Art & Apathy Shoot – To the Holy Land
Arrived safe and sound. Cameras ready and shooting begins already. So many new sounds, smells, voices, faces. And Home Depot.
So different, so similar, and I feel the flurry here deeper, more profoundly. Kittens outside our door, feral, terribly hungry, unable to understand play. Surviving. Scratching together a meager, mean life, as disposable creatures. There are levels of class and privilege here, based on more than money. Many feel this is home for them, spiritually. I feel spiritually burdened here. The trappings of man desperately gripping some measure of control over life, death, meaning. Jew, Muslim, Christian. All capital letters here. I, the pagan, the child of nature, see the twisting so obvious here – the writhe against. Against – the entirety of against. Not simply against death, each other, the Arab world, the growing disapproval of Western Nations, the occupation, the settlers, the armed and disarmed, the repression of sexuality, of compassion. I ache, I shoot, I witness and am saddened. I know my ever-present outsider view, a mixed blessing, makes me an ultimate enemy and a possible ally. My eyes confirm, see the conforming shapes of America, confuse the Arab and Jew as the same Mediterranean hued human beings, see no difference except in who has clean water, who has a swimming pool.
Compassion, compassion, compassion. My mantra. My only refuge. For myself, for others. I have no solutions. I create, react to myself, and the way I experience the world. I see seeds of something good in every being. Food, shelter, healthcare, respect, love, compassion. These are the only things we truly NEED. I write this on a laptop costing much more than the average yearly salary of some people here. I did for myself, for many years. Now, I turn that dial out, past me, family, material and status desires. Past tense – the passed tenseness of not being able to grip happiness in traditional ways. What do I seek to sustain? That is my question and my answer lingers towards love and sanity. The sanity I seek requires of me service. Service to bring the quiet, lamed voices of beings needing to be counted as valued. I cannot help staring at the guns in the arms of barely teenage boys and feel so many tears like bullets squeeze out far too easily. Automatic weapons – anger, hate, greed, fear.
I am here. Weeks of shooting ahead. Many different voices, at different stages of their personal mission. Each person humbles me. Except the whack ass upper classed myopic men of media I meet. Men. American. Missing the point on so many levels. Here for acquisition and angling for position on some poster boy promise of “new-ish media”. I wrongly claim I am of the same generation. I am a decade senior, though it does not show. I am tired of meeting upper class twits, who dispassionately moan about nothing, not realizing their white teeth, clear skin, newish/stylish/washed clothes, full bellies, opportunities and access are not a burden but a responsibility. Share the sweetness of your lives with beings to whom a very little means a very lot. And with respect, not the modern colonists’ pity by pennies. But who am I to judge? Does my intimacy with poverty, inhuman treatment and the social terrorism known as sexism make me a better candidate for truth, for honesty?
It took me 15 years to handle the standard white trash female variety of interior eruptions and external disruptions. It took many head on collisions with walls and the brain smears only made me more determined to break them down. The moves made were pouty, bratty, reactive, and sometimes downright stupid. No, not stupid, IGNORANT. And worse, when I became self-aware, self-educated, my natural defiance wouldn’t let me back down. Here, my blog lists only a couple of years of emotionally motivated choices that did not serve anyone. I might be wronged, but I know better than to wrong back. Its not fighting, its wronging. Its using a means to a mean end, because of self-righteous leanings. But the desert sprouted fruit, once forbidden, now sweet and honest and still sometimes full of vinegar.
Many stories to tell. More soon.
:) melissa
