Coming out spiritual at the LGBTQ national conference

Coming back to it, to you, for I am again overflowing with emotions as my mind churns with thoughts and inspiration.

I'm attending the National Conference on LGBTTQIA2S rights in Montreal right now. Third day of keynotes and panels on subjects ranging from ''the situation of LGBTQ migrants and refugees in Canada'' to ''domestic violence in same-sex couples'' and ''growing old as an LGBT person''. Fifty-nine panels to choose from. Right now, I'm playing hooky. I'm too overwhelmed to take such emotionally-charged information in.

I just attended a panel titled ''The role of Two-Spirit in today's world''. It was, in fact, one of the few options having to do with LGBTQ 2S (for two-Spirits) indigenous realities, all of which I attended.

Why did I attend those in particular? I don't have to justify myself! Am I being defensive? No! Why? What?!

When considering the list of workshops I chose to attend, there seems to be a certain thread.

On one hand, there have been the ones related to LGBTQ+ artists. I guess I'm seeking mirrors, hints, inspiration. Yes, I'm back to it again: I know there is something wanting to come out. I'm wondering: when will I get over denying that my sensitivity and my relationship to the world are those of an artist? When will my practice and my message take form?

I will actually be taking this entire year off, with the intention of engaging this process.  I will be dancing, I will be writing again. I will be healing myself.  I am entering that part of the spiral again, ready to step a little bit more into my identity.

Identity: the concept. As a white middle-class french-canadian woman, I realize my identities haven't really be so threatening to the societies I've lived in. I'm also queer and bisexual, but that hasn't even been so much of an issue for me either (I can be grateful for this). I'm full of privileges.

But there are areas where I feel uneasy about the gap between my inner truth and my identity. There are parts of me I am uncomfortable assuming, feeling that I might get judged and rejected, laughed at and misunderstood.  It came to me yesterday: I'm starting a process of coming-out... as a spiritual being.

And as I'm writing this I don't even know what it means. When I say I am a spiritual being, I mean that I believe to be part of something much greater than... my individual ego. I actually believe that there is something unfolding at a collective level, and that we have souls-bodies that are informing us, if we listen, as to the direction of greater healing and evolution.

Which brings me back to what I was feeling at the beginning of this post: overwhelmed. The workshop I left earlier left me with such a palpable ball of energy in my solar plexus. So much anger and sadness!

I feel the same way I used to feel when I became conscious, from the age of thirteen, of all the injustices that black people had experienced in America. (I am aware this is not a sentence to be written in the ''simple past'', yet I'm referring to the moment of my awakening, 21 years ago.  Today, I am more than ever feeling a rage and urgency: nothing is over). I felt the same way I felt throughout my International Affairs degree, learning about neoliberalism as well as the history of colonialism. Or as I felt when taking my first animal ethics class. The roots of violence and injustice run so fucking deep!

I am taking it in: as a white middle-class woman french-canadian woman living in Québec, I do have a duty to use my privilege to speak up. I don't know how far my words can participate in the healing. Right now, I'm mostly emotions. But there are many thoughts to come, some of them potentially insightful...

Right now, I have to go back in the conference room. I want to take part in the closing ceremony led by Ms. Sylvia Maracle. We are standing on un-ceeded Mohawk territory. We have much community healing and building to do. A-ho.

Queer & Reggae

I've been learning to go out in Montréal.  

In my planner I had written: Reggae Queer! 9pm.  Salon Officiel, 351 Roy. No cover.

It's ten o'clock on a dark Sunday night.  I've been indoor all day, resting my foot and sending job applications.  It's a bit hard to get motivated, but I well know that there is no way I can miss this event...

Reggae + Queer?!  That's HOME!  Yes, those terms are tightly tied to my sense of identity. In fact, it's deeper even than that: those two words evoke images of such freedom...  likes sources connecting to ''the essence... like wells where I get to quench my thirst for pure and simple being-ness.  Reggae + Queer are two homes to my soul.

''Feel like dancing... Dance 'cuz we are free!'' sang Saint-Bob Marley.  

And in queer I do feel free, because it's the epitome of no-boundaries - or I should say: fluid boundaries.

Rue du Roy is not too far, so I decide to take a walk, hoping that a few people might already be at the bar when I get there.  There's something just so absurd about sitting on a stool sipping on a five dollar drink, waiting for a party to begin.

I tend to go warm up the dance floor pretty quickly, since my primary intention for going on is to dance.  With a few friends, it's not too bad to break the ice.  But tonight, I have no friends with me.

I came out alone, which is perfectly okay with me.  For Jah's sake, I've been doing it for five years now.  I don't see why I should change my ways and pass a good gathering just because I have the same accent as everyone else around me. 

Most of the friends I already have in this city aren't going out on Sunday nights anymore.  And they don't go to queer events either...  

I suddenly re-realize, that this is a crucial part of that subtle sense of alienation I've been feeling wary about.

''Looks good in the box...''

Tonight, it feels good to dress up by wearing a button-down shirt and putting on my running shoes. Those are the clothes I like to wear; I feel comfortable, confident, and even beautiful in them.  I'm not thinking about picking up the ladies, though it does highlight a strong yang energy, I guess.  In the end, it's nothing but another costume though, as all clothes are.  Tomorrow, I might want to wear that cute skirt I got before xmas.  But it might be too cold outside for that.

I'm queer; I don't want to deny or forget it.  The danger is there; you hang out with a bunch of hetero-normative folks for a while and you start feeling like them, you want to look as pretty as the other girls around you.  It seems that the other option is to dyke it out so it's clear what you identify as.  Or you might have a job interview and you feel the need to dress the part, to make a good impression, to fit expectations.

I just want to be myself, in all my fluidity and ... repertoire!  That's what I identify as. :)

So I decided I'm gonna have lots of clothes, so I can just pick and choose on any given day or night!  Costumes Costumes...

Sink-side Flirtation:
''I like your haircut.''
''I like your curves.''

Queer reggae wasn't after all particularly queer.  I met some people from Ottawa, some Montrealers, and a Mexican guy.  A beautiful woman was dancing in her wheelchair...
The music was aaawwwwwesssssommmmme!!! :)
It is Sunday night and I am dancing in between, San Francisco (flashbacks of those many Sundays spent at Dub Mission!) and Montreal, man and woman, Franco and Anglo, straight and gay, while the planet we live on keeps spinning on its axis, in the solar system, in the galaxy, in the universe...

Wise Adolescence.

A bit high on caffeine this morning.  Listening to epic songs from Muse.  Wondering whether I should revise my curriculum vitae, again.
What do ''they'' want?

I'm realizing how much of a teenager I have been.  Not wanting to integrate society, feeling confused and angry at the ways things are done; ; calling it superficiality, hypocrisy... unsustainability.
But those feelings are gently shifting today.  There's been a revolution happening in me since I learned about shadow projection.
Besides,
Collective consciousness is a historicyclical phenomenon.  Those who are able try their best, the others are not responsible for their failures. (Here we get to the problem of evil again, but I'll choose innocence over fear again today.) I've been observing it in myself for a few years now: superficiality, hypocrisy, there's a drop of everything in every single one of us.  Makes me feel compassion (com-passion = feeling with)  It's all rooted in fear and not-knowing.
But what about unsustainability?!  Doesn't that make for right and wrong?  I sometimes think so.  And in true anthropocentric fashion I will say that it'd certainly be a sad-sad thing to see the self-conscious species gone.  But I Love the Creation regardless.  We'll either kill ourselves or we won't.  All of this to say, that the challenge of sustainability is perhaps more like a dance between life and death.  Hopefully humans can hear the song.

Am I buying into oblivion, buying my peace of mind, giving up the struggle?  Who knows?
I feel like growing up a bit, it's true.  I think it's time I stand behind my vision.

Adolescence (to come back to my point), after all, is an in-between time.  It's true I've pretty much always felt in-between.  I couldn't always name it, but that's what it is.  I'm not quite schizophrenic but I'm quite queer indeed.  I even created that condition outside of myself by falling in love with San Francisco: in the end, I could neither be here nor there.
And that's why I chose to move back to Montréal at this time.  I needed to try out this route to my feeling of integrity.  On the great wheel of Life I wanted to move towards more grounding and manifestation.  My heart is full, I want the world to drink from it.  I want to nourish my peers, I want to follow my exegesis of Nietzsche in ''becoming the meaning of the earth".  I think it is time to share some of my wisdom.  I say this in all humility.  By wisdom I mean: a knowing that ''it's all good.''
I've learned that much through thirty thousand dollars of graduate school.

How do I write that in my résumé?

I've been visualizing myself teaching philosophy to teenagers.  It'd be a good way to integrate that familiarity for adolescence all the while stepping into my new found sense of self-authority.
Or I could still work my way towards another credential, in Drama Therapy.
I'll always write, I'll always think.  I want to help things move.  Doesn't matter the title the job has.  Give me a chance to organize a great project on civic participation, or invite me to join your co-op grocery store.  I'm not that picky.

Each thing in their own time.  Other times will mean and necessitate other places.  Things they come and things they go..

For now, I clearly see this propensity of mine, that natural state of mind: in-between.
Like a psychopomp of sorts.  Working the transition.

Wish I could only get a bit of financial validation.  To pay the bills, keep warm, keep the energy flowing.  I'm giving of me and I trust.

Thank you for reading.  Don't be shy, please comment and engage.  What do you think?  What do you feel?  How is your experience similar or different?  This ain't supposed to be a soliloquy.

Centimeters..

Snow has been falling down alllll day.  I had tentative plans on my agenda for the day: 1) call this dude Vahid and go visit an apartment, 2) go introduce myself at the local office of employment.  But with this gentle white blizzard waving at me from the other side of the window, I decided to stay in instead.  (Plus, Vahid postponed our meeting.)
I browsed through a few more job offers, reworked a few résumé to fit the profiles, worked on those cover letters that are supposed to make them impatient to meet me.
People ask me: '' What kind of job are you looking for ?''  I tell them I am open, as long as it is inspiring.  You see, I'm not interested in working at Tim Hortons'.  I'm not going to spend my days like an automaton, just to make ends meet.  I want to care.  I want to grow.  I want to feel connected.
So these jobs I am applying generally have requirements that are a bit above what my experience is.  But I KNOW, they are not above my competency.
Here I am, in that infamous qualification ''ditch'', trying to show that I can climb and fulfill whatever functions these people need fulfilled, trying not to slip to the bottom and lose faith.
It's been less than I week since I moved here, I suppose.  I am trying to be patient.  The old wise woman inside knows it's only a matter of time until I get to shine my little light and take part in some super duper progressive creative community endeavor.  But for now, it's lonely as hell.
I haven't gone dancing in over what... two months?  My foot won't allow me.  The tendon connecting to my heel has a little tear (happened exactly a week before I left home in San Francisco.  Talk about body-mind!) and it wants me to stay in place and be with my emotions instead of going out and dancing them off.  It's hard.  I want to move, get my heart rate up, sweat and shake and feel free... but I can't.



I'm back on OkCupid.  I figured it'd be a good way to meet other queer people.
I miss home.  I miss the sunshine.  I miss creating with Harvey.
But this is not meant to sound down in the dumps or anything.  It's just that it's been snowing all day.  And I long to share my energy with others.

I have some ''meetings'' lined up for the next few weeks.  I found a group of people who are wanting to start a sustainable-living-community-land-ecovillage-project-thing somewhere.  I'm planning on joining the first meeting next week.  I'm also meeting a professor from the Drama Therapy program next week, just to learn about what the scene is around here.  Tomorrow, I'm going to some introductory meeting for a ''young entrepreneur in social economy'' formation.  And saturday, there's an open house at a dance studio.  Don't know if I can dance quite yet, but please foot, let me try out that physical theater class!  Oh, and hopefully, I'll get some calls for interviews soon...

It's cool not to be working, actually.  It means lots of free time.  Besides, I got a bit of a cushion still.  I can handle it.  It gives me time to explore the city.  (I went to a lecture on Mohawk history yesterday, at the McClure museum near McGill university.)  It's just that it ain't that much fun when thermometers show minus twenty (celsius) outside, and you got a sore heel with all the fear (of a chronic injury) it brings..

TransToulouse

Narrow streets of "La ville Rose"

More Toulousian musings on the themes of gender and identity.  Though it wasn't so much musing as it was just simply… experiencing in a closer, more personal way, yet another angle of the gigantic and wonderful diversity of Life.

I knew J. from San Francisco, having witnessed his part in a Theater for Change performance at CIIS, where he studied Expressive Arts Therapy.  His story (told partly in French)  had touched me deeply that day: a story of awakening to and accepting of her/his difference.  There on stage s/he had revealed part of the personal and political struggle s/he'd gone through in this hetero-normative and dualistic gender world.  Neither woman, not quite a man.  Gay, not quite lesbian.  J. has had to define himself outside of the reference frame provided by modern society.  

When I first contacted J., via email, I asked if he preferred the use of a particular pronoun.  He said he generally goes by he, "but like[s] the feminine plural."

J. has decided to begin taking testosterone.  His voice, his smell, his pilosity is changing.  J. is really beautiful.

I contacted him because I thought he might have some good French contacts for HE: a genderstranged clown duo.  I mentioned that we had met briefly once or twice, even though he might not remember.   I said I had the impression we'd get along pretty well, since I am into clowning - I had seen him stilts-walking during the Pride parade!- and drama therapy, and anarchist theory, as well as queer and gender studies - though I'm not half as versed as the real academics are on the subject (Foucault, Butler, etc.). 

He told me he had just moved to Toulouse and didn't know many people yet.  It might be hard to get us a show, but we or I could come visit anyway.

Harvey and I somehow kept our performances of ShameNoShame! in Berlin, but I thought I'd come visit J. in Toulouse.  I asked and s/he said s/he'd be delighted to meet.  And s/he could probably ask his squat-mates if I could stay there for a few days.

Funny how two beings with so many commonalities can live in the same city (SF), without ever meeting.  

Lovely how it can happen so naturally, two years later, on the other side of the Atlantic.  Given: there was the French connection.

"You can call me when you arrive and I'll come meet you", he'd said.

I was a bit nervous.  Was I cool enough to hang with J.?  Was I cool enough to hang at the squat?

When I called he asked, "how are we going to find each other?"

"I've got a big red backpack," I answered.  "And I'll recognize you I'm sure."

"Okay.. well I'm wearing a hat and… pants… kinda like a clown.. hehe."

Place Wilson.  I'm sitting on the bench entertaining conversation with a local man, busy trying to gage whether I should - and how and where to - draw my own opinions and boundaries, as the man passes judgements on a group of homeless young adults hanging around peacefully.  He asks me where I'm staying in Toulouse.  "With a friend," I say.  "He's coming to meet me any minute."

I used the masculine pronoun repeatedly, even though something inside of me wondered how androgynous-ambiguous J. might show up to be, and what reaction this narrow-minded fellow might  have.  I was eager to find out. 

J. and I found each other immediately.  He came to greet me. Kisses on each cheeks.  He shook my interlocutor's hand; I smiled.  I didn't remember seeing J. with facial hair before.

On the way to his house he told me he was in the process of changing his legal name:  "It's very complicated here in France.  I need a note from my doctor, which states that my decision to take testosterone makes my transition irreversible."

This is what I mean when I say that I got to experience the whole thing to a more personal level.  I know a few transgender folks, yet there is something about J. that I just feel so close to.  It's an essence.  It's the woman and the man in him.  It's the complete ease with which I see him as he is, forgetting and remembering the difference according to the moment.  It's the strangeness of my own voice when I refer to myself in the feminine.

Why am I identifying as a woman?

I don't actually feel the dire need to answer the question.  Maybe that's why.

"I came to a point where I realized that the only way I would be able to grow old was if I became a man" explained J.

Can you imagine?

Perhaps many of us cannot.  And I guess that's valid.  Yet, it is so real, and so freakin' beautiful to me.. integrity in complexity… evolutionary… beyond duality… You gotta respect.

But I left my new friend now that I'm on the bus towards Sevilla, Spain.  Last leg of this three month adventure.  

Yes, I am confident saying that I made a new friend.  It was a short time, but J. and I met straight from the heart.  The connection is undoubtedly timeless.  
Once again I met someone who's in a similar place: out of San Francisco and hoping to create a good life in a new place, hoping to share wisdom and care with the world, painfully seeing the many imperfections of this neoliberal system and trying to create something else, something better, more sustainable and ethical, at the periphery. 

But we didn't only talk.  We also danced.  First, he invited me to join his contact improvisation class, on wednesday evening.  And then again on Friday, him and his partner asked if I'd be interested in "helping out" and come to the studio to rehearse a session of "movement exploration." 

Because you see, J.'s girl has a passion ... for Butoh!  
Together they are crafting a workshop she will be offering at a festival in London.

Help out?  ah! ah! ah! Amen!

I met them at the studio, and then J. and I got a private Butoh class…

Connecting in movement, in breathing, in presence and exploration, in vulnerability and in freedom.


Butoh is a dance of in-between.  It's a dance of being with becoming... of being with transition.
How perfect.  How powerful.


---

"Parlas occitan?"
"Una soleta lenga sufis pas jamai!"

I also meant to write about Occitan, or Langue d'Oc, which is a latine language spoken  in eight regions of Southern France, as well as twelve alpine valleys in Italy, and in parts of Spain.  (It is quite close to Catalan.)
It was the language of the troubadours and poets, and it was widely spoken until the 14th century.  But then came the systematic imposition of the French language over the territory; first, when the king of France began to "unify" (read: conquer) the nation, and again with the French Revolution, because diversity of languages came to be seen as a threat to the Republic.
I'm just so fascinated with how languages morph and mix and become extinct...

Q-topia

"We don't want a piece of the pie, we want the whole bakery."

Tachales Kunsthaus

I just spent a gorgeous day on the outskirt of a tiny little village, which is  located an hour northeast of Berlin.  I had been planning this visit to the countryside for a little while.  I woke up after not sleeping so long and so well, and part of me would have gladly stayed in to rest (and do some laundry!), but a greater part knew that there was a reason I was going.

So far I have had the chance to hang out  and chat with a good amount of hold time squatters as well as a few Berliners who are part of this thriving "group living" movement; but this particular community is doing it in somewhat of a different way.

I met G. about a month ago.  She had come to Berlin for the weekend to take part in a casual gathering for women and lesbians to learn and practice acrobatics together.  G. and I didn't get much time to talk back then, because she was in a rush to go pick her children.  Still, it only took a minute to realize we both came from America (meaning the continent, of course).  

In ten minutes, I learned that she has just moved to the area, from Prague where she had lived for the last twenty years.  She told me she now lives on a big plot of land, in an old boarding school that she and seven other people have bought together, "to live under anarchist principles."  "There is a lot of work to do, but we're very excited about this," she had added.  "You should come visit us if you have the time."

"Really?" I had answered with certain dose of … awe.  "Well,  I would love to help with some of the work if I can!"

So the connection was made.  And over the following weeks my new friend was impressively good at keeping in touch and making sure I could come check out her community's project.  So today came, and I took the train out into the German countryside…

Falkenberg Mark Train Station

She picked me up at the train station.  We greeted each other, and as she began to drive she pointed out: "The man and woman who live in this big building here (the station) apparently own five small train stations like this!"  
Really?
On the way she stopped by the only [little] store to get some cooking oil, but for some strange reason it was closed, so we went on to the house.

The house: a former communist boarding school that was abandoned for the past decade.  "There is one other big building, in the back!  It needs to be fixed," she quickly said, "but it's beautiful."  

I could so immediately tell, or rather confirm, how much all of this meant to my new friend.  "I will show you later."

She led me inside the premises… In the kitchen, I met three of her companeras.  Indeed queer looking, for the most part.  Except for G., there were also all German women.  Well... "biological" women I should say, because several of them actually identify as genderqueer or gender-fluid.  Besides, I should note that the project welcomes people of all genders, including men.

(Note: I feel that I don't often address the topic of gender queer-ness, even though it is actually a bit part of my life.)

We made coffee and sat around the kitchen table to chat for a bit.  Somebody came in: "Did such-and-such already talk to you?  Is it okay with you that we cut the tree?"  They were talking about a medium-sized tree, out in the front.  G. explained to me that these two women were "tree killers" (irony intended) by trade, that is, they are environmentalists and take care of diseased tree-individuals.  "And they also work as "pine cone pickers.. or harvesters.  Apparently these things are very valuable to growers.  So they climb all the way to the top of pine trees to collect them and sell them."

She was happy and eager to share the details of the situation: "We shared all the work there is to do, learning from another as we go." Then, she underlined: "This is a shared economy, which means it's a huge deal."

"Yeah.. it's pretty much like being married to seven people at the same time," I said.

"Exactly," she smiled.

There are about a dozen rooms on the second floor of the building, but each single one of them is in a state of total abandonment and in need of solid repair.  "We only set up the electricity of this house a couple of weeks ago.  Before we used a kitchen, with a woodstone, in the other house." 

There are many projects in line for the years to come.  First, there is the mold and the asbestos to take care of.  But then... There will be a whole section of the house available for people to come and give workshops, or organize community events.  There will be a small library and resource center also.  One day, they will knock down that brick structure in the yard and turn it into an outdoor kitchen.  They will invite the whole village to come and share in the food they will grow in their orchard and permaculture garden.

They have already organized a welcoming party for the local people to come and meet them.  What they found out, is that many of them actually used to work in the school!

After the tour my friend asked if I was still interested in working a bit.  She said there were a few options: we can build shelves, or clean the kitchen, or we can find something else."

"I've never built a shelf," I said, "that could be fun."

So we did.   We set up the working station outside the woodshed, and proceeded to assemble… or rather, to measure and calculate angles and try to understand exactly how everything would stand together.  There was no IKEA plan.  We were both learning how to do this!

A meeting has been decreed to take place between three o'clock and five, so G. eventually left me to attend.  And there I was: Halloween day in Germany, a human being on multicolored background, yellow and orange leaves floating gently down the trees, surrounded by silence and warm oxygen.  A sound above my head: birds migrating in a divine demonstration of collective intelligence at work.

Collective intelligence at work.

There is so much more I could write about today.  I could go into conversations on the challenges of community-living, because don't get me wrong: there are obviously a lot of challenges!  Personalities do collide and conflicts.  It is unavoidable.  Fears?  We all have them?  How to mediate the disagreements, the power dynamics, and the streams of feelings that are generated by those.  How much is one able to commit to a certain vision, and how much of a venture like that can lead people to confront themselves too.

But I cannot go into all the details.  This too is a process.

I was so blissed out while doing "carpentry", that I completely forgot to take pictures of the place! Oops.. my bad.  I guess we'll have to agree that our imagination each gave us a different picture!

--
A few more pictures:

"Atomic Power?  No thanks."
(Frankfurt - and here and there throughout Germany!)

(I found these three headless men at Tachales!)

HE was Built for Speed!

Thoughts accumulate throughout the day and in so many directions, it's hard to actually verbalize it.  Last night HE had a gig at the King Kong Club.  How did it go?  HE... had. a. blast!
A couple of Americans, Mad Kate (Kathryn Fisher) and her partner, Juan Of a Kind, have been "throwing this party"(what a strange phrase!) one thursday each month for the past five years.  Last night, very few people were actually in the bar.  We had been scheduled to perform at 22h but we went on about an hour and a half later, of course. ''If it starts on time, it's not art!''
There were perhaps only 12-15 people in there... but: we truly played with them!
Before the show, Harvey was going around taking sips from people's drinks, and of course, I-Magda had to leave the comfort of the backstage lounge (where Magda was perfectly pleased to be dancing and singing to herself in the mirror for a while) in order to stop her from making a terrible fool of herself, causing havoc, and above all, embarrassing me-Magda!
We had such fun playing with people, sitting with them, me with my lipstick and mustache attire, talking to them in French, even though they didn't even speak a word of it!  Although, doing this pre-game thing I  found out that four or five actually did speak very good French, which meant that it was going to be a bit of a challenge, and certainly quite some fun...

"Lonely no More"

I find that working in gibberish with Madga has helped me with the physicality a bit more.  Nevertheless, I do have some work to do with keeping this crazy hysteric character grounded throughout the piece.. and with this non-language I still had the tendency to fly up and up...
It was fun for a while, and I do still hope to play with gibberish.  The reason I'm so attached to the idea is because I find language to be such a fascinating phenomenon.. and such an absurd and funny thing!  But I guess I've discovered that gibberish is perhaps one of those things that are best used only when it is "done well."  I'm not sure exactly what this means.  I suspect it might have to do with economy, as James Donlon would say.



So the show was a success.  The twelve people in our audience laughed, and gasped, and shouted and played with us.  It felt great.


We are doing another night at the same place next week (on my birthday!) - a different party though.  And for next time we are creating an alternative ending.  It'll be a special edition! if you my may say so; and there are talks of it involving hair clippers...

After the gig, Juan was DJ-ing some really good music; a lot of stuff I had only heard once of twice, mostly  "eighties queer rock pop"; or at least that's how I would call it.  By then, it was perhaps half passed midnight.  I had told Harv that I might very well go straight home after the gig - because I have been dancing 5 hours of Butoh everyday since Wednesday, and had another day of workshop today!  (How I want to elaborate on this too!!)  and I meant it... I was really tired.  But when I heard the music and saw the crowd (Kate, and Megg) dancing madly, I came out of the backstage room with my three free-drinks tickets and decided to stay.. for a little while.

Alex pours a Bavarian beer like it's a work of art!

Well, it turned out that all these beautiful people were actually all good friends with one another- duh!  Gorgeous freaky people!  Queers, punks and fairies...
Harvey and I exchanged a look and almost said it in unison: I love Berlin!

Kathryn, Andre, and Meg.
Partyin' like it's 1989!

I know these pictures could make you raise an eyebrow or two.  Well, what can I say?  Berlin is a place where these things just happen.  There is this edge, this pushing, this reputation for experimental art and performance art.  There are ex-patriates, artists from the United States, who have come here to play outside the bounds of a puritan American culture.

And remember: Europeans have a different perspective/ relationship with/perception of sexuality.  So let's just say that when you juxtapose a Berliner-German psyche (of which there a lot I hope to discuss further) on that backdrop, well... it creates some hot kinky stuff!

In short, it seems that our genderstranged clown duo might very well have found a home!  Everybody there was the sweetest, most fun radical people.  (No offense to you Alyssa, rocking out Rage Against the Machine with a bunch of Hamburger metal lovers was quite a memorable experience too, but this was just some crazy stuff! hehe)  In fact you know what it is?  It's a kind of FREEDOM...  These folks are so free...

When dancing becomes public performance:
sexy, raw, beautiful, alive!
(yet, still tasteful.  I swear!)

I got home around 4am.

Big Mountain

 Where am I?

I'm sitting in a sunny cafe of "the Castro", in San Francisco, California.  I'm drinking a chai latte.  I want to write about so many things...



Like waking up before sunrise in yet another one of the myriads of quaint - and often luxurious- apartment in the city.  Loading a grey Saab with boxes of stuff to go store them in "my employers" garage (as I often put it, though generally followed with "but you know... they've been more... like friends...like... you know... angels?"

I want to write about going to church in Oakland that same day, at 9am.  I'd like to convey the experience, but I doubt I could...

There is something about singing, early in the morning, with an assembly of black people and white people, kids and teenagers, young adults just like me, and people "in their prime".  And there is something about the presence of elders...
So we sing:
"I woke up this morning with my mind, set on Spirit
 I woke up this morning with my mind, set on Spirit
I woke up this morning with my mind, set on Spirit
Hallelu... Hallelu... Halleluuuujah"
(this is Oakland, California)

At 2pm, I'm playing dress up with CoiCoi.  She's an old man and I'm a boy, and so we laugh.  We head out to 19th & Franklin for an afternoon at Oakland Pride.  "I wonder what we're supposed to do here," she comments, "you know?"  "Yes," I answer with a smile, "you mean you need to know what's expected of you?" I hope I didn't say something... inappropriate (this is a euphemism, by the way).  But she replies "oh is that what it is?"  We laugh.  We don't really know what's expected of us; it's true... Should we check out the information booths, the food vendors, the artisans... Should we consume?  Well, I guess it's what they call a market, isn't it?  It's a place where people come together and exchange, it's the place where we inter-act.
At its best it's also a crossroads where we celebrate and where culture happens.  It's a place where consciousness changes.  And in the consciousness of this fact, it's an event within which we get to witness our collectivity.
And we dance!

It's sunday afternoon and the sun is bright.  Dancers and singers, drag queens and women hip hop duets, poets and djs are blasting their creativity out to crowds of curious passerbys and drunken teenagers, queers everywhere!  There's now more or less four of us, Phoenix and Fei have joined and we're meandering the streets aimlessly, dancing here and there, moving on and catching up...
We head to an after-party around seven, and of course, the place is quite empty.  But my dancing shoes are possessed. ('Cuz after all I did wake up this morning with the Spirit on my mind, which is my body.)

Ecstasy, at Octavio and Hayes, SF.

I'll dance, non-stop, until midnight.  I think I was a bit entranced, or perhaps rather, manic.  I couldn't stop dancing, feeling, MUSIC, MOVEMENT, and immense gratitude..


Sometimes I think that my dreams are my reality.. at least it has seemed this way for a short while now.  How can I be so blessed to encounter such abundance?  How can I be surrounded by so many angels, in a region of the world so gorgeous and magical, in the sunshine, writing alone, waiting for the next time I'll get to dance?  And what am I to make of my privilege?

And I want to write about "my job", which is not quite what I would call "a job."
My role is to answer the questions of a "three and three-quarter"'s year old while taking a walk, kicking fallen leaves and smelling the flowers!  My role is to make sure she is safe, physically, but also it's to not screw her up too much psychologically... my job is to remember that we are each other's teacher, and to learn to relax (it is such a contradiction).  My job, is to not beat myself up too much when I think that I'm not good enough, that I'm not present enough.. that I'm tired and lazy, and... un-creative (? - Unimaginative is the best antonym for creative.)
You get the picture.
My job is directly related to my Masters degree.

And is there even such a thing as unimaginative?
-These thoughts I have while I'm with Claire, isn't that imagination too?-

with Claire and Grandma, at Stern Grove

My role is to be one of the teachers in a young child's life.  I hope I've done okay.  I hope she remembers the times we picked plums off the trees, I hope she remembers the laughs we shared, the music we made, the banana breads we baked, the physical comedy and the finger paintings, the songs and the stories..
My heart swells when I think of all the things I wont get to see her learn and grow into.  I don't think I'd had this realization before.  It's a loss, a deep letting go.
But as I've often sang to her: "Things they come, and things they go. And that's what thing you ought to know".

Freedom?!