how we are existing

NOTE: I've been meaning to post this for a while, but you know what?  A combination of the lil hater and being BUSY with new projects means I've pulled away from blogging and been embracing real people intereactions


Not that yall aren't real.  But it's nice to talk and be talked back to sometimes...


This one's from 4/13.  Hope you enjoy.


Love


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How we are existing.

In our worldly context where production is not only the end product, but language of efficiency production dominates the process itself- the making, the vision, the generative process—I find my mind body cognition trapped.  Stressed.  Migraines and sleeplessness.  Too busy and too little actually getting shit done.  Or the alternative.  Disengagement.  Borderline depressed.  On the couch/bed watchingnotthinkingorfeeling. 

IN RESISTANCE of this shit.

-         Have a space to envision. Have a vision of ourselves that extends and pours beyond our bodies our immediate and material existence.  And we can give that to each other by asking, by not giving up, by fighting for real and deep relationships, out of all our relationships.  With guidesteachersmentorsfamily that helps us do this. 

-         Recognize that as humans, we are susceptible.  A recent Time article talked about the ways in which the workplace empowers male expressions of emotions while deeming female expressions as signs of instability.  While men often find emotional experiences at work cathartic, women find them disorienting.  When men get angry, it communicates caring, investment, passion, and a drive for perfection.  When women get angry, it communicates weakness of character, instability, an inability to work well with others.  When men cry, they experience a release.  Tears release toxins and tell our body that it’s ok to start over.  When women cry, the physiological benefits of crying are counteracted by social anxieties—'fuck, now I’m that bitch that’s crying because she can’t handle it.  Fuck, now I’m that bitch that can’t control her emotions for better or worse.  Fuck, now I may or may not lose my job because people around me are unable to process my tears and I am unable to process my tears because I have always learned that they’re a sign of weakness.  Fuck these tears, next time I'll hold it in, trap it, imprison it in my stomach before it's released.'  But imprisonment alters the thing you're trapping.  It's how stress translates to sadnessdispairhelplessnessdepression.  We needa watch for it.

-         Recognize that as women of color, we are susceptible to stresses around us.  Institutions in this are not structured around our cultural knowledge or physical needs.  I find that I put more pressure on myself to take on the pain, suffering, well-being of those around me.  All the time, cuz who else canorwill.  But it’s not a burden, as in, this doesn’t make me a better person.  Fuck that.  If one more person tells me it’s good of me to take on more maintenance of my family, I will scream.  And that will feel good.  It’s not that I’m a better person for caring.  It’s just that I am a person, and I cannot separate the way I live my life from the way I care for people I love.  And I have love for humanity, but I also recognize that my family and my community have fewer social resources.  We have fewer ways of knowing how to shape our social and personal lives because we have not established a history of doing so in the United States.  We were brought here to fulfill a labor need, and people who could come here to succeed did so by walking into the arms of upper middle class economic privileged.  However, we have left ties to other ways of knowingbeingpracticing back home, wherever that may be, and been taught to embrace ways of knowing that help us according to the power structures in the western world- structures that make us money and upward social gains, but little horizontal beingthereforyou support.  In the process of assimilation, we have walked away from social knowledge as a community, devaluing the social scientists and artists among us.  Those are fields for extra-curriculers to help us get into medical school or Google.  And now?  Our families have a hard time navigating when one of our own does not can not or will not conform to the existing narrative.  We often don’t have the social resources for it. 

We need doctors with social resources, the ability to look deep and counsel.  We need engineers that are politically engaged, able to not just design computer chips but a just society.  We need Business people that are willing to work for more than just money and also less money.  Because the reality is that money is a vital part of surviving in our context, but not the all-encompassing only thing.  We need to make art that speaks to our experiences and our cousins' experiences and our grandparents' experiences instead of consuming Outsourced. Outsourced has been cancelled, even though it was getting good ratings.  Who can't relate to the white dude tryna make an 'incomprehensible' India (with all its colors and spices) into a frat party? #onthatwhitetip


We need desi folks that know how to love and care for each other as a larger community in deep non-judging ways.  Love rooted in each other, caring for each other.  Holding each other as our own.  Cuz I know that instinct is in me.  We just need to foster it in each other.


LOVEloveLOVE