The little red shoes came to me when I began working on “Tears of the World.” They came from my favorite second-hand shop. Their round tips, shining out of a long row, seemed to wink at me.
Tears had been my work since 1997.
In “The Most Precious Jewel,” begun in 1998
Tears are of joy of the beauty of the earth,
Tears are of sorrow for the ills she is suffering.
In “Tears of the World,” begun in early 2001
Tears are all Sorrow
except the Sorrow has shifted from Earth to People
One child especially tugged at my heart, his name, Hassan.
A
mother and child
The
child, a boy
Lying
in a hospital
Dying…
A
little baby-boy in Iraq
Caught
in the War Machine
Last
Christmas,
(I
remember the moment well)
The
manger that is my heart
Broke
open
And I welcomed Hassan.
The story began as a letter to an old friend. This friend had a passion for shoes so I thought she would enjoy hearing about my latest adventures. Besides, everyone I met, or anything I was led to, seemed to be part of The Little Red Shoes story!
The story wrote itself out over the year. It is Christmas again, but this time around, we are talking about the Christmas/Hanukah/Ramadan Season.
I got to know Hassan through a newspaper article titled, “Embattled Iraq,” except my encounter with the boy happened in death—Hassan having died 13 hours after the photograph was taken. (The article’s subtitle clarifies, “A visit finds 10-year old sanctions are crushing nearly an entire society in a way that makes America’s Great Depression seem mild by comparison.“)
The mother and child had become part of my life. For several months, I had intentionally left the “nativity-like scene” of the special New Mexican section on my laptop, it helped me live the enormous question, “But what can I do?” What can I, one person, do in face of seemingly insurmountable forces? What can one person do about all this suffering?
Finally, on Christmas Day, my process breaks through. Imagining I am speaking from the pulpit of a mainstream church renowned for its women priests, I write “A Christmas Sermon”:
” …On this night/Every time we take a breath/A different
child appears/
Lying in the ‘empty’ manger/One after another/After
another…/
One at a time, the precious little bodies enter/The
visual field of our heart/
Our own inner manger/We give them our love, our warmth…/But
it is too late/
We cannot revive them…”
Dam aburst… Words, river of tears, wash away my paralyzing despair.
From January 16th to January 20th,
I stand on the Plaza of Santa Fe.
Dressed in black, I wear a white mask,
a big tear-bead flowing from the corner of the eye.
In my hands, a bowl
in the bowl,
the Tears of the World.
Standing for hours in the coldest weather… to the point the bowl of tears freeze…
is a new experience, the real breakthrough, however, comes from inside. Having stripped down gestures and interactions, (the patterns of performance,) I stand, tall and masked, hands cupped, holding the Tears of the World. By my side, a photograph of the mother and child.
Friends encourage me to stay with this work. Since appealing to the compassion of the world is my preoccupation, continuing during the Month of Love feels written in the skies! “St. Valentine’s is a good day to expand on the meaning of love…” “Besides, the red shoes seem to add to the unwritten instructions that keep pushing me forward!”
From February 10 to the 14th, I present “The Little Red Shoes/Tears of the World 2.”
My hands, ceremonially cupped, offer the little red shoes—two bright pink candles sticking out and small heart-shaped stones scattered in the box. By me, another hospital photograph. This time, the photo is of a leukemia-stricken girl, whose doctors have to ration medicine, the article says, “the way they ration food.”
Your
little red shoes
To mark the tenth anniversary of the Gulf War, People for Peace decides to do an action. (People for Peace, the much-larger-than-activism group I like to call my spiritual/political group, was founded in 1990 right before Desert Storm.) We gather medicine, toys and… shoes (my contribution,) and address the package to the Red Crescent (the Iraqi Red Cross.) A few of us meet at the Post Office. We are hoping the package will go through, but at the same time, aware of the restrictions imposed on packages to Iraq, we come prepared with an alternative plan. We’ll ask our Congressman, Tom Udall, to help us break through the inhuman policies of our government. This part of the story goes on, though, as to be expected, does not go on to the desired goal. The thing worth mentioning is that the little shoes multiply.
I begin making “Shoebox Shrines.” I outfit shoeboxes with several pairs of little shoes in two rows. Around white candles, I roll photos of Iraqi children whose short, tragic lives have been documented by the brave, Nobel-peace-prize nominee Kathy Kelly and her group, Voices in the Wilderness. With great feeling, (after all, the shoes are acting as memorials,) I plant the candle with photo in each pair.
We deliver the first “Shoebox Shrine” to Senator Domenici, a Republican senator from New Mexico known for his hard-lined support of the military and related industries, like the nuclear industry. It was a lost cause, we knew it, but we had to do it.
I am asked to carry the box and deliver the message. It is a serious undertaking—pictures taken by a friend show a somber expression on my face. The Senator is at his Washington post, an office manager receives us. We don’t know what happens to the “Shoebox Shrine.” Artists, activists, or people of conscience, not unlike gardeners, can’t dwell and wait for our seeds to bear fruit. We let our heart/minds speak and move on to the next step.
Steps
heavy with sorrow
O
the little ones who have died
Why?
Why?
In
my dreams
Little
red shoes
Set
on top of my black shoes
Give
me strength
They
lead the way…
Some
time later, Elisabeth Sherif is on her way to Washington, D.C.
She would see her old school friend, Diane Feinstein who had gone on
to be Senator Feinstein. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to give her a Shoebox
Shrine?” my friend says, “And why not do one for First Lady Laura Bush?”
Knowing Elisabeth’s wide circle of connections, I have no choice but
to go along. I make two more “Shoebox
Shrines,” the plea intended for Laura Bush, written white on black, states,
“…our First Lady, wife and
best friend of President Bush who so often mentions COMPASSION, we women and
men of the world beg you to help initiate a new era that seriously considers
a non-violent, COMPASSIONATE solution for the people of Iraq.”
The scene projected by Elisabeth sounds too good to be true! She will take her granddaughters to visit the Capital—not only the child element, but also the fact the little girls are the descendants of her marriage to a man from Syria. From the time she first experienced Palestine in 1954, Elisabeth’s destiny has been to speak on behalf of the Middle East. One million and a half Iraqi civilians… Half a million children… The numbers pursue us…
In
the manger that is my heart
I
put
One
Ten
A
thousand
Five
hundred thousand…
The shoes are cups for my tears
This new work is not easy. Yet, there is the sense of being carried by a force much larger than I. I drop the boxes off at Elisabeth’s. “With no strings attached,” I should add, meaning “no attachment to any particular outcome, simply following the energy.”
Elisabeth returns, her mission unaccomplished! Senator Feinstein was all booked up. As a Democrat, her load was heavy. “And,” my friend confides, “I realized something that would have most likely prevented our little mission from succeeding. Senator Feinstein is very pro-Israel, so much so she has tried to take on Israeli nationality. She may not be that open to a cause that, in her eyes or, the eyes of the world as we know it today, would seem to favor the “other” side.”
I don’t ask about Laura Bush. It’s quite obvious that unless you are a card holding Republican… and even then… reaching the First Lady would require, in any circumstance, a lot of maneuvering. No problem for me, it was Elisabeth’s idea… My process, not unlike a pilgrim’s, is quite organic—I simply witness when and where my vision is being met… When it is met, I feel charged to make the next step… And when it is not, all the same, I make another step, if more guarded, or corrective… needing to continuously check that vision of mine, to make sure it is neither insubstantial or simply way out of line!
“Little feet, little steps”
My basic philosophy
The little red shoes that once winked continue to direct me. One day, in the winter sun, I line up the “Shoebox Shrines” against the garden’s adobe wall. With their black statements sticking out back, a photograph reveals a cemetery scene, my shadow seemingly hovering over the little tomb-like boxes!
My despair persists—the same question still pounding at me: “What can one person do when the situation is so desperate?” “What is the best course of action?” Thoughts of monks immolating themselves during the Vietnam War flash on my mind’s screen.
Where is this new work taking me? Will I do a large installation with five thousand little shoes—five thousand for 500,000 you know what! Should I assemble one hundred “Shoebox Shrines” for 100 Senators? Again passing, process thoughts—they are too obvious in a political sense. After all, my ‘leftist politics’ are of the heart. As a “heartist,” I need to find a more universal language, the language of pure heart….
In the meantime, more shoes find me. (The thought of approaching a shoe manufacturer is short-lived… when you do ritual, your material has to be ‘live.’)
It was hard, it is hard, but is there a way to stop a path? I am not writing a Grimm tale, I am simply following my path. All the same, the red shoes feel they have cast a spell! That I have to keep mindful about my walking because of the very reason others are not given a chance! One shoe speaks of Life… the other of Death! I am being pushed and pulled… Whose growing pains are these anyway?
A couple more pairs… so touching in their smallness: My purchases range from one dollar to five. I had told the consignment shop’s owner why I, a childless woman of grandmother age, was purchasing so many baby shoes. From the onset, Suzanne showed her support by giving me a discount, and once in a while she tops off my purchases with a free pair. One day, the supply, always neatly displayed on the counter, includes a pair of Arab slippers. I hold them in my hands. The leather is soft yet rough, and the tops have inlaid patterns made of leather strips of different colors. They are bigger than what usually find their way home. My visual mind vetoes this possible acquisition, “they would stand out too much.” Also, “What message would their overpowering size send?” Yet, their presence looms over my shoe dreaming—“Arab slippers… in a circle of little Western shoes!” In the meantime, I come home with a pair of light suede moccasins, size 0!
My Iraq file is now bulging with an assortment of documents. They range from foreign policy reports to eyewitness accounts and poems by both Middle Eastern and Western poets. Like the deep, raw words by Iraqi singer Kazim El-Saher, they all speak of economic sanctions as a grave humanitarian crisis—a totally different tone from the official US explanations of “smart sanctions“ and “collateral damage!”
Remember
Remember
In your mighty prayers
That millions are chewing
rocks instead of biting on a piece of bread
On the path of wounds we
marched
Proud of our identity,
we die with honor
That millions are chewing
rocks instead of biting on a piece of bread
On the path of wounds we
marched
Proud of our identity we
die with honor.
Remember
Before you fall asleep
on a cushioned pillow
That the ones with a slaughtered
homeland can barely sleep at night
Remember…
I continue “The Most Precious Jewel,” the ritual I began in 1998 at the foot of Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in San Francisco. In that work, I talk about my beloved earth, her immense beauty as much as her immense suffering. When I get absorbed with the new work on tears, part of me feels that, by having been called by the people of Iraq, I am abandoning my beloved earth! One day, though, some pretty amazing occurrence (of the “meaningful coincidence” kind…) shows me, one more time, that All Is One, that separation is a construction of the mind.
The “occurrence” happens on the first day of my new ritual. Standing still in the center of the Plaza of Santa Fe, I am holding the bowl of “Tears of the World” (while holding my own tears back) when, looking down through my mask’s eyes, I notice the cement slabs are strewn with turquoise beads. For three years now, a couple of times a month and more recently every Sunday morning, I had sat on the grass in the northeast corner of the Plaza beading a fabric globe as a process of remembrance that our earth is a “Most Precious Jewel.” Because of my early involvement with the rivers of the world through “The Great Cleansing of the Rio Grande,” I had begun with the oceans of the Water Planet, my bead palette therefore ranged from turquoise to blue to green.
In some extraordinary coup of…. Great Mystery… beads in the same ocean palette are now surrounding me. One more time, I have to say, “Synchronicity is my best critic.” For an artist who has followed her own path, this kind of meaningful coincidence feels like a cosmic smile encouraging me to go on my “less traveled road!” “Yes, stupid…”
a voice seems to say, “All is One. The suffering of the Earth, the Suffering of All Creatures… Remember last year, it was the endangered whales you were marking through your ceremonial work! You were saying that, by having lived first on land and then in sea, the whales, some of the oldest creatures, had to be the voices of the earth.”
Soon, materials used in “separate” performances mingle. When little shoes circle the globe, some passersby, expecting everything to be commerce, ask if I sell shoes, while others, fascinated by beading, ask if I will cover them up with beads the way I am doing the globe? This “mingling” is so new I have not had a chance to mention the shoes in my statement. To interested inquirers, softly, I speak about the shoes standing for the children dying… in Iraq… “and so many other places…” It’s enough for now… simply… softly… sadly…
In May, I am invited to watch videos that a friend took when participating in a Jewish Unity/Not-in-My Name Conference in Chicago. Katya Miller, a Jewish woman—like Elisabeth Sherif, the Syrian man’s widow, and the people gathered at the conference—is deeply concerned about the degrading situation between Israel and Palestine. My friends, having taken notice of one American-Israeli feminist activist’s clear vision, want to join her in speaking out for “A Just and Viable Peace” in an International Day of Solidarity. The vehicle would be the creation of a group of Women in Black in Santa Fe. The Women in Black, they explain, is a movement initiated in Israel in 1988 by Jewish women protesting against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and demanding peace between Israel and the Palestinians. “It has become,” they continue, “a loose network of women worldwide who are committed to peace with justice and actively opposed to war and other forms of violence.” As the Women in Black from London write, “it is not an organization, but a means of mobilization and a formula for action.”
It was clear Katya and Elisabeth wanted me to join them in starting a WIB group in our hometown!
I had arrived very tired from a full day of homecare type work. “Besides,” I said, “I am still so heavy with Iraq, I don’t know if I can take another cause on. Let me sleep over it.”
At 8:30 the next morning, I call Katya. “You can count me in, a dream last night was clear,” I say. “It was revealed that I was a Sufi—perhaps an explanation that I, a non-Jewish, non-Arab French woman, (“at least in this lifetime,” I add,) who has never set foot on the Holy Land would have always felt so connected to it! The rest is history, or rather “herstory!” On June 8, Women in Black/Santa Fe ended up joining 155 cities from all continents, (excerpt for the Antarctic,) for an International Day of Solidarity. Our vigil made the front page in a New Mexican story entitled “Politics of the Heart,” words excerpted from my statement.
We had our special style, Santa Fe Style if you will! Men and women of conscience are invited. Our press release reads: “By wearing black and carrying black Hands of Fatima, a symbol common to both Israelis and Arabs, we are expressing our deep mourning for the deaths on both sides of the Middle East conflict.”
We continue doing vigils monthly, it is a delicate issue, people come and go. Rivka, my best friend in the whole world, a Jewish heart-sister whose wondering path has taken her from Transylvania to Israel, on to Canada and the United States, does not get what I am doing… O dear heart, that hurts… At the same time I feel her pain, her “tear-shaped why!”
How
to sound
The Bell of Compassion?
Sometimes, it is the challenge of group process that keeps folks away, also, I like to think, the pressures of busy lives? But a number of us stick to it—our feeling for the suffering of humanity and our dreaming for peace growing as we share this work. Like People for Peace, I love the coming together of activism (life) and spirit (heart,) the result of which is a new kind of creativity.
One
step, another step
Our
footing firmly grounded in our heart
It is October now, I am on my way to Pennsylvania for an artist residency at Kutztown University. “The Most Precious Jewel” and “Tears of the World” have given birth to “The Point of Tears” (from a quote by Albert Camus.) After a long, heart-wrenching journey, I feel ready. I feel strong and trusting, “Whatever is meant to happen will!”
Not unlike visiting angels, new images come to me. The little red shoes now have wings! How do I, a process artist not big on fabrication, realize such a creative challenge? Well…. of course… all one needs to do is a next step. My first next step is to find wheels so that the little shoes can be on their way. A visit to “my central shopping headquarters,” the consignment shop Double Take, produces a car-toy! The black, plastic wheels come off easily.
A key is to stay with the moment, which means not to force anything to happen even if one is convinced of the righteousness of one’s idea—it could be the wrong time or wrong place. This way of maneuvering is kind of tricky, but it is the only way... for a heartist, that is.
I have been in Kutztown for four days. A number of students have elected to work with me through the week. As I gradually describe what the ritual will entail, I mention my fabrication need. One day before the performance, Jen Bell, a crafts major, offers to outfit the little red shoes. The winged shoes make their debut in “Environmental Interactions, the exhibition marking the annual Kutztown University Art Education Conference. The announcement speak of artists (five of us, including two teams) “ orchestrating a range of interactions that address current issues and suggesting alternative ways of participating in the world…”
I come home for three days and leave again, this time for Colombia, South America where I have been invited by Centro Colombo Americano of Medellin. Its gallery director and curator, Juan Alberto Gaviria had interviewed me in 1993 for his Master’s thesis on the “spiritual in art, he had loved the concept of the “heartist.” Besides my new ritual performance, “The Point of Tears,” I offer a lecture “Art as Compassionate Action) during a four-city visit in Bogota, Bucaramanga and Cali, following the host city of Medellin. Indoor, outdoor, small private space on a side street, large central Plaza… I am not sure what to expect. A ritualist, like a heartist, has to respond to the conditions of the present moment—the most important tools, along with your materials, being your intention and attention. The beaded globe, 45 pairs of little shoes, together with a large bag of round tea candles, are neatly arranged in a black suitcase. Tucked away among them my mask and just in case, a little cup (a tear cup.) I feel like a doctor on call… Ritual is my kind of operation!
“Forty-five pairs sound extravagant… I like to travel light… but they are small… I’ll leave some along the way,” I hear myself “think” as I pack them in. “I have to have them. Their meaning has evolved… I mean… the power of their symbolic meaning…
It is perhaps more essential now to have a good number of them. In “Tears of the World”—a level of meaning I can never forget—they stood for wounding/loss/death; in “The Point of Tears,” the same shoes are little helpers standing for healing/recovery/life!
“…Holding these little shoes helps me remember/The
days way back then/
When my heart spoke clear and fearless/Today I will
speak Feelings/Memories…/
Words that are tears/Tears that are worlds/
Tears of joy/Tears of sorrow/ Together/A river of Tears/ Tears/Meeting/Rivers/Joining/Ocean of Oneness/
Each tear a world/Yet all tears alike…”
Seven rituals and five lectures later, there has been every possible kind of situation in the high-paced ten-day visit. Sometimes a handful of shoes suffice, while other times require for the whole company to volunteer! Sometimes the ritual takes place in a public plaza while others are held in the intimacy of an interior gallery space. As time runs out… and I feel more at ease—my work, not unlike shoes, always loosening from wear—I make a careful choice.
In Cali, an old tree offers its candidature: A bit protected from the busy Avenidad, on the side of the Museo de Arto Moderno, it marks a potentially good space. It is tempting but, after checking the exhibition space out a second time, the choice is made. It is my last ritual, I have been deeply moved by Colombian people, I need for “the Point of Tears” to be contained so my breath of “I will never forget you” may reach my South American brothers and sisters.
Sails
of spirit boats…
Rituals have to be experienced and not told. All I can say is the Colombia I experienced is a story in and of itself, “one part of which,” I hear myself say time and time again, “I have to share with the world.”
I need to trace my steps back to June and the first international Women in Black Vigil. Joining in this effort with 155 cities across the world is a new (and profound) experience—our prayers for peace (and in this case for peace in the Middle East) wrapping our beloved planet in a mantle of interwoven intention and attention, not to say love. (Activism from the heart becomes prayer. The experience reveals to me that an international event like this is about activating the thread of oneness we (should) know as our fundamental human trait!)
A few days after the vigil, groups report from all over the world, the Mujeres de Negro de Cali is one of them. (This is actually how I first hear the name of Cali, a city in the South of Colombia and that I eventually get there. Cali is right on the edge of the war zone, even Avianca warns me to be careful.) “But, please, do not forget us…” is how the Women in Black of Cali end their message.
Colombia would not have been Colombia without my connecting with these women. Maria Teresa Arizebeleta de Garcia, founder of Ruta Facifica and Women in Black, right after the ritual, talks into my companion’s video camera . “We were there (in the war zone) for three days of nine vigils in the most poor neighborhoods, prepared meals at night. Anybody could be there, only nobody could be there with weapons… that was the only condition… The Women in Black work with over two million displaced people. The women are triply displaced because their lands have been taken, their work, their loved ones, as well as their cultures… The women working with the displaced women are threatened. It is so scary. They say they will not have any more children to contribute to the war…”
The story to tell the world is a story of politics,
but a politics from the “New Left,”
the Party of the Heart.
The women, working inside the jungle of terror, would have every reason to stay within their borders’ struggle. When they joined others in “Being One With” the suffering of Israel/Palestine, they sounded the Great Bell of Compassion.
Tears
of awe
Tears
for humankind
Ocean
of tears
Will
we ever get to the other side?
Spirit
boats with round red tips
Allons
les enfants…
November 3rd, after 12 flights in 12 days, I return home. The shoes get stored in the small armoire where I keep my ritual objects. The beaded globe returns to the backpack, waiting for the next Plaza ritual. Without any breathing space, I resume my Santa Fe routine, except my routine is sprinkled with missives addressed to Colombia. “Don’t worry, sisters of Cali, I will not forget you, how could I… we are in the same line of work! The beauty is that we all hold a different string of humankind’s harp. The beauty is that when we meet, we activate the strings… the beauty… o, the beauty… We learn from each other… We…
O
Sea of Wonder
When
we meet
Our
joined breaths
Wind
Sail
Mast
Tear-Shaped
Whys?
It
is time to end this account, the heart of hearts has been reached…
Yet, we need a few more steps to reach destination, at least a pause…
As we know, stories, like lives, have a way to pick up and go, pick
up and go…
Julia is the name of the friend I intended this story for. We have not been in touch for a few years, yet every time I watch the stars, she is with me. (You never forget someone who knows the story of the sky!) I thought that she, a passionate and talented footwear designer, may appreciate the little red shoes with wings!
It is time for a Women in Black meeting. We sort through emails that have come from the Middle East. To my great amazement, one is entitled “Project Shoes.” Devorah Brous writes from Jerusalem: “Thanks to group like yours, groups like ours can stay inspired. Thanks to an amazing response among Israelis, we have a tremendous outpouring of clothes and blankets, we are now collecting money to buy shoes for the Jahalin Bedouin children living in Azariya, near Ma’ale Adunim… It is winter now, and as of last week, the kids are still barefoot…”
“Project Shoes.” I leave the meeting awed at this news…
“Synchronicity, my best critic…”
At this stage of the story, (the corner of this road,) the growing awareness of children’s basic, survival needs in so many places pushes me to the next step… Should the shoe industry not come in and play? Would it not make sense for them to join in that great orchestra of compassion? It is just a matter of putting it out there in some way… I had begun giving “my” little shoes in Colombia, but much more needs to be done. From a conversation with a musician friend, the seed for a fundraising concert is born—a step… Writing this letter—another step…
Steps
heavy with reality
Steps
alight with possibility
I
am learning to stand in the center of my
Tear-shaped
Why?
This letter may never be sent… but the message is being put out to the universe! Recently, I was asked to speak at a class in Environmental Studies about my work with the earth. The semester ending, the number of students has dwindled. Sarah and her mother are left with Nelson, the host teacher. We decide to go and do class at lunch! I ask for questions to guide me, there is so much to say. One thing leads to another. “My materials?” “Well, beads for tears, shoes… Heart!” We switch from the earth to the people… All is One… The brother works for a big retail chain, he happens to be the manager for shoe distribution… One thing/step leads to another… Addresses are exchanged…. An email received… A connection made…
***
Goodbye friend, this story will surely continue
For now, I am off on a walk