Ravenous For True Love

July 8, 2006

What a day this has been on the 6th day of fasting. First off, I believe it is a privilege to take part in this hertoric fast. I think of the millions of hungry people around the world who don’t have enough food to eat. Fasting is not an option for them. They have no choice but to slowing starve to death because global capitalism has failed to build a sustainable culture that can meet the basic human needs of everyone. I am starving with them, for them, to free us all from the horrors of social inequality.

What a crime it is that most Americans are overweight eating themselves to oblivion. I don’t really blame them for being obese. The American consumerist lifestyle which they have been brainwashed into adopting their entire lives is gluttonous. Cities designed without good mass transportation systems like Tucson are not pedestrian friendly. Being dependent on cars, people don’t get the daily exercise they need to control their weight. Cars are not only destroying the biosphere, but our bodies as well. Overweight people are to be treated with compassion for different reasons than the starving folks of the world. Perhaps it is two sides to the same coin. It shows the lack of balance within our global culture.

Wayne said to me the other night when we were reading quotes by Gandhi on why he fasted, “You never know what will happen when you begin a fast.” Religions have used fasting as a way to purifying the soul. Healers use fasting to heal grave illnesses. Maybe this fast is helping purify both my body and soul.

Cindy Sheehan has said that she had to divorce her former husband, the father of her four children who she was married to for years because he didn’t approve or understand her deep passion for peace. I found this so sad that her husband wouldn’t stand beside such a noble and honorable truth teller. She is a Hera of this global peace and love story. Maybe he just didn’t have the courage.

I thought my partnership with Wayne was perhaps stronger, that he would see the virtue in standing beside me during the fast. But tonight I wonder about this. This afternoon, we went to the Downtown YMCA where we both have artist’s scholarships to work out. I didn’t work out because of the fast. Instead, I did a little yoga. Afterwards, we went to the library so that I could find out what their policy was about putting up a literature table outside on the library plaza for the Troops Home Fast.

The library supervisor said that the policy changed two weeks ago when the library system was turned over to the county government. Now the Parks and Recreation department controlled the plaza. She thought that official groups could use the plaza. She asked me what kind of group I represented. I said a woman’s group. I held back that it was a revolutionary feminist BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW now group! She gave me the Parks and Recreation phone number and said I should call them Monday.

Walking back to our car at the YMCA, a few teenagers where drawing things on the sidewalk. The Y was having a Hawaiian Luau. I ask one of the girls who looked like it was her business if I could write something on the side walk with the chalk. She said yes. “Anything?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. So I bent down and I wrote “Troops Home Now. Impeach Bush, War Criminal.”

While I was writing it, Wayne had walked to the car, and pulled around the block to pick me up. When I got into the car, I discovered that he was furious with me. He said I was a stupid, fool for writing those slogans where children could read them. “What?” I thought. I thought he was for impeaching Bush and seeing that he was imprisoned as a war criminal. But Wayne thought that writing those slogans was totally inappropriate. He demanded that I immediately go back to the Y, apologize to them, and wipe off the slogans. He said I was more arrogant than George Bush.

“I believe that children should see those slogans,” I retorted. He said that if I didn’t go back and apologize to the Y, he was immediately moving back to his mother’s house. I was spoiling the Hawaiian Luau for those people and I should be ashamed of myself. I replied, “Maybe a lot of the parents will be glad to see those slogans since more than 50% of Americans now don’t support the war. Don’t you know that war is bad for children? “

We got back to the house and he proceeded to pack up some of his things. “What are you afraid of,” I asked? Are you afraid that there is no more freedom of speech left on the sidewalk of the United States and that we will loose our Y scholarships? Is that it? Or are you afraid to be associated with a radical woman?

It’s time Wayne that we step over that appropriate line and act on our belief in liberty. We have to embody that belief every opportunity we can if we want to be true to life. Still, he called me fool, stupid and even a witch.

When he used the word “witch,” I sensed that our trouble was an ancient social ill, a much, much older problem than the George Bush insanity. It was patriarchy, the domination of women by the opposite sex. How intimate the war is, how close to the heart!

Before he left he said that he didn’t care what happened to me on the fast. He wouldn’t be in contact me to find out how I was doing. If I was to die, he wouldn’t even hear about it since I was not part of his life.

Wayne has been my constant companion for four years. He has been my primary support system and my only sense of family since I’ve been in Tucson. We were building Lovolution Village together. It had evolved into becoming a video production company. We were learning video together, made three short films this summer and was planning on doing a video on utopia/dystopia called Lovolution. Our first shoot was to be in Nevada the end of August at the Burning Man event. The theme for the festival this year is utopias.

Wayne has also been my editor. So please forgive the mistakes that I can not pick out of the text. I’m alone now, alone and ravenous for true love.