“Writing about attention, I see that I have written a good deal about pain. This is no coincidence. It may be different for others, but pain is what it took to teach me to pay attention. In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me. Each moment, taken alone, was always bearable. In the exact now, we are all, always, all right.”
Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way week two
Hi Friend. Thank you for reading. Thank you for giving me your attention. Thank you for staying curious. Thank you for caring. Thank you specifically to the handful of people who could hear me last letter and help me as an act of SOLIDARITY. Because of you, I received two pairs of thermals, four pairs of socks, $50, two paid monthly subscribers, some fabric, and a website domain. I am so grateful and I was encouraged by friends to mention that I am still accepting any contributions towards urgently needed eyeglasses. Or please consider supporting my art/work/vision with a $5/$10 monthly newsletter subscription via venmo/cash apps $caradenden if you have capacity. (Update: Due to funding and a foot of snow, I’ve decided to wait until spring, when we start our teaching garden, to tackle the art barn.) In the vulnerable discomfort of asking for what I need, in facing arising shame, I have mantra’d the shit out of Krishnamurti’s words, “ it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”.
NOTE: I want to preface this to say that if someone who has less societal power than you is giving you feedback, it is information purely out of love. They don’t owe you that, they likely risk safety in offering it to you. And yet they believe in you enough to want to stay in relationship with you, wanting you to develop, reducing harm inside and outside of yourself. Very few of you reading this have less societal power than I do. Please consider everything I share as an act of love. I am trying to address our collective blind spots, subconsciously perpetuated microaggressions, and internalized oppression by naming my own. We are way overdue. And I really hope by here and now, we are collectively working to reduce harm by decolonizing ourselves and the failing systems we’ve previously accepted. I write because I value the time you spend working or with your families that might keep you from researching or knowing this information. I write because I intimately know the harm caused by patriarchy and capitalism. I write to seek more understanding about what whiteness is to practice somatic abolition. I write because I am weekly interfacing with a colonized healthcare system as a person with increasing disability, alongside an aging parent with chronic disease. I write because these systems are disabling all of us. I write because these systems are affecting me and more severely affecting people I am prioritized over. I write so we can look at this together. DO YOU HEAR ME? DO YOU VALUE MY LABOR?
Lately I’ve been reading and learning about the importance of personal narrative in creating cultural changes. When I talk about my experiences as a female body, a neuroqueer solo mother from a lineage of solo mothers in domestic violence which put us at a continual low grade socioeconomic status, it’s not so I might remain a victim. I’m asking you to witness me, to know me, to understand people existing in societal margins—margins you will hopefully never know—so it might speak to humanizing others around you who are making different choices than you, simply because they have very few to no choices to make. For the longest time, I couldn’t grasp the intersection I faced in an oppressive society, why I couldn’t keep up. In some ways, I was too busy surviving, playing old stories that triggered old wounds. (& still do but less regularly!) In some ways, I have been “protected” by my whiteness, defensiveness and perfectionism specifically, which only serves to keep me from my true nature. I was a victim with zero tools to even begin to process the ways in which I had been victimized by this system’s sneaker waves. And especially without getting caught by the undercurrent and stuck out to sea.
WE ARE ALL VICTIMS AND PERPETRATORS OF CODEPENDENT DYSFUNCTION AND CULTURAL COLONIALISM.
It’s soft power indoctrination, a way to control large populations into compliance by normalizing a certain status quo. Thankfully, the internet came to me in my teens, which for better or for worse, connected me to an entire education. I found some tools simply by googling the questions I needed answers to around emotional well being. Therapy being one. My therapist would often tell me that I can do anything, even what I deem unhealthy, if I do it mindfully. If I show up for the information, the lesson, the grist for the awakening mill. The trick is not leaving myself to participate. To withstand discomfort. Not letting shame get the best of me, keeping me from the lesson of my choices, serving to liberate me. So here I am, eating a bag of chips in bed, with myself mindfully, and writing to you. And when I breathe in, I can feel myself breathing in. And when I breathe out, I can feel myself breathing out.
Nearly every cold morning I am wide eyed by 6:45a or before. I find a sweater to throw on over my long johns. I light a candle in the dark. I say thanks. I say please. I weep. I stretch. Maybe this turns into writing. Maybe this turns into sitting in front of the fire longer. In another hour or so, I’ll be outside, letting the cold air touch my cheeks. It’s gotten quiet since the snow last week, but this morning I caught the dawn chorus. It always starts with one and others quickly join as our part of the earth makes her way to see the sun again. A few weeks ago, I read that it only takes 3.5% to make a change and somehow that made me think of this video of one lone guy dancing that became a group movement. Okay I can get with that. The in-it-together business. The fucking point of this newsletter. We are out here deconstructing our bullshit together.
Thanks to technology, we no longer read about people we are oppressing in censored history books decades later. These little pocket computers connecting us to the entire globe show us videos of oppression in action, directly from lived experiences and moving mouths, telling us their stories, showing us their pain. Many of our political heroes can and have been bought. Contacting our representatives to tell them over and over again how much I disagree, urging them to remember their humanity, our shared humanity, simply to cease fire. 110 days without a ceasefire. Over 100 days of unregulated war crimes. Over 25 thousand killed; children, journalists, poets, scholars forcibly removed from the planet. Nearly 2 million people displaced, told to go to one safe exit just to be bombed there. Hospitals, schools, UN buildings bombed. I’m tired of counting. I’m tired of thinking about this. I’m tired of writing about this. Yet not as tired as the Palestinians living through it. I now know contacting my “representatives” does nothing. Red or Blue is all the same corrupt coin of WHITE PATRIARCHAL CAPITALIST delusion who hoard wealth and weaponize power. They misrepresent and exploit the people they are meant to serve. They do not care. Contacting them is only for me at this point. To answer to myself, my kid, and the gay lord of my heart. When they stop bombing children is when I will stop talking about this. And when I breathe in, I can feel myself breathing in. And when I breathe out, I can feel myself breathing out.
All learning happens through culture. Thus, we all have culture!
I can no longer turn away from the historical atrocities of the US government and when I breathe in, I can feel I am breathing in. I am trying to integrate the disillusionment of this US citizenship and when I breathe out, I can feel I am breathing out. I am trying to reckon with our history of acquiring political control over other countries through settler occupation, militarized force, and exploiting natural resources that include innocent people just trying to live. And when I breathe in, I can feel myself breathing in. I am considering how here in the land of the free, we use wealth, media power, and violence to create a hegemonic culture of American supreme authority. And when I breathe out, I can feel myself breathing out. No more time for mindless numbing and dumbing. We are people, not political parties. We must push back with our entire existence.
What does that look like specifically for me? For you? What responsibility does living in this country mean for us? What does being white and having resources require of me? What is my place in ushering in a world where public servants live minimally and care for people? Where things are mutual and free? Where the collaboration of love is learning and growing together in our sameness and our differences? Where there is enough for everyone and a seat for every butt? AND it’s already happening! It’s already set in motion by people in the practice of SOLIDARITY NOT CHARITY because WE TRULY HAVE NO OTHER OPTION!! Let these arctic weather patterns caused by a warming climate push us towards our work ahead.
It is 2024 and there is internet. Dive into the collective consciousness in how these struggles are interconnected if you don’t already have an embodied understanding. Your fate and my fate and Palestinian fate and Congolese fate and Sudanese fate and Iraqi fate and every person’s fate and the entire Earth’s fate are all tied up together. We are the people worth more than profit. In thinking about what I have to give in solidarity, I’ve been reading a lot about the LAND BACK movement and thought I would share here. The culture of superiority creates an undercurrent of scarcity. We must work from a mindset of abundance to even open our limited minds to this idea. Consider any resistance (eyerolling, looking away, shame, or discomfort) you have while reading this next part as an opportunity to reconsider what you think you know about how things have to be. That is the white patriarchal capitalist planted inside you and this is exactly the time to practice disrupting that little fucker. Answer the call from inside the house. And when I breathe in, I can feel myself breathing in. And when I breathe out, I can feel myself breathing out.
Let us REJECT THE EXTRACTIVE ECONOMY by living simply within our means and redistributing whatever wealth we have. It is acknowledging that only when Mother Earth is well, can we, her children, be well. It is our belonging to the land – because – we are the land. We are LANDBACK! This is not a call for violent human removal. This is a call for collective reclamation of being in right relationship with the Earth and all living beings she hosts. Reclaiming land reclaims narratives. Rooted in love for community and land, it places importance on the reciprocal connection.
This is a physical return to communal land ownership of unceded Indigenous lands. This is about righting wrongs and honoring treaties. This is Indigenous land stewardship, prioritizing the role of wisdom keeping that has afforded us what biodiversity we have left on our planet. This is respecting Indigenous rights & culture, ensuring food sovereignty, housing, and clean air and water. This is a vision of a decolonized world by imperfectly practicing decolonization NOW. By decolonizing, I mean that we have to reject the commodification and exploitation of land. We have to reject colonial concepts of real estate and private land ownership. (While I’m here, stop going to Hawaii, it is not for you.) This is the cultural return of relationships and self-governance. Above all, it is a rallying cry for dismantling white supremacy and the harms of capitalism. And it starts with each of us.
What is our relationship with the land we are living on and tending to? How are we using that to serve people over profits? How are we giving back what is actually not ours? How are we perpetuating the necessary revolution for our planet and it’s people? How are we sharing what we know and what we have?
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
Arundhati Roy
*****Please respond to this email with resonances, curiosities, information, &/or dreams of camaraderie. Words are spells and what do we have to lose having the audacity to cast our best intentions into the ether?****
PLEASE JOIN GLOBAL EFFORTS IN A MASS STRIKE THIS WEEK 1/21-1/28
DO NOT SPEND AT ALL IF YOU ARE ABLE !!
OR DESIGNATE DAYS! OR SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL ENTREPRENEURS!
YOUR EFFORT COUNTS ! WITNESS YOURSELF! WITNESS THE ONENESS!
PUNCH IMPERIALI$T CAPITALI$M WHERE IT HURT$.
CONSIDER A LIFE WORTHY OUTSIDE OF MONEY !
LIBERATION FOR ALL !
//RUMI OCLOCK (coined by theo)
Always check your inner state
with the lord of your heart.
Copper doesn’t know it’s copper,
until it’s changed to gold.
Your loving doesn’t know its majesty,
until it knows its helplessness.
If the beloved is everywhere,
the lover is a veil,
but when living itself becomes
the Friend, lovers disappear.
//FIELD NOTES
I believe everyone should be reading Fariha Roisin, who pours more of her soul into a 6th dispatch on Palestine “upon whose bones do you intend to build your paradise?” You know what’s a threat to U.S. national security? And this is a hard one to digest… Progress is a threat to U.S. national security. Why? Because it doesn’t want other societies to be more advanced than it. This is an imperial tactic.”
This last week a friend shared Portland Artist and friendly neighbor Lettie’s substack and she is talented, devoted to her craft, and turns out, pretty freaking inspired/inspiring. I was teary at the soul salve of this last post. It is the post I wish I had in me to write to you today.
a mind that is free by Krishnamurti who understood every person is their own expert guru about their own lives.
This week my former neighbor, my friend, dyer, quilter, artist Katie North, sent me fabric she dyed with nature and a prompt to play so I am looking forward to that but wanted to point out this beautiful talent you might want to follow the explorations of over on instagram. When I first saw Katie’s work, I fan girled so hard. I’m not sure how many times I told Yana how I couldn’t believe an artist of such talent lived on OUR street.
a fuzzy poem on my altar wall from friend Sarah
Speaking of Sarah, I am so excited to be a part of a women’s writing group she facilitates! Join us online on Saturdays! Or in person in Portland on Thursday nights with Sarah! Also there is a free hour of writing together on Friday mornings for anyone looking for some focused time accountability!
Olam HaBa community quilt: submit blocks with the guiding question in mind: How are Jewish safety and Palestinian liberation inherently intertwined?
new season of SORT OF on hbo max. what a beautiful show. what queer representation. I love the humanity and tenderness of the main character so much.
just wanted to share a photo of tiny dog mother shitting in a blizzard while i yelled encouragement from a nearly closed door. sometimes that’s how i feel with these newsletters, me just shitting in a blizzard, screaming into the void. maybe you click all the easter eggs i link for you and maybe you already know what i share here and it haunts your brain or experience like it does mine. feel free to scream back. i will hear you. let’s keep going.
*****Please respond to this email with resonances, curiosities, information, &/or dreams of camaraderie. Words are spells and what do we have to lose having the audacity to cast our best intentions into the ether?****