Imagine All The People

I’ve been listening to Rachel Donald’s podcast Planet Critical, and a question has been on my mind these past days: why is the planet in crisis? 

We’re living through a polycrisis the likes of which humanity has never seen. A single crisis - like a health crisis, for instance - may have well-defined edges and a known or mostly known duration, but what is a polycrisis? How exactly does it differ from a traditional crisis? A polycrisis is a crisis which takes the shape of the mythological Greek hydra; a serpent with many heads. Each of the crises in the series connects to and interacts with each other crisis, in a sort of vast and frightening web fraught with spiders. The economic crisis, the food crisis, the climate crisis, the ecological crisis, the energy crisis, the meaning crisis, and the civilizational crisis - which each of the other crises threatens to collapse - are just a few of the interrelated crises circling like vultures overhead. Humanity, at this moment in time, seems perched on the perilous and precarious edge of a slowly eroding cliff face. We are adrift. The galloping hooves of calamity sound out madly as they draw in from all sides; city and statewide water shortages, droughts, floods, landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis, total crop losses, disruptions to the global food supply chain and the annual forest fires increasing in their frequency and devastation. Doom is on the menu. 


All around the common citizen, institutions are failing. Political parties no longer serve their constituents but instead seek to enrich wealthy donors and suck at the teat of powerful corporate benefactors who will invariably fund their next campaign bids. Looking towards the ostensibly infallible wisdom of Western Democracy, we can see events like January 6th signaling sure signs of rot and decay gnawing away at the lies of ‘liberty and justice for all.’ Recent Supreme Court rulings in America, rendered by the corrosive hive-mind of a hyper-conservative Republican majority, have decided that the president is above the rule of law and cannot be tried for criminal acts.  


Following the money reveals that short-term gains in the form of profits are to be protected at all costs and, everything else, like sustainability, consumer and environmental safety, resilience, self-sufficiency, public education & community, and even physical mental and spiritual health have been relegated to the realm of fatuous banality. These things are discretionary afterthoughts, not the primary focus of our economic machinations. 


Many people, when assessing the situation and inventorying the possible causes, eventually point the finger at capitalism as the likely culprit. And it’s true, there hasn’t been a more fitting villain in hundreds - if not thousands - of years. Capitalism is a predatory system that knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing. It’s predicated on exploitation, extraction, dehumanization, and the destruction of Earth’s natural resources and ecosystems. The glove fits. But what if capitalism is simply a symptom of a still larger problem? This doesn’t make capitalism any less odious, of course, but it gives us pause. 


Personally, I believe there are a complex set of systems interacting to produce a complex set of problems. If we’re looking for a single system or person or thing to blame, we’re not going to find it. But if instead we look toward how seemingly separate processes and vectors of influence converge to create imbalances and inequality, oppression, colonialist expansion, endless war and genocide, fear and alienation…then we might get closer to the root of it all. We may uncover a polyproblem. 


Over the last month, while working on a permaculture farm in southern Slovenia, I’ve been spending a lot of time weeding garden beds. From tenacious grassroots, to thickets of stubborn brambles - and everything in between - I’ve been noticing how the majority of our perception occurs at the surface level. Most things we see in life are like icebergs: they have an entire existence concealed below the surface of the water. This isn’t just true in the garden or in cold oceans, it’s true everywhere we look. What we perceive affects what we think. Take roots, for example. Once we establish the concept of root structures, it changes the way we approach weeds and briars. Now, although unseen when viewed from above ground, the wholeness of the plant is more thoroughly realized - as is what needs to be done to uproot the plant. Sure, the time and effort it takes to dig into the soil to locate and then extract the root takes considerably more energy, but it provides a more complete and lasting solution. Similarly, it takes far more focus and exertion to look inside ourselves and search for the cause of our own unhappiness, dissatisfaction, anger, frustration and sadness. In a culture glutted on instant gratification and quick fixes, it’s natural to embrace distraction, to escape into drugs and alcohol and holidays and food and sex or gambling, or, my personal favorite, suckling the sweet and carnally creamy brew from a pair of swollen and glistening goat tits; anything to avoid the dirty job of clawing through that seemingly impenetrable soul-soil. 


But if we were to pass our fingers through the loam and earth, what might we find? What complex relations between ground, insect, fungi, plant, water and temperature would we discover? It would depend on when we looked, I suppose. In the throes of summer, or perhaps during an autumn rain? Maybe when those frosty blankets of white ice drift down over the land in the dark quiet of winter?  


I’d like to make a brief point here about the season I omitted: spring. There’s something very powerful about this season in particular. So often, when discussing topics such as ecological collapse or the manifold other crises we face, we are likely to succumb to cynicism and pessimism. Right now things seem dire. They are dire. Hopeless, even. But imagine for a second you are an alien arriving to earth 500,000 years ago. Your spaceship crashes and is completely destroyed. You’re stranded on this strange and vibrant planet teeming with life and lush vegetation. Calendars haven’t been invented yet, and months and seasons still move unnamed, but when you arrive the days are hot and long. The planet appears a paradise full of proud abundance and unlimited diversity. Some time passes and you notice the days growing subtly cooler. Shorter. Darkness seems to greet you sooner each coming night. Fewer bugs buzz around your ears. Leaves dry out and begin falling from the trees. A sense of surprise and also perhaps worry rushes by on the breeze as you observe the verdant green forests and valleys awash in orange, yellow and red. Alarm continues to rise as the trees seem to rust and become more and more bare - food more scarce. What has become of those endless days of plenty from the time before? By the looks of it, the world around you seems to be withering and dying. You find it is no longer very comfortable to be in the chilled air during the night as you struggle to keep warm. Each day it’s darker and colder and no creatures seem to stir. Soon the sky itself seems to be dissolving, shedding small pieces of pale skin that either become cold stone or melt away in the morning light. The entire ecosystem appears to be breaking down all around you. You spend your days shivering, expending sizable energy scavenging for food which you can scarcely find. Frigid cold and darkness surround you, taunt you, penetrate you. Somehow the world which was before so wonderful seems suddenly wicked, cursed and cruel. You are forsaken, alone. Doomed.  


Impossibly, it gets worse each and every day. What terrible luck, you think, to have been marooned on a planet precisely at the moment of its death.  


And then…inconceivably, out of this wretched dark lifelessness comes a brilliant eruption of color and fragrance. Wispy particles of pollen float on the air, buoyant and dancing. Big bumble bees buzz, delighting on each dandelion. Pink cherry blossoms open like miniature umbrellas along the length of their thin branches. On warmer days, beautiful blushes of birdsongs tweet out from the tops of budding trees. How can it be, you ask yourself. In the face of certain death, miraculously, you are witnessing rebirth; something emerging from nothing. 


And this is the message of spring. It is a message of hope. Of life’s perseverance. Of surprise and magic and enigmatic wonder. It’s a lesson to us that even when confronted with insurmountable odds, there is still the chance for change.  


So, returning to the soil. What’s lurking there in our collective and shadowy human underworld? What abstract concepts, myths, stories and embodied realities are nestled in the ground below our feet? In our cemeteries? Decomposing bodies being reclaimed by the earth. What must the earth drink in as it peels away the wrapper of our skin and tastes the marrow in our bones? We are born of nature and return to nature, all the while forgetting while we are alive that we are nature. And here we land at one of the core causes of our current predicament. The myth of separation. As modern humans we see ourselves as separate from nature. Although we are animals, we don’t identify as such. In our stories there is man and beast and the thing which sets man apart from beast is our capacity to reason and speak and use tools to create art and paint on the walls of caves. Once we see ourselves as separate we begin to elevate ourselves above the rest of nature. Both Abrahamic religions and science play a vital role in strengthening this divide. Religions because they place our attention not on life, but on the afterlife - making the material world around us simultaneously a meaningless holding-pen and a minefield of vile temptation and sin. Science seeks to know the world through investigation and experiment at a distance, mediated through tools and instruments instead of our sensate bodies. All of nature is to be dissected and deconstructed so that we can understand it and, in doing so, conquer it by stripping it of all its mystery and denying it the ability to confound us. Once we establish ourselves as not nature, nature becomes something for us to use, to have our way with, to enslave, to consume and plunder while we wait patiently for our ascension to our rightful place in the realm of the Gods. 


But the myth of separation cuts deeper still. It not only divorces us from nature, and from our own indigeneity, but it estranges us from ourselves and our immediate communities. Today, paradoxically, despite being more connected than ever before, alienation, loneliness and suicide are on the rise. We are conditioned, in an effort to promote the demented toxic individuality necessary for fueling continuous capitalist consumption, to perceive ourselves as discrete, autonomous entities with our own unique needs and desires. We are led to believe we are small islands of intense and mercurial yearning. You have one life to live and you better live it up! Just do it. A deep rooted preoccupation with the self becomes paramount. Fret and obsess over your self-image in a compulsively self-conscious way; feel shame and self-loathing when you fail to meet unrealistic beauty standards; buy a new nose, or new lips, restore a receding hairline, climb aboard a new dieting craze, take pills to make your penis bigger. Total self absorption is the norm in the modern era. Once this idea takes root, the lurid and kaleidoscopic world of advertising finds fertile soil to fulfill its role as enchanter. Now, as companies collect information on you via your browsing data, email exchanges, social media posts and mobile phone usage, your exact needs can be targeted and catered to. If you’re feeling sad, meaningless and empty, simply buy the products they show you and you’ll feel whole again. The temporary satisfaction wears off rather quickly though, and before you know it you’re accumulating debt to try and buy yourself happiness. Or, if you’re fortunate enough to have some disposable income, maybe you find yourself chasing lavish luxury items to show off status and wealth because you’re told these are the things which prove you are a success. Certainly money, status and material belongings will remove that nagging hollow feeling inside, right? 


One last thing worth noting on the topic of separation is our separation both from where the products we consume come from, and how they’re made. Our choices are made for us. It is practically impossible to untether from the current system. Consider taking a trip to the supermarket, for example. Where does the grain come from in the box of Honey Nut Cheerios that you buy for your child? What are the conditions like in the factory where the cereal is boxed and produced? What safety mechanisms are in place to prevent you or your child from eating contaminated food products? Or those bio bananas that you have in your cart; what country did they come from? If you’re somewhere in the United States or Central Europe they had to be imported from somewhere. Have you ever considered how unnatural it is to have access to tropical or summer fruit such as avocados, strawberries, or melon all year round? Maybe you eat seasonally and you only shop at local farmer’s markets. What about your computer? Or your smartphone? What are the conditions like for the factory worker in FOXCONN in China where they assembled this electronic device? Are children working there? Are people working 16hr shifts to meet production demands ahead of the upcoming iPhone release? And what of the ecological impacts of manufacturing these products; of sourcing the rare earth elements that make up the components? How could you know if native peoples were displaced and an entire ecosystem leveled so that corporations could set up a cobalt or lithium mining operation? Is it possible there might be chemical contaminants passing into the drinking water of people living downstream from the mine? Maybe you only buy used electronics and shop in thrift stores. You even recycle. But where do the materials you recycle go after the truck comes and empties them into the back? All the plastic and metal and glass and other things like polystyrene and batteries which are harder to dispose of? Are they in a landfill somewhere in the global south? By separating us from the full lifecycle of the production process, we are kept ignorant and in the dark. Many people never ask these questions. Why should they? What can be done about it? After all, it isn’t you exploiting foreign workforces or destroying animal habitats in the name of capital. A still darker side is that we can separate ourselves from that process as a sort of plausible deniability. 


Except it’s important to remember that merely by existing inside capitalist structures, we are made complicit in harm. For example, I’m a US citizen. Right now my tax dollars are being used to fund a genocide in Palestine. Companies and governments are acting without my consent against my best interests and against the interests of those people - both human and non-human - whom I am connected to but cannot protect. 


But surely everyone knows - or at least knows someone who knows - this, right? Some of these topics must get covered on college campuses. But what if you can’t afford college and lose your God-given right to get pepper-sprayed in the face or brutally bludgeoned by callous police officers clad in riot gear as you take a stand against tyranny to protect your First Amendment rights? Roughly one in three adults in the United States are college educated. What impact must this have on shaping the critical-thinking skills of the voting public? How can Americans make informed decisions on the topics discussed above? As a globally interconnected people, it’s more important now than ever before to acknowledge that the decisions made in one nation affect every other nation - sometimes disastrously. Look at how the ‘war on terror’ worked out. Or the ‘war on drugs,’ for that matter. Trump’s appointment of several rightwing Supreme Court justices have huge ramifications not just for the bodies of American women, but for the fate of migrants seeking asylum, for marginalized groups far and wide. The rise of fascism and rightwing authoritarianism across the globe is more than grim and foreboding - it’s a reminder that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Education is a prophylactic against ignorance. 

But what are our educational systems teaching us? Are they teaching us to think for ourselves, to question authority? Or are they instead breeding conformity? Are they instructing us from a young age on ways to metabolize our collective trauma and manage difficult emotions like anger, shame and sadness? Do they teach us how to grow our own food, or which forest mushrooms are edible, how to maintain and repair common appliances, or tell us which species of plants, insects and animals are native to our regions and what their roles are within the ecosystem? What about our bodies and sexuality? Are teenagers informed on safe sex, consent? How much time is spent speaking about mental well-being, spiritual health, purpose, personal and collective meaning? Are we taught how to measure a life well-lived? As far as I can tell, the school system isn’t aimed at teaching people practical skills, nor does it prepare them to become well-adjusted happy adults. School is for teaching kids how to become productive members of the workforce. It’s a form of conditioning designed to produce docile taxpayers who ask few questions and know how to hire an accountant and follow orders. Education is historically underfunded and teachers are notoriously underpaid. Higher education is prohibitively costly for many Americans. The situation is bleak. For a fun experiment, compare military budgets to the education budget. Or compare police funding to what’s spent on communities, homelessness, mental health services. Money always tells a story. 


One particularly pernicious consequence of a flawed educational system is that it doesn’t properly cultivate the imagination. In fact, tremendous amounts of energy and resources are marshaled to train this quality out of students. Artists and other creatives are actively encouraged to get a real job, or choose a major which can financially support them. Dreamers with their heads in the clouds are mocked and ridiculed and generally viewed as anomalies; as though only artists possess this special ability to create and imagine. Imagination is a feature of nature! Humans are nature. We are inherently imaginative. The issue is we aren’t strengthening this muscle. More on this in a moment. 


So you take the following ingredients: the myth of separation, an underfunded and mismanaged educational system, a profoundly stilted imaginative capacity, and then add a splash of religious dogma to promote the idea of an afterlife somewhere in a galaxy far, far away, a dollop of scientific fanaticism which offers explanations for all of the universe’s mysteries, mix in a heaping serving of multinational corporate conglomerates working alongside armies of marketing and advertizing firms intent on selling us happiness via the promise of rapidly evolving cutting-edge technologies aimed at making our lives more comfortable and more convenient, then gently stir as you consider that these same conglomerates are buying our politicians to ensure favorable tax cuts and unimpeded access to material accumulation at the expense of the poor and working classes while exploiting foreign labor markets and destroying the planet’s natural ecosystems. Put it all in the oven to bake and voilà - you start to understand the sordid and sad state of affairs humanity is in today. 


Of all the things mentioned so far, perhaps none are as serious as the damage which has been done to imagination. If this faculty were restored and properly revered, many of the other problems would become easier to solve. A brittle imagination is cause for myopic thinking, poor foresight, an inability to innovate and a tendency to get stuck in the same patterns of thought and belief. We are what we imagine ourselves to be. If we are pests, or a planetary virus, that’s what we will see. That’s how we will act. If we imagine we are separate from nature and that our species is supreme and capitalism is good and the earth is doing fine and global warming is a myth and the free market will take care of itself and success is a swollen wallet and independence is the most important pursuit, then that becomes our collective truth. But the power of imagination lies in its ability to change narratives, to invent new ones, to bend rules and circumvent perceived limitations. In its simplest expression, it is another way of looking at things. Humans have a great gift for telling stories. We do it all day, every day. There is enormous power in realizing we can tell ourselves a different story. Imagine a story centered around a global community of 8 billion allies working to make life better for all living things. We can arrange ourselves in a dazzling number of political configurations, and we’ve done so throughout the 200,000 years of our history. It is only now, in the modern era, that we seem to have become stuck - willing to remain fixed in a white, patriarchal, nation-state configuration which uses capitalism as a default economic model. It hasn’t always been this way, and it will not continue to be this way. There is a way out. If you can imagine it.

Fire and Horses

 

Pale Fire. Vladimir Nabokov's collusively crafted work of literary cunning and genius is an absolute masterpiece. A one-of-a-kind experience, the novel confronts the reader at once with a deranged narrator named Charles Kinbote. Kinbote is the arrogant author of the book's forward which precedes the poem Pale Fire, the final poem penned by the deceased poet John Shade. A lengthy commentary follows, in which Kinbote, a demented and laughably narcissistic self-proclaimed scholar, adumbrates the sordid secrets he believes are contained within the poem's lines. It is an unexpectedly humorous tale wreathed in uniquely gorgeous prose. The work functions as a puzzle box which leaves the reader uncertain of what's real and what's fiction. One wonders whether anything Kinbote says can be taken as true, or whether Kinbote or Shade even exist at all. In this way the novel is conspiratorially psychedelic, and stinks of bong-smoke. Perhaps the whole thing is an elaborate ruse constructed by John Shade? Or maybe Kinbote wrote the damned novel - including its titular poem - in its entirety? Can we as readers know how much of the poem has been altered? Are the facts provided by Kinbote regarding John Shade's life accurate? Questions will swirl for hours and days after combing through the final pages of the Index. Nabokov has the reader jump from footnote to footnote searching for clues in a desperate attempt to make sense of all the various threads being woven together. It is playful and witty and smart and makes great observations about death.

“With this divine mist of utter dependence permeating one's being, no wonder one is tempted, no wonder one weighs on one's palm with a dreamy smile the compact firearm in its case of suede leather hardly bigger than a castlegate key or a boy's seamed purse, no wonder one peers over the parapet into an inviting abyss.

I am choosing these images rather casually. There are purists who maintain that a gentleman should use a brace of pistols, one for each temple, or a bare botkin (note the correct spelling), and that ladies should either swallow a lethal dose or drown with clumsy Ophelia.

Humbler humans have preferred sundry forms of suffocation, and minor poets have even tried such fancy releases as vein tapping in the quadruped tub of a drafty boardinghouse bathroom. All this is uncertain and messy. Of the not very many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme method, but you have to select your sill or ledge very carefully so as not to hurt yourself or others. Jumping from a high bridge is not recommended even if you cannot swim, for wind and water abound in weird contingencies, and tragedy ought not to culminate in a record dive or a policeman's promotion. If you rent a cell in the luminous waffle, room 1915 or 1959, in a tall business center hotel browing the star dust, and pull up the window, and gently - not fall, not jump - but roll out as you should for air comfort, there is always the chance of knocking clean through into your own hell a pacific noctambulator walking his dog; in this respect a back room might be safer, especially if giving on the roof of an old tenacious normal house far below where a cat may be trusted to flash out of the way. Another popular take-off is a mountaintop with a sheer drop of say 500 meters but you must find it, because you will be surprised how easy it is to miscalculate your deflection offset, and have some hidden projection, some fool of a crag, rush forth to catch you, causing you to bounce off it into the brush, thwarted, mangled and unnecessarily alive. The ideal drop is from an aircraft, your muscles relaxed, your pilot puzzled, your packed parachute shuffled off, cast off, shrugged off - farewell, shootka little chute)! Down you go, but all the while you feel suspended and buoyed as you somersault in slow motion like a somnolent tumbler pigeon, and sprawl supine on the eiderdown of the air, or lazily turn to embrace your pillow, enjoying every last instant of soft, deep, death-paded life, with the earth's green seesaw now above, now below, and the voluptuous crucifixion, as you stretch yourself in the growing rush, in the nearing swish, and then your loved body's obliteration in the Lap of the Lord. If I were a poet I would certainly make an ode to the sweet urge to close one's eyes and surrender utterly unto the perfect safety of wooed death. Ecstatically one forefeels the vastness of the Divine Embrace enfolding one's liberated spirit, the warm bath of physical dissolution, the universal unknown engulfing the minuscule unknown that had been the only real part of one's temporary personality.”

All The Pretty Horses. This is the first title in Cormac McCarthy's border trilogy. Having previously read Blood Meridian, The Road, and Outer Dark, I'd expected more of the same haunting grizzly beauty. Something lighter and more accessible can be found in this work compared to the others, though. Usually a writer intent on exploring the darker, more unsightly aspects of humanity, All The Pretty Horses is more of a boyish coming of age story that evokes Twain, Faulkner and Steinbeck. Reading the book felt like sliding through warm butter. Each page turned with ease and bled effortlessly into the next. I can't recall the last time 300 pages passed so quickly. Of course, the story isn't without his hallmark hardness and brutality, but it just isn't the most memorable part of this novel. McCarthy's deft depiction of adolescent romance makes you wonder why he hadn't written more on the subject. The elegant beauty of the prose and dialogue are striking, particularly when describing landscapes. Two passages which stand out:

"They rode out along the fenceline and across the open pastureland. The leather creaked in the morning cold. They pushed the horses into a lope. The lights fell away behind them. They rode out on the high prairie where they slowed the horses to a walk and the stars swarmed around them out of the blackness. They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing."

"They’d ride at night up along the western mesa two hours from the ranch and sometimes he’d build a fire and they could see the gaslights at the hacienda gates far below them floating in a pool of black and sometimes the lights seemed to move as if the world down there turned on some other center and they saw stars fall to earth by the hundreds and she told him stories of her father’s family and of Mexico. Going back they’d walk the horses into the lake and the horses would stand and drink with the water at their chests and the stars in the lake bobbed and tilted where they drank and if it rained in the mountains the air would be close and the night more warm and one night he left her and rode down along the edge of the lake through the sedge and willow and slid from the horse’s back and pulled off his boots and his clothes and walked out into the lake where the moon slid away before him and ducks gabbled out there in the dark. The water was black and warm and he turned in the lake and spread his arms in the water and the water was so dark and so silky and he watched across the still black surface to where she stood on the shore with the horse and he watched where she stepped from her pooled clothing so pale, so pale, like a chrysalis emerging, and walked into the water.

She paused midway to look back. Standing there trembling in the water and not from the cold for there was none. Do not speak to her. Do not call. When she reached him he held out his hand and she took it. She was so pale in the lake she seemed to be burning. Like foxfire in a darkened wood. That burned cold. Like the moon that burned cold. Her black hair floating on the water about her, falling and floating on the water. She put her other arm about his shoulder and looked toward the moon in the west do not speak to her do not call and then she turned her face up to him. Sweeter for the larceny of time and flesh, sweeter for the betrayal. Nesting cranes that stood singlefooted among the cane on the south shore had pulled their slender beaks from their wingpits to watch. Me quieres? she said. Yes, he said. He said her name. God yes, he said."

 

 

Not Defeated, Defooted

 

I broke my foot. All it took was a simple stroll through a small forested park behind grandma's house. The walk lasted less than five minutes. At the doctor the next day he told me the ligaments in the ankle tore the cuboid bone out of place when it rolled, breaking it. It's called avulsion. That's why I can't walk now. Of course the timing of this injury is atrocious. For 4 - 6 weeks I'll need to wear a boot and keep weight off the foot. Once the boot is off the damage will need to be reassessed. According to sources online, some number of additional months will be needed for the bone to recover, if at all. There goes my dance career.

What this will mean for our current journey in the van is still unclear. In this condition I cannot work as a farmhand or laborer in any capacity. It goes without saying that this threatens to entirely derail our plans. Our upcoming trip to Ireland, slated for next week, will need to be cancelled or postponed. Now I find myself jobless, homeless and disabled. When it rains it pours. I'm trying not to succumb to defeat, but it's hard when you're de-footed. Currently, I'm horizontal in Austria. Previously we'd made plans to join Asia's family down here for an extended weekend of hiking. They'll be pulling me up the mountain in a special extreme off-road wheelchair. 

Yesterday I recorded a podcast episode in an attempt to make sense of all of this. Perhaps it's too soon to do so. How long after the house has burned down should we wait to begin asking ourselves why? During this recorded session of sad self-inquiry alone in front of the microphone, I tired to explore the rich range of feelings erupting inside the confines of my skull. A great stirring of birds; anger, sadness, frustration, guilt, shame, helplessness, confusion, remorse. They caw and screech and cluck and wheeze with tormenting alacrity. One topic which emerged during the process was of certain archetypal or mythological energies: The Wild Man, The Trickster, The Disgusting Man, The Lawnmower Man, etc. In particular, I was contemplating the role of alcohol as an anti-moderating agent on some of these forces. For the most part, I've stopped drinking. Admittedly there's still the occasional beer or, even more occasionally, the glass of wine, but all-in-all my drinking habits have improved steadily over the past 5 years. Still, though, complete sobriety hasn't been something in the cards for me. Why?

Something about alcohol opens the lock on the door where I've hidden the clandestine, bastard love-child of these three mythological men. The wild, disgusting trickster rears his ugly, cackling, salivating, flatulent head when enough booze has entered my bloodstream. A possible hypothesis is that I haven't yet found a way to summon this entity in a socially acceptable way, so when it appears, it expresses itself in a kind of compensatory fashion to make up for lost time. So badly it wants to elicit a reaction, to discover a boundary, or to bend the shape of a conversational container, that in its excitement it leaps balls-first into the most depraved, raunchy and puerile end of the pool. Obviously, this can be jarring for some. Particularly if those people - listeners in this case - are of modest sensibilities, or have a more conventional sense of humor.

This morning I woke just after 6:00 thinking about the episode I'd published the bay before. Instinctively I felt that I needed to delete it - that it should be pulled. It's too lewd, too crass, too dangerous. My mind went on. What if a previous guest listens to that? Or an upcoming one? Don't you have a duty to your listeners and your guests to conduct yourself in a way that doesn't unsettle them? Do you really want to shoot yourself in the foot for a blowjob joke? Look what happened to Bill Clinton! Is it that important to talk about shitting and farting? The answer, I think, is yes - but perhaps not for the reasons you might initially think. Ultimately it comes down to authenticity and self-censorship. A podcast is an experimental space. It's a mixture of art and conversation. The medium is inherently expressive and it rewards - at least in the current climate - vulnerability and the honest presentation of self...even if some of those parts of the self are uncomfortable. Imagine for a second a child afraid to tell her parents that she's gay. She lives her life concealing a part of her identity for fear of rejection, or fear of offending her parents' conservative values. Isn't it better to be rejected for who you are than to be accepted for who you're not? Sure, my situation is different (some might say, perhaps rightly, that it's incomparable and easy for me to say as a straight white male), the stakes are not nearly as high, but the guiding principle underneath is the same. Being seen and accepted for who we are is something fundamental to the human experience.

Risk is a necessary ingredient for any artistic endeavour or creative project, and sometimes things don't land as the author intended. In this regard, imperfection is essential. Without missteps it's impossible to properly calibrate the artistic impulse. Despite this, something about the concept of artistic self-censorship bothers me. I'm my own content creator, editor, and music maker, and by virtue of this, I'm not beholden to the interests of any sponsor or label. Artistic liberty is one of the hallmarks of being an independent creative. So then my mind whispers. Isn't it possible to channel the wild disgusting trickster without talking about adult themes or using offensive imagery. Yes. That's the task. But shouldn't offensive content always remain on the table!? While reading Robert Bly's Iron John I came across the following passage:

Sometimes when friends are talking in a closed room, the heat of the conversation begins to increase: witty things are said; contributions flow from all sides; leaps of imagination appear; the genuinely spiritual follows an instant after the genuinely obscene. Hermes has arrived. At some beautiful moment of the conversation a silence falls that feels mysterious; everyone hesitates to break it. In Spain until the fifteenth century that silence was called "Hermes' silence." So Lopez-Pedraza says in his fine book on Hermes.

The old tradition maintains that true learning does not take place unless Hermes is present. That is depressing, because university English departments, and sociology departments, and religion departments usually get rid of teachers with Hermes energy first. The whole Ph.D. system was created by Germanic Hermes-killers. Hermes is magical, detail-loving, obscene, dancelike, goofy, and not on a career track.

I've bolded the portions of the piece that I think get at the heart of what I'm trying to name. It should seem obvious then that Hermes is the patron saint of psychedelics. What are psychedelics if not the mystical alchemical chemicals of the trickster? Left to its own device the modern mind, conditioned by capitalist interests and a compulsive optimization towards comfort, seeks to think in straight, orderly lines. Our lives, by virtue of the larger society in which we currently find ourselves situated, is predicated on forecasting, planning, prediction - logical repeatable laws and patterns, which, above all else, are knowable, observable and measurable. Then, unexpectedly, the trickster comes along. Suddenly those straight lines begin to bend. Abrupt blind turns appear. All predictability and knowability are lost, replaced with frightening irregularity and a bewildering, dreamlike imagination capable of catapulting us to towering heights or unfathomable depths. There is little to hold onto as we spill into the void. Sprawling. Falling. Drifting. Floating. Dissolving. The edges of our conscious container rattle and warp. Reality is reborn anew. Once this occurs, once this new Hermetic energy unseals the old self, an enchanted awareness emerges. This new state of being is charged with curiosity, creativity, mystery, and a dizzying elasticity. It is no small wonder that from this deformed yet formless container the liminal and numinous give rise to the mystical, the spiritual, the sacred and the obscene.

Personally, I've always found the blending of the genuinely spiritual with the genuinely obscene to be deeply satisfying and essential. The sacred needs the profane. Just like the darkness needs the light; each produces blindness absent the other. But how to profane while holding all things sacred? Does that seem a contradiction? It needn't be a paradox or a puzzling Buddhist koan. Is nature perverse when it strikes down one infant while nurturing another? When it culls an entire forest in a fire? How can such a live-giving, life-serving force be so heartless, destructive and cruel? Perhaps because it's both and neither. We as humans have the tendency to perceive things in binary, dualistic terms and then stretch that map over the fabric of reality like some cartoonish condom preventing us from interfacing with reality as it is. We do this in our evaluations of people, too. We seldom view a person in their totality. Instead there's a tendency to define others by their best and basest aspects...

A backpacker is traveling through Ireland when it starts to rain. He decides to wait out the storm in a nearby pub. The only other person at the bar is an older man staring at his drink. After a few moments of silence the man turns to the backpacker and says in a thick Irish accent:

"You see this bar? I built this bar with my own bare hands. I cut down every tree and made the lumber myself. I toiled away through the wind and cold, but do they call me McGreggor the bar builder? No."

He continued "Do you see that stone wall out there? I built that wall with my own bare hands. I found every stone and placed them just right through the rain and the mud, but do they call me McGreggor the wall builder? No."

"Do you see that pier out there on the lake? I built that pier with my own bare hands, driving each piling deep into ground so that it would last a lifetime. Do they call me McGreggor the pier builder? No."

"But you fuck one goat.."

Stop Resisting!

 

We were there for three and a half weeks, in Poland. It was to be our first adventure together in the van. In preparation we'd given up our apartments and our jobs to work at farms, intentional communities and eco villages across Europe. This was our first stop. Technically Asia had started the journey before me because of a last minute flight to New York which stole me away to another continent over the Atlantic. You know the story. Wilma (our trusty German steed) was a joy to ride in. She hummed along on Polish highways, carried us for hours and hours through forests and green hills, past fields of radiant golden rapeseed, until delivering us finally to our rural destination in Western Pomerania. Late on a Friday evening, we arrived. The grounds of the community are lush and hilly over the approximately dozen acre settlement. A thriving ecosystem of birds, insects and various frogs create a lush soundscape. On the eastern side, opposite to one of the several small ponds, cranes could be heard early in the morning and late at night. Near to the house, in the center of the land, atop an old concrete electric tower, a pair of storks constructed a giant nest housing two small chicks. Throughout the day the distinctive cluck-clapping sound they make with their beaks would send the resident canines into a frenzy. The dogs would bark and howl and chase the enormous birds all across the place. 

The area used to be marshland. Around the farm there are many beautiful lakes. Unsurprisingly, there are many mosquitos. A walk to the surrounding forest would result in sheets of mosquitoes stalking your every step. They would gather in droves along my pant legs - or across the backs of anyone depraved enough to venture into their territory - and stab madly with their proboscises trying to penetrate and extract warm blood for their young. Giant hornets and moderately sized wasps would patrol the village looking for anywhere and everywhere to install a nest. One had to be taken down from inside a stationary camper, another inside the entrance to the stone house, or inside an outdoor toilet, so Asia and myself had to take great care to leave the van door closed to prevent them from exploring the cool dark space within. The entire property was teeming with life. Ambitious blades of grass raced upward with ludicrous speed. It seemed as though they were being cut every week with a scythe. Over the course of one of the weeks we watched a patch of asparagus sprout up from the earth and grow into an intricate lattice structure almost as tall as me. Who would have guessed asparagus capable of such rapid and thorough transformation?

Everything was transforming, it seemed. Our bodies, unaccustomed to daily physical labor, began to grow harder and more durable - though they felt flimsy, sore, and brittle during the slow transition. So too did our emotional capacities begin to expand and deepen. The work at the settlement focused primarily on addressing the question of what it means to be human in the times of poly-crisis. Much of the discourse, practice, group activities and practical interactions hinged on this inquiry. Each day consisted (at least at the beginning) of an hour's meditation at 7:00, breakfast at 8:30, work from 9:30 until 14:00, lunch from 14:00 - 15:00, more work until dinner at 19:00, and then a group activity at 20:00 with bedtime at around 22:00. The schedule was full. As a lifelong introvert and desk worker, the shift was dramatic. So much learning happened every day; new tools (physical and otherwise), new concepts, new insights, new ideas and activities; a new me in the mirror. 

One morning, near the end of breakfast, there was discussion about meditation; Zen and Vipassana. A member of the core team spoke of her spiritual journey in search of insight and clarity, but how she hadn't yet had even a glimpse of enlightenment. She mused on how frustrating the process was. Have you ever felt a glimpse of it while under the influence of a psychedelic? No, not really, she said, maybe, but nothing that stuck with me. Yeah, it sometimes seems you can cheat your way into nothingness through self obliteration and that enlightenment doesn't care how you get there, but those shortcuts are just shortcuts and aren't likely to provide any lasting changes: you need to put in the work. Our conversation was cut short as the leader of the community interjected. C'mon, most of the people at these retreats and meditation workshops are just self-interested and want to get to enlightenment as quickly and as easily as they can. It's irresponsible and just reproduces the systems of consumption we see in modernity. It's a way to escape and retreat into yourself and hide from the harsh realities of the world. Sure, maybe for some people, but most people? Yes. Most people. It's bullshit and we should be honest with ourselves about it. That's not my view on things. Anyone who's read even a single book on Buddhism understands - hopefully - that the whole purpose of enlightenment is to be in service to others. It's why the idea of the Bodhisattva is so beautiful. So all of us can sit around and talk about how enlightened we are and spend our days meditating and hoping for a better world without doing the work to actually make the world better? What's the difference between that and denial, he asked angrily. His judgmental tone and imperious attitude suffocated the space. He seemed to be glaring at me. It was unclear why the casual conversation took such a sudden and severe turn. You're entitled to your opinions but I didn't hear any of that in anything either of us were just talking about. I invite you to have more honest discussions about your denials and notice when you're participating in or perpetuating these kinds of things. Do you want to have that discussion now, because to me it doesn't feel like the space is safe for that discussion. His eyes were unwavering. The world isn't safe, he said. Everyone at the table looked around nervously. My upper lip twitched with anger and confusion. Breakfast was over.

Learning, for me, happens not just through practice, but through dialogue, through interrogation, through rubbing two things together to see how they interact. It suddenly became clear that some of these methods were considered vulgar or disrespectful by the leader of the village. We are a community of practice, he'd say, talking is not doing. This struck me as strange given talking is verb, not a noun. He seemed defensive the day before when, during a conversation, the words my issues with authority leapt to his ear from my lips. He responded curiously to this and seemed to take it as a challenge. The topic was on masculinity and appealing to authority in the form of experts, high priests or elders. My perspective was that perhaps it would be better to come to our own conclusions through the examination of concepts and ideas and then check them against an authority instead of allowing any figure of authority to prematurely color our opinions. Unfortunately my view was not shared by our leader or his vocal, spectacled acolyte. My participation was then interpreted as hostile, resistant and blasphemous - for having questioned their gods. On a not so distant morning it would be added that in some villages, when you question their elders you are told to leave. And so began a series of conflicts and misunderstandings that would inevitably lead to a sort of intervention in the form of surprise tribunal which would put me on trial for committing crimes similar to Socrates. 

One evening, smack in the middle of this public hearing where the leader announced that he wanted to address some concerning developments in the community, he said that myself and another member had been showing signs of resistance to the culture. It soon was clarified that the bulk of these crimes had, in fact, been committed by me. The charges were as follows:

• Refusal to accept an invitation to an anger workshop
• Questioning Robert Bly as an authority on masculinity without having read Iron John
• Expressing resistance to authority
• Not attending a village dance party
• Refusing to wrestle in a men's circle
• Attempting to kill the men's circle

The main crime was described as general resistance to the culture they were trying to create. It seemed clear, at least to me, that the intent was to publicly pillory me - to excoriate and potentially intimidate via verbal flogging for my indecent disagreements. Of course, at the same time, it made sense that my behavior was problematic. It made their job harder, sowed seeds of doubt, challenged their research. But my problem was the approach. Why wasn't this communicated to me during any of the examples you've provided? Why did you wait until now? They wanted to wait until a pattern emerged. You wanted more evidence to have a stronger case for crafting a narrative. The anger workshop didn't interest me and, since it was - like all of the examples you've listed - proposed as an invitation, it was not clear to me that my attendance was mandatory. Are these things compulsory then? If resistance continues they will be made compulsory. This comment didn't make sense to me but we will return to that later. So, kill seems like a very strong word in my opinion. Ok, we can replace it with attacking, or questioning. When you come into a place and start questioning it, it weakens the space. You hide your anger and violence behind passive aggressive lines of questioning. We might have a fundamental disagreement on the purpose of questioning and what is achieved by it. It is my belief that questioning does not make a thing weaker, it makes it stronger. It's a way to help identify faults and inconsistencies, it helps shed light on what areas may need more support and which can be thrown out. It's how we can cut away the excess and focus in on what's important. You don't enter someone's home as a guest and start rearranging their furniture. 

That last line might be one picked up from another of the group's elders, Stephen Jenkinson. It makes sense and is hard to argue with, but it misses the point a bit and exposes a sort of paradox in this whole episode. One can enter another's home as a guest and hold views different than those of their host. The guest may have a preference on what's cooked for dinner due to dietary restraints, for example, or may have input on what movie to watch or which game to play. A good host accommodates their guest and helps to make them feel at home (as best they can). Guest and host can even exchange competing ideas and have healthy discussions about those ideas, so long as the dialogue is respectful and not offensive. This is not the same as rearranging one's furniture. But what struck me as head-spinningly confusing about this thing, was the charge being levied at me. Let me return to it and restate it: you are resisting and what we are trying to do here is create a container where people can push through discomfort and their inner resistances to grow and learn. Okay, this is all fine and good. But isn't it odd that the container being created doesn't seem capable of containing resistance? Why are you talking about sitting with resistance instead of practicing  it? To me it didn't seem like our leader was doing a very good job of working with his resistance to my resistance. A good container should grow more resilient and tenacious in response to resistance. How will it endure the resistance of those who aren't already, like myself, mostly aligned with the vision and values of the culture they're trying to cultivate? It needs to be able to assimilate and contain a diverse set of people with diverse sets of beliefs without excluding others if it is to grow and be a home for those seeking refuge from the consumptive machinations of capitalist modernity. No?

The group discussion went on for some time. It ended with a request for a contract or a set of agreements which would serve to reduce or prevent future confusion on the subject. The hour was late and everyone seemed spent.

After the interrogation ended we went to sleep. Something in me still didn't feel settled. It persisted through to the morning. So at breakfast it was time to voice some of these roaming feelings in order to once again be present with the group. There was a risk in doing so, though. The group could descend into chaos. Having clear intentions - to connect, to empty, to share what was an obstacle for being present - it seemed fine to proceed. Before my tongue could completely shape the sounds the leader interrupted and warned me that despite my explicit declaration not to take us into chaos, that's what might happen. That's not my intention. Wait, he said, is your intention to empty or to give feedback? That's hard to say. They're wrapped together in a way. Primarily it's to empty but via the emptying there may be feedback. It's very simple, he continued, if you're emptying then you're using I-statements, and with feedback you're not. Okay, then it's emptying:

Something about yesterday is still bothering me. It's unclear if we have time to work through these things now or if the day needs to get started, but for me, saying them is important, even if we need to have a meeting later to respond to these issues. Yesterday I felt hurt and sad - and also angry - in response to what happened. It seemed I was put on trial and singled out for violating a code of conduct or set of agreements which were never communicated to me. I felt a lot of judgement and accusation -- 

Are you familiar, he said interrupting, with the 'victim,' 'persecutor,' 'rescuer' low-drama triangle? What you're doing is making yourself a victim. Huh? Yeah, you're the victim and we perpetrated something against you. The existence of a low-drama triangle as a concept doesn't change the fact that victims and perpetrators exist in the world though. People perpetrate harm on others all the time. Yes, so you were unjustly attacked and just can shift the responsibility off of your shoulders onto the persecutor.

Suddenly the pattern became more clear to me: his space could be killed, or attacked without victimhood, but mine could not. My need for safety could be called into question, because the world is unsafe, but his need (hiding behind 'the space's' need) for safety and control could not. He could speak to me with veiled barbs of venom and vitriol but this wouldn't make him passive aggressive. A double standard. What to do about it though? Any attempt to talk or discuss things was met with instant defensiveness or subtle semantic games of psychoanalytical evaluation or judgment and coaching. It seemed obvious he wanted to teach, not be teached (sounds better than taught). Helpless stupefaction rolled over me, a hapless victim. A feeble request was made to hold space to continue this conversation later in the afternoon when there would be more time. Do you want to involve the whole community, he asked. Well, it seemed the preferred way to have these kinds of discussions were in front of the community or else why didn't we have a smaller group present last night? The whole group is needed only if there are useful learnings for the whole group. There might be. How can it be said for certain? Others from the group broke their silence and stated they would prefer to be present since they were present for the start and there seems to be something which could be learned. So it was decided the entire group would attend.

Later that afternoon we assembled our chairs under the hot sun and sat in a wide circle. The conversation went around. A couple of questions which would be great to clear up. First, yesterday when asked if these events were compulsory, it was said that they would be if resistance persisted. Can you explain what that means? A long response was given which softened that stance and clarified it and restated the need for a set of agreements to help explain and set expectations. Great. Second, I'm confused by what seems to be a double standard here. Confusion, the leader said, is an emotional state children and adolescents experience. Confusion can be used as a mask for not taking responsibility for your true feelings. That's not a fair characterization. Adults get confused all the time. You probably do, too. Are you afraid of me, he asked. No, promptly, I'm suspicious of you. It's unclear what your intentions are. I wonder whether you're manipulative or coercive. I find it challenging to trust you. That's because I'm provocative. Most people don't like those who are provocative because it makes them uncomfortable. I find provocation - and being provocative - can be used as masks to conceal cruelty. Not saying that's the case here, but it's happened in the past. Are you angry? I don't trust anyone who doesn't feel comfortable expressing their anger. Yes, right now there's anger. It's in my chest. Sitting in a circle and talking about my issues with you in front of a group of people who are looking at me isn't something enjoyable to me. The attention is unsettling. My anger doesn't have to make me mean or cruel though.  No need to raise my voice or point my anger at you like a knife. I can feel it and let it be there without wielding it. If you're angry at me though, and need to make insinuations, comparing me to a confused child, I'd ask you to be more clear and transparent when you want to insult me. Maybe you weren't trying to insult me. Only you know. 

The conversation went like this for some time. There were moments of vulnerability from myself and the leader, as well as others in the circle. My social anxiety, desire to do no harm, yearning to connect and learn how to live in community were all topics which were covered. All of the details needn't be belabored here. Honestly, many of the specifics have been forgotten and even the ones which have been recalled here are from my perspective and are far from perfect - potentially rife with biases and errors. But eventually it ended with a question from the leader: what can I do to help you? Well, when communicating from a place of anger, if you could also find in yourself compassion, kindness and love and let those things through with the anger, that would be great. Because we're not just these one dimensional angry beings who feel hurt or wronged, we have a rich palette of emotions all co-arising and coexisting within us at any given moment. It's very easy to let anger through. It's a cheap emotion. We have it on tap. We summon it when we stub our toe or when someone cuts us off in traffic. It's much more challenging to hold anger with love and compassion and find a way to express your anger in the presence of those other emotions. 

We ended the circle amicably. Most of the issues felt addressed and resolved. My sense of connection could return now that this emotional obstacle had been removed. But the weight of lifting it, rolling it up the hill, having it roll me over, walking back down to retrieve it and push it up again had me feeling as sapped as Sisyphus. It took a couple of days for my energy to bounce back. It helped me realize something about myself which I hadn't realized before. For most (maybe all) of my life I haven't done a good job at managing my emotional empathy. There's a concept of observing the emotional intensity of another without absorbing the emotional intensity of another. Someone with a poorly defined boundary will just let all the emotional energy of another in with their own and then have to shoulder simultaneously the weight of two human beings. This practice isn't sustainable. Particularly when the emotions involved are anger and sadness, I find it hard to not absorb them. In both cases my pattern is to diffuse the emotion to help relieve the suffering of the other person. But this isn't rational. The emotions of another are theirs, not mine. They need to process them. They need to make sense of them and integrate them. They need to ride the lightning. Doing it along side them helps me feel them, yes. But it leaves me drained and depleted. There will be future posts on this topic, I promise.

But to conclude this long chapter on our first longterm (!) stay at an eco village, there are still a few things left to say. First is that these events represent only a small facet of the experiences we had here. In this essay literary techniques were used to drum up readability via dramatic devices which may distort the reality of events. This is true for anything that has ever been written - especially by me. Attempts were made to remain closer to the facts than normal, but still, this piece reads like a condemnation of the place. It is not. The people there are trying to do a good thing. They have a shared vision and purpose and they are making a difference in their community and in the hearts and minds of those who visit them. No one there - I hope - is truly monstrous or villainous. We participated in rituals and creative spaces and had the chance to play and experiment in a unique social laboratory that is rare in this world. I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity and the people who made it possible. There is no ill will or bad feelings toward anyone there. Perhaps only differing opinions on the approach. Not every community is for everyone. Maybe my needs aren't met by the place. That's fine. It isn't a slight on the village. 

We may have different elders and different beliefs and different expectations, but that's the beauty of life and what makes places diverse and interesting is when people can come together and live in community despite their differences.

A Dumb Experiment / Matrimonial Jazz

 

Break open your personal self

to taste the story of the nutmeat soul.

These voices come from that rattling

against the outer shell.

The nut and the oil inside

have voices that can only be heard

with another kind of listening.

If it weren't for the sweetness of the nut,

the inner talking, who would ever shake a walnut?

We listen to words

so we can silently

reach into the other.

Let the ear and mouth get quiet,

so this taste can come to the lip.

Too long we have been saying poetry,

talking discourses, explaining the mystery outloud.

Let us try a dumb experiment.

-- Rumi

--------

Asia and I are well into our journey. Mine started in a way that wasn't entirely expected, but I guess that's the case with many such adventures. I decided to take a trip to New York instead of joining Asia at our first planned destination: a Polish permaculture farm run by an older couple we know through Community Building. My mother's health has been in a precarious position for a few months now. She's wrestling with a series of blood clots; 7 of them. A cluster of them formed five pulmonary embolisms in her lungs while the remaining two are trapped in each leg. It's been a bit of an ordeal for her. They are painful and frightening, since any one of them can dislodge and travel to the brain or heart with fatal consequences. The situation was weighing heavy on me. My sleep was affected. Underneath my thoughts a current moved. Always it spoke of danger and dread - awful thoughts of my mother's death, or of her reduced to a vegetative state in a sterile hospital room - until it convinced me I should take a flight over the ocean to go spend a few weeks with my mom. So I did. It was the only way I'd be able to settle into this trip with Asia. Otherwise in the back of my head I'd have that lingering, haunting feeling that I should have gone home while I had the chance. The visit home was time well spent. My mom appreciated the gesture and we had some good talks. There is always a stressful aspect of being home. Ram Dass says, if you think you're enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents. Quickly I noticed all my training and conditioning that I've undergone here in Europe was no match for the historical traumas and patterns of behavior which emerge once back inside the family unit. I'm grateful for that insightful and humbling experience. Not that I actually believed for a moment that I was enlightened, of course, rather that I would be less vulnerable to the familiar feelings I associate with going home. To my surprise I found this was very much not the case. In fact, it generally seemed quite the contrary. I happened to feel things more deeply, not less.

I've been back in Europe a bit over two weeks now. It's been busy. Asia and I are living in our van. Her name is Wilma. She's a reliable two-toned Volkswagen Transporter; white and baby blue. We're staying at an intentional community in Poland called Osada. I believe it means settlement in Polish. It's been exactly two weeks that we've been working here. The work is challenging. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. At Osada they try to more deeply understand what it means to be a human being during the times of polycrisis. Each day consists of breakfast, cleanup, work, lunch, cleanup, a group activity, dinner, cleanup, and a second group activity before retiring to bed. Needless to say, the days are full. The activities are aimed at fostering a community of practice wherein participants are invited to push their boundaries and learn something about themselves in ways that we can't easily learn inside the container of the modern world. We're encouraged to experiment, to lean into discomfort, to explore and express and discover what it is that's really alive in us. It is a kind of playground.

I'm a fairly introverted person. I cherish my alone time. When I'm alone I can read, or write, or play music, reflect, meditate or take a nap. For me these times are necessary for balance and integration. During the two weeks I've been at Osada we've had only two days off; one each week. This puts me in a position of scarcity in terms of time. It is hard to find balance. I've struggled to make time for my podcast, for checking in with friends and family...with myself. We're here two more weeks. Thirty days of intensive learning and practice are plenty for someone like myself. The time we spend in groups is centered around practices like community building circles, forum, anger workshops, and men's and women's circles, amongst other things. When we eat we hold hands. Poems are often read. They're trying to create a different culture here. An admirable goal. There are some strong personalities. In the past I've been told the same about my own. Predictably, this has been the cause of some tension. Experiences like these offer valuable insights into my own relationship with anger, discomfort, fear, resistance, authority, masculinity and femininity and many other things. I noticed that I find myself baited into butting heads with figures of male authority, particularly if these figures are angry or forceful with their expression or beliefs. These are qualities I abhor in myself; reflections of my father. When I see them in someone else I want to melt them the same way I try to soften and liquify them within myself. 

My idealized version of masculinity is one which embodies the feminine. It is vulnerable, firm yet soft, tender, nurturing, kind, compassionate and patient. Any definition of masculinity missing these components, in my opinion, is imbalanced and uneven, lacking that rounded wholeness which makes it mature and sensible. Otherwise it is just farce - forceful, manipulative, coercive, controlling, militant and mean; soldiers slaughtering civilians, raping their women, exterminating villages; games of conquest and brutality. Look at the world around us. What are the motifs associated with masculinity in the modern era? Masculinity as decreed by patriarchal structures of power rapaciously extracts and pillages Mother Earth. The cultural messaging and the language we use to talk about men and women helps generate these gender ideologies. I'm not sure they exist on their own. If it's true that they are abstract, human-generated constructs, then we can change our narratives and create more meaningful mosaics of meaning. But I'm starting a tangent I don't wish to continue at this point in time. The purpose of this post was to relay a story about a dumb experiment Asia and I made a few days ago.

Osada is a place for experimentation. One such experiment was offered to Asia and I in the form of creating a closing ceremony to conclude a week of work about a dozen of us had participated in for the first week of May. We were invited to produce a ritual. Having never formally made a ritual, and having precious little time to do so, I was of course hesitant. Instead of declining, however, I agreed to give it a try and try to learn something by doing. This is when things got interesting. The universe begin conspiring not against us, but with us. After breakfast, where the proposal was made and accepted, Asia and I briefly discussed what we would do for this important occasion which would bookend the week for the participants and impart a lasting memory. A space had to be decided on, a theme, the event's duration, gory details, speeches, all the logistics. It felt a bit overwhelming given the day would be packed full of work and group events, leaving little time to prepare. Then Asia read a poem she thought we could use. It was perfect. "There are even some walnuts we could use," she added. Shape was beginning to form. Ok, this sounds interesting, I thought. The idea was to gather the group together, have them contemplate the outer shells they use to hide their true selves from the world, ritualistically crack them open and discard them to extract the meat of the soul inside. Fantastic, but where would we discard them and what would happen to the discarded shells? 

One week-long ritualistic ceremony I'm familiar with is Burning Man. For many (perhaps most) rituals, the presence of some elemental force is required; be it water, fire, air, wind, or earth. It became clear the shells should be set on fire somehow. Burning would signify dissolution and transformation, a liberation from the shackles of our shells. All of the components were coming together. Of course there would need to be some good linguistic glue to hold it all together and facilitate sense making, but that could be decided on later. I had an idea to construct a small wooden coffin which we could place the shells into as a vessel that we could then deliver to the fire. And a torch! I wanted to make a torch like in the movies. A few days ago I'd seen a perfect piece of wood for this, gnarled, hefty, covered with bits of green moss, beautifully weighted and shaped. I'd wrap a piece of cloth around it and soak it in diesel so that Asia could light the torch before I walked to the fire pit to ignite the pieces of wood there. But then there was some tension. Asia wondered if we really needed a coffin, and if we needed to go through the trouble of including a torch in the ceremony.

She had a point. Maybe it was unnecessary, a superfluous flourish. But it would be so cool! Sure, it would take some time to make a small coffin, and the torch was a wildcard - maybe it wouldn't ignite, or it would violently explode. Some research was necessary. I pitched the vision of the coffin and the torch and expressed how they were not only symbolic pieces of the puzzle, but they also added a healthy dose of theatrics to the spectacle. I cautioned her that the shells aren't the only kind of box we humans find ourselves in. We exist in larger, more abstract boxes: history, culture, time, place. A coffin, for many of us, is the final box we're placed in. There seemed something fitting about it. The flames feasting on the hard, well-defined wooden borders of the box, breaking them down, erasing them. Asia was convinced. In time I located a candle I could place beside the coffin to create the sense of a vigil. All of the pieces were in place. We didn't know exactly what we would say, but we knew we didn't want it to be very rehearsed. It should be spontaneous and improvisational, like jazz. We'd let the moment dictate what words it wanted from our lips. 

So the night came upon us. We gathered on the small hill where we'd placed a small bowl of walnuts and a nutcracker. I assembled the wood for a fire, hid the diesel-soaked torch, and had a backup paper egg-carton should the torch fail us. We even had a drum to help us transition to our dance party after the ceremony. Our villagers arrived and the ceremony began. I welcomed them and handed out a walnut to each participant. Asia read the poem. She explained that she'd like everyone to identify an aspect of themselves they'd like to cast off and invited them to step forward, crack their nut, and place it into the coffin. This is where things started to get interesting. In our test run, the walnut we cracked broke open cleanly and easily. But now, in front of us, we watched people struggling to extract the walnut from the shell. What should have taken seconds, was taking minutes. It was cold, dark, and there were an army of starving mosquitos stabbing at us. I was unsure whether we should intervene or just let the process run its course. Somehow the stubbornness of the nuts didn't seem to sway the determination of the participants. Calmly they cracked the nuts and cleaned away the shells. Once everyone finished, I said something about the shells and how the difficulty was symbolic of how hard it is in real life to remove our shells and extract the good bits - how these things take time and careful concentration. Then I explained the purpose of the box and revealed that we'd be using fire to dissolve the hard edges and alchemize the shells and coffin. I reached for the torch, Asia lit it, and to my surprise it went up in beautiful spiral of flames. It looked majestic. Sacred. I walked to the fire and placed the torch against the wood. The wood wouldn't light. I tried moving it to the other side, but still, the fire wasn't taking. I hadn't thought to douse the wood with a bit of diesel to get the fire going. This second hiccup was unpleasant in a cumulative way. 

I tried to level with the crowd and admit that maybe things weren't going to work as I'd planned. I shared that perhaps I should have put a bit of fuel on the fire. I wasn't sure if people were convinced. I asked the two people closest to the coffin to bring it forward and place it on the fire in preparation for the flames. They did, but still, the fire wasn't spreading. To buy some time I invited the participants to share what their shell had meant to them by first sharing my own story. I said that I wanted to shed the fearful part of myself that's terrified to look stupid and unprepared in front of a group, to be okay with looking like a fool. As I said this, suddenly, the fire clamored to life. It popped and hissed and burped and wrapped itself around the wood. There was the distinct feeling of visitation; that something had arrived through this portal of confession and vulnerability. It sparked others into sharing their stories. We all went around as the flames consumed the shells and the coffin and the rest of the fire. I started playing a drum prematurely. After waiting until everyone who wanted to speak had spoken, I began drumming an awkward beat but couldn't find the right rhythm, so I started walking away in the hopes that people would follow. They did. We walked to the area where the dance party would be and started playing the music selected by the community. The ritual was complete.

To our surprise, over the next 24 hours we received generous praise and compliments on the ritual. One of the leaders of the village expressed how matrimonial it felt with Asia and I holding space and collaborating together. It was true. Something unique and special had happened. We took a risk and learned something. We channeled something. A group of people shared an important memory and took part in a symbolic act. Even with its imperfections - perhaps because of the imperfections - the dumb experiment was a success. I felt closer to Asia. 

I wonder what other magic awaits us on this journey.

Asking the Tough Questions

 

Below is something I'd posted in an online Discord server a day or two ago:

How do we harmonize with the discordant strumming of those capitalistic, imperialistic, consumeristic and overall anti-humanistic structures with their over-mic’d and out-of-tune guitar droning on and on demanding us to march? Can a cell in a sick and seemingly dying organism be truly healthy? Are mindfulness practices a luxury of the privileged? Is it a way to pat ourselves on the back and muse about how if we can’t control the chaos around us at least we can control the chaos in our hearts and minds? I’m torn because on one hand I do see the pedestrian Western spiritual path as sort of defunct and hollow - as a self-indulgent productivity tool companies now offer to their workers and private individuals use in order to destress and unwind as a gentle form of self-care. These practices begin to become the opposite of what they were intended to be. They are not a means to escape discomfort, they are a means to confront it. 

The spiritual path, if practiced authentically, is difficult, rife with struggle, yet many practitioners appear averse to discomfort and adversity, instead seeking to retreat into meditation as a reprieve from struggle and pain - be it emotional, physical, psychological or otherwise. Ultimately these practices are tools, and can be misused. 

On the other hand, spiritual practice has tremendous potential to liberate us from our ignorance, to heighten our awareness, to help us realize we are all one and that what we do to others we do to ourselves. These kinds of deep experiential revelations can usher in that more beautiful world we all know is possible™️ and so their value should not be understated. 

The challenge is realized when we consider how to be moral inside an immoral system. How can we purify the accumulated toxins and defilements of capitalism in the modern era? How can we ‘do no harm’ when, as citizens of nation states, our tax dollars go toward funding war, militarization, bombing of civilians, genocides, coups, invasions, forced migrations, fossil fuel subsidies, institutional oppression and the development of nuclear weapons capable of rendering most of life on this planet obsolete?

It isn't easy being greezy. Whether we're just trying to be better people or better citizens, there comes a time when it is necessary to critically examine the world around us. Doing so - assessing the external fabric of the national, social and ecological bubbles in which we all live - should reveal to us insights about our own internal environment. For example, a good Dhamma practitioner might seek to live a moral life. To do so is to be chaste, to abstain from intoxicants and sexual immodesty, to not kill or harm other beings. If this same person were to live in accord with the rules laid out for a 'good' life, is it considered killing to order some steaks from the butcher on her way home from work to feed her family? Sure, she didn't kill a cow, but her participation in the transaction as a consumer of a killed animal makes her complicit, or at least partly responsible, doesn't it? When Charles Manson suggested his family kill the people living in the house at Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, he technically didn't murder anyone. Was he acquitted of his charges?

Most people, if given sufficient time to think, can begin to piece together that something isn't right with the modern world. Things seem off. Pesky questions might arise about why there is so much war, why so much inequality, why so much political corruption, why are so many people homeless and starving, why do there seem to be more natural disasters, heatwaves and species extinctions, why do things keep getting more expensive while the minimum wage remains the same, why is there so much addiction, drug abuse, alienation and suicide? Answers to these questions may not come as readily as the questions themselves. The problem is that many people don't even have the requisite time to look around and reflect on the situation. Worse still, is that many people receive messaging through the media they consume which propagandizes them into channeling their abstract feelings of exploitation and injustice at manufactured scapegoats and boogeymen: immigrants, the poor, minorities, Muslims, each other. 

In his most recent book, entitled Illegitimate Authority, celebrated intellectual Noam Chomsky observes:

Both Lippmann and Bernays credited the Creel Committee for demonstrating the power of propaganda in "manufacturing consent" (Lippmann) and "engineering of consent" (Bernays). This "new art in the practice of democracy," Lippmann explained, could be used to keep the " ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" —the general public— passive and obedient while the self-designated "responsible men" will attend to important matters, free from the "trampling and roar of a bewildered herd." Bernays expressed similar views. They were not alone.

The trampling and roar of the bewildered herd has been misdirected, leaving the true enemy unseen and unscathed, with most of us not even noticing a trick has been played; that we've been duped. We're too busy fighting one another. We're too lost in fearful and worried thoughts about violent migrants pouring in over the border with guns and drugs, of swarthy, depraved, blood-thirsty terrorists, plotting, lurking, waiting, hellbent on the destruction of western democracy, threatening the safety of innocents everywhere. A buzzing blitz of macabre mayhem and murder await us in our pockets, reminding us that the threat is constant and unending and that as soon as one major tragedy or concern has waned, a fresh frenzy is ready to take its place. We are made to believe we are always under the threat of imminent destruction; a hostile nuclear submarine armed and ready off the shore, or maybe the next global pandemic. These drummed-up fears are incessantly broadcast on the news and propagated relentlessly across social media, whether they be financial, local, epidemiological or more personal - big-dicked black men ready to steal your woman, critical race theory trying to shame you for your whiteness, debauched liberals eager to reassign the gender of your children, trans people and other sexual miscreants lying in wait in public restrooms to ogle and molest young boys and girls, Mexicans flooding in to take your job, the list goes on - while the real, actual threats go unreported. For example, the climate crisis is the most pressing issue we face as a species, yet it gets scant coverage by comparison. The need for action becomes more urgent by the day yet we see little movement on this topic and, in conservative circles, flat out denial.

In order to liberate ourselves from this litany of false and exaggerated fears and focus on what truly needs our attention, we need the space to reflect - to contemplate our circumstances. This is why mindfulness practices matter now more than ever. How can one be expected to think about saving for their retirement if they can't think about how they're going to survive until the end of the month? 

A lingering observation from my time at the Vipassana retreat hinges on this very idea. I see now how vital it is to be in an environment insulated from the onslaught of worries and distractions that define the everyday default world we live in. Once inside such a space, there is finally the possibility to decompress, to declutter and allow the mind to settle. This is absolutely necessary in order to develop the clarity and focus needed for genuine insight and observation. 

If focus is regularly disrupted and misinformation keeps the mind confused and agitated, then the cogitative climate, rather than being suitable for realization, becomes quite opaque and intractable; the true nature of things remains impenetrable. The more conspiratorial part in me wonders whether this is by design. It would seem prudent to keep the governed throttled and in the dark, snapping at one another and quarreling over scraps, lest they uncover the big secret: there's more herd than shepherds. To quote David Hume:

...nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.

Poor Things

Last night I watched Poor Things, the newest film by Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos. So often when new movies are released they follow the same safe, formulaic patterns beaten into well-worn footpaths. It's hard to find anything weird or experimental, particularly when it comes to Hollywood. When movies like The Lighthouse, or Beau Is Afraid, or Everything Everywhere All At Once make it to the silver screen, I usually get giddy with excitement. This movie can be added to the company of those above. If you read nothing else, read this mini-review I wrote earlier in one of my scummy, villainous Discord hideouts:

It's a little bit Frankenstein a little bit Paradise Lost a little bit Metropolis and a lot of dark comedy. The acting is phenomenal, particularly Emma Stone's performance, but Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe's, too. Honestly, I started shaky on Ruffalo, but really enjoyed his portrayal of the character after only a short time. The score is unique and arresting and perfectly suited to the film's absurdity. It lends an amazing atmosphere which is further complimented by the cinematography and the use of ultra-wide lenses and disorienting camerawork. The story is full of important philosophical questions around shame, sexuality, exploitation, toxic masculinity, women's liberation, capitalism, etc., and is a bizarre sort of 'coming of age' tale with Emma Stone's character being perhaps one of the most badass Buddhamind bitches I've ever seen. 

Note that it is extremely sexually graphic, so if watching soft-core porn of Emma Stone isn't your thing, then you should probably skip it. Personally, I am a theater-boner enthusiast following in the long tradition established by Paul Reubens and most recently reprised by Republican senator Lauren Bobert.

The film, at around 2.5 hours in length, inexplicably left me wanting more. When the credits rolled I felt legitimate sadness that the ride was over. Nearly everything about the film is wonderful: the acting, the casting, the costume design, the sound, the sets, the music, the story, the themes. It is a remarkable and memorable film that invites repeated viewings. As mentioned earlier, the wide-angle lenses create a sense of kaleidoscopic disorientation and vastness that seem to puff the world out at the edges. Closeups of Emma Stone are mesmerizing. After watching Poor Things I couldn't help but feel it reminded me of something. Only after waking up this morning did I remember how I felt when watching Tim Burton's Beetlejuice as a child. The world was so strange and engrossing. Growing up I watched the film countless times. Vivid memories return of the distinct smell of the warm insides of the VCR as the cassette rewinded. Both films have eccentric characters, outlandish costumes, unusual creatures and bizarre happenings.

But back to Poor Things. A particular scene stands out in my mind, starring the very talented and very flexible Kathryn Hunter whom I'd first seen in the opening of Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth. In Lanthimos' film she is an aged brothel owner possessing sagely wisdoms and a violent love of lobes. She skillfully dispenses these insights and encourages our heroine to endure her hardships despite the struggle, revealing a precious truth: if one does not experience all the colors and shades of her life - the hopeless and the exalted, the miserable and the ecstatic - how can one really know anything? How can one discover truth or make meaning? Suffering, if nothing else, is instructive. 

This lesson is rattling around my head from the recent Vipassana retreat. The teacher, S.N. Goenka, repeatedly reminded us that without pain, without the body clamoring for escape, without confronting intense sensation, there is no true chance for metamorphosis. Imagine for a second a stringed instrument, perhaps an acoustic guitar. In order for it to make a sound, the strings need to be taught. Strumming a series of limp strings will only generate at best a sad metallic swishing sound. Once the strings are tightly pulled, however, suddenly something magical happens: a series of notes ring out. But it isn't enough to simply strike a bunch of open strings. Doing so only creates a discordant sound lacking harmony. Instead one must apply pressure to the strings - the right amount of pressure in the right place - to produce a euphonic sonorous sound. One must learn where to place their fingers along the guitar's neck to summon the desired vibration and bring it into existence. So too our bodies must be taught. We must sense with our higher selves in order to learn where to apply the right pressure to make those beautiful karmic melodies we want to hear. In time we must realize we are to play jazz, to improvise as best we can, and remember not to bludgeon ourselves for our false notes nor crave the rapture of grand rhapsodies. 

I know I drifted away from the half-assed movie review. That's fine. We eliminate the possibility of further spoilers this way. Go see the movie. It's fucking good. 

If you don't like it, fuck a seagull or become a goat.