Where I'm At

Been a bit negligent in my revelations and recollections of life on this side of the Earth. So here's where I'm at:
- Traveled to the waterfalls of Mt Elgon on the 9th grade trip where we worked for a day in a rustic clinic with a patient intake of over 1000. Seeing that they only operate the clinic once every few weeks, they finally had to shut the doors after running out of medicine - can't quite shake the sound of the metal doors slamming people away like cattle.
- Still reckoning with the juxtaposition of dreams/hopes/expectations/what is/what could be.
- Lobbying for a black-box space so that drama might thrive at the school since I'm currently teaching in various classrooms around the campus (drama ain't drama when you teach it in the math room).
- Trying a new method of acceptance and nonattachment, as in, "I love your enthusiasm today..." rather than "Stop yelling and listen to each other..."
- Rehearsing for a dance/theatre piece to be performed this weekend at the National Theatre - it's about life after Obama (combination of contemporary dance, documentary theatre style monologues, and good old fashioned cheerleader exuberance).
- Engaging in collaborations both as an artist and teacher outside the school walls as I search for ways to integrate Uganda into both my experience and that of the students.
- Studying Butoh dance/theatre with a Japanese master visiting Uganda - learning to walk to the rhythm of the music inside and slowly disappear into no dance... no self.

So that's where I'm at: making friends, making meaning, making theatre, making progress, making mistakes, making choices, making chai, making it all up as I go along.
It's quite a ride this life... you never really know what you're signing on for - the reasons we use to justify decisions may in time prove meaningless, usurped by a truth too profound to envision. Who knows what will come of it all.

Some pics

The Prime of Creation

The prime of creation:
6 dancers
3 white and 3 black
3 American and 3 Ugandan
all born of hope and possibility
choreograph a cheer to the 44th President
spelling the letters of change with glee
bare feet stomping out the past
on the earth that mothered us all
before continents shifted into difference
and we became "I" and "you"
the rhythm is old
the words are new
sweat drips hands clap bodies writhe
ecstatic beginnings of an uncertain end
where once-upon-a-time a preacher dreamed
stands reality smiling

*this poem describes a dance piece that will be a part of Uganda's National Dance Week the last weekend in February - yes I'll be taking to the stage in a dance/drama performance!

Death at Dawn

i woke up to a bright pink dawn
the magenta sun breaching the periwinkle gray cloud cover
highlighting the glory of nature
only to find a large beetle flipped on its back on my bathroom floor
despite my desperate attempts to right him
he had resigned himself to slow death
waving his goodbyes with twitching limbs
reminding me of the creep of time
perhaps i might have helped him on his way
but i wasn't in the mood to play god

Musings on the System

still seeking the poetry in a day ordered by the school bell
students filing about like soldiers
armed with apathy in place of guns
just as deadly
to the soul

seen them itching the wound where imagination once thrived
mourning the lost limb of creativity
numbing to the fate of desks and grades
calculators and connotation and correction in red ink
like a blood sentence of achievement

i too have barked like a drill sgt
clapped my hands like thunder
shook my head in disapproval
asking what happened to my former self

what are we breeding in these systems?
is there another way?
can we have order without orders?
can we break the 4th wall without 4 walls to break?
can we leave the answer unattended
and let the question take the lead?

no, it is not all despair
there is brilliance and delight
giggling in the halls, kissing in the shadows
the gentle slam of a body into a locker
the hand raised high with insight
the pride of something learned

and yet i wonder
because "why" is a gift
i never take for granted

Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall flies on the eagle, her white hair spiraling loose from its low bun, bristling in the wind of wings and the call of the chimpanzee.
She is slight and sweet with thin lips, kind eyes, and long limbs reminiscent of her constant subjects and her closest friends.
At the age of four, she hid in a haystack for hours to discover how the hen lays her eggs since explanation could not parallel witness.
Even Jane waited tables to save up enough money to board a ship and wave goodbye to life before dreams came true.
Her mother camped beside her in the jungles of Africa on her first journey, for how could a girl of 23 go unaccompanied into the wild.
Jane wonders where indigenous wisdom has gone – why the elders no longer meet to discuss the fate of the world; why each decision is made based on selfish immediate gratification.
She laments that we have somehow lost the connection between the clever brain and the human heart.
Jane says hope is a seed growing into a shoot, powerful enough to break through brick walls with its sheer will to survive.
She is a believer in the indomitable human spirit and the resilience of all things livng.

Half-baked

I've reconciled myself to the fact that this half year will be half-baked. Everything I attempt will not be fully realized as I'm functioning within the constraints of a system I've not had the privilege to devise. But I am determined suddenly to use the next few years here to design what I want out of drama - to start fresh next year with the potential created by this half-baked half year... because everyone likes a cookie even if it's undercooked and in its nascent form there is still the sweetness of what could be once fully gestated in the oven of my imagination. I remember my musings on "could be" in graduate school - the world an open possibility once the mind can grapple with what if, a blossom of creativity, a birth of possibility. I hear West Side Story lilting in my mind.