Weirdly, I find myself thinking about the phrase ‘time flies’ and how there must be a better phrase to express how quickly we move through time. As Treebeard from LOTR says: us two-legged creatures are always rushing about and wanting to hurry things up.
And so, I find myself in Wednesday and thinking of how my Monday and Tuesday were so quickly filled with things like seeing my youngest son to the airport. I still keep seeing him as this curly-haired mischievous toddler, only now he’s taller than I am. He still is curly-haired and thankfully, he is still mischievous.
Yesterday, I was looking through some old photos from when the boys were little beings. I came across pictures of us taking picnics in our backyard. I thought of that one summer when we couldn’t take a holiday, so we set up the tent and our eldest spent the better part of a week camping. I sent these pictures to my eldest and he sent me a message saying how those were some of the best times ever.
We think it’s giving our kids everything that will make them happy, but I don’t think they noticed how our holidays were always truncated–not two weeks away like other families but one mid-week (which was more within our budget). Once, we managed to score a great midweek at this out of the way holiday park with a whirlpool bathtub. That was a feast for the boys. I think I stressed about how to get there, but now that I look back, I can’t help but smile. Good times.
On Tuesday, I had my regular CT-scan and they also took some blood. Bah. I know this is all part of it and I did sign up for this trial, but I am looking forward to when these appointments become more of a quarterly or twice yearly thing. (Here I am thinking again about time)
I want to write about Sunday’s celebration, but at present, I’m finding it hard to find the right words. I think about why I feel I should write about it and realise that this is a thing I have put upon myself. And so, it’s something I can let go of. I recognise that some things aren’t meant to be written about so quickly. I can move back and forth in time, thinking on this and that. Dipping into a book, thinking again, writing down notes, going back in memory. Breathing. Listening to my heart. Paying attention to what’s going on in the body and in the spirit. Time isn’t rushing forward. It’s just there waiting for me to step into it.
I breathe again.
I hope that you who read this will step into that pocket of time where you can breathe. Listen. Pay attention. And then breathe again. Blessings and peace. Maraming salamat for stopping by.
It’s been quite a hectic week as we head towards the closing event for the LIMBO workshops. FramerFramed is hosting LIMBO for this event and Maison the Faux has invited LIMBO to make use of their podiums. When we first talked about this closing event, we thought of creating a similar atmosphere to the LIMBO workshops–intimate and cozy, with time to check in individually and converse. But as the programme bloomed and volunteers raised their hands, we now have a full-blown programme complete with a Waacking Dance Workshop and a pole dance presentation from one of LIMBO’s participants.
I do hope that there will be space for cozy conversations as being in FramerFramed does mean that it’s always possible to wander away from the main space for a tete-a-tete.
I heard back from one of the PhD students who visited LIMBO sometime ago with the hope of creating a space with a similar vibe to LIMBO. I remember that we had a lovely call where we talked about possibilities and what can be done to make the space feel welcoming and safe and how presence and intentionality are key elements to such spaces. It was lovely to hear about the success of their project and also to hear that this particular student was able to complete their thesis. I’m hoping we meet again as I would love so much to hear what it was like for them and also to compare notes.
LIMBO’s future is a bit up in the air at the moment as the last grant request wasn’t successful, but I’m sure that whether it’s in this form or another form, LIMBO will continue on and the people who make up the community will find ways to keep meeting and supporting one another.
I also think it’s good for facilitators and organisers to have room to self-reflect, to recuperate and to think on what kinds of spaces we might want to be in and how we would like to continue working and supporting communities in the future.
While I am looking through the fiction work that I have on my drive, my main thought at this period is thematising and gathering together the nonfiction writing that I’ve done. Part of which is almost done as I finally managed to divide the themes into five sections. There remains the matter of collecting the pieces that belong with each theme and then perhaps editing/expanding/completing them.
There have been times when I’ve felt like I was less than because I haven’t completed my novel yet. I sometimes felt that my voice was of less value than the voices of those who had won awards or been recognised as great authors. But a beloved friend of mine sent me such a heartwarming message reminding me that it’s not writing a bestselling book that makes our voices matter in the world. Dear reader, I cried listening to that audio message.
I was reminded of the joy that blossoms in my heart when I hear someone share a story or a poem or a piece of art accompanied by story. There was this one woman who shared how they’d never imagined they would be able to write and express themselves because they’d constantly been told their grammar was always wrong. I was like: “screw grammar. That part you can worry about if your objective is getting published. But now, at this point where you only want to share a story, just write.”
Often, we believe that we can’t because we’re told we haven’t mastered the language well enough. But I can testify to how if you can write in the same way that you would say it, a good editor will help you polish and refine your work so what you want to say comes across in the way you meant it. Don’t use chatgpt or whatever google translate. It won’t get your meaning across. Write it in your own words. We keep talking about decolonisation, but we still keep wringing ourselves into spaghetti forms to fit into something we are not.
Let language (esp the English) flow in the way it flows in your head. When I’m writing in the space of my stories, I’m not thinking English the way USians or British people think or write English. I’m thinking and writing English the way I hear the people in my head speak it. And that’s English that reflects the different influences on my tongue. Like how my son will say: You have a very Filipino accent. But my brother will say: your accent is no longer Filipino. And a Dutch friend says: Oh, you sound American. Lol. Yes. I have a mongrel tongue and I also do have a tendency to absorb the way friends who have grown up in different non-white settings speak. Those are the people on my tongue and in my ears. So yeah. It’s different.
At the first workshop I gave for LIMBO, I said to the participants–as we all do not come from the same language stream, don’t make yourself write in English. Don’t make yourself write in Dutch. Write in the language that comes to you naturally. We will understand the emotion. And we always do.
Anyway, I was intending to write about LIMBO’s upcoming booklet launch and somehow this post has turned into an all out discussion of me with myself as I think about writing. During the Spring School Co-creation Lab at the VU (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), I asked Saba Hamzah who is a Yemeni poet to read to us from work she’d written. It was a memorable moment to be listening to her read a piece she’d written in the three languages in which she lives. Yemeni, Dutch and English. To me such work is a reflection of the world we live in. We are multi-language, multi-culture, multi-faceted. Our work reflects that too. (Please click on Saba’s name to get to her website.)
Thank you for taking time to read this “hak op de tak” post. May you find joy in the small moments of everyday.
LIMBO’s booklet launch is this coming Sunday, 20th of July. Click on the image to get to the announcement.
This cover for LIMBO’s second booklet was designed by the wonderful visionary artist Ariya.
**I’ve picked a new book to read and possibly write about. Check the sidebar.
The Clarion West Write-a-thon started two days ago and so I thought I’d write about a performance/installation that I visited this week.
On Wednesday, I went to FramerFramed to see and imbibe of Maison the Faux’s installation/performance of The Tail. The installation will remain in FramerFramed up to the 17th of August, but if I understand correctly, the last live performance was yesterday.
Disney has taken Andersen’s tale and turned it into this romanticised fairytale, wiping it clean of all the things that have been labeled as not child-friendly and replacing the true ending with a fairytale (and more commercial) happy ending.
In Andersen’s tale, the Little Mermaid’s transformation comes at a great cost and with great suffering and (spoilers) unlike in the Disney Version, Andersen’s Little Mermaid doesn’t have a happy ending. There has been some discussion around whether the romantic version where the Little Mermaid sacrifices herself for true love by throwing herself into the waves and becoming the foam we see on the water is the ending that Andersen had in mind or whether he was made to rewrite a darker ending to one that would be more palatable as a fairytale.
I had to think about this because during the performance of The Tail, one of the personages repeats the line “do you want it darker” as a refrain to a song. If indeed you want it darker, there are darker possibilities to Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.
But The Tail is more than a retelling of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. It goes way beyond that. It is an intensely immersive and engaging performance which made me think not just about the fairytale that inspired this installation. It made me think about the pressures that are put on queer and trans bodies to conform to an expectation. What does it mean to be in the body? What does it mean to embody and for the body to be grounded in the self? For whose sake do we transform when we choose to do so? I also like that there is no prince in this telling. It’s a great reminder that transformation isn’t to win the approval of anyone.
One of the aspects that I found effective as well as immersive was the way in which The Tail is presented. We (the audience) follow the personages from stage to stage. I thought this was a really good way of drawing in the audience and making them feel more part of rather than simply as bystanders watching. In a manner of speaking, the audience becomes a player too by becoming part of the world occupied by the three who are on the podium. One of the disadvantages of this though is how it makes it kind of challenging when you’re not as tall as most people.
At one part of the performance, the players enter an enclosed podium. I’m pretty short, so I couldn’t see a lot of what was going on when they were at the entrance. I tried raising my phone up high, but all I could get were the heads of people crowded around the door. So, I decided to distance myself a bit. (There’s something to reflect on doing that as well.) From the distance, I saw that the screens around this enclosed podium give those outside a view of what’s going on inside. The small circles around this enclosure were actually peepholes through which viewers can look and catch a glimpse of what’s going on in there. Reflecting on it, I rather liked this construction where the world outside can’t see all, as it felt to me like a silent narrative running alongside the narrative that is revealed to us.
As I sit here thinking about The Tail, I recognise how everything that was in place was done with intention. It’s this kind of intentionality that makes The Tail a joy to contemplate on.
Maison the Faux’s installation can still be viewed at FramerFramed up to the 17th of August. If you do get a chance to witness a live performance of this installation elsewhere, I highly recommend going because this review can’t capture the feeling of being there in the middle of it.
I hope you enjoyed reading this short reflection on this performance/installation. As I write this, the sun has just come out and I’m writing in its light. May your week be filled with light and joy and blessings always.
I’m thinking again today about Aminata Cairo’s visit with us in LIMBO and the talk she gave about what it means to hold space for one another and how while we long for safe spaces, even such spaces can be fraught because of how we are. So, how do we hold space for one another? How do we make it possible for us to continue to be in community and to share space and make it feel safe and joyful and loving for all who share the space?
It’s something I’ve been thinking on as recent conversations keep pointing me in this direction, including one where I inadvertently created some discomfort because I wasn’t intentional. I think about intentionality and mindfulness and how these words are more than buzz words. I mean, the wellness industry has hijacked mindfulness so the word has kind of become one of those buzzwords–it’s not wrong usage, but its meaning has kind of diluted.
To be mindful is to be present in the moment and therapists often use being mindful to refer to therapy techniques such as meditation. Often when we speak of mindfulness, we think: Oh, let me do breathing exercises or let me do grounding work or let me be present in my body. And people then say: I’m practicing mindfulness. These are all great things to do but mindfulness isn’t just that.
To be mindful is to be conscious of how our words and our actions ripple and echo in spaces. Our actions and words, even the emotions we express if done without intention can hurt even when hurt or harm is the farthest from our minds. I tend to be less mindful when I’m tired or when I’m in a hurry or when I’m distracted. It’s why I try to put away my phone when I know I’m going to meet people. It’s okay if I don’t get that selfie. I was fully present and focused on the person I was meeting. (Although I’m kicking myself now because I should have thought about asking for one, but I just didn’t think about it.)
So what happens when discomfort arises in communal spaces? How do we resolve the discomfort? I think the best starting point is to start from knowing where the other person is coming from. Was it intentional? Or was it simply thoughtlessness? It helps when we raise the point and say: hey, could you be a little more mindful about this matter?
How do we respond when we cause the discomfort?
In a conversation with a very good friend, we talked about the discomfort that arises when we feel that something is happening and we can’t put our finger on it. It’s similar to discomfort that arises when white people enter spaces meant for people of colour and proceed to take the lead or take a positions of leadership even when they are not asked to do so. What do we do about that discomfort?
The question I would ask is: are we able to live with that discomfort? Can we put it aside and still be our full self in the space? If we can’t, do we feel safe enough and seen enough to open a conversation about it? For the person faced with this kind of honesty, the question becomes how do we receive it? Because honestly, it’s not enough to say I’m sorry. Sorry is just a first step, the next step is doing better. (Hence, self-examination.) As I say to my son, making mistakes is inevitable in life. What’s important is what we do when we make them and whether we learn from them or proceed to just do them all over again. And sometimes self-examination means removing yourself from the space and allowing people space to breathe. I know, it feels drastic. But it’s not for others to appease me if I am the cause of discomfort. It’s my job to do the work so I can be in community again.
I’m writing as I process these things because I want to make space in my head to write about Maison the Faux’s The Tail (not giving away spoilers) and I also want to make space to write about Nisi Shawl’s excellent Everfair. I’m 40% in! And as one of my dear friends said with a laugh: “Rochita, this is how I know you are reading on a kindle reader because you don’t tell me what page you’re on but you’re telling me you’re so many percent into a book.” (You can laugh now. Times have certainly changed.)
If you’d like to sponsor me during the Clarion West write-a-thon, here’s the link:
Sometime in August, the English version of the story published in De Komeet is going up on Philippine Genre Stories. I’m very grateful to Mia Tijam for her patience with me as replies have been often delayed. I have a tendency to think I have done things and find out I haven’t. Chemo-brain sounds like an easy excuse, but this tendency is common with a lot of people who’ve gone through chemotherapy. It gets better with time and the longer you’re away from the last chemotherapy treatment, the more clarity you get as well. So I am very thankful for the gentle nudges and the patience coming from editors during the period I was in treatment as well as the period of recovery.
The publication of this story works like a jumpstart of sorts. I started thinking about the works in progress that I still had on my drive and when the call to join the Clarion West Write-a-thon landed in my inbox, I carefully considered whether I would be able to do it. A conversation I had with Marielle (Wegbree)made me think that the write-a-thon would give me an easy way to slide back into writing with some accountability. I thought that I could at least do some book reviews on the blog as a measure of how much work I was doing. But in the process, I found myself returning to my one drive. I had this idea that the drafts I’d been working on were still quite messy.
My first thinking was to go back to writing in the world of Raissa and Anghe. But somehow I found myself pulled back into the Body Cartographer’s world. (If anyone wants to read Song of the Body Cartographer, it’s still available online.) After my first round with radiation therapy, I started working on this long piece again except somehow it felt almost confronting. Mainly because it starts with the main character waking up after a moment of crisis, after a near death experience that changes her so much that she is no longer exactly as she was. Yep. I wrote those parts before I was diagnosed and continuing to write those parts felt too close, I had to put it away.
But now, six months after being declared in remission and after being told that the last treatment worked, I find myself drawn back into that world and I recognise the place my main character is at. Having a deeper understanding of what it takes to recover from crises and how life-altering that can be helps me to also see where I was making the journey to recovery too smooth for my character. But I also see how this crises doesn’t define my character. It has to become part of her life if she’s to really live her life. And I am reminded again of my oncologist telling me: you are more than cancer.
We are more than the physical challenges that we face. We are more than the crises we have had to overcome. We are more than our traumas and our illnesses. We are more than that. And so I want my main character to reach that realisation too because loss has been very much a part of this character’s life but those losses do not define her. Instead, I hope that she emerges stronger and more herself.
I’m thinking about worlds today because I’m going back to the team I’m working with and I think we are going to set world parameters or at least I hope we are. I would very much like to get away from the D&D model and I am hoping that this is a shared vision. If it’s not then I have to think on whether I’m okay with that and how to go about that. Of the games that I’ve played, the one that appeals the most to me is a game built on Belonging outside Belonging. I love it for the spontaneous creativity that it gives rise to–and yes unpredictable silliness which even if you know it’s silly, you just go with it because it is fun to be silly with friends.
So I suppose July is building up to be a month of lots of thinking and reading and writing happening. Something I would not have been able to predict a couple of months ago when I was down in the dumps about not being able to write. I am evidence that the Recovery and Balance programme pays off in spades.
Finally, if you’d like to support my quest to raise funds for Clarion West, please feel free to visit my fundraising page and press the donate button. I would love for us to go over our combined goal as that means more support for the workshop and the writers who will be going there. WordPress doesn’t seem to support embedding my page, but here’s the link to it:
Thanks so much for taking the time to read. I am quietly surprised when I discover people have read what I write here. I hope it offers some food for thought, some inspiration or anything that you can take with you on the journey. Blessings and peace and thank you for dropping by.
Traveling to and from destinations is helping me catch up with my reading list. I find it sometimes surprising when I recognise how much traveling I’m doing. I live very close to a train station and from here it’s easy to catch a train to Amsterdam or Utrecht or Rotterdam or The Hague. I haven’t been to The Hague in a while and my library card has lapsed, but I want to return to writing and reading in the Royal Library sometime late in July after the projects I’m involved with have moved into the summer holiday phase. I also want to think more around what I want to do when the season starts up again. What is necessary to me? What do I want to keep on doing? What do I need to let go of and what do I need to prioritise?
I’m currently working together with a team that was put together with the goal of creating a table top rpg. It’s a process that’s new to most of us, but one of our team is an experienced Game Master and that helps the process along as we think around gameplay and building something that is interesting, fun and hopefully thought-provoking. We’ve been thinking around themes that we want to see as well as the kind of world and stories we hope to explore.
It’s a process that I needed time to wrap my head around as perhaps the biggest difference between writing alone and writing in the team is the work of coming to agreement. There’s also the process of making space for how we will not always agree and how we are fine with that.
We might fall into thinking that co-creation is some harmonious zen process. It can be, but by large it depends on the size of the team, it depends on the kinds of participants and the dynamics in a group, it depends on a lot of factors so co-creation can be as zen or as gnarly and messy as all get out, but it needs to be what it needs to be and there is no way to go around that and effectively co-create. I realise that going through the gnarly mess is a good thing. It’s good when we are able to show our faces to each other, to say: I don’t agree with you on this and I don’t want things to go in this direction and I actually would like to go elsewhere. When that kind of freedom exists, that holds a promise of something extraordinary coming into being.
Co-creation is a process that takes time because when we are creating together, it means we have to give a little and be willing to compromise in order to reach our common goal. I don’t think it can be hurried along and I think the best thing we take away from such engagements is how creating together allows us to quickly move away from surface and shallow niceties into spaces where we feel safe and seen and where we know that just because our thoughts and ideas are not shared by everyone, it doesn’t mean they are of lesser importance.
[Some questions I’m thinking around in relation to the work and the projects I’m working on: Do we want to build community? Do we want to share stories? Do we want to heal ourselves? What do we need and what do we want and how do we get there?) ]
At the heart of it, co-creation has to do with relationships. It’s related to how we’re entangled and connected to one another. If we are open and ready to make space for ideas and ways of thinking that are not the same to how we think and if we are willing to let go of control or if we are willing to step into the gap when we recognise a gap. Does this then mean that there is no space for individuality or for the individual choice?
I like to think that there can be room for both. That we can share and compromise and adapt while leaving space and room for ourselves to do and to create and to work around what speaks to us individually. I think that leaving space for individuals to come to terms with what works and what doesn’t is necessary if we want to come to satisfying conclusions.
I’m ruminating on this because creating world in a team feels very actual to the discussion around co-creation and I also am interested in how that translates into community building and creating together outside of fiction spaces.
Where ttrpg is concerned, we can try to think of directions in which we want players to go towards, but we can’t control or predict and while we can prepare for some scenarios, it’s quite possible that players will go towards outcomes we don’t expect or even want and that’s perfectly fine. I like to think that’s a good thing because there should definitely be room for insights and outcomes other than what we want.
Perhaps the most important takeaway for me from this process is to let go of the self that goes: ‘oh but actually’. Instead, I should just let the part of me that carries on snarky and whacky conversations with my other parts come out and play.
Throughout this writing, I keep thinking of that phrase from Donna Haraway from Staying With the Trouble: “It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”
Blessings and peace to you who read this and maraming salamat for passing by.
Staying with the Trouble is available from Duke University Press and from other booksellers.
(editing to add my thanks to Aliette de Bodard and Vida Cruz-Borja for listening to me while I worked through this process.)
There is a house on an island and there is a garden around the house and in that garden are the graves of three little girls.
I read Maria Dermout’s De Tien Duizend Dingen in Dutch, so the above sentence is as close as I can get to summing up the opening of this Dermout’s beautifully immersive novel.
What captivated me the most about this novel was the intentional use of language and how through language Maria Dermout pulls the reader into the rhythm of a time and a place. It’s beautifully evocative and not only does the writer make us see the house, but we also see the garden, the leviathan who lives near the edge of the water that is in the garden, and then we are made aware of the graves and the possible ghosts of the three dead girls.
There is also the history of a place and of the first Mevrouw Kleyntjes who lived in this house and the second Mevrouw Kleyntjes who still lives in this house. There is the history of these women and the stories of the lives of the people who have interacted with and lived in relation to the house and around them is the history of place.
Somewhere halfway through De Tien Duizend Dingen, I sent a message to the friend who told me about this book. I told her that it made me think of Virginia Woolf. It’s been quite a long time since I read Virginia Woolf, but I remember a similar mesmerising almost hypnotic use of language in The Waves.
We are immersed in the world Maria Dermout writes about. We are transported to a period in time when the then Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) is heading towards–an upheaval that will lead to a complete social-political change. Through the manner of telling, we can feel the simmering undertone of imminent change. Something is about to happen. What is about to happen is faintly present at the opening of the novel, but as the novel progresses, so does the sense of danger and precariousness–it is enough to make us recognise that at this point in time, the people in this place are no longer willing to simply accept the authority of Dutch masters. In this world, the woman, the house, the garden and its ghosts are relics of a past that will soon be nothing more than a dream.
De Tien Duizend Dingen was published in 1955 by Querido publishing house. It’s also available in English as The Ten Thousand Things.
Now that I’ve regained enough focus to read whole novels, I find myself missing the conversations I used to have with my sister. A lot of our conversations used to revolve around books we’d read and what we thought about the story or how the writer managed to do something well or not well enough. I think my sister was the original bookworm in our family and I simply followed in her footsteps because whatever my sister read, I had to read too. Anyway, I’ve started reading the books I downloaded onto my reader and I thought I would write a little bit about the one I’ve just started reading as well as the one that I just finished reading. I thought I’d switch between fiction and non-fiction. Non-fiction often takes me longer as I like to reflect on what I’ve just read.
Fiction Read:
I’ve just finished Tade Thompson’s excellent Far From the Light of Heaven. I’m pretty sure Tade has written and published a bunch of novels since this one, but I just got around to reading again and the title of Tade’s excellent murder mystery called to me. It took me a week and a half to finish reading (this is my current reading speed for novels) but I never once lost track of the thread of the story. I’m also glad that I decided to get a tablet because it’s made it easier for me to just open a book and read when I’m on the train or when I remember that I am in the midst of reading a book.
I understand the importance of titles now because for some reason, that title just kept jumping out at me each time I clicked on my reader and I decided that once I had enough focus I would read that novel first. Far From the Light of Heaven makes use of elements of space opera and science fiction but at the heart of it, Far From the Light of Heaven is a murder mystery. The stakes are high and I liked how the characters feel real. I have to admit a fondness for Shell Campion’s Uncle Larry. I could relate to that feeling of wanting to protect someone younger who you consider part of your family. I found myself quite intrigued by the Lambers as a race and I want to know more about them. Reading this book, I also had to think about conversations around AI and the use of AI. I like how Tade doesn’t take sides on that, but tries to show how AI can be useful but also how it has its vulnerabilities and can be subverted in a way that it becomes a danger. I don’t know if this was intentional, but it felt very much so.
One of the things I loved about this novel is how we get to see how what happens on and to Ragtime affects the world the characters live in. It’s a reminder of how actions taken reverberate in the world. The question becomes this: do those actions lead to understanding that brings lasting change or do those actions lead to polarisation and division in the society around us? I may very well be putting my own interpretation on it, but this is something I thought about when I got to that part. Another memorable scene for me is the communal rite of grief/processing trauma.
I won’t say anymore as I might spoil the book for those who haven’t read it yet, but if you enjoy murder mysteries that are more than just murder mysteries, this might be just the book for you. Highly recommended.
I have a rather lengthy TBR list and I think I would like to try and write about as many of them as I can. I’m pretty sure there are things I’ve read in the past three years and a half that I forgot to write about.
Current Non-Fiction reads:
As I tend to dip into multiple non-fiction books at one time, I might write about my impressions from those books every now and then.
I’ve started on Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway. I don’t even know who recommended this book or why I decided to buy it, but I’m pretty sure the person who recommended it made an impression on me. Anyway, I’ve just started reading it and there’s a line in the preface that just resonates so much with me. In the preface, the author writes about entanglements and how to be entangled is not simply being intertwined but it’s more than that. It’s a really great preface and if you’re interested in quantum physics, it does look like an engaging read.
A recent book I’ve recommended and gifted to fellow community workers is Aminata Cairo’s Holding Space. Aminata was one of the guest facilitators for LIMBO and the workshop she gave was joyful and beautiful and one that opened up space for stories to be shared and told. In this book, Aminata talks not just about holding space, but shares her own journey towards holding space. It’s a book that calls for reading and re-reading and for dipping back into when you feel the need.
Just yesterday, I had a lovely conversation with a friend who shared this line with me from a conversation she had with an older Dutchwoman. In that conversation, the Dutchwoman spoke of her husband, not as passed away or dead, but as someone who had stepped out of this timeline. I rather liked that phrase and it makes me think that entries like these are like missives sent to where my sister now lives–in a timeline that is outside of this timeline. It’s a lovely, lovely thought.
What are you reading now and what from those readings do you choose to keep with you?
The past week has been quite intense and quite busy as I traveled back and forth from home to Amsterdam. The travel is a little more than an hour and when I get to the station I’m supposed to be at, it takes another 10-12 minutes before I’m at my destination.
Last week, I was at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam for most of the week where I participated in the Spring School Co-Creation Lab. This was the first Spring School held at the Faculty of Social Sciences and I believe the intention is to have a repeat of this every year for a period of time. The effect of what’s taking place in the US was quite visible at Spring School as events over there made it impossible for one of the invited guests to travel to us in Amsterdam.
It did give me a chance to talk about science fiction, visionary worldbuilding and science fiction as an instrument that can be used for thinking through issues that concern us and then we did a collaborative world-building exercise.
In asking the questions around collaborative exercises, it reminded me once again that in the work we do where we want to bend the needle towards justice and equality, it’s necessary to remember what our community’s vision is. To consult and collaborate and work together even when the outcome is not what we expected. It reminded me too that in the kind of work that we do where we seek to advocate for and are working for communities on the margins, listening and paying attention are some of the most important things that we can bring to the table. (There are a number of other things too like love and acting on the principle of seeing each other as Kapwa, as connected, as human.)
For myself, attending Spring School made me realise that I have to face up to my own responsibility to my written work. One of the comments I read somewhere said that a lot of the links on my website led to dead-ends and it looked like I hadn’t updated in a while. This is, in fact, true. For a long time, I didn’t have the energy or the focus to update this space. I knew the links were dead-ends, but I kept thinking: who cares anyway?
From listening to the conversations around me, I realised that it was important to keep an accounting and a documentation of things I’d written and published. Not only for me, but also because it might help someone else down the line. So, I found myself searching through my disorganised drive, trying to locate as many of the columns that I wrote for Movements as well as other non-fiction work that I had written around change, decolonisation practice and women’s work. (I’m compiling them to create a pdf that can be downloaded for anyone interested in reading. Suggestions are welcome as to how I can make it available as I’m new to this.)
As I was reviewing the work I’d written, I found myself quite emotional. I remembered how a lot of the non-fiction work that I did is what supported our family through the most difficult periods when Jan didn’t have any work and often pay from whatever writing I managed to get published was what helped keep the children fed. Interestingly, my kids don’t seem to remember that time as a time of hardship. It was more like: we ate noodles for a week and it was great!
Writing this my heart aches because I know there are parents at this time who despair because there is nothing to feed their children with. There are parents who don’t even know if their children will survive to see another day, and there are children without parents to worry over them. Having noodles for an entire week sounds like heaven when food supply has been cut off or withheld by the powers that be. What’s happening in Gaza, what’s happening in Sudan, what’s happening in Ukraine, what’s happening in all the places where war and oppression are taking place happens to all of us and we cannot allow ourselves to become numb or to look the other way.
For those of us who live in places of privilege where there is no war or famine or fear of rockets detonating over our heads, while we may not be able to jump on activist boat like Greta Thunberg, we can still do something. We can listen. We can advocate. We can bear witness.
Blessings and peace to you who read this. May we ever be striving to move the needle towards what is just and true and may we recognise how we are connected in our humanity.
After a while, the portrait I’d been wrestling with made me feel so dissatisfied, I decided to turn its face away from me. Maybe it was the colours I’d been using, maybe it was because I needed a break, but the more I worked on it, the more I felt as if I wasn’t getting anywhere near where I wanted to be. It’s funny to write this when during my last entry, I felt as if I’d had a breakthrough.
So, I decided to step away from the portrait. I didn’t work on it for a couple of days. I didn’t even look at it. I played with my watercolours and didn’t require myself to do anything that was like a project.
There wasn’t really much time to dwell because I had the regular check-up which consists of a bloodwork and a CT scan. I didn’t have time to dwell on the CT-scan because my youngest son was leaving for the traditional end-of-school holiday (it’s a Dutch thing where young people go on holiday with their mates at the end of senior high). It’s kind of difficult to stress about a scan when you’re making sure that your son won’t miss his flight and it’s kind of difficult to stress about a portrait when you remember you have to go to the hospital.
After a busy couple of days, I decided I needed a break. I made a date to meet up with my eldest son in the city and we went shopping for some things (in my case it was art supplies).
The great thing about taking such a break is how there’s time to think while on the train ride to and from the big city. I thought about that little voice that makes tiny sounds of disapproval in the back of our heads. We don’t register it as disapproval because we’re so used to hearing it. It’s a voice that says: Oh, that’s not good enough. Oh, that nose doesn’t look right. Oh, are you sure you want to use that shade of red? Oh. Now you’ve done it. You’re overworking it. You’re doing it all wrong. You’ll never be good at this.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a painting or a story or a book report, our first and harshest critic is that tiny voice that causes us to tense up and become so focused on being perfect we end up helplessly throwing our hands up in the air and saying: I cannot.
There’s a great little clip I stumbled upon on youtube where a pianist is playing one of Chopin’s etudes (I forget the name but it’s one my mom played a lot). Over a section of the clip with the beautiful cascading tones of the piano, there’s a caption: What the audience hears when the pianist plays this piece. Right after this, there’s a section where the notes are clanging together in disharmony. The caption says: what the pianist hears when playing this piece.
It’s a funny clip, but it’s so apt. It doesn’t matter what art form we practice. Whether it’s making music or making art or writing, somehow we tend to hyperfocus on that one thing that just isn’t working. And it’s all that tiny little self-critical voice will let us focus on.
I laugh as I write this because it seems like this is a lesson that keeps returning to me. In the chase after an elusive perfection, we lose sight of what makes us love the things that we do.
Blessings and peace to you who read this. Thank you for dropping by.
From the Beloved Country 
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