It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt

Good-Bye Albuquerque

After a quick stop to the bathroom to take my last poop in the State of New Mexico...I shall bid adieu to Albuequerque. Minnesota...HERE I COME!

The Power of Visioning

The Power of Vision

I wrote in my MySpace profile that I no longer consider myself an activist or an organizer but a visionist. Activism and organizing have a place in our world and will continue to have a place as long as society is structured on oppression and inequality, racial supremacy, cultural hegemony and post-colonial imperalist ambitions of western nations. But in addition to folks being on the ground floor reacting to the on going ridiculousness of our every day situation, we need people that are proactively dreaming a better world. Folks that are able to articulate what can be and assist organizers and activists in the development of coherent, strategic, and cogent strategies for not only addressing the ills of the world but changing the fundamental fabric of our collective reality into something new...a co-existence on this planet based on justice, love, community, peace, and liberation.

I have many brilliant friends, but two in particular are writing and have done writing around the need for visioning work: Jeff Nygaard and Ricardo Levins Morales. Jeff wrote an awesome piece on the need for visioning that I would encourage you to read. You can reach Jeff at nygaard@nygaardnotes.org. And Ricardo is currently putting together a book on visioning (which when finished...will most likely become an instant staple of a new form of leftist organizing based on proactive visioning instead of reactive response).

Jeff writes in his article about the need for us to establish a value based system of pro-active visioning that allows us a frame work for basing our work. I absolutely agree. By articulating how we are going to do our visioning work and in what ways that work will be based and created...we allow others to engage with the expansion, development, and critic of ideas and plans for envisioning a new world. For me, the basic values that undergird my work are those I mentioned above...justice, love, community, peace, and liberation. Through my work as an artist, activist, advocate, community organizer...I have come to understand my work through the above lenses. Through my participation in the Visions Collective, a multi-gender/multi-generational/mutli-discipline/multi-sexuality based discussion group, over the last three and more years...I have begun to come to a basic understanding of how centering myself in these values and making my choices and decisions through these lenses allows me to break out of the mold that has been created for me...allows me to disect the rules that have been established without my consent...and gives me the fractional space necessary to begin to dream something different.

While centering yourself in your personal values and working from that place may seem obvious...I have found again and again that when working against the latest attack by the right...the latest constitutional amendment...the latest attack on welfare...the latest attempt to roll back civil liberties...or any other of a number of repressive and oppressive issues...I have often found myself attempting to refute the logic and values behind the attacks instead of acknowledging the attacks and proposing new and different solutions based around positive values that are based in a long term, strategic vision for the construction of a new society based on a new paradigm. I am not interested in fixing the current paradigm...as far as I am concerned the agreements that undergird society as it is now are agreements that were made without the consent, will or participation of most segments of our society (women, young people, people of color, people with disabilities, queer folks, the poor)...they are holdovers from a colonial era based in slave labor, racial stratification, economic and class inviolability, assumed Occidental superiority, and institutional oppression. The social contract, as it stands, has been violated by those in power so many times and in so many ways that to use the term "breach of contract" to describe the failures of that contract would be like using "oops" to describe Bush's election to the White House.

Great and admirable work has been done in the name of activism and organizing...enough work to get those of us that believe that the world needs to be imagined anew to the place where we can do that imagining...free of preconceived limitations...and begin the next phase in our own liberations. We claim to live in the land of the free...but I contend that no one...not the richest whitest man in America to the poorest blackest woman is or ever has been free. The oppression in which our world is based chains us all...in different ways...but the dehumanization of oppressor and oppressed are the chains that must be removed...and can only be removed through visioning and believing that a new world is possible.

Jermsy...

I promised Jermsy when I was in Tampa that I would write a blog about him that did not focus on his fiscal management skills or his uncanny resembelance to Ebenezeer Scrooge when it comes to coughing up a penny or two.

Lemme see...I met Jermsy also known as Jeremy...in December 2003 in Miami...when he arrived in Miami Beach for Creating Change with RJ...his partner. About three minutes after Jeremy met me...he grabbed my butt. He doesn't know how close he came to drowning in that one moment. But...in the end...we ended up in a freaky fivesome that will forever go down in Creating Change history as a night to remember. We have pictures, yes we do.

Over the last three years I've gotten to know Jeremy very well...he is one heck of man in a crisis...and he has a big heart...he also at times forgets that what he thinks should probably not go directly to his mouth but should pass through a filter or two before being allowed out into the open air. He's gotten much better about this...unfortunately his cleaning mania has increased to OCD levels. But...I have to tell you...his and RJ's apartment is spotless...I mean shiny from the hardwood floors to the kitchen faucets. He could teach Mommy Dearest a thing or two.

There are times when I love Jeremy to pieces and want to just cuddle and cuddle him until he falls apart with love. Other times I want to bang Jermsy's head into the ground until his brains spurt out of his ears. And then take off my socks and walk bare foot through the gore...and then leave footprints across his bedspread. Jeremy has a great sense of humor and is a total clown...he makes me giggle when he isn't inspiring homocidal thoughts.  He is a completely control freak, and if you are ever in need...he will walk on water, part a sea, or let loose with a good old fashioned plague if it will help you.

Jeremy is a creature of contradictions...but that's what makes him Jermsy. And he's never let me down.

Lions and Tigers and Monkeys Oh My...

Last night I had a really far out dream...two things made it jump right to the number one spot on my top ten craziest dreams list...one is that it was just plainly the nuttiest dream I've ever had and the other is that I knew exactly how to intrepret it.

So, in my dream...I am at this really cool wilderness observatory in Africa. The room is filled with all of my friends...including William H. Macy...cuz...you know...we're close pals. And, all around the room are these really nifty chimpanzees...just hanging out...walking around...playing with my friends...one of my handier female friends (handy girl=queer girl) showed me how to feed the monkey bananas...(thank goodness Jane Goodall is also one of my close personal friends!) ...and then...to my delight...the monkey also showed me how to take the banana and push it in his gullet...and then he grinned and winked.

That's when the fun ended. Right after that Mr. William H. Macy comes into the room and blows a whistle...and lions and tigers of all assortments come leaping gracefully through the windows...fully tamed...doing neat tricks amongst the bamboo rafters...There were African black maned lions and golden maned lions and siberian tigers and Indian Tigers...and until this dream I had no idea I knew so many different kinds of lions and tigers (thank you Nature of Omaha's Wild Kingdom).  Well...all of a sudden...the chimps start going...excuse the pun...bananas and haul ass up and out of the room. The lions and tigers look over their shoulders and book it as well...and William H. Macy is trying to calm down my friends that are wondering what the monkeys, lions, and tigers know that the rest of us don't. Well...that was soon to be revealed as a giant lion runs into the room...mad as hell...muzzle all frothy...and promptly starts treating my friends like the Super Grande Chinese Buffett down on Lake Street. I'm assuming I was one of the guests...because I was scared as hell...but I also was able to see what was going on...like when William H. Macy...who had a bag full of cool tricks, electronic gadgets, flying devices, etc....decided it was every A-lister for himself and hauled cookies right on out of there. Well...as he was driving through the forest...he noticed that the evil lion was running through the trees along side him moving just as quickly as he could drive...so he opened his bag of tricks...and decided to use his baloon to loft himself into the air to escape...only to get stuck in a tree branch...and then unceremoniously eaten alive by aforementioned man-eating frothy mouthed lion.

That's the dream...now the interpretation...in reality...(can you use reality to refer to a dream...hmmm...) the people in the Safari love hut were actually aspects of my personality...the monkeys were in fact representations of my friends...and my feeding the monkeys what they "wanted" was a reference to when I was actively using and would feed my friends bullshit to keep them unaware of my extracurricular activities. The "good" lions and tigers represented the various drug experimentation that  I'd done that hadn't caused any problems. And then, of course, the crazy frothy mouthed lion is that bizatch crystal meth...which enters the room and starts eating away. Meth was destroying my life...and as the lion was eating its way through my insides...it was getting closer to the real me...one of the final things to go was my external persona (here played by William H. Macy) who is a consummate actor plus has a great bag of tricks. In the end...the lion easily kept pace as I tried to run away...and all the tricks in my bags did nothing more than get me entagled in my addiction (here represented by the forest)...at which point the lion made a happy lunch of my external persona...which resulted in me calling everyone I knew in the world to traumatize them all in the time it took me to hop the train from the airport to Anh's house...a paltry 15 minute ride.

I'm really happy that I had this dream. It means that I'm still terrified of my addiction and that I never ever want to go back to that forest. Of course...what addict does want to go back to the forest...most of us do at one point or another...but the dream also reminds me that by running away from it...instead of confronting it...I'll just be eaten alive. I'm happy to be going home...I'm also very scared. A lot of new and exciting events are going to be taking place over the next few months. I'm feeling good. I'm in good spirits. In good health. Broke as usual...but I can't really complain. And that has always been the warning zone for me...when I'm in crisis I am comfortable...I know how to behave...and I have no desire to use...when I'm feeling good...I'm out of my element...I start to feel uncomfortable...and I know a real quick way to get back to crisis.

In Minneapolis I have the family that I have built for myself...one that has been given to me by God to sustain me...comprised of blood kin, family of choice, and a recovery family that I know and trust. I can't wait to get home.

Feelings...Nothing More Than Some Real Crazy Feelings...

Well..I wouldn't necessarily say I'm feeling crazy only that I'm feeling a whole lot of different emotions at once...for example...I'm really anxious to get on the road to get home...I'm really nervious about starting my new job next week...I'm hella nervious about my temporary living situation when I get back home...I'm super excited to be back in Minneapolis with my friends and family...I'm having a whole host of feelings about the time I've spent here in Albuquerque...I'm a little anxious about where my life is heading next...I'm a little bothered that I'm not better able to just sit in the current moment and really learn from the place where I am at the moment...I'm a little in awe at my capacity to watch movies (seven in six days...HOT DAMN...all in the theater folks)...I'm excited about the communication I've had in the last couple of days with my little sister Meta...I wish I could be at home with Coya for  her birthday tomorrow...I'm very sad that I can't be with my sister Shannon on her 25th birthday on Thursday...yeah...there is a lot going on in my little head and this here heart of mine.

I often have to remind myself that...as the immortal Celia Cruz once sang...life is a carnival...we are never alone...God is always with us...and that life might not always seem fair...but it is a beautiful thing and we have to live it. Sounds pretty simple eh? Yeah sure...you bet...as they would say in Minnesotan. But at the same time...it's a tall order...if I spend too much more time thinking about living...instead of just living...I'll probably pass out. And that's the rub...right there...too much of the time...I pass the days thinking about really living instead of actually living. You see if you think about it...think about what you want to be doing or could be doing or should be doing...then you don't actually have to do it...and if you don't actually have to do it...then you can't possible fail at it...but if you talk about it in a grand enough matter...well then you can fool people into thinking that you perhaps are doing it...face is saved...without having to actually risk anything...or accomplishing anything...or experiencing anything. That's the American way.

But...I'm challenging some of that in myself...for example...two things going on...I've vowed for aeons that I was going to write a book...I've started it. And this summer I'm going to India...where for a week...I will be travelling the country by myself before meeting up with my friend Sireesha at her wedding. The thought of being 10,000 miles from home...in a country that isn't near anything or anyone that I know (I had a friend in Uzbekistan until last year...but now he's home)...is a little bit daunting...a whole lot terrfying...and damn exhilirating...tickets are being purchased...passport is next...and if that isn't living...I don't know what is.

Life on life's terms...that's what it's all about. I suppose I should get it on with it then. Here I go.