"[...] are they like us?"

(no picture bc computer is fucked)

My computer pooped-out on me in a major way, and though I am flustered, I am also pretty impressed with my reaction. I am pleased with my own progression away from material things; these days if I have my health, my passport, and a pair of jeans (and research material backed-up) life is pretty okay. Though I am still dismayed, especially because technology isn't supposed to be quirky and weird like this, but around me it goes wack. It's like when I was worried I'd scratch my tattoo off, and everyone laughed that it wasn't possible, and then who scratched off part and had to go BACK to the chair of pain?! Yep, me.

Tomorrow I bus to Zaragoza, then to Madrid, then catch a LONG-ASS flight to Bangkok and head right to a V-Day event. It is pretty wild to be chatting with people in this lovely rural Spanish town, and be like, "Yep, heading to Thailand tomorrow..." My time in Quinto both research-wise and life-wise has been lovely... In ways lonely because the community here is so strong, family ties so obvious, loyalties so steadfast that I feel slightly off-kilter; the strange girl who is off travelling around the world and who left her mother by herself. Simultaneously though, I feel welcomed and so warmed by the kindness I have been shown. I am moved to see the richness and openness that can be brought to a place when people decide to truly devote themselves to improving their community. Today I was invited to this home that a bunch of friends buy together and then use for Sunday lunches, parties, celebrations- it's like the hippie commune that Emili dreams of us having, with kids underfoot, everyone knowing eachother so well. It was so normal, but also so beautiful.

Whether sitting around the local cafe where the grandmothers gather to have coffee every morning and doing some snazzy participant-observation, interviewing audience members who went both nights, or interviewing the majority of last years actresses with overly sweet cafes, I was again dazzled by the wealth of experiences they drew out of the Monologues. So much of the critique becomes superfluous when faced with these women's sense of pride, leadership and purpose. Communities are so much more open to these themes because they are going to see their aunt, neighbor, teacher.

They were so natural talking to me, laughing that they thought my recorder was a cell phone, talking about their fears, what moved them, what it was like to step onstage in front of peers and family members they'd known their whole life, and to do something so new! Mothers and daughters acted together; this year husbands and wives will be in the memory Monologue Rant and a Prayer cast, and watching this very multi-generational group at the first rehearsal was about the most precious thing ever. To see family members learning together, stretching their boundaries, whether in their twenties, forties, sixties and on- and being willing to move through discomfort and work to change their community- wow. The oldest member of the cast, in her seventies, is this spunky gem, who rides a bike around town, has the loudest laugh, and told me I was gorgeous and then basically smacked me. I was honored.

After an over 2-hour long focus-group I thought they'd be running for the door, but instead there was a beautiful moment where Pilar turned to me and asked, "These other women you've talked to- in Serbia and Mexico... Are they like us?" They all quieted and looked at me expectantly; so interested, though I know they were all on the brink of splitting off into a dozen directions to take care of newborn babies, make dinner for family, head to meetings...

I took pause, and a kaleidoscope of faces flashed before my eyes of all the stellar women and men I have met. A seemingly simple question, yet it seemed so beautiful to me, and so poignant and telling. Are they the same... What unites them all? The violence I know many of them have suffered? But here's where the affirmation of V-Day comes in; although we could say what unites all women is their shared experience of violence (and it's ALL personal, whether done to their mother, sister, friend if not themselves) the similarities that came to me from her question were instead the strength, the damn power and sense of creativity, fun and humor with which these women seized this tool and empowered themselves and their communities. I answered, "Yes," and rather clumsily elaborated. Yet I saw in their faces a kind of satisfaction and sense of solidarity that shows me I hopefully somehow conveyed my own sense of wonder. They clapped at the end and I felt so grateful.