Day 17 - Friday, July 19, 2019
As someone who is mostly restless, and sometimes anxious, I find it difficult to sit with my thoughts and feelings. I was excited about my morning meditation class with Abbie, at the ‘Brooklyn Zen Center’, a Soto Zen community. Their mission is to cultivate a community based on Buddha’s teachings of love and interconnectedness and inclusivity. The formal name for the practice is Koshin-ji, or Boundless Mind Temple and they continue to practice in their tradition with the belief that all beings are buddha.
I walked in and one of the teachers in a very soft low voice, almost like a whisper, explained the space, and the meditation process. I walked into the space and found a seat in front of a large window that was facing a beautiful church - as I was making my way to my seat on the floor, I noticed Abbie, sitting a little further away, sitting in front of another giant window. The meditation began and I got a taste of Buddha’s basic teachings and practice. The practice is meant to free one from unnecessary suffering and dissatisfaction. The reason for meditation was to make one realise and live on understandings and to be mindful as they move through life. I wish I could stay and explore this longer but I felt a certain calmness that I wish I could find a way to stay.
Abbie, and I walked over to the ‘Root Hill Cafe’, to catch up after our meditation class. The cafe had a warm and friendly vibe, with great coffee and a breakfast menu. We sat down as talked, about many things - about the class and reflective on our respective lives - strange that people from different parts of the world and completely different experience, can still connect over small human things - hopes and dreams.
I walked a few blocks from the cafe making my way down to BRIC’s gallery to see the exhibit ‘serious play’ - it explores forms of play in contemporary art and to attend the workshop, ‘Lessons in Learning/Unlearning: Alt-Text as Poetry’. I have to admit I knew nothing about alt-text before walking into the workshop lead by Shannon Finnegan and Bojana Coklyat. The workshop explored how alt-text, is textual alternative to non-text content in web pages (alternative to images). The goal through alt-text is to create an equitable experience of the image. It is a mean to provide accessibility to those with visual or certain cognitive disabilities. The workshop showed us how the possibility of alt-text can result in poetry writing, as a liberatory art practice - the workshop was amazing!
The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), in Brooklyn, uses the visual and performing arts as a point of departure for exploring new artistic production across the variety of disciplines. Through exhibitions and programming the museum aims to create dialogue on pressing social and economic concerns, being faced by the African Diaspora and fosters a space for the creation and continuous evolution of culture.
Later that night I walked over to union square and went looking for the ‘Legendary Cyphers’, a weekly freestyle communal hip-hop event or as some would like to call it a rap party. It is a park where rappers have gathered for years.
