Zip, Mrs. Emma Peel, owners and friends

The names of dogs that frequent next door...Emmie P., affectionately.
Lou and Lourdes came to Pam's house and we all stayed up much too late. I impressed L & L with my cocktail-making savvy.
Later Lou asks Robin about me "Can we keep her?" If only Lou would move in downstairs, we could have a real full on community here- help taking out the trash and everything. But the rent is too expensive- Why Peter Kim??!!

that does it for me

So I have been trying to figure out what is the THING that I ought to be doing in the evenings instead of getting lethargic and reading in bed; what is my project, other than playing with Kami when he is never as available to play as I would like? It seems to be emerging slowly, the strands are coming together, the way that my desire to work on behalf of indigenous people and their languages and my art can inform each other. I need to be assured that whatever is meaningful enough to me to do with joy is meaningful to the world.

Poets, artists, philosophers
hold the keys to the living
breathing aliveness of a culture
hold the spiritual warp intact
breathe into the heart with
a persistent sigh,
peering into the unknown
probing for its faintest heartbeats
listening to the last words of
every moment.

I might be organizing a party to raise money to buy a transmitter for Radio Ixchel: a community radio station in Sumpango, Guatemala, where Kaqchiquel is endangered. The government stole their equipment (since they're "illegal") and they have been off the air for close to a year. I called people today to get testimonials for grant-writing, and the people I work for were very pleased. In fact, the notion of gender equality receives no mention in the social milieux EXCEPT on the community radio station human rights program, where it is making a difference. Just talking to these people, learning about their situation, asking about the use of the language clues me back in to the kind of service I want to be doing. I go back to thinking that the best art has to be political, that the work that is most worth doing is in direct service to people whose cultures are threatened.

what?

This blog is like an experiment for me. Without telling anyone where it is, will anyone find it? Will anyone care about a stranger's life, without photos (I need to fix that)? I think about it and I am sure they will be turned off when they see the word therapy. Who in the world wants to read about that, even if it is a sensational, sex-positive, energetic life in the body type of therapy? I wish I could explain how bioenergetics feels like coming home, feels like the lifechanging commitment that will become my mindfulness, but everyone needs to find their own way, I suppose, to the thing that excites them most. I know that writing is the hardest for me, harder than going to therapy. I know if I did it regularly it would become easier, like it did before when I did 300 words a day. The sad thing about writing is not having an audience- perhaps never having an audience for those thoughts, which makes it feel so solitary. I guess that is the draw of blogging- there is, potentially, an audience. That possibility of connection is exciting. Also with visual art, you can just put it out in your house and someone eventually will have a reaction to it. But all those fragments of poems and poems waiting to be shown to someone someday? They are just sitting there.

Hatching the egg

Easter was fun. We had a small brunch party with our upstairs neighbors and friends, collaging and hiding eggs, drinking prosecco and eating all day long. The core of the party- four of us that were in it for the entire day- went to the tracks near here where I collect old metal stuff, we put a bunch of big spirals and stuff in the car to make a sculpture garden in the back garden. Much adventure- and surprise!- was had. Russell at first couldn't believe what I really had in mind was for us to haul out junk- it took a while to sink in and he kept laughing about it. Pete took pictures of what couldn't be carried out and seemed to have discovered a new playground. He really wanted to do something with the old industrial size laundry cart. We told him he needed to come up with a class project involving the tracks.
My first show is May 5-6 at the Somerville Open Studios. I've finished the pieces I had committed to for myself, and now have time to clean up and make some new things, and think about exactly how to do the installation.
I can't seem to decide what to identify myself as anymore. Last year on the tax forms, I put writer, this year artist. I have too many interests, and too much freedom, to be any one thing so far. But one day I think I will stop all this back and forth, and be relieved to have found the routine that I can rest in. Sometimes I think maybe it would be good to be a professor, at least there you know what you are committed to every day, and it does matter to other people. Working for free, working anonymously, you live in your own little elf world and scurry around inside of it alone, building things that are invisible and hearing things that no one else hears.

Take out the Trash

Last night we went to see Peaceful Warrior at the Kendall Theatre, our friends Randi and Chas had free passes. We had time for a game of pool beforehand- our couplehood against theirs- and they won, we talked about therapy, whether therapists can "cross the line" in telling you how you are, since all they know is what they see of you... apparently their couples therapist said something that really pissed Ran off. I wanted to know what it was, since I need to know this stuff if I become a therapist- i said i thought it might be okay for a therapist to piss you off sometimes: they are trying to reflect you, and there are plenty of things about myself that might piss me off if someone else told me about them. But I think saying that therapists "don't have the right" to tell you about yourself because they only know you so well is based on maintaining a certain amount of distance in the encounter, distance which ultimately might not serve the purpose...
Anyway I loved Peaceful Warrior, I read the book a long time ago and it was exactly as I had pictured it while reading. It was much better than infomercial-esque "The Secret" or "What the bleep do we know?"... I wish it would get more attention. The only cheesy thing about it, Kami said, was all the long focus on athletic training. But that was the guy's dream; I found it exhilirating to watch. The whole question of whether Socrates was real or not came up in the movie, whereas in the book I think you are convinced he is real the whole time, there is no question. I came across a quote this morning that reminded me of this dilemma, Anatole France said "Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when He did not want to sign." The movie gave a me a renewed sense of faith in the magic that is at work in every moment, if we only can turn to it and believe in it. Every moment is an opportunity for transformation, for revising our beliefs about the nature of things, for letting go of more of the habitual crystallized selves that stand between us and our vast potential. I would watch this movie again, I would buy it for my future kids. Now Kami calls me his Socrates. We need to close the gap between our past selves and what they believe/experienced and what is possible and real now. For me therapy is the place to learn how to do this.