"Man, that must have been hell. Luckily, I am available for hugs."

February, March, now April

Sticking to my goals:

Professional: Applied for a shot-in-the-dark scholarship through the Americans for the Arts, and actually got it!!! I'm now one of their "Emerging Leaders of Color" representing the midwest at national meetings. Woo hoo!

Creative: Bought some 30' by 40' canvases for my big painting/ sculpture project. Also, will be performing this summer. I auditioned and got into a performance project at the Guild Complex Chicago with some powerful poets and artists, and a great director.

Personal: Ran the shamrock shuffle with my family and Kart. Ran my fastest time yet: 10 minute miles. My legs and back were killing me the next day. I'm getting too old for all this "moving muscles" mumbo jumbo.

On a family tip, mom went to Vipassana (where she'll be for her bday..)(Dad just got back, loved it, and convinced her to do it), my beautiful Dada is in town, Vimal's interviewing for his next step, and Vish is almost done with her first year of college.

And two more another-one-bites-the-dust bachelorette parties in Vegas this year. I don't understand the facination with Vegas (every building's bigger than the last, almost naked women, binge drinking, gambling, bright lights, all-u-can-eat buffets... it's what happens when men have unlimited amts of $ to build a city...)
Eeeesh.

eeesh. it's been a long while.

wow. I've let this go for a long while.
I hope all of you are doing well, and are genuinely happy.

New Year's came and went. 2008 is going to be the year I reclaim my life. I can feel it, and it feels good.

So far, I've been doing well with my goals for this year:

1. Lead with Creativity

Started off January with an Art workshop at WomanMade Gallery, which was amazing. I also have a few painting/sculpture fusion ideas that I'm excited to test out.

2. Make time for myself

Just got back from Vipassana, and it was one of the most difficult, best decisions I've ever made. Vipassana is 10 days of silent meditation based on Buddhist philosophies. To be more clear: 10 days of silence. No talking, no phone, no music, no writing, no reading, no journals, no eye contact, no touching (i.e. no hugging or tackling), no gestures, no nothing. It was quite possible the longest and most fruitful 10 days of my life so far.

I discovered that my mind is a resilient, scary, intense place, and surprisingly, a lot darker than I imagined. Visually, it's what you would see if you mashed up the movies The Fountain, Requiem for a Dream, and What Dreams May Come(both the heaven and hell scenes), with Gaudi's sculptures in Barcelona.

I can't really explain what the experience felt like in any way that I feel others could relate to, because it is so completely different for every individual. I would however, highly, highly, recommend it to anyone who wants to geniunely understand themselves.

3. Simplify and prioritize, learn to say no

Going snowboarding to take advantage of the weather (yay!).
Hearing Angela Davis speak on "How you make sustainable social change happen". Prepping for the Shamrock Shuffle tradition in a month.
Making time for quality time with my friends and family.

So far, so good.

Also, random tangent: my friend Ranjit wrote an article on me. It's a strange experience to see someone other than yourself explain you in words.



***

Lastly, my Dada is in India this month. I'm tempted to go back sometime soon. There's a lot of great headway being made on projects that were just an idea when I was there. If I wasn't so committed to the work I'm doing now, I wouldn't have much hesitation in going back.

One of my heroes.

http://www.globalonenessproject.org/video/Jayesh-Patel/1

This links to a video of Jayeshbhai's everydays. I worked with him closely in India, and am so very grateful that people like him exist. Hope and humanity exemplified.... in people form.

A quick way to help the environment

https://www.environmentillinois.org/action/protect-lake-michigan/no-bp-gas

One day...

.. this guy was sitting at this bar in Chicago and looks over and sees this guy that looks exactly like him. He says to the guy, "Hey you look just like me!"

The other man agrees and asks, "Where are you from?"

The first guy answers, "Chicago."

"Me too!" says the second guy, "What street do you live on?"

"Forty-Ninth Street," answers the first guy.

"Me too!" says the second guy, becoming increasingly excited. "What's your address?"

''951."

"Me too! Wow, this is incredible! What are your parents' names?"

"John and Cathy," says the first guy.

"Me too!" shouts the second guy. "I wonder if we're related!?"

Meanwhile, the bartenders are changing shifts and the guy coming on asks if anything is new.

"No," says the first bartender, "just the Smith twins, drunk again."

_____________________

I have found life an enjoyable, enchanting, active, and sometime terrifying experience, and I've enjoyed it completely. A lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other. --Sean O'Casey

What today taught me

While you have a thing it can be taken from you... but when you give it, you have given it. No robber can take it from you. It is yours then for ever when you have given it. It will be yours always. That is to give. --James Joyce

"For the past five years, Dr. Stephen Post has been funding research projects that test how altruism, compassion, and giving affect people's lives and well-being. He has sponsored more than 50 studies by scientists from 54 major universities. In a wide range of disciplines – from public health to human development to neuroscience, sociology, and evolutionary biology – the studies have demonstrated that love and caring expressed in doing good for others lead people to have healthier, happier, and even longer lives. "

I had a terrific, terrific day today. I got a chance to do something really above and beyond for someone I love, which led to a mess of great people wanting to help, which led to a lot of people becoming happy by association when the pieces finally fell into place. The whole process made the entire day glow.

I want to try to be ridiculously unselfish. I want to be more like Hardee when I grow up.

Molting and whatnot

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take?" she asked. "Where do you want to go?" was his response. "I don't know," Alice answered. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter." - Lewis Carroll

People say, "Change is inevitable." I wonder if evolution is. I have this super-unhealthy tendency to coast, and bury myself in the work I take on, which is probably pretty common. I just need to make more an effort to sit with myself and my choices, and really think about what I'm building towards.

I just had a birthday. Quite honestly, this past bday has been one of the hardest transitions I've ever had to work through, right up there with GraduatingCollege. (Most of y'all know why, involving an age-old promise to my grandfather). It took about 4 or 5 weeks of living under a relentless black cloud - but I'm climbing back. Somewhat like the scene in Homeward Bound, where the old dog finally claws out of the deep and lonely hole. Between this one and my next birthday, I feel myself getting ready to make whatever big decisions come my way and take on the changes that come along with them (though it is still, as always, ever so scary).

We generate our own environment. We get exactly what we deserve. How can we resent a life we've created ourselves? Who's to blame, who's to credit but us? Who can change it, anytime we wish, but us? --Richard Bach

-------------------------------
And HAPPY BIRTHDAY VISHODUSS!!!!!!!!!!

Rules For Being Human

Rule One:
You will receive a body. You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your life on Earth.

Rule Two:
You will be presented with lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called 'life.' Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or hate them, but you have designed them as part of your curriculum.

Rule Three:
There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that work.

Rule Four:
A lesson is repeated until learned. Lessons will be repeated to you in various forms until you have learned them. When you have learned them, you can then go on to the next lesson.

Rule Five:
Learning does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

Rule Six:
'There' is no better than 'here'. When your 'there' has become a 'here,' you will simply obtain a 'there' that will look better to you than your present 'here'.

Rule Seven:
Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.

Rule Eight:
What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you.

Rule Nine:
Your answers lie inside of you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.


--Cherie Carter-Scott, From "If Life is a Game, These are the Rules"

Here's why I love Tina.. and why you should too.

y'all, i've got a fever. i dunno what happened. ima come thru tonight, but fyi, i am in bad shape. maybe that's why i was so out of it yesterday, the germs were attacking my system like white imperialists. fuckers.

sorry.

peace.
t.

Thoughts on approaching the 3 yr mark since my Indicorps Fellowship

Aug 2004. Committing to Indicorps was a decision among a lot of hard decisions I made back then. It's been a struggle to say the least, but I'm always growing, and hopefully, always learning how to be a better person.

Anyhow, I jumped into it- the Rural Design School fellowship- and something about trying to help empower people through their own creativity really clicked for me. The experience has informed and shaped a lot of what I've done since then. I know I'm committed to this work- community-building and arts activism- but I've had to work through some difficult thought processes. It's such fulfilling work, but I feel like there are so many balls perpetually in the air that I barely have time to recognize the rhyme or reason to my work, let alone the impact of it or the need for it.

For example, from the beginning, I was told that the first rule for community organizing is to immerse yourself in the community with which you work, to try to truly understand the deeper contexts and layers to what you see happening. But, at the end of the day, I've seen too many instances of organizers being unknowingly mocked, played, or (worst case) taken advantage of, by community members because these organizers are so oblivious to the fact that they are outsiders.

One of the most brutal reality checks I got was a conversation in India (while in the midst of 'immersing myself' in the community's lifestyle... living in a hut in the desert in 120 degree weather on the Indo-Pak border, living on less than $25/mo with a 2-hour commute to a hospital or internet) when someone reminded me that, at the end of the day, no matter how bare boned I choose to live, I'm still an English-speaking, college-educated, American-citizenship-holding woman with access and options. I think that one conversation set the course for all of my decisions since then.

I can be one with people in struggle and solidarity, but I have to acknowledge my privilege. It's a perpetual separator, but such a great gift.

I don't know if I have a point here. I am still learning. Working through all these diametric and circular thoughts I have swirling around in my head: guilt-complexes; understanding why people choose hate and anger instead of constructive work; wondering if grad school is a next step for me- and a method to understand how macro-level systems and institutions affect my work- or if it is me, stalling in the work I could be doing; understanding coalition building vs. separate community empowerment; mediating the difference between ground level, grassroots work and working on higher-up, systematic change; how one can begin to define 'effective' or 'successful' work in a space where change isn't quantifiable; how anyone can consistently and sustainably keep pushing forward with work that can be so frustrating and exhausting ...

I feel like I'm in a perpetual storm of wanting to do good while keeping my work, motives, and priorities in check. I guess, when everything is said and done, I'm still trying to figure things out, just farther along then I used to be. But the great thing is that like attracts like, and I'm surrounded by amazingly inspiring and beautiful people that challenge me to keep going and push me to imagine all the good I am capable of- if I can keep my head up (lately, keeping my head up has been one of the toughest obstacles I've faced).

I'm also super grateful that we live in a time of people like this getting the attention and credit that brings good work to the forefront.

as the world keeps getting smaller.

http://flickrvision.com/

beautiful concept. :)

Art Activism

"Art activism is not a service to be bought or sold, but art that defends and agitates towards change, tries to clearly articulate issues, has the ability to remind us of the connections between us, thereby inspiring the people to devise strategies and actions."
—Alice Lovelace in I Was Singing You

Study: 38 Percent Of People Not Actually Entitled To Their Opinion

CHICAGO—In a surprising refutation of the conventional wisdom on opinion entitlement, a study conducted by the University of Chicago's School for Behavioral Science concluded that more than one-third of the U.S. population is neither entitled nor qualified to have opinions.

"On topics from evolution to the environment to gay marriage to immigration reform, we found that many of the opinions expressed were so off-base and ill-informed that they actually hurt society by being voiced," said chief researcher Professor Mark Fultz, who based the findings on hundreds of telephone, office, and dinner-party conversations compiled over a three-year period. "While people have long asserted that it takes all kinds, our research shows that American society currently has a drastic oversupply of the kinds who don't have any good or worthwhile thoughts whatsoever. We could actually do just fine without them."

In 2002, Fultz's team shook the academic world by conclusively proving the existence of both bad ideas during brainstorming and dumb questions during question-and-answer sessions.

--the Onion Newspaper

---------------------------------------------

AND... the link to the Chicago Public Radio recording of our Looptopia performance. If the link doesn't work, go to www.chicagopublicradio.org and search for "looptopia".

http://www.chicagopublicradio.
org/Program_AMP_Segment.
aspx?segmentID=10896

I wished to live deliberately

"I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to
die, to discover that I had not lived."-- Henry David Thoreau

May 11th, 2007

Marks the first performance I have ever directed. :)

(It was recorded for Chi Public Radio; I'll get the link up once I have it.)

In other fantastic news: I just found out some of my work will be published in an anthology! More word to come...

updates: (brought to you in lazy powerpoint bullets form)

* my dad's bday celebration- went to see the Dalai Lama speak, organized a picnic, and got my dad and dada tickets to his private teaching. :)

* CA was amazing. Rage was fantastic, and the entire experience was worth the trip. QT w/ Hardee and my brother at the concert, planning w/ double oh, and catching up w/ anup. good times.

* work is still taking over my life. but it's great. between the website development, grant writing, market research focus groups, program planning (we are now planning fall 2008!), event planning, recruiting and hiring artistic directors and authors, and editorial work- it's like getting 2349823098 graduate degrees hands-on. with that being said, i am exhausted, and i feel like burnout is always something on my radar.

* vish graduates this year. holy god.

ah, quotes

"how can i go from seeing rage against the machine live to the dalai lama? is it going to be an acoustic set?" -vim

"fine, don't go. hang out with your friends."
"no, i'm coming. i'll feel guilty all night if i don't come home now."
-me and vish, in the moment i discovered i am becoming my mom. :)

"my seester! you up for some cultural learnings this weekend?" -vero trying to get me to go out

Inspiration from Nipun

"I'm a missionary today. I have decided to convert stares into smiles.

It's 4:50AM. A man on bicycle, riding hands-free, is singing devotional songs; I feel a current of positive vibrations as he passes. I smile. A bit later, four guys jogging -- two of them without shoes -- at a 10 kilometer/hour clip; they are easy converts and smile back at my smile. Then, a cow stares. So I smile, fold my hands and do a half bow. Unfortunately, the cow keeps staring. :)

Inviting stares, threatening stares, i-am-confused stares, get-lost stares ... it doesn't matter. I'm going in, head first, to do my job.

Candidate number 17, probably: a semi-toothless man standing outside a Hanuman temple at 6:35AM. I match his stare with a rock solid smile. But he's a tough one to crack. He keeps staring. So I pull out other tricks up my sleeve.

"Kaka, how are you?" I ask him. Still no response. He nods his head, as if too lazy to speak. I wave. Still nada.

Ok, time to pull out all the stops -- "Is this is the right way to Madhi?" Three others are far in front of me by now, and it's a straight road, so it's a really stupid question. But what the heck. Still staring, the old man in his kurta and pajama finally makes a sound, "Hmmmmmmmm."

I smile real big -- and I mean real big -- do a half bow to him and start walking. "I guess you can't win 'em all," I say to myself. But this is good business, because in the worst case, you are left with a smile on your own face."

From http://nipun.charityfocus.org/blog/ar/pilgrimvedchi/000651.html

Poetry in Motion

So when I hear music, I don't hear notes or nuances. I see it in my head as movement, light, color. I hear music in visuals. Same thing when I hear poetry.

I've loved him for years, and I'm finally going to see Alvin Ailey's Company perform. It's the closest thing I've ever seen to the music in my head. The last video is definitely my favorite, and I'm inspired to learn capoeira. :)