Snoutsparkle

Geodesic Homes

2009-06-27T21:39:00.000-07:00

"A suspended sky chair adds a nice touch."

The motivation required to keep on keepin on in the job search of This Economy requires a pluckiness buttressed by a rare kind of sureness about Where You Are Going. When you suffer from a lack of certainty about anything except that right now is a good time for self-reflection and growth, when the biggest, most unruly stress of your life is wondering how you will make ends meet -- a kind of epi-stress compounded by your (my) inability to find a job -- the utopian vision of rent-free lifestyles calls more compellingly.

I can appreciate the heart-swelling romantic vision that captivates wild-eyed, scruffy, young squatters who want the world to be their home, and their home to be sweet. Though I can hear the timber of that song of freedom, the tune that stirs my dreams is not the song of the squat, but the tune of the dome home.

Imagine living in a yurt or a geodesic dome: I can. I have this book called Woodstock Handmade Houses that showcases photos of handmade cabins, yurts, refurbished barns and chapels and the like that people created themselves and live in. The houses shine with an incredible amount of personal touches. They are as obviously intertwined with the spirits of their residents and creators and as obviously intentional aesthetic visions as they are gloriously simple. Beautifully simple, in the ways that material simplicity can be beautiful for builders and for religious aspirants alike.

Subversive Asexy Iconography?

2009-04-08T19:19:00.000-07:00

,
Celibacy has long been a practice associated with religiosity of various kinds. Recent research on asexual people (which are people who do not experience sexual attraction, and who may or may not be celibate; asexuality is an identity, and celibacy is a practice) has suggested that they are disproportionately religious, although this post, for example has raised some doubts and critiques of that conclusion.

The relative lack of cultural representations and narratives of asexual people, though, risks that they remain unthinkable to most people -- that is when asexual people are not being associated either with pathology (Not experiencing sexual attraction is inherently disordered because a certain expression of sexuality is intrinsic to being a healthy human!) or religiosity (You don't experience sexual attraction? or You don't have sex? You must be some sort of religious fanatic, or fancy yourself some sort of saint). That's why this personalized poster swirls with meaning for me. I am not sure at all at the doctrinal accuracy of a statement like "Be your own best friend" as far as Buddhism goes. Especially in light of this, the image (words and all) could be read as operating on wider cultural visions of solitude and spirituality that paint them as compatible with each other, rather than read as a statement that is particularly Buddhist per se. Is the schema that made this textual image intelligible of the same sort as those that associate asexuality with celibacy with religiosity in our culture?

Staring at this picture, I wonder if asexual people could intentionally draw on religious symbologies, which seem to be the sort of setting in which something akin to asexuality (like celibacy, or, more generally, the idea that having no better friend in the world than oneself could be the ideal configuration for someone) is most intelligible to most folks. Maybe playing with this sort of symbolism could be a visual strategy used to subvert the assumptions that conceptually link asexuality, celibacy, and religiosity. Viewing celibacy as inherently smacking of religious devotion, or as a logical and righteous expression of religious propriety, depends upon how we experience and conceptualize sexuality and sexual experiences (to say nothing of what it means that asexuality, then, gets lumped in with the both of them in many people's minds). Maybe intentionally occupying and subverting the meanings of sexuality/celibacy in religion can help to push at the limits of how we conceptualize a/sexuality, leaving a lot more room and freedom for that "a".

Questions that arise from reading this image in this way:

Is Buddhist practice, or another type of spiritual or religious practice, something that one should do primarily alone, or that will result in increased solitude when done properly?

I don't think so. I have always wrestled with ascetic tendencies and lines of thought that lead me to concluding that withdrawing from the world is the best bet for me. I've learned that balance is key -- it's okay to have a very contemplative side to my spirituality, and I value that side of it, but the real strength of my spirituality is the way that it is informed by and in turn informs my daily life, interactions with people, and actions in the world.

Is seeing one's relationship with oneself (as opposed to a romantic relationship) as the primary relationship in one's life a viable, healthy option for some people?

I think so. It may not seem obvious why affirming this would be politically necessary, until you consider how alienating our society can be for people who choose to be single, or childfree, or in some configuration of intimate or romantic relationship(s) in which those relationships are not privileged as the primary relationships in the lives of those involved. I believe that finding new ways to queer how we look at relationships, a/sexuality, and romance is an important process in furthering and maximizing the freedom of all of us to live healthy, empowered, livable lives.

Can employing the narrative of being one's own best friend potentially be a social / poetic / mythological asset to some asexual people (especially aromantic asexual folks)?

Aromantic I am not, so I have no comment on this aside from the thought. I will say, however, that I am a firm believer in the power of art of all sorts -- visual, textual, sonic, et cetera -- in validating, expressing, and sustaining oneself, as well as in having political effects on the world.

Kabbalah, Tarot, and Mahayana Buddhism?? Oh My. (Please Enjoy My Own Personal Brand of Syncretism)

2009-04-02T20:24:00.000-07:00

The recent foray of the syllabus of the class I'm taking on Western mysticism in art and literature into Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah has been welcome. The extent of my formal studies of Jewish mysticism to date -- if you could call them that -- had been my perusal of the above book, a friendly and mysterious book by Robert Wang called The Qabalistic Tarot: A Textbook of Mystical Philosophy. Its author was also the creator of the Golden Dawn Tarot deck (you can see some images of it here). Using this deck and this book is a great opportunity to enjoy the added bonus of having a very intellectualized dimension to one's relationship to the deck, when times may call for that sort of a thing.

So my fledgling academic study of Jewish mysticism inspired me to pull the Wang book out again, and I read a very intriguing section as I sat on the porch after dining, reveling in the golden glow of the setting sun.

The most recognizable element of imagery in Kabbalah (I mean, as far as I know) are the Sepiroth (Wang calls it the Tree of Life). The Sepiroth symbolize the universe (Wang 29). Each node (Sephira) is a different element on the paths of the Tree of Life, and the different paths between the Sephiroth illuminate ways to conceptualize the steps of mediation between the world of materiality and the Divine, between actuality and potentiality.

Wang's book describes one Sephira -- knowledge, Daath, the "Invisible Sephira [... that] does not appear in any representation of the Tree of Life" (77). Though this Sephira is not represented on the Tree of Life and is not technically one of the 10 Sephiroth, it is nevertheless an experience that is rendered necessary in order to pass through the Tree of Life, between "the potential and the actual" (Wang 77). What passing through Daath means is this: once enlightened and having reached a state that can be referred to as Adepthood, "to willfully relinquish the powers of Adepthood which one has earned" (Wang 78). This is not an easy task; it "has been described as a more overwhelming and solitary one than human imagination can conceive" (Wang 78).

Having been studying Buddhism this semester as well in the class I'm taking called Thinking about Not Thinking, reading this made very present to me a conceptual connection which may be too farfetched to mean something to anyone but me. It sounds very Madyamikan to me. Madyamika is the school that teaches the ultimate emptiness of all concepts, even those that comprise Buddhism. Insofar as Buddhism is itself comprised of rationally grasped concepts, it is ultimately something that one must go beyond if one's goal is to dissolve the process by which one's mind constantly grasps concepts and clings to rationality. Rupert Gethin describes the roots of the teaching of emptiness:

if something is sufficient to explain its own existence, then it must exist as itself for ever and ever, and could never be affected by anything else, since as soon as it was affected it would cease to be itself. And if things cannot truly change, then the whole of Buddhism is undermined, for Buddhism claims that suffering arises because of causes and conditions and that by gradually eliminating unwholesome conditions we can change from being unawakened to being awakened. Thus the one who claims that dharmas ultimately exist in themselves must either fall into the trap of eternalism by denying the possibility of real change, or, if he nevertheless insists that change is possible, fall into the trap of annihilationism since, in changing, what existed has gone out of existence. Therefore, concludes Nagarjuna, the teaching of the Buddha is that everything is empty of its own inherent existence (239).

Just because the concepts of Buddhism are conceptual and ultimately themselves empty is not reason to disregard and discard them. They may be left behind one day when they have aided the seeker in advancing to a place where she no longer needs them, but until then, they possess conventional truth although they are not and can never be equivalent to ultimate truth. Any Adepthood or enlightenment that one can conceptualize is a good goal, but is also inevitably something that one will need to leave behind, towards a place beyond concepts, towards pure potentiality. I appreciate that a Kabbalistic framework accounts for the extent to which this process can be overwhelming and solitary -- the mind clings desperately to concepts, frameworks, explanations. Letting go of these things -- and many other projects that could be seen as spiritually tinged, and worthwhile -- can be heartrendingly painful, tiring and bleak, and full of earthshaking surprises. Spiritual paths are far from the always easy, lowest-common-denominator barrage of revelatory a-ha! moments that The Oprah Show might lead us to believe.

Sources:
Gethin, Rupert. The Foundations of Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Wang, Robert. The Qabalistic Tarot: A Textbook of Mystical Philosophy. York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1988.

Reiki and Catholicism

2009-04-02T19:49:00.000-07:00

Several recent posts on Steven Waldman's Beliefnet blog have addressed controversies surrounding and meaningful fruits offered by the simultaneous incorporation of Reiki and Christian ideals and practice.

Catholic Bishops Say No to Reiki as "Superstition" (27 March 2009)
Includes a document, called "Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy", that was recently put out by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Doctrine. (Whoa.) The evaluation was somewhat negative... "For a Catholic to believe in Reiki therapy presents insoluble problems." ...

A Reiki Practitioner Vs. the Catholic Church: Reiki Healing Uses God's Love (28 March 2009)
A brief example demonstrating one way among many not only to understand Reiki practice within a framework that accommodates both Reiki and Christian belief, but one in which Reiki practice can draw on a Christian language, and deepen and enhance Christian belief.

A Nun Describes Why She Practices Reiki (31 March 2009)
An essay written by a nun who is a Reiki practitioner describing in detail the lovely immediacies that Reiki imparts to her Christian belief. She stays close to scriptural points, citing many specific verses as she spins a Christian language for Reiki.

All this debate is particularly interesting to me because I come from Christian traditions, and the language of Christian spirituality, doctrine, and ritual is the one that most closely approximates the language of my soul; it's been woven into my fabric in no slight way. I am also a Reiki practitioner, having been attuned first to level one and subsequently to level two both in 2007. In my personal experience of spirituality, both Christian and Reiki-related practices, communities, and poetics have formed sustaining and dear modalities through which I've weathered times of weariness and pain, expressed the idea and force of healing to myself and others, and transformed my eyes for looking at reality so as to reinvigorate my ability to notice the beauty of it all, harmony gleaming sonorously. And there's a stillness to that beauty that just gives the soul a place to rest and stay.

Dark Was the Night

2009-03-26T22:07:00.000-07:00

I recently found this compilation album produced by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National called Dark Was the Night. I read the tracklist with excitement -- David Byrne, Antony, Beach House, The National, Yeasayer, Conor Oberst, Sufjan Stevens, Grizzly Bear, Iron and Wine, The Books, and more! -- and though I haven't listened to it too much yet, it's taking hold in me slowly. That is not to say necessarily that it's growing on me from lukewarm upward; I don't mean to make that sort of an evaluative judgment. I mean to say something about the texture of it, the spirit of it: there is a familiar yet understated structure to its bones. Which is to say that it's as good as it should be.

Not Reviewing, but Drawing Inspiration From

2009-03-25T18:34:00.000-07:00

Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction, Ed. by Sabrina Chapadjiev

Reading this book is an affirming experience. I picked out here and there stories with content whose surreal similarity to some of my own memories put to shame their haphazard and far-between scattering among other stories that I could not call my own in the same way. I say ‘in the same way’ because something about each of the stories told in these pages did indeed feel very much my own even though each is deeply personal and unique. I don’t know whether to settle on inferring some beautiful, volatile common essence to my life and all of theirs; I feel that I should avoid that family of deductive beasts generally. But something in these stories repeatedly induced experiences of a certain kind in me – memories played back whose events and meaning I’d internally anthologized long ago, and then forgotten, at least in a day-to-day way. I don’t know if it’s this particular time in my life or an enduring theme particular to my life for whatever reason, but this is a prominent sort of experience for me lately, and it seems telling: selections from my canon of memories swirl around me, experienced as illuminating some aspect of my self or my life as it is now. Despite not actually writing very much lately, I feel full of essays that would gracefully make lots of connections between past and present, drawing lines made of me until, the pen laid down on the table, I’d chuckle and turn the leaf. No, no no – this saccharine temptation is a farce and I must resist it, must hold on tight for the dear life of the self I think is me. But which is my dear life and which is only gripped onto with an urgency that might befit fear of its absence as much as a sense of its preciousness?

You can tell your story; you must tell your story.

My story is not contained in anything. If I spread it out into the world, it will not disappear to my eye or become too thin to stand on. It may sink momentarily, but that’s what roots do. These stories will stretch, grow, thicken. To grow a shivering, verdant self one must plant some seeds.

My story is not contained in anything. If I put it in the world, I will not lose hold of it and hence disappear. It cannot get away from me because my very self is spun through its telling. What I forget when I cower in silence, gripping my unsaid story close and coughing on words, is that my story is written through telling it. Once I have told it, I will find myself in a place I couldn’t imagine before, out on the other side of the journey of building voice. Anything to which you assume radical openness will change you because that is what it means to pay full attention to something or respect to someone: to allow yourself to be changed by them. To assume radical openness to myself is to become. Do not fear; there will always be more to write.

Intoxicating Ideas

2009-03-15T16:06:00.001-07:00

Image from today's PostSecret.

On Where One Finds Oneself When Searching for Places and Making Maps

2009-02-28T22:12:00.000-08:00

"My compass spins; the wilderness remains."

~from "Make War" by Bright Eyes

"Because this territory in my internal universe is continually shifting, I've learned to look for patterns and rhythms in the chaos that I can use as guides when I can't locate steady ground. So I make maps from my memories. I make maps out of words and stories.

[...]

My journals are the maps of this crazy journey. They look like the rings of a tree in the history they tell by their appearance. The books I've kept as I was breaking down in psychosis are tattered shreds and barely held together, showing evidence of trauma the same way the inner rings of a tree from a year of fires will be darker and more charred. My handwriting changes between my mania and my depression -- excited sentences taking up enormous spaces and whole melancholy paragraphs carved in sketches in the margins. My dreams are always written down sloppily, in crude half-asleep chicken scratch, nestled between the other entries, marking the open space between days. When there are no dreams to mark the space, that in itself becomes a marker that I wasn't paying attention to my dreams.

[...]

The last time I was putting my life back together after it had completely fallen apart I discovered the true power of my journals. When I've been knocked way far off balance it's much easier for me to forget who I am and buy into the idea that everything I've done with my life or cared about in the end just makes me a criminal and a worthless deadbeat with no job skills or diploma that is destined to end up in prison or living on his poor mom's couch forever. My thoughts become plagued with oceans of 'if only's and I wish desperately for another chance to go back and change my sorry fate. When I rediscovered my journals THIS TIME I realized I'd left so many notes for myself from all the other times I went through this and that I already knew myself better than anyone: 'Just in case you forgot -- things were really bad back here but you pulled through like a champ. You're gonna make it, kid,' and, 'Don't you ever forget what the sunset looks like from the open door of this boxcar; don't you ever, ever forget how alive you are right now. It's still all in you; remember?'"

~from "Making Maps with the Artifacts of Our Fleeting Memories, or, On Being a Time Traveler" by Sascha Scatter, in "Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness: A Reader & Roadmap of Bipolar Worlds" Ed. by The Icarus Project

"The wisdom or understanding of ordinary beings becomes tainted by attachment to views and conceptual construction; this attachment manifests as a certain rigidity and inflexibility of mind; the perfect wisdom of a buddha is free of all attachment and clinging. In carving up reality into dharmas in the manner of the Abhidharma, we are essentially constructing a theoretical 'model' or map of the way things are. Like any model or map, it may be useful and indeed help us to understand the way things are. In a provisional or conventional way, it may actually correspond to the way things are. Some maps and models will reflect the way things are better than others, but they nevertheless remain models and maps. As such, none should be mistaken for the way things are. Thus for the Perfection of Wisdom, just as persons and beings are ultimately elusive entities, so too are all dharmas. In fact the idea that anything exists of and in itself is simply a trick that our minds and language play on us" (Gethin 237).

Source: Gethin, Rupert. The Foundations of Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Cosmic Interview Ends Basically How You Would Expect

2009-02-25T20:37:00.000-08:00

"Tell me, why are you troubled?"
"My mouth is allied with the water element; I learned a while ago that I'm a watermouth. I'm trying to remember I'm not a firemouth, but it's hard to know where else to put the fire."
"Well, what are your eyes made of?"
"Crystals."
"What is your hair made of?"
"Spindly lichens."
"What are your legs?"
"Redwood trees."
"What are your clothes made of?"
"Spun rainbows." Then, as an afterthought: "I don't wear shoes."
A pause. A breeze shivers the forest and unfurls a fluttering rainbow sky. The only sound, a whispering tributary. A frigid mist dots everything and beams green everywhere.
“Well, thanks for your time. I guess we’re done.”
The next little gust, and she’s gone, winking a gracious smile on the green flashes of leaves that the wind catches and which go on to catch the sunlight. I stand up, disoriented briefly as my eyes dart, adjusting to her dispersal that makes me feel curiously like I’ve forgotten the difference between myself and the world, or myself and others – not sure which. The smooth chill that my fingers feel as I slip them into my pocket brings me back. I grasp the object and pull it out. It’s moongreen, and its interior swirls and clouds could fool me into thinking it’s liquid and not crystalline. I slip it back into my pocket and look up, thanking her with the serenity of my face.

Thoughts on Getting Dirty

2009-02-21T18:06:00.000-08:00

"Therefore when in his compassion [St. Francis] had worked
for the salvation of others,
he would then leave behind the restlessness of the crowds,
and seek out hidden places
of quiet and solitude,
where he could spend his time more freely
with the Lord
and cleanse himself of any dust
that might have adhered to him
from his involvement with men"
(Bonaventure 3o3).

"The point is to make a difference in the world, to cast our lot for some ways of life and not others. To do that, one must be in the action, be finite and dirty, not transcendent and clean. Knowledge-making technologies, including crafting subject positions and ways of inhabiting such positions, must be made relentlessly visible and open to critical intervention" (Haraway 36).

Sources:
Bonaventure. The Soul's Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St. Francis. Trans: E. Cousins. Paulist Press, 1978.

Haraway, Donna J. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan(c)_Meets_OncoMouse(tm): Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Mine

2009-02-13T14:55:00.000-08:00

What/who am I?
I am, have always been
queer
always unready to say, to know
what I am
who I am
unsure what to take in
unsure what to breathe, drink, eat,
and doing all those things anyway
unsure what to say, do, think, and
doing anyway
ready to accept only those labels that,
when presented to others,
allow me room to move around,
room to sing,
dance,
breathe,
stumble,
waffle,
turn around.

eccentric,
mystic,
dream weaver,
song giver,
word player.

Will you let me be?
Will you let me burn brightly, and flicker?
Will you let me light my fire in different places?

Meta-Emotions

2009-02-13T14:37:00.001-08:00

I feel certain things leaving me and am aware of certain things that always seem to stay. A thought pattern that becomes claustrophobic and stifling will define my life for a time, and then one day it will just slink away -- differently than how it came, for these things usually come gradually and linger, and then fly suddenly.

I feel myself becoming. I know in my bones that life runs at a pace much slower than that of its syncopated calendrical inhabitants with our rent and to-do lists and freeway exits. (Note to self:) Let yourself walk in the slow ooze of that time, even as you embrace the flurry that happens at its surface, and trust the struggle that permeates the whole apparatus. Be kind to yourself. Now is the time to figure myself out, but "I don't think I'm ever gonna figure it out."

Get in deep into your ideas and your experiences. When you push them all in certain directions, when you ask certain questions of them, things transform and shift themselves into new arrangements around you.

I want to ask everyone, "Why do you care? What do you want? What do you believe in?" I want to ask, "Why don't you care? When did you, and what bruised your hopefulness into dormancy or self-defeat? What sustains you?"

We Want Skinny Bodies and Fat Wallets

2009-01-07T18:16:00.000-08:00

+

"'You will learn how to stay in control when you are stressed,' she promises. That includes when you look at your skinny 401(k)."

Empathy and Government

2009-01-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

I want to work in an Empathy Corps.

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/bridging_the_empathy_gap_-_yes_we_can

Another World

2009-01-01T15:36:00.001-08:00

"I need another place -- will there be peace?
I need another world -- this one's nearly gone.
Still have too many dreams -- never seen the light.
I need another world, a place where I can go.

I'm gonna miss the sea.
I'm gonna miss the snow.
I'm gonna miss the beach.
I'll miss the things that grow.
I'm gonna miss the trees.
I'm gonna miss the sun.
I'll miss the animals.
I'm gonna miss you all.

[...]

I'm gonna miss the birds, singing all their songs.
I'm gonna miss the wind -- been kissing me so long.."
~ "Another World" by Antony and the Johnsons

I want to be an oneironaut for beauty and peace -- I can't bear to hear myself beginning to mourn those things that sustain me because they coexist with those that pain me. Some days my energy will waver and I will sleepwalk from sleep's fading to its creeping up once more, never quite reaching the next idea that I'm waiting to illuminate me and, sadly, forgetting to smile. Maybe this world can change and maybe the world of my self can change, and the fact that they aren't different just means they haven't changed yet. It can be frustrating and terrifying to be out of control of the 'not yet'. But every night I get a new chance to dream. Maybe wonderful and fantastic things will happen to me in my dreams tonight, I can think to myself as I lie down, imagining fairy tale soirees or sudden superpowers. Or, rather than comfort myself with happenstance possibilities, I can orient myself toward aspirations of learning to awaken into lucidity behind closed, darting eyes and make my resting hours time for exploration, fun, healing, liberation.

Do I imagine lucid dreams as cinematic scenes graced by myself wearing a cape, giggly and swooping over mountains, free to be Falkor or Superman? I want to remember that my waking hours themselves, which seem to be materialized in ways that require (even?) less consent than dreamstates do, also contain spectra of lucidity and cloudedness, activity and passivity, intention and resignedness. There are many dreams I've had already, whether while awake or in slumber. There are nightmares I have only when I'm awake.

I want to be a ragamuffin for nature, draped in lovingly mended patchwork clothes that keep me warm and bathe me in colors. I don't know about you, but I have no time for landfills. I want to walk in the kind of time that the land has, not the time of landfills, which is inherited as toxic temporal residue from the frantic sleepwalking of humans. I take new steps as the sun rises and sets (and you know they say that to meditate while walking, you can imagine the soles of your bare feet kissing the ground and flowers erupting into bloom in your footsteps behind you). I let my clothes stretch, shrink, and tear, and I touch them and re-weave them, texturing the fibers that surround me with care and change.

Nonviolence

2008-12-04T22:19:00.000-08:00

There's a question I can't let go of: when I put my hand over my heart and breathe love into it and open my eyes and my mind and think of a word called "nonviolence", is it safe to assume that I am starting and ending at the same place, a place where I feel myself to be an individual, separate from the individual I think of as "you"? Each time I say the word "nonviolence", am I cementing the strange idea that I am my body, and you are your body, and that these two lives are separate?

My heart tells me that to let myself be harmed rather than to harm another is the better choice, but I am mistaken if I blind myself to the fact that, at some level, this is a false dichotomy. In choosing not to harm you, I am loving you and I am loving myself. In choosing to harm you, I harm myself and all life.

All life exists in tender, dynamic interconnection.

To think about my own bodily harm or well-being versus that of the person standing across from me, or that of the person who is ready to hurt me or someone I love, is to miss the point, although it makes the concept of nonviolence easy to grasp, just as the experience of having a body is the experience through which I can grasp the hand of another.

Maybe nonviolence has nothing to do with one body, be it mine or yours; maybe it has nothing to do with anything that could be a "mine" or have a "yours". Nonviolence is about fostering love and peace of and for the whole. On an individual scale or in an individual consciousness, nonviolence means acting on the faith that nurturing peace in the microcosm will echo into all. It's a metaphysical conviction grasped and enacted through the physical dimension.

The experience of having a body teaches me many lessons. In that body that enables me to reach out and hug you, or to sit and watch you and listen to you, it can seem like this body, this self, has its boundaries. In this body, I walk across a room and through a threshold and step outside. My bare feet shine knowledge of the shift from tile to dirt. I pause, look down, crouch, prostrate myself. I breathe. I see

that
If you get close enough to the ground to see it -- to really see it -- then your breath shifts grains of sand, sending them tumbling down the faces of tiny mountains.
If you get close enough to the ground to really see it, you change it.

And if you get close enough to the ground to touch it -- to reach out and feel it -- then grains of sand adhere in the soft valleys of your fingerprints, and you cannot escape untouched.
If you get close enough to the ground to touch it, it changes you.

Let's Be Compassionate

2008-10-30T21:55:00.000-07:00

Today I was walking down the street and I came upon a homeless man sitting on the street whom I'd talked to in the past couple of days. I sort of tried to catch his eye to say hello as I passed, but he's somewhat disconnected from reality and I don't think he remembered me. As I passed him, he started saying something out of the blue. He said, "Yeah, so there was a fight on Telegraph last night, and they had to..." Two people were walking right behind me, and one said, fairly amicably, "Okay, buddy. That's too bad." But without skipping a beat in step or in speech, he turned to his friend and said, "Fucking lunatic. I get so tired of all the lunatics around here. I wish they would get out of here. So where are you going? Subway? Aww, look at the line."

I was so outraged. My impulse was to turn around and say, "He just has a different experience of reality and a different set of challenges than you do." But I didn't get past turning around. I may or may not have caught the guy's eye. I don't know what held me back. I think it was partly intimidation I felt at his truly tangible lack of compassion. Partly, it was a flash of discomfort at how egotistical it felt, no matter how good my intentions, for me to turn around and give a stranger a piece of my mind for something I'd overheard him say. Am I closing myself off to compassion if I let myself be consumed by anger in the name of Being Compassionate? I also just felt really discouraged. I intuited that turning and snapping at him would yield nothing productive or positive. This world is tough.

Election Madness

2008-10-29T21:08:00.000-07:00

Does it always feel this urgent, this precarious? This pregnant and momentous?

On the other hand, is this truly a time entirely defined by "Hope", by "Change" -- their necessity and their inevitability? Is this moment more historical than all the others?

Normally so alienated by much of this realm of politics, I feel the call to phone bank this weekend, for Obama, against Prop. 8, against Prop. 4. I'm really yearning to share in the affective community of progressive politics -- the hope, the urgency. The euphoria? I'm wishing I could feel so trusting in Obama, in the ability of "the system" to redeem itself. But regardless of my cynical misgivings -- or radical, whatever the case may be -- I'm afraid of what could happen. Shock and disapproval at the status quo definitely prevent me from possessing any sort of apathy, prevent me from allowing my philosophical and political musings to divert my disillusionment into inaction. I march forward with twin flags held low but fast, one hand holding the flag of world-weariness, bafflement, outrage, sadness; the other holding the utopian and beautiful flag of hope, love, vision, innovation, justice. I don't think that utopia is a place where anyone can arrive, but I will never stop trying to get there.

U-Turn Town

2008-08-13T23:13:00.000-07:00

This is no dead-end town,
a place where people end up,
where you can tell by looking at people that, whether by their own design or the universe's, the place they're at,
the seat they're on,
the shoes they're in,
became their Destination.
In this U-turn town, people are always going
Somewhere Else.
A change of course comes in the form of a 180
Same motion, different sights.
Wherever you are, everyone knows
how you got there and how you can get to the next place.
And yes, it's understood
that you're just passing through.

I'm tired of U-turns.

A Chuckle

2008-08-13T23:06:00.001-07:00

Oh, how easy and how sad to let a poem slip away.
I'll walk around for days, ruminating on a line, meaning to write what comes after,
like an oyster on a grain of sand.
Only what's missing, clearly, is the shining pearl of my beautifully crafted wisdom (maybe if I had a hungrier tongue

-- foot?).

I ruminate -- like a cow on grass,
only cows produce something from ruminating.
I chew on words and don't get even shit from them.

Affirmations for Healing and Acceptance

2008-07-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

I make the intention of self-healing.
I make the intention of channeling healing for myself and for all life.
I allow myself to let go of those things that keep me hurting -- injuries, scars, emotional hang-ups, limited thinking.
I affirm my self-worth without the need of ailments to make me interesting or worthy of attention.
I affirm my own, and all beings', worthiness to thrive and live free of dis-ease and pain.

I affirm and honor the wisdom of the universe, even in those things that I experience as afflictions.
I choose to be grateful.
I choose to learn from my weaknesses and dis-eases and, accordingly, to treat them as venerable teachers.

Examining my Bike Utopia

2008-07-23T23:28:00.000-07:00

While riding my bike in Glendale again yesterday and having to face more aggression from drivers who ostensibly feel that I have no right to be on the road, I got to chuckling about how my vision of utopia (I was bicycling back from the library where I read raw cookbooks and the Utne Reader -- what a yuppie, I know) really clashed with some other people's worlds. It's probably really naive to be amused when people triple honk at me and them zoom conspicuously around me in their beemers (this happened) because, face it self, these people could run you over and probably want to, at least deep down. But I like chuckling better than stewing, and fear can be a little hampering, I've found, when I'm trying to ride my bike on the street amongst angry drivers. Throw fear out the window and replace it with the bicyclist’s kind of street smarts.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the roles of body/bodies in utopia/s but not getting very far. The image of utopia as a populated place is very captivating for me, though -- who walks around in your utopia? Or bicycles, as the case may be. I don’t know if this thought makes sense. It comes back to me again and again, though, as my legs pump and I’m breathing heavy and breezing down the street, and feeling the palpable confusion, surprise, resentment and anger from motorists around me. Why does this joyful thing I believe in so much bother some people so much? How can my utopia clash so hard with the status quo?

As beemer man honked at me and sped off with his aggression, the sound of other dude the other day saying "Bitch, get off the road" echoed in my head, and I had that thought -- that I'm trying to physicalize my utopia -- and I had this moment of wondering how my female-bodiedness may taint my presence on the road with a transgressiveness or at least a sense of trespass that would be otherwise less prominent. After feeling excluded, and literally hearing someone telling me to “get off the road,” I found myself wanting quite earnestly to never squeeze bodies out of my utopia but to make sure it's an inclusive one. I want to remember that not everyone can facilely ride a bike and successfully embody a futurist green urban utopian vision. Bicycles are lower emission vehicles than cars, that’s for sure, and they are good for your health and can really revolutionize your relationship with your environment, but let’s not equate the inability to ride a bike with a moral failure. That’s ableist, isn’t it? How can we use the technology that we have in as sustainably as possible a way in order to have a non-homogenized, inclusive utopian vision? How can we share better, inspire ourselves and others better?

Who do you make room for in your utopia?

http://www.bikeleague.org/action/sharetheroad.php

Bicycle Road Rage Experience

2008-07-18T12:28:00.000-07:00

As I was riding down the street in a bit of traffic (which enabled me to actually be going with the flow of traffic, I heard a man in the car next to me say, "Whatever, bitch, get off the road." I was a little shocked. Right after he said that, he rolled up his window, so I couldn't return with, "Let's share the road," or something like that. Silly angry person, his lane of traffic stopped and as I rolled on past him, he looked at me and I pouted at him. I wanted him to know that I'd heard him but also that I wasn't raging like he.

Buddhism and The Best Day Ever

2008-07-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

Last night I finished reading Against the Stream by Noah Levine. It’s subtitled “A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries” and so I expected something that was a little more overtly political in the standard sense. The book read, to me, more like a very readable Buddhist fundamentals text. I kept waiting for the part that went, “This is why I’m a revolutionary, and here’s how you can join me!”

That, of course, did come, just not in the form I’d expected. I had expected the book to say something like, “and if you meditate every day like I do, you’ll realize you need to change society in this specific way. You must comply, reader.” Levine’s prescription for spiritual revolutionaries went more like this, though: to change the world, you must start with yourself – but don’t wait until you’ve reached enlightenment to continue on with changing the world. Focus your energies on offering goodness “in all directions, to all beings everywhere” – including yourself (126).

The more specific prescription never came, though. I received another one of Levine’s key messages with joy – to beware of teachers and question everything. Ultimately, no teacher’s message can substitute for the firsthand experience you have while meditating or reflecting. While that sank in, I realized that the intellectual angle from which I approached Against the Stream was what shaped my expectation of a certain type of message. This realization made reading the book an interesting experience that gently had me examine myself and my motivations in seeking spiritual change as well as helping me better understand my typical mode of engagement with spiritual questions – that I often try to engage with them on a mental/intellectual wavelength.

I don’t know that this makes me particularly vulnerable to getting swept away by teachers especially since my personality is, in some ways, naturally skeptical, especially of religious teachers. But I think that being overly intellectual can sometimes act as a shield that actually distances me from making my own inquiries and having my own ideas and revelations. Isn’t it ironic that clinging to an intellectual way of inquiry – like trying to find ideas that fit other ideas that I like in order to accumulate a neatly organized web of compatible ideas – can hamper me from using my mind for as sharp a tool as it can be?

So I really appreciated Against the Stream for that reading experience and realization. I also really liked Levine’s point that if we’re talking revolutionary acts, the most revolutionary thing you can do is to break free from the human reactions to pain and pleasure – those being avoidance and craving, respectively – and practice having the abilities to observe those sensations as impermanent and to observe our reactions to them in a somewhat impersonal manner. Levine says that often people expect a spiritual path to be constantly filled with ecstasy. Like the rest of life, though, it’s also sometimes pleasurable and sometimes painful. He says there is no moment of enlightenment after which all of a sudden EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME IS JOY – but that happiness, a happiness closer to peace than to ecstasy, can come from radical acceptance of the good and the bad.

When I read this, I related to it. Like I’m attached to reaching out to things with my mind (and egoic identification with my mind), I’m similarly attached to an experience of spirituality as ecstatic, smooth, and generally all rosy. It occurs to me that nurturing a spiritual awareness of life that can encompass those moments when I feel quite the opposite of rosy can serve me and the world much better.

This brought to mind something I’ve heard lately. I’ve been very interested in raw veganism lately. This means I’ve been experimenting with my diet and how I’ve been eating as well as doing internet research into nutrition. I’ve also been watching a lot of youtube videos on raw lifestyle, nutrition, transformations, and so on. One figure I’ve become e-acquainted with is David Wolfe. I like some of what I’ve seen him saying on youtube, and some of it I can’t really relate to. Don't get me wrong; overall, my read of him is that he’s a good person and has a legit knowledge of raw food nutrition.

One way in which he kind of loses me is his mantra of “This is the best day ever!” One of Wolfe’s sites is thebestdayever.com. At first I was really attracted to the idea of deeming each day the best day ever and conducting one’s business accordingly. I've experienced the phenomenon of positive thinking making things go a bit better, and of negative thinking really just sabotaging your day. But there’s something about demanding each day to be the best day ever that really bothers me.

Here’s a snippet of David Wolfe’s raw food guru persona:

An excerpt:
DW “Is it possible to feel good all the time?”
Audience “YES!”
DW “Is it possible to never feel bad, ever; to never feel sadness; to never feel depression, ever; to remove those emotions from our psyche totally?”
A “YES!”
DW “And the answer is yes.”

I think that transforming what you eat can really transform your outlook on life as well as your body, which can really improve your days, but I think that to expect each day to be the best day ever is, in Levine’s terms, to not be a spiritual revolutionary. To do so seems to be going with the human stream of needing pleasure and avoiding pain, rather than against the stream toward radical freedom and compassion towards self and others -- freedom from needing each day to be the best day ever, and compassion towards self and others when a day isn't going so hot.

I don’t know – I’m still thinking this through. And though I’ve clearly taken Levine’s advice to be wary of spiritual teachers, I think I should take the counterpart to that piece of advice: to try something out on your own and make your judgment that way.

So I guess what I’m saying is this: if I stick with a high-raw or raw foods lifestyle and I never feel bad ever and have the best day ever everyday, well, I’ll let you know.

Nature Experience

2008-07-16T00:51:00.001-07:00

Today I stood under a waterfall and let it massage my shoulders. It felt pretty good but I was nearly overwhelmed by a fear that I couldn't quite deem irrational at the time, that a rock would suddenly come over the waterfall and strike me in the head, killing me. I frantically dove back into the swimming hole, kicking the rock face behind me in the process. I guess the lesson here is that no rock ever comes over the waterfall; you are the rock that kicks your own damn self, yeah. I floated serenely in the water and looked at ferns and blue sky and a rusted old sign that used to say something. I got out and managed to change into my underwear and other clothes decently behind a towel with no accidental flashings and felt very accomplished for the whole bit.

I Cannot Throw Things Away

2008-06-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

Is it dysfunctional to refuse to part with shoes and clothes until they completely fall apart? I recently had to throw away a different pair of shoes because the sole was worn thin and the rubber inside had cracked and was poking my feet. As I put them in the dumpster, I had a flashback to when I threw away my favorite orange sandals in a dumpster in Texas. I had worn a hole in the soles that caused the blistering asphalt (in 100+ degree heat) to burn my feet. It was time to say goodbye...

Maybe a feeling of anti-materialism that manifests in refusing to buy new shoes and wearing out current shoes until the last possible moment can turn into just a different kind of obsession with material things.

Surreal New Age Media Experiences

2008-06-15T21:19:00.001-07:00

I went to my local public library, compelled to check out The Secret -- I wanted to ascertain what the hubbub was about, and no way was I going to buy this book. I was too skeptical.

So after leisurely reading some of the magazines the library had, I made my way to the checkout counter to leave, The Secret in hand. The woman behind the counter asked me, "Oh, is this good?" I said I didn't know yet. She told me that she had heard so many people have strong opinions about the movie -- "but," she said, "I never read anything. I wish I did!" There was no trace of sarcasm, but, to my ear, more than a touch of irony in what this seeming librarian said to me. I wished her a good day and left.

Once I got home, I cracked The Secret and was sorely disappointed. I believed Oprah when she said The Secret would change my life! Tough cookies. I prefer Eckhart Tolle anyday.

2008-06-08T21:12:00.000-07:00

"The intentional fabrication of thirteen quadrillion lethal doses of plutonium seemed nonsensical to me until I was able to begin drawing lines of connecting thought and understanding from point to destructive point of our culture's behavior. The greatest mass extinction in the history of the planet. Ubiquitous genocide leading to the deaths of scores or hundreds of millions of people. Race-based slavery, leading to the deaths of scores or hundreds of millions more. Class-based slavery. Child slavery. Mass rapes. Vivisection. Factory farms. Irrational, deadly, and suicidal military budgets and policies. What picture emerges when you see all these together?

The deforestation of the Middle East, Europe, North America, the Amazon, now Siberia. The depletion of fishery after fishery. Just yesterday I read that scientists now predict that bluefin tuna will go extinct within the coming generation. The elimination of passenger pigeons, Eskimo curlews.

There can be only one end to this, of course. Apocalypse. Gotterdammerung. The destruction of the world in the final war of the gods, gods we have first, as I mentioned before, projected, and then reintrojected. Stasis. Death. The end of all life, if the dominant culture has its way. It's where we've been headed from the beginning of this several-thousand year journey. It is the only possible end for a culture of linear--as opposed to cyclical--progress. Beginning, middle, end. Self-extinguishment. The only solace and escape from separation: from ourselves, from each other, from the rest of the planet. Plutonium. DDT. Dioxin. Why else would we poison ourselves? No other explanation makes comprehensive sense. Apocalypse. 'The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.' American Chestnut. American Elm. Idaho White Pine. Redwood. Tallgrass Prairie. Shortgrass Prairie. 'And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died.' Blue Whales. Right Whales. Cod. Halibut. Tuna. 'And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.' Salmon. Bull trout. Western Cutthroat. Alabama Sturgeon. Western Sturgeon. Snail Darter. Arizona Pupfish. Each of these and so many more, individually, communally, and as species, destroyed not by angels nor by God, but by a culture aspiring toward the conclusion set forth from the beginning."

-- from Derrick Jensen's A Language Older Than Words, Context Books, 2000, pages 227-8.

Carry that Torch

2008-04-10T11:10:00.001-07:00

The Olympic torch event yesterday in San Francisco was really interesting and fun. The route was diverted and the torch never showed, but I think that I stand with the majority of the people there in feeling a little disappointed at that, but still feeling like being there was worth it.

There were huge numbers of protesters there, sporting t-shirts and signs about Tibet and Darfur, human rights and freedom. One of the common signs there was one that said "Another ____ for a Free Tibet," with each bearer of that sign having written in an applicable word. I saw "Chinese," "American," "Student," "Skater," "Human being" (and variants) -- and I saw some farcical fill-in-the-blanks, which I admit made me laugh: "Civil War veteran," "Porn star" (although I guess that might not have been in jest), and "vampire slayer". I also saw a pair of teenaged people walking around with a sign that said "Go warriors". These events of politicized public performance (summed up by the signs that people carry around) always seem so surreal to me, it reminds me of Debord's "Society of the Spectacle". I really enjoyed it, though. Good vibes for the most part, although I did walk through opposing lines of people, one side holding Tibetan flags and chanting "Shame on China!" and the opposite holding Chinese flags and chanting "Shame on you!"

My favorite sign that I saw went something like this:
"All governments are in violation of human rights
Hold the Olympics in Antarctica
Free Everywhere!"

Flash of Mortality

2008-03-23T17:30:00.000-07:00

I started reading The Divine Invasion by Philip K. Dick, and by the third chapter, the memory of a snippet of my dream last night spontaneously interrupted my reading. I guess there's really no greater and no more succinct a compliment one could give a book.

In that flash, I remembered that I'd dreamt I was dying.

Remember Who You Wanted to Be

2008-03-18T00:25:00.000-07:00

"Remember who you wanted to be." Some bumper sticker on some parked car that rotates around the streets in my neighborhood always catches my eye and causes me to chuckle or smile or sigh -- or something.

I guess it's a slogan designed to encourage people to stick to their goals, to continue on some individualistic self-shaping quest toward becoming the person whose origin is in one's memories and whose destiny looms closer and closer, bridged step-by-step by a series of satisfying narratives that hold up through different movements of time.

As you can tell, I'm skeptical of this formulation. I'm even scornful of it at times. Sometimes, yes, even resentful! I think I fight hard in attempts sometimes vain and sometimes successful to avoid getting pinned down in some category or catch phrase or well-formed narrative. I think some of that stubbornness betrays a naivete I might prefer to hide -- an egoic identification of some well-packaged element of identity with myself, my Self. I forget all those mind-tools that philosophers and theorists have offered word dreamers like me for situations like this, new postmodern formulations of subjectivities that are fragmented, co-constituted with their environments, in process, &c.

I have bristled at treatments of the self as The Self, possessing a substance, knowing what it is, constant, constituted, complete. I have attended classes about meditation, and meditated, and repeated mantras; I have felt my self unravel, I have dissolved myself to emptiness and love only to return again another time to I-me-mine anxious coffee consciousness. I am comfortable with my various experiences of the self as I am comfortable with my experiences of the different selves that I am (in different times, in different situations, in different moods).

And it strikes me as odd that I like this phrase so much! "Remember who you wanted to be." Perhaps my reading of it is a little different than its intended reading. It occurs to me that whatever possible image of myself that may drive me at any given time, there have been countless others that have not been fully realized, but that have each served me -- or preoccupied and confused me -- in different ways. Any number of ambitions or snapshots of myself have come to me, from childhood til the present: myself as a circus acrobat, as an astronaut, a scientist, a rock star, a classical singer, &c &c. "Remember who you wanted to be." I do, and none of those people I have wanted to be has become me. In remembering who I wanted to be, I remember the ways that thinking about myself can give a trajectory of mine momentum at times, but is always destined to be fiction. I remember who I wanted to be, laugh, take a deep breath, and keep on being.

The Wish for Moments to Live On

2008-03-12T11:04:00.000-07:00

As I was gazing absent-mindedly out the window, the trees caught my eyes the trees started to speak to me. As the breeze flowed through enveloped a tall redwood tree, I noticed how all its branches danced and quivered, glittering different shades of green and silver. Oh, I wish I could say (I wish I could show not tell) how beautiful, how beautiful this tree, how alive and simple and true this tree looked.

In Which I am Pained at the Inadequacy of Language

2008-03-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

sit down to write a poem sit
sit to write a poem
stop sit to write a poem
as I sit and write a poem
a poem for you, this poem
is so different from the poems
that write themselves in my head all day
for you and about you
and featuring you in cameo appearance
all those are much better, I'm sure
because those poems I don't write don't get swept away into an economy of emotion,
always approximating.
They are emotion.

And so I find myself once again not wanting to, but needing to stop a few lines short of saying what I will
because--what can I say?--some things say themselves and
and I'm going in circles and
I feel the sparkle
light winks at me and air kisses me
and something smiles