It’s Monday afternoon and after a LONG weekend I find myself sitting in the dining room of a quaint home in the southern part of Austin, Texas. No, I haven’t been kidnapped. I actually came here out of free will, which shouldn’t be that much of a surprise considering the rave reviews I’ve gotten about city for years now.

But it wasn’t the excellent Tex-Mex that’s brought me here (though it might be what keeps me). Fire & Ink, an organization committed to Black GLBT writers, had its 3rd Cotillion this past weekend, fitted with a variety of amazing workshops and panels on everything from memoir and lyrics writing to how to facilitate a writing community. Some of my very favorite individuals in the whole entire world presented and performed there as well, including Lenelle Moise, Djola Branner, Sharon Bridgforth, and both Aurin Squire and Andre Lancaster of Freedom Train Productions, which I’ve been working with all summer as part of their playwrights’ open workshops.

It’s been years since I’ve been to the Mason-Stith-Massenburg Family Reunion as dictated by my biology. But this gathering made up for all the ones I have ever missed and could ever attend in the future. Never have I been an environment so self-reflective and affirming of all of my parts.

In addition to being seriously inspired to work on develop some new pieces and work with new genres, I was also thoroughly entertained and uplifted by the staged readings of Sharon Bridgforth’s delta dandi, E. Patrick Harris’ Pouring Tea, and a concert by the effervescent JOMAMA JONES and her Sweet Peaches.

The conference ended on Sunday morning after a panel discussed the very necessary work of making art to save your own life. The Fire & Ink Board of Directors was acknowledged and opened up the floor for constructive critique of the conference, reminding us that the previously decided every-4th-year would be changed to every 2 for the conferences hereafter. It was then that the emotional timbre of the conference really manifested with three of the youngest participants (myself included) brought to the center of the room and four of the elder artists asked to lay their hands on us. Everyone else made a circle around the room and began granting us their wisdom in a cacophony of positive energy. The break down was fast and deep.

It was an astonishing moment for me – having black hands and voices invoking queerness and artistry into me rather than exorcising it out. It was an empowering moment, having all of my internal wisdom breathed onto my body by living beings. It was the moment that I’d dreamed of – having my tribe acknowledge and affirm me. I didn’t know it would be so hard.

Qwo-Li Driskill’s essay “Stolen From Our Bodies” discusses the ways in which colonization has forced brown queer people to eroticize themselves only within the context of the white gaze. But that holy Sunday morning moment forced me to consider other ways I’ve been forced to divorce my true self from my body. The relentless policing of my mannerisms by older men in my family from as far back as I can remember. Having to endure the harsh environment of juvenile sports teams while those who placed me in the position knew I would only receive ridicule and embarassment. Tough love.

But the most poignant moment that surfaced from the depths of my subconscious was being repeatedly shamed out of my ecstatic spirit dance as a child in church. He didn’t attend regularly so he had no idea how connected I was to our extended family’s spiritual tribe. How embedded its values were in my root chakra. How badly I wanted to receive the Holy Ghost and get saved so I could go to Heaven. How cathartic getting caught up in the music, spirit, and emotion was for me. And how much I wanted him to see that I was doing a good thing.

“Why were moving your hands like that?”, he asked me that night. I couldn’t answer him. How could I? But he made me promise to never do it again. But I did. Initiation into eternal life via ecstatic movement sanctioned by my tribe was bigger, yes, much bigger, than my father. If he hit me, I’ve blocked it out. I honestly can’t remember. But I do know that I never “got saved” in that tradition and I’ve felt tribe-less ever since. That self-consciousness about my physicality became fully embedded, like a WWII bullet, in my 6-year old soul.

It didn’t help that the last time hands were laid on my head in that fashion,  I was being exorcised of disobedience and homosexuality by a pastor at my parents’ church during my teenage years. It was a moment that was all too hard to trust or to give in to as badly as I wanted it to permeate my soul expel the lies that were residing in it. I fought back the tears lest anyone mistake me for “that ecstatically emotionally religious faggot” once more. But in these memories, it did it’s work. And now I will do mine.

“I remember I born I remember I born I remember I born…”- delta dandi, by Sharon Bridgforth

…of August, that is. It’s here, actually. Right now. And I’m finally feeling ready for life.

But that was supposed to happen at the beginning of June, wasn’t it? At least that’s

what I feel like we’re told via advertisements that tell us summer is what life is for. And I guess I have lived this summer, even if it’s all a blur in retrospect. I moved to NY, I’ve managed to pay rent and still have a good time, and every couple of days I wake up in the bed of a very handsome fuzzy dude that happens to live just a few blocks from my job. It just so happens to be the same dude every time.

Life has happened to me over the past couple of months, even if the summer didn’t start off with my having the highest self-esteem or most positive outlook. But it’s Autumn that really gets my goat. In a good way. Crisp weather energizes me. It’s the next three months’ descent into winter that thrill me and I’m guessing will be close to my most productive all year. I think I’m still on a school schedule in my head and can’t really fathom ever leaving it behind. September is for renewal in productivity. Evil heat and humidity shan’t deter thee.

On that note, I have a lot of catching up to do. In the next week or so, I’ll try to find a way to upload “El Mundo”, my FIRST ZINE EVER, onto this blog, as well as try to find out why some of my story links are broken/missing. One of my other goals is to finish my second zine before the end of August (“QuLT #1″) so I can jump into making a new zine this Autumn. And finally, I need to finish out my work with Freedom Train Productions, which so graciously accepted me as an Open Workshop Participant in June despite my being a lousy easily distracted student who’s significantly more motivated to write for the screen than the stage at the moment.

I don’t believe in missed opportunities.

Fitting that I should talk about art right now seeing as it’s what’s consumed my life for these past few weeks. Oh no, not my own art. Heaven forbid. No no, the art that has devoured me and all my time can be found in the Creative Time exhibition on Governors Island this summer, This World and Nearer Ones.

It’s been strange working for an arts organization, being inspired constantly by artists’ work from around the world have about no time at all to make your own stuff. I’ve got about a month’s worth of Muse backed up in my creative intestines and, seeing as I’ve been granted more and more time to myself these days, where do I begin? Resume my guitar practice or put some cash aside for a pottery class? And I haven’t collaged in a good long while…

As much as it’s nice to learn about artists internationally, it’s even more inspiring when those artists are close at hand. Like, your friends, I mean. I’m always turned on by others’ passions and pursuits, and it’s always a joy to see someone you know really begin to make waves in their chosen field.

Johnathan Lewis – a Miami native, Boston-resident, and friend of mine – is opening at The Schoohouse Gallery this August in an exhibition featuring the likes of Amy Arbus. His photographic work has focused on the bear community and the divine form of the male body. An article he’s written about his work can be found on the pretty awesomely rad Qind Blogazine site.

And me? I’m off to make art. And love. Of some kind or another.

Today was a long one. As I rushed out the door to the subway station in order to get to work on time, I remembered to be grateful for the day gifted me and felt prompted to feel especially grateful for both the predictable and the unpredictable. I don’t know how I could have expected less than the latter during intern orientation day at the very unique Creative Time office. After TMI about office procedures, I was made to take an unexpected trip to Governor’s Island where a bunch of large scale installation art is being put up at the end of the month by artists from around the world working with the organization.

It’s a really beautiful green space and, of course, there are very few of those in NY. I wonder how many people actually take the time to take the ferry out there during the summer. It’s definitely in my plans to, outside of work obligations. Part of my plan to make my NY experience wholeheartedly mine…to really make an effort to find what I need and incorporate those things into my life in hopes that they’ll help me thrive. It’ll require spending a lot less time in front of this clunky piece of machinery and a lot more time on my bike.

Summer isn’t the time for me to feel like a clunky piece of machinery, either. To the Y or Bust!

So I think it’s about time to give closure to my experience at Pine Ridge (from about six months ago) and post about it. It seems a world away now, like a vague dream, but one that profoundly affected my academics, the way I see America and my own sense of home and post-undergrad possibilities.

Arriving at Rapid City Airport in South Dakota, I was met with the state’s tourism and development advertisements. I was really curious to see how the state framed tourism and development in lieu of its obviously displaced Lakota demographic. I was pleased to see a large Indian statue at the entrance to the gift shop and an advertisement meant to lure white families to South Dakota as a “career opportunity” awaited them. I couldn’t help but think back to PBS’ The West series and how, well…nothing has changed. The same lure and the same ignorance.

This is not an easy conclusion to come to, mind you. I recognize South Dakota as a U.S. state, etc. It’s 2009, I know. But the irony is unmistakable and I’d be less jarred if I hadn’t been studying westward expansion for the past few months.

Moving on…

Tom McCann of Re-Member picked me up at the airport and we drove the hour and a half or so to Pine Ridge. The Badlands are incredible — seeing small oddly shaped mountains striated with the memories of a prehistoric inland ocean really changes your worldview (especially if you’re an East Coaster). They provided me with an in-between space/time in which to adjust — and not just to the time zone difference.

Pine Ridge Reservation, which is the size of Connecticut, is a separate entity from South Dakota with its own government. Since its inception, the Lakota oyate (nation) has been embroiled in reparations suits with the U.S. government over broken treaty agreements that made the Black HIlls and former reservation areas into domains for white settlers and miners. Not a single treaty made with the Lakota people has ever been kept.

Re-Member is a phenomenal outreach program on the Lakota reservation that distinguishes itself from others partly due to its strong non-proselytizing stance. Over one week periods, it engages its volunteers Lakota and Pine Ridge history, cultural programming, race/ethnicity/class deconstruction work, and housing projects.

Our first outing was to Wounded Knee, a gravesite where the casualties of the 1890 massacre were pretty much dumped into a big hole. It is still used as a cemetery today and our last day on the Reservation, a caravan of funeral cars was making its way up the hill. Nearly 300 Lakotas were murdered there and the event is, of course, something that will never be forgotten. But more than that, it is an indent in the lives of all Lakota people on the Reservation, if not a hole. The tangibility of communal trauma cannot be understated.

It’s important to note that the sign at Wounded Knee has the word “Massacre” bolted over the word “Battle”, as that is how the event is officially recognized in the United States (despite the fact that about 300 Lakota people were stripped of their weapons and brutally slaughtered en masse).

I took some images and footage of the Wounded Knee site and the Badlands in hopes that it might find a way into my Division 3 (more on that later).

My group’s housing project was focused on that of Robert Bear Killer, who lived about an hour away from Re-Member’s site. In about three days, we added paint, insulation, walls, electricity, and plumbing to a shell of a house that had been started about 6 years ago. Visible in the background was Robert’s deceased uncle’s burned down home from many years previous.

Every morning, our day started off with “Wisdom of the Elders,” a talk that blended Lakota history, world social ills, and wisdom from indigenous leaders the world over. It was an awesome bonding experience that got everyone on the same page as to our purpose each day. In the evenings, we were privileged with the presence of Lakota artists and speakers who’d share with us both their life stories and information about the work they do in their own communities on the Reservation. Most notable of these for me was Minerva Blacksmith, a medicine person who I spoke to after her talk about answering Spirit’s call. “You have to come to Spirit like I tell the children. You have to come to Spirit like an empty cup ready to be filled.” Another important speaker for me was Lawrence Swallow, a Lakota musician and medicine person who told us the Lakota creation story and of his efforts to engage youth in his community in traditional spiritual reclamation.

The week ended with a tour of Red Cloud Elementary School, Oglala Lakota College, and some areas of the Badlands. We dined at the house of a descendant of Black Elk’s at the very spot where John Neihardt transcribed Black Elk Speaks. Time moves differently on Pine Ridge and I find myself checking in every so often on Kili Radio, the “voice of the Lakota Nation.”

Being there, it’s incredibly evident as to why a people would not budge from the land despite numerous offers of monetary reparations by the U.S. government. It’s beautiful with a very unique character that is both foreign to an East Coaster like myself and immensely drawing. I will be back someday and am eternally grateful for the gift of that experience.

“Mitakuye Oyasin”

All My Relations

sometimes i feel like they hate me
because i know things won’t be good
until the lessons are learned
and the ceremonies are done
until i weep in new ways
and reach further than i can grasp

both doubt and belief make me think i’m insane
they nod and say
“this is the road they all go down”

it’s that the becoming is so loud
and so necessary
for everyone involved

and at this point
i’m more afraid of pain
than even rationally acceptable

can’t shake the gaps between the anomalies
the dreaming turned waking too much to bear
and the omen after omen
after shudder

Nearly a 6 month hiatus. I hate making excuses, but senior year did try to tear me apart like a rabid bear. And not the kind that I like. We will reconnect this week. I promise.

Love,

Chiron

Sunday, 9.7.08

I dreamt about bats last night. Large ones, as large as I am, in an alley with me at night. Three of them. One was two-headed. I was at least partially aware of the fact that I was dreaming and I asked myself, as they moved around me, if they were my totem animal and, if so, what qualities of theirs might be important for me to incorporate into my life. The only adjective I could conjure was “aggressive”.

Tonight (after the day had ended), I was walking home when I heard a sound and saw three bats swoop into the sky above me. I’d never seen bats fly in real life and I haven’t seen a bat in-person at all since I was very young.

Tuesday, 9.9.08

I arrive at the World Tree, which is huge, yet accessible. The roots form a bell shape and inside is a piano/music box. I express gratitude for the experience I am having and am about to have and touch the redwood’s thick bark with my fingers, torso, and tongue. Shooting stars streak across the neither day nor night sky above me and rolling hills stretch for miles behind me. I speak my intention to meet BAT into my hands and press my hands into the trunk of the tree. As if by pushing a button, a door opens in the trunk and a colony of bats flies out. My first instinct is to grab hold of one and be flown to where it’s going as I’ve been picked up and carried by flying creatures in the past. I realize, however, that these bats are small and I am big and should go to where they have come from.

I climb the World Tree and reach its branches. Inside, I find a dark area filled with bats. They are VERY active and quick-moving. In a “frenzy” even. One sits at the center. I ask her if BAT is my totem animal and she says “Yes, but probably not long-term”. BAT has come to help me with a particular issue I’m dealing with. I remind her of my dreams and of seeing bats fly above me and ask what issue in my life BAT medicine is for. I am quickly taken to the moment previous to my seeing bats flying above me… A young man stands in freeze frame about to walk by me and I am aware of the intensely convoluted feelings that arise within me. Lust, awe, jealousy, fear, embarrassment, desire, confusion. BAT hovers directly above him.

BAT tells me that her medicine speaks to social resonance. She shows me how echo-location relates to sending out one’s own vibration and waiting for it to come back to you after having had it been reflected off of others. Through the song in my heart, I will find allies and comrades, but that is energy that needs to be sent out. Those I resonate with will find me and I them. A lot of her medicine has to do with sound and the sounds that I, both vocally and energetically, emit.

“Speak truthfully.”

BAT tells me that her medicine speaks to issues of following one’s own rhythm while in community. Having a unique lifestyle while working and living in harmony with others. The feeling I got was the individual experiencing total self-acceptance of ze’s own habits and biological/energetic needs and tending to them (as a bat would not fight its nocturnal nature) and being a productive member of a community, collaborating and all. BAT is a very social creature and seeks a good working environment with others.

BAT told me to recognize members of my community as such and not to exclude them from my relations, even if I don’t necessarily like them on a person-to-person level. She also told me not to ignore strong personal desires financially, but I got the feeling she specifically meant giving to social causes that mean a lot to me and working on my health.

I asked BAT what to do in the face of adversity and I got the message to wrap myself in my own wings and go solo, hidden, Hermit, for awhile.

I asked BAT if I could call on her and was told “affirmative”. Specifically, I asked her if I could call on her to aid me in a ritual to reclaim lost power from past relationships and was told that that was one of the reasons why she’d come. She then told me I could honor BAT by leaving offerings of water and honey by a certain area of pine trees on campus.

I thanked BAT and the Tree and, as I counted upwards, I felt and saw a bat fly up along side me into Middle World.

It is only now, during my relating this experience, that I recognize the salience of finding a piano/music box in the World Tree.

It’s also interesting to note that less than a month later, I got a chance to participate in an amazing Sound Healing workshop with Nina Umai Spiro of Pravada Sound Healing that really showed me the power of authentic sound as a tool that’s right up my alley. I hope to talk more about this in a later post.

Search Magazine (formerly called Science & Spirit Magazine) featured an article in its July/August 2008 issue about the decision to grant the naming of one of Neptune’s moons to the Tongva Indian tribe of southern California. Amidst discussion of some of the tribe’s most important deities and internal schisms  concerning the possibility of building a tribal casino, the article mentions Marc Acuna, a Tongva wehepet.

The article says that wehepet is “a term meaning ‘two-spirit’ or ‘two-road’ that was traditionally applied to people we would now identify as gay or lesbian.” This is technically incorrect and ethnocentric on a number of counts. For one, we would identify this person as either a wehepet, a Two-Spirit, or gay, depending on how the person identifies. Secondly, the reason why the term ‘Two-Spirit’ was coined in 1990 was to provide a more gender/role-encompassing term (meant especially for American Indians) than “gay/lesbian” — terms which only speak to sexual preference and limit our understanding of the individual to that aspect of him/her/ze.

Nonetheless, mention of Marc in this article is really awesome in terms of general visibility and understanding of Two-Spirits and the piece even goes on to discuss some of what his role entails with a few direct quotes from him. I love the photo above because it shows him teaching local youth native herbalism. So Two-Spirit!

You can find the full article here. And for a little something extra I dug up, here is an article Marc wrote discussing traditional uses of Mugwort (kwiash) in the Tongva tribe (found on page 4).

Wednesday – 8.27.08

I journey to meet my spirit guides.

I walk around the World Tree and it is covered in red and green flowers and bark. It’s a bulbous tree and I am soon overwhelmed by its immensity as I look upwards. It is both sunset and sunrise all over the sky. I walk barefoot along the Tree’s roots. After stating my intention, a cellar door opens at the base of the tree and I slide down a dark spiral till I fall into a shallow muddy puddle. I feel handles beneath me, opening to a metal cellar (the other one was wooden) and I fall for a long time and, eventually, fall through a hole in the sky, hitting a desert where a LARGE tortoise sits. Ze tells me to follow hir to my spirit guides.

I shapeshift into a tortoise as large as the one leading me. We slowly walk through the desert and I am aware that this is the perfect pace for my nature at the time. The sun is beating hot and I feel the urge to climb out of my shell, though part of me fears the searing sun, not exactly sure of what a tortoise’s skin beneath its shell looks like or how vulnerable it is. All of a sudden, I see a woman in white and a man in a dark hooded shroud standing next to one another on a sandy cliff. I approach them and ask them if they ar my spirit guides. The woman says no and the man says yes.

The woman tells me her name is Maria and that she is one of my ancestors. Ths spirit guide tells me that his name is Zechariah. The woman takes me for a walk.

I hold her hand, paler than I’d expected, and wonder about her ethnicity. She has long brown flowing hair an a white lace dress on. She tells me that she was worried about me and that she’s come to rescue me from impending doom. She says that I am stubborn and do not follow my life path and listen to my spirit guides. She tells me to go speak to Zechariah. I ask her if I will ever see her again and her answer is ambivalent.

I approach Zechariah, who I remember from the first time I’d met hm some years back. I inquire about his face. He pulls back his hood slightly and I quickly realize that I do not want to see anything further. We walk and talk.

He tells me that I need to follow my life path and that this Performance Studies stuff is bullshit. He tells me that I want to heal the the world and that requires a different set of skills. I know what he means and consider how theory-oriented Performance Studies is an how, even though I’m crazy interested in it, books and academia are not practice and do not heal. Herbs, energy healing, and music all come to mind as important avenues for me, as do my theatrical presence and desire to counsel, my need to travel the world and meet different kinds of people. I need to focus on the tools that aid me in my healing work.

I ask him what I should do about my insecurities concerning shamanic journeying and he quickly says “get over it”.

He says I need to get myself apart from my friend group more to “forge my own path and own my power”. I ask him if I have any other spirit guides and he tells me that he is the only one who’d chosen me.

I ask him what to do about money and he tells me to increase my wealth by working with what I already have. “By investing it?” and he replies affirmatively. I tell him that the stock market is in the worst shape it’s been in in a long time and he says “so what?” and shows me his skeleton face. He wants me to stop questioning him so much and to trust him. I ask him what I could do more immediately for money and he says I should do spells for abundance. To save money, I should think “burgundy, deep reds, root chakra, security, and SAVING”. That when I receive money, I should literally sit on it.

Before leaving he, tells me again to “forge my own path and own my power”. A large falcon swoops down from the sky and picks me up in its beak. It lets me go and behind me I hear and feel monstrous things. I turn around to see a volcano spewing lava and fire with a mouth made of these substances and coming for me. From above, Zechariah tells me these are my fears. I ask him if he’ll help me out when I’m ready to conquer them. I tell him that I need his help because I eventually wanted to confront my Shadows, heal my wounded inner child, etc. He tells me he’ll be there. I ask him if it was a good time for me to ritualistically sever my connections with past lovers and he says “yes and no”. That if I wanted to forge my own path and own my power, then yes.

I escape back to waking consciousness.