Monday, December 20, 2010

Don't Burst My Bubble

My friend gave me the following mantra to repeat to myself when I feel like I am being sucked into other people's negativity:
I am surrounded by a barrier of positive energy, through which only positive energy may enter. If I am confronted by negative energy, it will NOT affect me. It will pass through and exit in a positive way.

This lunar cycle has been nothing but one huge challenge to this mantra. It feels like hell has been building since the new moon: an ugly altercation with someone I consider to be a close friend, childhood fears/insecurities coming to the surface, and the ever constant struggle of dealing with my ex's ups and downs. I can hear my grandma in my head, "That which doesn't kill you only makes you stronger". I feel like I should be a demi goddess by this point. This thought leads me to this quote, "Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures." I am sucking it up and doing my best not to whine. I am remembering to count to 90 before responding to a charged remark in my direction while taking many deep breaths in the interim. With that said, I am not backing down on my positions. I am FINALLY in a space where it is safe to be who I really am. People will either accept me or they won't. I will no longer live my life according to other people's expectations. This doesn't mean I will stop making collective decisions based on the greater good. It just means that I am no longer willing to allow myself to be used and sucked dry. I often liken this feeling to the following:


See where the guy is helping that child put on his mask? He couldn't do that if he hadn't put his mask on first. In relation to myself, I can't help anyone else if I don't take care of myself. I have to meet my own needs. I cannot expect other people to do it for me.

With all of this said, sitting here on the eve of the winter solstice and new year, I feel in my bones that this year is going to be huge - not just for myself, but for everyone. Huge changes are coming our way and how we deal with those changes will deeply depend on our acceptance and mindfulness of whatever comes to the surface. I think this sums my feelings up nicely:
Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience.
It isn't more complicated that that.
It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is,
without either clinging to it or rejecting it.
Sylvia Boorstein

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Year in Review

I've decided I'm going to do a year in review with songs.... Hope you enjoy it.

January -


February


March


April


May


June


July


August


September


October


November


December

Friday, November 12, 2010

Writing

I need to be doing more of it. The last 6+ months have been so personally heavy that I have utterly neglected this blog. I feel the blog calling me. It's saying, "Sara - get back to me! Share your feelings again!" I will heed its call. Expect a certain outburst of posts in the near future.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Wayside Cup - Team Radnecks

As many of you are already aware, I have been working REALLY hard for The Wayside Center for Popular Education. If you don't know what Wayside is about yet, check out their website here: www.waysidecenter.org. In the meantime, here's an excerpt from their "About Us" section:
"Inspired by the Highlander Center in Tennessee, we envision a vibrant center where activists, organizers and other justice-loving folks can come together for education, training, socializing, rest, renewal, healing, fun and whatever else it takes to grow and be nurtured into a movement powerful enough to create the world we want to live in."

Food Not Bombs Norfolk has entered a team to participate in the first annual Wayside Cup Event. This is a grassroots fundraiser to help Wayside fund their projects and workshops such as "....permaculture workshops, anti-racism training, organizational retreats for long-range planning, interpreting for social justice workshops, skill-shares, cultural events...grow our own food and experiment with, learn about and eventually model ways that we can live more sustainably." I am writing to you today in hopes that you may be able to donate $5 to $10 in our team's name. All donations made in "Team Radnecks" name will help put us closer to bringing home the trophy and bring Wayside closer to achieving their goals. If this is something you can support, please go here: http://www.waysidecenter.org/donate.php

Thanks everyone!!!
=)

Monday, August 16, 2010

Pakistan

The content of this poem might change. This is just what I came up with so far.

How many times
Have we seen this scene
Replayed over and over again in time
Children crying
Men punching and climbing like ants scurrying to the pie
Women bawling hands up to the sky while
Scarce bags of rice are flung at sheer
desparation by the naked emperor's army while we
Sit back
Admiring the emperor's sleek and shimmering new robe
Or
More aptly
Lightly carressing the iphone in our hands, pacified on technology's tit
Flipping from CNN to ...lost to lose the image in a blink
while never pondering
"why?"

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Clean Love

This is an excerpt from a book I am reading. It deeply resonated with me so I thought I would share.

Can you imagine love without jealousy, without possessiveness- love cleaned of all its clinginess and desperation? Let's try. We can take some thoughts from Buddhism: What would it be like to love without attachment? Or to open our hearts to someone with no expectation beyond another heart opening in return? Loving just for the joy of it, regardless of what we might get back?
Imagine seeing the beauty and virtues of a beloved and letting go of how their strengths might meet our needs or how their beauty might make us look better.
Imagine seeing another in a clean light of love, without enumerating the ways in which that person does and does not match up to the fantasy we carry around of our perfect mate or dream lover.
Imagine meeting another person in the freedom and innocence of childhood and playing together, without plotting how to make this person give us the kind of love we wish we could have gotten in our actual childhood.
But...but...but. What if you open your heart to someone and you don't like what happens next? Suppose that person gets drunk? Or treats your open affection with scorn? What if this person doesn't fulfill your dreams? What if this one turns out just like the last one? Suppose all those things do happen. What have you lost? A little time, a brief fantasy. Let it go, learn from it, and go find someone more worthy of your love.
Love doesn't much take to being stuffed into forms, which is what everybody's fantasies and imaginings are: custom-built plans for a constructed individual they've created to solve all their problems. Your authors have dream lovers too. But people are not made of clay or stone, and it won't work well to approach them with a chisel. Look what happened to Pygmalion.
How many times have you rejected the possibility of love because it didn't look the way you expected it to? Perhaps some characteristic was missing you were sure you must have, some other trait was present that you never dreamed of accepting. What happens when you throw away your expectations and open your eyes to the fabulous love that is shining right in front of you, hilding out its hand?
Clean love: love without expectations.
Wishing your love clean doesn't require advanced spirituality or weekly psychoanalysis. You'll probably never let go of every single attachment - at least we've never managed it. But maybe you can let go just for an instant: your history, worries, frets, and yearnings will still be there to come back to you when you need them. Just for now, take a look at the nifty person who is standing right in front of you.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Waiting on the Hierophant to Talk

not scream
throw smoke bombs
divert and dance away.
just talk.

meanwhile the time ticks away
tickticktick
the tears keep streaming
.:drip:. .:drip:. .:drip:.

What's a woman to do?
Keep getting gray while waiting for the day that the transformation takes place?
-OR-
Stop waiting for the hierophant to meet my own needs

Nine years gone already
pieces of me blowing
bit by bit
grit by grit
until only my old bones are left.

The hierophant will no longer keep me from myself. Time is up. I will take my power back.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Love is just a four letter word...

I found this really cool old video of Joan Baez playing this song with Earl Scruggs.

Here are the lyrics:

Seems like only yesterday
I left my mind behind
Down in the Gypsy Café
With a friend of a friend of mine
She sat with a baby heavy on her knee
Yet spoke of life most free from slavery
With eyes that showed no trace of misery
A phrase in connection first with she I heard
That love is just a four-letter word

Outside a rambling store-front window
Cats meowed 'til the break of day
Me, I kept my mouth shut,
To you I had no words to say
My experience was limited and underfed
You were talking while I hid
To the one who was the father of your kid
You probably didn't think I did, but I heard
You say that love is just a four-letter word

I said goodbye unnoticed
Pushed towards things in my own games
Drifting in and out of lifetimes
Unmentionable by name
After searching for my double, looking for
Complete evaporation to the core
Though I tried and failed at finding any door
I must have thought that there was nothing more absurd
Than that love is just a four-letter word

Though I never knew just what you meant
When you were speaking to your man
I could only think in terms of me
And now I understand
After waking enough times to think I see
The Holy Kiss that's supposed to last eternity
Blow up in smoke, its destiny
Falls on strangers, travels free
Yes, I know now, traps are only set by me
And I do not really need to be assured
That love is just a four-letter word

Strange it is to be beside you, many years the tables turned
You'd probably not believe me if told you all I've learned
And it is very very weird, indeed
To hear words like "forever" plead
so ships run through my mind I cannot cheat
it's like looking in a teacher's face complete
I can say nothing to you but repeat what I heard
That love is just a four-letter word.



Friday, May 7, 2010

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

I logged on with the intention of writing about popular education & the Wayside Center. Instead, I find myself wanting to write about something rather personal. In a way, it is connected to Wayside since Wayside also intends to be a place for personal healing as well as popular education. I think that's what got me on this train of thought to begin with.

Many of my friends are aware of the trauma i endured as a child. I was physically, mentally and sexually abused by my mother's ex husband from 4 until I was 12.5. My mother left him the summer before I turned 13 because I finally point blank told her what he had been doing to me. I will always be so grateful for the fact that my mother believed me and left. I have heard too many survivor's tell the sad tale of their mother's accusing them of lying, blaming them & abandoning them further. Thankfully, that was not my situation.

Thus began my journey of healing, learning to re-wire my brain for love rather than fear, relearning how to connect with others in a healthy, wholesome way. Here I am, 19 years later, still continuing down this healing road. I have often thought of this process as an upward spiral. It is never ending, yet the emotions needing attention ebb & flow. Each time I ascend the spiral, I end up better for it despite the pain & hurt that has to be tended to a long the way. I currently find myself with a whole lot of issues resurfacing, which can sometimes lead to me feeling really frustrated and tired. If I am feeling particularly immature about it all, I throw my hands in the air and say "When will this EVER be OVER??". It is painful and tiresome to continue to grow, push myself beyond the bounds of comfort. In reality though, I wouldn't have it any other way. This cycle of pain & growth is what keeps me evolving, keeps me striving to be a better person to myself and a better parent to my children.

I will leave you all with a poem, the title of this blog, written by Portia Nelson. It has often brought me comfort when I am in a self-deprecating mood in regards to some misstep I have taken or succumbing to old self destructive patterns. I hope that someone out there may find some solace in it as well.

I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.

II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place
but, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V

I walk down another street.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Human vs. System Values

If you know me, you know I am anti-capitalist. As you can imagine, most people scoff at me & ask me "why?" I always feel at a loss to clearly explain my stance. That is, until I found the following essay in my slingshot organizer. The person who wrote this is my new hero. I hope this helps clarify the issue for you as it did for me. Yes, I *know* it is a propaganda piece, but the message rings true nonetheless...

A key to figuring out how to resist capitalism, earth-destroying mega-technology, and velveeta culture is learning how to re-define our values based on what it means to be fully human, awake and free. All of us who've grown up within this system internalize its values in subtle as well as more obvious ways. In other words, perhaps without even realizing it we start to define what we like and don't like, what we are willing to strive for and what we dismiss, what we see and what fades into the background based on a value system defined by an economic, technological, and cultural environment structured by capitalism.

The capitalist economic system requires all participants to simplify their thinking and behavior to pursue narrow goals: the most efficient, quick, cheap method, technology, or form of organization. It is important to understand that although these goals are easy to understand, they don't really mean anything - they are means to an end, but the end itself (more stuff, more growth at the lowest cost) doesn't really have any ultimate meaning. Capitalism has no internal way to determine whether anything - including, in particular, constant growth and cheapness - is actually good. In fact, on an ecologically finite planet, limitless growth is not good. Capitalist growth may kill us all if we can't somehow stop it soon. Just having more stuff does not make human beings happy or make their lives meaningful.

Because capitalism is designed around constant competition, the pressure to pursue its very narrow goals is almost irresistible for companies, communities, and individual people. If any element of the system rejects the pursuit of efficiency, others who are more efficient will out-compete the resister, who will be forced out.

Human beings are not machines. We are not merely cogs in the an economic machine. It makes no sense that psychologically, culturally, and in our day-to-day decision making we should primarily pursue efficiency, the lowst costs, and other valueless means-to-an-ends forms of thinking.

The most fundamental aspect of being human is our ability to experience raw emotion, wonder, love, freedom, pleasure, and sensation. These are experiences totally outside the awareness of economics, corporations, or computers, but each of us knows they are what makes life meaningful on a deep level. When your face is stained with tears - of happiness or sadness, but in either case being-ness- those are the moments you know you're really alive.

Humans seek freedom, self-determination, adventure, and challenges, whereas corporations, hierarchal authority structures, and machines seek control, order, routine, and the easiest, quickest, and most boring solution to problems. Humans seek to express their humanity - we sing, write, draw, dance, and rebel. Only living creatures can love, which is an irrational emotion that is also essential and even magical. It is the glue that makes society possible, makes our lives worth living, and can give us the strength and courage to organize, resist the capitalist destruction of the world, and survive. Yet love is totally invisible to capitalism - computers and corporations can't love. These structures can't comprehend solidarity which is based on love and that doesn't depend on trading something for something else.

To create a new society, we have to figure out ways to resist the social structures and institutions that oppress people and are destroying the earth. We have to create alternative institutions that can meet people's needs based on cooperation, sharing, free will, beauty, pleasure, and ecological sustainability. Doing these things means we are re-organizing our priorities away from mainstream goals such as acheiving success and getting material possessions.

To the extent the process of our struggle as well as our goals are based on human vs. system values - and to the extent we're conscious of when we're being guided by system-values and when we're being guided by human values - we can decrease burnout by increasing our sense of meaningfulness. We won't be seeking one path in our politics while self-judging our lives based on internalized values from the system. The part of our mind structured by the system is filled with a lot of "shoulds" that upon closer inspection may not make a lot of sense. It can be easy for our "reasonable" system-mind to doubt our human impulses for adventure, freedom, and ill-advised love that can leave us dangling out on a limb.

Taking a different path or doing it yourself for our own reasons will be slower, more difficult and often very confusing, and messy. Resisting the global machine means that you'll miss out on the treats it has to offer, and it may role over and crush you if you don't step out of the way at the right moment. The funny thing is that a lot of times, enjoying easy treats makes you feel empty, while seeking complex, tough pleasures makes you feel alive and engaged. Taking the human and therefore sometimes irrational and inconvenient path seriously, and following it with all your heart is what the world needs most right now. We've gone as far as we can with making things fast and cheap - now it's time to build something meaningful and human.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

The Word of the Day Is...

Modulate:
mod⋅u⋅late

[moj-uh-leyt] Show IPA
verb, -lat⋅ed, -lat⋅ing.
–verb (used with object)
1.to regulate by or adjust to a certain measure or proportion; soften; tone down.
2.to alter or adapt (the voice) according to the circumstances, one's listener, etc.
3.Music.
a.to attune to a certain pitch or key.
b.to vary the volume of (tone).
4.

Telecommunications. to cause the amplitude, frequency, phase, or intensity of (a carrier wave) to vary in accordance with a sound wave or other signal, the frequency of the signal wave usually being very much lower than that of the carrier.

In order to
Say thank you to you
I must do it intentionally
But tonight with every breath
I can feel my death
Sure as I can feel my knees

You were my modulation
So that's what you will always be
We took each other higher
We set each other free

Course, neither of us were wearing helmets
And our blood was just everywhere
And when the morphine kicked in later
The censors threw their hands up in despair
And that's when the truth came marching in
And promptly pulled the plug
But you were better than any drug
You were better than any drug

In order to
Say thank you to you
I must do it intentionally
But tonight with every breath
I can feel my death
Sure as I can feel my knees

You were my modulation
And that's what you will always be
We took each other higher
Then we set each other free
We set each other free
-- A.D.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Methods

I just finished reading Pacifism As Pathology by Ward Churchill. It was an excellent read; however, the quote that stuck out to me most wasn't Churchill's own words. It was a quote from Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael):
If we are to consider ourselves as revolutionaries, we must acknowledge that we
have an obligation to succeed in pursuing revolution. Here, we must
acknowledge not only the power of our enemies, but our own power as well.
Realzing the nature of our power, we must not deny ourselves the exercise of the
options available to us; we must utilize surprise, cunning and flexibility; we
must use the strength of our enemy to undo him, keeping him confused and
off-balance. We must organize with perfect clarity to be utterly unpredictable.
When our enemies expect us to respond to provocation with violence, we must
react calmly and peacefully; just as they anticipate our passivity, we must
throw a grenade.

Now I realize that I am potentially igniting a firestorm by highlighting this quote but I can't emphasize enough how much this quote got me thinking. I have been wrestling for months with the following questions. Does pacifism work? Is there ever a time where more direct action is called for or justified? What keeps those of us working on a variety of social justice issues from unifying? How do we build solidarity in our community? I am going to leave you all with these questions and this quote to see what dialogue, if any, ensues.

Friday, January 8, 2010

rants

Why do people think it is okay to invite themselves to gatherings? It's okay to ask if you can come along, but don't just announce that you're going to attend when you weren't invited. That is one of those little societal nuances that I DO believe in.

Words without action are meaningless. I pay much more attention to what you do rather than what you say. If the actions don't add up to what you say, then I am going to call you on it. I expect people to do the same to me.


Why do people get so pissed off when I question our military actions & tell me I should support our troops yet turn their nose up at the homeless veteran when they ask for help??

Why do people feel like they can defensively question me about my lifestyle when I say NOTHING to them about the way they live their lives? Just because I live my life differently than yours doesn't cause me to ask you to justify your lifesyle to me, so don't ask me to justify mine.

If another person asks me if I am afraid that my kids aren't going to be properly socialized because I homeschool, I might just snap. Seriously people, who is more qualified to socialize your child - you? or 30 of their peers who are lacking the same skill set? I am confident that my kids will be socially more well rounded than any kid in the public school setting, hands down.

I could keep going, but I won't. I don't enjoy being in this negative space. I need to get the hell out of this place & recharge my psyche or else it is going to suck me into this blackhole of shittiness that is known as Norfolk, VA.