Fools and the Science/Silence of Climate Change

The sacred geometry of Sandy

Mother Nature wants us to listen. For centuries we’ve ignored her. So she’s having to speak up louder and louder. Are we listening yet?

Yes weather fluctuates and comes and goes in cycles, but when the unpredictable forces are becoming stronger and wilder, it’s time to pay attention. After the vast amounts of evidence presented us, in the form of melting ice caps, holes in the ozone, severe nationwide summer droughts, so called 100-year and 500-year floods within a few decades, record temperatures, and now the Superstorm Sandy, I’m upset why this is still being questioned. But I’m really not surprised.

artwork by Faviana Rodriguez (www.favianna.com)

As a child when I did 4-H presentations about what was then called Global Warming, about CFC’s and methane gas from livestock, about water conservation and the like, I was quickly dismissed by several adults as just some silly kid sharing some silly alarmist stuff. Most people wanted to ignore it. And most people are still in denial and/or shock. Our human nature makes it hard to admit when we’re mistaken. We hate being wrong, we hate having to confess that what we do and what we have been doing for most of our lives is deemed wrong and bad. We have to try and forgo much of the judgment and blaming in order to move forward.

We’re all products of this culture which taught us how to be this way. It’s hard to recognize that the modern lifestyles we’ve come to know and love, that of consuming vast amounts of energy and resource, which  produces vast amounts of waste, could possibly be so utterly terrible and so absolutely necessary to make changes to. We’re addicted to our unsustainable lifestyles. And it isn’t easy to break an addiction. But we need more than just an environmental 12-Step program - we need a vast overhaul of our entire belief system, our education system, our business models, and the list goes on and on. The problem isn’t a simple fix. It’s a vast and complex issue that is definitely going to take a lot of genius to figure out. Or maybe a lot of Fools.

That’s right - now more than ever we need a lot of FOOLS. And I’m not talking about the lower-case, stupid, idiot fools, I’m talking about capital F, Divine Fools, as in the archetypal Fool, who does things considered foolish and outrageous and so out of the norm from society. We need Fools to shift the paradigm, to challenge the way things are, to uncover new ways of being that to the status quo seem so strange but eventually will become the standard. History is full of Fools who did things so outside of the box that they were considered crazy, but eventually the path they blazed opened up new ways of being that changed the world and became the norm. Everything is a cycle. Every new venture is considered strange and unusual at first. It’s how evolution works, on both physical and metaphorical levels.

Naturally Fools are going to make mistakes. They’re going to stumble and fail from time to time. Some of what they do will just be plain foolish, but every so often what they uncover will bring such gifts. Fools by breaking through the boundaries are going to do things that shake up the way things are so much that they are bound to disturb the peace. Jesus was quite the Fool before he became known as a Savior. There are many instances where scientific breakthroughs came about totally by accident and Foolish mistakes. Over time the actions of the Fool become status quo. It’s a cycle; what is fresh and new eventually becomes old, and the system keeps turning and chugging along. The problem is that in a super creative society like ours, new technologies bring new advances AND challenges to our life. The systems and structure of society can actually halt progress and create stagnation, like a wheel spinning in the mud. While holding on to certain customs and traditions is indeed important for survival and identity, there are also certain elements of our culture and belief system that need to adapt in order for us to survive. The actions of the Fool are needed to break through that stagnation. Thinking outside of the box may come up with some wild and fantastical ideas, some terrible ideas, and some simply Divine ones as well.

The promised Hope and Change hasn’t manifested in the past four years as many of us would like, but is that really surprising given the fact that we’ve lived most or all of our lives in this unsustainable consumer culture and that there is so much resistance to do anything truly progressive to amend the situation we find ourselves in? Did we really think we’d get out of the situation in a mere 4 years? Life grinds on, bringing new complications and challenges. We definitely built ourselves a massive hole, but we won’t climb out of it using the same methods we got ourselves into it. And we won’t get out of it without collaboration and Fools to help pioneer the way toward new methods.

So if you find yourself in a situation where you hear of something or see something that seems so utterly outrageous, crazy, and downright FOOLISH — try to recognize that you are merely in the part of the cycle that is used to doing things a particular way, but a new Foolish way is required to get us out of the hole we’re stuck in. And if anything is to be done to put us back in connection and balance with the forces of nature, and allow us to live out a more sustainable life, it’s going to require giving a lot of Foolish endeavors a try until we find a way that works.

To find out more about the archetype of the FOOL keep checking online for more posts to come, leading up to  THE HAPPY HAPPY REBEGIN DAY CELEBRATION on Saturday December 29 from 7-11pm at the Spirit Studio Silverlake. The event will include video presentations and live performances by your Foolish hosts April Hava Shenkman and Jason Jenn. It will be a fun-filled exploration of the Fool archetype, paradigm shifts, calendar dates, the turning of the wheel, duality and much, much more!

"Bare" Witness to Veggie-Mama

 "Bare" witness to Veggie-Mama, goddess of Urban Alien Organic Garden at the Harvard Hive Alien Art Museum (etc.)! I’m still in awe that The Delusional Diva, R. Sky Palkowitz bared it all for my wild idea to use the remains of the summer garden as costume adornment on her body. And she's still in awe that she actually laid down in a plot of soil full of earthworms and insects I worked up in preparation for the winter garden.

So...it all happened when I pulled up the roots of the spent out plants. I realized I couldn’t let such beautiful forms go to waste! Something needed to honor them creatively, but also allow them to naturally compost. My mind has been on all manner of plant deities and ways to translate/morph them into human form (in a way creating my own form of a GMO). I'm developing a performance to don costume as The Queen of the Weeds on Nov 19, so it didn’t take much to make the leap for there to be also be a Veggie Mama.

It suits Sky so well, who has been a devout vegetarian for some 20 years. Gardening is an art, and certainly Sky’s endeavor in The UAO Garden reflects her spirit and honors the work that went into seeing the first season go successfully for her. And Sky is the type of bold, daring artist who really puts herself out there in the name of art.

Shocking? Well, what else would you expect from The Delusional Diva? Well, this Veggie-Mama is bound to make a future appearance and evolve over time. I'll be sure to have my own camera on hand, rather than the one I borrowed. We had a brief amount of time to do the shoot -- Sky naked in the front yard? Fortunately the aliens gave us a 15 minute span of time where nobody was around. It was simply divine. Now the garden has been "blessed" by the creation of art, and ready to plant the winter crop!

We’ll just have to see what happens next.
In-joy!

Urban Alien Gardening at the Harvard Hive Alien Art Museum (note Sky's new original alien art leg tattoo)

Cocteau & Colette

The cast & creators of the event "Cocteau & Colette at the Grand Véfour": Jason Jenn, Chevalier Tony Clark, R.SKY Palkowitz, & William Emboden

June 23 proved to be a highly charged evening - as the remarkable figures and friendship of Jean Cocteau and Colette were honored in a staged reading at the West Hollywood Public Meeting Room and Council Chambers. We had a packed audience and a warm round of applause. Chevalier Tony Clark, the organizing of the exhibition of Cocteau's artwork gave some opening remarks and introduced author/producer William Emboden, who gave a brief explanation behind the play.

Below are a few stills from the event. Thanks to Orit Harpaz for videography and post production pictures, and Karen Semanak and Tony Clark for their photography. All photos here are by Karen Semanak.

Who was Colette? Writer, Performer, Lover

The show is called Cocteau & Colette at the Grand Véfour, a two-person play that shares an intimate portrait of these two remarkable figures of 20th Century France and their unique friendship that blossomed over their years living as neighbors in the Palais Royal. The staged reading of the new play by William Emboden, will take place on June 23 at 7pm in the West Hollywood Public Meeting Room & Council Chambers.

I’ve known and admired Cocteau over the years, and now I am becoming more familiar with the incredible talent and spirit of Colette, who is considered by some as France’s greatest female writer.

Colette was indeed a very accomplished and prolific author. You may have had contact with some of her works, like that of “Gigi” which was made into a Lerner-Loewe musical and Oscar-winning film of the same name. There was also a recent film of “Cheri” starring Michelle Pfieffer. But those works watered down the full power of her material, and the bold, revealing and mostly autobiographical based accounts of her experiences as a woman who defined herself and her sexuality in her own terms.

It took her years of struggle to gain her status in the world, but she earned it through the array of ground-breaking literary works. During her first marriage to “Willy” she was locked in her room and forced  to write. He published these “collaborations” under his name alone. She finally broke free of the relationship, and changed her name solely to that of Colette (she was born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette). During her life praise and scorn were equally directed her way. But by 1945, she was the first woman to receive a chair with the Academie Goncourt, a high honor in the literary world. 

Although she married three husbands and bore a child with her second, she details many of her lesbian affairs in her writings as the loves of her life. In her younger years she was an accomplished stage actress and a performer in the Music Halls. There she met and loved a fellow dancer, Polaire, and the cross-dressing Missy. Colette herself was known for wearing a man’s suit before Marlene Detrich was internationally known for it. She was called a "vile creature of the flesh" for publishing "Les Plasiers" and her book "The Pure and the Impure" gave readers what she called "an investigation into the nature and laws of the erotic life." She was a brave woman, and truly revolutionary as an early feminist before the larger movement.

William Emboden’s script does a fantastic job of introducing both characters to unfamiliar audience. And R. SKY Palkowitz does a wonderful job of embodying her daring spirit. It's a role that seems quite suited for the Delusional Diva, a unique character herself! I’ll leave you now with a couple quotes that can give you sense of Colette’s spirit:

"When I love anything, I love it utterly. If you knew how I embellish everything I love, and all the pleasure I get out of loving! If you could understand the wonderful mixture of strength and weakness with which the things I love fill me! It's what I call the caress of happiness." - Colette

I also found this quote very amusing to me - it is from Colette's second husband, Henry de Jouvenal, toward the decline of their relationship: "You cannot imagine what it is like to live with a woman who always has bare feet." (alluding to Colette's preferred wearing of sandals). I guess he and I would not have hit it off so well.