My Life

Tonight I leave for Guatemala, to support Glendi in the care of her father and her family. Her dad has diabetes, and his kidneys have failed. It’s pretty much terrible, and it’s been very hard for everyone. It’s been hard for me to be so far away from them.

I bought my ticket yesterday. It’s that kind of trip. I’ll be gone for a week, and probably won’t have time to write while I’m there.

There is much to say, though. I’ve got a heap of questions to unravel and feelings to express about all of this, but they’ll have to wait.

Just read this: 7 Ways Reading Makes Writing Better

Gotta say I feel shamed. I know that this site is my little idea and emotion playground and I can do whatever I want, but I feel like if I want to really push my thinking and writing further, I’ve gotta be reading more. I’ve gotta be dialoguing more with other people’s thinking. Engaging more in community with my writing.

That’s gonna be hard with all of my anxieties about intellectualism, and I imagine that I can really hit some blocks here. But it’s about trying, about putting in the practice. So that’s what I’m gonna do. I probably want to start locally, with some friends’ blogs, and with Gathering Forces…but I’m also interested in writing about something the New York Study Group put out about revolutionary approaches to reform.

I’ll keep writing my own thinking and life, but I want to be engaging more with other people’s ideas here. It’s the next step for me, I can feel it.

“Separate everyday a little more from the things we start
Well I won’t forget my part
In the end what you want is much different from what you choose
Yeah, it’s bigger than me and you
It’s bigger than me and you”
-A Jingle For The Product by Dillinger Four

A year from now, I have no idea what I’m going to be doing. I have no idea where Glendi and I will be living. I have no idea what career or education path I might be on. That feels weird and scary, to say the least.

See, my three year commitment at SYPP, the organization where I work, is coming up in December. Glendi and I’s plan for a long while had been that in March of 2011, we’d move to Guatemala for 6 months, to have some solid time with her family in her home context, and to begin a long-range project of building a solidarity school there. For Glendi and I, it’s been a dream. But with the long train of challenges and emergencies that we and her family have faced over the last three years (deportations, evictions, diabetes, accidents, legal struggles, green cards, housemate nightmares), we have now officially exhausted all of our savings, and the dream seems like it needs to be delayed. [here is where you can watch the first 15 minutes of the Pixar movie "UP" to get a sense of how it feels sometimes]

So in the place of that grand plan, there is just kind of a void for me. Do I want to go back to school? If so, for what? Do I want to try my hand at being a teacher? PhD program? Try writing a book? Get another non-profit job? Learn a trade? Truthfully, the options seem wide open for me. While there is a very real pressure to choose a path that will allow us to support our whole family and grow our own close family, within that there are a lot of choices for us to make.

One of the reasons why I chose to start blogging again was just this reality. I need to connect with myself much more consistently and honestly if I hope to see where I personally want to go from here. Glendi and I didn’t ask for the class and imperialist realities in which our relationship and our families exist. That’s what has come with our love. And if we don’t want to fall into the twin traps of selling out and resenting our lives, then it’s important to do some earnest grappling with my own hopes and aspirations for the coming years.

However, right now, at 11:15pm on a Sunday night, I don’t know how much grappling I’m gonna be doing. Maybe it’s enough to just lay the question out here right now, for me to explore with more detail over the next weeks. Because there are so many questions that are wrapped up in this.

One thing I can say for sure, though, and a good foundation for all the exploring to come: I am in love and I am in love with life. And as sad, confused, and scared as I am about the future, I still feel like this life of mine is an adventure. It is a joy in so, so many ways, and I’m genuinely curious about what is to come.

First morning of my weekend and I’m in bed again, now into the third season of Friday Night Lights. Despite all sorts of emotional rollercoaster cheesiness on this show, my interest in this program is still unshakable.

It’s really unacceptable, though, how all of the main characters of color keep getting written out or they just disappear, at a rate of one a season…to the point now that in the third season it’s looking like an all-white cast. What’s up with that? Not to mention that two of the major storylines in the second season had to do with racism, but one of those storylines just…poof…disappeared, while the other one ended up sending the lesson that if a person of color defends themself or their family from racism, they get crushed. No thanks, NBC.

But I also think that I’m beginning to understand the personal appeal of this show for me, as strange as it is to realize: positive masculinity. There is something in some of the main characters, especially the character Coach Taylor, that is like viscerally hitting at my dad issues. Just watching that Coach Taylor character (who’s very well acted, by the way), and the way he makes decisions and yells and is all masculine, but also caring and ethical and emotionally present, it’s like hypnotic to me. It’s weird. This is something that my old therapist had brought up a number of times, my search for models of masculinity that make me okay with who I am and also let me stand up for myself. I don’t really have more to say about it, but it’s almost a scary level of realization to see that that is why I’m watching this silly TV show…what is this unearthing for me?

“If you knew that you would find a truth
That brings up pain that can’t be soothed
Would you change?
Would you change?”
-Tracy Chapman, “Change”

It’s just plain neat how the way we spend our time–our daily practices, as somatics folks like to talk about it–can totally affect our consciousness and our mood.

Like I said recently, I spent almost the entire weekend in bed, watching TV and playing video games. Essentially, I spent the weekend numbed out. When difficult ideas surfaced in my mind, or stresses began to appear, I would just dive further, surfing the web on my laptop while I watched TV. Playing cellphone games while listening to podcasts. Total sensory overload as a way to shut out feelings as well as the physical pain of my sprained foot and burned finger (small cooking accident).

Very well, but something interesting happened when I chose to turn off Friday Night Lights and try my hand at blogging again. That decision woke me up. It woke my feelings and intellect up! Not only was I reflecting on the US Social Forum, but my mind just started working through all sorts of discourses, project ideas, potential blog posts…including this one. I can’t really emphasize how different I felt. I almost felt like a different person entirely…myself. Exhilarating.

But you open up the flood, and it really comes flooding. I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was turn on some music. Tracy Chapman, singing my soul. The tears came quickly. That when I let myself think and feel, I’ve gotta think about the choices I’ve made, the pressures I feel, a grown man dying in Guatemala and growing Guatemalan young people depressed at the structural walls overshadowing them. The father I may become soon enough, and how I don’t want to be the fathers I’ve seen. How lost I feel when I think about life post-SYPP. Things I’ve mostly written about here before. What mistakes have I made? How badly have I strayed from the path I wanted? How wrong was I about what this life would hold for me?

But also, the flood of the beautiful, the wonderful: how fascinating it is the level that babies’ brains have to work to learn language, and how dazzling it is all the new ideas and poetry that linguistic structures allow; how stunning it is to watch people in my life learn, grow, change…watching younger cousins and ex-students and my own family members…ooh what a privilege it is to participate in; and how utterly overwhelming, how dwarfed I feel by that long train of people before me who have chosen to keep believing in the struggle for the beautiful and fair. I was just so, so happy to feel bathed in this, to feel the wonder of this little world of ours.

You know, maybe this is Bipolar Disorder (if that’s even real)…biochemical cycles going from the numbness and depression to the frantic and awed. But I don’t think so. I think I did make a choice last night to think and feel and reflect…and I think this happiness is really just me connecting to myself again, like coming back to an old friend. And that connection had me dancing alone in my bedroom with a sprained ankle this morning, holding my laptop like a guitar and belting out Christian pop tunes…with feeling.

That was pretty great.

So, Glendi’s in Guatemala for a month–which is a future post in itself–and I’m alone in the house with a sprained ankle. So this weekend I had very little to do.

I played a whole lot of video games (Tales of Monkey Island and Monster Hunter for the win), and then I started streaming this TV show that my friend Bruin had mentioned, Friday Night Lights. An NBC series about a high school football team in a small, depressed West Texas town? Not for me, I thought. Well, I bought in as soon as the pilot, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I watched all 22 hours of the first season in a day and a half. I was in bed watching the show for 15 HOURS on Saturday. In fact, before I started writing in this blog tonight I was just finishing the 4th episode of the second season!

So what do I like about it? Do I have a political reason? Not really. I just think the stories are good. It’s pretty much about the whole town and people’s lives, not just football. Now, there are layers of politics to explore and the show does explore them–there’s lot’s of stuff about ablism, some about race and class, a little bit about gender so far. But honestly, I don’t think much of it is all that deep (except for the ablism storylines, which I think are compelling and pretty rare for mainstream entertainment), but it’s gripping for me. I wouldn’t actually recommend it to you, necessarily, but it was gripping for me.

One thing that I particularly was struck by, oddly, was the way people set boundaries in the show. There is a whole lot of “get out” “leave and never come back,” “do the right thing or face the consequences,” kind of talk in the show, and it’s sort of the dominant way people make tough choices in the program. A lot of sort of razor-sharp decisiveness, whether it’s about monogamy or reconciliation, or quitting drinking, or confronting injustice. This didn’t strike me as realistic at all, because I’m very indecisive and I’m terrible at setting boundaries…but I think what is intoxicating about the show is watching people make tough choices and growing by leaps and bounds in each hour long episode…and here I am struggling for years just to even maintain an internal dialogue with myself through mediums like this blog! I think I was drawn to the escape into this world where tough situations are so clear and easy to confront and take action on. If only it were so.

It’s almost midnight now on Sunday night, and I have to get up at 6am to go to work and work on a grant with a deadline…but I’m mighty tempted to put on one more episode to fall asleep to.

Why should anyone but me care about my addiction to this silly show? I have no idea, but I think there are more profound things at work here, relating to how I’m feeling about real life in general. Which hopefully I’ll get to soonish.

From June 21st to the 26th, I traveled to Detroit with 9 youth and 2 adults to attend the US Social Forum (USSF), a gathering of between 15,000 and 20,000 social justice activists from all over the country and beyond. I actually started writing my blog reflections about the experience as soon as I was on the plane home, but as usual I started over-thinking it and just stopped writing. So, instead, I think I’ll just share some of my reflections in bullet points, before I start forgetting everything.

-The trip was exhausting! Because I went in my co-director role at Seattle Young People’s Project, serving as an adult chaperone for 9 young people (ages 12-19), I felt like I was constantly checking in with youth, texting someone or another, helping people find workshops, staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning debriefing the experience with the other adult support people. It felt more like work than any kind of trip. However, the good side of this was that I loved it! I really treasured the opportunity I had to really think about supporting teenage activists as they were having this one-of-a-kind experience. It was special to think about their experiences, to listen to their questions, to hear their frustrations, and to reflect back what I was observing from them. It felt like popular education as it was originally theorized: a process of dialogue and reflection where themes are presented, contradictions are unearthed, and new learning unfolds as that new experience clashes with the worldview that the student brings to the table. Though I can’t say that I slept well each night, I did go to sleep very, very happy. I felt really alive.

-Speaking of youths’ frustrations, the USSF has a lot to learn about being youth friendly. Youth were continuously frustrated by the inaccessibility of workshops, intimidation about asking questions (even being laughed at when asking someone to break down the meaning of neoliberalism), the lack of attention to all-ages party spaces throughout the week, and the sorry state of the designated “youth space” which youth said was relegated to a smelly basement (though I never saw it). I’ve heard similar but unique critiques about the ablism of the forum, as well as numerous instances of transphobia (particularly around the issue of gender-neutral bathrooms) but I don’t feel like I know enough to go into detail about it. Google it and I bet you’ll find some brilliant pieces of reflection.

-This was my 3rd time in Detroit, and ironically it was the time that I felt most disconnected from the realities of the city. I spent almost all my time in a very heavily-policed and well-developed area of downtown, and the sheer number of activist folks everywhere gave downtown Detroit a very surreal atmosphere. Many people expressed frustration about this, and made comments about how people should have left downtown to talk with “real Detroiters” and I hear that…but at the same time I was annoyed by how often this came from other white folks, who I felt were kind of falling into some exotification of local folks. As I’ve described it to my friends, it felt almost like some kind of racist petting zoo, with radical white folks talking about walking up and hugging random black people all over town, and asking people for their life stories because they are “so much more interesting than what’s happening in workshops.” I wondered how many of these folks would do the same thing back in their home towns, with the folks of color there? Because of the heavily policed and fair-like atmosphere, it just felt off, the level of entitlement to people’s stories and struggles that I saw people displaying. But maybe that’s just me.

-But speaking of Detroit, the plenary event on the first night of the forum was fantastic! A panel of some Detroit movement elders (including one of my long-time revolutionary stars, Grace Lee Boggs) talking about the history of Detroit as “a movement city” was really powerful. Listening to the discussion of the Detroit uprising of ’67 (I believe), and of movement history before and since, I fluttered my eyes and told my comrades from Common Action that I was in heaven. And I was. I love hearing people talk about their revolutionary experiences, especially when they are older and they still identify as movement people.

-This really hits at something that I’ve been learning about myself generally. I’ve got a big, sappy place in my heart for themes related to aging. I think and write about my own aging a lot (and I will continue to do so, I imagine). The movies that most often make me cry are crap like “The Notebook” or damned “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” not because they are that good, but because they show old people reflecting, making legacies together, and dying. So, watching old radicals reflecting on their contributions to not only a general revolutionary movement, but to the movement in a specific geographic location…it was almost too much. I started crying a bit right in the plenary. It brings up such vivid imaginings of who I want to be at 80 or 90, if I make it…of how I want to contribute and listen and share with my younger comrades in whatever city I end up being committed to.

-As for the workshops, well I spent a lot of time helping young people go to their workshops, and so I missed a number of slots, but almost every workshop I went to was excellent: meeting youth organizers from Mississippi talking about leadership transitions; watching anarchists and other radical scholars talk about movement-based research; a mind-opening workshop about building a leadership pipeline for youth to transition into the social justice movement, as an alternative to the school-to-prison pipeline; a workshop on transformative organizing that integrates whole-body, somatic approaches to personal change to great, structural movement-building thinking; a workshop with some really interesting new-school Marxist type folks about revolutionary approaches to reform; a workshop on US Solidarity with ALBA and the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela; an assembly on a youth-led national student bill of rights campaign…and more. All of these workshops, every single one, was engaging and exciting to me, and I was left with dozens of questions each time.

-This was one of the best parts of my experience (alongside my reflections on youth support): how intellectually electrified the whole thing made me feel. To be honest, as my infrequent blog posts should show, I’ve been in a real political rut. Very busy with work and organizing, but not really inspired or motivated. Just plain down, to be real honest. And one of the consequences of that is that I don’t actually read very much or engage much with current movement discourses. I read maybe seven or eight books a year, that’s all! For me, that’s really sad. But the interesting thing is that at the forum, I was amazed by how fluid and sharp I was in all of the discussions. Even in more tough-vocabulary Marxist discussions I was so happy to so quickly follow all of the exchanges, but also to quickly think about it, process it, and have handfuls of questions at all times. I was just brimming with questions! It was great!

-Many of those questions are potential topics for future blog posts: questions about the relationship between reform that engages the State and the building of revolutionary alternatives; questions of the efficacy of transformative justice organizing within our movements; the role of parties and cadre organizations in building the US left; the role of the city and citizenship as primary revolutionary sites of struggle; the question of community, spirituality, and the search for a political home…and oh so much more!

-But a big highlight for my trip was the personal connections I made in Detroit…almost entirely with people who I already knew: an absolutely heart overflowing hour+ with my brilliant old friend Chris Dixon (thanks, Chris!), a euphoric discussion until 4am with 3 comrades from Common Action about class struggle, transformative justice, and the church model of organizing; late-night debriefs and confessions about race, age, identity and vulnerability with my fellow adult support people…I just felt so connected with these people who I’m organizing with and who I have known for awhile.

-In short, for my organization the USSF was a solid experience that will pay off for our organizing. For me personally, it was even better: a vital refresher that came at a perfect time, a time when I’ve been doubting more and more who I am in relation to movement work. It was a great reminder of just how comfortable I am thinking about revolution, social movements, strategy, theory, and down-to-earth questions of change. It’s like since I was 14 my mind has become finely tuned to this stuff (which is pretty much the case), and I had really missed it. So it was great to feel it again.

There, now I wrote that, all in a half-hour. Here’s hoping this quick post keeps me writing here again.

For years now, I’ve been in orbit around a cluster of ideas that I think are really significant, but which I still haven’t been able to really explore to the depth that they deserve. These are the ideas that I tried to go into in my series of 21st century anarchism posts, as well as my barely-begun series on presence, power, and popular education, but in both cases I got stalled before things could get really interesting These are also the ideas that most make me come back to this blog…because I know that there is something important here that I want to articulate, but that I need more time and experimentation to get it out.

Basically, I’m talking about ideas that relate to being a better organizer, building a better revolutionary movement in the U.S., balancing life and activism, and meaningful popular education. At the core of these ideas, there are a couple of key words that I’ve been playing around with for a long time: mutual inspiration, personal cycles, and presence. These are words that just keep coming up for me over and over in my life and my work, and there is something there that I want to unlock. There is new theory there. There is really strong organizing potential. But how to get at it?

The answer to this question, I think, lies in the concept of presence itself. It is a tremendous challenge to both hold long-term revolutionary vision for our world, and to be daily present within that world. Even more, it is so, so difficult to see the needs we have for the people around us, and their potential, but to be present with the people they are right now–especially with their own personal dramas–and to really work with them from there. Never mind the constant struggle to be present with our own pain, loss, and senses of inadequacy when we feel like we should be so much more. And in my own case, it’s really hard for me to present with myself for long enough to really develop these ideas that I want to contribute to the world.

And so I return to this blog, specifically as a reminder that there is a space where I can be present with myself; where I can give myself that careful mix of patience, challenge, and attention that make the concept of presence so powerful to me.

In my daily life, things have gone back to feeling so heavy, with the burden of a non-profit and its legacy on my back, with intense internal activist dramas burning around me, and with what seems like less and less time to both take care of myself and meet people’s expectations of me. With that heaviness, it’s even more important to assert what I think is most important for myself, and what I want to be contributing with the youth, the resources, the experience, and the time that I currently have. Because as I get older and as I say yes to more and more of other people’s requests of me, I feel the danger of losing myself and why I became an organizer in the first place.

So, with that said, I’ve cleared some space again to give this another try. To work on articulating these ideas that I think are so important…not only to the social movements around me, but to myself as I’m grasping for meaning and for air.

I began this blog nearly five years ago, with the help of my friend Dave (thank you for more than you know, Dave). I started it as a way to share my thoughts as I took my first real journey outside of the U.S., to learn Spanish in Guatemala. Since then it has provided me really vital space for me to reflect, play with my ideas, and, frankly, grow in a lot of ways.

Now I’ve just returned from my 8th trip to Guatemala, and on the plane home alone, I was just weeping, weeping. I was so moved by how much I love that country, its people, its history, and especially the family that has welcomed me in there. Guatemala has changed me in so many ways, I feel like it’s a critical piece of understanding who I am and what I value these days. How could it be otherwise, with Glendi in my life??

But as I’ve eluded to in previous posts, I don’t really talk about it much anymore. I think that as the ties with Guatemala have grown stronger, and as I become more humbled by how much I don’t know or understand, it becomes harder for me to share. It’s not just the class and race complexities that make it hard to talk about, it’s the whole web of it. Just how different the whole picture is from the realities of my life and my friends’ lives in the U.S.

But I want to keep trying. This blog first started as a way for me to talk about Guatemala and my growth as I spent my first six weeks there. Now that I’ve been there 8 times, there are so many deep reflections that I could be doing here, and I want to give myself the freedom to do that.

But for now, let’s just settle for a quick few fun highlights from my trip:

-Riding for 7 hours in the back of a pickup truck on the way from the capital to Glendi’s family’s house. I love the wind, the sickening sweet smell of burning sugar cane, the disgusting, shit smell of the rubber factories, and the way my legs always completely fall asleep. It’s precisely the length of the journey, so many unknown locations and people that we pass, that really affects me…makes me feel so small in the world.

-Setting up two makeshift basketball hoops outside the family’s house, and playing almost daily 2-on-2 and 3-on-3 tournaments with nearly everyone in the family and extended family, from the 6 year old twins to the 35 year-old Inés. Since I’m a giant compared to everyone else, I get to play Shaq style, just totally guarding and blocking everything…that is until they got really good at passing underneath my legs!

-Picking coffee with Glendi’s dad and brothers on our little plot of land…my first time learning how they pick coffee. It was fun, and the social nature of it reminded me of our old family fishing trips in Alaska. I’m glad that even though the family is very conscious of the exploitation they face when they pick coffee at the fincas…that the actual activity is enjoyable for them. For me, even spending one day doing it, I appreciate just how hard they all work under the sun, and with all the bugs, every day of the week. Glendi’s dad also tried to teach me how to cut brush with a machete…but…that’s going to take me a lot longer to learn! Wow!

-Seeing all of the URNG (the old guerrilla army turned leftist party) graffiti on every single road sign in the area. It gave me hope about increased leftist mobilization since my previous visits, and reminded me that next time I want to plan more than just family time…I want to really seek out and spend time with some more organized Guatemalan leftists. However, I also cynically thought that the graffiti could just be one night’s work of just a small group of youth…who would still be great to connect with!

-Reading 5 books and writing all sorts of stuff in my journal, really re-connecting with some of my favorite political ideas….which hopefully I’ll be writing about more. The peaceful thinking time I had, mixed with the playful family time, really allowed me to get grounded with a lot of the emotional and political stresses that I’m feeling in Seattle these days

-Swimming, swimming, swimming!

-Visiting the kids schools was just so, so humbling. To see, generally, how young people live, interact, find their identities within their families…it really makes me question the work that I do in Seattle. What is youth empowerment in the context of deep poverty? What is youth empowerment in the context of barren schools with no books, and only a few typewriters that are in the main office? What is youth empowerment in the context of rigid gender roles that also maintain a very real family labor system…that if not maintained can grind a families health and hygiene to a halt? Wow, oh, wow are these big things to think about…and they just humble me when I think about my job.

It probably sounds like the trip was mostly low-key fun, and though it really was fun, what made it so powerful was that underlying everything was an emotional intensity, and some critical realities that I can’t really talk about here, but which gave everything a real electricity. Guatemala makes me feel in a way that makes me realize how numb I usually am. And it really makes me ask myself why I feel so numb so often. But that’s another thing I hope to write more about.

Until then, I’m home, I’m thinking, I’m feeling. And I’m alive, and that’s so, so special.

Much love,

Jeremy

So, I’m a member of a regional anarchist organization here in the Pacific Northwest. It’s called Common Action. When it was founded and when I joined, it was called Class Action Alliance, but the majority of us thought that name sounded too class reductionist, conjuring images of the old left shirtless white male worker swinging the big hammer and all that. The name change was just one of many instances of growth that we’ve gone through as an organization in our first year of existence that has given me a profound sense of hope in this particular grouping of radical people. I think we’re on to something here.

And this week we just had our Seattle branch meeting, and we came to the agreement that it’s time for us to engage in a common project, or a common focus, or even in a common campaign. You know, common action. For a long time, we’ve been doing a lot of internal and structural work. We’ve been doing a lot of consciousness raising events in the community that have built quite a bit of goodwill with fellow radical and progressive groups in the region. And now it looks like we’re ready for a new level of organizing together. Yes!

But the question is what? And how? What is the most valuable type of political struggle for organized anarchists to be doing? How does it differ from organizing that is done by groups from other political tendencies? And if it’s not different, then what is the point of even labeling it as anarchist? These are questions we have discussed frequently in our branch and in our whole organization, but now it’s time to try putting some of those concepts to the test.

Within our particular tendency of anarchism, there is a lot of talk about “social insertion” within mass struggles. That is, engaging humbly and fully within non-anarchist spaces of struggle, so that anarchism’s very practical and principled ideas can be put to use directly at the grassroots. I agree with this tendency, except I have a lot of questions about this notion of “mass struggle.” What is mass struggle in contemporary U.S. society? The anti-war movement? The climate change reform movement? Anti-austerity movements within poor communities? Obama supporters and the netroots? It’s tricky. What if the greatest political potential, the potential for really creative and innovative action, doesn’t exist within current “mass struggles?” Do we hold off on those ideas because they didn’t emerge from a grassroots, non-anarchist base? Or is that kind of idea a fetishization and exotification of “ordinary” people, and their historical destiny to spontaneously spin mass movements out of their own initiative? What about the fact that most of the “mass struggles” we see in U.S. society are actually the products of highly professionalized and well-funded reform groups that are already geared heavily toward policy advocacy and engagement with people in power? What is the anarchist contribution there? There are lots of smart people debating these ideas, as always, and I think it’ll do me some good to start reading more in the radical section of my personal library again…no more liberal progressive mish-mush for awhile, Jeremy.

We won’t have a decision for a little while, and then from there the actual planning and development of the project will take even longer, but even these initial brainstorming conversations are invigorating. Do I finally get to actually try out some of my long-held ideas about praxis, community education, and dual power? It’s a like a dream come true.

And I can tell you now, I have my own ideas unfolding out of the cracks of my mind, and forming into some pretty cool visions. Hopefully I’ll take the time to work out some of those ideas here.

So, I have to admit I have a problem.

I think the lines of what constitutes non-chemical addiction are a little bit fuzzy for me, so I don’t know if I can call it an addiction, but I can definitely say I’m struggling with it. It costs me hours and hours every night, it makes me feel disconnected from the world and numb to my feelings. And it is so clearly more about escaping than about actually engaging in my life.

My problem is games. Board games. Card games. Computer games. Video games. I’m pretty close to obsessed with them. Not nearly to the extent of other people in the gaming world, but still to a definitively unhealthy level.

First off, as I’ve said a number of times before, I spend hours on the internet scouring gaming forums, reading gaming news and reviews, watching gaming videos on youtube. It’s rarely even about games I play; it’s about games that I’m thinking about buying next.

Which is the second point. I don’t even play the games I have for very long. I get a few hours of fun out of them (sometimes up to 20 or 30 hours if I’m lucky), and then I’m off chasing the next great game. Glendi has a running joke with me that every month I’m saying, “They say that this next game is like the game of the year, I have to try it!” In the end, it’s not even about enjoying games and their actual qualities…it’s about building up obsessions and living in my own imagination of future recreation.

Which is the third point. This is deeply connected to consumerism, and an obsession with the new that I’ve had since my first pair of brand-name, Air Jordan shoes in 5th grade. I remember that personal shift pretty clearly, actually. And ever since, I’ve had some consumerist kick or another. Clothes (rarely), books, music, computers, and now games.

This is deeply linked to my cycle of depression that I’ve been exploring here on this site. It’s both a cause and a consequence, because I obsess about games specifically to avoid feeling what I need to feel. And then I start getting guilty and self-blaming about my game problem, and then that just encourages me more to just go down the shame spiral. Is that what addiction is like? If so, that’s me.

Truth is, I like games. I think there is a healthy place for games in my life. And I like game communities and I like being able to talk to strangers and play games with strangers who share this hobby in common. I’m not interested in going cold turkey, or in “growing up” away from this playful part of myself.

But if I’m not actually playing, and not actually enjoying what I’m doing, then there really is a problem, and I need to face it.

Thankfully, I have this blog, and it feels great right now to write this out, so that I don’t have do go around in circles about it privately. I have a problem, I want to confront it and give my games and my broader consumption a healthier balance in my life. I think writing is a critical step toward that healthiness.

Who knows, maybe actually writing about games and why I enjoy them might be helpful…making me more active in my hobby rather than using it as a tool for passive escapism. We’ll see.

I sat down to write in my paper journal today, for just 20 minutes, and I couldn’t do it.

As sad as it is to admit, I just didn’t know what to say to myself. I didn’t feel like I know myself enough to write anything. Like two people awkwardly shuffled into each other at a party, I didn’t know what me and myself had in common. So easy just to jump to the small talk…so, what’s the plan this week? Have you paid all your bills? What do you have your eye on buying these days? Those more intricate spindles of my personality seem dried up, and they feel so distant. My fun curiosities and probing reflections feel like a chore. What is happening to me?

With all of the automatic deposits, the automatic debits, the automatic weekly and bi-weekly appointments, the pre-planned social time with wife and friends, the monthly house meetings, the regular game nights, the chore days and the cooking nights, the TV schedules and the annual fundraisers…what is left beyond the pre-planned? Where is my life beyond the regimentation? Where is the time I’m making myself just to think, to feel? Because I’m not sure I am, and I’m not sure I do these days. When it is completely satisfactory to go numb for hours on board game forums, or window-shopping new electronic gadgets…when it seems unthinkable for me to be even one minute (in line, in the bathroom, in bed waiting for Glendi) alone without a magazine, my laptop, or my cellphone…when it seems impossible for me to be alone with my thoughts…something is wrong. I used to talk to myself–literally talking–for hours a day, and now nothing. The silence really is chilling. Is my soul dying or smothered? Have I sold out spiritually, even though my body keeps doing the political work? Is this why leftists seem to become so stodgy and uncreative? They just live on auto-pilot like I am?

I know that perky, sunshiny Jeremy finally needs to admit that he’s dealing with depression. Therapy has been helping a bit, but what he really needs is some time alone to himself. Just to step away from all the auto-responses and auto-deductions and just feel this shame and sadness that is in there, so that he…

…so that I can heal.

Let me share a little bit about the economic reality in which Glendi and I live, because it’s really intense, and I want to start talking more about it on this blog. I really need to talk about it more, reflect on it more…feel it more.

Here’s the short version: Glendi and I are more or less the sole breadwinners for our family of 11 people in Guatemala (and occassional supports of 4 or 5 others). This means at least one monthly payment to cover all food and utilities expenses (which are constantly rising in this economic climate), but it also needs to cover school fees, clothes, transportation, medical expenses, and so much more. This is something that we, of course, have built into our budget, but every month, when we send our payment (and especially when we have to send our frequent emergency payments), I am just struck by this reality. We are responsible for the health, nutrition, safety, and economic stability of a huge family who we barely even get to see every year. Coming from my own very stable U.S., white, managerial middle-class family, there really is no straightforward way to assimilate the full implications of this. It takes time, and it is a daily struggle (and one which I am privileged and honored to be a part of).

Truth is, it’s something that I find hard to talk about with my friends, and especially with my family. Sure the numbers and broad politics of it, fine. But the deeper emotions that I live with, and which have been stirring in me for these two years that Glendi and I have been living together…this is something else. I mean, I’m still me. I still like movies. I still play video games. I still like new gadgets and toys and all of that shit. And at the same time I don’t just have some distant family that I married into because I love their daughter…her and I are their core economic (and often emotional) support. I am involved. I have been grabbed by a context and pulled into the center of a family that is so different from me in every way…and it’s so real and so immediate that often there isn’t a lot of time to pause and analyze it.

I mean think about it as like some pop-ed workshop scenario exercise about power and privilege: Twenty-something middle class white guy marries spanish-speaking immigrant campesina and becomes a primary breadwinner for her 11-person family. What are the intersections of oppression? What does allyship mean? Just how problematic is this social relationship? I’ll tell you! It’s extremely problematic, and it’s also our daily life. With an economy in rural Guatemala in which there is almost no legal work, where health problems are mounting within the family, and in which the majority of children are still focusing on their education, what other options does Glendi’s family have but to depend on what their family in the U.S. can send them? And in a context where we make 4-8 times what they make in a month for doing much easier work, what moral option do we have but to send part of our check to them every month?

Having friends who are mostly white, anti-racist activist types, this is something that I like to talk about, but which leaves me feeling lonely. It’s a situation where I feel so much more comfortable talking with immigrant folks, because they know what it’s like to send the moneygram or money order, and to know that it’s never enough.

It’s never even close to enough.

And it’s so, so much harder, and so much deeper, when this beloved family calls and needs to ask for more. To think about their dignity, and the fierce injustice of needing to depend on this white guy and his wife (who only got here because of marrying the white guy) to be able to fucking pay for their pre-school for the twins, or the diabetes medicine, or little cotton balls for a school diarama…and even more complicated when we are stretched, and we don’t know if we can pay…but we also know that we do have a subscription to netflix that we could cancel or cut back…

This is just the beginning of me talking about this and working it out. It really goes so deep, and touches so many layers that I am going to need time to get at it. But I really want to. Because I feel like my inability to express myself about this to my friends and family is really cutting them off from understanding what my life and emotional state are really like…

…and also why I sometimes think that a lot of current U.S. activist preoccupations and analyses are kind of bullshit…much more than I used to, anyway. I mean, when people who you love are fucking screaming from malaria, or locked up in fucking Texas deportation prison, or they are eating beans and rice for the 7th straight meal of the week, because they can’t afford even carrots…then yeah, one’s sense of what is most important politically really changes. And you kind of do start thinking about some “oppression olympics” and some “class reductionism” sometimes. It’s hard not to. But it’s also important to keep the bigger picture in mind…but it does change you.

And I have been really changing. Not toward the sell-out side of the spectrum, not by a long-shot. More toward the, I am so pissed at this society that I need to do more side of the spectrum. My anger is a lot more visceral, and a lot less academic than it used to be.

As you’ll see as I eventually write about this more.

It’s not just about personal cycles when I get down and stop writing. Sometimes it’s about real stuff that is happening to me, that is happening to my family, to the people I love.

These have been some of the hardest 6+ months of my life. So many small and large personal struggles, economic struggles, professional struggles, political struggles, all packed into a terribly short time.

I’m writing now because it feels like maybe, oh pretty please maybe, things are starting to change. The pressure is easing off and my hours are becoming free to actually look at myself again, and to work on some growth and healing. I am so exhausted from being so stretched in so many ways, and especially by seeing just how cruel and terrible people can be to each other. Dealing with evictions and deportations and emergency board meetings and empty personal accounts and emergency moneygrams and malaria and sexual violence and…and…I’m tired. And the wild thing is that I am rare in my privilege to get a break. So don’t think I’m whining. I’m just acknowledging how damn hard life can be. And I don’t even know the half of it.

And it would be tradition to go off now on all the posts I want to write and the incomplete series’ that I’m going to finish up on this blog, but I have no promises to make. First I just need to break my own silence. Then we’ll see how I feel about writing more in the next day or two. Or whatever.

To those who catch this. Hi! I hope you have been doing better than me…and if not, let’s congratulate each other on surviving.

To the few or none who read my blog regularly, I want to give you some notice: I’m obviously feeling the need to really think through a lot of emotions and life stuff right now, and this page is my favorite place to do that thinking. So I just hope you’ll be patient as I do all of this thinking and feeling out loud…

Yesterday I was thinking about how interesting life is on so many levels. The diversity of it. The tenacity of it. And most interesting of all, how life makes all living things into subjects of their own story. That is just thrilling to me. The idea that for almost every living thing, they are the center of the universe. Their perception. Their connection to life and the world. The perspective and experiences of a grasshopper or fish are equally present for them as my own for me.

I like thinking about this in relation to my own life and interests and needs. The things that matter to me, the things that make me fret or cry or yearn are so deeply connected to me…and they really don’t have much relevance beyond me. That is, a person trying to survive a morning bombing run by the U.S. military is going to have wholly different priorities than me. They aren’t worrying about non-profit management or what the activist community thinks of them the way that I do. This, of course, is thoroughly linked with more structural questions of power, privilege, opportunity, but right now I’m just thinking about the pure fact of it. That life inherently means a plurality of subjectivities. And that is cool.

Maybe right now you are reading this and you are fretting about something in your life. Maybe you have self-doubts that are similar to mine, but for different reasons. Isn’t it special to pause and recognize the complete uniqueness, and overall global insignificance of that fretting. I just want to recognize you for a moment, recognize your fretting and self-doubt…and let us remind ourselves that life and the world are so much bigger than our own little boxed perspectives.

It is cliche because it is true. My life will go on if I miss a deadline, or if I screw up in my personal life. My life will go on if I am lazy one day or overzealous another. My life will go on, and it will still be running parallel with so many other beautiful lives.

Good morning, then. And I hope you have a good day as your time and life run alongside my own.

I’ve just been thinking and thinking and thinking lately about my life, who I am, who I want to be, where I’m going. I’m still drifting between depression and inspiration, and I’m amazed at how I used to think I was so emotionally stable…but the truth is I don’t think I ever really was.

You see, I’ve got cops in my head. I’ve had them since I was as little as I can remember. Be they my dad, or teachers, or bullies or influential friends and enemies, I almost always have all sorts of voices in my head telling me who I should be and telling me how I’m not measuring up, etc. Maybe you have similar voices in your head. This is pretty normal, I think. But it’s so interesting how I have dealt with these cops in my head and the toll it has taken.

For so long, I’ve seen my self as an essentially happy person. Beaming even. Optimistic. And I think it was mostly true. I have a vivid imagination, and that imagination tends to veer toward the positive. It’s something I’m very proud of. However, for so long I have felt so comfortable with who I am, and so empathetic about wanting other people to feel comfortable with themselves, that I’ve always been willing to give people little pieces of me. You’re sad and need my time and attention? Of course. You need me to change this or that so you can feel less threatened? No problem. Need me to take up more slack in a group? Okay, you have other responsibilities you need to attend to. This was nothing to me, and I was proud of my flexibility with people.

Only now, at 27, I realize how many of my relationships have had this dynamic at their root, and then other underlying authority dynamics surrounding them. I have felt so flexible, so willing to give and give and sacrifice emotionally, that the other day I was really wondering what I even care about anymore…where have my own passions gone? Where has my own sense of accomplishment or will gone? What do I do because I’m inspired, and what do I do because I’m scared or because someone needs it from me?

For so long, I’ve allowed myself to be flexible that I’ve allowed some pretty core pieces of myself to be chipped away. In many aspects of my life, I feel like such a shell. I feel so different than I felt as an inspired little boy. I’m not cool with that.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I started therapy. I’m trying to figure out some space and some limits in my life to give myself the room I think I need to find myself again. I’m working hard with Glendi to get what I need from her, and to make sure that we are both growing in a way where we can be good to and for each other.

I’m in need of more connection. I’m in need of more passion. I need to find that creativity that fills me with so, so much!

When I was in high school, I was so optimistic and so positive. I felt so open to the world. One of my favorite teachers, Tim, (there is a long and sad story there, believe me…but that’s another day) told me one day: “Jeremy, I’m really worried about you. You are like this vibrant and colorful butterfly. I’m worried about this world crushing you.” I just smiled, so sure and confident. My love of the world and of life were too strong to be able to crush me. Now I’m not so sure. At 27, I’m feeling the strain.

But life still is beautiful. And I still do love the world. There are other possibilities here. And this little butterfly can push back!

On Sunday, yet another long-standing Latin American social movement had a victory on its long electoral (and previously military) path to power. The FMLN won the presidency of El Salvador, and ended 20 years of rule by the arch-conservative ARENA party. From what I read, there has been a lot of dancing and crying in the streets of El Salvador, and the interviews and speeches I’ve seen from Funes, the new president, suggest a strong tone of reconciliation. Same from the Salvadoran establishment Right.

Okay, we’ll see how long that tone lasts.

But for now, this is what I want to say: with all that the Salvadoran people have been through, and with all the stages of struggle that the Salvadoran freedom movement has passed through, I can’t even imagine what this must feel like. 70,000 people killed during the civil war (official numbers, who knows the real numbers, right?). Millions displaced. And now there are red flags waving all around. My congratulations to them all. And my heartfelt wishes to them as their struggle enters a new stage of working to build people’s power through the apparatus of the state, against the resistance of strong and virulent opposition forces.

On a personal level, I also want to say that I’ve been reflecting a lot on my own life and where things are at. And I’m going to keep reflecting. But the Salvadoran story just goes to show the importance of perseverance and presence in the face of difficulties. We live in history, right? Not just in singular moments. Bad days flow into good days, disastrous moments unfold into serendipitous opportunities. I asked for a little bit of support in one of my recent posts and I received it (thanks, by the way). I will be better with time, and with some personal work. And I’ll be sharing that here when the time is right. We live in history, and history changes with us and our choices.

Thanks to El Salvador for inspiring me this weekend, and giving me an extra boost with my own stuff.

These have been low times for me. I don’t think I can even begin to summarize it here. Needless to say, I’ve been happier in my life.

Of course, I’ve written about my cycles before, so I’m definitely on the down side. But I sure wish I was feeling something else.

Many of my recent (as in within the last 4 months!) posts on this site have been nostalgic and reflective pieces. That’s still how I’m feeling. Really thinking a lot about aging, about compromises in life, about what I wanted for myself as a child vs. what I’m building for myself as an adult. Difficult questions. Not a lot of answers.

If you read this, I think I need a boost. Just a quick compliment or, even better, a fond memory of me. Right now I’m kind of forgetting the good that I do in the world. So, yeah, I’m fishing for compliments and positive attention right now. Isn’t that what blogs are actually about anyways?

-That someday, and it could be any day, I will die. This life is a precious accident. And the chance to share it with you even more an accident. What joy to be able to breathe in this air, to see these colors, to feel the weight of my body.

-And that my body is aging. I can’t jump on beds anymore, and my knees don’t have the spring that they had at 5 or 10. My hair is getting gray, my body and face are rounder. I am creaky. And I will never go back. I could engage in consumerism and body modification in a fit of denial, in an attempt to conquer myself. But no. So much more wonderful to just face it. Those seemingly endless summer vacations. Those silent and silly high school crushes. My first thrills of believing that revolution would come before my 20th birthday…those moments and feelings have passed. They are now memory. But they did happen and I will cherish them. Still, life moves along, and my body will groan and bulge along with it.

-That I will be out of touch with the younger generations. Their priorities will and do feel out of whack. Their technologies confusing. Their arrogance maddening. But it’s their turn for first tries. And it’s my turn for tenth tries. There is room for both of us, without crowding each other out. It just takes a little bit of openness.

-That I will never be perfect, or even live up to all of my personal goals. This life is too short, and soon enough I will have more responsibilities than just myself…I already do. The point of life isn’t to be everything anyways. The point of life is to live as myself, and to fill that role as deeply and openly as possible. And let being myself be enough, so that other people’s selves can come and connect and compliment it. It’s the us that end’s up really making us feel alive. Usually, anyhow.

-That I am on a big kick of nostalgic and sentimental posts about getting older! I think it’s healthy. Better to be doing this now than to be having a crisis at 40, or even 30, feeling like I wasted my years. Not a year of my life has been wasted. I am happy about the life I’ve lived so far. Let’s hope the rest is this rich.

Just a random smattering of updates and thoughts…

-Glendi just left for two months in Guatemala. I miss her a lot. It’s hard when we’re apart, especially when we’re both in very different contexts. More money on phone cards once again! And then in February I’m heading down for two weeks and I am so, so excited!

-Currently reading Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine. That book is blowing me away. For some reason (probably because I haven’t read a non-fantasy book in awhile, shame on me), this book is really getting my imagination going, not just my anger. Giving me a lot that I want to eventually write about here.

-Right now I’m playing around with two game designs: Struggle (tentative name), a customizable card game based around radical politics and social movements. And another cooperative board game in which each player represents a region of a country that has recently had a revolution, and you have to make the new socialist economy work for everyone in a participatory way. Both have basic rules and turn orders outlined. But I always get hung up on the math. I guess I just need to kick out some prototypes, play with some eager and patient friends, and then tweak the math and balance from there. Someday I might have my game design collective!

-Got an electronic USB music Keyboard for Christmas from Glendi and my folks. I want to learn how to play some music. I think there is a really good songwriter hidden away within me. Painter or sculptor? No! But potential songwriter? I think possibly.

-Work feels like work. Shouldn’t feel this way, it should feel more fun, like dream jobs are supposed to feel. But it feels like work. Slogging, struggling, bubbling, gubbling work!

-I’m really upset about what is happening in Gaza, and I wish I understood more. The fiction that modern war creates is often so much stronger than the reality, no matter how many lives are taken (especially when those lives come from poor and brown countries).

-If you don’t already know, I absolutely love Karaoke. We ordered a new microphone for our house, and I can’t wait until it arrives and I can sing anew!

Here’s my second piece. I almost thought about taking these down off the blog, but I feel like sharing.
***

The night that I became an atheist was one of the most powerful nights that I’ve had so far in my life. It was also the night that I came closest to killing myself. Thankfully, atheism saved me.

I was seventeen years old and it was a clear and brutally cold night in the middle of Alaskan winter. While my family slept, and wearing only a t-shirt and jeans, I headed out to ride my unicycle—I had recently taught myself the skill and it had become almost meditative for me—across the snow and ice of my small town of Eagle River. I was not planning to return.

My teenage years so far had been really intense for me. Having abandoned past quests for conformity after moving to Alaska from Washington at fourteen, I was enmeshed in a process of self-discovery and self-expression in which I was redefining my beliefs and my identity on a constant basis. It was hard for me to keep up with who I was from one week to the next. I was a self-proclaimed revolutionary anarchist; an ex-Catholic aspiring to understand Buddhism, Taoism, and Sufism; a fledgling poet and short-story writer; a voracious reader of critical educational literature and philosophy; and an iconoclastic dresser, with my black and white wingtips, my homemade t-shirts, my black suspenders, and my briefcase covered with political and philosophical stickers and quotes. In all honesty, I was just plain weird, and I was fiercely proud of that fact.

I was fiercely battling with my body as well, and carrying a deep shame about it that kept me from looking anyone in the eye for nearly two years. I had chronic acne that covered not only my face, but also my chest and back. I had to sleep with a towel wrapped around me, because every night all of the pimples on my back would burst and I didn’t want my sheets to get bloody. Skin and pus would wash off along with the soap bubbles in the shower, and my tears often drained away with them. I would wear layers of sweaters or even turtlenecks to cover up as much as possible at school. After I read Moby Dick I wrote a poem likening myself to the whales in the book, full of rich, thick oil that could be used to light lamps or fuel homes. Unfortunately what I had within me wasn’t so prized. When I finally got up the nerve to talk with my mom and go to a dermatologist, the doctor told me that it was level four acne, apparently the worst kind, as it also formed cysts underneath my skin. She put me on a drug called Accutane, at double the normal dose. Apparently, I was a special case.

It turned out later that Accutane was closely linked to teenage depression and some cases of suicide, but we didn’t know that then. And I didn’t actually feel depressed or suicidal. On the contrary, I was actually a very happy person, with nearly boundless enthusiasm about life. I did feel something, though, a certain sharp quality to my emotions, a certain clarity and force to them, and I now wonder whether that was the drug doing its work on me.

Regardless of my reasons, be they chemical, developmental, or even purely cerebral, my emotions about the world weighed heavily on me, and they often expressed themselves in relation to deep spiritual questions that I was exploring at that time. Was there a God? What was the meaning of life? What do life and death mean, and are we reborn in a cycle? Is the world all an illusion or even a dream? I would often go on walks or unicycling trips to think about these questions, to try and puzzle out who I was, who I could possibly be in the shadow of such massive confusions. I read books, and lots of them. The Bhagivad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, David Bohm and J. Krishnamurti, Frtizjoff Capra, the poet Rumi, Descartes, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Kurt Vonnegut, and especially the philosopher Martin Buber, and his book, I and Thou. In all of this reading the essential question remained: What could I possibly amount to in a universe so large, and so what did my life signify?

On my bedroom ceiling, directly above my bed, I placed a strip of masking tape that said, “Mysticism or Activism?” This was another definitive question for me. Did I want to focus myself on the inner life, on trying to reconcile and harmonize myself with the deeper rhythms of the world in some kind of search for enlightenment or the dissolution of self into something greater, or did I want to maintain my sense of self and my grounding in the world in order try to change the world and make people’s lives better? Was the choice so stark, or could I do both? I pondered all of this daily, I fretted about it, I wrote about it. While I had friends, and had crushes, and played video games and ate junk food like other teenagers, these were the parts of myself that felt most real to me.

Perhaps it was not only because of the Accutane, but because of my overall skin condition that the inner life meant so much to me. I’m not sure. I do know that I broke up with both of my high school girlfriends as soon as we got to a point of intimacy in which we are on the verge of taking off our shirts. Perhaps this is why I found so much comfort in thinking about living a hermitic or monastic life. In such a life I wouldn’t have had to think about the painful contradictions between my desires and the condition of my body.

*

This was me at seventeen, and this was me on that night. Earlier in the day I had just read something by Sartre, in which he said that life has no meaning, that there is no God to watch us or care for us, and the universe doesn’t know or care about us either. This was a alarming to me. As a boy raised Catholic, I had always had a feeling of a presence watching me over my shoulder. I felt the buoyancy of that presence. Even as I began to doubt the Christian God, I still felt like life itself had some kind of conscious, guiding, loving quality, and this comforted me. But on that day Sartre had messed all of that up. For him, life was meaningless, unless we alone chose to infuse it with meaning. This disturbed me greatly, mostly because I had a hunch that he was right.

So I took my unicycle out that night, thinking seriously about dying. I wasn’t sad, really. I was just exhausted. For me at that time, it felt like I had spent my most recent, most conscious and lively years completely wasting my time. I had put so much of my energy and creativity into searching for some kind of deeper connection with life, with myself, with something greater than myself, and now it seemed pointless. I had spent years struggling with my body, searching for ways to transcend it, to overcome it, to completely deny its existence as pure worldly illusion, and yet, ultimately, it was all I really had. The futility of all my efforts absorbed me that night. With these tired thoughts, with this world-weariness, I headed into the Alaskan cold.

I pedaled slowly toward a nearby creek bridge, looking up at the clear, dark starry sky. If life was meaningless, then it seemed fittingly dramatic and poetic to punctuate my death with the sharp, pure pain of freezing water. All it would take was a leap from the bridge. As I pedaled closer, I sobbed.

It was the sobbing that was the turning point, as I arrived and stood on the bridge. I looked at the water, I gripped the railing, and I imagined the fall, but my crying got more intense. I started to think about that fact, and it started to crowd out my thoughts of death.

If I was crying about life, then this clearly showed that I cared about life, I thought. I didn’t just care, I was actually deeply passionate about life. I looked through my teary, blurry eyes at the snow around me, with its millions of crystals reflecting the light of the streetlamp back at me, and I started crying more forcefully because of its beauty. I looked up at the moon and I lunged at it with both arms as if to try at embracing it, and I let myself fall to my knees in the attempt. The things all around me we were so beautiful. Life was so beautiful. Death would erase all of these things for me. But life, life alone contained all of these colors and sensations. Life alone was so full and complex, while death was a monotone, a flat line, a complete void.

That was the moment when I embraced atheism. Facing a choice between the constant blackness of death and the endless variety of experiences of life, I chose life. For the first time, I chose life, consciously and ecstatically, for what life was in itself, not for what was promised in some afterlife, not for the sake of some outside force that I thought was watching, and not for the idea of transcending to some supposedly more enlightened kind of living. I chose life as it was, and thus I also chose myself as I was, as a humble, lucky participant in life. Even as an accident of the universe, even with a body that seemed at war with itself, I was lucky to be alive, I realized. Even more, I was lucky to have all of the privileges of family, economic security, education, and peace to be able to appreciate life so consciously and abstractly, and so the question of social justice became even more forceful in my mind at that moment. There, on my knees in the snow, on the verge of choosing death, I finally really connected with my own authentic spirituality, and it gave me the force to choose life instead.

I am still a proud and happy atheist. I also love life, and my body’s participation in it, as passionately as I did that night.

However, I have grown up in many ways, and I’m often so embarrassed of this story, of the heavy teenage angst that it portrays, that I rarely tell it to anyone. I’m especially embarrassed, even ashamed, because two years after that night happened, one of my good friends, Stephen, committed suicide. There was nothing poetic, romantic, or philosophically pure about it. There was just sadness and confusion. There were just tears and snot and constant questioning about why he left us. There were just scores of people who wondered why he didn’t love us enough to stay and share this life with us. I’m so thankful that I didn’t make the same mistake that he made, and I wish that I had told him my own story.

For me, ever since that winter night on the bridge, life has been a choice that I make daily. I choose to give meaning to my thoughts and my actions. I choose to love and care about the people I love. I choose to work for a world where more people can choose life passionately, rather than just struggling to scrape through it. I choose to appreciate the blades of grass, the old trees, the tumultuous cloudy skies, because they simply make me feel blessed to be here.

And I also choose to love myself, with each scar that I still carry on my chest and shoulders, and with each memory that I still hold of that younger boy who didn’t yet have the force to choose. Now I do have that force, and I try to carry enough passion and love within me for both of us.

When I was studying for my Master’s in Teaching, I had to write two autobiographical essays. I dreaded the assignment, and waited until the due date to write both of them. But now, just having re-read them, I think there is a lot there that I almost never share with anyone…so, why not post them here.

Bear in mind, that I wrote these a year ago. Also bear in mind that I wrote them both in about an hour or two. With that in mind, I hope you like them. (Oh, and Christina isn’t her real name.)

***

I had to search through my seventh grade yearbook to learn that her name was Christina. Thirteen years ago I didn’t ask or care. She was merely a prop for me, a comic foil that allowed me to fit in exactly in proportion to how left-out I made her feel; and for these purposes she served me well. I made the whole playground laugh, so easily and instantly, and all I had to do was make her cry. I didn’t then know the full price, for her or for me. Even at night, sobbing and hating myself, I didn’t know what would come from my choices. I didn’t know that Christina would transform my life.

Christina was one of a handful of developmentally disabled students at Oak Harbor Middle School in Whidbey Island, Washington, and she was not the first of them who we surrounded and terrorized. She was just the latest in what was more or less a rotation. As we got bored with stealing one kid’s football or aggressively imitating the slurred speech of another, we would eventually come around to her. And she was mine. I picked her out in the playground, I motioned for my friends to follow me, and I chose those soft spots that I wanted to prod and irritate until I got my desired response. It was a calculated process of emotional brutality, targeted less at our victims and more at each other, a bunch of scrawny white middle class kids who’d learned from our movies, our sports, our dads, and especially our older brothers that this is what one does to be cool: you focus so intently, so callously on the strangeness, the weakness, the frailty of The Other that no one would dare suspect that you carry those things in yourself.

Without the ability to articulate it, and with no one to articulate it to, this was exactly what was going on for me. In my head, in my heart, things felt terribly wrong in the world, and I didn’t know where I belonged. I saw homeless men arguing with lampposts in the streets and I wondered how I was different, why I deserved friends and comfort while these men deserved ridicule. I saw National Geographic specials about poached gorillas and elephants and I rose up screaming at the television, at the unjust absurdity of the world. I even watched Corky struggle with Down’s syndrome on ABC’s “Life Goes On” and TV movies about Special Olympics superstars overcoming their obstacles and I remember feeling so much love and respect for them in their dramatized struggles. But I had my friends, and my brother’s older, cooler friends were always hanging around, as well. None of them talked about these things. They talked about cars and video games and the way women’s bodies were supposed to look. The message was clear: Talking about those other things made you gay. Mama’s boys talked about those other things. Pussies talked about those other things. I didn’t want to be called those names, and so I didn’t say anything about what was going on for me. I just focused on being cool instead, and that meant going after Christina.

Most of the time, I just sort of walked circles around her, tagging her and getting her to chase me, pretending to play with her while everyone laughed along from a distance. The last time was different, though. We all thought she had a crush on me, the way she giggled and tagged me back, and so I thought I was brilliant when the week of the spring dance arrived and I formed my little plan. On the Thursday before the dance, I came up to her really nicely, really slowly. I smiled at her and she smiled at me, and I faked nervousness, pretending to search for words.

“I was just, you know, wondering if, you know, maybe you’d go to the dance with me?”

She blushed brightly, her eyes widened, and she stepped back and turned around. I spun around her to see her face and she was smiling, nervous, clearly surprised. She ran off, laughing, probably not knowing how to respond, then she ran back to me, with a huge smile. She was going to say yes, I could tell, and that was just too much for me. I acted quickly.

“Not! I was just joking, retard!” I ran away to my group, and we walked, chuckling and jostling, back to our classes.

When school ended that afternoon, I ran home by myself, crashed into my bed, and cried. The person who I was inside, the person who I wanted to be, was nothing like the person who I was presenting in public. The gap was so great, and it felt so unbridgeable, that I started thinking about suicide.

I was lucky though. That summer, my parents had to move us from Washington to Alaska, and for me that move was a lifesaver. I remember consciously thinking that I would have the opportunity to start from scratch, to finally redefine myself in my own way. And I was.

In eighth grade, I was unashamed of getting good grades, of having multiracial friendships in a racist town, in being drug free among stoners, and in making friends with the so-called nerds of my school. In ninth grade, I got accepted into an alternative school, where nearly everyone had rejected the conformity of traditional schools, and where, for the first time, my confusions about the world were not only validated, but also reflected back in new and challenging ways. At 14 years old, teachers and students were introducing me to Socrates, Buddhism, anarchism, and the writings of Karl Marx. In that new, open environment, my mind exploded open. I felt like I was identifying with a new worldview every week, debating publicly and privately about questions of materialism, freedom, desire, meaning, and equality.

I’ve only recently realized that all of my intellectual and emotional processes in that exciting time, and up to the present, had their roots in the contradictions of my experience with Christina. Inside, I had long felt a deep love and sensitivity for the world, for other creatures and people, and even for her. But outside there were all of these forces pushing and pulling me away from who I was. They were not just pushing me away from basic decency and respect for people like Christina. They were also pushing me toward more and more consumerism at the expense of my childhood imagination; toward the objectification of women at the expense of authentic desire; toward classroom docility at the expense of intellectual curiosity; toward some vague college track at the expense of my genuine passions and interests. I came to see that modern social forces were far from benign. They were often deeply irrational and oppressive, even murderous. With Christina I had fallen into a myriad of society’s traps, and the move to Alaska freed me just in time to breathe, reflect, and decide that I didn’t want to go down that road ever again.

By 17, I was a committed radical social justice activist, in love with books, and especially steeped in economic justice and de-schooling literature. Even in an incredible alternative high school, I felt stifled and I decided to drop out. I tried college for a few months, but decided to drop out again. The struggle was calling. I decided to focus on full-time radical activism, fighting for farm workers’ rights in Skagit Valley, against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, for anarchist revolution in Los Angeles, and for community control of public space in Bellingham.

All my experiences eventually brought me back to college, by choice this time, rather than by obligation, and they even landed me a job back in the public school system, doing youth-empowerment work in a diverse urban high school near Seattle. I still work at the school, and it feels like such a privilege to work with young people and to provide them support for the kinds of vulnerable, challenging reflection that I wasn’t encouraged to engage with until many years too late. In that job, I discovered my passion for education, and my desire to be a teacher.

For me, every part of who I am is related to the story above. I love life tremendously, and I love sharing it with so many people, animals, and other living and non-living things. Sometimes the beauty is simple overwhelming. At the same time, ever since seventh grade, I just can’t ignore the ridiculous, inhumane, and sometimes unspeakable social systems and relationships that thousands of years of human history have built around us like a cage. I can’t pretend that racism ended with Martin Luther King Jr. or something. I can’t pretend that sexism faded in the 1970’s. I can’t pretend that poverty is on the downswing because the news is optimistic about the Dow or Nasdaq. I can’t ignore the realities of Iraq, Burma, Guatemala, Haiti. What I only viscerally felt in seventh grade, that something is terribly wrong in the world, I now know from experience and from research. Something is terribly wrong. Many things are terribly wrong, and they need to change. I want to be a force for that change, and for almost 11 years now I have tried. For me, that has meant participating in social movements that seek systemic transformation, that strive for the creation of new social institutions built on human cooperation, equality, and dignity. I’m not dogmatic, though. I recognize the possibility that I might not be on the exactly right path.

Every day, I try to find that difficult balance between my deep appreciation for the beauty of this life and my deep outrage at the injustices of this society. For me, this is a kind of amazing dance between my heart and my mind. I know that I need both perspectives, that without one or the other, I would be hollow. I owe Christina for pushing me to the deep introspection that has brought me here.

13 years ago, I didn’t know Christina’s name, but she did change my life. I will always carry shame inside me, knowing that her experience of me was probably not similarly beneficial. Whatever lessons I might have learned do not excuse how I treated her. I hope that somewhere she has forgiven me, but I would support her fully if she never does. All I can do is what any of us should do in the face of those inexcusable choices that we sometimes make when we try to solidify our status or our privilege: recognize my humanity, face forward toward my potential, and try once again to act vigorously for justice.

“When all is said and done, just cuz we were young, doesn’t mean that we were wrong.”
-Propagandhi, “Rock for Sustainable Capitalism”

When I was 15 my brother bought me a pop-punk sampler CD for Christmas, and on that CD was a song by a political punk band called Propagandhi. The song was called “And we thought nation states were a bad idea…” and it was all about the rise of neo-liberalism. It gripped me tight. It opened my eyes to a whole new type of music and expression (before that my favorite band had been the Beatles), and one line just completely spoke to how I was feeling as I was becoming a young, angry anarchist: “And I’m just a kid! Can’t believe I have to worry about this kind of shit…what a stupid world!” I sang and screamed that song in my bedroom all winter in 1995.

Ever since, I’ve had a deep connection to Propagandhi’s music. Well, actually, I think think their music isn’t very good. But there is something about their lyrics, and how they sing them that just speak to my exact feelings about the absurdity of our current society. I don’t think they’re the best band. They aren’t even my favorite band. But whenever I listen to them, I feel less lonely, more understood, and especially more grounded in why, after 13+ years, I’m still a radical.

The quote at the beginning of my post is really ringing true for me lately. I’ve been thinking a lot about my teenage years, and my education as an activist. I am so proud of who I was, of my naivety and my deep desire to be a good person. I am proud of the poems and manifestos that I would write in my notebook. I still read them sometimes and I’m actually pretty impressed. I was a pretty sharp and sensitive kid…and actually way more open to later anti-racist and feminist politics than I sometimes give myself credit for.

Just because we were young, doesn’t mean that we were wrong.

Young Jeremy, I’m so, so happy for how you’ve grown up. I’m so happy for the choices you made and the thoughts you had…because you led me to where I am now, at 27. I’ve learned a hell of a lot that you didn’t imagine then. I don’t know what you’d think of my compromises. Married. Working. Still playing video games. Still eating meat. Still driving and wearing store-bought clothes. But I want you to know that I haven’t forgotten those things you used to tell yourself, those better lives and worlds that you used to dream while bouncing the tennis ball against the garage. I’m walking the path that you found for me…and I so wish we could just spend an hour or two together. It would be so fascinating to get your opinion of all that is happening right now.

But instead, I’ll find you in the Propagandhi songs…because when I sing quietly on my walk to work, I can hear you faintly singing along.

Long time no post. Big surprise.

My fourth installment on 21st Century Anarchism hasn’t been forgotten. It will come when it’s ready.

I just wanted to write briefly about something personal. As I’m getting older and creakier, I think I’m starting to finally make peace with my own internal cycles. These are cycles that have dogged me since my earliest memories of school (2nd and 3rd grades…) all the way to the present. They’re cycles that cast a shadow over every aspect of my life. And I bet they’re very similar to the cycles that most people feel. Although I wouldn’t know, since shame has kept me from ever talking much about them.

The cycles are simple: weeks and months where I feel confident, creative, life-loving, connected…followed by weeks and months where I feel lackluster, ashamed, useless, corrupt and like a general nobody. These cycles have almost nothing to do with the overall conditions of my life, since they happen no matter how bad or good things are going. But they do have real consequences as they affect my friendships, my work, my writing on this site, and more.

At the root of it all, I think, is insecurity and a bad ability to handle pressure. When I feel low and forgotten and like I don’t have much to lose, my inspiration and creativity shoot up. But when I see people wanting to appreciate me, be near me, hear what I have to say, I feel like I will inevitably fail them, so I retreat, I distract myself, I wallow…and pretty soon they are frustrated with me or forget me…at which point I feel the upper swing of the cycle again.

It’s absolutely fascinating, especially when I look at it in its pure continuity throughout my entire life. By looking at it and acknowledging it as less of a personal failure and more just like a rhythm of my social personality that I may or may not grow out of, I think I can make peace with it. I think I am making peace with it. And that, I hope, will allow me to be more intentional in my work, more open in my friendships, and more accountable all around.

To those of you who read this and who have been burned by these cycles of mine (as all of my friends have been, and some for years and years), I hope you read this and forgive me. I hope you read this and understand that sometimes my silence is a sign that I’m doing important grappling with myself…

…but also sometimes its a sign that I’m just wallowing in self-doubt and doing internet window-shopping for 6 hours with crumbs of tortilla chips and peach pits all over my bed. Both scenarios are common and real.

I hope you can love me regardless, as I love you in your cycles, too.

I’m officially married…Glendi is living at the house with me…I joined and then withdrew from a Master’s in Teaching Program…I’m about to start a new job as a co-director of a youth empowerment non-profit…my hair’s getting long…a center-leftist won the presidency of Guatemala!

But mostly, I’m really happy these days. And I’m thinking about a whole bunch of stuff. So now it’s time to start writing again!

Nearly a year since Glendi and I really started talking about this, and now we’re almost there. I just need to pack my bag and head to the airport, and then…

Glendi, her mom, and her brother Ivan will meet me in the airport, where we will travel by bus for four hours to reach her home, and there we will spend 1 bittersweet week, as Glendi prepares her things and her family says goodbye.

I’ve been talking with Glendi’s dad and he seems a lot more prepared emotionally than he was a few months and weeks ago. Stilly crying occasionally, but much more open about his excitement and happiness for us as well. Glendi is excited. Her mom is excited and sad, of course.

I have so much I want to write about, but I don’t have the time. Hopefully during the summer, now that school is out (yay!).

I want to talk about my hopes and my fears about Glendi and I. I want to talk about the possible futures, about the balance between this relationship and my other friendships. I want to talk more about the politics of this relationship. There is just so much. There are all of these things that I’m thinking about all of the time, but I still haven’t put them down in this blog yet.

Still, for now I can tell you that I feel so free and happy…and I’ll let you know where it goes from there.

Much love, and hope to write a least once from Guatemala.

Hi there,

First off, my apologies to those who have commented and who have not yet received a response. Please be patient with me.

Second, you really should read this article about the battle for Bolivia’s future, and then read the Movement Toward Socialism’s Vision for a New Bolivia. This is really promising, I think.

Third, and most importantly, I leave for Guatemala on Friday! Glendi and I will be coming back to the U.S. together on Saturday, June 30th. My life is about to radically change at the end of this week. Wow. I am excited, nervous, stressed, scared, and then excited again. It’s a whirlwind, as one can imagine.

The good thing is that I have lots of support. Many people have emailed me or called me with support, and many people also are supporting me face to face. Moreover, talking with Glendi every night is really grounding and relaxing, as is talking with her family, who are definitely sad right now, thinking about saying goodbye to her for a good number of months.

But the hardest thing is having no clue about what I’m going to be doing for us to be able to live come the fall. I’m really leaning against going back to school right now. It just doesn’t feel right, and it will be expensive. At the same time, I don’t have a sustainable job anymore at the high school (they still want my work, but don’t have the money…can anyone point me to any grants or fellowships?)…so the big question is “What Now?” I don’t know, but I think it involves getting more focused on concrete organizing and pushing my politics, and thus maybe even looking for a more brain-free kind of job just to pay the bills. We’ll see.

I just took a break from cleaning the apartment in preparation for Glendi in order to write this entry. Perhaps I should get back to work.

More to come, I hope.

Hey folks,

I’ve received some really interesting feedback from a few folks about my “big announcement,” and I want to write about two pieces of it here…maybe more later.

First, there was concern expressed about posting such an intense, personal letter as Glendi’s on a public blog. That perhaps this is something I should share more carefully, with my close people, rather than just anyone who comes along. I’ve been thinking about this, and I want to talk with Glendi more about it (as soon as the phone card works again!), but for now I’m going to pull the letter from the writings section, and just email it out to those who email me and ask to see it. For now, anyway.

A second piece that I’ve gotten from a number of people is some concern about the tone of my letter, as if I’m coming out with armor on, ready for our relationship to be attacked, and so I’m bringing out my talking points. This is more or less accurate feedback. I feel extremely vulnerable talking about my relationship in general and this decision in particular with people. Somewhat with my family, but definitely in political circles. This is complicated, because there are many, many levels to it, but mainly because I know that our relationship is complicated, and because I know that it is easy to go from thinking something’s complicated to thinking that it’s problematic…and then to go from that to thinking its fucked up…and then going from questioning silently to shit-talking publicly…. I have been an activist for 11 years now. There are sketchy interpersonal dynamics across all communities, including activist communities, and so yeah, in making this more public beyond certain close circles, I kind of came out erring on the side of caution, just wanting to get my reasons and my thinking out there. You should have seen my rough draft…way more thorough and intense!

Bottom line, I have worried that people, even people who I care about, won’t trust us enough to be able to do this with care and intentionality. I have worried that people would talk behind my back and even spread rumors (and some crazy rumors HAVE been spread). These things have run through my imagination too many times, and so, yeah, maybe there is some attitude in my letter as if I’m anticipating a fight.

But the wonderful thing is that so far people have come back with concerned feedback, but also with love and support, and with an understanding that I really am trying to be careful about this…perhaps even too careful. I can take that, I can hear that. I’m also prepared to hear more feedback of all sorts.

All my love,

Jeremy

To all of my family and friends,
To all of the people who I love so very, very much,

I’ve got a really big announcement for you.

This summer, my partner, Glendi Susana Aguilar Lorenzo, is coming from her country of Guatemala to the United States, in order to live here with me.

We are engaged to be married.

Now, I imagine that this is a shock to most of you—and for some of you, not so much—and so in this letter I want to share with you first about our story and then about our plans, so that you can better understand and support us in this major change in our lives.

So, pretty please:

-Read through this letter (especially the part at the end with our plans and what we need from you in terms of support)

-Then, find some time to read the letter that Glendi has written to you (in the writings section). It’s actually a collection of 13 emails that I’ve translated from Spanish and edited, with her guidance and a double-checking of the translation by my friend, Isaura…thanks Isaura!

-Then visit here to see some photos!

All of this is quite a chunk of reading. I’m sorry for that, but that’s how it is, and I hope that you’ll make the time to read through it.

———————-
The Story, As I’ve Experienced It
———————-

I met Glendi in the summer of 2005, just two years ago, when I was studying Spanish in Guatemala. She was (and is) a teacher in La Escuela de la Montaña (The Mountain School), where I studied for just three weeks. We would chat a little between classes, and then she became my teacher for a week, and out of that we developed a good rapport. When I returned to the United States, through emails and phone calls this rapport turned into a friendship, and then about three months later into a more serious long-distance relationship. In those months, I had fallen for her, and she had fallen for me.

For quite a while, however, I was scared of my feelings and of our connection. One reason was the fact that my previous partner of four years, Briana, and I had just transitioned into being friends, and I didn’t want to move too quickly into anything new. A much larger reason, though, was the fact that Glendi and I are coming from such very different places, and I was worried that those differences—and especially the power dynamics that come with them—would make a long-term relationship impossible. I am an urban, middle-class white North American, Glendi is a rural, Indigenous Guatemalan from a poor, farm-worker family. My primary language is English, hers, Spanish. I am a strong atheist, she is a deeply faithful, though liberal, Protestant Christian (she calls herself evangelical, but it should be noted that this means something different in Guatemala than in the U.S.). I am a dedicated radical activist, and she is very sympathetic and is definitely lefty, but has never considered herself an activist. Moreover, I knew that if our relationship were to be real and sustainable, Glendi would have to be able to travel freely between the United States and Guatemala, and that would probably require marriage, which is a legal/religious institution that, to this day, I do not politically or ethically believe in. I had never imagined myself in such a complicated situation, I certainly hadn’t looked for it, and frankly it was freaking me out.

Yet talking on the phone and writing emails every day, the connection we had was undeniable. The openness, warmth and humor that we shared and that grew between us made it a safe place to talk about all of our differences, to analyze them and feel them, without feeling a need to push away from or reject each other. We decided to take a risk and hold on, with open eyes, yes, but also with open hearts.

And so we have held on, not only through almost two years of daily emails and phone calls, but also through 3 more trips to Guatemala, with me spending about 2 ½ months living with Glendi and her family, and through discussions of the relationship not only with my close people but also with her closest people. In all of this we have faced some real struggles, primarily related to cultural differences around dating and family, and we have processed through these struggles in ways that have strengthened our relationship and that have built intimacy, but which also have required compromises from both of us.

One of the most fundamental compromises is the very subject of this letter: our decision to get married.

For those of you in my family, I don’t want to freak you out or offend you, but I do not generally believe in the institution of marriage. I believe deeply in committed relationships, but for political reasons, historical reasons, ethical reasons, and just plain personal reasons, I do not support the institution of marriage (though of course I support people’s rights to choose to get married, including couples of the same sex/gender). Glendi, and especially her close-knit family, are not in the same place. Neither is U.S. immigration law. For these and other reasons, the decision to become engaged with Glendi has been a long, hard decision to make…a decision that, especially for reasons of the U.S. border, has been weighing on us from day one.

I am not going to detail all of our discussions and deliberations here. There is simply not room in this letter to outline the emotional and logical paths that we have followed to come to this point. If you email me or call me and ask, I will surely talk with you about it, but for now, I do want you to know just a few things:

• I love Glendi tremendously. Tremendously. I am committed to her and I am excited about building a family with her, a family that has strong, deep connections with our existing families, friends, and also with our extended activist “families” as well. Though our decision to get married has been confined and structured by U.S. law, this is no kind of “green card” marriage. Our commitment is much deeper than that.

• Our marriage, however, will not be completely conventional. We are going to share between us all of the traditional “husband/wife” marriage roles like cleaning, cooking, childcare, working, etc. ; we’re also going to prefer the term “partners” to “husband and wife;” we’re going to try something creative regarding the whole changing last names thing; we’re going to have a very non-traditional, non-religious “ceremony of commitment” in the U.S. (and something more traditional in Guatemala); and we are definitely going to work to stay connected with our communities, friends, and families so that we don’t get too isolated into our own little nuclear family unit.

• I have a strong relationship with Glendi’s family, and though I do not agree with all of their beliefs and traditions, I have tried to build my relationship with Glendi in a way that has been open to and respectful of where she and her loved ones are coming from. This has sometimes meant things like traveling to Guatemala to ask her parents’ permission to enter the house (which is a Guatemalan tradition), or traveling to meet all of her aunts and uncles…and it will also mean an eventual traditional-style wedding in Guatemala, in her family’s church.

• So far, our relationship has grown in a Guatemalan, Spanish-speaking context…in Glendi’s context. Now we are taking a major step towards strengthening our relationship in my context…the United States. Seattle. We think and discuss constantly about what this means in terms of greatly shifting power dynamics, of her experiences as an immigrant, as an English-learner, as a poor woman of color, and so much more. We also recognize the sad possibility that, despite our will to commit, our relationship might not be able to survive all of the challenges this transition throws at us…but we hope so much that this isn’t true! I take my own responsibilities very seriously in all of these regards, and we hope that you also will do what you can to support her and us (even if that means lovingly holding me accountable for mistakes sometimes). Please read Glendi’s letter and finish this letter to get a sense of the support that we are asking for.

• Even with our current plans to live in the U.S., our relationship is founded on a long-term commitment to share our lives in both of our countries. This means that probably within the next three years we will be moving together to Guatemala, to live near Glendi’s family. We are planning on moving back and forth periodically throughout our lives, and the life of our family, and this will very much depend on circumstances. I just want you to have a heads-up about this, and also to know that I will take my responsibilities as a North-American living in Guatemala very seriously, as well.

There is much, much more that I could say. There are many stories to tell (about Glendi’s family, her culture, our relationship, the VISA process, etc.), and I hope that you will stick with us and hang out with us so that you can hear these stories directly from our mouths!

I imagine that some of you are worried, skeptical, questioning, and I want you to know that I support you in those feelings. It shows that you care about Glendi’s well-being and my own. At the same time, we need you to put some trust in us that we know what we are doing, and what we are getting into, and we need you to know that your loving support and welcoming attitude toward Glendi are crucially important, even with any lingering doubts that you may hold.

I love you, and I look forward to further discussing this amazing new stage of my life with you as it develops. But for now, let’s move on to the actual plan!

———————-
The Plan
———————-

June 22: I leave for Guatemala, where I will spend a week with Glendi’s family as she says her “see you laters” and gets ready to come to the United States for the first time.

June 30: We fly together from Guatemala to Houston, where she will go through customs, and then we will fly to Seattle, arriving at night. This will be her first time in a plane, we’ve got seats together (of course), and any strategies you might be able to offer a first-time flyer might be helpful! We will stay one night in a hotel near the airport, to relax, get our bearings, and save her first real view of Washington for the daytime.

July 1: We will drive to Bellingham, where my parents live, and we will spend a week there. Glendi will give my family Spanish lessons (a great way to balance the power dynamics and allow us North Americans to feel some of the vulnerability that she will be feeling for a long time), we will cook and explore all together as a family.

July 8 or so: We will return to Seattle, where we are going to live together in the basement “apartment” of my cooperative house, alongside 5 other wonderful people. This way, Glendi will be able to be welcomed right in to my political and social community, she will be less isolated and less dependent on me alone (once again, helping to balance power dynamics), and both of us will be less isolated as a couple. Once again, Spanish lessons are offered to everyone in the house (but thankfully some already speak it)!

At some point in the three months of her visa: We will get officially, legally married, with no fanfare and the minimum number of witnesses (not even family) necessary. This is just the official part.

Sunday, August 12: We will have a non-religious, very non-traditional, and bi-lingual “ceremony of commitment and partnership,” probably outdoors. I am very excited about it!
ALL OF YOU who have received this ARE WARMLY INVITED, but I do need to make two points: 1) Because of the stress and newness of her first few months in the U.S., Glendi and I need to be able to focus on each other and make this event very casual…which means that we can’t take logistical responsibility for any of you who wish to come from out of town…so if you come (and you are invited!) you may need to coordinate it through my parents, or on your own. 2) Since this will be our kind of ceremony, which will uphold our values and the values of my community, this will be an event that is welcoming to all of my queer, lesbian, gay, and transgender friends and their partners. I want them to be safe and free to express themselves and have fun, and so if sharing this kind of space with my friends will make you so uncomfortable that you are unable to participate happily, then I want to give you a heads-up that this event might not be a good idea for you.
Please let me or my mom know ASAP if you are planning on coming to this.

August 13-20 or so: Glendi and I will fly to Alaska, to celebrate with my Alaska family and to explore the places where I was born and grew up. Ondras, Kochs, Brewsters: this also means that it’s okay if you can’t make it down for the ceremony.

August 20 until Glendi receives her permanent residency or at least permission to return to Guatemala: We will just focus on building our lives together, while Glendi prepares to start her business as a private Spanish teacher (waiting for a green card), and I will be working and possibly pursuing a Master’s degree in teaching.

When Glendi can travel back to Guatemala (hopefully by December): We will return to Guatemala, with my family, where we will have a more traditional Guatemalan wedding in Glendi’s church and with Glendi’s family and friends. If you are really interested in coming down to Guatemala for this, please let me know ASAP.

For the next 3 years or so: We will live primarily in the U.S., traveling when we can to Guatemala. We will be focusing on saving money and paying off my college debt, so that…

In the future: We will build a small house on a small piece of land near her family’s community, where we will live some years in Guatemala, some in the United States…we clearly don’t know the actual breakdown of how it will work yet.

———————-
How You Can Support Us
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Of course, you can support us emotionally by writing to us (Glendi’s email address is aguilarlorenzo_3@hotmail.com) with love and best wishes, and by trying to make it to our August celebration (please RSVP ASAP), and by being at our sides in good times and bad.

But also, because I have chosen a career path of important social justice work that pays very little, and because Glendi will be moving from a situation of being the breadwinner of her large family to being unemployed until she gets her green card (anywhere from 3-6 or more months), we actually can use your financial support as well.

In sort of a surprise move, the Bush administration announced a doubling of immigration fees, and we are not sure how this is going to affect our budget, and with our need to support ourselves, plus the need to support Glendi’s 12 person family in Guatemala, plus staying on top of my debts, and also trying to save for the return to Guatemala, your financial help can make a huge difference. We will have no wedding registry, but if between now and the August ceremony you would be able to make us a donation, we will really, really appreciate it.

My address is 1643 S. King St., Seattle, WA 98144

Also, if you know anyone in the Seattle area or in King County who might be interested in paying for private Spanish lessons from an excellent professional teacher from a highly regarded Spanish school, Glendi’s classes will be available for a reasonable rate when she has a green card, but until then she is up for trading English lessons for Spanish lessons, groceries for lessons, or other fair barter/trade kinds of things. Please let us know, and when Glendi has a website, we’ll send it out to you.

Thank you so much for reading through this whole thing, for being in my life all of these years, and for continuing to be in my life and now in Glendi’s life for many years to come!

I love you,

Jeremy

For a little while I’ve been hinting at opening up about some rather big stuff that I haven’t yet discussed on this blog…for a variety of reasons.

Well, things are getting to a point where I’m ready to change that situation. So just sit tight and check back on this blog in the next few days.

I hope you’re well, and things are flowing okay in your lives. My life is okay right now. The big staff meeting is tomorrow, supposedly. But I don’t believe anything anymore. I’m just going to show up, speak when asked to speak, and see what happens. I’ve already been saying my goodbyes to students.

Until soon, much love to each of you.

I’ve received a little bit of advice from a net-savvy friend of mine that maybe I should be careful about my “blog identity.” That is, I should be careful about how much I talk about my job, people I work with, etc.

I think he’s right. People do find this site in their google searches sometimes. And although I don’t think I’m saying much that I wouldn’t say to anyone’s face at the school, I think I do want to be more careful.

So, I’m going to keep updating occasionally about the job, but more cautiously. And maybe I’ll end up making some of my previous posts unavailable to the public. Not sure yet.

Please comment here if you think differently. Thanks to all who are reading!

Today, after lunch ended, the principal came into our office, with all of us standing there awkwardly, and she said:

“I just want to tell you that I want you two here. We need you two here. And I want you to know that I’m going to find the money. It may only be part time, but we will do what we can. I’m going to take the budget home over the weekend and find the money.”

She also apologized for her insensitivity and hurtful comments in a past staff meeting, she acknowledged her use of power to try to frame reality, and told us that yesterday’s emergency student/staff meeting was powerful…and she left saying, “So, before I just walked in, were you two organizing to overthrow me on this?”

No, we weren’t. But the students were planning some things. They had refined their walkout plans and messaging, and they were getting ready to go…the campus has been buzzing.

And they still are going to do something, but now it is a much more toned-down lunch forum about the future of student voice at the school. They’ve made new fliers. None of us are giving up, because having funding doesn’t mean that we get the kind of work we want. This is just the opening of the conversation.

What a weird place to work. A low-income high school that two years ago was totally traditional and has now become a national darling as an example of a successful conversion of a large campus into 3 small schools…an institution that is in an active state of transformation, and where very marginalized young people are finding themselves in new positions of activism and leadership around all sorts of issues…seriously, my head is just spinning and I’m in shock. What is this place?! This job is so hard to read. Every year we keep pushing and pushing, and they eventually give in…it’s like: when is this power structure actually going to stop us, because in four years it hasn’t yet. It’s kind of disconcerting.

It was almost easier just to see the principal in her power role…Briana and I were just staring at each other, like: “What happened to her? What got to her? What do we do now?” It was almost easier having all the drama…more familiar.

We’ll see, huh? There’s still the lunch forum and the staff vote on Tuesday. I’ll update as it seems valuable.

This’ll be funny coming off the heels of my last post, but I just got word today that I’ve been accepted into the Master in Teaching program at The Evergreen State College.

It’s flattering of course, to have the opportunity to go grad school to eventually be a teacher, but all my thinking and reading and experiences, as shown in the last post, are just really telling me that this is not a bargain that I should be trying to make with the system. I have other things I could be doing.

But I will admit that I’m not sure yet. Teaching public high school is way different from joining the academy. Yet it is still working for the state, and choosing to spend the vast majority of one’s active energies within a more or less structurally limited institution. The good thing is that I won’t even hear about financial aid/scholarships until mid-June, so I have a long while to decide. In the mean time, I have many other things going on in my life that I have to think about, and write about soon enough.

Also, you should go here and watch the newest PBS Frontline, a history of the Mormons. Fascinating stuff. Really got me thinking a lot about how faith works…it simply isn’t rational, it just isn’t. And as much as I try to understand religious people (including my Christian partner, Glendi) with my intellect, I can’t. I can’t cross that gap of faith that they have. Now, maybe I do cross it in my own ways (for instance, believing that revolution is possible), but I can’t cross it in their ways…I just find myself shaking my head and being perplexed. Doesn’t mean that I can’t respect faithful people in many ways, because I can. But there are just certain ways that I can’t understand them. But I am fascinated.

I just recently finished reading the memoir of a relatively prominent leftist by the name of Michael Albert, called “Remembering Tomorrow.” Albert is one of the founders of South End Press, as well as Z Magazine and Z-net. He’s written or co-written many books about revolutionary theory and post-capitalist vision, such as “ParEcon,” “Looking Forward,” and “Liberating Theory.” His memoir is not great, and in some places it downright pissed me off (mostly regarding his treatment of the Black Panthers, women’s liberation, and really many parts of the sixties in general…if you ask me to explain myself, I will, but otherwise, I’ll save it), but still it was well worth reading and it inspired me.

The truth is, I have read I think almost every book that Michael Albert has written, some a couple of times (his earliest work with Robin Hahnel, “Unorthodox Marxism,” is actually my favorite). I first discovered his writing when I was 16, and his thinking has been pivotal in my own development as a radical. In many ways still, I’m kind of an “Albertist” in my radical worldview. At the same time, he’s definitely a sixties white, male leftist, with many of those trapping and contradictions, plus I’ve had friends tell me that’s he’s kind of a jerk, etc, and that all probably holds too. But all of this together, I’m glad that he has lived and done the work he has, because he has helped me to become a better thinker, a better, radical, and frankly a better person. His writing frankly helped me transition from standard white male anarchism toward listening to the ideas of my anti-racist and feminist friends. If I hadn’t had that role-modeling from an older white male radical intellectual, I don’t know if I would have listened as intently to my friends’ demands for me to change my ways…even still it took me years.

I’m writing about all of this because, in the book, Albert mentions numerous times that actually, among his prominent radical friends, his thinking is actually met with silence. He seems genuinely frustrated by the lack of critical response he gets even from his friends about his work. I was wondering why this might be…maybe he’s hard to be honest to, maybe, personally, he’s an asshole (as I’ve heard from some, but not all), maybe he’s such an obnoxious debater that no one wants to get into it with him….or maybe they actually just don’t care very much to help push his ideas forward. Maybe engaging in his theorizing and vision doesn’t seem worthwhile to them, which I think is just kind of crazy. I know that almost all of my friends have had almost no interest in reading the theorizing of an old white male leftist. I’ve let them have that opinion, but that hasn’t stopped me from keeping up with his work, and I don’t regret it. Frankly, I’ve met very few other contemporary US radicals of different identities who talk about revolution and actually winning as much as he does (other inspirations that come to mind are the women of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence…they are on the cutting edge, way far ahead of Albert in many ways on many things…but I don’t think all).

But his discussion about the great silences that surround his work really shook me, because honestly it is kind of how I feel about my work. For a really long time, I’ve felt that while overall I’m liked (mostly, I think, because I’m nice, a good listener, and very non-threatening…and a perpetual optimist, which I think people sponge off of, because they aren’t…it can actually be very draining for me), I don’t think I’m recognized as actually very useful as a radical thinker, or as the kind of asset for social change that I have worked hard to try to be for years. Usually, this doesn’t bother me much at all, I’ve gotten used to it, being within a political context of non-white males who really don’t trust people like me very much for doing much more than staying quiet and nodding along, as “allies”…because of such a long past of broken trust by white male radicals. I get this, and I have just sort of been patient, because I know that someday someone will ask my opinion, and someday that will be able to make a difference…like it did for awhile at the school. But that is precisely it. I have realized that now that I’m feeling un-valued and thrown away at the school, a key source of my intellectual and radical self-esteem has shriveled, and I’m realizing that outside of the school, in this radical “community” that I am more or less a part of, I actually have almost no developed base of trust, where I am known or appreciated as anything other than a smiling, humble background character.

Like I said in my ego post, all of us have egos, and all of us want to be validated and valued, like we’re contributing. That goes for me, too. Not because I want to be a big leader or have fame. I simply want to feel useful. We have a revolution to build, and I think I’m pretty young, smart, energetic, and frankly ethical, and so I want to have a place where I feel like I can make a difference. But the problem is that nobody really wants me……but it’s not just me they don’t want. Nobody really seems to want anybody. Because nobody really thinks that way on the radical left. People on the left mostly just seem to be thinking of themselves, of their pet projects, and on getting everyone else to just be spectators, or marchers, or readers, or donors to them. People signing up to be equal, active participants in creatively building grassroots organizations? No, there is almost no interest there.

This is what capitalism has done to the radicals. It has sucked us dry and turned us way too far inward. And not inward in a healing way (that would be great, and is necessary), but in an unhealthy, cannibalistic way. Let me explain:

On one level, capitalism has captured many of our really energetic intellectuals, influencing them to go to universities and become academics, where they will be totally isolated from the movement outside of books and, worse, where they will be so pressured to come up with original theses and ideas etc….more books and cutting edge analyses, even though we really have many good ideas already, we just don’t practice them, and so we have radicals who just end up making old ideas more inaccessible, then they don’t engage with each other, they find cozy positions in society and…suddenly…where did they go? Off the streets, out of the neighborhoods, and into the ivory tower.

On another level, capitalism takes some of its cash and it doles it out to foundations, who dole it out to non-profits (read The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, by INCITE! must-read book), who then suck up our most accomplished and efficient organizers, having them organize stale campaigns and, worse, fundraisers, when they should be doing grassroots base-building outside of the non-profit system. They become professionals, who have traded efficiency in making narrow gains (and then exaggerating their victories for their donors and boards of directors) for effectiveness in building a mass-based visionary politics. Suddenly, where did all of the dynamic organizers who were willing to work for free go?

And the rest of us? With professional intellectuals making our ideas less user-friendly, not more, and with professional organizers making our work less ordinary-person friendly, not more, those of us who don’t join have to find normal jobs, where we are tired, and then we do activism on the side, in more or less unfunded and unstable groups, where we have a constant brain and ability drain into the academy and the non-profits, and we are left with sad little radical groups…which really just become the equivalent of farm teams in baseball…just a way for the big leagues to recruit our best and brightest, leaving us hanging.

Do I sound bitter? I am. I’m also furious. I have been a radical activist for more than 11 years. I still don’t have a radical group to belong to. Almost no one around me even seems very interested in the idea. My inspirations have all gone on to grad school. Maybe I will too. This makes me so sad.

Everything we know about global warming, water, and oil tells us that we are the generation that must take swift, decisive action. Us. Everything we know about the system tells us that it will not make these changes fast enough, or good enough. We must get organized and act for fundamental systemic change. We have the knowledge, the creativity, the generations of experience, the kick-ass intersectional revolutionary ideas and the ability to popularize them. We could win. We really could. But why aren’t we organizing more?

Because capitalism has bought too many of us off, and it has us cozying up. It had me for four years, at the high school, and I’m just now realizing how many other great things I could have and should have been doing. I still don’t regret it…at all. But now that I’m on my way out, I’m antsy to really find something effective to do now.

We can’t let this system beat us. We just can’t allow it. We are the generation to begin turning the tide. I want to rejoin that effort. Fuck getting paid for it (although, of course, I understand that some people have survival needs much bigger than my own…I’m speaking for myself)…fuck getting a book published out of it…I just want to make the world better….and yes to have my close people see my worth. This isn’t too much to ask.

Tomorrow, we have a staff meeting at the high school, in which mine and Briana’s work will likely be called into question, and it may very well mean that our services are no longer wanted.

I have worked there for four years now. It has simultaneously been the hardest, most painful, most powerful, and most effective political, emotional, and personal work I have ever done in my young life. They have been four incredible years. I will not regret them if this is the end, but I don’t want this to be the end. We’ve been working with a vision and a strategy, and for it to get rolled back this year, at this point, would be a major, tragic loss.

Tomorrow we will present our views, and all of the staff members will present theirs, and we’ll see where we all are. I have no idea what to expect. There frankly have been a lot of rumors going around about divisions and factions, and that freaks me out…because in dramas like that the radicals and visionaries are usually the first to be sacrificed.

I’ll let you know what happens, but I am preparing to leave. Crying sometimes. Enraged sometimes. Most of all sad for the students. I know that I am nowhere near the kind of educator and ally they really need at that school, but at the same time I KNOW that I am good for them, that Briana is good for them. If we leave, it should be because the school is ready to move on without us, not just because our work is not wanted or understood anymore.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Our work was possibly never wanted or understood as it really was, but rather as an idea, easily tokenized and marketed, of “student voice” and “student empowerment” and “social justice.” But then folks start to see the substance underneath the style and they get scared. It is a story that is WAY too old. I’m sorry to have to be just another rerun of it.

In this way, it was good yesterday to re-discover my old writings, and to recognize my own radical visionary abilities again. I think I’d forgotten lately that I am a valuable thinker and worker for social justice.

Wish me luck tomorrow, and still don’t forget to check out the writings, when you have time.

I’ve posted four of my most substantial pieces of writing from the last 5 years. Check them out (they are Word documents).

Two of them are works of revolutionary theory. The other two are attempts to express that theory in more creative, visionary ways (that is, they are fiction). I’m proud of all of them, with their flaws and gaps and all that.

To be honest, I’m thinking about maybe trying to do something more with some of these pieces. Not like a book, but at least trying to publish these as articles or zines…with some modifications, of course. I’d be interested to know what people think about that.

But seriously…the last two pieces are actually pretty fun reads, in my opinion, so I suggest checking them out.

Love you…and please be kind with any constructive criticism…because I am SUPER-INSECURE about my writing. Not defensive, but insecure.

P.S. If you do like any of the pieces, please tell other people about the blog!

Hi folks…

Well, I’ve gotta say that the old design of the blog was becoming too claustrophobic for me (but great job designing it, Dave! It served me well.) and so now I’m moving on.

The new design will make it easier to navigate and find things. It’ll also allow me to present more different types of content in the blog, which I’m really excited about.

So, you should come visit again in the next few days, and see what’s up!

I wanted to visit and to say hi to my little blog.

I’ve been busy. With some things that I still don’t want to talk about here. And with other things like applying to grad school (to become a teacher? Yikes!), and with designing a Magic: The Gathering style card game.

Tomorrow I have a meeting to find out about the future of my work at the high school, and I imagine that it will be pretty tense. So maybe that’s why I’m not sleeping right now.

I feel like this blog is becoming like a distant friend now…where I’m keeping so many things to myself that I feel like it doesn’t represent me or “know” me anymore. I don’t want this to be the case.

For those who have noticed my absence this week, I’m sorry.

I’ve been having a real hard time at the job and it’s kind of sucked away my emotional energy.

Truth is, I’ve had a lot that I’ve wanted write about…be it ideas about local organizing, Iraq, the Democrats, analysis of oppression, The Good Shephard, Borat, the upcoming constitutional referendum in Ecuador (April 15th!), and much more.

But really there is a more important post that I’m working on that should be up some time in the next week, so just be patient.

In the meantime, check out the comments on my post about Oppression Olympics. Some one wrote in and challenged me with some really good points.

Hope y’all are well.

Check this out, on my friend Andrew’s blog.

I’ve been thinking about how I still want to be writing more about more local, more grassroots kinds of things, but I think I realize why its hard: the vast majority of the political work that I’m doing and seeing relates to my work at the school, and I’m reluctant to speak about that work in a public forum like this as long as I’m employed there and working for the State. But I wish I could say more, because that work is so very, very satisfying, more than any other political work I’ve done in the more than 10 years that I’ve been an “activist.” Someday I’ll talk about it.

Sunday morning and I’m listening to Propagandhi’s latest album (they are a Canadian political punk band). I just had the strongest urge to hear them after my week of work. I’ve been listening to them since I was 15 (wow, 10 years!) and they just have a specific kind of white-boy “I can’t believe all of this is happening in the world and my parents never told me about it so now I’m REALLY pissed” rage that speaks strongly to me.

Also have the urge to listen to some Cat Stevens and Tracy Chapman today. And earlier this week I was listening to Alanis Morrisette. She has some really good feminist songs!

Been following the democratic presidential race daily, because it’s something to do, and every day John Edwards is impressing me more and more. Never expected it. Now clearly I am pulling for Obama and Hillary for the identity milestone reasons, but politically Edwards is setting himself apart more each day. He’s actually talking about real stuff on a daily level. For example: talking about ending poverty in the US by 2030 (at least talking about it), talking about drastically cutting down carbon emissions, talking about a non-aggression pact with Iran, about the genocide in Darfur, about net neutrality, about withdrawing troops now, about supporting rights of workers to organize, and most recently, talking about a cabinet level global poverty position, which would be his priority approach to national security…classrooms not battlefields (which still could signify expansion of empire, but AT LEAST by feeding people and providing books instead of killing them). So, yeah, he’s intriguing right now.

Another Friday evening. Got home from the high school a few hours ago, cooked some dinner, then mopped the kitchen floor. I’m tired.

And right now I don’t know why I do this.

Do you ever get that? I bet you do…those moments or days where you forget why you’re doing the work you do, why you’re living where you’re living, why you made all of the chains of choices that brought you to this point?

I think it’s really healthy to let reality unravel like that every once in awhile. Everything in moderation, and all that, but for me it helps remind me that this, my life, is just one of many possible lives, and that there are many other choices I could be making. It’s grounding, I guess.

Working at a high school, and being there to organize for social justice of all things, is just so tiring on every level. My body is tired. My back hurts. I’m perpetually sleepy despite almost always getting 8+ hours. I cherish my evenings and my days off like warm, golden honey. Even five minutes more on the snooze alarm is worth resnuggling into my bed for. Perhaps this is just the working life in general, but I’ve never felt it so strongly as this year, working this hard at this high school.

In other news…there is a lot happening in Ecuador…with 57 opposition senators being fired by the electoral commission or something for trying to stall the constituent assembly…and Chavez, as you probably know, made a tour across Latin America and the Caribbean in an effort to overshadow Bush–and succeeded. Chavez is actually on Barbara Walters tonight…check it out. Locally, the Tacoma Port protests have marched on, and I still would like to tell my story about that someday. It was weird to be there, with tear gas and weird sparkling fireworks things flying around me…and yet I was perfectly calm, just trying to help other people out, trying to keep people from running and panicking. Interesting bodily response, I thought.

There is so much that I still don’t share on this blog and I wonder when I will have the guts to break those silences.

One last thing: I believe that the next generation of activists will be much better at what they do than we are…and I think that we are actually pretty good.

I love all of you. Until next time.

OH AND PS:  Still having vivid dreams nightly.  Last night I was fishing  by hand for salmon in a creek.  It was kind of beautiful.

Another fact about me that some people know and others don’t: I’m straight-edge, which is a stupid punk-rock term that means that I don’t drink, or smoke, or do drugs. Never done any of those things and I doubt I ever will. I’m not judgemental or in your face about it, it’s just kind of something I came to in high school and never felt like giving up…it’s an eccentricity that I like about myself.

When I was in high school I had this super dorky slogan I told myself: “Dreams Over Drugs.” Truth is, I’m a very, very vivid dreamer (I often have lucid dreams, in which I know I’m dreaming and I can shift and control them…so I very rarely have nightmares), and so I decided that I would focus on my dreaming as an alternative to the psychadelic drugs that my friends were doing.

What I’ve found is that if I actively try to remember my dream from the night before, especially if I write it down, then I will dream vividly again the next day. I’ll let you know if this is confirmed by my dreams tonight…

Edit: Yep, I had very vivid dreams last night, and since I remembered them I hope the cycle will continue and my dreams will just get better.

I want to talk a little bit about growing as a political person, and the significance of that for me.

When I was a little kid, like 6 years old, I used to watch the TV show “Family Ties” with my mom. I don’t have many concrete memories from the show, but I do remember that I looked up to Michael J. Fox’s character, Alex P. Keaton, and I remember that he loved Ronald Reagan, and so I loved Ronald Reagan, too. I also remember the youngest child on the show, a cute little blond-haired kid, and I remember that I was entranced by him. I was entranced by the idea that there was actually somebody my age on TV. More importantly, I remember that I was very concerned with whether he was younger than me or older than me, because if he was younger than me, then somehow that reflected on me and my self-worth…that I was actually older than someone on television. That maybe I could even be on television.

The same thing happened years later with Macaulay Culkin, right after Home Alone came out. I remember reading a magazine and I found out that he was 3 months older than me and I was devastated.

When I was 16, I heard something about how the old philosopher David Hume wrote one of his most famous works before the age of 21 or something, and I told myself that I was going to beat him, and publish my first book before the age of 20. It didn’t happen, and I remember having a tinge of sadness on that birthday, although I didn’t tell anyone.

Also, when I was between the ages of 14 and 20, I was very interested in historical figures like Mao and Lenin and Stalin and Ho Chi Minh, and read biographies of all of them. I was particularly interested in their beginnings as leaders, in their school years, in their twenties, and I took mental notes of how I was stacking up. Was I going to make history like them? Was I going to be a famous leader?

I sure wanted to be a leader like them. Clearly, I would be a leader who would NOT be a butcher or a sellout or a hypocrite, I would be the one who broke the historical legacy of faulty leaders. Who truly WAS a liberator. I would be different, and that would be my particular claim to fame. The anarchist version of the Mao, of the Lenin (complete contradiction in terms, though it is)…and the biographies would highlight my distinctions boldly.

For a good number of years, I lived my life and grew as a political activist and organizer with a very real kind of double-consciousness going on. I genuinely wanted equality, social justice, liberation for all people, and I could imagine many details of that dream. But at the same time, I wanted that global liberation to come FROM ME, from my innovations, and leadership, and legacy. As if the revolution were Arthurian legend, I wanted to be the ONE to pull the sword from the stone (actually…thinking about it…that too was an old cartoon that really spoke to me growing up…interesting). I was a revolutionary optimist partly because I knew that it was my own destiny to usher in the revolution.

The problem was that, of course, there was a fundamental contradiction between my supposed beliefs in direct democracy, massive grassroots social movements and non-hierarchical social structures and my own ego. And over a number of years, as I began to rise in the “activist ranks” and began to find myself being offered opportunities to assert myself as a leader, as a spokesperson or whatever, that contradiction became a lived reality that really started to affect my choices. Especially in the climate of post-WTO radical organizing in the Pacific Northwest, I found myself faced with questions of integrity that held many of my friendships in the balance.

Thankfully, though, I met some feminists.

And, as so many feminists do for wayward young activist dudes, they introduced me to a way of thinking that, for them–and I would imagine most marginalized people–was just second nature, but to me was earth-shattering: they introduced me to the reality that I am not the center of the world.

From those first rocky interactions with feminism (I very nearly lost most of those friendships, too…in fact I pretty much did), I was eventually pushed and guided toward critiques of white racism, and then even more deeply into women of color’s thinking and organizing around ideas of multiple, intersecting oppressions…and each time, each day, each conference, each book just shook me further and further away from notions of myself, of who I am, and of why I’m here.

The realization, so obscenely simple: that there are actually billions of people on this planet, all of whom hope to be good people, to do good, to be recognized in their work, to be loved and cared for and admired. And that for me to want to claim all of that, to hoard that all for myself and for my posterity…how brutally greedy and foul it is…and how typical.

This shit simply just shook me to my core. Not like in one night of epiphany, but much more slowly, over time, in a process of realization that really just doesn’t stop.

Egos. Of all the questions that surround us when we think of social change, I think this question of ego often gets missed or, more often, misunderstood. It is sooooo deep, and it goes so far beyond just me and my particular story, and it goes so far beyond just white dudes, or white people, or middle class people, or educated people. It is much, much deeper, and I think much more crucial than the particular experiences of one or a handful of identity groups.

This is about who we are, about our places in the world, and about, like I said, a very real desire to be loved and to BE RECOGNIZED in this life. It is so simple but there is so much there, and if we look at social movements (or really any grouping of people) it is amazing to see how far egos and their misplaced desires and insecurities take us. The hierarchical, competitive nature of our society and of all oppressive societies fundamentally warps our senses of our selves — certainly some more than others, and probably proportionate to how close we are to the centers of power — and it warps our ability to hold our own value and desire for recognition alongside that of those around us. We sabotage even those we love because we see and feel threats to our egos all around us.

For me, this question of ego has required me to examine and redefine pretty much every aspect of who I want to be, of how I define success for myself. I cannot deny that it is still fun to think about being able to give speeches that draw crowds, to write a book and maybe get on c-span bookTV, to maybe be somewhere in a history book…and I think a lot about the implications of those lingering fantasies. But more commonly these days, these years, I feel like what I want for myself has shifted towards things much more simple. I dream much more often now of participating in revolutionary processes so big and complex that my own head couldn’t possibly hold onto them, of revolutions that would make me feel like a constant tourist, watching in awe as the people all around me create new things and we really learn from each other. I think about my personal success as the building and sustaining of even just a small community…of shared food and reinvented holidays and kids running around and looking up to us maybe for a few years, but then discovering our foibles, rebelling, and then maybe then reconciling with us years later…I think about plants, and simple music, and simple writings that maybe only my friends read, like these blog entries. I think about designing and playing games. I think about doing good work at a local level, like in the high school where I work, and fighting so hard for the people around me…with the people around me. Knowing them. Crying with them…and just weeping and embracing in sharing our losses and our triumphs.

What I think about is the significance of being just one among many, and rather than thinking that means something boring, conformist, robotic, I think about the magic of it: that we live in a world that is so richly filled with beautiful, brilliant, creative people, and that if unleashed we could share in so much joy and discovery every day, on every block, in every nook and cranny of our lives. In this life it is a privilege to be one among so many who are so fantastic.

Over time, and through the struggle of many patient people who love me and believe in me, I have come to see that there is something far, far more beautiful than the sight of a billion posters with one great liberator’s face: billions of faces making billions of unique posters about their own mutual inspiration and liberation.

So suck on that, Macaulay Culkin.

Just read this article and thought I’d link to it. It’s a good overview of Venezuela’s communal councils, and I think it does a good job of exploring the numerous questions that are bound to be raised in a process like this. A lot of these questions remind me, on a much smaller scale, of questions raised in the high school transformation work I’ve been doing these last few years.

Speaking of which, I’ve been feeling very overworked and emotionally exhausted working at the high school, and that is a big reason for why I haven’t posted since Saturday night. This is sad, because there is much that I want to talk about. I have a whole list of topics that I keep on a crumbled piece of paper in my pocket.

For now, though, I feel safe in asking you to go rent the documentary Jesus Camp and then please come back here and comment on it. Anyone who’s been around me these last few years knows how much I talk about and think about the Evangelical Right and their movement-building work, and this movie really puts faces on the stuff I’ve been thinking about; namely that they are trying to build a rich, parallel subculture which acts a base for eventually winning power in the US. This movie is especially interesting because it focuses on one of the most essential elements of any culture or subculture which hopes to sustain and reproduce itself: the children. It’s a freaky vision of what’s happening out there, but I hope also that it’s a wake-up call. I will write more about this in the future.

Been playing the board game Carcassone a lot with my brother and his wife. Damn is that game fun! Especially with the towers expansion, which makes the game a lot more cutthroat and interactive.

This past Thursday, I went to a special neighborhood meeting that was called because a local non-profit, Casa Latina, wants to relocate all of its services to our neighborhood, and some of the neighbors are concerned. Frankly, some of them are terrified and, as usual, those damned isms are the culprit.

Racism, classism, and xenophobia, to be more specific.

See, Casa Latina is an organization with the purpose of helping mostly Latina/o immigrants to pursue work, education, and personal empowerment. They have ESL programs, women’s empowerment programs, and they also have an active day-labor center, which helps immigrant workers to find day-labor within more dignified conditions than they might otherwise find. Basically, they are doing really good, important work.

My neighbors all seem to agree. Except some of them don’t want that work to be done “in their backyard.” “Can’t you do your good work somewhere else, doesn’t our neighborhood have enough non-profits doing good work?” (actual statement) “Our neighborhood is finally moving away from being a social service magnet, this is taking us in exactly the wrong direction.” Basically, the message was: go help poor Latina/os elsewhere. Here they’re good enough to build our houses and cut our lawns, but god forbid that they actually stick around and set up shop here!

It seems that our neighborhood, Jackson Place (sort of within and between the International District and the Central District in Seattle, right along Jackson st.), is definitely undergoing a process of gentrification, with fancy condos going up and businesses moving in (target is also looking to relocate nearby), and so Casa Latina is exactly the kind of thing that some folks just don’t want. It’s bad for the property values, you know. More white professionals? All for ‘em! More poor brown people? What, what?!

So basically this is how the meeting broke down: the majority of the members were older Asian folks, with some older white folks. The majority were against Casa Latina (but this was just the last in MANY community meetings about this project…and this one was organized by the angry neighbors who seem to have not have heard about the MANY other meetings!), and there were a handful of us who welcome Casa Latina. Also, there were a number of women from the Casa Latina board strongly and clearly defending their project and their organization, and there were two Mexican immigrant men who spoke very emotionally and painfully about the effect that racism and distance from their homes has caused them here in Seattle.

In my view, the “antis” already had their minds made up before the meeting even started. The majority of them were defensive, distrusting, and snotty as hell…basically insinuating that Casa Latina has been planning this project deceptively and with some kind of sweetheart deal with the city, and that they are trying to sneak these new offices onto our streets without telling any of us. When the women strongly explained that this was not the case, it seemed like most of the folks weren’t listening. And there’s a reason for this: the isms had drowned out all other noise in the room.

Only five minutes in, the real issue was out in the open: the anger had nothing to do with lack of open communication or planning protocol or anything, and it had everything to do with the image of poor Latino men out on the street-corner waiting for work.

Latino men. That was the issue. Period.

“I’ve been living here twenty years and we have fought prostitution, drugs, homeless people, people sleeping in benches…and we are terrified of this. We don’t want you here in our neighborhood,” yelled the angry white man who then proceeded to interrupt pretty much everyone else in the room as the night went on.

“Just tell me, are these people legal, or are they illegal?” Another white man chimed in.

“Sir, we don’t ask.”

“Well, then you’re supporting criminals!”

“You don’t even do a background check? We have children going to school nearby, how can the city allow this?”

Fear. Fear. Fear. The image of Latino men, huddled together in the morning, speaking in tongues…who knows what they are saying in that language of theirs…perhaps they are planning on kidnapping our children…or selling drugs. You know, because drugs do come from, you know, those countries down there.

God, it was just a few rifles short of being a Minuteman meeting…and the sad thing was that some of those angry folks weren’t white…they were Asian. It was actually quite devastating, especially in that the “antis”‘ petition actually compared the deal that the city made with Casa Latina to the JAPANESE INTERNMENT! What the?!

There were some allies who spoke up, and the two Mexican men held their ground (even when one of them told the Asian folks that their minds had been poisoned by the racism of white people…every one gasped and laughed at him…despite him being completely right), and frankly Casa Latina is going to win this, because the actual majority of the neighborhood supports them…but it was so painful to watch as stereotypes just rolled along and just got worse.

But I could only smile during the last minutes, when things were really made clear. The old angry white man, who had been yelling and interrupting, all to much applause, decided to tell us a story about how there were three groups doing neighborhood break-ins. One group was caught, and they were three Latinos. (At this point, I loudly said, “OH GOD, here we go!”). He told us that they had climbed up and broken into like the third story of the building…

“They were Latinos who broke in like this. Not black people. Black people just do not break into buildings. Black people will break into your car, or steal other stuff, but they don’t break into buildings.”

And with that, I hope the rest of the “antis” really got to see what position they were associating themselves with. The same old bullshit, dressed up as civic concern for the neighborhood. Those old White Citizen’s Councils were all about being civic minded as well.

Every day more lines are drawn in a not-so-new war against immigrants. Before Thursday, I didn’t know that our own block would end up being a battlefield.

Viva Casa Latina…

Pero, realmente, viva la revolucion…porque una chiquita organizacion como esa no va a poder ganar lo que realmente necesitamos…un cambio completo de este sistema tan injusto, corrupto y criminal. Poco a poco…

Well, I just got back from an amazing youth poetry slam and on my way home I was crafting a post about it. I was going to write about how, for me, poetry is the closest I feel to a revolutionary spirituality, a kind of deep, whole sharing of ourselves, our subjectivities, within a shared context. We are all there, and we get to watch as the center is shifted from person to person, with new stories and perspectives and ways of connecting us to something powerful through language, and intonation, and movement.

So, that was what I was going to write about…but then I read my friend Andrew’s blog and he, amazingly, has said much of what I was going to say. That is a neat bit of serendipity. It kind of made my day. Please read that entry, and then keep reading his blog, because he’s a sharp and dedicated fellow.

In other news, Seymour Hersh was on Democracy Now! today, that was interesting.

Venezuela’s Vice President gave a great speech at the anniversary of the “Caracazo”, the anti-globalization uprising in 1989 that arguably kicked off the current revolutionary process. Once again, he talked about how the communal councils will become the new form of government of Venezuela, a communal socialist government. He also talked specifically about how if the government tries too hard to direct or manage the “explosion of popular power” it will only kill popular power; and about how the government needs to get out of the offices and into the streets. This is a good sign, but of course time will tell.

I’m searching daily for more news about Rigoberta Menchu, but right now the Guatemalan media is more focused on the brutal killing of 3 Salvadoran congress people by Guatemalan police officers. Clearly it’s a really big deal, whether it is related to organized crime, or the state, or whatever.

Maybe someday I will write a poem and post it here. I did write poetry in high school. Even did some slams and had a show downtown. But then I just stopped, and for some reason it feels hard to start again. But that’s how it felt to write in this blog, too.

It’s really interesting to me how the entire flavor and texture of life can change simply by changing the ways in which we engage ourselves in it.  Just by writing in this blog again I feel so many parts of myself are opening up in other parts of my life, and I feel like my mind and senses are getting sharpened.

I’ve started working alot in the garden of my 6-person collective house.  We’ve been tearing up weeds and digging some paths and then laying down bricks and gravel to make them pretty.  Yesterday I helped install a low fence made out of old bicycle wheels dug halfway into the ground.  I’m also renovating our greywater system, which recycles shower water through  series of sand filters, into a small bathtub pond which then filters the water more, until it is ready to go through a hose and water the garden.  It’s neat.  Also I’m talking with my housemates more, eating better, being better with email correspondence (including writing to some old friends).  I’m applying to grad school to get my master’s in teaching (maybe).  I’m more focused at work (sometimes).  And I’m more present with my friends, family, housemates, and partner.  This blog is some kind of amazing medicine for me.  And it’s an addiction.  I come home from work and I just want to write in it, but then I stop myself because I realize that I would just be writing about work all the time.  So it’s better to pause, think, and wait before I just write whatever.

So, now for some random things I learned today:

-Just read Seymour Hersh’s new article (look, I can do links now, thanks Dave!) in the New Yorker about the administrations shifting foreign policy in the Middle East.  Damn.  So it looks like we’re covertly siding with Sunnis in order to contain the Shiites, to the point of financing radical Sunnis (like Al Quaeda allies???) to attack Hezbollah, etc…all of this running without congressional knowledge through the Vice Presidents office? Wow!  Now that’s sinister!

-Today the socialist president of Ecuador,  Rafael Correa (remember, I like this guy), ordered the military to make itself useful by providing for the public good, in an emergency order to build and repair the highway system, using the money that was slated to be used to pay the foreign debt.  This is important for two reasons: 1) Because Correa is making good on his promise to prioritize the “social debt” of the country over the foreign debt, and 2) Because Correa is playing like Chavez in trying to integrate the military into a protagonistic, civil role in the transformational process.  Very, very smart.  Arbenz and Allende fell not solely for lack of military support, but it was part of it, so this is good stuff.  By the way, Correa also has insisted on having a woman as the defense minister.  Even after the first one was killed in a plane crash, he made sure that her replacement would be a woman.  ALSO, he refused to allow anyone call his wife the first lady (primera dama), because he says it is sexist.

-There is an article here about Chavez and his environmental projects.  It’s a bit propagandistic, though I tend to like Eva Golinger’s writing.  This is a bit much, considering that there are still major critiques to be made of the Venezuelan governments oil projects, industrial projects, and ambitious pipeline projects.  Some more perspective, please, Eva.

-Didn’t play any Star Chamber today.  I was too tired from work to concentrate.  Plus it’s more fun to read the news on the internet.

-Watched the Oscar-winning Melissa Ethridge song on you tube…and I just started crying all over the place.  That would be a longer blog post to explain why (the last post can give you an idea, I think).  This world is just so, so beautiful and we deserve so, so much better.  Does global social transformation really need to be so hard?
Darn you power elite for always being such sticks in the mud!

I have nothing particularly profound to say tonight, but I had a hard day that has only gotten harder as it has progressed. And the thing is that all of it has involved watching other people who I care about who are hurting.

Don’t want to be naive guy here, but why are so many people hurting? Why are so many people so lonely, or self-doubting, or, just tired of living?

Sometimes I just sit here, in my bed, and I just look up at the ceiling and I think about how seriously, deeply fucked up our society really is. I try to allow the enormity of it pass over me. I don’t care what cynical folks say, or post-oppression folks, or folks who make themselves feel smart by being dismissive of rage and sadness at the world…I don’t care what they say because I, even with all of my happy times and great privileges, can see just how totally senseless this place is. Not the world, because the WORLD is beautiful. But our SOCIETY…

Senseless. Without fucking sense.

And it’s amazing how many people there are who get paid, who get degrees, who build status and careers all trying to explain this mess, to package it as THE way, trying to argue how it’s good for us, that this is the best of all possible worlds. Well, perhaps so, but it still sucks…and it could be a whole lot better.

To all of you who I know or who know me and who are in pain, I love you. I love you from the core of me, from my baby self through my wide-eyed toddler self and beyond. You may not believe me and that’s part of the problem, huh? And I am sorry. And if I’m a part of the pain then I hope you really know that I’m sorry.

When I was little I just wanted to cuddle up with the Snuggles Detergent bear. I just wanted to lay in those soft warm towels with that cute little bear. Boy, have I seen alot since then.

Umm, pretty much the nerdiest stuff of all:

-The Nintendo Wii.  My brother has one.  He got up at 5 in the morning and waited in line for it.  It is one of the funnest toys I’ve ever played with.  Even my mom enjoys it.  I played Zelda for like 2 days straight.  Then I played Wii sports tennis for like 3 hours…and now my brother and I play Madden football on the Wii every weekend or so.  It’s simply really, really fun.  Of course, all critiques of consumerism, etc. apply.  But still it’s hella fun.  And I avoid the really offensive and violent games, naturally.

-The Nintendo DS.  Really almost more fun than the Wii.  I’ve been playing this musical rhythm game called “Elite Beat Agents” and I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun playing a video game.  It’s very, very addictive.

What’s wrong with me, playing so many video games?  Don’t know, but now I’ve imposed a new limit on myself of no more than 2 hours of TV or video games a day.

There is just way more important stuff to do in the world…

The good thing is I don’t spend any money on this stuff…it’s all been gifts or borrowing or whatever.  I’m actually pretty much only spending money on food these days.  Everything else towards savings and debt and international phone cards.

I would like to thank Alisa, Andrew, and Dave for showing me that you’ve been reading this site lately…for making me want to reach out to you and write more…share more of myself with you.

I also want to thank Glendi, Lambert, and Briana for what y’all are doing to make me feel inspired again.

I just wrote a whole flurry of blog posts in one sitting, because something has clicked in me and I feel inspired again.

It’s okay to have typos and it’s okay to make personal and political mistakes…but it’s not okay for me to just go through each day silently when I have so much that I want to share and experience with the people who I love.  I don’t want my fears to be that powerful in my life.

When I was 14, I kind of decided that I wanted to be a revolutionary.

That decision transformed my life.

Being who I am, with all of the privileges associated with a white, male, middle-class identity, I have always just been sure that I will see global revolution in my lifetime…just like other kids of my identity were sure that they could become doctors and politicians and businessmen. The mythology of our culture is, after all, that we can do anything we put our minds to…I just applied that to global social transformation. And that has always made me one of the most optimistic radicals that I know.

Well recently I’ve been talking with old radical friends and we get to talking about we’ve grown and changed and settled and compromised…and we get to talking about hope, and I say, “yeah, I feel like I have more hope for revolution now than I’ve ever had before.”

…and they just kind of stare at me. Or can’t believe it.

And really, to respond, I only need one word: Venezuela.

There is something magical happening in Venezuela. It is the magic that happens when the energies and aspirations and minds of millions of ordinary people are awakened into social movements. There is a genuine revolution happening there. And it is speeding up so fast that I don’t think the English translators have caught up yet.

It’s not all about Hugo Chavez. Yes, he is the leader, the icon, the figurehead…yes he has tons of power (and now more with the “enabling law” which allows him to fast-track new laws without approval from congress)…and yes there is a gross cult of personality around him (seriously, it’s really gross). But it really isn’t all about him. What he symbolizes, what he talks about, and what he is trying to create is not all about him…it is literally about giving power to the people. I know that sounds weird…especially coming from an anarchist. But it’s the truth.

From the beginning, Chavez has said that to end poverty power must be given to the poor, and since the beginning he and his people have been transforming Venezuelan infrastructure to open up more spaces for popular participation and organization.

Down there, the discourse is very lively around democracy. WAY more lively than here. Unlike supporting Hillary or Obama or McCain or whatever, down there supporting Chavez implies wanted to actually be A PART of the process. They are very critical of representative democracy down there. They talk a lot more about participatory and DIRECT democracy.

And institutionally, these new forms of democracy are blossoming. The Venezuelan state is massively funding new Communal Councils…which are directly elected and recallable councils that represent 200-400 families only…and they are being given state funds to improve their own communities…also there is more and more talk about workers councils…about democracy in schools…about participatory budgets. The discussion of economic democracy and Socialism is now mainstream in Venezuela. The movement toward democratic socialism is now a mainstream debate…and it is a fiery one.

What I see in Venezuela is millions of people engaged in a very messy process that a lot of people outside of Venezuela don’t really understand (and I KNOW that I don’t fully understand it…but I’m reading about it, in Spanish, every day). It is a process that my radical friends and I have only been dreaming about…but down there they are building it. And soon, too, in Ecuador, in Bolivia…maybe in Cuba someday. Maybe in Nicaragua…maybe even in Guatemala.

So yeah…I still consider myself a revolutionary. And I still believe that we can do it. Venezuela can’t show us the way…because the US is much too different. But it should definitely be lighting a fire under our asses.

Need to bring some other parts of myself to this blog.  So with that, some nerd stuff:

-I have been spending about two hours a day lately playing a game called Star Chamber online.  (www.starchamber.net) It’s like a cross between a collectible card game (like Magic) and a board game…with a Star-Treky sci-fi theme.  It’s basically one of the greatest games I’ve ever played and I’m a total addict.  I’d love to play my friends on it, so maybe you should look into it.  It does cost a bit of money to get cards…but there is a strong player community that’ll give you tons of free cards.  They’ve given me hundreds.

-Recently read the sci-fi/woo-woo-fiction novel “The Fifth Sacred Thing,” and even with witchraft and magic and stuff I absolutely loved it.  It reminded me once again of the spirituality of my politics…and how so much of what I believe is rooted in a simple love for life and people and animals, even if I end up getting distracted by big-word theory sometimes.

-I love youtube.com  and I really have gotten into the fake tech-show called “infinite solutions.”  See if you like it.

-I also am a sucker for Saturday Night Live’s digital shorts…I love the newer “laser cats” ones.  When I was 8, my brother and I made a homemade “Aliens 3″ that was almost exactly like those videos.

-I tell my friends that the movie “Children of Men” was a movie for people like us.  It’s the best movie I’ve paid $9 for in awhile.  Also Dreamgirls…loved it.  And I laughed more than I’ll admit at “Music and Lyrics” with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore (saw it with my parents, okay!)

There’s much more nerd stuff that I keep inside.  Maybe another day.

Yeah, so it’s been awhile and the funny thing is that the last time I wrote I said that I wanted to write more. But I didn’t end up doing it.

Why?

Well, basically because, as much as I want to write and express myself and explore ideas, etc, I’m just scared. I’m scared to write, and I always have been, for as long as I can remember.

For some reason, when I first started this blog while I was in Guatemala, I could write and write and write, and I didn’t really want to stop. But as soon as I got home, when I actually had MORE access to the internet and more free time, that is when everything froze.

What happened? Why did it take a LACK of access to the internet to get me to write, to actually share something of myself…and then when I’m in my normal life I clam up. I procrastinate. I just have so much anxiety and fear about so many things.

I think partly its because when I was away, I was distant from all of the forces in my life that keep me quiet. The people who I fear will judge me. The pressures that I feel on my time, etc.

I think also it is the affect of living the kind of consumerist lifestyle that I live. I am surrounded by distractions. I have so many other things to do besides be creative and expressive, and it seems that at nearly every opportunity, I choose to do those other things.

This makes me so sad, because really there is always so much interesting and beautiful stuff going on in my head that I would love to explore, and even share with whoever reads this, but it just doesn’t get out. But that’s also a part of it, as well. I get so overwhelmed by all of the things that I want to do, all at the same time, that I end up not doing anything.

I want this to change. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Maybe I’ll do something or not. I guess we’ll all see, depening on future entries.

…And really, there is SO much that I want to be saying to all of you, to myself, right now.

Maybe someday.

I got back from Caracas on Monday evening. I’ve been pretty much home sick since then. Nothing serious, just a sore throat and slight fever.

But it’s made it even harder to acclimate back to my life here in Seattle…especially because of all that I experienced down there in Venezuela.

Don’t be fooled by the lack of updates to this blog…the reason I haven’t written isn’t for lack of things to write, but just the opposite. I was having so many back-to-back experiences every day (from 7am to 2am…I only got about four hours of sleep a night) that I couldn’t find time to search for an internet cafe and write up my reflections.

Only now, sick at home and bored, am I finding this time to type something up.

And what do I have to say?

Well, fundamentally, I can say that I have come back to the United States with a whole new level of hope.

For the first time in a long time, I feel like I have real hope for the world that is not based in my own self-generated fantasies of a different society, but rather in concrete processes that are actually taking place. For the first time in a long time, I can sit back and relax as my hope is refilled from an external source rather than from my own rusting reserves of teenage idealism…it feels so refreshing.

In Venezuela–and more broadly in contemporary Latin America and in the World Social Forum–there is something happening. It is something that people like me and my friends have been dreaming about and have been predicting for years, only to be called naive, only to be accused of misunderstanding human nature. There is a process underway that is engaging millions and millions of people in the creation of a new kind of society, based around a handful of key values: inclusion, participatory democracy, socialism, and integration.

The process is not perfect. In fact, it’s a mess. There is corruption. There is mismanagement. There is conflict. There is chaos. There are power struggles and there are injustices. It would be foolish to hide these or to apologize for them. They are real and they are a problem. But at the same time the process is also real. It is not made moot by it’s contradictions, in fact it might end up being strengthened by them…

I know that this is all vague so far. Sorry for that. But what I’m talking about is actually very solid and concrete and measurable…and it goes like this:

Venezuela, historically, has been a tremendously unequal country. 60-80% below the poverty line, while the middle and upper classes have enjoyed a US/Europe style consumer lifestyle…including shopping trips to Miami for new clothes (Venezuela isn’t that far from Florida…or Cuba for that matter). At the same time, it is one of the most oil-rich countries in the world…but historically only the top few have benefited from this wealth. As in most Latin American countries, there have always been social movements in Venezuela…there have been coup attempts, Guerilla movements, protest movements, riots (especially the 1989 riots in Caracas called the “caracazo” which arguably led to the current revolutionary process)…and these have left a legacy which eventually led to a left-wing coup attempt by a young paratrooper named Hugo Chavez Frias in 1992…Chavez’ coup failed, but he became a popular hero, was able to build a movement from jail, and then ran for president in 1998 on a promise to change the entire system, starting with a new constitution. He won. He won by 55+ %, which is rare for Latin American elections…especially since he didn’t really have a party. But he won. And he immediately held a national referendum to ask about rewriting the constitution. This passed. Then he called for elections for form a representative constituent assembly. This happened. Then the constitution was written, hastily debated at all levels of society (but emphasis should be put on the word hasty), and then it was also put up for referendum. It passed…and became one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, spelling out such rare things as social security guarantees for housewives, a whole chapter on indigenous rights, the idea of participatory democracy as opposed to mere representative democracy (that is, citizens actually directly participate in decision-making, they don’t just elect higher representatives to do all that in their name), rights for people with disabilities, etc…I have a copy and it really is quite amazing. It actually became a huge source of pride, especially for poorer Venezuelans, who for the first time began to feel included in the political process.

With the new constitution, Chavez and the entire government needed to be “re-legitimized” and so he and the entire new national assembly were re-elected in 2000…again by majorities. Then the reforms came. Land reforms. Fishing reforms. Oil reforms. The rich became antsy and they began to more seriously resist…

In 2002, with US support, the rich organized a coup. It only lasted 3 days. The poor supporters of Chavez, along with the rank-and-file of the Venezuelan military, came out of their homes and barracks and took the power back, putting Chavez back into the presidency (there is an amazing documentary about this, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” and you need to see it).

But the rich didn’t stop. They organized an “oil strike,” shutting down Venezuela’s most important industry and smashing the economy. But over time, this tactic failed as well, because lower-rank oil workers took over oil production, and Chavez filed the upper-bureacracy…stabilizing the economy again…

Then Chavez began deeper reforms. The missions. Mission Robinson, which seeks to complete eliminate illiteracy through free neighborhood reading programs. Mission Ribas and Sucre, which allow adults to finish high school and college, also for free. Mission Barrio Adentro (1, 2, and 3), which provide doctors and clinics within poor neighborhoods for absolutely free care. Mission Mercal, which provides special supermarkets with heavily subsidized foods….all of this paid for by oil profits that previously had only gone to the rich.

And so the rich kept at it…and they tried to use the constitution itself against Chavez…being a progressive constitution, it allows for the population to recall any politician from power, even the president. And so the opposition gathered signatures from 20% of the population (though this is disputed), and there was a recall referendum in 2004…once again Chavez won with a 55% majority. Only solidifying his political stability.

Since then, Chavez has become even more radical in his programs. More money for the missions. More money for social spending. Increased support for the formation of worker’s cooperatives as opposed to traditional top-down capitalist businesses…and just last year he finally used the “s-word”….Socialism. That is the direction that Venezuela is heading in. I couldn’t be happier.

Chavez states, repeatedly, that Venezuelan socialism will be fundamentally different than the USSR, or Cuba, or China…those models do not work (in my view, they aren’t socialist at all). In the Venezuelan process, they are trying to build socialism right alongside this other thing, called participatory democracy. They want equality, but they want it anchored in a democracy that allows people to discuss and debate and have real control over how things develop in the society…and this is what I saw in Venezuela.

In Venezuela, we visited a number of cooperatives, and missions, and community meetings, and we met with a large number of folks who are involved in this revolutionary process, and what I saw in all of this gave me hope. Just as I said in the last post, Chavez is not a dictator. He’s not perfect, and I think he’s too popular (he’s like a folk hero, with t-shirts, and dolls, and posters and all that…not by imposition but genuinely because he’s so popular…which is a problem. No person should be that popular, it’s dangerous), but at the same time there are millions of people trying to make this process happen independent of Chavez…and I think they will succeed. With time, I think they will succeed.

Okay, I’m tired for now…but I want to end this post just by saying that I think we in the US need to study what’s happening in Latin America very carefully. First, because if we don’t then we are going to be taken very much by surprise when we see a whole slew of socialist societies right down there at our South. But second, because we can learn so much from what is happening about how our own society should be changed. Hopefully we can do it without a strong personality like a Chavez…but I hope we do it somehow.

To all of those who actually read this thing,

I’m back at the keyboard again, preparing to share more about myself, my life, my ideas once again…and it’s taken another bit of international travel to get me here. I’m going to Venezuela.

Through a unique opportunity at my college, I am traveling to Caracas, Venezuela to attend the 2006 Americas Section of the World Social Forum, which is a massive annual gathering of people who believe that “another world is possible” (that’s the forum’s slogan). There are expected to be around 100,000 people attending, from all over the Americas, and there are 2,200 scheduled workshops, meetings, performances, speeches, etc.

This is all really exciting, but honestly I’m more excited just to be going to Venezuela itself. I’ve been following the political developments in Venezuela since 2003, pretty much on a daily basis, and I believe that people down there are genuinely trying to create a peaceful social revolution…which hopefully those of us in other countries can learn from (both positive and negative lessons). At the same time, however, this revolutionary process is very polarizing down there, and there is A LOT of media/government bias here in the U.S. about what they are trying to do in Venezuela, and so it’s very hard to get accurate information.

A good tip is: DON’T BELIEVE WHAT THE MEDIA SAYS ABOUT VENEZUELA. Hugo Chavez, the president, is not a dictator. He is not just another Fidel Castro. Flawed? Yes. But dictator? No.

Okay, this is enough for now. More as it comes…in the meantime check out this site to learn more about the Venezuelan revolutionary process (they call it “el proceso”).

You can also check out info about the forum itself here.

I love you, all of you who are actually reading this, and I hope to keep you energized and reflective and inspired as I tell you all about my experiences.

This is it. My last post from Guatemala. For this last post, I want to translate into English the speech I gave for my final graduation from the mountain school. I think it says everything I want to say:

—
There aren’t words. There aren’t words to describe my experiences here in Guatemala, here at the escuela de la montaña. How can you describe the subtle changes inside of a heart?

I’m a gringo. I come from a country, a culture where latinos and latinas are almost invisible, as farmworkers, gardeners, maids, mechanics. Where my students who don’t speak English are treated as if they don’t have brains. We, we white folks, are so lost in our things, in our money, in our TV, in our conquests, and in our racism that we don’t listen to latina voices. We don’t listen to the powerful stories, the touching dreams, the brilliant ideas. We don’t know the history of Guatemala…we don’t even know where Guatemala is on a map.

Supposedly, I’m different. Before traveling to Guatemala, I did know much of the history of Latin America. I have read many books and almost every day I would read news from Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brasil, and Guatemala. But this was just words and paper. Actually, I wasn’t prepared for this trip.

When I arrived in Guatemala, especially when I arrived at the escuela de la montaña, I realized how much I don’t know, how much I don’t understand. I noticed many little absences in my heart that I had never recognized before. There are no words.

My time here has been so much more than the grammar and the official activities. It has been a wonderful mix of sights, experiences, jokes…and, the most important thing, relationships.

Because of y’all’s affection and because of this project, I am returning to my country a different person, with love, rage, and solidarity. And an ear that is larger and more capable of listening to latina voices.

Well then, thank you all. You will be in my heart forever.
—

I am crying now, in the internet cafe, just I was crying then, in the mountain school. I think, with our without visible tears, I’m going to be crying for a long while now.

Thank you all for reading and caring about me, and I hope you know how much I love you and care about you.

I’ve been really satisfied writing on this little website, mostly for one specific reason. Those who know me even moderately well know that I keep a lot to myself…as I’ve mentioned before. They know that I often try to maintain separate worlds and fronts in my life…with my friends, my work, my family, my politics, myself. I get really nervous at the idea of certain people knowing everything that I think or feel, for fear of putting them off or scaring them…but here, for the first time ever in my life is just my honest thoughts, and I have invited my friends, family, co-workers anyone to read it.

When I think about the feelings of it, it feels like growing up. This whole trip has felt like growing up. Maturing just a bit into a place where I can be comfortable with all of who I am, nerd, radical, sissy, intellectual, atheist, gringo…all of it…this is me and I love me, and I feel like here in this space I’ve become a lot more comfortable opening myself up authentically for other people to really love me (or not if they choose) too…something that is obviously really scary.

I hope to keep writing when I get home…I have all sorts of thoughts about games, about international and local politics, about my work and studies. I don’t know who reads this, and I tend to assume only Bri, Dave, Mom, Dad, and Chris…and then occasionally other people…and that’s kind of fun…because I really am not writing for you all. That stopped pretty early into my trip.

This is much more for me than for you…sorry.

Okay, first…for those few who may be reading this who didn’t know: I am an anarchist. Now, there is no reason to be alarmed, because being an anarchist does not mean I believe in chaos and destruction, or that I am a bomb-wielding terrorist or anything…anarchism is a political philosophy just like any other. To be really simple about it, it’s a philosophy that people deserve the maximum amount of freedom possible and thus that we deserve a society that is free from all forms of oppression: sexism, racism, homophobia and heterosexism, ecological destruction, poverty and economic exploitation, and government oppression and war, etc…it is a philosophy that believes in grassroots, participatory democracy…it IS radical, it COULD be called naive or utopian, but it IS NOT mean-spirited, cynical, or destructive…and if anyone has any more questions about it, I would love to talk with you about it…for hours and hours and hours.

Now, with that said, I really want to write about something that I’ve been thinking about for awhile now: my spirituality.

Somewhere in the last few years, especially as I’ve become more and more fascinated with the growth and organization of right-wing christian movements in the US, I’ve started to become really bothered by the fact that I, as an anarchist atheist, am so often considered non-spiritual…and so I’ve been thinking, writing, and talking with Briana about this, trying to get a grasp on just what my beliefs are…what my spirituality is…so here I’d like to chat a little bit about it.

“If You Don’t Believe In God, Then What Do You Believe In?”

I believe that we are here, right now, and this is it. This is our life…and it will only last for a short time, and then we will be gone. Because what we are, as human beings, are beautiful, complex, and fragile patterns of matter…nothing more, yet nothing less, which have risen like a wave out of deep and rich process of evolution…but which will ultimately crest and crash back into the ocean of particles and elements that we were born from…and with our deaths, our memories, our consciousnessess will scatter in all directions…circulating back into the stew.

There is no higher consciousness guiding us, there is no grand plan…there is simply energy and matter and time…and the dancing, dancing relationships between them…

“Boy, That Sounds Depressing”

Now, I know so many people who hear this and think it’s so depressing…but I’ve never understood that…I think it’s just the opposite…I think it is an immense and almost unthinkable blessing that out of a gigantic mess of natural processes and chemical reactions…we have actually come to be, with our eyes and ears and our languages and cultures…that out of completely lifeless and soulless universe life actually DID happen, and that these impersonal processes have actually led to the evolution of PERSONALITIES…our personalities…and so we are lucky enough to be here…alive…and we are here together right now…sharing this thing, this experience of life…and really we are all we’ve got…

And this is another thing that is so depressing to so many people…this idea that without God we are alone in the universe…but when I hear THAT perspective I get depressed…because it feels to me like it’s missing the whole point: WE ARE NOT ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE. We are surrounded by life…we are surrounded by personalities and emotions and consciousnesses…more than we will ever be able to comprehend. People, bird, fishes, three-toed slothes, amoebas, viruses, chimpanzees, mushrooms, forests…what I don’t understand about people who believe in God is…why isn’t this enough…Why isn’t it enough that we have eachother? Why do we need something above us, watching over us? What extra comfort does that give…because for me that idea is far more scary…(that there is a boss in the sky that has a plan for me and that He doesn’t have enough respect for me to actually treat me like an equal, to introduce himself…and to level with me about what the point of this world is…but that’s just me. I don’t think it shows any real kind of love to leave your children in the dark, suffering and dying so you can watch and judge…that seems pretty abusive actually…sorry, I went a little too far into the negative there…apologies).

So this is the foundation for my spirituality…a spirituality of us…a spirituality without a hierarchy or a need for a leader or for a top-down plan…it is a spirituality that says: we are here, in this beautiful world, and we are here together…now we have a choice…we can work together to learn and grow and celebrate all of the beauties together…or we can fight and exploit each other and waste our lives…or we can tell ourselves that this world is actually just some kind of test or fake world, and that real life begins after we die…as for me, I choose the first. And by choosing that first, I have my moral code and I have my politics…and I don’t need any ten commandments or other scriptures to tell me not to kill or hate or steal…because I know that we’re sharing this life…so I don’t have any reason to do any of that bad stuff.

“But What Happens When We Die?”

Now there is one other part…and that is the whole death piece. I know that alot of religious people find it really important this question of what happens after we die…and there is all this fear of that after death piece…and for those people who feel like they need to know that they will live forever somewhere…there is no comfort I can give…because that sounds boring to me. I find it far more fascinating and powerful and neat that really I just have this tiny window…that I need to make this as powerful an excursion as possible…and…

…and I need to make sure that I am doing what I can to help my fellow people and creatures get the most out of their lives as well…because that’s the point for me, that we get to live TOGETHER…so this is why justice is essential for me…and also I believe that it is only in each other that we find our meaning and where we can become bigger than ourselves…by carrying the stories of those who came before us, and having our children carry our stories…we become a part of a larger project, something that, while not immortal and absolutely eternal…will continue for more than just one or two generations. We find meaning in our lives in how we live with each other…and for ourselves.

And so my spiritual practice is in sharing my life with my family, my friends, my neighbors…my spirituality is rooted in the struggle for justice…my mass is those times when we sit around to tell our stories, and where we bring forward the stories of the past…of those people who had their time and then passed…for us to learn from, for us to be nurtured by, for us to be inspired by (and for us to acknowledge those billions who have been wronged)…

This works for me…this fulfills me and enriches me…this gives me meaning…and this makes sense to me…

And I’d love to hear what you think about it…

“But Atheists Don’t Have The Communities That Churches Offer”

And this is absolutely true…I think one of the strongest and most positive things about religions are the social elements…the congregations, the discussion and study groups…the buildings that you can go to at least once a week to find people who connect with you about a deep part of your life…they connect with your most basic worldview…

And this is why I keep saying…not even joking…that anarchists and other social justice activists need to start building churches…or something similar…I would love to have a place to go once a week where I knew I could find people who shared my beliefs…where we could celebrate together and tell stories and histories together…share donuts and tea…in fact, strategically, I think it’s going to be essential for building commmunities that can actually change this world.

Ooh, this was a fun post to write!

Okay, I’ve just got a few minutes before I’m heading off to a workshop on human rights in Guatemala, but I really need to get moving on my stories from the mountain school, as new stories pile up each and every day…

Here are the basics:

The mountain school is sister project of the same collective that runs the language school in Xela, and it was started in 1997, I believe. It is a school in the country, located on land that used to be a finca (a plantation)…and I believe that the school building itself used to be the finca owner’s house.

The climate in this area is very warm and humid, with sun and warmth almost every morning and heavy rain EVERY afternoon. The property itself has all sorts of trees, coffee trees, banana trees, chickens, three dogs, two cats…and now…two ducks (who arrived while I was there)…the property is super comfortable, except for the billions of mosquitos that ripped my arms, legs, belly, and face apart. There are hot showers and electricity…and all of the students (12-14 at a time) live in the school…it’s a total dorm atmosphere, which was really fun…

Now, the school is located on the same old finca property as two small villages, Fatima and Nuevo San Jose…both of these villages are completely composed of families that used to live on fincas (that is, they born out of many generations of people who have lived on the finca, worked on the finca, and died on the finca…basically straight up peasants in the feudalistic sense of the term), but the finca owners ended up screwing with these folks too many times (in Nuevo San Jose’s case, by not paying them AT ALL for more than A YEAR!), and so the families organized unions (having to meet secretly in the Catholic church under the guise of worshipping, for fear of being killed or persecuted as “guerillas” since this was during the civil war that lasted for 36 years until the peace accords in 1996), and struggled, and struggled…until they were left with no choice but to leave their homes on the fincas (carrying all of their possessions on foot in the rain for miles and miles…all at once…at least in Nuevo San Jose’s case). So, now there are these two collectively built villages, Nuevo San Jose which is 11 years old, with 25 families, and is composed of two parallel dirt roads (more like wide dirt paths) with houses on both sides…and Fatima…which is 5 years old, with something like 15 families, and which is one dirt road with houses on both sides…through cooperation, solidarity, and struggle, they have built a school, they have gained services like electricity and water (Nuevo San Jose at least, Fatima still doesn’t have water)…and who knows what will come in the future…but it was always a joy to hear the stories of these important places from the families…and the mixture of pride and sadness (because the fincas were their homes…and they had thought they would grow and die there, as unjust and hard as that seems to me, and probably you too) was obvious on their faces.

Now, although the students live in the school, we each had a family, which changed each week (so I had two total), and we would eat three meals a day with our families…and that is where I’ll have to leave off right now…but when I return I’ll talk about the families, about the school, about the teachers and students…and poco a poco…about all this made me feel.

In the meantime, I’m doing fine here in Xela…I’d rather be in the mountain school still, and I’m a little bit overwhelmed by my studies right now (only my fourth week of Spanish and I’m studying the “advanced” track of grammar…subjunctive tenses…youch).

More later, and much love to you all!

Well, I cried yesterday calling Briana about my blog and the email I had recieved and I talked about my feelings and some of my experiences and I just started gushing in the internet cafe…

And now I’m in the language school, at my break, and I decided to check up on the Zapatista guerillas in Mexico (who, for those who don’t know, have guns but haven’t actually used them in ten+ years, and who are some of the most inspiring fighters for justice I’ve ever read about or followed) reading the newest translation of a communique at this site

…and I just started crying again…because it talks about this new generation of youth who have grown up in that struggle and how they are making the struggle even more strong and brave and inspiring than the previous generation…for me, it’s so beautiful…

Anyhow…more later about the mountain school.

I just checked my email and I had recieved a message from one of my closest friends challenging me for being so dry and so anthropological about such a powerful, sad, unacceptable situation as I saw there on that first day at the mountain school, and I really want to write more about this because I’ve been thinking alot about this very thing these last few days…about how I’m writing about my experiences here, and how I feel this dissatisfaction with how disconnected my writing style is from the feelings I’m feeling and all of the ways that I’m being pulled and twisted by having seen even the little bit I’ve seen of what things are like here.

In truth, I feel like there is something really tremendous building inside of me, with much of the shape and momentum of a whirlpool, which is frothing and fomenting with anger and fear and pain and sadness…and definitely guilt…and I think much of this began when I saw that woman. Before that, I feel like my experience here had been relatively unchallenging for me, but seeing her, and then seeing the reaction of the people who lived in that area, and feeling my alienation from the situation, our ‘observer’ status here, and my fear of saying or doing more, I feel like a big part of me started sucking in…and I found myself wanting to focus more and more on Spanish, on Spanish…studying, studying…to avoid all that I was feeling by being in a situation that is so wrong in so many ways…

I don’t know if I know how to really describe this…

Basically, I feel like after seeing that woman, and then spending more time at the mountain school, seeing the poverty, the struggle, learning more of the history of the area, of Guatemala, and of Central American in general…I kind of shut down emotionally. In my last post, I was kind of trying to portray that, that banal resignation in the face of really horrible things which I have witnessed numerous times here…and I feel like in the last two weeks alot of my emotions have been swallowed in this manner, because I don’t how how to hold it…I just don’t know how to hold this kind of reality right here, in front of myself, in my consciousness…I’ve never had to do that, this intensely, before. I’m a person so used to looking for solutions, so used to finding tactics and strategies, and trying to move towards reconciliation with people as soon as I can…and here, none of that works…this is a situation I can’t change here, there is a history and a reality that I cannot take back…I can’t take back the disappearances, the murders, the rape, the terror, the trauma, the violations of every kind of dignity…it’s just there, present in the air and in people’s stories, in people’s daily lives…and I don’t know how to hold that very long in front of myself…so, Spanish, Spanish, studying, studying…telling myself that maybe if I had just a few more words, a few more conjugations of verbs, maybe I could be that much more helpful…

But no, this is a situation that the little white boy Jeremy can’t fix…instead, I think I need to be more attentive in my observations, in my reactions, so I can learn what I can, connect where I can…so where I can help (and there are constant opportunities), I am emotionally ready and willing to step up…

…It’s just so much, it’s this massive torrent of pain and injustice…how do people here not completely lose themselves in that…that’s a feat of tremendous struggle and resistance in itself.

To anyone who was struck, hurt, offended, offput by the dryness of my previous post, I’m deeply sorry…it was a symptom of a much deeper problem, of my disconnection…my inability to put ME into these stories…and it’s something I’m working on…poco a poco…little by little.

I’ve just returned from two weeks that have changed my life. Not any kind of drastic change…not any kind of sell my possessions, drop out of the world kind of change…something much more silent and soft…like the fine hairs on my cheeks. I’ve had this weird sort of privilege of dropping into the middle of a situation that was so incredibly foreign to me that my brain was forced to create new categories of thought and understanding in order to be able to function…for two weeks, I was dropped into these two communities, Fatima and Nuevo San Jose (both associated with la escuela de la montaña…the mountain school), I ate every meal with families in these two communities, and within this, my understanding of poverty, of struggle, of work, of families, of religion, of education…all of it was shaken and challenged and…with that, just as with my learning of Spanish…I feel like I have grown enormously.

I don’t know how I’m going to be able to write about these last two weeks. There is so much to tell, and even more to process and analyze and reflect on…

I think I’ll probably try to do it in little bits, snapshots of my experiences…

If you take a moment and look to your right, you will see our Jeremy habitat…yes, there is a living, breathing Jeremy in there, so keep your hands and feet on this side of the fence. He’s more scared of us than we are of him, but if you startle him, he may snap, so just be careful. We took him in when he had a broken wing, and he’s been here ever since…our keepers are taking very good care of him, and we believe that in five more weeks he will be well enough to fly home.

Now, let me paint you picture of what this Jeremy’s life is like in here:

Jeremy lives in a house in the city of Xela (pronounced shay-la), with a mother and her two sons. The mother has three sons total, 18, 22, and 24 years each…but the oldest has a wife and cute baby named Diego, and he lives elsewhere. There is a husband as well, but he lives and works in another city, and comes home on Saturdays. This family has a contract with Jeremy’s language school, el Proyecto Linguistico Quetzalteco de Espanol, and they have been taking in creatures like this Jeremy for 13 years now. The family is extremely friendly with Jeremy, and they feed him three times a day…a diet of eggs, tortillas, and black beans in the morning…a large lunch of vegetables, meats, rice, and tortillas…and a smaller dinner of more meat, vegetables, and rice. Jeremy seems to love his food, and as a gesture of gratitude he does the dishes after lunch and dinner every day.

The house is modest, but very pretty and comfortable, and Jeremy has his own room all to himself, where he studies and reads. He shares a bathroom and a shower (which has a strange heater contraption attached to the shower head to generate lukewarm water…and which uses much electricity and will shock Jeremy if he touches it in the wrong way. The family has refrigerator, a Sony tv with satellite, cell phones, and a stereo…but they the mother does the laundry by hand in a large stone sink, and so Jeremy believes that this family is more of the middle class persuasion compared to many families in Guatemala. However, Jeremy seems to be stunned by some of the decorations in the house, and at how they are things that he would normally take for granted or throw away…for example, the family has, as the centerpiece of their dining room table, a Batman Returns placemat…and Jeremy is curious because Batman Returns (and this place mat) was created in 1992.

Every morning, Jeremy wakes up at 6 in the morning, to the sounds of dogs barking, roosters crowing, cars rumbling, and firecrackers cracking (which Jeremy naively mistook for guns at first). Jeremy brushes his teeth with bottled water, gets dressed, and goes down to breakfast with the mother. At every meal, the mother talks in a very slow and friendly manner with Jeremy, in Spanish, and Jeremy attempts to slowly carry on conversations with her. He has improved considerably in this in the week he has been with us here.

At 7:45am, Jeremy walks ten minutes through the narrow streets of Xela, past many houses and small shops, to arrive at his language school…which is run by a collective of more left-leaning Spanish teachers…who set up the school to not only teach Spanish, but to teach about the social, political, economic situation of Guatemala. Jeremy has one-on-classes with one teacher a week, for five hours, from 8am-1pm. In these classes, his teacher teaches him by writing concepts and words down on long pieces of paper, while he takes notes…then the teacher talks with Jeremy about his life, his opinions, politics and history. Jeremy is very happy in these classes, he very much liked his first teacher…and he has learned much…but he is still slow in speaking, and shy.

The school is laid out around an indoor courtyard, where the sun shines in, and where there are lots of political posters and bulletin boards decorating the beautiful yellow walls. During the half hour coffee break during classes, Jeremy mixes with the 40+ other students, trying to speak Spanish, but often falling back on English.

After class, Jeremy walks back to his house, where he eats lunch, and then he either returns to his room to study, or he goes out to do activities with the school (the school hosts workshops and movies and trips related to the reality of Guatemala). So far, he mostly just studies and walks around alone, admiring the city.

He eats dinner at 7:30pm or 8:00pm, and lately he has taken to watching tv with the family (shows like Los Plateados…which is a cowboy soap opera…and la mujer de ejero…or something…which is a traditional soap opera…and the news). At 10pm, Jeremy goes to sleep and sleeps soundly until the roosters and dogs and firecrackers wake him up the next morning.

So far, Jeremy has very much enjoyed his stay in this habitat, and he is acclimating well. He loves his family, although he feels shy and embarassed to not be able to discuss more than favorite fruits and preferred types of movies…but he is new to all this, so we expected this of him.