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 Ordinary Stories of Magic, Adventure, and Chocolate
It's been four years now since the day I hoisted my plastered, broken toe onto a footrest somewhere in the former Soviet republic of Moldova and started writing what has become the book, Ordinary Stories of Magic, Adventure, and Chocolate. It's been a long process, but the book is in its final stages of editing and I plan to send it out into the wider world within a few months. Here's a blurb that might end up on the back cover:
Beginning with a broken toe in Moldova, Ordinary Stories of Magic, Adventure, and Chocolate retraces a personal journey through urban squats of Western Europe, Central American countryside, an Alaskan winter without electricity or indoor plumbing, the streets of Istanbul and Southern India, across Bosnia, Serbia and Romania on a bicycle, and eventually into the political countercurrents of Venezuela, Uruguay, Cuba and Colombia.
More than a travel memoir, this collection of true stories relentlessly pushes at the edges of cultural boundaries, while tracing a path of personal evolution through activism, love, loss, birth, death, politics, and exploration of the ever-evolving mysteries of life. It is a tale of what is possible when a young woman insists on following her truth, keeping magic as a travel companion, and sampling all the chocolate along the way.
Ordinary Stories of Magic, Adventure, and Chocolate is a playful, personal story that pokes at politics and cultural differences, but focuses on our ultimate interconnectedness, and hopes to offer a reminder to see the magic that is always around us, the ordinary magic we tend to overlook, the mysteries we get too busy to ponder. And in that ubiquitous magic we may just find reason to live with more trust and compassion, with less fear, and with more openness to the infinite possibility of life. We may find that we are capable of much more than we realize.
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 The Kamagasaki Patrol: What the G8 Means on the Street
Ten years ago, a homeless man in Osaka, Japan, was collecting recycling by the river when he was assaulted and thrown in the water, where he drowned. The homeless community was outraged and called meetings to decide what could be done to ensure the safety of their community. They decided to address the issue collectively and autonomously, since the police were not supporting them. This was the beginning of the Kamagasaki Patrol.
In recent months the Patrol has been focused in three main areas of work: 1) patrolling the neighborhoods for safety and coordinating weekly communal meals; 2) organizing with the precarious workers' unions for workers' rights, and helping community members find jobs; and 3) engaging in anti-G8 organizing. But several weeks ago their efforts were derailed.
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The Book
Ordinary Stories of Magic, Adventure, and Chocolate
September 15, 2009
Well, it's been over a year since my old laptop was stolen. I think at this point I can almost say I'm glad it happened. I can't remember how I got by with that old laptop that couldn't do so many of the things I now take for granted, and I ended up rewriting the book in ways that I'm pretty sure made it much better. Everyone told me that would probably be the case, but I guess it was a little hard to believe when I was in the middle of it. It's funny how often things that seem so crappy can actually turn out to be those well-disguised blessings.
I didn't work on the book at all from May until October, and instead focused on a series of collaborative reportbacks from Japan about the global justice organizing surrounding the G8 summit in July, which were published on alternet and beyond. When I finally settled back into Ordinary Stories last fall, I had to start editing back at the beginning, rereading everything, making enormous changes, and eventually adding a few new sections. As the year unfolded, resolution to some of the questions the book had left unanswered started to appear through the circumstances of my life, and as a result, the ending of the story actually changed.
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