Ten Thousand Years
Today’s moment as staged reading…standing of course.
VOICE OVER
The best part of my day is when I hear from my friends with productive feedback on this scalar journey I’m attempting to create.
(Interior evening. A darkened stage. Enter stage right, cue single light on FIGURE ONE, a young woman presenting more as man walks to center stage, stands facing audience.)
FIGURE ONE
Linda writes, “Let's design curriculum that allows our future to think about the present and past in a way that celebrates our now.”
(FIGURE TWO, a young woman presenting more as a woman, walks to center stage, stands facing audience.)
FIGURE TWO
Norma writes back, “YES YES YES. Someone asked me how I would define life success...this is it! I want to make sure that we use all of our dimensional skills in service of ourselves and our communities!!!”
FIGURE ONE
I am today, brown, smart, funny, and willing to stare for long periods of time at my rooted feet, planted deep in ten thousand years of todays.
FIGURE TWO
I am abuelita and adelita, chavela and chola, cute-gay-nerd, feminista, chicana-chingona, filmmaking, content producing, scalar creating, oral historian, multi-modal scholar.
FIGURE ONE
I am today, chronically ill, and infinitely willing to beat the odds of health and well being, feeding my soul ten thousand years of todays with aquacate and kale and frijoles refritos, “sin Crisco.”
FIGURE TWO
I am willing to will my legs to pedal a bicycle ten thousand steps to oxygenate lungs and blood in their furious rush to my brain where the thinking factory is working overtime to experience and process and voice.
FIGURE ONE
I am today, living in my now, celebrating ten thousand years of innovation, language, struggle and triumph in my mother’s
FIGURE TWO
My mother’s
FIGURE ONE & TWO
mother’s mother’s mother’s
FIGURE ONE
contribution to THIS moment.
FIGURE TWO
I do read, willing my now oxygenated mind to see a chisme,
FIGURE ONE
the color yellow, the smell of roses,
FIGURE TWO
the low hum “del grupo coral” meeting the introduction of a gospel song, gently opening the door to love
FIGURE ONE
I translate all of this into sound, sight, feeling, opinion, and demand all with the goal of teaching.
FIGURE TWO
Organic pedagogy—is there another way to look at it?
FIGURE ONE
Swimming in Kairos, pool of great, brown&white sharks, doing the do—stop, stand, speak
FIGURE ONE (SINGING)
“I believe that children are our future.”
FIGURE TWO
No. Children are our now. If they are not the now, we are not the future. We will only be the past, with a glorious story that stops today.”
(Fade to black)
