A note about the cost of dying…

Right now, my grandmother is fighting down the cost of living.

In a mirrored hall of financial cycles, I am her bridge out of troubles the way she was for my parents 30+ years ago. On this globally warmed, deathly hot Florida August afternoon, I sit at her table, my son nearby. I watch with wonder…her every motion an epigraph of the body I will come to occupy; gray eyelashes, retired nurse’s hands, the critical, sharp corners of her mouth turning upward, easily, playful and luminous…

I must say it kinda freaks me out to visit my grandmother.

Somewhere in the midst of the love in this visit, is a silent, neon, implicit flaw in the premise of tomorrow’s promise…

And so I trip…

Cuz I am physically fit and ALSO keenly aware of the ways I am physically reaching away from my youth. Being around my 94 year old grandma is an unsettling reminder to maybe get right with God instead of lingering on the numbing tastes of the flesh…

I am safe, and spooked in the company of the aging, smell my youth’s sense of immortality slipping away on the sweat of my skin. My new york-set internal clock begins to slow. I remember I have so much left to do…and so little time…so little time…

Today my elder needs me.

My grandmother bought her home.

Her bank will not re-up at the end of her 5-year, real estate bubble, fucked up loan.

Always paid her bills on time.

She’s 94, the banks are discriminate in taking their time to decline.

The country eats its young and leaves its elderly in the summer heat to spoil…

…and the real bug out is…

If Congress fails to act on health care reform, it will be 20 times less expensive for me to buy my grandma’s house then it will be provide health care for her or  ANY ONE in my family. 62% of all bankruptcies last year were due to folks incurring unsustainable health care costs. 1.5 million families go into foreclosure every year due to unaffordable health care costs…

my grandma is a vigorous and VITAL 94.

Feisty.

On this august day, we look at one another from across the table, silently chewing on an endgame, active in a fierce tug of war between life and debt…

Despite the complex web of health and finance, the fear of dying reminds me that life is living…

Reminds me of the murdered youth we marched to remember in Chicago last month…

Kids who probably didn’t have an opportunity to see the reaper coming before getting sickled from behind between classes…In Chicago, we focused Life is Living on the art and activity that sustains our communities…soccer, dancing, visual art, music, biking, poetry, food, gardening…we framed the day in such a way that we could all agree that just as energy consumption is an environmental issue, elder care is an environmental issue.

Sustaining the planet INCLUDES sustaining enough humanity to recognize the basic right to age in peace, without literally worrying to death about a place to live…

The blueprint of our geological accountability is ACTUALLY imbedded in our sociological accountability. A people empathetic enough to care for one another’s physical and mental health, is thusly compassionate enough to assure the safe passage of our planet to future generations

As we seek to mirror the success of the Chicago Life is Living event (big UP Kuumba Lynx), I am settled into the very personal terms of celebrating urban life in this time of economic downturn. Planning for the Oakland Life is Living leads me into the West Oakland Senior Center, and the Public Library on 18^th and Adeline, both of which border our event site, DeFremery Park. I want folks coming out of either building to be at home in the park on October 10. More than that, I want each to find home in one another…

like a grandson bearing a burden for the one who bore him life…

like a newborn finding herself in her grandfather’s eyes…

please stay tuned as we chronicle this pathway to environmental sustainability…

the path is built by and FOR people, with an emphasis on future classic traditions, and in celebration of the LIVES we LIVE… holistically fighting for financial, physical, and social health…

urban…

red…black…green…and blue…

more soon…

So for real… 

I suck in the soil, but I been farming me a garden for a little while now, and I’m living off the fruit… 

But before we get there… 

I’m sitting in my car outside of starbucks with my engine running as I read the new york times… 

It’s December of 2007, and the Bush administration has used the Environmental Protection Agency as a proxy to reject 17 states in their bid to impose more rigid emissions standards on the automobile agency. Not that I wasn’t noticing the overarching wackness of our president’s policy making, but something about this PARTICULAR decision felt particularly sinister to me. Despite the illusion of inclusion into a domestic body politic, corporations clearly have no national identity, no allegiance to people.

With this decision Bush was going beyond the xenophobia that psychologically bridged the U.S to war in Iraq. The EPA couldn’t claim even a false moral ground here, was transparently and intentionally corporate in a manner that showed neither allegiance to country nor planet.  

Ooohhh… they actually for real, DON’T give a fuck…I thought…

And soon there will be nothing left to eat but money, and regret… 

Me? I got sustainability issues (and not just the personal ones)… I fly everywhere, drive hella much, eat out often, sometimes travel across oceans to perform 5 minute poems. Mine is a garden of robust messaging and performance language…an organization, professorships, hella foundation awards, several touring shows, talking head heaven, the whole nine…

My green lettuce is feebly wilted by comparison…something’s got to change…time to USE THE PRESENT cultural assets and position to MAKE THE FUTURE. 

So folks I’mo try something, and use this space to document the process of moving from thought to action the best I know how. In the break between convictions and contradictions, bush bashing and casual consumption I find art, and I think maybe, community… 

The idea is to make a LIVING COMMUNITY in PERFORMANCE called red black and GREEN: a blues… 

At the center of this community is the belief that the term “green” presupposes an appreciation and value for life. Further, the ugly reality is that for a number of reasons, this fundamental value of life is systemically stunted within the black community. The evidence is in the data. For instance, Blacks are more likely to die of heart disease, stroke, HIV/AIDS, flu, pneumonia, diabetes, cancer, asthma, AND homicide than Whites. All this according to the CDC’s latest statistics.  

So before we go green, we go brown, with a specific strategy to reflect and affirm life for all, beginning with a series of events and installations called life is living. “Life is Living” is a one day festival cum national branding initiative, a direct link between black and brown communities, contemporary arts centers, and the planet. Watch this video to SEE what I mean, or peep this abstract to READ what I mean… 

Either way, the deal is this… 

I am choosing to alter my personal relationship to public space, and through politics, performance, cartography, and film, I am inviting communities all over the united states to do the same, beginning in Harlem and Brooklyn, uptown Chicago, the 9^th ward in Houston, West Oakland, and the Excelsior district in san francisco… 

Along the way, the documentation of the process will appear on this site in blog, photo essay, and hopefully a community of links looking toward action…my starting eight of hero/allies in this are the YOUTH SPEAKS massive, Eli Jacobs Fantauzzi, the mighty MVMT crew, the women of MAPP, Brett Cook Dizney, bethanie hines, jeff chang and you.

Somewhere along the road, I will build my next dance theater work with the dirt and residue of these dreams… 

Art in action. For real… 

Re-use this blog…

Re-cycle these ideas… 

Life is worth living.

Living is green.