Our Bodies for the Revolution

As I watched the premier of Philly-based Interact Theater's MARCUS/EMMA last Wednesday, I thought about the Women's March on Washington, which reached seven continents on Saturday, January 21.

Marcus Garvey was a native Jamaican and one of only two children in his family of eleven children who survived to adulthood. He studied philosophy in London and became a great American orator, advocating for Pan-Africanism and founding the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. (Video: Know Yourself Speech) (NYT obituary.)

Emma Goldman was a Russian-born anarchist who immigrated to the United States as a teen. She'd already been a victim of her father's steady abuse, endured rape at the hands of a suitor and borne witness to brutal state violence. Within a few years, she was at the center of New York's anarchist movement advocating for worker's rights, women's rights and free love (although she was too far left for the suffrage movement). (Video: The Revolutionary Life of Emma Goldman.)

In the play, Emma is an oversexed older woman who seduces the younger Garvey. They were contemporaries, but didn't meet in life. Somewhere in their fictional seduction, they find common ground: human suffering.

Both revolutionaries had early and regular reminders of mortality and the power of having one healthy human body: Garvey's nine dead siblings, Goldman's regular beatings. They brought the power of their physical bodies directly to their revolutions, and therein lay the strength and integrity of their message.

Bodies: the actor's bodies onstage in passion and violence embodying our revolutionary forebears; the physical bodies of millions of Americans in dozens of cities denouncing the discrimination, misogyny and narcissism of our president.

In recent years, Black Lives Matter knew it first. Perhaps only through risking our bodies can we keep them safe.

The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul. -- Emma Goldman. 

To Meryl, with Love

Hollywood actors are: educated, diverse and liberal, "just a bunch of people from other places." And Meryl Streep is their queen.

She didn't disappoint last month, accepting her lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes and delivering a speech that cut right to the heart of the issues of this election: insiders vs. outsiders, freedom of the press and what we can possibly do next.


Some of my favorite moments:

"This instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing...When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose."

"We need a principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage. That's why our founders enshrined the press and its institutions in our constitution."

And, quoting Carrie Fisher, "Take your broken heart. Make it into art."

Long live, Queen Meryl. We're going to need her wisdom in the days, months and years to come.

My Five Commandments

I know from working with elementary-aged children that no one can keep more than five rules in their head at one time.

Although these are inspired by Gretchen Rubin's Twelve Commandments in her happiness project, I've settled on five that feel right to me. Number 1, 3 and 4 are loosely based on my "Discipline, Empathy and Grace" mantra.

1. Wake up early.

2. Words have meaning.

3. Walk a mile.

4. Look up!

5. Change the backdrop.

Each one of the above strikes me as simple and deep enough to remain resonant. The first is pretty self-explanatory; the second, "words have meaning," is the thing that gets me up each morning. So much evil is rooted in intentionally ambiguous language.

My evolving idea of the sacred includes, first and foremost, a reverence for language. It cannot solve the world's problems. It cannot say even what we most need it to say. But it is the best tool we have, and the more we can agree on the meanings of words, the more we can be speak and be understood.

My third commandment, walking a mile, is a reminder to exercise - literally at the very least walk a mile each day. But also, to walk a mile in another's shoes. I'm working on a blog post right now about queer #BlackLivesMatter leader Patrisse Cullors that will be richer for more time taken. The more distant someone's experience is from mine, the more reading required.

Look up! "When I look down, I just miss all the good stuff / when I look up, I just trip over things." That's Ani DiFranco, on the terrible application of opportunity cost in life choices. For my part, I intend that "look up!" encompass both catching all the good stuff and paying attention well enough that I'm not tripping over things. There's magic in a well-placed exclamation point.

This week is a good reminder that my travel radius has gotten shorter. Walking a mile in another's shoes is easier when you "change the backdrop," by traveling outside of your comfort zone. When I hear podcasts about the Syrian refugee crisis in Greece, my empathy is awakened more because I visited the Temple of Olympus, beside the former psychiatric asylum that is now a refugee camp. Travel and exposure lead to increased empathy and understanding, if you're paying attention.

It's been fifteen years since I was in Greece. It was another lifetime for me, and for that country. I suppose the devoutly religious see change of that magnitude and cling to their religion as comfort.

I see it and say, I need to get out more. There's a lot of work to be done.

Discipline, Empathy and Grace

Every January for the past fifteen years, I've made an intention collage. It's an excuse, once a year, to do a crafty project and anticipate the year to come. What do I want to bring into my life? Most collages include pictures of glasses of wine, books I want to read and short phrases about friendship, the future or financial goals.

About five years ago, I simplified. I spent my long, four-hour afternoon paging through magazines for large, beautiful letters to the words discipline, empathy and grace. The experience of making this different kind of collage had a more Zen-like quality. Instead of anxiously looking among all of the possible pictures and words, I skimmed calmly for exactly what I was looking for. The result hung on my wall for years.

I have never been more true to these intentions than in the two months I've been living with Sonia. So we may still be in the honeymoon period; I'll grant you that. Nonetheless, there's no denying the fact: I'm happier, calmer and more productive when I'm partnered.

Discipline

Getting up early has been a struggle since I was a teen. I always have grand plans, which when I lived alone meant setting my alarm for 7:00am and then dozing for at least an hour. That's the worst kind of sleep. I've read the articles, but that didn't stop me from hitting the snooze button half a dozen times. It was a rare day that I jumped out of bed when the alarm went off.

When Sonia and I first moved in together, she was studying for a test that required her to get up at 5:30am. I got up, made breakfast, made the bed. I even motivated her many mornings. When she was finished studying for the summer, I continued rising early. Drinking less helps, too. Sonia doesn't drink, and giving up the weekday brews is good for my waistline and health. Now, I'm getting up by 6:15am to write before work, something I've been meaning do to for years.

Empathy

I picked this trait at a time when I realized I'd broken a woman's heart because I'd allowed the relationship to go on for far too long, even though I knew my own heart wasn't in it. I knew I'd hurt her deeply, but was completely detached through the entire breakup. We weren't able to stay friends. Maybe this is normal, but I carried a lot of guilt. Maybe if I'd broken it off sooner, it could have been less painful.

It's always been easier for me to empathize with a stranger or acquaintance than with someone close to me, but that is changing with Sonia. Daily life together, and two years of dating before that, have helped me to understand what she's thinking and feeling about a situation, even before we talk about it. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop nudging her to be a little more social (like me!), but it has taught me when to back off and let her be Sonia.

Grace

I have never been particularly graceful. Like many aging women, I look back at myself as a teen or twenty-something and can't believe how lovely I was at the time. But I didn't feel beautiful; I felt overweight and awkward and insecure. There's a lesson in there. Now when I look in the mirror, I try to imagine myself at seventy, looking at myself now. I will regret it if I don't revel in my youth and vitality, so I'm learning to toss the self-criticisms aside.

How does Sonia support my gracefulness? Well...she encourages me not to be such a klutz! When we first moved in, I think I stubbed my left, second-biggest toe on every single new piece of furniture we brought into the apartment. Thankfully, I've gotten more used to where everything is in the new place. In all seriousness, I'm working out more -- and more regularly -- than I have since my early 20s, and it feels good. The clothes are fitting the way they should.

One day soon, I'm going to use discipline, empathy and grace to build my own set of Commandments. But for today, I'm just grateful, and yes, happy. This is what it looks like.