How to Change the World, Justina

Updated on Friday, June 8, 2012 at 4:40PM by Elena Taurke

One morning on the way to Ballet class, I hear the news that Black Americans are moving away from northern urban areas toward the South and into the suburbs.  This interests me for what it will mean for diversity, so I remember it.  

As we chitchat before class, Justina, a young Black woman just returned from a family visit to Tennessee, comments:  "The South never changes."   I argue briefly and then ponder her comment for the remainder of class.  (You can blame all my mistakes on that!)   When class is over I ask her what she meant.  A graduate student in Social Psychology, she is frustrated by entrenched patterns:  expectations shape behavior, behavior reinforces expectations, and the cycle perpetuates itself.   Indeed, I agree.   Except here she is, an exception.

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Crutch Master

Gales of laughter in the bus as he gets the first reaction--people on the street in some kind of shock and awe at a man using crutches to skateboard through the streets of New York.   He is known as the Crutch Master, and the mastery is evident and spectacular.   We are in the bus as the audience to his performance.  Hooked up to cameras, a DJ, and a major sound system, it feels like a combination of a hip dance party and a sting operation. "Wall Stall" Shannon Technique 2010 

So we are in the bus to watch the watchers.   We desperately want to see people on the street react to our Crutch Master.  We want their "Huh?"  We want to see them dislodged from their complacency.   We are hungry for it.    Many of us standing, craning necks from window to monitor display, aching to see a bystander get shook up.  Crutch Master is doing his best to deliver.  Here he is bumming a cigarette from a Wall Street Trader.  There he goes doing a jig for a tourist bus.  We see the people try to resist, turn their backs, shake their heads.  In the bus, we are cracking up, laughing forcefully at how people try to just keep going, how they can't recognize a true phenomenon, how they miss what is right before their eyes.  

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Gay "Marriage"

Made in 2008 or so, Gay "Marriage" exposes the dilemma of the maddening and unfair paperwork imposed on gay couples who want the same financial rights as heterosexual married couples.   It is a tragicomedy that blends interview and animation to bring to life the horrifying effects of paperwork unfairly imposed on gay couples:  JTROS, taxable gifts, powers of attorney, HIPAA, and more.   

A star-crossed lesbian couple get the romance knocked out of them as they wake up to legal reality.  Music by Mayra Casales.  Running time, 12:13 minutes. 

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It Doesn't Show

Updated on Friday, October 15, 2010 at 11:50AM by Elena Taurke

Updated on Friday, June 8, 2012 at 4:50PM by Elena Taurke

It doesn't show, they started to say after the surgeries.   This should have been a cure for shame, and maybe it was, but it also produced a new problem.   A deep and integral aspect of my personhood became invisible and unknowable. Don't look. Juvenile arthritis is a peculiar and defining experience.  As a toddler, you get braces and casts instead of the exhilaration of walking.  As a kid, you get the special  role in the ballet recital.  Then, as your wrists are progressively deforming, Phys Ed with its impossible pushups and volleyball falls by the wayside.  You are left with the other rejected kids in Choir and then in Drama Club, where, to vanquish your depression, you pledge yourself a career and vengeance.  The twist (pardon the pun) in the story is that, along the way, you fall in love with dance--the one thing that everyone agrees is totally out of the question. 

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You Just Don't Get It

You just don't get it, said her eyes into my silence.  My beautiful dark-skinned friend from a South American country had just told me of her troubles getting a Visa, indicated how hard she worked in a restaurant to support her dancing.   I felt for her, so the distrust was painful.  Was it distrust, or was I projecting my own?   

Like most of my young dancer friends, she asks me nothing about my life, as if it is already established, not in question.  If they did ask, they might hear

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Reading "Henrietta Lacks"

Updated on Friday, June 8, 2012 at 4:47PM by Elena Taurke

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks might be the saddest book I've ever read.   If you don't know this story, here's the bottom line:  A Black woman's cancer cells were taken and cultured without her permission and, because of their superhuman ability to thrive, spawned all variety of discovery and cure.  She died, her disease almost neglected; her family remains dirt poor and deeply uneducated.  In the absence of information from the scientists who benefited from Henrietta's cells, the family creates stories of heroism or victimization, depending on what's going on that day.  What is usually going on is a fight for survival against overwhelming odds.

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What Seduces You?

What tempts you to fall out of your mind?  For me, it is belonging.  If someone says you are one of us, I'm toast, especially if it's a  group that disdains all other groups.   I forget my values, my preferences, my feelings, my family ... and become a faulty mirror of the group, a groupee.   But maybe triumph is more seductive for you.  Maybe it's chocolate...or money...or fame...or boobs...or cherries...what are those things, anyway?
What can you learn about yourself from your temptations?
How can you encourage yourself to disobey their instructions?

What else will meet the craving?

What will satisfy the longing?

Can you stay curious long enough to sense the difference between craving and longing?  And can you allow the longing to pull you into connection with the whole universe?

Mahogany

Here's a funny story:

My daughter and husband are shopping for a birthday card for me.  They see a yellow card with sparkly flowers.  The text reads:  Today is a day for celebrating you and the wonderful mother you are…Today is a day to celebrate everything about you.  Your warmth, your wisdom…your beauty and spirit.  Today is a day for telling you how proud and grateful I am to have you for a mother.  Happy Birthday With Love.

The beige woman at the counter says:  "Are you sure you want to buy this card?"  They are puzzled.  What is the problem?   She replied:  "It’s for black people."   She pointed at the card.  "See, Mahogany,  for black people."   I guess black people love their mothers differently.

Are you laughing?

March 2011