The Not Yet Visible

My friends, the fall has been full.

Who knew that in the last four months of this year I would become an immigration pathway researcher, government agency acronym wizard, resettlement case worker, part-time therapist, on the ground service connector, and relocation services map-maker…across multiple countries? But as many of you know, once I commit my heart to something I cannot step away. Especially when the lives and futures of many good and kind and generous souls hang in the balance.

However, if you know me, you also know I cannot spend months at a time focusing on something without art and culture becoming an integral part of the process.

Please join us for a celebration of Shabe Yalda, a cherished and ancient festival of connection, reflection, and the renewal of our human bonds in the darkness of winter. Register now to join.

Shahzia Sikander, Emanate, 2021.
Watercolour, ink, gouache and gold on paper, 193 x 129.5 cm; 76 x 51 in
Courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias, London
Emanate, by Shahzia Sikander is about women as a source of light.

Within deep chasms of sorrow, we can plant the seeds of cultural renewal. They will gestate in the darkness. I’ve learned to hold still and be as soft as I can to hear and hold the whispers of the future. Art and culture weaves a powerful web of connection. This Solstice, as our friends and loved ones in Afghanistan are living through heartache, we offer the balm of story and song and the ties that bind us.

Hear lullabies and stories from artists and human rights advocates who recently escaped from Afghanistan.

With music, poetry, and visual arts from incredible immigrant and diaspora heritage artists.

If you are directly affected or have been involved in mutual aid efforts, please come for free and nourish yourself.

In August, I stepped on a path without knowing where it goes. Without realizing it, I became a seeker. And in looking and listening in the dark, through the frightful unknown I have encountered things I have tried not to see and I have found things I never imagined were out there for me.

• The tentacles of war culture  buried inside me, inside my mothering, inside all the institutions of aid.

• New connection to my creative center. Art-making doesn’t have to be this frantic “thing” outside of myself. It is part of me, it is what I am a part of.

• Staying present with those near and far with shared baby pictures while distracting myself from the thousands who will perish this winter.

I have not wanted to face what it means for me to be a body. An entity that needs support and care, rest and replenishment. I want to do it all. All the time. But in being vulnerable and admitting I need help, even from my Afghan friends who have so little, I’m finding the abundance that lies within solidarity work: the renewable and sustaining treasure of relationships based in love and trust and hope.

Thank you, each and every one of you who have held me, sustained me, sent a text, a photo, offered a gesture of love, or extended yourself to meet me on this path. As my new friend, Junaid Lughmani, said “When we open our hearts, there’s always a way.”

Del beh del, rah dareh. From one heart to another, there is a portal.

With love,
Kayhan

Digital Art: Stedroy Cleghorne

Seeing Through

Can I sit within the Force of this disaster, this disaster within a disaster, and hold open a space of possibility?

Can I do that without ripping apart all the cells in my body?

How can breath shape a way forward?

After displacing all of my work, life, and even joy this last month I have taken stock, found clear, good legal advice (including pro-bono lawyers to help two families) and am understanding the stark limits of institutional support. (This last bit is the title of a multi-chapter book!)

The number of miniscule items that become barriers to attaining the next step of a formal process is simply cruel. (We were able to help one artist receive a visiting researcher role at a major US University - he can’t get out without a visa, he can’t get a US visa without a US Embassy! There are no functioning US Embassies in Afghanistan.)

I’M STILL COLLECTING FUNDS ON VENMO or via check FOR APPLICATION fees AND ALL LIVING EXPENSES

Can I sit within the Force of this disaster, this disaster within a disaster, and hold open a space of possibility?

Certain books have been calling to me from my shelves. Books about my cultural heritage, with inscriptions from mentors and guides, books about the cultural heritage I share with others, and the cultural heritage and contributions of Afghanistan.

And that light, that energy, will find a way to persist. My role is as a guide, vessel of friendship, as a reminder that we have the tools and skill to persist.

Since my last note, only one person has made it out of Afghanistan. He paid a smuggler to get him across to Pakistan and is now hacking through bureaucracy and the void of email communications to get his case processed at the US Embassy.

Thanks to the love warriors around the world, but especially in Pakistan, he has money, a SIM card, a temporary place to stay, and has enrolled in English classes! We will continue to support him.

FOUR FAMILIES ARE STILL STUCK - ALL HAVE FLED THEIR HOMES - THEY MUST FIND A WAY OUT AND A WAY TO SURVIVE UNTIL PAPERWORK IS PROCESSED

MOST GOVERNMENTS ARE SAYING THIS WILL BE 6-24 MONTHS

What has become evident is that a temporary way to get to safety is humanitarian parole which gives someone a conditional 1-2 year visa so that they can be in a safe place to wait for the formal mechanisms to go through.

A HUMANITARIAN PAROLE APPLICATION COSTS $575 FOR EACH FAMILY MEMBER.
WE NEED SPONSORS FOR EACH APPLICANT OR FAMILY.
(Multiple legal sources have told me this doesn’t mean someone comes to live with you or that you are required to offer financial help - it just ensures a safety net because the humanitarian parole visa doesn’t give someone access to full resettlement aid and support.)

CONTACT ME IF YOU CAN DO THIS

I’M STILL COLLECTING FUNDS ON VENMO or via check FOR APPLICATION fees AND ALL LIVING EXPENSES

In 2008 this exhibit toured the world…

The artifacts in this exhibit …”had been rescued, along with other masterpieces from the National Museum, Kabiul, and protected in the intervening years of turmoil by a group of selfless Afghan heroes who have come to be known as “the key holders”; curators and guards of the museum”

Through reading and reconnecting with history and art, I am reminded that throughout time there are subtle things that the ancestors offer.  Gems that never lose their shine despite being buried deep in the earth, or in a dusty corner, or in the confusing gaze of an unkind place.

Art and culture will not disappear, but who will tenderly support the next, needed revival of Afghan art & culture? How can we shepherd the future in the most tender manner possible?

I am remembering, I am relaxing, I am recognizing what this work is.

It's Beginning

Nature brings us through phases, the shifts needed for sustaining all life. We are beginning our deep rest.

Starting with the solstice/Shabe yalda/Shabe cheleh on December 21st, the ground will start freezing and for forty days will suspend all new growth. After that is another 40 day cycle where the earth starts to thaw - from the bottom up.

We walking on the topsoil and asphalt will be in a deep chill yet the deep earth will be softening, expanding and letting seeds germinate.

On 12/20, the eve of solstice, I’m hosting a digital space to reflect on loss, on letting go, on mending memory and story to reclaim your deepest roots of possibility. Join me for FREE

During 2020, There is a Portal has come into being through a deeply felt process of reimagining the impossible, intuiting through the dark, and being nourished by the darkness of a womb space - a place to float and build connection.

This project has grown in the dark of the pandemic through the brilliant community pedagogy team and is on the threshold of birth.

In this transition from dark to light, we are halfway to our crowdfund goal. We appreciate the growing community as much as we appreciate the financial support to keep going. Who else needs to be included in this project?

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR CROWDFUNDER

One of the wisest and sharpest members of the community pedagogy team is Robin McGinty. I’m sharing a bit of her writing to offer another way to think about how the impossible manifests. She has gently pushed me through many of my own limitations and consistently offered the notion that everything is possible! For her friendship and guidance I’m grateful.

“Twenty-five years later, I can’t even recall what the weather was like that day—whether if it was raining, if the sun was shining or something in between. Even so, there would be no one to greet me with any open arms, nor would there be a car waiting for me outside the prison filled with joyous family members to whisk me safely back home to New York City. It was a weekday, so everyone was working, and had no time to take off. Reflecting on that day, my memory of how I even made it from New York’s Taconic Correctional Facility in Westchester County to the MTA’s Bedford Hills railroad station is vague, prompting me to check in with a woman I had ‘served time’ with at Taconic. After all these many years, we remain in contact after being locked up together at a site, which in the cultural vernacular of currently and formerly incarcerated Black folk is most often referred to as the ‘penal.’ In truth, I left the penal the same way I arrived---an anonymous Black woman being transported in a dark blue NYS Department of Corrections van outfitted with heavily tinted windows where I could see out, but no one could see in. Twenty-five years ago, I could not have known my experience of incarceration would become foundational to my work as an interdisciplinary scholar-activist, multi-media artist and educator whose pedagogy and critical practice is animated and shaped across multiple methodologies and form. As a PhD candidate (ABD) with the CUNY Graduate Center’s Earth and Environmental Sciences Doctoral Program in Geography, my project “A Labor of Livingness: Oral Histories of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women” considers a re-imagination of the living experiences of formerly incarcerated Black women that attends to the ways of knowing the world.”

Robin, top left. Seonae Byeon is top right, another community pedagogy team member and Tania Cañas is bottom right - Coordinator and Lecturer in Social Practice and Community Engagement program at the VCA, University of Melbourne who hosted our workshop and conversation with her students.

I am starting to get it.

The universe of possibility, just slightly beyond my reach, is manifesting.
I don’t have to push but I do have to reimagine what can be.
I have to live outside of what is, what has been prescribed, and be a weaver across dimensions of reality.

I’m humbled by this community (you) that sustains and supports my work and walks alongside me as we make and remake the impossible, possible.

Many warm blessings for a nourishing, restoring, and dreamy holiday time.

please share this news with allies and supporters who can help this project grow in ways I can’t imagine!

Stretching Out / Closing In

This is dedicated to Shymala Gopalan Harris and all the mothers who pull down the universe so their children have something to reach towards.

“She saw what can be, unburdened by what is.” - Kamala Harris

​It's time to reconnect to our deepest potential.

I created There is a Portal for the scared, sensitive child in me who felt incomplete and inadequate and didn’t quite learn how to dance in the light of her inheritance. The light of her people.

As I was thinking about what I could offer at this point in time, in our historical trajectory, for youth who feel hopeless, cornered, on the verge of giving up, it made sense to offer my story of transformation and making home as a portal to the multiplicity of stories that are out there.

It is almost 2021 and we desperately need models of teaching and learning that create transformative space where encountering ourselves and each other, creating meaningful relationships, is central to educational success. Many programs and institutions use language such as "student-centered" and “cultural competence” yet fall back on methods that re-inscribe assimilative values which uphold notions of us/them.

As we move into new cycles of possibility, with new images and visions of leadership, we need to make sure that the stories and voices at the grassroots are nourished.

This is something I wish I had growing up as an immigrant child.

SEE THE TRAILER HERE (best viewed on computer): https://there-is-a-portal-trailer.netlify.app/cover

Will you support There is a Portal and help me meet this moment?

There is a Portal is an immersive, culturally resonant digital performance piece and set of transformative tools that can reach thousands around the globe to catalyze new definitions of belonging and build networks of care.

(Want details? Go here.)

There are many ways to support:

1. Donate to the crowdfund

2. Do you know groups and people who I can share these tools with? I’d love an introduction.

3. Can you connect me to folks who can amplify the work? (anyone know Brene Brown, savvy marketing folks, social media advisors?)

4. Can you encourage FOUR other people to do one of the above?

There is a Portal offers tools to help young people bring out the multitudes they hold within and shape their identities with dignity and joy.

See trailer HERE (best viewed on a computer not phone)

And, as always, please reach out with any questions or ideas!