Recalibrating Resistance Strategies

And remembering that gravity holds us all

I’ve been writing bits and pieces since my arrival in Santa Fe three weeks ago, but I have been pulled in so many directions that I’ve rarely have had the concentration to complete this bit of reflection. It’s the combination of being in a new place, adjusting to living with others as well as a new altitude and climate, learning new routines, depending on my legs and the generosity others for transportation, figuring out what creative skills I want to use to process this challenging time in the world, keeping my body happy, and ducking when missiles of fear come careening into my field of vision. In the midst of this awful political moment, in the past few weeks, I experimented with a project that might lift people’s resolve to do something in response to what’s happening. My inner critic had a field day with what emerged, but I know that I have to be patient and let go of many of the expectations (as vague as they were) that I brought with me to this residency.

In the little cubby hole studio that’s part of a spacious hive of similarly semi-private spaces for the artist & writer residents here at SFAI, I made small ink drawings of the thoughts that float through my head as I listen on headphones to podcasts featuring brilliant thinkers like Jeremy Lent and youTube videos that were made to create focus for highly distractible brains (their frequencies have inconsistent success for my particular brain).

Initially, I had an idea to place photocopies of these images tucked into cracks in walls on the pedestrian streets of Santa Fe. The messages and imagery could be discovered and perhaps offer encouragement to those who were feeling discouraged. As I thought this idea through, I saw these carefully crafted & reproduced images ending up as litter blowing around the broad boulevards and back alleys. So I nixed that idea. Leaving these images & text like prayers tucked into the cracks of local walls was not the right path for this concept.

The neighborhood where our residency is located is far away from pedestrian streets on a mostly derelict campus (that was once the Santa Fe Art College). It’s in an area that locals frown about as not being attractive, with its car dealerships, mini-malls, box stores, and boulevards that are more like freeways, and it is quite a distance from downtown. The campus itself seems haunted, once an art school and before that another kind of school, some of it has been repurposed as storage or city offices, and the rest is abandoned. Public art with diverse aesthetics from the 1960s and late modernist architecture have made it an eerie place to roam these past few weeks. Since I resisted renting a car, I’ve been relying on the kind care of folks to give me rides to extra-curricular activities like dance & rallies. Fortunately, someone is always available to take me to the store for groceries. Later this week, I’m shedding that dependence and will rent a very small car through Costco, so that I can get out of town and experience the beauty of this place more fully.

Before arriving in Santa Fe, I had planned to interview strangers on the street and ask them what they were carrying in relation to the poly-crises of this moment. I wanted to know how they were grounding themselves despite the dizzying and deeply disturbing news and what their visions might be for a world different than that we are witnessing now. I had recently proposed a similar project for an artist’s grant in Tacoma in which I would become a walking story hive, dressing in a playful and outlandish costume, making me look like a hive surrounded by pollinators.

My plan was to take this information, digest it, and share it in some sort of sculptural hive as a kind of local “honey,” but my desire to walk the box store-filled boulevards of this particular neighborhood and accost strangers with difficult questions evaporated pretty rapidly when I landed here. Instead, I’ve been interviewing the members of my cohort, while drawing their portraits, and learning a bit about their concerns, their tool kits for self-care, and their visions. These interviews & portraits are a bit raw in their current manifestation (a web-like chart adjacent to the portraits) and they may turn into something else over time. I have definitely enjoyed the process and have gotten to know the cohort better than I might have otherwise.

To make the project more interactive for visitors to the studio space, I found some discarded cardboard, free paint & charcoal at the free art supply store (open once a month on campus) and got to work. The honeycomb pattern has become a joyful one for me, so I worked on two panels, puncturing one of them and placing spell pouches in the holes as party favors for those who participated in the project. For Open Studios last week, people were asked to answer questions about what it means to be here in this moment in history, and I invited them to respond in ways that felt alive to them.

It’s important to note here that I haven’t drawn portraits in years, but I saw this as a way to get to know my fellow residents in a relaxed way while I recorded their responses to questions on my phone. Some of their responses were written into the web (Indra’s Net) on the wall adjacent to the portraits.

In retrospect, if I were to do a public interviewing project with strangers, I would rather be part of team of interviewers. It feels too vulnerable otherwise. I’m imagining a group of 3-4 people in costume, playful “bee” costumes, going up to people saying “.Are you willing to share a story with me?” Naming the stories as pollen that we are collecting for our story hive feels a bit too bold.

Despite the corrupt crooks in D.C. with their assaults on democracy ricochetting around our heads and impacting so many we know and love, my artist/ writer cohort here seems to be finding ways to balance well, through their art making, meditation, walking, and just talking to others. Interviewing them alone, as I did, may be a form of myopia, I know, but the group was game for this experiment as a way for me to find my way into this work.

Using my scattered energy as fuel for writing, cultural interventions, and discussions with my cohort here at the Santa Fe Art Institute, is not a new strategy for me. In fact, it’s been rare for me not to be scattered, yet somehow I am able to find my way to some sort of completion. I’m planning to spend this next month tidying up my manuscript and finding an editor to help me clean up whatever is inessential to my thesis.

In the midst of the chaos of this time, I’m extremely privileged to have had moments when I can to re-tune my frequencies with yoga, dance, Qi Gong, a shiatsu massage and soak at 10,000 Waves. and a meditation, dharma talk, and community meal at the Upaya Zen Center. At the latter, I met wonderful, bright, and engaged people during the dinner, and delightfully reconnected with my old friend, Roshi Joan Halifax, and had a brief exchange with Rebecca Solnit who delivered the dharma talk (the recording is linked above).

I am now remembering my first uncomfortable nights here, full of fitful sleep and nightmares reflecting the pain and grief of the “shock & awe” policy shifts and mass firings. I was worrying about being away from my home, my cat, and the comfort of friends and community, but since then I have recalibrated. I’ve discovered a kind of magic here, where synchronicities are abundant, Home is wherever I’m sitting, sleeping, walking, or dancing. The inner mother that I’ve manifested over the years can give me a supportive hugs if I feel out of place.

The first month of my residency will end this Thursday and half of the cohort will leave and another 6 people will arrive for the month of March. Last Friday, I gave a talk about art as medicine for these times and how I learned to lift up positive possibilities in the midst of dire circumstances (something I was not programmed to do naturally). I will post the video recording of my talk, and that of my colleague, Ruth Wallen, who nominated me for this residency when SFAI uploads it to their site.

There are so many resources that I could post to help bolster our spirits, and for those of you who are well connected online, you may already know about many of them. For now, I will share the words of Jesse Serrante (a student and friend of Joanna Macy), Starhawk, and Rebecca Solnit who has new newsletter, Meditations in an Emergency.

FROM JESSE SERRANTE (podcaster for We Are the Great Turning)

As we navigate the assaults of Trump’s first few weeks I’ve noticed a theme in myself and my sessions with my coaching clients:

Our minds are running freaking wild.

Overwhelm is a undertow in our days, threatening to pull us off balance.

And of course, this is their goal.

The administration has been very clear that they aim to “flood the zone”, overwhelming us to the point of despair, numbness, confusion— and ultimately helplessness against their agenda.

From a place of overwhelm, where our minds are running on overtime and caught in places like worry and confusion, it’s difficult to focus on anything in particular.

Thereby, it’s difficult to respond to what’s happening in ways that are in integrity for us.

what would it look like for us to be “unfloodable”?

So, I want to offer some brief, imperfect guidance, through two simple practices that have helped my clients and me to settle and center ourselves in the last two weeks, so that we are not so easily “flooded”.

So that we can take in what’s happening and maintain our capacity to respond with integrity.

1. Bring in the wisdom of your body (and breath)

It’s really freaking hard to think clearly when we’re scared. To bring our brain back online, it helps to start by dropping our attention down into our bodies, and SLOW DOWN.

I know this can feel almost impossible when we’re activated, but it’s nonetheless true.

To do this, you can simply stop in your tracks and take 3 deep breaths.

You can wiggle, shake, or shimmy your body.

You can put on a song, focus on the music, and move your body in any way that feels good.

If you can, work out— run, walk, swim, hit a punching bag, whatever gets you out of your head and into your body, even if it’s only for a few minutes.

And if you want, here is a short meditation that I often use with clients when they need support to quiet their minds and tune into their body’s wisdom…

to hear the meditation and read the rest:

HEAD OVER TO MY (new!) SUBSTACK

From Starhawk’s Substack: Many voices are calling for people to form small groups of trusted friends and neighbors to take action together in the face of the Mump regime’s illegal and authoritarian blitz of actions. But once you get that group together, what do you do then? We need both long-term strategies and immediate responses, and we need to not get overwhelmed, panicked or paralyzed. So here’s a suggestion of thirteen things you can do with a small group. Many of them can also be done individually, but you’ll have more confidence and support if you do them together. And whenever possible, combine them with a potluck! Nothing brings people together like sharing food.

· Support one another: create space for people to share what they are feeling and experiencing.

· Write letters, make phone calls and contact elected representatives. Send a slurry of Letters to the Editor.

· Fact-check spurious stories on social media and counter them. Amplify stories and memes that further justice and empowerment.

· Go together to the office of your local congressperson or Senators and meet with staff to share your concerns. Bernie Sanders and Van Jones recommend this as being more effective than writing or calling.

· Go together to protests, demonstrations, vigils, etc. and bring friends. Organize them!

· Organize practical support, financial aid and/or legal support for people at risk: workers who have been forced out of their jobs or illegally fired, immigrant families, transport for people needing medical care, etc.

· Accompaniment: stay or walkwith people who are at risk of being targeted by ICE, hate groups, etc. Film and document interactions.

· Take and/or organize trainings in nonviolent direct action, strategy, group decision-making and other skills relevant to organizing and expanding our resistance and movement-building.

· Make art, music, theater, street theater, puppets, comedy or other forms of culture to contest the fascist takeover and empower people.

· Refuse to comply or cooperate with unjust orders or systems, and support non-co-operation.

· Pick one issue to focus on, and develop your own campaign around it or find a group already working on it to support.

· Ally with larger groups that are already organizing around key issues.

· Support good candidates for local offices, or run yourself.

· Create models of regeneration and empowerment.

We may not have the power we’d like—but we do have power! It will grow if we use it together, and if we do what we can, we may be surprised by what we can accomplish!

Thanks, dear readers, for your patience. I am hoping to post more in the coming weeks, especially about how people are perceiving this chapter we have entered. We need to keep each other strong, loving, and curious.