Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education

Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education

Presents

The Peace Poets

Come be a part of the movement!

Saturday, November 20th

3:00 – 4:30 pm

FREE!

Come enjoy an afternoon of creativity and performance. Working with students of all ages, the Peace Poets empower youth through fun artistic exercises and encourage youth to express themselves creatively through Spoken Word Poetry and Performance. Teaching youth the power of words and self expression, the Peace Poets have touched the lives of youth around the world.

Casita Maria

928 Simpson St. 6th Floor

Bronx, NY 10459

A Wake

A wake. This mournful gathering was more live than most protests I've ever seen. The people sing and jump. The news says Nestor Kirchner died of a heart attach yesterday. The people say he is as present as ever. I believe the people.

Prohibido Olvidar

Prohibido Olvidar = To Forget is Forbidden... This sign is always in la plaza de mayo in front of the presidential palace. Memory is a tool for justice, forgetting is a tool for impunity. The brutalities of war are facilitated by amnesia. Every Thursday the mothers of the disappeared still march in front of this sign. They've been marching for thirty years... They say justice is slow, but every step toward it is worth taking... We can never forget they say, Never. I wonder where somebody will be disappear tonight? Who has forgotten?

El Che

In the middle of the night people chant socialist slogans at the sky. An ex president has died unexpectedly and the pueblo is in the streets for his wake. The line to get inside is forty blocks line and the plaza is on fire. Effigies of music, burning bonfires in the air. This huge flag with el Che is hoisted up above a chanting crowd. Che is also on the wall inside the presidential palace above he coffin of the deceased...

El Rio

Sebastian gives the thumbs up while chillin next to Azul y Johanna at The River. This young man is unafraid to lift his voice up for any type of joke. Little by little he has begun to also speak up from his sensitive side. Turns out he has many revolutions to say. Last week he asked the teacher if she'd let us come early and stay longer. He's about it.

Circle of Peace

The Circle of Peace in Argentina aka El Rio, The River, where we've been doing workshops using Poetry as a tool to eradicate violence and discrimination in schools. This group of 13 year olds is overflowing with energy. They are like music you can't turn down. I've come to love them. We've come to love each other. And the process of education has begun in the heart... as real education always does.

Week 6

Week 6 of the Peace Poets in South America; we started a circle of peace in Uruguay, it was epic. Keeping the movement growing always, check out the picture below. Peace!!

Pollution

Today I hit up la villa

Out in Carillo I kicked it with Pablo, Eric, Jonathan, and Sergio and Alfonso.

On the bus home I met Hernan. He is a construction worker who used to swim in the river the 46 bus is driving past as we’re talking. It looks like an oil spill with garbage sprinkles. Why do we pollute so much? I wonder out loud. “–because we have not learned that tomorrow is born from today,” he says.

Spit Hernan Spit my brother.

Subte

The subway in Buenos Aires is called the Subte. Its like a dingy old living room on wheels. We barrel through the bowels of the city as the teenage boy tucked away into his hoodie sleeps to the train’s rhythm and the Peruvian mama listens with a grin to hear daughter begins a story that gets trapped in her chubby cheeks next to two old ladies who speak in a horse race about the boy who still asleep next to an old man with emphysema. Whoever said there is no country for old men had never been to Argentina. The doors creek goodbye.

Goodbye.

Vendor

There is a guy selling 8 foot high Bolivian flags. With great success. That’s patriotism.

Beyond Borders…

I used to have a friend who was one of those really really dark skinned people from India. Those folks got a certain beauty. But I never expected to see one in a Bolivian music group playing the Zamponia. There are borders where we don’t even see…

20/20

Maria can’t see out of one eye. But she works and studies and raises a daughter in the borderlands of Buenos Aires. A Bolivian unafraid to greet me with ocean water smile and a “que mas Señorcito?” as we walk next to each other through the river of trash left by the day’s festivities. What more? She asks me, a typical Bolivian greeting. What more? Well Maria, I would just like enough insight to be able to see with both my eyes things as they really are.

Toys for Big People

You know those big inflatable bouncing rooms that they got at festivals for kids play in?… society needs more of those, for people of all ages to jump around and not get hurt.

Watch ya wallet…

Seven out of the eight Argentineans I spoke to on my way to the Bolivian hood told me to watch my wallet over here. I’m sure they were just trying to look out and all. Probably the same as people say it if you coming to the BX or going to the Bonlieu or the townships or the favelas or the slums up in quito or the borderlands, but while my wallet is tucked tight in my front pocket, I’m sure I feel more peace of mind here than where the rich and the tourists waddle around in a state of worried wonder. Here we yell and laugh and eat whatever.. cuz why not? Wallet security is no guiding principle.

Alfredo’s Niece

The two-year-old Bolivian can barely walk but she grabs a baby size fist full of boldo and fills up a plastic bag. She looks at me. I must be a customer. She hands me the bag. I take it. She smiles. She fills up another bag. And gives it me. I put them both back… she frowns. Way ahead of the game.

Alfredo

He sells every herb. And coca. The sacred leaf of the Aymara and the Quechua people. The illegal substance that numbs or runs the angry and empty people. Alfredo has been in Buenos Aires for two years and has mastered the Argentinean accent. It’s a matter of survival. Racism kills. Damn. Can he live?

Bolivian borderlands

I haven’t been here in 7 years… Chicha, Chancho, Silpancho, Salchipapas y mamas en brightest colors dancing that simple Bolivian two step with their papacito wearing matching suits, wasted at 1pm. The borderlands of Buenos Aires sway back and forth in front of me to the baaaw boom of Andean drum beats and the wwwwhhhiii huuuwwww huuuwww hhiiii or the pan flute… enough to convince me that I’m back under Tunari, the snow capped god above Cochabamba, Bolivia. The land where I realized if I’m not a brother to you all, I am nothing. I eat a salteña and sit down on the grass next to Alfredo. This hood full of immigrants is medicine. And I didn’t even know I was sick.

Pigeons in Buenos Aires

Across from the window I work it there is a concrete ledge. Two pigeons chill there. Today, one lay down, putting its feet underneath its belly and its head along the ledge. The other walks over and began to nestle her head into his neck. It seemed she was using her beak to clean him off or give him a little massage. Maybe he needed a couple seconds on the shoulders to chill him out after all that poking his head around so intensely. I wonder why humans don’t feel comfortable to give massages in public? And why do we think we are so much more important that pigeons? And why these pigeons are getting so close to this open window I’m standing in and why it’s freaking me out? I wanna learn to fly.

Under the Bridge

What the hell is that? You ask as you pass underneath the bridge on paseo colon and the beginning of 9 de Julio. Here at the intersection of two streets, one named for the celebrated bearer of genocidal colonialism and the other for the date of independence when that colonial rule finally ended…it smells like death. Its loud and dirty and chaotic, the highway above feels like it might fall on you and the colectivos (buses) rumble by at way faster than a safe speed. Its ten pm and by the yellow glow of the street you see what looks like an archaeological dig. You squint. You lift your gaze from the deep hole next to the sidewalk to see a collection of papers with something typed out on each. In the center of the space you finally make out the figure of a human, dug out in the dirt and painted on the ground. It’s a symbol you recognize. It’s the figure that represents the disappeared. You realize, here under the bridge, where independence and colonialism meet, you are in a graveyard.

EQUALITY

As I write these pages, a young man, maybe fourteen years old leans against the wall five feet from the window of the café I’m writing in. his air matted down with dirt, and his faded red sweater torn. He appears to be one of the thousands of children who live on the streets of this city. Again, I return to me being well fed and stable enough and economically privileged enough to have the tools to be writing a book… this is our reality. And inequality slaps with the back of its hand. I never deny its existence, but like most of us, I pass moments when I’m not thinking about it. But its always close by. And as it makes me sad, I remind myself, I will accomplish nothing for no one if I get stuck in cynicism and say ‘Aww, this is how it is, I can’t change it,’ Or if I feel ashamed of my privileges and renounce all of them and go live in the streets in solidarity. (Of course, time spent in pain and danger is one of the most precious tools to live and act in solidarity and should be practiced in an honest way when necessary and practical) And so, I think not of an ideal world with total equality, but instead of a world where everyone has dignity and basic human rights. This is my dream. And this is the vision that will guide my pen, my feet and design all the days I’m lucky enough to live.

Spell Check…

Fuck. Even my computer is a racist capitalist. It automatically capitalizes things like names and the first letters of sentences… But tell me how it automatically changes gatorade to Gatorade, but when I write the name of an African country: niger… it is left lower case and marked misspelled? Grimey... It also must be religious because it likes me to capitalize the word god… interestingly it converts the b of Buddha to a capital letter but leaves jesus looking misspelled. Mohammed also gets capitalized. Oh ok, Christ also got bumped to a capital C, just no dice for the j in a plain jesus. Weird. Insight into the politics of whoever designed my computer program… I’ll keep you updated as I get to know my machine a little better…

Marathon

Today, 10/10/10, the Peace Poets ran 26.3 miles through the streets of Buenos Aires. I wrote five pages of reflections, celebrating the human spirit of the event and questioning the consequences of it being wasteful and classist. Can’t keep the peace poet quiet… I ran with Lau and two friends from New York and while it was fun to be part of this river of runners, I couldn’t help thinking about how the youth I’m working with will probably never have the flow to participate in something like this and wondering why we gotta waste so much water… I’ll try to edit down those pages for yall to read it. It ended up envisioning a new kind of marathon… one that takes the whole world into account. For now, I’m just letting you know. I ran madd far…

And when the going got tough and I thought my legs were gonna fall off I threw on the headphones and CypherMatrix rejuvenated me completely. Nothing like hearing my brothers on the mic to reinvigorate the soul. We finished, we hugged and they handed us a little piece of paper that said “GRATIS: 1/2 Chori”… which meant we got to get in a line behind a huge grill and they were gonna hook us up with half a sausage sandwich for free… So Argentinean! You gotta love it. Marathon = Victory. More to come….

Peace Poets Retreat

Right now I’m reeling in inspiration from spending an entire day with my crew…from hundreds of miles away. I would like to be able to hug the people who made this technology possible for me to have kicked it on the 3^rd floor of a BX living room without leaving Buenos Aires. Aside from all the dire dehumanizing effects of the tech revolution, I extend both my amazement and my gratitude to those work indirectly allowed me to share in the peace poets retreat this past weekend. We checked in, got open, learned from each other in workshops that touched on our specialties, and reignited yet again, our passion for our music, our art, our struggle. Thank you.

Update on Writing:

The peace poets are writing a book. These days I write from Buenos Aires but Abe, Frank, Ram and E are here with me. They are the mirror which this author uses to criticize and counter and challenge his the importance of his words. Are these the stories that represents our struggle? Is this the poetry that the people need to hear so they can work harder or smile easier? Tell me brothers. My knowledge of them, of us, is enough. I read their answers in my memories of who we are. So day in and day out, I open up the soul’s notebook to decipher what inspires us to rebel. Rebel against violence and apathy and laziness and racism and ignorance and silence. As I write the code is becoming clear. The simple subtitles to it all. Peace makers are made by a world at war, but we must be more than a response, more than rebels. We must be doctors that heal and poets that paint something new. Something never before imagined in this way at this moment. And this new thing becomes the path and each step is a victory.

Sucio = Dirty = who?

I just thought of Abe’s poem about a smelly man asking for change and perfumed him walking away and how ugly is made relevant. Today, dirty was made relevant for me. I cross the highway and stop to let traffic pass me by in the middle where a group of people camp out and try to make some change by cleaning the windshields of cars stopped at the traffic light. When they saw me stopped there alone, they rolled up on me like cleaning windshields wasn’t the only way they made money… I greet them and ask how they are doing like they were my peoples… They get a little confused. I put out my hand. They are suspicious. Their hands, along with their clothes and face, are covered in grime and dirt. Strangers don’t shake these hands. Nine times out of ten, being friendly inspires a friendly response. No dice with these guys. One starts yelling at me. What are you doing here? Get the hell away from our spot! I don’t stress it and as I’m walking away, he yells get out of here, Sucio(dirty)! Its easy to dismiss people as crazy. But he is saying what he has probably heard a million times. How many people have said those words to him? How many times has he been reduced to being homeless? Jobless? Sucio? In the eyes of a society that pretends so hard to be clean. Clean like the shoes of generals while they order more people tortured, disappeared, executed in a war that history only has one word for: sucio.

El Rio, Workshop 2

Tell me how the 5:48 am train leaves the station at 5:45… grimey. I know because Lau and I ran after it this morning. Yup, just like the movies running for the train as it pulls out of the station. Except we didn’t catch it. We caught the next one and showed up ten minutes late. But the good news is that if we weren’t sure whether the kids were feeling us, we got to enter the classroom today to a booming applause. I was humbled. Laura and I went through a quick check in and then I spit: La Cadena Mas Immensa, a poem that becomes a promise to speak out against the inhumanity and horrors of violence against women. Reaction positive. You never know how spoken word is gonna go over for thirteen year olds, let alone in a place where spoken word is as foreign as fufu (west African food made out of plantains and yucca-madd delicious). But it went well and we transitioned into a conversation about different kinds of violence like insults and social exclusion. The mission of the association we are working with is to eradicate violence in schools and so Laura and I are combining their methods with those of the Peace Poets and Artered (artered.org). So far the collaboration is flowing naturally and powerfully. The workshop then gave birth to one enormous group poem that cited different moments in the young people’s lives when they have seen instances of violence. They cited friends murdered, stabbings on their blocks, getting beat up at school, cousins being raped and many more painful moments. The lyrics hit hard but their voices are extremely timid so they struggled to even hear each other. Little by little we will develop the lion in their voice. It is there. We closed by saying all the things we deserve. All up in the axe circle, talking bout we deserve respect, we deserve freedom, we deserve a day off from school… it was good. One- Family, One- Family.

~*

Besitos

The streets of this hood are mud and clay. People have the dirt on their hands. Workers. Barrio Roberto Carillo is on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. It’s sunny and this hood has me finally feeling at home. We’re walking the streets. Around the corner comes the toughest looking dude we’ve seen so far, all pierced up, tatted out and dressed in black walking toward us with the stare of an executioner. When he is a few feet away he sings out the name of the old neighborhood futbol coach we are walking with and grill turns to grin. They greet with a kiss. Then I go to give him a point and he brings it in for the real thing… Kissed by a thug in the middle of the street. Totally normal here in Argentina. Alright, I’m cool. Keeping it moving...

The Sky Over Cities and Barefoot Stars

It’s a city… so its hard to see the stars. Maybe that why nobody looks at her. Her name is Estrella, what’s your name? She wants to know…

Where Buenos Aires flirts with the flagrant consumerism of Fifth Avenue, she walks around with no shoes. She holds a two year old whose filthy face is made ghostly by eyes staring into space. Her plea is simple: give me money for milk for the baby. She got the desperate look perfected. I stare back, overcome with saddness… ‘no mi hija, lo siento’ (no my child, I’m sorry)…

Why am I sorry? I am sorry that she is barefoot and begging. I am sorry there are two woman twenty feet away who are probably exploiting her by the way they are watching to see if she gets any money out of me. I am so sorry that she already done this eighty five times today and seven hundred times this week and I ‘m sorry that she is thinking that I’m only sorry because I can’t give her a 25 cent coin when I’m really sorry that I can’t give her access to a shower, a good meal, some shoes and a family to care for her or because she might have those things but still be trapped in this perverse vocation. And I’m so terribly sorry that millions and millions of children are also being denied their basic human right now. And I’m sorry that Laura and I are the only ones in this Argentinian 5^th Ave. mourning her childhood. I am sorry. While she just wants to know if I’m going to put my hand in my pocket and take out a coin to get rid of her. That whats she’s banking on. For a second, I wonder that too. A penny for my thoughts… to disappear. That’s not gonna work today.

And in these moments, the havoc of my humanness is incited. I succumb to sorrow that ignites anger. I’m mad. Furious that the same human beings who would throw themselves in front of a bullet to save their child, could walk by somebody else’s while she dies slowly. Can I have faith in the callous majority right now? None. We are too miseducated, too engrained in our rationalizations of our injusice. I look at this little girl and ask her name.

We talk. She laughs. My inspiration to work hard cannot come from the anger at our frequent expressions of inhumanity… What makes me a better man has and will come from the people who are living and dying in pain and danger. From their loving touch under the shadow of hunger, their steadfast steps toward dignity and survival and their ability to still laugh with the guy who won’t even give them a quarter for food because he hates their exploitation. In this moment I can’t find a hint of hope in the masses that walk past us in a hurry. But if I could make a wish for a future without wars of bombs and blindness it would be on her… Estrella…. The first star I saw today. And on the millions behind her in the darkness...

…. P.S. As I finish writing this, I read the words painted on the wall next to me:

“Es importante que cad uno haga lo que pueda desde su lugar.” = “its important that each person do what they can from where they’re at.”

… yah. That’s basically what I’m saying.

WHERE THE RIVER BEGINS

At 13, the universe explodes. A lot of times. Whether you in Harlem, Haiti or the hood of La Plata where Laura and I just did a workshop it happens. And when it does… Lips flap windstorms or stay shut tight, heartbeat like a 100-yard dash and the balance of survival hangs constantly in the words you say, the look you carry and the almighty opinion of your peers. It’s intense.

The front wall of the school is plastered with political slogans for freedom, declarations of love “Carolina, Te Amo –Carlos”, and a healthy amount of tags. Whoever is selling spray cans in Argentina is doing all right. Inside the lobby like a vacant warehouse. Its 721 am and freezing cold. And the kids. They stroll in with sweatshirts and attitude. Stand around the doorways of the classrooms. Those in the back corner of the educational warehouse start juggling a crumpled up newspaper like it was a futbol. It falls. One throws it at another’s head. The tallest one smacks the shortest. The little guy winds up and side kicks him back in the thigh. Another one pushes the shorty. I sigh. Lau and I sit on a cracked wooden bench waiting to start our first day as educators of a violence prevention program in Argentinean Public Schools. I bet I got those guys I think to myself. It never fails.

Five minutes later I’m standing in front of these little thirteen-year-old men and their compañera getting introduced as the no violenceia people… and they are straight up having conversations as the teacher is introducing us and as Marcela, the president of Association Pablo Nicolas is presenting our work. Maybe four out of the twenty-four in were paying attention. Damn, I think, its one of those classrooms where the air stays filled with chatter, laughter and blah punctuated by pleas from the teacher to please pay attention. No way. Not on my watch, especially when my watch says 7:33 am and I woke up at 4:30 to get here.

The intro ends, the kids still talking. We begin with a full 180 to change the vibe and I turn the volume up ten times from the teacher’s level. Laura and I introduce ourselves and explain we’re here to do something entirely different. This is no longer school. I do, when I say somos (we are), you say fuertes (strong)- somos fuertes, somos fuertes. They’re down. We form a circle and do a quick chequeo in which all 20 something of them say they either bien o con sueño (tired). Then Laura did an exercise of Image theater and they shared words that came to mind when they heard the word ‘violence.’ They easily came out with- fear, mistreatment, punches, pain, insults, and desperation. After Lau and I did an example, we all froze in an image that represented the words. They laughed a lot. Which was nice. Then we jumped to deciding how we wanted this space to be. They shared how they their favorite spaces were recess, their room, the futbol field, and the river… because in those spots, they can talk to their friends, be relaxed, there are no teachers around, people treat each other well and there is trust. And so we named the space, a dark echoing cold concrete shell of a classroom, ‘El Rio’, The River. The river was the one most people related to. And so everything Thursday morning from 7:30 to 8:30, that is what we will make it. We hot in our closing circle and locked arms and laughed more and then each said one word followed by the word si, yes to each affirm our individual commitment to making this The River how we want it. So it sounded like Freedom-yes, Peace-yes, Joy-yes, Love-yes… This was our end and our beginning. Our agreement between these twenty-four people that together we will build a space to have freedom, respect and trust. -The circle of Peace, La Plata, Argentina, aka: El Rio. When I say una, You say familia: Una Familia (one family). Always. First day: Victory. Peace Poets- 1, Cold little city outside Buenos Aires- 0. And so we begin again…

HARD METAL MORNINGS

The early morning train to La Plata, a city just south of Buenos Aires, is filled with workers. It smells of cold metal and dust and then the café being sold. Laura and I look out the window with tired eyes and heavy shoulders. We on our way to work too. We sigh. Wind comes through the open doors of the train as it picks up its pace. The morning is still under dark clouds. Its cold. The kind that arrives and wraps itself around your bones. Like the mountain cold of Quito that no blanket can conquer. You have to wait until the sun rises and you can sit in its light.

Out the train window the horizon starts to turn from black to blue to mist. The idea of the sun gives us a glimmer of warmth. Two hours late we arrive at the door of our place of work… Back to school…

-TOGETHER IN THE DARK-

Leaving home in the frigid darkness of 5am reminds me of the shelter. I take a moment to picture the breakfast table of brothers in the South Bronx. They are there. Starting from zero, looking for work and for an apartment. Looking to escape the system that steps hard on their chest with every application refused, every program filled up or insufficient, every job that leads to nothing but unstable survival. So many of them have heart problems. Many that Lincoln hospital will never fix. They are there, I think. And I am here.

Work

The Peace Poets got a workshop. Next Thursday with thirty thirteen year olds at 7:30am about two hours away from where we live. Yes. We are working in collaboration with Asociacion Pablo Nicolas, an organization dedicated to confronting and eradicating violence in schools. Lets get it on.

CASTRO

The day is brilliant and sunny and the students shine too as they enter and leave the Institute of Art. Five blocks away a girl of two years old sleeps face down on the street. Her pillow is a piece of trash. Her mother looks up at me calmly. I kneel down. She asks if I can call those policemen down the block because there is a shelter somewhere, she has papers for it, she is waiting…I ask her name. ‘Castro’… she stares blankly…. Still… ‘Mariana’… ‘hola.’ -Hola Mariana, mi nombre es Lucas. Ya te los llamo. I’ll call the Police for you… her daughter snores a little.

Questions

The city is inside out, turned by social movements and political oppression and misplaced efforts and malicious efforts and human chaos into slogans of liberation on walls and cafés on corners where you can get an empanada that will turn your whole situation around as you ask questions. But the questions are busier than the streets… You cannot ask about how people slept during the dirty war without being in the gridlock traffic of a million stories. But you have to keep asking questions. Questions like how are you today? And what do you remember? And what is your dream for tomorrow? What is my dream?

Tango Night and Flowers of la Señora, Parque Dorego

It has to be surrender. Or confidence. Or luck. Or the brilliance we forget we have within us finally splashing out the surface. One of these things is the essence of Tango.

I’m floating in a mist of cigarette smoke y breath full of vino tinto y a scratchy record’s epic declarations of passionate melodies y about 70 people dancing in a space where only 40 could stand comfortably. It’s a typical Sunday evening in this little plazuela where people come to dance and drink and talk and be.

A little girl of about ten years with a rainbow colored handmade poncho rolls up on me and sticks out her hand with a bright orange flower as if she was delivering the newspaper. I take it. She explains that the flowers belonged to a Senora who passed away, but the flowers are for the people. She is on a mission. I look at Constanza, la Chilena who had just been speaking to me about the necessity of breaking routines and living with passion. She smiles and the little girl gives her a flower too. La Chiquita scurries away through the pairs of dreamers dancing tango into the night sky like they were praying to the Gods of Argentinean Romance and red wind. Constanza and I accept the little girl’s mission and our part in it with curious amusement. My friend from Chile had just explained by example to me the inclusive nature of this social scene by acting as if I was an old friend even though I was just a stranger who just happened to be sitting nearby… “y tu, como estas?” she asked me and thirty seconds later we were agreeing about how miraculous it is to breathe air and look into eyes and create art. Five minutes after that we were gifted plants of a deceased woman. Ten minutes after that the chubby poncho flower delivery girl returns and says ok, la senora needs the flowers back. She grabs the stem and takes one right out of Constanza’s bag and lifts mine right out of my hands (so much for bringing lau una flor) We sit there totally shocked as the tango dancers glide around and watch as the niña walks up to a fifty year old lady in mid conversation and plucks a lily right out of her hair and walk off. We burst out laughing. The flower girl disappears, the tango dancers kick their heals up, the moon nods in approval and we discuss why life is worth living and then say goodnite as the dramatic pause of the tango ends and the plaza exhales.

La Otra

We live in a hood called La Boca. Poetry of paint of spray cans and brushes and hands and anything has been planted on the walls. Huge black letters on a yellow wall facing Calle Defensa read:

“Fuego a todas las Carceles! = Fire to all Prisons”

Word.

I wonder weather the brother or sister who wrote that has been behind bars. It seems extremely likely. I wonder if anyone that hasn’t could ever feel how inhumane prisons are?

I wonder what it takes to become the other?

The Right to go ummmmm.. .

Somebody should add Access to Empanadas to the list of Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So good.

Parks full of Possibilities

In the park here in Buenos Aires youth speak. They sit and drink mate and talk. Others skateboard, some read and some play futbol. They are together. It’s peaceful. I am overwhelmed with gratitude to be here, to love here… I wander the streets and wonder about the peaks and valley’s of people’s lives in this costal city farther south than I’ve ever been… I listen to the people, watch the humanness of their expression.

This is a Latin American city, even though it has architecture like Paris’ town halls and Italian names like Avenida Alberdi or Villa Crespo, but its Latino for sure. So it already feels like home. Dogs bark, drums play, three friends sitting next to me are laughing. The whole plaza feels like they are dancing in honor of expression itself, celebrating the perseverance of music, giving thanks for the benevolence of the sun. Actually, they’re just chilling like any people in any park anywhere... But it’s my first day far from home and I’m as open to inspiration as the cloudless sky above my head. Why not?

Futbol as Peace Making Strategy (Translated from Spanish)

And Now we here, eyes and ears open, walking as far as these feet will take us…

(Plaza Houssay, Buenos Aires

Frente la facultad de medicina)

Love of futbol seems to me to be a healthy love. Futbol is prayer, or maybe even more, a form of meditation. There is no war between those who play. There is an active peace. In this peace the human spirit, which is furious and excitable and competitive and hot… is free. And that is how peace has to be. You see everything come out in Futbol- patience and confidence, anger and joy, generosity or selfishness that we have or that we don’t. It’s all there. Free. But yet it’s controlled. We have to take into account the ball, the team, the time, the climate, the moment (not the past or future) and our capacity to play. Do you play? Yes. Why not? Lets play. Lets live. The moment. Free.

HOMES

Brazilian Airlines scoop me right out of my city and toss me to Rio, then drop me in Buenos Aires at 2am. Adrian drives his old little taxi slowly into the sleeping city, he talks about futbol as my mind travels back to this country’s Dirty War when these doors were kicked in and young activists like us were stolen out their beds, tortured, murdered and disappeared. ‘Every player wants to go to Europe’ Adrian explains. ‘Como no, I’m sure they do, I reply. The country has gone through an economic crisis in recent years but my friend says, ‘things are ok.... not good, not bad.’ We pass Parque Lezama and pull up outside Uspallata 489 where I will be calling home for the next few months. I think I’ve gotten good at making homes. I get out the car, step into the middle of the empty street and call up to the third floor: “Princesa!” She puts her head out the window and smiles. Home. The morning comes, the sun rises on a cold and crowded city where the ghosts of 30,000 people disappeared whisper dreams of revolutions, demands of rebellion and the simple human desire to at least be remembered. I can hear them sing.

~*

Leaving the Bronx

I’m gonna take a minute to go back to the exit from NYC. In our crew we always talk about how journeys begin before you leave and end long after you return…

14 - 9 - 10

Another journey has begun…even before the sun announces we’re worthy of another day, the call of brotherhood sounds. Enmanuel, Frank and Flo roll out of bed and out into the sleepless shadows of Valentine Ave. to grab the whip that’ll take me to the airport. Mike stumbles out into the dim light of the hallway to say peace and then insists on taking the traditional foto of me with my bags. Classic. Down in 3B Abe gets up and opens the door to give me a final pound y la bendicion, (we figure the more blessings the better). I walk out onto our block. I’m standing alone for a moment in the yellow haze of the streetlights.

Ahh, the block…I hate it, but I hate to leave it. The violence of crack, the guy stabbed across the street a couple months ago and my boy get put up against the wall and cuffed just last week. And yet right next door is family, where Rosa sells taquitos and tortas and Harris y Tito and the others guys kick it and tell stories and ask us to get the guitar to sing. Home. And then the late night chaos, somebody gotta break a bottle. The midday screaming matches between the lady on the fourth floor and the guys sitting on the hood of a car. Street football games at 2am when a diving catch sets off a symphony of car alarms. And drugs like milk outa the bodega. Home. It got a little quieter after that bust a while back when they found millions of dollars of heroin, guns, etc across the street but it’s getting back to its hostile self. Valentine Ave., you break my heart. I think of the last line in our piece about Manhood: “This War zone of a Home cannot steal our free will… We can still be as beautiful as the Sun…”

My brothers pull up in the car. Frank and Flo holding down the back seat, I get in the front next to E. I look at their tired faces. “Yall already know”. That means I’m grateful. Frank pats my shoulder, E says I owe him big time, Flo sits back and smiles. We turn down 194^th st and roll toward Webster then left on Fordham and out to the airport. Leaving the Bronx always hurts a little. I swallow the pain and regain focus. Its time to get to work and this is a good new beginning.

Flying down the highway through Queens listening to Nas I can’t think of a time when I had such a good sendoff since being in the back of a bread truck with fifteen family members bouncing down out the mountain hood in Quito to take me to the airport also at 5am. I feel strengthened by the solidarity. “Yah” I say, looking at each of them… “this is Brotherhood.” They laugh- “We got you brother” I nod, thinking to myself- yah, yaw do, and that… that is as beautiful as the sun.

It’s September 14^th and the Peace Poets are on the move again. Less than 12 hours ago Frantz and Abe arrived at JFK from Germany where they were representing Brotherhood/Sistersol and The Peace Poets at an international conference. Now I’m back at JFK putting my feet up at gate 3A realizing I’m ready. Here we go again…

Peace from South America

24 – 9 – 10

Its cold up in here. It’s the end of winter in Buenos Aires and the Peace Poets are keeping it positive despite the fact it’s not warm enough to wear chancletas in the streets. Whats up with anyone living in a place where you can't rock flip flops comfortably? … But life moves here… and you can hear people singing at all hours and you can play futbol en los parques and you can see people dance tango in the street and you can write books to rebel against mental slavery and you can be nostalgic and miss your loved ones and find people who sell shoes made out of old jeans and sit in plazas where mothers protested the disappearance of their children by the military junta and you can laugh at yourself and you can question your courage when you see kids in the streets at midnight asking for money for food because they are hungry and you can be sure there is hunger and you can read desperation spray painted on crumbling concrete walls and you can wish the world was better and you can love here and you can be joyful despite the pain here and you can dream of a place where everyone is as honest as the music of the man who plays his guitar with his eyes closed… here. Where we are now. Where we are beginning again. Where we are ready to work. And celebrate work. And inhale the clouds from above the moon, so that we have all the necessary breath to whisper I love you. And mean it with our entire poetic soul. Welcome home.