With Neruda on my mind, the exercise of finding different formats to verbalize thoughts is recurring. Canto General, long ago, was my hope for what this here diary would look like! At  this point, wanting to transform a diary into an incantation would take a life time. And … what good would it do me to face my shortcomings this way? How could I use my acceptance of them to keep going?

This sounds very much like something Simone Weil would say. Not that I confront my incompetence with her genius. But there is something to say about steely lucidity. This opposite to self-indulgence is good for creativity.

Speaking about ‘a Tale’, it is taking too long to finish it. I am stuck in a self-dug rabbit hole due to the belief that the vocabulary developed so far in the piece should be carried along to its very end. In the name of what? For what purpose? Consistency is a deadly reason in that it does not prepare for the future, which will be necessarily different. Otherwise we would live in the past, like the rabbit, fixated inward, ass up in the air ready to be kicked! Yes, to live in the past and to repeat the mistakes of the past, This is conservatism. This is reaction. This is not art or science or any cognitive endeavor worthy of our humanity.

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Here is a quote by Simone Weil which made me laugh like nothing short of genius would, unless it were delusional:

“I must say that for me the thought of transforming the efforts of my body and soul into potatoes and things of that kind among a people who may go hungry is the only thing that can excite me at this moment …”

How a single sentence covers the whole purpose of a philosopher morphing into a farm hand, were it only for a few month, shows how clear minded and purposeful she is. I actually believe that a plagiarized version of it could be a possible slogan for TINYisPOWERFUL! Something like:

“Transforming the efforts of our bodies and souls into artful thinking, art objects and the art of sociability, among people of the Low Country” .

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And then, there is this written piece by sociologist Hugues Bazin about spaces of socialization he refers to as  ‘third  spaces’. A third space is where diverse groups, with varied histories and experiences, meet and, as they learn from each other through collaborative projects, challenge traditional learning institutions and prime existing social networks for new spaces of collective questioning.

Speaking only for myself, I think that the apparent reluctance I show to “participate at all costs” for the sake of building the public image of  a collaboration proselyte, is false. Yet,

I can imagine funders observing TINYisPOWERFUL and wondering why we seem to shy away from the public eye, why we are so picky in our choice of partners, (although we actually love to welcome newcomers and often invite them to stay!). I believe that this   to do with the ambitiousness of our goals and also relates to what Hugues Bazin calls a ‘third space’. We are not all productive artists. Some of us are (also) activists or educators. But I believe we all dream of collaborating with other individuals or groups, were it for one project only, short or elongated! We also dream of weaving meaningful links with such individual and groups and seeing these all these links morph into a local network of diverse mindful folks whose commonality lies in their shared humanity. In other words, we are extremely political in that we believe all social activities, from art to politics are to be aimed at keeping and building on our humanity.

In our quest for local networking, Art (making) is our toll of choice. Equity and Access are our goals.