Hi all,

Hope this message finds you and yours safe and well. This has been an extraordinarily different 2 years than any in my lifetime. We haven't had the same markers - of travel, celebrations, or achievements. While I've more or less found my jam of regularity, there have been periods of stagnation, despair, anxiety, "languishing" and all the rest. This, despite progressing on my creative journey with a film and many essays for East Wind and Psychology Today. I've made new "pandemic friends", and that has been a highlight, and had lots more conversations with friends by Zoom. My practice has been busy. And as I mentioned, the collaboration with Truong Tran and QiRe Ching and others on a film was really meaningful. I'm sure we're all taking stock in some way as we enter 2022. Probably my biggest intention is to keep doing as much as possible for mental health - which includes being engaged culturally and politically. We know all too well that society impacts our sense of safety and well-being. The real beauty of the last 5 years is that increasingly, it has become obvious to more of us that we're all in this together.

But we have to name the difficulties, including 'stagnation' and 'scapegoating' and all forms of dismissal and devaluation that vulnerable people experience. I hope these last two essays do that, and move us forward.

East Wind eZine

"“Power is the ability to define reality and to have others respond to your definition as if it were their own. The most important reality to define is the meaning of one’s own human beingness.” – Dr. Wade Nobles

 

Who are we? Who are we in relation to others? As Rodney King asked, “Can we all just get along?” What prevents us from getting along? Individualism, competition, rivalry, antagonism, jealousy, hatred, factionalism and discrimination by race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, nationality, religious belief, etc. – can we leave these behind for collaboration and mutual uplift? How else will we survive? How else will our deepest human values survive? Isn’t interdependence and all that flows from it our deepest human value? As darkness turns to light in this second winter of our plague years, I’m looking for signs of renewal, hope and uplift. But I must first face the darkness, and the depths of the failures of relatedness. I have company, and guides, in the works of Truong Tran and Terrance Hayes.

 

In this essay, I am drawing attention to designs laid down upon vulnerable people by systems of power, particularly White supremacy.”

MOSF 16.10: Assassin. Abattoir. Academia. America. The Poetry of Truong Tran and Terrance Hayes. – East Wind ezine (December 30, 2021)