Moments of Insight • Vol. 1 Issue 14 • September 25, 2020 A Note from Anna, our Founder & Director Send us a Letter We know we cannot be there in person Hi All - Are we actually in Autumn? I hope you’ve all been holding up okay with all with you, but wanted to encourage you the craziness, especially those of you who got evacuated due to smoke and fires. to check-in with us like we do when we By all accounts it sounds like it wasn’t easy. We were thinking about you all. I hope are together. You know how Anna you are all back safe and sound and doing well despite the stressful circumstances. But my heart goes out to all those who lost their homes and suffered due to this. I usually asks us to state how the week hope all your families are safe and doing okay. has been and share something we've learned? We'd love for you to write it I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little concerned about the fires and watching how it down and send us a note. was affecting so many people, animals, homes, communities and forests. This was a first for me, to have a bag packed and ready to evacuate should the fires get any Send us a poem or artwork closer to Portland. Luckily that wasn’t to happen, but the smoke was hideous (as you all know) and it was really hard to breathe at times. It did have me thinking We would also love for you to share any about the recent events and seeing the common thread of - ‘I can’t breathe’. poems, artwork or insights you've had that we can include in one of our next Starting with COVID and its impact on the lungs and people's ability to breathe. Then George Floyd died from lack of breath as an officer had his knee on Mr. volumes of 'Moments of Insight'. Feel Floyd's neck. And the wider issue of systemic racism and the metaphor of not free to share ideas of what you'd like us being able to breathe. Then, the fires and having to stay indoors due to the to include in this newsletter as well. hazardous air quality and not being able to breathe. The lungs of the earth (the trees) burning all around us, and consuming so much oxygen in their path. And All letters, art and ideas can be sent to: then last Friday, the tragic death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg - a fearless champion of The Insight Alliance gender equality and civil rights who said, “But I ask no favors for my sex. I PO Box 820214 surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their Portland, OR 97282 feet off our necks." This quote is originally from Sarah Grimke who was a strong advocate of the abolition of slavery and women's rights. Again, the reference to simply being allowed to breathe. And then today, I went to a body worker as my shoulders feel all contorted due to hours a day on the computer. He said everyone he has seen since lockdown is so tight in the diaphragm. He said it’s like everyone has collectively been holding their breathe. Before starting the Insight Alliance, I worked in the field of Chinese Medicine. I found myself wondering about possible connections to all these recent goings on. In Chinese Medicine all the organs have emotions connected to them. And, all organs are paired. So the lungs are paired with the large intestine. It might not seem like it, but they function similarly. They both take in and release. The lungs absorb oxygen and release CO2, the large intestines absorb nutrients and release the rest. Energetically they connect to boundaries - who/what we let in and who/what we don’t; what we say yes to and what we say no to. THE INSIGHT ALLIANCE PAGE 01 CONTINUED FROM PG 1. WITHOUT A SOUND The emotion of the lungs is grief. Some would say there is collective grief during BY CORRISSA BARNETT AT CCCF this time. Grief for those dying of COVID, grief for the people of color dying on the streets at the hands of our police, grief for all that’s lost to the fires and grief My shadow is full of thoughts for planet earth as we see the effects of climate change before us. And grief for constantly following me around the loss of our trees that give all of us our ability to breathe. and when I think I'm lost I feel like I’m being invited to pay even more attention to all that’s going on. I’m Somehow I'm always found. curious if any of you have had other thoughts or reflections on all that has been going on? Miniature movies playing Flowing without a sound The Insight Alliance did our first Voter Registration drive on Tuesday. We My body is just a vessel partnered up with Victory Project PDX, an organization that feeds our houseless My soul is simply profound neighbors in Portland. So we set up in two locations, offering food and the opportunity to register to vote. As I parked my car, ready to unload, the very first person I saw was a familiar face from CRCI! A gentleman who I had the pleasure of The grass says I'm okay meeting a couple years ago in one of our groups. He was doing well, but he was as my feet hit the ground houseless. We gave him a meal and registered him to vote! It was lovely to see We all have our spot him. like a pitcher to his mound. It was really great to meet so many people. It also makes me realize once again how we all live in our separate realities and have very different ideas about voting. We are always in motion I had the very unconscious assumption that given the opportunity to exercise ones As the earth stays perfectly round right to vote and be a part of our democracy, people would indeed want to vote. We're like tiny ants marchin' Many people had no interest in voting, saying that their vote wouldn’t matter heading towards our mound. anyway or they don’t like any of the candidates, and nothing changes. I also saw in a very real way that people require food, water, and their basic needs to be met before they might even think about voting. I realized even having the ART BY JANIE LOWE bandwidth to vote is a privilege. Having the space in my life, with all my other basic needs met, voting seems like an important right to exercise. But on the streets I totally saw how that isn’t the case for folks who are just needing a warm meal in their bellies, or to engage in a decent conversation, or to get a fix. That is much higher on the list of needs for many houseless neighbors. Even though, to me, in my reality, voting is an obligation of citizenship, something I thought we all should care about. One more personal belief that I’ve had a chance to learn more about. Until next time, THE INSIGHT ALLIANCE PAGE 02 'Life of a Song' from the Financial Times UK TO CULTIVATE WISH YOU WERE HERE — PINK FLOYD’S SONG OF SELF- BY TREI HERNANDEZ AT SRCI SCRUTINY HAS GAINED UNIVERSAL RESONANCE To cultivate is empowering - In 1974 Pink Floyd were finished. Or at least that was the consensus in the year after ONLY if we are heard and seen. The Dark Side of the Moon had transformed them from avant-garde psychedelic The work is often undervalued as rockers into one of the world’s best-selling bands. There was a feeling that they’d institutional and systemic racism achieved all they could. “We could have easily split up then,” Roger Waters said many oppressors dehumanize BIPOC (Black, years later. Indiginous & People of Color). These actions, behaviors have outraged many. The gnawing sense of inertia and self-doubt soon began to infect their live shows. One performance at Wembley Arena in London was so leaden that it prompted the We continue to unpack our own lived and NME’s Nick Kent to pen this withering assessment: “The Floyd in fact seem so shared experience when it's safe to be proud incredibly tired and seemingly bereft of true creative ideas one wonders if they really of our intersectionality. care about their music anymore. Question the social construct - the social ”Things didn’t get better when they returned to Abbey Road Studios to start working conditioning that has been created on new material. At least not until they realized that malaise and disillusionment were, to oppress marginalized communities. after all, apt themes for a Pink Floyd album. From their torpor emerged Wish You Were Like - You - Me - US Here, an outstanding record (and the song of the same name) about being an indifferent bystander in one’s own life. To work within the systems many BIPOC switch to fit the status quo. Being BIPOC, For a song so introspective, “Wish You Were Here” is one of Pink Floyd’s most hard work is a must. We work within the accessible tracks and the closest they had come at the time to singalong pop. system and around the system just to be left Although we can trace the beginnings of the ultimately irreconcilable creative gulf behind by the system.