EP019: Stone Dancer
Transcript available here
Immediate need: About a year ago Benny was diagnosed with lung cancer. With chemo-therapy his cancer went into remission but In March 2023 the doctors determined the cancer was back. Benny has been given about 6 months to live.
With rent and medical bills he is in desperate need of financial support. If you are moved by Benny’s life story, please consider donating to the Venmo account - @bennytherockman. All funds will go to Benny.
In this episode we are talking with Benny. He has lived homeless in the Fremont neighborhood, artfully stacking stones on the parking strip, in the same place, for the last 30 plus years.
It seems, in every family there is a person who is living a bit differently from the rest of the family. You could say, zigging when the others are zagging. Their lifestyle or life-choices are thought provoking in one moment, perplexing and challenging in the next.
And yet, these differences are often what makes a family vibrant, positive forces in the dynamic. The varying views are appreciated for what they bring to the family mix.
And while it is not always the case, in general, with family, we work to find ways to be inclusive and supportive of those differences. In other words, we try our best to make room for each other. For example, Uncle Maynard, who’s marching to a completely different drummer, who gets eye rolls around the table at Thanksgiving, is appreciated rather than pushed away for his nonconformity.
How far beyond the family does this acceptance extend. How do we react when somebody in our community is marching to a different drummer? Do we make room for them? Do we work to be inclusive and supportive in the way we do for Uncle Maynard?
Excerpt from the episode: Well actually, people asked me was how did you come to do this? This rock stack the rocks were what's up with that? So I tell them when I was five I had a childhood trauma. And for for about a month I wouldn't I wouldn't speak, I wouldn't react to my family. And my family took me to, to the doctors to even there was a an American doctor in Benghazi, they took me to him and put specialists and said, well, there is nothing physical wrong with the kid. But maybe maybe it's psychological. After a month of not speaking. My grandfather and my grandmother took me to the, to the beach. And the afternoon, they're, they're sitting on their chairs. And I'm not talking. I'm just there. They said, play with these rocks. And so I started playing with him and staking them. And it kept going and going. And my grandma and grandpa goes, Oh, good, Benny, good. I will isn't that good? And I started, came back. I came back talking. - Benny
Benny the Stone Dancer (Fawzi Benhariz) in 2015
Benny the Stone Dancer (Fawzi Benhariz) in 2018
Benny the Stone Dancer (Fawzi Benhariz) in 2023
Fremont is known in Seattle as the Center Of The Universe, and the case could easily be made that Benny’s Stone Sculptures are the Center of Fremont!
Benny stacking rocks in the Fremont neighborhood
Benny stacking rocks in the Fremont neighborhood