Yoga: A Great Way to Make Friends

Today four of us met to practice in the morning at Tlatalolco Park, in El Plaza de las Tres Culturas, Mexico City.
My local friend, Liliana, her cousin Malaina, and Curtis joined me in the Mexican sunshine, at the kiosk where I first practiced with Liliana and Diego nine months ago. (see blog entries from January)

Liliana goes to school, works full time, and lives in the city with her grandmother. We connected here on this visit to the City, and I was finally able to give her a decent, thick, brand new yoga mat. She practices in her small amount of spare time and space. We are yoga sisters. How fortunate then, that her cousin Malaina lives in Portland, so we have made connections which make a circle.

After our practice we had tamales at Cafe Tacuba, where the waitresses were all dressed like nuns for Day of the Dead. The setting is a gorgeous old mansion, converted into a huge, beautiful restaurant.

The friendship circle began with their cousin Diego, who I met on the street while waiting for a free yoga class. He asked me if I would teach at the park because the free class was not meeting for the holidays. My Spanish is like a blanket full of holes, and he was very forward... I almost said "Lo siento.. no....I'm sorry, I can't."  Instead I said " Si..yes, I will meet you later." I thought myself crazy at the time.

Now I am grateful to have a bit of a wild enough nature that I could take the risk of involving myself with a stranger, in a foreign country, on the street, alone and with the most minimal of communication. That is what yoga can do, it becomes a human language which can transcend the many human barriers which divide us and keep us from knowing and trusting one another.

Today in the park, while people strolled around the kiosk, the sun shone on my friends, and we were, indeed, finding and sharing our sacred selves. In a 16th century church yesterday, I saw the word 'sagrado' under a saint, and had to look it up. Sagrado means sacred. Why were we taught, in traditional Christianity, that only God, his Son, and the saints were sacred?  We are each sacred, our bodies and our souls. We have our own sacred hearts which beat the rhythm of our lifeblood. We are Sacred like our sacrum, the center of the body, the place of movement, back aches and nearness to the creation of new life.

As we approach the Day of the Dead,  Dia de los Muertos, it is a fitting time to appreciate our aliveness, even as we honor and remember wistfully those we have loved and lost.

" Make new friends, and keep the old....... one is silver and the other is gold."

D.F. in the Fall

Today Senor Cortez and I walked the streets of D.F.  Not mean streets, maybe sometimes a little torn up, and teaming with people, La Gente, but familiar and welcoming.
We met Alvaro at the favorite coffee shop. Curtis was bringing him a flute. They met through a musical string selling transaction. It is good to have an international business.
We took the metro to The Condesa, an area I've not seen yet. The park there is large and green and quiet, opposite of the Centro Historico.
For breakfast we had real quesadillas with squash flower and mushroom. Real quesadillas are made with a hand patted maize flour patty then filled and deep fried. It was funny to compare the quesadilla that Alaska Airlines gave us in flight yesterday.... made with white flour tortilla filled with some amorphous bean, cheese, chicken, green pepper mixture. It is such a pleasure to eat authentic food, and for 13 pesos.

There is an art exhibit, of giant paper mache monsters on display near the Reforma. They are huge, colorful, fantastical and fun. We happened upon it after a lunch meeting with 2 musicians Curtis knows, again because of string sales... yeah Aquila U.S.A.! - which is the name of his business which sells Italian Nylgut (tm)  strings within the U.S., as well as on the internet globally.
Is it not a good time to live with global connections? If only the economics could be fair. The connections among peoples are so fascinating. Sergio, the violist at lunch, invited us to his recital at The Belles Artes this Saturday. Imagine, the government here pays musicians to hold periodic recitals free to the public.

In my dreams I live in a country which spends it's billions on funding artists to make music, or weird monsters for Halloween, or subsidized public transport (35 cents to ride the metro)  It is not my dream alone, I know. The resources are there, as Buckminster Fuller pointed out... it is only a matter of how they are allocated.

I watch other blogs and see lots of photos. I hope to post some, soon, but for now it is only words...
and as the BeeGees sang : It's only words, but words are all I have.... to take your heart away...."

Economics 101 - For the Humanities Major

In Mightier Than the Sword, author David S. Reynolds gives a scholarly, in-depth portrayal of the life and times of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the famous and infamous Uncle Tom's Cabin. What a fascinating look into American history by way of work of fiction, turned mythic.

For whatever else one may think of Uncle Tom's Cabin , published in 1850, it did raise popular consciousness about the grisly, perverted, sickening aspects of slavery in the United States - slavery happening in what we now call 'real time'. Up until the advent of this epic novel, slavery was viewed as an economic institution, protected by the laws and force of the U.S. government.

I read Stowe's book as a young idealistic teenager, and other books, by Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and other former slaves. What I was left with, because I am a woman for whom motherhood and family are the highest aspirations, is the brutality and injustice which is inherent in the system of owning humans as chattel.  I did not yet make the connection to economics, which is the strongest link in the chain.

Now, with  #Occupy Wall Street, and many solidarity occupations in other U.S. cities happening in real time, I can see that 'economics' is still at the heart of human suffering and exploitation.

When Harriet Beecher Stowe began to form the seeds of her famous characters, it was through hearing the stories of morally good black women servants in her kitchen who told the tales of being 'owned' by a master, who then became what they referred to as a 'husband'. Their bodies were co-opted for gratuitous sex, and as slave producing vessels. They did not want this life, but they managed to live and have children they dearly loved. Children for whom they wanted a different life, but who were, often as not, 'sold' away from them when the child reached working age.

So slavery is an economic model. The people who enforced it were protecting the 'investments' and the 'assets' of white business men. One epic novel, written by a housewife and mother of five, read by thousands, maybe millions, was able to turn the hearts of at least part of a nation. The pen vs. the sword, a human story vs. esoteric dogma.

History is fascinating, and right now we are seeing it play out in the form of people taking to the streets, many of whom have not much left to loose. Economics might be framed in any way which benefits the rich and powerful. Human suffering might only be understood on the street.

Fall Planting

Today I gather up garlic cloves, fat and healthy, to become next years bulbs. I plant them as my teachers down the hill taught me, 2 inches deep, and 6 to 8 inches apart... well, I fudge, and maybe go 5 inches, because this is a bed, not a field. I also plant daffodil bulbs along the outside of the garden fence. Next year this should look very spiffy!

While I plant, between rain showers, I can hear a flock of geese flying south. Ah, I bid them goodbye, and safe travels, just as I say goodnight to the bulbs I've left to winter's storms.

Our actions are like cloves, they take root somehow, and much later when the time is right, they grow into some sort of plant. What kind of plant do I want my today actions to create? Ah, if only I had the recipe for the peace and love clove. And, then I would want the equity clove too. When the sun came back around to longer days, I would have the fat bulb of a new world sprouting in my dirt.

Occupying Portland Solidarity

At 11 am last Thursday, I walked from the light rail stop in downtown Portland, city of my birth, to Tom McCall Waterfront Park.  I went to join "Occupy Portland".

At the Park hundreds of people gathered with signs, or just stood. We listened to the organizers in the center of the crowd do a form of public speaking they call "mike check". No megaphones were allowed, so the group, mirroring the same procedure done in New York, spoke a short phrase loudly, which the people nearby repeated as a group. This phrase then echoed out to the farther reaches of the crowd. This allowed that anyone taking the floor would speak with succinct brevity. It also encouraged careful listening on the part of the crowd. It was a nice touch.

I stood at the edge of the gathering, which quickly became the middle within a few minutes. The woman next to me was my first connection to a human story:

Carol: Mid 50's, holding a homemade sign with a picture of an impoverished mother and her children in a dust bowl setting. The caption read: "The New Middle Class". Carol does container planting for a living, is from Beaverton. She and her husband have one adult child who is gay. When asked by a reporter why she was there she answered: "For the next generation."

Julie: 62, from Vancouver. She was raised by parents active in the ACLU. She told the story of having worked in an insurance company in 1969. She attended a feminist meeting during her lunch hour, returning to work exactly on time, only using her allowed hour. When she returned to work she was summarily fired. We spoke of how this is a situation which would never occur today, and no one would take it lying down if it did, yet our rights are slowly eroding, slow enough that the next generation may not even imagine how recently it was that freedom of thought has been legally protected.
Heather had open heart surgery last year, and her insurance did not cover it. Right now she owes the hospital 250, 000.00 and she feels lucky that they have not taken her home.

Aaron- mid 50's. He has a vegan raw food business. He makes wheat-free crackers with sauer kraut, and his sales are booming. He knows all the food activists around, and they are on the edges of this crowd, like "Food Not Bombs" who offers us hummus, carrots and apples as we start to march.

A young woman, maybe 20, standing behind me. She says "I've never seen anything like this in my life. I didn't think there was anything to do, even though things are so bad." She choked up. I hugged her.

Shelly has a husband and 3 young children. She lives in the suburbs and has the normal life of a stay at home mom. She had to make lots of arrangements to come today, not the least of which was that her husband did not understand why it was so important for her to attend this unpermitted 'occupation', in solidarity with the Occupy Wall street movement going on for 3 weeks now in New York. She felt so strongly about the corruption in our country that she risked the negative opinion of her husband of 16 years. She was glowing with a warmth I could feel as she stood near me in the packed crowd. I know we could be great friends.

A march, especially done alone, offers these little snippets of humanity. We felt so powerful standing together, and by the time we walked through the city I think our numbers were at least five thousand.
To know this can happen, in any city of our country, should give solace to anyone who truly believes in a Democracy. Lastly, I want to say that there was no anger that lashed out, the tone was love, and strength. This does not mean there was not sadness and deep frustration with the resolve not to take this corruption lying down any longer, not to remain the slaves of the super rich. The young people danced in the street, and when I left, the core occupation was headed out to camp at a park, no one seemed to know where.
The cold rain began to fall within the hour, and I worried for the activists, who all were so well spoken and dedicated. I worry for them, just as I worry for my country, which is shafting the common people in greater and greater numbers. History tells us that when the wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of a few, and the balance is gone, the delicate scaffolding of a society rocks and shakes, and many things happen that are not predictable.

I feel honored to have spent that afternoon walking with Carol, Aaron, Julie and Shelly. They all represent hard working, play-by-the-rules Americans who want a better world.

October in My Heart

It was only last week,
sun so hot, I wore only sandals
and my favorite summer  dress.
Today I found the big wool sweater,
hauled it out of the drawer,
while the farmer across the road,
plowed under all his strawberries for good.

The pathogens have ended it.
You can still barely detect,
the sweet red berry smell
lingering over the fields.

I will miss
evenings in summer,
walking through those rows with a glass of wine.
Tasting the Bentons against the Hoods, the Shucksans against the Firecrackers
Never the sensation will leave me
of walking up the hill, arms heavy with berries,
 so ripe they are dripping red juice,
through the slats of my grandmother's basket.

Farmer Joe,
you have managed to plow before the rain,
working methodically, steadily as I wander into and out of
my housework.
I want to run down and tell you I think it all stinks,
lawsuits against people who dare to grow a little food
Every effort is a risk

 For days now the young people
dare to "occupy Wall Street".
Soon it will get colder, and I worry like a mother.

I watch the rain and ponder, putting on the right gear
to walk down the hill for more tomato harvest.
I'll think of those in tents, being kicked around.
I'll send them a red ripe sweet tomato in my thoughts
I'll keep the fires burning
As winter closes in...