We just got back from a pub quiz. We came second. My contribution was minimal as pretty much every question was on American pop culture or geography. Nevertheless its nice to use a free evening to share an experience.
I’ll be teaching three classes tomorrow on all sorts of different topics. The remit though is pretty clear and familiar. I go into these rooms full of clever positive forward American youth and I get them to experience embodying text. Body and breath and text stuff. We only get an hour. I could do this all day. Connecting people to their words, through their breath which is through their body. So body, breath, brain in that order and just hope that by the time brain comes back in the other two are front and centre and they aren’t monitoring and they surprise themselves.
It is still unbelievably cold here.
The car gets buried in moments. My first action most days after coffee is getting into it, getting the engine on, switching on the heated wheel and seats, scraping like an absolute motherfucker, and then sitting clinging to the warm steering wheel until I get the feeling back in my hands. My gloves are fingerless. I am okay with this choice as it makes things possible. I ski in fingerless gloves when I can. My touch is terrifically sensitive and I feel almost blinded to lose the tips of my fingers.
It feels like a powerful time to be in this country. The news is incredibly hard to palate. Not just the news but the willful misinterpretation of the trigger issues. I’ve never seen such clear examples of cognitive bias.
A friend once sent me a photo of a document that had clearly been doctored. I pointed out to them how it had been doctored. They agreed when I showed them that I was right. And then they said “but it’s worth it to get the truth out, right?” So they supported fake evidence that backed their worldview.
I see people clutching at straws regarding this guy they executed for dissent in Minneapolis. People who will go to their graves for the right to bear arms are trying to say it is on him for carrying, even though he clearly never even thought to draw it and it was taken from him while they were beating him. ‘Twas ever thus… People largely want to be told what to do. This country is desperately fighting for authoritarianism. And for xenophobia. And right now that voice is ascendant. With added hypocrisy. And a superior tone, because right now the guys in charge are atrocious human beings, buoyed up by power, feeling immune and making their thugs feel immune by proxy. It’s frightening to be a visitor here. I’m here under sufferance. I am alien.
Trying to be benign. Haven’t had much chance to phone home recently but I’ve tried to be helping with ouch. That’s my thing, generally. I’ll go to bed now and tomorrow get people into their skin a bit. Then on Wednesday we will all finally do what we came here for and we will share the work we have been percolating with a full house for the first of three nights.
It’s good work this. It is established and powerful work. I love this company and willingly will spend my time in it.
AlBarclay 