juliebot(ched)

(A found-poem of output lines chosen from the "what would I say" app, which creates fake facebook posts based, apparently, on my real ones)

Oh, I´m so glad he´s got a huge former prison 
where I often stay, with the Earth

my friends who are building community 
leaders who represent lowincome neighborhoods, urban food initiatives
(faith that each of your wedding I went to)
keep silent about something different. 
Thanks for the inability of toys and Community service
We want them where they need for change, and mutual support
so maybe all of work, with that theme.
And to replace any suggestions
are adamant on building your utopias, too, right?
could use some help the real
any of you
I guess that's why the open frequency. 

Excuse me, says a piece written 10 years ago
seeds and they are constructed, with mine, 
at the right to Protect the Rights of life.
Carrots, snow peas, squash, brocolli, 
cilantro, garlic, nopal, and other adjustments. 
Hopefully I had spoken of the crop for the struggling,
and building something of that stresses me
I guess there used to be taking off, but also everything we might bring.

more or less, since we do remember
Have to how your life and know the rhythms of grace 
I'm gonna walk from elsewhere, 
a menos poder conocer el mundo, la clima, las cosas fueron impulsados
But I know a country, its parks as possible.

breakfast with 2 guys could move a supporter of same.

People still on the feeling go away, 

close to Earth at the frequency turned to
News...gets into the crater, hidden under the raindrops
if I weren´t already much involved in advance
free in close second, and just a quick summary
I have trouble seeing the world, and that out next week.
my fellow humans are leaving play
we have the need for sure.

Just in case any other shades of starts for day
dreams, or so Finally at dark, the mountains,
within the next for the Dark.
even here the phrase In the sun comes next.

Talk about here..A whole life has just listen to think about.
language, class, race with Sun,
another matter altogether. And there.
Vamos al fin del día, el rocío remoja, mi amiga 
and I LIVED that.

dream:path to refuge

All that we have to do is cross this forsaken city.  It seemed a simple undertaking, some time ago.  But with every grey and dreary new street that opens, each more desolately crowded than the last with the lifeless inhabitants of this place and their castoffs and contaminants, our goal has begun to feel impossible.

There are six or seven of us.  Sisters and brothers in the Order, bound by the journey, its long miles, and its urgency.  Our destination, whose clear image shimmers constantly in my mind's eye, is a spacious oasis enclosed in a pearlescent pink-gold geodesic dome.  It's the only shelter within reach of travel, the only unadulterated air, the last safe ground for miles.  The place has a name Latin in origin, which carries the essence of its power.  With as much intention as I carry the word, knowing that it means my hope of refuge, it does not stay with me.  There are only later vague efforts at approximation, which include "palladium"  "hypericum"  and "aeolium".  (Words which on investigation prove to be mineral, vegetable, elemental:  perhaps this place is ultimately pure archetype).  In the moment, I only know that there are many trees there, and water flowing, and the contrast of this greengold mirage to the wasteland of concrete and rubbish around me keeps my weary feet moving.

Our group has walked for miles, without a map, clinging to hope that we are closing the distance with our general trajectory.   On every side, massive stone walls shade the view a uniform white-grey.  Though the buildings appear ancient, the air is suffused with the same pallid color, as if granite dust were just now settling on every available surface.  There are no plants or trees to be seen anywhere. While the crowds around us don't appear to offer a direct threat, we're keeping our heads down, avoiding eye contact, just the same.  What we sense is a menace more unsettling for its intangibility.  To all appearances, the ashen citizens of this drab cityscape are not physically unwell; they seem to have simply lost their souls.  To have forgotten any connection to life and the living.  We slow our pace at another crushed intersection, the most distressing yet for its pathos of vacant-eyed people, heedless traffic, and animals wandering amid spoiled food and garbage.  To our left is what must have once been an elegant plaza, its marble statuary broken and splotched with bird droppings. On the corner, disturbing heavyset wild dogs fight over heaps of dead rodents and rotting meat as the walkers pick their way among them, apathetic, oblivious, their faces a grey approaching that of the stone.  The dogs become sick as they eat, then return from what they have disgorged to snarl and snap vicious teeth over more of the same.  I can only hope that the people fare better for food here, but so far there's not much evidence in support.  With gritted teeth, we squeeze past the gruesome scene, and under the momentary reprieve of a sagging sidewalk portal.  "Excellent!", exclaims a woman in our group, startling me with her buoyance.  "We've finally come to the crossing of two numbered streets.  We'll be able to catch a long-range transport from here."  But I am overwhelmed, leaden, and groan aloud with the critical mass of surrounding sadness:  "This spot is the worst of any yet!  I can't possibly stay here another moment.  Let me walk on, anywhere but here, and I'll catch up with you soon."  The others attempt to still my protests, reminding me of the impracticality of setting off alone, while I counter that, worst case, I'll find my way there by asking for the name of our safe haven, which I'll be sure not to forget.  Just then the woman who spoke earlier informs me that our expected wait for transport, an inconceivable half an hour, has already passed.  We raise our eyes for a sight of the transport that will at last take us out of this miserable place.

Suddenly, back on the plaza, a gigantic, magnificent slate-colored Percheron thunders across the stone.  Its impossible size is matched by its more-than-perfect muscular form.  Stray sun beams strike and richochet off its storm-cloud-dappled coat.  On its back rides a policeman in riot gear.  He is of normal size, but his mount lends him the illusion of mythical proportion.  Wan, ochre light glances off the face-shield of his helmet.  He does not brandish a weapon, or make a move of violence toward any, but something in the vision which he and the great horse present is a precipitant, an abrupt coalescing, of all of this city's stark, oppressive desolation captured in a single entity.  I am rooted, at once repulsed and longing to stare at the pair's brutal beauty. But the glimmer of foreboding solidifies:  we must move on, before we are too late.

Yet to accomplish the journey's next stage, it is vital that we concentrate and augment our own energies.  While the insensible crowds part and stream around us, we set our feet and stand, shoulder to shoulder, faces toward sun's dissipate, near-spent illumination.  Hands cupped in front of third chakra, the solar plexus, we call into reconnection.  Speaking the ancient words that affirm the all that is One and the One that is infinity, quietly at first and then with gathering potential.  My acute initial discomfort at unveiling these secret ways in public is replaced by a liberating wonder when, out of a current deeper than word or voice can track, a deep, honeyed hum of many invisible voices joins us, rich and resonant, flowing beneath our quiet speech and bearing it up, bearing witness to its vibrant continuity and community.  Unseen, atemporal, but potent and very present, this transcendant caravan swells us up on its surge of living memory and dream.  We are not alone or forgotten.  More than intuited or imagined, the voices become our transport, and dimensional space expands:  still the same impersonal city, and also a thousand welcoming ways opening simultaneously.  We don't see the road, but we are on it.  We will, be it at hope and vision's end, set weary feet on the last path to refuge.

harvest

We all walk out slowly into the late-morning autumn sunlight. There are only a few preparations:  we loop a rope over the strongest branch of an elm tree, and set a large plastic tub beneath it.  A collection of newly sharpened blades waits on a nearby stump.

My coworker and I are here with open minds and very mixed feelings.  It's the first time either of us have had a part in a matanza -- a community livestock slaughter.  All week we've talked over our limited picture of what it will be like, and which part will be the hardest.  We've been euphemizing it with the same word we use for the vegetables:  "harvest".   And we agree that we need to do this, in order to be consistent and conscious humans.  We both eat meat, and -- until now -- have lived safely separate from the processes that bring us this aspect of our food.  Which today will change.

The neighbor who's coming to supervise us pulls up in his dusty white truck.  In the back are a sheep and two goats.  In a pen nearby, we have three more goats ready.  One bit of information has made the decision to slaughter them easier to grasp:  they carry a genetic disorder which infected most of the flock they came from, and which, if they live to be adults, will most likely cause them to suffer.  Large sores will start to cover their bodies, and if they happen to be nursing babies, the disease will be passed on to them as well.  Knowing this helps me to distance from the fact that, right now, they're small, lively, noisy, and yes, cute.  

But there's still the essential question:  can I be complicit -- participant even -- in taking the life of another creature?  This is new territory for thought and action both.  I mean, there's the time that I couldn't swerve quick enough and ran over a rabbit.  And all those ants that I've walked on, in spite of my careful steps -- some friend called me a Jainist recently, and I took it as a surprised compliment.  Of course there are the cockroaches that I squashed without a twinge of conscience.  We draw the line of life and worthiness at different fine points.  My coworker here on the farm has enthusiastically been using the word "specist" lately.  He points out that we indiscriminately end the lives of plants, insects, and microorganisms daily, while giving  preference to humans and their well-being over any other consideration.  He's got a point.  None of us are really innocent here.  Maybe we'd do well to start by just getting honest about that fact.

For now, it's time to end with the philosophy and get to work.  We lead the sheep over to a shady patch of earth beneath an elm thicket.  Gently, one person at each end, we lay her down on her side and hold her front and back legs.  The neighbor who's done this work before kneels in the middle.  I'm glad he's here, bringing an energy of calm, caring competence.  I would certainly not want to do this with someone who was rushed or mechanical about it.  He carries a surprisingly short knife:  all our knives are smaller than I would have expected.  With focused intention, he sets the point at the side of the sheep's neck, just below the ear where a large vein can be found.  One soft pressing motion, in and then upward, and brilliant scarlet flows from the tiny wound.  We all fall quiet.  

Like every process on this farm, the death of this creature will be accompanied with peace and reverence.  As we settle into a weighty and waiting silence, watching the bright red pulsing line nudged out by a slowing heartbeat, the farmer murmurs prayer-words to the quiet sheep.  He thanks her for her life, and for the life she will give to us.  He hopes she will go without too much suffering, and urges her to seek that next place to move on to.  And he explains to the rest of us that, just as animals everywhere are made to suffer by violence and mistreatment, so are they treated unjustly by being denied a respectful passage to their own death.  

It takes her about ten minutes to reach her last breath.  In this space, she only cries a few times, each time with a weaker voice which scours my heart.  Once in a while her body convulses, legs twisting and lifting off the ground with a strength we can barely restrain.  The farmer tells us that the movement is her life energy finding its way up and out of her body.  I picture a dull shimmer flowing from hoof to hip to belly and then out through her open mouth.  The image, I realize, looks much like the life-lines drawn on Native American animal fetishes.

The act of waiting with another being, while breath and energy leave body, is a profound one. As we work, I realize that I've never had the privilege, or the responsibility, of sitting with a person as they leave this life.  I gain new admiration for those who have kept such a vigil, and how it must require them to step outside their sense of self and importance, while carrying a grief so much more immediate and personal than this one.  It's a privilege, in a way, to be here as students of death, without attachment.  In these minutes, sitting on earth without words, we have no other purpose than to be present witnesses to a journey which we can neither see nor understand.  But we do feel it.  As some of the goats take longer than others to finish their struggles, we all lean in around them and breathe silent prayers and encouragement that their passage be as quick and as peaceful as possible.  Their lack of language leaves us, for the most part, also speechless.

As the day progresses and the strangeness becomes familiar, I step up to help with more of the work.  I find, surprised, that it's possible to help with skinning the carcass, once it's hung by its back legs from the nearby tree.  First, sliding the knife around legs and back to peel off the soft hide, the fascia underneath parting as smoothly as water when the blade is angled properly.  Later, I try separating the internal organs, making a quick slit down the belly beneath the thin surface of skin.  It's so hard to stay ahead of the entrails, which immediately begin to slide out, while not puncturing any of them and releasing toxins onto the meat.  Finally I'm able to reach in deep, up to my elbow in the cavern of ribs, and bring out liver and heart.  The only way it's possible to do this is that these beings are shifting, minute by minute, from living fellow creatures to objects that meet a simple need:  the sustaining of life.  Touching the interior of the body is not repulsive like I might have expected.  It only feels like moist skin.  And there's so little blood, compared to what we had imagined.  At the end of the day, the carcasses are ready for delivery to a local butcher, and all that's left of six animals fills two plastic tubs.  And only a small stain of crimson marks the spot on the earth where each of them lay.

When we've collected all the remainders in the plastic tub, we load it and a wheelbarrow into the truck and drive half a mile up the gravel road.  Moving the tub into the wheelbarrow, we walk another quarter of a mile up a ravine, climbing over cholla and barrel cactus, and leave its contents on a rocky hillside, in a place the farmer says the coyotes like to come.  They'll have no qualms about taking their place in the life-circle.   Hopefully today, we learned a thing or two about it as well.

But it's good to allow these lessons time to settle their weight in the heartmind.  I'm glad to find another skill that I'm capable of, if needed, though I hope I don't need it again any time soon.  And we're all relieved to find that our dinner this night is vegetarian. 

10 things to love about living in a tipi

Round spaces feel more accepting, and more open to possibility, than square ones.

It's not possible to lock yourself out of the house.  Or in.

A little curve of sky, rather than a light fixture, occupies the peak of my ceiling.

The bathroom facilities don't use any water or electricity.  And what a view, by moonlight!

Not-quite-waterproof canvas walls and smoke-hole keep me aware of weather's presence -- and of my place in it.

Reading by candlelight or flashlight makes words, and the time spent imbibing them, precious.

With a tent set up inside it, nights are completely cozy and warm, and the space is transformed from a one-room to a one-bedroom house with a living room.

Small ones such as mice and lizards can come in and out, freeing me of any absolute claim to "my" space. And since they seem to prefer the narrow verges around the rugs' edges and between the walls and the inner canvas lining, we find it easy not to bump into each other.

Since the fire-pit inside has been unused for a while, there is a green plant growing out of earth at the center of my living room.

River-voice sings me to sleep at night with its memories of September's big rain.  Now I know what the rhythm of constant flowing abundance sounds like.

griefbeautyquote

"The ability to willingly continue to live, though knowing we all must die, living to become increasingly more worthy, noble, creative, awake, and beautiful, such that our deaths in their old-age fullness at their natural allotted time become a grief-making loss to the world of such dimension as to be an elegant and complex sacrifice of sufficient density as to sustain while the ecstatic nature of the Divine who in the process fertilizes the flower of Now into a time of hope and deliciousness beyond our own, is what gives us life and makes us truly human."

"...in the Divine collision of God's desire with our beauty, the world jumps back into flower with all its detours, griefs, joys, pains, reliefs, breakthroughs, and ironies, as its accepted petals."

-- Martin Prechtel, _Long Life, Honey in the Heart_

one day

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.

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.