somebody else's paradise

boardwalk

Berna drops by after the spa – “self/body care” as an appropriate good-bye to santa cruz. We decide there are still more santa cruz activities to do. The boardwalk. After giulia convinces us we should do some serious make-up…

The Giant Dipper, one of these old wooden roller coaster from the beginning of the 20th century. We get ourselves in the line, all excited and laughing and talking about roller coaster experiences and all the things that (almost) went wrong. Some of the friends we’re with have grown up with roller coasters – there seem to be quite a bunch of them around – and these people are really dangerous. The ride is all bumpy, our bodies get shaken and pushed back, i can’t even really scream but just hold on to giulia. Berna gets out with her stomach upset, and i have a head-ache. i don’t really see the fun in this.

So we decide to go dancing for a little while before Berna needs to go home and pack. The Dakota, the lesbian bar on Pacific Avenue. We need to explain again that giulia who arrived here recently and is not used to carry an ID around, forgot her ID at home. A (true) story which got us into the Red Room a bit earlier. Here we get a rude no for an answer. i argue that it was berna’s last night in Santa Cruz, after having lived here for 4 years, and that she just wanted to dance for half an hour in a place she used to come regularly. and that giulia really didn’t know. The doorwoman begins to resemble an aggressive pitt-bull. By the time i’m done explaining those two little facts, she insists we should dissappear from her sight immediately.

i go into a super calm (provokingly calm, according to giu) yet persistent drive. she looks as if she’s ready to explode: her tall body is one tight muscle of rage, and she’sÂ leaning over me till her nose almost touches my forehead. she searching for that one spark to ignate the fight, the small movement or gesture that would give her an opportunity to beat me up. that’s how it looked from the outside, according to the friends, who basically wented to pull me away. but i felt how my body wanted to stay, keeping the ground, feeling untouchable, protected by layer of absolute zen. “surely there must be a solution. it’s our friend’s last night in this country, she’s been living here for four years, she regularly came to this place.” by then the woman is screaming (her breath in my face). she points to a sign at the door that said one had to be over 21 years old to enter. only with a valid ID. here i made a little mistake, in an attempt to create some complicity. “oh common on, that’s just a stupid american law.” guess what… the woman actually assumed the identity. “oh yes, well you know what, i’m just a stupid american.” (in a moment of instant wiseness, nobody of us commented.)

the woman was on such a power trip. she yelled that we should get out of the sidewalk in front of the Dakota. definately a sensitive point to me (as sometimes sidewalks overhere suddenly stop because the piece of land where they obviously should continue is private property) so i couldn’t help insisting that this was a public space and that we were perfectly allowed to be in a public space as we were doing no harm. meanwhile giulia had found her international student card, but of course the bouncer wasn’t into letting us in anymore. her power trip got out of control “I’m the boss and i decide who gets in,” she yelled. and then she had it – she couldn’t make the tension into a fight, so she called the cops.
a moment of discussing among ourselves what we wanted to do. it was berna’s very last night in town and we decided we didn’t really want to spend that time with the cops and the bouncer with a passion for power and violence. so we walked away, crossing the cops on their way to the Dakota. as we are talking, bettina told the story of how her German driver’s licence was not accepted at the Dakota on a number of occassions. the more we got our heads around it, the more it seemed to us that this was an immigration issue. which identification documents are accepted and which ones aren’t. by the end of our self-empowering brainstorm, we actually feel like discussing the matter with the cops, so we turn back, crossing the cops again, as they drive away from the Dakota. oh well, better to use the time to kiss and hug and say good-bye…

goodbye berna

oh this makes me so sad. after Feza now also Berna is leaving.
santa cruz will be even more empty. there really aren’t many
people in this place i feel a deeper connection with.
i will miss these new friends tremendously.
a party at Berna’s place, with “good luck Berna” cake and all,
and a collective salsa dancing session.

This morning there was a the service for the Chanchellor, some people at the party attended. Speeches emphazising the good work that the Chanchellor had started, mainly her program for diversity, without however disguising that it didn’t went all that far. Especially Angela Davis’ words seemed to have been impressive. more here

SC beach

on the hill

The desolation of the place. UCSC campus in summer is the next bit of evidence i have that these American-style campuses don’t work. Okay, i admit, there’s a bit of dishonestly in that claim: UCSC doesn’t count as a typical american campus. As a result of the experiment in decentralisation – i.e. the project of dropping a number of buildings randomly in a forest, in the name of having self-managed small communities (in colleges) – every attempt at creating some kind of beating heart is even more of a serious struggle against social geography than on the classic campus model with a central square.

Please don’t get me wrong, you know that self-managed small communities are not part of things i consider problematic. The problem is that, without any real decentralisation of power – especially in the case of the University of California system, where decisions affecting the SC uni are not only taken by the governing board on campus but also between the different UC governing bodies – this decentralisation of the students smells like nasty fragmentation. Then there’s the physical geography: the fact that the campus is on the top of a hill outside of town in a way that does not challenge the expression “ivory tower” further than the adjective used.

Anyway, we went to campus to today. We worked a bit, so we’re not complaining, and we ended up doing other beautiful things – there is no doubt that this is a beautiful place. But it continues to alienate me with respect to my work, it is as if i need to find all the force and courage to work despite the environment, when i know of so many environments that push me to sit down at a corner of a table or a sofa in midst of life’s joys and tragedies and business. You see, when Virginia Woolf wrote “think we must”, she was thinking of all of these places daily life takes us through, busses and streets and… But not easy to catch a bus here these days.

***

Dinner at our house. We have a new house-mate who will stay with us for a little while, Mihui, a high school friend of Cynthia’s. She’s taking refuge from the east coast; came to California, where she also grew up, to recover. Undergraduate at Harvard (bad start), law school at Columbia (got worse), working for a judge in court (Boston, New Orleans) (it gets tougher) and working for a big law firm (L.A., New York) (total burn-out). The remedy: hanging out in the house, having tea and conversation sessions with all of us, reading bad chick lit (like Mr. Maybe) with covers she tries to hide when she’s reading in public spaces, and feeding us court stories which leave us with stomach pains from laughing laughing laughing…

space

Pacific Avenue, the centre of down town Santa Cruz life, on a Monday afternoon. I’m a bit dizzy after doing some shops to find a good present for my sister’s birthday (and i found something that made me smile and think of her, but of course i can’t disclose here what that is…), and i’m a bit puzzled how i managed to get shopping dizziness in a place with one street of shops. As i’m walking direction post office i notice a typical white surfer guy walking towards me from the opposite direction. I shift my imaginary walking path ever so slightly to the left, in order to pass by each other smoothly. Just before we pass each other, the guy stretches out his right arm, in a kind of waking-up-in-the-morning-and-needing-to-stretch-out motion. His elbow hits hard against my head.

I freeze on the spot; knocked-out not so much by the pain as by the bafflement. I turn around and mumble hey or wait or something. He turns around and says “You’d better watch out” and is ready to continue his stroll direction beach. I gather my breath and continue: “Wait, i’m sorry, but that really hurts, you…” Meanwhile he takes off his sun glasses and gives me one of these “oh really…” looks and interrupts: “So?!? You’d better watch out.” At this point i get angry. I move in his direction and start shouting: “No. You’d better watch out.” He backs off, puts his sunglasses on and continues walking down Pacific, dismissing the whole thing with a gesture of his arm. People around us continue to stroll in a laid-back californian style, and i walk away in anger. Sigh, here we are, once again angry at this place. Thinking about things Berna once said about the way in which people take up (public) space here, unhindered by any notion that you might be sharing that space with others. When i get home Giulia cracks up laughing about my angry self (and reminds me, in between the laughter, that these things also tend to happen in other parts of the world. hm, i have a vague memory of that, yes indeed, but i also have memories of places i’ve lived where, the moment you start screaming, other people intervene.) And MarÃa tells stories from her women’s self-defense course at the Nelson Centre; some of the stories are precisely about this kind of male arrogant taking up of all the space. We actually conclude that the guy must have been the same as in one of MarÃa’s stories. And now that i know how he looks like, i’m determined to beat him up next time i cross his path. There you go, if i became a meat eater in Santa Cruz, i could also become a guerilla fighter, beating up the bad guys. They better watch out.

Before coming home i freeze a second time, as i see the headlines of the local newspapers. During the weekend the chancellor of UCSC killed herself by throwing herself from the 42nd floor in San Francisco.

pig and buffalo

i don’t remember quite well how we got there (we were talking at some point about how our names get deformed in american-english) and i’m sure that being hungry and just having the time to grab some (healthy and not so healty) snacks had something to do with it. anyways, let me introduce you to… pig and buffalo. they are really sweet (just make sure they get fed on time). my head was already filled with stories of bears, turtles, horses, slugs, cats… – for which i’ll probably never find the time to write them down – and now there are pig and buffalo adventures. quanti animali vivanno con noi…

cws 2

Our first working session with Sharon, from the Challenging White Supremacy workshop. We read Solidarity not Charity: Racism in Katrina Relief Work by Molly McClure and Unraveling the Myths. 500 Years of Oppression, 500 Years of Resistance by JosÃ© Lopez. The first text, a reflection on the role of white activists out of town in Katrina relief work, starting from the fact that “the mess of Katrina was caused by a storm of racism and poverty more than wind and water” and seeking what solidarity rooted in “looking at how power and privilege play out in our own lives” and the obligation to “consider our role in relation to the state and system that helped engineer this disaster.”

The second, an inspiring speech that looks at the legacies of 1492. “There are two obvious legacies that come out of 1492. The legacy that most of the governments of Europe and the established order around the world will celebrate is the legacy of Columbus as the heroic figure exemplifying the best of the European spirit of adventure and rugged individualism, who set out out to diffuse Western Civilization to the “lesser breeds of mankind” as Rudyard Kipling would say at the end of the 19th Century – that civilization about which Mahatma Ghandi, when asked by a reporter, “What do you think about Western Civilization?” responded by saying, “It would be a good idea.”” The text goes on to make the point that this “civilization” legacy is one of the West robbing the rest of the world. And then it links the history of Europe to that of the foundation of the U. S. “Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States became a monster, in which the taints, the sickess, and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.” In the last part it looks at the legacy of resistance and liberation movements, from the Indians to the Maroons and slave resistance to the riots in L.A. “So, as we look at this infamous Columbian legacy, this legacy of racism, of genocide, of all that is rotten about the Western world, when you look at this, you also have to understand that the very moment that the Europeans arrived on these shores, people resistance, and developed another legacy – a legacy of a rich history of cultures of resistance.”

Although we were more tired than during our first meeting, it’s exciting to actually begin the work, and Sharon is wonderful in the way she weaves the conversation together. I keep on thinking of the work to do back in Belgium – concretely, the “broken white” workshops with Sara and Diny & co, and the “histories of liberation movements” project with Nadia. But for the moment being, i am so very grateful to have this opportunity dig into the history of the U.S. (my assignment for next session: what would an anti-racist history of Santa Cruz look like… so much more useful than me being angry at this place) accompanied by a soul so amazing and delightful as Sharon, in the steady company of marÃa and the caravan company of visiting friends, and with the virtual connection of friends on the homefront. Won’t be able to report back from all the sessions on this blog, but check out the Nextgenderation Belgium site soon (when i finally find the time to redo it…)

gay pride SF

Do as the locals do, and as none of our friends were going to the main parade of the San Francisco gay pride, we skipped the event. Important note: Sahar and Rutvica should stop insinuating that this had something to do with the parade taking off (kind of) early (to me, at least…) in the morning. We were first enjoying the good company of Lydia and Sandrine (et de nouveau on se retrouve dans un endroit on parle francais…) in the magic house where now Giulia wants to move in, and then we were meeting MarÃa in a hipster cafe on Valencia street – things clearly more urgent than the main parade. When later during the day we went to Civic Center, where the parade had arrived and a bunch of activities took place, we were up for mixed surprises. So this is what it looks like when the LGBT movement becomes mainstream… sure, enough examples of that back in Europe, but somehow the picture here gets enlarged (as for so many other things.) In terms of visibility: the way in which the rainbow flag flies above the city is impressive, signs of solidarity everywhere, a giant pink triangle on one of the Twin Peaks, the sheer number of people in the streets for the dyke march. But also in terms of integration into structures of oppression. Like two of the stalls we came across at the Civic Center:

No pride, no pride in this at all… unfortunately i wasn’t in the “let’s go up to them and strike a pseudo-naive conversation” mood, always worth to try out what little poking here and there can bring about…