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.

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?

for little light

i think.  i think we are building a philosophy of radical love.  it is here. it is there. it is in and out.

we are writing a new bible of love and war.

how could i have forgotten this for a second.  of course of course i have read this.

it is this:

Here’s what they’re on about: they live in a world where we are monsters. They live in a world that trembles daily, because we snake our faultlines through its foundations and each time we move more crumbles and falls over the yawning edge of the flattened sea. In their world, once near us, their children can be lost to them, and just seeing us represented fills them with the rage of people struck in the face and deprived of their birthrights.
That world needs to end, and we know it. That world will end, and they know it.

There’s a war on. Either we succeed, and their world ends; or they succeed, and ours does. Does it matter that we want them to go on living in our world, that our world has room for them to build cities and parks and futures? Not really. The very act of not getting to define everything for the rest of us is the end, for them. The fact that none of them would actually die, that their children would be fine and their blood unshed, is irrelevant. We can abhor and condemn violence and torture, and this too is an act of war. We can love them depthlessly as people and wish them no harm, but we cannot avoid the implications. If we are considered equals, their world is over. Our lives are the explosives that end it.

that’s it isnt it little light?  it is not just our lives but it is that we refuse to let them define us.  that is an act of war.  that is the rhetoric that matters to them.  and if they can’t define us they cant own us.  if they cant own us they cant control us.  and if they cant control us then they cant make us monstrous slaves in their system.  and if they dont have slaves to work for their benefit, then the whole system collapses.

dance class

my flatmate came in and told me this:

voice of america reports:

UN aid agencies strongly protest the expulsion of 13 leading non-governmental organizations from Sudan’s conflict-ridden province of Darfur. The agencies warn of catastrophic consequences if the government of Omar al-Bashir does not rescind this decision.

The United Nations calls the expulsion of 13 leading international non-governmental organizations from Darfur catastrophic. It says it will be impossible to administer humanitarian aid to millions of civilians in this strife-torn region without their assistance.

and then she said: it means that there are going to be alot more refugees coming here…alot more…

tomorrow i go teach dance to the kids.  this week.  it will be reggaeton.  their request.  which surprised me.  that they were so into reggaeton–a music i associate more with my time in southern mexico.  and the barrios of chicago.

but isnt that part of the post modern homogenized culture?  east african refugee boys who love reggaeton?  southern mexican boys who love west african rhythms?

this rush of bodies and loves out of a country that is starving them to death and here to this new country with a new, and hopefully less deadly, form of starvation?

and who am i in all this?  not just an observer.  but a participant with bloody hands.  tomorrow i am going to show some kids how my hands move.  and they will teach me how theirs move.  and we will make our own language.  a language that is dirty, sweaty, bloody, and alive.

alive.

isolation, communities, and international womens day

1.  i am really excited about the fact that folks are interested in this lil blog dream.  i had kinda thought that no one be interested.  and people would be annoyed that i asked them in the first place.  and i put it out there because i had this dream and then another one and another one and it became obvious that the universe was not going  to let me get a good night sleep until i did.

2. i am hoping to have it up and basically running for international women’s day: march 8th.  but i may not reach that deadline.  there is alot going on in my world right now and i dont want to half-ass any of the projects i am working on.  including the whole being a mother-thing that i do.

3.  this morning i woke up with mary j blige’s version of ‘im going down’ running through my head…

yoga and seeds

i was shocked when i first read a few years ago about patenting seeds.

In 1998, Mr. McFarling bought 1,000 bags of genetically altered soybean seeds, and he did what he had always done. But the seeds, called Roundup Ready, are patented. When Monsanto, which holds the patent, learned what Mr. McFarling had sown, it sued him in federal court in St. Louis for patent infringement and was awarded $780,000.

The company calls the planting of saved seed piracy, and it says it has won millions of dollars from farmers in lawsuits and settlements in such cases.

how can a company have the right to own life?

but, frankly that is a huge corporation that in the US is legally treated as a person but has no moral conscience and must according to law work first and foremost in the interests of its stockholders…

but then this afternoon i read this:

Since its arrival in Britain and America in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when it was popularised by Beatles guitarist George Harrison, among others, Yoga has become a $225 billion industry.

In India, however, it remains collective knowledge – practiced in public parks where gurus often teach fast breathing exercises, like pranayam, and different ’sun-salutations,’ free of charge.

But as the number of Western yoga teachers has grown, there has been a steady increase in patent applications claiming each pose in their class is not part of the ancient discipline of mind and body, but their own unique invention. In the United States alone, there have been more than 130 yoga-related patents, 150 copyrights and 2,300 trademarks. Now India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library is being made available to patents offices throughout the world so they can establish whether the claim is a genuine innovation or “prior art” from Indian systems of medicine.

paintings by sudanese refugee living in egypt

this is not a hotel: breaking borders

1.

my friend, theresa (who we stayed with in scotland before we journeyed to israel last night), was beaten imprisoned and disappeared by the israeli governement.  i found out last night when another free gaza sailor stayed overnight.  fuck! no, really…the fucking israeli bastards…the sailor was texting her in prison (the israeli prison guard bastards gave her back her cell phone) so we sent a short message…

here is the link to the article: disappeared free gaza activist theresa mc dermott found in israel’s ramleh prison

Scottish activist Theresa McDermott has been found in Ramleh prison four days after she was “disappeared” by the Israel government after being forcibly removed from a seaborne Lebanese aid mission to Gaza. In early February Theresa responded to a call for support from internationals from the organizers of a Lebanese humanitarian aid voyage to Gaza aboard the Togo flagged ship, Tali. Theresa was one of only 9 passengers aboard the cargo ship on February 4, 2009 when Israeli gunboats intercepted it, boarded and forced the ship to Ashdod port in Israel.

digging right now

stuff i’m digging right now

eat mangoes nekkid: by india who reminds us to: nurture yourself , its all very beautiful, regardless of the circumstances always find the bliss

what i have loved about her blog for the past couple of years is her celebration of her body, sexuality, food, movement, visual beauty.  frankly she has excellent taste in the pleasures of life and reminds us all to be grateful for that which is good.  she does so not from an annoying positive about everything and thus oblivious about most things but from a grounded spiritual love.  thank you india.

pomegranate queen: her poetry ‘raw and spontaneous’ on the screen.  exploring diaspora, longing, love…

synchronicity is fading i fear
i am fading
so i must stay up

i put on my headphones
i lay back i listen
and the boom bap the bass line remind me
of the sun

the people could fly: i am one of those lil black kids who grew up reading the people could fly: american black folktales…and i love the blog created in the name of this book.

5 sisters travel the world finding power and possibility in the stories, dreams, and lives of people-through an evolving American mYth-reality about Africans who fly.

stand and deliver: rixa’s blog on birth and midwifery is one of the best, informative, well-researched, good analysis, interweaving the person with medical.

migration and the other

aza meeting another lil girl at a school.  they kind of stared at each other trying to figure each other out.   the school is for refugee children and adults.  primarily the school serves east african refugees namely from sudan and eritrea.    recent experiences in the israeli prison with european and african immigrants looking for work and now in egypt with east african folks fleeing war has brought me to a greater vision of one of the global experiences in this age: dislocation, movement between borders, migration and the ways that violence intersects and pushes away from the homeland and toward movement.  to live in the identity of migrant.  to choose the life of the ‘other’ in a strange/familiar place in order to choose life at all.

actually this is the theme of the work i have done in the past few years whether in mexico, palestine, the eastern congo, the u.s., and now in egypt.  time and time again i see how violence causes dislocation and how the experience of dislocation is a form of violence.  and how do we heal from this?  how do we create community in a strange land?  what do we do once we have survived?

a couple of days ago we went to an art exhibit called: the other that dealt with these themes.  kismet?

this was my favorite exhibit (above pics).  a small room filled with plastic bags, stuffed with pictures, stories, fragments of recorded identities of african men and women.  these bags hanging from the ceiling by plastic thread.  it was like walking into a large silent windchime.  these identites rooted to the ceiling but swinging in accordance to the vagaries of the wind or my movement through the room.