There is no such thing as a passive witness.

Some reflections on Illusion 5: Fuera del Barrio Beyond Our Block...

There is so much to say, and I really want to say these things to either folks who were at the De Young today, or to a man who up and left this city, fuera de su barrio, and ended up surrounded by art.

I came home tonight, with my white dress and my white suitcase touched here and there with blue paint from someone's artwork. My job was to go between artists' work and "integrate" separate pieces with my writing. When I got home, I was exhausted and drained. It takes a lot of energy to be around a ceaseless stream of people, integrate all of them into the project as well as integrate the seemingly disparate works of different artists into a whole. I observed and absorbed a great deal. I am filled with what I experienced, and I feel drained. At the end of it all, though, I am utterly rejuvenated beyond words.

I can see there is a journey coming...the figurative kind. I can sense my life is about to take me to a new place even if I can't see the path yet. I am where I had set out to arrive 12 years ago when I left home. I teach. I travel. I know what home is and what it isn't.

I am also where I did not imagine. I am surrounded by artists and musicians. I am surrounded by people who give back. I am surrounded by good food, good music, many languages and nationalities, and just simply, by good people.

Surprising to me is how I have become a participant in what surrounds me, how I have been absorbed into a community of creativity and imagination explored daily in conversation, in cooking, in hanging out and being, in playing, in swimming in the freezing Pacific Ocean, in being silent on the beach, in making art to be taken down the next day

I don't know where the path leads, and (not but) I am happy.

There is no such thing as a passive witness.