We spent a couple of days in NYC this weekend. The weather was clear and windy, frigid at night but nice when in the sun sheltered from the wind.
Friday we took the train down to NYC and went straight to the Guggenheim to see the Orphism show which was stunningly and deeply inspiring. Yesterday we saw the Kafka show at the Morgan Library. Throughout the weekend we sought out good food we can’t get at home, the highlight of which was dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Georgian restaurant.
I needed more video for a project I have been working on and was finally able to get several minutes of what looks like usable video. I shot daylight on the way down and, finally!, night video on the way home. I think the quality is OK but am too tired (we finally went to sleep around 1:30 this morning, having caught the last train back to Providence) to transfer the video from my camera and phone to my computer in order to truly see it.
We also had the good fortune to meet up with colleagues in the drama therapy and theatre for social change community, and to see our friend, Dr. Ben Rivers, performed his one-person play, The Invaders’ Fear of Memories.
Ben is the great-grandson of one of the founders of Israel and has worked extensively in a refuge camp in Palestine. He has performed this play in several countries during the past year.
The play is a compassionate, complex look at the painful history of Palestine. At its core is a searing critique of settler colonialism, much of it drawn from his grandfather’s diaries, and a painful reminder that violence and trauma only breed more violence and trauma. Inevitably there is great resonance with the present, as deeply rooted persons, families, and communities are violently torn from their lands and lives. The title also had touched this historical moment in the U.S. as we are assaulted by settler colonial attempts to erase histories, identities, and stories across the country.
Near the end of the play Ben told the story of Golda Meyer’s visit to the site of a massacre where she was shaken to see tables set with meals that were never eaten, abandoned by Palestinian families abruptly forced from their homes. I, of course, was reminded of the Trails of Tears and the many meals abandoned by brutally uprooted Natives, as well as the humanitarian disaster that is the current campaign of deportations in the Unites States.
During the performance and subsequent post-performance discussion I was continually reminded of Jesus’ saying, “By their actions you shall know them.” It is a profound irony that so many settler colonial countries, including the U.S., call themselves “Christian.”
To the mundane: we need to go grocery shopping if we are to eat, a daunting project…
Please share your thoughts and join the conversation!