Fifth Schmancerversary

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ATROCITIES 'R' US at Montreal Fringe 2019

ATROCITIES 'R' US
At Montreal Fringe
June 5-June 16, 2019

Venue 8
Black Theatre Workshop Studio, 3680 rue Jeanne-Mance
75 minutes
16+
Nudity
in English/en Anglais
$8-$12

Thursday     Jun 06     7:30 pm
Friday          Jun 07     5:30 pm
Saturday     Jun 08      4:00 pm
Sunday        Jun 09     8:45 pm
Thursday     Jun 13     11:15 pm
Friday          Jun 14      6:00 pm
Saturday     Jun 15      9:15 pm


Press Release
for ATROCITIES 'R' US
Montreal Fringe 2019

Tasha Diamant has been exploring radical vulnerability as a performance art form since starting the critically acclaimed Human Body Project in small-town Alberta more than 13 years ago. Unscripted, without a conventional narrative, honest and naked, Diamant shows up as vulnerably as possible to mirror humanity's state at this harrowing moment in history.

Raw, yes, but she can also be pretty funny. Comedian Maria Bamford has joked: "Weakness is the brand." Riffing, Diamant says: "Pain is the brand." Diamant self-deprecatingly shares challenging truths about herself, such as struggling with severe emotional pain; surviving Stage 4 ovarian cancer; spectacularly failing to thrive in the cult of academia; mothering in isolation; etc.

Gift from J. Graydon

The baring of body and self is also about reflecting the culture. Her work falls in the Shamanism and Elderhood Department, if Westernized, globalized consumer-people had such a thing. Diamant is white, educated, and privileged. She has often spoken about her work as a way to use her privilege and pain to interrogate and criticize her culture. 

And as a way to model vulnerability and show solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. In fact, Diamant takes her art to the streets. For years, often alone, she has held regular "Vulnerability Vigils," standing naked in the open, in some cases holding an Extinction Symbol sign.

Diamant, 2014 "Vulnerability Vigil"

By exposing herself and leaving herself open to judgment, audience members' issues—through their projections on her—also become somewhat disclosed. Diamant is subverting audience expectations of who is responsible for what and it's uncomfortable.

In performance and in public, Diamant hopes to offer a form of cultural healing for a civilization that renders older women invisible, has no shamanic tradition, and is destroying the world. For Diamant, who began naked performance art/activism in 2006, the need for a cure has gone far beyond urgency.

"In a space with no limits, we nonetheless carry limits in ourselves, play roles, seek confirmation. Our winner is a show that isn't comfortable in its contradictions and cares so deeply it just can't give a fuck! Fierce nonchalance and the full power of extreme vulnerability: it challenges everything we believe about theatre and undermines all hierarchies."
— Geoff Agombar, Mainline juror 

"You are a role model."— audience member

"Powerful medicine...When confronted with work to which I've had a visceral reaction I need to go deep within to confront the part of me that’s mirrored. Although there are many solemn moments, the performance is surprisingly life-affirming, with moments of laughter...Profoundly moving and relevant."— Janis La Couvée, Dispatches from the Victoria Fringe 2017

"The definition of sincerity."— audience member

"You connect all the dots."— audience member

Tasha Diamant, 57, lives in Victoria, BC, and is married with two daughters, 17 and 12. Work she has been paid for: waitress, journalist, visual artist, yoga teacher, university instructor. She has participated in several community and prison theatre projects. This is her 10th anniversary as a fringe performer. Diamant is a privileged, monolingual English-speaking, cis, straight woman of European descent who is not actually an extrovert.

Contact  tashadiamant@gmail.com

Grinding Groundedness + Birthday Action Sept 29 CANCELLED

I've gone from feeling crappy to feeling full-on shitty so I'm cancelling tomorrow's action.

Tasha's Birthday 
Act of Disruption and Resistance
Pro All Kids
September 29, 2018
CHANGED TIME AND LOCATION:
10:45-11:45 am
BC Legislature
Victoria, BC
12 noon-1 pm
Across from the Empress Hotel

There are actually people who take time out of their days to protest educational resources that support kids of all genders and sexualities. They will be at the BC Legislature protesting these resources on September 29 and I plan to be there to disrupt them (in a peaceful way).

All welcome to witness or participate.

Tasha's Monthly Action Facebook event

Pro-SOGI 123 Rally Facebook event

Atrocity Cheer. Aug 26, 2018.

__________

Grinding Groundedness

I signed up to do a fun thing but I woke up that day and I felt shitty so I cancelled. Cancelling also felt shitty.

Aside: I have a confession to make. I almost never go back and read past blog posts so I probably repeat myself and for that I apologize for anyone who reads this stuff. Anyway, I do know that even before the schmancer, I have often written about my susceptibility to illness and emotional pain. And I've written about it in relation to the MOST DESTRUCTIVE CULTURE THAT EVER EXISTED that I live in and am complicit in creating. That's what this post is also about but I hope I'm covering some new ground.

In the last week or so I've had two very vivid dreams. Dreams from HELL (i.e. EARTH), you might say. You would think you cannot make this shit up. But here is my brain...

The first dream consisted of me sort of accompanied by what could hardly be called a following, maybe like a small loosely organized class, or even just a random raggedy group of people who had nowhere else to go and looked even more lost than me. Except for being near each other, we seemed to have no comprehensible connection. For the duration of the dream, which felt interminable, I was trudging around a cityscape with few open spaces; where the spaces available were cramped and the ground was all ditchy or really steep. Everywhere, I had some sort of entourage and it was very difficult or impossible to stand without slipping or needing to find new footing. 

And, I'm not kidding, for the WHOLE dream as we painfully wandered in this way, I kept asking myself: Why am I here? Why am I here? Why am I here? Why am I here?

If there is a distillation of my struggle in this existence this dream is it. Thanks Mr. Sandman.

Dream number 2. Definitely the work of the same auteur. I went to bed, disappointed with myself that I felt so unwell and would probably not be able to attend the thing that I had to cancel.

Again, this dream had the interminability and repetitive qualities of the previous one. In this case, the "star" was a woman I am acquainted with who bears a strong resemblance to the neighbourhood mother of my youth who, in my critic brain, represents the apex of judgmental, white, upper-middle-class, Calgarian, 1960s-1970s, NARROWNESS that I grew up in. And she played this role in my dream simply by showing up with her harsh, crabby face (a resting bitch face, as the lovely expression goes and as I, myself, at the age of almost 57, now sport as well or, perhaps better, than Mrs. X. ever did.)

I'm not kidding about this dream, either. For almost the whole dream, I was crying and apologizing to this apparently unyielding lady for missing an important event I had promised to go to. For a LONG time. This one had more of a conclusion, however. 

Somewhere in my desperate remorse, literally sobbing on her bosom, her shirt came off (no, of course, it did not turn into a fun sexy dream) and exposed an atrocious sight. Her breasts were there but covered or simply composed of red, raw-looking scar tissue, as if burned with oil or acid. Her nipples no longer existed. Witnessing the brutality of the damage was traumatic!

I know I am often a buzzkill kinda gal. You should get into my brain people! Never a buzz!

It's challenging to find a nugget of hope from these "messages." But what I have gleaned is an ever deeper and pointed groundedness in the grinding here and now. (I know I wrote that alliterative phrase last month, but it still rings my writing bell.)

And by GRINDING, I still mean, as I have written about and spoken about for years: in my body and self. I.e. I get sick a lot, whether it's mental illness or physical or both or I can't tell the difference. Many days I feel like I have a cold in my head, which also feels like I have no energy. Or, as I tell my kids, I am not able to function as an adult today. I will make you macaroni and wieners and watch Netflix with earphones. They don't want the macaroni? I have no idea what they eat. We have food.

Have I mentioned my low bar, which I need to remind myself of now and then? Keep the kids alive. (Living pets are a bonus.)

"Grounded" is an interesting word. It often means that someone is stable and functions well. But I wouldn't describe myself that way. I use extreme amounts of emotional energy in the adult functioning and interacting that I either have to do or choose to do. More than anything, that's why I get sick a lot.

It's not that I have to interact with awful people. On the contrary, I am fortunate enough to interact with many lovely and engaged people. It's just that I don't know how to do it in a way that works for me in this language and culture. My inside me is wide open and vulnerable but also filled with rage and grief and my outside me has resting bitch face and Canadian-English conversational and relationship skills honed in the excellent years of the latter decades of the 20th Century, i.e. crusty and awkward.

I'm grounded. I'm just grounded in a parallel reality.

I saw this video of Zoë Dodd speaking passionately for thousands of people dealing with the opioid crisis, especially people who are disadvantaged. It spoke to me so deeply. 

https://www.facebook.com/DarrylJGebs/videos/10156474807990729/UzpfSTQzMDEwMTk6MTAxMDA1NTIyNTg4NDA2OTQ/?fb_dtsg_ag=AdxjRZEoxzwlAhuoblS3G6xWZK3mpalFrr7Z7XIzr0IWuQ%3AAdzHiYTWb9KvC_Yh7zX_0GNQBiTsfGP-MSDjR6dlpizkbw

If the link doesn't work, basically a woman named Zoë Dodd is speaking with authentic emotion, as well as intelligence, clarity, and volume, about the urgency of acting on the crisis of people dying on our streets in the thousands. A roomful of people not used to authentic communication looks on awkwardly and a platform of politician-types gaze out uncomfortably and respond with platitudes.

This is how I feel about everything. I feel like I'm grounded in an emotional reality similar to what Dodds is expressing in the video. URGENCY. And those people on the platform are not necessarily evil or unfeeling, but they are probably grounded in a different reality. 

Monthly Action May 27 2-3pm BC Legislature "the SHAME of PAIN is still a thing"

Monthly Action
When: Sunday, May 27, 2018, 2-3 pm
Where: BC Legislature (obsolete colonial structure) grounds

What/Why/How:
Performance art/activism. Radical embarrassment.
I use my naked (or semi-naked) body/self in public to express pain, improvise connections+push back against business-as-usual brutality. On behalf of the collective. Participation encouraged.

Healer, feeler, revealer. Paradigm shifter. Heavy lifter of paradox+pain. Ageing, overweight, cancer schmancerous. Recovering academic. Suburban mommy lady. Powerful+vulnerable. Privilege-user+vagina-haver. PTSD+lover of trees.

PS I've only started using the words "pain" and "trauma." Twelve years ago I started using the concept of "vulnerability" (four years before before Brené Brown's viral TEDTalk) because people would look at me blankly when I said this work emerged from pain. Now Pink is on her Beautiful Trauma world tour. There's always a Lululemonization (ie, capitalist yoga) when concepts go mainstream. So... not sure what to think except, ya, people are in CRIPPLING and SHAME-HIDDEN pain and even though pop stars are singing about it, the SHAME of PAIN in a culture of INVISIBLE BRUTALITY is still a thing.

MONTHLY vulnerability action/#NUD/vigil Mon Feb 26 3-4pm BC leg

For February's MONTHLY vulnerable action in the streets, I will be Naked Ugly Dancing #NUD in the vicinity of the black Queen Victoria statue on the BC legislature lawn. 

(Because capitalism, feminism, imperialism, colonialism and probably other isms.)

#NUD
Near the black Queen Victoria statue on the lawn of the BC Parliament
Monday, Feb 26
3-4 pm

People can join (dressed or not) if they like. #uglydancing in public is vulnerable even with clothes on.

For me, it all started with pain and the extra awareness of motherhood.

I see my work as pushing back against the most damaging culture in history (my culture).

I have refused to allow myself to be diagnosed as mentally ill, my "mental illness," which is emotional pain, is that I feel this: none of us has made it until all of us has made it.

The Naked Ugly Dancing is about dancing out the ugly, showing up in vulnerability, not having to be pretty and MORE! Because I can do, think, and feel more than one thing at once!

Facebook event
humanbodyproject.org

Mini-marathon of hopelessness, Monthly Action, Nov20 noon-2, VictoriaBC

Monthly Vulnerability Action

All welcome.
Monday, November 20, 2017
noon-2 pm
Pandora Ave between Vancouver and Cook streets
Harris Green Park, Victoria, BC
(an area of town where you might see/ignore gatherings of people who have dropped through the big cracks of our indifferent, casually violent culture)

COMPLIANT ACCOUNTABLE HUMAN MOTHER 
ALIVE with BLOOD and SKIN
uses DEMOCRACY and PRIVILEGE
to DEAL and HEAL
SYSTEMIC FIX?
HOLY SACRED PARADIGM
PRECIOUS VULNERABLE EARTHLINGS
US

Since 2012, for monthly Vulnerability Vigils on the street, I created signs to hold in front of my naked, exposed body. The words above in block letters are some of those signs.

My street actions have evolved. For Monday's action I plan to lay the signs in a kind of running track oval around Harris Green Park at Pandora between Vancouver and Cook. I'm going to run/ugly dance around the oval for a while. I am inspired by Terry Fox and Steve Fonyo and really want to push against the anthropocene by running across Canada in a naked Marathon of Hopelessness. But, for now, I'll do a mini-marathon.



...making the healing paradigm visible on behalf of the collective...
humanbodyproject.org
Twitter @HumanBodyProj
Instagram @hurtlingearthling
YouTube channel HumanBodyProject

#NUD in #yyj (Oct 14 2pm "Odeon Alley")

Naked Ugly Dancing

#NUD in #yyj

Saturday, October 14

2 pm

"Odeon Alley"

700 Block of Yates St

Victoria, BC

-- Part of Open Actions Monthly

Everyone welcome.

Photo by Miyoko Caubet, #NUD in #yyj September 2017

I will ugly dance naked.

Why? •Healing ritual. •Cultural antidote. •Humanization. •I am a human canary ("in a coal mine") and Stage 4 cancer survivor. As a longtime performance artist using my own naked, vulnerable body/self, I share and create space for vulnerability. •I am dancing the ugly out on behalf of myself and my dehumanizing, destructive culture. •The casual violence of our dominant culture is systemic, structural, and we learn to tolerate it pre-verbally. So, in my art (and life), I explore purposeful, visceral vulnerability. Facebook event link

So I Took the Kids to the Terry Fox Exhibit

I recently took the kids to the Terry Fox exhibit at the Royal BC Museum.  I cried. The Terry Fox story is incredibly touching and beautiful. What a shining example of humanity he was.

But I was also VERY irritated. I like to think Terry would be ticked off too. 

I cried for the reasons we are all moved by Terry Fox. The artifacts are inexplicably heartrending. A shirt. A prosthetic leg. His mother's calendar! The letters from kids!! He was so young, so beautiful, so brave, so real. And then he died. 

Our culture eats up that shit. That's the part I found so irritating. First of all, we like our heroes to be pretty, check. Preferably white, check. UNCOMPLICATED, check.

Terry was a nice middle-class kid, a jock, a Canadian "every-young-man." We learn he was sometimes crabby on the road. Take that Canadians! Our hero was sometimes crabby. 

It's telling that the promo video for the exhibit prominently features Wayne Gretzky--alive but with the nice (fake?) clean brand intact (if not fake, certainly unknowable and easily digested).

I'm totally guessing but I bet Terry would prefer to see a Steve Fonyo exhibit or a Terry Fox and Steve Fonyo exhibit. (I would.) 

Over and over, throughout the exhibit, we learn that Terry did not want to become *Terry Fox*. He was just a guy who knew he had work to do and was determined to do it. Selfless, sure, but he didn't want to be made into a big deal.

Now Steve Fonyo. There's a guy who's been through some shit! 

He didn't die! 

After he ran all the way across Canada on one leg, he struggled with addiction and committed petty crimes. I'm not saying he doesn't bear responsibility for his choices, but, wow, what a comment on fame and heroism. 

And projection. Steve was no Terry in the looks department. And a more damaged guy. He got nationally dissed for riding Terry's coattails. What? Only one person's allowed to run on one leg? 

Eventually his Order of Canada was rescinded. How petty and punitive can we get?

I can't believe I'm agreeing with a Toronto Sun opinion piece, but give the guy his Order of Canada back. Back in the day, he ran across Canada on one leg and raised $13 million dollars and his life has been shitty ever since.

Steve Fonyo, his accomplishments and subsequent struggles with fame and post-fame should have been an equal part of the Terry Fox exhibit. His enormously successful 1985 run was inspired by Terry. 

His complicated life, though plausibly quite different to how Terry would have lived his, would add more poignancy and authenticity to the unasked for divinity of *Terry Fox*. 

Terry, the young man, was 22 when he died. He didn't have a lot of time to get complicated. In some ways, that's the saddest loss.

I think we do Terry a huge disservice, making him this nice, clean, lovably crabby cancer poster boy. 

(I've learned that filmmaker Alan Zweig has made two recent documentaries about Fonyo: Hope (2017) and Hurt (2015). I need to see these movies.)

But I reserve most of my irritation for the outdated idea that money will cure cancer.

In Terry's day, Cancer Inc. was not the beast it is today. Yes, we need money for research. Yes, we need more research. 

But as a Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer Survivor, an incredibly sensitive human being, and former beaten-up Education Inc. disposable lackey (i.e. feminist contract or "adjunct" instructor in cultural studies-type classes in post-secondary institutions), I know I got cancer from trying to behave and fit in a culture that hates who I am.

This is a sick culture and no amount of scientific research will fix that without acknowledging the corruption and giant house of cards that is contemporary global capitalism, which contaminates EVERYTHING.

I LOATHE with every single breath in my body that the sole response we continue to teach to our children in this day and age is to throw money at a GIANT COMPLICATED PROBLEM without having the ability or desire to teach complexity much less disruption or resistance. 

Including Steve Fonyo in this exhibit would have been a step in that direction.

Another Explanation for My Kids

Several years ago I wrote this letter to my daughters. I know they haven't read it.

Like many people in our culture (including myself) they don't often have the patience to listen to an explanation or even ask for one.

And, of course, I do understand that an old, chunky mother is embarrassing enough, even without parading her weirdness and nakedities around town and social media! They're also irritated, no doubt, by the thought that I might have a good reason.

Recent #uglydancing. My upcoming Victoria Fringe show is entitled Naked Ugly Dancing.

Now they are 10 and 15 and, even though I think it's still a pretty good letter, I'm going to attempt to add to the explanation.

I got Stage 4 cancer almost 2 years ago. I was really overwhelmed by a lot of things but especially working as a university instructor. I think that made me get really sick. For me, as a teacher, it was important to share certain understandings about how humans need to think differently. But I made people afraid. No one was interested in supporting me or willing to believe I had good reasons. (Does that sound a little familiar? Haha!)

An example of a difficult thing to learn that you might recognize is how in your schools you have learned about residential schools and how our Canadian government and churches hurt First Nations children very badly and caused harms to First Nations people that continue. For instance, many of those children who grew up abused have turned to addiction and abuse themselves; and, because the children were forced to speak English or French, many First Nations languages have been lost.

This is very difficult for us to understand. Because we want to trust our government and our country. We want to believe that everyone gets the chances we get.

The problems in our world are caused, in many ways, by what people believe. So when we believe we have a trustworthy country, for example, we might not look to see things that happen that are actually very harmful.

Or we might blame another group for those harms.

Unfortunately, the way we live and believe in richer countries like Canada is the cause of most of the difficulties on earth... like global climate change, poverty, weapons, war, etc. 

One example is shopping and poverty. We get many things like clothes and toys and food and things for our house. Almost everything we buy involves people in poorer places being paid very little to make it or grow it or dig up the materials for us. 

This example is very tough to swallow. Because we need some of that stuff and because our society expects us to look or live a certain way. We are pretty stuck. And there are many more examples that show how we are stuck. Another is how we need to drive but we don't want oil (which needs to be sent all over the world so people can put gas in their cars and heat their homes) to pollute our oceans and land.

I think that's why people want to believe we are nice and don't want to look at how not nice we are. Because in a way, we are not being un-nice on purpose. We are in a culture and a system that surrounds us and no one can just step out of it.

So, one of the reasons I do what I do, is to make people think about what "is normal."

I have started to do ugly dancing in the street and for my upcoming fringe show because I think of it as a kind of action to create healing. I'm dancing out some of the ugliness. For the health of our culture and my body.

I also think of it as a cultural antidote. An antidote is something that removes poison. So if there is some not nice stuff going on but people aren't seeing it, maybe doing something the opposite of normal can help remove some poisons. 

One thing about our culture that is interesting is that when women aren't young anymore, they are considered ugly. But I'm not poisonous. I'm a caring, loving person. I'm a wise person. I'm a person who shouldn't be ignored.

So if I show up as an "ugly" dancer on the street, I am doing something very non-harmful and expressive. Why should that be a problem?

A lot of my performance art is about giving people the opportunity to question their beliefs.

It's embarrassing for me too. You have no idea. But, as I've tried to tell you guys, some things are more important than embarrassment.

Help Keith?/Reading Blog Posts 2: "Porn/Non-Porn"

I hope anyone reading this will consider helping out a beautiful person and member of the Victoria downtown street art scene and a longtime Human Body Project community member.

My dear friend Keith Jenkins, 61, had open heart surgery in the fall. He's still unable to work and needs rest. Keith is one of many Canadians who lives from pay cheque to pay cheque and has very little savings.

I know everyone is sending money every which way and it's that spending time of year. But if you have even a little to help Keith, please do!

The one and only Keith!

Here's the funding web address:

https://www.youcaring.com/keith-jenkins-649425










Also, here's the latest YouTube video of me reading my blog posts.

Reading Blog Posts 2: "Porn/Non-Porn" (posted Feb. 27, 2006)



I'm following a creative impulse and recording myself reading my blog. We'll see where it takes me...

Here's the link to the original post http://www.humanbodyproject.org/2006/02/pornnon-porn.html

Reading Blog Posts 1: "A Longer Version of the Artist Statement" (Feb. 12, 2006)

I am reading my blog posts written on humanbodyproject.org

The one above is the first one: I'm reading the blog posted on Feb. 12, 2006. I'm starting with the oldest and working my way forward.

I am sitting naked in my basement (but you can only see my head and shoulders).

I am choosing to be as groomed (or ungroomed) as I am in the moment of shooting.

I use physical and emotional nakedness as a medium to create vulnerability or a metaphor for vulnerability or to allow space for vulnerability or radical non-violence...

Here's the YouTube link

Cancerversary Vulnerability Vigil

Cancerversary Vulnerability Vigil
Friday, August 26, 2016
5-6 pm
Government + Yates St.
Victoria, BC

Everybody welcome. Dressed or not.

Last year, on August 26, I was admitted to hospital because it looked like I had a malignant tumour in my left ovary or thereabouts. A few days later I learned I did indeed have stage 4 ovarian cancer. Dang. Bad prognosis.

I was due for a breakdown. The paradigm I believe in and try to live is about healing. But I had been working in an environment where healing is not part of the vocabulary and most of the words are pretty lies, like "community," "support," "transformative," etc.

I had made the mistake of being honest and caring too much. I didn't have the necessary boundaries. It hurt me. I found my job as a university instructor deeply rewarding and extremely painful.

Pain has been everpresent. I am extremely sensitive. For most of my life I had NO IDEA what it was or how to deal with it, except to feel ashamed.

I can honestly say I don't want to be here, living on this earth in the culture we have created. I don't have the necessary boundaries. I have suffered immense emotional pain. Unconsciously, which looked like boozery, promiscuity, irony, etc., and then consciously, caused by motherhood, mostly.

A great thing about my cancer is that I realized that if I was going to survive, and I do want to survive because I have 9- and 14-year-old kids, I needed to stop fantasizing about dying. So I took another stab at trusting Western pharmaceutical hooha and, what do you know?! I find Cymbalta very helpful. I never think hopeful thoughts about dying anymore. 

I would never have started the Human Body Project on Cymbalta, that's for sure!

Last month's Vulnerability Vigil in Toronto at Yonge and Bloor.

What is the Human Body Project? It's me intersecting my culture, a culture that really does not work for me... even though I am undeniably privileged. I have never felt safe here. 

So in this work, whether I do it on the streets or in performance, as my public self, or even private self, I am always working with my state of vulnerability, which, interestingly, mirrors the vulnerability of humanity at this unfortunate juncture.

Our culture does not understand or respect vulnerability. Our way of dealing with vulnerability is learned in a pre-verbal state. We don't have words to help us. By we, I mean especially us Western humans, who have created a weirdly visible situation: Syria! Yemen! Global climate change! Rape rape rape! Debt debt debt!

Which is also a weirdly invisible situation: far away or on a screen or she asked for it or, the worst, this is how it's all set up so what are ya gonna do?

IT'S A FUCKING DISASTER.

So anyway, at least once a month I do this thing I call a Vulnerability Vigil where I stand on the street naked. I hold a sign in front of my body because, God forbid the good people creating the 6th extinction should see a naked lady whose body is not selling something. This month I will probably hold the extinction symbol, as I have often done.

Back when I had more hair

My 54-year-old, baby-producing, cancer-surviving, naked female body is there to honour, share and express vulnerability. I work within the spacious form of performance art to present a non-violent, non-rhetorical, feminine, indigenist, healing response to an insane world. I am white and very privileged. This is also about showing up and using my privilege.

A Vulnerability Vigil is a ritual; it's about being the change; it's about being an ally; it's art. Holding vigils (and performing the Human Body Project) continues to be the only sane response I can come up with.

Please consider joining me this Friday. My friend and longtime Vigil partner, Keith Jenkins, will be out of town and I'll be extra-vulnerable without that dear man.

Cancerversary update: Chemo is done but it hurt my joints pretty bad, especially my knees, and either the chemo or the Cymbalta has caused my brain to process less sharply. I need a lot of sleep and rest. That bliss stage I went through for a while last year... I LOVED everyone! It was like being permanently in the early stages of a nice drunk... went away. 

My digestion is good, though. I taught a painting class. We had a great family trip to Ontario. I've been swimming in lakes almost every day this summer. I'm part of the group creating and performing the William Head on Stage play this year at William Head prison. And I'm happy to say my kids are driving me crazy. 

I don't think about the statistics.

Please, when you think of me, say: it's gone, Tasha, and it's not coming back.

humanbodyproject.org 
vulnerabilityvigils.org
Link to Facebook event