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

Syndrome post-samsara

Étourdie, j'inspire.  Je me sens inspirée car je me suis arrêtée, un moment pour m'asseoir, et que la terre continue de tourner. C'est pour ça que la chose la plus difficile à faire est d'essayer de s'arrêter.
Et c'est que ça tourne là-dedans! Ça tourne, les pensées comme des singes qui junglent dans nos esprits, qui s'accrochent les unes aux autres; des idées, des théories. Des projections, dans toutes les directions.

Théories des systèmes, résolutions de problèmes complexes, il nous faut nos machines pour calculer ce qui se passe... mais pourquoi?  Calculer pourquoi? Pour prédire, pour... s'assurer?  Pour se rassurer? Se sécuriser? Est-ce que ça marche aujourd'hui?
Pseudo science. Néolibéralisme vampire et suicidaire. Avarice, cécité. Peur.

Trêve de lyrisme. Si je suis si particulièrement étourdie, c'est parce que j'ai écouté un film ahurissant ce soir, au théâtre de la Verdure, Parc Lafontaine.  La semaine dernière c'était Pina (!), ce lundi : Samsara.

Que dire? Quand on sait qu'une seule image vaut déjà mille mots!? Je ne vais pas pour entretenir de telle ou telle scène, je vous somme plutôt de laisser le film vous toucher. Nous en discuterons par la suite.

Et c'est de songer à toutes les personnes qui étaient présentes ce soir et toutes celles qui on vu ce film.  Quelles pensées, quelles associations surgissent dans leurs esprits? Quelles émotions surtout? Ça, j'ai le feeling que peut-être on se les partage celle-là. J'aimerais tant qu'on en parle! Pour le moment j'écrirai seulement que l'oeuvre me jète dans un abîme de complexité. Il me semble qu'aucun système de pensée philosophique ne pourrait désormais rendre compte du monde.

Alors on est tous là à se regarder dans le miroir, inconfortables.

Et je repense toujours au fait que cela fait à peine cinquante ans que la photo du Earth Rise a été prise. (Avec tout ce que ça symbolise dans la conscience collective de l'espèce humaine).

Ce sont cinquante années sur ... Ça dépend jusqu'où on décide de remonter! Disons 1537 ans depuis la chute de l'Empire Roman, 5000 ans depuis la fondation d'Ur, 65.5 millions d'années depuis la disparition des dinosaures. C'est quoi, cinquante ans?!


Et nous voilà aujourd'hui perchés, accrochés dans la stratosphère, reliés par des satellites qui se promènent comme des étoiles.

Nés poussières et nous retournerons poussière [d'étoiles].


Armés de caméras, obsédés par l'images et la représentation.



Nous photo-graphons. Nous marquons la lumière d'empreintes de nous-mêmes. Nous visons.



Combien de concepts pouvons nous encore créer?

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...

politics and the phenomenology of paradox

Sitting in my former school, the California Institute for Integral Studies. Soaking in. Reading and meditating on the different objects of my attraction.  On the one hand, mysticism and the taste for a free, unconditioned experience of Life.  On the other hand, visions and fears concerning the condition of matter, humankind, society, and Mother Earth.
I've been reading Mircea Eliade on Yoga.  I've also been seeking those with explicit inclinations towards consciousness studies... taking full advantage of this special Bay Area spirit.  It's clear to me, a region produced by the frontier mentality had to be permeated by idealism.  This place was born out of the necessity and capacity to see further, to open up paths into the unknown, to envision riches and dig for it.  The gold rush is of the past, but furher riches are being unearthed here. 
We've colonized land to the very edge of the new continent, and so came facing the unchartered territories of the mind, aided by the wisdom of Indigenous (behind) and Asian (ahead) cultures... This to me is one of the greatest gifts of San Francisco.

I am re-membering the pieces of my own journey.
I am considering the nature of time, and space.
I miss Montreal and the nation of my ancestors.  And in the material plane I wonder, I feel, that I can contribute something of what I've been learning...

Back in Quebec, the elections have been officially announced by the prime sinister - uh, minister.  Given what has sprung out of the "Printemps Erable", Charest might be right on one point: these could be the most important elections in the history of the province.  Or not.

It's 2012.  How many are able to dare and be visionaries?  How many would agree with my intuition; that we too are of a certain frontier mentality?  We are made up of pioneers (though we were first enslaved to the Catholic Church, and since then, to our fears and victim mentality.), ingeneers (for we had to keep ourselves warm and sufficiently fed) and hard-working families.  We were multicultural from the start, all immigrants on indigenous territory.  We have wide spaces and tons of ressources; water, minerals, wood.  We have circumstances, which point to warmer climates and future population growth.

We have so much potential.  If we acknowledge it.
If we can truthfully consider the power structure and the dynamics that are making up our society.  If we can keep talking amongst neighbours to revitalize the connections we have with one another; if we can let this be a strength that helps us out of fear and stagnation.  If we can imagine what is possible through emancipation and cooperation.

I cannot deny my vocation for political philosophy.  I also cannot deny my understanding that there is an Ultimate reality, beyond the illusion of separation and the fear of ego death.
I wonder how to honor both.
I am sitting at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

A Day in a De-Growth Life

I like the work set up that I have going on right now.  I work three shifts per week at the restaurant, and I have four days off.  That's barely part-time...
So what do I do with the rest of my time?  (How do I make ends meet?)
I'm living very well, thank you.

Actually, I've now found a complementary job. Yep, I'll be joining the ''Echo'Scouade'', a team of animators-educators, which tours some of the biggest festivals in order to raise awareness on the topic of waste management, i.e. recycling your bottles while on site...and at home.
Between the two jobs, I should be able to feel a certain financial stability this summer.
And I still get to have about three days off each week.

My point in sharing all of this is to share one example of a life that is possible... A life of quality, of not being ruled by a work schedule, a boss, a mortgage.
What I'm really talking about is tied to a concept I've been musing over for some time: de-growth.

A couple of weeks ago I attended an international De-Growth Conference.  There, eminent professors and lecturers talked about different aspects of the transition our civilization might want to get into.
De-growth means stepping away from the illusion of happiness as progress and profit.
To me, it seems to point towards greater sanity and health, as well as creativity... and intimacy.  Instead of isolating ourselves by spending forty hours tiring ourselves out at work, coming home being exhausted, watching tv as an easy way into mindless relaxation, and wondering about that yearning for deeper and more meaningful relationships... We could work half, or even three-quarters of that time, and spend the remaining hours enjoying the presence of people we love, perhaps growing some plants that will give us food, and coming to terms with our fears of nothingness...
Don't you think?

I fear nothingness.
I fear the changes that are happening.  But I love the changes that are happening.
It has to do with Time, in part.

Am I inhabited by that old millennial, apocalyptic thinking?  I don't think so.  I don't think the end of the world is coming.  At worst, the human species would perish within the next fifty to two hundred years.  At best, we create a more sustainable world for ourselves.  Chances are, we're shifting from His-story to another kind of story...

Either way, Life and our Consciousness of it All is Divine and Beauty-full.

We could really use more networks of bike lanes and installations that make it easier for everyone who can use bicycles to get around.  We could rush less, move more.  We could spend less, and help each other more.  We could take time to communicate with our neighbors, get to know each other.  We could solve problems together.

Today, I ate breakfast with seven other people.  Then I cut my friends hair on the balcony, and after that I gave an intro of an astrological reading to a friend and I cleaned around the house.  After lunch I juggled a little bit outside while waiting for my other friend to return with his bicycle.  We talked about the choices he's trying to make, his aspirations and his fears.  We talked about going for a bike ride to the Canal Lachine.  But then a girl from work - she's gorgeous! - happened to walk by our house as we were sitting on the porch, so we invited her to sit with us a little bit.  We hung out, with two of my roommates.  We talked about synchronicities, about ''the hundredth monkey effect'', morphic fields (we didn't have the names for those phenomenon but that's what we were talking about), and collective consciousness.  We talked about sharing our greatest potential within the communities you are part of.
And then A. and I went to Parc Lafontaine, and we drew a huge chalk maze in the middle of a path.  People walked by with a smile.  They asked a few questions.  They wanted to walk it and they did once we finished the piece.  Two park workers drove by. ''We're making ephemeral art,'' I told them.  ''I was just taking a look'', one of them said with a smile.

We went to the market and bought lettuce and radishes (grown ''in Québec''), some pears, a mango, grapes, and avocados (grown far away), roasted sunflower seeds (where from?) and some balsamic and oil to make a fresh salad.  We made dressing out of mango pulp, garlic, ginger, lemon, balsamic, grape, and sesame oil.  We sat on the balcony and feasted while reminiscing about the intensity of yesterday's storm...
Yesterday, a crazy storm fell on Montréal.  Dark clouds and thunder quickly led to heavy... heavy rains, which, we soon learned, turned into flooded tunnels and metro stations!!!
Nature is mighty.

The climate here is so different than what it is in the Bay Area... I loooove these warm summer storms!

And tonight, I'm finally going out to dance!  It's been months since I've made it to a good dubstep party...

You can follow your bliss.  Take part in the beauty of existence.

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

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!

Sitting on the Dock of the

I wish it was summer outside.  I do.
My strong self knows I can pull this through,
but the truth is,
who wants to live like this?

I miss the sun.
So bad.
The green grass, even the rain.
(forgetting how brutally freezing a San Francisco summer can be)
This grass that's always greener,
on the other side.

I'm listening to Bjork, sitting on a wooden chair in front of this wooden table.  Pedestrians are bundled up outside, the sun is very bright.  My astrological planner to my right, an empty glass of orange juice, the English language, three juggling balls, a cell phone, two bandanas (two?)... and a pile of papers: my ''résumé'', flyers, a map, pamphlets and notes...
What's my summary? My résumé?
How to resume?
I would rather live in the present, with you
Wouldn't you?

It's hilarious, to be staring the process in the face like this.


A New beat generation, traveling through dubstep beats, gathering in festivals.
I must not give up.  I must.  Relax.

The truth is, I love not to work!!
Are you kidding me?  I'm sitting here LISTENING TO MUSIC AND WRITING, and learning and dreaming and watching the sun go around, on a different time wave, that's all.
Like the fool on a hill.
Pierrot la lune.

Et tous les souvenirs.
Ce romantisme chronique,
ces désirs.

Au-delà du romantisme et du nihilisme, je pense toujours à Nietzsche.  ''What would Nietzsche do?''
He would ask if this moment is worth living, over and over again.  He would ask if your heart is open so wide you could explode - or implode, as his did - of this passion for all things alive...
No, he wouldn't do that.  I would.

The truth is that I love to write.  I find the highest pleasure in feeling those waves of thoughts pulsate through my wrist onto the page, or to the very tips of my fingers, when it's a computer.
Otherwise, still.
''You may say I'm a dreamer.''

(Who are your heroes?)

In truth, right now I terribly miss San Francisco.  It crawled up on me last night, as I finally went to rest.  I had a heavy feeling in my stomach, the sudden pull of nostalgia, and my heart filling up with tears.  I didnt quite cry, but I let myself tear up and feel the pain.  I hadn't been feeling it.  I keep myself busy and/so I don't think about everything I left behind.
My life!  A clan of spiritual warriors, those streets and those parks I knew so well, all the stuff I tried so hard not to acquire but did, in the span of five years.  My things, my things I couldn't throw away.
They're in a bunch of boxes in the garage of my former ''boss'', who is also my friend...for we played in the snow and ''crazy carpet'-ed together.

I know that missing San Francisco doesn't take anything away from this new place.  Just as missing the culture of my former home doesn't take anything away from the hearts and mind of the people here.  I love you very much too, med ami(e)s, it's true.  Please forgive my absence then and understand that I am in a whirlwind, and simply trying to keep myself in the middle of the storm until it gradually winds down.

I know the value of time and timing.  I still have no regrets.  (Though in that wave of emotion last night, I did.)
And besides, I've already had a few of those moments since I've moved here... you know, those moments...  of pure grace, of great beauty!?  It's not the place, it's the state of mind.  That's a huge part of my experiment.
Spending my days thinking about the future of financial security, mine as well as the macro-scale's.  Spending my days thinking about what I want to be doing all day.  Turns out, that's what works ends up being: the thing you do all day.  What kind of days do I want to have?  What can we create?
Spending my days with flashbacks, flash cards of all the sublime encounters I have been blessed with.  Wondering if tomorrow can be as bright and light as what I had on the Left Coast.  Wondering about cold and industrial societies, industrious and creative societies.  Wondering about multiculturalism in formation, for ever and increasingly, the planet getting so small and the power of the few, so big.

Do you think that my degree in ''Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness'' might freak out or turn off potential employers?  Could that be it?  What do they think?  What do they know about what it means?  I can barely articulate it myself!!  I wouldn't know where to start.

''Once upon 14 billion years ago...'''

C.I.I.S. meant that we were in graduate school trying to face and cope with the Greatness of the Universe.  We had our own language, our own micro-culture, our shared experiences so that we could talk about what lays underneath it all... And we would smile and say: Namaste.  (Not without an awareness of the cultural appropriation issue it represented- though the school was indeed founded by Indian scholars.  It was 1968.)

Where have I been?  I've been beyond the pre-Socratics to indigenous populations through the earth and the thirteen skies... to the Big Bang that resounded in the Heart of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu... beyond the first Sound to the eternal OM, and back.  I've been from the Middle Ages to the Far West, between lands and sea, running on a treadmill waiting in a traffic jam.  I've been.

Walking the ancient streets of Istanbul, Byzantine, Constantinople... taking strolls on snaky hilly streets after dark, breathing the air of history, getting lost, feeling the beautiful complexity and the tension reigning and breathing with its people.  Prague, Marseilles, Carcassonne, Granada.

Here.

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.

Catalonia throughout His-story

Processing a visit at the Museu d'Història de Catalunya...

I finally shook myself up after two strange days of energetic and emotional tumult (more on this in another post), to take myself to one of the museums I had intended to visit during my week in Barcelona.
It has been a most unsettled kind of week through which I have learned A LOT.  But I'd like to attempts not to disgress into the personnal sphere quite yet and focus my writing on the experience I just had at the museum.
Of course, it is all related.  We call it Life.

We call it History.  Mainly indeed: his-story.  Words upon words, artifacts and media of all sorts, exhibitions to trace the line of a place.
I wanted to see this particular museum because I don't know anything about Catalonian nationalism and its roots and aspirations.  There is a conception, an assumption, of a connection between Quebec and Catalonia.  It´s true, we are minority languages (and thus cultures) with long standing struggles for recognition and independence.
But I think it's actually much more complicated and nuanced than that.  Nothing can be isolated or singled-out so easily anymore.  We have learned that much.

This was yet another journey down the ages... (How many museums have I visited in the past three months?) This one starts in the lower paleolithic era.  Fossils from some long gone homo erectus ancestors were unearthed around here.  Four hundred fifty thousand years that is. 450,000 years - most of which were not conceived on a Roman calendar.
So I'm walking around trying to imagine that concept, trying to imagine the most primitive conditions and technologies, the most ancient modes of human lifestyles.  Nomads.  Cave dwellers.  Very small carbon footprint.  Yet so many other short-comings I'm sure.

It's precisely that phenomenon that blows my mind.  I cannot help myself, I look at everything through utopian lenses!  I'm there, studying, reading, pondering images and objects, while some part of my consciousness is always searching for connections, for clues if not examples, of "good" living.
Meanwhile another part of my brains smiles like a buddha, asking gently and humbly: "what is good?  justice?  what is justice?"  The Buddha would have more than evidence from this exhibition: life is suffering.

O such [beautiful] complexity!  Complexity of power structures, of misery and labor, of blood and soil and migrations and multiculturalism, and occupations and wars and political and religious systems, and technological discoveries and developments, and social classes, and power structures.... and power structures.
Another part of my mind is gathering information with what appears to be a attempt to situation myself and find answers to my current quest.  What is my role in society, at this time, in this body, with this conditioned reality?

I'm a young woman, from a middle class family.  One of my grand-fathers worked in a paper mill, the other one on his family farm.  My parents moved to the city as soon as they could; they bought a freshly-built house in a pleasant suburb.  Quebec has [only] been colonized for 400 hundred years.  What did my ancestors do, back in Normandy and Brittany?  What social class did they belong too?  I'm a global citizen, fruit of a cultural globalization movement that began... well... over 450,000 years ago.  I'm educated, out of touch with industrial and agricultural means of production.  I'm a mind, a spirit, a body, a heart.  I'm a philosopher, a spiritual being, a political thinker, an artist.  All these used to be the domain of men.  All these, used to be (and to some extent, they still very much are) valued, and as such they were sponsored by those with money, with ranks, with land.

I want land.  I think I'd be able to learn how to keep it alive.  But I'm a lazy-ass generation Y kid (why!?), living off the historical struggles of peasants and syndicalists, who toiled and fought with their lives for some minimal changes in labor conditions.
And I'm here, in Barcelona, typing on a macbook Air in an Irish Pub, pondering the state of the planet and the next steps to take in order to... in order to what?
To fight for Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality?  It's such a relatively recent concept, though we can obviously trace it back to Jesus Christ, (and most likely, to other people before him.)  But they killed Jesus!  And they still have the power and the weapons and the capacity to blow it all up if they feel like it!  They still have the power to kill anyone they choose, to occupy the land.  Do they know how to make food grow?  I'm not sure.  But they have gunpowder, and satellites.
So what's the point if there's no spiritual realm in which to find redemption?  I'm not talking about another life in the Kingdom of Heaven.  I'm only thinking dignity, in promoting love and wholeness, and dying when the time comes, even if it's at their hands.

History is a strange and wonderful thing.  Wholeness, for instance, takes a whole new meaning in today's world!  Wholeness is a scientific fact!  We can see it on one of the greatest photos ever taken: Earth Rise.

NASA, Apollo 8. December 24, 1968.

The world is one.  No denying.  Physically at least, so economically too.  For eco-logy is eco-nomy is oikos: home.
I wouldn't mind a peaceful home where I can age with some kind of security, within a community, which to me, is Spirit.

Wow.  Who said museums were boring?
;)

Oh.  I remember now... Catalonia.  Well I learned it's a national identity that emerged out of several many a lot of geopolitical dynamics and fluctuations.  But what's new with that?  It's always the case.  In the case of Catalonia, we're talking NorthEastern part of today's Spain, which was inhabited by Iberian people prior to conquests and settlements by Greeks, Carthaginians, and then Romans.  (A pattern very similar to that of most of the Mediterranean coast).  Here the Visigoth kingdom then took over and briefly ruled until the Moorish empire spread its Al-Andalus territory (8th cent.) to include the Iberian Peninsula.  The Franks coming from the North eventually made their presence known, and somehow in 795 Charlemagne created a buffer zone - called Marca Hispanica - between his empire and that of Al-Andalus.
I think this buffer zone thing is very interesting.  I don't know enough of the details and the history, but it looks like that zone included those parts of country where nations would later demand cultural recognition and autonomy.  It's the Pyrennes; and it's the Basques and the Catalans, etc.

Anyway.  The catalans became stuck between the French (Franks) and Spanish (Aragon) kingdoms at some point.  It was ruled by a bunch of counts who ended up not buying into French nor Spanish feudalism.  They had a different system, a more democratic, decentralized one.  They worked some sort of consensus organization between the different ruling groups (priests, counts, merchants? Don't remember.  But certainly no peasants nor women!)

Then it was the maritime age of commerce, and cities popped up and the plague came through and the peasants rebelled against tyrannical kings and the Americas were conquered and Catholic authorities came in and then brought the Inquisition, and more commerce happened and soon the first phase of industrialization with its capitalism and the formation of new social classes and the ebullient anarchist-syndicalist movement and a civil war and a bloody dictatorship...

And today.  A neoliberal, global economical crisis is affecting Spain quite badly, with about 24% unemployment.  Cell phones, immigrants, political apathy and young adults spraying graffitis...

It has changed so much and it is so much the same.

 

Clown Estado

I am now three hours from Barcelona, on my last bus trip before returning to Québec.  

I think I've grown better at saying goodbye and letting go.  During the first two months of this journey, I often left whatever place I had come to experience with a sentiment of not-enough-time-!.  I felt that bitter sweet longing, not to be passing through only, but yearning, to go to the depths of a people, a language, a place...

But yesterday, as I walked in the neighborhood of Realejo, and then up to the periphery of the Palace - but did not enter - , I felt something different.  I was well aware of all the things I wouldn't get to experience in Granada.  There is the Alhambra, that famous red palace, known by all locals and visitors as a real moorish architectural jewel.

La Alhambra

Vista Santo-Nicholas,
looking out at the Alhambra,
and the snow-covered Sierra

There's the Apujarra region, just on the other side of the Sierra Nevada, where indigenous (now mixed with many ex-pats from England and else where) pueblos allegedly live a most pristine communal life within the mountains.  There's Serromonte too, which is a neighborhood of Granada where people live within the mountain, in caves!  And they play a lot of Flamenco there, and it's the real thing.  It's not something you schedule as part of a touristic tour.  Real Flamenco happens spontaneously, when the spirit moves them.  And what about the reggae scene?  With such a high rate of dreadlocks per capita, Granada must have a nice scene!  

Oh well. 

Calle Silencio

I walked slowly, simply, enjoying the tiny narrow curvy paved streets, the murals of Realejo, the omnipresence of moorish architectural details, and later the sound of water running down the gutters of the Alhambra gardens.  I was relaxed, satisfied.  I didn't need more of anything.

Perhaps it had to do with having those three days of ''Clown, con Danza y Energia'' workshop.  I had come especially for that experience, and even though I could just dwell in that space permanently (it's kind of my goal in life), I mainly just left the course feeling energized and inspired.

I feels good to be reconnected with the work.

My couchsurfing mama and I,
having tubos and tapas after the workshop,
talking of a revolution that's happening.

"Clown no es un personaje, y no es tampoco 'tu mismo'... Para mi, clown es un estado." explained our teacher.

A mi me gusta eso.

How can we deny the wisdom in this?  Clown isn't a character, and it's not quite your own self either; clown is a state of mind.  It's saying "Yes!" despite everything.  (Indeed, it's super Nietzschean to me.) It's opening one's self totally, as in 360 degrees of ears and eyes and skin, connecting with the totality of the environment, ready to make new connections at any moment.  That's how the clown helps life to open up and renew herself.

In the workshop, we did an exercise aimed at exploring how we each tend to react when thrown off-balance.  Disequilibrium is where the clown lives and thrives.

One person would start walking around the room, and a partner's role was to get in the way, pushing and pulling on the first person's body and clothes, thus creating unpredicted and unwanted  disruptions and obstacles.

Everyone had their own set of reactions.  Some resisted more, some were annoyed, some were more fluid and accepting of the new directions brought upon them.

  

Clowns y tapas!

Personally, I discovered that I wanted to trick my partner.  I felt open to her input and eager to discover new directions in space and in my body; but most undeniably, I just wanted to joke around and engage in play.  I wanted to be unpredictable myself, make quick changes in direction,so she wouldn't catch up with me.  And simply, because I could!  

How informative!  And of course saying "yes" and staying light and open is easier to do within the boundaries of this exercise than it is in life.  In this game, I knew who and where my partner was.  I had a sense of direction that was limited by the stage and didn't involve anything more than walking around.  

Still, I guess I discovered that I do live my life in quite a similar way.  Perhaps it's easier to play hide and seek, to come up with my own changes in direction, to walk a bit of an erratic path rather than a straight one, to try to escape rather than commit to a specific goal, for fear of getting thrown off.

But it's not only fear.  It's not necessarily "resisting."  It's also dancing with the essence of existence, which is change.  I dare saying that I think there's some wisdom in that.

One more thing.  The exercise was very informative indeed, but I personally thought that something was missing in the set up.  Some-bodies were so open to external influences; they let themselves be so fluid, that it didn't seem authentic enough to me.  In life - as in clown - there's got to be a minimum (or maybe a lot) of self-will (does this phrase exist?). Otherwise there's just no life, no drama, no tension.  One remains waiting for external forces to push and pull and guide without ever bringing energy of their own.

Would these forces not empty themselves, after a while of giving, without meeting any "resistance"?  Wouldn't libido not exhaust and drain itself?  Wouldn't it get bored?

I tired to raise that point to the class, but in a broken spanish I'm not sure the teacher understood my statement.  I just thought he should mention that "accepting" change/ disequilibrium/ obstacles doesn't mean completely subjecting to it (as some people seemed to be doing in the exercise) but rather, perhaps, that it means being open to see/ hear and integrate new information at any given time, so that one's sense of will and inner guidance remains fluid.

the sound it makes...

Am I making sense?

What do you think?

It's like water...

''Zero Impact'' EcoCafé-Bar Manila...
with an exposition on Québec and its ressources!!

Recommitting myself not to eat meat.

Committing myself to keep drinking with friends :)