Zentangle Meditation Begins a Vision of the Future
Buen Vivir for Women’s Liberation: Can you imagine?
Today I project myself into an imagined future beyond patriarchy and empire. No lines of march, no analysis of contradictions, no plan to get there--just fragments, some frozen moments in a time of women’s liberation as it might be in the 22nd century.
I wake to the sound of Anne Murray, “Hey mama, there’s a hippo in the bathtub!” our ritual wake grandma music. Not yet awake I feel the touch of my baby grandchild Raider. Then come Layla and Ava with a full force dive onto Poppi’s back. “Snuggle time, grandma; snuggle time, Poppi.” Screaming and laughing, we make peanut butter sandwiches; Ava is the peanut butter; Layla, the jam; Raider, a little more butter for taste and then Poppi and I are the 20 grams of fiber bread. SQUEEZE, yum; squish, delicious; oh my goodness, we’re falling apart. Raider says, “grandma, I’m not butter in real life, am I.” We all crack up, roll out of bed, into our clothes and make it to the breakfast table to grab our favorite chair. I can smell the bacon: Joe is making breakfast. I don’t have to do a thing. Buen Vivir—living well, enough, in harmony with our planet--just like everyone else; that is how we face the day on Monday morning July 28, 2100.
I greet my daughters Celia and Melinda—we all twirl round singing, “Water spirit feelings Springin' round my head makes me feel glad that I'm not dead Witchi Tai Tai, kimarah Whoa Ron-nee Ka Whoa Ron-nee Ka Hey-ney, hey-ney, no-wahi.” Veggie sausage, scrambled egg whites and gluten free rice buns—yum. Plenty of green tea for everyone. Sitting in our usual chairs we hold hand and say together “Buen Vivir May the energy flow between us and our Pachamama.” “May Earth thrive another day. Hugs for the day and we are off to join the other families in our cooperative. Ava and Layla run to school, where they can stay all week if they want—after all, they adore Mr. Jimmy who teaches them all the old Motown songs, like “Please Mr. Postman” and “Dancing in the Streets.” And Miss Jill and Sunspot will guide them to Griffith Park, where Celia is Park Director. The park used to be a gathering place for running bums who began each morning by racing and sucking in LA’s lethal air; now, the park is the center of learning for the LA region. Children are in outdoor classes all over the park—chasing birds and rabbits as they learn their names. The air is clear, the sky is blue, and children are learning their colors by naming all the plants—the ferns are green, the maple trees are orange and, look, the lavender is lavender. Then a whole other team of teacher friends arrives—Esperanza, Barbara, Lillybell and Carlos— will lead group story-telling until its lights out. Raider goes to baby care at the children’s museum—now in exposition park--where his mama Melinda works. He gets to see her when she leads the tumbling team play, then he’s off to sleep while mommy plans the field trips for all the other children who visit the museum—now 5,000 on a slow day. There is a 24hr childcare center down the block that Raider might get to go to if mom’s work goes late; the children’s museum is operated by the state but Melinda still spends many nights gathering supporters and raising funds for the ever-evolving equipment for special children. As I walk to work, the streets are bustling with people walking, running, biking, busing, a few jitneys. How do we manage the traffic? Everyone circles the intersection—moving left, which, of course, keeps the system humming. There is music playing, bands rotate all hours of the day—a great job for music teachers and great joy for their students. The main streets are covered with green shade fabric and vendors abound. On one corner of the market the day laborers hustle to get extra work. They wave bright colored banners to signify their dignity and their indisputable value to the whole community. My son Joe is a firefighter; he and all the firefighter women who respond to medical emergencies as often are burning houses have created an initiative through which all fire stations house free medical clinics. They are operated by Planned Parenthood, so well-respected for its years of service to women in the dark ages of the early 21st century. Now they preside over 24hrs healthcare—free to women and men of every age, race, ability--without parental consent. I teach at the party headquarters. I am a coordinator of the campaign to build the human capacity to love. Today we are celebrating the new Polyamory Law that establishes the right of any number of people to marry for whatever reason and further guarantees protection of all sex and gender identities and expressions. Bear with me while I tell a bit what our world is like: no gender binary exists, that is, no child has to declare their sex or gender ever—unless, of course, they want to shoot it from the treetops. Children grow up in a society in which gender is undefined—not by body members, hormone balance, or role in reproduction; clothing styles, adornments, body types are not a sign of any specific gender (unless they are the bright orange of the intersex gang). Rather our physical expressions are the polymorphous look of that day. Just as people are different in nationality, race, culture, age, attitude, interests, talents, and life choices, there are many different sexual practices and gender expressions. One day Tekoah is the hippest dude, wingtips and suspenders, the next day a black African princess in a white circle skirt, dancing bamba. Carlos teaches his young students to dress unisex—all in t-shirts that say I’m pre-med, not pre-prison. They have formed a drum and chant core, through which they can take the power of uniformity and unison and unleash it into jazz trading fours like nothing the 21st century had seen. It’s hard to imagine in the 21st century how this gender non-normativity could have worked. I tried it in my youth: too time-consuming because in those days, before the revolution, being non-gender-conforming was a full-time job—going against every grain. So, I set those pleasures aside; I made a choice—I’ve been in a monogamous heterosexual relationship for 75 years! Of course, at 102 yrs. old, wisdom resides in my sexuality—true for all centurions. For many of us, our sexuality is our gender. While staying straight, I devoted myself to teaching the black and brown youth who guided the new Left of the late 21st century. They led the revolution. Fancy that! All around the world people are waking with someone present to care for them, comfort them. It used to be that the sick and needy awoke alone. No more. Caregiving is a structural backbone to our social system—no one is alone, no one is in danger, no one will be abandoned. How is this possible? Productivity and distribution of resources provides for buen vivir. The tasks of caregiving are socialized while at the same time support is available to those who want independent living, privacy in a love relationship—sexually lovely as well as powerful. What is socialized? What is collectivized? What is private? What is governed? These are questions we deal with all the time in all levels of people’s councils. What does work look like? First principle, no one is placed in a job that will sever their mind from their hand—nothing like the 58 seconds I had to install window cranks on the line at Ford Milpitas, back when capitalism produced automobiles and we aspired to “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Production is more than ever the engine of a sustainable society and livable planet. What do we need to produce for buen vivir? Labor organizations figure that out, as well as who will wash the factories so the machines we own will shine. Isabel is supervising the work in the orchard. A team of 20 work the harvest—this land produces apples, pears, peaches in 3 kinds—enough for the entire coop. We need food produced at many scales. Every living unit belongs to a food cooperative. We grow some peas and tomatoes, for daily consumption in our unit’s plot of land. Then we maintain a community garden for mass production of healthy food goods to feed our section of units as well as to trade in the marketplace. What is the scale of our trade? What goods really need to be shipped around the globe? Now Really? What is the longest distance one would have to go to find a thing you need that isn’t produced at hand? Imagine. Just like we don’t need factories that produce poisons, we don’t need shipping fleets; we don’t have massive rail-cars or ports that move oil and bananas from one side of the earth to the other. Daily life is local. Weekly, monthly, yearly—everyone travels to participate in large collective work—all variety of projects all forms of organization needed to plan the social economic, political stability of a multipolar world committed to the survival of the planet. Most forms beyond the local—industry councils, governance bodies—are led by women of color, not by mandate but by the result of their leadership. The 800 military bases that the US stretched around the globe in 2011 have been converted into cooperative communities and the super profits gained from rape of nature in foreign lands no longer accumulate. Resources are protected, restored, and distributed wisely. Reparations are paid. It’s 2100 and humankind has released its patriarchal grip on exploitation of nature and the invisible labor of reproduction. It’s an ever-changing dialectical process of people struggling to be free. Buen vivir. Some of you may be interested to hear that the Women’s Global Secretariat has just decided that all women should have a month of rest time each year, at the retreat of their choice!