at least...

there is no good reason for this picture of me as a happy kid in flippers. still, here it is. at least you know what is going on... no I don't. This is supposedly a kind of ALS but no one knows the etiology, the mechanism or the cure for ALS. And Progressive Muscle Atrophy is even more rare, so even less studied. 

at least now you know you weren't crazy... I didn't think I was crazy. Did you?

at least now your symptoms make sense... yes, that's a little closer but, as David Byrne said, Stop Making Sense.

Diagnosis does not always confer coherence. In fact, in my experience it rarely does. It's an effort to put a boundary around things that always bleed into each other. But the intersectionality of the body does not succumb to a dose of diagnosis. 

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Justice. And beauty.

Yesterday I got the vaccine. I qualified as a health care worker even though I am no longer working. I didn't qualify as a person with ALS who was hospitalized for respiratory failure. I was ecstatic, triumphant that I could wobble over there, talk when needed, follow the directions. My arm hurt. Later I listened to a smart Dharma talk by a friend who challenged the unfair distribution of vaccines; he cited Singer, who famously advocated killing disabled babies. How do we know what is just?

I'm breathing sandalwood,

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Do something!

Doing gets a bad rap sometimes in Zen circles. It's all about being, being in the moment, being time, no goal, just be be be. But also, while we're being we're usually doing something. Yesterday a beloved teacher asked me what my days are like, and I felt my insides blossom. My life is what I do. Now I'm writing. Before I was stretching my lungs and breathing, looking for my lats, taking a cold shower, drinking coffee, planning my priorities, folding my laundry, making more coffee, mulling things over, reading the news... 

Is reading the news doing something? How about checking email? I say yes. These are my connections to the wider world. Tomorrow I'll be co-teaching an ongoing workshop: White Work on Racism. I like to call it WWOR because when you say it you can feel the fight in it.

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More Dharma on Healing

In this talk I get into the details of healing, and draw a clear parallel between how I work with my body now and how we can work with the body of racism.  The talk was given online at the Village Zendo on October 25, 2020.

October 2020

My Body My Country: Lessons From Healing

Back in June I gave this talk on my experience of working with my traumatized body and how we might apply what I learned to heal the trauma of racism. Now seems a good time to post it, though late, because soon I'll be co-leading an ongoing support group for White people to uncover and transform racism, White Work on Racism (WWOR).               

August 2020

Just Another Racist White Lady

I'm at Far Rockaway because it's the people's beach, not like those fancy beaches you have to take a special train to get to.  This beach has more kids, more festivities, more lifeguards, more noise, more of it all.  It's been a glorious day, playing in the water, watching the joyful families, letting the deep drone of the waves permeate my brain.  Because I trust everyone completely, especially people of color, I often leave my bag on the sand as I take dips into the healing ocean.  

As I'm getting ready to go home, I reach into my bag for something or other and suddenly discover that the pocket where I keep my wallet is completely empty!  Panic!  I shuffle around some more, maybe I was mistaken?  NO, it's really empty! 

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Really Undoing Racism

The parade of slayings and obscene statistics have finally yanked our attention to the crime of racism in America.  Eyes open, horrified and heartbroken, we march and protest.  "Black Lives Matter!" chant Whites and Blacks together, coming together to rise up and defeat the oppressor, or at least get him to put a camera on.  

Several months ago, during a formal conversation on healing racism, a zen teacher--Kodo Sensei, the first Black woman to receive dharma transmission, asked a question that sounded to me like "What's in it for White People?"   The question spun itself around in my guts like a sharply angled koan.

For one thing, White people want

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Seeing Kara Walker's Subtlety

A brilliant and articulate volunteer guides us through interpretations of “A Subtlety, or The Marvelous Sugar Baby" and the public reaction.  I hope you can forgive the limits of the iphone4.  As a friend and collaborator says often, the best camera is the one you have on hand.  I just had to share what I learned from this installation, all melted and destroyed now, at the former Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn.  

Central Park Five, and Me

Aghast as the movie finished, I sat in the dark watching the six other people in the theatre gathering their stuff.  I think I was the only one with beige skin.   If you still think that maybe we live in a just world, please try to witness the wreckage of The Central Park Five.  Like most White people, I had forgotten or never much thought about what happened to the brown-skinned teenage boys who were wrongly accused of raping the White woman known as the Central Park Jogger.

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