Hope for a healing: A Boto/Bilat Dialouges
When I was at Harbin Hotsprings earlier this month, I picked up the May/June 2007 ConnectEd catalog for the OneTaste Urban Retreat Center in San Francisco. The slick and sensuous cover drew me in and the promise of classes like Radical Ecstasy, Sexual Awakening, and the Future of Culture excited me!
"Wow!" I mused, "This is definately a potential site for Pukengkeng Liberation!"
As I flipped through pages, I was drawn to the course descriptions ,the unique life coaching services, and its "urban monk program". Most of all, I was drawn to the way One Taste conveyed its vision for authenticity and a honest, responsible, and safe exploration of sensuality. Visible and public centers like One Taste are needed everywhere--especially in times when we are ravaged and assaulted by intimate violence, war and fundamentalist thinking.
Others may direct energy in the forms of academic analysis, mass action, and politics and policy in stopping global warming, humanitarian crisises and the Iraq war. For myself, my energy may be better leveraged by supporting women and men, to honor, heal, and love the creative, juicy power of their sex. In doing so, a profound nourishing act of service can happen in both the mind and body which can ultimately subvert the origins of Cartesian (black/white, right/wrong, top/bottom), split thinking that created this whole mess in the first place. When the body gets what more and more what freedom feels and tastes like deep inside, the rest follows.
With that said, I also have to name this other nagging truth: there comes a withholding, a certain sadness, and tension inside my body when I encounter these human potential resources. While integrating, heavily borrowing, and making money from "ancient/native" or "eastern" teachings, very rarely do individuals in this field take on and name, the deep overlays and intersections of race, class, and gender and sexuality in meaningful, public ways. To do so, I suspect often complicates one's own:
1) cherished visions of personal power, individual liberty, and freedom
2) rhetoric of taking responsibility for one's life vs. being a victim to it or circumstances.
3) liberal humanist desire to be "one" with others
4) consumption impluse to "have more" in life
It's 2007. To not see oneself and the deep awareness needed to transform inequity, still not largely reflected in the "human potential" movement, one has to wonder, when do I/we get to exhale.
Go to any bookstore or erotica shop. Go to any workshop on Tantra. Try and find a counselor or therapist, or writer who can really embrace and support your pleasure and still get the context of internalized racism, sexism, classism, religion, and neo-colonialism and the impact this weight has on your vagina. With the exception of a few pioneers, it is like finding a needle in haystack. "Where are the brown women and men that get this and want to talk and do something about it?" I have ofted lamented, "Where are the allies that won't balk and shirk in self-defense and guilt?"
Two years ago, my lament turned into action when I took a step forward to produce an all Pinay production of The Vagina Monolouges. This powerful experience still has its healing effects and since then, I have begun find the friends and path makers that I have been seeking. They help me accept the reality that if I want to see more diverse cultural expressions and savy and accessible reflections of wholistic healthy sexuality, then I have to step up to the plate. I have to create that space in myself and with others. I have to reach back to uncover and provide visibility for the rich Pilipino cultural traditions that honored sexuality before colonization. I have to surround myself with courageous others who have given voice before me to the conflicts and have taken the criticism for attempting to do this dangerously liberating work.
A couple days ago, I have begun again, in my mind to re-entertain and imagine what a Boto (penis)/Bilat (vagina) Dialouges performance piece would like. What if, on stage, Pilpina women and men could finally heal present resentments rooted in historic rage? What if nanays could publically say to their sons, what they always wanted to say, but couldn't? What if daughters publically could tell their Tatay things they could not hear? What if our brothers could talk about the shame and homophobia that keeps them from each other? What if our brothers could be honest about how they prop up their masculinity on us Pinays? What if we could forgive each other for not being able to recognize and touch the beauty in each other? What if we could own our desires even if it does not conform to church or societal dogmas, but responds to much deeper prompting for authenticity?
What if in this performance we could wash away all the shame?
While still terrified at the potential imensity of such an endeavor, I have put out "feelers" to some of my Pinoy brothers and fellow artists who may down the line co-facilitate and help create with me and the pukengkeng liberation crew here in Hawaii. While many other projects, occupy my mind at the current time, this one has a very dear place in my heart. I keep the flame still burning for its eventual birth and real becoming. What better way, to name this yearning for a healing here.
I am hopeful. Very, very hopeful.
"Wow!" I mused, "This is definately a potential site for Pukengkeng Liberation!"
As I flipped through pages, I was drawn to the course descriptions ,the unique life coaching services, and its "urban monk program". Most of all, I was drawn to the way One Taste conveyed its vision for authenticity and a honest, responsible, and safe exploration of sensuality. Visible and public centers like One Taste are needed everywhere--especially in times when we are ravaged and assaulted by intimate violence, war and fundamentalist thinking.
Others may direct energy in the forms of academic analysis, mass action, and politics and policy in stopping global warming, humanitarian crisises and the Iraq war. For myself, my energy may be better leveraged by supporting women and men, to honor, heal, and love the creative, juicy power of their sex. In doing so, a profound nourishing act of service can happen in both the mind and body which can ultimately subvert the origins of Cartesian (black/white, right/wrong, top/bottom), split thinking that created this whole mess in the first place. When the body gets what more and more what freedom feels and tastes like deep inside, the rest follows.
With that said, I also have to name this other nagging truth: there comes a withholding, a certain sadness, and tension inside my body when I encounter these human potential resources. While integrating, heavily borrowing, and making money from "ancient/native" or "eastern" teachings, very rarely do individuals in this field take on and name, the deep overlays and intersections of race, class, and gender and sexuality in meaningful, public ways. To do so, I suspect often complicates one's own:
1) cherished visions of personal power, individual liberty, and freedom
2) rhetoric of taking responsibility for one's life vs. being a victim to it or circumstances.
3) liberal humanist desire to be "one" with others
4) consumption impluse to "have more" in life
It's 2007. To not see oneself and the deep awareness needed to transform inequity, still not largely reflected in the "human potential" movement, one has to wonder, when do I/we get to exhale.
Go to any bookstore or erotica shop. Go to any workshop on Tantra. Try and find a counselor or therapist, or writer who can really embrace and support your pleasure and still get the context of internalized racism, sexism, classism, religion, and neo-colonialism and the impact this weight has on your vagina. With the exception of a few pioneers, it is like finding a needle in haystack. "Where are the brown women and men that get this and want to talk and do something about it?" I have ofted lamented, "Where are the allies that won't balk and shirk in self-defense and guilt?"
Two years ago, my lament turned into action when I took a step forward to produce an all Pinay production of The Vagina Monolouges. This powerful experience still has its healing effects and since then, I have begun find the friends and path makers that I have been seeking. They help me accept the reality that if I want to see more diverse cultural expressions and savy and accessible reflections of wholistic healthy sexuality, then I have to step up to the plate. I have to create that space in myself and with others. I have to reach back to uncover and provide visibility for the rich Pilipino cultural traditions that honored sexuality before colonization. I have to surround myself with courageous others who have given voice before me to the conflicts and have taken the criticism for attempting to do this dangerously liberating work.
A couple days ago, I have begun again, in my mind to re-entertain and imagine what a Boto (penis)/Bilat (vagina) Dialouges performance piece would like. What if, on stage, Pilpina women and men could finally heal present resentments rooted in historic rage? What if nanays could publically say to their sons, what they always wanted to say, but couldn't? What if daughters publically could tell their Tatay things they could not hear? What if our brothers could talk about the shame and homophobia that keeps them from each other? What if our brothers could be honest about how they prop up their masculinity on us Pinays? What if we could forgive each other for not being able to recognize and touch the beauty in each other? What if we could own our desires even if it does not conform to church or societal dogmas, but responds to much deeper prompting for authenticity?
What if in this performance we could wash away all the shame?
While still terrified at the potential imensity of such an endeavor, I have put out "feelers" to some of my Pinoy brothers and fellow artists who may down the line co-facilitate and help create with me and the pukengkeng liberation crew here in Hawaii. While many other projects, occupy my mind at the current time, this one has a very dear place in my heart. I keep the flame still burning for its eventual birth and real becoming. What better way, to name this yearning for a healing here.
I am hopeful. Very, very hopeful.
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Leny