last night, tonio and i lived at the ocean. in my dream, i rolled out of bed and walked to the open doorway- no hinges, no door. i could pick out tonio’s silhouette at the water’s edge. he was gliding along the shoreline in thick fog. he spotted me and headed back towards our house. a line of pelicans divebombed the water for fish, iridescent dark cyan-green birds- the gasoline color of fly exoskeletons- with enormous scoop beaks. interlude: here’s a poem i wrote a while ago.

If you don’t want the glint of gold leaf parchment light on the surface of the waves and the gathering swell of the waves’ enormous skirts carrying you to the shore, and the sway of sea oats, and the smart of salt in your tired eyes and the catch of salt in your throat, and the silent perfect plummet of the pelican and the taut discipline of a row of pelicans overhead and the rude cacophony of gulls, and the teem of spot, flounder, shark, stingray; if you resent the humbling you feel at the ocean’s sheer enormity; if you don’t want this girl’s eyes swimming with love and longing; if it feels like too much, it’s time for you to go.

continuing the dream, one pelican split from the formation and headed towards me. i stepped aside and it flew into the house. tonio was ascending the porch stairs. i cried out to him that the pelican had flown into our house! he responded with the same detached, shruggingandsmiling warmth he offered when i had once complained that our frying pans had uneven bases so things didn’t cook symmetrically. his response: ‘maybe it’s us who are asymmetrical’. right. so i ran in and waved a cloth, coaxing the bird back out the door. and then i awoke. i called out to tonio from my bedroom that he had been in my dream and he said i had been in his.

he dreamt that we were trying to make a treacherous passage atop precariously tall canes, but they kept bending and cracking as we stepped from one to the next. we realized that if we just slid down them,  we could walk safely on the ground. i like this genre of problem-solving dreams the best.

i checked in with anasa and elandria, both of whom have had dear friends pass away in the last two days.

i spent the morning typing up notes from the southeast regional planning meeting for the u.s. social forum. i’m still not done! this is why i should always type notes during meetings and email them to folks immediately rather than writing them by hand in a journal. it’s so bloody time-consuming to do it this way, and so tempting to do tons of research to flesh it out into a masterpiece.

since i returned to highlander, there have been three things i’ve fixed with the slab of smoked bluefish my mama sent up with me:

1. spring rolls, with julienned ginger, thin strips of carrot, and shredded bluefish, dipped in a sauce made with rice vinegar, tamari soy sauce, chopped garlic and ginger
2. omelette, with finely chopped shallots, tomatoes, and bluefish
3. rotelle pasta, with sauteed pine nuts, cherry tomatoes, strips of bluefish, parsley, red wine vinegar and spicy olive oil

the third dish, along with a small salad of strawberries and oranges, was my lunch today.

more work at my computer, and then we had teatime at the library, masala chai with tonio’s nana’s homebaked biscotti. mmmmm. i taught susan, elandria and tonio the verb ‘mook’, which is malayalam for dunking things in your tea. very important verb. 

i met with elandria and susan briefly to plan the next chunk of work, and then roberto, tonio, elandria and i took a group of about thirty college students on a tour of highlander. they were in the bonner scholars program. we had discussions about popular education, highlander history, undoing social justice hero mythology and, most fascinatingly, the changing societal role of social change music. guy and candie carawan told stories, played and sang with the group, and then we all went down to dinner.

guy and candie were originally from california, but they met at highlander over thirty years ago. i believe they are the only people left who have been based at all three of highlander’s sites (monteagle, knoxville, and new market in TN). they are cultural organizers carrying forward the tradition of southern and appalachian music in social movement-building. guy is most famous for helping spread the song ‘we shall overcome’ throughout the south. kids in india still learn that song in school.

guy explains that the lyrics come from the original gospel song ‘i’ll overcome some day’ (charles tindley, 1900) and i’ve read that the melody derives from the 19th century spiritual ‘no more auction block for me’, a song pre-dating the civil war. early highlander cultural worker zilphia horton put these lyrics and melody together, and changed the words to ‘we will overcome’. guy says that pete seeger was the one who suggested that ‘we shall overcome’ sounded better when sung. guy plays banjo, guitar and dulcimer, and candie is a singer and a potter. now all the royalties for that song go to the highlander center’s we shall overcome fund and support cultural work benefiting southern african-american communities.

tonight i am making anar-kissed valentines with tonio and roberto for the other highlander staff. i love that roberto sings aloud in the office after the rest of the staff go home. snehal said that reading this journal has convinced him to write daily, and that makes me smile.