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Today I’m honored and delighted to be featured on The Jizo Chronicles: award-winning Buddhist blog and home of the hella inspiring Maia Duerr. Maia is a wonderful writer and creator who knows how to craft big questions out of few words. After she e-mailed me the interview prompts, it took me weeks to reflect on them — finally prompting a sweet and gentle check-in from her, like, uh, you okay over there? :)

Anyway, I am enormously grateful to be walking the path with her, and to be included in this interview series with the likes of Arun from Angry Asian Buddhist, Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, and Roshi Joan Halifax. Check out the interview and feel free to leave thoughts, pushback, disagreements, elaborations, questions, etc.

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Not the most awesome photos, but I was excited to make this salad today, which involved my first pickling experience.

I had heard that quick-pickling onions is an easier task than it sounds, which I found to be true. But I didn’t realize how many delicious components were involved.

Cloves.

Chili.

Bay leaf.

Brown sugar.

And, of course, vinegar. (I used the apple-cider kind.)

So simple. So satisfying. Highly delicious.

I had been looking for a new way of using farro, a grain I adore for its chewy heartiness. Saw a beet, farro and arugula salad on a menu in SF and thought I would try my hand at something similar.

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Ella observed my experiment from her perch on the grocery tote.

Highly unpleasant.  Perfectionism played a large role here, too; I’ll come back to that in a minute.

Fortunately, over the years a number of great people have shared with me their tools and strategies for living with episodic or more chronic depression.  Nothing like knowledge and loving, supportive relationships to lessen fears and ease internalized stigma.

Also fortunately, I have access to many resources for digging myself out — including free time.

What that wound up meaning, for me, was: forcing myself to do a lot of things that I reeeeeeeally did not feel like doing.  Robot-style, I checked off my list.

• Don’t deny it (in other words, be real with myself and Ryan about how I’m doing, even if I feel ashamed about it)
• Apply for jobs (seek more structure in my day and more stability in moneyplans)
• Accept invitations to hang out (even when all I want to do is stay home alone, sit on the couch, and valorize all my thoughts)
• Seek parental insight on racism (ask my dad what he has done to cope with lifelong feelings of outsiderness and non-belonging)
• Get under the sky (hike, see some trees, feel some air, find an arboreal newt at Butano State Park)
• Try therapy (preferably with someone who knows about queer shit, POC shit, political shit, and how these relate to mental health)
• Practice gratitude (this one didn’t actually work for me — the negative thoughts were just too loud and strong — but I did try)
• Reach out (talk with friends who know me well, even if they’re far away and “talking” is via phone or email)
• Exercise (since the bike-to-car transition, the old endorphin crank is getting real rusty)

On this last point, my friend Cat kindly clued me in to a free program through Yoga Journal: the 21 Day Yoga Challenge.  Offering daily vegetarian recipes, guided meditations, and yoga instructional videos, it supports participants’ three-week quest for calm minds, open hips, and better bowel movements.  Ideal for avoiding the crowds at Yoga To The People.  (Despite living in what is probably the white yogi capitol of the world, with studios outnumbered only by Walgreens, I still haven’t found a cozy home base like Mandiram in Barcelona.)  Online videos allow for sweatpants, bad attitude, and slovenly following of computer-screened orders.

The sessions were at first relatively numb and joyless.  Stretch this, bend that, breathe, same-old same-old.

By now, Day 11, I am gobbling all kinds of YouTube yoga videos and practicing extra arm balances on my own.  Falling all over the place, trying to build strength in my shoulders and core.  One of my goals is to master the pincha mayurasana by the Day 21.  Almost there (hopefully I’ll have a video or photo to share soon), and practicing feels delicious.

B K S Iyengar

In other words, playtime* is back — and that is a good thing.  A very good thing.

What do I mean by playtime?  Giving oneself permission to be curious, try things, make mistakes, and do weird shit that may or may not ‘add up’ to anything, but in the meantime is fun and/or fascinating.  Scientifically, play appears to be critical to healthy childhood development, and among adults it’s vital to creativity. Even the big businesses are catching on, and you know they don’t waste labor costs on pure frivolity.

[Sidenote: I'm not totally sure about this, but I think it might be useful to distinguish between mindful and unmindful play.  For instance, Ryan and I have been talking a lot about video games lately, and how they can become very addictive and life-force-sucking, rather than rejuvenating and relaxing (as one might imagine a "game" would be).  Is it possible to play video games mindfully?  Probably, but for a variety of reasons it seems awfully difficult to me, though I admit I am no expert.  In any case, rather than labeling certain activities (i.e. yoga, music, sports, freewriting) as "mindful play" and excluding others, the main thing might be the quality of play, or the attitude one brings to the activity.  No?]

Now, I’m not too keen on the “allegorical” school of yoga writing: always translating physical asanas into metaphors for everyday life, in a kind of pat, Chicken-Soup-For-The-Soul way — you feel me?  I’m more on the medical/meditative tip (i.e. this posture supports thyroid function; and when keeping the attention on the breath and sensations, yoga becomes a very practical spiritual path).  Therefore, the following observation about my own 11 days of yoga makes me feel a little squirmy.  But I’ll say it anyway.

Remember how I mentioned that perfectionism contributed to my depression?  As we know, perfectionism breeds rigidity.  Failure and mediocrity seem to permeate everything; nothing is good enough.  Except maybe the rare, unattainable genius of other people.  But even then, they are probably geniuses at things that don’t matter very much.  Awesome at yoga?  Who cares; plus, where’s the critique of patriarchy.  Brilliant writer?  Idealist/individualistic and/or suicidal.  Stellar organizer?  Either too complicit with the state, or too unsystemic in thinking.  Great politics?  Where’s the disciplined application.  This is what my mind said, over and over.  Rigid.

And what’s the opposite of rigidity?

You guessed it: flexibility.  Darn allegories.

So where my depression was closed, stagnant, and neurotic, yoga has brought openness, movement, and grounding in the body. I feel so. much. better.

Of course, it didn’t have to be yoga!  Running, if I could stand it, might have offered similar benefits along the exercise lines.  And it wasn’t only the yoga!  There were hella other factors contributing, too.  (Notably, Ryan’s constant, unwavering, loving support.  Straight-up amazing.)

Nevertheless, there it is.  Yoga helped me be more flexible, let go of rigid perfectionism, and remember how to play.

Hold up — I think I feel that gratitude practice starting to kick in.

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* In light of fucked-up racist stereotypes, I just want to clarify that when I associate playtime and yoga, I don’t mean that yoga is somehow unserious, or that inversions like pincha mayurasana are childish and/or monkey-like acrobatics.  That is some colonial-ass thinking, which is unfortunately not uncommon, hence the need to mention it.  Rather, when I speak of play in my practice, I mean focus, immersion, an attitude of curiosity, ability to adjust, tweak and revise, recover buoyantly from errors, or even let go of the idea of error altogether.  The same applies to the freewriting practice I recently resurrected for myself, called “morning pages”: an exercise from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.

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The General Strike worked in Nigeria! Beautiful testament to who really constitutes the foundation of the world economy: not politicians or businesspeople (so-called “innovators”), but workers and ordinary people (who continually innovate new ways of asserting power against bosses, patriarchs, and state oppression).

Thank you, friends in Nigeria, for inspiring the rest of us! May we continue to develop and use our collective material power, worldwide, and discover together how to replace capitalism with a system that promotes freedom, equality, compassion, and positive interdependence among humans, animals, and the earth (and maybe robots; who knows ;) ).

Also, smiled at this seemingly pro-queer shoutout from Femi:

Later in his office, Mr. Kuti shouted at his television as he watched the labor leaders announce the end of the strike. “I told you those people would back down,” he said to his aides, looking up from the screen. As for the government, he said, “They prosecute people for being gay, but there is no law against stealing 14 million.”

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I needed to know how to make my own shelves, so this weekend while I visited my parents, I asked my mom. My mom knows how to make things; she’s comfortable with studfinders, drills, all that basic and slightly-above-basic stuff. Her dad, my Opa, was a mechanic, which literally saved his life. In the concentration camp, during the war, he knew how to make things, and how to fix things. He was valuable, so they didn’t kill him.

When I feel anxious, making things helps to calm and steady me. Cooking, sewing, hammering, measuring. Adjusting and correcting. It’s not even about doing it well (some things I’m good at; others I’m not), but there’s a wonderful feeling of becoming absorbed in a project for hours and hours.

So today, with my mom’s instructions and some friendly help from the landlord’s husband, this new mini-pantry came together. Highly imperfect, construction-wise, but I love it anyway.

It's a little hard to see, but the bubble in the center indicates that the shelves are level. I was so proud that I just left the level on there for like three days, just gazing happily at it from time to time.

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I don’t want to fight my landlord
over who will pay for bed bug extermination.
I don’t want to feel relieved
when the infestation’s epicenter
turns out to be in the unit upstairs.
Those men are broke enough as it is,
trying to stay clean and sober and keep a job.
Can’t afford a thousand dollars
for liquid CO2.

I want a building, a block, a cityland
where everyone is secure
in a shelter they love
where no one feels pressed to salvage
a dubious mattress
unless they can take it to the free clinic
for thorough inspection and cleaning.
No big deal.
I want to be free and open
to share the pains of infestation:
we’re in this together.
I don’t want to fight my landlord.
I don’t want a landlord at all.
I want a world without them;
bed bugs we can handle.

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there’s that scene in The Matrix
where Neo reaches into a dying Trinity’s chest
to pull out a bullet.

i think this is a dream that many of us
share.

someone who will reach
directly into our chest
place a hand on our heart
and heal us.

Where We Been

Grew up listening to him on KSFM 102.5 — now appreciating Davey D’s take on the day.

Mushim Ikeda-Nash, writer and one of the many dope teachers at East Bay Meditation Center, offers a perspective as a spiritual leader and involved Oakland parent.

Dope commenter, organizer, and now blogger in her own right, Huli breaks it down and offers a delightful new phrase: “peace bullies.”

A 10-year street medic, present for the attempted re-opening of the former Traveler’s Aid Society, supports liberating empty buildings and standing up to cops, but urges us to prioritize inclusive solidarity and sustainability, not spectacle.

Where We Goin

Ryan and I made this flyer a few weeks ago for East Bay Solidarity Network, to pass out at the Occupy/Decolonize Oakland encampment. (Click image to download & read)

And sure enough, what headline is the Chronicle running now?  “Occupy Oakland’s new target – foreclosed buildings.“

Some parts of Occupy Wall Street seem to be heading in a similar direction, as with this beautiful recent action, when #OWS folks occupied a boiler room to win tenants heat and water.

Official, institutionalized groups like Causa Justa / Just Cause and ACCE have been doing some anti-foreclosure work since before #OWS.  But I think that the movement now lends two vital long-term ingredients: (1) a crucial boost of irreverence for the law, and (2) more people power to defend this wave of “political disobedience.”

Despite some people’s insistence that occupiers are exercising “the right to assembly,” when it comes down to it, Oakland occupiers are maintaining an unpermitted encampment.  We are disobeying laws not for the sake of flauting unwanted codes, but for the sake of building new wanted realities. And we have enough support —thousands and thousands of people — to keep on making moves.

The strain of positive lawlessness underlying the movement is, in my opinion, a good thing: especially if it means that we, the 99%, are asserting that the law institutionally favors the 1%, and thus is not a reliable mechanism for real change.  And since nonprofits in this country, like big unions, are so bound up with legalism (in order to get grants/contracts, avoid lawsuits, and continue to exist as orgs), it’s important to have strong unofficial wings of mass movement, willing to take that extra step into illegal (but positive, life-affirming) territory.

At the same time, whenever we talk about positive lawlessness, the question arises: arrest risk.  Real talk, hella people simply cannot afford to be arrested, cuz they’re already overcriminalized because of racism, transphobia, anti-migrant terrorism, family responsibilities, etc.!  So it’s also important to continue having lower-arrest-risk actions, ideally led by people who aren’t trying to get arrested themselves.  For instance, this march led by POOR magazine (Prensa Pobre), scheduled for this Thursday.  From their web site:

We are asking the powerful Decolonize (Occupy) movements in the Bay Area to decolonize and march with us in solidarity with those of us in severe poverty who struggle to survive, raise our babies and face ongoing racist, classist laws legislations and false borders everyday on both sides of the bay as we present demands to the government offices that continue to racialize, criminalize, harass, evict and abuse us.

We will march and decolonize four govt spaces on both sides of the Bay – ICE, Welfare (DHS), HUD (Housing n Urban Development) & The Po’Lice in one day  at the front of each of these buildings – we ARE not trying to endanger ANY poor peoples/migrante peoples with arrests as none of us can risk arrest.

POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork(PNN) is a poor people-led.indigenous peoples led grassroots, arts organization dedicated to providing revolutionary media access, education, art and advocacy to youth, adults and elders in poverty across Turtle Island.

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It’s so encouraging to see issues like free education and housing coexisting with labor demands and greater organization of the working class across sectors.  In the long-long-term view, as Advance the Struggle reminds us, we — not the politicians and policymakers — will occupy the means of production and begin to build the world we desire.

See y’all out there. :)

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Yesterday I watched Ella once again engage her Sisyphusean toy: a tempting pink ball encased inside a large plastic donut, with side-holes just large enough to accommodate a grasping paw.

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Suddenly I wondered: is the ball’s ungettability upsetting to Ella, or does it just prolong the pleasure of the chase? In other words, does this game more closely resemble tanha, the craving that leads to suffering, or simply the jouissance of good old healthy exercise?

Or maybe both?

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A few fotos from Wednesday: most from my own vantage point (between holding banners, wielding a bullhorn, and passing out flyers . . .) and a few from my friend Cat during the march on Bank of America.

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