Ceremony: Call for ideas

Ceremony
I will tell you something about stories,
[he said]
They aren't just for entertainment.
Don't be fooled
They are all we have, you see,
all we have to fight off illness and death.
You don't have anything
if you don't have the stories.
Their evil is mighty
but it can't stand up to our stories.
So they try to destroy the stories
let the stories be confused or forgotten
They would like that
They would be happy
Because we would be defenseless then.
[Leslie Marmon Silko “Ceremony” 1]

To my mother, it is an Earthquake.

To me, this is an nuclear disaster.

I came to believe that as much as I believe that I can decide who offends me, or when I can get a productive panic, or greed, or sorrow, that are truly intimate to me, I respect that my mother can do too.

She is not a helpless victim.

Saving Japan narrative drops off so many.

So many of who have been outside of the stories,

The stories of governments and corporations.

Don’t kill me.

Don’t make us revive from your crisis like puppets.

I will write and go insane sometimes,

and I don’t want anybody else to decide it.

- - - - - - -

I am trying to shoot videos or collect infos that introduce coping strategies for anybody who is affected in this whole thing, whether it is loneliness, nuclear, breaking up, earthquakes, or just the lack of their favorite TV shows.

Survivors in Japan and other parts are having hard time with their physical

reality as well as their emotional reality.

They have to be constantly on radio or on the Internet, looking for info about

the next earthquake or the radiation.

Media does not broadcast anything else at all.

Also, radiation shuts people up inside of their houses.

All the international support is being sent to Japan (nobody talks about Earthquake in China last week, for example),

and how resilient Japanese people are.

I believe that this Japanesness narrative may be a coping method for many,

but leaving non-Japanese, tourists, homeless people, many with(out???) birth certificates,

lower castes, people with disability who are outside of this already established "Japanese" narrative.

People whose loved ones in Japan, who are not Japanese, or people from other places across the ocean such as Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, Taiwan, Shanghai, Korea, China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Chile.. (Santa Cruz too) are affected by this, and at immediate risk of radiation.

What I am trying to do is not to panic people by dropping useful information, but to create communities to believe the power within, rather than forcing people to internalize

the united victimized narrative....because nobody is just a number.

I am collecting methods that someone can do even if they:

- are not Japanese.

- don't live in Japan or the places that are affected right now.

- don't have a home.

- can't go out because of the radiation.

- don't have very much space inside of wherever they are.

- don't have any friends.

- have no personal space at the place of evacuation.

- are LGBTQ folk.

- have a disability.

- do not speak Japanese.

- may not be interested in money, but rather, well-being of one’s day-to-day life.

- are tired of watching terrible warnings and news all day and needs support.

-

I made my first segment with my fun loving housemates, specifically thinking about

my mother in Japan, my friends in New York and Canada who are overwhelmed by helplessness or nationalistic narratives, and for myself.

With my blog, I want you to join me to make segments.

Each segment is ideally 3-5 minutes, bilingual, and can do without much

preparation or ability.

- breathing methods

- monkey dances (in a very small space)

- making funny faces and jokes

- self-massage

- making up songs

- hand clapping

- comic with bubbles, so people can easily print out even they have to go to work today.

and so many others on my list that I want to do for myself and share with others.

If you have any ideas, let me know directly.

If you hesitate or think "Oh, I have no personal context with Japan, I cannot make a mournful face", don't worry. People see too many mourning faces all the

time on Valencia street, San Francisco, CA, for example.

Not only earthquakes and nuclear disaster, but everything is so painful, and can be fun.

http://nomoregaman.blogspot.com/

amnioticfluid@gmail.com