(autobiology)

notes.

2007-11-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

I'm still here.

My 27th birthday was on the 27th of October.

A month prior, I moved to Colorado.

A month prior, I bought a house near downtown Boulder.

I work, now, in a beautiful office with a view of the mountains, surrounded by both blue skies and amazing people and I'm a little wide-eyed about all that's unfolded over the past few months.

I am still very much in love.

imposter.

2007-07-14T12:03:00.001-07:00

I went to a salon yesterday on the topic of Dying Well. The dialogue was wonderful, and I could fill a small book with the ins-and-outs of the discussion, but I just wanted to share one fragment.

(I wish you could have been there for all of it, but this, at least, is something.)

Midway through the conversation, someone at the table brought up the notion of the “imposter syndrome”: that feeling that, despite your position or accomplishments, you're still just “faking things,” and that you've fooled others into thinking you're smarter or more capable than you really are.

He mentioned that it took a great deal of pain and struggle for him to come to the understanding that he wasn't “faking it” any more. He went through a difficult period in his life, and surviving that test meant that he was no longer afraid of being unmasked. He looked around the table, and wondered out loud whether that pain and suffering were necessary. “Are there any of you who feel as though you're no longer “faking it” and who haven't experienced some great or painful challenge?”

A beautiful question, I thought.

Various voices spoke up. A few mentioned how it was the gradual accumulation of successes in their lives that made them feel more self-assured. They mentioned how launching a few companies and seeing these businesses thrive made them feel as though their was something to that sense of competency that others saw in them, and they began feeling as though they were actually accomplished and capable—that they weren't acting “as if” or, again, “faking it.”

I appreciated this, but I couldn't help but share my story. I'm not one of those who was spared the crucible.

I no longer feel at all as though I'll be “found out” or that my accomplishments and abilities are somehow the result of me fooling others, but I came to this understanding only after hitting rock bottom.

I was destitute and jobless and scrambling, a little ball of self-hatred whose entire identity was more a puppet to addiction than anything recognizable as a personality. I hated what I'd done to myself, and, even more, the damage this self-sabotage had wrought upon my family and friends and those people I purported to care about. It was more than a life wasted—it was a life that was inflicting pain in the mere being.

And it was from there that I came to realize despite all this, it was a life worthy of being loved. Despite all this, I was still a human being who deserved to be cared for. It was from that position, of having literally nothing else to lose, that I realized I already had everything.

I don't know. I'm sure that there's nothing wrong with a self of self-confidence founded on the evidence of success. I just find a certain peace in knowing that even were I to lose, again, everything, I'd still be fundamentally okay. My concern with the other route would be that, if I started suddenly to fail and if all my projects were to collapse, that I'd wonder again at my abilities. Maybe I was once worth something, I might fret, and perhaps I'll be worth something again in the future… but right now I'm a failure. I feel an odd comfort that I'll never have to worry about this again.

I'm not sure why I feel so compelled to share this here. I'm not sure how it will come across. But I do wish I could instill this in others: there is nothing you can do that will make you unworthy. You're loved. You're worth it. There is no other way.

two truths.

2007-07-07T19:48:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between seeing connections and making them? I feel as though I've fallen into some strange universe where coincidences no longer exist.

But here are two poems.

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.

Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

- M. Strand

&

There are times when I can't move.

I feel roots of mine everywhere,
as though all things were born of me,
or as though I were born of all things.

All I can do then is to stay still
with eyes open like two faces
at the moment of birth,
with a small amount of love in one hand
and something cold in the other.

And all I can give someone passing by me
is that motionless absence
that has roots in him too.

- R. Juarroz

momento mori.

2007-03-11T22:37:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about death recently, perhaps too much.

I suppose this makes sense; 2007 has already been a record year for me as far as suicides alone are concerned. I feel close to my mortality; the edges feel raw.

I was at a talk yesterday morning that included a long digression on the problems facing our world; about Iraq, about global warming, about the struggles in our administration; about natural resources; about Africa, about change, and about what we have to look forward to in the future.

The speaker (the former director of Amnesty International) ended his impassioned speech with a paraphrase from a theologian. “In this time, we have one choice: dialogue, or death.”

There was a space, where others emptied themselves of their questions, and I sat silent until I could no longer be still. I asked, from the circle, ”Or death? Death is not optional. Death is always an 'and.' These stories we've been listening to, about the shift that's occurring in consciousness and about how we're waking up to what needs to be done, are beautiful, but are we not all just avoiding that we each much die? Individually, each of us, and, eventually, as a civilization and species?”

I felt immediately chagrined; dumping the skull on the banquet table is a bit of a faux pas these days. Still, most people seemed not just to forgive me, but to want to engage more with the question. The conversation that followed was rich.

Those conversations mean so much to me.

Because I don't think at all this means I'd want to abandon any effort at gentling the world, or that I'd want to give up hope about healing; I do think that there are likely many generations to come and I feel a heartfelt obligation to make sure that I limit my contributions to the pain and suffering they'll experience, and to do what I can to increase the joy (assuming these two are separable). But I can't help but look at the popular apocalyptic cries of Peak Oil and the assertions that our culture is on the brink of collapse with a wry smile. Somehow I can't help but imagine that every preceding generation believed the same. Living in a time of perceived crises means that our lives become meaningful; we have a project; the world depends upon us. Far better to imagine catastrophe than to admit the more likely scenario: that our generation too will die, to be subsumed in the oncoming waves of future humans, and that we too will be mostly forgotten.

I don't know. I find, I suppose, some peace in this latter fact. It makes life, now, for me, and the meetings I have within it, all the more important.

yes.

2007-02-05T15:56:00.000-08:00

Today is the 126th anniversary of Thomas Carlyle's death.

Carlyle was a Scottish historian and sociologist whose thought and writing influenced American Transcendentalism; the letters he exchanged with Emerson comprise hundreds of pages. To my mind, though, he's an incredible thinker in his own right.

Carlyle wrestled deeply with, and eventually lost faith in, his own Christian tradition; which is part of why I love him so . . . there's a certain tragic Kierkegaardian existentialism to his struggle.

He wrote about the concept of "The Everlasting Yea," a sort of divine affirmation of the world - and of faith - "wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him." This, for Carlyle, is in contrast to "The Everlasting No," the denial of the divine in the world, and "The Centre of Indifference" a detached agnosticism.

I find all this beautiful.

But this I love more: Carlyle had an unblinkered awareness of the suffering inherent to the world. He believed the point of life is to make man blessed, not happy, and that the pursuit of happiness is one of the things that prevents people from achieving blessedness.

Ai. Perhaps I like this so because I feel so blessed, and for me, this has little to do with feeling happy, and more to do with gratitude, and acceptance, and - yes - affirmation.

Anyway. My grandfather (Farland's father) was the first I ever heard speak of Carlyle, and though he's no longer alive, some feathered whisper prompted me to write.

Yes.

shadows.

2007-02-02T11:58:00.000-08:00

Something came up again for me last night.

(I'm going to keep this next part vague, because I'm sensitive about confidentiality, so my apologies for any lack of clarity that results. I'm trying to speak as much as possible from my own experience, and I'm trying to do so as authentically and blamelessly as I can. So please, if you read this, read this with that in mind, and read this, too, knowing that while my intentions are pure, the lenses through which I see are grubby indeed. Forgive me, please, for that.)

There's a group I'm a part of, a group of about twenty-five other individuals of various ages and from differing areas, individuals of different races and various cultural backgrounds. In most respects we're remarkably close: these are people I'd trust, and have trusted, with my deepest secrets and most personal truths. With most things we're able to hold each other.

It's become apparent, though, over the past few weeks, that the topic of race, within our group, is a deeply painful issue.

(An aside: it just occurred to me that all of this should go without saying; the fact that people have different backgrounds, that I feel I can trust them; that racism is a tremendous reality … ought not these statements be true in any group? Anyway.)

So far we've been dancing around this elephant in the room. Some of the group members in the white majority censor themselves because they feel awkward; some of those in the minority have expressed that they don't feel safe speaking about what they really feel, and, too, that when the topic does arise it's overshadowed by the issue of 'white guilt'; some of the biracial members of the group feel torn; and everyone, obviously, has their own personal take on the matter.

But things have come to a head, and the tension has gotten to be too much, and so next week I'm going to be helping to facilitate a discussion on the dynamic, and about what all of us might do.

Needless to say I'm a little anxious about this conversation.

This issue is so, so deeply painful for me. It's painful for me because at one point it wasn't an issue. It's painful for me because there was a time in my life when I would have not seen it as my problem. In high school, I was sure I wasn't racist. I believed in the myth of a colorblind society; I thought, in trying to treat everyone the same, that we could all be made equal. I had no idea how incredibly damaging this blindness of mine was.

And I don't feel particularly guilty about it. I feel, rather, a deep rage and sorrow at the fact that I live in a society that allowed me to grow up so utterly oblivious to the rampant oppression and pro-racist ideologies it perpetuates. I feel, rather, a deep sense of grief at the entire history of not just the US, and not just Colonialism, but the human race as a whole.

It's Black History Month. Affirmative action is again in the news. The topic came up for me recently around law school; blacks make up 13% of the US population, but only 6% of law students. This statistic, combined with the fact that 12% of black males (compared to under 2% of white males) in their late 20s in the US are in prison, indicates that there is something supremely wrong with our society. (Here's another little fact: In South Africa under apartheid, the incarceration rate of black males was 851 per 100,000. In the U.S., in 1994, the rate was 4,919 per 100,000. This is America, in comparison to the most openly racist country on the planet.)

I know that looking at this requires looking at the fact that the history of the country and our current capitalist system is deeply stained with the atrocities of the slave trade. I know that looking at this requires accepting that the European development of the new world was made possible, in part, by the use of the “free labor” of African slaves, which provided the wealth – from the cotton and sugar and rice within the plantation system – necessary to make such technological advances. And I know that looking at this demands all that goes with it, from the fact that Christopher Columbus sent more slaves to Europe than any other individual in his time to the history of exploitation and cruelty that stand as the dark unexamined underbelly of development.

This is an ugly topic, I know, and I know, too, that it's easier not to look. But I'd suggest, in not-looking (assuming, that is, you have the “luxury” to do so), that you might be making yourself complicit in the very perpetuation of such injustice.

I know this, but what I don't know is so much greater. I don't know how to heal any of it. I don't know how to make a difference. I don't know, at all, what to say when faced with this past.

I don't know. It makes me so sorrowful, and so, so full of anger.

Thich Naht Hahn said once that, when anger arises in you, to think of three sentences to tell those you're feeling anger toward. These sentences are: “I suffer and I want you to know it.” “I am doing my best.” “Please help.”

Please help.

cinq.

2006-12-22T16:29:00.000-08:00

I rarely accept these tags, but because I'm in good company with this one, and because I adore Evelyn, I'll have a shot. Following are five things you do not know about me.

1. You do not know the first words I spoke.

2. You do not know what it feels like when I open my eyes in the morning and stretch my legs together under my white muslin sheets and shake the sleep from my shoulders and look out the window from between dream-matted eyes and try to resituate myself in the world, and you do not know what it is like as the reality of my day-to-day life starts seeping in, and you do not know the particular quality of reassuring delight and somehow heavy comfort of that settling.

3. You do not know how hard it is sometimes for me to understand myself.

4. You do not know why I choose to live my life the way I do, and you do not truly know what my relationship is with you, and you do not know what it is like, at all, to be me.

5. You do not know how much I wish you could.

Does it matter if I opt not to tag others? Can, instead, I tag anyone who wants to be tagged? If you're reading this, please . . . consider yourself invited.

why do you write?

2006-12-22T15:37:00.000-08:00

Orhan Pamuk had a beautiful answer, but it was not mine.

I write because I have to write. I write because I am in love with the world. I write because my tongue is too wet and sloppy a tool for the elegance of language and because I feel more comfortable speaking through two splayed hands, through the pianoing dance of my fingertips. I write because the world is created through language and story and because I have a role to play in weaving the future. I write because I believe in the human beings around me with a passion so intense and so vivid and so bright that I can't help but want to reach them, and I want to reach not just them, but every future generation, and to tell them to keep trying and dreaming and striving, because it is worth it, and because the only way we can know each other is through these stories. I write to discover myself. I write because there is no other way. I write because I would go crazy otherwise. I write because I am crazy. I write because I need to make sense of the hideous intricacy of the universe. I write because I am happy. I write because I am in pain. I write because of the sheer joy of it. I write because sometimes it is the only thing that keeps me here. I write because, right now, I am breathing, and I can feel the beating of my heart within the rise and fall of my ribcage and I write because moths drink the tears of sleeping birds.

phalène

2006-12-21T20:20:00.000-08:00

I've found the most inadvertently poetic news headline of the year.

Moths Drink the Tears of Sleeping Birds.

solstice.

2006-12-21T10:17:00.000-08:00

It's the winter solstice, and I'm mindful of the weight of the planet, and the emergence from darkness, and, too, the tug of the new year. And so, in the spirit of that, I wanted to share a poem.

Drink Your Tea.

Drink your tea slowly and reverently,
as if it is the axis
on which the world earth revolves -
slowly, evenly, without
rushing toward the future;
live the actual moment.
Only this is life.

- Thich Naht Hanh.

connexion.

2006-12-19T22:14:00.000-08:00

I always feel awkward breaking a silence.

I've been writing more emails reccently, and connecting more with individuals, and connecting more in the world "out there" than I have been blogging. While I've been involved in a few certain circumscribed online communities, on the whole I've I've been less immersed in blogs and more sunk into the world at large. But recently I've started writing a bit to the author of How to Save the World. And I felt somehow that I wanted more people to read what I was sharing with him. So here's a version. It's mostly in response to this post.

For someone so dismayed or disheartened by dialogue and language Dave certainly wields it well, though I'll confess as another wordsmith to having those precise fears; namely, that the more elegantly and eloquently I use these letters the more inextricably tangled I get, and the more in the way of letting my self be my Self.

Sometimes this seems blindingly obvious. Of course language is an impediment, I think. Of course these abstractions are exactly the wrong way to approach this nearly intractable problem. Of course I should just be still. Sometimes, though, I delight in the nuances of being conscious of this dilemma. There's something beautiful about awareness, even when it's accompanied by pain.

And though I should be still, I'll say a few more words.

I was involved an Open Space Technology event not long ago and had to take some time during the weekend to write about how inexpressibly sad that sort of systems work inevitably makes me feel.

I can never begin to connect, fully, with a group without falling headlong into that horrifically deep felt sense of greater connection . . . of an awareness with my own connection with the earth, with our gasping biosphere, with the pain and misery of so much of humanity in the global south, with the entrapped desperation of overweight suited executives unable to believe what their little-boy-selves have become, with the confused and angry systems in my own body so dead-set on tearing into each other . . . for whatever reason, allowing myself to connect fully with any community drags me into the rest. I feel it all, so strongly, and it's for this reason that I both adore and pull back from group work.

In that OST I offered to convene a session on sorrow and grief. I introduced the 'topic' with a few stumbling attempts at I just wrote. I took my paper to the back. And I was the only one there.

So I wrote. I don't mind holding that for people - indeed, in some ways it's an honor - but it's still hard. When I allow myself to sink into stillness and being, when I allow myself the space to reflect on the materials that went into the building I'm perched in and the labor that went into the clothes I'm wearing and the vast networks of production and energy on which my whole environment depends, I feel so much of it in my heart and my ribcage and it feels all the world as though I'm being held underwater, or trapped somewhere, and I can't quite get my breath. There's no way out of this world, and it's becoming toxic, and this interconnection, this sentence, makes me want to cry.

Oddly enough I have some gratitude for this, too; sometimes I think it's the toxicity that helps me realize this extreme interdependence, and for whatever it's worth, I'm glad we're all so bound up. If there were a way off the earth, or a way to escape this . . . I don't know. There's something to the realization that I can never run away from myself.

I meant to take this elsewhere though. Sometimes, for me, I can just breathe. Sometimes that helps. And sometimes I can just write.

mère.

2006-10-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

I don't have much to say. It's Monday, the end of a long and exhausting weekend. I don't have much to say but I have far to much to do; a situation I'm getting used to.

But I wrote, not long ago, about a book my mother had sent me, and how much I loved reading the notes she'd scrawled in the margins. It was such a beautiful glimpse into such a rare life, and it's a glimpse I want everyone to have.

She is an incredible writer.

presence.

2006-09-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

I've been corresponding, recently, with a man who told me, crypically, that I was someone who "created life." He told me I was a weaver, of stories, and, I suppose, of networks.

I hadn't put much thought into this, until yesterday I revisited what's rapidly becoming one of my favorite books.

One of the final chapters of Presence investigated the idea of power, and of how the usual sources of power in the world today - technological power and governmental / corporate power, say - are fundamentally and overwhelmingly powers-to-destroy. (Somehow I feel that most "external" power is of this kind, but that's another story.) Obviously this sort of power is not the sort I could imagine anyone really wanting -- I'd hope that it's apparent that our world is small and interconnected enough that the destruction and abuse of anything in it can't help but affect the one doing the abusing -- but nonetheless, it does exist, and nonetheless, there are people with the horrible burden of holding this sort of power. It's not a role I'd relish.

But it made me start thinking about what it means to have or to own a power-to-create; that is, a power-of-life.

To me, "storytelling" (be it either writing or speaking) has the potential to fall under this category. Weaving stories involves generating meaning . . . and creating meaning is a life-giving and obviously creative activity. It involves the ability to communicate to people a greater vision, a reason for their being, and is the one of the few ways in which it's possible to facilitate that connection of individuals to the deeper, greater life, to a sense of purpose, to the is-ness that's already existent. It's one of the few ways to encourage the connection of people to themselves, and to begin to bring about and work positively with that human, that necessary, search for meaning. I can't think of anything else that has the power to do this . . . and thus I'm somewhat humbled by being awakened to my role as an instrument in the process. (We are all instruments in the larger system, whether we're aware of this or not, and we all play roles within it, and I feel, again, a deep sense of gratitude for being an instrument of - or for - life.)

I'm still struggling to articulate this; again, it's something that I've only recently begun to really appreciate. And I feel, still, a little shy about this posting; it feels half-finished and not-quite-born. But it affected me, deeply, and it's the start of a new story, and stories are nothing without being shared.

temps.

2006-08-31T20:18:00.000-07:00

Oh, where to start?

I've had an insane few weeks.

I'll start with the news that I've been coaxed away from my current writer / editor position with an online adult personals site to one with a far more ambitious dream. Starting next week, I'll be owning the role of Synchronicity Coordinator at Zaadz. I'm embarrassingly enthusiastic about the new gig; I'll be working “in the area of partnership development, community building, media relations, and corporate communications,” and I've already had the opportunity to try my hand at an ENN interview and a few tantalizing writing assignments. It's such a treat to get to interact regularly with people who share my own values, and I'm still a little stunned that I'm getting paid to do such things as ramble on at length about self-empowerment, personal responsibility, the inseparability of people and planet and product, the growing demographic of individuals for whom non-eco businesses are no longer an option, and additionally, get to grow partnerships with others who believe the same.

And I get to work from home. Crazy.

The transition from my job at Various to the new one at Zaadz was interrupted by a workshop I'd signed up for months ago. I just got back from spending a week at a Community Building Facilitation training. It was, perhaps, one of the most emotionally intense experiences of my life.

Imagine waking up in a world of sixteen strangers, with no other instructions than these guidelines. It's a bizarre and more-than-surreal experience, and the best crash-course in interpersonal psychology, family dynamics, and the workings of systemic oppression I can imagine. (I've had experience doing community building before, but it never ceases to amaze me how these experiments become such microcosms of not just family systems, but cultural and global systems as well. It's one thing to understand how this "works" academically, and quite another to get it from within.) I wish I could describe in the abstract what the week was like, but this would be like attempting to impart the taste of a loaf of warm bread by giving the ingredients. And I wish I could write about the week from the inside, but I'm bound by confidentiality.

I'll say only that the net result of putting people in a room and instructing them to reach community turns the group into a miniature model of the global community; it becomes a pressure cooker for conflict and the way in which conflicts get resolved without leaving the closed system. (No one can leave the retreat, or at least not without violating their commitment to the group, just as no one can leave the human family on our planet.) Again, though, I was most stunned by the way in which the larger patterns of oppression and patriarchy manifested themselves in this collection of people, all the more so because everyone there was highly self-aware and able to talk beautifully about issues of sexism and ageism and racism and culture. It was humbling, to say the least.

There were other aspects that contributed to the profound intensity of the week; sometime around the second day I - or we - had the collective experience of a strange transcendence of time. I'm familiar with the experience of flow, of losing myself in a project or activity and losing all sense of self and time as a result. This, though, was something different. It was after a particularly combative encounter, and the emptying that followed it, and it was as though all time fell away and everything in the world had already happened and was always in the process of happening and what was going on was so ancient and so eternal and so always. It was as though the circle we were in was the same circle we'd always been in, and no different from the larger circles of the whole world. And it's another one of those things that I can't speak of, but can only - barely - remember from the inside.

In any case, I'm still struggling to integrate the week, whilst trying at the same time to gracefully exit my job (a dear friend will be taking my current position and I want to make the transition smooth) and start the next.

I'm very, very glad I have a few weeks before classes start.

profondeur.

2006-08-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

Last night, a college friend came by. He was in California for the week, and took the opportunity to visit, showing up on my doorstep with a brand-new mohawk and an overflowing box of ripe organic strawberries. We spent the evening sprawled on my livingroom floor, talking over mugs of tea and fingers stained red with berry juice.

It was one of those conversations that ramble into increased depth and complexity, the sort of meaningful, heartening, rich exchanges that approach the emotional equivalent of the more awkward intellectual variety I remember from my university days. It makes me wonder why I don't encourage more of this in my life; my days seem to get so full with work and classes and the sorts of social activities that involve doing something, and somewhere the time for just being with others gets lost. Or lost isn't quite right; that time is always there. It's just so easily skipped over, or forgotten, or otherwise ignored.

We talked about this, some, about the way in which, though we've become experts at the technological aspects of communication - we keep our phones on us; we can make instantaneous contact with someone across the globe - we seem to be utterly clueless when it comes to deeper connections with the real human beings around us.

It has to do with so much, I think. There're the general scare-tactics of the media that encourage people to mistrust their neighbors and lock their doors and to be wary of strangers. There's the distraction of all manner of entertainment, from shopping to television to the internet. There's the general denial that we're all of us in; really connecting with another demands a certain degree of openhearted authenticity, and I can't help but think that the vast majority of the US is incapable of getting to this point. I'm biased, I know; it's hard to talk about this without my social and poliitcal beliefs coloring the dialogue, but for a country at war, we seem to have an odd aversion to talking about the suffering involved. We'll skirt political issues and heap abuse on our administration, but I so rarely encounter any acknowledgement of the pain and sorrow and anger that can't help but accompany the death of thousands. Doing so entails taking some sort of responsibility, however minor, for the situation, and doing this is hard. And so we stay safe on the surface and talk - if at all - about facts and weather and celebrity weddings. But I digress; last night was a welcome contrast to the usual, and it's made me commit to discovering, and creating, more of these evenings. I love my across-the-world connections, but I'm hungry, too, for community I can touch.

And to that end, I'm going tonight to this exploratory salon. I'm curious and excited about the other unknown guests. I'm in need of a little impassioned slowness, I think, and this event seems just the thing.

mémoire.

2006-08-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

Write in books.

I am reading a book my mother mailed me a year or so ago, and the scribbles and jottings and underlines, the notes in the margins, the asterisks and exclamation points and her inimitable handwriting, are nearly enough to make me cry.

I don't know. Perhaps it's because, as someone recently reminded me, so much of our correspondence is so ephemeral (who sends letters through the mail anymore? Unless you print out your words they will all disappear, and likely sooner rather than later; servers go down, computers crash, and we all know how fragile CDs are); perhaps it's just because of the mood I'm in, but I love that this book is one I can keep, and love that it's been made so much more rich by her thoughts.

pause.

2006-08-08T20:24:00.000-07:00

A Peregrin falcon attacks a starling flock.

. . .

Opening Words

I believe the earth
exists, and
in each minim mote
of its dust the holy
glow of thy candle.
Thou
unknown I know,
thou spirit,
giver,
lover of making, of the
wrought letter,
wrought flower,
iron, deed, dream.
Dust of the earth,
help thou my
unbelief. Drift
gray become gold, in the beam of
vision. I believe with
doubt. I doubt and
interrupt my doubt with belief. Be,
beloved, threatened world.
Each minim
mote.
Not the poisonous
luminescence forced
out of its privacy,
The sacred lock of its cell
broken. No,
the ordinary glow
of common dust in ancient sunlight.
Be, that I may believe. Amen.

- D. Levertov

raccordement.

2006-08-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

Dave Pollard, of How to Save the World, again contributes a post that makes my heart thrill. He proposes Let-Self-Change a "theory, framework, approach and/or methodology" that flows from the integration of change agents and social activists with an appreciation of complex systems, and complex adaptive systems theorists. Pollard's been working at piecing together tools such as Open Space Technology and notions like Collective Wisdom and systems thinking for some time, and this recent post uses the lessons of The Other Side of Eden: Hunters, Farmers, and the Shaping of the World as a point of inspiration.

Do go read his proposal. .

Again, as someone ridiculously in love with the challenge of systems thinking, I adore Pollard's vision. Still, I can't help but wonder at the way in which these net-dialogues tend to focus on tool-kits and methodologies and new languages and frameworks. It's true that these are crucial, but I worry sometimes that they miss the point. I've been involved in a few Open Spaces, and I can't help but think that a huge part of what makes the practice successful is the way in which it teaches - or demonstrates - a new way of being. How to put it? My thought is that it's less the solutions and results that come out of these practices than it is the experience of being in a true community that makes the difference.

(I wanted to write that I thought that if the directions / paths that came from OST were merely imposed on the group from the outside, they wouldn't be remotely as effective, but as I was thinking this I realized that such a separation is impossible, and that the mere existence of the outcome is dependent on it being literally birthed through the group.)

In any case, I do think it's this embodied education that makes the difference in the success of many of these examples of collective wisdom. I'd venture that beyond the obvious benefits of intelligent collaboration, it's the experience of trusting in oneself and in community that contributes to sustainable outcomes. It's this, I think, that we could all stand to see more of; this felt-sense of being-in-a-collective.

It's strange for me to say this. I myself (like Pollard, I imagine) tend towards being a loner. I appreciate solitude more than what passes for company in this society. I'm only just realizing that what I always mistook as a preference for isolation was more a preference for being, and that it wasn't so much, growing up, that I didn't like socializing, but that I didn't care for the endless stream of entertainment and distraction that seemed always to accompany the experience of being together. As I become more skilled at holding to the present even in the midst of bustle and confusion, I've come to appreciate - and to love -being with others more and more, and the more this happens, the more passionate I feel about the heavy significance of communal projects like Let-Self-Change.

But I digress. Go read Dave's post, or don't. Please, though, be present with the next person you meet. Because connection, really, is all that there is.

écoutez.

2006-07-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

I would like to listen more.

perception.

2006-07-17T14:23:00.000-07:00

My friend Duff posted a link to - as well as some scathing commentary on - Steve Pavlina's recent post about resolving global conflicts. Pavlina is of the view that the war in Iraq can best be addressed by meditation and consciouness-raising; Duff believes this is a myopic and narcissistic approach and that the oil crisis is not going to be served by sitting on a cushion and thinking good thoughts. My personal view is that they're both right: I'm including my response here.

It takes a tremendous amount of courage and awareness to get to the point at which we realize our responsibility for the violence in the world and the situation in the middle east. So many of us prefer to see the problem as “out there” – as something beyond our control – instead of taking an clear-eyed look at how WE are responsible for it. The more we raise our awareness, and the more we're able to respond to the world and to those beings in it with love and compassion, the more we'll be inspired to tread lightly on the planet, to reduce our dependence on oil, and to contribute to peace in the world.

What other route is there? Coercion? Forcing people to behave in more peaceful or less exploitative ways? In my view this merely displaces (if not downright exacerbates) the problem. So while I agree with Duff about the paramount importance of reducing our dependency on oil and of working to reverse global warming and directing our efforts at creating more sustainable communities, I'd also bring up Al Gore's point in An Inconvenient Truth. We already HAVE the techologies available to us. What's required is a shift in perception. What's required is a change in our belief systems . . . there must be enough of us willing to adopt the practices and processes that already exist. And this willingness amounts to, really, a shift in consciousness.

It is imperative for people to understand that we can't compartmentalize the problems we face -- nor can we externalize them. Peak oil, war, overpopulation, global warming, the environmental destruction of the planet, soil erosion . . . these are all OUR problem, all the result of the way we live in the world, the result of our day-to-day lifestyles, and the result of the fact that we are OF the world. Our problems stem from our unwillingness to see this. We need to move to the level of social consciouness in order to care about the planet, and in order, thus, to change. This is why meditation is importance. It enables that fundamental realization.

So I think they're both right, and that the two approaches are not separable. But then, what is?

guerre.

2006-07-06T21:04:00.000-07:00

This is what I wish I dared to say about Iraq.

libre.

2006-07-04T13:48:00.000-07:00

Happy Indepedence Day, I think, though this holiday tastes a little bittersweet. Is it a truism to say that no one is free until we are all free? Or that it is sheer idiocy to think that we can work toward freedom abroad (not that anyone believes this is what we're doing in the Middle East, but still . . .) while sacrificing it at home?

Happy Indepedence Day, then. Freedom is one of those fantastic things - like happiness, and like inner peace - that can only be attained by giving it to others. So go let someone you're close to, or attached to, or that you want something from, be free. Let go of your expectations of them. Free them from whatever obligation you think they might have. Free them, and see how you're freed in the process.

It's a small thing, I know, but I think this is how freedom works on a grand scale, too, and this exercise is a little more simple and a little more practical than freeing your favorite political prisoner. And if this is too much, or makes no sense, than do something else small. Go out and encourage someone - preferably a stranger - to realize how beautiful it is out, and how lucky we are, and how needless our battles. Smile. Be beautiful. Be free.

While you may have seen this already, I did add this site's blogroll to the black navigational box in the upper right. So go have a visit . . .

pleurez.

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

I had a dream the other night in which I was demonstrating an ability to weep on command.

In real life I can't do this - at least not that I know of - but in my dream I was in a conference room, at the end of a long table, around which were seated a dozen or so suited strangers. I was standing at the front, and I was asked, again and again, to cry. Each time I was asked I turn around, so that when I turned back to face the room, my eyes would be wet. The panel took studious notes, but were otherwise unimpressed.

I woke up with tears on my face, and I still don't know what they were for.

plus.

2006-07-01T10:46:00.000-07:00

Dave Pollard posted, not long ago, a link and a response to a recent article in Orion Magazine. It's a excerpt from endgame, the latest book by Derrick Jensen (one of my favorite writers). It's painful and heart-breaking and well-worth reading; if you have time - or even if you don't - I'd encourage you to have a look.

I wrote a quick reply to Pollard's post, and wanted to include it here. I wrote that I found myself mostly in alignment with Jensen, but that (and I worry about this, because Jensen has seen so much more than I have and experienced much greater pain) my heart is so, so filled with such a love for this world, and not just for the brilliant biosphere, but for the tragic fear-filled and bloated persons and systems that keep stumbling toward their own misguided hopes.

Dave wrote that "love exhausts and consumes us." It's my belief that this is only true if we don't love enough. I think that the only way we can afford to love the Earth is if we love the damaging systems more: we are a part of them, after all. And I don't mean to support or to contribute to the projects they represent, but to see them for the obviously self-destructive, self-sabotaging, sadly unsustainable operations that they are.

I do not hate invididuals bent on paths of self-destruction; I feel a deep sadness and sympathy and love. It's okay, I want to whisper. You're okay. You don't need to do this. It's this attitude that I feel toward our civilization as a whole. It's love. And this, at least as far as my heart is concerned, is the way to freedom, and that is the end of fear.

feuillage.

2006-06-29T16:27:00.000-07:00

On the way to work this morning, I saw an elderly asian man out on his balcony. The platform was overflowing with an amazingly green and vibrant garden: there were flowers everywhere, and the foliage was spilling over the edge. And as I watched, the man began studiously kissing the leaves of each plant.

I nearly cried.

It is beautiful out, today.