"Women echoed each other": Breaking Silence with the Vagina Monologues

Back Stateside...

2009-09-03T10:12:00.000-07:00

Oh my. So this is certainly not the end of the adventure, but the end of my Fellowship and the current Vagina World Tour have arrived. I hope to keep blogging/writing/publishing/learning/questioning and presenting about this experience, so stay in touch! Especially if you want to come to a presentation, or if you have any advice about publishing. I wanted to include my final Watson Report. My personal Vagina Monologue is at the bottom.

FINAL REPORT
Thomas. J. Watson Fellowship

Jennifer McKenzie

“Women Echoed Each Other”:
Breaking Silence with The Vagina Monologues

I have delayed writing this report, because I endowed it with a melancholic symbolism as The End of my Watson Year. I imagine you would respond by saying that the Watson experience is one that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, and that the perspective and direction it has nourished in me is but beginning, not terminating. I agree, and am trying to view this report as a reflection; a validation of sorts, an opportunity to truly thank the Watson Fellowship, to share what I have done, and to ruminate on how I have changed. Writing this and thinking about what I want to say, I do deeply feel this gratefulness- but even as I marvel at what this experience has meant, I also can’t help grieving its loss. This year I felt so incredibly alive. I was so enmeshed with my project and the daily business of creating and fully living a life in Mexico, England, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Thailand, Cambodia, India and South Africa; everything felt vital and somehow more vibrant.
Even now, as close to the experience as I still am, it can feel like a dream. Looking at my photos can feel unreal. To have been so many places in such a short time… But this was only a month ago, and it was my life, just as these more mundane days of the job search are. My backpack probably still smells like South Africa, but it is in my basement and not on my back. I’m going to fight against this though; I refuse to give in to nostalgia and rather choose to struggle to hold onto the truth of the experience. I don’t want the people I met, the stories I’ve imbibed, to reek of fantasy and glimmer with this nostalgia. It was real, I did these things, and I am changed. My goal I guess is to preserve this sense of wonder, of awareness, curiosity and openness that should be as vital here as it was traveling this year. Yesterday I was walking home from yoga along Division, the very street up which I walked to Elementary School. And yet, it was like I had never seen it before. It felt as new and unfamiliar to me as any random street in Budapest, Barcelona or Bangkok. And one thing I’ve learned this year is to take that fresh perspective, and instead of letting the unfamiliar be lonely, let that perception, whether it is actually a new street or one I’ve traversed for years, color my mind with new thoughts. So although this the end of my Watson journey, I am trying to remind myself that meaning is not dependent upon location, but rather my own attitude. I loved my life and hence myself while I was traveling this year. I want to be present and intentional “here” (wherever that ends up being) with as much passion as I was there (oh, there were so many “theres” this year).
This year I learned dozens of words for vagina in eleven different countries and even more languages. Of the over four thousand V-Day events this year, I covered twenty-five. My methodology included monitoring press reaction but was primarily based upon extensive interviews and participant observation among cast, crew, audience and beneficiary organizations. I also attended the V-Day European Organizers Workshop where I met V-Day staff and author Eve Ensler as well as influential activists. I completed over 200 interviews, and spoke with well over 225 informants in individual and group settings. But what do these numbers tell you about what this year was like, about what I learned and accomplished? The experience was so much more nuanced than mere statistics.
To my great surprise and joy I found that my project, while personally challenging and simultaneously gratifying, was a cathartic experience for my informants as well. And informants quickly became friends. I could never have realized before I stepped on that first flight (of many) how my role became so much more rooted in the personal validation I provided this year than on any final product. The Vagina Monologues portray real women’s stories. Just as most of these women had never shared these experiences with anyone before they became Vagina Monologues, most of my informants had never given themselves the chance to process what being involved in the play meant to their lives. I am honored to have helped them to feel legitimized, and delighted to find my work this year was often so reciprocal. I had feared being a story vulture. The first question I always asked was why they came to be involved. And I cannot stress enough the depth of the responses, the complex yet universal reasons women felt lured to speak out publicly, sometimes at great risk. Oh so naturally, my process of collecting testimonies about their experience with the play became about so much more; about their experiences being women, about their joys and trauma relating to their own vaginas. Often we both ended our interviews exhausted, but filled to the brim rather than drained. I think every interview ended with a hug, and as I left on the Mexico City metro, or the Bangkok BTS, or a Mumbai rickshaw, I would mull over the words I had just heard. And I knew that other soul heading off in another direction in the same city would be similarly holding in their mind the words they had just spoken- sometimes for the first time.
These conversations truly transformed The Vagina Monologues into dialogues. All of these incredibly poignant moments flicker through my mind. I found I would be thinking of Spanish abuelitas waving around bright pink vibrators while attending the Marathi dress rehearsal, in which some women were dressed in red sneakers and others in Saris. Or perhaps I would be chilling in the anti-trafficking NGO I studied in Belgrade, and something would conjure an image of the Mexico City AIDS Conference Vagina Monologues Open Mic, and I would be two places at once: preparing for the first rural performance in the previously war-torn former Yugoslavia and simultaneously remembering how thunderous monsoon rain couldn’t dampen the spark of stories that poured forth from HIV/AIDS activists. Though I am gone, or rather here than there, I still often have that experience of being many places at once. Because I know women are still speaking everywhere I went and beyond. I can almost hear them as I walk these familiar streets. I know what they are saying and I love them.
I used to make collages. I loved how all the pieces made a vibrant whole, and how seeing the images in bits or combined made me reconceptualize their meaning. In the same way I hope to collage what I have learned this year into a shareable product. I have an article that is being published (attached), and hope to expand this into a book. I also look forward to sharing a presentation about this year with communities around the city. I feel urgently responsible to do something with all that I have learned this year- as though I owe it to these women who so bravely spoke out to me, and who wished to share their stories with a wider audience than one.
I fell absolutely in love with my project. Just as past loves have busily occupied my mind and heart, during down time I was thinking about how to pack lighter, or about how to make informants feel more comfortable, or what sort of challenges they must be facing in their unique contexts. I was in love with my work and it also allowed me to focus on my relationship with myself. And, a year later, I’m convinced that I have found the equivalent of my soul mate in terms of the kind of work I want to do. I am still moved and engaged by it and would see The Vagina Monologues any day. I truly felt as though I was exactly where I was supposed to be, and doing what I needed to do. This year helped me to learn how important it is to give myself over to the work that I do; I enjoy being a vessel and feel I am most effective in this line of work. I have learned how to listen. I have learned when to talk. I am a witness. I now firmly believe that the world is smaller than I was led to believe, and am more sure of the role I am meant to play as an active citizen of this world.
After the kick-off event of the first V-Day ever done in Cambodia, I was getting late night eats with the leaders and their friends who had attended the screening of the documentary about The Vagina Monologues, ‘Until the Violence Stops’. In the humid night we were talking about how it has become a tradition at the end of the show to ask anyone who has survived abuse to please stand. Over curry and drinks the women were marveling at the strength of the women who stood in Brooklyn, in Kenya and beyond. They were chatting about how connected we are in the violence that is done to us, but more than that, connected in our strength and ability to feel empathy for one another. We could have been a scene in the movie. I listened intently, and noticed that one other woman was also silent. But hers was a brooding silence, her ears turned pinker and pinker, she had stopped eating. As I knew she would- she spoke. She said she felt like a liar sitting here at the table with us and speaking as though these were things that happened to other women, because that was her experience as well. She said she had never spoken about her abuse to anyone, but that when she saw all those women standing she desperately felt she had to do something. The organizer responded perfectly. As the women at her side reached out to her, as our eyes filled, Nora asked, “Would you like to stand now?” The woman considered it. And though we were in a rowdy crowd, she pushed back her chair and under the Cambodian sky she stood. She was regal. We all stood as well. I will never forget moments like these; how sometimes we have to stand, and how much easier it is when we stand together.

My Vagina's Watson Year

My vagina comes from a very female family My radical mother chose my genetics from a sperm bank and raised me to be always leaving her. Ever leaving her to follow the "wild collective song" that Eve Ensler shared with the world. She said, and I found, that women echoed each other. This song, these vagina monologues, became dialogues. They rang forth in cowsheds, hotels, restaurants, elderly homes, refugee camps, public parks, schools, malls, domestic violence shelters and antifascist festivals.

Danijela, a V-Day activist in Sarajevo, told me about one time when she was sitting on a beach. She was moved. Maybe it was the sea, or maybe it was what she calls the beautiful breaking of silence. She stood and started shouting monologues. I can picture her: surf in her hair and salt in her voice, spouting, "My vagina is angry! It is! It's PISSED OFF. It needs to talk. It needs to talk to you!" I imagine the shock this must have been to the sunbathers around her. I have learned this year that shock can be good. The moments when we are most jarred, most overwhelmed, open a little window of opportunity: for a
new thought; a new conversation; a new question, doubt, or validation. Opened up the window for a lot of joy.

Me and my vagina have been traveling this past year. We've been listening. We've been focused on the stories of others. The art of witnessing; the practice of empathy that sometimes swamps. Believe it or not, it wasn't sexy. Most of the time. I'm trying to absorb the survivorship, the hope and community instead of the rape and abuse and
fear. I'm hoping to put into practice what I advocate. I want a quizzical, questioning, intentional vagina. I am most present in my body when I am traveling.

My own vagina monologue has merged with the main players of my year. Their story is mine and mine is theirs, and taboos are broken and words created where they didn't exist. This year there were a lot of moans. Mine tended to be rooted more in the exchange rate, Mumbai traffic and computers crashing than in lust. I cried in most of my
interviews, and hugged in all. There was vagina art, lots of chocolate, alcohol, coffee, eighty year-old senoras auctioning dildos, massages, red lipstick, and vagina birthday cakes.

Lori in Serbia used to go to refugee camps alongside the medical services. Afterwards, they would do an informal reading of The Monologues: just there, behind the van, in the streets where they happened to be. She said afterwards, a woman inevitably said. "Ah.
Now we have all heard this... And so I will tell you my story." And like magic, they would begin to share. Lori said, ‘It's the end of the performance, and they are speaking. You are speaking with them. The performance is over, you are packing your stuff- you are leaving. They are staying and speaking more and more and more. You are gone and
they are still speaking." Though I am gone, or rather here than there, I know women are still speaking everywhere I went and beyond. I can almost hear them as I walk these familiar streets. I know what they are saying and I love them.

Women talking about their vaginas tend towards circles. They sit in circles, they hug in circles. What I learned, and tried to share, was the place where all these circles connect. Like links. Becoming ever stronger. Like ever widening ripples that touch individuals and catalyze communities. In the end of my own vagina monologue, there is no
end. There is only connection; there are only more stories.

A Sunday-like Sunday

2009-07-05T06:02:00.000-07:00

I am in Port Elizabeth, (P.E.) now, and it is a quintessential lazy Sunday. I am catching up on sleep, grooming, reading, solitude and sun. Stumbled into a sweet coffee shop, then stumbled upon St. Georges park and the monthly flea market where I purchased a carved wooden flower to replace the button on my sweater and dried apricots, which I munched while languidly reading against the kiddy park and people watching. Last night after a sauna-esque bus skipped the station, I was left stranded in a creepy vacant mall parking lot. A kind family adopted me and drove me to my backpackers.

Tomorrow I have a group interview- perhaps the last interview of the year. I hope to volunteer at the Women's Haven here for a few days, before heading to Cape Town to see Mollie's life, and to meet Dawny! As you can probably tell from this post, I am feeling present-bound and more focused on current enjoyment than on deep reflection. This feel alright at this stage. More than okay, it feels good. Though, crunching through some fallen Oak leaves today, I felt a hunger for familiar seasons, one that will be satiated soon enough. I feel like napping, stretching, crying (in a good book kind of way); I feel like kissing someone, I feel momentarily brave.

I am reading Bahjallanie's "Midwives" and though it probably shouldn't, it makes me want to be a midwife in spite of having ruled it out. I love helping people, women, babies, vaginas. I loves science without doctors offices and bureaucracy, and I love warm fuzzies. I think I could be comforting, I know I wouldn't be squeamish. Hm. Something to think about, talk to Steph about.

In Which: the end was filled with laughter

2009-07-05T05:29:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize how much I was online until these last few weeks when my absence was noted by conscientious friends, Mom was called, etc. Course I don't want to make anyone worry, but nonetheless it was a cozy feeling to have people looking out for me. Aware of me, even the cyber version of me. I know you're rolling your eyes, but I do have a tendency to think I am forgotten, and to underestimate my friends- not them, but them in my life. I picture myself, when everything is going crappily, crying with the end conclusion (of flooded art buildings, burnt sinks, unhappy endings, wailing: "I don't have anyyyy f-f-f-FFFFFriennndddds!" And Dawn, or Katie, or any of my fabulous loved-ones, exasperated, but kind, reminding me of my own ridiculousness.

Since Durban research I have been traveling with Mollie- another gift I've received from Andrew. We absolutely hit it off from the first moment as I tumbled off that stale buss in East London. Chattering wildly and hyperly as we made our way to the bathroom, she: "ARRGH! I just started my period and don't have my diva cup!" Me: "Ha! Mine's inside me!". With a glee resembling A.D.D. we bought 2 kilos of carrots and yogurt and trundled immediately to the coast, where a peace both friend and sea-related overswept me, and hasn't disappeared since. From then on, we didn't really stop laughing. We laughed as we nearly got stranded there and drank cider and played horrific pool, we laughed as we WOOFED at an organic permaculture farm and dismantled prickly pears and assassinated invasive plant species; as we crashed a farm party (we taught the lady farmers the macarena while the men shyly chugged beer by the fire and gossiped in a middle school parody- apparently we were quite the hit!); We laughed our way down the Wild Coast, as we unstranded ourselves in Umtata, as we perused the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. We marveled at the sparkly depth and magnitude of the stars on the farm where we stayed.

Being in her constant jolly presence relaxed me in a way I haven't felt for ages, and I promptly responded by absent-mindedly forgetting things everywhere I went, which have since been returned through the kindness of strangers. Because of her easy company I checked out of my "reflective travel mode", and just enjoyed. Sharing details, decisions, and company- processing verbally and being entirely myself... We were bad at shutting up to sleep; I read maybe twenty pages during the time we were together. She helped me with my Americorps app (I got an interview!), and even de-boned chicken for a Mexican feast we prepared for a VM focus group with Rhodes Univ. Students.

Rainy day

2009-07-05T05:03:00.001-07:00

Don't ask me why, but the rain in Bulungula smells like Michigan air. Which means o me it smells of nostalgia, innocence, magic summers and sadness I'm not old enough for. Too many mothballs of grief for comprehension.

Mollie and I got up for a rain splashed sunrise, from which the sun was as sluggish to emerge as we were to wake. Walking the fluctuating waterline in the liquid dawn, I kept hearing slapping footfalls running up behind me. Whether they were really leaves, paranoia, or ghosts I know not. But I wasn't scared.

It reminded me of other early morning beach walks, it reminded me of reminding myself of my mother. That moment in the D.R., with my toes the first to touch that Caribbean morning foam, and jotsom and ... flotsom? (How does it go?) I was maybe beginning to grow up, because the similarities between my mother and I were comforting, were a dose of her, as opposed to the stereotypical teenage grimace at any familiar resemblance.

I am sitting here in the eco-lodge, fresh solar made Xosa bread and veggie sausage brekky on the way. Mosaics and murals and drift wood chandeliers are above me. It is a rainy day, a rained in day, a day of rain, and the sea is visible just outside the dripping and salty window. There is local jazz playing, and this morning, everyone is slow to wake. We have bi passed the paraffin-powered showers in deference to the water shortage and our own cozy laziness. Need I say more? I am happy.

Taking my vitamins

2009-06-14T11:38:00.001-07:00

(Political cartoons. Second one a counter attack to the outrage and rebuttals. He is being sued I am told.)

Durban is a delight. My first day I awoke at dawn (momentarily) and peeled back the curtain to see a rose sunrise splashed across the horizon, which was two-thirds round, round, ocean. Drinking nescafe and obligatorily admiring their obese sea-lion-esque labs, I saw whales spouting! (okay, moment of sharing: wrote “whales sprouting” stared at it for a sec, ‘something is wrong about this. Then realized, and struck me as hilarious. Sprouting!) There were dozens of dolphins cavorting amongst their own breakfast of sardines. The water was quiet. Auntie Raj told me she calls it a tea-cup sea when it’s like that. Staying with Nikita’s family and their friends was a window into a large family. Her parent’s relationship, forged in the Apartheid resistance movement, is the kind everyone dreams of. Or, the kind I dream of anyhow. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a partnership more tender and respectful. She told me, “Watch them- every morning it’s like they fall in love again.”

Some of the tension, and most all of the cold, is alleviated here. Walking the tree-lined avenues, meeting interviewees at Botanical Gardens where symphonies play, used bookstores, curling amid funky décor and ordering hummus, sipping coffee in sunlit street cafes- all of these things are welcome. My enjoyment of them can feel vaguely guilty, because I appreciate these things for their familiarity. But I have long given up trying to find the quintessential “South African” experience- it is all South African, just as it was all Indian. The 7-11s in Thailand were Thai!

I’m also at the point in my year where I make real vegetable soup and squash for dinner, where I transcribe in the corner and read Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” (my find!). In Spain the difference between Emily’s lives and subsequent attitudes and I was so clear- she was so interested in making friends with everyone, “Where are you from? How long are you here? Where are you coming from and where are you going next?” And I was just happy to be with a familiar soul and tired of asking and answering those same questions; I am meeting people all the damn time. I love it. Of course I do. But today for example, after three interviews, one rape disclosure, I am exhausted. I had real connection, I made them feel comfortable, I described my project for the thousandth time. I am not lonely. But I am a bit weary. And I just don’t want to play nice with the other backpackers.

Like the veggies (whose need I feel after too much hearty South African fare of meat pies, “chips”, billtong, and bunny chow), the solitude and my new book are my nutrition. Another job application is my nasty vitamin pill. I am fortifying my cerebral cortex. Though the academia of Wits University was tantalizing, I don’t really want to go right back to school even if the economy seems to want me to- instead, I need to keep LEARNING other ways. I cannot wait to go to Portland’s public libraries! We are so damn spoiled with educational opportunities.

I do have this sense of… Not quite getting to the heart of the issues here. My interviews are satisfying, interesting, similar, but my research stays on a safe level. The Medical Research Council says that there are 40,000 rapes per month in South Africa. ONE THOUSAND RAPES EVERYDAY. Interpol says SA leads the world in rapes. The facts are more than sobering, they are crippling. A new fear- being raped and becoming HIV positive. These conversations are moving, but I am on Florida and Davenport road, I am not seeing the townships, the grit, so apparent in Jo’burg, is hidden- where are the drug pushers? The children sniffing glue? The cornrows being done on the corners? I keep wanting rip off the facade, “5,000 toddlers are raped every month! 20 infant rapes per day here!” One out of two women in South Africa will be raped or violated. I feel frustrated, impotent- my questions feel futile- “What is the point of The Vagina Monologues?” I ask, and here, I wonder, I need answers. “What does it mean to have it here?” I am trying and trying to focus on the individuals, how these young women’s lives were broken open, how they now feel stronger, inspired, validated. Nombuso told of having her first baby at fifteen, of not knowing anything about sex, about her babie’s father stalking her, raping her. She paused. And then segwayed, “I think I am strong for leaving him. And that’s why I did The Vagina Monologues. We have to tell girls about these things!” But these statistics are looming, and threatening to swallow the beauty. Can I do this work my whole life? Will I be able to keep believing in humanity? … There are some books and films that capture life’s ephemeral and epic yet mundane qualities- every now and then I get a glimpse of this perspective for my friend’s lives, ever so rarely my own. Oh, I don’t know how to explain this. Gonna go eat some "grenadillas" ie. passion fruit, to feel some vibrancy.

Howziit. Stayed in Jo'burg, hey.

2009-06-12T03:13:00.000-07:00

Accidentally spent nearly two weeks in Jo'burg! Interviews, outdoor rock music festival, rare rain made the coziness that much more appealing. I went to uni with Niks during the day, and between interviews just revelled in a university setting- I was feeling nostalgic and strangely drawn to go back. Until I went into a classroom! Got sucked into the daily life of a beautiful family, and felt so at home I procrastinated leaving. Like Ana in Brighton, Nikita welcomed me not only into her heart and insight about The Vagina Monologues, but brought me home with her. Her fourth/fifth generation Indian South African family were an amazing transition- daily curries so comforting. I am covered in lab puppy hair- I have no doubt at least a kilo made its way into my backpack. Their incredibly tight knit family made the uniqueness of mine shine anew. Her mum, Auntie Janie told me, "You have no sisters?" No, none. "Well, now you have Nikki." I got goodnight kisses along with all the other "kids" and am driving down to Durban with them today where I have gazillions of interviews set up with her cast for the next three days. Then I head to meet Mollie and woof! So excited to get my hands in some dirt and see some greenery after Mumbai madness and Jo'burg cemented and gated cosmopolitan entity.

Severally Alone

2009-06-02T00:24:00.000-07:00

Jo'burg feels oh so different from Mumbai, though there are parts that are eerily familiar. I admit I let myself be intimidated. How does fear form? In warnings, in an extreme sense of not belonging, of standing out- being the only white person in sight. In an emergency button I'm supposed to push in case someone tries to break in during the night, in, "so I'll just ask directions" and "umm, no. Don't talk to anyone" Everyone, black, white, foreign, local say to be in by darkfall- which means 5 pm! Because of the cold and the fear I feel strangely hibernated tucked in to wait out a violence that will probably not come, but whose presence seems lingering. Venturing to the market felt like an adventure- the way people were talking I pictured- what? gangs roving the streets? Instead, it was a sunny crisp Sunday afternoon. Could have been any inner-city area. I saw a literal craigslist of agitated white handwritten papers with crowds pressed in. It felt surreal, people lined as though watching parade or army pass by- but staring instead at a wall full of overpriced non/possibilities.

Babies are the warmest people I have seen. Securely strapped to their moms' backs like sleeping spherical precious cargo. I want their security- or even the comfort of caring for a little person. I imagine they are tiny sloberingsnoring furnaces- even warmer than the sun that settled over my own shoulders and back as I sipped endless tea- trying to imbibe warmth and confidence.

The minibuses felt incredibly familiar, and safe to me. It felt like AMIGOS, or like Mexico city. I love watching everyone on their way to work, school, the drivers joking with each other, instead of shooting up as I'd been told.

I slept under four blankets, the tip of my (I swear) growing nose frigid. While the chimes chimed, and the dog orbited my "cottage," the inexplicable movie of my dreams unfolded. They say you don't imagine strangers, but I have never met the man I loved last night. Only I could see his bruises. I traced the texture on his back where he had been beaten with wood. The grain pronounced in his epidermis like a wood cutting. We were trying to save a child.

The city felt untouchable, impotent, from the 50th floor of the Carlton Center. It made me feel lonely and as though I could never understand or touch anything about this place. I love the quotes at the beginning of 'Maximum City'; "We are individually multiple" (Kabir Mohanty) and "I am severally alone" (Kumar Gandharva). The Soweto Artists gallery was the perfect anti-venom- Peter's colorful chalk pastel rubbed off onto me, and the grassroots single room filled with dancing, pain, music, AIDS, poverty, gossip and flirtation calmed me in a very real way.

I've lightened up and am so very mobil that there is none of the distracting "settling" in that normally eases me into a place. This nomadness, my utter lack of a plan that is in fact necessary- knowing this is almost the end, and that Dawn is coming- all of this swerves me into countdown kind of mind. Is this good? Bad? I think it just is. So much of life IS; value judgement free because of its inevitability. I am not an advocate for passivity, but the moments we have the least control can be oddly liberating.

Jo'burg

2009-05-31T02:32:00.000-07:00

If you' told me I had acclimated to India heat I would have given you a sweaty hug or flicked my "long" hair to spatter you with salty bits of Jen. Transferring in Addis abbaba the sun was still strong, but a pleasant vitamin something inducing relief from Mumbai. But, here in a South African winter, I am utterly wimpy towards the cold. I have to wear layers? Socks?! SHOES?!! Woah. It feels crisp like autumn, generous watery sunlight. I slept like a baby cozzied under five blankets. I am waiting for an overpriced taxi to head to real city digs, and a bit high on new beginnings. Trying not to be intimidated by warnings and crime statistics. Have meetings set up for the next few days, and lots I want to see. Nicest send-off, moody lady turned grateful sap. With fresh pesto still in my stomach, Mumbai club sweat dry on my skin, friends dropped me at the airport at 2 am. It's the first time I've been "taken to the airport" since Portland, sweet sweet. Well, here goes! Invigorated by newness and wild African wind getting to know the terrains of my face, my smile.

Audience responses to The Vagina Monologues in Mumbai, India: "Nice way to change the world"

2009-05-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

28/5/05 I would like to wish that this show is staged in every corner of this country.

Staging this play took a lot of courage, grit, will, determination & VAGINAS OF STEEL!!

…The most amazing theatre experience of my life…I am a proud feminist being a guy myself. I’m most willing to help you out with your cause to help stop atrocities handed out to women. I’m into media and will be honoured to help.

29/5/05 You spoke about me!!!

Just gifted this play performance on our wedding.

16/7/05 Especially loved the way you hit on the deep issues with so much subtlety

Thank you for ‘bringing up’ the ‘down there’!

24/9/05 Thank you for helping us respect our vaginas.

Great if we could have more men watch such performances; would make them more human.

They say change begins at home!

My vagina says THANK YOU!

25/9/05 …makes me want to celebrate my womanhood!

1/10/05 It’s the first time I ever said vagina.

An ecstatic celebration of womanhood. Thanks.

The show must go on!

Never thought I could see a play so great, so different, here in India!

The inhibition toward the word vagina has turned into respect.

Being a gynecological doctor, looking at numerous vaginas telling the stories of their mutilations, anger, sorrow, love, happiness—Never thought somebody could put it in better words!

16/12/05 Coming from Holland it’s great to see such a controversial piece acted out with such a power and strength respecting women all over the world!

18/12/05 I think the Monologues should be enacted in regional languages to reach a larger audience.

5/1/06 Now maybe I may understand my mother/wife better.

14/1/06 Keep on doing this; it means a lot to all the vaginas of the world!

Now I can discuss the ‘vagina’ with my daughter without being embarrassed.

Thanks for introducing me to my vagina.

12/3/06 I’m only 18…I feel like a more mature and comfortable young woman. Thank you.

I hope this turns into a movement.

7/5/06 …really changed a lot of my perceptions about women.

Am also glad I brought my mum along!

Matured people’s sex education.

Could there be a monologue by a TRANSGENVER longing for a VAGINA?

Simultaneously heartrending & entertaining.

I have been dealing with VAGINAS for some time now (I’m a gynecologist) but I guess I knew really REALLY little before I watched THIS! Thanks for all the education.

25/6/06 It has increased my respect for myself manifold. Comparison of vagina and heart was awesome!

I’m glad I got my 17-year-old to see the play – quite an eye opener

19/10/06 …it should be performed in various REGIONAL LANGUAGES so it reaches out to more people, especially women from all parts of India.

I’m so delighted to see this play in India where we really need to tell these dialogues & emancipate & empower our wonderful women.

As men, particularly in a society like that of India, we really do not come across “sources” where we get to hear the other side of the story. And that too portrayed so beautifully…

19/11/06 Very enlightening for a man!

Thank you so much for bringing this to Delhi, even if a few of us are less ‘tabooed’ it will make a difference. May we continue to celebrate ourselves and our vaginas!

Thank you for liberating everywoman in this audience, in a country where everyone of us is still a sex object, you’ve let us become a thing of grace and beauty.

I would love to hear more Indian women’s voices. Come to us, we’ll give you the stories!! (International Planned Parenthood Federation)

8/2/07 All females in my life will get more care and respect and love.

8/4/07 Just another instance when I realize that I appreciate a woman’s place in this world.

I’d really, really like to be part of it!

I wish sex education classes in school were like this!

I think a lot of what you said appeals mostly to the urban audience. Your next step should be to adopt it into every Indian language and spread the message to the masses to stop rape. THIS IS YOUR CHALLENGE. Would like to help.

10/5/07 More of us men should watch it. It will mature us and teach us to respect women.

Am coming here to see the play for the sixth time…

I have four daughters. Last year I held a mirror to them & showed them their vaginas and reaffirmed all that you just said in your play.

I’m sure my boyfriend and to-be-hubby will respect me & my vagina much more.

A must for everyone in India.

14/7/07 Prithvi 151 st show

An inspiring play handled with care, compassion & class…Need to give Indian women confidence.

Thanks for making the private public!

A must watch for our society.

…to touch the real, practical lives of women in such a simple way.

Hope the show runs and runs! It was the most empowering show I’ve seen! I’ve truly been touched!

15/7/07 I think it was absolutely brilliant. I’ve seen over 100 plays and it’s one of the best I have ever come across. Have waited almost a year to see this play. Must say it was work the wait. Amazing!

26/7/07 Prithvi Instilled and encouraged a strange but wonderful feling of freedom & acceptance of self.

It sure makes me love myself more.

The two times I’ve seen this wonderful wonderful play I’ve been bombarded with Tch! Tch! Tch! Oh no! Did she say clit/yani/vaginaaaa! Well, you’ve achieved what you always wished to – made them say the much-dreaded word…VAGINA!

I discovered myself!

My vagina is wide awake!

I am a man. It saddens me to see something so beautiful, natural & loving be so blatantly abused. Thank you for enlightening us.

Your play moved me, touched me beyond words. I am going to come back again & again.

Different, intelligent, vaginal.

22/7/07 Being a man…I would have to call watching your play my most liberating experience.

30/9/0 7 Deshpande v-good

Impressed that this could happen In India.

I was encouraged to see the play with my 20 year old daughter. No regrets!

Truly progressive!

Brilliantly ‘organismic.’

Must be made mandatory for men!

5/10/07 Max Adlass in Wadala

There was a moment when I had tears in my eyes. ..I have newfound admiration for women.

Make this compulsory viewing in all colleges, the army, the police force. It will sensitize people who matter.

I spent 18 months doing episiotomies in a public hospital. Your play affected me powerfully; I’ve traveled from Pune just to see this play – worth every mile!

Fulfilling

Easily the most beautiful, innovative, expressive, bold & brilliant way of bring up issues related to us – Vaginas.

7/10/07 Vivid, vivacious, voluptuous, volatile, voracious…wonderful!!!

I loved the Indian take on things

Lucid, humorous day-to-day discourse to expose gender & sexual politics should to on!!

Never in my dreams would I have ever imagined myself screaming the word VAGINA in an auditorium…

This is what India needs and needs now.

After ten shows that I could not get tickets to, I have finally managed to watch it! Definitely worth the wait! The most refreshing and honest work I have perhaps ever seen!

Made me look at my vagina in a new way. Also hurt my tummy laughing!

Every 17-year-old bloke should be made to listen to this!!

Going home to check my vagina tonight!

Sri Lanka 22/10/07

Liberating! I’ve waited many years to enjoy these amazing Monologues.

Prithvi 20/12/07

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! A post grad, married 10 years, mother of two and today you made me realize what a wonderful thing I have been carrying around all this time – my wonderful, pulsating, throbbing , alive, beautiful fragrant vaginaJ

Thanks for making me experience this feeling. I am in my 8th month and I think my Baby loved it as well.

29/12/07 I’m from Iran. I wish there was freedom of speech there too.

It was fun screaming out CUNT & VAGINA with my mother, uncles, aunts & cousins! I’ve waited 40 years to do that.

Having been working in the field of reproductive & sexual rights, I felt that it was a great step to bring such isues in the open.

I’m never gonna wait for weekends now, as that’s when my hubby gets some time’ to make me come.’ I’m gonna enjoy on my own.

I saw VM for the second time today, with my husband. I recently got married and I had told him that I specifically want him to, want us to see this play together. And I loved it all the more this time too.

As a man, I felt sad and thankful at the same time.

Pune Festival at Nehru Audi

14/1/08 Please let me know when you are back. I WANT MY MOM TO SEE IT!

I’ve been waiting 2 years for this!

Thank you so much. I could feel the spirits of all the women hovering ( a doctor).

…genuine…

It opens everyone up.

Absolutely amazing, dashing, bold and factual. ‘Courageous move.’ Wonder how it will be taken in our country in ‘Hindi’. Be careful.

23/1/07 I am a girl & I should buy a hand mirror fast. A must-watch for men alongside women.

Gave me a new perspective on understanding the beauty of women.

Felt closed, stifled and dead; today realized which part of me died.

I’ve see this in Holland and in the Caribbean. This was the best!

Captivating…enthralling…

Such an amazing, thought-provoking portrayal about women’s liberation. Wish you could bring this somehow to the Gulf where women are so suppressed & not allowed to voice themselves. Hope to see you there sometime in the not-so-distant future.

You know something likes this exists, but never wish to see it.This play turned my reluctance into acceptance. I liked it a lot for a long list of reasons.

Such a thought-provoking play. When will women be taught that they also have the right to all the pleasures. Whenever they have and second or third partner they feel as they have become whores. I thing you should also include this aspect. As men think it’s their right to change partners, but now women.

…like a journey…

Highly provocative. I can see why is wasn’t allowed in Singapore where I came from It even awakened me to emotions in myself that I didn’t know I had.

Calcutta 29/1/08

…little too much

Pathbreaking is an understatement. It is surely a new beginning.

The similarity between the heart and the vagina was an eye opener.

…from darkness to light…

I am nineteen and I had already forgotten how it is to be a woman. Thank you.

It takes a lot of courage & love to do what you are doing. It’s a huge responsibility to give back the vagina’s dignity. Thanks for it.

Can you bring the Vagina Workshop here?

…therapeutic…

9/2/08 …great local adaption

I feel all powerful…

You should put on a show for all our guys in Kashmir (the Indian army).

This makes having an orgasm more legitimate. How come no talk on the period; that’s one time most women hate their vaginas!

HAND OUT A MIRROR!

8/03/08 You gals are the guardian angels for all the vaginas throughout the world!

This is an experience that will stay with me for all my life.

Total gender bias you make a production for vagina monologues. Why not penis monologues as each coin has two sides, you have to show both the sides. If you don’t, I will.

I used to love pussies, now I love them more than ever & respect them.

Bangalore 4/4/08

I once did 9 episiotomies in a single night shift in …The last monologue brought back memories of exhaustion, blood and the needle, thread and technique.

Saw the original in NYC 6 years ago.

It was a revelation.

Thank you for bringing in a VAGINA VOCAL REVOLUTION!

9/4/08 This is the first play that I have seen.

It must be performed in Islamic countries

19/4/08 This is the second time I have watched this play & it has had an unbelievable impact in my life,

my thought process & my understanding of women. Absolutely fucken incredible!

It was an experience of a lifetime. I have never been kind to my VAGINA…it should be part of curriculum…

JUST THANK YOU.

…I could never imagine so many facets of my vagina…

26/4/08 This totally gave me a new perception to vaginas and since I watched it with my mum, I think it

made the topic of vaginas easier between us.

26/6/08 I am recommending this to everyone I know/don’t know.

Of all species, only humans have the pleasure of enjoying sex. An hour and half back, vagina was important for me. Now it’s sacred and person.

Slightly tougher for men to identify. Suggestion: make a new play – vaginal dialogue (including views from men).

Striking truth!

The past 90 minutes changed the way I look at life & myself.

27/6/08 This is the second time I am watching this and I must say I have changed.

I love the VAGINA MONOLOGUES. I’ve done a reading of it, I’ve read it end to end a million times, I’ve seen 4 other versions, but today, wow, today was amazing…

27/6/08 I thought I was a doctor and knew it all, but you just liberated me & my vagina.

It needs to be shown for women who might not see it otherwise.

8/6/08 Going into the play I was so blank and coming out brimming. So much so that my

dictionary falls short.

2/7/08 Helped clear a lot of my myths.

I wish my husband was there watching!!!

5 years to get to see this.

The only missing cycle is the WIDOW VAGINA.

16/7/08 I am a gynecologist. One night I got a call: “Doctor.I am having an itching sensation in my

vagina.” “Damn it…scratch! “ It was 2am. Keep it up!

A beginning!

Finally the vagina speaks her heart & claims her true place!

Recommended for all high schools.

16/7/08 Helped me question.

I am 30 year old urban Indian woman and never examined my vagina. Will do it tonight!

Today happens to be my 48th birthday and I was invited to the play by my 18-year-old son –It feels like I got the chance to grow up on a rainy Monday.

28/7/08 I watched the play with my 2 teenage daughters. It was very liberating for me & I hope my daughters also found it so.

I have learnt so many new ways of self-expression. I am amazed at the sheer truthfulness of the monologues.

…overdue message…

Suggestion: try and concentrate on rural areas & small towns.

The unexpected ordinary but extraordinary. I am 21 and you changed the way I look at girls. Thank you.

…extremely subversive…

It makes us feel that we have entered the 21 st century…bravery with elegance.

28/8/08 I am a father of two daughters, older one aged 10. I would like her to be guided in the right

manner about her body.

`…leads to opening up of our sordid minds…

Thanks . I’ve largely undone twenty years of damage by assholes.

I have actually revisited myself.

Should be part of gynecology curriculum in all colleges.

One of the few experiences that has moved me.

Being a doctor, I didn’t know that I didn’t know so much about vaginas.

Awakening epitomized.

I wept. (a man)

Spellbinding. I am sure millions of ladies, girls or maybe even males have been liberated by speaking and more by listening and even more by laughing. I could watch it 1,000 times.

This was the most beautiful and satisfying piece of work I’ve seen I can go back home beaming PROUD to have a VAGINA.

These things have to be said out loud. (a man)

My appreciation goes by your tribute to women in labor and delivery. (a midwife)

Wonderfully woven in pleasure and sadness. You made me laugh and cry all at the same time.

Great exposure.

Whenever someone unwanted touches my vagina, it shouts and cries and no one hears it. But it speaks…

“The first step towards spiritual awakening is self-acceptance…” VAGINA MONOLOGUES has led me to the FIRST STEP.

I am liberated, but now I am overliberated.

10/9/08 A very fair liberation of the fair sex. A clear & honest narration of the w(hole) truth.

It’s liberating to think about a piece of my anatomy which I had forgotten existed. Thanks for the experience.

My vagina throbbed with life today.

A complete eye opener. I have my Mom’s suffering from uterine cancer and now can empathize more with what she’s going through.

I WANT MY MOM TO SEE THIS PLAY. (a man)

We will attend as many times as we can! Love you people! I am 20 years old and I’ve never felt this way before.

I can say it now, I can feel it now, I don’t know whether I can celebrate it yet.

IN HINDI – KISSA YONI KA 13/01/08

I’m proud to be a woman today.

It’s important to this society.

Should come up in other languages as well. You can even start an AIDS awareness program with this.

Don’t stop. Let the yonis storm the whole of India.

Superb translation. This performance should go to every corner of India.

Funny, but after seeing the performance some words do not sound obscene anymore.

This play can empower girls of India to become great and wonderful women of India.

22/1/08 Feel liberated as if someone has freed me of my hypocrisies.

It’s slowly breaking free from its English original.

Hindi version is more lyrical.

23/1/08 VAGINA MONOLOGUES is beautifully crafted, but I feel as a girl that it should be telecast on

television so that each and everyone can watch it and learn lesson from it: to respect a woman.

A goose -bump affair. Every incident strikes a chord.

You girls are the spice girls (very spicy).

16/3/08 Life has started today.

28/6/08 Nice way to change the world.

I feel so proud to be an Indian – as a product of this generation that allows for women such as you to leave a mark in this society.

The English performance was moving, disturbing. The Hindi show was an eye-opener. You are changing lives with every show; please go on.

29/6/08 I’ll continue with the thought that I have to learn many more things. This play of yours has given me a damn big vision about the whole world round

More power to women, especially in our country. I strongly feel that this play should tour the country especially in the interiors of our country so that more people can be part of the ‘V Movement.’

6/8/08 Awakenings. The last episode was soul stirring.

Must play all over India, a country requires such a play, especially men.

It’s struggle, it’s right, it’s awesome step beyond existence. It’s very important!

Educative for a shunned society.

28/11/08 Could be a replacement for sex education if nothing else.

"acting"

2009-05-24T02:46:00.000-07:00

While working on the umpteenth draft of this article, whose scope is becoming more expansive and ambitious than I am to include transnational feminist networking, etc. etc. I started pondering the beautiful depth inherent when I am talking about V-Day actresses; the debatable nature of acting vs. portraying, acting on a stage while acting in an ACTivist sense to intentionally change the world. Hmmm.... Thought I'd share. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss academia in the sense that I miss the support, the colleague feedback, etc. I want to peer edit! But I have to stalk my peers via desperate e-mail please around the world instead of meeting at the Bistro for caffeinated red marker sessions. Sigh. It's true, the dork-level of my infant glasses'd self lives on.

Literal and emotional snapshots of the train experience:

2009-05-21T23:22:00.000-07:00

A fully veiled woman on the train is staring solemnly at me. I feel self conscious, want to somehow communicate my dilemma between self expression and cultural respect. Then I notice a meticulous child-drawn flower on the ball of her hand that grasps the handles. The six wavering orbs glow from their deep mahogany henna. I picture a child's glossy black head bent in intense concentration over her palm. There is a look of fierce love on her face as she she feels the tickle, the cool henna, as she smells its sweet earthiness. The child is already on to the next task of growing up, and she is letting the henna dry, carefully making chai and food, so conscious of the crumbling dark lines of connection.

On the train I am absorbed in, thoughts? Something. So absorbed that I don't realize my hand on the railing is all mixed in with a woman's long dark hair, and has been awhile. I startle, remove the offending limb. But she hasn't noticed, or if she has, was not bothered. I peer around shiftily, but no one is looking alarmed at the firangi sticking her paws in people's ponytails. I laughed out loud. What an illustration of the lack of personal space!

The moment I knew I wanted to be friends with Anneke was during her description of an old woman's attack on the train. I laughed so hard, I loved it, because I could picture it perfectly. 'I was in the ladies train and this old woman practically scrambled up my back trying to get on the train!' I just pictured a tiny wizened monkey-like ancient mauling her. Her visiting friend Ritz got nearly mowed down when she tried to plunge into an exiting mass of women. It is utter madness, and hilarious how everyone will be all sweet, maybe singing or haggling, smiling at me, adjusting my bra strap so it's more appropriately hidden. And then a big stop like Dadar or Mumbai Central comes and the same kind ladies morph into sternfacedloudvoiced monsters as they push out of the car like a force of nature, like a birth contraction. When the train is packed tightly I feel like all the little fish stuck in the net in 'Finding Nemo'.

After an emotional and successful interview I was in a perfect mood; which is to say, a complicated happiness- tempered and shaded by depressing realities but also real connection. Sitting in that silly mall, we drank overpriced Gloria Jean coffee, while outside the sparkling glass I could see slums decking the hills. I'd cried as Sangita described her connection to 'My Vagina was my Village' She told me how she connects with the piece because it is not located in some vague realm of time or 'other' location. For her, it is present, it isn't Sarajevo. It is her region, where a girl was raped by every man in her town, wood and glass shoved inside her vagina. 'I see her' she told me. So no, I don't think it's all fun. I feel her with me" Even in this work, I can disconnect with the closeness of these stories, their multiplicity. Feminist theorists can bicker all they want about problematic universality, etc. etc. but I can't connect with theory, it means nothing to me compared to hearing these stories replicated the world over.

I feel at home here in a way I only ever can right before I leave. I breeze through the station, snag a five rupee samosa, validate my tickets, give my samosa to a charming urchin, buy another one and invest in some stomach-hardening sugar cane juice. The gears work over the stalks of cane, and a bell rhythmically chimes along with the production of the oh so refreshing frothy green elixir. Ring, ring ring. We stand and drink companionably from the ambiguously clean glasses, flies adding to the rhythm section. I miss the train- there is a moment when I could have ran and swung into the car, graceful and lithe- but I'm not, and I'm too hyper-aware of the slicing rails.

Death is just a few feet away at all times here. As I watch a train running parallel having caught the next one, I can't help shiver despite the sweltering heat, as I observe just how close all these transported humans are to being sliced apart. I'm not usually morbid, but the accident seriously disturbed me. As it should have. I picture people slipping, which would be an easy feat in the packed cars from which people overflow, stand on the roofs... I want them to live. In my fears for their death I affirm the value of life. A woman lifts her baby to snag the hand-holds. The baby chortles, the women smile, a moment passes and we're to the next station.

"We can do it with this text": Utilizing the Vagina Monologues Internationally

2009-05-19T02:24:00.000-07:00

I am submitting this article to be published in an academic compilation of essays regarding the Vagina Monologues. I would love feedback, and if the formatting is too messed up here, let me know and I will e-mail you a word document.

“We can do it with this text” :
Utilizing The Vagina Monologues Internationally
Jennifer R. McKenzie

INTRODUCTION

I am constantly on the move, hurtling through foreign currencies, new flavors and languages, and I am not allowed to return to the U.S. for a year. The constant in my life: The Vagina Monologues. The words I am learning: vágina, paparoocha, chong claud, pichka, fannie, coño, choot, and yoni. The terrain I am passing through: Mexico, England, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Spain, Thailand, Cambodia, India, and South Africa. Having been passionately involved in V-Day for four years at Willamette University, I am now traveling the world documenting The Vagina Monologues’ international presence. Everywhere, participants and audience members tell me they have experienced magic, that they feel a part of positive, “mad hysterical energy,” as one V-Day actress named Rupa told me in Thailand and Jelena in Serbia echoed, “I don’t know how to explain it- there was a lot of magic surrounding it”.
What has been most surprising and inspiring throughout my experiences are the innovative strategies diverse communities are utilizing to indigenize The Vagina Monologues within their cultural contexts. V-Day activists around the world are mobilizing; they are seeking out new experiences, and making the text relevant to themselves and their communities. Actresses on every continent are embracing perceived universalities, empathizing with differences, finding solidarity and adapting where necessary. They are using The Vagina Monologues as a tool to answer their local needs.
V-Day a fallibly human movement, and could never express the experiences of all women. Given this reality, what is crucial is that we contribute to its evolution and that it inspires our own storytelling and actions. There is much that can be critiqued. Yet this is not how those involved relate to it, and in spite of this, the play has a tangible international presence that is expanding every year. These ‘vagina warriors’ are performing in cowsheds with a borrowed couch in rural France; in restaurants; touring in a Roma caravan; in hotels, birthday parties, public parks, girls leadership trainings, malls, women’s shelters, cinemas, women’s prisons and cafés; in SOS hotline trainings: at universities; at antifascist festivals, among disabled groups and alongside refugee medical services; at elderly homes, among NGOs, and on beaches in Croatia.
While allowing for constructive examining of how V-Day can become more inclusive, we also owe it to these remarkable organizers to respect their agency, creativity and bravery. V-Day is not a dogma but an invitation, and it belongs to those who choose to utilize it. Eve Ensler addressed this shared ownership during the European V-Day Organizers Workshop in London:
“When we love something, we want to believe it’s ours: because it gives us value, and it gives us identity, and it gives us purpose. And what I am being taught constantly in this movement is to give it away. To give it away, to get out of the way. Serve it up …You can say, this is my movement, this is my thing, and you’ll keep it very small, and it will be your thing. But your objective should be that as many people get to be involved in V-Day, and to want people to come and take it away from you! Come and take it! … Spread it to your community, be bolder than me, be ahead of me.”
Wherever they are staging events, activists are as bold and innovative as Eve could wish. They take what they need while creatively molding it to suit their context. Instead of asking how a movment like V-Day can possibly appeal to such a breadth of international women, I demonstrate that appeal by examining and seeking to understand the creative strategies and functions it satisfies for international organizers. Their words and experiences highlight the usefulness of V-Day as a strategic tool. In this paper, I examine how productions in three locations indigenized The Vagina Monologues, and demonstrate its effectiveness in addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic and at the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico, in sustaining and reenergizing weary feminist activists in the former Yugoslavia, and in creating a rare Thai and expatriate community in Thailand.
Their strategies are unique, but their creativeness is so pervasive as to be common. These examples serve to highlight the poignant possibility of our expanding transnational sphere, which Valentine Moghadam describes as, “Globalization has in fact brought social movements together across borders in a ‘transnational public sphere,’ as real as well as conceptual space in which movement organizations interact, contest each other, and learn from each other” (Moghadam 4). Transnational feminism approaches like V-Day can only grow through learning from eachother through efforts like these in Mexico, the Balkans and Thailand.

MEXICO CITY

‘My vagina is going crazy in fact…
It’s mad already…
AIDS has invaded its deepest, sweetest, most secret places
…My vagina is dying of AIDS…
Are politicians watching?
Do they know this?
Do they know they are diminished every time a vagina perishes?
…This great army can wage a war against vagina injustice
….Chronicle the story of vaginas
Learn the history of vaginas
… Uplift the dignity of vaginas
Hold it high for the world to see
That the vagina, like the penis, is human”

(Poem in Vagina Monologues Session
World AIDS Conference ‘08 Mexico City)

In the conference room packed with international HIV/AIDS activists, the early August rain was deafening. We were there for The Vagina Monologues session of the XVII International AIDS Conference. The reading of select international Monologues and open mic seemed disorganized, with the organizers mispronouncing author Eve Ensler’s name. I braced myself for a flop. Instead, I was privy to an inspiring and intimate conversation. As one of the organizers gushed afterwards, “I’ve never seen this happen with a hundred strangers before.” Leading activists piled informally on the steps--some HIV-positive, one held her sleeping infant-- and the microphone was passed amongst them with care. Many were hearing the stories for the first time. As the presentation proceeded, the emotions inspired in them and the audience were palpable.
Although The Vagina Monologues has been shown over 5,000 times in the last nine years there, and is performed an impressive twelve times weekly in Mexico City alone, what happened here was unique. The professional production has put the word vagina into daily discourse , sparked controversy, focused on the missing women of Juarez, appealed to a massive public and become a rite of passage for female celebrities . Yet what we saw that monsoon-drenched afternoon was not acting. As one participant said, “this was more authentic because it was real women. We’re not actors, we’re just women, women who happen to be in the Women’s Movement, or the HIV movement.” The words rang with this authenticity, forged instant community, and provided a platform for dialogue about the intersections of the pandemic with sexual violence. Activists synthesized The Vagina Monologues to illuminate their cause and needs. They used it to address overlapping issues within the HIV/AIDS movement such as speaking about taboos, breaking stigmatized silence in this ‘silent epidemic’ and validating individual experiences while applying them to community action. The connection and similarity to The Vagina Monologues is apparent in their goals:
“Women’s voices are central to our success in identifying and ensuring rights-based responses to the epidemic … It is a space for us to … bring forward women’s voices-old and new, diverse and unified- to comment, shape, critique and respond to current and future interventions responding to women’s realities risks and needs. We aim to bring the voices from the margins to the center. We aim to trace our history as a movement and to map our way forward.” (Feminization of violence and feminization of the epidemic)
Although there were more attendees than seats, The Vagina Monologues was utilized to create metaphotical space, and facilitated the kinds of conversations activists both hungered for and sought to use in their own work. Seodhna Keown described her experience at the session in a paper titled, ‘The Feminization of HIV-a call to Action,’ saying it created, “a safe space for women and men to share, opened up a discussion and dialogue about our own personal experiences of our bodies, our relationships, our pain and our joy. I witnessed an incredible community of women supporting one another to share their intimate experiences on being a woman!” She sees The Vagina Monologues as a resource, and was inspired to replicate this kind of tool in her work with sexual health education. Kristan Schoultz, Director of the Global Coalition of Women and AIDS called for more creative strategies like The Vagina Monologues to, “vibrate with the richness of women’s experienes, and offer a vibrant demostration of how different the response can be, when women take the lead” (Schoultz 4).
The organizers of The Vagina Monologues reading had hoped to inspire activists to creative responses not only through witnessing the texts’ potential, but through then breaking our own silence. After the reading, tears and laughter drowned by the rain, the emcee said, “ I think maybe we should just begin to tell each other stories … We’re at this conference to talk about breaking taboos- that’s really what The Vagina Monologues is about. It’s about relating what happens to us in our lives, and speaking words that haven’t been spoken.” Even then I doubted. Who would stand in front of hundreds of strangers, walk to the front of a cavernous room and speak into the waiting microphone? There was a mere moment of tense silence. And then the stories began to pour forth. Their power and poignancy drowned the thunder and created a different kind of electricity. Though many languages were spoken, we were sharing the same conversation.
Some were stories of affirmation, “I want to encourage everybody to keep a vision of the pleasure that talking vaginas can have. And that people want to hate you for. I want to assure you, that at age sixty-seven, my vagina is talking to other vaginas and having a pretty damn good time!” One woman spoke about inseminating herself to create her son. Others shared about their empowerment through short skirts and their joy with multi-orgasms, “You cannot reach that without empowering yourself, and feeling that your body and your pleasure belongs to you.” Activists also shared their pain and survival through molestations and injustices,
“While in exile, at the age of five I was raped by a neighbor in Swaziland. We moved countries. And went to South Africa, and I was raped at thirteen. And I had to leave the country and go to Zambia because I was raped. And I was raped again at fourteen. I went to a theological seminary to study to be a priest, and I was raped at twenty. And then, I was raped by the former Deputy Director of South Africa. First he said I wore a miniskirt. And I folded my skirt in such a way that it enticed him. And then he said it was because I wore a cloth that nearly all women in Africa wear- to the bed, to the market. But on top of that, his lawyer said that my rapes at five, and thirteen, and fourteen and twenty were my sexual history, and proved that I could not tell the difference between consensual sex and rape. I refused to give in to it. Everyday I have to keep reminding myself that I did nothing wrong. And I have to keep fighting the fight!”
One activist told her sister’s story of rape and subsequent crusade to document sexual assault on Chilean university campuses. One young woman, appropriately named Lluvia (rain) told about using the The Vagina Monologues in a community project in Gueretero, México:
“We talked with many women from different groups, mothers, and young women. And it’s incredible how many want to talk … We can do it with this text, we can organize ourselves and our states, and our cities, and our countries … This session is an example. We have many women sharing very intimate things, and it’s only because of the text. It’s an invitation … When our vaginas start to get organizing, and to talk to each other, no one can stop them.”
The crowd applauded raucously. Another woman thanked those who shared: “I feel very fortunate to share this space with such powerful women. Even though they have suffered something I can’t comprehend in my head or my heart, they are still here fighting for all of us. I cried when I heard them.” The open mic had to be cut off, though participants were lined up to share their stories. They drifted into the hall speaking amongsts themselves. The stories in the text allowed their own stories to be shared, and then communally uplifted and validated.
This kind of intimate sharing and strategic use of The Vagina Monologues is an example of activists creatively applying the text to their cause. I have learned this year that there is no traditional or typical V-Day performance. This is highlighted even more in organizers’ informal use of The Vagina Monologues in the context of an international conference to create community, inspire alternate strategies and re-emphasize the interconectiveness of issues. Conference organizers suggested that, “Approaches that rest on the experiences of women and girls encourage and engage their participation in decision-making, and emphasize the importance of changing community attitides to counter gender inequality” (4). Initially I thought V-Day had been overdue in addressing HIV/AIDS and the health issues surrounding vaginas and violence against women. But after the session I realized it is even more powerful to have communities making the connection themselves. As one organizer emphasized, “We wanted to link the connection between violence against women as a major risk factor for AIDS- violence against women and rape. Especially now, in Darfur and the Congo - there are so many places where women are HIV positive because they were raped.” I imagine all of these diverse activists taking the lessons they shared at this session back to their countries, the breaking of silence expanding like ripples. As the organizer of the session said,
“I think it’s enormously powerful, and beautiful and fabulous and bold, and it creates a space. And it’s a space that can only expand.”

BALKANS
Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina

“[The Vagina Monologues] had great impact on women and communities, but also on activism. [V-Day] changed what activism means, it fulfills us in a different way”
Rada Boric

(Director Women’s Studies Center Zagreb, Croatia, Feminist Aunt and influential V-Day activist )

“It is an activisty way of doing The Vagina Monologues”

(Biljana (Lori) Stankovic Founder of NoviSad Lesbian Organization has been performing unofficially for ten years among diverse communities and informal settings)

Walking through stormy Sarajevo, I was stressing because I was lost and late to meet Nuna Zvizdic, the director of Zene Zenama , and long-time V-Day advocate. I walked through the gorgeous shrapnel-pitted and cemetery-ridden city, and after knocking on bemused neighbors doors, finally found her. Nuna held my eyes solemly while her reply was translated regarding why the The Vagina Monololgues and V-Day are significant to feminist work in the Balkan region: “They are very important because they are improving the development of strategy for women’s rights, and against violence against women. It’s one part of the strategy.” I asked her what she thought was the connection between art and activism. She gazed at me evenly, and responded, “Isn’t it the same thing? Activism is really the art of survival.”
The region of former Yugoslavia has many such survival artists and a strong Vagina Monologues presence. In many ways it is the V-Day Mesopotamia. Eve’s work with Bosnian women refugees sparked the flame that ignited The Vagina Monologues from theatre to a public movement. The Monologue ‘My Short Skirt’ was even adapted into a hit song in Croatia. As Rada Boric, the Director of Women’s Studies Center in Zagreb, Croatia and influential V-Day activist said, “-when you think [the play] might have been forbidden in many places like Kosovo, and then … after the bombing, to have ‘My Little Skirt’ being first on the top pop list- that somebody dares to play it! A pop song, in a war-torn Mostar or even Sarajevo…”
With numerous creative endeavors like these, the Balkans have embraced V-Day in Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. The recovering region is a dramatic backdrop for the play. As Serbian V-Day organizer Jelena Djordovic wrote in her article about the first official production in Belgrade: “Staging V-Day in this region, which was for years devastated by wars in former Yugoslavia, provided a metaphor for the possibility of bringing peace and coexistence of different cultures and religions. It was aimed at strengthening women’s solidarity and support and sending a strong political message demanding an end to violence against women.”
V-Day has fulfilled the even more unique function in this region of sustaining activists. The Vagina Monologues provided a powerfully positive outlet which fits and fulfills them. As a strategy, the play re-energizes even as it drains, unites activists in a shared commitment and collaboration, supports focus on their individual needs and encourages them to celebrate their efforts. In the words of Danijela Dugandzic, Bosnia and Herzegovina V-Day activist and Pitch-Wise founder , “We said, okay, we’re still feminists, and these are feminist issues, but we’ll do it through this venue, and form, and actually it’s the form that really suits us … we saw that we really enjoyed doing it through art.”
This artistic strategy sustains activists by allowing them to creatively focus on the range of female sexual experience, joy as well as injustice. It is affirmative and this focus on positivity is catalytic and refreshing. Sandra Ljubinkovic, the Director of Belgrade Anti Trafficking Center said, “I personally, and we at the ATC, are done with victim-hood, and victims, and this deep deep dark. We know that. We did that. We worked on that, but then we decided our strategy will be a bit different. It’s affirmative- it’s not light, but it’s affirmative.” As Jelena Djordovic, co-director of ATC, illuminated to me over exponential cups of coffee, tangerines and chocolate:
As a way of talking about violence against women, it is extremely powerful. It is a new way; it is talking about violence against women in a very powerful message- through art, through music, through dancing through play. We don’t play much around violence against women, it’s all very clear: ‘it’s difficult, its bleak’ … Battered women, bruised women, you know? And all that weight around it, it’s all heavy, it’s all dark. So The Vagina Monologues is something different, it is vibrant, it brings people together. It’s like a way of attracting people through dancing- and through beauty. And then bringing them to this very safe place where actually we can talk about very difficult issues … I think my dream is to use The Vagina Monologues to energize the activist community. Because people are really exhausted and drained, and disempowered.
V-Day further energizes activists through a renewed common commitment. Danijela describes the final moment of the play where they ask people who have suffered violence to stand:
“you have everyone standing up. And this is like an awful moment. I mean, I looked around, and I started crying, because you understand you live in this society that is so violent; and everyone understands that this is something that unites us. Like- fuck! I didn’t know that everyone is going to stand up! Every person in this room, 800 people has been or knows someone who has been through violence- this is awful, you know? And then people of course keep on standing when they say [remain standing] if you’re going to keep this from happening to women and girls.’”
As well as renewed dedication, Sandra describes the importance of sharing a common dream. She says a world without violence against women, without the need for The Vagina Monologues would be “a more contemplative world … But that’s like… a dream, yeah? And we have to dream, we have to dream. Otherwise it wouldn’t be possible, we couldn’t be doing this… For activists this is very important. Because it is what sustains you, and also what drains you at the same time. Because you give so much” Jelena emphasizes how V-Day encourages this shared dream among activists:
“a shared idea about the world, and emphasizing dreaming about this world against violence against women. What would it look like? What would we do? And really feeling it! … Capturing that feeling- this is something we rarely have a chance to feel, because this doesn’t exist. We’re always trying to get it and its difficult- we come up again, we fall down again, because the struggle to create a safer world is very hard and there are many obstacles… V-Day is a really beautiful and magical experience which personally re-energizes me a lot.”
The movement and presence of The Vagina Monologues have re-energized many activists as it did Jelena, and allowed them to focus, for once, on their individual needs. For many activists hearing The Vagina Monologues was “revolutionary.” At local gatherings around the region Monologues were regularly read, “and this was beautiful, you know? It was really beautiful. Just among activists.” These readings inspired vagina workshops. At a conference in Thailand Balkan activists were relaxing after a long day and Rada was asked, ‘Teta (auntie), why don’t you do with us a vagina workshop?” She saus, “it started there, and they all loved it! … it started by talking and it was so wonderful I created a program…I really started softly…You can’t believe the impact. Whenever we have a women’s meeting in the smaller communities usually I do two Monologues for the women, in the night just sitting wherever we are. Women are falling apart… One day we might eventually know the impact of The Vagina Monologues.”
There can be power in preaching to the choir. Jelena points out that although many of the participants were veterans with issues of sexuality in their work, they were not engaging their own needs. The workshops facilitated more self-care which leads to greating sustainability of activist endeavors, they:
“reminded us how many of us learned about our bodies through violence rather than pleasure. But also how important it is to create these spaces where we talk about ourselves, our desires and our bodies. We had time to think about it, away from our daily work, activism and families. We reminded ourselves we need time to self-reflect, to look at ourselves more deeply. Because only by change in ourselves, can the change we envision for the world happen.”
Bosnian organizer Danijela similarly discovered that fellow activists:
“were never actually talking about themselves, or themselves through their vaginas …It is fun, but also every time we have this workshop, we find out that most of the women have suffered from violence, or know someone who has been through violence. … This is the shocking thing, you will always unfortunately find women who say, ‘it happened to me’ and it’s just… It is beautiful how this silence breaks, but it is also very emotional. Sometimes I just cannot hold it.”
In addition to beautifully breaking silence, V-Day is a chance for activists to celebrate their work. Rada describes one year when activists were so exhausted they just gathered together for a Vagina Monologues reading at a jazz club, and with accompanying music “had their party.” It was a chance for them to focus not on yet more advocacy, but upon celebrating and validating their efforts. As Dunja from Women’s House in Croatia said, “It was a nice atmosphere. Something…Something was in the air … It was not for awareness raising, it was more- let’s celebrate! Not so much about getting to the public, but about how strong we are, and what we can do together.” She jokes, “Usually we quarrel, so it’s great to just be together!” This is another element of sustaining activism that V-Day provides in the region, as organizers collaborate and support one another in their common goals; in Jelena’s words, “[V-Day] created a space for activists to talk about their work, to talk about their fears, to talk about difficulties they encountered through their work stopping violence against women.”
For ten years the The Vagina Monologues was done in readings among NGOs and women’s organizations, conferences and trainings. Now many activists are focusing on spreading the message beyond their own community. The dilemma is Jelena’s words was, “How to do it inernally as much as it happened over the years in the activist community, but also to spread it out. It needs to be spread out! It needs to be, because... its a beautiful way of really breaking taboos and pushing people outside of their comfort zone. Shaking them. Its cathartic!” Sandra summarized the resolution of this dilemma, “it has less and less sense that we do performances for each other. I mean we know that, we know each other, so there is no purpose. I’m interested in the people I don’t know. I want to reach as much people as possible. I want to touch hearts.”
With this goal in mind, activists collaborated to swath a “Vagina Triangle” between Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo. Their V-Day tour in a “crappy little van,” was intentionally political. They focused on reaching a larger public, crossing constructed borders and looking beyond problematic ethnic divides to focus on common experiences and collective solutions. Rada said, “As we all know, it’s about living on the edge. The blur on the border is nicer than something firm, it overlaps and it always has that kind of texture. Women are crossing borders- we don’t like borders, life is the most exciting on the edge” She elaborated, “This is a deeply feminist piece, with wonderful humor- in The Vagina Monologues we laugh even in the places we shouldn’t. And it’s a perfect balance.” Activists continue to use this balance to sustain themselves as well as to reach out to a wider public. They dream of expanding the movement to schools and bringing it to a more rural demographic, as Serbian Biljana (Lori) Stankovij, NoviSad Lesbian Organization founder did during her ten years performing unoficially:
“We did it in refugee camps with a mobile medical team…its an activisty way of doing The Vagina Monologues. These refugees, the stories they have… the taboo of the vagina is so big. So I don’t think, it doesn’t matter if there are ten, fifteen, two-hundered…If you make a womb atmosphere they will stay, smoke a few cigarettes, and speak about it before they go home, and then they will also speak about it there…Like in the refugee camps… they said, ‘Now we are all here, and we have seen this performance, and we are all women, so I will tell you…’ And then she adds something from her story. And then the others say, ‘Yes!’ And you just see:

It’s the end of the performance, and they are speaking.

You are speaking with them.

The performance is over, you are packing your stuff, you are leaving.

They are staying and speaking more and more and more.

You are gone, and they are still speaking.”

BANGKOK

“We were all together there.”
(Volunteer V-Day actress Rita)

During the first all-cast rehearsal of the first Thailand V-Day ever, Thai and expat women sat separately at lunch. It was a huge group of women, predominantly Thai but with over a dozen nationalities represented in the cast and production team. Bangkok is a unique entity of Thailand, and within the metropolis exist numerous cliques, divisions and communities that remain quite rigidly separate. Many of the volunteers were hearing The Vagina Monologues for the first time that long hot afternoon. They wept during Sonoko’s raw unleashing of ‘Say it.’ Even though many could not understand the language, they felt it, just as they responded to German Rita’s epic moans in “The Woman Who Liked to Make Vaginas Happy.” Their tears of empathy turned to explosive mirth. Dry leaves swirled in and puddled among the dozens of women’s shoes piled by the door, and something hapenned. Suddenly Thai Pearl was giving Canadian Yvonne a tender massage. Thais and expats were spread evenly on the floor supporting each other and melding together a tenuous community of the type rarely seen there. As one actress said, “In the team, we were bonding together, singing together, dancing together. Before, it was a bit like, some of the internationals talking, and the Thais would be in the corner. And even when we went to lunch the Thais would all sit at one table. But then it was like – we were all one. There was no division between the Thais and internationals. And we were all together there.”
This endeavor was intentionally used to unite farong (foreign) women and Thai women in a community. The play was innovatively done bilingually with subtitles, a unique solution. American director Alanna Gregory found that in Bangkok:
“There aren’t many cross–cultural based communities. It’s just Thais. French people. UN people. Americans... Trying to build a community for women in Bangkok was definitely one of the goals …It isolates one group if you only do it in English, or you only do it in Thai. And you shouldn’t. You should get both of them in the same area. Because how many times has that actually happened?! … Just sharing the same space.”
Share it they did, as V-Day was used to create not only a shared community between Thais and expats, but a common cause. The experiences of the cast were as diverse as the stories present in The Vagina Monologues. As actress Sunanda commented:
“It’s extremely diverse. I really do feel like one of the only things we have in common, if you don’t count being in the play, is that we’re women. But I think that’s one of the great parts about it. Because it’s really women from all walks of life, different attitudes, and outlooks and experiences. Because it is about every woman … Before I started I had no idea what to expect. [I was surprised by] the range of emotions covered. I cried at the audition. ‘Cause… It was so shocking, and disturbing, and just really sad. So just the range of them, and how you can laugh at some of them, and some of them just make you want to cry. It has the diversity that our group has.”
During a conversation about the diversity of the team, French Mary said, “We’re all from different countries and different backgrounds, and Thai Miu replied, “And so what? Because we all have the same organs.” And Mary, not understanding, “Orgasms?!” We laughed. “Well,” Miu said, “we hope!”
The diversity of The Vagina Monologues and their cast was reflected in the motivations of those involved, “People were drawn to it for very different reasons, for community, to make a point, further awareness in your own culture and country, or maybe because they’re survivors- its different, and its positive, and its not trying to make up for anything” These unique reasons melded into a common cause. In spite of, or perhaps because of their diversity, cast members spoke of themselves as a complete entity, whole because of their many parts. As Pearl effused,
“I can feel people here, feel it’s a very good thing in this world to support. Not just this group, but we as women! Humans! We can do great things, and I can feel that people who come here have very positive energy to move this world on … I just can feel that we are whole, the Thai women as well, not just the foreigner … I can feel that my energy is shared with the energy of these people with these good attitudes- it’s just perfect! I like to see you! I like to see Alanna! I like to see everyone in the show, it makes me happy!”
The volunteer production team envisioned this bilingual production as an initial foundation to eventually become an entirely Thai effort. Yet many actresses, particularly the Thai women, spoke passionately about its greater strength and chemistry as an international project. As Dusanee expressed, “It’s great to meet with other women from different backgrounds … and to get to know we have the same interest … involved in this, I would say, really special special show … Because without this I would not have met these girls …So I think it’s a great opportunity to involve the farong, also Thai women, and that will make the show interesting. Because if it were only farong women, that would be – not very interesting. Or if it’s only Thai… But if it’s a mix!” Actress Karin similarly asserted:
We’re reaching out for women to be more understanding of other women …Any woman that’s been a few years, and even a few months in Bangkok will see that this is a world that is divided in so many different parts… this is a very difficult place for women whether it’s expat, or Thai, or transgendered women … this is perfect. Because it speaks for all the women in Thailand. It’s great, because our production is multi-national. The Western women are from many different countries and have different experiences and different ages, same with the Thai women … It’s more than just participating, the women acting together become like a family, a team, a unit- like a nucleolus. The added energies become so much more effective when combined.
These diverse backgrounds enriched the team experience and were reconciled into a common agenda. Pearl said, “That’s why it’s interesting too. Because we have Thai people, and we have I don’t know how many nationalities, I don’t even ask. But I feel that we feel the same way. And believe in the same thing. And we come for the same objective, to stop violence against women.” Mod, one of the transgendered actresses said, “[the team] has a lot of the people from a variety of nations- I think they want to share, and it’s very universal. And I think the female, even though she comes from a different country, she has same idea about sensitivity.”
The blending of different backgrounds formed a community with a cause that allowed for a greater understanding of their unique realities. With that understanding came a strong sense of solidarity, as especially Thai women came to realize their gender oppression was not isolated. Dusanee said with relief, “with the Thai women … our perception is that western culture is very open …you are so open you can talk about this, you can act like this, and not feel anything. But in Asian countries, maybe like this or also other countries, we still feel like- oh! We cannot talk about this, especially in public.” She elaborated, “So by combining Thai and farong, maybe we can understand that… Oh, we are the same, Thai and farong women. That we have the same concerns, same problems.” Being a foreign text validates shared issues and insecurities, but also allows the show to be more radical and to escape censorship it would otherwise face.
The efforts addressed the needs of all women, including expat women. There is a tendency to hierarchize oppression, which in this instance might have led to a presumption that ethnic oppression is more debilitating than gender oppression; yet my research showed the communal action provided crucial support for expat women, in a refusal of hierarchical thinking. As one actress said, “I didn’t really do this for Thai women, I did this for myself. I did it for myself, being in Thailand. I wouldn’t do it in London. Here I did it because I feel these things more.” Another echoed, “I feel invested in it because I personally feel a great sense of stress, of sadness, of inadequacy. Of being little, anytime I see on soi 5 [notorious red light district] forty women, maybe half of them aren’t 17, having to sell their bodies … There’s a piracy of Thai women going on … A little empowerment helps me, personally, to feel like I am doing something. Because I often feel so… What can I do? It’s a huge problem!”
The bilingual production united diverse volunteers and reached a wider public than it would have had it been presented in only English or only Thai. It was initiated to unite typically separate communities, but could not have prophesized the strength of those connections. As one actress said, “I guess the nature of the issues creates a bond. … We feel so comfortable around each other, though we don’t actually know much about each other, except we are in this play. But to me that says so much, because we already love each other. It’s like loving a stranger, in a sense.” Through loving the stranger in each other, the anonymous women whose stories they presented onstage, as well as themselves, they came to realize they were not such strangers after all.

(Haven't solidified conclusion yet... may add more theory in here re: transnational feminism)

Are geckos the ones who can change colors due to their surroundings?

2009-05-15T23:45:00.000-07:00

There is nothing like friends getting engaged to be emotionally fucked. To be really happy for others, while at the same time responding to it so personally. I mean, my god, it has nothing to do with me, but it does cause one to self reflect in ways that are not entirely healthy nor self-compassionate. I feel like Bridget Jones. Eww. "ALL BY MYSELLFFFFFFF" etc. etc. bad songs and wine. Except wine is expensive here.

Naw, I am probably just flippin my lid (is that the saying? I am forgetting everything) because all these tangible life changes in my friends lives contrast against my own changes which are so internal and secretive even to me. I must be growing right? It's this frantic kind of, 'well, how can this not change me... But... am I different? Do I feel different?....(five minutes later: '..and now? Wiser? More kind? More patient?')....

Oh baby, get over yourself. Shake it out, shake it out! I think this calls for some dancing tonight.

I've picked up Indian mannerisms, necessary rickshaw Hindi, head bobble, accent when necessary. They laugh, tease me, say when I get back to the U.S. I'll be "HUH"-ing, and bobbling, and confusing the hell out of my friends. I like it, I feel oddly proud. But I know the truth. A few days into South Africa I will have dropped it, just as the "chai"s and "kawp kun kaaaa" trailed off immediately upon arriving here. It's gecko-adaptation my friend, it's forgotten quicker than I like to admit. I have no recollection of the exchange rate of the Thai baht, and couldn't even remember the name of the Serbian dinnar tough I worried it like a splinter for over twenty-four hours.

It's crazy how I can live somewhere nearly three months and still go a few blocks in any direction and see something entirely new! Street of wood shops, floral curlicue-ing around rockers and window frames- no problem! A "lake"-esque thing with paddle boats for rent- why are you surprised?! How to really know a place? How to know a place you are coming back to? Which is harder? I came back to the city and in 12 days so much changed! A road re-done, my eyebrow beauty salon totally gone- was it a rip-van-winkle trip to Rajistan or what? Will it be more surreal if Portland has changed or hasn't? Questions, questions, and so few answers.

It makes me need to scurry off to the Bagel Shop, get a black Americano with double sugar and immerse myself in working on my article. Yet, here I am, writing to you instead. Writing to myself. After spending 24-7 with friends travelling, I am feeling strangely co-dependent, and though it is not real, feeling a strange vacuum and lack of people to talk to, so am stuck writing to myself instead. I think I was a fairly self sufficient child, always throwing myself into new projects, new cardboard forts to be meticulously constructed and then left out in the rain, plays to write and never be performed, tree houses that I would live in until school started, reality shifted, and I moved on. I feel right now like I am always leaving.

More photos!

2009-05-15T23:06:00.000-07:00

Photos of the dayyyysssss (need like ten per day while yendo in Rajistan, so beautiful!)

2009-05-15T22:53:00.000-07:00

Fight flight or close eyes?

2009-05-15T22:34:00.000-07:00

I am getting sick of sweating. It would feel purifying, but coming hand in hand with pollution and dust negates any positive effects. Heat does make you finely attuned to changes in temperature, to the point that any wayward breeze or 2 degree drop is a respite.

When I was young (ha, did I just write that?) i.e. middle school, I remember a few prepubescent 'babes' lurking in the third floor girls bathroom. it just so happens that it was frequently dim, and you had to go around a blind angle. I am gullible and startle easily, so they'd 'boo' and I'd 'AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!' and kick them. Every time. My 13 year old soccer legs would bam, and they would be vanquished. This is how I remember it anyway. And THEN, it would be MY FAULT for reacting violently, when this was how it always manifested. This fight rather than flight instinct didn't fade with age, and in our sophomore year dormitory I brained Dawn with my cell phone (literally making her bleed) because she was chasing me during a water fight. All of this is too caution you against scaring me, but also to demonstrate this bizarre reaction. I do strive to not injure loved ones, promise.

Now though, I notice a change. Dozens of times daily I am in a rickshaw, taxi, bus, and there is an instant when life could end. Not being able to fight back, I close my eyes. And not in a tense comic sense, but in a deep breath, well, maybe this is it way. And that's just the visible danger. I like to hope that when it comes to big risks and bravery, especially where the heart is concerned, when the next chance comes I throw myself into it instead of closing my eyes. It comes down to a forfeiting of control, and a simultaneous trust in this system that is not my own. Most times what appears to me to be death approaching in four wheel drive is likely here a valid traffic signal. It reminds me of all the near dogfights I've seen here- you think, oh god, I don't want to see this, any second a throat will be ripped out, a mangy ear masticated, then the process unfolds and dissolves.

When it comes to the non-threatening but hard too see- this city is peopled by some of the least fortunate most literally and demographically injured people I have ever seen, I try to keep my eyes glued open. I noticed it even more through my Mom's eyes, through her overarching compassion, and feeling my own cynicism I feared a hardening of myself. I notice it more having been away from the city.

Going home late last night, the world seemed to be just too full of suffering. Whole families live in the traffic dividers, these not even one foot wide chunks of concrete with six lanes of traffic speeding by are people's... homes. What a sick word for these non-homes. An old woman nurses her ill husband, a young woman clutches a sack of tiny bones, her baby and sleeps through the chaos. If any one of them shifted, perhaps flinging an exhausted arm above their head, or kicking out in a dream, their limb would be ripped off by passing traffic, they are that close. A block later, people are lined up like sleeping matchsticks for perhaps fifty meters. I'm weary of always reacting, and then analyzing my reaction, and then analyzing my analyzation, and then feeling sick with it all anyway.

Getting caught up on photos of the days (weeks)

2009-04-28T03:38:00.000-07:00

Quarterly Report #3 (nine months down...)

2009-04-28T03:23:00.000-07:00

QUARTERLY REPORT #3
‘Women Echoed Each other…”: Breaking Silence with the Vagina Monologues
Jen McKenzie
April 28, 2009
(Thailand, Cambodia & India Chapter)

Another three months have passed, truly?! They’ve flown with speed and vibrancy. The global nature of this fellowship melds perfectly with the international breadth of V-day. A few days ago I was in a rickety fishing boat while my visiting Mom looked for dolphins as the sun dawned over the Indian coast. While we patiently strained our eyes for the elusive animals we chatted, and had an Israeli man, British ‘Dr.Who’ caster my Mom and I discussing the Vagina Monologues which we’d all seen in our respective countries. There have been so many crazy coincidences like this one, I am starting to firmly believe that the world is much smaller than I was led to conceptualize.

THAILAND:
The last time I wrote you I was a few short weeks into Thailand research. My time spent there was absolutely the kind of participation-observation I had dreamt of while writing the Watson proposal over endless cups of coffee. The production was an unbelievable success by any definition of the word. Technically a success because it drew three nights of packed audiences at one of the most prestigious and innovative theatres in the country, drawing majority Thai audiences but a wide range of ages and sex if not economic demographics. Thousands of USD were raised (not a small feat in the world of baht and economically rocky roads) for a local women’s shelter doing incredible work.
Even more powerful than these tangible accomplishments however, are the rich threads of connection forged among the incredibly international cast. It was a huge group of women, predominantly Thai but with over a dozen nationalities represented in the cast and production team. Bangkok is a unique entity of Thailand, and within the metropolis exist numerous cliques, divisions and unique communities that remain quite rigidly separate. This endeavor was strategically used to unite farong (foreign) women and Thai women in a community and cause. The play was innovatively done bilingually with subtitles, a unique solution. International women spoke to me about needing the support and community they found in the context of their expat lives. All Thai women asserted that having a blend of nationalities was as strong as or stronger than an all-Thai production, that the diverse nature of the cast could better reflect the inclusive content of the Monologues themselves - leading the cast to reflect upon the universalities that bound their very distinct lives.

CAMBODIA
I had to do a visa run to Cambodia in order to stay through the performances, and coincidentally hunted down the Phnom Penh production just in time! I rolled in from a day of cycling around Angkor Wat just in time to shower, help the organizers decorate decadent ‘fannie’ donation boxes, and jump in a tuk-tuk for their kickoff event- a screening of ‘Until the Violence Stops’ (the documentary about V-day). While there for a weekend, I attended their rehearsal in a yoga studio, talked to nearly everyone involved and saw the restaurant in which they would hold the extravaganza.
It was a unique experience particularly because it challenged my own analysis of what it means to have the play be a foreign initiative/imposition. What does it mean to have the play internationally if its presence is reflected in an expat cast and not even done in the local language? Something I came to realize is that while it is an admittedly murky realm, if I were an expat working in an NGO in Cambodia I would desperately want to be involved and find a community and venue for speaking out. It can be extremely hard to be a foreign woman in a country that is not your own, and which has very different gender roles and levels of equality. I also came to terms with the fact that while a Kmer initiated effort in Khmer may have been ideal, the needs of these expat women are also important, and can serve as a starting point which hopes to encourage local leadership and sustainability of the movement.

INDIA
India dazzles me with its energy, vibrancy, spice and flavors. I even love it when my sweat is pouring down. Yet like most love, this is a complex relationship. Just as the beauty disarms me the blatant oppression, poverty and even more subtle violence dismays me, sickens me. Though judging levels of oppression can feel wrong in itself, in many ways this is the most restrictive environment in which I’ve researched the Monologues. Even in Mumbai, the most cosmopolitan city in the country, I confront my gender in very different ways. While loving the ‘Short Skirt’ monologue, I am constantly trying to balance standing up for myself with respecting local culture and being safe. I’ve had to consider more concessions here than I ever have before, donning kurtas and long pants in 105 degree weather.
However in spite of, or perhaps because of, these tense gender dynamics the Vagina Monologues is everywhere! The demand is high- all the shows have been absolutely packed or sold out. I am simultaneously researching three productions, which provide insight and contrast between what it means to have a professional production, university production and NGO-based grassroots production. I was here for the 200th performance in which they included male Bollywood celebrities performing monologues from Eve’s new play ‘Memory, Monologue, rant and a prayer’ to draw a sold out house. I made fresh pesto pasta and mojitos to lure last year’s university women to my bungalow, and we had an amazing relaxed focus group, then celebratory night of dancing. It was truly beautiful. Their personal experiences and commitment to working to end violence against women and children is truly inspiring. The production launched a radical and vibrant feminist movement on their campus, and first year students hope to do it again this year, making it a sustained presence.
The NGO-initiated grassroots V-day was produced in Marathi, the official state language, which touches upon a fascinating element of the VM presence here- how multilingual the city and country is. To do the Monologues in Hindi means something entirely different to local audiences than to do it in English, and to do it in Marathi breaks whole new sets of taboos and includes entirely different vernacular references. Language is highly politicized here, and the productions I have seen in Hindi, English and Marathi are incredibly distinct from one another and from other versions I have seen, with music and dance included to ‘indianize’ the subject matter as they say. In spite of these differences, the play resonates profoundly with audience members and casts involved in these three distinct efforts.
The three productions appeal to different demographics, and the professional one has toured around the country and even to Sri Lanka. However, with so much poverty present, I can’t help but consider the vast groups of people who it is not accessible to, in an economic as well as subject matter sense. As it hasn’t been brought to many of these populations, the response cannot be known, yet one wonders how it may be received in a context where tampons aren’t used and gynecological exams not remotely possible, for example. In India I am confronted with different kinds of feminism, different needs o \f women and difficult questions about it. I’m glad to be challenged, and hope to come to, if not some answers, even more developed questions.
In my last report, Jennifer asked about what it is like talking to people about these sensitive topics. In fact, that is the easy part. The conversations flow with a natural ease and authenticity that constantly moves me. The nature of the play encourages conversation, calls for breaking silence, and in this vein, people are remarkably open with me about their experiences and reasons for being involved, many of which are deeply personal. The logistics are a challenge, but once I get a hold of people everyone so far has been really pleased to share with me. In many ways I feel it’s been cathartic for them to tell their own stories, through talking about their experiences with the Monologues.
In a sense these stories have helped me to process my own experiences with my vagina, with my relationship to the Vagina Monologues, and particularly with regards to my future. While I feel a clear vocation to work with women’s direct survivor services, I have learned I need a creative outlet (like the Monologues) to keep me energized and from getting too depressed by the subject matter to be useful. I am applying for a position next year that would fulfill this need, and allow me to work in prevention doing gender sensitivity training with students and services, as I work with women at a DV shelter.
The main lesson of this year for me is how to listen, ironic, considering the VMs are so much about speaking out and breaking silence. If I have a more developed understanding about listening, and definitely one about geography, my relationship with time is the most changed. I remember I was concerned with a two year commitment with the Peace Corps, but the more I see the more I realize how long it takes to begin to know a place, and how much you must know a place to be present there, much less work to change it.
I feel the pressure of time slipping away, and try to relax regarding my near constant fears of not doing enough, of missing some crucial element. There are so many countries I should go to! So many voices that should be heard. Can I have another year? I’ve decided to just relax about it- to continue to South Africa as planned and really allow myself to be present the last two months there. The truth is that just as the Vagina Monologues can’t possibly represent the experience of all women, I cannot possibly cover it all. What is important is to follow each web to its next connection, and to validate the stories I am hearing rather than lamenting the ones I am missing.

Me n V-Day production in Mumbai Mirror

2009-04-20T10:11:00.000-07:00

Hey all, crispy Jen reporting from glorious Goa! Here's an article published in Mumbai Mirror, in which the fabulously intelligent Shanta interviewed ME when I turned up (with Mom in tow) to interview HER, ha. More on that soon, gotta walk back along the beach, Mom already holed up reading and listening to the ocean no doubt. Much love!

Behind on photos!

2009-04-12T11:50:00.001-07:00

I am so so so SOOOOOOO happy my mom is here. Tho will mean less blog updating and writing of article (gulp). BUT also means lots more photo taking. We are happy as little parental and offspring clams. In a rickshaw.

There is no photo for a day like today

2009-04-06T07:42:00.000-07:00

I saw a man die today. And I decided I want to be a mother. We were taking the train to the orphanage for a party. And we took the wrong train. And just as the one we needed to take was pulling into the station, a man slipped under. What I think I saw is this: a thin man with a dark plaid shirt slowly yet instantaneously sucked under the train. It seemed as though he turned into it, and reminded me of when you're learning to swim and you hunch over the edge before your body plunges. Anneke heard a woman scream. All I heard was the impact, and then a dog going crazy. 'Jen, let's go!' Emma pulled us away, as people rushed to look. I thought they had a greedy curiosity in their eyes, but they think people just wanted to find out if he was still alive and needed help. I don't think anyone could survive that. I'm glad I didn't see what came after.

All these questions, and we will never know. They thought he was blind, had a stick. So did he not hear it and try to jump and cross the tracks? Did he slip? Did he kill himself on purpose? And how much agency does someone really have in suicide? I wished to cry, to vomit. Instead I was intently aware of my own corporeality, of the tension in my face. In the taxi we were silent, all words seemed superfluous. The road blocks appeared smeared with blood, and I felt bile rising in my throat imagining this man, who was as alive as myself, a few feet from me, and then spread similarly along the tracks. What the hell was it? Red mud splashed during monsoons passed? Or was it the red wad that wallas chew and spit it clotted streams? I thought of our long train-rides to Michigan and the mysterious stops in muffled snowy nights when others jumped in front; I thought of Gaudi hit by a tram in Barcelona and left to die because they thought he was a pauper; of Kelsi and Emili's screams when Kasha was hit in the gorge, of what is left after a train passes over an animal. We seemed to pass hundreds of gory red broken apart watermelons and again I'd here the thunk of his body.

We went to the orphanage. We went to the most alive place possible. To glee, to loving needy touching tiny people. I didn't want to do anything at that moment. And then, suddenly, I did. I wanted to comfort them, I wanted to give them touch and laughter. Though they must have comforted me more than I could possibly have them. It is the most natural thing to be in the company of children. I danced with them in my arms to ludicrous Backstreet Boys music. I felt strongly that I want to be a parent some day- I really don't think the kid has to be biologically mine, I had this sense that I could love any one of these children with all my heart. I am just exhausted now. That's all.

Holi/Vagina Analogy

2009-04-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

(The director)

EXCERPT FROM INTERVIEW WITH V-DAY DIRECTOR:

Keep in mind, this woman is coming at the play from a theatre perspective not 'cause' perspective, and last thing I knew was highly uncomfortable with the subject matter. When I went for the rehearsal, she was a changed woman with a religious-like converted fanatic glow in her eyes. On a chai break mid-rehearsal, she told me her Holi metaphor for the use of the Vagina Monologues:

"You have quite a few words and sayings that are not.. said. Have you been to a holi festival in Bombay? They use the colors. And the day before that there are a lot of wooden logs that are collected... You are not supposed to buy those logs. You are supposed to steal them, collect them, and burn the logs. And there is a tradition in Mahrashtra, you have to use all the bad words. All the bad words- it’s a tradition. All bad things, all bad words, and anyone, the most gentleman even!

And next day those colors, the colors are a very... open thing... And those two days are for the bad words and everything. And I found it very near to this play. Getting rid of all the inhibitions. Whatever there is. How do you say in English? … Cleansing the system! Getting shed of all inhibitions and becoming free, regarding each and every part of your body. So I found it very close to the festival!

I found it.. The first time I felt when I read it [I thought of this]. In our tradition we have this concession of letting us, whatever, get out our inhibitions! Whatever we feel, we can just throw it out on those three days. It’s a big concession to our society. It’s very important [...] It has changed me a as a person.

(My findings: Group hugs = universal)

Photos of the day

2009-04-05T00:47:00.000-07:00

April 3rd

April 4th

April 5th

Photo of the Day April 2nd

2009-04-02T09:27:00.000-07:00

(Photo of the day above)

Photos from the first rehearsal I have attended of the V-Day Mumbai Marahti Team!
Another fantastically warm and fierce group of women, instantly welcomed me with warmth and chai despite the truly boiling temperatures today.

Photo of the day, March 31st, '09

2009-03-31T04:05:00.001-07:00

Photo of the Day

2009-03-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

Had a lovely interview with the oh so kind and sassy Andi who organized the VMs in the Social Sciences University here last year. I am doing 'after the fact' interviews with them. This is her photo, but I edited it and enjoy the blurry quality yet obvious connection between the women. I can't wait to meet them after hearing so much from her!

Photo a day?

2009-03-29T02:09:00.000-07:00

Today's photo

Last few days

~I found someone who blogs a photo of mumbai a day, and I thought, what a great idea. Will inspire me to take more photos and always fun to share? Would that be interesting for you? Sometimes it seems a big commitment to write a blog, but a photo I can definitely do. If you'd like that, if anyone looks at this, let me know :)

Quantity of quality

2009-03-26T03:10:00.000-07:00

The sheer quantity of quality- details and MOMENTS I want to share and remember are backing up in my mind, till I don’t know where to start or how to capture it. I feel I’m trying to collect water in a sieve. I make lists in my mind to try and remember the daily vibrancies, and then come more, and I am swamped. So I guess it’s fitting to similarly bombard you with details, in an illogical swarm perhaps reminisent of the city’s vibrant chaos and constant efforts to overwhelm- so far unsuccessfully, I am hooked.

~I spent a sleepy Sunday afternoon recovering from epic night (sweaty Bollywood style dancing and the kind of quirks that keep you out till dawn) out and crashing Preeya’s lunch with her Indian family. They were warmly amused by my adoration of the food. We go to the ‘salon’ on the third floor of their building, which is a fascinating cultural experience in itself. I do some ‘research’ with hair removal and try out waxing- kind of super satisfying. Armpits hurt the worst, and I felt so sorry for my tiny bleeding hair follicles, no way would I try waxing my poor pubis, fuck that shit! It’s all about invasive beauty procedures here- eyebrows are twisted off with string, entire bodies waxed- why wax your back, why? Faces bleached… I meet Abi, who gets excited about the VMs and invites me to her after knowing me ten minutes and 1.5 legs worth of hair removed.

~Banipurri is the epitome of fast food. It’s the kind of street food you eat just because you crave it. People mob the stand and wait their turn, holding tiny tin cups. The man is like a conductor, grabbing the tiny crispy spheres, punching a hole in them then, swoosh, swoosh, filling them with some sort of minty spicy fresh juice and garbanzo beans (I think) then plunking them in people’s cups. It’s like feeding all these greedy baby birds. You pop it whole into your mouth and it explodes in the strangest tangy rush. Then you hold out your cup for the next one. So you have this crowd of people all holding out their cups waiting for the next 2 seconds of bliss. Maybe it resonates particularly because you see so much of this begging posture constantly, and it’s a joy to see people so easily satisfied.

~I take the wrong train and end up in Andheri. I watch the deep indigo urban grit sliding by with refreshing wind mixing up my breath and hair. I’m listening to NW hip-hop, and the handles of the Ladies Only Car are swaying in-time with Track 5. I am exhausted and pleased.

~It can be so exhausting having the same conversations nearly constantly, How long have you been here? What are you doing? Wait, what?! Vagina-what?! So finding those people who you can skip to the soul of the thing with is a real gift. My new friend Anneke is like that. Chatting over masala chai with the ever-present eardrum-blasting honking in the background, she went on this beautiful tangent that caught my imagination. I think I was going off on the sense of needing to focus or specialize, and how I wish I had some true vocation or passion like Andrew, Emily, Anne, Ellie, Elliot, etc. etc. How I see Joyce be so deeply focused and “on” all the time, but how that’s not me, and she just sort of stopped me, and said it’s the nature of our age and our personalities, that we’re ‘not ready to let things go’ yet and that’s okay. This is basic, but I felt she gave me permission to remain open. I love the image it conjures of all these possible paths stretched ahead, and letting ourselves still love them for a bit more instead of placing roadblocks. When we’re young we have these gazillion paths we fancy taking, and bit by bit we narrow and focus, and though we gain so much it’s through a process of elimination. Each decision holds within it so much possibility, but also a loss. Yet with this year I’m sensing a possible synthesis that makes me thrill with possibility.

~ While in the back of a rick navigating the cramped streets I see this single cow. She is slowly ambling through a 6 street intersection. It’s as though she is in slow motion, completely unperturbed by the mad human scramble as rickshaws, motorbikes, buses and taxis swerve around her. I can’t describe this one adequately, it was just this strange contrast of humanity’s chaos… This other animal, the one other natural thing in this landscape of cement and metal and exhaust, had grown immune to the unnaturalness of us, and was herself the out-of place-element in this fabrication. This is how far we have come. She could have been the last cow in the world, she could have been a dinosaur going extinct.

~Two hyper masculine men decked out in military gear, shined shoes and guns are ambling along the shady side of the street. They are the same height and build, and the one is lightly clasping the extended pinky of the other. I walk behind them for blocks and blocks, and they keep strolling, just holding one another. The truth is the society’s so homophobic it’s assumed that they’re not gay, so it’s more permissible for men to be affectionate with one another- this is such a bittersweet idiosyncrasy. But I enjoy seeing men being so sweet with one another in-spite of this.

~I make my first clothes-washing attempt, and the incredible nastiness of my clothes completely stain this white I <3 BKK t-shirt a nasy rotten egg color. And in the process I use up the whole house’s water supply. Oh, idiot.

~Leaving an interview with the most gorgeous older lady I have ever met, the ever-charming Vagina pioneer Dolly Thakore, the cab was (of course) stuck in a sweat-inducing traffic jam. Then, a man on a bycicle breezed past. His two foot high daughter calmly had her shiny black shoes and knees socked feet on the back of his seat and her tiny paws on his shoulders. They were this little bubble of calm, as he cycled and she balanced, as though they were floating through the country-side and not a street that seemed to be full of all 14 million of Mumbais’ inhabitants.

VMs in Marathi

2009-03-25T00:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=d26675f5-1f3b-44d0-acb6-6923dd8287f9

EEee!! The other Vagina Monologues efforts I am documenting here- Mumabi is vagina-crazy! :) This is so so exciting. The city is seriously multilingual, and it's exciting to see the VMs being used to tap into this:

Breaking stereotypes, now in Marathi

The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler’s bible for a new generation of women, has been translated in 45 languages, the website boasts.
Make that 46. On April 4, Vandana Khare’s impassioned Marathi translation will secure a spot in that extended list.

Impelled by the boldness and relevance of the book that celebrates female sexuality, Khare, director of the youth fellowship programme at Pukar, an organisation aimed at generating global debate about urbanisation and globalisation, took on scripting a theatrical adaptation in Marathi.

“Translation was easy, but a cultural adaptation was the tricky part. I had to maintain the boldness but restrain it from bordering on vulgarity, given the constraints of Marathi culture,” said Khare.

The feminist author is anxious about the response her adaptation will elicit. A prior reading for a select group of literary and theatre folk earned her praise and encouragement to stage her version.

“It’s a bold move on Khare’s part. The language is most likely to elicit reactions. Literature of protest in Marathi isn’t a novel concept but women speaking that language is new,” said Chaya Datta, professor of women’s studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Abundant references to the vagina, sex, love, masturbation and orgasms required Khare to expand her research to different parts of Maharashtra, such as Vidarbha and Pune. “I had a vague idea of the equivalent for vagina from graffiti in local trains. My research threw up words like yoni, fundi and bhundi, as synonyms. Sheeshtikka is the term for clitoris, but no one uses that so I've referred to it as sukhacha (pleasure) button. The book was intended to demystify and reclaim the word c**t,” said the 45-year-old.

Rehearsals for Yoneechya Maneechya Gujgoshtee (sweet secrets of the mind of the vagina) have been stalled because of the
reluctant cast.

“The play is simultaneously personal, universal and unique. It's a part of my personhood, but a lot of actresses have refused to act in the play. The current cast members are hesitant about the content and aesthetics. But it’s an important piece and merits a wide audience, especially the middle classes,” said Khare who is in talks with the BMC to host the performance for various communities in slums.

“With the elections round the bend, I am both curious and afraid of the reactions. I have known Maharashtrians to be progressive as far as theatre is concerned, but let’s see,” Khare said.

(For tickets, contact Vandana Khare on 9821520724. The play will be staged at the PL Deshpande Academy, Prabhadevi, on April 4)

2009-03-25T00:25:00.000-07:00

Freaking awesome!

http://www.twine.com/item/1211hhyqm-vvl/loose-women-launch-pink-panty-protest-south-and-central-asia-msnbc-com

Also cool:
http://www.vaginalady.com/words/words.htm

Going to the 200th performance of Poor Box Production's Vagina Monologues tonight- will let you know all about it! They are including a dance perf. poetry, new Monologue, and Bollywood MALE hottie, so will be interesting... Work has suddenly taken off at a gallup. Gallop? Anyway, be well and be in touch!

2009-03-16T03:08:00.000-07:00

Sitting at a table ‘helping’ Vandana draft letters soliciting sponsors for the first ever Vagina Monololgues in Marahti (local language in this state), I couldn’t remember the last time I drafted something with a pen and paper. The local tea stand delivered chai in tiny burning glasses, and we pondered how to make it ‘peppy’ and how to emphasize ‘that IT’S A BIG DEAL!’

As her coworkers drifted into the community center she introduced me as her friend, which was more warming than the tea and climate combined. It was such a relief to have her explain my project- and to realize how well she understood it and believed in it's importance.

People keep asking if I’m sick of the Monologues, and the answer is not at all. I am usually the loudest laughter in the theatre. What I AM exhausted by is explaining why it is important, why people should care, and what I’m doing. Her friends kept calling excitedly, because the production was in the Marahti newspaper today, enclosed in a pink box and glowingly appreciative of her courage in the face of challenges and taboos.

She is this awesome woman, organizing the Monologues on her 'holiday' from very exciting community organizing NGO work. She is a single mom, and incredibly awesome and strong like my mom. I asked what her 14 year old daughter thought of her work, and she said she knew all about it. And wanted to act in it. How cool is that?? And also that although she wasn't letting her act, she volunteered to make her mom's bed till the show. I just love that.

India in images

2009-03-14T01:23:00.000-07:00

Memory lists

2009-03-14T00:27:00.000-07:00

‘But isn’t it overwhelming?’… I think much of the magic lies in this sensory overload. And though I admit Bombay has treated me to some WICKED luck: I found this quirky lovely attic in a 150 year old cottage in the most bohemian charming neighborhood right near the beach, happened upon holi, am meeting people left and right, and have two productions of VMs to research here- been here under a week and already seen a Hindi and English version. I am in a state of near-constant appreciation. Re-reading that, it sounds braggy- it's not all perfect, I am dehydrated and sweaty all the time.

Maybe it’s where I’m at in my life, but this surreal wash of stimulation is so vital, I’m relishing it. Tastes, spices in the air stinging my eyes, rose milk, smoke, dust... I daily make these bizarre lists to try and remember the details, and they wind up sounding like some frantic fevered litany. I found a scrap of paper from the other day that read: nostalgic smell, all women, albino toes, glee pets, alien beauty, forget what look like.

I myself can’t even decipher some of my scratches, and over coffee a few days later these attempts to immortalize the details that compose my life feel so desperate and ephemeral. I know that leaning out the rickety train while pushed against the crush of humanity I get these powerful hits of nostalgia- it has to do with trash, sweet hot air, I don’t know what, but it overwhelms me and makes me feel 17 again, so jaded about somethings and painfullysweetly innocent about others.

I remember watching these two ancient uncles sitting at the station as we thundered through, and through the frenetic crowds they were a pocket of quiet, stroking this gleeful writhing kitten and I couldn’t tell who was happier.

I remember pondering how the lack of mirrors in my life, and always being behind the camera lens instead of in front, leads me to slightly forget what I look like. I asked a friend about this, ‘does this happen to you?’ and he had no idea what I was talking about. It’s disorienting, seeing yourself- maybe because we are always changing. If I was handed charcoal and told to draw myself, I would have no idea where to begin; the girl who emerged would be uglier, or prettier, either way completely unrelated to me. It’s not that this woman is a stranger, but her lines are fuzzy even in my short term memory.

Mumbai, I am feeling you.

2009-03-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

I have exhaustion in my eyes, curry licorice in my teeth, and Mumbai in my lungs. The end of the Bangkok chapter was a whirl of friends, fun, booze, and NORMALITY that broke my heart to leave. The city snuck into me, and instead of traveling manically around Thailand as I am normally apt to squeeze in, I opted to stick around and hedonistically relish the rare slice of community. Time there was weirdly cyclical with people and places popping up in mysterious ways. The last night had drinks on rooftop bar, got to ride through BKK in Sunanda's car bumping local hip hop and feeling cool, then perfectly nasty 'Volcano' club with the vaginas, buckets, and tea in the all night diner with my dear Elaheh before hailing a taxi around 5 am and heading to the airport; on the way there the DJ did a 'happy Women's Day' section, and it was so right to be pulling out of BKK into a new chapter on March 8th.

It's only a handful of hours later, not many of them containing sleep, and my imagination is already awash with vibrant and challenging images. There is this overstimulation combined with sleep deprivation that gives everything a tinge of magical surrealism: dozens of crows clinging to a bright red bus as it hurtles down the street; going to be an extra in a Bollywood movie tomorrow; Indians hesitating to rent me rooms because they think I am a whore; mango lassi was, appropriately, my first taste of India; blurry rainbow chalk explosions around the city feel like glimmers of a story I'll never understand...

I was driving around town on the back of a moto to look at a 'flat' of friend of friend of, etc. etc. suffice to say it didn't happen, but was a trip and a half- as we were zooming through the city, we passed this movie being filmed- super man was literally drifting down a few stories with the damsel in his arm in the middle of Mumbai, suspended by a crane but so so graceful none-the-less. I have so much more to say, but need to go sleep in the only (mangy) 3'X5' hotel room I could find.

Thailand chapter is winding down...

2009-02-26T00:54:00.000-08:00

Going 'home' is feeling more and more daunting. A few times, attempting to convince friends my life isn't perfect right now, I have gotten sucked into pity-parties thinking about my student loan-jobless-penniless existence post this adventure. Though this is usually appealingly bohemian, I apparently succeeded in depressing them, and myself. Point being, time in Thailand has been so ideal project-wise. I am moved to tears and joy and admiration on a daily basis. I'm luxuriating in amazing food, heat, massages and yoga.

I meet new people nearly every day and seem somehow blessed that most of these interactions feel truly authentic and teach me volumes. But in spite of this, or maybe because of it, I am left feeling a bit lonely. I am always the one asking questions, and although I have grown to genuinely really care for these vagina warriors, I worry few people really know me at all. I guess that's the off-shoot of both Anthropological fieldwork and this kind of activism; the self becomes more contained, dissolved into a cause that demands a sort of sacrifice that you give in bits and pieces till you don't realize how deeply you are immersed. Silly girl, that's what I wanted, to be a kind of vessel. Maybe I am just sad about leaving. I feel like I'm never doing enough. Tonight is the final rehearsal, and 30 women from Emergency Home will come see it pro-bono. I am so glad- I hope this helps bridge the gap sometimes created between glamour and professionalism and heart. I am so proud for all of them.

Elephant empathy

2009-02-22T07:49:00.000-08:00

As I was cycling around Angkor Wat with my new friends Hannah and James, they kept bringing up Bangkok, ‘Oh, have you gone to the Palace?’ ‘There’s this bizarre forensic museum have you been to that? Or the park? Or the dildo shrine?’ Turns out, I’ve skipped the sights entirely while here. Instead what I’ve loved is the normalcy: regular haunts, daily yoga, nightly rehearsals, constant interviews and coffee, weekly massages, swimming pools, oh so much delicious food, hopping on and off the BTS, moto, BTS, moto… I’ve slipped up and started thinking of it as ‘living here’ as opposed to visiting or travelling, a distinction I strive to ignore. And it’s true that entering the tourist circus of Kao San was a shock to the system; though I learned important lessons about the joys of ‘buckets’ of booze, to never try to keep up with the Danish and the obscenely high degree of my tolerance to spice.

The whiskey fueled my dancing, but although it was a fantastic night out, more than that it fueled my anger. What will stay with me from that Saturday night is the baby elephant paraded through the streets packed with sunburned and drunken tourists. Turns out, baby elephants make the most pitiful squeak, and have to put up with belligerent fucks feeding them lit cigarettes and garbage. I realized, though I stayed fuming in my seat and throwing death glares, that I am most certainly capable of violence in the face of cruelty. This leads me to question again where pacifist compunction resides and how quickly it can be overwhelmed.

I have discovered a deep love for elephants and motorcycles and one of my lasting impressions of Bangkok will be breezing past trundling elephants with bicycle lights, cds, or reflecting tape flickering on their tails, as I sit expertly poised on the back of a moto, consciously pushing aside the reality of danger to enjoy the breeze, smells, vibrancy, and conflicting identities of this city.

Sorry it's been so long!

2009-02-15T23:15:00.000-08:00

Hey friends, sorry I've been out of touch a bit had to do a visa run to Cambodia, so threw in a trip to Angkor Wat ruins and Phnom Penh for some VM research (THEY ARE EVERYWHERE!) and now everything's a blur of vagina madness. But here's how they decided to use my photos and interviews for the testimonies, thought you'd be interested, and more to come soon. Also, don't be alarmed that my blog's been 'flagged' for objectionable content, I find it amusing and their objections are objectionable in my opinion. Don't get too excited, the sex factor hasn't been amped up or anything fun like that. Huge all-cast rehearsal last night was invigorating- news channels were filming away and Bangkok is getting all a-flutter with the vagina spirit, or curiosity anyway.

As I was taking photos and buzzing around the room, one of the cast members snagged me, 'Did Alanna tell you?' I was thinking she was referring to something not yet checked off my to do list, and then she latches on to my eyes and says, ' this weekend I was held hostage and a man tried to rape me for hours' And just like that you're slapped by it, the wind is knocked out. These violent metaphors seem appropriate as that's exactly what it feels like, that's what it is- violence against anyone IS violence against all of us.

I hugged her. I said what I am supposed to say, but what does that really mean? 'What timing, what a coincidence don't you think? And I want to tell you about it, I want to talk about it.' I watched her the rest of the rehearsal, as she delivered the lines from the new Congo monologue about how the violence touches all of us, how it is present in what we do, and what we don't do. And I marvelled at her bravery to even be standing, much less part of this collective roar against violence. The VMs is good for my heart. As all this regular yoga is stretching muscles I had forgotten about and sweating out all this unnecessary junk, as do the Monologues. My heart feels like some kind of insane magnetic field with all these positives and negatives pushing apart, holding me together, making me hum with feeling and urgency and love.

In time we will fly the skies

2009-01-30T05:07:00.000-08:00

(Ella [volunteer] and Pearl [actress] being irresistible saleswomen for the V-Day merchandise)

I spent yesterday collecting testimonies (even that vocabulary makes me nervous and reeks of academic imperialism). Por and I talked with three women at Emergency Home, and their stories were absolutely overflowing and overlapping tales of abuse, of hair pulling, rock crushing, love turned monstrous and isolating fear. BUT. But, they were also the stories of deeply loving mothers, fiercely strong survivors. They still have the mental stamina to dream of a better life for themselves and their children, even if those children are products of rapes that will never be punished, and even though their dreams are all mixed up with fear. One woman’s worn pink t-shirt had birds all over it and English text sprayed across her heart, ‘I cannot fly the sky’. Another woman when I asked her what it means to be a woman told us it meant to be weak. She later clarified that women no longer needed men to take care of them if they were going to abuse them. Another woman shyly but proudly told us her dream is to be both mother and father for her babies.

The evening fundraiser was quite the contrast from the humble but clean and peaceful women’s compound of the morning. This was a glamorous, earnest and slightly superficial crowd. I was much more comfortable behind the VM table talking about it and selling merchandise than mingling with the models, journalists, editors, producers, writers and creative elite on a rooftop bar looking over the sex playground of the Nana district, heady with their brilliance and the balmy Bangkok breeze.

I was glad for the sense of excitement and celebration though. Free drinks and pounding music make me as happy as the next person. But after Emergency Home, I wasn’t in the mood to humor balding jerks endless jokes about, “supporting violence against women! I support that!’ As though he’s the first to present misogyny in the uncouth and unconvincing package of liberalism and wealth. I wanted to tell him, ‘Today I listened to a sixteen year old girl so crippled by her embarrassment at being raped that she hid her pregnancy seven months, till it was too late to get an abortion. How she told us her fear had been disappointing her family who saw her as their light and cherished dream of her being the first to attend college’ So no, I don’t think you’re funny.

And I know this makes me the angry feminist who would still the party atmosphere around us were I to engage him. I also know it wouldn’t help her, it wouldn’t actually make me feel better, and he would not listen. This is why I entrust my faith and voice to the Vagina Monologues; because they can engage a diverse audience with patience, wit and humour unlike my anger. If it had been Ellie, she would have delivered some bitingly clever line that let people laugh while also chastising him in the most charming way possible.

So when you become the 'vagina woman' you get the best e-mails!

2009-01-27T17:33:00.001-08:00

Check it out: Bikes and vaginas! (Thanks Em!)
http://jalopnik.com/393601/giant-vulva-bicycle-taxi-is-freudian-wet-dream

(And, a friend of a friend's baby)

First all-cast rehearsal!

2009-01-24T09:01:00.000-08:00

A few moments from today that I'd like to share with you:

Walking back after lunch Mew asked me what 'fistula' is. The word is in her Monologue, the new one about the Congo. I explained it's a medical word, but a hugely social issue. I carefully told her how it's usually caused by prolonged child-birth by very young girls. I watched her reactions carefully to be sure she understood, as I told her how they can't control themselves and leak urine and feces uncontrollably. I explained how even more horrifically than usual, fistula is one of the huge problems in the DRC because of the especially terrorizing way that women and children are being raped. I wasn't quite sure she understood, because she was looking at me so intently as we dodged Bangkok traffic. Then she started to cry. So I started to tear up. She understood in a very real way. Mew is a travel agent, but tells me her passion would be to work with women in the U.N.

~

The after lunch stupor sets in and the BKK heat, while apparently very 'cold' these days (the paper yesterday listed the expected high at 90 degrees Fahrenheit), is still enough to bring the energy down. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one sweating. Everyone is leaning against the walls, but independently Yvonne and the woman doing 'Village' are practicing their Monologues. They mouth the words, drifting gracefully across the 'stage'. I am struck by this.

'My Vagina was my Village' chronicles horrific rape while Yvonne's is 'I was there in the room' a squishy Monologue about the miracle of life and full of 'vaginal wonder' Rape and birth, two universals, two near opposites, though sometimes tragically overlapping. They are both earnest and non-dramatic, and I don't think anyone else is noticing. But seeing raw-pained survival and cherished re-birth quietly side by side, co-existing, gives me chills in a way I cannot quite describe. It is a quiet, beautiful (and feels to me) loaded moment.

~

I'd heard that Sonoko's was powerful- Alanna had cried during her audition though she understood none of the words. But even so, I wasn't quite prepared for the total raw power and pain of her 'Say it' Half Japanese herself, the piece is about the Comfort Women. It's a rehearsal, yet she pours everything into it.

Raw is the only way to describe her fury and overwhelming grief. And strength. A tear clings stubbornly to her chin, and I think about the layers of bravery. Her bravery to respond so, to access those emotions and to let them twist her face and lash out in her voice which goes from quiet sighs to animalistic screams for justice. The howl. The bravery of the woman whose story it really is- is she still alive? Is she still picketing the Japanese embassy in Milan? Dry leaves blow across the floor.

I am crying though I understand none of the words, and I look around and the majority of the cast is as well, though many don't understand Thai. Mere moments later we are all laughing, though the tears aren't even dry yet; this is the power of the Monologues.

Eve and Dr. Mukwege on NPR

2009-01-23T18:17:00.000-08:00

Give it a listen folks- should be enlightening :)

Eve and Dr. Mukwege on NPR TOMORROW!

Eve and Dr Mukwege will be on NPR's Weekend Edition tomorrow, Saturday January 24. The interview is scheduled to air at roughly 8:25AM ET. The program runs from 8AM to 10AM Eastern.

Check your local listings if outside of the New York City area.

Obamanos!

2009-01-20T09:00:00.000-08:00

Yeah Obama! Though was for once on a work roll, made myself leave the apartment to seek the Night Market, some din din, and an inauguration party. It's crazy how ultra proactive one has to be in the beginning stages of making a home somewhere. On the one hand I think I am freakishly adaptable at this point- having only slept like four nights here, I got back from the North and way like, 'Oh sigh! Home!' Though this also backfires; for example was talking to Katie and heard myself complaining about how I don't have any friends beyond my informants here... Then realized I haven't even been here a week- come on! Give yourself some slack Jen.

Night market was a fairly revolting mess of everything I don't like about tourism, globalism, and sex work- i.e. could have gone to a 'pussy-ping-pong event' declined rather scornfully. So after some green curry (blisssssssss) went to this bar, for Democrats in Thailand event, and holy-cow, haven't seen this many Americans since July.

Was kind of an overload actually, we could have been in Salem, Portland, anywhere. Lots of tanned, confident, and glammed up ex-pats- most of the women with nose piercings (a nod here to the daily comedy that is life and acknowledgement of the irony). Anyways, it was kind of lonely to be in the crush of people, though the energy was undeniably charged. Ended up chillin with folks from London, Norway, and some Australians, so that's hilarious. Anyways, I will go to sleep tonight very content and so so pleased for these tides of change.

2009-01-20T03:15:00.000-08:00

On the way out of Huay Pu Keng Karen village I was meditative as we crossed the small river. I helped Mubi’s (my translator, the leader of the women’s shelter’s in the refugee camp and now my friend) son scramble up the steep bank. His little feet clinging resolutley to his sandals as I swooped him up the rocky bank. With his sturdy little body in my arms I was well aware of how foreign little people are to me, and that most of the women in the village my age had been married almost a decade. How strange I must seem to them!

We walked along the small but much loved path, and she told me with pride about the previous conversation. I had been utterly oblivious to the discussion’s gravity, as I attempted to gnaw on the very hard and aptly named bitter nut, and sipped at a beer/energy drink concoction I had been gifted. Turns out, the village chief and his delightful wife who had the most neck rings I’d seen, a near constant gob in her mouth and an infectious chortle, were on the verge of divorce. As we swished our way through the long grass she told me with pride how she had been mediating their conversation, how they had no-one else to talk with because of their high status, and how their now-nightly shouting matches due to his infidelity were wearing on the family. I, while trying to appear engaged, and understanding nothing, had been gazing at the numerous soccer trophies and attractive dangling CD decorations, pondering my sore butt, and had assumed they were talking about something mundane due to the frequent laughter. Just goes to show how clueless I can be, and what a barrier language is.

As we’d walked to the truck, her son manically ran between the driver and us more stumpy walkers, exactly like my childhood puppy used to do. I’d wondered, and expressed without really thinking, ‘Mubi, what is your earliest memory’ thinking, maybe this would be her son’s. Of war she told me, of fear, fleeing Burma with her family, of hiding in the jungle, of the first refugee camp. I don’t remember my own first memory, I just remember swearing to myself I would always remember it- I think it had something to do with lilacs. What a contrast…

I was surprised when this time Mubi and her son jumped in the back of the truck with me for the long ride back into MaeHongSon. He apparently took to me, and even let me carry him when I offered to give poor Mubi’s back a break. She said in surprise that he liked me, that farong (whities) usually made him cry. While he nestled into her in the back of the dusty truck, Mubi grinned at me, glowing, with her mouth stained a vibrant rusty color from the bitter root/leaf/unknown white paste. Her face opened into a wide smile, and her eyes nearly disappeared in gleeful half moons, as she told me, ‘say hi to your mom for me next time you see her!’ I thought I had misheard, which would be easy over the extreme bumpiness of the ride, which made me wish I had a sports bra or, better yet, a helmet. ‘Tell her to be proud of you’ she told me next, and the kindness and care in her face took my breath away. Dear dear Mubi! I’d felt honored by her company that day, and awed by her survival and tenacious optimism in the face of such hardship. I’d felt a real connection to her as well, but to hear her so openly volunteer this touched me in a very real way. She said, almost with surprise, ‘I already feel like you’re family! I feel I could tell you anything, you’re so nice.’ She insisted I must come back and visit sometime, to bring my mom, war or peace, to come stay at her house. I honestly can’t think of the last time I’d been gifted with such a meaningful compliment.

Photos from MaeHongSon Interviews

2009-01-19T19:25:00.001-08:00

Article I wrote for Bangkok Monthly

2009-01-15T12:04:00.000-08:00

Go “Down There?!” with the Vagina Monologues, Bangkok Style

This February, go “Down there?!” as V-Day Productions brings you “The Vagina Monologues,” one of the freshest, sexiest plays to hit Bangkok. This multi-award winning production is being performed in Thailand for the first time. Boasting a talented cast of 23 diverse and engaging women, “The Vagina Monologues,” is a powerful collection of real experiences and surprising facts, narrating the story of women around the world- with a profound dedication to improve it.

“The Vagina Monologues” is compelling both hilarious and extremely moving. It approaches often taboo subjects with wit, humor and heart. The play is accessible and authentic because the Monologues are all real women’s stories, based on over 200 international interviews. With such a range of perspectives, there is something for all men and women, and is sure to open your mind and heart.

Bangkok’s three not to be missed performances of “The Vagina Monologues” will be on February 27-March 1 at the Patravadi Theater, Theater in the Garden. These performances will join the tide of thousands around the world as part of V-Day’s international campaign to end violence against women and girls. V-Day is traditionally celebrated around Valentine’s Day, as the “V” in V-Day stands for “Victory, Vagina and Valentine,” thereby ideologically linking the campaign to love.
Bangkok’s performances will be fully bilingual, with monologues in English and Thai, and simultaneous translations. Designer, Marisa Baratelli, will donate the Thai-silk costumes. This historical first for Thailand is supported by local celebrities such as Natalie Glebova, Paradorn Srichaphan, and artist Doytibet Duchanee, as it was supported internationally by such well-known actresses as: Meryl Streep, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey and Jane Fonda.

The V-Day movement also strives to raise funding for local efforts to end violence. V-Day Bangkok has partnered with other change-making organizations, including MTV’s anti-trafficking campaign MTV EXIT, and the local Thai charity, the Emergency Home for Women and Children, part of the “Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women” under the Royal Patronage of H.R.H. Princess Soamsawali. All proceeds will be donated to Emergency Home to fund their safe house and initiate a violence prevention campaign. The director of the show, Alanna Gregory, hopes the performance “will open up a dialogue about some of these issues—rape, violence, assault and exploitation—and will increase awareness about these highly prevalent problems.” At the performance you will also receive testimonies of local vulnerable demographics.

In addition to the three performances,V-Day Bangkok volunteers will hold a fundraising dinner in the newly renovated Nomad Restaurant on February 18, 8-11PM, also serve the restaurant’s debut. The event features a four-course dinner, live auction with exciting items including a painting by Doytibet Duchanee, a “sneak preview” performance, and speech by the President of Emergency Home.

The production is made possible by the loving dedication of local volunteers, and with just a little over a month to go the excitement is palpable. Volunteers’ affirmative energy is creating a powerful local community to continue the work to end violence against women in Bangkok, and everywhere. The production promises to be so sensational, it has gained international focus and will be documented for a book.

With only three performances, seating is limited, so get yours soon at www.totalreservation.com at their call center 02 833 5555 or by visiting one of their ticket offices in Victory Monument or Mo Chit. VIP ticket options insure optimal seating and include pre-show dinner. Student, group and early-booking discounts also available.
To learn more, please visit vdaybkk.blogspot.com or http://events.vday.org/2009/Community/Bangkok_(TVM). For further questions about the performance, V-Day Bangkok Merchandise and tickets, donations or to attend the fundraising dinner, please contact vdaybkk@gmail.com.

Bangkok!

2009-01-14T01:08:00.000-08:00

(Bangkok V-Day cast!)

I’m in Bangkok! What does that mean? It means everything is new. It means last night was a whirlwind of the first V-day fundraiser event, with my backpack stashed behind the bar, and mingling with a crowd of glittering ex-pats producers, stockbrokers, actresses, UN workers, etc. It means I am new enough here that I was thrilled to see an elephant in the street. It means I slept nearly 12 hours after an endless two days of travel and bureaucratic bull-shit that necessitated me desperately buying a plane ticket to India before I could board; I’m going to have to switch my ticket and make a visa run at 30 days. It means I am listening to Flashdance and Eve 6 while the Thai wind wraps around the studio apartment my main contact Alanna’s friend is letting me use. It means I’m sleeping in the hugest bed ever, that a tiny balcony overlooks the Northern Bangkok skyline, that I am determined to keep this guys plant not only alive but flourishing. The skytrain is awesome! It means there is pomegranate juice and chocolate soy milk in the fridge. It means I can breath easier in the humid heat, that my pores are cheering the warmth, that I can return to flipflops, that the sun is making me ridiculously giddy. And having done my first step immersion stuff- cell phone now in hand, mystifying grocery store experience, public transportation, I am suddenly- settling. It is shocking how quickly these basic details get taken care of. How… (please don’t let this jinx me) easy it all is. I was a bit daunted leaving this morning, but my nerves quickly switch to excitement-stimulation instead of fear by all the I see, smell and hear. Walking from the skytrain to ‘my apartment’ the air is filled with mouthwatering street food smells, and there is a beautiful, silk draped shrine in the alley. Motor-bike taxis await their next patron. I think I’m going to be really inspired here.

Tonight I’m going to a Vagina Monologues rehearsal; the cast includes Thais, ex-pats, transgendered folks… It will be done in a combination of Thai and English. My mind’s already a whirrrrr. There is heavy censorship here- a film producer last night told me his movies had liberal chunks frequently removed, including a frame where a women’s dress strap slid modestly off her shoulder. BUT the Vag Mons is somehow under ‘royal patronage’ so it gets to skate away, censorship free! There is a famous tennis player and ex-miss universe publicly sponsoring the event, and there has already been excellent media coverage though it’s still over a month away. This kind of participant-observation is what I dreamt of while writing this fellowship proposal. In a few days Alanna and I will catch a flight to Northern Thailand to do interviews, collecting testimonies of women who have experienced violence at Burmese Refugee camps as part of the activist/educational component of the production. If you know me, you can understand that I am in heaven. More than ever I am aware of the flippant brevity of a year, and feel a near constant ticking against my wrist where a watch should be, reminding me how brief this blessing is. Half way gone, so much to still see and experience…

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

2009-01-11T11:58:00.000-08:00

(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.

This side of the sick, the sun is shining

2009-01-05T03:04:00.001-08:00

There are some very interesting cases in the world right now regarding death with dignity... (esp. in UK- look them up... I hope I have deep enough love in my life that people would help me die if that's what I wanted, and visa versa. What a strange way to measure love, but really, what could be more selfless?) I have this on the mind, as have just emerged from a few days of sicky-Jen-monster, I realized how deeply degraded quality of life is when you're sick. I become an emotional-mental nut, and my fairly consistent sense of appreciation for life and a quest for intentionality becomes muddled and depressed. Also, being sick in a foreign country is lonely and sad- huddled under blankets with a raging fever in Madrid I kept thinking how I could die and no one would know!

Anyways, on this side of the sick, it is a gorgeous day in Barcelona, and I am guzzling some stolen coffee (I shamelessly poach anything not labelled from hostel kitchens...) before diving back into the city; I WILL get more of a sense of it, and it WILL love me back, damn it! Other goal of the day- see more Gaudi and splurge on a new book (swoon).

Part of the blues, and likely illness, was my body shutting down and requiring some rest. If I'd considered powering ahead this year like a non-stop vacation (i.e. LITERALLY seizing every opportunity), I was reminded of the impossibility and importance of finding SOME balance and pacing myself. Furthermore, my mini-vacation with Emily between research jags at the beginning and end of my month here in Spain isolated me from my PURPOSE. I wonder if I will be happy just "touristy travelling" anymore, instead of either working or living somewhere... I doubt it. But heading back to Quinto to do some focus groups with the vecinas there, and as plans for Thailand fall into place (I will literally head to their press release from the airport after nearly 24 hours of travel (AHHHHHH) to meet everyone and get the key to the flat I'll be staying at); I am reconnecting to the main thread of meaning to this year, which grounds me in some sense, so I don't feel so floating or disconnected.

Also, hostel is again full of freaking-adorable couples; without a doubt, I have to get me one of these at some point. I've been lucky to travel so much, but never with a significant other- sounds like a dream. Although hostalling it up and sex seem highly unconducive... Hilariously- dictionary.com word of the day is abstinence.

Flashback to December 15th

2008-12-28T15:34:00.000-08:00

December 15th, 2008

I am going to write more often, as I can feel my intentionality begin to slip when I get too distracted by mundane things, like streaming Grey’s Anatomy in Belgrade. I have only been in Barcelona a few hours, but am already quite taken by it, energized, inspired… Partly it’s the great public transportation. Also I am realizing how isolating it actually was to have spent the last two months in a country whose language I didn’t speak or even understand at all, although words keep popping out of my mouth as I’m speaking Spanish in this weird reversal of me being the Spanish-speaking freak in Serbia, ha. But it’s like this marvelous overload of understanding, where suddenly all the signs have meaning for me again so it’s this constant exciting auditory overload of overheard conversations and that constant visual onslaught of words, like the blur of the metro. In Belgrade and Budapest just “surviving” was an accomplishment, so I forgot to miss the immersment of language. Partly also, I am feeling so stimulated and grateful for the fine company.

Isabel and Fernando (I couch-surfed with them) are so kind, so open minded, so intelligent and wise. I feel honored to be welcomed into their home, and it’s also like getting a bit of Dawn as well, as I know she was here… Literally conversing with these marvelous people and sleeping in this same bed. So much of my year is completely solitary, something to share with people who I then leave behind, and with no-one to share “remember whens” with. Also, honestly, it’s a bit of a head trip to know that Andrew was here a year ago this time. We are so good at just missing one another, and I can’t help but wonder, ‘did he run to catch this metro too?’ ‘was he also moved by this?’ ‘did he love this about Barcelona too?’ And knowing both of us, and that the answers are probably yes, is strange.

I can’t tell if it feels heart-rendingly lonely or comforting; am I somehow sharing in their experiences/story or have I missed it entirely and so am even more alone? Maybe it can be both strange and comforting to know that people I love have also gotten acquainted and maybe fallen for this city, that they have walked these same streets. I picture our “ghost” selves, I don’t mean dead, just passed, brushing through each other- it’s this visual image I can’t quite convey but has something in common with the idea Kels and I have talked about so much of those cities where your layers of memory and previous selves crowd the corners, parks, cafes, fire-escapes, and roofs: familiar streets with this shimmering golden layer of the past.

Fear of forgetting

2008-12-28T14:53:00.000-08:00

I should write more. Or I may forget how the reflection of the Alahambra was more vibrant than the reality. Or how sweet was the tea, smoke and company. How we climbed the fence, and I felt the muscle memory of this body; this similar spontaneous self hopping other barriers, trees and rooftops that magical summer I chose life. I'm glad I haven't lost that girl. Or, I might forget the joy of meeting new people, sharing titles full of possibility - "The Hour of the Star" or "The Cherry Orchard" on scraps of paper and through talking about mutual passions, reveal again to myself the parts I like best.

Afraid too, I will forget the simple pleasure of being suspended in a hot safe web of water will connected to a sister, and also a Christmas eve where two Italians cooked paella and sangria in Granada, Spain for Kiwis, Mexicans, Americans, Brazilians, Russians.... Then midnight mass and a sleep so profound. Holidays have become bookmarks for making meaning of the passing of time. I am always glad for an opportunity to celebrate. I am thinking about the pleasure of the right song in the right moment and the satisfaction of motion, on the long bus ride to Granada as we pass endless orange groves. I carry curry, flax-seed and tea in my backpack, and in Valencia we found fresh basil and dates in this incredible market.

I hope I do forget fearing my body has betrayed me, though I did everything right... May nothing come of it. I try to send these messages with great intention to circulate along with my red blood cells. This fear was less when there were two to share it.

Will I lose the sea wind in my hair in Valencia, or the familiarity of smoky salsa bars, and the brave passion of Flamenco: the liberty of shedding material possessions, the purity of eating fresh earthy things and home-made wine in the Sierra Nevada over an icy stream through which snow-melt flows.

AmAr a tu Cuerpo Horario de actividades (Love Your Body Workshop and activities)

2008-12-25T08:38:00.000-08:00

The lovely Stina and I facilitated and planned the following workshop in Quinto, Spain (near Zaragoza) the 20th. We received very positive feedback, learned so much, and felt so privileged to meet such an incredible group of women! The group was very multi-generational (20-somethings up to women in their 70´s) and we were moved to see abuelitas rolling around on the ground during the taking up space activity, as well as the heart and authenticity with which women openly shared and celebrated their bodies!

Love Your Body Workshop (Quinto, Spain) --Dec. 20th, 2008

Supplies: paper, markers/crayons, note cards, music gear +CD, beverages, chairs, tables, string/yarn, magazine (women’s, porn, etc.), women!

1. Introduction
Us: Background
Them (Introducing themselves with a motion/sound to be present in body, everyone repeats it.

Opening group thoughts: Why did you come today?
What is body image?

2. Questions/Statements (move to corners for strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree)

3. Magazine images: walk around and look at them (musical chairs style: when music stops, everyone stop and ‘vent’ about the image.)

4. Show Dove commercial about how a model is made up and photo-shopped.

5. Taking up space: women’s bodies getting smaller, our motions controlled. A few minutes of big moving!

Break

6. Write a letter to your body: if your body could tell its story, what would it be?

7. Moment to reflect and be present in body: What is our body proudest of? What is it’s greatest accomplishment?

8. Drawing your BodyLove, share drawings.

9. Web of compliments/support

10. Personal support. On notecards, write 10 things you can do to love your body/love about your body/compliments/things you’ve learned today, etc. (For your own personal use/on your mirror, etc.)

11. Hold hands, squeeze. I love your body, I love my body. Hug yourself.

12. Conclusion: feedback? Learn? Surprises (small debrief). Farewell.

Mingle and music J

1. Introducciones (nos presentamos)
• Presentaciones de todas con gesturas o sonidos y todas las repiten y saludan.
• Pensamientos introductores: ¿Por qué he venido al taller? ¿Para mí personalmente qué significa la imagen corporal?

2. Preguntas y frases/dichos. Mover a esquinas distintas del cuarto para indicar nivel de acuerdo: muy de acuerdo, de acuerdo, no de acuerdo, ¡no no no de acuerdo!

3. Imágenes de la revistas: todas pasen y miran las imágenes con música (cuando acabe la música, todas paran y comentan rápidamente en las imágenes, usando palabras y frases para expresar las primeras impresiones.)

4. Enseñar anuncio por Dove sobre la creación de una foto para un anuncio…la construcción y la artificialidad de la belleza.

5. Hablando del espacio…estamos restringidas, controlamos y reducimos el espacio que ocupamos y nuestras gesturas y movimientos. Romper estos hábitos: tomamos unos minutos con música para mover GRANDE.

Descanso

6. Escribir una carta al cuerpo. Si tu cuerpo pudiera contar su historia, ¿qué sería?

7. Momento para reflejar y estar presente en el cuerpo. ¿De qué está más orgulloso tu cuerpo? ¿Cuál es el hecho o la realización mejor (más orgullosa) de tu cuerpo?

8. Dibuja Amar a tu Cuerpo.

9. Red de apoyo. Decir cosas bonitas/buenas sobre las compañeras en el circulo y pasa el hilo.

10. Apoyo a tí mismo. En las cartas, escribes 10 cosas que puedes hacer para respetar/amar a tu cuerpo/resoluciones/cosas que has aprendido hoy (para tu propio uso—puedes poner las cosas en el espejo, etc.)

11. Coger las manos de las compañeras, amo a tu cuerpo, amo a mi cuerpo. Abazar tu propio cuerpo.

12. Conclusión: comentos, cosas buenas/malas. Impresiones del taller. ¡Gracias y despedirse!

Musica

Statements________________¿De acuerdo?____________________________Dichos

1. Amo a mi cuerpo.
I love my body.
2. Me siento influido por los opiniones de los demás.
I feel influenced by what others think of me.
3. Considero que mi cuerpo está separado de mi mismo.
I feel that my body is separate from myself.
4. Me siento sana.
I feel healthy.
5. Castigo a mi cuerpo cuando siento descontenta.
I punish my body when I feel discontent.
6. Opino que la belleza tiene muchas formas diversas.
I relieve that beauty has many diverse forms.
7. Siento que mi propia imagen corporal está influida por los medios de comunicación. ¿La moda?
I feel that my own body image is influenced by the media. Fashion?
8. Yo jusco los cuerpos de otras mujeres.
I judge other women’s bodies.
9. Mi cuerpo es fuerte.
My body is strong.
10. Mi relación con la comida y la alimentación es o ha sido complicado (y no saludable).
My relationship with food and nutrition is or has been complicated (or unhealthy).
11. Doy la culpa de mis fracasos y problemas a mi cuerpo.
I blame my body for my failures and problems.
12. Yo o alguien a quien quiero ha sufrido o luchado contra un trastorno de comportamiento alimentario u otro problema con a imagen corporal.
I or someone I love has suffered an eating disorder or some problem with body image.
13. Creo que debo cambiar mi cuerpo o algún aspeto de mi cuerpo.
I think I should change my body or some aspect of my body.
14. Creo que si cambiara esta parte desagradable de mi cuerpo, sería más feliz….tendría más éxito…yo sería más querida.
I relieve that if I changed this disagreeable part of my body that I would be happier…more successful…more loved.
15. Mi cuerpo ha dado luz.
My body has given birth.
16. Siento que he perdido parte de la belleza que tenía en otra etapa de mi vida.
I feel that I have lost some of the beauty that I had in another stage of my life.
17. Estoy orgullosa de mi cuerpo.
I am proud of my body.
18. Amo a mi cuerpo.
I love my body.

Snippets of Budapest while waiting at the airport to fly out...

2008-12-15T02:29:00.000-08:00

Budapest was serendipitously filled with people I had met at the beginning of my time in Belgrade. I not only appreciated being around people who already know me, but also their symbolism as bookends at either end of this chapter... Snippets:

Marjo from Finland sharing the story of her grandparent's love: A woman who lost her husband in the war meets a man named Hope and a man who has the war still in his lungs meets a woman named Peace. It takes my breath away when real life is as beautiful and right as fiction.

Met an Indian soldier at a hostal in Budapest. I so easily could have not talked to him, believing him to be hitting on me, but I did, and I my preconceptions were turned upside-down. He is a UN Peace Keeper in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and talked to me about all the hundreds of rapes they are hearing about. He told me of his sense of utter despair and helplessness to help these women, he kept saying, "you feel so cramped by this pain"... Seeing this soldier nearly doubled over describing to me the vise of his emotions will stay with me.

Marjo and I missed our bus stop, and when we stepped off the next one she didn't miss a beat, but led us right into the bright pink bar which was a few steps away, ha. It was the kind of local joint we never would have met, but while sitting at the grimy bar she addressed my feelings of intimidation wit writing about this experience in anything longer than a blog post. She brushed away my fears of "where to start?" and said that there is never a clear beginning, you just start with what you know you want to say, and only later does it take a cohesive form. This seemed very wise, and metaphoric for life as well...

Butiful Budapest

2008-12-12T09:10:00.000-08:00

Budapest is this stunning Christmas wonderland laced with lights, hot wine, skating rinks, Christmas markets... It is this great buffer/limbo between Serbia and Spain; this blessed time to disconnect from one stage and open myself to the next. Today was a heavy cold day, so I spent it in the famous Baths. Was unbelievably relaxing and rejuvenating. Was literally, and mentally drifting in the huge open pools (which remind me of that scene in Fantasia with all the frolicking nymphs, and nearly naked people lounging around and emerging from the steam). The sky was this heavy deep blue color, lightly raining, cold shoulders and body so so hot, and this plane soared overhead. Out of my jumble of non-thoughts, I realized that will be me in a few days heading to Barcelona; but I was so glad to just take this pause. It was also nice to reconnect somehow with my body, which has been stifled under so many layers- I want to get out of the cold!

Speaking of which, the Thailand production looks like it's going to fabulous! I may literally fly into Bangkok and catch a taxi to their first event and press conference. The producer even found a flat for me to stay at, only catch being that I have to water "Frederique" the bamboo plant.

First last Sunday in Serbia

2008-12-08T01:43:00.000-08:00

I am tying up loose ends and fixating on how to pack lighter; eating creatively to clean out the fridge and re-gifting. I am sitting in a borrowed white robe with a hot mug of tea (I already dutifully finished the coffee). Winter sun is optimistically striping my bare legs. I poke fun at myself by trying to compose witty combinations of “glad” and “sad” regarding leaving. Yesterday someone asked me what it was like to be travelling alone for so long. I floundered with no succinct answer… I mean, it is what it is- in many ways I really love it.

I ended up with some bullshit answer about having been an only child of a single parent and being accustomed to being independent. I’m not even sure this is where the truth lies though, as I have always surrounded myself by people. Similarly, the other day I found myself extremely defensive by the suggestion a friend had made to a friend that I was “maybe a bit lonely”- I mean come on! Of course I am; BUT I’m not actively lonely, and I absolutely don’t want to be doing anything other than what I am doing right now. The clouds were heavy and purple Saturday, not so Sunday, as I wandered with this French couple who is staying with us.

They are perfectly matched and so beautiful. He told me, “Well, maybe you are always saying goodbye… But you are also always saying hello” It touched me to have this stranger explain me to myself so gently. Seeing them makes me slightly melancholic but mainly (softly) hopeful to see another example of a dynamic partnership that travels and learns and loves each other so much. Last night it could have been sad to listen to their love language, but now’s not my time, and others’ romance gives me hope for my own.

As for me, I’ve been glad to even just FEEl for someone else, even though nothing can come of it. Just feeling that possibility of connection is enough for me right now- I don't know if I would even want anything to manifest. I have met a few crazy love-birds who have met people while backpacking and moved back for them, blah blah blah. I can feel my face going skeptical during these conversations. My heart is HIGHLY not up for this, no stamina anymore, but one night stands and true crushes are good enough sustenance for now- to know I can I feel, to know I can be wanted and want; that’s all I have to offer right now. But its okay.

Love Your Body Days, Quinto style ~ Amar a tu cuerpo taller

2008-12-06T06:02:00.000-08:00

So ~ having met the dynamic and persuasive Ana while in UK for the V-Day European workshop, I was willingly-wrangled into leading a workshop in her hometown of Quinto, Spain. She loved the idea of Love Your Body Days which we do as part of S.H.E. (Strength, Health, Equality) at Willamette, and asked me to lead a similar event dealing with body image issues in Spain. Though Anthropologically this is a bit invasive, or more participant than participant-observer, something I am really learning through my research is that activists use the tactics they need in order to broach sensitive subjects. As a soon to be PhD in Medical Anthropology (her research focuses on rural Spanish women's experiences with breast cancer), Ana is well aware of this.

Yet, she is strategically using our "foreignness" to intrigue and draw the local vecinas to the workshop. Her theory is that our young/american/feminst energy, etc. will allow us to facilitate a more enthusiastic workshop, thus leading to more open discussion. It IS local in that all the motivation and organization is hers; yet just as Mexico and the Balkans use the celebrity wow factor to gain legitimacy for the VMs, she is creatively playing upon the factors that she knows will lure a broader audience. The poster is above, and the advertising e-mail below. I am really excited (asked Stina who is studying in Granada to co-facilitate with me, which works out great because she is also researching these themes) and feel full of energy and creativity to be actually DOING something myself, in contrast to this constant observance of the actions of others.

Hola a tod@s,

Como ya sabéis el DíaV Quinto 2009 está engrasando la maquinaria para otra súper-exitosa-producción.

Para ponernos a tono, el DíaV nos ha traído a dos mujeres estupendas desde los Estados Unidos. Jen y Stina serán las encargadas de dirigir el primer taller de la campaña el sábado 20 de diciembre a las 17h en la Casa de Cultura de Quinto. ¡El taller promete ser divertido así que apuntarlo en vuestra agenda y traed ropa cómoda!

El taller también es la excusa perfecta para salir de casa, reírnos un rato y después ir de vermuteo!

Para más información sobre el taller mirar el súper poster adjunto que el equipo del DiaV ha preparado con tanta iVaginación;)

Por favor, distribuir este email entre vuestros contactos de la comarca, ¡contra más seamos, mejor!

Un saludo

DiaV

Tsunami on Nikola Tesla Street

2008-12-05T08:29:00.000-08:00

So yesterday, I was in my groove, perfect song pounding through my headphones, pondering how wimpy Serbians are about rain while running to catch a bus, only to be swamped as it washed a total tsunami of dirty street water on me. And we are talking, like, I couldn't see, there was water in my ears and my hair was soaked. So, I get on the bus, positively dripping, sputtering, but also kind of laughing at the hilariousness of the situation and dabbing mud off my face. And although obviously every single person on that crowded bus saw my incident, not a single person laughed with me or cracked a smile! It was stony faces all around. And then that made me laugh even harder. Such a foreigner.

Reminded me of the laugh attack we had in Brighton when my friend was telling about how she fell flat on her back in a drunken unbalanced moment, and instead of catching her, all the Brits just stepped out of the way of her falling body. For some reason, this incident totally made my day. Bizarre woman I am, that having nasty water splashed on me can put me in a good mood. Less than a week left in Serbia, and though I am sad I am also so invigorated about seeing new places- first Budapest and then off to Spain for a month before flying to Bangkok, Thailand. DAMMMNNNNN, international plane tickets are an aphrodisiac.

Decisive Moment

2008-12-02T11:51:00.000-08:00

Back to childhood today- fell down and skinned my knee and went to the zoo with my friend and her little daughter. Considering the urgency that is being 22, and the current romantic irony that plunges me in alternated possibility and exhaustion, it was so nice to just slow the fuck down. See four-year old joy and trust, be touched by this tiny complete little person. I miss touch almost recklessly.

Walking to the office I saw a photograph I had studied for an assignment, ‘The decisive moment’ which submerged me into a reverie of thought. In the photograph, the man is walking on water- yet we know he is about to fall in, trench coat and all. We rarely know which moments will be decisive until they have arrived and we are changed. Yet even as I write that, I can think of a handful of utterly epic decisive moments... I remember I chose to take a quiet approach to the inspiration, and those images of my mom on the beach are some of my favorite photographs. She is quiet, trusting me, the moment is full as the frame, the shadows rich, the skin texture complex. In the other her feet are splayed in the sand, and I feel so tender towards the indentations left by her socks. I would like to appreciate quiet moments like these more.

I made some beautiful photographs at the zoo. Instead of zebras and tucans I had all these stolen little moments of mother and daughter, and they just got erased which is so incredibly frustrating! I swear, technology hates me and acts all spontaneously malevolent in ways that are theoretically impossible. For example, why did this photo upload vertically? Sigh sigh. So much for appreciating quiet moments, I'm watching a movie.

Taking it to the streets

2008-12-01T05:41:00.000-08:00

Apocalypse?

2008-11-28T06:48:00.000-08:00

Woke up to the real Thanksgiving, and it was one of those mornings where you read the news and the world seems to have gone to hell overnight. My obscene good luck seems to have ground to a dramatic halt. Having just submitted my Indian visa and almost bought my ticket to pursue double research in Mumbai, I woke up to hear the city is in flames, that Americans are being targeted, hostaged, murdered on rooftops. My back-up plan, Bangkok, Thailand is coincidentally also on the verge of catastrophe and all the airports are closed while Americans are being flighted out… I am fully aware that these are thoroughly selfish responses, I additionally have deep sorrow for those who have been affected. And the production here has been canceled because funding pulled out at the last minute. While this in itself is educational and relevant to my research, and though I’ve already learned much and will continue to do so my last weeks here, it is still a downer. I was so jittery yesterday that I felt highly over-caffeinated, then realized I was just feeling stress and sadness. Guess it’s a sign of how well things have been going that I didn’t recognize it as such. I feel restless, as all the options I was so excited for are closing to me. I guess if I get stranded in Spain it won't be such a bad thing, ha...

My mom’s voice as it crackled like autumn leaves through the no-doubt very expensive connection yesterday, would counsel taking this moment to reflect upon what I am grateful for. Yesterday I pretty much just had the heart to hibernate. And today I don’t have any eloquence regarding my gratitude, but it is of course still present; mainly in the deep love I am radiating out from this freezing Balkan city to project around the world. My people are so scattered, but I am so deeply lucky to know and care for as many people as I do, and to know they in turn love me. I have received massive support, letters, a near constant stream of love and news… For this I am deeply grateful, as well for the physical safety of those I love.

Stuffed

2008-11-25T15:54:00.001-08:00

I cooked an entire vegetarian Thanksgiving today! It rained all day, and I was cozy inside over steaming pots and creatively maximizing a poorly equipped kitchen. I got the date wrong, but the food right. Yet as nice as it was, with the mess delayed till tomorrow, a gifted plant, and good company, I’m feeling… I was going to say lonely, but that’s not it- I feel old. I feel overwhelmed by all that I don’t know and weighted down by what I do. I feel capable- I can imagine a 30-something-th Thanksgiving in which I feel trapped, and my capability leads to resentment. Makes me shiver. Makes me feel tired. Tonight, I have to consciously shift this image, push it aside. Maybe I’ll be more thankful come Thursday’s REAL T-day.

My most remembered and maybe most beloved holidays have been the most complex ones: Christmases pervasive with death, or delayed flights, or potlucks in Ecuador, or winter trains to the middle of the U.S., or freezing Midwest heartfull, or New Years in a cantina in the Republica Dominicana. I hope my quirk-factor outweighs the rest. And that this premature-Thanksgiving in the Balkans is a premonition of sorts. Of spontaneity trumping superiority. Of my own optimism. Let it be, amen. I hope I find someone who can remind me of my best self by their love. And also that I grow enough to be able to remind myself- more consistently anyways.

Succint May Memory

2008-11-21T05:44:00.000-08:00

Memory:
Early May, pretending the tentative spring evening is undiluted summer, I put on paint stained cut-offs and started my last art project of college. I'd delayed, not out a lack of desire, but wishing to create something conclusive, important, to capture these fleeting moments whose worth I was suddenly fervently aware of. I spread out on the deck, and though it was too cold and my mess of tissue paper and photo scraps not conducive to the wind, this succinct moment is preserved with great care. I think I was nostalgic even as it was occurring.

My roomie and dear friend Elliot was reading in the chair, bundled in the blanket I identify with him and sipping tea, probably English Breakfast. We pulled a lamp out, and it was as though we created a cozy living room under the stars. Heady with a youthful hubris of our own creative spontaneity. The lilac was just starting to bloom. I would pick flowers and leave these offerings in their rooms much like my mom did for me- oh how obvious our learning pattern of how we show our love.

This evening was so COLLEGE, so ardent and urgent and fleeting; this home we so earnestly created and dissembled. These minutes so soon to be eclipsed by night chill, obligations, hopping on my bike to rush to the darkroom- a moment gone, but whose existence is more significant than its passing.

I don't know why that came to me so clearly right now. Perhaps because I long for a sense of belonging or creativity. I am so damn anonymous these days. We huddle our sense of self in our activities, in what others know us for, in what we do. So of course learning the more grounded facets of ourselves will be a lonely business. I know in my bones I will long for this transience as soon as I return.

CHOICES

2008-11-21T05:34:00.000-08:00

~Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina~
(Nov. 17th 2008)

I am in one of those slightly discontent moods that I can't quite shake; not solid enough to have beauty in its melancholy or light enough to be banished by an overnight bus ticket or sickly sweet espresso and postcards to loved ones. Today I had a moment of total dislocation, discordance, and the jangle of nerves like I imagine the snap of a guitar string to be. A perplexed jolt of, 'what am I doing here?'

Usually in moments like these, making art or others happy (same thing? what is more creative than love...) brings color back to my eyes. While writing doesn't carry the visceral release of paint or toxic photo chemicals, its the best I can do in this moment as I huddle over a cafe heater. I spill words over torn out book pages to honor my emotions in a plea or prayer for a more intentional life. In this "prayer", I try to be glad that I can feel anything if not the emotions I would choose.

Re-reading what I'd written reminds me of a poem by Nikki Giovanni that I love:

CHOICES

If i can't do
what i want to do
then my job is to not
do what i don't want
to do

It's not the same thing
but it's the best i can
do

If i can't have
what i want . . . then
my job is to want
what i've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more to want

Since i can't go
where i need
to go . . . then i must . . . go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral

When i can't express
what i really feel
i practice feeling
what i can express
and none of it is equal

I know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry

I miss refill mugs of NW coffee...

2008-11-21T05:29:00.000-08:00

Its a sleepy Sunday. Some great dramatic sunlight slanting the grimy apartment walls across the street and splashing some color onto the grey. Listening to Graceland. Made a huge jug of Turkish coffee to try and redeem myself by some productivity post-clubbing-till-6 am and sleeping-in-till 2 pm. The night-life here has a fast metabolism and lots of self confidence. I am super impressed by the party stamina and only hope I can make Ellie proud by shaking the Polaroid picture till the wee hours of the morning. I dig this bar called, get this, sound it out, "Bitef Art Cafe" where raucous cover bands play the soundtrack of my life- ie. dirty dancing and other songs that in the States basically serve for bouncing around your room in your panties here become ultra HIP. Hilarious. And then this other bizarre techno club on the 9th floor of askyscraper where I got to be on feminist patrol, lucky me!

I don't know when I will cease to be amazed by the subtlety with which life in a new place becomes normal. It seems so elusive, that moment when you suddenly look around and realize you have people, and purpose, and routine, and spontaneity, whether its Mexico City or the gritty and glamorous Balkan Belgrade. And in that gentle shift from new to a sense of place you forget all the work, energy and self-doubt that went into making a home and just marvel at the reality of it.

Saving the World and Dying Alone

2008-11-10T11:35:00.000-08:00

I appreciate the candidness of the women I'm working with at the ATC (www.atc.org.yu). We talk about taboo subjects such as burnout/exhaustion/NGO tourism, etc. I am allowed to ask questions, to receive blessed permission to not think about sexual violence all the time. To see INTELLIGENT idealism in action, and what action!

But having the most brilliant gorgeous woman look you frankly in the eye over instant coffee and say love and partnerships are virtually incompatible with devoted activism makes me squirm. My god, if she can't juggle it all, how will I? Its possible to live a very complete and meaningful life, but to somehow miss that part. I've seen it happen, and its gradual, and there is no fault in it. There is a window of time that you can miss- and I'm not talking biological clock bull, because I intend to be having sex in my 70's. No, I mean a period of time when you are still flexible and your heart has an imagination that can expand to include another flawed human being into your life dream. I don't want to miss that. But though I'd like to think my desire alone is enough, its not. No one ever thinks they'll be the one who won't find staying-love; we all kind of think we are the protagonists of our own stories, and every good story has some kind of romance.

I desire love and I desire a career synonymous with a cause that I can give myself over to: to be a vessel. But if you volunteer for said immersion does that mean you don't get to be a whole person? I reject that. I also fear it. I fear becoming so focused that everything, and more importantly everyone, becomes problematic- that I become so morally outraged and urgent that I become rigid and unforgiving. I think so far I value balance too much to be truly great at anything, and for that I am glad. A part of me hopes this extends to love as well; that I can exchange lofty ambition for a humble but meaningful life with a partner by my side.

I want it all. I want to care deeply with real compassion, yet I don't want Eve's voice whispering in my ear as I try to sleep about women in the Congo being forced to watch their husbands be decapitated or to eat babies. How do these realities exist in my world alongside crushes and horniness and normal things like eating brown rice every day and making sure I have clean clothes? I want to be able to draw myself a hot bath to relax from endless articles about rape used as a strategy of war, and sink into the hot water mindless as muscles unwind... Instead of picturing Cassie's ex-boyfriend crouched over another bathtub dismembering three limbs and wondering what the hell that means? Is a head a limb? How do people do that? I do this work, though I haven't been raped. I am learning to fear men and that is NOT the lesson I want to take away from this. My fantasies as I walk to the bus aren't about someone I like, but about kicking ass.

We have a responsibility to love ourselves and truly LIVE our lives, as we fight for women to have this opportunity. If I could be a witness in the Congo, stand in front of a tractor or shame the peacekeepers or something, I think I would do it. I would die for a cause but only if I thought it would do some real good. Our lives are not only our own, but belong to those we love and who love us, and perhaps also the people we fight for. So what's the answer? Eve says daily dancing should be mandated. We eat lots of chocolate in the office. I have no answers, only questions.

New Days

2008-11-10T01:31:00.000-08:00

(Obama pride over blackberry beer)

(All Saints Day in Zagreb, Croatia- poignant sad music as everyone flocks to the cemetery)

These last two weeks have been so full; I have hesitated to put my thoughts into words. I miss art- messy chalk pastels and leaky acrylic under my fingernails. However, as I feel some of my revelations slipping away as well as my intentionality, and writing and photography seem to be my creative outlets, I'll go ahead and forego the succinct "moral of the story" posts I seem inclined to, and just spew what's in my heart right now.

Like my quirky Halloween in Croatia, surrounded by Couch Surfers and 80's techno (I'm missing filthy American dancing...) election "night" was equally surreal. My sense of the urgency of needed change in U.S. foreign policy has increased exponentially since being in the Balkans. Americans are perhaps the favorite categories of comedy here: our ignorance to geography, languages, overly fake friendliness and obsession with being PC while being international bullies... Though elements of this are of course correct, I've surprised myself by the things I DO appreciate about the States, as well as my reaction to the hypocrisy and easy laughs inspired by perpetuated stereotypes. Having heard more blatant sexism, racism, and gallons on homophobia since being here, I appreciate our self-conscious guilt (until the point that its crippling not catalytic).

Even in the face of so much Obama-ptimism, there is utter disillusionment/hopelessness among Serbians towards the U.S.; more so than any other country I've visited. Perhaps its to do with the visual reminders: buildings that still gutted and decimated by our bombs. Point is, stayed up all night curled in bed watching the BBC election results pour in whileskyping with Lin in South Korea and Megan in San Fran, and while it wasn't partying in the streets w/Oprah, there was something appropriate about watching the sun rise while tears leaked down my face and Obama delivered his eloquent acceptance speech. So, I tremulously/proudly donned my Obama-t and walked to work, and the few "I love Obama!"s that I got were enough to water my hopes that some day we may actually be cautiously proud to be Americans...

a few more fav. pics :)

2008-11-04T02:01:00.000-08:00

Photos from last year's WU production! Warm my heart.

2008-11-04T01:53:00.000-08:00

(These photo are courtesy of the lovely and talented Emily Tess Johnson, should be viewed as copywrited, etc. and not re-used without her permission)

"And I saw what Art can do"

2008-10-29T13:46:00.000-07:00

(Excerpt of Eve speaking about V-Day's work in the Congo and collaboration with the UN/UNICEF)

"[...]we did these public tribunals, when I was there. In Goma and Bukavu, where ten women in each city came forward and told their stories before government officials, before UN officials, before hundreds of people in their community. It has never happened in the Congo that women have broken silence.

These women were so fierce. We worked with them for a week everyday, practicing their stories, telling their stories, doing trauma exercises, releasing… And then they got up, and they were so strong, they were so fierce, they were so powerful. And both events were filled with men who were weeping, literally. Kleenexes were being passed out. Governors were there, high officials were there. We would never have have gotten [...]the high officials... the – UN brought all those people. They are able to bring in all kinds of players and actors in the story that V-Day would never have access to. And we’re able to do these radical moments of breakingthe silence, and telling their story, and spreading pink, and spreading red, and spreading a whole different kind of energy [...]

I’ll tell you another example of our collaboration that sums it up. Last year we did huge demonstrations in the streets of Bukavu and Goma, and 8,000 women marched in the streets of Bukavu to stop the violence. And it was beautiful. And in the end, there was this huge stadium, and there was speeches and we did this whole performance [...] she [Justine, famous Congolese actress] had organized a theater piece which was about rape. And they were doing this whole community-based piece, where women were being raped, and they were calling on the cell phone- and this was in front of all the U.N. officials, and the first lady, who had come [...] All decked out, in this pink outfit! No kidding, she looked like Princess Diana, in pink [...] during the piece, Justine got dragged away, by a rapist, and when she came back, she had a little baby in her arms, who was a product of rape.

And she started to scream, “I have been raped, by so many men, that I don’t know the name of my baby!” And then she took the baby, and she threw the baby onto the first lady's lap. Threw the baby! Just like that [mimics motion] And said, “You. Name my baby!” I have never seen anything like it in my entire life. The first lady just went, [mimics total shock] scoops up the baby- all the guards were like [mimics sound of loading guns] but they couldn’t shoot the baby, right? And there was just like this moment, 5,000 women watching, and everyone just gasped.

And then the first lady sort of scooped up the baby, held the baby, and the first lady changed all her plans. She stayed at Bukavu three days. She came and danced with the rape women. She fed the rape women, she joined our campaign. And I saw what art can do, but I also saw UNICEF and V-Day. And the UNICEF people were like, ‘Did you plan that? Why didn’t you tell us about that?’ And I was like, ‘I dunno, it just happened!’ [laughter] And that’s what we are able to do together. And that’s what, at our meeting in Goma, the UNICEF people said, we need you to be who you are. You need to go and push the edge as far as it can go, and we need to do what we do."

Cassie

2008-10-28T09:15:00.000-07:00

I thought of Cassie today. I do occasionally, only once a month or so now. But for awhile what was done to her haunted me. Its not that I had ever been so close to her. Katie was. I remember her as being golden and rosy. Very kind. Overly bubbly for me, who has been called overly bubbly; she was that warm. I remember how her gruesome murder shocked us, it was incomprehensible. And I was also obscenely curious. I'm not proud of that. I was on a plane when I finally read the article about exactly how he had killed her, a total nightmare of dismemberment and death at the hands of the boy she had maybe loved. I thought I wanted to know. But I still haven't forgotten the sickly strawberry smell of my vomit as I heaved, my body out of control as it reacted with utter horror.

Its years later now, and when Cassie crosses my mind she individualizes statistics for me. Having just compulsively re-read articles and looked through her memorial site, I'm struck as well by my sorrow for him. What happened to this boy? What do we do to our boys so that they do this to our girls? Sad too by some of her family's assertions that Cassie would never have been a victim of domestic violence. That means nothing. Do any of us know what we would really do in these profoundly sick situations? Haven't we all realized with fear how deeply in love we were, and wondered what extremes that love would put up with? More to the point, the power dynamics that color nearly all of our desicions.

I remember her memorial at EMS, sitting in a circle singing hippie songs that were at once beautiful/fitting/tawdry/obscene. How the teachers seemed so much older with grief. Thinking we were too young to know how to do her justice. That she was too young to die. I think now that this will never get easier, but only harder. How nearly all of my close friends have been raped or assaulted. When asked to step in the circle if I've known anyone who has been a survivor of assault I don't even know who to picture anymore- its a blur of faces. Does that get easier? No. Each time I am more angry, more convinced that I have to find someway to make this better.

Re-reading Cassie's words for her own eulogy moved me, and I hope they touch you. I can only imagine what a sweet life she would probably be living now. If I were her, if I were dead, if I could be, I'd be pissed off, 'oh good, my death helps remind you to live more fully. Nice.' But I can't imagine Cassie being so bitter.

"There are those who lived longer, and those who lived better for the world, but she made a difference that mattered, even on a small scale. She was protector to her family, and to women who thought themselves weak. She taught them, as best she could, to find confidence and inner power Ÿ She decided she was going to adopt as many female children as she could support; she brought up those girls to be strong women Ÿ She wrote books that didn't reach mainstream bookstores, but the content mattered Ÿ She loved dogs. The world's not drastically different because of her, but there are signs that she lived. The women she raised grew up to be powerful, and took those values into the world with them. Dogs led happier lives, and her books touched the lives of few, but loyal, readers." (Cassie Brown)

Belgrade bars are way too cool for me

2008-10-28T08:57:00.000-07:00

Sipping beers in a bar with pianos as tables, I was struck by how open communication can be with strangers. I miss being around people who know me so well. Yet there is also something liberating when you can have genuine conversation with someone completely new; just jumping in, getting glimpses of their history but never having the whole story (which you couldn't have even if you'd known them their whole life).

I was struck by this, and also a little saddened by how quickly apparent so many of our scars are, even when shared as something already passed. So transparent, as old heartbreaks bubble to the surface three hours in. Are my own sorrows and insecurities so apparent as well? It makes me wish I could meet myself in a bar, chat objectively, just to know how blatantly these hurts show. Then again, maybe I don't want to know.

I've been gone almost 100 days. How startling. How urgent. Having my ticket to Barcelona somehow makes my time here feel more real and fleeting. While very aware of the complexity of this statement: I am learning to be happy here.

Excerpt from the European V-Day Workshop that moved me

2008-10-27T06:33:00.000-07:00

(my morning walk along the waterfront)

I love this, how sometimes its about not asking- about resisting and perservering...

"Sarah: Hi I’m Sarah. I’m actually from Memphis, Tennessee [...] I’ve been involved in V-Day for about six years [...] in Memphis, and then I brought it to my university, Mississippi University for Women [...] It’s a very small school, about 2,500 people, and a really conservative area, so I had- I asked my junior year, and was shot down by the president. She said I could quietly show the movie. So I showed it.

Eve: QUIETLY show the movie [laughter]

Sarah: It wasn’t very quiet, I don’t think she liked that much. And my last year, I just didn’t ask. [laughter, “yeah!”] And we had it in a room about this size, we had a hundred people crammed in, so it was a small presentation-

Eve Go girl!

Sarah: - but it got a lot of awareness out, and we gave the money to the Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the Hurricane Katrina Fund, Which helped with shelters that had been torn down from the hurricane.

Eve: I want to just say, you all don’t know Mississippi. But to do the Vagina Monologues in Mississippi, is like doing it in Islamabad, Pakistan. [appreciative laughter] Its about the same, it’s about the same. So I just want to say, kudos for your bravery! You go!"

Book recommendation!

2008-10-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

Please please read Eve's book, a collection of pieces by notable men and women poets and authors about ending violence. It is now being used as a tool in community and university productions just as the Vagina Monologues is. I'm just starting it, but found Eve's first words in the introduction moving. I share them with you below, and hope they inspire you to seek out the book.

"Words. Words. This book is indeed about words. Speaking the unspoken. Speaking the spoken in a new and viable way, speaking the pain, speaking the hunger. Speaking. Speaking about violence against women not because it is the only issue, but because it is an issue that lives smack in the middle of the world and is still not spoken, not seen, not given weight or significance. So that words crack open numbness and denial and disassociation and distance and deception. Speaking so that we are in community, in conscience, in concern. " (Ensler, 13)

Quarterly Report

2008-10-24T12:34:00.000-07:00

3 Months done :(
See mushy report below:

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/6/20/1967513/Quarterly%20Report%20

Susana challenges Bill Gates

2008-10-23T08:25:00.000-07:00

(Excerpt form interview with Susana Moscatel: co-translator/adaptor of Mexico's VM script)

"[...] I have this column for the newspaper, and every year, EVERY YEAR, I update my software...and it keeps telling me the word vagina is misspelled. And I keep on laughing so hard, and ... A year ago I wrote to Bill Gates, and I told him that vagina is the right word in Spanish. It is not misspelled. It doesn’t mean anything else. And he still hasn’t corrected it! So every year- I’ve been doing it for seven years...So every year, I think, ‘Okay, time for the vagina thing again!’ And I check and its still a mistake! ... And I find it unbelievable, you know?! So I think that’s the kind of thing this play, the Vagina Monologues, can change. Because somebody somewhere programmed that to be a mistake, or didn’t program that in... The way that if you write a curse word, it marks it.
JM: As though it doesn’t exist…
SM: But you write penis, and there’s nothing wrong with it.
JM: Oh, pene goes through?
SM: Yeah, pene’s right, it doesn’t correct it [...] It might just be someone’s mistake, but its been so long. And I DID write to Bill Gates!

Home #...?

2008-10-23T04:17:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in the new "flat" I am likely paying way too many Euros for. BUT, I have laundry hanging on the balcony outside my room, good company and an unpacked bag. It is right next to the conjunction of two rivers, and walking there last night and this morning I felt comforted. It reminds me of the Portland Esplanade and all the important moments I've had there. Like there, people walk their dogs, ride bikes, fall in love, families unwind after a work day, old couples stroll out their last years.

Having met with the mighty women of ATC (Anti-Trafficking Centar), it makes most sense for me to stay in Belgrade to be part of the momentum leading up to bringing the VMs to Novi Sad for the first time. I'm going to be a participant-observor, and help out as well as document. In November I'll take two week-ish to go to Bosnia and Croatia and do interviews with some vagina warriors who have collaborated in the past to creatively spread a "V-Triangle" across the former Yugoslavia.

They are so inspiring- Don't look much older than me, but founded the NGO five years ago and tackle multiple and interesecting issues with bravery and brilliance. It was humbling to hear the constraints that they face, as they talked about how being an activist for touchy subjects is to daily risk your life. Talking honestly over blackberry beer, I felt myself surrounded by a kind of energy and solidarity. They remind me of Dawn and I. It was a relief talking about how to remain individually and communally sustained, and the grassroots movement's predispopsition to burnout. I feel so green. Driving last night through beurocratic red tape, my roomie pointed out, "and there's the Chinese Embassy that you 'accidentally' bombed".

I could go on for ages, but will leave it there, because I have to write my Quarterly Report. It seems impossible three months have passed. True, my hair is awkwardly longer. The seasons are changing. But it fills me afresh with a desperate desire to make this count. Knowing I will be back the 24th for Courty's wedding is strange; it makes me feel old to be going to my freshman year roomate's wedding. And at the same time, it gives me a reason to go back. It is something I can picture- a dress, reuniting with college friends, dancing with Angie, Megan making some hilarious toast- these are things I can picture, whereas two months from now I draw a blank.

Belgrade~Beograd

2008-10-19T10:32:00.000-07:00

Belgrade has elements that are so familiar, yet distinctive. Kind of like when you get a wisp of thought that reminds you of last nights’ dream, but the details are blurry. Had a strange experience having stepped off the plane, and then the bus, of having directions given to me in Serbian and somehow understanding. I can cobble together a piece-meal understanding through Spanish and English similarities. I haven't travelled somewhere I don't speak the language in a long time, and it is humbling. Which feels healthy in the same satisfying way that salad does.

Its as though my skin is coated in a light film of emotions rising to the surface. Reading the most beautiful book, and I'm like an old lady crying at every little thing- whether extremely sad or beautiful or both. Imagine what an emotional time-bomb I will be when I actually AM old, yikes.

Having made my way up a precarious elevator to Three Black Catz hostal, I was offered a shot of home-made plum brandy. And since then have been amused and amazed by Belgrade. Think: Turkish coffee. There is also such recent violence, and I'm only beginning to get a grasp on the history. It was eery to see children playing on old tanks and weapons at the fort, as well as the eardrum-destroying sound of planes thundering above. Though it was an aerial show, mere years ago the planes could have been dropping NATO bombs. I'm hoping to meet with the anti-trafficking NGO goddesses tomorrow. I have ganas de getting my ass settled in Novi Sad. I want to be able to sleep naked, do laundry and unpack my stanky bag for awhile.

London beauty by night

2008-10-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

(So, I actually didn't feel that emo walking the waterfront, but I couldn't resist- I just felt so damn cool listening to my Coldplay and strolling with my date [my camera])

At night they would go walking ‘til the breaking of the day,
The morning is for sleeping…
Through the dark streets they go searching to seek God in their own way,
Save the nighttime for your weeping…
Your weeping…

Singing la lalalala la lé…
And the night over London lay.
So we rode down to the river where the Victoria ghosts pray
for their curses to be broken…
We’d go wandering neath the arches where the witches are and they say
There are ghost towns in the ocean…
The ocean…
Singing la lalalala la lé…
And the night over London lay.

God is in the houses and God is in my head… and all the cemeteries in London…
I see God come in my garden, but I don’t know what he said,
For my heart, it wasn’t open…
Not open…

Singing la lalalala la lé…
and the night over London lay.
Singing la lalalala la lé…
There's no light over London today.

Too much tea- weighing me down this London afternoon

2008-10-16T06:08:00.000-07:00

Its strange how I’m studying the breaking of silence through being quiet myself. I am learning so much about listening. Spending so much time with others, absorbing their stories, so that when I have company, I feel more quiet than usual. And of course spending more time alone also means more silence; even though thoughts are ricocheting through me quicker than usual.

At slightly melancholy moments like this, I feel like a kind of neutral receptacle, a bit of a non-person. Going so many new places, making so many rich new acquaintances, but aware that no one knows me deeply, or perhaps not as well as I think I know them. I suppose I am sharing of myself in a different way than I am used to. That's how we remain open, by voluntarily sharing of ourselves. And I need to remind myself to speak out, whether asked to or not, to remind myself of who I am. Most times I feel more intensely myself than ever, but there are moments when I get lost.

And I feel so lucky to be in this experience, that I feel guilty for feeling lonely, or cranky, or whatever, because even in the midst of that is my privilege and my gratefulness for this opportunity. I remember reading some of the Watson blurbs, and they felt so self-pitying to me, so focused on the self, when I want to focus on my project, and I figure the self revelation will naturally accompany that.

I'm thinking a lot about the devastating violence Eve told us about in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and how to know these things, and let them in, and not choke. She said, 'These women lived through hell, and survived. You are not going to die just hearing it' No, but I'm trying to learn how to give myself over to being this useful tool, and at the same time remain that "seeker of beauty" that I used to envision myself. How to care for ourselves enough to maintain our efficiency and drive, without floating indefinitely in the mundane, or petty. So after I finish transcribing this endless interview, I'm going to go out into the sunny autumn day. I'm going to go to the FREE National Gallery and look at some Boticelli, DaVinci, and Duccio. I'm going to brush up against strangers, and probably see some incredibly human detail that fills my heart and reminds me that what we are fighting for is a revival of our full humanity.

V-Day European Workshop

2008-10-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

The "vagina godmamas" dancing it out and healing ourselves at the V-Day European Workshop yesterday

(Ana, Eve Ensler, and I!) I got not only hugs, but her blessing and a renewed sense of purpose)

Text to come tomorrow!

Brighton, the Robin Hood, and the kindness of strangers

2008-10-07T10:12:00.001-07:00

(Brighton from the pier)

I’m sitting in the Robin Hood, a People’s Pub that donates all the money to charity, and allows puppies inside. It is a block-ish from the boiling ocean, and I am feeling rejuvenated. The beach is wild and cold and windy in a very Oregon way, it saltily smacks your face and wakes you up. Reminds me of the surreally beautiful beach trip with Anyel when I got back from Ecuador and was heart sore. The way the foam was piled as deep as snow drifts, the dramatic lighting, rainbow, and wild joy that I could still feel.

You know the old saying, “wherever you go, there you are”? Well, I feel that I am rediscovering the parts of myself I like best, and am remembering to enjoy my own company. I am a woman who doesn’t mind the rain, and who is drawn to the ocean. There I feel more thoughtful. It is easier to be intentional as well as kind. I feel a renewed optimism. In myself, in love; I feel the Regina Spektor lyrics, “You peer inside yourself -You take the things you like - And try to love the things you took - And then you take that love you made - And stick it into some - Someone else's heart “. I have worried my heart is closed, but it isn’t. I love in many other ways, and in time another person will come along who, like the ocean, brings out the best parts of me and loves me in spite of the rest. When I was with Andrew before things got so hard, I was so damn happy my heart was that much more open to the other relationships in my life as well.

My project is going good good good! Ana kindly offered for me to stay this week, and it is so wonderful to alight here in the lovely Brighton with such good and intellectually stimulating company. I plan to transcribe and translate all my remaining (read: NUMEROUS) hours of Mexico interviews. And then we’ll go to London for a UK Feminist Conference, and then hopefully back to Cambridge which is showing the VMs! What a crazy coincidence; I’m not sure if the Vagina Monologues really ARE everywhere, or if I’ve just had the most incredible luck thus far. Then back to London for the European V-Day Conference. Serbia plans are (tentatively and with much pushy Americanism) falling into place.

Point is, I am learning to walk alone but not be alone, and when I am, to not be lonely.

2008-10-03T13:52:00.001-07:00

(Tlatelolco- Plaza of the three cultures in D.F.)

Imagine suddenly being in a land where the postman serenades (not propositions) you, and you escape into a pub from the wet chill, accidentally order a heaping piece of chocolate cake and “white” fair-trade coffee, which you eat in front of the fireplace where Pink Floyd began. Cheers! Welcome to Cambridge. I’m staying with Emily in her quaint 800 year old college, where Silvia Plath lived. The poetry and history is blatantly present, as it was in Mexico, but so so different. It reminds me what a young country the U.S. is, and how much we have to learn and change (if the debates last night weren’t enough of a reminder).

I keep having, “I’m not in Mexico anymore” moments- though the instinct for constant comparison is wearing off, as is my horror at the GBP. I need to balance my natural penny-pinching with a realization that travel inherently involves a near constant spending of money. Because of this, I feel an urgency to justify the extreme privilege of my life right now with a lot of work and budgeting. Especially meeting all of Emily’s brilliant and specialized peers here makes me feel a bit insecure about my own intelligence and lonely about what can sound like a bizarre and flighty year when described to the classy folk here over a pint. But in the end, there’s nothing I’d rather be doing, or a way to be learning so much about violence against women, and also about myself.

At the Red Bull Pub the other night, I realized with joy that the Vagina Monologues is never really that far away. The very act of talking about what I’m up to inevitably leads me into dynamic conversations about peoples' impressions and experiences. I met Danika, from New Delhi who saw it there twice and passionately ranted over pear cider about how much it moved her and about what she learned about female circumcision while on a dig in Egypt. I also met Katie, who along with an enthusiastic sky-diving conversation told me that Cambridge also has a V-Season every-year and who promised to put me in touch with her friend who organizes the womens group, which has a representative in every college.

After my little rest from jet lag, hopefully a few interviews, and a beautiful breath of home in the form of one of my oldest friends, I’m off to Brighton for a few days. The woman who is getting her PHD in Medical Anthropology, studies Breast Cancer in rural Spain, and organized the VMs there, invited me to go to a breast cancer walking through the “rolling beautiful hills of rural England”. I couldn’t say no to the opportunity, and hope to learn more about the Zaragoza production while I am there.

In London I am going to interview leaders in PozFem, as especially with the New V-Day developments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I want to learn more about the connection between violence against women and the spread of HIV/AIDS. And I am getting ridiculously excited about this upcoming V-Day European Organizer conference, where I hope to learn much and make contacts who will inform my next few months. Though I will meet and talk to Eve, I won’t be allowed to interview her. Though this was initially disappointing, just being in the presence of this world-shaking goddess is going to be mind-opening.

2008-10-03T13:25:00.000-07:00

Sitting between Rachel and Kasra and watching the Monologos de la Vagina in Mexico City for the last time, I felt a sense of peace. I had interviewed each of the three actresses, so for me their own voices and love for the text combined with the script, making true the title of my project, “Women Echoed eachother”.

I have few regrets from this first stage, having squeezed in a few last interviews with actresses, the NGO the money is donated to, and the original translator/adaptor. I wish I could have interviewed the director, and I feel I should have gone to Juarez to visit the shelter there and to try and better understand the femicide there. I should have gone. I was afraid and didn't prioritize it, and that was wrong.

Listening to the final words of the Mexican version, “Yo estaba alli, yo recuerdo” felt final, and right. I was there. I learned. I will remember. It is time to move on.

A few recent photos

2008-09-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

Near Catedral Santo Domingo in Oaxaca

Monte Alban ruins near Oaxaca

Guanajuato by night

Mercado Hidalgo in Guanajuato

View of the lovely Guanajuato

Thoughts turn familial on a soft September eve

2008-09-17T18:45:00.001-07:00

As our bus rolled out of Guanajuato, my mom pointed out to me a woman walking by. Her t-shirt said, “Home is where the heart is NOW” I wondered if she knew what it meant, and hoped that she did.

I’m thinking about how family makes you feel cherished, and at the same time lonely. Took my mom to the airport, and on the metro ride home felt bereft for this first time this trip. Returned to find surprise letters bundled up on my shelf, and the toothbrush I had insisted I didn’t need innocuously nestled in the cup holder. A tangible reminder that there are some gifts we cannot refuse. Reminded me of how she used to tuck love notes into my lunches and send me boxes of fresh daphne or favorite autumn leaves in college. I love that through our letters we are sharing more of our complexities, and a lot of our sadness, which goes hand in hand with our strength. There is so much we forget to say on a daily basis, we’re at times so adept at simply existing together.

The book I just finished says that to understand a woman, you must understand her beginning- her own mother and her mother’s mother. I take pride in how unique these stories make us: a young divorcee when that was no chic thing to be, turned fairy tale; a woman of epic independence who moves cross country, wants to be a mother and makes it happen; a baby girl born far too early who fits in your palm, but who is strong.

My family has become a tribe of women- one boy, who looks like our grandpa, among our ever-diminishing family. When my Aunt Sue died I remember my soul getting all twisted up. I thought we were going extinct. What is left? We’ve come together so often in the last ten years that maybe the elastic that’s supposed to jerk us into unity has gone soft, and rotted. I love my family, dead and alive, literal and created. I love too the startling moments in which I see myself perfectly reflected in them, and also those in which I realize I am completely separate.

"My Vagina is Angry"

2008-09-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

How to start? I wasn’t going to write about this, because it’s “not a big deal” and it “wasn’t sexual assault”. And then I realized how many times I have heard women say these same words about experiences that whatever their definition were wrong, and made them feel powerless. I am angry, I am fucking pissed off.

I gave dozens of more kisses than I wanted to. I felt pressured in a million ways, and understood in a real way how many factors go into feeling like your power is taken away, into feeling vulnerable and manipulated. I have a fucking open mind, and I do seize the moment, but this does not necessarily lead to me fucking you on the beach, believe it or not, American or not, cabrona woman travelling alone, or not. I didn’t want to make a big deal for fear of escalation. Only to find anger still rippling through me a week later. And just like the time that asshole molested me on the street when I was visiting my friend in Bellingham, my instinct was to not tell anyone. And I hate that silence seems to be the natural reaction. Because meeting a handsome stranger and having a romantic interlude on a August beach would be preferable to the reality- but, wouldn’t be true.

First of all, I don’t have that many close friends to tell here, but more than that, there is this sense of dirtiness. As though there is something about ME that attracts these creepers. As though it was my fault for letting him kiss me in the first place, for drinking whisky on the beach, for just wanting physical contact. So just now, I wrote him, saying, “I don’t want to see you. You pushed me too far and you scared me. I don’t forgive you for having taken away my power. Don’t write me or call me ever again.” And guess who is calling me right now, making my phone vibrate off the table. Fuck him.

So I’m trying to immerse myself in work. Interviewing audience members, and seeing their utter relief at finally talking about these things reminds me why I am here. I met seventy-two year old twins who adored the show and told me how they couldn’t have imagined a show like this being possible in their lifetimes. Tonight is the 5,000th performance “Gala Event”, to which I was informed by a snooty ticket seller that I needed to wear a ‘traje de noche”- something between a cocktail dress and a ballgown? Did I pack something like this along with my flipflops and yoga pants? Nope. BUT I found a sexy black dress for $4.50 at a flea market. So I’m going to shave my legs, put on lipstick, and go celebrate. And turn my phone off. So what if I rejected 5 phonecalls just while I was writing this. I refuse to let my righteous anger overtake my joy tonight.

The Sum of My Parts

2008-09-01T13:31:00.000-07:00

I’m thinking a lot about change, about the seasons, about the meaning of family. Kelsi told me how the autumn is making her nostalgic. It made me miss the seasons, and hope there are some falling leaves in London. Writing an old friend also made me ponder internal change. How do I account for the last two years? I found myself reiterating all that I had done, but what sum do all these parts lead to? I can’t put my finger on the real change, although I know I feel stronger, more thoughtful, more compassionate. When so many of the key players remain the same, though the cast has grown, I fear many of the same dilemmas fill my neutral head-space.

I feel oddly adrift, and so distant from all that “I did” that I need to realize who I am without these activities. Or what they have made me. I am so proud and happy watching S.A.R.A. take flight- thinking of all these allies forming community and just being Present on campus. I feel much of who I am is located in the people I love, but when these people are scattered literally around the globe as they are, I am left with a vague sense of longing, but no location, home, or life on which to pin my missing. I am so proud of my friends for all they are doing. And so this has become a very different kind of travel, in which I feel even more present than ever, as I have no “life’ to go home to. This is it. And when I “go back” I will have to recreate a life there as well. Wherever ‘there’ is.

It seems appropriate to me that we “make” or “forge” homes, as it really is an exhaustive and highly creative experience. Like art, the preconception plays a role but is often unrecognizable in the final product. And also like art, the final product is rarely Finished. Rather, its’ meaning is constantly evolving, and there is always more you can add to it. Makes me think of the constraints of photography and ceramics, as there is always that final moment when you put it in the kiln or slip it into the fixer, and call it good. How this imposed “end” challenges you to hone the piece. And also how in life there is only one final reckoning, and by then its too late for revisions. I wonder if that’s why we make much of anniversaries, birthdays, celebrations of time, to give ourselves an ‘end’ from which to reconceive the project, or rework the themes. Maybe this is why I am so adamant about this kind of celebrations. The validation of myself and others and the perspective, if from a fabricated realm, can be startling.

I bought a cheap bracelet and had the artist engrave on it: “live with intention.” Now I’m reminded hourly. I think maybe this philosophy is the only way to be conscious that every decision we make is a stroke of paint, an etching in clay, another few seconds of exposure that in some way changes the art piece; and though not guaranteed to improve it overall, the intentional choices make our life authentic.

The eternal struggle

2008-08-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from my interview with Beatriz Martinez, professional actress in the VM in Mexico City:
(my translation from Spanish- imperfect)

Me: How would it be, a world where the Vagina Monologues wasn’t necessary? How would the world have to change so that it wouldn’t be necessary to have a play about these subjects, like violence against women and all that?
B.M.: I believe that this world is not the one we belong to. I’m not an optimist, I’m a fighter. And I haven’t let it get me down while I could help it. But, I am not optimist about men. I believe that its our lot to live in this world the eternal fight. And it could be that in fifty years, its not necessary to do the Vagina Monologues, but it would be something else. It would be something else.

Its very difficult to have perspective on our own history, which as it is is very small in relation to the universal history. So, in fifty year, someone might be able to answer this question. [...] With the Monologues, we still don’t have this perspective. And it seems to me that this world we live in is a world of struggle. Today it’s the vagina, tomorrow it will be something else. But it’s a permanent fight. And it seems to me as though the most marvellous part of this is to be alive in the history.
J.M.: Actors in history and actors in the show as well, right?
B.M.: That’s it! That’s exactly it.

Having survived the 14th...

2008-08-16T13:06:00.000-07:00

August 16th, 2008

Best Saturday morning ever! Slept in having been out late “working” and interviewing the VM’s actresses backstage before and after the show. Incredible women, learned a lot, felt nervous but professional, and enjoyed the show (for free), which is slightly different with every rendition. Woke up and was drinking coffee, reading the paper, and trying to get the washing machine to work when my landlord’s helped me get the internet up and going here. Brilliant!

And even better, incredibly kind people came to look at the other apartment, German exchange student, and I instantly decided to seduce them into loving the place as much as I do by shamelessly using the kittens, park, and cuban café as bait, which he bit, and will be moving in tomorrow! Tra la la. Surf-rock concert tonight with friends, and dinner at Jess’s apartment makes me unreasonably happy and triumphant to “have a life” here. I could imagine myself living here long term, which as Andrew says, seems to be an affliction of the travel-minded that is simultaneously positive and bewildering. When one could put down roots nearly anywhere cosmopolitan, indecision can reign supreme and flexibility can turn into a commitment-phobic curse.

La Casa Azul

2008-08-16T12:55:00.001-07:00

August 10th
Having just finished my second clove and glass of wine, and watching a massive downpour from a misty few feet away, I marvel that I am getting paid for this experience. Its laughably privileged and deliciously hedonistic. Megan would be proud, I am beginning to love storms. I read Lida’s book on DF (interesting, but profoundly biased), and listen to Lila Downs, a great singer my friend Masa lent me over delicious lunch with his well-travelled father. Today I went to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s blue house. I feel a remarkable affinity to her boldness, style and colors. If we played the game of what dead person would you want to sleep with, she would win.
The museum had less of her actual art that I would have liked, but I was shocked by a sketch she had done of an eye with a clock whirling around within it. I have doodled that exact same image, carved it into clay. It makes me doubt my own originality, and also appreciate universal symbols. My art teacher in high school advised against the often blatant and redundant symmetry in my own paintings, and while looking back, tho they aren’t so hot, I think the advise is still useless. What’s the point in making art obscure, when the viewer normally want only to identify with what they are seeing and to feel themselves worthy of art.
The sky is turning a lovely celeste and lavender post-storm. I hope my landlord’s got their new (minuscule!) kittens inside. They are a good/bad influence on me, inspiring day-dreams with their easy love, globalized children, cigarettes, drinks, and falling-off jeans. Their tanned and relaxed presence is refreshing, as are these new furry members of the household. I lick nutella off a spoon, and half-assedly repent my light buzz, as finishing my transcription now seems unlikely.
Jess and I talked about the “no-lugar” our profesora dwelled upon. The limbo zones such as airports, or neighborhoods like Condesa or La Roma, which could be any Europeanized city. These places are good to visit, entertaining to pass by, but ultimately I am relieved I ended up in this humble neighborhood, whose sidewalks are smeared by dog shit and bird seed that the elderly leave out for their paloma friends.
The neighbors have turned on their lights, and their fake stained glass patterns glow warmly. Making me think of a future home where I want to tissue paper designs over the windows. I dream of the door of this house as I am meditatively walk to the Metro. I will paint the panes with a blue sky, and a gold abstract sun in the right corner. I will outline the pains and the door frame with a bold red. Invite people over for relaxed dinner parties where the wine will flow and someone will pick up a guitar and play the Beatles at request. And we will sing. And “we” will be a community, and also there will be a love of mine, who catches my eye as we enjoy our friends, and raises one eyebrow, to reminisce over the hurried fuck on the stairway before everyone arrived; so we smelled vaguely of sex or wax when we shook the guest’s hands and which made me more flushed and pretty than make-up alone could engineer.

Motion of emotion

2008-08-09T16:51:00.000-07:00

At the VM session at the Conference they held an open-mic after informal readings of the monologues. I doubted anyone would stand, yet the miracle of silence being bolding torn asunder, even among hundreds of strangers, prevailed again. Woman after woman shared their “vagina’s story” in Spanish or English.

One woman spoke in monotone pain about being raped at five, at eight, at fourteen, at twenty, as she fled from refugee camp to refugee camp. We gave her a standing ovation. Maybe trite, but we didn’t know how else to show our solidarity.

This woman was also the first to start dancing that night, at the closing party that Will snuck me into. I danced near her till we were dripping sweat, moving to the music as though with endless energy, as though women weren’t being raped that very minute all over the world as she was, again, and again, and again.

We danced because our hearts were sore, but also because we owed it to them, we owed it to ourselves, to gyrate our curves, to pop our hips, to enjoy and own the very sexuality that is under attack. We weren’t dancing for anyone else, we were dancing with our sisters, we were the motion of emotion.

Will kept asking me, “are you networking? Who have you met”” But I didn’t work this opportunity, of rubbing shoulders with the worlds foremost gender and AIDS activists or taking advantage of an open bar. Instead, I learned an invaluable lesson from this woman. I am proud to have chosen instead to dance. And I am glad to have lived this moment with her, whether she was aware what it meant to me or not, to see what survival can look like. Because if we don’t celebrate side by side, with our remaining vitality, as well as fight these uphill battles, how the hell do we keep at it our whole lives long?

Magenta Jamaica tea in a purple mug, while it rained, with lighting striking the sky

2008-08-09T16:36:00.000-07:00

With my tanned skin and passable Spanish people don’t know how to peg me, only that I’m not from here. Its my eyes that especially give me away. So I dyed my hair darker and I wear sunglasses. A photographer told me I should use this to my advantage, those extra few seconds when people are trying to place me to- what? Jump right in I guess. Everyone also thinks I’m older than I am, which is disconcerting. And which Joyce suggested I use to appear more professional.

I am vibrantly satisfied with how my project is coming along, and I have more transcription than the desire to do it. This satisfaction in being able to focus so allows me to be more observant in my daily life. The lavanderia, whose laundry smells Dawn would love, their turtles in tanks, the scrawled green and silver word Sunshine that I pass everyday on my way to the Metro, how when I’m not having sex I think dancing is just as good, how taxis drive backwards for blocks down one-way streets so as to not be driving “against the law”, how people ride bikes on Saturday, the bus-drivers’ tiny son, identical to him, who solemnly collected my three pesos…

These fill my mind, and I wonder if there is so much more to notice here, or if my eyes are just more thoroughly open. How do I keep my “travel lenses” on when I’m back home? Why do we make these distinctions between travel and daily life, when nearly everyone would admit its all one massive journey and segmenting our lives is purely contrived?

I think I’ll go see the pyramids Sunday, I have the urge to be around ancient creations.

Todas las mujeres, todos los derechos

2008-08-06T11:40:00.000-07:00

I love when you ask people here how they are, and they respond, “aqui” (here). How appropriate sometimes, and more honest than the chipper, “great!” that I feel we tend to dole out with more than genuine regularity in the States. How am I? I am here. Underrated to be present-tense, yet one of the great struggles.

Life here has become, rapidly, and surprisingly easily, Normal. I go to a café, do my internet work, transcribe interviews and field notes, eat a salad, then am heading out to catch an artsy film with a friend and coffee later with a new couchsurfing buddy. This may be as settled as I will be for the next year, so it feels like a good place to start, and the fleeting solidarity is all that more appreciated.

The rally yesterday for women’s rights (in conjunction with the World AIDS Conference) was beautiful. I felt part of the evocative, joyful, tide of caring humanity. Even more than other rallies I’ve been to, there was a sense of extreme vivacity, even though so many of the people marching and dancing along are HIV positive and are fighting battles of life and death through their activism. It was profound, and it was familiar.

I sat next to a woman from Kenya on the bus ride to the protest, who deeply moved me, and shared her perceptions with me about how the Monologues have been received in her country. Her wisdom was as apparent as her exhaustion, yet she talked to me and listened to me with the keenest of attention. I feel like a broken record in these posts, as I end with a sense of gratefulness. I have a nasty gripe, and even this reminder about how crappy it is to feel bad is important, as it gives me a sense (of minuscule proportions) of empathy for what it would be like to live daily with a disease.

Some more photos: Jess y Caleb lookin like the Surf-Rock stars that they are after Lucha Libre, my laundry, and my kitchen pre-dinner party.

2008-08-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

2008-08-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

No time to write, but here are some recent photos. Had a lovely dinner party last night, great new friends, and am off to a rally at the World AIDS Conference- ¨!Todas las mujeres, todas las derechos¡¨and found out they are performing-having a session about the Vag. Mons. @ the conference Thurs. What luck! I´m hoping it talks about Eve´s work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

¨corre la voz¨

2008-08-02T14:49:00.000-07:00

I shower with incense drifting through the steamy air. Vow to buy flowers for myself on my walk home, as soon as the rain stops- which could be in a second or hours. As soon as my precariously perched kitchen is done I want to invite all the pseudo-friends I´ve me over for dinner, wine, maybe litter the roof with candles to make it cheery, and hope no one falls off.

As much as this journey is about exploring ¨breaking silence¨, in my comparative solitude I find myself quiet. And though the irony doesn´t escape me, I clutch at the conversations I do have, and am, I think, becoming a better listener.

I interviewed the assistant producer of the Monologues today. I felt moved, and exhausted, and reminded of why I am here. Its that part of the movie where everything is going smoothly, where I am walking through the subway like a bad-ass with the Blue Scholars (and Dirty Dancing, lets be honest) pounding through my headphones and what I hope is an ice cold expression, conveying that I remember at least 2 ways to gouge out eyeballs.

There is going to be this big blow out celebration Sept. 1st for their 5,000th production (there has never in the history of Mexican theater been a play in more demand), which is going to be this massive call for presidential action to stop the violence against the women of Juarez, which not only continues, but is breaking all kinds of horrific records of untold brutality. Coincidentally, the World´s Aids Conference starts tomorrow, and I hope to sneak into some of the unbelievably interesting workshops and lectures. My mind is open, and its metabolism is picking up in a way that school sometimes failed to stimulate.

¨...embrace the present with every cell¨

2008-08-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

Aug. 1, 2008

I am, I think unreasonably thrilled to have discovered this cuban café near my apartment and across the street from my favorite park (where I often get cheered up by elder-salsa dancing or tai chi classes in the morning). I drink intensely strong cuban café out of a humorously tiny white vasito. Between the caffeine and the hand rolled cigarillo I was gifted by the owner, I feel my heart accelerates and rises to be reflected through my grateful eyes. Thank you. Building routine out of the new takes energy and optimism.

My project is stumbling along, ever quicker and more efficiently. I am nervous about my upcoming interviews, but as my new friend reminded me, that’s what I’m here for, “¡Animo!” I met him yesterday and felt invigorated by this open minded and kind human being. His thoughts and experience so different from mine, but somehow similar enough to add up to us drinking strong Americanos tucked in la condesa. Lucha libre and Surf Rock concert... Both new to me and I expect to be amused and glad to be slurping down some chela with other young people.

I’m reading the most beautiful love story, and right now believe my own is out there, if currently dormant. “Is there a logic, a rule to all this coming and going, all this dislocation? Is there a way to stay put, to embrace the present with every cell?” (ix The Time Travellers Wife) I read as the storm comes, caffeine and nicotine pounding through me, breeze and heavy clouds behind me. Then walk home, passing the newspaper stand where the woman greets me with genuine warmth at least four times a day, and the flower vendor who is scraping cactus every time I walk by, and who tied her grandson to a nearby cart as he napped, and I pass a splash of red. I realize its blood, and I try to tell myself its from one of the negligent dogs that roam these streets and that I wouldn’t be above kicking, but already I am shocked and composing this entry.

Night falls over the city

2008-07-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

July 27th, 2008

-$.10 2 mangos

-$3.10 coffee and 2 tacos for breakfast

-$.5 newspaper

-$.3X4 bus fares

-$14 lancha fare

-$14 lunch on lancha. Oh such a rip off.

Things to remind myself of at nine pm. When I am feeling slightly bereft, and a bit too entrenched in my head, and habits of being constantly entertained. It was a good decision to go up on the roof, to perch on the ledge and watch my neighbors wander home, walk the dog; to appreciate the vague lightning and the flowing light coming from the apartments across the way, which pulses in lavender, cobalt, angry orange from televisions, but which reminds me of other people’s domesticity. Like the fire escape at home, or how I used to climb the tree in front of my house and perch silently, I like the sense of anonymous observation. I need to take that moment to snap myself out of my head, or at least into a more appreciative and creative corner. Good also, to listen to my landlord’s frenchy spanish echo around this caverny old house. I am safe here- a bit like a princess up in my tower, which I laugh at myself for. So far the only threat has been the kids accidentally locking me in my room. I really hope it was on accident and doesn’t become a past-time. Having to holler out my window to an eight year old Oskar who has better spanish than me makes me feel like an eight year old myself.

For my mom’s 60th birthday I made her a book and a promise to write her sixty postcards, one for each of her years, while I am gone; one or two a week. This serves many purposes: we both get correspondence, which we love and will need when we are lonely. Also, she enjoys journaling, and I should do more of it, and the “assignments” I gave us will hopefully keep both of us intentional, social, and grateful. Today’s was to “feel the news” (which I resented as stodgy even though I had made it up myself), and it felt like a good place to start the day after a night of roiling pesadillas, or nightmares in espanol. Nothing more routine than seeking down a newspaper stand, breakfast and coffee, even if that breakfast is tacos al pastor and the coffee a cup of capuccino foam.

I also made three friends today. A couple came to look at the downstairs room, which I covet. It costs more and is unnecessary, but has poetic deep blue tiling and the most perfect claw foot bathtub. They are Chilean, and we met as Virginie was showing them the roof, which I was lounging on with my Lonely Planet and paper, attempting to hydrate and feel chipper. Turns out, the Vagina Monologues are being performed in two days… Is this why I can’t get ahold of the producer? Or is it a different performance? So it was a really good thing I read the paper, and noticed the headline, “Espectaculo femenino”.

I felt stifled by Sunday in a Catholic country, and perceived everything to be closed, so instead opted to take the couple up on their sympathetic offer to join them on their adventure to Xochimin, which I have yet to pronounce correctly, and which I keep saying like Hochimin, which I believe is in China. He was raised in the U.S. and they met while in Patagonia, perhaps one of the most beautiful places in the world. This is as good a time as any to mention that apparently everyone in Mexico is part of a lustful lovership. Though I am entertained to find a Catholic country winning the “most PDA award” I do feel slightly forlorn and like a creeper as I take photographs of enamored lovers lounging in the park, or sneak peripheral glances at the massive saliva swappage constantly taking place on the metro, in the street, everywhere.

Anyways, they are delightful, he is a photographer, and she is very kind. I wish I could help falling in crush with nearly every truly good and interesting man I talk to for more than an hour, but. Asi es. I felt her getting chilly towards the end, maybe because we were speaking in english, or maybe because my eagerness to hang out with people near my own age looked more like infatuation than it really was. We talked about feeling as though we have slightly different personalities in our non-native languages. How even our limited vocabularies lead us to express ourselves differently, and therefor be perceived as different people. This frustrates me, and I try to overcompensate for sounding a bit like an ass by being abnormally friendly, smiling, and listening more than speaking. I feel like I am less edgy in spanish and far more polite. Wit is cumbersome. Perhaps this is why Sonia, my Ecuadorian host mom, loved me and felt she could talk to me about such personal things, also why I befriended Ana, another old lady, for the long commute home. She, like Sonia, is a beautiful person, with a love of sharing her country and a propensity to talk about food, the ocean, and being alone. I opened the front gate successfully for the first two times today, which is a good thing, as the family is leaving for two weeks sometime in the darkness between tonight and tomorrow.

I am glad I took my new friends up on their offer. Like when Virginie offered for me to eat with them, I had to squash my initial overly polite, or self conscious, or something, response, of “oh, don’t bother” to a “well… sure. Why not?” Honestly I’d love to accompany complete strangers on an adventure that would be grisly lonely on my own. I spent perhaps six or seven hours with them, know a lot about their history, asked many overly personal questions, but still only know that one of them is named Gabriel. I think its him, but I’m not sure, and this reminds me of the funny kind of friendships you make while travelling. Whether of short or long duration, these are rapidly forged friendships, born of spontaneity, an open –mind, someone’s generosity and someone’s loneliness. Though this apartment isn’t their style, it is most definitely mine, and I enjoy the long walk back from the metro, the shrine I find along the way with fresh flowers, looking for the kitten I saw once and probably won’t see again by some decrepit carts, opening the ancient wooden door, and finding the kid’s plastic swords as a roadblock and careless reminder that I am in fact far from alone, and am capable of being the kind of person I want to be and writing on the roof with Mexico City breathing, honking, and pulsing around me.

Saturday July 26th, 2008

2008-07-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

-$1 papaya and banana for breakfast, eaten in the Parque de Santa Maria

-$28.70 Po Box rental for ‘6 months’ and 10 stamps good for passage to the US

-$1.95 3 post cards, including Metro map

-$25.30 Guia Roji and 3 post cards at Sanborns

-$3.20 a few clove ciggies and lighter

-$ 1.70 cafecito

-$1.80 cheese and chicharron gordita for lunch (yum!)

-$.20 metro fare

-Dinner: $.16 tomato $.55 avocato $1.6 cheese $.11 bread

-To have in stock: 5 liter H2O $1.40 and granola bars $2.75 $.34 gum

Thoughts for today:

-Fresh papaya and a banana make the best breakfast.

-Entreating eyes make big headway when it comes to beaurocratic details, ie. Apartado/PO Box.

-I am an old man when it comes to park sitting at 10 am. We sit and watch. While everyone else practices boxing, learns to ride bikes, walks their dogs, or does some kind of tai chi class.

-Everything takes less time when you are alone. I must typically talk a lot, because I feel so silent. Eating especially goes by quickly- I am no longer a slow eater. Apparently I was always just a big talker.

-Little things really do add the dimension and vibrancy to life- like noticing the clouds reflected in my cup of coffee, buying a single clove cigarette for 5 pesos, buying fresh dinner for $2.21 after successfully finding the nearest super, playing cards with kids in a language that is none of your first tongues, needing to have your hot french landlord let you in when you can’t get the lock to work late at night- and have him wearing a honest to god sand-man-esqu long nightgown.

-I must be really sedentary usually, in spite of the biking, because I’ve been walking all day the last two days, and whoo!

-Metro systems rock. I notice we are all clutching our purses or shopping bags furtively.. are we all just scared of each other or is there really that much risk?

-Lots of thoughts about the squatters town that seems to have sprung up around the monumento de la madre. I took photos, but why did I not go in and talk to anyone about what they were protesting? The regal and enormous carved madre figure towering above these protesters “of four hundred villages”reminded me of the emotionally evocative ‘maternal’ section at the Museo de Arte Moderna that I saw earlier today. Some where sweet, but the huge majority were wistful, tragic, exhausted. Mexicans seem to have a more honest popular understanding of parenthood.

-I adore the painting “Inner City” by Alice, R-something. Also Cabezas Religiosas and The Pledge (can’t remember the word in Spanish right now). Oh! La mandata.

-The art made me feel so much, I honestly placed my hand across my sternum to Contain, and commenced to sweat like crazy. I have been getting brief fevers recently when I feel deeply, I swear its true. And I don’t think I’m getting sick, though I am tired. I felt the kind of intense passion and then exhaustion that I can only compare to an adrenaline rush or incredible orgasm. After looking at just the permanent collection I needed a nap- so I took one in the sun of the outdoor sculpture garden; a reclining woman among many other more abstract android figures.

I need to remember when I am sad, or stuck in a rainstorm to go back to this museum. The ceiling looks like a huge glowing combination of the moon and sun- I don’t know how. Its free for students, as is the Contemporary Art Museum across the street in another park. I enjoyed that one too- but something about the paintings in Chapultapec pleased me more. Maybe because they asked less of me. It was amazing to see Jeff Wall’s photographs though, which we studied briefly in my photograpahy class. It was strange to contrast these images from Vancouver Canada- the dumpy heart of north american laid bare, the snow, with Mexican art and life surrounding me. Which do I identify with more?

-Why don’t I sing out load by myself more? Why be self conscious when you are alone…

-I want to raise my kids for a big chunk of their childhood while they are abroad. It is amazing how Jade and Oskar jump so fluidly between three languages, having spent time in the Philippines and here, and speaking French with their parents. I have rarely seen such well adjusted, confident, and easily social children in my life. They are already better travelled than the majority of my friends, and they aren’t even close to being teenagers.