Martin Prechtel

CHOREOGRAPHED DISASTERS

"In the Guatemalan village of Santiago Atitlan, people used to build their houses out of traditional materials, using no iron or lumber or nails, but the houses were magnificent.
Many were sewn together out of bark and fiber.
The house that a person sleeps in must be very beautiful and sturdy, but not so sturdy that it won't fall apart after a while.
If your house doesn't fall apart, then there will be no reason to renew it.
And it is this renewability that makes something valuable.
Because the village huts were not built to last very long, they had to be regularly renewed.
When your house was falling down, you invited all the folks over.
Once the house was back together again, everyone ate together, praised the house, laughed and cried.
In some ways, crises bring communities together but Mayans don't wait for a crisis to occur; they make a crisis.
Spirituality is based on choreographed disasters - otherwise known as rituals - in which everyone has to work together to remake each other's houses or the community or the world.
Everything HAS to be maintained because it was originally made so delicately that it eventually falls apart.
It is the putting back together again, the renewing that ultimately makes something strong.
That sort of constant renewal is the only permanence we should wish to attain."

Martin Prechtel: http://www.floweringmountain.com

DAY 1: Semana Santa in Santiago Atitlan from A Mayan Journey on Vimeo.

Alan Lomax

THE TRUTH ABOUT LEVEES

The levee is always close by
A great, groaning serpent
Running through woods, swamp, farm and city
It is the distinctive spiritual and cultural feature
Of the Gulf Coast landscape

Realize that these huge dikes were erected
By People Power
Black muleskinners urging on their teams
With wild work calls and African melodies
Ancient Black Magic Songs built these levees

Before the levees
Ancestors of the Indigenous Ones raised mounds
To which they retreated
In times of high water

In the 19th Century
Planters and Industrialists piled up small embankments
Against the floods
Giving way in the 1870's and 1880's
To newly-empowered Levee Boards

Inconceivable but true
These huge early earthworks were built up
One load at a time
By Barrow Men, Hoppers and Convict Gangs
Leased, driven and dumped on

Working slips and wheelers
Dead Beat, Dead Broke, DirtMen
Hitching Around
Stomping the ground
Of Levee Camps, Railroad Fills, Canals and Dams

Adapted from Alan Lomax's
LAND WHERE THE BLUES BEGAN

1993

March On Poverty Houston's Resurrection City

HOUSTON'S RESURRECTION CITY 2005

Today, thousands of Black Hurricane Rita Survivors, seeking access to federal aid stations located inside Reliant Park, were left outside on cement walkways for over 10 HOURS in 100 + degree temperatures. I know because I stood with them, summoned there to establish a care center for the children of applicants queued up in long lines. Security guards had watched too many hours of scary NOLA news footage and refused to unlock the gates.

The wait could have been conducted in any number of Houston's massive/air conditioned cathedrals, performance halls or public buildings but because the class and color of these human beings DOES NOT COUNT...
This travesty was allowed to go forth in brutalizing weather, televised on all three local evening news channels.

We must understand that Superdome New Orleans was no accident.

Instead it was the result of U.S. public policy now hundreds of years in the making.

If it is an apocalypse that America wants, then our wish will be granted.

Either everyone's behavior changes or the Universe will hand us a purification worthy of any ancient Tibetan/Bon-Po Master

Wind, Fire, Water or a stunning combination of all three.

Nearly 40 years ago Dr. Martin Luther King tried to warn us off of our own self-destructive civic path.

Will we listen now?

"America is at a crossroads of history and it is critically important for us, as a nation and a society, to choose a new path and move upon it with resolution and courage. It is impossible to underestimate the crisis we face in America. The stability of civilization, the potential of free government, and the simple honor of human beings is at stake. We have been given the opportunity to initiate a 'last chance' project to arouse the American conscience toward constructive democratic change. The nation has been warned that our society faces catastrophic divisions in an approaching doomsday if the country does not act. We have an opportunity to avoid a national disaster and to create a new spirit of harmony."

MLK December 4, 1967