Monday, August 27, 2007
Notes from Jammin with Katrin on babaylan --
Katrin:
From the point of view of NVM Gonzalez' sacred space and time, you can be everywhere at the same time. The ancient Africans and black Australians talk to trees when they want to talk to one another...why does it have to be a little machine in your hand? Today, connectedness is only understood in material terms.
the babaylan still knows sacred space and time. she's never forgotten. so from that viewpoint: is there really a diaspora?
is the babaylan not a pinay who remembers with every cell of her body sacred space and time? even in the diaspora?
enriquez always said we filipinos will repopulate the world . what did he mean? repopulate the world with humans who know how to be in the body and outside the body-- in sacred space and time at the same time...
the babaylan, to me, thinks with the heart and the babaylan in the diaspora can do that fully conscious that (s)he is doing this without losing innocence. it is just a matter of creating your psychological foreground/background pattern in an order that reverses the present dominant cultural patterns.
deconstruction must not only be an intellectual process. the igorot "coat and tie" is deconstruction. enriquez was so good at it. his works are full of it. you just have to place yourself there-- innocent and lightly, just playing, but at the same time very very serious. your book does that, leny!
thanks for letting me jam with you.
Katrin:
From the point of view of NVM Gonzalez' sacred space and time, you can be everywhere at the same time. The ancient Africans and black Australians talk to trees when they want to talk to one another...why does it have to be a little machine in your hand? Today, connectedness is only understood in material terms.
the babaylan still knows sacred space and time. she's never forgotten. so from that viewpoint: is there really a diaspora?
is the babaylan not a pinay who remembers with every cell of her body sacred space and time? even in the diaspora?
enriquez always said we filipinos will repopulate the world . what did he mean? repopulate the world with humans who know how to be in the body and outside the body-- in sacred space and time at the same time...
the babaylan, to me, thinks with the heart and the babaylan in the diaspora can do that fully conscious that (s)he is doing this without losing innocence. it is just a matter of creating your psychological foreground/background pattern in an order that reverses the present dominant cultural patterns.
deconstruction must not only be an intellectual process. the igorot "coat and tie" is deconstruction. enriquez was so good at it. his works are full of it. you just have to place yourself there-- innocent and lightly, just playing, but at the same time very very serious. your book does that, leny!
thanks for letting me jam with you.
Leny's note to self ...and my others: these notes from Katrin gently reminds me that when I am preoccupied and all bent with emotional turmoil about current events (wars of all kinds), I am being called to a way of being that knows how to be present both in sacred space and time and this physical space my body occupies in time. To play and be serious at the same time. Life as Jazz. Life as Jujitsu. Life as a Koan.
There is one other person I love who knows this. Let her Light take you there.
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