Cartoon 16: Holy Shit

Where do I start?  About two months ago, Daniel decided that he would no longer be traveling with us.  He now knows that he wants to dedicate his life to dance and he felt that he was not able to do that with us.  So we were down to two, my boyfriend Joaquín and I.  Then, about a month ago, Joaquín and I broke up.  Our relationship didn't stand up to all of the intensity and stress of our crazy dream.  This cartoon is basically all of the memories that are swimming around in my mind from the preparation for the trip and my time traveling with Daniel and Joaquín. And now we are down to one. Just me. Without any of the plan that I spent the last two years of my life creating with my partner and his good friend.  Wow.  Joaquín proposed that we continue to travel together as friends.  That sounds like emotional hell to me.  I will not sacrifice my emotional well being to be 'comfortable' in an old dream that, for me, was lost when the love was.

So wow, now I am in the middle of Mexico, in the middle of someone else's dream (my original dream was just to go Brazil and work with the social circus programs there. Then I met Joaquín and he invited me to travel by land with his collective and I said that sounds like a great adventure! Well, I was right). 
I do not dream of traveling on my own through Latin America.  Many people do, but not me.  I wanted and want to have a home base. To work and collaborate and live and learn with others.  So I'm thinking of everyone I've met in the last 6 months, who could I travel with?? I've come up with 4 options:
1. A group of 4 awesome Spanish women.  I met them in a Theater of the Oppressed workshop just before Joaquín and I broke up. They are super warm and excited to have me and God it would be fabulous to travel with women.  The only thing I'm not too excited about is that they are hitch hiking.  Hitch hiking is very different here, it's much more accepted and way less dangerous. But still I'm not to excited about the idea...
2. Farandula de la Esperanza: A couple who do social circus and are traveling down in a camper.  I have met them at two circus conventions and they do fabulous work. I've sent them an email but haven't heard back yet (http://faranduladelaesperanza.com/?lang=es)...
3.  America Latina Cooperativa: A group who is traveling through Central America doing social circus shows and workshops with the goal of strengthening the network of social organizations throughout Latin America. I met the aerial director at the first circus convention I went to and we got along great.  I emailed them as well but they don't seem too interested, we'll see what happens (http://www.alcoop.org/?lang=en <----- This one's in English)...
4.   Alone.  My best friend in Mexico City has contacts in pretty much every country throughout Central America.  I could ride buses from country to country and meet up with her contacts and then go to social circus organizations upon my arrival in each new city. 

So now it's the waiting game. Trying to stop my heart from jumping out of my chest while I send a million emails and try to put a new life together. Did I mention Wow? Life is crazy.  I never thought I'd be where I am and in two weeks I have no idea where I will be...

Cartoon 15: Dabbling in Oppression

Okay so this happened at a 'Fiesta Popular' which is basically a block party to celebrate the local saint. Each neighborhood here in Mexico has their own saint and once a year they have a street party with fireworks and bands and all the people come out to celebrate the saint. These events aren't heavily touristed and I am lucky to be staying with folks from here so they brought me.

The energy of the band just swept me away and I started dancing like crazy as I tend and love to do.  I was movin' and groovin' and smilin' at folks and havin' a blast but after a minute I kinda felt a weird energy.  I stopped and realized that a circle of people had formed around me and they were all staring at me. Whoops. I had totally forgotten the environment that I was in and that my behavior was very abnormal there.  A woman dancing alone, moving her hips, smiling at everyone.  Way to create waves Sara. As the last panel of the cartoon shows I got every response from 'What a slut!' to 'Wow you are so cool!' to 'Come here baby'.  So I danced over to the folks who were looking friendly and curious and hung out with them for a minute til' the circle disappated. Then I danced my butt back over to my friends and stayed a little closer and moved my hips a little less for the rest of the time.

The question that comes up for me with this situation is, "How important is it to me to act as the liberated woman that 'I am' if it means that I cause too many waves to be in and learn from certain places?"  Eventually the attention, not just to me but to my whole group because many of us were obviously not from there, got to be too much and we left.
So...oppression! It is so crazy to live in a society in which woman's rights are not the same as what I'm accustomed to.  I have so many questions about how to respond! Do I dress like a boy (self-oppression) so that I don't have to deal with comments or unhealthy attention? (In one week I had three different men say gross and hurtful things to me in the street) Do I stick with men I know all the time?  Women here create a web of support, beautifully conscious and generous with each other, taking care that everyone gets home safe and doesn't have to be alone.  (Makes me ask myself if in the dominant culture of the US we needed each other a bit more would there be less of a culture of competition between women there?)

 I feel dependent on my travel mates (both males) in ways that I am not used to. I have to ask for help based on realities that I don't want to support and I don't understand completely. I don't know how much of the need to be accompanied all the time is a real danger or is part of a traditional way of thought that teaches women that they need men to protect them, that they need a man to be complete (not that that doesn't happen in the US buts I feel like it's on another level here).  I realize that I have not had to develop the humility it takes to depend on other people.  I'm used to being in relationships only for love, not financial support or protection.  That means, if someone treats me badly, I'm gone.  Now I start to feel how those other considerations can play into relationships. 
      
For the first time I would self identify as part of an oppressed group.  This is the closest I've gotten to understanding what it's like to have ones life opportunities severely shaped by gender, race, socioeconomic status, etc.  I must look to my community to find ways to get what I need in an unfair system.  It is incredibly painful and frustrating and, at the same time, it is turning out to be a really rich experience. Seeing the web of support here, feeling how people I hardly know take care of me, groups of friends that I just met offer to walk me home if its late at night.  It is making me a stronger, humbler,  more well-adjusted person. How odd the concept to be able to dabble in being part of an oppressed group.

Cartoon 14: Body Image



The house I am living in has one mirror.  It's in the hallway and we all share it.  I am used to each person having a mirror in their room and than another in the bathroom.  For me, this access to my reflection has meant that I have always had the option of being perfectly put together in the company of others.  I am used to having all the privacy I 'need' to decide exactly where each hair on my head needs to go.  And now, any moment of 'fixing' myself, I have to do in plain view of the folks I live with. I have to face up to all those moments when I half consciously stare at myself, studying what I like and don't like.  I realize that I have spent much of my time watching myself brush my teeth or hair instead of feeling it.  I realize I have totally missed out on the opportunity to live these moments as delicious self care ceremonies!  I've missed out on how wonderful it feels to run a comb through my hair or the taste of a yummy toothpaste and the tickly bubbles on my gums. The sensation of my own hands spreading lotion across the curves of my face, my arms, belly and toes. Wow! What a discovery!
         It's amazing because naturally, my self image is shifting from an outside-in perspective to a feeling based one.  My concept of my own beauty has begun to be based on how I feel.  If I feel strong and healthy, I feel beautiful, regardless of how much meat I have on my bones or what I am wearing. I am now fully convinced that the less and less I look in the mirror, the more beautiful I feel. For real, if it's not already there, I highly recommend reinstalling your mirror in the hallway :)



Cartoon 13: Day of the Dead

The Mexican legend of the Day of the Dead tells us that on two days of the year (Nov. 1 & 2), the dead come back to visit us.  To welcome them, people here build altars for the spirits of their loved ones, adorning them with all of the things that the departed enjoyed in life...fruits, candies, chocolates, sweet bread, tequila... The streets are filled with smiling skeletons dressed up in elegant clothing.  The holiday has a mischievous and playful tone. As I understand it, it's a way of embracing death as a natural, normal process, not something to be afraid of...

To celebrate, I gathered with a group of about 25 people, a few I knew but most I didn't, to make a procession through the main strip of the downtown area. We all dressed up as skeletons and danced and played music and stopped in various parts of the city to tell ghost stories.  People walking the streets stopped to watch and listen and some joined us as we continued our path.

Im trying to keep this post short and sweet but I have to tell you guys about the drama and the incredible power of looooove and music and dance to squash it!

So we arrive to our final destination to tell our last stories and do our final dances and we find a guy there with a huge crowd predicating in English about the sin of celebrating death!...but he wasn't just preaching, he was yelling like crazy and telling everyone that if they don't believe what he says they are going to hell.  I was like what is this guy doing here? He doesn't even speak the language! How could he think that he understands what is being celebrated here?   Did I go back in a time machine to the conquests?  I was so mad I could spit.

Anyway, so we see him and he sees us and we are like 'Crap. What do we do? This could get ugly...'  We all look at each other and with out even talking we decide as a group to just keep on moving and pick another spot in the plaza to continue our celebration. So we move and form a circle and start to dance and the frigin guy follows us! He actually brings his microphone and his translator and his whole crowd over to us and starts screaming, 'You are all going to go to hell!  Devil worshipers!'  He got louder and louder and we danced harder and harder.  He got madder and madder and I swear our music just got more and more beautiful. I lost myself swaying through the crisp night air, elated by the unity within our group of strangers.  We peacefully held the space and no one was lost to this mans' violence.  I assumed that he would go on forever, we responded to his violence with the strength of our song and I didn't even realize the moment when he left. By the end of our celebration almost his entire crowd had joined our circle and was movin to our groove :). 

Cartoon 12: Schizophrenia (Fronterizos Series #3)

Now, the Fronterizos process has come to an end, and much to my amazement we did it!  In a month, we, seven folks from around the world, produced and toured a 30 minute long street theater piece with the theme of Borders that included elements of circus, dance, social commentary, and lots and lots of wooden boxes. Ha! We created our portable set using about 70 huacales, wooden boxes that are part of everyday life here, used in the market to transport fruits and vegetables, in homes used as tables and chairs and shelves and anything else that one could imagine.  We did 4 showings of our piece in 3 different towns each time using our make shift box scenery to tell 2 parallel stories... One, the story of an undocumented immigrant traveling from south to north (immigrants who travel through Mexico to the US suffer deeply at the hands of robbers, rapers, and others taking of advantage of their precarious status).  And two, the story of a box of arms traveling from north to south (as a result of failed US government anti-drug 'Operation Fast and Furious' 70% of the guns used by drug cartels here in Mexico came from the US).

These two stories converge at the border-- the arms (pieces of wood from broken huacales) cross and are given to the public at the very moment when the immigrant attempts to cross. The border guard turns  to the armed public and says "Ready! Aim!..." letting the public choose how the stories ends.  More often than not, the public, laughing and smiling as if it were a joke, shoot the immigrant.  During the whole process my greatest reflection and the question I hoped to offer the audience is 'When the power is in our hands, how do we react? When in our own lives do we have the opportunity to break cycles of violence?'

In the exploration process, we played with the significance of borders on various levels from micro to macro. We discovered borders inside of ourselves like those created by fear or worry.  These emotional barriers have often kept me from taking a step into a new or unknown situation even though I believe that on the other side of that situation is a healthier way of being.  We explored borders between us and other people in relationships. How thick is the barrier I place between me and those around me? How much of myself do I share and with whom? We looked at borders between our families and others, like the walls of our homes. How do we choose who enters?  And of course we explored national borders, impressed at the fact that borders are totally relative to those who cross them, each of us experience them so differently based on our country of origin and socioeconomic status.

All of these explorations became encapsulated in the paths of the immigrant and the box of arms.  In the literal interpretation, I hoped to offer a snap shot of a reality of border dynamics between the US and Mexico.  Considering through the performance piece, as a nation what do we let in or deny entry to and what do we let out?... Also, I feel like there is a tendency for folks to identify an oppressor who plays the part of the bad guy and receives the for the blame for existing negative dynamics such as violence.  In the case of illegal immigration, the story that is often told is how badly people are treated as undocumented folks in the US.  Now I am learning that they also suffer incredible violence along the way as they travel through Latin America. 

On the micro level, for me the immigrant represented the part in each of us that drives us, either by necessity or desire, to face our interior emotional or mental borders and risk the security of the known in search of something better.  The box of arms represented the often violent system of fears and worries that can dominate us into a way of being that is safe because it is familiar although it may not be best.  

In the cartoon, I am trying to express a sort of schizophrenia I feel when thinking about these social phenomenon.  I am both the immigrant and the US.  Considering the US, in conversations around border dynamics or our role in leaving our borders to intervene in the paths of countries throughout Latin America, I feel totally crazy. I hear people be so angry at the US and I want to defend our system.  I am part of it, it is part of me.  I grew up happy and loved there, participating in the system and feeling successful.  Some parts of it work. The internal parts I guess, as a white middle class female, for me work. I feel free at home. I can dress how I want and practice the religion I want and stay out by myself as late as I want and leave a job where I'm mistreated with the confidence that I will find another.  That's how things should be!  That's my personal experience of the US.   But as I am privy more and more to the experiences of others, I learn that outside of its borders (and often inside), the idea of the US is much different.  The same force that assures me these freedoms takes it away from others in unimaginable ways. 

Because of this I feel aligned with the story of the immigrant.  I myself am an immigrant leaving the known (BY CHOICE which is not at all the same as leaving to survive) in search of another way of life. Leaving the comfort and security of the US partly because of what my comfort there means for so many others. I am so thankful for everything that I've had and have and I do NOT think that the right way to deal with privilege is to throw it away. That is part of why I follow this path, looking to understand the world context and understand how to use my privileges how I see fit, not just to be successful in a system in which I may or may not believe (don't know yet!).

Good lord I've taken to blabbing! Next time I promise I'll write less!! And wow I congratulate you, you patient person if you've read all the way to this point!

Now, the Fronterizos process has come to an end, and much to my amazement we did it!  In a month, we, seven folks from around the world, produced and toured a 30 minute long street theater piece with the theme of Borders that included elements of circus, dance, social commentary, and lots and lots of wooden boxes. Ha! We created our portable set using about 70 huacales, wooden boxes that are part of everyday life here, used in the market to transport fruits and vegetables, in homes used as tables and chairs and shelves and anything else that one could imagine.  We did 4 showings of our piece in 3 different towns each time using our make shift box scenery to tell 2 parallel stories... One, the story of an undocumented immigrant traveling from south to north (immigrants who travel through Mexico to the US suffer deeply at the hands of robbers, rapers, and others taking of advantage of their precarious status).  And two, the story of a box of arms traveling from north to south (as a result of failed US government anti-drug 'Operation Fast and Furious' 70% of the guns used by drug cartels here in Mexico came from the US). 

Cartoon 11: La Honey (Fronterizos Series #2)

This month we have the huge honor of receiving the first volunteer to our project: Emilia! a.k.a. La Honey (Bernardo, one of the guys in our group, likes to give the gals playfully sweet nicknames based on petnames in the girls' native language. I was called 'Sweety', Eva was called 'Shatz' [german for sweety], Gaby was called 'Dulcecita' [spanish for sweety], and Emilia was called 'Honey' [since sweety in english was already taken :)]) 

So Emilia, also from Atlanta, GA, USA, was with us for two weeks to document the Fronterizos process through photography, videography, and illustration. One of her many gorgeous sketches became the promotional poster that you see above. So nice right? Thank you Emilia! You absolutely rock.

For me, having Emilia here was so special.  It offered me a chance to get in touch with myself as the foreigner that I am.  Seeing her beautiful eyes widen as we drove through the countryside helped me to get in touch with myself as an individual in unknown territory.  Far from the self I have been trying to be, doing my best to adjust as fast as possible into the flow of things in order to find a life here (food, housing, work, a social support system), I was able finally to settle into my trip as the awe-struck tourist that I really am. 

I began to take in the inviting colors and colonial architecture nestled into breath taking fluffy deep green broccoli mountains.  I let myself revel in the somehow successful relative disorder of interactions between people, animals, and nature. 
I let my mind spin, taking in all the new input without trying to organize it into my own functional concept of reality.
Houses made of concrete painted in orange, blue, pink, and often just gray when there's no money for paint.
New tastes... Tlazcalate (corn meal, milk, sugar, water), Pozol (cornmeal and water), Horchata (rice, sugar, water, cinnamon). 
The smells... fresh sweet bread baking yum,  greasy carnitas sold on the side of the road eeck, flower stands full of bouquets for the equivalent of $5 mmmm, stray dogs' doo whereever it falls and no one to pick it up uh oh!
New social norms... we share everything, its nearly unheard of to eat in the presence of someone else without offering some... it's almost expected that we won't do what we say we will when we say we will do it,  everyone seems to have faith that it will eventually happen.  A boss hires me to perform a circus cabaret in his fancy restaurant/bar and tells me 'You guys do whatever you think the people will like. I trust your creativity.' =oO What??! Crazy!
 
I watched Emilia, who doesn't speak Spanish, patiently try to understand the conversations flying around her, trying to figure out when it was her turn to speak.  I thought wow, she doesn't know whats going on. But she is here just listening.  Just trying to enjoy the not knowing and discover other wavelengths to participate on.  The communication that was achieved between her and the group was on another level.  They seemed to get to know one another just by feeling each others' intentions. Emelia came to a new country, to a new way of life, to a new reality and of course, she didn't know what was going on. Does that mean that I'm not necessarily supposed to know whats going on either? Yes! I don't have to know what to do either! Freedommmmm!!! 

Emilia has ushered me into a time when I let myself watch and learn. Through seeing her patient observation, I realized that I have pressured myself to act, to push forward without fear, to pull my weight, like working in the traffic light in Cartoon 7: La Sema. I jumped right in weaving between cars without stopping to observe the flow of things. Without watching how Joaquin and Daniel work successfully. In wanting immediately to prove to myself, my coworkers, the world that I can do anything I set my mind to, I lost the opportunity to learn how to do just that. I do believe that I can achieve what I set my mind to but the best first step is not always action. Now, in so many new situations, its my turn to watch, to learn from the many teachers that the world provides me, and to act only when it comes from a centered Sara, moving from a congruent heart, mind and body.
Thank you Emilia, it was such a pleasure.

Cartoon 10: The Fronterizos Project! (Fronterizos Series #1)

As you can see, this month I'm working with an international group of social artists on a project called Fronterizos. We are doing a month long creative exploration of the concept of BORDERS culminating in the development and tour of a performance piece. (all this in one month, is it possible? We shall see...) 
Hmmmm what should I tell you about the process? One of our first tasks was to decide for what audience we want to develop the show. As a start, we have decided to do our performances in public spaces (plazas, pedestrian streets, parks, etc.) with the hopes of opening up access to artistic expression and to truly interact with the context here. Saturday was our first day of street exploration to get used to how people react to random folks doin' random things in places they're not supposed to.  We wanted to experience how to receive the unplanned stimuli of the streets, like the random dog that walks into your scene or the police officer that tells you in the middle of your performance that you have to leave because you're obstructing public space. We went out with the assignment to considerately break the flow of things and observe which actions create communication and which ones just piss people off. 
I watched Joaco go onto the patio of a restaurant and stand under a closed table umbrella completely still for like 5 minutes. About 1 out of 3 people who walked by noticed him and they were so tickled :o)  At one point in my exploration I walked by a musician who was playing an accordion in the door of a restaurant and I started dancing to his music. I danced all across the pedestrian street and lots of people stopped to watch.  The musician got a huge smile on his face.  When I finished I looked at the people and smiled and nodded and they smiled back and we all continued on our way.  It was great! 
Near the end of our allotted exploration time, I found Daniel, our intensely dramatic quiet storm, sitting as still as a statue with his limbs tangled up in a fence around a tree next to a construction site.   The rest of the group joined me there and we watched for a moment.  Then we began to cover Daniel in unused slates of concrete from the construction site until he was boxed in completely.  In stone on the sidewalk in front of him we spelled out the word HELP.  We watched for another moment and then Bernardo took a sparkly butterfly clip that I was wearing in my hair and placed it on top of the stone that balanced on Daniel's head.   People watched curiously and one guy started taking pictures.
Finally Joaco put a pile of dirt on top of the butterfly and the slab on Daniel's head and that made the picture taking guy laugh. Then I think he felt bad for laughing and he ran off and so ended our day of street exploration.

The experience gave me a new perception of the possibilities of my participation in public spaces in general. I feel kind of empowered knowing that by simple breaks in the flow/norm, I have the option to bring sparks of newness to my life and the lives of others.  Sharing moments of random creativity with strangers was rather inspirational :o)... well okay not always. We definitely had some not so harmonic moments. At one point we danced out into a gridlocked trafficky intersection to see if we could break the tension of honking horns and furled brows but it just made people honk and yell more 'Frigin hippies get out of the way!' Hehehe.
Oh yes, and I did say "SEVEN people from across the world" so next cartoon I will reveal the identity of our surprise guest!! How mysterious...