Positive Energy.

Today I received the most beautiful compliment from the same customer who noticed me reading in the store a couple of weeks ago.

"You know, you're a really nice person. I notice these things because I work with special needs kids, and I study a lot about how positive energy can affect people. I see you around this store, and you're kind of mellow but you're always smiling. And that positive energy just comes out of you, and you know, other people can feel that." 

Thank you, sir!

Talking with Yasmin 4

Yesterday's session was a dud. I was feeling really down and didn't want to be there, but went anyway because I knew that I needed to go (plus those late cancellation/no-show fees are no joke). But I got the feeling that Yasmin didn't really want to be there either. I didn't walk away feeling like we'd talked about too many significant things. Eh well. Hopefully next week is better.

• Been keeping yourself from singing because you don't think you sing well enough
• Mastery takes time and hard work; you could probably reach the level that you think these "real artists/musicians" are at; but you're already assuming that even your best will leave too much to be improved upon and it won't be worth it
• When you have a passion, of course you want to be great at it; but give yourself a chance to be your best before you take yourself out of the running!
• ASSIGNMENT for this next week: Do one thing that makes you feel good about yourself. Not something that just enriches your mind or potentially enhances your skillset. Not a wanton distraction. Something, just one thing, that makes you feel good about you.

BOOKS! (The Round House)

THIS BOOK NEEDS TO BE REQUIRED READING FOR ALL STUDENTS IN THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.

Life on Native American reservations. Desecration of bodies and sacred spaces. Historical legal precedents of white people giving themselves the right to steal Indigenous land and lives. Loopholes and an inability to obtain justice due to a messy overlap of competing land rights and jurisdictions. Violence against Native women.

These are real. These are things that are still going on that we need to know about. And these are the details that we need to be studying in school, instead of being fed farces about Thanksgiving goodwill and acting like Christopher-he-who-shall-not-be-named wasn't a murderous, navigationally-challenged fiend. Requiring students to read this 2012 National Book Award winner would be an invaluable step in that direction.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Joe is a boy living on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. He is only 13 years old when his mom, Geraldine, is brutally beaten and raped in the spring of 1988 at the a Native place of worship called the Round House. Tribal, state, and federal authorities launch an investigation on the attack, while Joe and his dad (Bazil, a tribal judge) pick up the pieces at home and try to keep a wounded and broken Geraldine from giving up on living. Bazil and Joe dig for as many answers as they can on their own, but when the investigation stalls and it becomes clear that the perpetrator won't be punished even after everyone figures out who did it, Joe decides to take justice into his own hands. Over a tumultuous summer he is emboldened by the support of his four best friends, the spirits of his ancestors, the knowledge of his people's legal history instilled in him through his father's instruction, and his elders' folk stories.

This novel is heavy. As it should be. Erdrich states in her afterword that at least 1/3 Native women will be raped in their lifetime, 86 percent of sexual assaults upon them are committed by non-Native men, and the vast majority of cases aren't prosecuted. And you really can't talk about sexualized violence against Native women without discussing their status as Native people, and how Native peoples have been gruesomely and criminally disenfranchised by this country from beyond the beginning. So in this novel, Erdrich uses a fictional incident of rape to discuss all of this. And it. is. heavy. As it should be.

What's crazy to me is that Joe's mom isn't even the main target in the particular incident she was involved in (you'll know what I mean once you read the book), and yet look at how brutalized she is. And look at how much her family and others on the reservation suffer and are forced to become different people as a result of what she is going through. When people talk about trauma devastating communities, especially in regard to communities of color in this country, this is what they mean. If it happens to one of us, it happens to all of us in some way or another. I find this to be true in my personal experience as a Black person, and The Round House appears to indicate that individual trauma becomes shared as part of community-wide trauma in a similar way for Native Americans.

I would recommend this book to any American citizens or residents who don't want to keep their heads in the sand about the people who were here first, and are still here.

Favorite quotes:

"They lived and died too quickly in those years that surrounded the making of the reservation, died before they could be recorded and in such painful numbers that it was hard to remember them all without uttering, as my father did sometimes as he read local history, and the white man appeared and drove them down into the earth, which sounded like an Old Testament prophecy but was just an observation of truth. And so to be afraid of entering the cemetery by night was to fear not the loving ancestors who lay buried, but the gut kick of our history, which I was bracing to absorb. The old cemetery was filled with its complications" (100).

"Look at me. Would I wreck her life? The Creator made us for each other. Me here. Zelia there. Space was put between us by human error. But our hearts listened to divine will. Our bodies, too. So fucking what? Every bit of what we did was made in heaven. The Creator is goodness, brother. In his mysterious mercy he gave me Zelia. The gift of our love−I can't throw it back in the face of the Creator, can I? That's what her parents are asking me to do. But I won't do it. I will not throw our love back in God's face. It will exist for all time whether or not her parents can see that. Nothing they do can get between us" (312).

Talking with Yasmin 3

Friday's session included a lot less crying than usual (woohoo!). Lately I've been thinking a lot about some things, trying to face myself and figure out what I need to be doing. Not any more clearer on any front, but at least it was nice to talk it out.

• Thinking about what Ma said about my focus being misplaced/off (obsessed with and intimidated by end result instead of enacting "whatever it takes" mentality to work through the middle) + things the poets said at the PIA Tour (desiring God, wanting what God wants even if it means letting your own dreams and desires go/take a backseat)
• Talking about God (since I brought it up, Yasmin was allowed to talk about it) 
• I'm always wanting things I'm not ready for
•  No idea what God wants from me; no idea what He's calling me to do
• hard to fully trust that God will make a way if I truly believe, since I don't know where that'll lead me or what I'm supposed to do; too terrifying to consider that it means giving up what I've always wanted
• You have to define what you want out of this life.
• it's about your truth, your passion, what makes you happy; because making Danielle happy is #1
• What's your passion? Your dream?
• singing, writing. Living and working as a singer (band's lead vocalist) in Japan
• talked to Tiffany Toriumi for information/inspiration/encouragement→got into the jazz thing singing at jam sessions, started seeing vocal instructor
• but then started feeling again like I'm just an amateur and everyone else are the "real artists" (plus got my keyboard to tinker around with my songs)→started shrinking back again
• but in the pursuit of your dreams, you'll likely have to be under someone doing grunt work for quiet a while if that's what it's gonna take to get you there
• why're you crying talking about your passions as if you're embarrassed? they should make you excited! if they matter to you, then they matter!
• Yasmin reading You Are an Amazing Woman by Lisa O. Engelhardt to me 
• not overloading yourself by doing too much; you can't do everything
• people respecting/looking up to you, feeling support and light through you, maybe even envying you; you can be/are useful to others
• sisterhood; been burrowing yourself in your own little hole since graduation; maybe should reach out to friends from college
• Too preoccupied with thinking about what you should do with yourself and figuring out what kind of artist you want to be, to be fixated on usual bad feelings about your body! Yay for positive distractions and refocusing!

'Cuz Commies. 'Cuz 'Murica. - Bridge of Spies

So I know I made a commitment some time ago, in the interest of maintaining my sanity and preserving my sense of self, to only go to the cinema to watch movies starring people of color or featuring stories of color. But this one sounded interesting, my vocal instructor recommended it, and Tom Hanks is the GOAT, so this evening I made an exception. Ma and I's selection for this evening was a film about the Cold War, one of many wars of dubious necessity injected with American-made  fear and fantasy in order to justify violence and make Americans feel good about themselves. A war which has also spawned many a film such as this one. And the story goes...

Seen Friday, October 23: Bridge of Spies

"In the shadow of war, one man showed the world what we stand for."

First America's like, "Ayo Donovan! We caught this dude with an inexplicable Irish?Scottish? accent who we're sure is a Russian spy, and we need you to defend him in court. Can't have our justice system looking like it throws people into the trash heap even though that's exactly what it does. So help us give him a semblance of due process to make us look good." Then America's like, "Look, we know as a lawyer you have a duty to abide by the law and the Constitution and human decency and all that stuff, but we didn't really want you to do the job we appointed you to do. Naw man, you exemplified honesty and American values too well, and that's just un-American 'cuz we really just wanted to fry that Commie! Why couldn't you have just played along?!" And then America's like, "Alright man, we know we just finished dogging you out and the CIA tried to intimidate you and your house just got shot up, but since the Commie was found guilty like we wanted him to be, and now the Russians have one of our pilots in custody in the USSR, we'll give you one more chance to prove how much you love this country. Go to East Berlin and negotiate a swap to get that pilot back in exchange for the Commie you just defended. We can't get our hands too dirty, so this is totally under wraps and we can't officially acknowledge you. As such we can offer you no help, so if you mess this up or something goes down, we will not protect you. Oh and there's some other American doctoral student wrongfully imprisoned in East Berlin, but we don't care so much about him, so just focus on the pilot." And then America's like, "Oh! You managed to trade one for two and get both the American guys back. You're a true American hero! Right on!" 'Cuz Commies. 'Cuz 'Murica. And so on and so forth.

And I'm rolling my eyes all the way home.

Not about the film itself, mind you. The film is great! Tom Hanks is a legend! And this is an intensely engaging story that I'm glad Steven Spielberg chose to highlight. In my humble opinion, he treated the story with dignity, as he is wont to do. What I roll my eyes at is what the film reveals about American society that most audience members won't  realize is actually sickeningly typical. Because they'll probably be too drowsy from having their appetite for testaments to our so-called "exceptionalism" satiated. Bridge of Spies lays two grand jokes out on the table for us to chew on: that of the justice system (due process as a fraud, a facade, a spectacle, going through the motions, little more than an aspiration) and that of American heroism (oftentimes America will only celebrate you as a hero or a patriot if you demonstrate American values the selective way people want you to, not if you actually play by the rules, do the right thing, genuinely stand by what you claim to believe in and do so not only as it conveniences you, etc.) But these are two jokes that I'm pretty sure few people will get. I imagine there'll be a lot of talk like, "Man, what a crazy scenario. Sucks for that guy. But hey, those were the times. What do you expect? Besides, it worked out for him in the end." Instead of,  "Man, that's wrong and messed up. Why were those folks put in such a situation anyhow? And how much have we really evolved from that particular moment in time?"

On the whole I say, Bravo! This is most definitely a film worth watching, and deserving of whatever merits it might be considered for. (Come on now. Tom Hanks? Spielberg? War film? With award season in just a few months? In this country that's a no-brainer.) My only qualm is that the film has a lot to teach us that will go over many heads, because if we look beyond the surface it shows us too much of what we'd prefer not to see.

Things People Give Me #24

Today I received a card from my friend Kristi! She took it back to our pen pal days by writing a nice note and mailing it to me, just to check in and say hello. We met at a fine arts camp called Blue Lake during the summer before 8th grade, and from there we kept in touch as pen pals. Then email and Facebook and texting happened, so we don't write each other in letter form as often. She asked for my address last week but didn't say that she'd send me anything, and then I forgot about it all so this was a very pleasant surprise. Thanks, Kristi! 

Ma, on hazing.

Ma: Nah, I never wanted to pledge 'cause I didn't want to deal with the hazing. They'd try to do something to me and I'd end up hurting somebody.

Me: No you wouldn't.

Ma: Why wouldn't I?

Me: Ma, when have you ever hurt anybody?

Ma: You never know.

Me: ...

Ma: ... Nah, I haven't. But I'm just saying.