Being and doing (Doo-be-do, bee-do)

I get back to work in one week.

It's the end of the summer; and what a summer.
From one angle: Swaying between being and doing... What to do? What to make? What to buy? And why not just... slow down and stop!?

Because stopping kinda makes me dizzy. 'Cuz as Hiroko Tamano (Subterrean Arthouse, Berkeley) says: ''When you stop, then you start moving at a thousand miles per hour.''
And Google agrees with teacher Tamano:

''The earth rotates once every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09053 seconds, called the sidereal period, and its circumference is roughly 40,075 kilometers. Thus, the surface of the earth at the equator moves at a speed of 460 meters per second--or roughly 1,000 miles per hour.''   -Google

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
― Rumi

Complete liberty! (which is different than absolute freedom, by the way.)  
A whole lot of free time! (At least as long as I have money in the bank.)
As I anticipated, I've felt it somewhat compulsory to ''furnish'' the time-space I live in. I really wanted to do nothing. But I guess the mind did not quite surrender so easily. I guess I can't handle an empty room; there's always writing on the walls. That's what happens when you get a taste of mindfulness: the mind is so full!

I seek balance between doing and being. I take care of small actions that need to be done, like taking out the compost bin or trimming and watering the tomato plants. I dance a lot and I juggle; I so need to move the energy through my body. I haven't learned to contain the impressions the world make on me; I need to find appropriate ways to ex-press them. And when I stop moving my body, it's my thoughts that keep running. Observing the chatter in your mind will make you dizzy. Finding that you're quite powerless when you want to make it stop, that's a lesson in humility. Recognizing that trying to control or fight the stream actually gives the chattering mind even more power, that could lead to revolution.

...

Stopping to face a pregnant void. A distorted time-space of some sort. A plane of immanence. Matrix of potentialities, in which all things get revealed. And many demand to be made into manifestation; to be manifested.

(It's is a beautiful word;

man·i·fes·ta·tionˌ manəfəˈstāSHən,

noun

Event, action, or object that clearly shows or embodies something, especially a theory or an abstract idea.

"the first obvious manifestations of global warming"

• the action or fact of showing an abstract idea. "the manifestation of anxiety over the upcoming exams"

• a symptom or sign of an ailment. "a characteristic manifestation of Lyme disease"

''And I think to myself''... 'Am I manifesting anything'? What am I really doing with the time given me? Or should I ask myself about what I should be doing? What? No! The teachers have told us, 'There are no more shoulds', at least not in this case.
I should be doin' just what I'm doin' right now, conversing with my heart, grounded in cyberspace, spinning a thousand miles, per minute.
Just that. Living a blessed life. Doing what I love.

I'm sorry, I didn't get the credits for these three images. I give all credits to their authors et cetera.

“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”
― Rumi

“silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.”
― Rumi

Puisque tout est politique.

Un texte pouvant peut-être sembler un peu décousu.
C'est que le fil est transparent.
N'hésitez pas à commenter!

Une amie me racontait: ''Pour moi tout est politique.  Des fois... ça devient un peu fatiguant.''

Je me dis, en effet:
J'aimerais, par exemple, savoir comment prendre le temps
de prendre soins de jeunes plantes

Parce que 1) prendre le temps est un geste radical, à contre-courant du mode compétitif effréné dans lequel se vautre notre culture économique; et parce que  2) prendre soins est un geste radical et trop peu valorisé: ça ne fait pas partie du PIB!
S'appliquer, s'engager, s'efforcer à faire émerger la vie, à fournir la juste dose de tout ce qu'il faut pour que prennent racines: c'est radical. Imaginer une production alimentaire significative à même nos milieux urbain, faire respirer la cité-bitume, semer sur les toits de nos appartements, dans les craques des trottoirs, dans nos bacs à double-fond et nos jardins grimpants...
Ça requiert tout un engagement.

Cultiver.

Naturer.

Arrêtons de prétendre que nous ne comprenons pas ce qui nous arrive. Certes, encore aujourd'hui, tous les angles ne sont pas visibles.  Mais ne pourraient-on pas rendre compte de ce qu'on a appris et de ce qu'on continue d'apprendre? Je continue de croire qu'il nous faut créer des espaces dans lesquels on se permettrait d'explorer, c'est-à-dire de ressentir, les sentiments qui se rattachent à l'Histoire.

Reconnaître notre ignorance et notre vulnérabilité en tant qu'espèce. Intégrer ce que nous avons appris depuis Nietzsche, Freud, Fromm, etc. Célébrer le chemin parcouru. Considérer les motivations psychologiques derrière la tendance réactionnaire et la puissance grégaire. Expliciter le phénomène et se donner les outils pour ne plus commettre de telles violences.  Car c'est nous-même qu'on continue de mutiler.



Des outils comme le discours critique, ou comme la compassion! Nous sommes en train d'apprendre à nous émanciper.  Nous y oeuvrons maladroitement depuis 2500 ans (avénement de la philosophie occidentale. Le processus émancipatoire tient sans doute de bien plus loin...) L'apprentissage est là, étape par étape.

Ce qui me fait penser... aux Lumières!


Par exemple, pourquoi ne pas outrepasser la philosophie des Lumières? Questionner le libéralisme, la science moderne, le capitalisme industriel... l'État!  La philosophie des Lumières, ce n'était pas l'aboutissement de l'histoire, la ligne d'arrivée!  Pourquoi ais-je l'impression que ''la société en générale'' en est demeurée avec les idôles de ce temps? ''Liberté, raison, ... égalité''.  Le culte de l'individu et de sa supposée raison!  Démocratie?  ''Droit fondamental''?  Pourrait-on seulement continuer de porter une pensée critique sur ces Idées ?

Je ne suis pas la première à dire vouloir rappeler le lien qu'il existe entre l'État moderne et nos pires cauchemars: holocauste, hiroshima, génocide au Rwanda, corruption, violence policière, etc.  La justice et la liberté n'existent qu'en Idée. C'est autre chose qu'on choisit, il faut arrêter de se leurrer.  J'appellerais ça le Sentiment de Sécurité?

On le voit bien qu'il faut questionner!  On le sent, et c'est pour ça qu'on s'entre-mêle dans des tirades émotives et des rassemblements de peuple - tant de phénomènes que nous le savons voués à nous faire perdre la raison.

Rassemblons-nous alors!  Je sais que plusieurs philosophes contemporains sont derrière moi, entre autre parce pour ce qu'ils ont influencé ma vision du monde : Le sauvage, le non-ordre, le courant libre et créatif.. tout ça se doit d'avoir une place dans nos vies!
C'est dommage que la société québécoise du spectacle ait co-opté tout ça.



Le carnaval existait bien longtemps avant le cirque du soleil, le festival de Jazz de Montréal. Le carnaval existait avant Jésus-Christ, avant les Romains, avant Gilgamesh! Peut-être parce que l'être humain a bel et bien besoin de ces rites (de purification?), de cette intoxications, de cet ex-stasie (hors d'état).  C'est nécessaire, pour l'équilibre des choses.

Il y a une charge, une énergie, qui coure et constitue le flot des choses.  On ne perçoit que les presq'équilibres; on n'en sent que la tension, que la réverbération d'un mouvement minuscule qui devient séisme dès qu'on arrête de se tenir occupé.

Pourquoi, à quoi résister?
Quand on s'arrête de bouger, le cosmos lui tourne encore.
Résister au changement? Résister au status quo?
Les deux forment un tout.
(Y aurait-il un tierce élément à considérer?)

Bref.

Notre sensibilité est palpable.

Alors pourquoi nier?  Pourquoi tout enfouir?  Nos déchets et nos échecs, notre incapacité à gérer l'affaire. Les dépotoirs comme l'ombre de nos Lumières. Du matériel inconfortable à gérer, dont on préfère rester inconscient. Un barrage mental - qui a servi sa fonction - prêt à exploser.

''Je ne pense pas que je sois si politisée que ça''.
Mon amie était surprise.
 - ''Toi? Une fille qui étudie et qui va enseigner la science politique... et qui n'est pas politique!...Ah!''
On a bien rit.

Les cégeps existent depuis 46 ans.
Avant, la grande majorité des francophones du Québec
ne poursuivaient pas d'études au-delà du secondaire. Qu'est-ce qu'on a appris ?

Bien sûr que je suis politique.  Comme toi, je vois un système et je suis curieuse de le comprendre. C'est seulement qu'il y a quelques années j'ai aussi compris que mon intellect et mes efforts de logique servent d'abord à apaiser un feeling.  Je ne suis pas la seule.  Il faut en parler.

Tout est politique.

Alors je choisis de vivre en communauté et de chercher à définir le sens du terme, de créer des espaces de croissance et d'émancipation, d'enrichissement et de résilience.

Qu'il est sublime de voir un plant de haricots spiralé son chemin vers la lumière!

La fin d'un Monde

C'est la veille de la fin du monde et je me sens bien.  J'habite dans un coeur battant.
Un nouveau monde commence demain.  À travers les tueries, la souffrance, les guerres, l'esclavage... en chute libre au creux d'un futur qu'on dit ne pas pouvoir connaître d'avance.
Sauf que le problème, c'est que le futur n'existe pas.  Et en même temps, il existe aussi: c'est nous qui le créons.  Le future, le telos, c'est une projection de l'esprit humain.

C'est la veille de la fin d'une histoire.  La veille du solstice de 2012.  Le temps et l'espace s'apprêtent à prendre une nouvelle dimension.

Mon présent est vraiment merveilleux, because I come home to an open heart: a open home.   Parce que c'est pratiquement ''un open house'' ici, for our friends, visitors, family, friends of friends, etc.  We are seven and satellites, a kind of nucleus for nomads particles to find a home, for an instant.
We leave or heart open, so we learn from each other.
Three languages, four including music.  Cooking.  Building.  Sharing.  Growing seeds and sprouts and picking up the excesses from the capitalists' dumpsters.  Trying to live radically: trying to live from our roots.  Though we all come from elsewhere, from another part of the world.

Moi, fille d'ancêtres quelconques, de colons Français immigrant dans un nouveau Pays.  Et je me demande: Qu'elle était leur relation avec ceux qui habitaient sur ces terres?
Ils sont venu s'y établir, les Européens; ils sont chercher des richesses, développer des marchés, puis coloniser, cultiver, et évangéliser... Ils sont venus raconter leurs histoires d'un futur meilleur...

Meilleur que quoi?  Meilleur pour qui?

Eux qui perdirent leurs mythologies d'éternel retour des choses se mirent éventuellement à adopter de nouveaux mythes... des mythes de: progrès.  Une ouverture est créée.  C'est demain qu'il faut viser.  Demain, il y aura plus, plus de grain, plus de surplus, plus de sécurité ...

Nous avons si peur de la disette, de la pénurie.
Nous avons appris à focaliser un supposé état de manque.
Ceux qui détiennent les moyens d'exploitation, de transformation, et de distribution de nos ressources se rient bien de nous voir perdre nos moyens, de travailler comme des imbéciles et de courir contre la montre pendant qu'eux amassent les richesses en évitant de mettre l'épaule à la Roue (de la Vie)...
(Nous produisons beaucoup désormais.  Il y en aurait surement pour tout le monde.)

Au fond,
La Vie et la Mort son comme le pouls d'un temps infiniment profond.  Nos petits ''je'' ne font que passer dans la grande parade de l'Histoire, et encore plus dans celle du Temps...

Considérons...

- 408 million years ago, the first amphibians ''appear'' on Earth - planet Earth, that is; where we live today - the first insects, and the first spiders from the Silurian period and bring about what we apparently label the ''Devonian period", which is of course part of the Canbraic Era.

Then, 

All through this time the earth was changing. 
In the Triassic period, all the continents were joined together in one huge landmass. Climate was hot and dry but with rain seasons. The first tree ferns and coniferous trees were starting to appear. 

In the Jurassic period the climate changed as the huge continent was breaking up. There were now forests of cycads, conifers and gingko, all plants that still exist today. 

In the Cretaceous period (that's: 144 million years ago), the continents had separated and each had its own flora and fauna. However, Australia and Antarctica were still joined together. There were now flowering plants such as magnolias and waterlilies.

The first cell with a nucleus?  2.100.000.000 years ago.
Homo Erectus: 2, 500, 000 years ago.  

And then, barely two million years later, two MILLION years, homo sapiens emerges and begins to sapiens itself: a new form of self-consciousness develops...

Neolithic humans developed agriculture 8,000 years ago.

Two millennia ago, a Son of Man claimed himself Son of God.  King of a non-Earthly Kingdom, where there would be no wars, no slavery, no injustice.  Jesus was the awaited savior a of people without land, the one who would die and live again to purge the world of its darkness.  The Sun of God, the one who would live and die to bring us Light, just like old god Dionysos. 

Before that, at about 2,500 years ago, it was the son of an aristocratic man from the metropolis of Athens, a man named Plato,who laid the foundation of Western Philosophy and Ethics.  He told us of the man Socrates, who taught citizens how and why to think for themselves...

In this geological perspective, what is 2013?

What is December 21, 2012?
The astronomical calculations of the indigenous people of Mesoamerica.  A long cycle is ending: one Baktun of some 394.26 years, a cycle which is itself but a fraction of a bigger cycle that is also ending...
I heard about special cosmic phenomena that would apparently be taking place, like:

The supposed prediction of an astronomical conjunction of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy with the winter solstice Sun on December 21, 2012, referred to by Jenkins in Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: The True Meaning of the Maya Calendar End-Date (1998)

Is there really a black hole at the center of the Milky Way !!?

The Milky Way?  Can we really see that far outside of ourselves !?  Historically as well as cosmically, why deny it: we are so small.  Are we thus also insignificant?
Peut-on vraiment voir aussi loin à extérieur de nous-même?  Historiquement et astronomiquement parlant, pourquoi le nier: nous sommes tellement petits.  Mais alors, sommes nous pour autant insignifiants?

Voilà ce que j'en comprends.
Demain, je prendrai le temps d'écouter la souffrance de mes contemporains.  Je sais que je vais aussi ressentir la souffrance de notre Terre Mère, les guerres de nos pères, les peurs de nos frères et soeurs.  Je ressentirai l'Histoire, la pre-Histoire, le Temps Profond.  Je m'émerveillerai aussi certainement avec une dose d'ambivalence et une fascination intarissable, de voir nos constructions, notre architectures, nos organisations, si imparfaites.  Je m'émerveillerai d'être sapiens sapiens, de pouvoir être témoin de tout ça: le temps, l'espace.  Je serai reconnaissante, de pouvoir ressentir un flocon de neige sur ma peau, de pouvoir concevoir et admirer son unicité, son éphémérité...

Meanwhile in Gaza

I just wrote another blog about the politics of Québec.  Less than a week before our provincial elections, I'm humbly trying to contribute to the betterment of a society that I truly consider to have much potential (there are so many resources laying around here!!).  I'm hoping to bring up not one, but several coherent - and inspiring - perspectives, that would account for the complexities of our situation, all the while offering both rational and emotional grounds. (Trying to be integral?)  I am calling for an urgent move that brings us beyond the politics of fear, hate, and war.

I am dreaming of autonomy and intelligent self-management, while... in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian children are being tortured, every single day and unabashedly.  We might be in denial once again, because a nation is being occupied and the world ''community'' (always a good word to ponder) says absolutely nothing.  Well some people are speaking up and denouncing the violent apartheid system that's taking place in Israel.  Palestinian villages have been displaced.  Houses were demolished or taken over, and the people that lived on those lands - up until 1948 - are now waiting inside shrinking territories.
The Wall is built and it keeps eating up Palestinian gardens: Israeli settlements are spilling over.  The army is everywhere: check points and fences sprout like aggressive weeds, and military planes fly intermittently over the heads of these people effectively reminding them: : we got you.

Sorry to bring this onto you. It's just that it needs to be talked about.

Last night my roommates and I watched a documentary, called ''Le rire contre les larmes'' (Laughter against Tears), which followed a French troupe of Clowns Without Borders during their mission in Gaza.
(The following video is a different one... but :D )

My roommate M. was in Palestine last Spring, and she feels very strongly about the Israeli occupation. She told us that there is currently a boycott against Cirque du Soleil to protest against against their going to Tel Aviv. ''You can't put the people of Israel and their government in the same boat, '' I said, trying to defuse her anger.  (I thought of my dear Jewish and Israeli friends, and I didn't like M. pointing her finger at them!) And so a passionate debate ensued, and M. refreshed our memory about the history of the past 60 years and the fact that it is getting worst everyday.  I studied this shit in college and I know it is real: a whole nation, a whole culture is being slowly exterminated.  Genocide. We exchanged points of view to try and lay out the fullest picture, only to settle on the eternal conclusion that it is and will eternally be complex.  Of course, the youth of Israel is also victim of the situation.  Personally, I dare hoping that the mandatory draft is debated, and that few are those who go through it without realizing what is at stake.  Yet it takes superhuman powers to muster the courage and defy one's culture, to stand against the draft and face years of imprisonment. Everyone's fucked. We agreed on that. So M. said, ''I just can't deal with people who go on denying what is happening.'' And I wish I could do something.  I wish I could do something for indigenous people everywhere, in Québec, Brazil, Tibet, Kurdistan, Palestine, etc.  I wish I could learn some good tricks on the diabolo, and muster the courage to join Clowns Without Borders.  I wish I could tell everyone: ''We are with you.  We don't know how to go about it, but with all our hearts we see your humanness, your resilience, and your beauty.''

You can visit Clowns Without Borders' website, by clicking here.  You know this is deep healing work. One way to call for the end Apartheid in Israel is to join the Boycott and Divestment Campaign.  Learn more about this international movement here, or on the BDS website,  here.


As always, I welcome any respectful comment and questions about this post... We all feel passionately about those things that we identify with; let us all learn to notice this phenomenon so as to engage in functional debates in which we may all learn and broaden our horizons and our capacity to love.

Of minds and men (Mtl, Moscow, Mind)

Création d'espaces créatifs

All things are well in the midst of the Squirrel's Spire.

  Beautiful encounters over the past few das, the past few weeks.  I am trying not to make sense of it all but rather to experience it, with trust.  With breath.  

If the results of this experiment in abundance have been positive so far, I simultaneously feel another strong emotion... The depth of the Unknown, the compulsive fears and reactions, the anxieties of eminent change, of a potentially profound transformation.

Power to the Neighborhoods!
(Oui!)

As the Second Quiet revolution is starting to take place, we, the people, and I, actually, are starting to wonder... what's the point again?

''Le tintamarre des Casseroles'' is still happening, every night, though in reduced numbers now.  It has been going on since May 18th.  That's almost one month!  Every night, some... citizens get out and start following sidewalks and banging on their pots and pans.  Neighborhoods concentrate and relate, in this demonstration against the undemocratic absurdity of Loi 78.  Oh yeah, that's why!

But people also go to work everyday.  They also eat and so they cook or buy food.  They go for a drink or two, they see their friends.  We want the revolution AND life as usual.  We want to eat well and to be surrounded by people we love.  And why not?  You can't be on the battlefront at all times; because then, what are you fighting for?

Is the movement losing its breath?  I don't know, 'cuz I haven't been to the protests!

I am fighting for the Beauty and the interconnection in All things.  I am fighting for the Mystery of Life.

But sometimes I find it hard to sustain the fight.

Thoughts?  If the human species disappeared, it would take no more than a hundred years for planet Gaïa to rejuvenate Herself.

We are not indispensable.

 By now, we have to acknowledge that, since our arrival, we have been the most destructive species on Earth.  We need to acknowledge this reality, our reality, if we want to move forward.

And so once more it seems it comes down to some primary Guilt.  Damn guilt.
When you mama gave birth to you, it was the most painful and mystical experience... and yet.
 It's just how it is.

(Plus we now have epidurals anyway.  Not that I'm against it, just that we have adapted to make birth less painful and less dangerous.  Less mothers die I suppose.  That's a good thing!  But we get born in these conditions now, shielded and numbed from the pain of birth, and so we carry this on later in life, using more drugs, which I am not saying I am against either... given that it's all interconnected, and that the Earth also gives us these plants...)
(I could go on and one with musings on sacred medicine, but that'll have to be for another time.)




In short, all in all, consciousness is quite a phenomenon...

What are they trying to sell to us?

Une affiche, un manifeste non-signée. (Centre-Sud.)

 Of course I am trying to make sense of what's going on.  Why wouldn't I?  Why wouldn't a tree drink from its roots and tend toward the Sun?

 I don't need a lot of money.  What would be nice, however, is a good camera...

P.S. Remember !  The whole world is going through its revolutions.  One hundred thousand people gathered yesterday in Moscow, to overtly protest Putin's government and ask for new elections.  

Since embarking on his third presidential term, Putin has taken a stern stance toward the opposition, including signing a repressive new bill last week introducing heavy penalties for taking part in unauthorized rallies

Read more: http://www.canada.com/news/Tens+thousands+flock+anti+Putin+protest+Moscow/6768552/story.html#ixzz1xbCWp9cE

Yep.  It's happening in Russia right now.  Same thing!



A famous photo from Germany.  Cops suddenly take off their helmets and escort the anti-capitalist protests taking place in Frankfurt...  May 19, 2012.   (That was about two weeks ago.)



And in Poland, also yesterday!  :D  This is in parliament.

Réflexions sur le St-Laurent

Life goes on... so fast!
Je ne sais pas quoi penser de se qui se passe.

Le Québec, ma tête,
en effervescence,
À voir une identité se forger,
les tensions qui l'habitent
Les peurs et les espoirs les plus fous

À parler de la langue
le français et l'anglais co-habitant sur une île
depuis 370 ans
Ville-Marie l'utopie
...

En ces temps politiquement chauds
En ce printemps de l'année 2012
Des manifestations d'hommes et de femmes
d'enfants et d'aînés
d'étudiants, de générations,

Des voisinages qui s'animent finalement
Des jardins communautaires

I am getting a privileged perspective into what it might be to be anglophone and live in Montréal, because I am seeing my friends looking for work and facing a reality I never considered before... to work here, you need to speak French.
And that's a good thing, I think.  I think I think.
This is how we preserve a language.  This is how we keep it alive.  The money, the economy, drives exchanges and thus keeps our connections alive.  What happens to our beautiful français if we let English take over the world of our daily transactions?
(C'est comme ça qu'on préserve une langue!  C'est comme ça qu'on la garde en vie.  L'argent, l'économie, c'est ce qui créer nos échanges et garde en vie nos connections. Non?  Qu'arrive-t-il à notre français si beau, lorsque l'anglais commence à s'imposer comme unique langues du monde des transactions?)  (C'est ce qui est arrivé au 20e siècle.)

The reality is that Montréal has always been populated by both Anglos and Francophones.  And there were Native inhabitants too, and soon came the Irish, the Italians, the Portuguese, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Haïtians... (who am I forgetting?) and now the Arabs, the Africans.. the Canadians, the French!

I asked my friends, ''Do you feel... discriminated against?''

''I love French and I think we should all learn to speak it'', responded K.
''I think one should come here and expect (I always rather thought ''to respect'', perhaps in my feeling victimized?) to live in a new language.  It's like going to Spain.  You can't say 'I should be able to work in English!''', explained E.

Québec is another, different place.

It's not too late to make something of it.

It's not the Berlin Spree, but it's still gorgeous.
(coucher de soleil au Canal Lachine)

Métro quelconque

We've been living in two ghettos, and that's perfectly okay.  in a way.
Two cultures of different values, or business meets religion.
(Two fundamental activities for humankind, I must say.)
...

Civil engineering
 

''It's a very interesting dynamic here,'' added E., ''because you can easily live and go by in Montreal without speaking a word of French.''

C'est bien vrai.

Quoi que tout le monde n'ose pas parler de politique.  ''On ne devrait pas parler de politique dans sa  famille.  Ça enflamme souvent les discours.  On le prend personnel.  C'est trop désagréable.''

''Oh! Je ne pourrais jamais afficher mes opinions politiques au travail!''

Quelle tristesse!  Pourquoi ne pourrions-nous pas débattre des meilleurs façons de vivre ensembles?  Pourquoi ne pourrions nous pas apprendre, dans nos écoles, à discuter et à écouter, à dialoguer et à médier, à s'organiser et à gérer tous ensembles les secteurs de nos vies qui nous concernent tous?

Je sais, je sais. Mais pourquoi ne pourrions-nous pas au moins essayer?

Je reviens encore à Nietzsche, mon éternel compagnon... Il y a ceux qui choisissent encore de se faire mener.  Ils préfèrent la loi du moindre confort, ils ne prenne qu'un minimum de responsabilités et se contente d'un minimum de liberté.

Et ils y a les sauvages, les illuminés, ceux qui ont le besoin de faire pousser la barrière du possible.  Ceux qui voient au-delà de la servilité confortable et se sentent appellés à la Créativité...

Ils y a ceux qui se veulent maîtres d'eux-même.

Bien sûr personne ne l'est vraiment.  Les forces du subconscients sont bien réelles après tout.  Il faut rester humble dans cette histoire d'Übermensch.

Orion nebulla / La nebuleuse Orion

spire for a car ride

''The inconstruable We-problem''

Assessing existence again because perpetually,
for the mind is a gang of grasping monkeys.

Thinking of Osho's words I read yesterday: ''A contentment that comes and goes again is not contentment, it is simply a gap between two miseries.''

Perhaps then, joy is made of those most authentic moments of sharing with a friend about underlying fears and anxieties.  Perhaps it's spending this time together, dancing in and with the unknown.  We wonder ''what to do with our lives'', but we already know, we are teachers and healers and leaders.

I just took my roommates A. and K. on a joy ride around the city.  I have a car these days, so I've been enjoying the irony and laziness of burning fuel to get around town.  It usually takes more time to go somewhere by car than by bicycle, because of street lights and one-ways and traffic and parking.  Oh well! I'm embracing the situation, naming the guilt, and taking full advantage of the engine while I have access...

Comment dit-on ''altar'' en français?
Je ne sais pas.

Concordia's bike co-op

K. asked if I would drive downtown with him to get a giant dry eraser board for the house.  I asked A., and we figured we could make a little adventure of it.
So we three hippies got inside the vehicle and drove through the city.  We listened to loud electronica music and watched out at the landscape... building features, monuments, parks. etc.
We got another perspective, noticed places we hadn't seen before, and went much further...

We went south-east in hopes of reaching the water and find a park there.  The weather was overcast but the temperature quite moderate.  We'd find a park and I'd perhaps guide a little Butoh exercise.

My roots are thirsty for context.  I want to learn this land and see its history.  So I open myself up to it...

This is not the Pacific Coast (how I miss the Ocean!)  This is a trading post, an industrial forest rising up at the heart of another particular geological landscape...

About 125 million years ago, magma rose through the Earth's crust in the Montreal region, crystallizing slowly at depth along many conduits. In this way, the Monteregian Hills were formed and with them, a number of rare minerals. Of all these features, Mount Saint-Hilaire is the best known as a source of rare specimens. In some cases, magma erupted at the surface, feeding volcanoes that have now completely disappeared. Since that time, erosion has removed several kilometres of rock. The hills that arevisible today represent the magma chambers and part of the conduits through which the molten rock rose toward the surface.

My new friends are a bunch of ''geographers''.  So I have been learning amazing facts about the natural world.  A few days ago, I learned that we live on the meeting point of two tectonically plates...

Mont-Royal is a dried up bubble from the center of the earth.  The sedimentary formation of both shores, and that of the island, are each of a different composition.  Isn't that amazing?  
The land is alive.  Its people are alive.  Geological conditions predate cultural epicenters.  And that's certainly the reason why people come here: the land and its people are deeply alive and intrinsically subject to transformation.  It's a matter of time-perspective.


What do we want for this island, a hundred years from now?

We didn't get to the River, but we found an industrial playground

Butoh with Yumiko Yoshioka

Friday night sitting at the dinning table.  A new house.  A new life.
I haven't felt like writing much, as some of you might have noticed.  I needed, I wanted, to just be with what I'm going through.  Being, in the midst of the storm.  To see.


The beautiful thing is that these past five days have managed to tie me back to my core... in a way that I had deeply been needing.  I knew it would happen.  I had been waiting for this workshop for a while now: finally: a bit of Butoh. (Or as they write in French: butô.)

Studio 303, Montréal.  Twenty movers I had been excited to meet, for I figured they would share my love of Butoh, or at least, of one aspect of it.
We had the opportunity to spend 20h with world-renown teacher and choreographer, Yumiko Yoshioka, as part of her big tour.  How wonderful it must be to travel the world and teach this art form and this wisdom!

As she said, Butoh is not just a dance.  It's also a way of life.

Yumiko Yoshioka tells us that, for her, ''Butoh is dance of transformation.''  She said, ''It is a passageway, a medium.  It can be also be dance of darkness, of the unconscious.''
And that my friends... is why I am attracted with this art form-process...
It's that encounter with the in-between again, that space of transition... for it's at the very center of every breath, in the heart of the process, that I experience Life to her fullest...


When I dance butoh, I am in relationship with oneness.  I do not always feel at one, but I am searching for it, through consciousness and through my body... from inside AND outside, simultaneously, within both the physical and the imaginal environment, I try to listen and surrender.  I stop thinking and I move.  Naturally.

 Waves.  Waves.  Waves.
I thoroughly enjoyed Yumiko Yoshiota's Butoh.

''The essence of wave, is to transmit.''
Yes.  That's what I want to do.

''The yin and the yang are always within one another.  Life and Form chase each other...''

I'd be lying if I said I completely succeeded in forgetting about my [looking for work] situation... ''What do I want to do?  Where do I want to work?'' ... I've come to realize I've been throwing my energy in a million directions.  Work? Work?  I could do a million things!  I only need someone to give me a chance!



What I really need right now, is to stop and be for a little bit... in a yin kinda place.  There is no need to be all yang and proactive if I haven't given myself the time to listen... to what I really want to be doing.

Sure, I seem to be running out of money.  But I must accept, this is a big transition indeed.  Butoh is reminding me: the beauty is in the process.
(Caution: I've known this for a while and I might be a bit addicted to that state of becoming...)

Yumiko says: ''Pain is often the best teacher.  Love is the best healer.''

This week, I did EXACTLY what I LOVE.

A space I had found in Barcelona...
the last time I took half an hour to dance like this...
slowly...

P.P.S. For those that could be interested: Yumiko will be teaching in Québec city next week (I think I'm going for part of it!!) and then in Toronto...

P.P.S. For my part, I'll be teaching in a community center somewhere north of Montréal...  My first dance class to a group of 3-5 years old!!
:)

8e Feu: je me souviens.

Hier soir, j'ai écouté un excellent documentaire, à la fois très divertissant et instructif.

8e Feu: Les autochtones et le Canada
(Il y a quatre épisodes, j'en suis au milieu du deuxième)

Saviez-vous que les autochtones canadiens représentent le plus haut taux croissance démocratique au Canada?  Saviez-vous que plus de 50% des autochtones vivent en ville, et que la moitié d'entres eux ont moins de 25 ans?

Pourquoi y a-t-il deux fois plus de jeunes autochtones que de blancs qui vivent sous le seuil de la pauvreté?  Pourquoi se suicident-ils à chaque semaine?  Pourquoi tant de problèmes de dépendances, et de violence conjugale?



Encore une fois, il est difficile de se pencher sur ces questions sans se buter à la ''culpabilité blanche''.  Le concept (''white guilt'') est généralement utilisé dans le contexte de l'histoire et des répercussions de l'esclavage aux États-Unis, mais il peut tout aussi bien être appliqué à la réalité Canadienne et Québécoise.



En fait, c'est peut-être encore plus complexe lorsqu'un peuple se sent déjà victimisé, comme le sont souvent les Québécois francophones.  Comment peut-on être coupables lorsque nous avons nous mêmes été victimes des Anglais?  Tel est le narratif, l'histoire qu'on se raconte.
Il est vrai que la couronne Britannique a prit le pouvoir sur les terres des colons de la Nouvelle-France et que c'est elle qui a conçu la Loi sur les Indiens.
Mais encore.  Aujourd'hui, ce sont autant d'anglophones que de francophones qui sont portés à nier la discrimination systémique qui afflige les nations autochtones.
Qui est le plus victime?  Il serait temps qu'on révise toute cette histoire et qu'on se donne l'opportunité de regarder de l'avant et de célébrer les différentes cultures qui constituent notre pays.  Culturellement, les Québécois francophones ont besoin de s'auto-déterminer au de toujours se définir par l'antagonisme et rce sentiment de victimisation.  Les autochtones aussi ont besoin de s'auto-déterminer... seulement jusqu'à présent on ne leurs a pas beaucoup donné la chance.

Personne n'aime baigner dans la culpabilité.  C'est plus facile d'éviter et de nier, de couper court en se référant aux stéréotypes: ''Les Amérindiens sont des lâches, des alcooliques, et des joueurs compulsifs, etc.''  (Saviez-vous que le jeu de hasard faisait autrefois partie d'un contexte sacré?)  ''Ils n'ont pas à se plaindre! Ils ne paient même pas de taxes!''

Faux.

Pour qu'une personne autochtone n'ait pas à payer d'impôt ou de taxes, elle doit résider et travailler dans la réserve.  Est-ce inutile de préciser qu'il n'y a pas beaucoup de boulots offerts dans les réserves?  Donc, la vérité c'est qu'au moins la moitié des autochtones canadiens paient les mêmes taxes que tout le monde.  Et oui, ils paient également leur comptes d'Hydro-Québec.

D'autres feront plutôt comme moi, qui ai tendance à romancer et idéaliser.  ''Les Amérindiens n'étaient-ils pas les experts du développement durable?''  D'autres encore s'approprieront la culture et les pratiques spirituelles des peuples autochtones sans même avoir la décence de demander la bénédiction de ceux-ci.  Cette question (i.e. l'appropriation culturelle) en est une autre que je trouve assez complexe.  J'aimerais beaucoup en discuter avec les principaux concernés.

Bref, il y a des choses dont on doit parler.  Pour le l'ensemble des habitant du territoire canadien puisse vivre sainement, il faut que tout le monde prenne part au débat.  Il faut qu'on s'écoute et qu'on se donne le temps et l'espace pour vivre et partager les émotions et les questions qui nous habitent.

Visioner ce documentaire est un bon point de départ et c'est pourquoi j'en fais la promotion:

8e Feu: Les autochtones et le Canada

Québec: je me souviens.  Mais de quoi?  Et dans quel but?

Situating the Species

Someone recently told me, ''Humans are animals, and as such we are meant to relate with our immediate environment through our senses, through our body.'' (So far, so good.)  Then she added, ''It's not normal, it's not healthy, for us to be bombarded with information about the state of the global economy, etc.  It's too much stress, and it brings us way up in the mind...''

This was a response to me bringing up that I would like to create space for people, to really feel the depth of emotion they feel when they ponder the current crisis.  It's an economical and ecological crisis.  (It is an ecocrisis.)  I partially agree with that comment, although from an evolutionary perspective, I am resistant to this idea that ''we were not supposed to''.

I think it was meant to be this way... and that we're coming full circle in order to embark on a new leg of our journey.

Consciousness has morphed tremendously since the advent of our homo sapiens ancestors.  The evolution of consciousness is a reality.  Look carefully and you'll see the parallels between developmental psychology and the growth of humans society!  From undifferentiation to rebellion to integration, it's a never ending process that everyone experiences.

One aspect of this is how humans have pushed technological innovations (through their imagination first, which is beyond the five sense), from the mastery of fire and the creation of the wheel, to the building of steam engines, nuclear reactors, and global positioning systems.  Each new discovery has transformed the fabric of society.  Each new invention has transformed the relationship of humans within time and space and amongst themselves.  Today we are finally remembering the fundamental fact of our interconnectedness with the entire world.  Today, we can experience more empathy for the Other. A marvelous book on the connection between the advances of technology and the grown of empathy is called The Empathic Civilization (2009), by Jeremy Rifkin.

It couldn't have been any other way.  We are social animals, who have created beyond themselves, projected ahead of time through our minds eyes.  We have imagined.  We have dreamed.  We have created.

And we've migrated and colonized, and relocalized.  Today we urbanites find ourselves uprooted, piled up in offices and lined up in subterranean mazes.
We get to see the insides of the matrix we live in.  Roads, tubes, neurotransmitters and all.

EarthRise

Complex systems are difficult to behold and comprehend.  That's why our species had to compartmentalize, first, throughout the ''mental'' (to use Jean Gebser's terminology) era.  We had to analyze, to understand, to control... to divide and conquer.  The prerogative of a great deal of ''methodological'' thinking, especially since the Enlightenment.
But the problem is that we can't and should not conquer nature, because wildness is the source of our creativity.  Wildness is necessary to our survival.

Yet it's true; beholding the present situation is overwhelming.  What can I do, now that I know the statistics: in 2010, it's an estimate of 925 million people that were undernourished, and this  in spite of the fact that, ''World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase''?   

What am I to do?

I think about... ecology, because that's how I've come to look at politics, spirituality, psychology... even the arts.  It's all interconnected.

Witnessing this incredible web of connections and relations... It humbles me, and it makes me so much greater than myself, all at the same time!

This being said, the systematic study of ecology, as a science, is a relatively new :

Ecology is a sub-discipline of biology, the study of life. The word "ecology" ("Ökologie") was coined in 1866 by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919). (wikipedia)

The greek word ''Öko'' means ''house, which means that ecology is the ''science of the house''.

It was 1968 - only 44 years ago - when the astronauts of Apollo 8 took the famous Earth Rise photograph (above) and for the first time gifted humankind with a new perspective of our home, as seen from outside.

Two generations ago, they'd never seen a picture of the Earth taken from space!  Just ponder that.

Ecology is a new field.  It's an ongoing observation of the all the complex and intertwined relationships that make up this web we call Life.  Am I to be derogatorily labelled ''hippie'' for the simple fact that I actually understand the significance of all of this? 

Yes, I care about the environment I live in.  Yes, I get emotional when I look at this mess we've created for ourselves.  It makes me wanna know the next room's occupants, my neighbors.  It makes me wanna learn their language so I can have a conversation with them around the table.

And it makes me want to localize myself and re-awaken to my five senses and my body's wisdom.  It makes me want to grow and prepare the food I eat, instead of relying on chemical fertilizers and gas guzzling transportation and plastic wrappings.  

I want to hold and celebrate the sublime immensity and of the matrix.  I want to send my roots down so that I can bear my fruits, in time.  That's what I mean by coming full circle.  We don't need to roam anymore.  We don't need to hurry either.  We have each other plus myriads of other living friends to get to know better.  Here, now.

Goodbye studio, Hello Community

I love my music.  I love that I am spending this tuesday afternoon dancing in my very own studio... Sun shining through the windows, and a wooden floor to die for.

I should stop saying that I can't dance.  Sure I feel pain in my foot, but I just have to be careful, right?  I can't quite jump or bounce, but hell I can dance!  

In fact, I dance pretty much everyday.  I do it on the streets, waiting for the bus or the métro sometimes... I do it in my head most of the time.

The apartment has been emptied of its furniture.
The funny thing is that everyone seems to worry about the quality of my life. ''You mean, you have nothing?''
''Are you kidding me?! I'm having a blast!''
They know me, so they know it's true...
I took a walk today and noticed that there is at least seven or eight dance and yoga (often combined) studios lined up on Mont-Royal between St-Laurent and Christophe-Colomb!
And I got my very own.  Blessed!

I just returned from a 24h trip in Québec city.  This time around it was different, I mean... in a ''new'' way.  As if I was seeing it with completely different eyes now that I ''live'' in Montréal.  I had never had this impression before.  Of course, that's because I'd never had my own ''chez moi'' here.

Landscape, Via Rail between Québec and Montréal.
And it makes me wonder...

I'm almost there.  ''Chez moi'', I mean.
Though it's true, I'm also in the process of defining it for myself.  Gathering thoughts and visions, setting intentions, trying things on.

I have found a new place to live.  I'll be moving in in the next several days.
The place is everything I've been setting myself up to manifest... but I'm nervous now.
I've been living the dream life: all this space, and this time, to do my own thing and be with myself.  Abundant space and time!
I am now moving in with more or less 13 people.  Adieu spontaneous butoh jam sessions, crawling on the floor like a wild animal and pirouetting like a ballerina.. Adieu clean and gigantic kitchen.  ''Things they come, and things they go...''
At my new place, we get bulk food and cook communally.  We also subscribe to a Community-Supported Agriculture program:

(A CSA consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farming operation where the growers and consumers share the risks and benefits of food production. wikipédia)  

 And yes!  Like me they faithfully practice composting as well!  I mean, isn't this pretty much what I've been talking about for months? (The only exception is the lack of a backyard garden, which is so central to the little utopian scheme I've been playing with in my head).  But!!! If I take the lead on it, we could grow our own lettuce in a window like that vidéo I saw on YouTube!
I gotta say.  It's a reasonable price, but the room is rather small...and it has no windows.  It has a skylight but it's quite dirty up there.  I wonder if I could get the landlord to let me go clean it...
I'm anxious.
Another transition baby!  Bring it on!