Oh the broke down bus.

The saga of the broke down continues. We trucked up a hill at a angle

Mountain range in Venezuela.

Dylan!

Venezuela from the barracks.

Today I spoke with a woman about her issues with her job. She works for an organizations whose past accomplishment have completly overshadowed their current work. She was looking for something with more action less rhetoric it seemed. Another woman I spoke with was all about helping the worker move to a place of direct action. She gave examples of a community of folks that put pressure on the mayor to extend Sec 8 to give them more of a chance to become self sufficient. I asked her what did she give them to sustain then if the action did not work. She stated simply that it was getting the to believe they could not fail.
I work for a place where everything I do comes from a reactive place. The crisis prompts the solution. After three years this has left me unsatified. This work is supposed to be empowerment but is that what it is? I teach people to react and strategize within a system set up to tear them up. A system that would rather they didn´t trouble it with their needs although it had a heavy hand in creating them. While the people that I have spoken to have inspired me in many ways there is that leave me frustrated. I have also learned about being stuck. The ways a person so caught in the reactive state that they never move forward. The sadness of it. How being victimized has become so ingrained that it is the cycle that wears down their souls. The think tht there is nothing else, no other possibilities available. Choice is so important. Recognizing that there is a choice is the hardest thing a person can do. Acting on the choice is second hardest.
I came here to learn as much as I could about building coalitions to bring about social change. I will be more aware when I leave this place. I will learn how to combat the wages of the capitalist, white supremist sexist society. The kind of people who do this are very important because without this kind of work I would be hard pressed to be sucessful. The work that I want to do involves using my creativity in cinematography. At it highest level in this field is the commercial aspect. The hands on experience that I would be most likely to receive would be in documentary. The kind of experience that would feed me the most because not only would I practice the the craft but I would tell important stories. The commercial has no use for work that is in addition to being artistically beautiful work that is a critic of the world it examines. Or is that another pessimistic cop out. The biggest block to tear down are my own issues with powerlessness. The master tools have built sturdy house. I must get passed this within myself to tear it down. It is what I hope to accomplish here and now. I want to unlock that part of myself.

My meal was rice, bread, potato and juice but this was my view.

This is the kind man who let me steal his bed. You rock Richard!

The first folks in the US delegation. We received careful warning about current political climate. Don't get involved in it while your here. Be careful you could be deported.

This is me writing from the computing area of the festival barracks. I am trying to take it all in. The funny thing about being here is there are so many different kinds of people that it is almost impossible to feel out of place. There is a aura of vibrant energy that surrounds this place. Like a school where everyone wants to learn or help.
As we got off the plane I was still feeling the unreality of being in Latin America. We got off the plae at 8pm and then there was the wait. Every hour some one announced the time incredulously as it streached into the next mornings night. Annabelle was recruited to help people get their credential. I sat and talked to Julie, Q and Adam. Q is a woman I met at WOW cafe when I performed there last summer. Adam I know from Shane another friend and Julia I used to see. Q and Adam are both in the YCL. We tried to keep each other entertained. We were given what our our completo. It was two boxes containing fruit, candy, a sandwich and a sweet desert. The sandwiched was bread and cheese from vegitarians and ham for the meat eaters. This was when I knew that it would be the same food day after day. They packaged so neatly in plastic containers. After a while when we had oficially been here around 6 hours. The giddiness started to set in. The young people of the delegation played music on various instruments and jumped to the beat of drums and chants. We finally got our credentials at 2am. Then we went outside to the buses. They reminded me of the country buses in Jamaica. Not to big with windows wide open to catch the air flying by. When we finally got on the road the similarities didn´t end there. The smells and the hillsides. The fast and furious driving of the bus driver. Our ride was scored with sentimental spanish music. The barracks are located in the province of miranda. The bus got lost a couple of times during the 90 minute ride to the barracks. Backing down the steep and narrow road with the Venezuelan police who rode with us providing navigational help. I couldn´t sleep on the way because my eyes were peeled back as wide as they could go to take what I could in. I am having trouble really processing what I have done coming out here. I havent been to the city proper and because of that I don´t feel like I have really seen Caracas. The festival will not properly begin until tomorrow. I suppose I will receive a schedule of events. I want to see the gay bars and the beach.

These are the barracks where we will be sleeping. Unisex..

Its getting bigger. This is the beginning of 20000 students strong. Multi-lingual, cultural, and faceted. People sang chants about freedom and Chavez.

Organizing organizers is like herding cats. IT BEGINS a quote from Shane McEvoy

Lara from Toronto. Part-time organizer full time commitment to social justice and government reform.

Julia Beatty on the plane to Caracas. we are all on the same plane. We are meeting the YCL kids in Miami. Then on to Venezuela.

This is the inside me the suitcase I am bringing to venezuela. I am excited and terrified all at the same time. Right now my biggest concern is .. Have I pack too much shit?

On being naked for money.. Coming soon.

This morning I stare out a day filled with the anticipation of travel. I will travel to the city to sell my nudity to an art class. I will travel to Venezuela to learn about what it means to be revolutionary in my time. I am going to see what others mean by solidarity. I am a little afraid because I put my self in debt to this but I feel that if I don't I won't manifest something I have said I want.

Choices are very important. If I don't move I have no reason toi complain of not going anywhere.

Dominance and submission. There are people in this world who want to be told what to do. In relationships of the romantic and platonic alike.
My lovers are always dominated by me in a certain respect, giving up control of what their formerly held beliefs of what a relationship should be to accept my ways of loving. I have had quite the time trying to figure out the space as well as the closeness I need from a partner. It is easy to negotiate these spaces if I keep my self aloof. If I am too affectionate profess my love too much this often signals the end of a relatiobnship. Some how the more cold I am the more heat I receive. It is as if the constancy of the struggle to seek my attention is the draw.
I hate to need anyone for any thing. Unconciously they see that need and use the power of the domination to reset their own emotional instability. Their judgement/assessment of me becomes the way that they can explain the world around them. In relationships it is easier to be in control when a part of me is left unsaid. This is passive aggressive. I feel like I can't share because it seems to difficult to own up to a shortcomming. Also it often seems like my foibles are used to deflect attention from the person who stands in judgement over me. The way they cope is to feel my shakiness as contrast to their unscruitinized stability.
I feel like even my closest relationships follow this pattern. The less that is said of own narrative the more of me I can keep from being bandied about as conversation to keep the focus away from the speaker. Alternatively the less I say in these relationships the more I am loved because all of our interaction is focused on them.
Funny thing is I can usually tell my lovers that the are not respecting my boundaries. I witnessed horrific partner abuse as a child. I saw things that no child should see. I also learned that if there are no boundaries people will push and push until they have ground you into dust. I will never allow a person that cannot respect my boundaries as they come to access to my body. They will write their pain on me emotionally and eventually physically.
Friends on the other hand I tend to allow far more liberties. If I owe them anything I can feel the command behind every request and invasive probing behind every query.
Strangers being the variable over which I have no control if they are overtly agressive in their first interaction how I react depends on the first interaction. Usually though my aloofness is read as arrogance and I am approached aggressively very often.

I have learned to accomodate overt aggression. Other stand and fight I choose flight or placation. Lulling my confrontation away. I hate the fact that I do this but I learned it so young. I learned to keep the resentment I feel buried so deep that it takes up no room. Or at least it shouldn't. There is so much of it now that it spills from my eyes. The years have changed the first of these buried thought from murky slit in a still pool to hard layers of sediment. Stacked high in my psyche pushing outwards until it becomes granite encasing my face in the stony grin. The mask.
we wear the mask that grins and lies
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes
This debt we pay to human guile
with torn and bleeding hearts we smile

It seems to of that relationships evolve in very specific ways. Everyone involved has to have a certain amount of control. Beyond control there is anarchy, maybe there can live love.

This is the glass of ice tea over which I fantasized about my trip to venezuela.

Let be be the finally of seem for I am the emperor the emperor of icecream

The voices in my head are the manifestations of my fears. They are more of the litany of self doubt that the world would feed me like mothers milk. The cold breast of failed hope. The only way to combat the unrealized is to live like there is no other choice but to do what you want.
Manifest the statement you make.

What I want
1. Ultimate goal feature film cinematographer. The stress, technical skills of pointing and shooting a film of immense magnitude. From idea to painting life with color sound and motion. To be respected, make alot of money, to dream bigger than ever.

2. To see as much of the world as possible. This life too short. I could be on a bus and torn asauder by some one elses political belief made real. I could arrested for comments made about my government I could be beaten for being a woman. My life as a Black woman under pressure deserves to see and experience as much as possible before the sweet taste of life has left my mouth.

3. Buy a brownstone in an area of NY that I like and/or a home in New Orleans

I thought my woman left my but she was playing nursemaid to her love struck/sick friend all night. She didn't call because she wanted to surprise me. I was elated to see her at the door but mad. She was mean to me and left me in the doldrums.
Still I was glad to see her when I saw her.

Peach smoothie, mmm... Another summer day in Bedstuy.