spiritual activism

Tomorrow morning (in some hours time…) i fly to Washington, for the spiritual activism conference organised by the Network of Spiritual Progressives, initiated by the people from Tikkun. I’m interested to see how the articulation between left-wing politics (explicitely anti-capitalist) and religion and spirituality takes place, whether it works or not (and according to what criteria…). I had some conversations with Susan these days, a first one last week in which she claimed that in this country things have come to such a point that we have little other choice than re-occupying the sphere and language of religion. But when we talked about the conference (and Tikkun and Rabbi Lerner), she was sceptical. Somehow too manufactored, she believed. I had given her a report on the Michael Lerner’s lecture in Santa Cruz some months ago, and she ridiculed the way in which Lerner had structured his talk: starting from a research that showed a deep spiritual crisis in society that the left was not addressing or understanding, which subsequently served as a legitimation for his initiative. With her typical dry cynical humor Susan responded: Oh sure. Did Martin Luther King ever say: “I did a research project and it shows that Black people in this country do not have civil rights.” No, he had a dream. Where’s the fire?. But we’ll need the practice of these articulations before something more attractive can be articulated, she added. In any case, i’m really curious, also about this clear take on Washington D.C. and bid for political power. (and then my house-mates are excited that i’m going since the woman who leads the church all of them go to – Inner Light Ministries – will be speaking at the conference, and talked about it in church last Sunday). Won’t be writing for some days now, but i’m copying the programme.

Wednesday, May 17
9:00 am Opening Religious/Spiritual Rituals.
10:00 am Introduction to the Conference: Deborah Kory and Rev. Robert Hardies
10:30-12:00 am Understanding Spiritual Politics: Sister Joan Chittister and Peter Gabel
12:00-12:30 pm Introduction to Small Groups
12:30-1:30 pm Lunch with small groups
1:30-3:15 pm Keynote Plenary: Rabbi Michael Lerner: How Spiritual Progressives Can Take Back our Country from the Religious Right and Build a New Bottom Line in America so that Our Society Can Manifest the Love, Kindness, Generosity and Connection to God that Reflects the Highest Vision of our Spiritual and Religious Traditions and Defeats Media Cynicism and Cynical Realism.
3:30-5:15 pm Trainings focused on the Spiritual Covenant with America to prepare participants for presenting these ideas to their elected representatives

SPIRITUAL COVENANT GROUPS preparing for meetings with Congress on Thurs.
1. Create a society that promotes loving relationships and families Rabbi Debora Kohn
2. Take Personal Responsibility for Ethical Behavior (including sexual behavior) Facilitator: Rev. Tony Campolo and Rev. Ama Zenya
3. Build Social Responsibility into our economic and political institutions Facilitator: Peter Gabel
4. Reshape education to teach love, caring, generosity, nonviolent communication, cooperation, compassion, environmental responsibility, awe and wonder, respect and thanksgiving. Facilitator: Svi Shapiro and Ralph Wolf (W.A.S.C.)
5. Build a broader understanding of health care while also pursuing a single payer national health care plan. Facilitators: Dr.Roy Farrell, Harvey Fernbach, and Dr. Bill Benda
6. Be stewards of the environment Facilitator: Thea Levkovitz & Paul Wapner
7. A spiritual foreign policy, homeland security and elimination of Poverty: safety through a strategy of generosity and nonviolence. Rabbi Michael Lerner
8. Separation of church and state and science while bringing our new bottom line into the public sphere Jonathan Granoff

5:30-6:30 pm Workshops on spiritual politics
A 1. Global Warming: An opportunity for Global Awakening? Moderator: Rev Jim, Ruth Mulligan, Russ Agdern or Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Brent Balckwelden
A 2. Our own and others’ fears of Progressive Social Change Rev. Deborah L. Johnson
A 3. Kety Esquivel: Cross Left
A 4. The Spiritual Crisis in Our Lives Generated by the War in Iraq Stacy Bannerman
A 5. How Authentic Spirituality Drives People to be Advocates of Social Justice Mary Darling
A 6. Religion and Faith in the GLBTQ Community Harry Knox
A 7. Politics of Meaning Peter Gabel and Michael Lerner
A 8. “Spiritual but not Religious”: How to create a movement that has room for those whose connection to God and the spiritual wisdom of humanity is done outside traditional religious communities and without the theo-centric language that suggests hierarchical and patriarchal visions of God? Ama Zenya
A 9. Spiritual Nonviolence Training for personal and social change Janet Chisholm
A 10. The Encounter & Reconciliation of Civilizations (a challenge to the “clash of civilizations” world view) Shaikh Kabir Helminski
A 11. The Ethical and Spiritual Dimensions of the New Immigrants-Rights Movement Norma Chavez
A 12. The Heart of a Spiritual Progressive Movement that Cares Julie Oxenberg et.al.
A 13. Youth Caucus Deb Kory
A 14. Domestic and International Poverty: The Spiritual Dimension Bread for the World & Kristan Sumbrell (Jubilee USA)

6:30-8:00 pm Dinner break
8:00-11:00 pm Carrie Newomer 2 songs Plus song by Rabbi David Schneyer
and speakers on The Role of Spirit and Religion in Politics Michael Bader, Rev. William Sinkford, Mary Darling, Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, Sayyed Hussein Nasr, Rabbi Brian Walt, Rev. Tony Campolo, Marie Denis, ArchDeacon Michael Kendall

Thursday, May 18
8:45-noon Congressional Briefing to our Elected Official on the Spiritual Covenant with America. Speakers at this will include Tony Campolo, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, Taylor Branch, Abdul Aziz Said, Michael Posner, Peter Gabel and more.
1:00-3:00 pm Pray-in for peace outside the White House at Lafayette Park :
Prayer leaders include Bob Edgar, Rev.Lennox Yearwood, Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, Ahmed Ahrar, Holly Near, 2 Methodist Bishops, Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, Rev. Jim Winkler, Norma Chavez, John Dear S.J., Archdeacon Michael Kendall and Pledge of Resistance to the Iraq War: Ken Butigan. Cindy Sheehan and Code Pink and Global Exchange present Petition Against Bombing Iran to White House.

3:30 pm Workshops on spiritual politics
B1.
B2. Theological Perspectives on the Free Market System: Idolatry, Sin and the Structures of Evil in Economic Life Stan Duncan & John Surr
B3. Emancipatory Design Toby Israel
B4. Environmental Consciousness John Seed
B5. Music and Social Transformation Holly Near
B6. Islam: Perception and Reality: Ammad Ahrar
B.7 Law as a Vehicle for Social Connection or Disconnection: Can law be reconstructed in ways nurturing to the soul rather than its enemy? Peter Gabel and Nanette Schorr
B8. Torture: Building a Spiritual/Religious Campaign Against Torture Rabbi Brian Walt & Michael Posner
B9. End of Life Decisions: Moral and Spiritual Issues Barbara Coombs Lee and Rev. Paul Smith
B10 The Heart of a Progressive Spiritual Movement–Part 2 Rosa Naparstek
B11. Environmental Health and Justice Thea Levkowitz
B12. A Progressive Pro-Families Agenda Michelle Dean & Enola Aird
B13 Reconciliation, building Communities and Identities of Inclusive Otherness Gilbert Bond
B14. Declaration of Peace: Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service

5:00-6:30 pm The Struggle for the Heart & Mind of Traditional Religious Communities
Rev. Paul Sherry. Rev. Jim Winkler, Glen Harold Stassen, Andrew Weaver. Rev. Ama Zenya, Jason Lendez and more
6:30-7:30 pm Dinner break with your small group,
7:30-8:15 pm Song and Inspiration from Holly Near and All Souls Choir
8:15-10:00 pm How to Make the Liberal World Diverse Not Only in Race, Sex and Gender, but also in Class and Religious Orientation – Rev Deborah Johnson, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Rev. Glen Harold Stassen, Jeffrey Kuan, Rev. Diane Ford Johnson, John Dear S.J., Norma Chavez

Friday, May 19
7:30-9:00 am Spiritual and Religious Practices
9:00 am Spiritual Progressives address Poverty: Rev. Jim Wallis and comemnts from Rabbi Michael Lerner
10:30 am Plenary on A Progressive Pro-Families Movement that also Addresses The Spiritual Dimension to Relationships and Sexuality
Rev. Ama Zenya, Rev. Donna Schaper, Rabbi Debora Kohn, Enola Aird, Partrick Whelan, and Matt Foreman
12:00 Noon Small group meetings and lunch
1:30 pm Plenary on How to Bring a Spiritual Politics into the Heart of the Democrats and into the Liberal and Progressive Social Change Movements. Directions for 2006, 2008 and beyond.
Obery Hendricks, Michael Bader, Congressman Jim Moran, Lisa Rea and more.
3:30 pm Workshops focused on the Spiritual Covenant with Americans: How to Bring the Spiritual Covenant to our Local City Councils and State Legislatures, unions and professional organizations, religious institutions and communal associations.
Eight workshops, each on one of the 8 planks of the Spiritual Covenant with America (see above)

5:00 pm Workshops on Spiritual Politics
C1. Spiritual & Religious Experience of Peoples of Asian or Pacific Islander Backgrounds Jeffrey Kuan
C2. Spiritual and Religious Experience for African Americans Rev. Debora Johnson
C3. Spirituality and Religious Experience for Latinos Norma Chavez
C4. Trade Justice Elizabeth Carty & Oxfam
C5. Biotechonlogy and the Human Future Jaydee Hanson and Andrew Kimbrell
C6. Reproductive Freedom and Spiritual Healing Rebecca Trotzky-Surr
C7. Using Feminine Principles to change the World Patricia Smith Melton and Elana Auerbach
C8. An Environmental Movement That Cares about More Than Humans Rabbi Daniel Swartz, with Kurt Hoelting, Felicia Markus and Bishop Mark MacDonald
C9. Non-violent Communication: Inesa Love
C10. Spiritual Challenges of Aging Debora Kohn
C11. The Role of the Arts in a Spiritual Progressive Movement
C 12. A Spirit-Friendly Approach to Science Building a spirit-friendly society requires a conception of human nature that doesn’t reduce people to selfish genes driven only by survival needs, but incorporates cooperation, meaning, pleasure, and mutuality as intrinsic biological motivations. Dan Levine
C 13. Children’s Spirituality Christie Duncan-Tessmer

6:30 pm Dinner Break
7:30 pm Shabbat Service led by Rabbi Michael Lerner
8:00 pm Evening Plenary: Spiritual Progressives Facing The Globalization of Selfishness (the globalization of capital, the environmental crisis)
David Beckman, Charlene Spretnak, Jonathan Granoff, Robert Thurman, Bill Meadows, Andrew Kimbrell, (Music with Sharon Abreu, Michael Hurwicz, and Stephen Fisk)

Saturday, May 20
9:00 am Spiritual Practices: Ecumenical Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Sufi, Hindu, Shamanic and Jewish Shabbat Services
Plus Other Spiritual Workshops:
D1. Progressive spiritual media Jochen Strack
D 2. Grassroots Spiritual Progressives in the Democratic Party: Nicoli Bailey and Charles Lenchner, PDA
D3. Healing Israel/Palestine Muhammed Abu-Nimer
D4 The Ethics of Eating Jaydee Hansen et.al. Molly Anderson
D5
D6 Is God a Pacifist? Not according to Carter Phipps in this provocative workshop. Zen Peacemaker Bernie Glassman on Not Knowing, Bearing Witness and Loving Actions

10:30-11 am Small group meetings
11 a.m. Plenary: Spiritual Resources for Peace and Social Healing Arun Gandhi, Svi Shapiro and more
12:15 pm Small groups and lunch
2:00 pm Spiritual Wisdom at the Center of our Spiritual Politics: Matthew Fox, Andrew Harvey,
3:30 pm Strategies for the NSP in the coming year: how to bring these ideas into your local communities led by Rabbi Michael Lerner
5:30 pm Dinner break
Conference Grand Finale
7:30 pm Poetry Kathryn Fishman-Weaver, Drew Dellinger
Performance from the Play “Motherblood” by the Omega Theatre (with Saphira)
Speakers on Spiritual Wisdom and Planetary Sanity:
Roshi Bernie Glassman, Rev. Deborah Johnson, Jim Garrison, Carter Phipps, Harry Knox, Thea Levkovitz, Sarah James, Eric LeCompte and Pamela Taylor
Humor from Swami Beyondonanda and music from Michael Franti.

dancing with happiness…

spiral.JPG … yet again, and this time in Santa Cruz, who would have imagined, and what beautiful spirals we walk (or dance!) in. This house i’ve been resting in, and thinking about, is in transformation, you already know that part. Katie is also leaving, she needs a dog in her life and we can’t have pets in the house, so that leaves Leta and me. Been meeting and interviewing many people these days, most often contributing to my sense of disconnection.

Just one example: someone shared a practice of doing the dishes that worked in another shared house she lived in: small containers on the sink with names on, so everyone can put their dirty dishes in their own container and wash only their own dishes. When they answer to questions such as “So what you do understand by living together, by sharing a house?” would they also realise that they are respondents in my fieldwork on american individualism? And then there was that strong thought of last week, as i was thinking of the shared houses i lived in and in particular of the home with Rutvica in Utrecht: can’t do community on my own here, but it would only take another person to do the house differently. (And Leta, sweet Leta, she’d join that energy, i know it…)

And then there is Maria, just back from her Earth Activist Training, and beautiful, amazone-like (as she rides her cool black bike through the streets of Santa Cruz), radiant, transformed, in a spiral dance of her own. She had a dream of our house while she was at Ocean Song. And she comes back and finds that our house is looking for people… A dinner with Leta last night and a phonecall from Leta this morning, and Maria will be moving into Washington street in a short while. Quelle vie, imagine tout ce que cette maison peut devenir… what a gift.

And also this morning i found an email from Nicolas announcing that the blog about politics in Flanders that Nadia and i wanted (needed) so much to begin, is ready. We’ll be waiting a little while or so to make it public, but here, while we are trying together to find our voice, is a first impression for friends: het verdriet van vlaanderen (le chagrin des flamands). Yet another gift. Oh, could it be the same thing, if there are two, if there is a bunch of us, that we could make this sad Flanders differently? I think we could, and i know there is no other option than trying.

mother’s day

A good chunk of public life in this place is concentrated on Pacific Ave, the one main street in town where most of the shops, a number of restaurants and bars and two cinema theatres are located. Pacific Ave on a Friday night is to be avoided, if one doesn’t appreciate a kind of compulsory small town “it’s time to go out and have fun” atmosphere. Too familiar from those American movies and series that actually make you happy you didn’t have to grow up in that place (oh mama, now i want to know why precisely you decided we shouldn’t grow up in the U.S. and move back to Belgium? will you tell me?), and too familiar from growing up in the village, where that kind of Friday and Saturday night entertainment was definately greatly aspired by the bored-to-death teenagers, an aspiration which couldn’t be met in our small village (with its public space limited to a grocery shop, a bakery, a school, a church and a cafe, and the youth movement house) and which took the kids to neighboring bigger villages.

Do you remember that you didn’t let me go out till i was 16, mama? And of course i wanted to, “going out” (from that place) sounded so promising. Did i ever tell you the truth about that first time that i could go? That i found it so stupid, so senseless, such a waste of time. That, if anything, this rural discotheque was village stupidity and boredom larger than live; it was by no means going out, rather falling deeper into it. Of course, i couldn’t tell you then, after having put up the “why can everybody go except me” routine for a while, but i stopped wanting this “going out”. Would only be satisfied with a “going (getting) out” of a more radical kind (remember the episode when i desperatedly wanted to go to school in New York…) Anyway, my first friday evening downtown in Santa Cruz, back in February – while i was walking home between the loud, drunk, behaving stupidly and vomitting teenagers (and students no doubt, they’re beginning to look so young…) – represented one of the moments of lucidity in which i knew i couldn’t stay in this place. Yesterday evening i walked on Pacific Ave again, on my way to Berna and Feza. It was early in the evening, just after dusk. I had a six-pack of Corona and a big bag of blue tortilla chips in my hands (an evening of movies!) and was addressed pretty much the whole way down the street, by underage kids and the homeless, begging for one of those bottles of beer…

We started off watching a Belgian movie, Everybody’s Famous! I hadn’t seen it before, didn’t think it was a good movie, but Berna and Feza had heard good things about it. And it was sweet, and interesting from a Marxist analysis, in which we indulged ourselves – its represenations of a post-industrial context and of class (heavily marked by differences in a spectre of Flemish and Dutch accents, which totally got lost in the subtitles of course…). And one scene made us laugh so much we almost rolled out of the sofa… on the basis of an eye-witness of one of the kidnappers of the famous singer the police makes a profile that is subsequently distributed, and according to the profile the kidnapper (a white guy with blond hair and blue eyes…) is… Moroccan. Before watching the movie we had a whole session on the recent “events” in Belgium of course – the stabbing to death of the 17 year old Joe Van Holsbeek some weeks ago which initiated an intense scapegoating of the Moroccan community until (and still after…) it seemed that the perpetrators were Polish kids, and the rambo-style action of taking a gun to the streets and killing non-white people (women and a girl basically) by an 18 year old white boy (who happens to be the nephew of a Vlaams Belang politician) in Antwerpen and the current discussion whether this is a racism or an disturbed kid (who actually declared that his mission was to kill as many non-white people as possible, but you see, he might be so disturbed that he is deluded and even if he proudly claims to be a racist, it might actually not be appropriate to speak of racism in this case, cause he’s a disturbed individual and Belgium is not really a racist society and the earth is oh-so-flat – do you understand? But i shouldn’t get on my horse now, saving the AAA (Anger, Analysis and kicking-Ass) for the Flanders blog that Nadia and me are starting soon… What was i writing about? Movies (and i had brought Yes; friends, i really want you to see Yes!) and companionship and sleeping over and making pancakes in the morning. And so today I was walking down Pacific Ave again on my way home, and all of sudden i saw and heard this bunch of old grey ladies who squatted – with a little table and banners and their somewhat fragile but impressive selves – in the middle of Saturday afternoon (shopping) business.

IMGP3656.JPG Armed with aprons and kitchen utensils, they were singing popular and American folk songs with modified lyrics – one of songs they had aptly entitled “The Raging Grannies”. This one i heard a couple of times (to the tune of Country Roads):Bring ‘m home, bring ‘m home
To the place, where they belong
There are children, stop the killing,
Bring ‘m home

They were from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; they even looked as if they had been part of the league since it was founded. More than that, they looked determined, “still standing”, and not planning to go anywhere else soon. Their leaflet reads: “It was the wisdom of our founding foremothers in 1915 that peace is rooted not only in treaties between great powers or even in ending the arms race. They understood that peace can only flourish when it is planted in the soil of justice, freedom, non-violence, opportunity and equality for all.” They were collecting signatures against the war in Iraq to send to senators (“Can i sign, i’m not a U.S. citizen?” “Of course, my dear, they won’t really know, will they?” she giggled. “The more post-cards we send to our senators, the more pressure they will feel.”) And they were giving out cards for Mother’s Day (“What about giving this card to your mother instead of shopping for a present?”). I’m sometimes troubled by peace-activism so rooted in a certain notion of motherhood. But not on Mother’s Day, and not here in Santa Cruz where i wished more of the students would continue to struggle and organize against the war their country is waging. And i wish i could give you the card the raging grannies made, mama, but it won’t cross the atlantic in time. So i copy the text below for you. En ik wens je fijne moederdag, mama, van ver weg, maar toch ook weer dichtbij! dikke kus, sarah

——————————————————————–
Mother’s Day began with a woman named Julia Ward Howe,
who nursed the wounded during the American Cival War. In 1870
she started a crusade to institute a Mother’s Day as a Day for Peace.
Here is her Mother’s Day proclamation:

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have
hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us,
reaking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons
shall not be taken form us to unlearn all that we have been
able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.”

We women of one country will be too tender of those
of another country to allow our ons to be trained to
injure theirs. From the bosom of the devasted earth
a voice goes up with our own. It says: “Disarm, Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

driving

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My first phonecall when i arrived back here in the beginning of the week was to the driving school, or better: the adult education school where they offer driving lessons. I could start lessons immediately after getting an instruction permit, they explained, so this is how i found my way to the DMV, the Department of Motor Vehicles. I just got back from the DMV in Capitola, where i had an appointment this morning. A bit of an expedition to get to Capitola and back by bus, since there’s only one bus every half an hour, and of course i had just missed it by the time i got out of my appointment. Which went so differently from what i expected. I was basically looking for information and since i couldn’t get anybody on the phone i decided to go to their office to find out how it works, since i’m not a U.S. citizen, whether the identity documents i have are sufficient for them, etc.

We had to clear some red tape indeed, but then they also did the digital picture and fingerprint, a vision test and a driver’s examination. Basically i could have gotten the real permit (i was under the impression that the driving school just wanted some kind of registration at the DMV), had i passed the test. Which i didn’t: one could make up to 6 errors and i made 9 (i don’t even know how mph relates to kilometres per hour, let alone the different speeds limits in this state…). The first direction on the examination paper reads Study the handbook before you take the test but the DMV guy was very laid-back about it all. “Oh, just give it a shot, you might get lucky, and it can help you to learn anyway.” Amazing, leaning to drive on a “you might get lucky” note… i kind of like this, it’s already more fun than i had imagined. But so i got myself a handbook at the DMV (with a message and picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the first page…) and i’ll study it and one of these days i go back to take the test and i’ll actually have a permit. (All of this for $26 dollars, cheaper than a monthly bus pass…)

Exciting but i’m also freaking out a bit. Don’t like this idea that i’m forced out of trying to organise my life without needing to drive, which succeeding very well back in Europe. Don’t like how car-dependent this place is, don’t like it at all. I would prefer to much to be able to walk, take busses and trains ànd feel mobile in this place. But it’s simply not the case. So i keep on telling to myself: you’ll be learning a skill, it’s only just a skill, you’re not buying into an ideology, only skill no ideology…

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au claire de la lune

By the time i met up with Berna on campus there was a full moon (almost), high over a couple of pink magnolia trees near her office, in a sky that was still blue and only slowly turning to dusk. On the other side of the horizon: an ever-so-slight fog lingering in between the trees, with golden rays of sun playing around in the forest. Beauty for Berna’s birthday.

We met Feza in a restaurant downtown. I was so happy to see both of them. Berna full of stories of the May Day march in Santa Cruz. This is how Feza wants to remember Santa Cruz, she said. Feza looked radiant. When i asked him how he was, after all this time, he laughed: “Good. I’m going back to Turkey in three weeks.”

He couldn’t believe i actually went to the European Social Forum, and he was still full of the “banner incident”. The huge MLKP banner (Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Turkey/North Kurdistan) at the main entrance of the ESF, which was at some point torn off by participants who didn’t want the faces of the holy trinity, and particularly Stalin, to be watching over the forum. This was deemed as “very anti-democratic” by the dogmatic Marxist forces that were strongly represented in the forum and in the organisation committee in particular. Those trying to tear the banners down were subsequently labelled “Trotskists”. Ah, the fossilised slogans, heros and tribal wars of the left – very tiring and this year, with the luxury of not being involved in the organisation of the forum, to be ignored all together. Feza lamented the pathetic state of the left in Turkey, that it was no coincidence that it had to be a Turkish banner with the face of Stalin, that Istanbul indymedia is totally in these dogmatic hands, etc. Hm, yes, of course the left in Turkey is very broken. But i’ve been seeing, much to my dismay, posters of Stalin at the other social fora, where the Turkish participation was not so marked. And what about our friends of the Socialist Workers Party, so strong in the UK and Greece? And let’s not forget how Indymedia in Belgium is in the hands of the stalinist left as well, with no other way of cutting through this dominance than starting up other indymedias – we have about 4 or 5 indymedias in the tiny space of Belgium by now, with different cities names masking different political tendencies. (So indymedia Ankara as the answer to indymedia Istanbul!) A wide-spread symptom, i’m afraid.

Anyway, it’s nice when Feza gets upset, cause then he writes an opinion piece about the sad state of the left (in relation to the EU process this time) and gets it published in Radikal Iki. For the friends who read Turkish, look here.

A sweet birthday dinner, with one story in particular i want to write down here as it made everybody laugh a lot (and me blush). With Berna and Feza leaving Santa Cruz soon, Bettina is looking for new house-mates. When one woman came to visit and they realized that she was living in the Chavez coop, they asked her whether she knew me. “Oh yes,” she responded, with a sceptical smile as Berna told the story, “she made an impression…” It seemed that a number of people in the house had a crush on me during the interviewing process, and so some of the boys in the house were all of a sudden – at least for the time of the interview – talking about feminism-this feminism-that… [ah right, i remember the particularly cute punky-anarcho boy who kept on asking questions about feminism…]. It still made people at the table laugh a lot, and while i was blushing it striked me again what a tiny place Santa Cruz is…

At night in my bed, in my room veranda room with all those windows, the moon was impressive. In a more down-to-earth mood of the night before – no good company to have dinner with, no laughter and wine – and having already taken my lenses out, i remembered thinking: “Why did Leta install a new lamp that shines right in my room at night? If some place needs extra lightening it’s the street and not our backyard.” Ah, it was the moon, and she’s doing something powerful here these days and nights. Giulia, il faut qu’on comprenne mieux: quand la lune est pleine ici, elle est comment où toi tu habites?

companer@s

For those of you whom i was lucky enough to meet somewhere along this beautiful and intense journey from New York to all those places in Europe, this story is not new. It is no doubt the story that caused most unbelief and laughter. It is time to tell you more about my house.

I’m not in a shared house by accident or only because the rent is cheaper (indeed, Santa Cruz rents are outrageous), there was a conscious decision to look for a communal house. Contrary to the image one might have about Santa Cruz, there are actually not so many cooperative houses in town. Rebecca, who did part of her undergraduate degree here and came back this year as a visiting fellow, could compare: while she used to live in a coop here many years ago, she found it impossible to find one now. Yes, there are the two student coops, Chavez House and Zami, and i went through the getting-to-know-each-other and interviewing procedure with Chavez House. They wanted me to come and live with them, and i did like the place. But there seemed quite gap between my desire to create a home and the prospective of living together with 21 mostly undergrads. Already during the interview, which was very entertaining and pleasant, there was a bit of an “auntie” dynamic, the role i feared i might end up playing in the house. I considered, but didn’t jump. At 615 Washington Street, where i moved in on the 1st of March, the atmosphere was different: more quiet and less political, and the emphasis on creating a home together, supporting each other’s life-styles, and even something about family.

What does living in a Santa Cruz “supporting each other live-styles” and “creating home” shared house mean? “We’re all about food,” one of the girls (ah, our boys are moving out…) keeps on saying to candidates who come to visit the house these days. We do food together. They even say that we eat together, but i find that stretching it just a bit. There are five of us in the house, and everybody cooks one evening in the week, which means the house provides (organic, wholesome, vegetarian…) food for all throughout the week. You’re not expected to be here for dinner every evening – everybody has different and busy life-styles, you see – but you can count on food being kept for you.

Translated into practice this means: after cooking the meal, people put food in tuperware containers with everybody’s name on it, and when people come home they take their tuperware dinner out of the fridge and put it in the micro-wave. Up till today i haven’t shared one meal with my house-mates. Sometimes there is not even a cook whom you could try to join – on several occassions the person responsible for cooking made the food earlier that day, or put something in the oven and ran off to an appointment, phoning another housemate asking to take the dish out the oven on time. When i first did my cooking shift, the girls came in when i was almost done, which made me happy. We could eat together. But they were just passing by. A small spoon to taste the risotto followed by: “Hm, that tastes great. I need to run off to my work-out now, i’m looking forward to eat it when i get back tonight.” It seems to me that there is a certain point when risotto has that right texture and consistency which the micro-wave is pretty much unable to reproduce. Anyway, if something tastes great, why would you need to run to a work-out? I don’t quite understand this kind of being “all about food”.

The situation in my house is not abnormal nor isolated around here. When i talked about the tuperware eating arrangement with other people, they immediately recognised our house as a “semi-coop”. More convenient and more freedom than a coop, someone added. When i talked with Rutvica on the phone about my house, she laughed and called it very Dutch. Although i’m mixing up things now – we elaboratedly talked about houses before i actually made the decision, and little did i know about the tuperware practice back then. But i knew what the “Dutch” referred to: carefully designated territories, and all the mechanisms to keep that in place. It also reminded me how little it took to change the dynamic in the house: just two of us were able to create a home in that place. Mind you, i don’t mean to say that my house-mates are not nice, they really are. On the first evening i moved in, “bienvenue” was written on my tuperware container in the fridge.

Food is only symptomatic. It’s also the house-phone that nobody uses (i had to ask three house-mates before somebody could tell me what the arrangement is for using the phone) cause everybody has cell phones, of course, but some even have land-lines installed in their room. (Can you imagine a communal house with no negotiations or arguments about who needs the phone when and for how long? It’s like a cafe without beer, as the Belgian saying goes…) It’s the sense of their individual rooms being the actual place where they live. I came to notice how i use space in the house so differently from my house-mates: it doesn’t feel as if my actual space in the house is my room, not at all, i’m using the whole house. (House-mates i say, they tend so say room-mates. But we are not sharing a room, no need to feel that threatened, we’re only sharing a house, and even that remains questionable to my feeling.) Common or collective space, it seems, is a negative function. It is void, neutral, meant to function as a buffer between well-protected selves. It barely has a quality of its own – there is no transcendence here. These fortified bodies and selves and life-styles, this suburbian architecture of subjectivity… My fortress, myself. So you can get the house out of the suburb, but mabe you can’t get the suburb out of the house? It goes way beyond Dutchness, Dutch arrangements actually look quite cute in comparison. And then there is the layer of friendliness, the point not being how thin or solid this layer is. The point is that the pleasant quotidian friendliness is constructed upon fear, upon the ever-present threat of the other, who might take away or undermine that cherished illusion of independence of the self.

Ay ay ay… no chance of a home for me in such a landscape, here we are doing fieldwork again. (And damn it, there is nothing more exhausting than doing fieldwork when you’re looking for some kind of home, even a tiny temporary one.) Sigh. Under the motto “research what you can’t defeat, or what bothers you, what eats you away,” i’ll have to start studying American individualism, and while we’re at it, liberalism.

Meanwhile in the house… for the moment we are (officially) not really “doing food together”. The house is officially “in transition” these days. Not only Chris is leaving, but also Figs. Katie and Figs had a big fight last weekend, in which Figs accused Katie of all the sins of the world. It all started with some dirt in the bath tub, but obviously it was not about dirt in the bath tub. Leta filled me in that Katie had a crush on Figs from the very start, from the interview (aha!! more of the falling in love with house-mates than she admitted before! although she probably wouldn’t call it falling in love i guess…), and that they never managed to deal with it. It has an impact on the house and so Leta thinks Figs should go (remember, the common space, the space of social interaction, should be void…). What pisses me off is the reason invoked: that he doesn’t participate much to the shared house. Using the collective, so terribly absent, as an excuse because they’re unwilling to talk about or deal with the crush?

What can i say – we might be all about food, but there are no companeros, companeras around here. You know, the ones you share your bread, your meals with. Hey, will you guys come here for a while? Like many of you? Like a whole tribe? And we’d squat all over the common space, and cook together all of the time, and make lots of noise and music, and keep the doors of the rooms open, and go to bed late, and strategize about politics, and use the bathroom with a bunch of us together, and sleep in till noon… it might be healthy for my poor Californian house-mates and their life-styles.

russian chinese massage

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He’s the best in town, Leta told me, and she should know. She just graduated in Chinese medicine, and he used to be one of her teachers. He does not live here, but once a week he comes to town and does a day of regular clients. So i phone him and tell him i’m a housemate of Leta and if it would be possible to have a massage (still too afraid to do acupuncture). Michael Alexander – i couldn’t help making it sound Russian in my ears.

Introduced through Leta in more than one way. By the time i get to his working space, he knows the story i had told Leta earlier this week. About the massage i got at the Community Bodywork Centre, which was good but especially the second time the context got on my nerves. A massage that gets on your nerves kind of defeats the purpose. It was okay as long as she was actually giving me a massage, but as soon as she started talking i felt my nervous and muscular system protesting. She felt like sharing her diagnosis, along the lines of: “So you’re new in town… hm, yes, that explains the tension in your shoulders. It’s all about communication. When you’re new in a place you need to connect to how people communicate. What about coming to the dance church we have here on Sundays? So you can loosen up a bit.” All of that wrapped up in a very new agie language, and did i already mention that it got in my nerves? It boiled down to a new age take on migration & assimilation: you come here, you better learn the lingo and mix in. The kind of thing that makes you want to say: hey, do you know what i think of your way of communication and your dance church? But i said nothing, retreating into a consumer attitude as my defence: i’m paying you for a massage, not for some cheap new age talk. (no, i didn’t actually say that, i only focused on that thought and tightened my muscles)

Leta, taking her profession seriously, had laughed at the story and said that there was a lot of that around. Michael is nothing like that, she announced, he has a solid (Chinese) medical training, and one feels the difference. So today i went to his cabinet and met this man who seemed like a big Russian bear to me. I only actually saw him briefly before i was flat on my belly on the massage table, so from that point onwards the image of the Russian bear became larger than life, materially supported by his low and deep voice. Whenever he tells or asks me something, i can’t help but hear it with a Russian accent. The pieces of the room i see through the face-sized hole are dominated by Chinese-styled furniture. Much is red, and as in my head it mixes with Russian fantasies and Russian red, i find myself floating somewhere in the Trans-Siberian/Mongolian express.

The massage is indeed brilliant. When he first touches my shoulders he starts laughing. “Waaw, that’s a lot of tension for a body as small as yours to carry. So you decided to take the stress of the whole world around on your shoulders?” (with a Russian accent) I smile – which he doesn’t see of course. Although his knowledge of bodies makes me hesitate now, maybe a smile shows on the whole body? I tell him that i’m more careful about that since a little while, but this (very Russian) laughter tells me he is not convinced.

His hands have such a sofisticated knowlegde of the body. It is truly amazing how he immediately finds those spots where tension is accumulated. Just in case i would start taking that skill for granted, his fingers stumbled a little bit when looking for one of those spots in my knee cavity. And i could immediately feel how precisely right all those other places he put his hands on were.

“Are you a vegetarian?” (with a Russian accent) Well funny that you should ask, i tell him, cause i’ve been for the longest time and a month or so ago i stopped being a vegetarian. “Good, I encourage that.” (with a Russian accent) I ask him why, already on the defensive about theories claiming that vegetarians miss out on some food elements. He explains that it’s about the texture of the muscles, that over many years muscles of vegetarians get harder, tougher and more unflexible and vulnerable to muscle problems and tension. Never heard of that, i tell him. “This is not much discussed about outside of Chinese medicine,” he replies, “and especially here people don’t like to hear it”. (with a Russian accent). And in contrast to the words of the woman of the Community Bodywork Center invested in what “people here do”, i believe him. Hm, how much one’s openess to the framework and vision of the hands that try to heal you matter. Ready for a bloody red steak now.

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if there’s a black list, i wanna be on it

Yesterday evening we got a phonecall in the house, from some charity organisation to sollicit (financial) support for “our troops”. Strange to get such a call at home, especially when the only answer i could come up with on the phone is: the only thing about “our troops” we support at this stage, is immediate withdrawal, like NOW. Was it really a charity that called us? Does this mean our house now features in the TALON database?

Technologies and mentality of surveillance and control are spreading at such a speed that sometimes one can only make fun of them. Time to play. This morning: a funny follow-up mail on the War on Terror teach-in at Santa Cruz two weeks ago. The message let us know that, while the Pentagon eventually got the UCSC protest against military recruitement on the campus out of TALON, a conservative blog writer published all the kids’ names and emails and guess what – they all received death-threats. Okay, not a very funny game, but it does get better. The message included a letter from UC Davis to the Pentagon, concerning their upcoming teach-in against the war. (and note that i’m not the only one connecting the surfing “fun-loving” culture of this place with a profound lack of political passion and activity…)

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Lt. Col. Gary Testut
Threat and Local Observation Notice Database (TALON)
Pentagon
Washington, DC

Dear Lt. Col. Testut,
We, faculty and students of the University of California at Davis, would like to Call your attention to an upcoming teach-in at our campus titled “Connecting the Dots: The War on Terror and You.” In particular, we urge you to consider designating our teach-in a “credible threat” in your TALON database.

As you may be aware, the different campuses of the University of California compete vigorously with each other to attract students, faculty, and research funds. Your designation of protests at UC Santa Cruz as a “credible threat” bestows considerable prestige on that campus. In the interest of fairness, we believe you owe it to us to seriously consider our teach-in for the same honor.

Though you have never made public what criteria you use to judge what constitutes a “credible threat,” we are certain that, by any criteria you may be secretly using, our activities here at Davis constitute a threat at least as credible as any in Santa Cruz.
• Demonstrations: our students have held numerous, vibrant, and well-attended demonstrations, including demonstrations against military recruiters on campus.
• Radical student groups: our campus takes just as much pride in promoting freedom of speech and scholarship that Santa Cruz does, and you will find student political groups here from across the entire political spectrum.
• Diversity: our faculty and student body include many people of color and foreign nationals, including people from the Middle East.

Furthermore, there are factors which we believe make our activities at Davis a more credible threat than anything in Santa Cruz:

Our campus not only has the same mix of freedom of speech, anti-war groups, and immigrants and minorities, but we also host significant military research. This combination of immigrants, freedom of speech, and military research should be enough to conjure up a credible threat in the mind of even the most complacent TALON investigator.

Finally, please note that Santa Cruz is the site of one of the world’s best surf breaks. No matter how passionate their students may be about political causes, if the surf is up they will run for their boards, giving your recruiters ample opportunity to present their message to the non-surfing student body. Here at Davis, having no such diversions, our students are more serious and focused. Thank you for your consideration. We look forward to hearing from you at the earliest opportunity.

home sweet home…

IMGP2861.JPG As the Greyhound bus drove into Santa Cruz this morning, i didn’t exactely feel light, and it wasn’t due to the small home (and mobile office) that i’ve been carrying on my back, turtle-style (in the good company of the new animal in my life, Chaim!), all these weeks. As i was telling travelling stories to my house mates Leta and Katie and we got stuck again in metric conversions, i realised there was another way to give them an idea of how much i had been carrying around: more or less half of my body weight. How light (well… almost) this had felt during other pieces of the journey. But i’ve arrived in Santa Cruz again, a move that fundamentally works against my laws of gravity, so it seems.

But finding my house again was good. Peace and quiet (i’ll probably enjoy a week of that before it gets on my nerves…), bathing in sunlight, trees and flowers in bloom everywhere around us. And a sweet message from Berna, welcome back and if we could see each other soon and if we could celebrate her birthday together this week and that she had wanted to write before with the excitement and pictures from the May Day “A Day without an Immigrant” march in Santa Cruz. Also in Santa Cruz (some thousands of) people took to the streets, the biggest demo in quite some years it seems, and it made Berna and Feza so very happy.

I want to begin telling you more about the house. It has changed while i was gone – Chris is moving out. Leta wrote me an email last week, apologizing that i had to find out like this, but: Chris fell in love. The “natural” implication of this, it seems, is that he is moving out. The concepts and order of things don’t cease to bewilder me. So first they were “dating”, then he “had a girlfriend”, and now he is “in love” and so “of course” he is moving out (and moving in with her). What happened to first being friends, or housemates for that matter, and then in love? Or first falling in love and then becoming friends/companions? As Katie suggested on another occassion: Nice idea, old-fashionedly beautiful, but profoundly time inefficient… Natascha (who has done more fieldwork on the matter 🙂 and i were talking about that very strange world of sex, love and relationships in America just this weekend – a wedding as the prefect opportunity to do so – and she filled me in on her project to write a funny “cultural” guide to L.A./California for Europeans… And i figured that one of these days i should write up some of my strange encounters with “dating”…

But i keep on drifting away from the house… which is looking for new people again, and so once more there’s an ad about the house on Craig’s list – and i take the opportunity to copy it below. True enough, the house is amazing. The discourse about family and living together, all the things “we” do, remains fascinating science-fiction to me. For those of you whom i didn’t have a chance to tell the stories in real life, tomorrow i’ll fill you in on how we “eat together”. In style.

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Come Live in Style with 4 thirty-somethings in downtown Santa Cruz!

Looking for a “family” atmosphere with responsible, motivated, and fun-loving people?

We have an opening for one really special person in a room that is $650/mo. starting June 1st

• Live in a quiet & beautiful house built in 1910, craftsman style
• In a room with two large windows & great hard wood floors
• With fruit trees, orange, tangerine, guava, and lemon
• A beautiful dance/yoga/martial arts/meditation room
• A possible darkroom for photographers
• Several private study/work spaces & DSL Internet
• Two attics furnished as guest rooms
• A bicycle shed and a driveway
• A 3 minute walk to the Laurel bus line
• A huge kitchen & organic produce delivered to our house
• In a quiet, friendly neighborhood.
• Hot tub, piano, vegetable/herb garden among other extra’s
• Soon to have a video projector surround sound movie theater

We are three professionals and a grad student.

Currently we have two males and three females, which we feel works best.
One of our male housemates fell in love and is moving out to be with his girlfriend. We are hoping to find another male.

We are looking for someone who is mature/responsible and excited about participating in all that we do to maintain a supportive and caring home.

Together we cook dinners and eat together; make decisions by consensus; share chores and house responsibilities; support one another; plan festive gatherings and most of all enjoy life!

We strive to be open and available to each other in order to learn from, have fun with, and support each other’s lifestyles and needs.

Email us and share about who you are and what you are looking for.
We look forward in hearing from you!