Monday, November 3, 2008

MUC to the ANC, and the TRC

Fly out of Munich to Jo berg, scotch in conference so I get last minute flight to Cape Town. Leaving the misty old stone world of Munich and Germany for a continent of red earth I have never been before. Cradle of civilization. Financial Times on seat. Pick it up—the world is falling apart. And here I have to make the lexical distinction—“world” does not mean “earth”. What is “world”? When I think of that I mean by “World”, I do not mean bears and forests and vast sweeping plains. “World” always has to do with people. “World War”. It was never called “earth war”. Because the earth is not at war, and the earth is not falling apart. The games we have been playing on earth are falling apart. The financial game. The world markets are collapsing, and it puts into further relief the importance of this story, this film, this exploration. When the fundamental system on which we organize our lives—capital, economy, is undermined across the globe people can no longer trust money as a stable reflection of value, of labor, of nourishment. How will we negotiate a world where a group of men can determine the volatility of a market, of an economy, and thus of a peoples ability to nourish themselves with the words they choose? When they say the Japanese may need bailing out, suddenly it does, overnight. The value of my labor two weeks ago as represented by kroner has decreased 20%. The value of what I did has not decreased, but the value of the paper that represents my labor has decreased.
The land continues to slide under the wing. I am standing still and the earth moves beneath my feet.
Oh mother, what earth is this? How can I bring it back to my people? And my people are all people. All people my soul meets. Which is an expression of my soul and not just theirs. We must create a new myth. The old myth is falling apart. It doesn’t work. Most simply put, the sensuousness of the human being on earth is being denied. This is a sensuous existence. Who can deny the organization of the human body and impulse? It is for pleasure. External enjoyment through material (if one would include even a sunset as material, as it comes through the eyes) and the internal enjoyment of spirit, (ho is this separate from anything else? Is spirit not felt with the same senses I experience the rest of the “external” world with?
How can we live in a new myth of man and woman and time? All I want is to love and be loved, loving. To explore and exclaim this existence. What for are all these power brokers brokering? The desire to own another mans water, his land, his labor; his physical freedom is a great prison. Their identity is dependant on the mans domestication. So they are slaves to their slaves, for if and when they walk away, where will they go? To what community can they flea? They have been busy denying love in the world. Who will cherish them for who they are, when who they have been has been defined by whose energy they could leverage and what water and air and land they could put a fence around. They cannot own the land. No one can. They can only own the fence. But the fence is only as good as the man who guards it. And they can only get him to guard it when he remains under the belief that he must guard the gate to have access to a small ration of what is inside, when before there were no fences, and everything was his birthright.