Reaching Out

I met Valisa last spring when she showed up to Ultimate frisbee practice in the Vanogan she was living out of. After practice we looked at the artwork she was carrying around hoping to sell so she could get her van fixed. We bought 3 pieces of her work which is a mixture of paper cutouts and painting that are imaginative, beautiful, and a touch Egyptian. Exotic. (When I get a digital camera - I was using Dave's - I'll take a picture of my favorite piece). Valisa then invited us on the first annual memorial hike in the Gore Range that weekend to remember her husband. A year prior she was a newlywed hiking with her husband when a tragic accident took his life. It was a freak accident as he was an avid outdoorsman - he fell off a narrow trail and over the edge of a cliff. Her present and future were snapped away from her just like that. I could tell that she was regrouping and dealing with her devestating loss by following her heart. She mentioned that once her van was fixed she'd be heading to New Orleans to volunteer, helping those who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. Then I open the Vail Daily today and read a moving report from Valisa in New Orleans. It's her voice - heartfelt, soulful, loving, inspiring.

(Apparently you need to login to VailDaily before seeing the article. It's just a login, no money or anything. It's worth it. )

Here I give you a snippet:
". . . Sometimes it’s not even worth going out. You want to escape for a moment, but instead you come face to face with the reality of Katrina’s wrath.

We take pictures to show the world. We send them out, like cries for help, but the only answers we get is our president in the French Quarter saying it looks just fine.

“Go east, Mr. President,” we plead, but he strolls down Bourbon Street smiling. “Go east,” we repeat, and the papers say this story is over. We are only five miles from the Quarter, only five miles, and no one cares — as long as the world can drink their hand grenades and hurricanes, they would rather forget about our hurricane.

It's clear when you ride through the mess of twisted homes, that this is so much bigger than we had ever planned for. This is almost nine months after, and still you dodge debris on dark and lonely streets.
Katrina’s magnitude magnified America’s need for a more diverse disaster response. The feeling that diversity is still needed has kept me down here. Frankly, I don’t feel that disaster relief should be a business, or a campaign issue.

I have been lucky enough to fall in with a group of people with the motivation and the know-how to create a new kind of disaster relief.

When you come into our camp you see what’s been missing. You see survivors and volunteers mingling in the dining area. You see fresh carrots, organic milk, and smoked chicken. You see sunflowers planted around the port-a-potties, and hearts painted on the signs.

People feed as much off the ambiance as they do the food. A woman looked at me one day and said, “You know what you guys are doing here? You’re preventing suicide.”

They come here for some reprieve from their struggles. Our kitchen has become a bright oasis in this bleak and torn landscape. And it isn’t just the flowers and the pretty signs, it’s the volunteers. Everyone feels free to express themselves.

I find myself smiling while I work, and that kind of light-heartedness spreads. Serving lunch a few days ago, an elderly resident offered me his plate and grinned. He said, “I don’t get to smile much these days, but I get here and I just can’t stop.” . . . please read more and see her photos

Letting someone else say it

My friend Julie has a beautiful post today. The poem, you should read it.

Perspective from the Plastinates & love to Grandma Cuba

I saw the most fascinating exhibition yesterday. It's been around the world and in several cities in the U.S. so many of you may have seen it but I've only heard of it this year. It's called Bodyworlds: the Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies. The creator, Dr. Gunther von Hagens, invented Plastination - "the pioneering technology that makes contemporary anatomical exhibits possible." Drawing inspiration from the anatomical drawings of the Renaissance he "replaces bodily fluids and fat in donor specimens with reactive fluid plastics" and then "fixes the specimens into dynamic, lifelike poses." You can see the Plastinates here. WARNING: NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. You can also download a video.

Luckily I went at a time when it wasn't crowded so I was able to inspect everything closely for as long as I wanted. It was a spiritual experience to be in the presence of these previously living beings. And it was clear to me that our bodies are intricate pieces of matter and meat and when they cease to pump blood the lifeforce leaves and we are nothing more but humps of flesh and bone. Feelings, ambitions, thoughts, dreams, hopes, desires, pain, love all go away with that lifeforce. It was just so clear. So clear what an incredible mystery we are. What absorbs all of that? Where does it leave to?

Years ago my maternal grandmother, Elsa Cuba, died in my arms after a long battle with alzheimers and old age. I held her while whispering in her ear through muffled sobs that she could go, that we all loved her, and that it would be OK to leave us. She took her last breaths with me as I held her and then, suddenly, she slipped away. From one second to the next her lifeforce was out of her body and I could feel it not necessarily rising but expanding - it took up the entire room. Intuitively I felt that she was everywhere and that she was free from the confines of her broken, old body. It was such an immeasurable gift that she gave me, to allow me to be in her presence as she moved beyond her body and this world that we knew together. I felt her presence for a time in the room and knew that she wouldn't stay. Where did she go? A parallel universe maybe? Absorbed somewhere or did she hold together all of her experiences?

Seeing the Plastinates was like looking into a 3D x-ray. I look at myself with a new respect and perspective that I will never forget. A new perspective that reminds me of what my Grandma Cuba gave me. May she be thriving somewhere new.

John Cassavetes on life, love, and art

Have you seen any of John Cassavetes' films? He's the legendary independent director who wrote and directed movies for 30 years from 1959 to the late 80s. Years ago while living in L.A. I went to a tribute of his work where I saw four of his movies in a week and was deeply moved by them. A program from that tribute with Cassavetes quotes and notes by Ray Carney, Professor of Film at Boston University and author of The Films of John Cassavetes, is something I've read over and over again when I need to feel understood and that there are others I can relate to when it comes to the complexities of love and our humanity. At a time when many things that I encounter everyday seem pointless and stupid (pop culture, sales, advertising, politics) I relish in the work and non-judgmental perspective of John Cassavetes. Some of his films: Shadows, Faces, A Woman Under the Influence, She's So Lovely. Some of his words (it's long but worth it. The film he's referring to is She's So Lovely):

"What I think everybody needs is a way to say, 'Where and how can I be in love so that I can live? So that I can live with some degree of peace.' I guess every picture we've ever done has been, in a way, to try to find some kind of philosophy for the characters in the film. And so, that's why I have a need for the characters to really analyze love, discuss it, kill it, destroy it, hurt each other, do all the stuff in that war, in that word-polemic and film-polemic of what life is. And the rest of the stuff doesn't really interest me. It may interest other people, but I have a one-track mind. That's all I'm interested in - love. And the lack of it. When it stops. And the pain that's caused by loss of things that are taken away from us that we really need.

Everything that affects our lives is determined by the influence that one sex has upon the other. Sure we're in the midst of political decay and turmoil - but that's not nearly as interesting. That's more mental, based on how much information you have. The relationships between men and women are permanently fixed in our instincts, not our minds.

Family life is so different from what has been fed into us through the tube and through the radio and through the casual, inadvertent greed that surrounds us. . . Films today show only a dream world and have lost touch with the way people really are. . . .Marriage, like any partnership, is a rather difficult thing. And it has been taken rather lightly in the movies. . . This film deals with the serious problems of a man and woman who are ignorant of their problems, yet totally in love.

I don't know anybody who has an easy pattern of behavior. I know people who are just sensational one minute, and absolute bastards the next. And these moods come from specific things that I can't put my finger on because I don't know their whole life. . . I say, Jesus, I like this person even though I know he is an s.o.b., you know, I love him, and I can't help it. It's his personality and his style that I like.

As people we know that we are petty, vicious, violent and horrible, but my films make an effort to contain the depression within us and to limit the depression to those areas that we can actually solve. The comic resolution of my films, if one could call it that, is the assertion of a human spirit.

I like to deal with characters who have a bit more feeling than the stereotype. . . People prefer distance. In movies today there is a reluctance to show really deep feelings. They don't like vulnerability.

[People kill themselves because of] society's inability to educate, in terms of love, any further than a given point. Nobody in this world seems to be able to love beyond a certain point; they all go up to a certain point then they become emotionally tired of it, or bored or hurt. They change, and their love doesn't transcend certain obstacles. For somebody who is very sensitive and idealistic, as we all start out to be, it becomes a dramatic experience. You can either make that bridge or not, and we are going to make this picture for people who are possibly lost, and try to point out the reasons for it.

My films are expressive of a culture that has had the possibility of attaining material fulfillment while at the same time finding itself unable to accomplish the simple business of conducting human lives. We have been sold a bill of goods as a substitute for life. What is needed is reassurance in human emotions; a re-evaluation of our emotional capacities.

I won't call my work entertainment. It's exploring. It's asking questions of people, constantly. How much do you feel? How much do you know? Are you aware of this? Can you cope with this? A good movie will ask you questions you don't already know the answers to. Film is an investigation of our lives. What we are. What our responsibilities in life are - if any. What we are looking for. Why would I want to make a film about something I already understand?. . .People have said that my films are very difficult to watch, that they're experiences you are put through rather than ones you enjoy, and it's true.

I refrain from leading people by their noses by imposing a stereotyped moral vision in my work. I believe in the validity of a person's inner desires. Whether they are ugly or beautiful, they are pertinent to each of us, and are probably the only things worth a damn. I want to put those inner desires on the screen so we can all look and think and feel and marvel at them.

I'm a revolutionary - but not in the political sense. . .In my opinion these people and these small emotions are the greatest political force there is. These small emotions, these character disagreements are of vital necessity.

[My films] really are all love stories and not just a chance meeting and a two second love affair. They're optimistic. . .Here's a situation with a couple who have nothing in common except love."

And Ray Carney says:
"As in classic Greek drama, each of Cassavetes' films ends with a moment of insight or self-recognition. Characters discover something about themselves - not by thinking but by listening to their feelings. One day they finally hear a little voice of discontent that may have been nagging away for years, and, if they are lucky, wake up. Cassavetes is a very spiritual artist. All of his work is about learning to hear that still, small voice. What is wonderful is that he never gives up on even his most doomed characters. He is an artist of hope - a poet of the miraculous, transforming power of love and grace."

More cheer

I am being respectful of his choice.
I am being respectful of myself.
I long to do what I will not regret.

But at times I silently explode, energy shooting out like arrows
from my hip, my jaw, the lower curve of my back, my strong
shoulders, and my feet want to run, run, run. They spin in midair
gasping for traction. Wanting to escape from inside yourself is like
being stabbed and having no defense. You have no choice but to sit
and take it. I’m sick of momentary peace, momentary distraction,
momentary forgetting.

I thought it was unbreakable.