As part of their much-welcome “Women’s Work” series, Cal Performances recently brought Sasha Waltz & Guests’ provocative dance “Körper” to Berkeley. “Women’s Work,” the latest instalment (titled with definite tongue in cheek) in the “Berkeley RADICAL” series, brings a much-needed corrective to what has too often been a male-dominated world.
As an unapologetic straight white Eurocentric male myself (to put my cards smartly on the table), I applaud, and cheer, the impulse behind this. The modern world has been over-driven by testosterone since the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution and the autocratic isms that have followed, beginning not least with capitalism, and has left us careening toward an Armageddon of our own making. More than ever before, the world needs a woman’s touch – the deep generosity of woman’s concern for the vulnerable, for others besides themselves; an essentialism that I suspect not even the most deep-dyed feminist will deny, at least privately. What bothers me about feminism, however, is that it too often has bought into the masculinist, and hubristic, assumptions of liberalism, voluntarism, individualism, modernity and the Enlightenment project, and by doing so merely has strengthened the chains that bind us all. Some feminists do not seem to realize that their liberation – and our salvation – requires that we overcome, and replace, modernity itself. Otherwise it will not be merely our souls that are lost.
We are very happy to announce that the literary contest ‘Nature’ is about to start. This year’s theme is “The Nature of the Universe”,
with Earth’s terrestrial nature remaining central to the theme.
All are welcome to enter by submitting a piece of writing on the theme of nature and the natural world. This can be a poem, a short essay, or a short story. American author Janine Canan, who has a long and established reputation writing on these themes, will serve as judge, and Portuguese author Rui Carvalho sponsors the contest and prizes.
Mark Morris Dance Group performing Pepperland. (Credit: Mat Hayward.)
Eat your heart out, atheists: there is a god, and his name is Mark Morris.
To prove his divinity once again (though what god needs to prove his divinity? I should say: to display it to us hapless mortals), he brought his company of angels, fallen and otherwise, to Berkeley over the last weekend in September to ravish mere humanity with an hour-long dance based on one of the most inspired and exuberant and original and humane of all albums of popular music—the Beatles’ seminal (for once, the word is apt) contribution to what few virtues we have left in our world today: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
It is almost embarrassing to salute so fulsomely a work of such wit, humor, graciousness, humanity, and eternal youthfulness. It stands uneasily on its pedestal, threatening at any moment to throw itself onto a 60’s dancefloor and show the rest of us how it is actually done. Continue reading →
Welcome to October 2018’s issue of Synchronized Chaos! This month’s theme is Aerial Perspective.
It’s a time for reflecting on your life’s journey. This month’s contributors look at life from a distance: processing trauma after the fact, considering entire scenes and landscapes, heading off into flights of fancy, and expressing ideas poetically through metaphorical language.
Mahbub’s poetic speakers, whether thinking while awake at night or while hiking in the woods, have enough mental distance to consider their lives and situations.
Logan Lane celebrates a fun Halloween tradition that began with Linus in the Peanuts comic strip: going to a pumpkin patch and waiting for the Great Pumpkin. Her piece is a genuine, sincere tribute to tradition. In Joan Beebe’s poem, her tears mingle with the dew. She’s part of nature, part of a natural scene that actually brings her great joy.
In her monthly Book Periscope column, Elizabeth Hughes reviews novels and memoirs that dramatize suffering and survival via self knowledge, self respect, heroism, crime-solving or whatever else it takes to triumph. She reviews Crissa Constantine’s Love and Accept Yourself Now, Marshall Ginevan’s The Wrong Side of Honor, Ellen Payne’s Finding Joy, Rob Watson’s Friends List, and Astra Ferro’s Stepping Stones on the Spiritual Path.
Chimezie Ihekuna’s poetry highlights how living a life of love and truth is a choice, something we must do, but are also empowered to do. Leticia Bradford’s poems also demonstrate the choice to stand in one’s truth, by speaking up for social justice in a nationwide march.
Some writers reflect on their inner feelings and wishes from enough distance to be able to understand themselves and others in the big picture.
In James Diaz’ love poems, his speakers want to understand and heal their partner’s pain and past grief, blame, and loss. They extend this compassion regardless of whether they’re currently together with that person or whether the relationship has ended.
Eliza Segiet contributes poems of war, referencing the Holocaust and concentration camps. Segiet alludes to things rather than describing them directly, addressing the daily indignities of oppression in fresh ways: ‘numbers are born’ rather than human beings, inmates lose the ‘ability to lie by choice’ as they must conceal some matters to survive.
Ian Copestick gives us poems of struggle, writing of addiction and pawnshops and his amusement with books that describe an easier, more refined life. He, like Mahbub, reflects on his existence after consideration, although he’s in the midst of the struggle. His work illustrates how poverty is not always composed of moments of desperate action, but also long periods of waiting and contemplation when one is unable to afford to move forward in one’s life.
Thank you for joining in the Synchronized Chaos journey by reading our publication and leaving comments for our contributors. Hopefully this issue will cause you to contemplate and ponder, then pontificate in our direction, about the major themes in your life and our world.
