It's everything that I've ever been afraid of, and everyone who has ever harmed me. It's all of the potential for beauty in the world, and everyone who is trying to do better. It's war with Iran, creeping up, bringing out convulsions in my body from some deep, forgotten place. It's all of the trauma (the trauma I uncovered during Somatics and Social Justice, as people sat around talking about 9/11, wanting to scream that I finally realized that it is impossible to know me without knowing that from the time of my conception to the time that I was five years old, somebody was trying to kill me. That that was not paranoia, that it was real. That I realized a body can know that, no matter how distant the perpetrator, a body can and will remember that 25 years later. That it affects every way that body IS in relationship to the world, for the rest of that body's life.) It's all of the trauma, the migration and little me who was never and will never be a part of the dominant paradigm, and who is grateful for that now, because she questions the necessity of dominance anyway. Because if there has to be a class of the powerful and a class of the powerless (less power! not none!), I know where I'd rather be. I'd rather be broke and silent except to those around me than be an oppressor. All while imagining and creating a different way.
It's the people all around me who are starting to document their awakening. It's this culture of activists and organizers and writers and artists who are breathing, sitting, writing, practicing practicing practicing compassion, self-love, healing, (and as much as I have negative associations with this word right now) accountability. It's when we do it right and when we do it wrong that gives me hope. It's that we're doing it at all.
Yes, it's Occupy. Even that. When we're doing it right and when we're doing it wrong. That we're doing it at all. Yes, that.
Yes, this will be a year of profound change, just like all of the years that came before, but with exponentially blooming transformation, like jumping one whole digit higher on the Richter scale, every day. Yes, Jamaica's Prime Minister will say that queer folks are welcome to serve in her cabinet. Yes, Barack Obama will send a drone into Iran's airspace, and when Iran takes it down, will sheepishly ask for it back. Yes, everything will get unbelievably better and worse, side-by-side, simultaneously, all at once. Yes, we have choice sometimes. Yes, sometimes we don't at all, and we have to stand in some stagnant, murky shithole trying to figure out how to escape.
And yes, when we find ourselves in a garden, we can choose to pluck the weeds and water that which nourishes us. And when we've washed off our boots and notice the sunset is changing all of the colors of the sky, we can put away our cell phones and step outside, and stare, awestruck, into the magnificence of the heavens, mouths gaping. And when we didn't see the deep end coming, and stepped accidentally into a seemingly bottomless hole of our sorrow and longing, it's the choice to roll up a sleeve and plunge an arm in, elbow deep, into the pain and pull something (anything) out, and wipe it off and give it a kiss.
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