June 2008 Archives

This past Thursday I went to see the Broadway revival of Sunday in the Park with George. Sadly it closed this weekend, but if you ever get the chance to see a production, you should seize the opportunity. It really is a beautiful piece. It’s about the painter George Seurat, who painted this:

A few years ago I was also lucky enough to get to see this painting at the Chicago Art Institute. It really is a sight to behold. It is approximately 6’8” x 10’10”. (That’s longer than 2 of me!) As memory serves me, this was only Seurat’s second painting, and like many other artistic geniuses, he never sold a piece in his lifetime.

Seurat was a pointillist pioneer. He made little dots and dabs of color on huge canvases instead of filling in areas with one color. If you look closely, no figure in the painting is a solid color. Take a look at this close-up of the little girl:

The shapes of color are made of tiny dots that are blended by the eye, not by the brush. Thus a purple flower is really a collection of blue and red dots. The whole is made up of tiny constituent parts that shimmer in the light. Without all of the other dots, the painting would not be the same.

Interdependence, anybody? Unsolid self? Maybe Seurat was a Buddhist! Who said that Broadway was dead?

Oh, and Seurat called his technique Chromoluminarism, or how the mind perceives the tiniest elements of juxtaposed colors. Just try saying that three times fast.

Fun weekend. A little birthday party (guess my age), a little rearranging of my apartment, and a lot of mindful dancing that shook the building to its centuries-old foundations.

The activism meeting today was great, and the Back To the Sack Initiative is full steam ahead. Everyone should get involved with the project. We are seriously making moves. Let's not talk about what's wrong with the world y'all. I do that too often. You do that too often. Spiritual people do that way too often. There were 17 or 18 people at today's meeting. Next month's meeting should have at least 50 (Sunday July 27 @ high noon), what with all the griping we all do about our ecological problems.

This post won't be majorly substantive in any spiritual or political way, but if you need a little fix, check out this inspiring blog about all the great sustainability initiatives going on around the world. My favorite is the "organoponico," the Cuban urban garden and market phenomenom which is revolutionizing Havana and vastly altering Cuba's food and sustainability landscape for the better. We need to get more organoponicos rolling in this One City. Anyone know of anything like this going on stateside? I heard Detroit has a lot of urban gardens.

So anyway, back to the non-substantive. On Friday evening, fellow blogger Eva and I finished our neighborhood petitioning and are hoping to actually serve on the Brooklyn Democratic County Committee come fall (graft, anyone?). To celebrate our successful participation in democracy, we rolled over to Mighty Diamond, a Williamsburg vegetarian Jamaican style joint. In the kitchen, the I.D. Project's own multimedia czar Patrick Groneman can be found cooking - as well as serving up - some Jerk Tofu and Seitan curried "goat" to perfection. Now that's right livelihood, Pat.

Eva and I talked tattoos and sipped Tecates. Eva has some good tattoos, fyi. In celebration of my birthday, I'm about to get another one, my second piece. I have two ideas floating in my head, but I thought the IDP/One City community could help me choose the next inky image implanted under the skin, only to be slowly eroded by impermanence. Eva didn't love my main tattoo idea, btw. That made me nervous, combined with the fact that I have the most open-minded mother on Earth and she hated that I got a tattoo in the first place, even though the subject matter was quite near and dear to her heart.

Here is my existing tattoo, on my left arm. Extra points to anyone who can tell me what it is and what it represents (GZA, Ellen Scordato and others with insider knowledge are excluded from commenting on this mystery symbol).

Put on yer thinking caps and tell me what the theme of my next tat should be. I'll share my two ideas once about 7 or 8 comments and ideas are down below.

As alway, an honor blogging with you all.

Organoponicamente,

E.N.

Leah Ingram has a great post up on her blog today discussing the merits of biodegradable trash bags. Do they work? Are they worth it? A quick check of Amazon.com tells me they cost around 50 cents a bag, compared with about 13 cents a bag or less for traditional Glad bags -- and a quick check of my inner cheapskate tells me paying any amount of money for trash bags is ridiculous. My roommate and I have been re-using plastic shopping bags for our kitchen trash, and it seems to work just fine. We have to take them out every other day or so because they're so much smaller, but that just encourages us to make less garbage -- and it keeps the kitchen from getting smelly. And it seems like a nice rationale for my laziness -- whenever I forget my reusable shopping bag, I can tell myself that at least I'll be using the plastic bags for trash. Is that so wrong? Will my plastic trash bags still end up in the ocean? Perhaps on Sunday we can get an expert to weigh in. But what do you guys think?

And here's another blog post from Tiny Choices about using biodegradable bags. Anyone else have any experience with them?

...show up to the ID Project's Integral Activism meeting on Sunday June 29 at the Lila center!

Our current project is to reduce and, eventually, ban plastic bag usage in New York City. It's ambitious and complex, and we need all the help you have to offer! Other cities have taken steps to greatly reduce their plastic bag consumption and sometimes they are visited by an odd creature called the Plastic Bag Monster. Watch as the monster lobbies the Santa Monica city council for his continued survival (he's so clever. So cunning):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2VZ23SzwCU]

See you Sunday!

-Stillman

Speaking of self anger.

I had a very profound moment last week. The fact of whether or not it was justified is irrelevant; it was there. And it totally, and I mean TOTALLY sucked. Based on this I would recommend that we eradicate self anger (I wish).

While my primary job is that of One City Blogger (again, I wish), I’ve been working part time for the past year as a tutor for an autistic child. Working with this child has been an education in the principles of patience and compassion, maybe as much as all my Buddhist studies combined. It has both worked in conjunction with my meditation practice, and sometimes it seems in opposition to my attempt to cultivate compassion. But really, especially lately, it’s been about redefining my view of what compassion is.

This little boy, I’ll call him “James,” had his birthday last week. As much as I tried to give James a fun, happy birthday, he was stuck in one of his crying tantrums for our whole session together. Even his favorite activities made him furious and distressed. He didn’t want to draw; he didn’t want to have ice cream; he didn’t want to go to the park. Autism presents such a challenge to anyone faced with it – an autistic person has a relationship with the world, objects, people, and their own emotions, that is difficult for the rest of us to relate to. Sensory information is muddled. Transitions from one activity to the next are perilous and strange. Connections between moments come and go. I wish I could tell you more about it, but I can’t, because I don’t know.

That day was, and hopefully will be, the only day I’ve ever cried at work.

As I reported to his mother what a difficult day it was for James, I felt an overwhelming rush of self anger – that I had somehow failed this boy. I felt so awful that he didn’t get to experience the kind of birthdays that I got to have when I was little – tons of my friends, lots of cake and a big party with balloons and a day that was all about me. And the understanding of all of these things that I had been given. James was given all these things, he was absolutely not neglected. His parents and his family are beautiful, kind, loving people, and give him everything they can and show so much devotion to helping him. The fact that James doesn’t grasp it; the fact that he had to do un-fun work on his birthday; the fact that he had to deal with a pushy woman who couldn’t possibly understand how he was feeling and yet still asked all these difficult things of him, were the thoughts that pushed the tears out.

I turned away in shame, angry at myself for being unprofessional. I ignored James’s mother’s warm reassurances that I was doing my job and that my work was helping James to overcome his obstacles. I only dwelled in the heated self anger that was bubbling somewhere behind my face, behind my eyes, around my throat, fluttering in my chest. I ruined his birthday, I thought.

This was no good at all. This would not do. I knew that I was doing the right thing in working with James on his birthday, but I needed to convince myself further. A few days later, at the ID Project retreat on Saturday, I worked with these feelings of self anger:

Why was I so angry with myself? Because I had failed.

What did I fail at? Making James happy.

Is making James happy my goal? No, it is not.

What is my goal for James? To help him function better.

How can I help him to function better? By giving him what he really needs.

What does James really need? To work on the things which scare him.

My work with James is about redefining what it means to be compassionate. While I would love for our sessions to make him happy, make him laugh, make him carefree, I know that they won’t always be this way. Real change happens in the uncomfortable, unfamiliar places, and sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is to not make it easy. James will continue to cry, I will continue to have moments of self anger, but both James and I must push through the tears and the tantrums to find the places where we can learn. I can rely on my friends and teachers to give me tough love when I need it. For James, and for other autistic children, it will, likewise, take a teacher or a friend who isn’t afraid to truly be compassionate, to get them to a place of understanding.

Maybe I know James better than I thought.