They're marching tomorrow. It's about damn time.
After Monsanto has almost succeeded in getting Congress to subsidize its crimes against humanity and the earth, after their leadership roster has provided the perfect retirement or second career for ex-government officials, after they've almost prohibited us from knowing what is in the food we buy...after the farmer lawsuits and the health crises and the colony collapses and the suicides in India...people are finally starting to look up and pay a little attention to what they're doing to this planet where we all live.
Some people. Not nearly enough. Maybe not soon enough. I try to be optimistic, or at least to withhold comment when I'm not, to leave room for others to be. But this is a hard one. The infection of greed and corruption is too pervasive; the plan of attack too insidious. I need to scroll through that list again of cities that have organized "March Against Monsanto" demonstrations tomorrow. It's worldwide. And it's pretty a impressive list. Even the part that represents this country. (http://occupy-monsanto.com/march-against-monsanto-may-25-2013/). But tomorrow's actions hinge on turnout. And ever so much more on what comes after that.
What would it take? To move more of us into the action this world urgently needs from us? What would involve enough of the workers, the families, the middle-ground ones whose collective voice would -- possibly -- shift the balance?
I put this question to friends on the social site. It was a practical query, not an ideological one. What tangible factors, I asked, might give us all the time/space/comfort/will to consider, and possibly to act, on the heavy issues? A day off work? A few stiff drinks on the house? Free childcare? A cash incentive?
And I got a nice collection of responses. Surprising, since not many people take me up on my sleepless-idealist inquiries. Childcare got the most votes. That's cool: I've said for years that as soon as protest organizers advertise free childcare, they'll get the turnout from the workers they're trying to represent. Second most popular answer was time. I won't get philosophical about that one here. For whatever reasons, yes, we all feel short on time. More knowledge (definitely). "Financial plausibility". Better community networks. Knowing your neighbors -- which I took to be about remembering that we can, in fact, reach outside the walls of our own houses and other constructs. To ask for help, to empower ourselves, and then to pass it on once we're able.
But there were some nice surprises in their answers, too. Comfort. A commodity we in this country might have both in too great and too short supply. We don't act for the greater good, however we may perceive such a thing, because we are individually so chronically uncomfortable. From our poor health habits. From the exhausting schedules the capitalist economy imposes on us, and from the unending list of wants and needs we impose on ourselves when we buy into it. From the fact that we (as a nation) consume so much altered, processed, chemical-tainted, unnatural food. From the toxic binges of threat and drama and shadow and judgment that we let mainstream news force-feed us, and from all the real news looming just outside the peripheral vision, that we're afraid to look in the face. After surviving all the above, where is there possibly room for more bad news? More comfort is what we look for. And (for many, though not of course for all) it's easy enough to come by enough comfort to make action seem unnecessary. Or at least, to leave the threats far enough removed to be only some sort of bad dream. To be forgotten quickly by consuming more comfort.
We don't act because we're uncomfortable, and we don't act because we're too comfortable. Is there a way into this? How do we find a balance between "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable"? Is there a way to meet both our very human tendency toward complacency and avoidance (or, let me be a little less critical and say, inertia), and the perfectly valid dread and anxiety which confronting our world's current realities produces? How do we convey the intensity of the need, in a way that incites real action from an authentic source in each person? How is it possible to salute the inherent worth and value of each person as well as engaging them with their responsibility to the whole?
Here's one thing I'm envisioning, lately: a world in which just one day, once in a while, is given to getting outside the comfort zone and working together for something bigger. Just one day. We have so many holidays on the calendar, for so many diverse actions and observances. We've agreed on consistent occasions to celebrate, to gather with family, eat, drink, relax, be comfortable. But we talk so much on the "regular" days -- some of us, anyway -- about the need for better. Why don't we have a holiday devoted to collective social change? Just one day a year: is that asking too much? We don't even use half the holidays we have now for their stated purpose. Memorial Day isn't, unless you're actually a war veteran or close to one, for remembering. Labor Day, for most, is neither about laboring nor being mindful of labor conditions. On Presidents' Day we don't honor, petition or protest any president. We just have all these miniature vacations with nice names on them. And that on top of the weekend all those people with "normal" jobs get. Couldn't there be room in the year for a day for building the new in the shell of the old? Construction Day. Reconstruction Day.
I'm as frustrated with my own inaction here as with anybody's. I don't have the answers to all these questions. Except this: only together, yes? Marches and demonstrations seem such a scratch on the surface...but, we've got to start acting any and everywhere that we each see that we can. For the life of us.
See you downtown at noon tomorrow.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
calling
"Your calling is the point at which life's greatest need and your heart's deepest joy intersect." -- some writer whose name I can't remember
Something I read a while ago that gave me hope. For its practical take on a concept as nebulous as a "calling", which some of us would like to perceive as an element in life's flow despite a need for strong pragmatic and empirical threads to be woven into our metaphysics. The line is also attractive for the recognition it gives to the heart. For me, such considerations put the idea neatly between the two seeker's poles of "save the world" and "follow your bliss" -- positions held respectively, in my head, by the Socialist ex and all of those Santa Fe women. While those two voices seem to have some degree of permanent residence in my mental programming, I've let them know that they have their place: at the margins. They taught me with their extremes, but intention's center is now reserved for balance, and for interconnection.
The line came back to me at a welcome moment this week, as I started to wonder (not, of course, for the first time) what in the world I was doing heading to Mexico to learn how to teach English. It's a sharp turn of a trajectory that in the last few years was moving steadily toward farming, and barter, and all things tangible and earthy and simple. I haven't been a full-time student in over 20 years. I'm apprehensive about the move for what I know (the training course will be a serious challenge) and for what I don't (most of what happens afterward). The whole idea, even though I've imagined it for years, would fit that old disclaimer, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." That time being the moment, two months ago, when a surgery seven years in the waiting (see: no healthcare, misdiagnosis, survival mode) suddenly returned a huge dividend of energy, optimism, and longer perspective. This in turn began to defeat the insidious long-term insomnia that was the result of too many layers of physical and emotional stress (see: an abusive relationship, economic precarity, driving for a living and the compounding effect of insomnia itself). The resulting sudden boost to strength and outlook was, as I've told several friends, quite a bit like winning the lottery. Going for the ESL certificate, as a new travel adventure and a career change long overdue, is how I decided to spend the jackpot.
But my own decision is also a surprise, for the timing. Of all points at which it's seemed appropriate, or at least justified, to drop everything and hit the road, this surely isn't such a time. Very belatedly I've discovered, in the last few months, how profoundly essential are some of the simplest daily realities many people take for granted. Recognitions which my life's chaos and transition had never really allowed the chance to catch on. Continuity in daily routine. Enough sleep to feel sane and competent. A homespace that feels safe. Housemates that treat me with respect and kindness. Economic stability (for the first time in several years). A vibrant network of friends and community groups. That familiarity with a place which, in the past, nearly always bred contempt, but now inspires a bemused loyalty to what I never meant to call home, a noisy city in the drought-ridden desert.
Really, if heart's desire alone got to call the shots at this point, I'd be heading for the hills. A landscape with mountains and rivers and space and silence is what I always longed for home to be. There was a moment, just after the credit union approved the loan to cover course and travel expenses, when I thought to take the money and run. To Colorado, green dreamscape of so many younger years. Or maybe to Taos, whose luminous skies and liminal mountain-mesa poise have so attracted my attention of late. Find that little cabin on the land, slow way down, get on Earth-time. Maybe start writing more. But that route leaves unanswered the question (after the loan runs out, anyway) of how to make a living. As well as the deeper query to which a word like "calling" speaks: how can I make my living on this earth feel at all worthwhile? It's not enough to be the hermit in the mountains anymore. Not with the earth returning us the early-stage cancers of all the toxins we've force-fed it, and humankind hemorraging justice and crying out for dignity as they are. The life-current in me is electrified by the increasingly forceful impulses of the world's great need. It's no longer enough just to keep myself well. Not that it ever has been. I've wrestled this question almost all my life. But the last half-year's events have finally offered the means by which to live my conscience instead of just to keep my head above water, so it's time to move in that direction.
I'm not exactly sure how teaching English will meet the larger existential challenge. As I wrote in the application essay, I'd like to imagine it feeding into greater economic justice for people in Mexico. Perhaps even into the immigration dilemma, by equipping some to find sustainable work where they already live. It will surely engage the heart's desire for communication, understanding, and mutual learning about the human experience. It'll feed the mind too. And it's an emotionally safer venture than farming would be at this point. While socially conscious farmers might well be the world's greatest need at this point, or at least in the top five, that's not a vocation for the faint of heart. The psychic toll of keeping even a little abreast of Monsanto's actions, and the empathetic perspective gained from watching the struggles (both practical and political) of several farmer friends both here and in Mexico, have shown me that -- at this point anyway -- I just haven't got what it takes.
At the essential level, this venture might be a first-stage action analogous to the launch of a space probe (if I remember correctly what I've read on the subject): that initial shot towards the sun -- obviously not its destination -- which catapults the vessel into the stronger gravities needed to liberate it from home base and send it on its way outward into the galaxy. This year seems to send the clear mandate for a dramatic change of course. I need to vault myself out of my present orbit, into a space where new possibilities are visible. Whether this is a voyage into a calling, or only another step in getting free, time will have to tell. Time and need and heart.
Something I read a while ago that gave me hope. For its practical take on a concept as nebulous as a "calling", which some of us would like to perceive as an element in life's flow despite a need for strong pragmatic and empirical threads to be woven into our metaphysics. The line is also attractive for the recognition it gives to the heart. For me, such considerations put the idea neatly between the two seeker's poles of "save the world" and "follow your bliss" -- positions held respectively, in my head, by the Socialist ex and all of those Santa Fe women. While those two voices seem to have some degree of permanent residence in my mental programming, I've let them know that they have their place: at the margins. They taught me with their extremes, but intention's center is now reserved for balance, and for interconnection.
The line came back to me at a welcome moment this week, as I started to wonder (not, of course, for the first time) what in the world I was doing heading to Mexico to learn how to teach English. It's a sharp turn of a trajectory that in the last few years was moving steadily toward farming, and barter, and all things tangible and earthy and simple. I haven't been a full-time student in over 20 years. I'm apprehensive about the move for what I know (the training course will be a serious challenge) and for what I don't (most of what happens afterward). The whole idea, even though I've imagined it for years, would fit that old disclaimer, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." That time being the moment, two months ago, when a surgery seven years in the waiting (see: no healthcare, misdiagnosis, survival mode) suddenly returned a huge dividend of energy, optimism, and longer perspective. This in turn began to defeat the insidious long-term insomnia that was the result of too many layers of physical and emotional stress (see: an abusive relationship, economic precarity, driving for a living and the compounding effect of insomnia itself). The resulting sudden boost to strength and outlook was, as I've told several friends, quite a bit like winning the lottery. Going for the ESL certificate, as a new travel adventure and a career change long overdue, is how I decided to spend the jackpot.
But my own decision is also a surprise, for the timing. Of all points at which it's seemed appropriate, or at least justified, to drop everything and hit the road, this surely isn't such a time. Very belatedly I've discovered, in the last few months, how profoundly essential are some of the simplest daily realities many people take for granted. Recognitions which my life's chaos and transition had never really allowed the chance to catch on. Continuity in daily routine. Enough sleep to feel sane and competent. A homespace that feels safe. Housemates that treat me with respect and kindness. Economic stability (for the first time in several years). A vibrant network of friends and community groups. That familiarity with a place which, in the past, nearly always bred contempt, but now inspires a bemused loyalty to what I never meant to call home, a noisy city in the drought-ridden desert.
Really, if heart's desire alone got to call the shots at this point, I'd be heading for the hills. A landscape with mountains and rivers and space and silence is what I always longed for home to be. There was a moment, just after the credit union approved the loan to cover course and travel expenses, when I thought to take the money and run. To Colorado, green dreamscape of so many younger years. Or maybe to Taos, whose luminous skies and liminal mountain-mesa poise have so attracted my attention of late. Find that little cabin on the land, slow way down, get on Earth-time. Maybe start writing more. But that route leaves unanswered the question (after the loan runs out, anyway) of how to make a living. As well as the deeper query to which a word like "calling" speaks: how can I make my living on this earth feel at all worthwhile? It's not enough to be the hermit in the mountains anymore. Not with the earth returning us the early-stage cancers of all the toxins we've force-fed it, and humankind hemorraging justice and crying out for dignity as they are. The life-current in me is electrified by the increasingly forceful impulses of the world's great need. It's no longer enough just to keep myself well. Not that it ever has been. I've wrestled this question almost all my life. But the last half-year's events have finally offered the means by which to live my conscience instead of just to keep my head above water, so it's time to move in that direction.
I'm not exactly sure how teaching English will meet the larger existential challenge. As I wrote in the application essay, I'd like to imagine it feeding into greater economic justice for people in Mexico. Perhaps even into the immigration dilemma, by equipping some to find sustainable work where they already live. It will surely engage the heart's desire for communication, understanding, and mutual learning about the human experience. It'll feed the mind too. And it's an emotionally safer venture than farming would be at this point. While socially conscious farmers might well be the world's greatest need at this point, or at least in the top five, that's not a vocation for the faint of heart. The psychic toll of keeping even a little abreast of Monsanto's actions, and the empathetic perspective gained from watching the struggles (both practical and political) of several farmer friends both here and in Mexico, have shown me that -- at this point anyway -- I just haven't got what it takes.
At the essential level, this venture might be a first-stage action analogous to the launch of a space probe (if I remember correctly what I've read on the subject): that initial shot towards the sun -- obviously not its destination -- which catapults the vessel into the stronger gravities needed to liberate it from home base and send it on its way outward into the galaxy. This year seems to send the clear mandate for a dramatic change of course. I need to vault myself out of my present orbit, into a space where new possibilities are visible. Whether this is a voyage into a calling, or only another step in getting free, time will have to tell. Time and need and heart.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
here and there
"Novelty excites the brain in precisely the way we want in order to heal and transform our stories." -- Lisa Wimberger, New Beliefs, New Brain
Come on. You know you wanna go. Even if you want to stay, as well.
Spring always sets the mind loose in a crazy spin and spiral. Unearths the highway virus from its dormant wintered state. Electrifies intuition with the contagious contamination of every place-vibe once touched on earth's green surface. The here and now is finally -- miraculously, after recent events -- beautiful again. But so, concomitantly, is everywhere else. Especially Mexico, that years-running infatuation and fascination.
La Capital in the rainy season. El Ombligo del Universo, in original connection with the Mother. The ancient Templo Mayor, reexposed after 500 years, drawn up out of Her belly to be seen again by sun and moonlight. Greenglow of palm and cypress and eucalyptus in the parks. Afternoon slantlight reflecting off stone. Street vendors throwing tarps over their colorful squares of sidewalk as sky unfolds in downpour and people dash for cover under the nearest portal. Thunder joining sky to earth, reaching through the concrete of el Zócalo to reunite what went before with those who now walk the surface. Danzante drums rescuscitating the city's ancient hearbeat, inciting stone buildings to be its dirty but strong lungs, still offering echo of living breath. The friendliness of strangers: young hippie guy I bought a bracelet from on the sidewalk, asking me with a smile, "Do you live here? Well, do you want to live here?"
Sigh...New Mexico in May. Cottonwoods' instant illumination of river's presence through the city. Farmers' markets and music outoors and camping in the mountains. Staying also has its pull. Almost-home in the sweet slacker life of Burque. Almost at home in the routine, in the simplicity, in the mind, in the skin. Heart craving just a season or two to learn of continuity. What it is not to have the earth shaking every time you lift a foot from it. Not to be closing a door in the same motion of opening it. Ceasing to understand every hello as really a goodbye. Finding out what it's like to live in the same house and work the same job for more than a year. To find roots -- yes, angry leftist voices, even comfort! -- in the security of a network of friends, a little economic stability, a little sweet give and take and share. Only took me 13 years to decide to live in this place. Why give it up just when it's working?
Because there's more. Life always drawing toward more. Knowing the way change can flow into strength. The coincidence of much-needed physical healing with Lisa Wimberger's excellent book on regenerating the mind urged: reach out. Don't keep sheltering within. Just barely do I open the door and peer out, and there it is: river still in flow. Full now to its banks, with the waters of winter's thaw. This season the current invites me to the very thing I asked for last year: to go back to Mexico, but not as a tourist. As, just possibly, a useful member of the community. Which community, yet to be seen. But the starting point will once again be the center: Mexico City, in July, for a month-long intensive course that will certify me to teach English as a Second Language, somewhere in the country. That will offer job placement assistance, and a whole new network to weave into. That will push me toward another much-needed step: career change. And that will most certainly offer the kind of challenges that keep mind and body strong, primed for longevity and resilience. Those are the essential currents to follow right now, toward this story that wants to heal and transform. Mine, and however my story connects with the world's healing and transforming.
Come on. You know you wanna go. Even if you want to stay, as well.
Spring always sets the mind loose in a crazy spin and spiral. Unearths the highway virus from its dormant wintered state. Electrifies intuition with the contagious contamination of every place-vibe once touched on earth's green surface. The here and now is finally -- miraculously, after recent events -- beautiful again. But so, concomitantly, is everywhere else. Especially Mexico, that years-running infatuation and fascination.
La Capital in the rainy season. El Ombligo del Universo, in original connection with the Mother. The ancient Templo Mayor, reexposed after 500 years, drawn up out of Her belly to be seen again by sun and moonlight. Greenglow of palm and cypress and eucalyptus in the parks. Afternoon slantlight reflecting off stone. Street vendors throwing tarps over their colorful squares of sidewalk as sky unfolds in downpour and people dash for cover under the nearest portal. Thunder joining sky to earth, reaching through the concrete of el Zócalo to reunite what went before with those who now walk the surface. Danzante drums rescuscitating the city's ancient hearbeat, inciting stone buildings to be its dirty but strong lungs, still offering echo of living breath. The friendliness of strangers: young hippie guy I bought a bracelet from on the sidewalk, asking me with a smile, "Do you live here? Well, do you want to live here?"
Sigh...New Mexico in May. Cottonwoods' instant illumination of river's presence through the city. Farmers' markets and music outoors and camping in the mountains. Staying also has its pull. Almost-home in the sweet slacker life of Burque. Almost at home in the routine, in the simplicity, in the mind, in the skin. Heart craving just a season or two to learn of continuity. What it is not to have the earth shaking every time you lift a foot from it. Not to be closing a door in the same motion of opening it. Ceasing to understand every hello as really a goodbye. Finding out what it's like to live in the same house and work the same job for more than a year. To find roots -- yes, angry leftist voices, even comfort! -- in the security of a network of friends, a little economic stability, a little sweet give and take and share. Only took me 13 years to decide to live in this place. Why give it up just when it's working?
Because there's more. Life always drawing toward more. Knowing the way change can flow into strength. The coincidence of much-needed physical healing with Lisa Wimberger's excellent book on regenerating the mind urged: reach out. Don't keep sheltering within. Just barely do I open the door and peer out, and there it is: river still in flow. Full now to its banks, with the waters of winter's thaw. This season the current invites me to the very thing I asked for last year: to go back to Mexico, but not as a tourist. As, just possibly, a useful member of the community. Which community, yet to be seen. But the starting point will once again be the center: Mexico City, in July, for a month-long intensive course that will certify me to teach English as a Second Language, somewhere in the country. That will offer job placement assistance, and a whole new network to weave into. That will push me toward another much-needed step: career change. And that will most certainly offer the kind of challenges that keep mind and body strong, primed for longevity and resilience. Those are the essential currents to follow right now, toward this story that wants to heal and transform. Mine, and however my story connects with the world's healing and transforming.
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