tom campbell

2008-11-07T20:41:00.000-08:00

I killed a rabbit two days ago. It was a farmed rabbit, male, darkly furred, and very cute. I clubbed it at the base of its head while Shaun, an instructer with Trackers, held it caringly but firmly by the hips. Before we slaughtered the rabbits, Shaun led us through a small Thanksgiving address, making sure everyone present was of one mind in gratitude for the world surrounding us and for the rabbits we were to eat. That bit right there is the most ceremony-like ritual that we do at Trackers. I really appreciate it. We stroked and petted the rabbits before killing them, and as they died. It took me a couple minutes it seemed to work up the courage to move on from taking aim with the club to taking that massive swing. I struck, and I immediately pulled back, pulled my hand to my mouth, almost in surprise or shock at what had just happened. I looked to Shaun to see if that one thump had been enough. Thankfully, it had. The rabbit's eyes were wide as it died. His tongue was sticking out of his mouth, bright red with blood. A small thick puddle of red also formed below his mouth. He kicked a bit, but his spirit left pretty quickly. Shaun felt deep in his chest to make sure his heart had stopped. After my friend 'matt! killed the other rabbit, we skinned and gutted them. Shaun showed me how to gut the one I killed, and then I showed 'matt! and Gabe how to do theirs. We washed the carcases in the stream and then they were made into stew. I ate my portion without spice, so I could really taste the meat. It was a solemn meal for me. I had a bit of trouble falling asleep that night.

I told Stephanie, a fellow student who happens to be vegetarian (and who was not present for the slaughter), as the time drew near for the slaughter, that I didn't want to kill the rabbit, but I did want to experience killing the rabbit, if that makes any sense.

I've eaten meat almost all of my life, and this was only the second time I've been present for the death of the animal that would go to feed me, first time that the animal died at my hands. So much of how I live my life leads directly to the death of life far away from me where I never see it directly, and so I never have the opportunity to feel empathy for that life, to feel the effect of my actions or my choices, to act and to choose with full knowledge and intent. Never have I had that opportunity until now. And in the future, I never want to proceed without that opportunity. I am very grateful to that rabbit for giving me its life and I feel blessed to have been moving towards the competency to raise my own domesticated animals and to hunt the wild ones.

Here's 'matt!'s account and take on all this.

2008-10-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

Tumblr has a super easy user interface, so I've been using that more than blogger lately. Check it. You'll have to email me directly to comment, if you care to do so.

Mostly, it seems people use tumblr as a space to copy and paste data, gather links and organize thoughts, and then move to their main blogs for a more polished post. I just know I want to wire into my body a habit of generating, and right now I need to use the easiest tools available.

(rest assured, I realize pen and paper is easier, and talking and singing even easier still. maybe once my voice is strong enough that my family back home can hear, I'll abandon this silly thing.)

2008-10-11T18:09:00.000-07:00

I have a tattoo. I finally went through with getting one at the beginning of this past summer, just a few days before I went on my bike trip. I wanted to get it then as a kind of rite of initiation to help usher me into the next phase of my story. My friend Mary gave it to me, stick 'n' poke style (that is, a never-before used sewing needle that has been sterilized by flame is stuck into the eraser end of a pencil, floss wrapped around down the length of it, and dipped in black india ink. and then it's just a lot of poking. she went over it five times. my skin took it really well, she said). It didn't hurt nearly as bad as I was expecting, but it still hurt a lot. It was interesting to feel the difference in the sensitivity of skin as she got closer to the (apparently very delicate) crook of my arm.

The tattoo is of the word "beast". It is placed on the inside of my right forearm, right where I can see it all the time, if I'm not wearing long sleeves. I didn't decide on what to get indellibly marked on my body until right before I had it done, but of course, I had been brainstorming for a while. I wanted to have something that would remind me that I am alive and that I will die eventually, so I need to live it up in this moment. I was thinking about several options- "memento mori" (remember that you are mortal), "memento vivere" (remember that you must live), simply the words in english "you will die" (which is a bit grim), and the word "animal". I finally decided on beast via looking up the etymology of the word animal, because I knew that animal was a latin-based word, and there must have been another word for animal in the english language before latin invaded it. And beast was that word!

I really like it.

It does what it is intended to do for me. And it has the connotation of referring to someone who is powerful and a force to be reckoned with, which is something for me to aspire towards, haha! And something I didn't consider at the time but is kind of cool is that I have the mark of the beast on me. Hah!, I've left myself behind. Thanks but no thanks, heaven. This world is good enough for me. I'm having too much fun doing my beasty thing.

2008-09-15T04:27:00.000-07:00

So, here's an overview of some of the things I did during the Nature of the Village open space:

bird language sits (I now know what a wren tit and a stellar jay sound like, but more importantly I understand that songbirds are either content (referred to as baseline) or alarmed, that they only sing when content, and they use more simple chirping for both other contented activities and alarms, that it's the intensity of those more simple chirps to listen for that will tell you if they are alarming. Oh, and that's all important because bird alarms can be used while hunting both to let you know what other animals are in the area, and conversely, whether or not those animals know that you are in the area or not. Songbirds are the security systems of nature. You've got to be careful, or you'll trip the alarm and every deer or rabbit or whoever will immediately sprint away.)
We slaughtered a sheep, which provided the meat for most of our dinners for the week. I witnessed the kill, and I helped in the skinning and quartering parts of the processing (I also helped render fat). So strange to have eaten meat for 20 years and to have this be the first time I've directly witnessed the death of the animal that goes to feed me. I look forward to taking an even more direct role as time goes on.
I made progress on the carving of my first bow. It'll be shootable in the next couple days, hopefully.
I picked and ate a lot of evergreen huckleberries for pemmican making (they're everywhere at Cedar Grove!), with the occasional salal berry found and thrown in for good measure.
I assembled a bow drill fire kit and got sore trying to start a fire. I think I'll get it down pretty quick as I find more refined materials. I need a wider drill and a smoother bow (I'll probably just carve down the one I have). I also need to find the best position for my gangly self to hold the drill steady so it won't wobble and so I can put as much pressure as is necessary to get that coveted black smoking powder (if the powder is grey or brown, it's not enough pressure)
I learned the very basics of flintknapping- stone breaks at a 45 degree angle from the direction of impact. also, you need to strike on a face of the stone angled towards you- it doesn't take much force, just the right angles. Also, obsidian shards are really really sharp, the dust from knapping can give you silicosis, and improper technique can give you tendonitis and/or carpal tunnel.
We looked at some tracks and scat- deer, fox, elk, bobcat, and bear
Went out on the umiak, and paddled a kayak for the first time, both of the skin on wood frame design.
played bamboo swordthrowing games, and spolin games - very good medicine for me. both work on building one-mindedness and sensory awareness. cut the pauses, and magic happens in the space between you and the people around you.
harvested mussels from the beach; played giddily in the freezing cold surf of the pacific ocean
ate and helped cook amazing delicious meals.
ate ripe figs right off the tree (yet another first; certainly not the last first . . .)

Also, our group will be keeping a blog where we will be documenting what we are doing. I might end up cross posting either from there to here or vice versa. The name we chose for our group is Earth Ninjas.

2008-09-15T03:13:00.000-07:00

I got back saturday from the first week of the TrackersTEAMS adult immersion program, during which we travelled to Cedar Grove Farm, a working permaculture homestead (with lots of goats and chickens and fruit trees, tons of huckleberries, a big garden, and thousands of disease-resistant cedars that have been planted out) just outside the small town of Port Orford on the southern Oregon coast.

We camped for 6 nights there during our Nature of the Village open space.

Open space gatherings (I'm using Mythic Cartography as a reference here) are based on four principles-

Whoever comes are the right people,
Whatever happens is the only thing that could have,
When it starts, it starts, and
When it ends, it ends

and one law, the Law of Two Feet-

If you are neither learning nor contributing where you're at, use your two feet to move somewhere that you can

and an assortment of understandings-

be prepared to be surprised
open space needs passion and responsibility to work

The law of two feet leads to a couple phenomena, labeled butterflies and bumblebees- different styles of participation in the gathering beyond the standard of active and steady- butterflies can just sit and observe intently, and bumblebees may bounce around from one group to another, pollinating along the way.

Basically, there's a big board set up in a central location with time slots and locations delineated, and anyone at the gathering can plant the seed of intent for an activity or a workshop or a discussion, whatever. So there's all sorts of things going on during each time period, and you have to choose. It's beautiful and chaotic, but also not very coherent.

And that's where another piece of the puzzle comes in- agile retrospectives. The agile retrospective is a social technology that aims to allow a group of people to work together as efficiently as possible. At regularly scheduled meetings, you evaluate how things have gone so far and what needs to change/happen next. The model we followed this week was using sticky notes to contribute on a board, optionally announcing what the notes say verbally, first just observations, then feelings, and finally needs or next actions. Then, all of the needs are read by the facilitator and each one is asked to have a volunteer (who feels passion and responsibility for it) take on making sure the next step towards fulfilling that need is taken. We did slightly different variations on this theme three times each day.

I enjoyed the open space format because I got to tailor each moment to what I wanted to do, but it became exhausting by mid-week as I didn't make taking down-time (and thereby missing something) a priority. For me, I think it would work best for just two consecutive days. Maybe three. Seven was a bit much.

And the retrospectives are going to grow into an amazing tool. It's still very unfamiliar territory to me, being constantly asked how I'm feeling and what I need, so I'm glad that we'll continue with this model throughout the program.

As Tony (our facilitator) reminded us all week, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

2008-09-05T01:12:00.000-07:00

Oh! One more thing. A quote from a zine by Ran that has put the weight of my fear of failure into a new perspective:

Cynics say that people like me are foolish idealists, because we're fighting according to our values and not according to what seems possible. But these cynics are the real idealists, so fixated on the ideal of "success" that they become paralyzed, unable to act without the appearance of likely success. And anyone who controls the appearance of what is possible and what is impossible controls these people utterly. That's how a lion "tamer" is able to abuse and humiliate an animal that could kill him in seconds, by giving it the illusion that it can't win. And people who have been given the illusion that they are powerless in what they really care about, like the lion, become depressed and lethargic, and stop caring, and just go through the motions waiting to die.

In our culture this is called "growing up," and these mature and sensible people are always telling us that we're "wasting" this or that because we can't succeed. Even if we can't, what's more of waste, a trapped animal that fights to the death, or one that dies without a fight?

I'm totally tamed right now. But I think I'm finding my way to the cage's door.

2008-09-05T01:02:00.000-07:00

Holy shit, I live in a different city now.

Over 2000 miles away from all of my family and most of my friends. (Did you know that Google maps now offers walking directions? It's pretty humorous to scan through, especially the strings of nameless left and right turns. It looks like if I walked 24/7, it would only take 30 days and 21 hours to get home. . .)

I miss 'em. Quite a bit. I'd be missing 'em a heck of a lot more if it weren't for my brain-cancer causing cell phone. Maintaining connection over vast distance. Despite vast distance. While simultaneously figuring out how to become evermore present in what's going on right here. It seems to be a funny dance I'm doing now, a balancing act, on my toes, on the run. I'm very busy these days, and it's all interesting.

What's the plan? Become a competent human in nine months time, take what I've gathered back home and share the love? How nomadic of me.

In a big way, I'm moving directly towards everything I want for myself and for everyone around me, but in another way, I left everything I want behind. Cut myself off and away. Transplanted. Putting down roots here now, but not too deep! In limbo.

Or maybe I'm just akimbo, an elbow temporarily jutting out away from the body of my family. On a walkabout. A rite of passage. A coming into my own.

Whatever, I'm excited.

I'm amazed and so grateful to my family for making this adventure possible to me. I definitely recognize how blessed I am to not have to take a job to pay my way through this. I can give it the kind of focus that I used to give high school, but even more so, because this is not compulsory. Or, more aptly, it's less like high school and more like the immersive learning that children in indigenous cultures experience(d).

Actually, that leads in to the literal rejuvenation I am intentionally trying to cultivate- behaving more as a child, shedding the rigid seriousness of civilized adulthood in favor of light-hearted curiosity, playfulness, joy. I want to be adaptable- flexible, again. My current rattail hairdo harks back to my seven year old self for inspiration (I had a rattail in first grade as well). Now I like it when people call me Thomas, for the same reason.

I suppose it seems kind of contradictory to be rejuvenating and rite-of-passaging at the same time. I guess I need to move backward before I can move forward. If I must move linearly at all, that is.

Tis late. My sheepskins beckon.

2008-08-24T12:35:00.002-07:00

6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss Of Formal Schooling

Via cryptogon; via The Onion:

"It might be The Onion, but it’s not funny.

Local first-grader Connor Bolduc, 6, experienced the first inkling of a coming lifetime of existential dread Monday upon recognizing his cruel destiny to participate in compulsory education for the better part of the next two decades, sources reported.

“I don’t want to go to school,” Bolduc told his parents, the crushing reality of his situation having yet to fully dawn on his naïve consciousness. “I want to play outside with my friends.”

While Bolduc stood waiting for the bus to pick him up on his first day of elementary school, his parents reportedly were able to “see the wheels turning in his little brain” as the child, for the first time in his life, began to understand how dire and hopeless his situation had actually become.

Basic math—which the child has blissfully yet to learn—clearly demonstrates that the number of years before he will be released from the horrifying prison of formal schooling, is more than twice the length of time he has yet existed. According to a conservative estimate of six hours of school five days a week for nine months of the year, Bolduc faces an estimated 14,400 hours trapped in an endless succession of nearly identical, suffocating classrooms.

This nightmarish but undeniably real scenario does not take into account additional time spent on homework, extracurricular responsibilities, or college, sources said.

“I can’t wait until school is over,” said the 3-foot-tall tragic figure, who would not have been able, if asked, to contemplate the amount of time between now and summer, let alone the years and years of tedium to follow.

The concept of wasting a majority of daylight hours sitting still in a classroom when he could be riding his bicycle, playing in his tree fort, or lying in the grass looking at bugs—especially considering that he had already wasted two years of his life attending preschool and kindergarten—seemed impossibly unfair to Bolduc. Moreover, sources said, he had no idea how much worse the inescapable truth will turn out to be."

Also, here's a non-satirical article that explains part of why I dropped out of college.

2008-08-08T18:22:00.003-07:00

At long last, pictures from an amble through Pruitt-Igoe! I took these earlier today.

AND, a video tour(!) (in three parts): Pruitt Igoe, urban forest of weeds.

Follow along as tom learns to use his digital camera. The audio quality is atrocious and annoying in parts one and two, but luckily, I didn't start saying much of interest until part three.

Pruitt-Igoe is beautiful. Hopefully the whole city will look something like this in fifty year's time.

2008-08-07T19:26:00.002-07:00

Fox Park Farm, the community garden in my parents' neighborhood where I tend a bed, was featured in a piece by ABC about community gardens in general. Some of the people interviewed are also shareholders in the New Roots Urban Farm CSA.

I uploaded some photos that I've taken of my plot, since I didn't see it at all in the video (it's kind of tucked away in a corner, and it's rather weedy). Some were taken sometime in May, and some are from earlier today. (btw, most photos that I upload come with more interesting commentary in the captions than the sparse statements I've been making here about the photos. Also, I'm linking to web albums instead of posting photos here so that you can choose, based on your internet speed, what you want to spend time loading). Yay for growing things; l'chiam!

2008-08-06T22:01:00.003-07:00

I can't remember what keyword search led me to The Open Mind, by Dawna Markova (only the feeling that it was a moment of inspiration, like I had caught a scent on a trail). It describes not personality types but thinking patterns. People learn and express themselves in wide ranging ways. Hence the phrase "multiple intelligences". Hence the industrial education system only working for a select portion of the population. Markova explains what is actually happening differently for different people.

Our brains can receive input in three primary ways- through our eyes, through our ears, and through (the rest of) our bodies. Markova's theory is that as we learn or express things, we move through different levels of consciousness while processing and integrating, and at each level of consciousness (conscious, subconscious, unconscious) we use a different language or modality. Overall, then, there are six possible patterns of intelligence.

For a long time, I've recognized that I am "primarily" a visual learner. Now I understand that "primarily" actually means consciously. From what I have gathered, I believe my thinking pattern to be VKA (that is, visually conscious, kinesthetically subconscious, and auditorially unconsious).

The conscious level is a very focused and narrow level of attention. It operates linearly and is in the mode of making decisions, judging things, feeling certain. The unconscious level of attention is very unfocused, "spacey", broad, nonlinear. It is daydreaming mode, where you are completely receptive, open, and also rather sensitive or vulnerable. It is the source of creativity. The subconscious functions as a kind of bridge between the conscious and unconscious, where you can look at both sides of an issue and see clearly the benefits or the truth of both sides.

I see the VKA pattern at work in me in that I am primarily visual- that is, I learn, understand, remember most easily via the written word or by looking at maps, and I communicate most easily and thoroughly via the written word as well. My unconscious seems to be primarily auditory because auditory stimulation puts me in a very receptive space- so much so that when in a conversation, I will become so engrossed in the other person's words that if they ask a question, or if there is a natural space in the conversation where I would perhaps be expected to say something, I often find myself spaced out, far away from being able to come up with a conscious response. Speaking takes a lot of energy for me, so it is a rather special, sometimes sacred thing. I really enjoy music that has human voices harmonizing, and I enjoy playing with singing, but mostly when I am alone. The kinesthetic subconscious kind of just fell where it fell for me, at least so far. I don't need to move to think, and I don't necessarily need to physically do something to learn how to do it (it's not my conscious modality), but I'm also not super-sensitive to touch- it's not something I shy away from or don't like to share freely (so it's not my unconscious modality either). Well, I do kind of bridge kinesthetically from unconscious to conscious by talking with my hands before I speak. I think Markova describes the phenomenon (which I hadn't paid attention to before) as painting a picture with my hands (kinesthetic/visual) as I fish for the right words (auditory).

Beyond the personal, there are more interesting implications for understanding the thinking patterns of the people that you relate with. It can give you an understanding of why they perhaps come off so strongly with one mode of communication, or why they seem so overly sensitive about a certain way you want to connect with them. That understanding can afford you some measure of compassion and patience and can allow you to tailor your interaction with them so you meet them where they can meet you back.

----

I really enjoy using these typing systems as tools to understand more how I tick. I retook the Myers Briggs and was surprised to find myself being called an ISFJ. I used to think I was an INFP, but I think now that that is what I wanted to be (or what I thought other people wanted me to be). It is also the kind of person I am attracted to. Hopefully, these letters keep changing. I'd like to intentionally get more balanced, especially towards E and N.

2008-08-05T22:58:00.004-07:00

I just put a few photos up. You get to see the bike I used for my bike trip (all decked out with kitty litter buckets), and some sweet shots of red earth farms.

2008-08-01T11:00:00.003-07:00

I first heard of the Emotional Freedom Techniques from Dan (whose site is under construction right now), started reading the free manual, and stashed the idea way down on my to-do list when the description became too complicated to follow. Then, Aaron brought it up again, and with more urging. So, I finally took another look, and watching videos of people doing it makes it look as simple as it really is.

Basically, you tap on various "energy meridians" (via Traditional Chinese Medicine) while calling to mind some specific ailment. The most important part, it seems to me, is the setup statement at the beginning, where you state (whether you believe it or not) that even though you have whatever ailment you have, you love and completely accept yourself (while tapping the "karate chop" side of your hand).

I've used it successfully so far just to get rid of a headache. I've been getting rid of headaches through non-resistance to them for a while (I usually wallow in the pain for a while before I remember the trick), but this technique seems to speed up the process quite a bit.

There's all sorts of things I want to try it on, though. A lot of these things run a lot deeper than a headache- social anxiety, fear of conflict and disapproval, lethargy, depression, the tightness of my muscles and ligaments, and my inability to gain weight.

There's definitely a lot of hype in the videos, which excites me with the potential here for this to become real folk medicine magic, so I'll report back if I am able to use it to heal more deeply.

2008-07-27T02:08:00.002-07:00

Humans innately possess vast powers of intelligence, meaning the ability to respond to each new situation, not with instinct or habit, but with a new, unique action adapted and tailored to that situation.

As children, we possess and use this intelligence with great glee, but we are only able to do so when secure in our connection with our family. That connection breaks very easily when we are children. We make a lot of mistakes. We get hurt. A lot. And it breaks our fragile connection, our sense of security, and while we are in that state, we can no longer function intelligently. But, we instinctively know how to heal from the hurts we experience. Then, we can regain the connection to and safety in our family, and with it, our intelligence. This healing work takes the form of some sort of physical/emotional release (crying, shaking, tantruming, talking, laughing, and even yawning) while within the loving and totally accepting presence of a care-giver (most likely mom or dad). With the healing work done, the child can integrate the experience as wisdom and return to playing intelligently with zestful and genuine enthusiasm, just as before whatever hurt it was occurred.

The problems arise when that healing process is interrupted or disallowed by the care-giver. When children are told to stop crying, to stop tantruming, in short, to behave, and are then often forced into some form of isolation as punishment for not complying (time-out, going to your room), they cannot restore their broken connection and cannot begin acting intelligently again. The vastness of the child's intelligence is reduced in some small measure as the hurt emotions remain unresolved and in essence jam up some portion of their intelligence. It then becomes a positive feedback loop as any future event that is similar in some way to a past, unhealed hurt will trigger the same response. And so, instead of being able to respond to that new situation uniquely (intelligently), we become more like robots that perform a particular habit when a button is pushed, enslaved to unresolved emotions. And all the little unresolved hurts accumulate, tying up more and more of the child's vast innate intelligence, and he or she grows into the all-too-common adult who is completely ruled by habit and burdened by a childhood's worth of emotional baggage.

This is my paraphrasing of the basic theory behind Re-evaluation counseling, otherwise known as Co-counseling. So, the whole deal of co-counseling is to spend the time to work through and discharge those old jammed up emotions, with the loving, accepting presence of a counseling peer as a stand-in for the connection you needed with mom and pop. Peers take turns as client and counselor, sharing equal time, making this a largely non-hierarchical, low/no-cost form of mental health care.

Certainly, there's a lot of potential in that kind of work, but of more pressing interest to me is the ramifications it has for how we as physically mature, but emotionally wounded, adults tend to those who are children right now. When caretakers of this culture interfere with the healing process in children, it is most often because the adults' buttons are being pushed - their past unresolved hurts are triggered by the crying they were not allowed to do. But with an understanding of the healing process, it becomes possible to look beyond the push button responses and sit with and listen to your child's grief, and allow them to heal themselves.

I think it becomes possible to do that because this theory is a myth, a story we can tell to make sense of these situations where two-year-olds are behaving terribly for seemingly no good reason. We need a story like this to guide us towards the right action because "babies don't come with instruction manuals", at least not in our fragmented culture, and a theory like this begins to restore that kind of very necessary instruction manual that is woven seamlessly into a healthy culture.

I've only poked around the website I linked to above a little, but it seems pretty extensive. I've read The Human Side of Human Beings, by Harvey Jackins, which is a short but thorough introduction to these ideas. I'm participating in a co-counseling group while I'm still here in st. louis. The facilitator says there's a thriving co-counseling community in portland, but I think I'll be pretty well immersed in other things while I'm there.

2008-07-26T21:24:00.002-07:00

World Naked Bike Ride is coming to St. Louis this year for the first time!

Next saturday, August 2nd, Tower Grove Park (pool pavilion), gather at 7pm, ride starts at 9.

Two of my favorite things put together in one event! Let's just hope the st. louis police play nice like police have in other cities. . .

2008-06-18T02:50:00.002-07:00

I recently returned home from my first ever long distance bike trip!

I road 260 some odd miles, first west along the katy trail (a converted old railroad bed) and then north through Columbia to dancing rabbit ecovillage (my third summer in a row visiting there) and neighboring red earth farms, making it there in four days.

I lent a hand to my friend Brian (aka Ziggy), who is building his cob house, while I was at dancing rabbit.

Then I headed on over to red earth for a short introductory visit. REF is intending to grow into a collection of homesteads (more spread out than the village model of DR). The people there are really great and knowledgable, and one homestead, called Dandelion, aspires to grow into a tightly knit group of 6-8 adults, focusing on attaining sufficiency through permaculture. I'm thinking maybe I'll intern with them at some point after portland.

The bike ride back was more direct, 150 miles, rerouted slightly due to flooding, which I made in three days. I experienced many kindnesses from strangers as a touring bicyclist.

I'm amazed at the absense of residual soreness from this adventure. Certainly, my butt and hands and back got sore and tired as each day went on, but off the bike, after each leg of the journey - just fine. Exhausted, but fine. The whole of the trip was very intense physically, and I do want to note that I cried a lot (well, at least for me - I rarely cry, unfortunately. In fact, before this trip, the last time I cried was last december when I was in the midst of a stomach bug - another physically exhausted moment). I really enjoyed inhabiting my body in this way, going to bed tired - and early! At red earth, with people retreating to separate quarters after dinner, I started sleeping with the sun! Finally! It was amazing.

Of course, ever since I've gotten back, I swung violently in the opposite direction to staying up all night and sleeping through the morning. Life is a lot simpler on the road and in the country. When there are so few distractions, it is a lot easier to apply the self discipline to get done what needs to get done. When biking, I used every ounce of self discipline that I have towards biking, so whenever I rolled into a gas station, or a cafe, I ate a whole lot of ice cream and pizza. But now that I'm back and not biking, I'm still eating a lot of ice cream.

Also now that I'm back, my next goal - getting ready to move to portland, is a lot less physically demanding, and there are so many other more interesting things to be doing than sorting through and getting rid of a childhood's worth of shit. I have to shift to applying all that physical self discipline into mental self discipline.

Ohp, sunrise - that's my signal to finally succomb to that heavy pull of weariness and cut off the endless flow of reddit and brainfood and youtube videos.

2008-05-17T20:07:00.003-07:00

I've got a handful of pictures up of pruitt-igoe forest, the grassy fields to the north, new roots urban farm, their small cramped orchard, and random lots throughout the neighborhood. More to come as I have time.

2008-05-15T23:43:00.004-07:00

Here's google's satellite image of my neighborhood, including the mystical forest formerly known as Pruitt-Igoe. Ground level pictures that I've been taking to come shortly.

2008-05-11T23:06:00.000-07:00

Ran links to a story about a town in Ohio razing abandoned buildings AND tearing up the roads around them.

If only St. Louis could be so cool. It's really rather frustrating because where I live now (north city, near downtown) has already had blocks and blocks of buildings razed, but it's just in preparation for new ticky tacky development, some of which has already been built.

My apartment is just a few blocks away from where Pruitt-Igoe (housing projects built in the 50s and demolished only 18 years later) once stood. They haven't taken out the roads, but they have put a fence around it and simply refrained from mowing it, and after just 35 years it has grown into an amazing beautiful forest of weeds. I'll take and post pictures around the neighborhood soon.

I just hope this depression depresses any more injections of suburbia into my neighborhood so that saplings and seedballs have a chance to take hold.

2008-02-25T21:57:00.000-08:00

A couple of months ago, I became acutely aware that I was circumcised without my consent and that a foreskin might have been something I would have liked to have. I felt anger towards a culture that takes away natural pleasure, destroys intact working systems, and violates bodies, as I so often have, but perhaps never so personally. And I felt frustrated because couldn't see anything I could do to resolve my loss, except to resolve to never circumcise any future son of my own. But then, I read an article about circumcision that mentioned the possibility of foreskin restoration, with a link to a website providing a device to such an end. Hope! Or rather, if hope wishes for something over which I have no agency, what word can I use to describe the seizing of that agency?!

Circumcision became a popular practice among christians in the 1800s as a means to "cure" masturbation. Circumcision strips away the most sensitive nerve endings in the penis (in the ridge of the foreskin) and exposes the glans, a naturally soft, moist mucous membrane (just like the inside of your mouth), to the abrasion of the outside world, with the effect of making it dry, hard, and largely desensitized. While this really sucks for men, it does not, in fact, "cure" masturbation, not that I need to assure anyone of that. But it almost sucks even more for women who end up on the receiving end of a desensitized penis trying to still get off. From what I hear, when a man is intact, the rolling back and forth of the foreskin over the glans, which requires only a very subtle movement, provides so much pleasure that pounding never becomes necessary, and the two pelvises stay closer together for a much greater amount of time, with much increased pleasure for the woman.

None of the health or hygiene claims in support of circumcision hold any merit, according to both common sense and current medical opinion. The intact penis actually produces its own anti-bacterial cream (and lubricant), smegma (scroll 2/3 of the way down to reach the relevant section).

So, I am restoring my foreskin, as much as I can. Techniques for doing so work on the basis of skin under tension creating more skin to relieve the tension, just as in the bellies of pregnant women and the earlobes of people stretching their piercings.

Aside from the primary sensory benefits, I feel like I am getting a chance to physically revoke my membership to the Judeo-Christian tradition, and even to this American culture. I am rejoining the the 3/4 majority of the rest of the world as an "unchosen" pagan. yippee!

In a similar vein, but on a different subject, I recently learned that the use of hops in ales was brought on and enforced top-down during the Protestant Reformation, replacing a wide variety of herbs that were often medicinal, and also highly inebriating, and that such was done so expressly because hops is an anaphrodisiac for men (that is, it decreases sexual desire), as well as it being not nearly as conducive to altering one's state of consciousness (it actually just puts you to sleep and makes you need to pee). Hops is filled with phyto-estrogens, so it could be beneficial for a woman in menopause to consume, but not very good at all for men. So now I am wondering if anyone knows of a commercially available ale that does not contain hops? And if not, that's cool - I'm way excited about brewing my own gruit, anyway.

I am amazed by the hidden, subtle ways in which this culture negates sexuality, and with it, life.
Get your knife off my penis. Get your hops off my libido. You can't control me anymore.

2008-02-19T22:40:00.000-08:00

*scratching head - yawn - rubbing eyes - big stretch - looking around*

I've been hibernating.

But I smell spring.

Actually, I've really only been sleeping an average of nine hours a night. And when I'm awake, I've been eating and staying warm and other activities of that nature.

I share an apartment with my friend Julie and her 18 month old daughter, Luna. Maybe I'll tell more about them later. They fill me with wonder.

This past fall wore on my nerves. I slept on a couch in a Catholic Worker house for a couple month - never without a place to sleep, but not really having a home either. It stretched me - living with so many people. I spent most of my energy staking out my ground on which to just exist, so I didn't have much energy to put towards "doing" much of anything.

I partially moved back in with my parents for a while until the stable, beautiful, awesome apartment fell into our laps. (I still sleep at least one night a week at my parents' house these days.)

The era of stability, tranquility, hibernation (the era of the apartment) started mid november. The only furniture we have is a table and two chairs and a bookshelf. I sleep on the floor, on a mat (or a "rug") made of sheepskins. We eat a lot of sourdough pancakes and quinoa and eggs. And okra and onions and garlic . . . I've been really excited to have a kitchen that is fully open to my fermentation pursuits. Julie and I share much of the same food culture and values. We always have several things bubbling away along the back edges of the countertop - sourdough, komboocha, mead, kimchi, matsoni (yogurt that yoges at room temperature). Julie just recently started souring rolled oats by simply filling an emptied wheat starter with oats instead. She's been making "pancakes" (imagine a fried porridge patty) with that too, sometimes souring the rolled oats with wheat as well. Oh, and I have to recommend my favorite type of kitchen knife, which I first used at CAMP for food not bombs to chop up garlic - the ulu knife, the design of which originates from native Alaskans. You can find them on ebay, often emblazoned with the word "Alaska". Julie daily (sometimes hourly) makes medicinal herbal teas, much to everyone's enjoyment and good health. I've really been digging the bitterness of dandelion root (no pun intended) and am attempting to use it as a bittering agent in my current batch of mead, in place of something like hops. I've also been trying to learn how to brew beer from scratch with wild yeast. It brings me much satisfaction just to be making my own malt, but I wonder if a wild beer has to be a sour beer. If anyone knows how people brewed beer before commercial yeast (and what that kind of beer tasted like), shoot me a note!

I stressed a lot towards the beginning of fall 07 also because I struggled with failing to find a niche to fully integrate myself with New Roots. The crux of the situation rests at the fact that they farm, and I want to garden. Their pace, their flow, just wears me out. I tried to keep up by developing an addiction to coffee, but I quickly recognized that I did not want to live like that. I still want to collaborate with them on projects this spring and summer, just not as a member of their collective (not that I ever was one, fully) but rather on my terms. I want to construct a rocket stove next to their earthen oven, for outdoor cooking that will still work when blackouts happen. North city is full of vacant grassy lots. Fields of them. I'm getting excited about making seedballs and planting trees. The thought of playing with moss graffiti appeals to me as well.

On a broader philosophical level, I keep receiving the message that the future is completely open and unwritten, that right now is completely open and unwritten, and I hold the responsibility to do the writing. Joseph Campbell talks about it in terms of creating your own mythology that will give you the zeal to "follow your bliss." Tim Boucher decided to stop suffering and instead is now writing the musical of his life and is inviting everyone else to gather together in and script their lives for themselves as well, with some tips for how to make it the best musical possible. And Ran Prieur wades into the grey swamp of reality, attempting to pull people in from the black-or-white high and dry shores of ideology, with the message that we can take whatever was good from the past (regardless of where or when it came from) and create something completely new.

So, I do not go to school and I don't have a job. I am routinely presented with long chunks of unscheduled, unstructured time. Right now the script that I write defaults to either locking in to someone else's schedule, usually either Julie's or Luna's or my brother, Mike's, and structuring my time that way, or plugging away at the never-ending to-do list, which mostly consists of technical projects, material rearrangements/procurements, and things to look up when I'm around the internet again (the apartment does not have internet). I visited Portland, Oregon recently, and I really enjoyed how intentionally and consciously I scheduled my time while I was there. On the train back home, I reflected that I'd like to meet every day with a similar commitment of presence.

I want to shift the plot of the musical of my life in a new direction. I visited Portland to check out a program that purports to share in and practice the knowledge of just about everything I am interested in learning about right now - "hunter-gatherer skills, keen awareness, martial-arts, green mobility and living, interpersonal clarity and peacemaking principles, entrepreneurship, permaculture and personal health." They call it TrackersTEAMS. I call it the next Act in my play.

I want this program to provide just enough non-coercive structure to allow me to practice that continual presence and focus my intentions and actions. I don't want to be racing and pushing to keep up or succeed, as those are the patterns so ingrained in me that I wish to break.

It will be really hard for me to leave St. Louis and my family of friends, partly because I fear that I'll never come back. Of course, if that happens, I will have found a new home and a new family. I just feel uneasy about pulling up 21 years of roots when I really want to have my roots as deep in the ground as possible right now. Perhaps those 21 years of roots were only growing shallowly under the surface. Or perhaps the roots have grown straight down, and when I move, I will break off a part of myself to leave here forever, or to come back to. Either way, can anyone else hear Joseph Campbell calling out "rites of initiation!"?!

Part of the source of my desire to put down deep roots right now came from watching video of an interview of my friend, Thomas, who lives (with 5 year old roots) at Dancing Rabbit. He has me thinking about visiting Red Earth Farms soon. I want to plant tree seedlings that won't just get mowed down.

*scratch, scratch - yawn - zzzzzzzzzzzz*

2007-10-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

"My efforts won't matter to the world. It's best to keep the peace."

Holy shit, is that really my world view? How did I ever come to that conclusion? What could my family have done to me (or not done to me) to make me that resigned to my lack of value to this world?

The books tell me I must have been neglected when I was young, but I don't remember feeling neglected. My mom tells me I was breastfed for a year, at which point I had almost completely self-weaned (I still wanted to nurse before bed at night), and then I was weaned the rest of the way. I may be wrong about this (and my mom will definitely let me know if I am), but I get the impression that I did not sleep in a family bed but in a crib. But I definitely have fond memories of snuggling in the family bed as a toddler and small child before going off to my own room. Could I simply have followed in my dad's footsteps, imitated his personality? Maybe he was neglected. Maybe his dad was neglected. . .

The words "enneagram" and "nine" took waaaay less time to become cliche for me than the phrase "people-pleaser", so I'm using them as little as possible these days. Honestly, I've grown tired of focusing so much attention on baring light on all the ways I am not integrated and whole. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've ended up enacting the "law of attraction" and have manifested some more bad habits by reading about what "nines" do. So, since I have no clue what the real secret is (how to succeed without positive thinking), I'm focusing on the positive.

I've found a book by Riso that provides mantras to aid in focusing in on integrating and letting the rest go:

I now affirm...

that I am confident, strong, and independent.
that I develop my mind and think things through.
that I am awake and alert to the world around me.
that I am proud of myself and my abilities.
that I am steadfast and dependable in difficult times.
that I look deeply into myself without fear.
that I am excited about my future.
that I am a powerful, healing force in my world.
that I actively embrace all that life brings.

(text pulled from this site)

Basically, I can transform myself with right action and self-love. And both of those things lead to practical application in the form of developing a personal agenda - what my opinions, beliefs, and passions are, separate from everyone else.

So, step one: separate myself from everyone else (momentarily - after my agenda is set, I want to be able to hold onto that while still communing with others)
Step two: declare my opinions, beliefs, passions. I don't want to get into all of my opinions and beliefs and passions right now, but I'll use one as an example. I am currently very passionate about learning how to stalk, hunt, kill, and dress animals, both as a way to grow in community-sufficiency and as a spiritual practice.
Step three: set up a structure of some kind to either express or make my opinion, belief, or passion a reality. So, for hunting, I need to create a ritual for myself of waking early in the morning and going on a walk first thing with the intention of watching the animals and their behaviors and habits, starting to build a relationship with and deep knowledge of them. At the same time, I need to be reading about the technical aspects of tracking, making a kill, and dressing, or seek out an elder who can share that knowledge with me, as well as the wisdom that comes with being so intimately involved in the life and death of another animal. As I gain more knowledge, I will need to incorporate practice of more skills during those daily morning walks - how to walk, how to read tracks, how to construct, handle, and use whatever kind of weapon I learn will work.

It sounds like a great plan. If you're familiar with threes at all (that's what I integrate towards), you could see that this is looking like something a three would come up with. Unfortunately, there's no way I'm possibly going to get up tomorrow morning at or before dawn to take that walk. And there's absolutely no way that it would happen every day that way. BUT, what I will do is commit to going on that walk every day, just not necessarily at dawn. Some days I'll make it at dawn, and gradually, it will become a routine thing. And that's what I need - life-giving routines.

I do want to say that there are positive things about being *ahem* that number that I already have down. I'm great at listening to people, receiving them exactly as they are, holding them without any judgement, and really feeling what they're feeling along with them. I'm good at that. And I love doing it. That, and in the midst of lighter conversation among a group of people, when one person misunderstands what another has said, I can usually jump in and clarify what was meant more easily and quickly than the original speaker. I also probably have vast powers of intuition that I've got mostly locked up right now. I think, when I unlock them, they could express themselves in the form of telepathy, maybe even psychokinesis. Now that's cause for excitement about my future!

2007-08-07T19:47:00.000-07:00

Since moving to New Roots, I've gotten really into the Enneagram. It was something I had heard of in the past but never really looked into. But everyone up here was referencing it, so I figured I better educate myself.

It has turned out to be a very useful tool, broadening both my understanding of myself and of the people around me (more so than any other personality type system has).

In my reading, I recognized myself in the ninth personality type, sometimes called the peacemaker. I am calm and serene; I desire for everyone and everything to be united and without conflict; I am lazy and lack self-direction, allowing myself to be guided by the people around me. I accommodate other people, giving in to their wishes without giving credence to my own needs or desires (I people-please). I invest my identity in other people. I am an introvert to the extent that I shut out outside stimuli so that my inner calm is not disturbed, which leaves me living for the most part in my own fantasy world. I avoid conflict at any cost. These characteristics make me a nine.

I have a one wing, which I used to express a lot more when I was Catholic. Ones are idealistic and driven by a strongly defined morality. Perfectionistic. Judgmental. I've let a lot of that go, I think.

Nines integrate towards the three, which for me means that for me to become more healthy and whole as a person, I would need to develop self-direction, initiative (which I mentioned in my last post), and self-confidence. I'm not there yet, but it helps to have clearly stated what I'm moving towards.

Nines disintegrate towards the six by becoming overwhelmed with anxiety over the fear of being separated. It's this anxiety and fear that drive me to people please, so it is also this anxiety and fear I need to let go of, accepting the possibility that people may not react well to me not giving them what I think they want, but also learning to trust that they will still love the real me (although I'm still in the process of figuring out who that is).

I don't know if this also falls under the three integration, but the other big thing the enneagram has shown me I need to work on is my avoidance of conflict. This is the other big thing I am working on right now - being able to sacrifice my short-term peace of mind in order to involve myself with situations and people where conflict is likely that, in the past, I would have simply avoided.

I've felt pretty stagnant since I stopped going to school (that place that trained me to follow the authority figure's directions), but I'm starting to feel stirred up.

The enneagram has also helped me understand other people better, seeing clearly that everyone is not motivated by the same basic desire that I am. Which sure is a good thing, else the human world would be a very calm, lazy, boring place.

So, here's to self-discovery and integration!

2007-07-13T00:28:00.000-07:00

I love watching things grow. I didn't really notice that about myself until this year. I think maybe that's why I ended up growing my hair out so long. I enjoy witnessing slow, gradual change.

Gardening requires two virtues, initiative and patience. I've got patience down pat. Initiative on the other hand . . . Regardless, for a first attempt, my garden is doing relatively well. Many of the seedlings I started indoors either didn't get watered enough and dried up or were eaten by mice; half the seeds I sowed outdoors apparently did not sprout at all, but half did. And a few of the plants I started inside did make it. It's been a learning experience to say the least. I tried square-foot gardening (or my version of it), Grow Biointensive (R) spacing, and some cobbled together wisdom of companion planting. And since it's my first year, I can't really compare all of that to anything else, but it seems to be working!

I have an annual vegetable bed in a community garden (about 15'x5') where I am growing (or have grown) radishes, peas, okra, watermelon, bok choi, arugula, swiss chard, beets, onions, leeks, carrots, basil, tomatoes, sweet peppers, and borage. I also attempted to grow broccoli, artichoke, collards, spinach, and squash but they either didn't even sprout or were nibbled to death by bunnies.

In the backyard, I've got mostly fruit (which I realize is the reverse of permaculture zones - having the annual veggies, which need more attention, farther away. oh well.): blueberry bushes, blackberry, strawberries, grapes, a peach tree, two apple trees (Cox's Orange Pippin and Ashmead's Kernel), and an almond tree. I've also got garlic, cucumbers, and cantaloupe growing in the backyard. The sunflowers I planted either didn't come up or were too tasty for someone to pass up. Oh!, but I spread shitty city compost over the whole garden area in the backyard, and I've got amazing volunteer tomatoes and lamb's quarters as a result!

That initiative thing I mentioned earlier. . . I haven't started any herbs growing yet. I've got the seeds. I just need to go out and plant 'em.

I will. Soon.

So, to update since my last post, I found a place, a community, to move into: New Roots Urban Farm. It's in north city, about a mile north of downtown, and a twenty minute bike ride from my parent's house. It's a CSA, growing all kinds of veggies. Their overall mission is food security - more specifically, providing quality food to a neighborhood who's only "supermarket" is a glorified candy store, and doing so on a sliding scale, meaning everyone pays what they can. That's all fine and good - it's not what I'm interested in doing in the long term (which is a more personal version of food security), but it's fine and good, for now. I fit very well, culturally, there, and that's the most important thing. This past month or so that I've been there has probably been the most socially stimulating month I've ever experienced. It's thrilling and exhausting at the same time. Also, as the farm acquires more land in the future, they'd like me to start up a forest garden!

I'm continuing to homeschool with my brother in some capacity. Right now, we're set up for me to be at my parent's house with the express purpose of learning with my bro two days out of the week, which has turned into a great balance for me because where ever I'm headed next is someplace I want to be.

I'll see what I can do about making posts here more regular and interesting. No promises, though.

2007-05-04T17:55:00.000-07:00

I'm lonely, sad, and anxious enough of the time that I'm looking for a change. I'm in the process of looking for an open bed (or -- even better -- an open spot in a bed) in some communal living situation. I love my family and am very grateful to them for everything they've done for me, but I need to get away from the suck of the tv. My original impetus for thinking in this direction was realizing how much I didn't want to spend this summer living in a refrigerator (A/C).

I'll let you know how my quest turns out.

2007-04-01T04:17:00.000-07:00

I've continued to buy useful tools. I feel rather shameless about it now, as they are useful, enduring things- many of which, I expect, will come in handy during the magnificently great(er) depression that I feel brewing just around the corner. I'll list some of them for you:

a (blemished) country living grain mill,
food grade buckets with gamma seal lids,
a nightstar flashlight,
a petzl tikka headlamp,
a hori hori,
a rain barrel,
whetstones,
a global sun oven,
canning jars,
a REI sub kilo long down sleeping bag (and thermarest pad),
a minimalist bivy sack,
a granfors bruks small forest axe,
a 32 oz thermos (for passive cooking),
a compost fork,
a push reel mower (my parents actually bought that for me, since they're the one's that want the grass cut and all)
encyclopedia of country living (I know, I'm in the city, but did you see the green space around me?!)
4 replacement Berkey black filter elements (which supposedly covers my filtration needs until january of '10)

And so the wishlist evolves.

I've also been buying garden materials. I've already listed some tools above, but even more interesting are the living things. I've been scouring books and the internet for good local fruit tree and shrub nurseries and have had little luck. Right now, my best bet looks to be Stark Brothers, which is probably about an hour away by car. The next best selection in the midwest that I've found is in Michigan- Southmeadow. I'd love to find one with a really good selection in or just outside St. Louis city. I'll keep looking. In the mean time, I've gotten a little impatient and have already gotten some fruit bushes and vines from Lowe's. Specifically, a blackberry bush, blueberry bush, red raspberry, black raspberry, green grape, concord grape, and strawberries. So far I've held off on getting any trees from them. I'm also planning to grow some annual veggies and perennial herbs. In fact, I've just joined that community garden that's on the corner of my block, Fox Park Farm, and have a 5 by 16 foot raised bed to plant with whatever I want. I've picked up a lot of free seeds from Gateway Greening. Rotating seedstarting trays in my bedroom windows has now become a daily ritual. I can't wait to plant them out (april 15th is the area's last average frost date, but I don't know if I'll wait that long). Tomatos, sweet peppers, carrots, onions, spinach, broccoli, chard, beets, cabbage,collards, arugula, artichokes, peas, cucumbers, borage, corn, sunflowers, squash, melons . . . I won't have room for it all! Not in that one bed at least.

I've mail-ordered 2 pounds of red wriggler worms to unleash upon the garden and compost piles, as I'm planning to do no-till gardening. And with a combination of square foot gardening, companion interplanting, and mulching, I'm hoping to do no-weedpulling gardening. After studying up what I can find, my companion groupings, or guilds (to use a permaculture term for annual veggies), are

tomato, pepper, carrot, basil, onion, borage
cabbage, beets, spinach, chard, broccoli, onion (?- I've gotten mixed reports on whether to plant cabbage and alliums together), borage
corn, sunflower, squash, melon, peas, cucumber, borage (borage is everything's and everyone's best friend)

I'm still mapping out my perennial herb and fruit garden. Not knowing what trees I'm going to get is partially holding that process up. I want to get two apples, and then an almond tree. And then peaches and plums and pears. And hazels and chestnuts and (black) walnuts. As long as I'm dreaming of a forest, I might as well add some paw paws, tart cherries, apricots, and nectarines. If there's a temperate fruit tree out there, it's on my wish list.

Also, I've recently joined a local food co-op, so now I can order bulk organic food and pick it up a couple blocks away instead of driving out to the county. They also supply local "clean" meat (uncertified but organic-ish, grass-fed) for cheap. I pay cost+15%, and then just work a 4 hour shift each month. It's a pretty sweet deal. My primary impetus to join was to find a cost effective way to buy a 50 pound bag of wheat berries, for grinding flour. I didn't want to do it over the internet because the shipping charges were nearly doubling the price. But now that I'm in, I'm excited about more fully utilizing this resource.

In the fermentation department, I'm experimenting with making ginger beer. I've started a batch of dandelion mead that'll be ready to drink by the end of the summer. And I just got the raw materials today to try to make my first batch of saurkraut (practice running for harvest time later in the year) and to pickle cucumbers. Once I get the hang of it, I'd like to move on to making kim chee. I'm staying away from the soy ferments for now, though. While I'm in love with yeast at this point, and I'm warming up to fungi, the idea of eating mold still freaks me out.

One final bit of random news before I end this nonsense. My computer is over four years old now and is kind of slowly dying. But I'm trying to breath new life into it by stripping down my uses of it (namely, no longer using it as my stationary ipod - putting that music on cds). And I'm playing around with linux puppy. Now, I thought that I needed an external modem to be able to get on the internet, but it turns out that after a bit of setup, my wireless works fine! So this post is being written while running puppy. And it's running veeerry quickly. If running your entire OS on your RAM sounds appealing to you, I suggest you give it a looksee.

2007-03-31T23:59:00.000-07:00

After 1 and 3/4 years of not cutting my hair, I gave myself a haircut. I'm doing this haircut in stages. It had gotten past shoulder length in the back, so first thing I did was trim the back to just above the shoulder, and kept it at that point for about a week, warming up to the scissors. Then, this past tuesday, I took the plunge and cut off the majority of the length of my hair on the front and sides . . . leaving a mullet. I kept that amusing look for barely a full day and then proceeded to cut the length off the back as well. I'm pausing for probably another week at this point (somewhere between a bowl cut and a crew cut- except "styled" with body oils. . . if I bathed, it would just lay flat, and I'd probably continue to cut it sooner), after which I plan to give myself a sidewinding mohawk, nabbing the idea from jay brannan (whom I saw sporting it in the "making of" documentary for shortbus). I am happy to no longer have long hair. I just hope I end up with a hairstyle that is as maintenanceless as possible but still is aesthetically pleasing. Anyway, I'm having fun with it for now. If you want, I'll post pictures later.

100 things about me, the sequel

2007-02-27T03:56:00.000-08:00

I first did this meme just about a year ago. Some of it is outdated now, but I'd rather preserve that one in its entirety and attempt to start all over. And hopefully I'll cover some new ground. I haven't read over last year's recently, so I'm only going by memory as far as what I've already said (so there will most probably be some overlap). With that said, let's see how this turns out.

I love food. Eating (and the activities surrounding it- cooking, baking, shopping, dumpstering, and shortly, growing, hunting, and gathering) is a central focus in my days right now (and, I imagine, for the rest of my life).
I was a picky eater throughout my childhood. That abruptly changed when I became vegetarian, nearly three years ago. But really, that was just a different form of pickiness. And now, as an omnivore, I'm still picky. It's just now I don't like to eat things like hydrogenated oils or refined sugars whereas during my childhood it was veggies and anything unfamiliar.
I'm planting the beginnings of a permacultural garden in my backyard this spring. And I will be exploring the urban landscape to see what wild edibles I can gather - dandelions, lamb's quarters, acorns in the fall - and what animals I can stalk - pigeons, rabbits, opossums.
This focus on food is part of a larger focus on moving ever more deeply into my body, into the physical world, and out of my head and intellect. As I continually shed those mental chains that tie me down in this civilized society, I am also acting to free my body from the cultural chains of malnutrition, sedentariness, and the corresponding lack of physical, emotional, and mental health inherent in such a society.
While my family still pays for health insurance for me, I consider the investment in high quality, nutrient-dense, whole foods as my primary health insurance.
To use Sandor Elix Katz's phrase, I am quickly becoming a fermentation fetishist. While, as yet, I have only fermented wheat flour and various juices (with delicious results almost every time), I expect to explore the wonders of vegetable and dairy ferments soon. I'm still trying to develop a taste for pickles in the mean time, but then again, I've probably never even seen a fermented pickle! It's most probably just that I don't like such a strong vinegar flavor (however, homemade raw apple cider vinegar is quite refreshing as a tonic, I've found).
I'll admit that this focus on my own personal health has been a relatively individualistic affair. As I withdrew myself from the obligations of a religion, of school, and of our culture in general, part of what I retracted was my sense of duty to be of service to others, to humanity in general.
Now, as I am rebuilding my sense of belonging - to a community of people and to a place - my desire to help other people is again slowly expanding. But this is on a much more limited scope - I desire to be of service to my family, to my friends, and to the land I live on. I imagine my past sweeping aspirations to be of service to all of humanity are gone for good, along with my former liberalism.
As I've already hinted at, my second main, and growing, focus has been on building community. It's taken a while to fully reintegrate myself in my family after returning from my 9 month long excursion into dorm "life" (a pivotal period of growth for me that probably wouldn't have been possible without the physical separation from my parents, for which I am grateful). But I again feel very much at home here, which has in turn provided me the security to go out and build deeper connections with people, the potential beginnings of a tribe - just a twinkle in my eye at this point.
I have a lot of intellectual motivation towards jumpstarting this permaculture experiment in my family's backyard because it brings my two biggest priorities together - 1) providing food, 2) for not only myself, but for my family and friends as well. Also, 2b) this project combines my more personal anthropic interests with my desire to rebuild and nourish the wider ecological community that I am a part of. I expect the emotional motivation to kick in as spring grows closer. And, of course, this is all a nod in acknowledgment to times to come when I expect supermarket shelves to be much less burdened.
I retook the Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type test, and I'm still right there between ISFP and INFP.
Just from reading the descriptions of the types (or all the introvert ones anyway), I think I was more TJ when I was in school.
I also retook the Political Compass test, but I found that when I took it the first time, when I didn't have an answer to a proposition readily available in my mind, I fell back on my former liberal paradigm to answer them more quickly. So I decided to retake the test several times, playing with how I answered the propositions until I felt that I was answering all of them as true as possible to my current view of the world. It was rather hard, as some propositions just simply don't fit in at all (such as the proposition, "Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment" - since I would like to see both money and work abolished). With that said, my final score this time around was economic: -.88, libertarian/authoritarian: -7.54.
I'm perplexed as to how I have a more moderate score on the latter "axis" this year as opposed to last year, when I scored a -8.41 (yes, I did go back to check on that). I don't know what I could be answering more moderately in that regard. Oh well.
On the Kinsey scale, I am about a 1.5. (that quiz I just linked to there is actually for the Klein scale, which is shifted one number up, meaning when I took it, I scored 2.5 overall. I don't know what Klein was thinking, making it so confusing.)
That said, the Kinsey scale is based on binary gender (only addressing the problem of the binary view of sexuality), and so that 1.5 does not take into account the possibility of sexual attraction to someone who is trans, intersex, and/or genderqueer.
I, myself, identify as genderqueer. So whereas in the past, I would have said that I was bi-curious, I would now use the term pansexual or omnisexual. Or simply sexual.
These are probably a lot of new terms for some people, but I've got yet another one for you while we're at it. I am also polyamorous. I have yet to actually be with more than one partner at the same time, but I am open to the possibility.
Actually, even with the one person I considered a partner in my history, it has always primarily been a friendship in my eyes. I prefer not to stratify different relationships into distinct levels of intimacy (with labels like partner). As with everything, it is a continuum, and polyamory is simply there as an explanation of why I would not artificially limit or cut off love where it is blooming simply because I'm already loving another person at a similar level of intimacy. Jealousy is for insecure people.
I haven't talked about this stuff here yet because abnormal sexual behaviors and preferences are rather taboo in the culture of my extended (Roman Catholic) family, and many people within my extended family read this blog. It still takes me a while, on occasion, to work up the courage to ruffle feathers and rock boats.
Also because of my Roman Catholic upbringing, I did not masturbate until I was a senior in high school (shortly after the time that I stopped considering myself Roman Catholic). I was socialized as a child to view sex and pleasure as negative and shameful. I grieve that that form of play was entirely absent from the whole of my childhood.
I am strongly resentful towards the industrial education I was subjected to and eventually subjected myself to which taught me to fear breaking from what is normal or expected of me. I have been so for some time now and am still figuring out how to move towards resolving some of the damage done. I consider this right here, this baring of my soul indiscriminately to family and strangers alike, as therapy towards that very end. It's the conversations that occur in real life as a result of this blog that actually do the healing. Every time I say something here that I fear my family will reject me over, and they keep on loving and accepting me for who I am, I heal a little more.
I've been in a relaxed, mostly pleasant, state of anomie since I left school (about 9 months now).
But I've recently begun to get more focused, developing my self-discipline, becoming more proactive. It feels good to not have someone telling me what to do, but also to start to have a clue as to what I want to do.
I'm a pretty spiritually focused person, but it has taken a long while to untie myself from all the bindings with which the religion of my childhood held me down. I miss the sense of community and the meaning of shared rituals, but when I've revisited such community and rituals (as an observer, a tag-along), it felt stale and almost tacky. Part of my renewed focus has been directed towards recreating rituals for myself and rebuilding community with whom to share them.
I am not a theist, at least not in the personal, big guy with a white beard, sky-father sense. I revere life and have faith in the universe that it will provide for me until it is time for "me" to compost and metamorph into hundreds of new living beings, just as so many formerly living beings live on through me (see #1).
I sense no inherent meaning or purpose in this life, in this universe, other than to play.
I don't use shampoo or soap ever when I bathe, and I bathe about every 10 days. Occasionally I use baking soda and/or apple cider vinegar on my hair.
I don't use deodorant. I hate the smell of deodorants and perfumes. Pheromones are a huge turn on for me.
. . . as is body hair. I don't shave, I trim. And the only thing I trim is what has come in so far of my beard (mostly a goatee at this point). My hair is blonde, but my beard has a sweet reddish twinge to it.
I still haven't cut my hair (it's been over a year and a half now), so it's getting a little longer than shoulder length in the back. I imagine I'll start cutting it again sometime this spring or summer, in stages, playing with it along the way. Or I might wait until I have more of a beard.
I am tall and very skinny. I have little hope of gaining weight, since both my dad and grandpa were lean until they became more sedentary, and I don't foresee becoming sedentary, even just considering all the biking to come.
Before I broke my left thumb in kindergarten, I was ambidextrous. Ever since, I've been right dominant. I want to recultivate my ambidexterity.
I have a small third nipple below my right one. As a kid, my mom told me/thought it was a birth mark, but it is the same color as my other nipples, and it has an indentation in the center, indicating an opening to a milk duct in my opinion.
I've heard of instances of male lactation. That possibility is exciting to me.
I wish I still had my foreskin. I feel overexposed and am definitely desensitized without it.
I only wear clothing for warmth and to not make other people uncomfortable. I do not have any body shame. I've been naked in regular social situations (i.e. with or in front of lots of people, and not just in the locker room) and have been completely comfortable.
I wear the same items of clothing day after day, only switching out individual articles when they actually become dirty.
I enjoy being very extroverted with my physical appearance- funny hats, dorky outfits, skirts, stick on tattoos .
It's counterintuitive, since I'm introverted in so many other ways, and this practice of wearing unusual clothing (or nothing at all in some cases) obviously draws attention to myself. But it kind of makes sense if I view it as a kind of prop I carry around to have something to talk about. Like readymade small talk.
I'm thinking about getting a real tattoo soon.
I am usually barefoot during the warmer half of the year. I'm still working on thickening up my soles. The other half of the year, my feet get too cold, even inside.
I've been told I am a good dancer. It takes a while for me to warm up on the dance floor though.
I like the taste of alcohol but not being drunk.
I do not drink coffee. I avoid most forms of caffeine most of the time. I don't like feeling jittery.
I have never smoked anything, and I have little desire to do so.
There's a fine line for me between outlets I use to numb and distract myself with and outlets I use to learn, expand, and be inspired. I refer mostly to the internet and movies.
I avoid televisions. The high pitched whistle they produce in the background (which you can really hear when the thing is first turned on) drives me crazy.
My favorite movie at the moment is shortbus.
I dropped out of college after freshman year because it was boring and expensive.
I view college as a kind of professional dominatrix that people go to because they are either habituated into submitting or they actually enjoy it. I wasn't enjoying the intellectual BDSM, and I certainly didn't want to pay for it, so I broke the habit.
However, I am not in debt as a result of that year, thankfully. And that is entirely due to the generosity of my family, both extended and immediate. Without their help, I would have almost no chance of making my way out of this prison.
My brother and I are unschooling each other. We read, we play, we construct things, we deconstruct things. We're exploring. And we're healing. Yes, there's lots of time for healing.
I am most awake towards the end of my day, and I get the most accomplished when other people are either not around or are asleep, so I usually consider myself a night person.
But I love sunlight! And early mornings are always so awesome when I see them (i.e. when I stay up all night). I'm attempting to wake up earlier these days, before my mom and brother get up, so that it's light out and people are still asleep. I've been enjoying that time, but it doesn't last long enough for me to be awake enough to accomplish anything. I'll keep experimenting, waking up earlier. The most important realization I had when I first started doing this is that I don't have to set a bedtime, only a wake up time, and then go to bed when I'm tired.
None of my physical senses are particularly acute or supernormal, but they aren't lacking either. I'd love to focus some attention on increasing how much I can perceive with them.
My intuition, what I would call a sixth sense, is off and on, but I expect I would notice it being much more accurate if I consciously put more faith in it.
I love being around nonhuman animals, but the idea of having pets seems silly to me. Pets either serve as surrogates to receive the excess affection and grooming energy that would, in a healthy culture, go into strengthening social ties with other humans, or they serve simply as commiserators in our cages of domestication. Or both.
That said, my family has two dogs, whom I love almost as much as the rest of my family.
I hate clocks, especially ticking ones. I never wear a watch. If I have to look at a clock, I find analog secondhandless clocks to be least offensive.
I also do not like mirrors at all. They usually serve only to spur on either one's narcissism or self-hatred, usually alternating back and forth between the two. I think the faces of my friends and family serve as reflection enough.
I really like other kinds of tools, though, like bicycles and the internet. And language and fire.
I've recently gotten really into yoga, and I've been going to classes. I hope to get to a point where I practice daily on my own.
I've been journaling more regularly in a paper journal, but I don't go very deep yet.
I started knitting a scarf last winter. At this point, it's still little longer than a foot long. It's my first knitting project.
Sometimes, when I'm in a good mood, I spontaneously sing songs or hum tunes or just make sounds.
I also relish in groaning while in pain or moaning while in pleasure.
When walking, I'll also spontaneously do a little dance or jig along the way sometimes.
There's a subtle change I've noticed within myself as I've grown older, which I don't like, that I tend to eliminate certain actions I've judged to be not energy efficient enough. Mostly, I think this has developed as a survival mechanism to have enough energy to put into schooling, and it's overall effect has been a reduction in my creative, spontaneous energy. Perhaps I can recultivate this lost energy by purposefully doing more spontaneous, seemingly frivolous (to my current, wounded paradigm) things, like playing outside in the dirt, or going on long walks with no intended destination (ooh, barefoot, too!). I think this could work!
I enjoy musical artists who use regular instruments in very unusual ways (like Sigur Ros) and others who use very irregular instruments in their usual ways (like Neutral Milk Hotel).
I squat when I poop.
I usually only know about current events (i.e. events going on at a level beyond my monkeysphere) through word of mouth or whatever filters through to the tiny portion of the blogosphere that I read.
My favorite general category of foods to eat, based on taste and how it makes me feel, is fats, especially saturated fats. Bacon, coconuts, butter, mmmm. I'm shameless about this fact.
I have no handle on the specifics of what I'll be doing two years from now, and while that fact leaves me feeling a little unsettled, I also find it very exciting.
I either want to die in a very exciting and dramatic fashion or in my home, conscious, surrounded by the people I love. I don't want to be a vegetable. I don't want to be a machine. I don't want to have a cabinet full of little orange bottles to keep my body from falling apart.
When I do die, I either want to be buried in a simple wooden box, or even better, just straight in the ground, by or underneath a garden, tree, or compost pile. And no dressing me up in a suit. I'd rather be naked, to be honest, but anything would be better than a suit. Make-up and formaldehyde are out of the question.
Death and destruction don't bother me nearly as much as they used to (like, say, when I was a pacifist vegetarian). I understand death and destruction to be integral to life and creation. Upon a little contemplation, I can easily reach a place of acceptance and courage about "my" inevitable end.
I like watching the compost pile shrink.
And, to quote Maude, I like watching things grow.
I've already grown a lot as a person, but I can't wait to see how much I change in the future.
When I was really young, I remember a friend and me eating ants. Even then, I had tendencies towards hunting and gathering.
I remember when I was about 8 or 9, a friend and I were play fighting with little swiss army knives. I got a cut on my hand. I think that might be the most dangerous, risky, "no-no" thing I did as a kid. Well, as a conscientious kid. My mom says that when I was an exploring toddler, I was climbing on an open window and might have fallen out if she hadn't sensed that I was in danger from a different room and came running. Anyway, the point was that other than these things, I had a very safe, bland childhood.
When I got legos, I would construct the models, roleplay a little bit with the characters, and then just put them on a shelf to look at and collect dust.
I got good at the school game sometime during first grade. That's when I first learned to feign enthusiasm. By third grade, I forgot I was feigning it.
I got good at the religion game around seventh grade. My service project before confirmation was probably where I first got addicted to the praise I received for doing such "service" activities. Anything to get in good with the masters.
I never cussed in grade school. One time, probably in eighth grade, I accidentally said "shit" instead of "spit", and I was so appalled that that slipped out of my mouth that I developed a sore throat. No joke. Another time, when I was alone in my bedroom, I whispered the word "fuck" to myself in the mirror to see what would happen. Nothing happened, but I was still a little scared. Another time, sometime after I learned that there was one unforgivable sin, I ended up accidentally thinking the thought of what I considered to be blaspheming the holy spirit, and I neurotically couldn't stop thinking that terrifying thought over and over again. Terrifying because I thought that it might mean that I was going to hell.
I don't let words have any undue power over me anymore. Fuck that shit.
At the point, or shortly after the point that I was at the peak of my religious purity kick, I actually felt like I had reached a peak in my spiritual journey, that there wasn't anything new to do or discover. I felt like I was sentenced to repeat the same exact experiences, cycles, and rituals for the rest of my life. Naturally, I found this prospect rather boring, and so began my descent from the formerly sisyphean hill of religion and the pursuit of purity.
I can't tell if I'm still descending or if I've started up another hill, or if this metaphor no longer holds any meaning or relevance to my life as I now live it. All I know is that I relish in being dirty, impure, fuzzy around the edges, contradictory, undefined, obscure, unlimited . . .
To quote the eight rather you didn'ts of the flying spaghetti monster, purity is for drinking water, not people.
Lately, I've become rather attached to thinking of St. Louis as my home. Apparently, if you touch the arch, you're doomed to stay here or come back here, so I've heard.
I have very little desire at the moment to live in the wilderness (and no desire to live in it alone). Instead I want to bring the wilderness back into this city, beginning with my heart. And then my yard. Then the neighborhood. Guerrilla gardening ninjas, woo!
Shortly after I started descending from the religion peak, I questioned whether I was already at the peak of my radicalism (although I didn't think about it in these terms, nor did I connect the two trains of thought). I thought to myself, what part of my life have I not radically changed my ideas about?
I saw the beginning of that transformation as my switch to a veg diet. Then I got more liberal and pro-rights.
Then, mid senior year, almost at the same time, both my politics and how I viewed my body had a major shift, into anarchism and nudism, respectively.
By the end of senior year, I dropped the RC church and unhealthy celibacy in favor of finally allowing myself to have a girlfriend.
Over that summer, I became anti-work, and at the beginning of college, anti-school and anti-civ.
By november of that year, I was no longer a theist. I've dropped the -isms as much as possible, and now I'm moving towards a focus on being pro- things.
And to complete the circle, I'm eating meat again, but with so much more consciousness and deliberateness about it.
I leave the question that spawned all this open, because without ideology, there's no possible end goal! Only the continued exploration and expansion of play and love.

2007-01-19T04:24:00.000-08:00

Almost everything I was given for christmas was either cooking-related or money. A cast-iron skillet was the most notable and useful thing received, as it is something I use everyday, throughout the day, in the preparation of most of my meals. I've been investing the money in a veritable plethora (as my high school latin teacher would say) of other useful items -

The Berkey Light water filter, as recommended by deconsumption. It doesn't filter out fluoride, but it filters out just about everything else to below detectable levels, so I intend to use it primarily in conjunction with caught rainwater as much as possible.
Montrail Torre GTX hiking boots, on sale and fitted at REI (size 14, btw).
a Corona corn mill, for unspecified but potentially wide-ranging grinding purposes (perhaps even to grind corn! I bought seed for blue corn recently, which I plan to grow this year)

This past fall, I also picked up a Leatherman "wave" multi-tool and a two person, 3 season tent, made by Eureka.

My bike (an old Univega 10-speed, with 27" wheels) is in the shop right now, getting repairs done that I couldn't do with the tools I have available to me. I'll be glad to finally retrieve that later on today. Besides that, I intend to upgrade to more puncture-resistant tires and set myself up with front and back panniers, looking ahead to future road trips.

And if you haven't looked through that wiki of mine, you wouldn't know that I have a wishlist of material desires left unfulfilled. But I'm intending to go ahead and buy a sleeping bag (and all its accompaniment) sooner rather than later.

It feels rather strange to be spending so much money on things. I've been buying books (ones I can't find at the library) a lot too, but I can pass that off as being a fraction of the cost of what I would be paying for books if I were in college still. It feels strange because of my aversion to commercialism. But this isn't commercialism. This is materialism. I love the bike I use. When I saw that I had received that cast iron skillet, I think I yelped with glee. I have attachments to material objects, not to brands, and not to the shopping/spending itself. I'm looking around me and asking myself what would be good to gather around me to enable me to live more deliberately. To live with more freedom. It may feel strange to be spending so much money, especially as a freeter, but it certainly makes a lot more sense than holding onto abstract numbers on a server somewhere. Those numbers are simply potential useful things, but that potential could disappear so easily. When the dollar collapses, I hope I won't still be dependent on that potential.

Technology is certainly not neutral (scroll to lie #4), but there are some tools I really love.

2007-01-03T06:47:00.000-08:00

I've been in a funk lately. Part of it is winter. Part, I'm sure, is that I've been eating more crappy food than usual lately. Another big part is that there is a lot of opportunities this time of year to reconnect with friends, and I've been missing a lot of those connections. Also, as a side note, I immediately fell back into my laptop addiction, ironically, beginning with my post about becoming free of it.

So I'm getting back out into the real world again. I took a jog/walk late last night exploring streets I've never been on in my neighborhood, which was really good. I'll be doing more of that.

I kind of feel fragile. And listless. Like I don't have the capacity to get deeply engrossed in anything right now. I'm going to play with centering myself, engaging myself completely in whatever feels most appealing in each moment.

I came up with a metaphor, which I think is an original thought (a rare event, as far as I am aware), earlier today to explain my lack of motivation right now. I am a boat. And throughout my childhood, I had a motor strapped on my back, pushing me forward at a very fast pace (heading where?), and that motor, for the most part, was being guided by someone else. Now I've unstrapped myself from that motor and lofted some sails. Now I am at the helm and am learning how to discern my own course. So there's a learning curve there. And I think I'm in some doldrums right now. I have a lot of intent, but little wind in my sails. It may take several weeks or a month or more, but I'll wander into some trade winds eventually.

2006-12-24T12:29:00.000-08:00

I was looking around the other day, and it sank in just how good of a spot my family is in for future permacultural potential. To illustrate what I'm talking about, I painted my neighborhood for you to see .

(created with mspaint, referencing googlemaps. scale given only as loose reference)

The blue block labelled "me" is my family's house. The "yard" next to our house is our yard, as is the "yard" directly behind our house, extending to the alley (the land slopes down after the line/fence). The gray areas in the yard are concrete (the black dot on the concrete square is the basketball pole). The brown patches are the existing garden areas, almost completely plantless at this point, save one rose bush, but mulched over heavily. They are the areas I intend to plant this spring.
But looking into the surrounding area, there is an incredible amount of green space that could feasibly be guerilla gardened in the future, as control systems get looser. The big field across from the house to the north of us (which is gutted) is city owned, I believe (well, at least it's city mowed...). The big field behind our house is owned by a church (not pictured, but I show their parking lot). Continuing east, the field across the street is owned by the city. It used to have a building on it (as is true of all of these areas), and has been subjected to some earthworks (there's now little rolling hills, with single trees planted at the top of each). Note the community garden on the corner. I'm considering renting a plot next year to grow some annuals. The grass medians in the road to the north could be planted (they're maintained by the same people who garden on the corner). And west of our house there is some fenced-in private property that could eventually be utilized by the neighborhood, far in the future. One note of concern my dad pointed out is that there's a lot of housing development right now on that northern street, and it could spread to the church owned field, or on any of the other fields.

The two trees in our yard at the moment are a maple (overhanging our yard in the corner) and a cleveland select (in the front/side yard). You can see how many (or few) trees there are in the surrounding neighborhood (most notably, there are two huge mature oak trees (I think they're burr oak), one of them being pictured south of us across the street). I want to increase the numbers of those wise beings in this land. That is my highest aspiration at the moment - to plant trees.

I'm starting to research the plant nurseries in the area to be ready to make my order come late winter. But I wonder, how would I build a forest when the nurseries are closed (hopefully, far in the future)? If there are no good specimens to graft from in the area, I'd have to start from seed. But what if I don't have the right kind of seeds available? How easily, really, could I start a permacultural garden post-collapse? Or is this (ad)venture something that is only feasable to begin from within civilization? I'm not doubting that a forest garden of sufficient size could sustain us during and after a crash, but it seems it would be a necessity to already have the forest at least in it's adolescence to have a chance.

If there is one overarching lesson I am learning these days, it is how to adapt, to readjust to changing conditions. I could let myself be immobilized by fear that my forest will be years too young even as I need to come to depend on it, or I could prepare to be able to shift lifestyles completely. While I'm watching the plants grow, I'll also still be out there learning to track rabbits (there are at least three that live on my block) and gathering acorns and lamb's quarters and dandelions. And I plan to volunteer at the urban farm/csa, new roots, in north city, hoping to make connections and build relationships with others throughout the area attempting to produce their own food - maybe get a little rhizome network going. All in all, I'm not overly concerned about the future, and I'm doing what I need and want to be doing at the present.

I just thought it was nifty how much "green space" I have around me, in the middle of the city, when I took the time to notice.

2006-12-21T21:28:00.000-08:00

Short rainy days and long dark nights lead to a lot of time spent indoors thinking for me. I'm just happy this is the darkest it gets, and that while the cold is just beginning, it keeps getting lighter after this! Happy solstice, everyone!

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about what I'm going to do in the future. I am home/unschooling Mike for the rest of the school year, and I'd like to get at least a small food garden growing this april, if only for the experience. Beyond that, I'm not tied down to any one thing, and I wouldn't want to be either. I would love to continue unschooling my brother until he is 16. I want to take him to see Dancing Rabbit next summer. So I fantasize about living there with my brother, start on growing the beginnings of a big forest I'll live in, having that as a homebase, and still travelling around the country with my bro as long as bus fares remain reasonable to see what there is to see and learn what there is to learn, maybe do some wwoofing along the way (and when there's no organic farms around, maybe some impromtu camping/hunting and gathering in some national forests).

That's still looking only into the somewhat intermediate short term future. Which is really all the farther I feel the need to look. I suppose in my fanasy there is the implication that I'll settle down eventually at DR. From a practical standpoint, the only thing I'm sure of is that I want to become community-sufficient in procuring all the necessities of life. As I learn skills to head in that direction, I suppose I plan to spend my energy learning and practicing whatever is the most fun. Right now, I'm really into the magic of growing things. This only manifests itself in reality at the moment with my sprouting of wheat berries in a jar on the countertop, but I find it so amazing - captivating - to play with life! And death (that is, eating, in this case).

Reading Ted over the last couple months, there were points where, when he brought up parallels between his own body type and those of certain primitive peoples, that I realized that my body is really not adapted to any environment that I know of. I'm tall and skinny, so I would theoretically do well in very hot environments (and not so much in cold ones), but I'm also incredibly pale. And where there is heat, there is also generally a lot of UV rays to burn the skin when it's not blocked by melanin. So damn, where can I live? Someplace temperate and cloudy? I figure the climate will be changing so much within my lifetime (and unpredictably, too), I might as well stay where I am (meaning missouri) unless/until it forces me to move someplace else. Well, with global warming, the height/skinniness should come in handy, and maybe if that continues in combination with global dimming, I'll have the perfect body type for where I live! If only. . .

2006-12-05T11:05:00.000-08:00

Another xkcd comic I love, entitled Nihilism.

2006-12-04T04:57:00.000-08:00

This is pretty much exactly the reason why I haven't been blogging as of late. (comic from xkcd)

I really want to be able to just live without habitually thinking about how whatever I'm doing can make me look good to someone else. I've been an internet addict, and showcasing myself on this blog has been part of that addiction. I've begun to wean myself off the internet, gradually. I no longer feel the compulsive need to check my email all the time or refresh my feedreader five times a day. Actually, what I've done that has allowed me to get some distance away from the computer and spend some quality time with the real world is get really into food. I love food. Not just eating it, but even more so, playing with it. The vacuum of time I found myself freefalling in that I used to wastefully fill up retracing my steps over and over again on the internet I now spend fermenting, sourdoughing, sprouting, cooking, baking, washing dishes, reading really interesting cookbooks (like wild fermentation or nourishing traditions), and yes, eating. Certainly I still inevitably get on the computer towards the end of each night to check in with the goings-on of the cyberworld, but it no longer demands my near-constant attention as it used to.

Now food does that. And I'm much happier because of it.

My diet has actually undergone a pretty substantial revolution in the past month or two. I gave up peanut butter cold turkey. I don't fully know how or why I did it , but one day I was still eating my regular lunchtime meal of a humongous peanut butter sandwich (with the layer of pb between the slices of bread being as wide as one of the slices of bread) and the next day I found something else to eat instead. Pbj's (or for some lengthy intermittent spans of time, pb's) had been my lunchtime staple since I was two- throughout my childhood as a picky eater, thriving even more as I became vegetarian, and carrying me through my most recent period of purgatory hovering between vegetarianism and omnivorism. I suppose a couple things changed at once that allowed me to make the transition from constantly fatigued pb-fanatic to my present nutritionally healthy state. 1) my attempts at souring dough finally suceeded and I began to regularly consume sourdough pancakes, and 2) I started getting high quality bacon and grass fed burgers from a natural food store. A couple weeks after quitting pb, I was looking for a quick bite before going out, and I grabbed a spoonful of peanut butter only to find that it now tastes nowhere near as good as it used to (actually, more bad than good). So I'm pronouncing myself cured of my peanut butter addiction, as well as very happily an omnivore again.

If you're curious, my meals these days often go something like this: an apple first thing in the morning (granny smith's are my current favorite), then often a sourdough pancake, with butter and real (grade b) maple syrup on top, then often in the afternoon sometime a salad of sorts consisting of whatever sprouts I have going (wheat berries, quinoa, clover) mixed with some Ezekiel brand sprouted cereal, flax seeds, and whole-fat yogurt. And every few days I have a midday meal of meat, taking care to include as much saturated fat as possible. I usually have some form of eggs for dinner- an omelet or a couple over easy or scrambled or "in a (sourdough) basket". Oh yeah!, I've also made two loafs of real sourdough bread, one breadpan shaped and one round. And I've made two pumpkin pies with sourdough crusts. On halloween, instead of eating refined sugar, I made "urban legend" cookies with Rapadura and whole wheat flour, which the family enjoyed very much as well. I also gave up caffeine, except in chocolate form of course, so I've been exploring the world of herbal teas (mmm, especially with raw honey). I've also been taking bee pollen as a whole food/superfood vitamin supplement (I can't wait till spring comes to see how much it'll mitigate my seasonal allergies!). I cook with either olive or coconut oil, depending on the dish, and I bake with organic butter. I just made a batch of nut bars the other day, but they're really rich! (I used almonds, cashews, brazils, dates, and maples syrup, in decreasing order of amounts) I got a headache the first day from eating two and a half bars, and I won't be making that mistake again. I've got several different juices fermenting wildly right now- apple, grape, cranberry/blueberry. And I've still got some of my blueberry mead left. It's aging beautifully, but unfortunately I made the mistake once of shaking up the dregs before serving it to some friends. I like the dregs! But my friends don't.

Other than preparing, cooking, and eating food, I've also been dreaming of growing it again. I've recovered fully from my detour away from permaculture with Devin and now eagerly await to play with the space my family has made available to me in our yard. This is still one area where I can only read up on right now and can't do much yet except sheet mulch the beds, continue composting, and tinker with a homemade rainwater catchment system (so far, my problem is that the trashcan I'm diverting the water into fills up too fast and overflows! I've just reconnected the pipes to run into the sewer for winter, but I eagerly await holding onto and fully utilizing that water in the spring (perhaps even filtering some of it to drink?). Right now my vision for the garden is of a woodland edge garden, as that would fit the space I have availabe perfectly for now. If I were to stay here with my family on a more longterm basis, I would want to start maybe convincing them to let me turn the side yard into an orchard, and all of the yard behind the house, and down the back hill, and even in front of the house (you know that narrow strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street- I'm thinking a male and female couple of some undetermined species (probably an apple). That brings me to a question I've been pondering- If I were to build this woodland edge garden, and I only had room for one tree to start out with, what tree would be best to use? I want it to provide some food (either fruit or nut) and, since it's a forest of one, it of course needs to not need a mate to pollinate. I'm still researching, but if anyone has a suggestion, feel free to leave a comment. I'm also excited about using mushrooms in the garden, specifically mycocorrhizal fungi. And maybe with all the leaf mulch I've put down, I could grow some edible fungus too, perhaps the king stropharia. Other than the mycogrow, I really have no clue yet what I'll end up putting in. I'm trying to try out a lot of new fruits and nuts that could possibly be grown, but most just can't be found, even in a farmer's market (I'm thinking gooseberries, juneberrys, currants, and the like). There's a mulberry bush growing right next to our property line that I hope the neighbors leave alone long enough to fruit. We used to have a fruiting mulberry bush/tree ourselves until my family had the yard completely redone with dirt to level the side yard (where a house once stood) and fill in the empty concrete carlot, creating a hill down to the alley. The mulberry tree was actually perched right on the edge of the yard , hanging over the empty parking space like the magnificent weed it was. I don't think we ever ate any of the berries. Just complained about the birds pooping purple on our cars. At the same time as we had the fill dirt put in and sodded over it all, we also put in a concrete slab of a basketball court (this was all ten years ago when I was still ascending towards the peak in my fanaticism about basketball). Now I dream about tearing up that concrete to plant trees in great full southern light. Maybe someday. . .

2006-12-04T02:46:00.000-08:00

It's been over a month and a half since I last wrote. That's significant because it's the first time since basically the beginning of this blog that I've let a whole calendar month slip by without writing at least one thing, if only to hold a place in the archive (so that there are no "missing" months). I considered posting something on November 30th, but I really didn't want to. So I didn't. I let go of my need to control this one little aspect of my outward (internet) appearance. You'll notice I also did some cleaning up of the site as a whole. I was feeling cluttered, so I cut out a lot of the bells and whistles and am working on some new pages to share, as you can see, using pbwiki. All of the links that used to be in the sidebar, and some new ones I added, can be found by following the links link to that separate page. And since the focus of this site has shifted from discussion/debate to just me randomly checking in every once in a while, I've removed the fancy html code that allowed for easier commenting/viewing. If there's anything you notice lacking in functionality of the site as a result of my delete-button happy excursion, feel free to let me know.

Regaining Soil and Sanity

2006-10-13T16:27:00.000-07:00

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.."

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pushing through writer's block

2006-10-13T16:13:00.000-07:00

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.

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funemployment

2006-09-20T13:32:00.000-07:00

my friend sara sent me these comics today.

(from toothpaste for dinner)

(from natalie dee)

she knows me so well.

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my body remembers fall

2006-09-19T20:12:00.000-07:00

I was out and about a lot today, going to different places on my bike, so I had ample opportunity to soak in the newly chilled air of fall. It's amazing how closely the shift in weather is tied with the approaching equinox. Anyway, I realized that this crisp cool weather - the kind of weather that would be really refreshing after the heat of a summer season - had a bit of a negative effect on my mood. It felt like it was weighing me down somehow. I felt ill at ease. I quickly realized that in my mind, this kind of weather change is probably very closely associated with school picking up to full speed, with the heavy workload that entails. This is the first fall in at least 13 years that I am not being saddled with such a burden, but my body doesn't know that. It doesn't yet know that it no longer needs to brace itself for the stress of five hours of homework each night, staying up til 1 or 2, and waking up early and in a hurried panic each morning. This routine has been drilled into the memory of my body. It's going to take a while for me to heal from the abuse I've been through, deinstitutionalize, deschool, unlearn the pattern of expecting and enduring the stress from the daily trauma of school. I want my body to rejoice with delight at the feel of the changing seasons. In the past, I always got seasonal depression at the onslaught of winter, beginning in november when school is at its peak in inducing misery. I can look forward with joy, at least with my mind, to the potential of a stressless november, but I expect it will be years until my body can do the same.

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coming back to my body

2006-09-19T02:39:00.000-07:00

I mentioned my low energy level a little over a week ago, attributing it to my willful indulgence in the supposed benefits of civilization - computer, tv, high fructose corn syrup. These things numb me, insulate me from needing to be aware of my surroundings; they put me to sleep. Not even sleep, because sleep is an active time of rejuvenation and imaginative adventure. They steal my life from me. I am heavily addicted to this computer. It sucks me in and keeps me contained inside my head, or, more likely, someone else's head. I'm not going to forcefully limit my time using this contraption because that would never work. Instead I want to simply rediscover a wider diversity of activities to engage myself in that get me out in meatspace. "Teaching" my brother is already helping a lot with that. We spend hours outside playing and searching and discovering and building and being destructive, and every once in a while, we look up some info on the computer, and then go back outside. Now that is the appropriate use of this technology, not staring at the screen for hours, going through the routine of websites I visit on a daily basis, looking for something to catch my attention.

I love making magic happen.

I put up a few boards of plywood in the corner of our yard, throw in some yard "waste" and start collecting the scraps from the kitchen to throw in as well, add some readily available urine, and I've just mixed together the potion for next spring's rich humus-y mulch. It's come alive with the everpresent sound of chirping crickets, gathered around the warmth of active decomposition.

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I mix some honey with water, leave it out in the open stirring in my cauldron for a few days, and it starts to bubble. I transfer it to a jug where it continually bubbles for weeks. It will be ready to enjoy, complete with natural carbonation and vitamin rich yeasty sediment, sooner than seems possible.

I concentrate my attention on an idea for three days, gathering materials from around the house, and in the end, I have a book I just bound myself that will last me for years (probably both in the binding and in the filling of the pages).

This is all pretty awesome. But how much more could I be creating if I weren't drugged by the food I eat and self-imprisoned by the screen of my choosing? I have such a great opportunity to regain some of the childhood I mostly lost to school right now, within the safety and stability of my family's home, to discover and experiment and learn and heal.

I've been reading The Drama of the Gifted Child, by Alice Miller. I haven't gotten very far, but it is certainly striking a cord with me. She talks about the child behaving grandiosely in order to earn the pride and love of the parent, which basically amounts to my perfectionism. I only do or attempt things I am certain to do well at. If I think I might perform badly at something, I just don't do it, or at least avoid it as much as possible. So I'm thinking to heal this habitual inhibiting behavior, I'm trying to seek out things to do that I will not be good at. Right now, I'm learning to write with my left hand. I think I used to be ambidextrous when I was very young, but I broke my left thumb in kindergarten, and ever since, my right hand has been the supposed dominent one. My writing is very slow and awkward, but is actually more legible than the quick sloppy writing of my right hand. I anticipate good things to come out of learning to draw and paint with my left hand. With all my years of schooling, I know part of the reason I feel more comfortable staring at abstractions all day instead of engaging the real world is because of my over-developed left brain, only wanting to analyze and think about everything. I want to exercise my right brain, the hemisphere of creating, imagining, playing, doing. This could potentially lead to some sort of theme of antiperfectionist activities - learning to play an instrument, designing a miniature forest in the backyard, conversing more with strangers, opening up to what my emotions are more (and expressing them in some way), travelling by myself or with other inexperienced people to gain some experiental street smarts, rely on my intuition more in general. The great thing is that all of this goes right along with the journey of rewilding!

Not only do I want to shift from my left brain to my right, I also want to crawl out of my mind and come back into my body. I don't want to simply read about what foods I "should" be eating, I want to learn to feel what my body needs and provide myself with that (like this guy). I want to engage in more personally meaningful manual labor. I want to sleep with the sun. I know I've been saying this for as long as I've had this blog, but I want to give yoga a shot. I want to learn some form of self-defense. I want to learn to fight. I have an overdeveloped cerebrum and an underused body. I can hold my ground in an intellectual argument, but would I be able to still hold that ground if it actually was ground? I watched the movie Fight Club for the second time recently. It reminded me I have to learn over and over again. There's a great danger in living in your mind. You tend to forget that you are an animal, that, just like every other living thing, will die sooner or later. An integral part to being present in this body of mine is being ever aware that it will one day decompose and recompose as a multitude of more life. I need to give up everything, let go of control, let go of my fear of pain and of death, and have a near-life experience.

Today, we were building a torsion catapult in the backyard, and on two separate occasions, I let the arm of the catapult spring into either side of my head. I can only think that this happened because I was more present in my thoughts and my mind than in my body. It hurt. A lot. Both times. (I felt like I was a bad guy in a home alone movie) Later on, I got kind of freaked out because I was remembering an episode of some tv show (probably some csi) where a guy got suckerpunched in the back of the head and, though he walked away from the fight, died the next day from internal bleeding. So thinking about this, I'm basically saying to myself, "oh shit, I just got hit on the back/side of the head twice! am I internally bleeding? how could you tell?" Eventually, I confessed my fears to my mom, and after that, I just put my faith in the gods to take care of me. I tried to re-emerse myself in my body and focus my energy on the swollen part of my head, basically attempting to send healing vibes in my own amateur way. And I also came to be at peace with the remote possibility that today or tomorrow could be the day I die. So, my head is still sore, but I am now without any irrational fears, just peace and an excitment about the potential adventures of tomorrow.

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a hodge podge of notes on the past few days

2006-09-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

The mead I started is doing really well. I followed the instructions for making tej, or Ethiopian mead, except I put in blueberries instead of the "hops-like bittering agent" that they normally use, which means that my mead is actually called melomel. I just combined the water and honey (4:1 ratio) in a crock and kept it covered with a towel for nearly four days, stirring several times a day. I added the blueberries to the mix slowly over the four days. By day four (yesterday), it was bubbling, which meant it was time to transfer it to a gallon jug where it will stay for only two to four weeks, loosely capped, until its finished fermenting, amazingly. Everything I had heard about honey and mead was that it took forever to ferment (well, months at least). I guess I'll find out. I'm sure the blueberries helped a lot.

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I'm also in the middle of constructing a journal/notebook for myself, I created and sewed together the signatures last night and put the glue on the spine to dry, and now I'm attaching the covers. It's a lot of fun. I can't wait to finish my current journal so I can start using this one.

I've had a good bit of socializing the last two nights - after a dinner with friends, we went on a latenight bike ride in the full moon light thursday, and last night we had a dance party of sorts (I think I did the most dancing, until I wore myself out at least). I'll be enjoying a night in tonight, listening to the stack of music I picked up from the library this afternoon.

It's been at least (at least) two weeks since I've showered, and even though I've gotten used to my smell (and kind of like it), I'm afraid others have not, so I'll probably take a shower tonight or tomorrow too.

I'm very happy that I am not in college anymore. Dropping out was a very sound move. The only thing I miss is the greater freedom of living on my own (that is, away from my parents). The one thing I do not want to do is mooch. I need to talk with my parents to make sure they don't feel that I'm taking advantage of them. I'm certainly not trying to. I hope we get to a point very soon where my living here for the time being is a mutually beneficial situation. Ran has commented on the idea of mooching before -

Isn't living with somebody without paying them anything called "mooching"?

Yes it is called that, because we live in a slave culture with a slave language! Our ancestors "owned" only small personal items, but now we think we can "own" information and physical space. This idea is a social construction that serves to concentrate power: if I already have power (represented as "property"), those with less power/property have to give me more. If I "own" a space, you have to pay me just to live there, and if you don't, you are taking advantage of me. We have it backwards! It is the alleged "owner" who is mooching, benefiting from the legal right to deny someone their natural right to occupy space in this world, to build a shelter and gather food and live in a cooperative community. (Not that rent-chargers are bad people. Many of them have been forced into a situation where they have to charge rent so they can make payments to still more powerful people.)

Even though I feel my freedom slightly restricted here, it's the best place I could be at this stage, being a safe place to challenge myself to build cooperative community and (in so doing) to heal. I love my family, and I love my friends. I may not have a tribe, but I do have community. If I'm smart about how I use this expanded freedom from dropping out, I expect things to only get better.

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apathy

2006-09-07T01:12:00.000-07:00

I am tired. Lately, I've been allowing myself to freely indulge in and relish civilization on an emotional and intellectual level. Not that I haven't been doing that all along against the wishes of my intellect and emotions. I tend to blame the tiredness on that, but that's really unfair. I'm going to be tired no matter what right now. Lots of new stuff is going on - I'm home/unschooling Mike, Sara's recently moved into CAMP, and other various projects are afoot. But even without all that, I'd still be tired.

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I'm just tired all the time. Part of it is my being in a limbo between vegetarianism and omnivorism, I'm sure. But part of it is certainly some form of depression as well. Not that I'm sad. On the contrary, I'm very much apathetic most of the time. There are so many things I desire to spend my time doing, so much to expend energy on, to get excited about, but when it comes to acting on these desires, I'm met with a whole lot of lethargy. Some things are progressing, but very slowly, in stages, baby steps. I'm searching for intrinsic motivation and trying to balance that with what's still expected of me by others. I'm having a hard time not just shutting down at the prospect of doing anything that isn't intrinsically motivated, so I'm feeling selfish as hell.

When I do allow myself to feel, I feel fragile - like I want to curl up in the fetal position and be protected and nurtured. According to many of my societal circumstances, I am an adult. But I'm not an adult. I'm not ready to be an adult, and I don't want to be an adult. In some ways I may be at the point of coming of age, but in other ways, I am obviously still very much an infant.

While my internal state seems to be rather emo at the moment, my superficial circumstances are rather exciting. I'm so glad that Mike is able to get out of school because of what I can offer. We're going to have fun together. And I'm happy to have Sara as a close friend still, and happy for her that she has a permanent address (for now). It's been fun helping to set her up in her room and helping her build her bike. And we went dumpstering last night - all over town. It was her first time, and it was quite a first time. We hit up the Aldi's, Trader Joe's, World Market, and Sappington Farmer's market. Lot's of potatoes and bananas. More fruit and veggies, and even some chocolate. My brother and I also went shopping at Soulard farmer's market for the first time last saturday for the family's produce needs. No more supermarket produce for me. Oh, and I'm starting a batch of mead, using the recipe found in the Wild Fermentation book. I've also been using the library extensively lately, exploring new music (Neutral Milk Hotel being a new favorite) and reading up on gardening, forest gardens, and permaculture. I am actually rather excited about getting some sort of perennial edible garden going in the back yard. I've got the compost set up. I want to go ahead and start sheet composting too. I'm planning for it to be a no dig garden. I've also got a fire pit set up in the backyard for me to eventually practice friction fires in. The project we've started in homeschooling is learning about and constructing a relatively lifesize catapult (it's what he's interested in).

When I go over all that, I am actually excited and do feel pretty happy. I'm just kind of surfing the flow right now, trying to find my way to the fringes of civilization. I think the sentiments I was remarking on at the beginning of this post come from a dread at the idea of getting some part time work right now (I do want to save up some money to travel to europe with my friend Nathan). Maybe once things with the beginning of unschool settle in I'll be ready for that. For now, I really am tired, and it's because it's 3am and I've been up for 18 hours. So that's all for now.

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truly wild?

2006-08-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

Is the goal of rewilding realistic at all? When I'm honest with myself, when I look at where I am now - how very domesticated I am - and where I have yet to go, I'm inclined to say it isn't. There's been a discussion going on between Ted and Ran about this predicament - everyone talking the talk, but no one completely walking the walk. Civilization is a prison, and we've all been in it so long that no one knows how to really function outside of its walls. And we're too afraid to try.

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So far I've mostly looked at rewilding from the perspective of needing to learn skills to be community-sufficient outside of the life support system of civilization, away from all the tubes and chemicals keeping us artificially alive. Skills are certainly very important. But they are really only a small part of rewilding. Beyond meeting the needs of survival, there is the problem of trying to regain a sense of sane community, both with one's fellow humans and with the rest of the world. Giuli at Anthropik quoted something by Tamarack at Teaching Drum that fits situation -

Someone recently asked, "How long does it take from knowing nothing about the wilderness to going off and living in it, and when do you know when you are ready? I basically just have a few books I haven't started reading about it."

This is a profound question, and I see it is the main theme in various group discussions lately. Not a day goes by that someone does not ask me the same thing, or else a related question, such as, "What are the top skills I need to know?" "Learning the Old Ways should be free, like it used to be; why do I have to pay money?" "Where can I find an elder to teach me?" "Is it even possible anymore, with all the hunting and fishing regulations?" "All the land is private or restricted, and I can't afford to buy any, is there anywhere can I go to live primitively?" "I want to learn on my own, what
steps should I take?"

I'm going to give you all some straight talk, in hopes that it will help to steer you on to a track might get you somewhere. The reality of the situation is that I have not met, or heard of, a single person in the past 40 years who has used the approaches that we have been talking about, who
has been able to return to primitive living. This includes the authors of the popular books. Yeah, they might talk a good talk, but look at what they've actually done -- a month in the mountains, a solo year in the woods, some time in Alaska -- is that really living the Old Way? Where is the
clan? Where are the elders? The children? Where is the example and clan memories to learn from?

Why didn't it work for them, and why won't it work for you? Because they carried civilization with them into the wilderness, and you likely will as well. You can learn all the skills you want, and The Mother will spit you back out just about as fast as you went in. The more stubborn individuals
will last a few months or maybe a year, but rest assured, they'll be back.

Why? Because they didn't do their work. We come from a technological society, so we naturally think that substituting primitive technology for civilized technology is our doorway. The only problem is that Native people are not into technology. They spend only a couple hours a day providing for
their simple needs, and they mostly use simple means. Look at their tools -- few and crude, and their craftwork -- basic and utilitarian. What a Native person excels at is what I call qualitative skills -- how to sit in a circle with your clan mates and speak your truth, how to find your special
talent so that you can develop it to serve your people, how to use your intuition, the ways of honor and respect, how to live in balance with elders and women and children, how to speak in the language beyond words, how to befriend fear and live love. Without these skills, you will surely die. Or
else you'll go back to the life that shuns these skills.

Will a book teach you these qualitative skills? Will a class or a workshop? Is learning firemaking or edible plants going to give them to you? They actually take you further away from what you need to know, because focusing on them reinforces the technological approach, and that 95% of your brain
which you don't use, shrivels up even more. We become what we surround ourselves with; the way to learn Truthspeaking is to share with other truthspeakers, the way to bring life back to our dormant brain is to immerse ourselves in the full spectrum of life in which our brain evolved, the way
to elder wisdom is to be with wise elders. There are patterns to break -- crippling, blinding patterns that take continual, unrelenting attention if we are ever going to see, hear, smell, and feel as fully as we are intended. That takes guidance, a supportive environment, and example. Otherwise, it's just another exercise, another class, another walk in the woods, and then
it's back to life as usual, with no end in sight.

Roughly 80% of what a Native person eats is not affected by hunting and fishing regulations. There are vast tracts of public and unregulated private land that are available to a hunter-gatherer, with virtually no human competition. If you think there are a lot of people at your favorite
state park or national forest just step a few paces off the trail, and they all disappear. Very few people really go "out" in the woods anymore. I know a dozen ways to live legally on or adjacent to foraging lands without having to pay big bucks. I can grow fat by living primitively in a farmer's
woodlot or city park. It doesn't take Alaska or the Grand Tetons. It takes shaking off the old preconceptions of what primitive living is and rebecoming the Native person you already are.

It simply can't be done alone. We evolved as social beings, and we literally start going crazy when we spend too much time without company of our fellow creatures. Learning skills alone, buying land alone, is feeding a pipe dream, a romantic fantasy, that will likely only lead to frustration
and disillusionment. Virtually everyone I know who has tried it for any period of time, has given up and bought back into the system. Try to look up some of the older people who once had dreams as you do now. You'll see -- they now have mortgages and jobs with benefits they can't let go of, and
kids' educations they have to worry about. Yeah, they might still be talking about their dreams, and they might practice their skills and head out in the woods now and then, but realistically, when is that dream ever going to become reality?

And then there's the cost of your rewilding. Yes, I said cost, because nothing is free. Money is the least of what you are going to be asked to give. There is a world of difference between something for free and something that is freely given. On a stay with one of my elders in Canada, I built her a cabin. 15 years ago another elder asked me to literally lay my life on the line for him. I would gladly give my last dollar, and much more, for the privilege of walking in my ancestor's footsteps.

The alternative? Sit in the city, whining about how things used to be and ought to be. Or look at the cost of NOT rewilding, and come to realize that one has to give before they can receive. Then you'll be ready to throw away your books, turn your back on the "experts," and turn your face to the wind. You'll start hearing voices that help you walk rather than give you sweet talk. There waiting to greet you will be your clan, your teachers, and your real self. You'll leave survival behind and walk into the Beauty Way.

I don't know where all this leaves me with my own goals. Sure, I'll learn (and use) as many practical skills as possible, probably in both hunting and gathering and in permaculture. But how to become feral? Other animals can do it - cats, horses, goats, pigs. Why couldn't humans? There are stories of civilized humans getting stranded in the wilderness and becoming savage out of necessity, eventually integrating into the local indigenous culture (movies like Dances with Wolves and The Snow Walker), but alas, I doubt I'll be running into any sort of intact indigenous culture. Certainly those are two parts of what makes it difficult to rewild - we lack the necessity to do so (at the moment) and we have no one to teach us -- not only teach us but live with us and become our family.

That's the balance I'm trying to strike right now, I guess. I want to be within a family, and I want to become as wild as possible. I loved Ted's part in his post about truly wild being spear in hand, naked with body paint, and animist. I've at least gotten somewhere on the latter two. And I can't wait to get some experience with a spear. And then to recognize that that is still only the very beginning of the journey back home.

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hitching

2006-08-24T14:37:00.000-07:00

I got back home a couple days ago from a rather spontaneous road trip I went on with a friend. The plan was to hitch to vancouver and back, with part of the journey covered by driving someone's car for them up to vancouver (gas paid). That was arranged through craigslist. That would have been great, except that we were refused entry at the border because we didn't have enough cash on us. In our determination, we attempted to go to another bordercrossing, four hours away. But apparently, that's called bordershopping, which violates their immigration act. So they could have technically thrown us in jail for the night. Instead, we just got chewed out and detained for a couple hours to try to make us sweat. We ended up just having to take the guy's car back to Denver and pay for the gas ourselves. Other than not quite making it to our destination, the trip was very fun. We made some really cool friends while we stayed in Denver for a few days before hitching back.

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The act of hitching itself was a rewarding experience, having faith in the kindness of strangers to get us home. Out of the many rides we got, only one even approached being questionable as far as safety. The guy was driving rather fast, and talking even faster. And let's just say that I think I got second hand smoke from something other than tobacco. He got us out of the middle of Kansas City though. We were very grateful for that. When we started back from Denver, we got a ride really quickly, and from a guy in a very luxurious RV, driving his daughter to college. He drove us for 8 hours from Denver. We watched two movies and had some lively political debate. Other than those two, the rest of our rides were relatively plain. It was always as exciting as hell to be picked up, to have someone actually pull off the road to open up a momentary relationship of mutual aid. Often, the people who picked us up had hitchhiked themselves in the past, or had a parent that used to pick up hitchhikers. One was motivated by his recent conversion to christianity. Others didn't seem to need any special motivation at all - they were just willing to help us out. I think everyone benefited from each ride/pickup in some way.

At any rate, it was a whole lot of fun to do something so spontaneous and supposedly risky. I want more of that in the future.

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rewild.org taken down

2006-08-19T14:06:00.000-07:00

I was just asked by Griffin of the former rewild.org to take down my recreation of their site, so I have done that. I'll remind everyone that the articles can still be found in the internet archive and their zine (which includes most, if not all, of the content on the website) can be found here (unless they're being asked to take that down too). I had assumed that the website went offline from lack of funding because the group had indeed gone out to live their vision, but there was apparently other reasons I'm not aware of that they took it down. I apologize to them if I overstepped a boundary. I'll be removing the now dead link from my sidebar right after I post this. Sorry also to all who already linked to that site.

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meta

anima

2006-08-09T23:58:00.000-07:00

Today, I tried to spend as much time as possible outside. It was a great day. I get lulled into a daze so easily when inside, in the air-conditioning, with the tv on. It's amazing how much more time I had today, how much more time I was aware of experiencing. I don't like being indoors. I look at the walls, and I see where they came from and what it cost in life and energy for them to be here and the life they inhibit the existence of. I do not see anima. I do not see movement, spirit, life. I know that it's just that I'm not looking deeply enough, that life is everywhere, that this home has a spirit of place, and that my family is contributing to it's evolution by inhabiting what used to be an abandoned board-up. But even so, in my weakened state, in the process of healing spiritually, emotionally, relationally, intellectually, and physically, I can draw more easily from the strength of life outside of these walls, even in this urban habitat. I found a place last night to sleep outside where none of the streetlights or porchlights reach me, leaving the AC units' buzzing as the last main nuisance. It's wonderful to wake up to the sun's warm rays heating my body, like a wierd alarm clock that is comforting yet gradually coaxes me out of my horizontal position. Later in the day, I bathed in the heavy rain of a thunderstorm. My shorts and I had been air-drying ever since. (I think the shorts are finally dry - and cleaner! And look!- no lint!)

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There's a relevant passage from the book I'm reading now, Island, by Aldous Huxley. The islanders are talking about how their particular religion/philosophy (which happens to be mahayana buddhism) causes them to relate to the world-

"If you're a Tantrik, you don't renounce the world or deny its value; you don't try to escape into a Nirvana apart from life... No, you accept the world, and you make use of it; you make use of everything you do, of everything that happens to you, of all the things you see and hear and taste and touch, as so many means to your liberation from the prison of yourself."

It's the journey out of myself and into the world that I'm on. (Conversely, its just as much a journey of rediscovering who I am, going deeper into myself, through that journey deeper into the world)

I do not believe in God. But I have faith in God. (I'm using a broader perception of "God" than people usually do, but I'm using it to be able to share the common terminology with other people and so connect with them better through that language. I could just as easily substitute in "the gods" or "the universe", and I would prefer to, actually, for my own benefit, since the word "God" comes with a lot of baggage, like in explaining what the hell I mean by what I just said...) By that I mean that belief is static, unchanging. It is something people cling to and defend and prove and push on other people. If belief is a holding on, faith is a letting go, a trusting. My understanding of these terms come from Alan Watts-

"Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float. And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on. In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight. But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be."

I made the seemingly contradictory statement at the beginning of this paragraph to try to get across the idea of where I am spiritually. Occasionally, I take to calling myself, again ironically, a religious atheist. It's because I truly don't believe in or perceive a sky father deity-type personal god, but I do perceive a spirit, a life-force, in everything around me, in the universe. And I entrust my existence to that life-force. I yearn to live in the hands of the gods. When I say I don't perceive a personal god, I'm not saying that the universe is impersonal, only that I personally feel silly talking to the universe in the dark alone at night (it doesn't mean the universe isn't listening). Any sort of sincere prayer that I could muster would be beyond words. And yet I also find myself searching for ritual. Fun, easy, spontaneous ritual, but ritual nonetheless.

I'm attempting to explore the good that I can extract from my adolescent hyper-religiousness as a part of healing. I can't make the past disappear. Healing requires balance. I think I'm getting through my reactionary phase, and I'm hungry for some soulfood. Great timing, too, because I'm going to spend tomorrow (well, *today*, according to the clock) having fun in the meramec river with some friends.

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2006-08-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

I just have a few random thoughts that I want to get out, so it might be jumbled.

I'm releasing myself from as many "shoulds" as possible. It has almost turned into something of a running joke among some of my friends that whenever one of us says that they should be doing something, someone else says, "should", in such a way as to make the person question where their motives are coming from. For me, if I can't replace the "should" with "want to", I'm going to find a way to not do it. I didn't vote in the primary election yesterday because I had no intrinsic motivation to do so. That's actually the first election I intentionally skipped. I remember how powerless I felt after each of the handful of times I've voted in the past - that the ritual I had just performed was on the whole meaningless and would effectively change nothing. Its only real effectiveness is in maintaining the illusion of democracy for those awake enough to care but still too myopic to see through the game.

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I want life to be easy and fun. (note that had this paragraph not come right after the first, I would have been inclined by habit to say "life should be easy and fun") It's amazing how much that wish goes against the unspoken assumptions of our culture and of civilization - the assumptions of life being a problem to be solved or a set of numbers to be earned, that most of one's life for most people just has to be hard and boring, and there's no way around it. I don't accept those assumptions, and I intend to be living proof that there is a way around, or out, rather. As I desire, I intend to be unapologetically lazy. And then I'll turn around and be just as unapologetically dilligent and creative in whatever project I'm inspired to pursue. It's so much easier when the motivation wells up from within.

That said, it seems that the process of rewilding is a monumental task, being without a tribe, without a culture, and already beyond the age of peak mental malleability. I intend, though, to build momentum and be persistent in learning as much as I can as thoroughly as I can, and to put that knowledge to good daily use. A lot of what I want to learn about is right in line with my desire for life to be easy and fun. The learning part may be slow and hard (although not boring), but once the knowledge of self/community-sufficiency is gained, it'll make life a lot more easy and stress-free. For one small example, take squatting to poop. Certainly, it's hard at first to fine tune your balance and figure out exactly what position to be in, but with practice, it actually becomes a much easier way to move your bowels. I didn't notice it at first, but once I got comfortable with the process, I could relax and actually move my bowels more quickly and in greater quantity. There was a threshold of difficulty to get past, but now that I'm on the other side, it's so much easier to behave as my body is adapted to behave.

I have more thoughts, but I'm tired of being on the computer, so I might be back later with more.

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bicycle fuel economy

2006-08-08T23:53:00.000-07:00

My friend Annie sent me a link to a t-shirt design today that had a bike positioned above a sign on a gas pump that read "fuel economy information" and then had, City [infinity sign] and Highway [infinity sign] to the left and right of it.

I also have a sticker on my bike helmet that reads "I get 1000 miles/gallon and I don't pollute" (placed on the left side of the helmet so that it faces drivers and makes them mad/think, should they happen to read it).

I enjoy the sentiment in both of these designs, but neither of them are actually true. Certainly not the first one. But the second one is probably still pretty outrageous. Sure, there's absolutely zero gallons of fuel going directly towards powering the bike. But there's the fuel that went into manufacturing, shipping, and selling the bike, of course. And the oil that goes into maintaining the roads that the bike rolls so smoothly over. But more than that, oil still fuels that bike, just indirectly. Because oil fuels me.

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No, I'm not a robot. I eat regular old civilized human food like everyone else. But that's the stuff I'm talking about. Here's an article, the oil in your oatmeal, that explains what I'm getting at. More fossil fuels go into the growing, shipping, preserving, and preparing of your food than you would think. According to the article's sources, 7 calories of fossil fuel energy goes toward bringing you 1 calorie of food energy.

I'm certainly not knocking bikes. But unless they're eating organic food that they grew (or otherwise gathered) themselves and preserved and cooked it without fossil fuels, the environmentalists are fooling themselves to think that bikes are not powered by oil.

I wonder how far off the sticker I have on my helmet is. The article says that 8 ounces of oil go into the breakfast described, and that over 2 quarts are consumed with that breakfast routine over the course of a week. So let's keep the amount of oil per meal constant and triple it for a week to cover all my meals (6 quarts, which is already a gallon and a half, for 21 meals of fuel, er, I mean food). That means for my sticker to be true, I'd have to be able to ride an average of 71 miles after each of the 14 meals that add up to one gallon of fuel. I know my calculations miss the mark some in how the food is actually divvied up to power the bike, but 1000 miles per "gallon" is not going to happen. Oh well.

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bicycle
food

I am a sponge

2006-08-08T18:03:00.000-07:00

There are two verbs I am using to describe what I'm doing now that I've escaped with what's left of my spirit from school - unschool and rewild. They're interconnected, of course. In unschooling, I am primarily interested in learning the skills necessary to rewild- friction fires, shelter constructing, water purifying, hunting, herbal medicine wildcrafting. And more important than all of that is to first strengthen my trust in my own judgement and intuition. I have a lot of healing to do. It is part of both the unschooling and the rewilding process.

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I've already talked about my addiction to praise and ingrained habit of people pleasing. At this point in my journey, it's the biggest wound I need to heal. I have not only been trained - I have trained myself - to obey, but to be pleasing to those I hold up as figures of authority. I please them by molding myself into a person that is compatible with them and with their ideology. I soak up the characteristics of those I put in power over me like a sponge. I have seen this tendency play out most dramatically in my relationship to Devin. Before I met him in person, I was pretty gung ho on the idea of becoming a permaculturalist, starting my own garden, living on the edge of civilization. But only a very short time after I met him in person, I had reshaped my opinions on the subject to match his own - that permaculture is a dead-end and that becoming a hunter-gatherer was the way to go. Of course, Devin spoke of it solely in terms of the way that was right for him and was not pressuring me at all to change my thinking. I did that willingly, if a bit too quickly. It's not that, upon giving it more thought, that I even disagree with his opinions at all. It's that I took them upon myself as absolutes. In my mind, he was the teacher, and I was simply eating up the lessons like I've done for the past 13 years.

This trouble with blind acceptance of whatever I perceive as authority extends in an opposing way as well. Those that I hold up as authority have obviously changed a lot, and it's very hard for me to face those past authority figures who do not necessarily know how I've changed. I'm caught in an internal double bind of not wanting to pretend or wear a mask around them but also not wanting to deal with explaining and justifying myself to them and then feeling the psychic pain of their changed opinions about me, of my not pleasing them any more. So I end up just attempting to shut those former authority figures out of my life. It's true that I could just give up on maintaining the now false image that they have of me in order to begin relating to them more honestly, but honestly, without the motive of pleasing them, I have nothing drawing me to them, nothing that I feel I have in common with them to share in a friendship. I'm not talking about anyone in particular, just the general sense of weariness that I get when confronted with the conflict of my past and present selves. I really just want to walk away from that former life and have nothing more to do with it, but I don't know how that would work if I want to heal the wounds received during that time. I can never fully walk away from what made me who I am today, from what brought me to this point. But in another sense, I am always walking away from my former self as I change and evolve a little bit each day.

Fuck, I think I got off track. Let's try starting again at a different point.

I'm tempted to consider whether, since this habit of soaking up the opinions and goals of my authority is so ingrained, I could use it to my benefit by carefully choosing who it is that I put on that pedestal and so become the person I want to be... by... becoming other people? Shit, that's a really stupid way to behave. And it's what I've been doing. All my life. No, I need to kick this habit, and I need to do it by being an ass. Well, not necessarily being an ass, but I'll definitely be feeling like one. Instead of soaking authority figures up, I need to purposefully put them off. My mom describes my people pleasing behavior in terms of seeking peace at all costs. I avoid conflict by anticipating what those I would conflict with want and preemptively giving them that. So I simply need to get more comfortable with being in conflict with other people.

Simply. heh.

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2006-08-04T20:11:00.000-07:00

I've had a mental block against writing for a while which I think I'm about to come out of. I've been seeking an outlet lately, but I've not felt like I could say anything here. That seems to be a relatively common hurdle that I need to get over. I'm treating this blog as if it needs to be perfect. As much as I like to think so, I didn't leave behind my perfectionist side back in sophomore year. There's also the part about what I write here hurting people unintentionally. But I've got to remind myself, among others, that this blog is for my benefit primarily. It's a space I can use to sculpt my thoughts. I just happen to also find it useful to share those thoughts with everyone else, both as a broadcasting service and to receive feedback. I also tend to worry about whether I'm being too long-winded.

Well, I'm putting those concerns and worries aside because I have things to say and a place to say them, so I'm gonna. This post'll probably be mostly stream of consciousness-type stuff. I've got stuff I've got stored up from at least a month of writer's block. So here we go -

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We had a huge wind/thunderstorm here a little over two weeks ago. It knocked the electricity out for close to half a million people in the metro area for several days. That was lots of fun. Huge branches were downed in our backyard from a maple next door (the leaves from which jumpstarted the carbon portion of my compost pile), so it looked a little bit like a jungle. I loved having the air conditioning off and the lights off at night. I enjoyed time away from this addicting computer, spending more time than usual experiencing the world, unmediated by a screen. The one thing I did miss was free access to the refrigerator. We quickly got out and ate all the animal foods possible, so it's not like there was much in there that I was missing out on, but just not having that convenience of being able to look in the fridge whenever I wanted to became the biggest burden for me somehow. The one big loss from the storm personally was that the tent I had set up in the backyard broke. That was where I was sleeping most nights. The first two nights without power, I still slept outside, under the sky, on a full-length folded out lawn chair, where there was actually enough air movement that I was more comfortable than the people sleeping inside on beds. Nearly everyone cheered when the power finally came back on, 67 hours later. I didn't. I'll always cheer when the power goes out. It's good practice.

One of the weirdest things to come back to after Dancing Rabbit was indoor plumbing. Why shit in (somewhat) clean water when you could better use it to drink or to water a garden? And why flush away perfectly good shit when you could compost it and turn it into fertilizer? And then, when you go to squat on a toilet, there's the splash factor you have to worry about. And why is it necessary to pee inside? We train our dogs to go outside to do their business (actually, it's more like we train them to stay inside and then have to additionally train them to not mark the territory of where they've been trained to live), why can't humans?

At Dancing Rabbit, they have a humanure system set up, with composting toilets (buckets that you sprinkle sawdust in after you're done) and humey piles that cook in a compost pile for a year before they turn into usable soil. I really didn't want to turn the lever of any flush toilet ever again when I first got back, and with good reason. Within a week of returning home, a toilet I flushed overflowed, which was a big smelly mess. That toilet has since fallen into disrepair and my mom has spent many hours of frustration (with my help every once in a while)attempting to replace the innards of the tank contraption, and to no avail. I'd really rather shit in a bucket. Or even better, grab a shovel and head for some woods.

Just after I wrote the part about training dogs to go outside, our new family member, Emma, was let outside to poop. She's a 10 week old, six pound, beagle mix. She's the runt of the litter (the mom and dad live next door) and is very cute, soft, floppy. White with big brown blobs. So far, she's mostly been doing a good job of getting along with Lady, our 14 year old, 16 pound terrier. At first, I resisted getting attached to her because, generally, I don't like the idea of having pets. I love animals, but I don't want them domesticated when I'm trying to go feral myself. I've heard the philosophical argument made that humans keep pets to have someone to sympathize with their own cagedness. We generally treat pets as a lower caste of humans - keeping them locked up within boxes of various sizes, from the literal cage, to the backyard, to the leash around the neck. They're fed "food" that's even more bland and processed than human "food". They're trained with rewards and punishments exactly what's acceptable behavior, and when broken, lead even more tamed and boring lives than most of us live, looking forward only to the next opportunity to be rewarded or to get out of their most restrictive cage. Many, of course, grow to love their cages, finding them secure and comforting, just like every human I know. And of course, any animals that we take with us into the realm of civilization also have the corresponding population problems. And we sterilize many of them. I just finished reading Brave New World. I wonder if that's coming for humans. (And by coming, I mean coming back and expanding, because I'm aware that some humans have already been subjected to involuntary sterilizations. US citizens even. Before Hitler made eugenics unpopular. For a while anyway.)

I had another bubble of hope pop the other day. I was reading Ran's zine, Superweed 4. First, I should mention that Ran is still one of the people I've positioned as an authority figure to look up to, imitate, and please. In the zine, he's basically journaling during a wilderness bike trip, and by the end of it, he, someone who is strongly anti-civ, is sick of the wilderness and can't wait to get back to civilization. From there, he goes on to say that it'll be impossible for him to ever fully undomesticate himself. Civilization is his home, even as dysfunctional as it is, and he'll always be drawn back to it. The best he can hope for it to live on the fringes of civilization and try to get the best of both worlds. Since I put so much stock in what he says, this little part crushed my hopes of ever becoming a full-time hunter-gatherer. So without that naively cushioning hope beneath me anymore, I got pretty depressed and despairing for a little bit. I've got a quote from Radiohead as the "headline" for my myspace profile right now that fits the feeling - "your fantasies are unlikely. but beautiful." Despair is a hard emotion to feel, but in the end, it always ends up being more motivating than hope. Hope is passive; despair opens the door for action, since there's nothing to lose after all.

I watched a documentary ealier today, Modern Tribalism, which explores the sub-culture movement in modern society towards ritual practices very similar to those carried out by primitive cultures - primarily, tattooing, piercing, and festivals centered around a fire. When I was younger, I always said that I would never want to get a tattoo or a piercing. I wanted to keep my body "natural". Why would I want to improve upon what I was given by God? But as my friend George said, life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. Things like piercings and tattoos appeal to me now, not just as an act of rebellion. It's an act of belonging. It's an initiation rite, or a partial substitute for one, since there are no really good one's in this culture. The act of going through something painful can be a powerful tool for growing in strength and confidence as one transitions to a new stage in life. I'm certainly in such a transition right now.

Sara and I are in a really good place right now. I've realized that I don't really need to change the way I relate to her since she has always been my friend first and foremost and still is. And Sara has realized that the primary thing she was ending in our breakup was the use of labels - boyfriend and girlfriend. It's the status of being a couple that we gave up. And, really, I'm happier for it, and we're both healthier for it.

Well, healthier to a degree. I'm still very sick. Not physically, most of the time, but in every other way possible. Since I've begun this journey of healing, I've become very aware of exactly how I medicate and numb myself to protect me from reality. Lately, I've been eating more comfort food, which I don't even want to think about stopping since I'm underweight, but some of the food I eat still doesn't make me feel good afterwards. I rarely drink coffee (only when I go out with friends to a coffee shop like Mokabe's), but I want to cut it out completely. It certainly tastes good, but it makes me feel awful. And I definitely don't want to ever become dependent on that most used and abused drug in the world.

Speaking of coffee, the last day or so, I've been considering a job at a fancy coffee shop close to my neighborhood, called Belas Artes. I'd like to get a job in order to save up some money. I'd like to save up some money in order to travel to Europe with my friend Nathan in January. He's studying in Ireland for a semester, but he's visiting a friend in Bulgaria first and then has a month to get from one corner of Europe to the other, seeing as much of Europe in the meantime as possible. And I want to make that journey with him. I'm also planning to travel around to visit friends at college in Chicago and at Truman. And I'd like to go back up to Dancing Rabbit sometime this fall, maybe in conjunction with helping with the sorghum harvest at Sandhill Farm. When I'm at home, I'll be helping with house maintenance and renovations, possibly homeschooling/unschooling my brother, and unschooling myself - reading at will and learning some basic self-sufficiency skills. And I'll be continuing to heal. But that's a lifelong process.

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Rewild.org

2006-07-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how long rewild.org has been offline now, but for my and others' convenience, I've reincarnated their website with the help of the internet archive and google pages. You can find the site's text, as it appeared as of it's last archive snapshot - March 8, 2005 - here. My link in the sidebar to rewild will now point there as well. I hope the people who ran rewild.org are doing well.

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Sara

2006-07-05T03:22:00.000-07:00

I am carefully tearing apart my old life, my old way of living. I am changing. I have been changing. I change. I say "carefully" as if I'm in control, but I am most certainly not. I can take the first step on a lot of things, but after that, I don't know where the path I stepped down is going to take me. And even that first step is only possible within the specific context of a lot of outside factors. And sometimes, I don't even get to make that first step for myself. Sometimes, I'm following someone else's lead.

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That happens to be the case for this one particular change. Sara and I broke up. It was at the beginning of our second week at Dancing Rabbit, which means that it's been a little over a month now since it happened. I don't want to go into the whole story here, but feel free to ask me about it one-on-one. Neither Sara nor I are completely whole and healthy, and our being together was essentially insulating ourselves from that reality. I know that in my case, I have been changing so much that I don't really know who "me" is. I've spent a lot of time peeling away the facade I wore throughout my adolescence and simply replacing it with other superficial things. I don't know what my core is. I don't know what a core even looks like. I know I must have one, but I have so many layers of defense mechanisms and insecurities put up around it that I don't know how to split through those to find myself again. So that's basically the purpose of our break up. We are still good friends (which is something I don't know how to really do yet, but I'm letting myself go with the flow, as it is). I am grateful to Sara for initiating this opportunity for growth. I never would have done it. I was way too comfortable. (There are other, more fucked up reasons why I never would have done it, but I don't feel like going into those here, yet).

I guess I should let you know that I did not take the break up as well as I'm showing myself to have here. I have already gone through a lot of emotional angst, followed by attempts at numbing myself, and then more angst (to greatly simplify the pattern of behavior). I've grieved sufficiently for now and am pretty okay with where Sara and I are in relation to each other, but it's taken a month to get at least this far. I'm excited about the unknown future.

More on that "tomorrow."

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community

A quick overview of my time at DR

2006-06-28T23:35:00.000-07:00

I miss being at Dancing Rabbit.

I miss the clean air, being outside, surrounded by mostly untamed (if recovering) wilderness, walking barefoot everywhere, swimming in the pond daily (sometimes twice), the stars, the fireflies, the food. I miss the culture of openness and honesty, of egality, of body freedom. I miss the land and the rabbits (real ones, hopping all over the place). I don't really miss the ticks. Well, I kind of do.

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It was a very simple and enjoyable life that I had there for those three weeks. I had the space and freedom to be myself without anyone giving me funny looks. Women needn't shave, and men needn't wear pants (skirts and dresses are not uncommon for both genders)... I fit right in! Sort of.

There are some things that I don't particularly like about Dancing Rabbit. They are an eco-village and they intend to grow as big as one (500 people). They are by no means a tribe. A tribe could form within the village, but I don't know how likely that would be. They are also out to save the world, which is more just an annoyance from my standpoint. But their method of doing so, as shortsighted as it is, is to model to "mainstream society" (a very common phrase heard at DR) a more sustainable way of living, but one that isn't so drastically different that people from the outside world automatically think that they couldn't do it.

Dancing Rabbit is off the power grid (all electricity is from solar panels and wind turbines) and mostly off the water grid (via filtered roof runoff). They use only sustainably harvested lumber. Members cannot have personal vehicles on the property. Buildings are often built with strawbales or cob. They grow most of their fruits and veggies (and buy all the rest of their food in bulk from an organic supplier). And they're trying to restore the rest of their burned out ex-farmland to its pre-civilized state. That's what they're modelling to the world as what will save it. Somehow. As if the world needs saving. There's a lot of issues with purity and guilt there. They've got a bit of the puritan work ethic going on, too.

I'll go into more of what I took away from DR and what I'm thinking (right now) about the future later. My life is in transition and upheaval, which makes it exciting (read scary) but hard to think all that clearly. But more on that tomorrow.

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Back in the land of flush toilets

2006-06-22T19:19:00.000-07:00

I am finished with my visit to Dancing Rabbit. I've been visiting with my friends, Nathan and Lacy. I'll be back home tomorrow night. Lots to say, but I don't have the time, energy, or distance, yet. But I'm sure that if you check back in a few days, you'll get an eye-full. For now, you can go read my new friend, Brillo's account of his time at DR.

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Summer

2006-05-24T10:40:00.000-07:00

I finished with school about two weeks ago. At first, my family and I spent our time in a mad rush to get the house clean before Sara got home from Europe, which she did monday before last. We got to a point where at least everyone had a place to sleep (I have not had a bed when I came home all school year). Sara spent a few days here decompressing from her travels before heading to her family's house for a week. So I've been busy with having Sara home, after having been apart for a very long (and very short at the same time) four months. Which is just an excellent use of time in my opinion.

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Once she headed to her family a couple days ago, I finally started moving on some things I want to begin doing. I'm doing my best to recover from at least 5 or 6 years of sleep deprivation. I'm avoiding the ever-whistling television as much as possible and spending as much time as possible outside, enjoying my wonderfully unkempt backyard. I've watched another awesome movie, My Dinner with Andre, which my dad got for me from the library. I've also been bookshopping a lot, mostly at a small bookstore on south Grand called Dunaway, but also at Borders to get rid of graduation gift cards I still had. I picked up the screenplay of the above movie, which I know I'll enjoy reading in the future. I also got a field guide for wild edible plants. I've been occasionally snacking on little yellow flowers in my backyard, and now I know that they're clover sorrel. They have a nice sweet, but biting, taste. I also tried my first dandelion flower and greens sunday, and I also had a bunch of wild strawberries (which admittedly seemed to be simply crunchy packets of water).

I went grocery shopping both for the family and for myself a couple days ago. For my food, I'm trying out a lot of things that Ran suggests in his Advice page. I'm experimenting right now with catching wild yeast to make my own sourdough bread. I'd also like to learn to sprout grains. I went to a health food and supplement store called New Dawn (also near south Grand) where I spent too much money. To get an idea of what I bought, I'll say what I ate throughout the day yesterday. For breakfast, I had an orange and a banana with some Smuckers "natural" chunky peanut butter and some organic green tea. A couple hours later, I learned to make scrambled eggs (isn't that sad- that I have to learn to make scrambled eggs!), made with cage-free eggs (from Schnucks- so I would guess that they're still crowded in a warehouse, just not in cages). Then I had a peanut butter sandwich on Ezekiel brand (sprouted) wheat bread. And an apple. And then spaghetti and tomato sauce, both organic.

I want to try buying food in larger quantities from Jay's international grocery, but I've never been there and have no clue as to what the quality of the food is there. Since I'm not making any kind of income right now, I really feel entitled to nothing. So I'm trying to learn to live on as little money as possible. I went dumpstering for only the second time this past saturday, at Soulard farmer's market. That's another place to shop in the future instead of a huge supermarket. I want to start gardening in the backyard (I hope it's not too late for everything at this point), and I want to start composting. I'd really like to start filtering the tap water because I don't like what I've learned about it's quality. At this point I'm just setting my drinking water out in an open container for a day or so before I drink it to de-chlorinate it.

There's a lot I want to start doing but I'm prevented right now by the fact that I'm leaving for Dancing Rabbit in less than a week. I'll be leaving for that monday morning with Sara and Devin, and I'll be there for the next three weeks, without any contact with a computer if I can help it. So, basically I'll be back in july to tell you all about it.

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On covering my ass

2006-05-10T05:59:00.000-07:00

It might just be because rebuttals have slowed down lately that I feel inclined to address this subject, but basically, I find myself covering my ass way too much in my writing. So to address this concern, I am just going to say what I mean without any attention paid to how or who it might offend. So, a list (some of these I have said, but very anxiously. Things I have not said before will be marked with an asterisk):

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I do not believe in a god
I do not value chastity or purity (what I do value is honesty and trust - in one word, integrity)*
I am not ashamed of nudity
Not only the government, but this entire culture, called civilization, needs to end, and will indeed crumble under its own weight soon
I like to use "cuss" words like fuck and shit
I am dropping out of school
Everyone in this global culture is a fucking drone and their lives suck. When people can't acknowledge it, they're just too numb, dissociatied, and drugged up on affluence or entertainment or religion or pot or booze to notice. Anyone who is not numb to the reality of this culture is, by default, depressed or otherwise mentally ill.*
I happen to enjoy beer myself (that's not my drug though. Entertainment and receiving approval are my drugs of choice. I've only enjoyed beer in moderation so far).*
I can't get mad anymore when people try to escape this reality through vices like cigarettes or other drugs or anything else. I try to escape all the time too. It's part of surviving. I just wish (as I do for myself) that they would work to actually escape from this system, drop out, and begin to build a world that we can actually live in. That's certainly what I want to do with my life. I'm tired of choosing between suffering through bullshit or being numb.*

I guess I do allow myself to say most things, but I so often end up covering my ass later (even immediately following a statement sometimes). I'm just tired of it. I don't like confrontation, but almost everything I am involved in now is countercultural. That's probably why my method for resolution to all of the problems I see involve walking away instead of fighting against. I don't like covering my ass, and I want to stop doing so as much as possible in the future.

(*restraining...to...not...cover...ass...aahhhh!*)

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The myth of progress

2006-05-09T09:38:00.000-07:00

I just turned in a paper for my American Urban Crisis class. I kind of took a broader view of the "urban" crisis and basically wrote more of a manifesto than a research paper. I put in references to links that vaguely fit the context - after I had finished writing in most cases. There's not much of anything new that I'm saying here (not to you at least). My only motive really is to introduce my thoughts to one more person (the teacher, Jody). I'm tiring of my redundancy, and I'm sure you are too. I won't be posting any more essays from classes because I'm one exam away from being finished with those. I'm going to slow down and try to stew for a bit so I can find what I actually have to contribute. I am finished with "rearranging abstractions." I can continue to tell my own story but there is not much new there for the moment. I look forward to sinking my teeth into some practical application in the near future - gardening, dumpstering, cooking, foodnotbombsing, working/playing/living/learning at Dancing Rabbit for three weeks, travelling, unschooling. I'm excited.
Onto the essay...

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As a culture, we perceive ourselves to be progressing over time, evolving in a linear fashion towards some preordained ultimate goal (presumably of perfection). This meme of progress manifests itself in the form of civilization. Civilization is characterized, according to the documentary Yu Koyo Peya, by these five things: “1. settlement of cities of 5000 or more people, 2. full-time division of labor, 3. concentration of surplus, 4. hierarchical class structure, 5. state-level political organization. And all of these depend on agriculture.”[1] Indeed, civilization was only made possible by the domestication and intense production of a few grains in only a handful of locations throughout the world, starting about 10,000 years ago. This Agricultural Revolution allowed (or maybe forced, rather) people to settle down, once they had taken control over their food supply, ensuring a surplus that would not require constant migration. This sedentary lifestyle gave rise to villages that eventually expanded into cities. In these cities, there is already an emerging ruling minority. Agriculture is very hard work (much much harder than the work required in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle), and people would not do it willingly unless they had to. The production of a surplus of food necessitates the storage of that surplus and its eventual redistribution. Storage of a surplus necessitates guarding of that wealth. Keeping food locked up allowed those in power to create a peasant class of farmers who they could control through having control over the food supply. Already, at the dawn of civilization, we have the making of the underclass, separated from the ruling class, which profits from and lives off of their labor.[2]

Civilization is predicated on continual expansion and growth, behaving like a disease or a cancer, fabricating a need for resources, and starting a vicious cycle of increasing size and complexity with increasing consumption of resources. The above agriculture that I discussed caused an increase in population size. This increase in population size necessitated a corresponding increase in food production. And the cycle goes on and on and becomes more and more vicious. As such, civilization is not sustainable. All past civilizations have collapsed, and this one will too. The extent to which a civilization can expand is limited, primarily, by the amount and quality of energy available to it. When only human and animal muscle power was available to civilizations (through the course of most of civilized history), they were somewhat limited in how far they could develop their complexity. Today, we are in the end-stage of an age of very cheap energy – in the form of oil. The rate of production of oil peaked in the United States in the 1970s, and it is estimated to peak worldwide in the next few years. What Peak Oil means is that after that point is reached, supplies will start to decline – it will become less and less cost-efficient to pump the remaining reserves. It does not mean that we will run out of oil completely, only that it will become much more expensive. Our entire economy and way of life is based on oil. Oil is used in manufacturing processes, in the synthesizing of plastics, in our industrial food production (fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, transportation), and, of course, most obviously in the cars that many drive. And demand for oil is increasing. China and India are beginning to enter the oil market as larger buyers. Demand is increasing even as supply is just about to start on a never-ending decline. People may look to alternative energy sources such as nuclear, solar, and wind, but none of these are sufficiently scalable, cheap or fast enough to solve this coming crisis. Our global economy will crash, and with it, our civilization. [3]

Even if Peak Oil were not to happen, our civilization would be threatened in other ways in the coming years. The biological world, on a global scale, is already largely dead as a result of the combination of widespread industrial agriculture and industrialization in general. Global warming, dying oceans, vanishing topsoil, desertification, deforestation, water exhaustion/pollution, species extinction, and the exponentially booming human population all are symptoms of an environmental collapse.[4] Civilization is very literally a disease that is killing our planet, our biosphere, upon which we depend to live. We, as a civilization, may aspire, or think of ourselves already, to be above such dependence on the web of biological life, but we certainly are not. Without food, you die. All of the symptoms I just listed are all collecting together to make it increasingly harder to feed every human on the planet. As I mentioned before, we are, in effect, eating oil, and when it becomes too expensive, food will become too expensive to produce as well. It seems that an involuntary powerdown is inevitable. Our way of life as we know it is about to end. Civilization, should it recover, will have to progress by using some other energy source, but I doubt that the complexity (or progress) that this civilization reached will be matched, again, as I can’t imagine an energy source as abundant, rich, and flexible as petroleum.

What we base our concept of progress on is largely the level of complexity of the technology that we have created. When you look to point to some example of progress, you would be apt to point to the car or the computer.[5] Note that these are also objects of consumption. Besides technology, progress is also measured in how much resources are consumed and how much profit is made upon them. These are the standards by which we judge the success of our society, our way of life.[6] The level of complexity of our technology has progressed, yes, but human quality of life has not (not to mention the quality of life for the rest of the biosphere, as I have already mentioned). Prior to civilization, hunter-gatherers lived in the original affluent society, existing in relative leisure without having to work much at all to provide for their sustenance, and their “work” was more like our play. By contrast, today, the majority of people in the world live in abject poverty, working long hours in horrible conditions to barely eek out survival. There is a minority at the “top” who live in relative luxury thanks to the progress of civilization, but the costs (to humanity and the rest of the biosphere) for supporting such a lifestyle for such a small minority far outweigh the supposed benefits of civilized life. But even such affluence among the minority does not necessarily provide them with happiness. Americans, on average, are some of the most mentally sick people on the planet, if not physically as well (physically, Americans are the sickest among developed nations[7]). We are also the richest nation on the planet. I think I can safely call that a correlation, if not a causality. Civilization makes us sick. We are culturally conditioned to believe that primitive people lived lives that were “nasty, brutish, and short.”[8] But this is simply not true. Modern healthcare is just beginning to return health standards among the rich minority to levels existing pre-agriculture.[9]

Progress is a meme, an idea in our culture, created and proliferated to make sure that everyone in civilization believes that civilization is the only way in which one can live in this world as a human. If it were not for this myth, people would feel free to abandon their miserable lives and adopt one of a myriad of different ways of living that are not predicated on continual growth, or progress. There is “no one right way” to live.[10] Humans have evolved to be adaptable to whatever environmental niche is open to them, but now we are so removed from even understanding our relationship with our environment, leading lives in artificial environments which we are very maladapted to, that instead of diversifying into a multitude of niches, we are culturally compelled to conform to a perceived one right way – civilization.

On the micro level, progress is perceived by the public in such areas as segregation in cities where none actually has occurred. This popular perception that we have evolved above such problems as racism masks the reality of the situation and prevents any action towards rectifying them. When the Kerner Commission report was released in 1968, stating that the country was moving steadily towards two societies – one black and one white, it surprised white society even though they were the ones who created and enforced policies of segregation all along.[11] But really, these are symptoms of much bigger problems that go all the way to the root of our culture, all the way to the root of our experience as humans on this planet. Ultimately, for us today, the problem of civilization and our acceptance of the myth of progress is not the result of some remote switch to agriculture thousands of years ago but rather stems from the trauma to our psyche that growing up in civilization causes. We need to deal with that psychological trauma, a split between mind and body, projecting itself in all of the dualities we see around us – white and black, left and right, citizen and foreigner, good and bad, civilized and primitive, progress and balance. We need to heal that split on a personal level in order to begin to heal the larger context of civilization.

What would be the goal of progress? What are we racing forward towards? What we call progress is the increase in control over our environment, shaping it to our liking. The desire for such control comes out of fear of uncertainty. If our goal is complete control of everything, of complete certainty, then we will have created the conditions of death (for that is the only certain thing in life). Civilization and progress go hand in hand, operating as a death-urge, ultimately desiring to eliminate all biological life, which is much too messy and chaotic to allow its continued existence. If you look deep enough, that is where we are heading, that is our “progress”. Progress as a positive, life-affirming process is a lie. The idea itself and its sinister effects are all too real, but the benevolent-looking mask it wears must be stripped off.[12]

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[1] Tyler Kimble, Yu Koyo Peya, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6579559693433526430

[2] Jason Godesky, The Thirty Theses, http://anthropik.com/2005/10/thesis-10-emergent-elites-led-the-agricultural-revolution/

[3] Matt Savinar, Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash, http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html

[4] William H. Kotke, Garden Planet: The Present Phase Change of the Human Species, 15.

[5] Kirkpatrick Sale, The Myth of Progress, http://awok.org/myth_of_progress/

[6] Ivan Illich, Celebration of Awareness: A call for institutional revolution, 9.

[7] Carla K. Johnson and Mike Stobbe, Associated Press, http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/1500AP_Sick_America.html

[8] Thomas Hobbes, Levithan, Ch. 13.

[9] Jason Godesky, The Thirty Theses, http://anthropik.com/2006/01/thesis-22-civilization-has-no-monopoly-on-medicine/

[10] Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization, 97.

[11] Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass, 4.

[12] Ran Prieur, The Soul of Progress, http://ranprieur.com/essays/soulprog.html

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more multimedia

2006-05-08T23:19:00.000-07:00

There's some neat videos in Aftermath's multimedia page. The first one, Yu Koyo Peya, is a short documentary of the primitivist critique of civilization, featuring John Zerzan and Jared Diamond (sort of). The other one I have enjoyed is a silly video of the adventures of Urban Scout. You think I'm dirty now - wait until I start wearing camouflage! But that's a long way off still...

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this is exactly how I look at this very moment

2006-05-08T00:40:00.000-07:00

(image from Abotech)

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Put the fun between your legs

2006-05-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

I love riding my bicycle. I recently traded my old bike (which used to be my grandpa's and my aunt's) for one that is much better sized for my height. It's so much more efficient to ride now that I can extend my legs farther. It's a very pretty bike - the brand is Univega, and it's a very cool shade of blue. The handlebars are bare chrome and the wheels are shiny chrome too. It's even got a tiny rainbow flag decal on the vertical post! I traded for it at CAMP's bikeshop.

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Bicycles are basically the best transportation-related technology ever created in terms of energy efficiency, availability to the masses (i.e. cheapness), autonomy, and just general fun, whereas cars are basically the worst. Cars have their place, of course, when you need to travel long distances and bring a lot of cargo with you (why a train can't work for that, I don't know), but I would also question why we should set ourselves up to have to travel long distances on a regular basis (like, say, from the suburbs to the city). Our produce travels an average of 1,500 miles before reaching us. This was only possible because we had cheap energy available to us. When we no longer have that available to us, we need to get used to growing what we need to eat locally again (which means if it doesn't grow in your climate, you're not going to be eating it anymore. bye bye bananas...). Ran has a great excerpt from Ivan Illich up on his site about the effects of cars on a society, and the benefits of bicycle use.

One of my favorite things to do is ride bicycles with a group of people, or even one other person. I've only ridden in a Critical Mass ride once, but it was great fun, and I intend to participate in more in the future.

Some reasons to go by bicycle:

1. Remember when you first learned to ride a bike? Think back for a second. It's just as much fun now as it was then.

2. The bicycle is the most efficient form of transportation ever invented.

3. Half of all transit in the United States is six miles or less round trip, a distance easily made on a bicycle.

4. If you see someone you know while riding, it's easy to stop and say hello. Bicycles create public space, enhance street life and build a sense of community.

5. Ever go for a nice evening stroll down a busy street? Nope, too noisy. The occasional bicycle bell is nothing compared to the constant cacophony of car traffic.

6. There are no parking problems for bicyclists, nor are there parking fees or tickets. Lock your bike to parking meters rather than putting quarters in them. In the space one car takes up, twelve or more bicycles can be parked, which solves parking problems in densely-populated areas.

7. Americans spend 15 to 20 percent of their income on cars. If you ride a bike, not only can you skip car payments, but you can also skip insurance payments, maintenance, dmv stuff and stopping to pay for gas. Carsharing for occasional driving is becoming a more and more reasonable alternative. (A good new bicycle can cost as low as $250. No dmv, no insurance, no gas, very little maintenance.)

8. Millions of Americans want to lose weight, and yet they step into cars everyday, passing up the opportunity to exercise. In addition to weight loss, bicycling reduces the risk of heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and high blood pressure. Given the abysmal state of health care in the United States (which is partially due to the cost of treating well over 2 million car accident victims each year), self-prescribed preventative activity is a wise decision.

9. If you stand in a closed garage with a running car, you will die in a matter of minutes. Hundreds of thousands of cars in our cities create dirty, unhealthy air.

10. Terrorist organizations use our gas money. In order to protect political and corporate interests, the United States supports dictatorial regimes in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, which is the number one producer of oil in the world. 15 of the 19 September hijackers were Saudi. Iraq is the second largest producer of oil, and Kuwait the third. Do those countries sound familiar? The government supported Saddam through his worst atrocities, then Saddam began to disobey U.S. orders. That is precisely when he became our enemy.

11. In 2001, more than 3,000 Americans died of terrorism on our own home soil. In 2001, more than 43,000 Americans died in car crashes on our own home soil, and about 2,200,000 suffered disabling injuries. The American death toll of the Vietnam War, which lasted several years, is about 50,000.

12. States, counties and cities spend billions of dollars fixing roads that cars damage. A Honda Civic, a compact car, weighs about 2,500 pounds. That's about 100 times more than the average bicycle. A typical SUV weighs much more than a Civic, and does more damage to roads. Wear and tear on roads from bicycles is almost nonexistent.

13. Experts estimate that easily accessible oil (in other words, cheap oil) will run out around the year 2010. After cheap oil runs out, the price of gas will shoot up. The economic ramifications of this suggest that the sooner we accommodate oil free transportation into our daily lives the better.

14. Watch any tv show, listen to any radio program, look through any magazine or newspaper and you will come across ads showing how cars will make you cool, sexy, popular, respected, at one with nature, safe, etc. The car and oil industries spend billions of dollars each year to promote a benign image of driving, but the function of all this is to assure profits and manipulate consumers, and nothing more.

15. Staying closer to home to shop and do errands builds communication among residents, which promotes autonomy. This in turn leads to political, social and economic self-determination within communities. City hall ends up truly serving the needs of the residents because residents can tell city hall exactly what they want rather than city hall guessing at what they think would be best for the residents. Besides all this, if you factor in all the costs of driving to mega-warehouses, you end up paying more anyway.

In the Wake has also calculated that he gains two minutes in lifespan for every minute spent biking (scroll half way down the archive page to see the relevant post). It's an adaptation from another study in which a man concluded that he gained three minutes for every minute spent walking. So basically, you are slowly shortening your lifespan by using a car.

I realize that there is a lot of danger in riding a bicycle on these insane streets. I was just riding south on Grand during rush hour (on a Sunday afternoon!) a little bit ago and was nearly run down by a swerving speed-demon asshole. It was scary. I felt very much alive, basically having a near near-death experience. According to a bicylce safety site, "Around 44,000 people die in car crashes in the U.S. each year. About 1 in 54 is a bicyclist." I'll take those odds. Cars kill. I personally consider it more dangerous to ride a car on a highway than to ride my bike through a "shady" part of town.

I love being able to service my bike myself as well. Part of the bikeshop at CAMP is being able to learn from others how to become a bike mechanic. I definitely want to get more involved there this summer. My friend AnDIY helped me get my bike into riding condition (I believe the back wheel is actually from one of his old bikes actually). I want to be able to do the same in the future.

(I saw the title of this post on another friend's patch featuring a bicycle prominently. It's very true. So, please, do so!)

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Genes, Peoples, and Languages

2006-05-05T15:06:00.000-07:00

Another book report for the same class (same score too). I ended up pulling together a lot of things I've already written about here. So you might find it interesting to read.

This book explores the topic of human diversity on both the genetic and cultural level. Diversity, especially human diversity, is a very interesting topic to me because I hold diversity to be a primary good. The forces of this universe all generate diversity. It is the variation inherent in diversity that made evolution possible. Diversity creates more diversity. That which promotes diversity is a good because diversity builds integrity and strength into systems. Diversity is stabilizing but not static. That which hinders or eliminates diversity, conversely, is not good. In the realm of human culture, globalization (which could alternately be called Americanization) is creating a monoculture, destroying the rich traditions of indigenous peoples in every corner of the world and replacing them with one set of values, one worldview. It is a worldview in which the natural order of things is flipped and diversity is seen as a hindrance instead of a treasure. This worldview seeks to make all conform to single “right” way of living in this world, and this way is greatly deleterious to both the biological world and to humanity.

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While diversity is the primary good, humans are social animals and must relate to each other and cooperate to survive. Their strength as a species is found in their shared cultural traditions – the wisdom of ancestors. As such, it is commonality within such social groups that allows them to function. The important thing here to realize is that while a group may be homogenous within themselves, that group is distinct from every other group around it, and therein lies the strength of diversity. Each distinct human social group can fill a specific niche in the environment. The problem today is that our social groups have expanded to be so large that when we attempt to become homogenous, we are no longer able to fit into any niche that might promote a healthy relationship with the rest of the biological world. The solution is to promote diversity without and commonality within (and to greatly reduce the size of human social groups). Anthropologists have shown that there is an upper limit on human social network complexity based on the size of the human brain. The number of other people that humans are neurologically capable of treating as other human beings (and so would be members of their tribe) is about 150.[1] Instead of identifying with groups of this size, modern humans attempt to belong to such unwieldy groups as “the United States” or “the Democratic Party” or “the Catholic Church”, but such identification and homogenization within such humungous groups causes a lot of problems socially among humans. The most basic (i.e. smallest) unit of social organization in today’s society is the nuclear family, spawned from the industrial revolution and normalized after World War II in order to increase the efficiency of production among society’s members. This unit of social organization is greatly dysfunctional for the opposite reason that fictitious monolithic superorganizations are dysfunctional – there are too few people involved in sharing the burdens of daily life (not to mention how much the stresses of daily life have increased in spite of (or because of) all of the technological advances that have taken place. For children to be raised in a healthy manner, parents need the ever-present support of extended family. People evolved to thrive in tribes – households governed by extended kin networks, not a solitary mother and father.

Regarding my own experience of the nuclear family, I would consider myself to have been raised in a relatively functional family (as functional as a nuclear family can be). My parents are married and love each other. My dad works full time to provide for us and my mom retired partway through my childhood, becoming a stay-at-home mom, focusing on volunteering at my brother’s and my schools and at our church. My mom especially made sure that my brother and I knew we are loved no matter what we do. Nevertheless, I developed an addiction to praise, and I gained that praise through pleasing other people, especially authority figures. This addiction to praise allowed me to do very well in school and to appear on the surface as a very good kid. I took what was expected of me by all the authority figures in my life and excelled at it. In doing so, I unknowingly built up identifying labels that facilitated my receiving praise. I adopted the religion of my parents wholeheartedly and also their independent, but liberal, politics. This is an example of cultural transmission, but it is also an example of me not maturing appropriately. While assuming a common culture with my family and community is beneficial to prolonging the existence of that community, what if that community should not necessarily be prolonged? In my process of maturing, I have grown to realize that I was not being myself by wearing the specific masks (really well) that people wanted me to wear. My religion has changed, and so has my politics. It has taken some getting used to, but I am still in very good terms with my parents. I need to work with my extended family a bit on that yet. While the tribe is what needs to be built back up to promote healthy human culture, complete with internal commonality, such tribes should be open, allowing people to freely move from one to another based on where they fit best. I do not pretend that tribes prior to civilization were “noble savages.” They certainly had their own faults, but the basic structure of human organization found there is still sound, but the meme of extracultural intolerance could go by the wayside.

Language is the foundation of such an expansive human culture. With a species that uses culture so much to shape the environment to their own likings, language could be said to shape reality itself. It is a very powerful force and should therefore be used with caution. Words used as labels are capable of masking all sorts of hidden complexity. They are efficient in communicating things quickly, but they are not necessarily effective. I have personally been trying to not apply labels so easily to myself so that I give other people less of a chance to pass me off without needing to think because they think they understand my complexity because they hear a label applied to me. There are other things that bother me about dominant languages, especially English. For example, the use of the word “to be” in the identifying sense makes a huge unsubstantiated claim that one thing “is” another thing, often without needing to provide any proof that such a relationship actually exists. The possessive form of nouns should be done away with in my opinion. “Property by right” instead of property by use is theft, and the language including built in markers for such theft only promotes its continued existence. Language is very powerful in allowing humans to shape their environment through culture, but it can be so easily misunderstood, which can lead to dire consequences for the culture and environment both.

Cavalli-Sforza’s book looks into mostly how genes affect human diversity, but it also dips into a broader look at cultural diversity and its evolution, especially through language. It is an important work for the new perspective it provides in the relationship between genes and culture. My closing thought is that humans were genetically and culturally shaped to live in certain conditions over millions of years. Those conditions no longer exist as we have started to build civilizations, only 10,000 years ago. We are not adapted to live in the conditions created by civilization. Why not resume the diverse ways of life we were shaped to thrive in?

[1] http://www.liv.ac.uk/researchintelligence/issue17/brainteaser.html

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The Monkeysphere

2006-05-03T12:51:00.000-07:00

(Via anticivilization longings) The rule of 150 played out in comical language. A funny and informative read.

What do monkeys have to do with war, oppression, crime, racism and even e-mail spam?

You'll see that all of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world will suddenly make perfect sense once we go. . .

Inside the Monkeysphere

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Some more cynicism

2006-05-03T10:10:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling very cynical right now, so be forewarned that if you want to protect yourself from seeing reality, you should probably skip over this one.

I'm doing a lot of watching of movies lately, mostly to pass the time (a little over 7 days until "school's out forever"), but they are at least informative movies.

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Last night, I watched the documentary, Loose Change, which is a conspiracy theory about 9/11 and the role our government played in it. The Bush Administration inflicted this attack upon America themselves in order to gain the support of the very scared nation, opening the door to such things as the Patriot Act, the occupation of Afganistan, and the occupation of Iraq. We still have to wait and see if they invade Iran as well. It's not like they need anyone's support for anything at this point. Oh, and apparently there was billions of dollars worth of gold under the WTCs, and only a small portion of it was recovered (because the rest was hiested by the people who organized this). The movie is about 80 minutes long. You can watch it at the link above. The government - killing its own citizens to gain more wealth and power. This is not a democracy. This isn't even a republic. We are living under a tyranny, and as anyone who isn't wealthy enough already knows, we are living in a police state. It's not like I didn't already know all this; the documentary just helped me to start to feel the emotions that come with this knowledge for the first time in a long time.

Several weeks ago, I watched another documentary, Pickaxe. It was actually the second time I watched it, the first being a year and a half ago, right around the time that I first acknowledged that I was an anarchist. It tells the story of environmental activists blocking the road to an old growth forest marked for logging. This is public, protected land we're talking about, land that is not allowed to be logged. The government/logging companies (you can't distinguish one from the other in this case) get around this by first setting the forest on fire (as in arson), then openly "fighting" the forest fire by burning more of the forest, and then "salvaging" the damaged woods. Fires do not kill forests. Forests recover (and are actually strengthened) by natural fires all of the time. Logging kills forests. So the eco-activists camped out on the road leading to the forest for almost a year before police arrested them, but in that year, they were able to gain enough public attention that the logging of that forest was cancelled. I have the video, so just ask if you want to watch it. We can organize a screening if you want. That'd be cool.

Profit and control being put before life. I am angry, yes. I am rebelling. Not at the whole world. Just this one, solitary group of humans known as civilization. I allow myelf to experience the emotion. And then later, I'll let it go because Bush isn't trying to be evil. The police aren't trying to be assholes. They can't help it. They are just as trapped as I am (more so, actually) in this sick game called civilization.

But this is all abstracted. I wasn't anywhere near New York or DC on 9/11. I have not ever been to Washington to see where forests have been clearcut. Why does something so far away have such an emotional effect on me? I am projecting my anger on something far away so that I don't have to deal with its source in my own life. I'm not exactly sure what that source could be. My mom has reminded me that before I went to school, I could creatively play for hours on end by myself with whatever toys were available (well, they had to be stimulating toys, she said). I don't remember much from my early childhood. I remember seeing kids playing in the schoolyard across the street. I thought that is was school was - playing with other kids, so naturally I begged to go (as my mom reminds me). Thankfully, she kept me out for as long as possible until I was the oldest age allowed for preschool. Along with begging for school, I also begged for a little brother, which I got finally when I was 6. Could all of my anger just be coming from school messing me up? Or not having enough partners in play? (I know I'm introverted, but I was also obviously infatuated with the idea of having other kids to play with - if I was begging to go to school) I don't know. But I want to start to heal whatever traumatized my inner child. In turn, that will start to heal the trauma of civilization.

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In the rain

2006-05-01T20:53:00.000-07:00

[my first shot at poetry independent from school ever. written earlier tonight in the margins of a notebook I was intent on brainstorming in. but the storming was not limited to my brain]

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artificial light
and panes of
glass
protect
me from
nature's fury
this night
bangs of thunder
pangs of conscience
what have we done
what the fuck
have we done
i want out
into the rain
and thunder
and danger
of it all
out of this shelter
this cocoon
this coffin
i want out
but I wait

and drink coffee
from a paper cup
with a plastic lid
who am I kidding
how could I
survive
let alone thrive?

I wait, yes
but it is purposeful
waiting for the right moment
to come back home
I wish that moment was
now
two weeks?
two months?
when will I be free?
I need to take a walk
in the rain

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It's just a ride

2006-04-29T02:06:00.000-07:00

I was watching some video clips of Bill Hicks performances a couple days ago to pass the time. I first learned of Bill Hicks from the_bone via the interests in his profile, but I hadn't seen any of his performances until now. I came across one that was pretty cool (in a serious way more than in a funny way). So I want to share it here. You can go watch Bill Hicks say it himself if you want to. But here is my transcription of the monologue:

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All matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death. Life is a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves.

The world is like a ride at an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it's real, 'cause that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down and around and around. It has thrills and chills and its very brightly colored and its very loud. And it's fun, for a while. But some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question, "is this real? Or is this a ride?" And other people have remembered and they come back to us. They say, "hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever. Because - this is just a ride."

And we...kill those people. "Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This has to be real."

It's just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try to tell us that, and let the demons run amuck. But it doesn't matter because - it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money - a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door and buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.

He then goes on to say that we can solve all the problems in the world by redirecting all of the money spent on weapons and departments of "defense" to feed, clothe, and educate every single human on the planet, none excepted, and could do so many times over with that money. Then we could go on to explore space in peace. Wow. It was cool until he said that shit. Talk about setting up conditions for a population explosion. (although, In the Wake has suggested that its not overpopulation that is the cause of most of the environmental crisis but rather the overconsumption of resources by the wealthy West.) I guess that's why we'd need to be exploring space - to ship excess people off the planet to start destroying other planets. I'm glad we no longer have the energy resources to do so. Otherwise, the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy would have to be revised - earth could no longer be considered "mostly harmless."

Anyway, I just thought the first part of the monologue was pretty rad.

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The problem

2006-04-28T00:33:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago, I went to a presentation by the beehive collective, in which they told the story of the dark and sordid relationship between the US and Colombia - the "war on drugs," which is an excuse to go in and control the country economically and politically, greatly harming many innocent subsistence farmers when the US accidentally destroys the wrong fields (because it's hard to get the address right from 500 feet up in the air). They went into incredible detail about all of the bad shit that happens there because of "us". The basic message is globalization = bad; local community sufficiency = good.

I watched a documentary last night that I picked up from the library called The end of suburbia. It introduces the coming (or present, if you've been to the pump lately) crisis of peak oil. The rate of production of oil for the world will peak within the next decade, if it hasn't already. This means that the age of cheap energy is over. The lifestyle we developed during that age of cheap energy will no longer be able to be fueled or otherwise sustained. There is no scalable, cheap, fast solution. But we will continue attempting to expand our economy as we always have, an economy completely based on oil and its byproducts. And our economy (our global economy) will crash. The movie says this will end suburbia. I say this will end urbia as well (a.k.a. cities::civis::civilization). I'm looking forward to the possibilities such an involuntary powerdown will open up.

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I watched another documentary earlier tonight, outside, projected on a screen on the side of a building, at New Roots urban farm, called The future of food. The issue here is genetically modified foods, and how they're fucking with the lives of family farmers (because of the patenting of life, and its uncontrollable reproduction and spread to land where the farmer hasn't paid the patent fee. Monsanto is evil.) and with the ecosystems they are introduced to. The scariest part to me, besides what GMOs could be doing to me allergenically, was the idea that terminator seeds (seeds genetically modified to commit suicide - to produce infertile seeds in the next generation, tieing the farmers to the company that makes the seed forever) could cross-breed with wild plants and spread the suicide gene throughout an ecosystem. I cheered when they talked about superweeds overcoming the Roundup herbicide (that the industrial farmers then kill with something similar to agent orange that is known to cause cancer (*cheering dies down*). Everyone outside of North America is scared shitless of GMOs (the governments and the peoples). They are watching Americans to see when they start dropping dead. The documentary goes on to highlight the organic "counterrevolution." The film barely touched on the environmental impact of monocultural farming methods. That's left for another movie, I guess.

Or a book! I recently read Garden Planet, by William H. Kötke. This book is very readable (not quite as intense and detailed as Final Empire). It covers how civilized humans are killing life on earth and how to create a new human culture that will allow humans to gain "biological legitimacy" in basically being worthy of continuing to exist as a species on this planet. I'll just list all of the ways in which we are raping the earth: global warming, the dying oceans, the vanishing soils, desertification, deforestation, water exhaustion/polluting, species extinction, and the human population disaster. More devastating (from my perspective at least) than the economic collapse is the environmental collapse. Humans can live quite well (thrive, actually) without functioning monetary economies, but they can't very well thrive if the earth is too sick to continue to provide food for them. We are omnivores, so there would have to be nothing edible left alive in order for us to starve to death, but such is a possibility with how badly we are screwing up everything we touch (and we, as a global culture, can't keep our grubby little hands off anything). The solution Kötke provides in building a new human culture is based on, guess what!, ecovillages. And the use of permaculture. I was ready for this book. It fit exactly into the path I was already planning to go down. Sometimes people recommend books for me to read because they fit very well into the path they are going down (not me). So while I thought this book was great and think that everyone should be aware of what it has to say about the future of the human species, I will not recommend it to everyone to read. You will not appreciate it until you are good and ready to appreciate it. You will not change until you are ready to change. (And I know the same can be said of me from your perspective, re: things like God, growing up, getting a job).

But the problem is deeper than even the impending collapse of the environment. It is much more personal. Civilization has made us all sick through the core - soul sick. Even if the economy or the environment never fell apart, it would still be imperative to start to heal. The crises ahead are a great opportunity for such healing to take place, but they are not a prerequisite. We learn as children, as babies, from the very beginning, that we are isolated in this culture, alienated, alone. Our needs are not met at all, and so we learn that to survive we must fend for ourselves independently and not trust anyone else. Instead of loving each other, we distrust (a.k.a. fear, lack faith), and that distrust, that inability to understand each other in our uniqueness, leads to hate. We hate those different from us, but in a myriad of ways, we also end up hating ourselves. We become isolated from ourselves. We split within ourselves and become unendingly conflicted. As my self-taught psychologist friend, Devin, has shown me, we need to heal the mind/body split. (I can take no credit for this last paragraph. It's all Devin.) This is "the problem" that I want to "play" on (as opposed to work on) my whole life. I invite you to play on it with me, when you're ready.

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Dance, Monkeys, Dance

2006-04-27T15:37:00.000-07:00

Sara, my girlfriend, (and I only apply that label here to distinguish from this Sara who comments here), shared a video with me this morning. It's pretty funny. You are potentially going to find it offensive if you happen to be a theist or otherwise are unable to acknowledge fully that you are a primate. With that introduction, I invite you to go watch Dance, Monkeys, Dance. It was produced by a techno-geek, Ernie Cline, but it fits in well with what I've been thinking lately. Everything he is talking about is the product of civilization, not human nature. And that makes me very, very happy.

Edit (5/6/06): It seems that the page the movie was on has been removed, but you can still listen to the script of the movie read by him in his Spoken Word section.

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Meet your meat

2006-04-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a shortened version of the video that eventually led to my vegetarianness via Trudy Boots. You can either go to her myspace profile or see the google(TM) video: Meet your meat. I will warn you that it is disturbing to watch, but I think it is vital as a human being (and by that, I mean as an animal, as a part of an ecosystem) to be aware of where the food that you eat comes from. Even though I hope to eat non-factory farmed meat in the future, I am also ashamed that I am not hardcore enough to be vegan for the moment. I'm going to want to cut out dairy eventually anyway. I'll finish out the semester, being sustained on pizza and quesadillas, and then I'll see what I can do afterwards. I'm certainly looking forward to three glorious weeks of organic food at Dancing Rabbit. I really do need to get gardening right now. The waiting - on everything - needs to stop.

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food

Ani DiFranco

2006-04-25T21:42:00.000-07:00

I went to see Ani in concert last night. I went with my friend Annie and her best friend Nikki. It was in Columbia, Missouri, where I believe there is a thriving anarchist community if I'm not mistaken. I wore my "I [heart] anarchy" shirt to the concert, complete with recent splatter marks on front and back from riding my bike in the rain. Ani was amazing. She is an awesome woman. She stopped touring for a while (for the first time in 15 years, except when recording) because of problems with tendonitis in her very talented guitar-string plucking hands. About halfway through her performance, her hand (visibly) started bothering her, but she continued with the show, playing the guitar as powerfully as ever (she must have broken at least 6 strings through the course of the night. at least.). So if you'll indulge me, I'm going to post some of my most favorite lyrics from her.

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I have to begin with my favorite song, Animal:

more and more there is this animal
looking out through my eyes
at all the traffic on the road to nowhere
at all the shiny stuff around to buy
at all the wires in the air
at all the people shopping
for the same blank stare
at america the drastic
that isolated geographic
that's become infested with millionaires

[refrain:]when you grow up surrounded
by willful ignorance
you have to believe
mercy has its own country
and that it's round and borderless
and then you have to grow wings
and rise above it all
like there
where that hawk is circling
above that strip mall

more and more there is this animal
looking out through my eyes
seeing that animals only take from this world
what they need to survive
but she is prowling through all the religions of men
seeing that time and time and time again
their gods have made them
special and above
nature's law
and the respect thereof

[refrain]

ask any eco-system
harm here is harm there
and there and there
and aggression begets aggression
it's a very simple lesson
that long preceded any king of heaven
and there's this brutal imperial power
that my passport says i represent
but it will never represent where my heart lives
only vaguely where it went

[refrain]
-----------

Okay, so it would be a bit much to continue posting full songs, but I'll at least list some of my other favorites (with links to their full lyrics):
Evolve
Your next bold move
What if no one's watching
Shameless
To the teeth
Welcome to:
Self Evident

I'm going to give the full lyrics here for one last song that resonates with me very much at this point in my life. As you'll see, a few of the lines would apply more to me if I happened to be a woman, but you get the idea... I give you Swandive:

cradling the softest, warmest part of you in my hand
feels like a little baby bird fallen from the nest
i think that your body is something i understand
i think that i'm happy, i think that i'm blessed

i've got a lack of inhibition
i've got a loss of perspective
i've had a little bit to drink
and it's making me think
that i can jump ship and swim
that the ocean will hold me
that there's got to be more
than this boat i'm in

'cuz they can call me crazy if i fail
all the chance that i need
is one-in-a-million
and they can call me brilliant
if i succeed
gravity is nothing to me, moving at the speed of sound
i'm just going to get my feet wet
until i drown

and i teeter between tired
and really, really tired
im wiped and im wired but i guess its just as well
because i built my own empire
out of car tires and chicken wire
and i'm queen of my own compost heap
and i'm getting used to the smell

and i've got a lack of information
but i got a little revelation
and i'm climbing up on the railing
trying not to look down
i'm going to do my best swan dive
into shark-infested waters
i'm gonna pull out my tampon
and start splashing around

'cuz i don't care if they eat me alive
i've got better things to do than survive
i've got a memory of your warm skin in my hand
and i've got a vision of blue sky and dry land

i'm cradling the hardest, heaviest part of me in my hand
the ship is pitching and heaving, my limbs are bobbing and weaving
and i think this is something i understand
i just need a couple vaccinations for my far-away vacation
i'm going to go ahead and go boldly because a little bird told me
that jumping is easy, that falling is fun
up until you hit the sidewalk, shivering and stunned

and they can call me crazy if i fail
all the chance that i need
is one-in-a-million
and they can call me brilliant
if i succeed
gravity is nothing to me
moving at the speed of sound
i'm just gonna get my feet wet
until i drown...
-----------

If you don't already see it in the lyrics, the reason this song resonates with me so much right now is because of my dropping out of school. It is very much a swan dive into the unknown, and it's a jump that's opened me up to receiving a lot of flak from other people. What this song underscores is the absolute necessity for accepting risk and danger as a part of life. Without risk, there is no living going on, there is no life worth living. The only secure (i.e. certain) thing in life is death. To seek out security is to seek out death. To live in a cocoon of protection (a big house in the suburbs, a college diploma, a high school diploma, a bank account, insurance policies, marriage contracts), shielding you from life's unending uncertainties (what will I eat next, where will I live, who will love me), is to effectively eliminate the substance of a fulfilling life. As a culture, we replace the free, dynamic, wild ride that is a fulfilling/successful/thriving life with a hardened shell that tries to control everything and pin every uncertainty down. That hollow shell is fired in a kiln of fear of that unknown. Fear inspires control. The more you (attempt to) control your circumstances, the more you fear losing that control. The antidote to such a vicious cycle is simply to let go of that fear and to let go of that control. It's a little scary, but that's only because it's new. I'm still a baby in this world (the real one). Really, its more exciting than scary.

If people want to try to show their love for me by expressing worry- you do what you gotta do. I'm not going to try to convince you to let go of me, of control, of your fear (or worry- it's all the same). You'd have to do that on your own. Know that I appreciate that I am important enough to you that you feel the need to protect me too, but also know that I do not appreciate the attempts at protection themselves. They are misplaced and not helpful. I am not shunning you, only the lifestyle you lead. I'm sure you take offense at that. Now you know how I feel.

This life is an adventure, full of risk and danger and the unexpected. Simply surviving isn't enough anymore. I'm ready to take my swandive.

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Language

2006-04-19T23:50:00.000-07:00

Several days ago, a friend from high school, one that went with me to Honduras, Sean, inquired about one of the quotes I have listed as a favorite in my facebook profile. First, the quote, then his question:

"it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. sometimes i feel like . . . it's too much. my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst, and then i remember to relax and stop trying to hold on to it and it flows through me like rain and i can feel nothing but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid, little life. you have no idea what i'm talking about, i'm sure, but don't worry. you will someday." -lester, american beauty

You say that is one of your favorite quotes. I am assuming you like it so much because it is describing a part of what you believe to be true. But reading that i am curious. to whom or what does that gratitude go to? Back to nature itself? Back to yourself? To nobody? Back to the National Parks Service? Back to others? Back to God? To whom do you give that gratitude to and why?

And here was my response:

expand to read the full post

one of the (many) things I hate about the english language is that verbs are suppposed to have subjects and objects, and when they are absent, they are assumed. does gratitude need to have a specific recipient? gratitude emerges from me on account of my very existence. my very existence is dependent on everything else around me that built me and formed me and continues to form me - my parents, my grandparents, the biological world ("nature"), the abiotic world, for that matter, my friends and family, and strangers, the cosmos, everything. it is all beautiful because it exists. and i exist out of all of that. and so i am grateful. to everything. i am meaning the same thing as when you would say that you feel gratitude towards God. as it always seems to, it comes down to semantics.

I guess I've just been thinking a lot about semantics lately. More than usual, I guess. It started with a discussion over the best term to use when labeling the end of the world as we know it that will come about during our lifetimes. The discussion began with Eula at citymouse/countrymouse protesting the use of "crash" and "collapse" because those words bring up negative images instead of the freedom and opportunity that the breakdown of civilization actually will be. So Ran took on the challenge and is now referring to the collapse of civilization as an "involuntary powerdown," which Eula liked. As Ran also noted, what I hope to do is voluntarily powerdown. For those that don't wish to do so, the powerdown is going to be a very rocky ride. It will be rocky for everyone regardless of whether you are willingly walking away or not, but the degree of rockiness will certainly be moderated by the level of "community sufficiency" you have attained, to use an alternative (and more accurate) term for self sufficiency as suggested by In the Wake.

Language certainly is a powerful force. It shapes the way that we perceive reality. Acutally, when dealing with a species which uses culture so extensively to adapt the environment in which it lives, language shapes reality itself. I know that for myself, I exist for most of the time in a world completely constructed with language - writing, talking, thinking... mostly thinking. It is the most basic layer of abstraction that keeps me from directly experiencing "reality" or "the world." Using language to communicate leaves a whole lot of room for ambiguity. I've talked about my well-placed lack of appreciation for labels before. The labels I associate "me" with have changed a lot since then, but the same sentiment remains: it would be better if I did not put myself in mental boxes, with labels that mask all of the complexity behind them and allow people the opportunity to pass me off without thinking because they misconceive or confuse what one label or another is actually supposed to mean. People will prejudge enough on their own (for all labels are inherently tools for prejudging); I don't need to help them.

Labels I use on occasion but would like to be rid of:

Hippie - Ways in which I fit the label of hippie: I have long hair, I don't shave (and would prefer women to do likewise), I bathe twice a week on average and don't use any kind of soap when I do so, I want to join an eco-village, making love and not war sounds kind of fun, I am in love with the biological world, my email address is "listentotrees", I am a vegetarian (for now), I like to walk barefoot, I also like to be naked (if that counts), I like noncompetitive games like hacky sack, and I like drumcircles and dancing.
Ways in which I do not fit the label of hippie: I do not dress like a hippie (most of the time) unless you count the ways in which I undress like a hippie (see barefoot, et al. above), I do not smoke pot, I am not a pacifist (while making love and not war does sound kind of fun, I'd still be okay with a little class war action (but I guess I should remove myself from the middle class before that happens...)).
But my point is, why does that first list have to be only associated with hippies? And how would people appreciate the qualifications of the second list when they can feel they know me after hearing the label of "hippie"?

Anarchist - Okay, so the previous label I have not embraced for a while (probably close to a year), but this one I most certainly have been embracing. But it is so misunderstood. The popular perception of anarchy is equivalent or interchangable with chaos (which I am not saying is bad, either), anomie, disorder, and general violent mayhem. But what I mean by the word, to borrow Mother Anarchy's definition, is "without coercive authority or hierarchical organization; a society organized via voluntary, cooperative participation of its individuals." Such a social organization is inherently uncivilized, and so to protect the myth that civilization is the highest fruition of human culture, all of those negative images of terrorism and cut-throatness are propagated. It would be hard to part with this label right now though. I kind of enjoy being summed up by it. It gives me a sense of dangerousness and unpredictability that I've never felt I had before, and in a way, it can almost inspire action, just to try to fulfill what the label implies.

every other -ist (animist, pantheist, nudist, bicyclist, primitivist, (wannabe) permaculturalist) Any word that ends in -ist is describing the believer of an ideology, of an abstraction. I want the language I use to be active, not abstractive. Instead of saying that I am a nudist, why not just go nude? Instead of learning more about primitivist theory, I want to start rewilding, learning skills, eating plants I pick from the ground, squatting to take a shit (over the toilet of course). Instead of philosophizing about the divinity of the universe, I want to simply be present to its glory as much as possible. I don't need these labels to do any of that. People will understand when they see me do it.

Tom Campbell - Ah, the biggest label of all. Who is "Tom Campbell"? What is "Tom Campbell"? Why is "Tom Campbell" called "Tom Campbell" and not some other random combination of vowels and consonants? Really, I don't think I'm too attached to this name. I don't have a problem when people call me Tommy or Thomas or even the occasional Tomothy. And even if someone looked at me and called directly to me with some other random name, like Dave or Shannon, I'd probably still respond. Campbell shows my ties with one half of my family, but I don't know that a name is necessary to do that. It would show a more real connection when people see that I look like a reconfiguration of physical traits from my family or when they see the same mannerisms that my parents have express themselves through me or just when they see us hugging each other and eating together and living together.

Labels are efficient. They are vital for communication in a fast paced, efficient, product-driven world such as our own. But you miss so much when you feel the need to go so fast. Not using labels requires you to slow down and explain out what you want to communicate fully, but in doing so you have the benefit of understanding and appreciating the complexity and uniqueness of experience so much more. What's the hurry?

But beyond the use of efficient labels, all of language itself is deceptive and flawed. Of course, on one hand, that is why beautiful poetry and storytelling is able to exist, because of its ambiguity, but on the other hand, assumptions made through language can be very dangerous. Consider the verb "to be." Whenever you say that one thing "is" another thing, that is making a huge assumption, but providing no proof that such a relationship between the two things on either side of the "is" actually exists. A style of writing exists in which one does not use the word "to be." That style of writing goes by the name of E-prime. (I tried writing the last two sentences (and this one!) deliberately without using "to be," so if they sound funky and convoluted, that provides the reason.) Overall, though, language should be used to connect in whatever way necessary or desired with other people. It would be impossible to function in this abstracted world without language, but it seems that it would be a worthy exercise to focus on the goal of language (what it means) and on communicating that effectively instead of efficiently. Quality over quantity. Somehow, even with using those efficient labels, I manage to ramble on needlessly. I've been realizing that I enjoy reading Ran so much because he writes so concisely. I would like to develop that skill. And I can start right now by finally ending this post.

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Searching for the functional family

2006-04-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

I wrote a research paper for my women's studies class on the topic of nuclear families. I'll present the paper in class thursday. I wrote it the morning that it was due, so I didn't feel that I did a very good job of it, but in reading over it again in preparation for presenting, it seems okay to me. So here it is:

In this paper, I will describe and contrast the different ways in which to assemble a family, commenting on their relative evolutionary stability, in broad terms, and on their practical, day-to-day costs and benefits to individuals living in these various situations, in narrower terms. The familial situations I intend to examine and compare are the various forms of the present day nuclear family and the alternative, and original basic unit of social and cultural organization as provided to us by anthropologists, the tribe of both present (if scarce) and “prehistoric” times.

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First, a definition is in order as to what exactly I am referring to by the phrase, “nuclear family.” I am using Meredith F. Small’s definition, from her book, Kids: How Biology and Culture shape the way we raise our children, “governed by an adult [or two adults] and not a household compound with extended kin networks.”[1]The definition of this modern invention reflects the corresponding alternative, the tribe, in which a family is, in fact, governed by a “household compound with extended kin networks.” The problems inherent in the nuclear family paradigm are those of overexertion on the part of the parents and the correlating underparenting, if I may coin a term to describe the deficit of care that children need but normally do not receive to the full extent required for healthy socialization. The overexertion of the parent(s) is present in any of the possible modern combinations of family members (mom and dad, single mom, single dad, with child(ren). It is simply a matter of the ratio of adults to children necessary, which Small suggests is three to one.[2] Most acutely, the problems of overexertion play out in our society in the form of the double burden on the mother, having to perform a perpetual balancing act between her family and her job/career, trying to provide both emotional/social support and financial support for her child(ren), especially in the case of the single mother. The issue is complicated further when one considers not only the financial motivations for mothers working but also the personal desires of mothers for achievement in the workplace because, here, we are dealing with what makes the mother happy and gives her psychological stability, something that is just as important for the mother as for the child(ren).[3]

The economy has evolved such that more and more people are now working nonstandard shifts, and to some, this appears to be beneficial because it allows for, theoretically, the kind of balancing act in which a parent is with the child(ren) at all times while the other is at work, or in the case of a single parent, that they are at least home during the evening when their children are home and awake. While this setup may allow such a balancing act to even be possible, it does result in much stress for the parent(s), either by the consequential separation of husband and wife in the case of a couple or by the general sleep deprivation that prevails in the case of all parties involved.[4] Incidentally, single mothers end up building up and utilizing such kinship networks that used to be commonplace in the helping of taking care of the child(ren), just so they can survive. While this is the most extreme case of parental overexertion, any form of the modern nuclear family has heavy stresses on it. While in some cases it works out that a parent or parents can rely on other family members, like grandparents or aunts and uncles, to provide the necessary childcare while the parent(s) work, such a setup is often not possible in our society because the pressures on the family have become so high that more often than not, extended family members are no longer a part of everyday life, but rather, relationships are strained and grown children are isolated from their parents or siblings for the majority of the time, excluding such extra-nuclear family as a possibility.[5]

The high pressure on families today lead parents to depend on maladaptive parenting techniques involving coercion and negative discipline that end up doing much harm psychologically to the child(ren), which also points to an explanation as to why the world is in such a mess today. It all starts at home. These parenting strategies basically involve either withholding love and affection from a child or flooding a child with too much affection and praise in order to produce the desired behavioral result in the child, regardless of how the child actually feels about the situation.[6]

Parents resort to these techniques because they are not considering what the child actually needs but only what the parent wants in terms of how the child should behave. Children who are controlled in this way end up tying their own self-worth to the approval of others, eventually internalizing the demands parents originally put on their children so that they must strive to be something that they are not in order to seek some sort of happiness or fulfillment – a fulfillment completely dependent on receiving the requisite approval from any authority figures, rendering the child dependent, self-deprecating, and neurotic.[7] Not coincidentally, in my opinion, these kind of children grow up to become very effective cogs in the capitalist system because they lack the creativity to imagine a way of life different from the one forced upon them, and they still crave and are completely dependent upon the approval of authority figures (such as their bosses) in determining their own self-worth. The nuclear family is promoted as the ideal in this country, and has been since after World War II.[8] This is because it is a very effective unit of organization in maximizing profits and production in the economy, ignoring the adverse effects the nuclear family inherently has of being overworked, stressed, and on the verge of despair – the natural byproducts of such isolation from an extended community of support.

In tribal societies, there is a group of adults, often spanning generations and including either a line of brothers or sisters, and older children that all share the burden of caring for the very dependent young of our species. This developed evolutionarily, first, to allow humans to reproduce more frequently than other species of primates, giving them a superior adaptive edge. But this system of care for children also served as a prolonged time of learning the culture of the family tribe.[9] This is the kind of familial relations that we as humans are adapted to. It is the unit of social organization that evolved with us over millions of years. There is much wisdom to be found in learning about what we, as humans are naturally adapted to. Ten thousand years is not enough time for us to adapt via evolution to the monumental changes to how our society is organized – the switch from being hunting and gathering nomads to sedentary agriculturalists. And fifty years is most certainly not enough time to adapt to the extremely organized, regimented, and isolated unit of familial organization – from the tribe (or extended kin group) to the nuclear family. It is essential for the health of humanity, in my opinion, to somehow regain its connection to live in the way it is adapted to live.

Today, there are attempts being made among civilized nuclear families to adopt more tribal ways of parenting children – attachment parenting, voluntary weaning/tandem breastfeeding, elimination communication (a.k.a. natural infant hygiene), co-sleeping. Of course, these are all valiant efforts but are all severely limited in applicability if not attempted in the context of a wider supportive network than the normal nuclear family, in which such intensive parenting practices were originally possible, leading to the same (or more) overexertion of the parent(s) but perhaps psychologically healthier children. The maladaptive parenting techniques commonly in use now are in use simply because parents have to be more concerned with other things than their child(ren)’s welfare, such as work, chores, and hobbies, not leaving enough time or energy for the kind of parenting that children actually need. Children need parents to be responsive to their needs all the time.[10] This need developed under conditions where it could be met – in a tribe in which extended kin also participate in responding to the needs of all of the children.[11] Without this extended supportive network, taking such an intensive and active role in the care of your child(ren) would simply be beyond one’s capability in terms of time and energy as a parent, and that is even considering the case of stay at home mothers. It seems to me that attempting to parent in this way will only cause more strain on an isolated parent, but it is certainly courageous of them to try. Such parents are certainly on the right track; we need to move back towards actually caring for our children instead of controlling them with either discipline or praise, and the only way that this could possibly be truly effective is to also move towards our original societal structure of tribes as well, giving parents, especially mothers, the much needed support in giving their children what they desperately need – love.

[1] Meredith F. Small, How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Kids (New York: Doubleday), 213.

[2] Small, 217

[3] Michele Kremen Bolton, The Third Shift (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass), 288.

[4] Cynthia Fuchs Epstein and Arne L. Kalleberg, Fighting for Time: Shifting Boundaries of Work and Social Life (New York: Russell Sage Foundation), 58.

[5] Stanly I. Greenspan, The Four Thirds Solution (Perseus Publishing), 206.

[6] Alfie Kohn, Unconditional Parenting (New York: Atria), 5.

[7] Kohn, 23.

[8] Andrew Cherlin, “Changing Family and Household: Contemporary Lessons from Historical Research” Annual Review, 51.

[9] Small, 52.

[10] Attachment Parenting International, http://www.attachmentparenting.org/info.shtml.

[11] Small, 215.

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Play

2006-04-18T00:17:00.000-07:00

Several days ago, Devin was talking to me about his unfulfilled need for play, and more pointedly, partners in play. I have witnessed my brother growing up being in a constant and never quite fulfilled pursuit of friends with whom he could play. I don't think I ever felt that need quite as strongly given my introvertedness, but the need to play itself I certainly felt just as strongly. I'm pretty sure that's universal.

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When I try to remember my childhood, I am saddened by the fact that I do not remember playing all that much. I remember competitive playing, such as basketball teams and at recess. (I've been remembering how much I loved four-square and dodgeball (that's dodgeball with one ball and people either "in" or "out" of the circle - with the ones doing thd dodging "in") - so much that I'd love the chance to play them again.) It's not that I don't remember free time during my childhood. It's more that I'm noticing an absence of creative play. I remember consuming a lot of entertainment, but I don't remember "producing" my own entertainment very much. It seems that such a thing would have just taken too much energy. But where did that energy go, if not into creative play? I think I started the cycle very young, the same cycle I follow now, and would follow forever if I weren't to make drastic changes in the way I live my life on a daily basis. This cycle, I'm pretty sure, began with school by introducing the drudgery of work, reciprocated by the seeking of numbing and mindless entertainment in order to recover and escape from life until the next bout of drudgery had to be endured. I somehow managed to waste whole summers by some macro form of this otherwise daily cycle of little death following little death.

I found a neat essay about the importance of doing what you love. We learn in school that work must be a drudgery, that it cannot possibly be fun. And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This was the highlight of the article for me:

"More often people who do great things have careers with the trajectory of a ping-pong ball. They go to school to study A, drop out and get a job doing B, and then become famous for C after taking it up on the side.

Sometimes jumping from one sort of work to another is a sign of energy, and sometimes it's a sign of laziness. Are you dropping out, or boldly carving a new path? You often can't tell yourself. Plenty of people who will later do great things seem to be disappointments early on, when they're trying to find their niche."

I would only object to the negative connotation being applied, as always in this culture, to laziness (via the protestant work ethic). As Bertrand Russell said so wisely, "the time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." Nevertheless, the article gives some good tips in succeeding in one's search for the work one loves. I'd like to get into a bit of a debate over semantics, since the word "work" is so far gone in this culture with its implicit and pervasive association with drudgery, that the word "play" should always be used when speaking of things one loves to do. Although, I guess there is just as much in the way of implications to fight against when going the other way, as play is viewed conversely as void of productive value or practical application in addressing the fulfillment of life's daily needs (food, water, shelter). Regardless, I intend to play throughout the whole of my life, and make a living doing it.

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What are you going to do next year?

2006-04-14T23:12:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of questions in my mind, as usual. Many, I'm sure, I am not even able to put into words still. Some, of course, I can - mostly because they have already been asked to me by other people. And I don't have the answers when they ask these questions. "What are you going to do next year?" "How are you going to support yourself?" "What do you have to offer to the community if you were to join this eco-thingy you speak of?" "What is your long-term plan?"

And in each case, my answer can be summarized as "I don't know." Or perhaps, "I don't know, yet." Obviously, a lot is weighing right now on how the visit to Dancing Rabbit goes (just a month and a half away!). There's a lot I need to try to figure out during the three weeks that I'll be there.

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If I do join the village, that answers the first question without a problem. It has been very easy and nice to actually have something, anything, to say when that question comes up. But, honestly, I don't know what the future holds for me. Just not school. I don't think people understand just how desperately I want to get away from the school setting. I am thoroughly institutionalized (I could not succeed in school otherwise). The regimented pattern of "learning" that takes place has sapped me of any and all creativity and original thought. Such is the result of being singlemindedly focused on fulfilling the requirements other people have set for me (again, in order to earn praise). I have no idea what I want to do with the time after I am finished with school, and it is precisely because of all of the schooling I have been through already. The only thing I know to do, in whatever way this may manifest itself, is to unschool myself. Deinstitutionalize. Try to reenergize whatever the source is of my creativity. Not until I do that will I be able to even start to figure out the answers to the rest of those questions. I have no idea how I would support myself at Dancing Rabbit, or elsewhere. If I don't wind up at DR, I could probably find cheap rent with a group of people, get a temporary minimum wage job and dumpster for food (while I continue to unschool and begin to learn what I might actually have to offer this world). And if I do end up at DR, there's no way to even know what kind of work would be available to me until I get there.

I have always wondered what I could possibly be good for in the workforce, what skills I could possibly offer. I used to say teacher (because I "liked" being a student), or architect (liked playing with legos and drawing (but not with a ruler)), or priest (ha). But I don't know. Whatever skill I do end up pursuing the development of, I want it to be practical. I could see myself going to a trade school of some sort. Carpentry perhaps. My mom has mentioned some sort of ecologically conscious construction company in the area. Perhaps I could check them out.

Obviously, Dancing Rabbit has the most potential to pose an answer to the question of what my long-term plans are. Coming to live in such a place would be a dream come true right now, taking a big step for myself in the right direction, away from civilization (and the civis - that fundamental building block of civilzation, the city).

I was talking with my Aunt Annie a couple weeks ago, and during our discussion about these things, she made me aware of a couple things. One, that when people disapprove of the direction in which I am taking my life, they are doing so out of love because they are worried about me. Two, that it seems as though my attempt to walk away from civilization is also an attempt to walk away from all of the relationships I have had throughout my life, relationships with people who are thoroughly planted in civilization and are not going to walk away from it any time soon. To the second point, I responded that it is certainly not my intent to cut myself off from relationships. Relationships are everything to me. It's all the stuff that distracts us from relating to one another that I want to be rid of. I do recognize that many of my relationships have been strained by the fact that my ideology has changed a lot as I have been able to start to make my own way from the foundation of the ideology I was given from birth. There is a commonality that used to be there that is now absent, and that is certainly a problem to be worked out (or played out, as I like to think of it) - how to continue relating to people, how to connect with people, when the common ideology is no longer there. Thankfully, ideology does not mean everything, and as much as people don't show it in there actions, there is something deeper than ideology in the nature of the human person over which everyone can connect. Appropriately, there is no name to give to that something, for otherwise, it would become part of some ideology. So that gives me hope.

A third comment my Aunt Annie made was that when I started to talk about permaculture, my eyes lit up. She was very happy to see that I was still passionate (in a positive manner) about something, that I had something that gives me life and joy, even if it is only an idea at this stage. And I am very happy about that too. When I say that I want to live in a manner that is "more than sustainable," I am referring to permaculture because permaculture is a kind of horticultural design that is, one, permanent (hence the name "permanent agriculture"), and two, rebuilds biodiversity and replenishes the life of the soil. That is what I am most passionate about learning and implementing at a place like Dancing Rabbit. I don't know how much permacultural design is already going on there (how much I could learn from them), but if there is not a lot as of yet, I want to go out and do whatever I need to do to learn about it and bring it there (my skill!).

Another option that I have been beginning to entertain is to enroll in an eleven month intensive program in which I would learn complete self-sufficiency (within the context of a group, of course) in the wilderness. From my perspective, this would be the most forward thinking and long term planning option available, as it is a goal of mine, if I go to Dancing Rabbit, to help establish a primitivist subcommunity there (which would certainly cut down on a lot of the living expenses, reducing the need for "supporting myself"!). It's just a thought in the beginning stages at this point. But it is all very exciting!

I still have questions that I have yet to get any closer to answering, and that's okay. That's how I like it, actually. I'd be more concerned if I felt that I had found all the answers. I don't ever expect that to be the case. I'll try to tackle a couple more another day, and we'll go from there.

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a life of loud desperation

2006-04-07T16:35:00.000-07:00

I have not had a roommate this semester, but it has taken me a very long time to move into the extra space. The extra space, for the most part, is simply unnecessary. However, today, for the first time, I opened up the venician blinds that have stayed put all year (spanning the whole window and mostly open). The clouds this afternoon are gorgeous, with the sun setting slowly behind them, filling up the edges of the clouds with its brilliance and spilling over in streaks of glory. My appreciation of them was greatly multipled by finally thinking to slide back the blinds. The borders of the different window panes are still obstructing my wonderful view, but it is wonderful nonetheless.

An unintended result of opening up one side of my room so much is that it becomes so much more evident that I am living in an concrete box. I've got it dressed up real pretty with a bunch of posters and pictures and maps, but it's still a box made out of the same kind of blocks one would expect to find in a prison, another place, incidentally, whose purpose is to supposedly mold people's behavior and train them to do what they need to do. It's the same kind of thing that goes on here. We just have a better euphemism for this prison than "house of corrections." We call it "education," making it sound like the people in these institutions are being empowered, when in reality it is just another tool for social control.

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I am, of course, painting a bleaker picture than what the reality experienced is. Obviously, I am not kept in this concrete box by any physical force, only social pressures. I have the keys. Everyone has the keys. And they have us trained so well that no one wants to let themselves out. Well I do, and I'm going to. I may be using exaggeration for effect, but I'm not exaggerating too much.

My uncle made a comment a few days ago (one of the rare ones where he doesn't try to convey his unique sense of humor through texual form and end up infuriating me) that started me thinking about this topic on a broader scale, or "me" in general. He said,

"It seems that you like and dislike abstracts, and both sets of abstracts tend to be fixated on extremes; extreme idealism about how to fix the 'problem' and extreme cynicism about the source of the 'problem'."

First off, even though this blog is deceptively titled "tom campbell," it does not, in fact, sum up the entirety of my being. His analysis of "me" is absolutely correct if it is applied only to the words that I put here. This blog is obviously completely in the realm of abstractions, and yes, I do allow myself to be both extremely idealistic and cynical when writing in this blog. I almost take it as more of a compliment that he recognizes my ability to be very idealistic and very cynical at the same time. I take pride in being so seemingly contradictory. Both of those words have a lot of baggage, so it's hard to tell what precise definitions are being implied by their use in any particular case, except, to some extent, by context. Idealism could refer to the philosophy of Plato's Forms (something I despise) or simply being optimistic and striving for a goal. Cynicism can refer, again, to a philosophy - this one being that the only good is to be found in virtue resulting in the incessant pointing out of instances in which everyone else is not as virtuous as they should be (something, again, that I despise. I really hope people don't think that that is what I try to do with this blog), or simply as a negative view of the current state of affairs. I would assume that my uncle is using the second (generalized) definition in the case of both words. If I am correct to assume that, is there something bad about having a goal to strive for? (I'm still working out how that is different from the myth of progress. I know it is, but it's still muddled for me.) And is criticizing and trying to make others aware of what one sees as bad not a worthy practice? (of course it is, or else my uncle wouldn't do it himself with his comments either.)

My uncle puts in quotes the word problem, so as to suggest that there isn't actually any problem with the way things are currently going. That is the premise under which he operates - there is no problem. He's right, of course. Our system in America is perfect. It is utopian. But Utopia only works if the people living in it are also perfect. And that will never be the case. People are not perfect. They are not necessarily even good. Or bad. People just are. So when imperfect people are expected to perform perfectly in a perfect system and fail, there's a problem. Sorry, there just is.

That is the premise I start with - there is something very very wrong with our culture today. My uncle commented at one point that he profoundly disagrees with my conclusions and the logic by which I reach those conclusions. I would like my uncle to point out the logical fallacies in my arguments, because I don't think it's my conclusions he disagrees with but the premises I start out with, and premises can't be argued over - one either accepts them or she doesn't. Hence the "agreeing to disagree," as my personal philosophy certainly allows for, what with there being no one right way and all.

I would also contest the idea that I am idealistic, actually. I'm not saying that I'm not striving for some pretty lofty goals, because I definitely am. It is certainly extremely idealistic from my uncle's perspective, but from my perspective, it is actually extremely realistic and practical for me to pursue these goals to "fix the 'problem.'" This civilization will collapse. It is bound to happen eventually. But I think there is sufficient evidence to show that this collapse I refer to will happen sooner rather than later. With this in mind, becoming as independent from the system and as self-sufficient as possible is a supremely practical and pressing goal in the pursuit of a happy and successful future. I will admit to being blatantly and unapologetically selfish right now. But my take on being selfish involves opening myself up to community in which I am completely non-individualistic but rather find security in interdependence with other people. Humans are social beings and would not have been evolutionarily fit if they did not cooperate and collaborate with each other. But genes only care about proliferating themselves, not cooperating lovingly and peacefully with other genes in the hippie camp. The cooperation serves an underlying self-interested purpose of increasing chances of survival. So if it feels like I am separating myself and going off to build a life in which I am concerned with my survival alone, that is partially true, from my genes' perspective. It's only partially true because 1) as I've described, it is in the best interest of my genes to help others in my tribe to survive as well, and 2) my genes, as much as I'm sure they would like to, don't run the show. Their phenotype (or "me") does that. And that phenotype does have motives outside of proliferating genes (e.g. not wanting to contribute to the continued overpopulation of the planet by one, very dangerous species). I would like to aid other people in making their own jumps off of this sinking ship. But to promptly switch metaphors on you, it is as in the case of an emergency on an airplane when the oxygen mask drops - you put on your own mask before helping others with theirs. I need to take care of myself before I am able to think to take care of other people.

So am I extreme in my "idealism" and cynicism? Only to the extent that I am also able to say that my uncle is in extreme denial about what he passes off as a fabricated problem. (Again, it comes down to premises).

As I said, though, this blog does not = me. This blog happens to be where all of this heavy shit ends up. I am able to put my thoughts here (my abstractions) and can be free of them to some extent the rest of the time. While I may appear to be overwhelmingly cynical about our culture here, that does not preclude me from being a relatively happy guy elsewhere. As far as I can self-diagnose, I am not suffering from depression, although that particular bit may be skewed by the fact that I am doped up on entertainment and other distractions most of the time still. My distractions may be of higher quality (surfing the internet instead of surfing the channels on a television, listening to ani difranco and radiohead instead of pop music on the radio), but they are distractions nonetheless, screening me from facing to a full extent the reality of living in this culture of isolation and control. This blog will either completely cease to exist or radically shift in content once I successfully plant myself firmly in the reality of the present moment because at that point, all of these abstractions will become unimportant as I start to experience what they are meant to represent.

The biggest and most important abstraction to me is community. For me, the search for community is synonymous with the search for love and acceptance. As far as I can tell, this is a universal human desire, and 19 years in this culture is plenty to understand that I am not going to fulfill that desire entirely from within such a culture. I do not want to lead a life of quiet desparation. First I am going to be loud about my despair. Then I'm going to find hope.

Edit [4/8/06 2:13pm]: Jason Godesky happened to be writing about the ethics of collapse at roughly the same time I was (since this post actually only began at 6:35pm and was publised around 4am). It answers similar, if broader, critiques about essentially the same kind of things I'm talking about here, and does so eloquently as always.

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Hey, environmentalist liberals! Here's a hint: IT'S TOO LATE!

2006-03-28T11:16:00.000-08:00

Returning to that book report I wrote, my teacher only wrote a few comments on the paper, but one is important enough that I wanted to point it out. With the point at which I say that "my grand scheme to 'save the world' is simply to walk away from participation in those institutions that diminish diversity and learn about or create a new way of living that increases diversity," he responds "- How about joining the people trying to save it?"

(I thought that is what I was saying.)

But I understand that he is coming from a different angle. It is basically the angle of the liberal environmentalist. And the best way I know to respond to this angle is to simply point to an essay that could answer that question much better than I could right now- Ran Prieur's Thinking Through the Fall. I haven't referred to Ran's writing directly since I first mentioned him with regards to his essay defining violence.

expand to read the full post

That instance is actually a fun personal example of the butterfly effect. One night, back in late october, I was doing a random google search for "pacifism," and Ran's essay happened to catch my eye (if you do that search, you'll find it almost to the end of the page, if you have it set to return 100 results). I clicked on the link, read the essay, and thought it was really good. It was touching on just the kind of transient nature of the meaning of the word "violence" that I was trying to feel out as I began to question my pacifism. I shared the link to the essay with a few friends, and that's where it stayed for a few weeks. I wrote about the essay in my blog eventually. And then finally it dawned on me to perhaps explore other essays written by this author. And I did. I read many of his essays and then switched over and started to follow his blog on a daily basis, but only superficially, never following any of the links in his posts. At some point around Christmas, Sara and I were looking at the site together, and she was exploring every link possible, and the opportunity again dawned on me that I am not exploiting this resource nearly far enough. So then, as I began to go back and explore places Ran linked to, I quickly made my way to Anthropik, as Jason was still in the midst of finishing up his Thirty Theses and so was being linked by Ran every few days as a new thesis was published. I continued to thoroughly explore Anthropik then, adding it to my list of daily reads. One day in January, by chance, I came across a link to Hobopoet in the forum at Anthropik, and headed on over there. Here things start to speed up a bit. By this time, I am starting to add these daily reads to the sidebar here, and when I added Hobopoet, somehow, the very next day (if I remember correctly), Hobopoet had linked back to me! (my first big hit of blogger-to-blogger approval, btw). While all this general blogging merriment is going on, I have basically been pacified and beaten down into accepting the idea that I could go on for three and a half more years and get a degree in something or other. Still, I'm exploring, virtually, and I come across the link to Dancing Rabbit on Ishcon, again randomly, and link to it. And I know this is a little cheesy, but it all comes together, all these little happenstance events, with Devin. Remember that he found my blog through Hobopoet, which he found through Anthropik (probably the same way I did). He begins to open up a dialogue with me mid february, and by the end of march, I have again come alive and am chomping at the bit to be rid of the chains of school and start living. To change direction so as to not end up where I was headed. To actually have what I believe acted out in the way I organize and use my life every day. SO, the point was - a random google search led directly to my dropping out. So be careful what you google search!

Wow, so I got way off topic, but that's okay. It was fun. Anyway, I can't recommend Ran's essays enough, along with the rest of his site.

The corollary that follows my people pleasing addiction is that I am very apt to become dependent on people I perceive as role models or heros in my life. To quote a CrimethInc. Worker Bulletin, the most important question for the revolutionary is how to escape disciples and enable equals. I would like to start enabling myself. It's fine for me to learn from other people, but then I need to take what I learn and go out and live my own life, not live vicariously through the people I'm supposedly just learning from.

Sorry I went a little linkcrazy with this post. Don't know what came over me...

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New template

2006-03-27T14:54:00.000-08:00

As I am sure you have noticed, I just changed the template for this blog. It is based off of the minima template, with major modifications made by yours truly. It's a lot of fun to play with existing html (but I remember from computer fundamentals class that writing html from scratch is a pain in the ass). The last time I changed my template was about a month or so after I first began this blog (I believe it was a simple black text on very plain white background with an orange banner on top). I was tiring of the black on white and general lack of individuality in my former cookie-cutter, ready-made template. I'm also using some hacks found at Blogger Templates to tweak little things here and there. I am open to hearing what your opinion is of the new template and will take any constructive criticism under advisement (basically, is everything still readable with the color scheme I've got going right now?). Thanks, and enjoy!

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meta

Attention potential future commenters:

2006-03-26T01:19:00.000-08:00

I have just changed the setting so that only registered users can comment. It is relatively easy to register with blogger, and it does not require you to have a blog. Thanks for your cooperation. Otherwise, sorry if I lose you as a commenter over this. I was just having some problems with anonymous commenter-vandals recently, and I'm hoping this stems the tide.

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meta

Book report

2006-03-25T00:43:00.000-08:00

I had to write a paper recently for my biology class, The Diversity of Life. The paper was actually a book report, and the book we (were supposed to have) read was entitled The Diversity of Life. I did read the first 100 pages, and then skimmed the rest, as I had of course procrastinated until the day before it was due to even attempt to finish reading the book. The book is worthy of my full attention at some point in the future. Anyway, for this book report, we were asked to write about how the topic of the book (encapsulated nicely in the title) relates, first, to our society, and then, directly to me. It was actually fun to write, so I wanted to share it with you. It was supposed to be four pages long (1.5 spaced), but mine came out to just over 3 (working up to right before class, you know?). Nevertheless, I scored a 95, whatever that means. So here is my paper...

expand to read the full post

Civilization is killing the planet. Well, not so much the planet but rather the thin veil of life that covers every inch of the planet. Life is both very delicate and very resilient, and civilization is putting both of those claims to the test. Edward Wilson’s book, The Diversity of Life, seeks to describe this life, how it works and evolves, and what relationship we, as humans, have to it. The way I just worded that last sentence is very telling, revealing an insight into the root of the problem we are now facing, the decimation of the biological systems of the world that allow us to exist. What is telling is that distinction made between humans and the rest of the biological world, as if we are not a part of it, as if we are above it, as if we are gods. By viewing the biosphere as something distinct from humanity, something that we can be extracted from and govern over, we make ourselves prone to the very dangerous mistake of viewing the earth as simply a resource to be exploited instead of the mother, who made life for all of us possible, that she really is.

The topic discussed in the book has very severe and important implications for our present society, or more widely, for our global civilization. Humans are very much part of the biosphere. We are mammals. We are animals. Simply because we have the mental capability to recognize that fact does not remove us from our interdependence with every other species on the planet. The most prominent and immediate manifestation of this interdependence and our corresponding warped attitude towards the biological world is in our procurement of food. Ten thousand years ago, before the Agricultural Revolution, humans were hunter-gatherers. They lived off the fruit of the land, just as every other animal does, secure with a faith in Nature’s bounty. Then, a strange thing happened. Suddenly, one group of people lost their faith that Nature would always provide them with the food they need to survive, so they attempted to take matters into their own hands and produce all of the food they needed by themselves. This loss of faith was the biological equivalent of blasphemy, with humans proclaiming themselves gods, complete with knowledge of what species should live (those that directly contribute as food for humans) and what species should die (any species that is in the way of or competes with humans and their food sources). Thus, intensive agriculture was spawned, with monoculture fields that wipe out all diversity, providing humans with a surplus of food – but a surplus constantly threatened by diseases (since there is no diversity in the fields to offer any protection). Ironically, by assuming control over the production of food for the security of that supply, humans introduced famine upon themselves for the first time. In the past, when food was short, one could simply move on to new lands, but sedentary people of agriculture have that option closed to them. Nevertheless, those that adopt agriculture as a way of life do obtain a surplus of food, as all available land is being directed towards food for humans, neglecting all other species in the ecosystem. That surplus begins a vicious cycle of population growth and increase in the available food supply, a cycle which eventually leads to the population explosion we have on our hands now, overshooting the carrying capacity of the planet.[1]

Our species is in a very precarious position now, as we continue to act as though our actions have no serious consequences for the rest of the life on this planet or even for ourselves, when in reality, this behavior on our part has begun the sixth great extinction period in the history of the planet, and at a much faster rate. As a species often considered to be on the top of the food chain, wiping out the foundational species below is not good practice if we desire to stay in that position on the food chain – or even to stay around at all. Indeed, we are not actually on the top of a food chain because there is no top. The energy and fire of life passes through this world as a web, not as a hierarchical chain. Such images of dominance are again products of the fundamental division between humans and the rest of the biosphere, as we choose to ignore the fact that we do indeed get eaten upon death by bacteria and plants and scavenging animals.

Our current society and civilization is built upon the assumptions of human separateness and superiority that are now most clearly showing themselves to be very deleterious to the continuation of life on earth. I do not see how such a civilization can be changed or reformed in any way to revert such direct consequences of our foundational myth. Our current population and way of life is being propped up by technological complexity and cheap energy in the form of petroleum, but petroleum production will peak very soon. After that, it is only a short time before the comforts of civilization that we have become so accustomed to will not only not be sustainable – they will not even be possible (not on the scale that they are today, at least). Society, then, should prepare for a great many changes in the future, in both the status of the biological world and in how our relation to it is felt and perceived. It’s time for us to wake up to the reality of our situation. We are animals, currently biting off the hand that feeds us. We need to first acknowledge the first statement, and then stop the second.

I am an animal. I am a very small part of the biological world. I contribute to the diversity of life by simply existing. Admittedly, that contribution is infinitesimally small considering that I am a member of an omnivorous species that has an inordinate number of individuals, 6.5 billion, and growing (exponentially). Also, any small amount of diversity I might bring to an ecosystem is cancelled out many times over at the moment by the way of life that I have been raised in this society to lead. Even though within the context of the United States, my family is very much a middle class family, when the context is expanded to the rest of the world, my family if immensely rich. We lead lives of extreme comfort and ease compared to the majority of the world. This situation is the product of a capitalist system – the few living very well upon the backs of the many. I have read the “State of the Village Report,” and I have taken the online ecological footprint quiz. I am well aware that my lifestyle is outrageously unjust and unsustainable. According to the quiz, if everyone were to live the same way that I live, there would need to be 3 earths to support the demand. And that is with being a vegetarian of two years and no longer owning a car. One of my lifelong goals is to not only no longer contribute to the continued destruction of the earth through the way I daily live my life but to also begin to reverse the process and find effective ways to increase diversity in the ecosystem in which I live. This is the whole idea behind permaculture – beyond simply gardening to provide a portion of my food, I want to encourage the development sustainable and functional ecosystems. This summer, I will be visiting an eco-village in northeastern Missouri called Dancing Rabbit, visiting with the intent of exploring the possibility of moving there and beginning to enact my dream and goal of more than sustainable living. In this way, I also hope to prepare for the impending collapse of civilization (because all civilizations are destined to collapse – such complexity is never indefinitely sustainable). My grand scheme to “save the world” is simply to walk away from participation in those institutions that diminish diversity and learn about or create a new way of living that increases diversity.

This book, The Diversity of Life, presents a very good and thorough account of the beauty and necessity of diversity. It shows how life is created and proliferated through evolution, how diversity comes out of that evolution and strengthens the hold life has on earth, and then how humans have set out to unintentionally destroy that diversity for their own benefit. This book is a call to action, crying out as a wake up call to a people put asleep by the drug of material affluence, or the seeking of such affluence. I hope more people are listening.

[1] My understanding of the Agricultural Revolution and its consequences was influenced by not only The Diversity of Life, but also Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn.

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Recovering from my addiction to approval

2006-03-23T20:52:00.000-08:00

Hi, my name is Tom Campbell, and I am a people pleaser.

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At the moment, I am reluctant to even write this post because I fear it won't be pleasing to some people. That is the primary, if latent, emotion that drives addictive pleasing behavior - fear. Fear of not being accepted, of not being loved, of not being good enough. It is an internalized pressure to meet the expectations of other people, internalized from the original external pressure. The pressure is subtle, and it is not necessarily even intended. My mom has commented, and I know, that when children are born, they don't come with instruction manuals. And any instructions received from this culture are bound to be faulty and maladaptive. So I don't blame my parents. Within their particular stories and context, this was the only way they were able to raise me. I have always said that I thought my parents did a very good job of raising me. And that is part of the problem. 1) I feel the need to reassure them, surely in an attempt to make them even prouder of the product of their raising, and 2) I am mirroring their behavior, making a value judgement on their parenting skills when they should speak for themselves without any judgements being necessary. What I am referring to is the phrase "good job." I just used it myself, in reference to my parents, and they used it all the time with me and any small accomplishment I made. This evaluative phrase has the unintended consequence of turning whatever activity I am engaged in as only a means to an end- seeking the approval and praise from my parents and any other authority figure in my life. I became dependent upon this praise and learned to seek only that. This pressure shaped me into a very "good kid" from outward appearances. I was a straight A student and was very religious, and I was especially willing to be helpful and always in service to others- always with the hidden motive of getting my approval fix, like the junkie I was. Now, this was not done consciously. It was not contrived behavior. It grew into a habit slowly and unknowingly, from my earliest formative years, whenever I first did something that could possibly be regarded as praiseworthy- perhaps opening my eyes for the first time, or smiling, or, I don't know, maybe even pooping (depending on how weird of a mood my parents were in at the time, of course). Like I said, I do not blame my parents for turning me into an approval hungry monster. I am a little angry that I have lived my life thus far in this way and now have to struggle to unlearn this addiction, but placing blame does not help the situation.

I learned to first seek praise from my parents, but the lesson was hammered home in grade school. I know that by third grade, I was thoroughly a teacher's pet. It may have started before that, but I got really good at it by third grade. I would try my hardest to exceed so far in school that the teachers just had to love me. And they did. They loved me because I was intelligent. They loved me because I was cooperative. They loved me because I was helpful. Because I was eager. Because I was responsible. Because I was trustworthy. These are all good character traits by themselves, but I did not develop them for their own sake but rather only to receive the praise that results from having these traits. It became almost a kind of game for me. By highschool, I was conscious of the necessity to make a good impression on the teacher from the start in order to get the teacher to like me, and then do well in the class as a result, gaining both the approval of that teacher and fueling the everpresent praise of my family. This addiction is what drove me to get straight A's (and to view the act of getting them as "fun"...sounds like a junkie's high to me...), it's what drove me to be very religious, going to extremes in only listening to christian rock and signing at least five different chastity cards over the years and, eventually, feeling the duty to consider the priesthood, seeking the approval of the priests at my school and church, and perhaps my dad (?), and certainly God. Actually, part of my disillusionment with God might have been realizing in a very demoralizing way that as much as I might try, I'm not going to receive praise from God in the same way (or perhaps in infinitely more ways?) as I did from all the other authority figures in my life. Everything that made up who I was was superficial. It was all simply the most effective means to accessing my drug of choice.

So I'm trying to recover, right? I slowly deconstructed all the labels I had built around myself in order to attract praise, and I stumblingly found myself some new labels to assume. Vegetarian, anarchist, anti-civ... It is certainly a step in the right direction, as it was a very tough thing to open myself up to so much disapproval from all of the authority figures I looked up to throughout my childhood. Any relationships that remain through that are real. And that is a really cool thing. But in taking on new labels, I'm finding that I am still just as addicted to approval. I'm just seeking different sources for that approval. I very much yearn to simply be accepted by the people at food not bombs, but in seeking that acceptance, I am again having to construct labels around myself. And each time someone links or returns a link to my blog, I am filled with elation. It very much resembles a high, and it's because I'm receiving another hit of approval. And, of course, I still very much would like all of the old sources to come around and start praising me again for the direction in which I am taking my life. But, honestly, that would be my downfall. Hearing their disapproval for the first time is a very shocking experience, but it is also very healthy for me, I feel. I do not know how to unlearn this behavior or how to get out from under this addiction, but I want to. It absolutely essential to the unschooling process.

Before, I was the perfect citizen, for the reason that I strived to be perfect. Perfect for other people. That perfectionism and the desire to please would have led me to do anything required of me in order to satisfy the demands of other people, and achieve their approval as reward. This is exactly the kind of behavior desired in soldiers and the corresponding soldier citizens in the economy- mindless drones willing to bend over backwards to please their boss(es). I am, of course, painting a much bleaker picture than anyone would be willing to accept as their reality, but it essentially comes down to that in the end, whether we're fully conscious of it or not.

So I desire to excise myself from this current environment where I am still being trained to look for little red marks on my paper to see if I did a good job or not.

There is a Chinese proverb I saw recently that helps to describe my feelings about college - "Unless we change direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed." I need to change my direction, or I will head directly into the wage slavery I so much dread and despise. I don't know the specifics yet of what that direction will look like, but I am lucky enough to have a family that will support me in the short term, allowing me the time to solidify my vision and gain some autonomy in my life.

I have recently become very interested in the matters of parenting and general child-raising practices. This recognition of addiction became clearer to myself by reading an article by Alfie Kohn, called Five reasons to stop saying "Good job!" (it's one of the spotlight articles- no direct link available). I would like to read his book, Unconditional Parenting.

Beyond that, I am also exploring the world of unassisted childbirth and elimination communication and the continuum concept- mostly because I am reading the blogs of very interesting parents, like Mother Anarchy and Village Blog. It makes me excited about the prospect of raising a child someday. For now, though, I need to focus on unlearning the maladaptive lessons of my childhood. That's enough to fill up anyone's plate.

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Ventures in further self-awareness

2006-03-20T22:15:00.000-08:00

For anyone who knows me personally, I would invite you to share with me how you perceive me, both in a positive and a negative light. Thanks.

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community

2006-03-11T22:49:00.000-08:00

A link from Mother Anarchy's blog on unschooling- a course on un/homeschooling. Most relevant to me is the part of Lesson 7: College and Career about alternatives to college. That may be helpful in helping people to understand how I plan to "survive" without a degree.

On the other hand, Skald has yet another great post on Hobopoet about the necessity of simply not letting people coax me back in to following the crowd, stepping back in line, finding my place in the system. That's just helpful to me on a personal level, but check it out if you want.

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Some meta and reflections on my list of 100(ish) things

2006-03-11T20:36:00.000-08:00

First the meta-

You have probably noticed that the list of links on the sidebar has grown and evolved quite a bit over the last month or so. These are all sites that I either visit on a nearly daily basis or are simply good occasional resources. So check them out if you haven't already.

I also amended the about me portion. That is probably an emotional response to first being elated that Anthropik linked to me, and then being slightly TO-ed, seeing that they describe me as a kid (which I then realized is how I describe myself in my about me section): "The nice part about being a kid now is that you have a chance to grow up to see a free world; the bad part about being a kid now is, you're not born into that world." So I felt inclined to update the about me section, naturally.

Also, I don't have a full understanding of the way all of the laws work, but I have put up a notice that I release all rights over what I write here. I don't know how that works if I ever post things that other people have copyrights on. I'll look into that, I guess.

I switched a while ago to have everything in the sidebar to lower case, including even the title of the blog (tom campbell). I'm not sure what exactly my motive was there, but I just know I like it. Hope you don't mind my imitation of bell hooks.

Now for the more interesting reflections on my own list of 100 things about me-

I just wanted to note that I found it interesting how often I remarked in some way that I am an introvert.

I am also realizing that even though I am now assuming the label of an anarchist basically and trying to push away the hippie label, I've probably never been as much of a hippie in my actions and beliefs than I am now. As soon as I stopped trying to fulfill that label in name, I think I started to fulfill it in deed. I still don't like that label, though. Now, to me, when someone is labelled a hippie, it brings up stereotypes of drugs and a general laidback nature where one is apt to say, "Hey dude, it's all cool. Just chill," even though it's not all cool and chilling is not going to help. Now what I need to do is move past the label of anarchist so I can start acting like that, too!

I was also surprised to hear me comment at a couple points that I am "funny to look at." Seems like there is still some latent self-image problems there. That said, I do believe that I clean up pretty well; I just don't have the motive to do so all that often.

I have begun to knit my first scarf. Yay for being artsy and productive and challenging gender roles all at the same time!

I noticed that I didn't feel compelled nor even think to include anyone from college on the list of favorite teachers.

The thumb I broke was on my left hand (that's not so much a reflection as an edit...oops).

On the potential dangers of activities I am engaging in... I was in my first bicycle/car collision thursday night. It had been raining off and on all day (but not at the time of the accident), so my wheels were slightly wet, and therefore my brakes took longer than usual to stop the bike. I'm heading down a slight incline and have the right of way (of course) when a car starts to turn left to go onto a highway onramp, coming right into my pathway. He did not see me, with my headlight on and my fucking fluorescent yellow jacket on, so he does not stop. I instinctively try to brake, which slows me down just enough (I might have been able to narrowly miss getting hit had I not braked) for him to clip my back tire with the front left corner of his car. My bike is knocked out from under me and I go skidding for a couple feet. As soon as I hit the ground, I look back at him, and he's looking at me. The look in his eye is as if the collision was my fault. The reality of the situation must have hit him by time he got a few meters further up the onramp because he then pulled over and got out to ask if I was okay. I was still picking myself up, but said yeah before I even really checked my bike. He took hold of my initial response and ran with it- getting out of there pretty quickly. My bike was fine, though. And I just got some roadburn on my left hip, ankle and elbow. My left knee also hurt that night as well. I was pretty shaken up, but I was able to continue on to my intended destination successfully (cooking for food not bombs). Today, the knee is feeling fine, I've got a bandage on my hip (with a scrape about three inches in diameter that I incurred through my jeans (oh, and none of my clothing got damaged either, not even the thin fluorescent jacket I was wearing. I was impressed)), but muscles in my right leg are aching. That quad must have slammed into the frame or something. Overall, though, it was a good first accident to have, with very little harm actually being done. My respect (and hatred, of course) for cars has been raised again, now backed by personal experience of their dangerousness. I still hold that it is much more dangerous to ride in a car than to ride a bike, and most of the reason that there is danger in riding a bike comes from the fact that cyclists have to share the road with the huge chunks of aluminum speeding along like there's no tomorrow (but, ironically enough, with peak oil at our doorstep, there isn't a tomorrow for cars. haha!). But accidents are simply a part of life when commuting by bicycle, and I'm just happy that I am keenly aware of that, no longer in theory but in practice.

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bicycle

The Meatrix 2

2006-03-07T13:39:00.000-08:00

I saw over at food not oil that a sequel to The Meatrix is being released at some point this month, The Meatrix 2.

While I am actually strongly considering the possibility of eating meat again in the near future, I am still a vegetarian for now because any meat available to me at this point would be coming from factory farms. It is both a matter of health and to make a political statement that I continue to not eat meat until I have some control over where the meat I would eat comes from.

I am looking forward to eating meat again, so I can start to move towards the paleo diet more solidly. It's really hard (impossible, really) to try to be vegetarian and paleo at the same time. They're incompatible in what you are allowed to eat and in how you view the world. Any source of protein in the vegetarian diet- dairy, beans- is not included in the paleo diet. And the vegetarian diet, while it has the noble goal of not supporting the factory farming industry, acts to further remove people from the natural flow of life and death that is what actually makes life possible. If a vegetarian holds the goal of not harming any sentient being (as many I know do, as I did, to some degree), what they are really saying in effect is that they are above living. Violence is integral to life. Without death, there could be no life.

So I'm making a distinction between economic veg'ans, who would never buy animal products but would eat them if they are free (which is what I would be right now if I wasn't in college and didn't have a meal plan through the middle of may) and elitist veg'ans who feel that they are above all of the dirty violence of life and sustain themselves with store-bought soy products (who I have been).

So yeah, check out the movie when it comes out, or the short little trailer right now.

Unschooling

2006-03-01T14:33:00.000-08:00

A little over a week ago, I was ready to drop out of school immediately. As in, that day, withdrawing, checking out, no looking back. I felt a certain amount of urgency because the last day to receive a partial refund for tuition was quickly approaching. That day has now passed, and I am still enrolled. I will be finishing the semester, but I have partially already mentally dropped out. This means that I am still going to classes and participating and doing the work (for the most part), but it is not the priority at all in my mind anymore. The majority of my energy is now being spent on pursuing my own interests independent from school (this is nothing new; it is just more purposeful now (i.e. no longer dismissed as simply procrastination)). I am also only taking 12 hours (the minimum number to still be a full time student) instead of 15, since I withdrew from a writing class I was in that I found particularly annoying. At this point, I am exploring these interests outside of school mainly through reading, both books and on the internet, and through talking to people (friends, family, teachers, strangers) but also through some direct experience (e.g. food not bombs). I am making definite plans to visit Dancing Rabbit this summer. It is still up in the air at this point whether I will be returning to school next fall. Honestly, if I end up returning, it will only be because of the friends I have here. A possible alternative would be to transfer to a college that might better suit my interests, such as Northland. But more likely, I would drop out completely so as to most fully have the autonomy to explore the formation of another way of living.

School, and especially SLU, is no place to do that. School has a very specific purpose that is hidden under layers of apparent choice and topical learning. But John Taylor Gatto, a veteran teacher, makes very clear what is actually being taught in the educational system by outlining six lessons. These lessons are:

1. Stay in the class where you belong
2. turn on and off like a light switch
3. surrender your will to a predestined chain of command
4. only the teacher determines what curriculum you will study
5. your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth
6. you are being watched

While I will admit that these lessons are less stringently enforced in college (such as 1, 4 (for some people), and 6), they are all present here to a large degree and therefore greatly inhibit actual learning from taking place.

Daniel Quinn also has a speech online on the topic of schooling. In that, he purports that the main function of schools are to delay a segment of the population that is able to work from actually entering the work force so as to benefit the national economy, both in reducing unemployment rates and in creating a whole new industry from which to profit. Nothing of value is actually taught during those years and years of compulsory education. It is filler to waste time until they can't keep you from working any more. If anything, as Gatto would agree, what schools are teaching are dependence to authority figures, the kind of dependence that makes for good wage slaves, unable to survive without a mind-numbing 9 to 5 job for 40 years because they never actually learned any real skills that could benefit the person supposedly learning in school, skills for autonomy and self-reliance. I am of course not suggesting that we should not be interdependent with each other. That is very much necessary. But that is not the same thing as mindless dependence on abstract entities like corporations and governments.

The alternative is unschooling, where I would need to spend some time and energy to unlearn those six fundamental lessons of school that I have been socialized under for at least 14 years. Through unschooling, I would learn what I am curious to learn, when I want to learn it, at the pace I want to learn it, and through the means that I, and any teachers I may seek out, deem necessary. It would definitely be a lot of work- very engaging and intensive. But it would be a hell of a lot cheaper. And by directing energy towards things that I actually have a personal interest in, it will be a lot more fulfilling and a lot easier to muster inner motivation than what I am experiencing through my current situation.

I am ready to stop following the crowd and start finding my own path (with the help of some friendly scouts that have begun to venture into this forgotten territory).

Edit [3/2/06]: Another good essay on this topic can be found over at The Journal of a Rebel.