Regaining Soil and Sanity

Oh, one more thing. I don't know how many people who read this blog also read TaoGnostic, but if you didn't know yet, Dan has moved his blog and writings to a new domain: http://danbartlett.co.uk/. He's pretty awesome, so if you haven't been there yet, check him out.

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Dan had a splash page up while he was busy getting the blog set up, and it was a passage from Wilhelm Reich that I really liked. Since the splash page is gone now, I'll put the passage here -

"It IS possible to get out of a trap. However, in order to break out of a prison, one first must confess to being in a prison. The trap is man's emotional structure, his character structure. There is little use in devising systems of thought about the nature of the trap if the only thing to do in order to get out of the trap is to know the trap and to find the exit. Everything else is utterly useless: Singing hymns about the suffering in the trap, as the enslaved Negro does; or making poems about the beauty of freedom outside of the trap, dreamed of within the trap; or promising a life outside the trap after death, as Catholicism promises its congregations; or confessing a semper ignorabimus as do the resigned philosophers; or building a philosophic system around the despair of life within the trap, as did Schopenhauer; or dreaming up a superman who would be so much different from the man in the trap, as Nietzsche did, until, trapped in a lunatic asylum, he wrote, finally, the full truth about himself—too late. . . .

"The first thing to do is to find the exit out of the trap."

The nature of the trap has no interest whatsoever beyond this one crucial point: WHERE IS THE EXIT OUT OF THE TRAP?

One can decorate a trap to make life more comfortable in it.

This is done by the Michelangelos and the Shakespeares and the Goethes. One can invent makeshift contraptions to secure longer life in the trap. This is done by the great scientists and physicians, the Meyers and the Pasteurs and the Flemings. One can devise great art in healing broken bones when one falls into the trap.

The crucial point still is and remains: to find the exit out of the trap. WHERE IS THE EXIT INTO THE ENDLESS OPEN SPACE?

The exit remains hidden. It is the greatest riddle of all. The most ridiculous as well as tragic thing is this:

THE EXIT IS CLEARLY VISIBLE TO ALL TRAPPED IN THE HOLE. YET NOBODY SEEMS TO SEE IT. EVERYBODY KNOWS WHERE THE EXIT IS. YET NOBODY SEEMS TO MAKE A MOVE TOWARD IT. MORE: WHOEVER MOVES TOWARD THE EXIT, OR WHOEVER POINTS TOWARD IT IS DECLARED CRAZY OR A CRIMINAL OR A SINNER TO BURN IN HELL.

It turns out that the trouble is not with the trap or even with finding the exit. The trouble is WITHIN THE TRAPPED ONES.

All this is, seen from outside the trap, incomprehensible to a simple mind. It is even somehow insane. Why don't they see and move toward the clearly visible exit? As soon as they get close to the exit they start screaming and run away from it. As soon as anyone among them tries to get out, they kill him. Only a very few slip out of the trap in the dark night when everybody is asleep.."

Tags:

• meta
• civilization
• rewilding

pushing through writer's block

Apparently, I haven't got anything interesting to say. Or at least I haven't for the past three weeks. Today's date being what it is, maybe my luck is changing.

maybe...

I've obviously got writer's block again, which I think stems from some sort of energy blockage in some other part of my life. It feels like a burden to be writing these few words. I can chalk that up to just being the result of an unhealthy rut I'm in with diet and sleep (which is certainly part of it), or I can look a little deeper at what's going on in me emotionally right now. And prose isn't the place to do that. Not at the moment.

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But while I have the mental momentum and my fingers going, I might as well try to make some sort of update on my stable, yet never boring life. Unschooling with my brother is going well. After so much schooling, I anticipated Mike to not really have any natural interest in "learning", but even with as much abuse as he was put through, he seems to be relatively unscathed and still has a very healthy and strong desire to learn. Of course, he doesn't enjoy book learning any more in this setting than he did in school, but he has a passion for building things, working with his hands, figuring out puzzles - in a word, tinkering. We've built a rather large torsion catapult (right now it's really just the arm. we're still refining our methods for actually hurling something...), played with sound-barrier breaking (homemade) whips, started an open fire with a magnifying glass, shoddily constructed a bow with which to shoot "arrows" (point-less, fletchless sticks), and just the other day we fashioned our first spear after being inspired by a book I recently picked up Tom Brown's Field Guide to Living with the Earth. (While I'm on that subject, I'll briefly mention my own unschooling pursuits. I'm reading a whole bunch of books in tandem at the moment (and very slowly): the above title, forest gardening, the book of the damned, the continuum concept, gaia's garden, and the teenage liberation handbook. That last one brings me back to what I was talking about before I most rudely interrupted myself) We've also gone on various field trips - to the zoo, to the magic house, to a food not bombs meeting... Planning on trips to the art museum and science center next. It's honestly a lot of fun. And it be even more fun if I didn't have to worry about complying with Missouri's even relatively lax homeschooling requirements (needing a 1000 hours of "instruction" and some form of evaluation of what "progress" is made).

In other news, I started experimenting with sprouting grains again today, now that I have the appropriate supplies (a mason jar and some cheese cloth). I've sprouted quinoa once a couple months ago but in the confusion of a three day power outage, I didn't get the chance to enjoy eating it. Now I'm attempting to sprout what I hope is viable whole grain berries. I'll let you know how it goes.

My mead has been officially finished fermenting for a week or so now. I drank some with some friends last sunday. It is sweet and yummy. It's so sweet that I'm not yet convinced that it's finished fermenting, but it certainly isn't bubbling very much at all anymore.

I'm wanting to build a rocket stove, but I still need to gather the necessary supplies. I was intending to use the supply list and instructions from Recipes for Disaster which calls for some rather large cans (two 1 gallon cans, one 26 oz. can, and two 16 oz. cans). If anyone in the area has these or other metal containers of comparable size that they wouldn't mind parting with, let me know.


Alright. That's enough prose. I need to go vent my emotions in some less abstract medium.

Tags:

• unschooling
• food
• progress