Geo era singur, deh primul omulet modelat din spuma de zeu, numit Geu.
O voce in el s-a rasucit intr-o noapte (musai ca intunericul l-a derutat) si l-a invocat:
Simplu deci, la per tu:
Geo – tu esti?
Si raspunsul evident:
Geo – Da.

Si uite asa, in loc sa faca pur si simplu dragoste cu ochii inchisi, s-a iscat confuzia intre Geo si Geoda, acelasi sine cautandu-si coada.
Ei au intemeiat o familie (tocmai ca in alte povesti in care de la o pereche sarim calul la trilioane infinitezimale)
In curand li s-au alaturat alte membre din marele pantec – materializate dar fragmentate- incepand cu Geodel si Geodita, apoi din neamul lor Geodoi si Geodin, Geodic si Geoditic. Asemenea triburilor care tin la traditia lor, toate numele incepeau cu initialul Ge-o/a/u, pe parcurs insa eliminat convenabil din tolba povestii.

La un moment atatea inmultiri plus permutari apoi functii au dus la o marinimie de complicatii, scantei si confuzii. Limbi care mai de care mai pocite de rasucite incat fiinta cu fiinta nu mai puteau comunica fara plangeri.
Un razboi, doua, trei, victime metaforice si apoi din ce in ce mai reale, pana sa ne dam seama mai multi, cat mai multi ca… nu exista sfarsit cand e vorba de fragmentare.

Sa le slefuim geodele astea cu dragoste si rabdare

Sau
Sa le aruncam cat colo, de la inaltime mare, doar doar s-or sparge in capetele testoase si descoperi cealalta realitate

Sau
sa le injuram cu drag de adevar de mama inapoi in fierbinteala initiala

una or alta
cert este ca la nivel de aparatoare de asemenea calitate nu avem cum ne vindecam de boala a carei medicatie e simpla unitate a unu in toti si toate.

*
Cu dedicatie d’lui Geo-log care a adus lumina in povestea asta pe limba ‘voastra’- de la o ge-oloaga aspiranta, nedispusa insa sa mai faca o alta facultate. Post eveniment de lucru in care geodele din noi s-au tot dat cap in cap cu ceva rezultat, precum tocmai demonstrat.

Dear all, Magwi related,

With Magwi, I confess again: it was love at first at first sight. Had started to think that is not so easy anymore. Still, it looks like hope and passion can re-kindle fast when bumping into straight speaking things, so to speak.

Now I don’t have to say to my partner only: listen, I met this gorgeous African man while you were away and I’d like to give a try to a deeper relationship. Because I met a collective! I find that collective love declarations are just the thing to do, when wanting to tell soul truths.

Magwi is not just one, but many. After having fallen in love with an entire theatre group previously, it looks like I am prone to serious love affairs with collectives. Mostly when they’re doing a great job at being close to their people and working away on inner and outer development. While keeping very humble at it.

True, we can’t ask all development workers to give a try to living with the people, in a small basic accommodation whether in clay hut or more of camping style. But why not give it a try? At least some of us, some of the time.

Quite a lesson in humbleness, in being close enough for a while, observant enough, quiet enough to let listening prevail. So that one can eventually figure out what to contribute as an outsider essentially. The logic of projects, funds available and organisations that have to fit into the guidelines is strong. But what to offer groups that have reached a level of self sufficiency and dignity of few resources but rich soul work that are saying: “We don’t even need their money!” And the strings attached, as a matter of fact.

‘Helping’ can turn in ‘working together’ not just as politically correct phrase but through the willingness of entering and building relationships on foundations of friendships.

So, before applying for a job, officially, proposing a project or any other standard thing, I’m interested in the applications forms for entering open, honest relationships with potential of turning into friendship.
What requirement would one have to meet to not be seen first of all as an outsider?
What would take to be seen as one that is here to be together with, in an enlarged Ubuntu circle of possible brothers and sisters?

I’m wiling of course to work for free, since it would not even be work yet, but laying the foundations for it: building the relationships. An emphasis on this would complement the project mentality quite well, if we’re willing to consider there are subtle things that will easily be jotted down in a project “time line”, especially when vital categories there are missing.

If not as a true or half sister, I could apply for a sister-in-law position. And the “law” here would be connected to reintegration issues across many division lines from gender, to race, to ethnicity and so on.

Going climbing one day in the Sudan, one of the few places where it feels like you could be anywhere in the world, in the forest, on the rock.
A difficult route was ahead so … “aid-climbing” was the solution.
Aid-climbing is very slow, and it involves a great deal of extra materials than just the harness, climbing shoes and cord. It needs ladders, nuts, cams and all sorts of technical equipment to climb it.

Very slow can mean a couple of hours to climb 3 meters up on the rock. Tedious, involving putting up equipment on the rock, enough to make sure one doesn’t fall, then taking it down again.

Could not help thinking of development aid as the solution to development problems. Given that research is clear about how the gap between rich and poor countries tripled in the last thirsty years, one wonders whether aid is actually a solution. If it so slow and complicated, why not choose easier routes give up some all in all? Or giving climbing lessons could be another option.

Sudan is reportedly Africa’s longest civil war. The biggest food aid recipient in history. And a conflict story so complicated, the more one seeks to understand, the more never-ending it seems. While the big conflict with the central government have been big in the war equation, the constant is the inter-tribal warfare. Critics of aid and western intervention have said since the 80s that no amount of aid will solve Sudan’s conflicts, but the people themselves.

Caught in between aid as political rhetoric and a response to sheer human suffering. What type of external intervention is the answer, if at all? (well, development cooperation, to be politically correct).

Answers are never very simple and easy, when there is a big system rolling and many interests that keep it up.
But it is a system of our creation so with changed mindsets in people, in the logic of the Buddhist co-arising and co-dependence of all phenomena, there is a chance for institutional shape-shifting. And we are walking the road.

Family St(a,i,u)ff – freres quie se chamaillent mais qui s’aiment. Well, this is always the possibility.

Which barricade?

UN has a bad reputation outside the UN system. Of course there is a glamour to it and envy plus desire to be within the chosen ones, well known for its high benefits. But a pretty bad reputation nevertheless even among the rest of international development organisations as well as national organisations. People receiving high checks, not interacting with the local realities, sitting most days in air-conditioned offices trying to do as little as possible and as slow as possible.

Once I started working for UN and other international organisations – even as temporary consultant – the misunderstandings, prejudices and mistrust towards the ‘other side’ are also clear and based on experience. People and organisations one can hardly trust, mismanagement of funds, low accountability, slow and difficult work etc

Difficult to escape the power games and the projections among the different camps as well as the temptation to stay off just one side of the barricade, whatever offers more personal benefits or fulfilment.

Fragmentation is not only a story for the realities we work with: conflict, war, poverty, tribal disputes etc. Camps we have, misunderstandings too. Lack of communication and trust. Little relationships and even less friendship that would really teach us some lessons. What is more needed is people who walk the line, who do not give up on one side of the other but keep bridging both, all three, all four.

Need for better relationship building among the different camps before attempting to be successful in interacting with local realities. Or precisely to be interacting more with the communities. The mantra of constructive communication and coordination to be repeated more=:o) beyond the cosy and tempting barricade of one’s choice.

Games Day for a Change

So, out of the many stories out there, here’s a recent one. Newly arrived in Sudan, an invitation comes for a Games Day with a local school. Sunday afternoon, we get to meet and support this initiative which needed many volunteers to give instructions and supervise games for about 200 children.
Pure joy for the children and for the unity seeker in me just by seeing the car logos of many UN agencies and international organisations present.
All happy to be there, supporting a volunteer initiative of a common friend at UN that wanted to contribute something hands-on in his free time.

“You’re my hero for today”, I declared the initiator. “So is he, and she”, he added immediately. And indeed the day had many heroes, from the one who took hundreds of photos of pure joy and laughter, to the one that baked 200 cinnamon rolls for the end, to every single one that was there wholeheartedly in a Sunday afternoon to give the same game explanation to ten different groups and keeping an eye to communicate, congratulate, support tens of children.

We can all take turns at keeping close to this humanity in us, in a age of small people doing small things to change the world as Arundhati Roy put it. Since institutions are not big bureaucratic monsters but of our own creation, change may be difficult but it has always happened. If focus on the people is a solution in this institutional bureau-craziness sometimes, then I am placing some bets on these ones.

There are no easy solutions for the big picture in which we are operating, but there are countless activities like this than can build bridges.
Maybe we can improvise some civil peace engineering courses.
By the Nile, every other Friday.

Sun Gone Crazy (Again!)

Last night, at 1.45 a.m the presence of the Moon was suddenly noticed gone from sight although the sky was clear and all constellations present. Given the bad record of the Sun taking advantage of the Moon, especially in her Crescent Phase of young girl a bit naïve about the world and thus with powers diminished, a team started investigations immediately.

It turned out that the Sun got into this deep amnesiac phase again, turning against his own Shade – as other kidnap and killing attempts were part of the history of the past. The Moon is thus held captive, most likely treated badly and interrogated roughly about the dark sides the Sun himself projects on her.

What do you think can be done quickly to help heal the Sun from this madness, thinking that the Moon is a separate aspect of Self and not his own Shadow?

Please Call these emergency number 1248889 or send SMS with urgent solutions. For more extensive elaboration on this age-old conflict still without sustainable resolution, write to 1back21@separation.gone.what.planet?earthagain

Dear A,

Starting to look for wisdom with the first letter today. After attempting so many other letters as I managed to work with the voice that kept wanting to defend the little me, I figured I’d better start again. Since I can’t go anywhere and delude myself that there will be other issues and projects and people. Moving around as an international worker has its deficits in that we may – as protection mechanism and others – end up not caring much about the web of relationships in this place and then the next. But there is a trick: patterns -as the name say- repeat. Once unresolved things stay not only in me but in the overall system that has shaped me and many situations – similarly- this running illusion is good only as long as it’s conducive to continuous learning.

I am not clear yet, so this is part of the process, with the line between: what is “the way things are” and “what they can be”, or what they really are and we stopped seeing, maybe.

So, in short, I must say that it was painful. Progressively painful until the point of explosion. Controlled explosion, but nevertheless. (Makes you wonder whom the military thinks it can fool with the smart bombs, right?!). And emotions still seem to have a negative connotations, even for the gender sensitive but not yet fully integrative. Or they are perhaps threatening. Even a pharaoh’s heart may be moved by tears and a good speech. Not sure. A proper evaluation was missing.

I was not speaking of any new things. Rather this: bridging more the gap between knowing / doing and being, an integration of life and work, personal and political, vision and daily practice.

Alignment of Values & Organisational Practice

I mumbled a few, mixed in too strong spices, or perhaps too many at one time. But a few got it. And ‘truth in a minority of one is still the truth’ as Gandhi said. It’s just that until it gets out there, communicated that is, or until it gets to be co-created and shared, it may just be another piece of useless information. (People surely had the word love in their vocabulary before Jesus came it, but somehow he gave it a ‘felt’ meaning!) I myself may as well forget it that felt clarity, lumping on my work and life table a million other things.

To recap the why of explosion: had just finished my Patience & Healing drops. So it started to hurt again, these old separation tricks and the colder age of misunderstood professionalism. Or perhaps the age of toughening up and playing rational, a bit too much.
I was at the bottom of the Tao curve, fully aware of the game, but not really having the strength nor the will to go up or down under completely without a sign. So I thought I’d take at least a few witnesses. Though silent. Though more difficult than to get 4 women for 1 man as in some traditions.
(Pretty sure it is the Ego responsible but hey, I’ve detected it and still keep it under house arrest until further info leaks)

* Painful to have to give up on another institution working on global ideals, and being envied for it, getting a good check (and with it check threats and fears) and a good name. But progressively less life and hope. To get little feedback, no support, and to work alone. And to progressively hear colleagues competing with “I’ve done the same for longer”.

Tao & Life Processes

So I am not giving up yet, since I am not clear if it is me or you or them who just did not get it. I’ll continue walking this useless road of bridging instead.
Grateful meanwhile for any lessons my way.
For the Great Lady that said she had not heard this kind of vision talk in that institution ever.
For the Other Girl who took time – a bit and enough – to enter my reality.

Working on the Be Loving, My Wise One. That is the most difficult task. And most likely the only work worth holding when out of job.

Any rationalization may be a defense, but until the pianist will stop getting shot, he’s gotta to try at least to make fun of it.

*
Knowledge
Is creation in the making
Lived reality not old reports
To be managed electronically.

Communities of Practice
Needed as Praxis.
Old bridge between
theory and action

We all Know,
we just have to start
Walking it
Daily,
as work,
personal,
spiritual,
integral
practice.

You find the name.
The trick is to live the reality,
And not put out each other’s eyes
All the time over just
Who might be right

the trick is not to get stuck
mired in complexity
in the “there are many realities”
that wings of vision cannot take flight.

Di-Vision of Common Vision
Has held the floor long enough.

What News would break the Ice
on the bridge between Mind and Heart?

A demonstration of the underground resistance movement of women is taking place outside your offices. As a matter of fact, they are inside your courtyard. If you were to join the demonstration, what would you put on your poster?

“Gender Equality”, “Women at Work”, “No to violence”.

What if you were to be more creative? More personal, more engaged in it?

Creativity has to be tapped into first. She is a sweet, sweet old lady (the type of grandma that cries easily) and has no rush, always ready with soul food for the home-coming baby. But she only talks to those who’d listen. To those who know how to ask questions, and know how to show love and appreciation.

Shouldn’t we be out there, working together? Re-envisaging the old vision of the feminist movement, the solidarity values that I, younger, have not seen yet. Not as promised, at least.

It may be easier to adopt spiritual families and heal one another than work on our own home garden. It may be easier – in that less painful to start with – to de-root ourselves from our own and work internationally. As long as we do the love’s work, the object may not import. But are we doing it? Or ignoring that official terms of reference are a bit limited? Not short – way overwhelming, but limited still to one dominant view, call it mainstream, or male-stream if gender awareness is in. A bit ignoring the past and forgetting the once driving vision – out of surely objective reasons. Assuming the little of the present seen is everything, and glued in power relations as a giant with clay feet.

And what work works to help and heal others if not acknowledging our own brokenness? What works to cover the holes in just “my” side of the common boat when the water makes no difference among who to drown first?

Step sisters. Good metaphor. With an emphasis on ‘being sisters’ or on the step we still need to make, over and over again? Until the scar becomes less visible, or at least less hurtful.

*
Personal / Professional
Down the drain
With the Separation!
That’s what I’d demonstrate with
If my friend was only working
For women’s empowerment
With books in an office.

If my friend was only
Seeing pain at her end
Only – not mine,
Still
I’d be out there
Asking things
to be reconsidered
Both sides and
Thirds inventing

Separation as solution
Only when self inflicting
Amnesiac solutions.
When we lie by omitting
The painful truth of reality
We broke into many
That keep us separated.

Sisters co-creating visions
Turned into crumpled
Divisions instead
Feeding on illusions
Of one self in many
Separated.

New(s) Interactive: By Whom?

Feeling flooded, powerless, overwhelmed with millions of pieces of news on a daily basis?
Most of them telling about how terrible, destructive, horrible things are happening in the world and to other human beings.
And how new are they in fact? Apart from the fact – turned into pattern – that they keep emphasizing the worst in an attempt to kill off the small oasis of Hope in humanity left in us, one by one, scattered around.

Pandora did however get out of the box. (As with Adam and Eve and the paradise story unfolded, maybe her / hope getting out last was the whole point of the Greek Gods’ box in the first place).

Off to changing perpective on Evils

And… with women’s emancipation around the world, she managed to get into a job market previously dominated by male-biased perspectives. Tired of war journalism only, she chose to be a front line reporter.
With a twist - so to speak. With an emphasis on peace. As in her old story, replayed, her job is to twist the evils that preceded her and rescue different story parts from what the big unity body that was scattered around.
• Emphasize unity over seemingly separation of brothers that are killing themselves off after trashing their common mother.
• Draw out the inspiring stories of hope, healing and love from peace lords not only the war ones.
• Ask questions to trigger creative, constructive thinking over joy of possibilities.

Think Differently:Transcend/Transform

Needed – all – to get involved in shaping the world. More. Or less. Depending on the perspective. The focus needed is within, to begin with. There we need to burn some things regularly. Starting with what we think we know about the me and you, and us and them barricades.
Then as the mystics agree: “If we fight within to make ourselves clear, once that inner war is over, there need be no outer war. The only war is within”

Do stay tuned to this other (misunderstood) daughter of Eva!

-
Check out Peace journalism.org/.com* on Dr. Google and so on.
(to see that Pandora is nothing-but-in-a-good-sense crazy)

Note:
*If you live in a war prone state, painted authoritarian out of fear in its peace-and-power keeping for the selected only, you may get messages like “Sorry, this page is blocked by National Telecommunication Service”. Do keep trying. This means you are on the right way,
discovering that peace is quite political if one insists.

De nouveau il s’agit d’une crime!

Cette fois c’est pas (encore) une tuerie de masse re-inventée pour s’assurer que la séparation est bien nettoyée.
C’est (seulement ?) une tuerie au niveau des idée. (A la racine des actions en faite – les fruits viennent plus tard si on insiste sur cette partie des semences héritées).
Il s’agit d’un pays ou les Hutu et les Tutsi (devenus symboles mondiales d’ethnicité inventé) se sont tués les frères, les voisins, les copains, les enfants dans plusieurs amnésies et folies temporaires.
Un pays avec une trinité de logo sur l’unité (rendue malade), travail (de guérison oublie) et progrès (attendant derrière ses frères mentionnés). Ou la politique centrale et les multiples politiques périphériques insiste toujours plus ou moins subtile sur la même séparation qui peut toujours exploser.

Comme les grand-mères disent, il y a eu un temps, avant que les colonialistes sont venus, ou les ethnies n’existaient pas. Au moins, no comme ça.

Mais comment peuvent les jeunes comme toi se rappelait plus des histoires comme ça si les grand-mères ne sont pas la?
Qui d’entre vous a des grand-mères qui savent comme l’unité se sentait autrefois ? Qui ont témoignées tant mariages entres classes qu’elles savent bien que c’est tout un mélange de même la même langue.

Comme les rêveurs savent aussi il y a un temps ou ils se sont tant mélangés que la distinction et di-vision d’une ancienne vision n’est pas simplement la.

Re-connaitre le passe ou le present?

Les Hutsi et le TuTu sont des frères qui se chamaillent – c’est vrai, un peu – mais ils s’aiment quant même ! Ou il s’aimaient ? (On n’est jamais sur si c’est un rêve de possibilités ou une très vielles mémoire du passe)

Et c’est quoi qu’un Tu peut faire de Tu même que d’apprendre a dire: Moi, je m’aime. Et après conjuguer le verbe avec les autres personnes, comme dans les plus simples leçons d’âme (oublie un peu dans les écoles trop formelles)

Ou… vous pensez qu’il ne s’agit pas d’une faute de grammaire?

*
Note pour mon grand-petit :
Et toi, je m’excuse mais s’il te plait, toi, au moins, laisse ça de cote.
Il y a des autres pièces d’histoire a re-jouer que le César et Brutus : « Toi aussi, mon fils?« En plus, tu n’as jamais fait le devoir avec Ta Grande-Mère ! Combien Grande tu veut que la déjà Grande Mère se fait pour que l’enfant se souviens d’elle ?

Myths to Come, Stay and Go

Story telling,
Who has time for it
In the speed
Of efficiency?

Friendship building
Who has time for it
When guilt trips
Are big?

(Y)ear lent to listening
Deep culture out
To the surface,
To help birth
Understanding

Webs of relationships
Myths to unfold,
Stereotypes strong
Though professed
‘overcome’

Playing with meanings
Quotation marks and stories
To be rewoven in a kilt
That will nourish
our souls and
the starving babies.

We are all caught in the cow dung ‘development’ story: the meaning of our lives revolves around it. Caught up in a system we know is ‘wrong’. (We’re good at criticism and have not many ideas what we can do differently nor hope and trust that we can actually change things. Or, alternatively, we have an idea, and it is ‘ours’, from back home, in the ‘headquarters’, wherever that is, not the ones emerging from a particular ‘local’ context and reality for which we did not ‘budget’ time for).

At the same time, our task is to transform the development machine from within, while we suck the milk at its breast (read pay checks as well as symbolic remuneration in righteousness developed from working on “good jolly causes”).

Yet, guilt, frustration and anger are not really making us any happier, nor are they yielding results in the outside order to business, the efficiency in whose name we’re selling our labour hours, night and days.

We cannot bring about change solely through developing more projects and logical matrixes where we put time in a box to be laughed at (by African peasants or Carribbean island mentality) and social change on a simple line to be achieved through ‘partnerships’ based on unilateral funding schemes. 50+ years of ‘development’ interventions have taught us that much.

We cannot be working alone, on different sides of ‘the development war’ barricade just as change cannot come through finding individual solutions to social problems. (As in the many places where instead of solving problems collectively, people who can afford private health care, electric generators and sending children to school in the city or foreign countries will bail themselves out of the heavy responsibility to contribute).

Relationships need to be drastically improved through friendship not ‘helping’ business. (As in returning 10 % or less in ‘aid’ from what the former colonial power gains in economic profit, See Belgium- Burundi relationship).

Of course there are no recipes, only good questions. And we have to keep asking them and stay with the uncertainty of not knowing easy answers.
Keep digging for gold instead of ready made solutions.

Let’s ask these questions together!
From critical tones, to constructive undertones that will get us someplace.

p.s “Development” in the story is mother (sometimes step-one though) of ‘Peace and Conflict’, ‘Humanitarian Assistance’, ‘Gender Equality’, ‘Human Rights’, and you name it, many brothers and sisters and cousins sharing the same patterns and multiple parents in a longer, larger voyage.

Life, Work, Play
With Love entering later the stage

I am not playing with you, life is a play
with work intertwined in it too
at least three levels in our seeing
the constant connection
happening.
if only we got it.

There is nothing to say
More than playful poetry
That is leaping beyond you
And the other constantly
The one who has hurt me
Again, willingly
Because of
Sleeping awareness to
Higher meaning and possibilities.

I don’t hold it against you
If anything, it is love that
Asks me again and again
To attempt pain for gain.

Don’t put your hopes up
For more lies to be
Everything happening for a reason
Even another missed opportunity
To learn a love language
If only we ever listened to
Our higher selves
Knowing better.
Instead of playing toughness.

I said I recognized you,
Like so many unheard things
No hiding necessary!
I wanted to give you
My highest love, that’s all
No degree of comparison.
Can Mr. Respect in you
Wake up to this too?

My mother would say
‘Love dies,
respect has to be in’
And I wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t
Ever give up on love, still.

*

When you ignore
Constantly
The pain that comes
In this domination game
It’s time I told you
I gave up on you
With love, my dear,
Being hurt too.

We were not ready
After all these centuries
Of stupidities and confusion
To enter a new reality
Take back your played superiority
It makes me sick, body to soul
And still know that love is right here

You are so much in me
I can’t even tell you
How important this is
Until you shed another skin
However painful that might be
To enter a relationship
With your woman kin.

*
When the man
I fall in love with
Thinks I’m a rag,
Disposable after use
What do I do?
When I know it’s not
even Him
Nor I,
but both falling again
In the mistrust pattern,
What options to choose?

Can’t you see how much pain
This keeps going and going?
Violence is not out there
Only, always, here too
In you, me, and this third
Child of ours,

The unity that could be.

It’s time violence lovers
Stop trembling
To ask How Dare You?
Please don’t trigger
this anger in me
so I can write a love poem
and hold your hand
to love you out of
all these inventions
that have hurt you
so long ago
you don’t even remember
in flesh.

It’s the spirit
we have to wake up
together, in our bodies
Only in two-s
can we knock
at these gates of heaven.

*

I have fell
and hurt myself
again and again
picked up by you too
and then fallen once more
– and I’ve learned my lesson.
now we can begin
a relationship that
will never be the same
Because it will be
constant creation
of truth sharing
from our hearts
joining reason
by hand
where love in the open
is possible
no more hiding of souls
nor bodies
necessary

A relationship where we are
one another’s souls guides
I remember you
you remember me
together we can laugh so hard
as to wake of from this amnesia
of who we are.

Grateful for all these bastards
-And I say it with love-
That have taught me this.
So that my new child coming
Will not be illegitimate
But a fruit of this higher
Knowing and unity.

Why is intelligence acknowledged more in expressing criticism than appreciation?

Can we renew
inside old skins
or shedding is necessary
both of me and
of what you think?