the privilege of traveling

i have been thinking  about writing this post for a while.  in part i have not done so because i do have lots of privilege and have been able to travel.  and i felt awkward, felt like i was making myself vulnerable to criticism if i wrote this.  but then i figured, fuck it.

i had one of those conversations that i seem to have every few months with someone new about how i do not take into account how privileged i am to be able to travel and live abroad.  and how privileged i was to be partnered. when i talk about my experience of being a mother.

privilege.  privilege. privilege.

1. i do take how much privileged i am into account.  actually in some ways i am more aware of certain types of privilege because i travel.  for instance, the power of my US citizenship comes into stark relief when i am abroad.

2. and i know that it is a privilege to be in a happy partnership, both of us dedicated to loving aza and each other.

3. but i also know that traveling and being partnered is not in and of itself simply privileged.

MOTHERS TRAVELING

let me see if i can put it this way:

through out history.  as long as there have been wars.  mothers have traveled with their children.  they have to survive.  they become refugees.  they become slaves.  they travel to find a safe place to live and create a life with their families.  they leave home to flee abusive husbands, or advancing troops, to find doctors, to find lost family, to take care of sick family, to find work, to find food, to find peace.

yes it can be a privilege to travel.

but it can also be a privilege to stay home.

balcony culture and community art

i invite all of you who read this blog to particiate in this lil piece of community art.  by sending me pics and photos.  and words.  and whatever you want to digitally.  and i will print them out and incorporate them into this balconey art.

so i have been thinking a lot about community, art, and borders for the past few months.

one of the things that i have realized is that making art seems to stress me the fuck out.  i get knotted up about the art piece being good enough.  or whatever.  so i started sketching in an art journal.  just trying to loosen up.  and searching for my vision of the world.  i started taking photographs of the world around me.  loving the digital camera that lets me just snap. snap. snap. and then run home and see what i saw.

and these practices definitely helped.  to open myself to my own vision.  but the notebook started to feel too small and confining.  and i love taking pictures.  but i still wasnt feeling myself as free.  i was still caught up on perfectionism and meaning.

so habibi bought this 6 foot piece of canvass and i have been painting for the past couple of days.

at the same time in talking to lex about porch culture in the south and stoop culture in the north and i was saying: man, i miss having a porch.  and then i said.  oh but we have balconeys here in cairo.  and realizing that there is a very definite balconey culture here because everyone lives in an apt.  and even cheap apts have at least one balconey.  and that i want to make our balconeys a site for urban street art and contributing to a culture of balconeys in abdeen, cairo, egypt. i also wanted to do an art project with aza.  and so she will be painting and drawing

so i am painting this latest piece and i when it is completed.  i will hang it on our balconey.

and i want to invite all of you who read this blog to particiate in this lil piece of community art.  by sending me pics and photos.  and words.  and whatever you want to digitally.  and i will print them out and incorporate them into this balconey art.

send it to me at primitivedragonfly at yahoo dot com or leave a link in the comment section…

as to the type of art i am looking for.  i am pretty open about it.  take a walk through your neighborhood and take pictures or sketches.  a poem.  questions.  a story that you want to share.  photos of you or your family friends community.  art.  posters.  your ordinary heroes/heroines.  a piece of art/painting/writing created by someone else that you want to bring forth.  the possibilities are endless.

i am really excited that this piece will:

1. contribute to the visual community of the neighborhood

2. mean that aza gets to paint

3. will act as a bridge between my online communities and my offline communities

4. will bring forth a more complex picture of middle east africa for those who do not live here and a more complex picture of europe and the americas for those who do not live there. and show the interconnections between these multiple sites of expression and communication

5. find another way to break through the censorship, imprisonment, and torture of bloggers in egypt

sketches of whiteness overseas

1. went out last night.  met new people.  had a great time.  woke up this morning with a realization.  in white culture it is okay to talk about race, ie arab culture, sudanese culture, african culture, etc.  but if you talk about white culture or racism (which is the definition of white culture) then your intent is obviously to make white folks feel uncomfortable.  you could not just be some one interested in culture.  especially in white culture which is fascinating in the fact that white culture’s existance is about domination.  just on a theoretical level.

2. like if i ask: how did you overcome your racism…to a white person….they think i am serious.  they dont know i am joking.  i dont expect them to have.  and still be white.  white folks are so weird.

3. like i get in the elevator to go home.  and there is this white guy there who has been sitting with us for a couple of hours.  and seriously i thought he was cool.  but he’s not.  he is aryan nation boy #2.  (aryan nation boy #1 is the kid who looked like i had attacked him because he had a degree in war studies and i was like: what kind of war did you study?  then i asked him a bunch of other questions. including: how did you overcome your racism.  considering that most wars happen in brown and black people parts of the world.  and basically discovered that the kid was all theory no practice and not very interesting to boot) anyways aryan nation boy #2 is in the elevator with habibi and i and says: you bring up race in inappropriate moments.

wtf?

What’s (radical) love got to do with it? Everything.

1.i am a mother. and when i first read jess’s piece that was what came to me: my motherhood. and how central my love with my daughter is in my organizing.
and i have followed the ensuing conversation fascinated. wow. there are all these permutations and experiences i hadnt perceived. so thanks to everyone for that. i will be thinking about this conversation for a long time.

when i say ‘radical love’ what i mean is ‘radical caretaking’. caretaking for me is concrete action. taking care of myself. taking care of others. on multiple levels physical, mental, emotional, spiritual.  it is providing space where others can take care of themselves.  where they feel empowered to ask for what they need.  it is  not because i like them (often i dont, hell, there are enough times in the day i dont like my daughter, but i take care of her…does that make sense?) but because they are another human being and they deserve to be whole too.

when i think of radical love. i think of being a birth assistant for working poor african immigrant teenage moms. and loving them. even though i may not particularly like them. not the kind of folks i want hang out with on a saturday aft. but loving them tenderly through an incredibly vulnerable moment of their lives. and that creates a bond between us. and yes they yelled not nice things to me in their final moments of labor. and they resent me because i am a stranger, not their boyfriend, not their mom. but because we have been really vulnerable with each other…the quality of the relationship is…more human(?)

black fairies represent

aaaahhhh

how did i not know about this blog/mag?

ultraviolet underground?

the gothic girlie fantasy political artist in me is in love

and the ebook: zambaru

about black fairies?

finally something i can read aza…

random stories

1. there is so much to do in this world.  and these days i feel so small about it all.  and so i have to slow down and deal with what life brings me.  piece by piece.  day by day. it is cliched but it works.

2.  the raven eye blog will be up soon.  i had to change hosts and shit.  get used to the time difference between here and there.  business hours are a bitch.

3. in the mean time i have been reading blogs galore.  oh my god.  woc and tpoc y’all are amazing.  there are all these beautiful blogging experiments out there.   exquisite writing.  art experiments.

i am especially digging:

on the night of eid

my mural of a diamond

from nadia.

1.here, we live on the fifth floor of an apartment building in downtown cairo.  the closest we get to dirt and leaves are the potted plants on the balcony.  so i am end up sinking into blogs lately (do you ever do that just sink into a blog and read it for hours?) that celebrate the earth, green growing things, leaves, trees, etc.  like this blog called: diy winterdreams.

2. recently she had a post on atc’s artist trading cards.  which is a movement/style that i learned about back in 2004 from my friend cami.  and i always meant to join.  somehow.  but i end up getting distracted by life.  so now four and a half years later…i am thinking about trying to take my lil art journal pages and moving them towards atc’s.

even though this one is traded: i love it.  sew.

but this one is available.  somedays it is how i feel. blue tree

and these trees as well: spiral garden

3. this morning i had a dream that i was painting this gorgeous mural on a wall of our apartment.

a painting

i love this painting.  it is by one of the refugees who works at the school where i teach dance.  excuse my bad photography which makes it look washed out.  in real life there is this stunning vibrancy that bespeaks of a visual imagination that is contemporary to the fluidity and quirky attitudes of street muralists throughout the crazy cities on planet earth.  the improvisational frankness and complexity of jazz and hip hop.  it looks like aza.

aza’s moods

oooohhh