Creativity is non-acceptance, wonder, rebellion
I'm sleeping, surrounded by pillows and a warm doona. It feels like soft flowing hills. Outside, there are storms. They gather around the city like hungry seagulls. Greedy rumbles and too much water. Overflowing concrete barrios and broken stone roads and rubbish pile-ups by drains and nearby a town that will slide down the hill... Continue Reading →
Her mass of taut and floating balloons seems heavy. The Puebla street is five layers of flaking paint visible on the lamp post. It's anxious crowds shopping slowly between the two stories of old buildings and churches and rubbish bins spilling over with taco and cemita wrapping. Among the balloon sellers and crowds you don't... Continue Reading →
In 1872, the president of Ecuador ordered that Manuela Leon be shot, after her leading role in an indigenous rebellion against forced labour. Her troops had been victorious, and they say she had managed to kill the lieutenant Miguel Vallejo. In the president's decree, he called her Manuel. And just like that, he erased the... Continue Reading →
Where the bodies of man-made deaths go...
Blood is profitable…
little singing birds are diving into the fire the smell of burning bird of suicided song is mistaken for a dark day in Australia overcast skies, the weather reader reports (Hodan Yasin and Omid Masoumali, young refugees from Somalia and Iran and detained by Australia, set themselves on fire within a week of each other)... Continue Reading →
Excerpt from the Butterfly Prison Think Brussels, Paris, Syria, Australian Aboriginal deaths in custody, Black people murdered by police, Central American migrants - which lives are covered more?
42 was the meaning of life. 43 was death – for the 43 Mexican students forcibly disappeared in one go, and for the 43 people in Venezuela killed during rightwing barricades. 11 (April, 2002) was coups and the will of the Venezuelan people trampled on 13 was overcoming defeat. It was when the Venezuelan people... Continue Reading →
The first pages of the Butterfly Prison: Who made the story rules? Once, stories had been an oral tradition, a way to teach. Then they were stolen, canned, and sold. But now and then people tried to reclaim stories. They told them in order to redefine corrupted ideas and to name injustice. They broke the... Continue Reading →
The Butterfly Prison on Amazon
To new tiny person, New being, seed of human, bundle of questions with a whole world to get to know, remember to delight in falling over. Babies are wonderful at getting up again. Keep that. Remember that imagination is your strength. Wonder keeps you alive. Ask as many questions as you can, always. Play until... Continue Reading →
Every person had at least one incredible story frolicking inside them. But the market chose quick satisfaction, supermarket weekends, air-conditioned adventures, television colonisation, thought minimalisation, bomb production. It made the story people tired. Stories died. Souls put to paper, internal battles portrayed in magic metaphors were blown into the air, then caught in nets and... Continue Reading →
On happiness Those Hollywood moments of happiness, which we are all meant to crave - triumph, being proposed to, winning a race - aren't ever so simple and happy in real life. Happiness is always more complicated, and always coincides with other feelings of concern, stress, doubt. Happiness for me has not been those moments,... Continue Reading →
What if selfishness were illegal and books could watch us and our dances drew our faces and the rivers remembered and beauty were untouchable and sleep were stolen and kisses were limited and words were earned and laughter turned the air purple and causing poverty were punishable What if imagining things made them possible. by... Continue Reading →
No peace for the poor Yesterday the rich protested against the poor. They protested their rights, their growing dignity here in Ecuador. I walked among them with a big metal brick in my chest, watching them in all their fine clothes and white skin calling a democratically elected, popular president “dictator”. They waved their black... Continue Reading →
resistance words 