 You wake in pre-dawn darkness and the room you've lived in through five plus relationships four plus heartbreaks and keep eyes closed over the last images of last night's dream You see faces of distant loved ones near to each other around picnic tables close to hills and sky Your family sharing smiles your friendships unfractured all hard conversations had hearts met in understanding Your dreams are so rarely if ever like this But before your eyes open the memories come The familiar tightness around the heart Sinking of the lungs as you see the faces of the ones who left you sleepless with trauma Who named you community yet walked away from your grief let silence grow in the cracks of absence instead of Accountability offered not even a cup to catch your tears let alone water to replenish what they'd caused you to shed but This is familiar and you've practiced So you breathe in And breathe out Think the scenes for what they have to show you for what you've learned but are clear that they are not welcome to stay You don't choose the past Today you choose yourself Standing from your covers you open your eyes to walls Papered with sketches prints and posters that two friends who bring you soup when you're sick and watch your back at demonstrations Put up to help you love yourself Five seasons into a time when living was a challenge Your shower playlist is all black women mending spirits and sewing futures You choose purple floral leggings from the first clothing swap since covid a white tank top from a clothing swap pre covid Then a jacket from the free store with pins of angela and asada and a quote from lauren Little gifts you've learned to give yourself And head outside into the early october air Past the threats of street harassment predictable as falling leaves Past the gentrification towers advertising vacancy after three thousand dollar vacancy past the storefronts changed over even before this pandemic because Her tell from the abolitionist sister whose vintage clothing shop used to be sanctuary on the street for organizing grieving art making Will always took time to water the oak outside her door frame who once stopped you on your way home to tell you about the spiritual gifts She saw in you The landlord who owns the black wouldn't renew anyone's lease Wanted new clientele You pay for your food Remembering the asian-owned shop that used to be here Offering cheap american breakfast and korean lunch with paintings for sale on the walls And across the street used to be that latinx owned joint with the cheap donuts and breakfast sandwiches You pay more at this place than you'd ever played at those places And in your head You begin to write this poem You consider omitting that you took a plastic fork with you so you could eat your food by the lake Decide instead to be honest that you'll take it home wash it clean and add it to the others instead of pretending like there's Any such place as a way You remember that enbridge is turning on line three today And you're still meeting people who have never heard of it You make a note to check in with the water protectors who sheltered and fed your affinity group two months ago Got you heavy blankets hash browns and a shift in a hotel room for hot showers So you could camp out in front of the courthouse all night to pressure achon county to release water protectors They caged for days next door You feel a strain of a heart beating across multiple front lines And breathe together yourself back together again You feel a twinge in your right acetabulum as you head for the water A warning that you have not been tending to your recovering injury with stretches and strengthening and releasing as prescribed In these weeks of taking on the tasks of your burned out colleagues to get the community event produced and the unpaid hours expected by the teaching gig So you let the lake waters rippling massage your eyes The sun bloom vitamin d in your skin Enjoy every bite of oil and potato and hot sauce and recommit to caring for yourself without compromise Coming home To the rent controlled building you've been in since the last recession with the asshole landlord who threatens your once upstairs neighbor with eviction Till she took her 30 years here and moved to texas You stick a note on your door Asking the handyman who's supposed to unclog the kitchen sink and complete eight months old requested repairs today Finally to please not knock until after 2 p.m When the ancestor remembrance and writing retreat for people of african descent You are going to tune into from home today ends You hope the spell will hold It does Next morning You see the email asking you to show up to the press conference demanding justice for jonathan cortez brother father murdered by feds right here in hu chin two weeks ago You make a note to make a note in your calendar On the way out the door to write this poem by birdsong and water You were followed for the who knows how many if time by the same man in your neighborhood You wish could see you as family not clay thing You turn off into the crowd in front of the vegan filipino food stand and text the friend You've done safety planning with who and y'all first met asked Who do you organize with the way the middle class and more folks you went to college with now ask What do you do? He's there in 25 minutes And while you stand down the block back to palm tree A conversation is had Black cis man to black cis man An agreement tentatively made The man apologizes to your friend It takes off on a spike You cannot know if you will be aggressed on or retaliated against tomorrow, but today You have not called the cops on a dark-skinned disabled neighbor And the pelicans crashing into the water make divine music And the air is only moderately unhealthy Despite the fires raging to your northeast and south This is how we did it my loves breath by breath day by day football by football Backtracking remembering starting again making time for our dreams and learning from our ancestors Carving space for our stories trying what we hadn't seen tried before Bringing our gifts to the movement from minnesota to oakland palestine to mindanao text by check-in Conversation by changed behavior. We planned together Called on each other showed up in streets held space on conference calls inboxes community circles and zooms drew boundaries said no Found and followed our full bodied. Yes fell apart Disappointed and were disappointed dissolved into deserts found at the bottom of our tears found respect for silence and stillness and rage rested healed Broke open cages returned to land and breath by breath morning by morning recommitted again and again Two days ago My partner drives me to work and we see a sibling roller skating down the middle of mlk Under overpasses and in the sunshine Hair flowing melon and glowing crop top leggings that are blunt in their mouth No, I don't know all the details of the world. We did our piece to remake for you But in my dreams I know y'all at least as fly and as free so much For that art share and that beautiful conversation that we all had together around Things falling apart in our state of theater I'm feeling really full. How about you yiyo? I'm definitely feeling invigorated by these conversations I feel that you know these thoughts that I've had alone sometimes are I'm finding that they're being shared by the larger community and I'm just grateful that we're able to join together in this space in community In order to you know hear each other out And um, you know, there's some very powerful things that were said, you know, like be accountable for what you are learning and That's definitely something that I take from these experiences for today. What about you, devora? Oh my gosh. I mean, what was the process like so many questions from our last Um session, what are you trying to survive? What do you actually want to do with your life? What do you want to learn? What do you want to make? Let's Stay vulnerable with each other and continue these dialogues. Um, you know name name. What's true for us? That it's you know in these inequities and how we move forward and what we take As you know, this Raised our bar, you know, that's what I was getting out of it is let's raise our bar everybody. Um, you know You know, how do we take up space space and how do we yield space particularly for white folks and the problematic? You know ideas of what happens when we get into affinity spaces particularly white folks and how we kind of Re-harm in the um colonialist mindset Uh, you know, all of these ways that we're moving forward with better with more grace Adding spirituality if that feels right for you like so many different ways Um that we each individually show up. So that's really exciting for me and then the real real get down of brunch and budget dialect Pam Kappalad and pier Joseph this morning was just It feels good to name the things everybody But we have some exciting we have an exciting event. We wanted to share with you. Eyo Yeah, so uh the burning wild uh piece has um Taken on so many forms. It has been transmuted Into an art share that was displayed today. Thanks. You do. Nikki Martinez who was able to work on that as well as we do um seeing and Cynthia Ling Lee um as well as the partners at Berkeley rep and um so many others um But one of the transmutations one of the alchemies that has uh happened is that There is now an altar at the mission cultural center for latino arts um in honor of uh That connection with the land the honoring and commemorating of the experience Um and also of honoring our ancestors that aren't just human either You know, they are They are the animals. They are the trees. We are connected to this and I think that's one of the most beautiful things about You know starting with the land acknowledgments. It's where are we? What is supporting us? What is grounding us? um you know, just some of the great great things that um You know, I've been able to experience with this burning wild altar and reflecting on it um, and I invite everybody uh on here to come to the mission cultural center for latino arts if you are in the bay area um The altar will be up until the 20th Um, and there is a space for you to write your reflections To share your thoughts your experience. Let your knowledge be heard um, let your truth be known And let the community know how best to support you from where we are Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for your work Yiyu on the burning wild project and the interactive altar altar that we have there um And uh, you know now is the time this is this is the end of so such a multiple weeks of work It's 47 people are are being paid in order to um create and bring all the amazing programming that we have for you um It's and it's taken um Months and months to make it work. We are a very small company with a 75 thousand dollar budget So if you feel that your values are aligned with the work that we are doing here Please put your dollars where your values are and please if you haven't already Register make a donation use that green button and it will go towards paying all these artists and the great um The great work that they are doing so. Thank you so much for that support and also just being here Your presence means so much to us and please in the chat Just let us know what made an impression on you this afternoon. What are you grateful for? What what what are you grateful for? What is build forward generated for you? You know go um Give us an impression put it in the chat We love to hear that and then I I want to thank I have to do the thank yous y'all It's so important. Thank you to our partners. Howl round. We love you Nikisa edamad and lmda Nikki martinez and the entire trans advocacy collective You know, it just takes a big crew of talented folks to pull this off together my staff this team We're working from san francisco mountain view boston chicago new york philly and belfast and I am so Grateful to our fabulous teams labor and I'm a big fan of each one of them Including and I need to name them the production manager. Just cone Digital producer joshua waterstone. Yes. Give them a round of applause obs operator richie vivrina artshare and microturgey coordinators sevin and emily crowdcast moderator susanne interns sarvin alida a Chloe bars kenja wellman and connor wentworth and you you you you or nela's our production associate. Oh my gosh extraordinaire Very uh and my and our co-host here. I love it and of course all of our artshare cohort our microturgs Our panelists and you for joining us Yes, amazing Wait wait one more thing What's that? Crowdcast participants get one more bonus artshare From returning art share artist evan montoya of saffron's dance theater and her amazing son buddy Stay tuned and we'll dance it out after Wow Stay tuned everybody Dear teal I miss you I want to see you Love buddy Dear teal are you playing xbox? love buddy Dear teal My school is online love buddy Dear teal. I created an operating system called dago s On scratch. Love buddy. Did you write your postcard to teal today? No Dear teal Miss damn love buddy. Teal teal. I want to see you. Love buddy Dear teal. I adopted a kitty. Her name is corn. Love buddy Pencils. Pen instead. Go get another pen Dear teal. I got a new fire alarm Love buddy Did you write a postcard to teal today? No Are you going to? Yes Dear teal. Dagi says me. Love buddy Dear teal The mountain's on fire. Love buddy Dear teal Do you like coding? I am coding Love buddy Dear teal. I drew lucas the fire alarm Love buddy Carlos Martinez a number eloy detention center 1705 hannah road Eloy, arizona 85131 My teal was locked up in immigration detention And because of COVID-19 I could not see him he he was um He was sick with COVID-19 and thankfully he has recovered Wow, what a great way What a great addition at the very end Yeah, oh my gosh. Love me some soft post dance theater Thank you, buddy. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much uh Yvonne and all of our artists I'm full as we move forward How about you? You? I'm feeling pretty full We are so grateful and Honestly, this is Yeah What we do with build forward is we just put a pin in the national dialogue of where we are really international dialogue So how are you building forward? What are you going to do with the information that you have? I'm hearing a lot of things seeing a lot of things in the chat about feeling feeling Full having resources, you know that we a desire to reach out connect. Please connect Locally connect with the network of ensemble theaters. Um, take your Go make partnerships outside of of theater to keep forwarding this civic Practice that is art making and um, thank you so much Please donate if you can And we are just so grateful that you showed up, which means The most go forth and make amazing art Human beings take a nap Yeah, but first of all Let's dance it out Let's dance it out people. Thank you for building forward