What is Healing?

Note: Original title of post was, "What is Activism?"

(Not journalism, just rambling)

We have the potential to heal others and heal ourselves. Most healing happens in the simple act of listening. Allowing the other to their right to a hearing and keeping the door open long enough for there to be a happening.  The happening I refer to is the healing, the moment in which two people make a commitment to aid each other in the journey of life.  This is especially potent when the two people come from different sides. 

Activism is a direct result of a person or persons who have not gotten a fair hearing.  They have been and continue to be silenced long enough so that finally, they explode.  Most activism is accidental.  Most activism is a last resort.  It is usually an act of survival. Graffiti in the 80’s was activism because it was the space that youth claimed as their own to come to voice.  Blogging and social media Twitter is the same for many—it offers a chance for those who otherwise wouldn’t be heard to share with the world their matter-of-fact life.  Unfortunately, social media and the internet offers false hopes to the masses who need real healing.  Why? Because after a while, one realizes that the spit into the wind is just that, spit.  Real activism, real healing comes from the risk it takes for two or more people to engage in genuine listening and promise to become critical friends towards eradicating social injustice.  This can be an exchange of trade, monetary or it could be symbolic in position/rank or access to resources that otherwise would be out of reach.  It is a promise to open the system to possible change, by admitting the “grey.”

In my humble experience, there are many who are unwilling to fight for what is most important, to see through the bullshit, to fight for the most valuable source, to get past the stage of judgment and self defense  to stand up in real activism.  This kind of real activism requires a fundamental challenge of oneself and all that is involved in the status quo. It is placing value on the “unknown.” Ironically, pseudo activists or liberals that are intellectually acute on all issues involving social justice are part of the problem of social change.  It is because they are so easily bought or recruited, for their ideals and intellectual stamina on any given subject.  Unfortunately, I have noticed that many of those with the best of intentions end up cowards.  I have been a coward and continue to fight that battle.  I am not pointing outwards, but all around including me.  It is because poverty, hunger and fear for survival are so near to our existence that it is such a big dare to stand up for the masses.   I don’t mean stand up for one, or two, but all.  This requires a greater boldness, a greater power to stomach self-criticism, to bargain, to negotiate, to compromise,--ultimately to listen. 

It has always been my greatest desire to teach this skill to others, the agency needed for truth and real activism…to teach the poor to stand up and to teach the rich that there is space for us all.  Education for me, writing for me, reading for me has always been about the quest for freedom.  You can not take the pen from a true activist.  If he or she does not give it up, that should be sign enough for anybody of integrity.  Not that working with a person of integrity is easy, it is not.... but it is a real marriage for the required effort for social change.

I have made many mistakes and have passed judgment too easily.  I have fought for lost causes and left just causes, not knowing –

Yet, I stick to this truth.  True activism is the willingness to give over your power to the hundreds because you must think gullible like a child, and believe that we as human beings are capable of honesty and truth and that there is a place for listening and justice.  This is healing.  This is the spiritual side of activism.

¿Vencido?

Last Night

I woke up remembering dying last night a mosquito in my bed

Then, as if a shift occurred, other than my husband that is

Gave me more than redundancy, as if

My job was not done when I wanted it to be.

My legs and arms, the balm on my lips became, be it an angel

Or some strange spiritual matter braided two and two by four

Then hugged me tight while I took a piss, it was

The only moment I was alone, the stall.

Had I missed the thought to holler, to stop, to wait, to get on, to go?

The day turned year but it was different then, it was the beginning

Not the end.  I’ve been petrified since you see of missing it, as I always do

And just as I watched it leave, that was the moment that I decided death.

I lay down on the sofa, legs sprawled, smoked lips and hands

And felt the great tension of relief rise and fall, sinking

The air and sounds of the world muffled around the beat, beat, beat

Of my heart, the only thing ringing in my ears was dying.

Oh, what great joy to rest alone on one sofa cushion, thinking

goodbye tonight.

I woke up remembering dying last night a mosquito in my bed

Then, as if a shift occurred, other than my husband that is

Gave me more than redundancy, as if

My job was not done when I wanted it to be.

Instead, I got up and took a run around the pavement, trees

Pushed the air inside your lungs will stretch into something more than

Pity the man who I pass on the park bench, drinking beer at morning

You are my friend are me and I am you and I pass you by shifting, I

There is much to be said about the routine of living.

Putting your hands to mold meatballs or almond cake, combing a child’s hair

Your hands don’t know you were once an angel, they’re human hands

To pass on with words but with breaths and pauses, we pass on too.

I thought I had chosen this night but then again, you came holding me

Handing me life, don’t want it, handing me another day, for them

Dear Angel of light, twisting and turning on my left eye

Don’t come to my door if it’s not really time, please, come only if—

I woke up remembering dying last night a mosquito in my bed

And in the morning I made a promise not to write one more word unless

It flowered.  

I'm In the Dark Here

So what does it mean to be a poet?

If not to illuminate the darkness and alleviate the soul.

I have never claimed to be a poet, except for my journal

Who knows.

There’s no money in it, and poor folks know—

Poetry is a wasteful habit, like picking your nose

Peeling skin off your palm at least reveals fortunes.

I’m in the dark here!

Lost in the darkness of steel guns and war and disease—

In racism and classism and spite and poverty and spite

Obama dreams.

But alas!  I’ve come to this point.

When I know, that all that I’ve written is a lie

Lie after self-defeated lie, because I’ve survived

The marathon, or don’t you know that race, you ass-kisser!

Spit on you. On me.

If I had only known that there’s a space for me,

With food and grapes and fine red wine (and cheese)—

I’dda become a real poet a long, long time ago

I’dda hung my hat on that bed post and made sweet love

To you and me and to you too, cuz poets do that sort a thing

And I’d be saved, you know, from society

Tis an artist thing.

I’m in the dark here!

No prince charming, no lottery ticket, inheritance, fortune

Free gain, much pain, stress and then clarity

Death after death after death, another woman’s life, left alone

Here to scream, writher in pain, a labor pain as I give birth

To my FIRST BORN.

I’m in the dark here!

And I want it to end, so forgive me Al, give me your gun

I can’t.  I can’t.  I wanna go—

And be that gal, that freedom gal,

The one who really knows the relationship between poetry

And protest.

The only way to heal is to write it down again.

If I only knew it was okay to be a poet.

  

Un Mohón

El Mohon del Trigo, Sierra Nevada

Literal:  boundary stone, landmark or turning point
Slang: a usually long and cylindrical amount of human excrement

Disclaimer

I promise you that this is not going to be an exceptional post.  It’s just simple spit into the wind today.  My husband inspired it and he sometimes calls me, “una psicóloga barata.”  Nonetheless, I like it and who knows, you might find it useful.

***

Un Mohón

Literal:  boundary stone, landmark or turning point

Slang: a usually long and cylindrical amount of human excrement

It’s easy to get lost out at sea, in the winding slopes of the mountains, a humid rain forest, in the West Village of New York City where there are no perfect squares to mark the narrow back roads, while campaigning.

But even though it's easy to get lost out at sea, a fisherman returns every morning with fresh hope and a steel eye for how to return home. He knows that what wasn’t caught the day before does not determine what will be caught in the present moment and he knows about the power of a good mohón.

In a time when we are inundated with rapid information exchange, the powerful might of human invention and the spiraling confusion of a desperate economy—it is too easy to get confused about who or what to believe.  How can we maintain hope and what is the right way home?

You must feel the pulse of irrationality at the core, like talking with John Nash, a paranoid-schizophrenic—where you are simultaneously being given insight into genius and insanity. You must see what I see, fear what I fear, scary times for us all.  

That is life now and as we experience current events and struggle to navigate our daily routine and for some, survive—we must stop and spit into the wind: 

I WILL NOT DIE AN ORDINARY CASUALTY OF THIS WAR!

DO NOT DIE AN ORDINARY CASUALTY OF WAR!

That is why I share with you the metaphor of fresh hope and el mohón.  They go hand in hand and can’t be undone.  

It means... if you are out there LOST and unsure of your priorities—

your self-worth,

what’s really important,

your politics,

the truth,

who to follow,

when to start

            or stop

fighting—

Remember to look for fresh hope and el mohón— the critical landmark or turning point in your life that defines/BECOMES your inner compass. Find it, it is there. 

El mohón is used in Spanish slang (they are very clever people) to describe a long and cylindrical amount of human excrement—in another words a terd.  The irony is not void of hidden meaning.  How often are we muddled, lost, surrounded by, our personal source raw, the core of our energy void—filled up with so much shit? 

Other people’s voices.  Baggage.  Guilt. Regret.  Judgement.  Fear.  Spin.   Mind trips? 

This is all confusion.  Get rid of it. 

Get rid of the shit and go home. 

DO NOT DIE AN ORDINARY CASUALTY OF THIS WAR!

SAY IT:  I WILL NOT DIE AN ORDINARY CASUALTY OF WAR!

Fresh hope and el mohón.  

Use it.

~For MVR, Obama and me.