Saturday, September 24, 2011

What I love about America

I have a short list of several blog posts waiting to be written while I have some Internet time, but I feel compelled to skip them, for now, in a more spontaneous burst of thought.  On Facebook, attempting to upload photos, I saw a link for a video showcasing classes taught by one of my hip hop teachers (and friends) in San Diego.  Ahh, the wonders of YouTube...I wait for it to load, and then--I'm there.  Back in this magical city where I ended up by the grace of curiosity and enough money in the bank for a plane ticket.  Back in this studio, where I ended up (not without some nervousness, I might add) on a whim for a dance audition after stumbling across the ad on Craigslist while looking for jobs to keep me afloat.  There's the warm-up routine, the stretches and the energy, the fine coat of dust on the floor (no matter how much we swept it) that ended up all over you in your mildly-sweat-soaked baggy dance clothes, the beautiful windows where we watched planes take off from downtown and soar overhead in Point Loma.  There's one teacher, her wildly personal (and perfectly-suited) hairstyle shaking with vigor as she dances, her "My husband rocks" t-shirt proudly displayed, more evidence that this marriage is still one of the few I've ever witnessed that inspires me, that gives me hope for the marriage I hope to have with someone someday.  The video starts with some cool animation, and I think back to sitting in Angel's car at the bus stop, listening to him talk about learning PhotoShop by playing around with it, and I'm thinking now, just as I was then--wow!  Look at how professional this whole operation has become, because they work to figure out how to do sound editing, graphic design, photo manipulation, video composition. 

Then the dancing starts, and I can't help but watch the video again, again.  Even as I write this, I have to pause to watch it again, and for a third time tears form in my eyes.  Why?  It's not sappy, it's not particularly emotional, though I am a bit of a sucker for Katy Perry's Firework, to which the video/choreography is set.  It's not the choreography that brings me to the brink of crying.  I don't know what it is, exactly, but I think it's what I love about America.  It's the opportunity, the sense of possibility, that has permeated my whole existence.  That I could go to a strange city and become part of a family in the oddest of entities--an environmentally- and socially-conscious hip hop dance company, despite having no prior hip hop training, limited (and late-started) dance training in general, and no wealth of talent for this particular art.  It's about...the pushing of boundaries that happens so naturally in the U.S.  It's about riding the bus for 2 hours to be part of a 2 hour rehearsal, then 2 hours home, because it's where I feel myself--and not just my hamstrings--being stretched in new ways.  It's about...and I'm near sobs now, though I can hardly understand it myself...the relationships that are made, that connect, that form a special place in your heart even though roads may beckon elsewhere.  It's about all the possibility that lies before me, that always have, by virtue of where and when and how and to whom I was lucky to be born.  It's about what I will get to come home to, though I don't know exactly what or where that will be.

I love my life in the village.  I enjoy fetching water; I find hand-washing clothes to be therapeutic, even at 6:00 a.m. before school.  Bucket baths have a sweetness to them, and eating insima and soya and beans out of collective bowls on the ground outside my neighbors' house with people I consider to be family is my standard, and much-enjoyed, dinnertime ritual.  I don't consider my life full of hardship, though certainly it has frustrations.  Watching this video, I am filled with a yearning for home--if only one of my many homes Stateside--that I don't often feel tugging at my heart.  And simultaneously, it's a reminder of why I'm here.  Because there's something about opportunity, possibility, creation that I see in this dance, this movement, this endless work toward refining the abilities of the human body, that I want the children in my community here to have, to know.  We don't need electricity.  We don't need personal cars or brand-name shoes.  But creativity...education...ideas...belief in ourselves...this we need.  This is what I see, what I saw in this beautiful thing I got to be a part of, if only for a little while, on the West Coast.  This is what I want for the people I see daily...whether it's the middle-aged mothers who, for the first time, are learning to write their names and read first-grade books in Bemba as we sit together under the afternoon sun in a field where cassava is waiting to be harvested; or the first-grade, single-parented children who walk for over an hour to sit on the floor because there aren't enough desks and try to copy the strange shapes on the chalkboard (the teacher calls them "Math" but what does that mean?) adequately into their notebooks so they can get a check from the teacher; or the neighbor who's been successful, who has a grade-12 education (a rarity in rural areas like mine), but whose intermittent work seems enough to keep his family fed and himself lubricated with cheap liquor, because he doesn't know what to aspire to or how to reach it.  I wish they could see these people dance, could see the ideas they have--not just about motion and grace and beauty and skill but about the world we live in and what it can be--I wish they could be half the places I've been blessed to be, do half the things I've been blessed to do. 

So I'll return to my village, and continue to get frustrated with all the kinks in the system that make it all but impossible for kids to learn to read and write and think and dream, but hopefully I'll get a little visual in my mind that reminds me to show them what they're worth.  Kruciaal Element, Angel & Jaami--I love you.  Thanks for what you do, for what you are.  I hope I can do you proud.