the year of magic

2011, the year I declared “the year of magic” has ended. but i feel as if i’m just at the start of this exploration. i decided on magic as a focus last year when i was feeling overworked and burned out, wanting to shift my view of the everyday, to make a little more room for the unknown. what i found was so much more. a queer magic circle. the woods of IDA. a new framework for activism. the power and accessibility of ritual. an ear turned towards my own intuition. a recognition of the elements and the everyday sacred. what i found were the tools and language and collaborators for a much larger, longer, process.

this year, 2012, i have no easy slogan for my intentions. but there is a knowing, that i want to learn to listen better: to plants and trees and dreams and spirits and energies and everything that we’ve been taught is without voice. it’s not gonna be easy. in many ways, it scares the shit out of me.  because it also means trusting in my intuition and instincts, believing in my body and the strength of my feelings. and there’s a lot in this body and memory that i don’t want to face. but it seems like the right next step towards witchery, to drawing closer to magic. the next step to being a more powerful ally, friend, artist, activist, healer, lover, teacher and creature of the world.

thank you friends for reading.

both/and

I decided today that I’m going to leave the city this spring, or even sooner. It’s a hard decision to make, especially since I believe that the Occupy movement will gain more momentum in the spring, after a winter of strategizing and reflecting. And I want so much to be a part of this new growth. But I also miss, beyond language, dirt under my feet and visible stars above.  I miss the clarity and stillness that I found in the woods this summer.

I miss too, living in a way that felt connected. When I would shit into a composting toilet in the mornings, it felt good and right, knowing that I was fertilizing the land that was giving me so much. But when I shit these mornings into clean Hetch Hetchy water, I check out a bit, in order to be ok with this necessity. Green lifestylism has often been critiqued by radical environmentalists for focusing on the personal and ignoring systemic issues. As capitalism co-opts environmental concern the message has become: replace your lightbulb, buy a canvas bag. Focus on your purchases rather than the corporations. And this critique is spot on. But I also agree with what Cindy Crabb writes in Doris #24: “I don’t think that our lifestyle choices are in and of themselves political. The political part is whether our lifestyle choices help us to become more human. If they help us to feel a sense of personal integrity, and if that integrity gives us the power to fight further, to imagine deeper, to want more.”

And what I want right now, and what I’m trying to imagine, is how to create Queer Farm. I want to create an intentional community in the Bay that is financially self-sustaining for queers who would like to live rurally, while also offering a healing and educational space for city queers to learn, grow and rest. I dream of a place where activists and grassroots organizations could have retreats on the cheap, where queer youth could intern on a working farm and barn raisings/work parties would be understood as skill shares.  As queers we have historically congregated in cities for community, safety and employment. But in exchange for these benefits we often lose our relationship to the land, a process that effects our physical, mental and emotional health.

I want to realize this dream, and I want to fight industrial capitalism, and I think that I still have a lot to learn from the woods to effectively do either. One of the things that I like about magic, is it creates spaces between the either/ors, to makes room for both/and. I don’t think that trying to live sustainably means losing sight of systemic problems, or that choosing to live rurally means abandoning activism. I think it can mean learning to be more human, more alive, to have the strength and groundedness to fight further and harder.

telling our stories

on narratives

We are born into narratives. Before we have words, before we have voice, we internalize narratives of meaning, narratives of value, narratives that provide structure and order to the unknown. Enforced through the words of storybooks, the prayers from pulpits, or the plot lines of sitcoms, narrative is the underlying force of socialization.

But narrative is also the way we structure our individual landscape, the way we create reason from our histories.

Narrative is ideology in motion. It is the daily construction of morality.

mega narratives

All cultures are constructed through narrative. In this country where both public and private space is saturated with corporate messaging, public narratives often become homogenized into a commercialized mega-narrative. The incredible thing about this moment is that the Fox-News, american-dream mega-narrative is breaking, and shifting. The system itself is being called into question. Personal debt and financial struggle is being placed into a larger picture of criminal gains. The “economic crisis” is being revealed as a crisis of priorities.

In an essay on general systems theory Joanna Macy writes that our perception is composed of codes. She believes that as we project these codes into the external world, we can receive two forms of feedback. The first type of feedback confirms “our expectations and serves our goals” and we stay comfortable with our narratives. The rarer second type of feedback occurs when there is a “persistent mismatch between perception and code” and we must create new narratives, to adapt and accommodate this new information.

This rewriting is the space of transformation. As Macy writes “Real learning is not something added, it is a reorganization of the system.” That is why each hand made sign is important. Breaking from the mega narrative of capitalism-is-natural-and-god-sent are a multiplicity of voices, speaking from personal experience. And the place where all those voices meet, a new public narrative is created. The first time I watched this video I cried. I think it’s because it feels so beautiful to finally be part of an amplified voice for change. Not a protest, or an action, but a movement.

speaking our stories

Starhawk describes on her blog how one night, when hundreds gathered to defend Occupy SF from a police raid, she suggested that each person speak about why they were there. And for hours, as people were mic checked, each speaker spoke of their own struggle. She writes “What’s happening here is so beautiful, so powerful.  It answers our most primal human needs: to have a voice, to have that voice heard and affirmed, to tell your story, to be seen, to be part of something, to stand for something, to stand together, to stand strong.”

That is the power of story. To help us feel more connected. To help us to feel less alone.

And this is the time for stories. To grow this movement we need all of our stories, to create collective narratives of possibility.

the concrete and the symbolic

A week ago, Occupy Oakland was evicted from Oscar Grant Plaza and despite the rain, the city has been running the sprinkler system frequently in order to create a spot too wet for camping or gathering. Yesterday, five raised beds were planted in this plaza to build a small garden at the steps of city hall.  And today, police destroyed that garden. Free shelter can not be tolerated, free medical care cannot be tolerated, free food can not be tolerated, free assemblies can not be tolerated, and even seedlings, apparently, can not be tolerated in this public space.

I believe that the occupy movement needs to move into neighborhoods and institutions, that we should work to liberate foreclosed homes, banks, refineries and so much more. But the downtown encampments of the movement are also crucial.  For one, they have provided safer spaces for people to live in cities where homelessness is increasingly criminalized. Secondly, there has been a reclaiming of the commons, in cities where limited public spaces are increasingly closed (such as libraries) or privatized (malls, plazas, etc.)

And the third incredible thing about the Occupy camps that I have seen, is a meeting of two forms of action, the politics of pre-configuration with the fight for institutional and structural change. The politics of pre-configuration is a term for actions and movements that try to create alternative options and institutions, for building little pockets of change within industrial capitalism. And at the occupy camps these counter-institutions have been on display, with free schools and free libraries and greywater systems for the dish water. At their best, these camps have been a been a lab for what could be, where people’s direct needs could be met (a stabbing victim in the Tenderloin came to Occupy SF in the middle of the night because she knew that there was a free health care tent there) and skills shared. At Occupy Wall Street I saw a notary with a little table, and a voice coach too. They were eager to offer their services to strangers in a format outside of capitalism.

What I think is incredibly important though, is that all of these little actions have been tied, this time, to larger discussions about the need for structural change. Learn to mend your socks so you create less waste, but do it in a space that says you’re concerned about wealth disparity, where you will meet other people who also want change. Offer free meals to people in a gesture that is not about charity but an f-you to capitalism. And learn from those who have already been fighting for institutional change, to become involved in the work for immigration reform or prison abolition, housing rights or labor law.

And that is why a little garden at Oscar Grant Plaza is a threat. Because those weren’t just seedlings that could grow into food , but also a symbol of the camp itself. And the concrete, tied to the symbolic, is a powerful force.

activism in magic

This summer, on wooded queer land, I wrote: ”I want to believe in a woo that is centered in justice. I want a spirituality that is concerned with collective healing more than personal transformation. I want to talk to stones and listen to trees and call down the moon. I want to experience dreams and visions and trust in change. I want to make room for the light and the dark. For the miracles and the traumas both.”

Right now a friend from the Free Farm, Pancho Ramos-Stierle, faces deportation for being arrested while meditating at Occupy Oakland during Monday’s morning raid. In a statement from jail he said that he hoped his arrest would encourage the spiritual to be more active, and the activists to be more spiritual. Pancho himself lives an incredible weaving of the two, working for justice while practicing a spirituality that informs his every action and interaction. Language like: we are all one and: you are all my brothers and sisters, usually makes me bristle, but coming from Pancho this sentiment is so sincere that I can relax into his words. I’ve never know anyone as compassionate or committed, working daily transformations while fighting for structural change.

magic for courage:

If the Occupy movement, and the movements that it will be birth, are effective at all, they will face state violence. Domestically, the FBI’s Cointel-Pro campaign against the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, SDS and other radical struggles utilized infiltration, psychological warfare and assassination (focusing particular violence on activists and organizers of color) in order to sabotage their work. Internationally, the U.S. has repeatedly used violence against movements for self-determination on behalf of corporations. There is so much history I could site here to make the point that the U.S. government, and all of its institutions, will not hesitate to use force on behalf of the 1%.

On the night that Occupy Wall Street was raided, the live cams of mainstream press turned to the waving flags of the capital to censor the NYPD’s actions. The Brooklyn Bridge was closed, as were nearby subway stops, to prevent supporters from coming out and defending the space. It was an incredibly coordinated and insidious effort to evict a couple of hundred people peacefully sleeping in the park. We’re up against something big. And when the powerful try to create a culture of fear, spirituality can provide needed courage and meaning. It’s good to know what ground you’re standing on, what you’re defending, why you’re out there at midnight with riot cops around. In my own beliefs, I want to stand in defense of life itself. For earth and air and water and fire and all that is created in their alliance.

magic for change:

So far, each raid of the Occupy camps has simply grown the movement. In response to such unnecessary force, more and more folks are getting involved. There is a shared frustration at the disparity in wealth in this country, (not to mention globally) and in the disempowerment that capitalism breeds. At Occupys, people are experiencing direct democracy in general assemblies, mutual aid in the form of food and health care, and a sense of connection in rallies. This movement is not without its problems, to be sure. But there is an excitement too in all this mess. (A really great New School hosted discussion on the future of the movement can be found here.)

For me, magic is in part about the liminal, the transgressive, those forces that can be felt if not named. There is something happening right now.  There is a growing culture of resistance like I have never known in my lifetime. Political conversations are happening between strangers, and the discourse has shifted to systemic problems. There is the sense of possibility in our cities, a new creativity directed at change.

Some spell has been broken and magic is about.

center: help

Sometimes I wonder what it means to feel healthy or balanced in this crazy time of destruction. Is it even right, or fair, to reach for this?

Dori Midnight, an incredible and inspiring witch who grounds her work in social justice, has written two posts on her blog this week in response to the nuclear disaster in Japan. The first talks about ways to care for our bodies in a time of increased radiation. Her second post has recommendations for keeping our hearts open when all the tragic news causes us to shutdown and turn away. She writes:

I invite you to ask yourself if your feelings of fear or grief can allow you to feel even more connected to everyone and everything, to the whole sparkling web of life? Can you extend your compassion as far as it can reach and also extend it to yourself, at this moment, living in this time of great anguish and uncertainty? And can you let it break your heart right open, so as you feel your pain for the world, you can sense that it is rooted in your love for the world and your love for life?

Last night Pickle and I went to the Elm Dance at Justin Herman Plaza recommended by Dori on her blog. At this gathering to honor the nuclear disaster in Japan, we danced the dance that Johanna Macy taught twenty years ago to those in Novozybkov who were poisoned by the Chernobyl plant. Now whenever it is taught, the story of Novozybkov is also shared, so that the people of that place will be honored with each dance.

At the beginning of the dance a woman thanked the palm trees and seagulls and grass that were witness to our ritual and I teared up at her connection to the beings of this very urban landscape. As we moved together, hummed together and swayed as trees at the center of our circle, tears finally came to me for the first time all week. The horror of nuclear energy has been on my mind for days, a background noise that comes in and out of consciousness, but its felt like too much to process. It felt so right and necessary and healing to collectively give voice to the fear and sadness last night. It felt important to honor with my body the people and the animals and the plants and the air and the water that are all being affected by this tragedy. And it felt important to hold hands with strangers as we did this honoring together.

I feel like another kind of honoring is necessary: working to shut down the Diablo Canyon plant here in our backyard. But it felt right to begin first with this dance. Because it moved me from overwhelm to engagement.

center: unknown

Mexico City’s Zocalo is one of the most powerfully charged places I’ve ever been. In addition to the energy of all the protests held there, and all the government buildings that line the plaza, there is buried under the massive Cathedral the Templo Mayor of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. Aztec dancers dance every weekend near the Cathedral to honor the buried temple, and to demonstrate that the Conquest did not succeed in entirely destroying the culture or spirituality of that place. Before a dance begins the four directions, and center, are called with a conch shell. And I remember being struck, watching Aztec dancers in the Zocalo at 19, by this calling of Center. It seemed so clear, suddenly, that there were five directions and I had been raised in a groundless cosmology.

I don’t know the meaning of center in Mesoamerican belief, but in neopaganism center is aether. Center is the life force, the great spirit, the beginning and ending, the seed that births the four directions. When I called in Center at class one night, I used the words of Reverend Billy, of the Church of Stop Shopping, and welcomed “The Great Fabulous Unknown.” (I’ve also heard him call on “The Great Sexy Unknown.”)

What I like about this idea of Center is its inherent complexity. To be “centered” is to be grounded, yet if Center is aether “it is everywhere and nowhere,” both “within and without.” In Reclaiming grounding rituals we send a chord down to the center of the earth, yet this center is volatile. And we are always spinning in a galaxy that is ever expanding.

Maybe to be grounded in center is to know that center is change. To be centered is to be present,while also acknowledging the great unknown.