Economy Re-Imagined

I stood at the doorway to the large conference room, greeting latecomers trickling back into the ReWeaving NC convergence. I tried to look as reassuring as possible, as many individuals hesitated for a moment in confusion. Over lunch the room had been converted from a discussion room, chairs were stacked against the walls, and fifty grown ups were walking around the room in bent-over elephant impersonations. This became explicable to newcomers as Alyzza May, my co-facilitator / wonderful new friend would shout the next invitation, “Now walk like your shoes are too big for you. Yes, good! Fill up the room; keep moving towards open spaces.”

Laughter began to shake off the discomfort as serious conference participants one by one gave themselves permission to be playful. “Okay, walk like you’re late for a very important meeting about the New Economy!” Now a shared sense of familiarity and a certain self-effacing irony washed through the room, more laughter and lots of rushing. One man, who remained stationed in a chair on the periphery, began to smile.

Warning. This paragraph contains a ranty not that well articulated political aside. It doesn't feel quite right in the story, and yet I didn't have the heart to take it out. Maybe it's a great example of how words can get in the way of sharing an idea... 
It’s easy in Canada to sit in cynicism of the entire American economic system – the sell out of homes and retirement funds by wall street executives, the endless powers of these fictional invented persons – corporations - that have no eyes or hearts for the masses without medical care, for the beauty of the Earth, only an insatiable hunger to profit. Of course Canada is generally complicit in this system that functions according to one fundamental false-premise of the modern-industrial era (a logic that is already collapsing upon itself) – the idea that the environment is a set of inputs within the economy.  I.e. A tree has no worth until it is cut and counted. The great truth is that our economy (like all human-made concepts) is contained within the precious system of the living earth. Whether we ‘know’ it or not, we feel deep within our lungs the unquantifiable value of standing, breathing trees.

It’s easy to feel doomed. But here was a mass of people, each bearing stories of engagement in creative and compelling change projects. Some target various institutions – welfare, banks, and government. Others are growing up new systems in the cracks of the old – worker cooperatives buying out abandoned businesses, mothers on welfare starting day care coops, private micro-loans helping small organic farmers stay on the land. We were gathered at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro to share inspiration about the transition to new economic systems, to network and weave these strategies together. Listening to their stories and their “yes we can” attitudes, I started to become truly inspired. I started to believe that they (we) could actually succeed.

After some further warm ups to get people into their bodies, and in gentle contact with others in the room, we began the Image Theatre work (one branch of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed methodology which Alyzza and I studied with Marc Weinblatt). 

Rather than diving right into images of a desired future, we thought it important to give space for the stories of suffering interwoven with the desire for change. As people sculpted each other into still images from their own struggles within the old /collapsing economy we saw several people, backs to each other typing, while a standing person points behind one’s back.

In another image several people lie splayed out on the floor around a figure that stood with their fists in the air, eyes dead set ahead, and a cold expression.

Before the end we would start to ‘dynamize’ the images to begin revealing the participants own instincts and desires around steps needed to move from these images into the transitional space, leading towards a ‘new economy’. One theme that clearly emerged was the need to be wary of repeating past injustices in the urgency of change.

To be honest though, themes weren’t that well discussed. Though I’d used TO activities in workshops before, this was my first start-to-finish TO workshop. It's fairly new to Alyzza too. We were so interested in working with the images and embodied aspects; we may have neglected the dialogue and meaning making somewhat. This is an important learning curve with TO for me, to find the proper balance of activity and reflection. Part of the intention of the work is to ground our analyses in embodied wisdom.

I’ve spent many years walking the long road between my mind and the rest of me. Along this quest I was exposed to Image Theatre at a workshop and within minutes I had fallen in love with the graceful power of the method. Just as a 2D picture is ‘worth a thousand words’, human sculptures reach between the veils of words that so often obscure human communication. Truth gets pulled right out into the shared space. There are moments when the crowd viscerally senses itself as the people ‘see together’ suddenly emerge in an image. You can feel it resonate, (and sense where there is discord) very quickly. Often it is something everyone already knew without being able to say directly. Usually there is an effect, something like – we all just became more ‘human’ together.

As the conference progressed, I continued to have a strange feeling… something felt different. There was a vague sense of uncomfortable…loneliness…hesitancy, creeping through me. At first I thought it was simply nerves about leading TO, or just my being new to the scene here. It was subtle; things seemed similar enough on the surface - the scene of a conference at a university - that it was hard to see at first. But shortly I realized that there was actually a different cultural reality here than I’m used to, duh right?! Definitely the tone and norms around race relations felt different somehow to me. 

Tracking into this feeling led me on a rapid self-education over the last couple weeks on civil rights, slavery and the history of the world – and helped me to better see the place I am standing in, and re-understand myself, and my ‘whiteness’ in this new setting. I will share about this in my next post.

Alyzza and I really enjoyed working together so we decided to do more before I leave the area. We’re going to run a two part Theatre of the Oppressed series. Without the frame of a conference, we will be free to explore whatever the burning issues come from the people, whatever they struggle with in their lives. In the first session we will explore these themes with image work, much as we did at the conference. In the second session we will create Forum Theatre plays on these themes, another branch of TO in which a play shows a microcosm moment of a social justice issue and then the audience becomes spect-actors, trying out different ideas for resolutions that people could actually take back out into their lives with them.

New economies of co-liberation,

~Sab

Still on Frankie’s farm!...somewhere North of Siler City, NC

On the Vindication of Puttering

Yesterday I finally gave my spaceship a good deep clean, and decorated a meditation/work station platform. This morning when I came out to drop my computer & smoothie (before heading up the hill to do qi gong) I found myself puttering for a few minutes. I was aware that I didn’t want to become distracted from my morning practice, but it felt nice to put a few touches on the work of yesterday.

Puttering sounds at first like a nothing sort of thing - something next to idleness… or distracted movement, something vague, a bit purposeless, filling time, not truly productive. At least these are my associations with it. But when I’m honest with myself, puttering is one of the most enjoyable actions in my days.

I had found a few thumbtacks in the utility drawer in the house, so I hung up the calendar I love on one of the tall cabinets. I hung a thin white scarf as a curtain over the refrigerator alcove turned boot tray-broom closet. I spread a batik sheet over the new meditation / writing platform. I rearranged a few of my icons so they felt precisely perfect and set out my smoothie & computer for when my meditation would be done. All of this flowed together, one thing into the next, as if I were painting a little wave of feng shui through the space.

I realized walking up to the hill how pleasurable those few minutes of time had been. I recalled other typical puttering times, like in the morning when the water for lemon tea is coming to a boil; I often move slowly about setting things right for the day - tidy the table, put some dishes away from the dish rack, chat with the cat for a moment. I realized suddenly that these little tendings, cumulatively, are an essential element of maintaining a pleasing and energy-flowing space. But how often do we think of puttering as a worthwhile activity? Or even notice that we are doing it, or better yet - slow down and enjoy it?

It occurred to me as I reached my qi gong spot on the hill, and stood staring into the sun with closed eyes for a moment, that puttering and cleaning might be lumped together sometimes, but are quite different. Cleaning is a big task, like yesterday I lugged a small shop-vac out to the ship. Then made a second trip hauling a bucket of hot soapy water and a bag of rags and a citrus spray. I got my head geared up for the job, rolled up my sleeves and pant legs, put on DCX and my best farm wife handkerchief and dove in. Three and a half hours later I was filthy, dehydrated, shaky and very pleased.

But I love how puttering is more of an adventure than a task. It can start at any moment, with one tiny action. I see the dish soap is still in the bathtub where I filled the cleaning bucket, so I walk it back towards the kitchen. On the way I recall that post-cleaning-frenzy I left wet rags hanging on the truck, so I retrieve them, put the soap at the sink and head out the back porch to hang the rags on the line. On the way I see the dogs’ outdoor water dish is low, so I refill it which prompts a happy response from Pearl, so I pet her for a moment while she slurps and wags her tail. Back inside I realize it’s almost time to start cooking dinner so I wipe down the counters and turn the radio on to NPR, pour myself a big glass of water, add a lemon balm leaf and decide to sit for a moment and listen to the show, vowing to start cooking in 5 minutes…

The magic formula, ‘this, so that’ can go on and on until the moment you decide to stop. Since each action is small there is no protracted denouement, just a gentle sense of accomplishment that things are a little more right than they were a few moments ago.

This lends itself to a whole territory of action where my beloved to-do lists don’t apply because, besides the fact that it took longer to write then to do all that, I wouldn’t have even thought of it all ahead of time anyway. Each step indicated the next. It’s more like a tuning in to one’s immediate environment and following a breadcrumb trail through the space of little things that need attending to.

Now that’s puttering.

Upon my epiphany that I love puttering, I quickly moved on to consider scheduling puttering into my day. But something inside me recoiled at the thought. One of the best things about puttering is how it can slip in between the bigger, planned activities of life.

I will also need to guard against my tendency to get over-excited and ruin a good idea. I don’t want to putter for 3 hours, turning it into some kind of OCD episode, which runs in my family… Puttering, I believe, is meant to be a temporary thing, in little bursts.

A bluebird singing called my attention back to myself standing on the hill. So, as I began my qi gong on the hill, I concluded that I wouldn’t schedule puttering or turn it into another thing on my daily list. But I vowed to notice this little action that heretofore had gained no credibility or attention in my days.

From now on when I realize, ‘Oh I’m puttering’, or ‘Hey now would be a perfect moment to putter for a little while’ I’m going to open my heart and body to the experience, thinking “Yes, you putter girl. Enjoy it! Feel the big impact of these tiny actions! Ah ha there’s the next little thing calling for attention…” And henceforth this worthy activity will hold a more noble title – spontaneous daily feng shui meditation.  ;)

So putter on people,

~sab