White Sands, Dark Night

We finish driving through Texas and enter into New Mexico in the afternoon. Tzadik drives up a smaller highway towards White Sands. There, we run around the cream-colored dunes, dancing in the falling sunlight and rolling down the hills, making photographs and spinning in circles. We stirr up so much emotion that the sky seems to twist into a knot and burst, drizzling soft rain onto our bodies and the dunes. Raindrops on dunes are a phenomena. One of the things that should have been included at the beginning of that movie Amelie, alongside the sensation of fingers running through a barrel of dry beans, or the crack of a spoon on the top of a dish of creme brulee.

We run around and move through so many different emotions and then make figure eights and donuts in the big parking lot before leaving the national monument that is White Sands. Then we have the crazy idea to go to Mexico for one last hurrah before heading home to Tucson. We return south and go back to El Paso and before we can even finalize the decision or figure out where to park, we are driving on a bridge over the Rio Grande and staring up at a big green sign that says, "Bienvenidos a Mexico." In Ciudad Juarez, we go to a big grocery store and wander around the aisles, getting brightly colored, super sweet smiley face cupcakes, Mexican hot chocolate bars, small avocados, and birthday cards in Spanish. We drive to the city center and walk around the plaza in front of the large cathedral. The place is littered with drunken folks and homeless folks and we smoke cigars and feel entirely transported to another world, a world all to familiar to me in some respects. We stop for tacos at one of the only restaurants still open. It feels like there is a part of my lungs that gets air for the first time in a long time--that is what it is to be in Mexico, outside of the United States--it is like a taste of freedom that makes the deception of our government all the more real, even within all of the poverty and darkness that a night in Juarez contains.

At the border, the patrol officer questions us like we will never get back in. First, the guy doesn't believe that "Tzadik" is really Tzadik's name. Then he doesn't believe that we're driving my best friend's car from Georgia to CA--a lie would have been more believable. Finally we call him out on his myriad of isms and he taps the wheels and lets us go. We reenter the land of skyscrapers with brightly lit US flags and street sweepers and SUVs. At the next rest area we switch drivers and I drive until I pull over to sleep at a gas station.

Austin: Crossing Over

We wake up on sandy terrain and head to Austin, the place where two years ago I was in a car crash. We not only reclaim the city, but have a lot of fun doing it: We meet up with Sean at the FSSCA for lunch and then go to a big swimming hole for an icy dip in the hot Texas afternoon with Tzadik's friend Meredith. Meredith is a goddess of a woman--all wisdom and laughter and a good story teller with a big heart and a disposition for catching babies. We leave Austin and journey westward, sleeping at a rest stop somewhere in West Texas. I am consumed by bugbite itching; the door to the tent rips off and Tzadik says we are like Abraham and Sarah. I say sure, except for all the passing semi-trucks and the dull humming of sleeping teemsters in their airconditioned cabs. I realize that I have made it through Austin, barely skinning the edge of a car at an intersection, but safely out of the city by dusk. A turning point.

Bayou and Gulf: Search and Find

After a long night in New Orleans, complete with a five-star meal of bbq shrimp (with bibs! the photos are hilarious!), jambalaya, blueberry margaritas, and more; live jazz; intense conversation; long walks by the bay; an interesting political conversation with a man who coordinates a lot of peace events in New Orleans, and who is also the bouncer at the Pirate, and who is well into his 60s; and an endless drive through the Bayou to find a place to sleep... we awake in the middle of a wheat field. The ground is soft, muddy almost, and we have slept soundly in the tent all night, only to wake up hot and sticky from the humidity and rising sunshine. I marvel at how it is possible to follow a farm road in far enough so that you are almost lost, and then stop and pitch a tent right there on the side of the road in the middle of the field. I wake groggily, change clothes, and we are off. We traverse the road several times, searching for the historic plantations that seem never to really exist.

We visit the Oakwood Plantation and we walk around with the heaviness of the place, which seems unrecognized by the generally white tourists who peruse the grounds oohing and ahhing and making photographs. To me, this is not a glistening spectacle, but is rather an apparition, a malady in the beautiful swamp landscape that juts out of the ground with all the arrogance of the antebellum era. Imagining that there were slaves here once, reading the list with their names and worth in dollars, and looking at the place where their houses used to stand (of course they were built for impermanence and left to rot), all made me sick to my stomach. I found solace in the thick old oak trees lining the path: their mossy roots, strong trunks, and drooping, full branches. I took off my shoes and allowed myself to touch the soil despite all the warnings about bugs and worms. Grounding on the grounds of servitude and domination. I am in Tzadik's arms crying about personal connections and about this place. Then we are jumping over a small ravine, through flocks of dragonflies, illusions, and into a new world, or at least a new dimension.

Then we search for real Bayou cooking in a local restaurant, which is equally as difficult--lots of hole in the wall greasy chicken places and fast food chains, and even a brand new Walmart, but no roadside stands to get fresh cooked seafood or real Cajun cuisine on the cheap. We even try visiting a biker bar, which reveals a big confederate flag and is totally dark and creepy inside. We end up at a roadside cafe where we get our boiled shrimp and gumbo after all, but not until several hours later.

That night we intend to get to Austin, but when I pull over for gas in eastern Texas I realize that I am too tired to keep going. Out of nowhere, I see a small brown sign pointing to the left that reads, "Beach 20 miles," and so we decide to go to the beach. We drive down a small road and emerge out on the peninsula of the Gulf of Mexico. We park at an RV lot and walk out onto the beach, where we see bright, looming lights casting nets of florescent rays onto the muddy green water. Upon closer inspection, we find at least a dozen surfers surfing in the middle of the night! It turns out that Hurricane Dennis has generated these larger than normal waves, the surfers have flocked to the scene, and someone is filming them surfing. I find this fascinating and we watch and run around the beach, all the while innocent of the hordes of sand bugs that are attacking and biting us.

We camp by the road further down and spend a beautiful night under the stars, almost bug free, entirely in love. At night the sky is full of lightning and thunder. In the morning, a double rainbow.

New Orleans Daylight

We awake and plunge into the pool, floating around for a while, soaking in the scene of bohemian foreign backpackers swimming through America’s big cities by train and spending languid weeks in this bustling city, drinking and dancing in the streets by night and watching MTV from sagging couches in dimly lit rooms, snacking on bulk cereals and saturating themselves with pop music in the day. Languages are traded and western culture is commodified in that particular way that is replicated by backpackers all over the world, and I feel as if I could be anywhere—Guatemala, Bali, France, or perhaps the set from the movie, The Beach. We leave this little world in midday and journey into the French Quarter where we find a café that has a courtyard filled with fountains, greenery, good sandwiches, iced coffee, and wire tables to work on. I discover plugs for the electric lanterns hidden in the garden, hook up my laptop, and I’m in business. Night falls and we prepare to saturate our souls with live jazz and more adventure. When I travel with Tzadik, everything—from grocery shopping to exploring a new city to driving to writing to singing to simply breathing—is an adventure. This way of living is tantalizing and rejuvenating, and after spending the entire afternoon working on CODEPINK work at this café and catching up on blogging, I feel refreshed and ready for the night.

Alabama Alternatives

Tzadik and I go to the only NSA (Network Spinal Association) practitioner in Alabama for entrainments. It is wonderful to access the healing community in the South, to counter the popular myth of “Red States” being devoid of such resources. Then I have a CODEPINK conference call which I am on from my cell phone in the car. Tzadik and I visit the Civil Rights museum and the 16th Avenue Baptist Church where the four young girls were killed during the bombing. This is a very emotional experience for both of us, as we recount our country’s recent history and look at the similar paradigms being repeated today in intolerances towards gay rights, anti-war activism, and the “war on terror” fear-based politics dominating the media and (less and less) popular American worldview. It is also disheartening to see how though everyone now has a right to vote, the majority of people, regardless of race, feel (and I think that this is the reality) that their votes are not being counted.

We stop at the library on the way out of town to check email and we drive through the Southern forests to Louisiana. Tzadik gets many more magnetic ribbons in Alabama, Mississippi (at Wal-Mart and at a Winn Dixie strip mall) and we reach New Orleans in the late evening. We go to several bed and breakfasts but everything is booked because of the hurricane warnings; folks are fleeing Florida and coming to Mardi Gras central. The brief news I hear on the radio and see on commercial TV sensationalizes the whole thing, like everything else, highlighting “flashbacks” from the devastating hurricane of 1999, instilling paranoia and fear into the masses, as usual. Tzadik and I discover the India House youth hostel by asking a tarot card reader in the park about where to stay and we go there and spend the night for a minimal fee in our own room with honest-to-goodness bunk beds. It is hot and we fall asleep almost instantly upon arrival, having syrupy dreams and waking sweaty and thick.

Peachy Politics

We drop Dena and Gary off to fly to Costa Rica for their honeymoon and we depart for our road trip. We spend the day in Atlanta, Georgia, where Tzadik begins his Real Troop Support project, collecting “Support Our Troops” ribbons in every state we visit and making plans for an art project about what real support for the troops looks like. We eat a hearty, organic breakfast at the Flying Biscuit, visit Little 5 Points—the Atlanta equivalent (attempt) at Haight-Ashbury, where we visit the independent feminist bookstore and the thrift store. We spend time at a city park that has some interesting art pieces, including an installation of roadwork neon orange colored hammocks that we nap in for an hour or so. We go to Donna Van Gough’s art store, a shop that Sam and I visited on our trip through the South before the election 2004, where we interviewed the owner, asking her “What is Christian about Bush?” This time I revisited the politics of Atlanta, and found that the progressive community is still working hard, vibrant, however small. What used to be a square of sidewalk spray painted with a sunshine with the words “Vote” in the middle is now red, white, and blue and reads, “Liberty and Justice for All.” We go to the library and I work on the internet for a little over an hour. We shop at Sevananda community-owned natural food grocery store and get a Rocket Pocket veggie sloppy joe that is absolutely delicious, as well as has a cool name.

We drive on the big freeway and on several little roads, visiting Cuba and stopping to play on the swing set there and watch a long train go by, and by nightfall we are in Birmingham, Alabama, where we stay with Reverend Jack Zylman and his wife, Mike. They live in a historical landmarked house build in the early 1900s, a house which is filled with colorful, funky artwork from all over the world, but mostly from Cuba, Central America, and the South. They have many nativity scenes, including my favorite which is a sculpture depicting the birth of Christ in the back of a pickup truck. Jack is an older activist with a fountain of stories that pour over the dinner table, spill out into the sitting room, wash through the kitchen, and swim upstream into the bedrooms and office upstairs. He tells us about his role in the civil rights struggle in the South, his work with students in the Unitarian community in Massachusetts, his anti-war work during the Vietnam War, and stories of the scandalous, racist politics characterizing the former mayor of Birmingham and FBI interventions in Alabama. His wife, Mike, relates her experiences working with the women’s studies program at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham), and she tells me that women’s studies and African-American studies aren’t even departments at the under-funded, struggling university. Mike has a quiet, yet very powerful demeanor and her satirical humor and bright whit course through our conversations.

I find myself extremely inspired by Jack, even through all of his painful and challenging stories about organizing. One thing that Jack says which sticks with me is when he is talking about organizing for civil rights and says that it is not courage, but rather faith that motivated him to do the work that he did. He talked about how many ministers and preachers and other members of the clergy spoke with him years after the civil rights movement began and told him that they wish they could have been involved in the way that he was, but they had families to take care of, church communities to look after, and survival needs, and thus couldn’t participate the way that he did. Jack said to these people that for him it was not a decision, that it was more important to him to die with meaning, for a cause, than to live a life without meaning; that he would rather live a meaningful life than die without having followed his heart. And this meant that he had to put his body on the line numerous times.

In addition to all this, Jack is a music aficionado and he and Mike are part of a neighborhood cooking cooperative, and they both have some pretty cool cats. I leave them with a CODEPINK book and a promise to organize a book event soon and with hugs goodbye we are off in the morning.

On the road again..er, in the air!

After an all too brief stop at Rebecca’s to drop off the car, we return to Shira’s place and sleep for a few hours before waking to go to the airport. Shira drives us to LAX way way way before sunrise and we are very very thankful to her for dropping us off. Tzadik and I embark for our first day of flying (in an airplane) together. We barely make it onto our first flight, which is a lengthy trip from LA to Washington, D.C. over a huge blanket of clouds that must be covering the bulk of the United States, though it is hard to imagine that all that land is hiding down there under all that white. We see glimpses of sunrise and a few mountain peaks that look like floating islands. We manage to sleep side by side on a row of three chairs and it is the best sleep I can remember having on a plane since I was little sleeping nestled between my parents’ shoulders on flights to London. We nap and chat and sneak peaks out the window and snuggle some more.

In Washington, D.C. we make portraits of each other in front of a large row of rainbow illuminated glass—I pose in front of the hot pink and Tzadik stands in front of the orange in a No Enemy shirt. We take a shuttle (the inside of which is more like a jungle gym) to the G terminal and we read and talk about yoga and I make a zillion work calls and then we are boarding our plane and Tzadik almost misses it because he has gone hunting for food in another terminal but we make it onto the plane, which has only 13 rows of 4 seats each and we are at the very back next to the lavatory. We have a very enjoyable plane ride that includes making magazine collages, calculating how high we are in the sky (over one mile high, very cold temperature), and chatting.

Dena and Gary pick us up at the airport and we go out to eat at a Thai restaurant where we toast the newlyweds and I sing my adapted cheer/chant for their marriage. We spend the night at Dena’s relatives’ house. Tzadik and I run outside and go dancing in the thunderstorm, returning home drenched in water and laughter. I work into the wee hours of the morning on the internet and I sleep very well.

Los Angeles Codepink Style

Tzadik and I wake up way way way before sunrise (if we ever went to sleep at all) and depart for Los Angeles. The scene of the two of us driving to LA on the Five is a joke: we are so tired that we switch drivers at almost every gas station we pass and Tzadik eats a whole loaf of Mana Bread to stay awake (at least that’s the excuse he gives me when I wake up for my driving shift hungry). I have to be on a conference call during our drive over the Grapevine, during which my phone keeps cutting out. In LA, Tzadik drops me off at the Los Angeles Convention Center for the National Educator’s Association convention and I meet Dana, Tiffany, and Medea as they’re leaving for Medea’s lunchtime talk with the Peace and Justice Caucus. I spend the afternoon tabling for CODEPINK wearing a pink cap and gown and passing out pink mock diplomas that read “Diploma or Death Certificate?” and have tips for how to incorporate counter-recruitment into high school curricula and how to give students the resources they need to make an informed decision about enlisting in the military. People are very receptive and interested in finding out about CODEPINK. A few days later, we find out that the NEA has passed two resolutions about the militarization of schools and the protection of student privacy.

In the afternoon, I have a one hour interview with a radio station in Columbia, Missouri. I speak about CODEPINK’s 4th of July actions, the recent news that the National Guard has created a surveillance unit to spy on anti-war activity and our response, the changing tide of opinion around the war, and countering military recruitment. Several callers express their support of CODEPINK. We talk a lot about the issues around a US pull out of Iraq and the fears people have about ensuing conflict in the region. I do the entire interview on my cell phone in the huge car garage of the Convention Center.

In the evening, Jodie hosts a book party at her home in Venice. The room is overflowing with people eager to hear about how to stop the next war now. Jodie, Medea, Fernando, Nadia, and others speak. It is both difficult and inspiring to bear witness to Fernando and Nadia’s accounts of the death of their children as soldiers in Iraq. By the end of the night, Tom Hayden has modeled the pink rocker wig, and Gracie is doing a mock book signing. I leave Jodie’s house feeling very, very grateful to work with such an inspiring bunch of women.

Interdependence Day 2005

On the 4th of July, hundreds of women and men all over the country reclaimed the day by taking a stand against the imperialism and torture that now characterize America. CODEPINK called for parties and demonstrations in parades that made colorful statements against the abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, the war in Iraq, and the proliferation of not only nuclear weapons, but an attitude of superiority and domination. In Alameda, CODEPINKers organized a procession within the big 4th of July parade, and in Huntington Beach, near Los Angeles, CODEPINK crashed the parade. In Half Moon Bay, my family and I threw an “Independence from the Empire Day Bash” and invited everyone we knew. About 40 people showed up to demand a Stop (to) Wars, Star Wars style. We celebrated Interdependence Day, roasted veggie kabobs, defeated the Darth Vader piñata and watched candy necklaces, chocolate kisses, and toy airplanes fall onto the concrete—yes, sweetness is inside of darkness. We ate a vegan chocolate cake that said, “Happy Independance Day”—we attributed the spelling error to the wonder of words, weaving dances together, celebrating diversity. There were three waves of guests at our BBQ: Mike’s work friends and our family friends, friends from high school, and Dena and Gary and their wedding party friends. As night fell, we drifted down to the bluffs over the beach to watch the firework explosion. Fireworks always strike me as a strange expression of freedom; I think of Ani’s lyrics: “…and the birds flew around like the whole world was ending, cause they didn’t know that we were only pretending.” We mock war by detonating the sky with colors so we can ooh and ahh and stand around squeezing our lovers and our squealing kids and then we return to our houses so we can shoot some of our own mini rockets and feel free because of the little sparks and the dancing flames. However totally screwed up this tradition is, the pyrotechnic inside me never fails to rear its head and send waves of excitement and intrigue through my body. This year 4th of July was a continuation of my family’s party tradition, which is older than I am, with the added flare of meaningfulness, and this sentiment promises to light up the sky for a lot longer than those bursting orbs of cannon fodder.