well...how is my spanish today? minimal, i know. i'm working on it slowly but surely. so, as i stated above, i am doing well today. i woke without an alarm or anything at 7:20 this morning. taking cue from hubert, i made a cup of tea and went back upstairs to have a slow wake up. after the weekend, i pulled out two old books that i had on the shelf, the first being Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of Freedom and the other, George Lakoff's Don't think of an Elephant. Both books I had purchased at some point during my time in college, and after spending the weekend with so many students...5,500 to be exact...my mind inevitably drifted back to the days when i actually read theorhetical thinkers and i admit that i got somewhat nostalgic.
but not nostalgic enough to really delve into those books, seeing as the first by Freire is incredibly dense and not exactly a page-turner, i mean it has the word "pedagogy" in the title for christ's sake. it's educational theory which i'm inclined to think has extremely valuable ideas, not just because it is ed theory, but because Friere is known for being a very progressive thinker. he is most well known for his book called, Pedagogy of the Opressed, and I just have this feeling that that book has shaped alot of my thinking indirectly, that perhaps some of the most influential people in my life have been guided by his words and ideas, or perhaps they are just similar in philosophy. but i can't read that stuff right now, not yet. im still recovering from an overly-theoretical college education, and i'm enjoying my periodicals and my fiction for the time being. so i am sending them to montreal. alec will appreciate them more right now, and there is no need for them to just sit on the shelf. i was half-surprised to hear his conclusion at the end of the weekend: that because of powershift, he is more excited than ever about getting involved with politics. i couldn't help but wonder, would josh have said the same?
but that is a rhetorical question, of course. because i think that i noticed something in myself this weekend that i have been trying to loose for years, and that is the constant wish that the people who i love dearly can see and experience exactly what i see--in those beautiful moments where you feel like something is really changing inside yourself and all around you. and usually this is just an in-body experience, like a yoga class or a great hike, or maybe an exchange of words that i want to send out to the world for everyone to hear. but the lesson i have learned time and time again is that trying to pass those experiences on to others is incredibly difficult, while not entirely futile, the effect is rarely just as you want it.
so, this weekend, there were moments when i thought of you, i thought to myself, "i want josh to see this, i want him to feel this energy, and this shift of thinking!" because for the first time, i felt very confident in the direction of this movement, specifically the youth movement, because for the first time, the message that this is just as much about equity as it is about the environment, that we are all tired of the misunderstanding that we are here to save the polar bears and the maple trees. were we scared to say it before? did we not know how? i have so many questions for myself and the collective group of us that have been fighting....fighting for what? why were we unable to fully articulate the vision until now? i think it has something to do with these guys.
"superman!" people we shouting at Van, as he left the stage on Monday morning...a crowd of thousands cheering, yelling, crying and calling for more...more Van Jones, more Billy Parish, more Majora Carter....these are quickly becoming the faces of this new..."movement" (for lack of a more accurate word, im still thinking).but in the end, i did not wish that you were there. i mean, just to be clear, i would have loved for you to have been there, but for you and Em Adler and Olivia and Corinne, all of you great thinkers in my life who are very much "in this" as much as the rest of us but could not be at Powershift, you know what i say, power to you! what the weekend did more than anything else is allow everyone to see that we are headed in a good direction, that we have a vision that is evolving which bridges (not segregates) all of individual visions for what we might want to do in our lifetime, what we think this country and this world could use to make it that much better. i just have a feeling that wherever we all are right now, we are coming to a unified conclusion. or maybe that is just what i am hoping for.
A few more pictures from the weekend...
3 of your favorite people, signing into the conference
Alec and Rea, with the midd kids. Funny that they sortof look like you and me, in certain ways. They are both more stylish than us. People laughed all weekend at how interchangeable the two of you seemed. (But I learned after just 2 days how interchangeable the two of you are not, particularly in my life anyway...)
alec with bobby. is this a strange picture? i bet you never thought these people would all be in the same place at the same time. alec looks like will martin, dont you think?
rallying on Capitol Hill, a view from the crowds.so much more, so so much more to tell you. but this writing thing is new to me and i'd like to try and be more coherant in the next post. i love you joshua, be well and dig amish country for me!
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