See & Connect

With an art-making friend today

we talked about

discarded

patterned

cloth

scraps

from last year

hanging

in her

work-in-progress

exhibit.

When…

How…

do scraps become substance?

Whoa!!! I haven’t been writing into this site since 2016. A couple of hours ago, I was having a sad face thinking I have no easy place to blog…something I’ve thought intermittently in the last couple of years. I mention this to a friend while we are talking on the phone. She goes to the site and points out I can post here.

What?! No! Yes!

Somehow, I did not see and connect with the easy option of coming back to this space.

Laughter.

All this time, right here…an easy way to write and post.

Here I am.

A small step into a dance which has been tugging at my bones.

I am smiling.

I’m on a break from blogging at this site – I ought to have posted this at the beginning of September 2016.

I’ll either return to the this space or re-direct readers to another blog site. Not yet sure of the timetable.

Thank you for stopping by here. I look forward to writing for you again, in the near future.

Toward the Next Jewish Rebellion. – An article posing this question.

Extract from this article: As April Rosenblum writes in her groundbreaking pamphlet: “Attacks come in waves; but each time things calm down and Jews are able to blend in or succeed in society again, it gives the appearance that antisemitism is ‘over.’ In some of the most famous examples of anti-Jewish expulsion and mass murder (i.e., medieval Spain or modern Germany), just prior to the attacks, Jews appeared to be one of society’s most successful, comfortable, well-integrated minorities.

……

Two days ago, a friend brought to my attention the heated exchanges taking place around the Black Live Matter Platform – specifically a policy position on Palestine-Israel. I don’t feel it is for me to try and capture the discussion here or to tell this friend’s story. As a result of hearing their story, I will say, I went online and started reading the exchanges between Black BLM folks and Jewish BLM folks – some of whom were saying they had to step back from BLM because of the reference to Palestine-Israel (again, not for me to try and articulate their perspectives) in the platform, some of whom were critical of those who are stepping back.

In one of those articles, the author referred to the success of Jewish people in the USA (I believe it was specific to the USA) – their wealth and power. When I read that, I sat up in my seat and literally talked to my computer screen: “But, such economic integration was there at the time of the Holocaust – in fact, it fact didn’t it play a role in the narratives spun by Hitler which coaxed (if that is the word) people into playing their role in acts of genocide?”

There have been a few times since I’ve arrived in Santa Fe, when I have been with people who have made offhand remarks about Jewish people and – I vaguely recall – money or business. I remember at least once saying something like “I don’t understand how their being Jewish has anything to do with what you are talking about” (I don’t remember the specifics). I remember thinking – “Whoa. Is this anti-semitism?” I repeat: this has happened a few times. Like it is socially acceptable to make wise-cracks about Jewish people…cracks that are meant light heartedly and are rooted in stereotypes which might seem harmless in the whole scheme of things – but to me such comments are on a spectrum which has violence at one end of it.

The purpose of this post isn’t to present a position of any kind on the deliberations-exchanges going on around the BLM policy platform. As an activist, and a recovering social policy professional, I think the Movement ought to have stayed away from articulating specific policy demands – just as I thought Occupy London should have stayed away from it…but that’s fodder for another post and – frankly – my take on a tactical choice made by BLM doesn’t matter.

My point is: I invite you to read the article at the top of this page – which (and I’m making an uneducated assumption here), if you are not Jewish, you might normally not stumble across, let alone read. I invite you to read it to take in a perspective on what we – whoever we are – collectively are grappling with, summed up I think with this extract from the article:

“And this is where the lesson transcends the question of Jewishness and anti-Semitism and goes hand in hand with the most essential questions the movement must ask itself today: What do we — each and every one of us — have to do to become our most powerful selves? We had better have a good answer, because becoming our most powerful selves is the only chance we have at winning the world we all deserve.”

Though I don’t think we ‘win’ anything – we collectively create the world. We are, as we always have been, in a dance of collective creativity. Of course, yes, at times the dance feels like a never ending series of battles and an all out war…

I haven’t posted since January. I spent February and March in the north Chicago suburbs helping my mom through shoulder replacement surgery. While I was there, my dad – very unexpectedly – ended up in hospital. I put blog posting on hold at that time, and I look forward to returning to it in the coming week. In the meantime, I’ve just published an article in Open Democracy about a wonderful and inspiring artivist project- COAL: the vagina monologues of climate change. 

Last Saturday night, I went to a performance of monologues at Teatro Paraguas in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In “Bodies of art: women of ink tell their stories,” five women shared stories about their relationship to tattoos. I’m here now writing about Charlotte Jusinski’s story about a the tattoo on her left shoulder of a semicolon followed by the word rest – ;rest.

After the performance in this intimate black box theater, I went onto the stage and gave Charlotte a hug. “We don’t know each other, but I’ve had a lifetime dance with anxiety and I value that you spoke about your experience with it. Thank you.”

A half an hour later, I was on my way out of the theater and stopped to listen to Charlotte talking with a few people. She explained that she is nervous about the performances appearing on YouTube. “My colleagues from the job, they didn’t know why I was off work for so long – just that I was ill. They didn’t know I was crazy.”

Charlotte had an extended period off work because some days getting out of bed was a huge feat, because she had episodes where she had been driving and her arms went numb, because she had reached a point where she no longer had capacity for work.  The doctors ran test after test and all came up clear. The final diagnosis, as it were, was stress and anxiety.

A nervous system gone crazy.

Her tattoo represents her response to this craziness. The semi-colon is an instruction in life as it is in a sentence: pause. ‘Rest’ is the command they use at the dog-training center where she worked – particularly for a breed of dogs (I think it is german shepherds) who get very hyped up when being confined. The hand does a gentle up-down gesture, while the person commands ‘Rest. Rest. Rest.’ until the creature settles.

Charlotte explained that she would like to say she’s “all better now” – only she isn’t. She continues to grapple with the over-charged nervous system or what we tend to call ‘anxiety’ and daily life can be challenging. She is taking, by the sounds of it, one step at a time and finding her way. As and when needed, she commands herself: “Rest. Rest. Rest.”

;Rest.

When I overheard Charlotte express her concern about putting the monologues on YouTube, I inserted myself into the conversation.

“This thing we are calling craziness, many people struggle with and there is a stigma around it. Going public, speaking out, sharing our stories is brave, courageous and needed. There’s that point. And, well, what is crazy? Who is crazy? So many people leading lives that numb them, cut themselves off from the world around them, exhaust them.”

And then Charlotte inserted something to the effect of, “Yeh. Who are the crazy ones? They’re crazy, too. We’re all crazy.”

Yes, I do believe a lot of people in the United States are living with nervous systems gone out of control, bodies exhausted, spirits diminished.

Well done, Charlotte. For getting up and speaking our truth, for speaking our crazy.