Friday Night Occupation

I open today's post with a folktale.

"Long ago, in the district of Ka'u on the Big Island of Hawaii, the ruler of that place decided to build a temple. This ali'i was hard and cruel, demanding hours of backbreaking labor from his subjects. Stone by stone the heiau was fitted together, while crops withered and children cried from hunger, and men and women whispered their displeasure with the ali'i in the dark of the sleeping huts.

Remember that this was in the old days, when a ruler was considered a direct descendant of the gods. An ali'i of the purest bloodlines was so sacred that if his shadow fell on you, you would be put to death for profaning him.

But still, the commoners whispered.

Finally the people completed the heiau, a mighty terrace on the shores of Punalu'u Beach, and their ruler was pleased with their accomplishment.

"All that remains," he said to his subjects, "is for you to place the image of the godhead on the altar."

And his subjects replied, "Oh King, you should put the sacred ki'i on the altar, for only you are worthy of its divine presence."

This seemed a good idea to the ali'i, so he stood beneath the great stone image of the god and pushed with all his might to slide it up the stone ramp set before the altar. His subjects took hold of the ropes wound round the ki'i to steady it as the ali'i pushed.

Then, just as he reached the top of the ramp, the commoners cut the ropes and crushed their ruler to death underneath their god.

And thus the people were freed."

I grew up in the district of Ka'u. The old proverbs of Hawaii call my district "land of the rebels," because Ka'u has a long history of taking shit from exactly no one, as this story demonstrates. I wanted to tell it not just because a tyrant get smooshed by a stone idol, even though that's pretty metal, but also to open a discussion about the responsibilities of those with power.

If you have more money that you or your family or your family's family can ever spend in a lifetime without resorting to crazy rich-people schemes like dipping all your yachts in gold or grafting metal to your skeleton so you can be Wolverine, don't you have a responsibility to spread that wealth around to those of us without gold yachts and Wolverines? If you have been blessed, like our Ka'u ali'i, with the social position necessary to make your workers tremble as you walk by, don't you have a responsibility to not be an utter cock about it?

These are the questions raised down at Occupy Wall Street in New York City's Zuccotti Park. I spent my Friday night at the occupation, where the commoners aren't quite at the point of cutting the ropes, but we're getting there.

On the ground, it's pretty awesome. I sang Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" with a group of Spanish-speaking poets who were all worked up about something. I've forgotten too much Spanish to know exactly what it was, but I stayed and listened for about ten minutes in fascination because it was the first time I saw the human microphone in action. Sound amplifiers aren't allowed in Zuccotti Park, so the speaker yells, "Mic check!" and everyone who can year him yells back, "Mic check!" and then everything the speaker says after that, the crowd repeats, so people standing in the back can hear what's going on.

Of course, you don't need sound amplifiers at the drumming circle, where the usual shirtless ragamuffins that spring up like mushrooms around social justice movements can be found banging on trash cans with two-by-fours. But this is New York, so there were also some trumpet players in business suits jammin along. I listened to them until they had to shut down at 6PM--new agreement between the drummers and the residents in the area--and then I went to the Tree of Life, where the Hare Krishnas had set up an altar by a scraggly tree. We all had some yoga and meditation and prayed for peace and healing, with an emphasis on our fellows harmed in Occupy Oakland. I talked to the people sitting next to me for a bit, a nice artist-type from Queens who had been down there with his tent for about a week, so he still smelled okay, and another Brooklynite visiting the occupation for the first time, just like me. And since this is New York, the guy on the other side of me on the bench was this massive Teamster with a great thick gut and a handlebar mustache chanting "Ra-ma-da-sun."

While we were meditating--yes, I'm a massive hippie, I went to the protest and parked myself in the meditation circle, and if I'd brought my drumsticks I would have thrown in with the drummer-mushrooms--this guy behind me was engaged in an intense art performance. He was in an orange prison jumpsuit with a black bag over his head, and he knelt motionless with his hands behind his back surrounded by hand-painted cardboard signs protesting the treatment of prisoners both domestically and overseas in secret prisons. My favorite sign read, "I don't want coins, I want change." And man, this guy did. Not. Move. He was kneeling on concrete, actually up on his knees and not resting back on his heels, for the whole time I was in the meditation circle, a good half hour, and he was still there when I left for the general assembly. That's what it's like down there. People are putting themselves in extreme discomfort--it's going to snow later--for causes they really, REALLY believe in.

And there are a LOT of causes. The meditation circle was for general peace and healing, but there were people protesting nuclear power, environmental degradation, fracking, the wars, high housing costs, student loans, the government, the wealthy. One tent cluster was "Queering the Occupation," which is cool. But all of these grievances are ultimately about the same thing: the people with the power and the money have too much of both, and they've forgotten that the commoners are the ones who make it possible for them to have that power and money. If you're a stockbroker making millions from trading IBM and technology stocks, what gives you the right to make 400 times more than the people working the retail stores that sell the product; or the factory workers in China putting the product together; or the miners in the Congo digging out the zinc and copper that makes up the guts of all our computers and cell phones? We achieve NOTHING on our own. Everything we achieve, everything we ARE, is thanks to our fellow human beings.

We live in a world so globally inter-connected that it is objectively wrong for a tiny fraction of the population to keep benefiting so hugely from the labor of the rest of us, while we scrape and struggle to just survive. This isn't about being jealous of gold-plated yachts or wishing we didn't have to work for a living; this is about working two jobs and still having to decide between paying for birth control or eating meat this month. Yes, this happened to me, right around the time I started this blog. I went with birth control and ate a lot of beans, which is a decision that no one should have to make in one of the richest, most powerful countries in the world. At the time, I was ashamed of it, and thought there must be something wrong with me, that I was being irresponsible with my money or being lazy and not trying hard enough. But there are hundreds of people down in Zuccotti Park, and thousands more across the United States who are in the exact same situation, and we're out there in parks and squares to say that it's not our fault. The poor will no longer be ashamed of our poverty. It's time for the wealthy to be ashamed of exploiting the poor.

The protesters are doing just fine down by Wall Street. They have a first aid station with free medical care, a comfort station giving out clothes, blankets, and condoms, a library, and a play space for children. One of the librarians told me they had more donations than they could fit in the park; the organizers have had to rent off-site storage space to handle the overflow. Volunteers handed out little cups of pretzels, chips, and of course granola, and I think someone was passing out pizza, too. It's going to snow today, which will be miserable for the people camping out down there, especially since the fire department took away everyone's heating elements and generators, but as far as Hoovervilles go, it's damn pleasant.

One thing that kind of bothered me: Occupy Wall Street is a total tourist attraction. Everywhere I went, people were taking pictures and video of the protesters, the signs, the drumming, the meditation circle--man, is there anything less conducive to cultivating inner peace than having flashbulbs constantly going off all around you? I didn't bring my camera, as you can see by the lack of pictures in this lengthy post, and I'm glad I didn't, because the camera allows you to separate yourself from the consequences of the situation. When you're a spectator and not a participator, you absolve yourself of responsibility toward the occupiers and their quest for social justice. I understand the need to document the movement for both posterity and so the authorities can't get away with any beat-downs or secret arrests, but I am neither an object of anthropological interest nor a subject for your "edgy" vacation album on Flickr. If you're going to photograph the proceedings, talk to the people in front of your lens, ask our permission to use our images, or at the very least be part of the human microphone and help spread the message. Don't just be a tourist, because that cheapens both the cause and the people involved by turning us into objects you can gawk at, instead of humans you identify with. In my experience, there's no quicker way to make someone or something an "other" than to photograph or film them without talking to them, because this allows you to build an opinion about them based on a silent, static image and your own prejudices. There is no truth down that path, take it from someone whose image is scattered around in world in various "Hawaiian Vacation" photo albums.

That's all I have to say for now. It's started snowing outside. I hope the occupiers get their generators back soon; that citizens stop having to choose between health care and food; that the health of our planet can take precedence over the desires of the wealthy few; that human resources can be utilized without human exploitation; and that we can have peace.

Aloha.

Tom Sawyer: An American Ballet

So why was I in the ghost metropolis of Kansas City, Missouri, marveling at the intact bronze-work and the lack of excrement in the flowerbeds? Why, to attend the world premiere--and inaugural performance in Kansas City's new opera house--of the Tom Sawyer ballet!

I've only ever seen one full length ballet, and I've seen it many, many times: The Nutcracker Suite. Every year at Christmas time in Hawaii, we'd go to the Aloha Theater to see the community ballet troupe perform the perennial classic, usually because we knew the little girl who was playing Clara. I always looked forward to it because I could hum all of the tunes. (I feel the same way about opera: if I can hum the tune, I'm interested, otherwise I'll probably fall asleep.) So I don't know as much about ballet as I do about, say, feminism or Batman, but I know just enough to get myself in trouble. In true Tom Sawyer fashion, I'm going to just charge on ahead and pretend like I know what I'm talking about, and we'll see what shenanigans ensue. That's the American way!

This is the the first full-length American ballet based on an American story, composed and choreographed by Americans. Ever. (Suck it, Russia!) I love the eminently-quotable Mark Twain--"Clothes make the man; naked people have little or no influence on society." He's considered the first truly American writer, so it's entirely appropriate to base the first American ballet on his classic "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." So much of the beauty and genius of Twain lies in the words themselves, so I imagine it was a challenge to adapt "Tom Sawyer" to an art form totally devoid of words. Look, Mum, no lyrics! I'd say the ballet succeeds in this goal, particularly in the second act, where Tom and Huck spend the night in a graveyard and witness a violent murder. All of the best dances come in the second act. Muff Potter's "Duet for a Man and his Flask" is my particular favorite. Why can't I look that graceful when I'm lurching around drunk in a cemetery? I'm also fond of the fight-dance between Injun Joe and Doc. It made me wish someone would make a Batman ballet, just so I could see more classy, violent men brawling and dying in a most beautiful fashion. From a technical standpoint, however, I'd have to say that the Dance of the Stone Angel is probably the highlight of that act. The music and movements are so perfectly aligned in their eeriness that even a layperson like myself can tell how truly original and inspired it is. That said, really all of the second act is just outstanding: the tombstones coming to life, the fireflies, the ghosts, the Sprite Circus, the zombies (the program says they're goblins, but when a gray stiff-limbed fellow clambers out of a grave and menaces a teenager, that's a damn zombie). This is the act that other ballet companies will choose to perform when they can't do the full-length version.

The highlights of the first act are the opening scene--Tom tricking his friends to whitewash Aunt Polly's fence, possibly the most famous moment in all of American literature--and Tom and Becky's pas de deux in the school classroom. Appropriately, Tom and Becky's other pas de deux in the cave is the highlight of the third act. We heard a lot of the music for this ballet before we saw any of the choreography, and Big Sister said of Tom and Becky's theme, "I can just picture that part of their dance when they're across the stage and fluttering their fingers as they run toward each other." And that's exactly what happened in the ballet! Good call, Past Big Sister.

I feel nice and patriotic about joining the international ballet scene with a traditional American ballet of our very own. As for hum-worthiness, that prize goes to the Mississippi theme, or as I like to think of it, the Great American West song, appearing as the overture for the third act and reprised in the final number. If I was slightly more tech-savvy, I'd post a sound bite for everyone, but I don't know how to do that, and writing, "da-da-da-dada, da-dadada-da-da-DADA!" doesn't really capture the breadth and majesty of the music. You'll just have to wait until it comes to a city near you!

And now, the after-party! Here we all are, Big Sister, her Fiance, Mum, and Big Island Rachel in a halter dress and my great-grandmother's rhinestone jewelry. That dress I'm wearing may look nice, but a week later I've still got a bruise on my neck from the halter-bra I had to wear with it. Oh, the trials of the well-titted woman!

Kansas City--where'd everyone go?

I've been around. Lima, London, Prague, Rome, I've seen my share of cities, and just like people and particularly beloved stuffed animals, they all have their own personalities. Honolulu is a drunk chick past her prime dancing alone in front of the speakers at a bar. Spokane is a fat guy who wears his good sweat pants to the Arby's in case he runs into a potential lady friend. Lima is a scrawny ten-year-old with no shirt and an AK-47. New York is a lot of fun when she does a couple bumps in the bathroom with you at an art opening, but she'll shiv you as soon as look at you if you're not careful.

Now I want to have a conceptual Halloween party where everyone has to come as a different city. I'd come as Lima. Smear fake blood all over my ear and neck like my step-grandmother when a beggar reached in her car window and yanked her earring off. That place was harsh.

So I've been around, and I have to say that Kansas City, Missouri was one of the strangest cities I've ever visited.

There's nobody there. No people on the street, no cars on the roads. All of these great parking places and empty real estate, and nobody there to use it. But what's really strange is how clean and well-kept this empty city is. No trash on the streets or in the gutters; no vomit or dog shit in the floor beds. There's all of these lovely late 19th century and Art Deco buildings, as preserved as a Hot Pocket, that no one has graffitied or gouged with knives. All of the bronze decorations on the fountains and street lamps are still intact, not stripped down for the scrap metal. And lofts--lofts for sale and rent everywhere! But no dogs, no strollers, no people, no cars. It's like walking around a movie set before the cameras get there, or like the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.

I exaggerate, of course there were a few people on the street, but a LOT less than even Honokaa or Naalehu on the Big Island, and those towns have a couple hundred people living there compared to over a million who are supposed to live in Kansas City. We could walk around an entire city block and see maybe three other people.

And again, the lack of people wasn't as surprising as the quality of the infrastructure. It would be one thing if it was a dying city and the whole place was a shithole held together with duct tape and collective prayers of the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce. But this was a nice place, with immaculate landscaping and a brand spanking new opera house in the center of town. Roger Daltry was playing the concert hall on Thursday night! Kansas City is not podunk or small apples. (quick aside, New York City got it's nickname "the Big Apple" from traveling acts who called the towns they stopped in "apples," and since New York was the biggest stop on the itinerary, it was the biggest apple. The more you know!)

At the after party on Friday, all any of us out-of-towners from Kailua-Kona, New York, Seattle and Miami could talk about was the emptiness of Kansas City. We all agreed that it was, without a doubt, the weirdest city any of us had ever visited.

Good barbecue, though.

A Wedding!

The BF and I have been to at least one wedding a year the whole time we've been together, and until last Sunday, all of them had been on my side of the family. We've been to a wedding at Disneyland where the guests were given Mickey Mouse ears instead of champagne; a sunset wedding at Hulihee Palace on the Big Island; and a hillbilly wedding at a campground in Idaho. The reception was held in a barn and my cousin Ted got drunk and fell into the bonfire, but he wasn't hurt so it's okay to laugh about it. Actually, that whole wedding was a pretty accurate picture of my family. The catering was barbecue, we tapped the keg before sundown and everyone brought out their car whiskey to pass around while the little kids threw things in the fire to see what would burn. Good times.

I imagine the BF felt the same way at his brother's wedding on Sunday. It was the first wedding on his side of the family, and also the first Jewish wedding I've ever attended, which meant instead of the couple's first dance, we did the communal Horah dance and lifted people up on chairs. Every single person who went up on the chair was gripping that thing for dear life, so I'm guessing it's kinda scary, though not having gone up in the chair myself, I can't say for sure. Still--white knuckles, every one of them.

There was also a LOT more talking than any other wedding I've been to. Something like six or eight people got up to make a speech, and each of them had two or three typed pages of notes. They were all very good speeches, because it was a crowd of hyper-educated Jewish East Coasters, and I gather this is pretty usual for this type of gathering, but I'm not going to lie--I liked the dancing best.

The location was tits, by the way, a vineyard outside of Charlottesville, Virginia with polo horses in the pasture next door. Waiting for the ceremony to begin, a bunch of us went down to the fence to pet them and take pictures of each other with the Blue Ridge mountains in the background. Here I am! I clean up real good, don't I? You'd never guess I was from hillbilly stock.
The only part of that trip that wasn't so much fun was the airplane ride. Now, it wasn't the smallest plane I've ever been on. That honor goes to the 12-seat puddle jumper I once took from Moloka'i to Oahu where the pilot requested that we all "lean forward" during take-off. But this plane, a two-propeller 34-seater, got the Indiana Jones theme music stuck in my head for days. All we needed was a couple of brown fedoras and the yellow map with the red line moving across it, and we'd have had ourselves a real adventure on our hands!

Mazel tov.

The Poetry Beat

One of my favorite writers is Diane di Prima. You might not have heard much about her. She was a Beat Poet--still is, I guess, does a person stop being part of a movement when the movement has moved on to other things?Anyway, you wouldn't have heard much about her because all of the other famous and "important" Beat Poets were dudes, and she was writing at a time when there wasn't really any societal or artistic freedom for women.

I'm considering Diane di Prima today because last night, my poetry teacher took me to an event hosted by her feminist poetry collective at the Dixie Club in SoHo. (There's no part of that sentence I don't like.) They showed a 26-minute indie short film called "The Poetry Beat," about the life and work of di Prima, which included interviews with women who knew her back-when, women who were influenced by her work, and di Prima herself, now living in San Francisco with her poems, watercolors, and little yellow dog. There were poetry performances by di Prima at all stages of her life, from when she was a well-titted young woman with golden-red hair, until today, still well-titted at 77 but a bit grayer in the hair.

My favorite anecdote was from a woman who hosted di Prima at a commune in Maine one year. The commune had 8 children under the age of 2, so when di Prima got a bit of royalty money from one of her books, she celebrated by buying the commune women a crate of Pampers diapers (until then, they'd been using and endlessly washing cloth diapers). The women loved it, but the men complained about how much waste disposables created. "It was an easy way for them to be down on Diane without calling her a pushy woman," said the commune manager.

I like that story because it illustrates the problem I have with the Beat movement. On the one hand, I like the writing that came out of it, but on the other hand, some of its more celebrated figures were raging misogynists. Jack Kerouac can go hell as far as I'm concerned. His book On the Road made me cross-eyed with rage. It's supposed to be about these guys who are all hip and free and not tied down by societal bonds, but they're constantly getting women pregnant and then abandoning their families to hitchhike across the country. Freedom bought for the price of a woman's suffering. Disgusting, I say!

Diane di Prima really gets it, though. I wish I had time to find some of her poetry to put up here, but my break is almost over and I guess I should get back to working for the Man so I can earn my cheese and waffle money.

Hurricane in Brooklyn

Tornado, earthquake, a tsunami if you count the one that came from Japan to my relatives on the Big Island, and now a hurricane. This is shaping up to be a really weird year for Big Island Rachel. No wonder church attendance was so good at the Catholic church on Court Street today.

Being from Hawaii, I have a Girl Scout badge in Hurricane Preparedness--Survival Camp at Kilohana, 1997--and good thing, too, because my little perfectly-Rachel-sized apartment on the East River ended up being in the evacuation zone. My Daddio left me a voicemail AND sent an email telling me to head for the hills and "don't do that family thing where we say, 'What is this strom you speak of, I can handle it!'" It was sound advice from the parental unit to the latest generation of that family the other kids were warned never to play with. I confess that I did have a passing fancy to stay in my apartment just to see if I could handle it, but when Daddio tells me to get out, I know it's serious.

Fortunately, me Mum was in town and staying a few blocks inland out of the flood zone, so I spent the night with her after hurricane proofing my apartment. Here is my "go-bag." Sure, it has all the usual stuff: passport, computer, three books, two graphic novels, five comic books (my worst nightmare is being stuck on a deserted island with nothing to read), blankets, clothes. I also brought Spam, couscous, my teddy bear (seen squashed up against the plastic bag) a chocolate donut that has been in my cupboard for so long it qualifies as a scientific experiment, and candles, except the only candles I had were tiny little Chanukah candles, so I ended up having to bring my menorah, too, since it was the only candle holder that would fit them. And of course, you can see my blue rubber boots there. A girl on the street yelled, "A shout-out to all my sisters rocking the boots and shorts!" I was the height of fashion that day, even without a bra.

I hung up my heavy winter curtains and covered the body--I mean, all of my clothes with my winter down comforter. If I'd been more clever about it, I would have simply lifted the closet rod off the wall with all the clothes still on it, but as you can see by the bare rod resting on the heap, that eminently practical idea didn't occur to me until it was too late. I figured that if the worst did happen and my windows burst apart in the gale like deadly flowers of glass and mayhem, all my expensive and fancy clothes (not always correlated, my fanciest gown was only $10 at the Hilo second-hand store) would have a modicum of protection.

I also filled up the bathtub. I got to impress a lot of people at work on Friday by informing them that the bathtub full of water, a standard preventative measure when a hurricane is bearing down on you, was not really for drinking, but rather for flushing the toilet in the event that the electricity went out and the toilet couldn't pump water into the tank. For reasons unknown to me, New York City water is a gentle shade of teal. I'm not sure if this picture really captures that soothing, sea-like hue, but trust me, that shit is teal.Saturday night was spent on the stoop of Mum's sublet, drinking wine and singing all the songs we used to sing when she drove me to high school in the morning. I think I slept through the actual hurricane, which didn't pass over us until 2 or 3 in the morning. It passed quickly and had downgraded to a mere tropical storm by that time anyway, but Mum said the winds still sounded like a freight train as they roared through.This morning, we went to inspect the apartment. The windows are all unbroken, but two of the three windows had leaked and there were a few puddles on the floor. The curtains in the bedroom were so heavy with water they'd pulled the curtain rod down. But underneath the down comforter, the body--I mean, my fancy clothes were bone dry. Everything is coming up Milhouse. Thanks, Girl Scouts of America!

And the bathtub? Totally empty. I always suspected that my bathtub plug was slightly defective. Oh, well. If there had been serious enough flooding that the power had gone out (all New York City power lines are buried in the ground), my riverside apartment would have had sewage and river water backing up into the pipes, and flushing the toilet would have been an exercise in futility. Rank, rotting futility.

Here are some tree branches that fell over. Fellow curious Brooklynites for scale. So long, Irene. Don't let the doorknob hit ya where the door should've bit ya.

Earthquake in Brooklyn

The Big Island gets little tremors all the time. We're volcanic. It happens. It's not supposed to happen in New York City. If I'd known I would have to deal with earthquakes and tornadoes in addition to fucking WINTER, I might have just stayed in Hawaii with my earthquakes and tsunamis. At least there we have perpetual summer.

Virginia just had a 5.9 earthquake that we felt up here in Brooklyn, first as a maybe-it's-just-me tremor and then as a holy-building-evacuation-Batman shake that left us milling about in the parking lot for about half an hour in some pretty gorgeous late summer weather. So it wasn't all bad. I was standing by the office printer with a piece of paperwork and thought at first that I was having a sensory flashback to the great Hawaii earthquake of 2006. But then the hangers on the coat rack started to clink together and the floor began to sway like a boat (we're on the top floor, six stories up, so sway is actually a good thing. Sway saves. Brittle breaks.). My coworker told whoever was on the phone with him, "It's an earthquake, get out of the building," hung up, and looked at me and snapped, "Get moving!" Combat veterans: they always know what to do.

It's a good thing we just had a fire drill a couple of weeks ago. Everyone scurried briskly down the stairs, making loud human-noises similar to wildebeasts evading lions on the savannah. "Don't panic, don't trip, don't puke," I told myself. Self, all excellent suggestions. I was one flight of stairs away from the outside world when this guy in front of me suddenly stops, turns around, and says, "I'm going back to help get Admissions out of their office!" I shoved right past him, because Hero, I'm too young and pretty to die! Let others perish, I've too much to live for!

I got out into the parking lot, looked down, and realized that the only thing I brought with me was the piece of paperwork I'd been clutching when the quake began. I felt like finding the student who gave me the paper and saying, "When disaster struck, yours was the only thing I thought to save!" I didn't feel too embarrassed, because one of our student workers was in the file room before she evacuated, and she brought the paper she'd been holding at the time as well. And it was one of my emails! Bonding moment!

Hanging out in the parking lot with everyone from my building was actually pretty fun. If we'd had a couple of kegs and a grill, we could have made an afternoon of it. Alas, they made us go back inside and work for another hour. We received emails and text messages telling us that "the buildings are secure and workers are to resume all activity." So I went back to copying my sexual organs on the Xerox.

You know. Like ya do.

Natural disasters--I use the word loosely, I don't know if much was actually damaged, especially not this far away from the epicenter--have a fun way of bringing people together. It doesn't matter who's the boss of who, or who makes more money than who (whom?). If that building goes down, peasant and noble are squished alike.

Terror of the wrath of the gods: the great equalizer.