The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’
On Storytelling
A true hero doesn’t know they’re the hero.
A true villain knows they’re the villain.
The innocent think they are guilty.
The guilty know they are guilty.
The truth-tellers fear liars.
Liars fear the truth-tellers.
Snippets from the Notebook
On Play
Play is not just an act of joy and pleasure but and exploration of our darker feelings; a space to also move to pain and sadness.
Play can let you experience your feelings and free you from living your feelings.
Questions Needing Answers
- What does the normalization of parkour create/why is it important?
- What can we do as individual practitioners to further the normalization of play in public space?
- How do spaces / places / communities permit or restrict individual movement?
- How do these permission/restrictions change based on identity, location.
- How can spaces be redesigned to be more permissive? How can laws or societal patterns be shifted to be more permissive?
- What can the emergence & practice of parkour or these types of interactive urban space activities (like parcon?) reveal about the deficiencies of our cities/spaces?
Whats the body in regards to mobility?
Something you own, that needs to be improved, maintained, fixed. Emotions, history as we relate to the spaces we live in. We interact with those spaces different due to those emotions/history? Our bodies are not neutral; processing truama/emotions through movement.
When we turn our bodies into property, we empty them of movement.
When we practice parkour, we dont just ineract with the architecture but the history there. We’re going to have different relationships to the place and we’re going to be moving with the architecture differently. How is there mobility for moving emotion, trauma, history? Whos history is illuminated through design?
We are always projecting things onto our architecture.
On Authenticity
Staging Conversations: I can test out versions of myself and pick the one that is most authentic and with greatest integrity
On Relationship Building
How can we move from the transactional to the transformative? I want reject consumerism and experience communion with my fellow humans; to move from the indifferent to the interactive.
Absence by Pablo Neruda
My love, We have found each other Thirsty and we have Drunk up all the water and the Blood, We found each other Hungry And we bit each other As fire bites, Leaving wounds in us. But wait for me, Keep for me your sweetness. I will give you too A rose.
An Anti-Racist American History Reading List
Are you struggling with understanding white privileged or reject that it benefits you? Do you not quite understand structural or institutional racism and its depths? Are you uncertain or afraid to talk about race but want to be an ally?
I understand how you are feeling: You were likely given 12+ years of deeply white washed American history education that conveniently left out how we went to great ends to oppress the black community over the late 1800s, throughout the 1900s, and 2000s. You might even find yourself saying you ‘dont see color’ and were raised to treat everyone the same–not recognizing still that you still are a part of a system where you benefit from your own color.
Of course you aren’t prepared to be an ally. Of course you struggle against accepting your white privilege. Of course you probably hold disbelief in the extent and pervasiveness of institutionalized racism in modern society.
However, it is your responsibility to be an educated and aware citizen. The reality is that if you are white, you are more privileged, you benefit from century old systems that oppress our black communities still, and if you truly believe in living in a equitable society you must learn to talk about race, help others confront their own racism, and embrace allyship.
So I present to you a short reading list that can help you learn the american history that has been conveniently been left out of your history classrooms and books, and can also give you tools to help you be a better ally and anti racist. While there are many many more books, I focused heavily on those that covered the 100+yrs of economic, political, and social oppression of the black community spearheaded by american government, police, and white communities POST slavery. These are history and sociology books, as well as first hand accounts that cover:
Your Anti Racist + American History Primer Reading List
These are in no particular order. If you don’t know where to start or want to talk about what you’re reading and feeling, please send me an email or a comment below. I offer judgement free space for conversation.
📗The Color of Money by Baradaran (history, financial oppression, black banking, etc)
How the American banking and financial institutions (which served as the foundation of American / generational wealth) undermined progress and devastated communities of color throughout the 20th century. Amazing read, historical and well documented. A little slow at times though.
📗The New Jim Crow by Alexander (history, police, incarceration)
The U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. This is an intentional redesign of methods of oppression in a post civil rights era.
📗White Fragility by Diangelo
Ever feel uncomfortable when confronted with talking about race or find yoursd saying you’re ‘colorblind’ and don’t think you benefit from racism?? You’re not alone. White fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. iAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively. Amazing books that recontextualizes your relationship with racism.
📗The Color of Law by Rothstein (urban planning, housing, policy)
interested in why our cities Are segregated or why black home ownership is drastically lower than white home ownership numbers? This book is about how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods.
📗The Warmth of Other Suns by Wilkersons (Social history)
History buffs! This book follows the stories of individuals during the Great Migration, forced to move from south to north in search of safety, community, and opportunity. Reveals through first hand accounts the extreme racist behaviors and laws upheld by southern and northern cities from post slavery into the 1980s. This was your grandparents And parents generations.
📗How To Be An Anti-Racist by kendi (Tools for communication and allyship+history)
Kendi helps us recognise that everyone is, at times, complicit in racism whether they realise it or not, and by describing with moving humility his own journey from racism to antiracism, he shows us how instead to be a force for good.
📗So You Want To Talk About Race by oluo (Tools for communication+history)
Starting with a definition of racism and then delving into topics such as intersectionality, police brutality, affirmative action, the school-to-prison pipeline, microaggressions, the model minority myth and several more, each chapter starts with a personal story illustrating the topic and then explores it more, giving you bullet points of ways to think about and respond to such behaviors.
Is this an end-all-be-all list? No. This is just a primer, a place to get started, to help you realize that you weren’t given all the information, that oppression is real and embedded in the very foundation of how America operates.
From Fired Up to Burning Out.
Over the last 10 years, I have seen so many passionate community leaders light up, explode with effort, and slowly but surely burn out. Having burned out hard once or twice, it is painfully obvious when I see someone now heading full speed for that same painful wall.
One thing that has helped me manage my energy and avoid burnout is knowing more about the Maslach Burnout Inventory. MBI identifies six areas that lead to burnout:
This gives me a framework for reflection, evaluation, action, as well as for self-care. By being able to identify the contributing factors to my exhaustion or approaching burnout, I can often take the necessary steps to implement meaningful change and recalibrate.
For leaders who are responsible for small communities or non-profit organizations, the burden of responsibility (workload) is at times extreme and often paired with feeling a lack of appreciation and acknowledgment (reward).
Make sure to set up a time to check in and evaluate!
Health is More Than Just Physical
It is often easier to understand our gaps in physical health than in mental health.
I can tell more easily when and where I feel strong in my body and where I still have strength to build. There are also clear and actionable ways for me to work on improving my performance and ability—I could take classes, follow a weight lifting routine, go for a run, change my diet, and so forth.
Mental health is a little harder. Emotional states are less concrete and stable as your physical state. How you feel in the morning could be fairly different by lunch or evening time, depending on what happens during the day. Over a few days or weeks you may swing from feeling highly motivated and productive to hitting a wall and feeling a mix of anxiety and helplessness.
During this time of social distancing and isolation, it is important to consistently check in with your emotional self every day–throughout the day.
The best way to do this is by building it into your routine or making it a habit. I personally love tying my physical activity to my mental check-ins, as it often gives me the most information about myself to reflect on.
Checking In
So here are three questions you can ask to check in with your mental and emotional state just before, during, and after a class or workout. These also can help tune the strength of your body-mind connection and health, and bring greater self awareness that can lead to greater stress-management.
This article was first published on Parkour Visions Online, April 6, 2020 by Caitlin Pontrella
“Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That’s why it satisfies nobody.”
– Seneca
Confusion
A person who never learned to trust confuses
intimacy with intensity,
care with obsession,
and security with control.
“Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.”
Charles Lamb