Sense of Place

My brain is a little scattered today. My valentine went to the ocean yesterday for good, but left me new bike fenders to remember him by. It got me thinking about why we connect with people when we do and how when it comes to matters of the heart our brain can be a little disjointed... but 'nuff about my moping and into other things that matter.

I did some interpreting for some moms this past week at middle school parent-teacher conferences. It was rough. Not only the ethics of interpreting -there were so many questions I wanted to ask the teachers... so many misunderstandings I thought I could clear up if I just used my own voice and words... so many people who look at me when they're talking instead of the folks they're trying to talk to...- but also all of the mess of bilingual education in the public school system.

Teachers who had no idea that the reason why the students were always "sick" and going to the nurse was because the kid didn't speak English and couldn't understand what was going on. Teachers who had no idea that some of the parents couldn't help their children to do the homework, because they weren't literate in any language. Parents who didn't know there was afterschool help or that they had agency in how their children were learning. It was really frustrating. Especially since the majority of the students at the school don't speak English, but it's the only language of the majority of the teachers. There were too few interpreters, and so many (very young) students intepreting for their parents.

It got me to thinking about the multilingual capacity building session I had been to from the Highlander Folks and how to go about building an interpreter's collective here. I had met some women from Providence, RI a while back who had done that. They supported one another and shared techniques and strategies while offering interpretation for social justice related events. I would like to do that for the public schools here. Maybe offer free interpretation for parents and also help connect them with oneanother, with teachers, some kind of organizing with them... it's an idea I've had some good responses to and want to explore more. Somehow to provide a service but also to tackle roots of it somehow. I'm looking to go back into teaching next year so it might be excellent to be a teacher in that situation... we'll see where it goes.

Saw Persepolis last night- it was terrific! Books and graphics that I love turned into a great, honest, revolutionary minded movie. It's really clever and I'm impressed and surprised at how willing the artist/author Marjane Satrapi is willing to open up her life and ideas and mistakes so creatively... lots of feeling and interesting insight into late 70's early 80's Iran as well as thinking about place and who we are where we are... which seems to be a theme that comes up for me and the people I know a lot recently.

I wonder what it's like to be displaced, misplaced, relocated... there are so many versions of it. People who must go, people who chose to go, people who just end up somewhere- the contexts are all so different- but it seems to me to ultimately feel belonging or community or connection is really important. And it often seems that it has to be a stationary thing, that the ideal end result for so many of us is a place we stay or land or take root.... but for some people it must be more fluid than that, right? Your birth-land is here, but your heart-land is somewhere else? That you never find it or feel it, or it's somewhere you can't go back to, or it's somewhere that never was? With immigration, migration, asylum, refuge, integration, or the flip side of travel and adventure, chosen risks rather than imposed ones... how related are these things? Self imposed exile versus banishment? I'm rambling but it's a theme that always surrounds me: the idea of place being connected directly to community and community being the what's worth being in a place for... and how I'm still struggling to find/build it and will I always be? And how often do you find it? And how often do you find love? Always? Rarely?

I had a few moments recently where I was trying to work on one of my challenges- to talk with people I care about about the racism and patriarchy rooted in some of their daily ideas and commentary- and when it doesn't work I come across as angry and self-rightous and belittling the other person, but when it does work (and it hurts that it's so rare, when will I learn how to do it? how to talk to people in a way that they'll listen and understand?) it's amazing. It's quiet and soft and there's dialogue and not defense and it feels more like learning than fighting.. it has love even though the anger is still there, it's open to be examined. And how does this connect to place? to interpretation? to graphic novels turned movies? I don't know. Maybe that it's revolutionary too. That it's building and not destroying.

That it all belongs.