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 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

6th Anniversary of Vulnerability Actions+New Video

I'm not the highest functioning person since ye olde Stage 4 Kanker wake-up call... but I do get out and about once a month to disturb the masses.

Here's my latest YouTube video of last month's street action. By chance, I caught a lot of audio of police (even more than the month before). I like to think that I provided some education.

Also, on New Year's Eve Day, December 31, 2017, I'll do a 6th Anniversary Monthly Action (aka Vulnerability Vigil)
3-4 pm
BC Legislature Grounds (Victoria) or nearby
Everyone welcome. Dressed or not.
Link to Facebook Event

For this piece of shamanic street performance, I plan to cover my naked body with "HELLO my name is" labels.

As most of you know, I started monthly Vulnerability Vigils on January 1, 2012. I've held at least one public vigil monthly, except when I was very ill. Vigils have evolved.

But I continue to use my naked body as a medium to share vulnerability and as a cultural/political statement.

Loneliness+futility, I've found, are part of the art.

The Thin Edge of the Wedge

A friend asked me if I believed in the current structures and, if not (I don't), what would I replace them with?

Another friend asked me why we didn't hand out flyers at our Boxing Day AnthropoScene or ask people, "What are you doing to create the extinction crisis we face?"

I got really irritated with both of them and I'm still irritated.

Regarding handing out flyers and asking people point blank... seriously? Ya, the reason I have diligently used my naked, VULNERABLE self/body as an expressive/artistic/political statement for  MORE THAN 10 YEARS of HEAVY LIFTING is because I haven't thought about flyers or asking people pointed questions. 

The decision to intervene, to trouble, to create—dare I say it?!—discomfort is purposeful.

Portrait of me by Elemental.

In my portrait here, by Elemental, she used an interview she conducted while sketching me to pull my quote. I say: "This is a culture of avoiding pain at all costs." 

But it's worse than that! We're a culture of avoiding discomfort at all costs. 

And, hypocrite that I am—because who cannot be a hypocrite in this culture?—like pretty much all of my cultural criticism, I am also criticizing and implicating myself. I have said many times and I'll say it again: I'm teaching what I need to learn.

I know that the work I've done in the Human Body Project and the new AnthropoScene Collective isn't easy to parse. 

It's more like a poke in the psyche for the people who come upon it. Yes, it creates discomfort. I dunno, is discomfort worse than facing mass extinction? A fate that is decidedly closer with President-of-the-Petrostate Trump's inauguration. 

Just because our society's emotional/neurological systems haven't evolved to FEEL the PAIN and seriousness of the ongoing situation so that in most cases NO AMOUNT of logic will penetrate... I'M supposed to figure out a surefire way of reaching people?!

And I'M supposed to know the best system to replace it with?!

This is what I know and have been expressing in my personal/political art practice for more than 10 years: we don't understand or deal with VULNERABILITY. 

Because in this ego-based culture, in this culture built on millennia of domination and violence, our understanding of vulnerability is suppressed pre-verbally. 

(From my personal perspective of doing DECADES of self-study and therapies to heal, I have come to understand my own PTSD-like nervous system symptoms as something that happened at birth. Simply put, my extremely sensitive baby being couldn't believe I had landed in such a cruel, unloving, DISCONNECTED place and my extremely sensitive 55-year-old being still can't. Ya, ya, people are basically kind but are emotionally damaged, etc. I'm on board with that. That's the whole point.)

We are all walking around in various states of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). To cope, we learn to suppress our vulnerability. This suppression of vulnerability is especially socialized and internalized by masculine beings.

So conversations about climate change, mass extinction and the end of capitalism as an idea that functions for the good of most people—incredibly challenging conversations—are impossible to have when one-upmanship is the norm. 

And impossible to have when one-upmanship (a nicer word for domination and violence) created the situation in the first place. Hence thinkers such as Audre Lorde: "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

The choices the American people had for electing a leader were mistress-of-realpolitik Hillary Clinton (status quo, or, arguably, worse) and an INSANE PERSON addicted to one-upmanship. The system—and many people—allowed the insane person to win. 

The current structures of English and most dominant languages, as well as dominant institutional structures for governance, "trade," education, etc. do not allow for us to have the kind of conversations we need to have AND have created the situation we are in.

As I explained to the friend who asked me what structures I would replace the current house of cards with, that's not my job! I'm the thin edge of the wedge already!

Do the visuals help? The thin edge of the wedge people are taxed in a way that most people couldn't possibly comprehend. We're up front chip-chip-chipping away, creating the space for movement and change.

Like the tip of any wooden doorstop, we are beaten and battered but, at least in my case, still in service.

Not only that, "be the change" has been my purpose from the beginning. To own and hold vulnerability, to share vulnerability, I do work that is exactly the opposite of comfortable. 

And, not only that!! To offer a space to be vulnerable and show up vulnerably is exactly what we need to have honest and NECESSARY conversations.

As I explained to both of my friends, after doing this for more than 10 years, my work is about due diligence. I show up and do the work. I don't get money. I don't get jobs. I am not generally befriended or welcomed by art or theatre people. Academics don't get it. I am CONSTANTLY coming up against criticism and judgment, my own and others; or worse, indifference. There are moments of fun when I'm actually out there but far more moments of difficulty (MENTAL ILLNESS/processing shit-type stuff) behind the scenes. I got Stage 4 cancer for fuck's sake.

DUE FUCKING DILIGENCE. I hereby honour myself.

As my friend suggested I ask: what are you doing to prevent the mass extinction crisis in which we find ourselves?

I try not to rant but so be it.

The next AnthropoScene will take place in solidarity with the Million Women's March on January 21, 1pm, in Centennial Square, Victoria, BC.

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

Human Body Project 10th Anniversary Vulnerability Vigil

10th Anniversary of the Human Body Project
"Retrospective" Vulnerability Vigil
All welcome.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
1:00 PM
Revised location: Dallas Rd. walkway between Cook and Cambridge
South end of Beacon Hill Park (near flagpole and Camas Circle, across from Dallas Rd.)
Victoria, BC
If you've ever wanted to take part in a public performance project or a flash mob or a Vulnerability Vigil, please consider coming out for this one!! (Dressed or undressed.)

___________________
I started the Human Body Project ten years ago, as a performance art event, in a very conservative place, Lethbridge, Alberta. An undercover officer came to the first performance because a concerned citizen had called. (The cop left saying, "That was very beautiful.") I had the idea two years earlier but it took me those two years to get the courage up to be naked.
People like to say nakedness isn't a big deal. Ha. You try it. On the street. In any case, it's a big deal to me. It's very challenging for me to show up naked.
I do so in the Human Body Project, which is an ongoing performance art/activism project, to provoke a serious consideration of individual and humanity's vulnerability. Nakedness is a metaphor for and embodiment of vulnerability. I use my naked body and naked self. I also use this blog/website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as other spaces to share.
When I started I was the mother of a 4-year-old whose birth changed my life more than anything before or since. Her presence in my life awakened me to the denying I'd been able to do before she was there. I had responsibilities, to her and to myself. I felt so much opening, love, and pain. I finally felt like an earthling.
I couldn't and still can't explain it all. Or that's not right. I have explained, in many different ways, in my writing and in performance. It's difficult, however, to explain succinctly and in a way that many people can access. I'm pushing against so many dominant narratives and vulnerabilities. People react very personally.
Still, after 10 years of viscerally and publicly coming up against our culture's ideas of vulnerability. And after becoming a woman with gynecological cancer, yes, I will connect misogyny, fear of femininity, and our culture's need to place ego above love to what I'm slogging through.
My mother self couldn't accept that the world was going to treat my daughter like it treated me and so, not logically or rationally, but with a sense of calling that has been a burden and a challenge, I embarked.
It has been too hard and I don't doubt that the toll it's taken on my body has been a reason I have cancer. Some of us process the shit of a damaging culture. I'm one of those people. It does not come with pay.
Now I'm 54. Because of chemo, I look 74. I have two daughters now. One is 9! My oldest is 14! I'm alive!
I use the word vulnerability as a key to entering this work. All of us have vulnerabilities, all of us are living at the most vulnerable time for humanity that has ever existed in history. This is directly related to how we treat women, children and feminine energy. To shift this WE as a culture have to shift. It has to be a visceral, non-verbal shift because we need to waylay the ego self, which is very attached to words.
It can only happen with experience. "Be the change" is a useful phrase, one that continues to simplify the reason I do this.
I must repeat this though: I don't pretend to be good at it.
On Saturday, March 26, 2016, at 1 pm, in Victoria, BC, which is where I expanded the Human Body Project work to include Vulnerability Vigils, I am holding the 10th Anniversary Vigil along the Dallas Rd. walkway between Cook and Cambridge.
Over the more than four years since I started holding vigils, I have stood naked on the street more than 50 times (behind a sign as a gesture of gentleness to those who are deeply affronted by nudity). In solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. To share and express vulnerability. As a creative antidote to the isolation and detachment of our society. Etc. I'm doing more than one thing!
For the 10th Anniversary Vulnerability Vigil I will place all of the signs I have used on the slope of the hill. Words like: VULNERABLE, PRIVILEGE, SYSTEMIC, HEAL, FIX, PARADIGM, MOTHER. Also the Extinction Symbol.

Keith Jenkins and I holding the Extinction Symbol, February 2015.

It would be thrilling if lots of people came (dressed or not) and joined me. As an art project, people holding the signs (there are more than 20) would be such a beautiful statement!

Links to the event on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/events/229958677341052/

https://www.facebook.com/events/506020046252691/

Stage 4 Cancer: my human body project/the Human Body Project

In my last blog post I was very ill. I had to cancel my show at the Victoria Fringe and put Vulnerability Vigils on hold.

It turns out I have Stage 4 gynecological cancer. This is not a great cancer to have. Prognosis is 30-50% alive in 5 years. I do plan to be in this number, however.

I have a large cancerous mass growing in what doctors assume is my ovary, but they're actually not certain. This kind of cancer is an "invisible cancer," one that escapes detection until the person is ill. Mine was found because my GP ordered an ultrasound after I showed up so sick in her office.

I was in hospital from August 27 until September 25. My first couple of weeks were traumatic. I was extremely ill with fluids accumulating in my chest and abdomen and I had a parasite on top of this. I dealt with extreme, unceasing nausea. I was so ill, I couldn't stand to be touched except handholding. I was so ill, I could see it in the terrified looks on my family's and friends' faces. I was so ill, I said to my husband: "I can't even miss you guys."

My situation was one they call "complicated," without protocols. I could see my very competent, very kind doctor wrestling with how to handle me medically. I am extremely grateful to him and to all the incredibly dedicated caregivers in Women's Health at Victoria General Hospital. I have such faith now in this doctor, who will be part of my surgical team to get my mass removed, because I feel he made really difficult but the best decisions while caring for me during this time.

After "getting stabilized," I was transferred to Royal Jubilee's oncology floor to begin treatments for the cancer. It took two more weeks for me to be well enough to leave hospital. Again, the care I received was, on the whole, stellar. 

I am beyond grateful to our health care system.

It's difficult to recall details. I have been on a "dose-dense" chemotherapy program. I definitely have the side effect of "chemo brain," e.g., very fuzzy-headed, slower reaction time, can't get jokes! And, because of drugs and discomfort, I have also been very sleep-deprived.

I needed people to wipe my bum. I had two blood transfusions (thank you thank you blood donors). I have had about 15 thoracenteses/paracenteses. These are scary. Fluid that would kill me accumulates in my chest and abdomen. It was the fluid accumulating (and the blessed but sickening parasite) that alerted me to the cancer. To get rid of the fluid is pretty intense. I am "stabbed" and a straw is inserted into the space in my body where the fluid is. Then a a line to a bag is attached and I drain. The last two times this happened (it continues since I've been out of hospital) more than 2 litres of fluid came out each time. Ew!!

I shaved my head to pre-empt chemo shedding.

These last two times came from my chest, which is a more dangerous place to poke (lungs and all nearby!) but the radiology doctors have been as kind and competent as almost everyone I've encountered in the health care system. Only once in these times the straw must have twisted and didn't drain. A repoke was required.

These poke'n'drains are one of the most difficult things for me. But they have also saved my life several times over. I have one scheduled (thoracentesis=chest) tomorrow. Ugh.

I also struggle with bloodwork pokes (usually only once a week now but at least once a day in hospital) and my IV being put in for chemotherapy (once a week). I really struggle with pokes. For the thoracentesis or paracentesis, I use pain and anxiety drugs. For blood and IV, I have gotten pretty good at knowing what works and giving instructions but it's still a source of pain and anxiety.

My chemotherapy side effects include neuropathy (numbness and discomfort in hands and feet), the fuzzy brain, joint aches, and severe energy dips.

At this point I can't drive; I can't prepare for a class I was going to teach so had to let it go; I can't really do much around the house; I'm only able to read in brief bursts; I can sometimes take short walks. I need a lot of quiet, solitude and rest. I am VERY LUCKY that I have the support that I am able to do this.

This is the first time I've been on the computer since I got ill. I have been sharing on Twitter (@HumanBodyProj) and Facebook (on my personal and Human Body Project page). But I felt unable, until today, to go beyond short posts and my iPhone.

I am also VERY LUCKY that I do not experience nausea. In fact, I have an excellent appetite and any of you supporters out there who want to donate food, I encourage you to do so!! Anything! Variety is a gift!

Hmm. This ended up being a post about the more physical details.

Spiritually, I have been deeply blessed by this cancer. I've written about his in my posts on Twitter and Facebook. Adrian Chamberlain wrote a piece about me in the Victoria Times Colonist. 

Loneliness and depression is something that was such a deep and painful part of my pre-cancer life. Doing the Human Body Project in the way I was holding that super-serious piece has been a burden and also separated me. Somehow through this transformative cancer I have been able to receive love in ways I was unable to before. 

The Human Body Project is this!! Cancer is part of my human body project/the Human Body Project. 

The Human Body Project has always been about two main things:
1) me working with my disconnection... from self, community, love...
2) how my process intersects with "the culture" or, maybe a better word is "the community"

How has this particular part of HBP process intersected with "the culture"/"the community"? It's brought out an outpouring of love from everyone around me. Just an outpouring. That love, yes, it's "inspired" by my process. But it's not "zero-sum," i.e., the love is not just "for" me but envelops, feeds, gives to all who feel it.

I'm not sure what the Human Body Project as performance and activism will look like when I'm better, but I'm definitely going to have more fun. Part of what I've let go is my need to hold such seriousness alone.

Love, Tasha

ps Some kind people have put together a fundraising effort for my family and I: https://www.youcaring.com/tasha-diamant-444984

Vulnerability on Display, by Michel Ghanem (reposted from The Martlet, October 30, 2014)

This article, Vulnerability on Display, was The Martlet's cover story on October 30, 2014.

Written by Michel Ghanem, photo by Nikki Koutsochilis.

Once a month since January 2012, Human Body Project creator Tasha Diamant stands nude outdoors in Victoria to bring awareness to ideas surrounding vulnerability. She held her 39th vigil on Oct. 24. The 53-year-old is a mother and teaches at Royal Roads University.

“I just thought [that] it seems very weird to me that we’re all such vulnerable people and we don’t really acknowledge it or deal with it,” Diamant said. “It came from a place of feeling really vulnerable and [being] in a lot of emotional pain.”

Since she was 12 years old, Diamant has dealt with emotional pain of her own. As she went through a divorce, she used the vulnerability she felt to start the project. “The spectrum of reaction I get is from ‘you’re a fucking crazy lady’ to ‘Oh my God, you’re a saint,’” she said.

She began the Human Body Project in “conservative” Lethbridge, Alberta, and used nude Fringe Festival performances as a platform for her ideas, despite not gaining a monetary profit from her shows. “I show up naked and unscripted to share vulnerability and create space for vulnerability. It’s really challenging for me and the audience; who knows what’s going to happen?” Her show invites the audience to undress and often join her on stage.

Nudists in the audience debated if she could be considered a nudist, she said. “I don’t really consider myself a nudist, but I feel like I need to be naked so that I can be as vulnerable as possible,” she said. “If I want to talk about how we need to face and deal with vulnerability, it’s not enough to talk about it. I have to do it.”

#VulnerabilityVigil on October 24, 2014. Martlet photo by Nikki Koutsochilis.

When she began her monthly vigils, she brought a public visibility to her vulnerability. She does not consider the performance particularly enjoyable, often feeling sick the day before a vigil. “My work is not embraced,” she said.

The banners she holds in front of her are key to understanding her message. In the past, Diamant has used the words holy, systemic, compliant, and is currently using the symbol of extinction.

“Here we are, the North Pole is melting, California is drying up, and we just act like everything is normal,” she said. “I don’t get that. I guess people are thinking about it? But it’s invisible somehow.”

She cites artist demonstrators Marina Abramovic and David Blaine as inspiration. “Those people, their platform emerged from their work, and for whatever reason—[maybe because] I’m a Canadian and the age I am—I have not found that group of like-minded individuals, probably because I’m not from New York. I’ve come from smaller, more provincial places.” As a mother who is surrounded by a white, middle-class population, she has not found a receptive local audience to create space for discussion. She often performs the vigils alone, with only her husband standing in support. “I find [the lack of reception] desperately awful.”

Diamant finds solace in reading Michael Kimmel’s published academic work, who is “an authoritative, intellectual, academic male voice who is very pro-feminist,” she said. Kimmel’s work focuses on exploring how masculinity is invisible in our culture.

According to Diamant, her nude appearances is about showing the public what is often invisible “which is even just an older woman who is not allowed to exist anymore,” she said. “I’m 53 so I don’t feel like my body is very beautiful.”

She connects her work to invisibility on mental health and sexuality. “We relegate so many types of people and ways of being in this culture that don’t work in some ways with the dominant narrative.”

Despite near arrests and misunderstandings, she perseveres. “It’s both liberating and painful, and difficult and challenging. I feel scared about doing it,” she said. “I’m protesting my own culture, but it’s really hard for people to understand what that means.”