The Hollow Reed Goes to Court

I have defined myself by loneliness, a barrenness of expectancy. Any light that passes through me is not my own, I am a hollowness that is sounded by the passing breath of what the universe elects to bestow, just as it so readily and inevitably draws away, to leave me again enshrouded in silence, in the magnitude of a void that lies at the root of every being. For this solitude is not my own;  it is the very concavity of the universe, against whose form I am embedded within, a child pregnant with nothingness, like the deadened sacs of jellyfish that wash to shore, glancing in the moonlight like glass blown bubbles, a horrifically beautiful detachment of alien life forms deadened of meaning. The eye that views us wholly is not our own. It is in the distance of aqueous rock, beholden to a history that extends far beyond the parasitic need of life.

As I unravel from out of my comfortable discipline, from out of the mountainous wilderness of my solitude and into a daily existence that necessitates immediacy, haphazard intimacy, and action, I find myself flailing, looking to strike out again for the deep water, where life slows until it is still.

But I have made a choice. I have turned my back to the night and descended into the electrified city of the people, where we choose to listen to the music of our own crafting. My deepest self, rooted in empty blankness, must belatedly put on the masks of human aspiration and join in the ritual dances of the season. To become a proselytizer of the human future, laboring for fecundity. To have hope, to believe in a collective expansion of spirit, that what we take will be less than what we make.

The individual light within me has been lessened, intentionally, to make way for the lights of other people who will come with me. The one light that we shine can only be stronger, the one song that we sing can only be that much more steady, defined through the legislated breath of each other, not simply by the passing happenstance gift of the beyond.

New Paradigm

You may have noted that I have been relatively quiet on the political/news front as of late, mostly because I don’t have any free time anymore, but furthermore because I think that most of the events, such as Obama’s inauguration, speak for themselves and we are all somewhat inspired and hopeful for the future, finally. But there are a few things that I want to say about the pressing economic and political events of our time.

First of all, former George W. Bush’s presidency was a complete and abject failure. Please, let’s not forget that. There have been a lot of interviews and articles before the switch-over that offered a somewhat benign retrospective of Bush’s reign, and it looks like reporters have been attempting to remain “objective” by entertaining the notion that Bush may have represented integrity because he never backed down from doing whatever the fuck he wanted, or something like that.

Bush was a terrible mistake, and a giant mar on the already besotted history of US politics. He stood as a representative not of personal integrity, but rather as the exact negative of what a leader should be. He didn’t listen to his opponents nor his own constituency. He didn’t utilize diplomacy in dealing with world bodies and foreign leaders. He took more vacations than any other president in history. His administration was peppered by yes-men, neo-cons, and nepotism. This is completely ignoring the myriad scandals that marred his administration. Basically, he didn’t do anything that he was supposed to do as a LEADER. The real “leadership” in the Bush presidency were the people who actually ran things, such as his vice-president and Karl Rove. Presidents in the past have oft been puppets on strings, such as Reagan, but at least Reagan had charisma and could instill some kind of false confidence, even when his actual policies resulted in terrible outcomes that we are still paying for today.

So yes, thank god we have closed that terrible chapter in our history. But we will be continuing to pay for those 8 years of bullshit for a long time hence, Obama or not. The Republican Party, as evidenced by their cold response to bipartisanship in the passing of the stimulus plan, are awaiting an eventual rebuttal to the centrism of the Obama presidency. They will do all they can do to ensure that his policies fail, so that they can renew their onslaught of the poor and middle class. Bear that in mind in the coming years: W. Bush was not an anomaly. He was the epitome of hard-line right-wing divisiveness. And again, let me be perfectly clear about the policies of such an administration: they failed. Period. They will never be effective. The myth of free market capitalism has been—with finality—debunked.

The history that Obama has made in his ascendance to the American presidency is not simply about a black man becoming a US President, nor reductively about simple “change”: it is about the forceful backing of an American public for a government that will utilize its policies for greater control and responsibility of economic tides. A government that does what it is supposed to do, rather than absolving itself of any and all responsibility beyond that of blatant militarism.

Now I want to discuss these “tough economic times,” as they like to say everyday on the news. This is indeed a time when the failed economic policies of the past are coming home to roost. This is also a time when “the American people” are beginning to pay for their years of living wantonly off of money that they never had and never will have. This is a time when issues of sustainability are no longer simply concerns of hippies, but of academic professors and Washington policy wonks. This is a time when America has to wake up to the fact that we have been sleeping, while the rest of the world has been quietly surpassing us in their investment in business and educational competitiveness.

Even though comparisons to the Great Depression can be fruitful simply for waking up people to the fact that this recession is real and its effects on people devastating, let’s also abstain from going too far. No one is jumping out of windows on Wall St. The lines for unemployment may be exceedingly long, but there’s no extensive lines for soup kitchens, at least, not yet. Retail chains that have stretched themselves too thin on the promise of endless sales have indeed been shutting their doors. Banks are decisively slimming their ranks with a butcher’s knife. And this impact cannot be understated on the economy nor on men and women now without salaries. But for many, it also doesn’t mean much of anything other than that they won’t waste their money like they might have before. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Because the fact is that transitioning into what they call a “green” economy can not be easy, nor even possible without the recognition that it is necessary. These “tough economic times” are not about a housing market bubble collapsing, nor about over-investment in bad securities and over-lending of easy credit: it is about the transition into a new economic and political and social paradigm. A paradigm in which we recognize our interdependence on each other and other nations, acknowledge the interconnectivity of mankind with that of the earth, and begin to take responsibility for the actions not only of ourselves, but of our governments and world bodies.

So as tough as these times are—and yes, these times are tough for me personally, thank you very much—they are also a necessary time for buckling down and gaining a clearer vision of what we need to achieve.

Rock Facing Water

In this contemporary juncture of my life in the continuum of heart-space-time I am being challenged, challenged by this giant density of city, challenged by the commute out to my work and by the long hours on my feet and by the loss of sleep, challenged by the people in the subway and the street, challenged by my living situation, challenged by my own limitations, challenged by my relationship, challenged by my expectations, challenged by everything that currently exists here and by everything that has led me summarily to this point of now.

I have not been writing frequently, as you may have duly noted, both because I lack free time outside of my days off and because I am having trouble enough grasping physically with my reality not to want to expend effort psychically and mentally untangling my emotions into worded strands. But I have a need. I have the pent up panopticon of my unvented frustrations and shattered hopes to deal with. I have the neglected plot of my blog awaiting tending to, calling out quietly for growth and development, for creativity and courage. I have myself to answer to, to nurture, take care of, love, and maintain.

Suffice to say that the challenges I face are far beyond the expected penance that any great dislocation can incur. I am realizing just how naive I still am, almost 30 but still sheltered in a collegiate sort of way. The struggle to actively prepare for the future is beyond all hopeful reckoning. I am understanding now that I must be prepared for disaster, for worst-case-scenario. I must be prepared to seriously and tenaciously endure. I must be ready to subvert my own natural inclinations and proclivities and breathe slower, breathe deeper, pace myself, hang back and await the unknown mystery that will come. To accept what I am given, patiently, with quiet ambition kept stoked hidden in a secret place from the world, to be unveiled only when the final cards are ready to be faced.

I think I seem to be implying that my reality is terrible, but it really is not. This is my point of this whole story. Things are not bad at all. The things that have been horrifying and distressing me are petty and largely irrelevant but to my battered ego. The challenges that I face wisp away when stood up to in full. My commute is focused reading time of the bounty that I skim from the wonderful NYC library. My work hones my body and teaches me humility and how to relate to a wonderful diversity of people and how to maintain a maturity and integrity of perspective and action. My living situation incorporates me into an extended family who supports and loves me. My relationship is committed, full of daily love and constant tendering. My expectations are evolving to include a much broader range of what my life is meant to be. And this giant, dirty city is teaching me what it means to truly live with and love humanity.

So these challenges, I am finally and wearily realizing, are welcome challenges. Though arriving in completely unexpected ways, rendering me momentarily defenseless, they are exactly and precisely what I desired and required, when seen for what they are. Something within me is rushing to the brink of a certain type of extinction. And beyond this shattering momentary loss and delimitation lies the widened horizon and incorporation of a greater sea.

So go we all. The economy, the body politic, the bedoeling roads of science, culture, and intuitive grasps at divinity. We journey our disparate paths to oneness. However embattled, however frayed, these droplets will find their way to their unexpectedly perfect destination.

Thoughts on Money & Poverty: The Root

In my series of posts focused on confronting the existence of poverty and thinking through the issues behind it [Thoughts on Poverty parts I, II, and III], I came to a series of realizations which I will sum up as follows: 1) development, profit-generation, and gentrification is not necessarily a bad thing; 2) poverty is not spawned by the idleness and laziness of the poor but rather through structures of commerce and policy; 3) charity is only a symptomatic response, and does not in any way address the root causes of poverty; and 4) poverty is sustained by the lack of will and indifference on the part of those with influence and money. These are all poignant observations, but my thought process was stopped short continually when I hit the wall of what do we do to change this? This can be seen especially in my second post, in which I end it by stating that micro-credit doesn’t work in the US, and that I have a lot more to learn on the subject of poverty.

I do indeed have a lot more to learn, but the wall that I was hitting turns out to be a quite common perception within the US in regards to the problem of entrepreneurship/employment and the poor. That wall is welfare. I was getting at this idea in a general way when I discovered that charity is a manifestation of shallow perceptions of the problem and not the solution.

The fact is that welfare has created a powerful disincentive to those stuck in poverty from ever obtaining the motivation to succeed. It’s throwing money at the problem, and increasing the division between the poor and the rich. It’s a type of exclusion, a method of control. Any of us who has ever been bribed by our parents knows this.

I arrived at this understanding while reading Banker to the Poor, by Muhammad Yunus. I have talked about Yunus before, and posted plenty of quotes of his, but I had not yet actually read a book written by him. I would highly advise reading some of his speeches and his books, in addition to books written about Grameen Bank such as David Bornstein’s The Price of a Dream. In Banker to the Poor, he discusses the reactions of Americans to the concept of micro-credit, and the problems he encountered with welfare states in the US and in Europe.

“I was not prepared for the amount of skepticism I encountered. What struck me was not so much people’s doubt as to whether micro-credit would succeed in the United States but their pessimism about whether anything would actually raise people out of poverty rather than merely alleviating its symptoms. Many Americans argue that their welfare state has created a lazy underclass of dysfunctional individuals who would never be interested in or capable of starting their own businesses or supporting themselves.

. . . Almost everyone I spoke with dismissed what I said, arguing that the Bengali experience could not be relevant to poverty eradication in the United States. They claimed that [poor people] needed jobs, training, health care, and protection from drugs and violence, not micro-loans, and that self-employment was a primitive concept lingering only in the Third World. Low-income people . . . needed money for rent and food, not for investment. They had no skills anyway.  . . .”

That is essentially the argument that I had been making in my second post on poverty. I was talking about how the cottage industries in Bangladesh of weaving, making furniture, rickshaw pulling, etc, were all something ingrained in their traditions and way of life. In the United States, I thought, what could we do to start our own businesses? Isn’t it a lot of hassle and paperwork, and don’t you have to get some kind of training and a degree? However, the more that you think about it, the more that you realize that the problem isn’t that people don’t have skills or ability, it is that they lack will and motivation.

I wrote a post while in Colombia on the teeming activity of its micro-economies, and of how this was inspiring to see, something that we need in the United States. And that is exactly what we do need! We need more street vendors, more individuals starting their own taxi businesses, more food carts, more clothing makers, more strange and exotic retail shops, more corner stores, etc. This local, community based commerce is what makes for a stronger overall economy. We need small-time entrepreneurs.

As I was reading Yunus’ chapter on the United States while on the subway, I excitedly gripped the book and finally realized the biggest major obstacle both in my mind and in my nation in regards to poverty: the concept and institution of welfare.

“. . . I witnessed directly how welfare laws in the United States create disincentives for welfare recipients to work. Those who receive welfare become virtual prisoners not only of poverty but of those who would help them; if they earn a dollar, it must be immediately reported to the welfare authority and deducted from their next welfare check. Welfare recipients are also not allowed to borrow money from any institutional source.

. . . In the developed world, my greatest nemesis is the tenacity of the social welfare system. . . Recipients of a monthly handout feel as afraid to start a business as the purdah-covered women in Bengali villages.

. . . I believe . . . that providing unemployment benefits is not the best way to address poverty. The able-bodied poor don’t want or need charity. The dole only increases their misery, robs them of incentive and, more important, of self-respect.

Poverty is not created by the poor. It is created by the structures of society and the policies pursued by society.”

One of the problems with welfare is that it is staunchly defended by anyone who thinks that they are liberal and/or compassionate. It is thus defended because it is seen as a necessary means of address to the problems of poverty. But welfare is only a symptomatic address; it does not change the structures that create the conditions for poverty.

We obviously cannot just lop off welfare and expect the problem to be solved. Welfare must be reduced in tandem with the extension of financial services to the poor in the form of micro-loans. Welfare must also be altered to allow for the poor to have incentive to take out loans and start their own businesses.

Welfare as a concept and institution should not be done away with. Welfare is necessary for those people who are not able-bodied enough to help themselves. However, it needs some drastic changes in its structuring. Otherwise, all other actions we take to eradicate poverty in the United States will end up falling far short in the face of the lack of will, self-esteem, and motivation on the part of the poor themselves. Only they can raise themselves out of poverty.

Geography of the Mind

Why can’t we look at people based on the color of their minds, the fruit of their perspectives, their intriguing meshed inner map of happenstance and outward trajectories of decisions, the varying shades of individualism interwoven within the living fabric of all that exists? We’ve got people convinced that somehow the color of their skin defines their capability and outlines their personality. That the accoutrements of one’s gender defines their ability to succeed or perform. That we’ve got to talk a certain way, act a certain way, perform a certain way.

It’s now been proven that sexual orientation is a formation of the brain before thought. There is no will, no choice in the matter. What appears can and often will contradict what is.

In the United States, we have furthered and maintained the myth of an identity known as the ‘black’ or ‘white’ person. Is the type of genes that one possesses relevant to anything but one’s healthcare provider? The color of one’s skin only becomes relevant outside of such concerns in a society that has bigotry at its core. The classification of black and white should not be used to subdivide cultural identity. We are all citizens of our country, with common goals and standards. Our perceived differences should merely lie in geography and ideologies, not in genes.

We live in a world based on diaspora. The identity of the citizen of a country is no longer based on the color of one’s skin nor even necessarily on the language one speaks. We create artificial subdivisions based on wealth and seclusion, and use excuses like racial identity to explain away inequity.

There is no escaping the conclusion that we all share common goals and agree to accept the standards of capitalism and democracy and human rights. Beyond that, why are we divided? Beyond that, why are we afraid? Beyond that, why do we classify ourselves as limited due to our appearance, when all of the evidence around us points not to what we look like, but where we happen to live, or what we happen to belief in?

All this hullabuloo during the presidential campaign has revolved around race and gender politics. What a petty misdirection of our attention from the issues that truly matter, and what concerns us all. It’s like everyone is patting themselves on the back because a woman and a black man are finally considered viable candidates for president of the United States. But guess what people? Wait to pat yourselves on the back until the day comes when we dismiss race and gender as completely irrelevant to the realm of politics—and to any other realm of public domain.

Thoughts On Money & Poverty: Part III

I’ve had some more thoughts to add to my developing perspective on poverty that stems and evolves from my last post; there I had begun the line of thought that poverty is not an issue of charity and indifference, but rather of a systemic need to provide recourse for the poor to make their own money in a legitimate manner (duh!). Continuing this direction in thought, I would like to now confront a fundamental obstacle in the path to the poor helping themselves: those with the money and the power.

It is the onus and privilege of those with money and power to pretend that they have nothing to do with poverty. I am now going to begin speaking of these folk as “we”, in the assumption that if you are reading this post, you are probably not living in poverty. And I include these poor, destitute 20 somethings in NYC who are forced to flirt for free drinks and eat junk food while living in their loft apartments in midtown Manhattan (follow that link up there to read yet another article that demonstrates just whom the NY Times caters their news towards). At this point, you are probably throwing up your hands and backing out the door, saying, “I’m not responsible for poverty. I can barely afford my credit card bills, fill up at the pump, or pay back my student loans.” But you are. We are all responsible, because of the very reason of such a denial. We are responsible because we are complicit.

Don’t worry, this is not going to turn into one of those liberal assays of guilt and blame. I simply wanted to make my point very clear: the major obstacle in the way of the poor raising themselves out of poverty is not themselves—it is those who hold onto money and power and deny it from the poor. We are all complicit in this act because of reasons such as I had detailed in my last post on this issue: we believe that the poor are poor because they are lazy, stupid, or simply because we need poor people in order for there to be rich people. And so we either extend charity or pity, or we remain indifferent. And thus complicit.

Beyond complicity, there are those who work directly to keep the poor poor, and these are the people with the major money and power. The Bush Administration, along with groups like Enron and Halliburton, have clearly demonstrated what kind of stripes these people wear. They are greedy sons of bitches who will not hesitate to lie, cheat, and betray all of the world in order to get what they feel is their entitlement. And because we are complicit, we slap their hands, but we do nothing to stop them. Because we all want to be this powerful and have that much money. We all want to become the real life embodiment of the American Dream.

But to assume that simply because we live in a capitalistic society and that our market thrives on competition that we require for there to be have and have-nots is ridiculous, and in fact completely anti-capitalistic. The more people that we can allow onto the playing field of the economy, the more that there will be enhanced competition as well as collaborative growth, and the more the market will develop. Poor people need to be extended credit and resources to start their own businesses, fund their own developments, build their own communities, and invest back into the bigger pool. The more that micro-economies thrive and teem and interact with smaller fry, the more that the macro will be stabilized and efficient and healthy.

The fact is, there is no credible reason to keep poor people poor. The only thing that keeps poor people poor is the greed, complacency, bigotry, short sightedness, and all other forms of small mindedness from those with money and power. It is therefore only extreme indifference and cruelty that allows us to see, when taxes are cut and budgets are slashed and essential programs and social services are jettisoned, not the devastating effect on human lives, rather solely the hypothetical increase in our own coffers. We put up blinders to our own humanity to think in such a manner. The fact is that there is no excuse. There is no acceptable reason for accepting poverty.

And there is no acceptable reason, for that matter, of accepting any kind of tainted and bitter revolt against our own humanity. Compassion is much stronger than pity. Understanding is much more powerful than fear. Everyone on this earth has the potential to be beautiful. Everyone deserves to be beautiful, to shine, to be seen as the treasure and gift that they are.

We need to fight back against the ugly despair, disgust, and terror that is our nightly news. We need to fight back against the complacency and indifference that is so easy to succumb to, the avoidant eyes on the subway, the challenging aggression on the streets, the burning short fuses on the freeway.

No one said it would be easy. But there is a fundamental step within our own minds that must take place for anything good to happen: we must determine whether we will fight for joy, fight for beauty, fight for wonder, and fight for humanity, or whether we will simply step back into the shallows of our temporary alliances and turn against what we know is true. We know that the existence of poverty—ever, anywhere, but most especially now—is simply

unacceptable.

So what do we do? Do we start throwing our pennies in the cups of homeless on the street? No, of course not. We need to start affecting change in the structures and environments of the most destitute and impoverished areas of our cities. We need healthy, beautiful, clean, and affordable living spaces. We need access to public transportation. We need the extension of credit and access to money. We need access to well-funded educational and youth development programs. We need nutritious food. We need potable water. Is any of this complicated?

Essentially, all that the problem of poverty and its related issues requires is ATTENTION. The solutions then flow from creativity, community, and collaborative dedication. And turning our attention to these matters should not be seen as charity, selflessness, and other forms of saintliness. Rather, we turn our attention to these matters because we recognize that we are enhancing our greater community—because we are removing the root source of fear, bigotry, and despair from all of our lives. Like what I was saying in another post about the need, in our personal lives, of cleaning and organizing every hidden and unattended spot in our living spaces and mind, so too in our civic spaces and minds we must focus on those areas that are ignored, have been left to fester and decay, have turned into dumping grounds. Because these are areas that are parts of ourselves.

We cannot detach ourselves from each other, except to the detriment of everyone’s humanity.

Organize Your Self

I grew up with my momma cleaning up most of my scattered detritus after me. I’ve never been a terribly messy person, but I certainly wasn’t clean either. I considered myself organized because I would make piles in terms of accessibility: the most recent thing that I had just used would be on top, so I would know where to find something I used frequently.

Since then I’ve learned how to maintain cleanliness and organization. Having girls as roommates for a couple of years has helped, as they would yell at me about being messy until I started cleaning up after myself. Then after working in the housekeeping department for a few years, I developed a higher level of personal standards of organization and cleanliness, because I had to tell other people how to clean, and not only how to clean well, but furthermore why they should want to clean well. I would generally approach this issue from a philosophical standpoint regarding the broader issue of why working hard and applying yourself fully to work–no matter the given task–is a definitive life-skill.

I’m going to take the argument for why working hard is an important capability for everyone to have and broaden that concept a little more to introduce the idea that how we think, act, and organize ourselves in our private lives is deeply and intimately related to how we develop and achieve our goals professionally. This might seem simple to you in concept, but in reality not many people really make that connection. So let me see what I can make of it.

Clean Up, Organize, and Maintain Your Life

Yeah, I know. This is sounding like a self-help, motivational thing all of a sudden. But sometimes hearing it from other people is refreshing, because I can tell ya, hearing it from myself is refreshing. Look, you need to clean up after yourself. And I’m not just talking about your dishes or your clothes. I’m talking about behind your couch, behind the toilet, underneath the sink, those boxes full of junk in the attic. Every inch of living space that you leave to fester unattended is representative of a space within yourself. If you have a tendency to hoard things and allow them to pile up until it overruns your living area, then guess what? Chances are quite good that you allow emotional baggage in your life, both professionally and personally, to build up until they affect and infect your everyday existence as well.

Obviously, there’s differing levels of maintenance required, dependent on high and low traffic areas. But it’s all ultimately part of a whole. You’ve got to get a handle on the whole thing in order to know that you are on top of it, and the only way you can do that is by starting now in tackling all the areas that you’ve been pushing away and allowing to sit unattended. Once you’ve done a “deep clean”, or “spring clean” or whatever you want to call it, then you can settle back into the daily routine of doing your dishes, picking up your clothes, vacuuming your carpet, etc, and simply doing semi-deeper cleans periodically. But every single space, outer and inner, top to bottom, must be accounted for if you want to get your life in order.

Don’t believe me? I don’t got no psychology degree, but I can tell you that cleaning (please only use non-toxic cleaners!) is indeed therapy. We reflect our living environments. There are some things that we can’t control, like the guy on the subway who curses us for no good reason, or the pinecone that fell on top of our head right as we walked underneath it. But in the areas of our lives that are under our control, it is imperative that we empower ourselves to organize and maintain those areas in order to allow ourselves to develop.

I’m not saying to be OCD about it. But I’m letting you know that allowing your baggage to build up and sit for years in a corner is equivalent to effectively blinding yourself to your own problems, even as they culminate to become a visible monster, visible to everyone except yourself.

This baggage, this junk, this dirt, mildew, mold, mice, and other assorted benefits of laxness will manifest itself in your life in terms of your relationships and work life as well. You will be the person who never moves upward in job responsibility, who never moves forward in a relationship. You will be the person who wants to ignore their own hand in their failure to achieve. You will be the person whose computer runs so slow that it’s basically an Apple IIe in boot time.

Present Yourself Well to Everyone

We like to think that when it comes to friends that we can let our guards down and just let it all hang out, without being judged or condemned. But in fact, it is often our friends that are our harshest critics–for the very reason that they have greater insight into our lives and how we live it. Unfortunately, our friends don’t often want to tell us straightforwardly their criticisms, and so we rarely get the feedback from the people that are best capable of giving us that feedback. Instead, we get that critical feedback from strangers or hostile acquaintances, and by then, we aren’t really positioned to listen to them.

It’s important that we present ourselves well to everyone, from strangers to family members. Everyone judges. It’s human nature. We aren’t saints–we use our brains and our eyeballs and we compare and contrast other people with ourselves. With friends and family members, we CAN let our guards down, and we know that we can always come back to open arms. But only to a certain point. You see, if you keep acting like an inconsiderate slob or snob around a loved one, at some point, they will get fed up with it. And no matter how much someone may like you for your wit and company, they will probably not recommend you to their employer when you are looking for a job if you walk around all day with the crack of your ass showing. You can’t take your friends and family for granted. In fact, you shouldn’t take anyone for granted. You should treat every single person in your day with the same respect. Because it all comes back to you.

And another point here is that appearance is related to integrity. That ties in with my overall theme, which is that your personal life ties in intimately with your professional life. The way you look, the way you talk, the way you think. How you lead your private life has repercussions on the way your interactions on the street and on the job go. Call it karma, call it do-unto-others-as-they-would-do-unto-you, call it what you like. Just recognize that everything you do is related to everyone else, and that people may not be able to see who you are in your fundamental being, being as it are that they are not saints, don’t really give a shit about you, and have enough to deal with in their own lives, BUT, even completely random strangers on the street get a vibe from you. People in your workplace get a feeling from the way you talk, the way you carry yourself. Your friends know you for certain qualities. Your family jokes about how you always did this and that as a tyke. Who you are and what you do are unimpeachably interrelated.

Take All Criticism Into Consideration

I kind of went into this point a little bit above when I talked about how even the closest of friends can be your harshest critics. But sometimes a complete stranger will criticize you. Sometimes it will be your boss at work. And you will want to say “fuck you” and disregard everything they said to you. And that’s completely understandable, and in certain situations, that is exactly what you should do. However, there are also many times when you should be listening. Criticism, especially when it occurs on the job, should be taken as constructive, even when it sounds harsh and demeaning. Some managers simply aren’t good people, aren’t good managers, and don’t know how to communicate well with different people. But they are trying to get something across. And sometimes your friends, family, and even complete strangers are as well.

Taking a criticism of yourself into consideration does not weaken you unless you feel that it is so valid that you can’t see any way of answering it. So you need to take it head on. Let yourself be challenged. Take every criticism as a lesson from a teacher, and see how you can use it to develop yourself and make yourself stronger.

It’s like on American Idol. Paula Abdul thinks she’s everyone’s friend. She’s not. Simon Cowell is the one to listen to. He is honest, to the point of being brutal. If you did a shitty job, he will tell you that you did a shitty job, while Paula blathers on about dreams and how wonderful you are. If the contestant listens to Paula, and shuts out Simon, then he/she is most likely just about to be voted off the show. Simon may be harsh, but he is attempting to provide constructive criticism that should be taken into consideration if the artist wants to develop and progress.

Sometimes people just don’t phrase it to you in the right ways so that it can slip in past your ego. So you need to just drop your ego sometimes and really listen to other people when they critique you. Let yourself be judged. Learning to wade through other people’s problems and picking out what is of use to you and what drags you down is how you grow. Often in the midst of the bricolage of someone elses’ jealousy, desire, rage, and anguish is a gem of constructive criticism that is waiting to be taken into your consideration and worked on.

Alright, so I think I am just about cleaned out on any further burning nuggets of wisdom that I feel the need to bestow on you right now. I’ll plop out any new ones as they come along. I’ve still got a lot of growing and learning to do myself, but I’ve been thinking about these particular things that I’ve learned as I’ve been coming up against extreme change in my life, both professionally, emotionally, spatially, and otherwise.

Thoughts on Money and Poverty: Part II

On my last post on the issue of gentrification, I’d left off with the question of “How can a community expand and develop its wealth locally, while at the same time accepting, encouraging, and embracing external inputs of wealth?” The more I’ve pondered on this, the more I’ve realized that the question is quite a bit more complicated than it sounds. Essentially, what we are really looking at are the root causes of poverty, and considering methods of assisting communities in raising themselves out of it.

The problem with poverty is that there are a lot of differing [mis]perceptions of the issue: the most common one being that of the better off, which assumes that those who are poor are lazy, stupid, or otherwise—that is, if the well-to-do are aware of the issue and consider it at all (it sounds amazing, but having grown up in a well-to-do area, and having worked in the hospitality industry with the extremely well-to-do and their offspring, I know first-hand there are indeed people out there who live in an oblivious bubble, both self-imposed and otherwise). Stemming from this initial prejudice, there are two common perceptions on poverty and the poor: 1) they are an unfortunate and inevitable scourge of humanity, to be ignored, endured, and shut away into their own enclaves; and/or 2) they are to be pitied and supported through the works of charity.

I think what becomes apparent as one examines this issue is that while welfare and charity are quite obviously direly needed by those stranded in extreme poverty, what must be recognized is that charity is ultimately only a temporal bandaid that avoids the root causes that create and sustain the conditions for poverty. What becomes further apparent from this realization is that the poor must be given the structural means to help themselves. In other words, the only ones who can directly and actively work to address the root causes of poverty are the poor themselves. Thus, they require not charity, but a pragmatic and systematic support that hands the money and the tools over to them.

This may at first sound perhaps out of touch with reality or idealistic and overly vague. But this is a concept that has been applied effectively by Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh starting in the 70’s, when he introduced the concept of micro-credit and banking for those in poverty with his Grameen Bank. Since then, micro-credit has been further applied successively, most notably, in Southeast Asia and Latin America. Yunus founded a bank which extends credit directly to the poor, so that they could gain the means of raising themselves out of poverty through their own hard work and entrepreneurship. This is an approach to poverty that is staunchly capitalistic in its approach, yet underlied by a basic concern for human welfare. Most approaches to poverty are rooted in that initial notion of charity which we just have outlined above, and exist as non-profit donation-based organizations. These organizations generally do little or nothing in regards to helping the poor help themselves. Rather, it is always a matter of the rich helping or giving to the poor. This position, of course, is already rooted in a problematic perception of poverty that does nothing to empower the poor themselves, and rather perpetuates the symptoms.

The problem with micro-credit is that there haven’t been found ways to translate it into a workable and comparable vision in the United States. The reason for this is that micro-credit works quite well in village-based economies, where the poor have recourse to starting their own business in say, weaving kerchiefs, or vending food, and other such small, individual, street-cart type sales. There exists in such cultures many small, micro-economies in which small entrepreneurs are able to thrive. But in the United States, the economy, lifestyle, and culture is different, and small-time entrepreneurs face a number of hurdles before they can break into the world of commerce.

And this is where my thought begins to shoot out randomly in a haze like a flashlight in the fog. This is where I realize just how much more I need to learn. I have already gone from the issue of gentrification to that of poverty in general, thus expanding and deepening the questions on money and poverty. So at this point, I’m going to step back from these questions and look again at the bigger picture. I think what has been changing in my own thought and perception is that I am no longer fundamentally opposed to capitalism—the concept of making money. I believe that we can consciously make money, while at the same time benefitting the environment and combating poverty. And as these changing ideas sink in, my worldview begins to shift on an everyday level, such that as during this trip to Colombia, I have been noting the influence of wealth, and welcoming it.

Thoughts on Money and Poverty

Some thoughts that have been fomenting somewhere in the back of my dome have been coming to the fore as my trip winds down to a close here in Bogotá, and I’ve had some more time to contemplate the bigger picture. One item that I’ve been considering is the changing perceptions I have of the concept of ‘gentrification’. I’ve always been critical of the influence of big money on people’s lives and communities. I’m especially critical of the bland and complacent lifestyles of the well-to-do, the ‘yuppies’, the SUVS, the suburban sprawl, the homogenous franchises, and so on. But my experience here in Colombia has driven me to question some of the aspects of gentrification that before I immediately and completely rejected. This has been due to the fact that when you’re traveling on a budget here, you’re inevitably staying in some neighborhoods that aren’t exactly high-end. And as a traveler coming from somewhere else, it makes you all the more conscious of the presence of poverty, wealth, and the types of commerce going on around you. And when you are looking simply for a bite to eat, or a place to get a good juice or coffee at, you are looking for some kind of welcome, however tentative that may be. At the very least, simply the product you desire, preferably sanitary and with a smile. But in some places, these basic expectations have been hard to come by, for the very simple reason that many businesses here are run by families or individuals that cater solely to a small local market, and have little interest in growing or developing their operation. They will close for weeks on end for the holiday season, they will not provide customer service aside from plopping down your plate and taking your money, and there’s often a sense that they could really care less for your business.

In such circumstances, I have discovered a sudden appreciation for the Juan Valdez Café chain. Yes, it is a franchise, but there are a few things that you can count on when you enter into one of these ‘yuppie’ establishments: 1) friendly, efficient service; 2) clean facilities, with a bathoom; 3) an atmosphere conducive to sitting, relaxing, chatting, and reading. These are aspects, as Americans, that I think we often take for granted in our businesses. We expect—and demand—adequate customer service, clean facilities, and proper delivery of the product. We live in the land of franchise.

Now let me be clear about something: I despise franchises, both as a concept and in their usual effect on local communities. However, when else has failed, and all I’ve wanted is somewhere to sit and read and drink coffee, Juan Valdez has been there. This isn’t to say that I haven’t discovered some great local cafés and what not. I will happily circumvent Juan Valdez whenever and wherever I can. But there have been times when there just haven’t been any other places open, or air-conditioned, or quiet or spacious enough to read in.

Here in Colombia, they don’t have the knee-jerk allergic reaction to franchises that many of us idealistic Americans have developed. They love their Coca-Cola and Postobon, they love their Juan Valdez, and while there are certainly Colombians who question capitalism and its accompanying imposition of materialistic values, as well as the influence of foreign investment, overall, Colombians seem quite happy with name-brands and familiar franchises. And that may have had a subtle influence on my experience here as well. When everyone drinks Coca-Cola all the time, it makes you more apt to grab one and sip it along with your fried chicken, patacones, and french fries.

But I’m getting off on a tangent. What I was getting at in bringing up the subject of Juan Valdez cafés is that there can be a positive effect from the influx of outside money and businesses. As a traveler and tourist, for example, I am bringing in money from outside into the country, and this is good for their economy. I understand when people speak disparagingly of gringos, and I have never been one to welcome tourists into my own community with open arms. Tourists are, in general, annoying, demanding, and most of their money goes to big business. That said, however, in the big picture, I believe tourism is a good thing for a country as a whole, especially if the tourism is encouraged to developed concurrently with local environmental and social concerns.

And so I’ve been extending that thought into the more general concept of the influx of outside money into any local community. I think that gentrification is easy to criticize and despise, but I think that what also needs to be considered is that inevitably, a community needs outside input in order grow. Before gentrification, a community is generally mired in poverty, and there is little potential for growth and expansion. Gentrification, in fact, could be seen as an inevitable aspect of growth and development.

I’m going to ignore for the moment the myriad negative effects that gentrification can incur on the local community (such as simply driving out all the prior, poor inhabitants), which I am fully aware of, and rather move onto the parable of hip-hop. The growth and development of this music mirrors quite well the growth and development of any community when it encounters a sudden influx of outside wealth. Hip-hop started, of course, in the restrictive hard-knock life of the streets. It was a revolution in articulation. Suddenly, disenfranchised youth found a creative and positive outlet for their passion, desire, anger, and thought. Much like graffiti, it empowered them in a way that, at first, seemed unprofitable to the outside world. It began simply as a method for those who had been unseen and unheard to express themselves. And as hip-hop developed and expanded into other communities, and eventually across the globe, it inevitably became commercialized and diverged into the mainstream, and glitz and glitter and glamour now are the name of the industry game. It seems to be dominated by a rich and famous elite, who proclaim at every chance they can their extravagant wealth. While this aspect of hip-hop can and will be lamented by those who love it for its roots in self-expression and rebellion, at the same time, it can also be seen as an inevitable outgrowth of the expansion and development of the music as a whole. This is analogous to the development of any artist who is “discovered” and inducted into the mainstream. Sometimes, and oftentimes, this sudden influx of outside money and influence results in pathologies and the destruction of an artist’s original intent and purpose. But other times, it simply extends the power, creativity, and influence of the individual to a broader audience, which is a good thing, if they are doing anything original and inspiring. And they develop their style in accordance with this extension (sometimes, of course, losing some of their original fans in the process).

But such is the process of evolution and growth. Communities, like individuals, are not steady-state bubbles. They are influenced necessarily by external factors, and they must utilize and embrace these factors if they are to grow. They can, of course, choose to withdraw inward and fight off all externalities, but inevitably, they either must collapse or expand.

So to get back to my original idea: I am beginning to think that external inputs of wealth are not completely undesirable. The problem, of course, is that most of the time, none of this wealth ends up in the pockets of the original inhabitants of a community, and they are either driven out, or they are left to fester in small controlled pockets within the newer developing community. So the problem I think that must be addressed, therefore, is not that of “gentrification” per se: the problem that must be addressed is: how can a community expand and develop its wealth locally, while at the same time accepting, encouraging, and embracing external inputs of wealth?

I’m going to get into some ideas and approaches to that question in another post, as this one is getting rather long. I wanted to first lay down the foundation for it, however, as for me these ideas are a new direction in thought. I’m beginning, basically, to look more at such issues in an integral fashion, rather than simply separating the negative from the positive and looking only at one side. I’m recognizing that the idea of money and wealth is not so simple as rejecting the entire concept of monetary gain. Rather, the idea is to unite the principle of natural wealth with that of manufactured wealth.

Sick of Partisanship

As the whole presidential race idiocy begins winding itself up in the media, I grow increasingly agitated at the state of politics in this country (the ol US of A for those of you who stumbled acrost this page randomly). The whole nature of all interactions here, whether political, economic, or legal, all seem to have to be made on adversarial terms. It’s always A vs B. It’s never A working with B to produce C. It’s Democrats vs Republicans. It’s capitalism vs socialism. It’s environmentalist groups vs corporations. It’s good vs evil. Etc, ad nauseam.

The problem with this state of affairs is that when it comes to issues where all parties involved need to work together to create any kind of real solutions to major problems, such as in the arenas of public health, or reducing carbon emissions, then there is never any progress made until things attain such a state of degradation that it is undeniable to everyone that drastic measures must be made. And by that point, of course, it’s just a little too late. It’s “damage control,” instead of “preventing catastrophe.” It’s “rebuilding from the ground up,” instead of “retrofitting existing structures.” Aside from those of us who subscribe to neither liberal nor conservative, nor Democrat nor Republican, most Americans are quite happy to delimit their perceptions to one side or the other. Once you’ve picked a side, most issues resolve themselves rather conveniently into black or white. And you will never understand the perception of the “other side.”

If you’ve read any of my political rants in the past, then you know that I obviously don’t hold much patience with Republicans and conservatives of most any stripe. I really don’t have any interest in seeing their point of view, because it dominates enough of the political and cultural scene as it is, even as “liberal” as Americans pretend their major cities might be. But I also despise Democrats and people who blindly adhere to notions of liberalism as simply ideological opposition to Republicans, while mostly, in action, still just big-business economic ass-kissing just like conservatism. But ultimately, I really don’t give a shit about Republican or Democrat. I care about issues that truly affect the world and the nation, and that truly need to be addressed, one way or another. Issues such as revitalization of the economy, global warming, and public health. And the only way that such issues will ever get addressed is if people in positions of leadership put their fat heads together and work out the nitty-gritty details as a team, instead of squabbling over ideological issues that they will never resolve simply so that they can maintain political supremacy.

And this is the exact point where the pseudo-Democracy of the United States begins to look a bit out-dated and inefficient. Because it seems to be in the very nature of our economic, legal, and political systems to be adversarial, partisan, and privatized and individualized. Any kind of notions of “teamwork” seem to invoke knee-jerk allergic reactions to the ideologies of socialism and communism. But addressing and resolving trenchant issues such as those embedded in public health and global warming require a social cohesiveness that will not be achieved through mere partisanship. We must somehow go beyond ideologies, whether political, economic, or otherwise, and attempt to look at issues through a cumulative scattered cohesion of lenses, the liberals and conservatives and goods and evils all sewn together into a temporary visage of futurity. A rainbow quilt of different perceptions, meshed into a higher vision, beyond that which could have ever been achieved through the simple antagonism of isolated fragments. Such a networked collectivity of expression can still be competitive, aggressive, and progress oriented. But it must necessarily demolish the currently seemingly intractable obstacles of factions squabbling over (largely irrelevant) ideological issues.

Nuclear Energy Now

“I think we have little option but to prepare for the worst and assume that we have already passed the threshold. Like paramedics, their first priority is to keep the patient, civilization, alive during the journey to a world that at least is no longer undergoing rapid change. We face unrestrained heat, and its consequences will be with us within no more than a few decades. We should now be preparing for a rise of sea level, spells of near-intolerable heat like that in Central Europe in 2003, and storms of unprecedented severity. We should also be prepared for surprises, deadly local or regional events that are wholly unpredictable. The immediate need is secure and safe sources of energy to keep the lights of civilization burning and for the preparation of our defences against the rising sea level. There is no alternative but nuclear fission energy until fusion energy and sensible forms of renewable energy arrive as a truly long-term provider. Nuclear energy is free of emissions and independent of imports from what will be a disturbed world. We would be right to cut back all emissions to a minimum, and this includes emissions of methane from leaking pipes and landfill sites. But most of all we need electricity to sustain our technologically based civilization.”

James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia: Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity (2006)

A List of Ways to Reduce Your Waste

The main problem right now in all of the world, including within each of our own lives, is waste. We waste our time, we waste our resources. Our social, economic, and political systems waste money, people, natural capital, time, and energy. We have all been taught to waste, because we have been taught—and we allow ourselves—to be blind, heedless, and “good consumers”.

Businesses can strive to become closed loop production systems, in which they use a whole systems approach to reduce and eliminate waste. This ultimately saves them money and allows them to become increasingly efficient and agile in adapting to the market. So too in our individual lives we should strive to eliminate our output of waste as well as our input of short-term or function-less products.

People always seem to be confused about what they can do in their individual lives, aside from donating money to charity, to really enact change to regressive and repressive social, economic, and political systems. As in any grassroots movement, the real change comes from within. And then it begins to affect daily lives. And daily lives—the furthest downstream from centralized, sloth-like systems—affect everything.

So as an exercise, I thought it might be useful to attempt to compile a list of ways to reduce waste from our everyday personal lives. I don’t do many of these things myself yet, either, so take these as suggestions and goals. If you know of other ways that individuals can act to reduce their production and consumption of waste, please feel free to add more in the form of comments. Also, think of ways that you can mirror some of these actions within your community or workplace. Sometimes you’d be surprised at what you could change.

Please note also that almost all of the items detailed below will ultimately save you money, in addition to the social and environmental benefits, so please get beyond the dismissive mentality of labeling me as a “treehugger” or “hippie”—that’s the kind of perspective that lends itself to further waste.

1) Purchase from local businesses and food sources as much as feasible.

2) Reduce or eliminate the use of a personal vehicle. Walk, bike, and utilize public transportation. Delimit the sphere of your personal social needs to as localized an area as feasible.

3) Utilize your free time for things that make you feel good, foster interaction with other people, and that are productive. Reduce or eliminate mindless activities such as TV watching. Learn new things. Take classes at your local community college. Check out books from your library.

4) Make exercise a part of your daily existence, such as in biking or walking to work, or biking or walking to a bar or bookstore or cafe. Try to eliminate the perception of exercise as an accessory chore or activity to become more desirable.

5) Cook your own food. Mend your own clothes. Make your own coffee or bring your own coffee mug to coffee houses. Utilize whatever resources you have to do your own thing.

6) Eliminate the use of plastic bags at stores. Bring along a tote bag or backpack to carry items in whenever you go shopping.

7) Stop buying water bottled from municipal sources. Get yourself a Brita filter and drink tap water.

8 ) Buy produce directly from local (preferably organic) farmers; attend farmer’s markets or join food coops.

9) Make your own household cleaning solutions

10) Purchase only energy star rated appliances and lighting systems; convert all of your lighting to compact florescents

11) Insulate your house with energy efficient windows

12) Convert your lawn to a natural food source

13) Compost your food and outdoor waste; utilize kitchen scraps for the making of stock

14) Harvest rainwater and utilize in shower and household use and/or garden irrigation

15) Design and implement a greywater system

16) Reduce your use of paper and wood products; reuse paper as much as possible (double-sided printing) or eliminate altogether through the use of a computer. Use alternative woods, reclaimed wood, or engineered wood products whenever possible when designing and building structures.

17) Take yourself off of junk mail lists; utilize e-mail notification services where possible for bank notices, cellphone bills, etc.

Positivity

Of course we could discuss endlessly the notions of ideologies, systems, and expectations. But the only fundamental thing that could ever be changed in this world is your own perception. Is you allowing yourself to see beyond what you have been given. And there are really only two types of perceptions, when you pull everything out to the very big penultimate picture: there are negative perceptions, and there are positive perceptions. If you subscribe to negativity, as we all do at some point in our daily lives, then you tend to talk shit about your neighbors, your coworkers, the world. If you have faith in the positive, you believe that you have the ability to relate and talk to anyone.

It’s really quite unproductive to be negative. Ever. And I’m can be a largely negative person, so I know this first-hand. At any point in my day, if I allow myself to step into the steeped downward spiral of negative thought, on any matter, whether it is about myself, or about someone else, or about my environment, then it just drags everything else down. This isn’t to say that one should ignore or pretend away negative shit. Rather to say that in acknowledging negativity, one can still find something positive, constructive, and move onward from it.

I would go so far as to say that all of the problems in this world stem from negative perceptions. For example, one common negative perception in the U.S. is that poor people are poor because they are lazy and thus they deserve to be poor. This is such a harsh and superficial judgment, especially considering all those of us who break our backs working 9 to 5s just to break even. Yet it is a commonly held belief, reinforced especially by super-rich and powerful people who can influence the media and the political process.

Negativity creates divisions and boundaries where they do not exist. It creates us, and them. It creates good, and evil. It creates gossip, and hatred, and self-induced blindness.

Positivity is to embrace, to reach across distances and formulate understanding. It is to give people the benefit of the doubt, to give them the space to grow, the forum to be themselves. Every single person in this world has a context within which they are beautiful. Until you understand that context, you cannot understand that person, nor see them for what they are. You see fragments, you see pieces, and you string these together into some kind of definition which you use to put them into a box.

We put the world into boxes because it makes it easier for us to pretend that we know what we are, and what the world is. We look at these little boxes and we label them and we think that we have things figured out. We are children sitting on the floor of our bedrooms with pieces of a puzzle whose frame is in the night sky. We can’t ever know how it all fits together. We can’t ever see the big picture. All we can do is accept that the pieces which we have been given are a part of a whole of which we are also a part.

I don’t want to allow myself to become petty. I don’t want to pretend that I know what other people should be. I want to be positive. I want to forge connections, not distance. I want to understand, not separate. I want to truly fulfill my potential, rather than wasting away all of my life, all of the gifts that I have been given. If I cannot be positive, then what is the point in breathing?

Disillusionment Americana

As Americans, we suffer from a vast disillusionment with our nation and ourselves. We still adhere, through appearance and hearsay, to ideals and mental strictures that we have lost faith in, yet won’t admit it to ourselves or each other, whether through fear or through clinging to these lost fragments like a drowning ship passenger to a piece of wood siding. We look back at the countercultural backlashes of the 60s as if they were mere adolescent throes of desire and drug use. The 50s still lives on, ironically, in simulacrum, in our repressive mentalities and jaded TV shows. Racism still thrives everywhere, although so cunning and interwoven that it no longer is simply black and white, but whiteblack and blackblack, cultural and psychological. The American Dream that never really existed now quietly plans for its retirement, with investment portfolios and hopeful bets hedged in to an economy whose tenuous reality folds in continuously, although we keep forgetting, so busy in speculating on stillborn futures. As if the monopoly game of real estate would simply keep expanding into some endless horizon, into the invisible properties of Atlantis. As if roads can simply keep on being built, widened, overpassed. As if nothing would ever run out. As if lakes would never run dry. As if Manifest Destiny continues on into outer space.

We all know that the fantasy is over. That the United States can no longer even remotely pretend to be a representative of freedom and democracy. That building bigger and higher tech weaponry does not promote peace. That police and military only protect the interests of those with money. That privatizing public health, or public anything, does not produce savings for the consumer. That the rich getting richer does not eventually pull up hard working folks from poverty.

And yet we find ourselves unable to say these things in everyday discourse without confronting some kind of religious zeal of denial. There are people out there, and they are a majority, who will quite happily go down with the ship, taking their lawns and SUVs along with them. Forget the children, they say. Forget the future. Let them fend for themselves while supporting us as we grow old and are kept alive by drugs in hospitals.

Is it simply that we Americans, as a culture and a nation, have become so enamored of our exported ideals, so regimented by our supermarket pitches of complacency and freedom of purchase, so wrapped up in the structures that are sucking our souls dry, that we are unable to step free of its wreckage? That we are so guilty, so intimately involved in what we know at some level to be false, that we are nearly incapable of the psychological ability to look at ourselves in full honesty?

It is depressing though, people. It’s depressing because the prisons are still getting built and overfilled daily with men whose only crime was to not fit the profile of what we think we are. Because weapons are still getting made and shipped overseas and sold to the highest bidder. Because our waste stream is still a direct, flooding line straight to the sea. Because even all this talk of global warming only has us talking about how to find new sources of energy we can waste, rather than reexamining our very lifestyles, our very economic systems, our very outlook upon life.

It is this reexamination we need. Openly, critically, honestly, and as publicly as possible. Democracy can be recreated. Capitalism can be reinvented. The United States can be something other than a representative of false hope and denied dreams. But as long as we keep holding onto our fallen images, then nothing will change, and we will continue to be the bitches of advertising campaigns hinged on our complacency and political campaigns dependent on our lethargy.

Restorative Justice and Perspectival Shifts

There’s an interesting article in The Independent on ‘restorative justice’ methods in Britain which deal with bullying in some schools. The restorative justice approach, based on Maori cultural principles, attempts to deal with bullying not through punishment, but through face-to-face facilitated discussion and reconciliation between victim and offender. Having been bullied once upon a time myself in my childhood, simply because I was a quiet and introverted kid, I can well understand the ineffectiveness of attempting to “tattletale” on the bully. All that happens is that you make them more angry, and they will only seek later to make you pay for telling on them and getting them in trouble.

The restorative justice approach sits the bully and their victim down together, and the victim tells the bully what the effects of their bullying have done to their lives. The bully is thus shown quite viscerally what the effect of his/her actions has wrought, and he or she is thus given the full action-and-consequence perspective that they had not thought through before. It teaches them to understand the victim’s perspective. Once this perspective is developed, 9 times out of 10 the bully has lost all desire to continue abusing another human being. Because no longer can they pretend they don’t know what they are doing.

What a unique and deceptively simple approach to justice! Community and communication based as opposed to hierarchical law based. Because law, even when developed with noble ethos and egalitarian interests in mind, is set in stone—well not stone, because it can be amended, but more like thickly stirred sludge—and is little able to adapt to unique particular circumstances and contexts. Our law is a law focused on punishment and retribution, suing and money kickbacks, with little to no compassion and healing.

I just realized from the article that I had already unwittingly been training some of my workers in restorative justice approaches when it came to dealing with matters of poor cleaning jobs done by staff under them. I tell them that instead of yelling at people and making them feel bad, simply take the person into the place where they failed to clean adequately and show them visually what they missed. Once they have an understanding of this, they will not usually make the same mistakes again, unless they really are just asswipes. The fact is that most people simply do not always have the oversight and follow through of thought that takes them to the point of realizing the bigger picture, unless they are specifically shown the bigger picture. Then they get the A-ha moment.

Our culture, I often think, works from the angle of assuming that people are inherently stupid and pretty much worthless except as mindless consumers, spoonfed drivel and guidance from above. But on the contrary, I think that people are innately quite capable of doing highly creative acts of beauty, if given half a chance. It’s this ‘half a chance’ that is oftentimes missing in most situations. The most potent power that we all hold in the world is our perspective, and if most people’s perspectives are delimited and negative, then that has a profound affect on everyone. Even the simple inner act of allowing another human being to exist beyond the box that you daily choose to confine them in can have amazing consequences. All you did was change the way you look, and then the outer world shifted! Is this possible? It is. It happens every day. The little revolutions. The little openings of light shining from within making their way into another’s eyes.

American Misogynistic Culture: See it?

It is often hard for most people to really understand that we live in a masculine centered, misogynistic culture. I think one of the simplest ways to clarify this reality is by looking at the conflicting values that we ascribe to women: we tell them that they should shave their legs and their armpits, wear make-up, work out a lot and eat right and have a tight body, that they should have big boobs in order to get noticed—and all of this simply to please men, to be desirable. And then yet, if a woman takes pleasure in her own sexuality, if she empowers herself to enjoy her body, then she is a whore. So we tell women both that they should be sex symbols—objects of desire—and yet that they can’t take undue pleasure in their own sexuality.

Men, on the other hand, are given increased status for their sexual prowess and conquests. Every boy secretly wishes to be a pimp, like Snoop Dogg (before he got rich and discovered the small joys of parenthood and home life). To use em and leave em, like all women were just tools designed by god to get men off. And all of our culture reinforces this notion of women as commodified objects, including many women themselves, who are trained as youngsters to compete to be the most successful objects of desire possible. Sure, women are lawyers, politicians, army officers, etc. But all you have to do is turn on the TV to see just how far they’ve still got to go.

Women should be revered for their beauty and sexuality, there’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is when their beauty and sexuality is used to sell products to children. What’s wrong is when goddesses are rendered so confused and insecure by all the conflicting values thrown at them that they don’t even know how to see their own beauty. What’s wrong is when men are given all the power, and as in any situation where there are those who have power over those who have relinquished their power, women are mentally, spiritually, or physically abused.

The deleterious effects of masculine values—such as of aggression, territoriality, and short peak climaxes—can be seen the world over. Aggressive corporate shortsightedness, little or no political diplomacy, global warming, global sex and drug trading, you name it. Of course feminine powers are everpresent and quietly intertwined, working always to balance. But until the feminine values of intuition, empathy, flowing continuous risings, and flexibility are given greater prominence and cultural enforcement, the misogyny will continue. Our children will continue to be sexualized in order to sell them products, our women will continue to relinquish their own power to be successful, and our men will continue to think that treating women like sperm receptacles is the right thing to do.

Acceptance of Less Than Ideal Locales

As I get older and a little less ornery, shedding some of the idealistic righteous anger developed during adolescence and young adulthood, I discover that my perspectives on things I once abhorred or disdained are shifting, ever so slightly, towards tolerance. For example, I have suddenly found, to my surprise, that I no longer am harboring hatred towards Los Angeles or San Diego (sentiments which could be gathered in my last post before I left for these destinations). Maybe it’s just because the weather is summertime hot and sunny, the flowers are blooming, and women are scantily clad. Or maybe it’s just because I’m so grateful to be on vacation and no longer in a winter enshrouded location. Whatever the case, I even felt a kind of rekindling of love in my heart for Southern Cali, which once only aroused my ire. Sure, the traffic is still horrendous and the Bel Air inhabitants still superficial. Sure the cities are still ever sprawling and politically mismanaged. Sure, water is still wasted by the gallons daily on manicured lawnscapes and fruitless shrubberies. But for the first time in Los Angeles, I felt a real sense of community, whereas before I only felt detachment and isolation. The Mexican communities, the Korean communities, etc, are all thriving and bustling and filled with life and interconnectiveness. It’s akin to the perspectival paradigm shift that I felt in Perú, in regards to Lima–at first it was just a big dirty crowded city, but by the end, I saw it as colorful, vibrant, and beautiful. I suppose it is really simply a matter of the places that one sees, and the viewpoint that one gets from that particular position. When I lived there before, I lived in an overly expensive, disconnected-from-reality area, and that tainted all of my experiences, because I didn’t own a car and thus rarely ventured far from that established viewpoint. This time in LA, we acted more as tourists–we went to the tarpits (did you know that there were native camels in the LA basin?), we went to Olvera St and ate some excellent comida Mexicana. I also visited my friend’s ecovillage in the heart of Koreatown and ate salad greens picked fresh from his garden. We went out to see live cumbia in a bar smaller than an armpit (definitely not up to firecode) where there were no signs except for a little piece of cardboard telling you to go around back, where it was so crowded you could only kind of stand there and sway and jump up and down, but it still was good.

In San Diego, the 80 degree weather is maybe just slightly too hot, but it’s still a welcome change from snow embankments and icy walkways. Walking along the beach, smelling the flower laden air, running along the boardwalk . . .suddenly San Diego doesn’t seem so shitty. Sure, the city is corrupt and the traffic is getting just as bad as LA’s (give it 5 more years). Sure, the music scene is still dead and the sense of community is often missing. But it’s a place to live, and there’s always the everpresence of the ocean, primal, impervious to human pettiness.

There are certain overarching tendencies in any given city, which lends its force and inertia to the general vibe and flow of lifestyle and commerce. But within these dominant trends there are also eddies and subcurrents of wholly different and unique peoples and mindsets and musics. Let’s be honest, Los Angeles really does typify many of the stereotypes that it is branded with: there’s a lot of really superficial, boob-jobbed MILFs and shiny luxury cars and actor wannabes living on credit and sheer appearance. It’s Hollywood, it’s Beverly Hills, it’s Bel Air, it’s Westwood. But then there’s East LA. There’s Watts. There’s Compton. There’s Skid Row. There’s concrete fortress towers of luxury condos and then there’s rows of cardboard box houses right along outside. There’s the appearance and then there’s the reality. There’s the movie and then there’s the living life coming to the block near you.

And really, of course, ultimately, what it really comes down to–in any place where you might happen to reside in–is you, and what you choose to do with what is available. Is you, creating new perceptions or simply going along with whatever the latest herd fashion fed to you on the billboards, the radio, the TVs, the clubs. Is you, fighting to find what makes you alive, fighting for friendships that give you strength, fighting for love that gives you wisdom, fighting for space that allows you to grow. This can happen anywhere, in any city, at any time. Guess it just took me a while to grow up and learn to stop blaming everything around me for keeping me down, when all I really had to blame was myself for not reaching out.

Space of Self Discovery as a Means to Unity

It’s hard in this day and age to find the space in which you can maintain your integrity. It’s like the whole culture, all of society–even the entire world–is dead set against you finding yourself and discovering your inherent power and beauty. Everything we see and learn everyday is about tearing down other people. We watch the news and see politicians involved in scandals; we read tabloids and see famous people torn to shreds; we talk to our friends and gossip other people to pieces. Everything is about destroying each other. And eventually, all that this really seems to be about is avoiding the fact that we can’t face ourselves. We can’t face ourselves because we know just how easily we too would crumble in the face of a world that only wants to see us fail.

Words and perceptions have an incredible power–to speak against someone is to speak an incantation, a spell, a curse. To weave a mindset of dark expectations and negative hidden agendas. This builds into a web that strings them down, weighs into their actions like molasses. I know this because I have felt this from other people before, without even knowing what kind of words they might have spoken in privacy. It doesn’t matter what the words are–it is the intent, the perception that builds a force against you. It is the feeling that it almost doesn’t even matter what you do; that in order to change this negative mindset you would have to be a saint, impervious to expectation and the pull of others’ desires and dislikes.

To love someone means that at some point you must let go of your expectations of them. Whether you are a parent, a lover, or a stranger. How can anyone be themselves unless they have the space in which to create their own selfhood?

Quantum

I admit to having a certain fascination with quantum physics, especially as applied to cosmology. But I have absolutely no propensity for mathematics, equations, or really anything scientific at all. I just like the ideas that come out of it. And I find that oftentimes some of the principles and theories that arise out of those areas of research seem to make a philosophical, poetical sense. Poetical in the way that a quantum tunnel can be formed across seemingly uncrossable barriers, so too in language a metaphor links together seemingly unrelated things. Philosophical in the sense that as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that any attempt at measurement will be subject to some form of uncertainty, so too the philosopher recognizes that the very attempt to define and articulate certain aspects of things only blinds one to other potential viewpoints.

If quantum theory can be applied to the entire realm of the physical universe, as it is in quantum cosmology, then I do not see why it could not be just as readily applied in the realm of everyday thought and perception. I think that Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, for example, is readily understood on a conceptual level when it comes to individual perception and its power on the formation of potential outcomes in the universe, on the everyday scale of life. For example, if we look or talk about other people in a certain way, we can delimit or expand their potentiality, we can effectively destroy or create some of their possible outcomes. This is the power of gossip, the power of the observer.

The Mind Is The Greatest Of Weapons

What are feelings if they can’t be formed into thoughts? What are thoughts if they can’t be put into words? What are words if they can’t be turned into actions? What are actions if they are not dependent on what you feel?

Consciousness permeates all things. Intentions are broadcast before a movement is even made. How much more direct it is to simply be aware.

You could practice all your life learning how to disarm an attacker with a gun or a knife. Yet a true master of any martial art never has to fight. The mind is the greatest of weapons.

Focusing On Love

Love is the focus of all energy down to a singular point in all of the cosmos–the Beloved. This might at first seem to be reductionist, for what of all the friends, family, and various facets of the wider world that demands and requires your attention? But as love for your Beloved deepens, ripens, and evolves, you find that to devote all of this love to solely one point does not necessitate a loss of awareness nor a destruction of other potentialities; rather, as your heart deepens and expands through the medium of the Beloved, you find that your external connections to all the world also deepen and widen. That in fact, this love is the ONLY WAY you could ever grow. To evolve is to increase your ability to love. Love is not a complacent plateau of stasis; only through constant struggle and transcendence does it grow.
I have shut out everything but my Beloved, and my future lays itself out before me like a gift, and the only thing that is important is this love.

Muhammad Yunus’ Nobel Peace Lecture

Dr. Muhammad Yunus, accepting his Nobel Peace Prize, gave a stirring speech today detailing how to fight poverty effectively. He has demonstrated, through his work with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, that the poor, if given half a chance, will work to better themselves and their community. Contrast this to most middle to upper-class American’s viewpoint, which will be something to the tune of “poor people are poor because they are lazy, stupid, etc.” As in, poor people deserve to be poor. Dr. Yunus, on the other hand–obviously an enlightened human being, as opposed to most middle to upper-class Americans–states, “Poverty is created because we built our theoretical framework on assumptions which under-estimates human capacity . . . Poverty is caused by the failure at the conceptual level, rather than any lack of capability on the part of people.” Yes. His words come from the depths of understanding, compassion, and everyday connection with the struggles of poverty.

Dr. Yunus also clarifies some ideas on capitalism which I had been moving towards as my social awareness has been expanding bit by bit. He states that our current conception of capitalism and business “originates from the assumption that entrepreneurs are one-dimensional human beings, who are dedicated to one mission in their business lives — to maximize profit. This interpretation of capitalism insulates the entrepreneurs from all political, emotional, social, spiritual, environmental dimensions of their lives. This was done perhaps as a reasonable simplification, but it stripped away the very essentials of human life.

Human beings are a wonderful creation embodied with limitless human qualities and capabilities. Our theoretical constructs should make room for the blossoming of those qualities, not assume them away.

Many of the world’s problems exist because of this restriction on the players of free-market. The world has not resolved the problem of crushing poverty that half of its population suffers. Healthcare remains out of the reach on the majority of the world population. The country with the richest and freest market fails to provide healthcare for one-fifth of its population.

We have remained so impressed by the success of the free-market that we never dared to express any doubt abqut our basic assumption. To make it worse, we worked extra hard to transform ourselves, as closely as possible, into the one-dimensional human beings as conceptualized in the theory, to allow smooth functioning of the free market mechanism.“

How simply and pointedly stated. He very clearly explicates the issues surrounding poverty without getting bogged down in political or theoretical constructs. The fact is that our current definition of capitalism and human capability is extremely one-sided, and it’s destroying the entire world. Yunus also brings out a key element of poverty: that “poverty is a threat to peace.” That when people live in squalor with no immediate or visible means of escape, they will turn to terrorism, theft, and rage. That as long as we have those who have and those who have not, then we will have warfare.

Finally, Yunus offers a vision of humanity that is filled with hope. He obviously believes in the power of the human mind to create whatever it desires. He states that “we create what we want: we get what we want, or what we don’t refuse. We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us, and that poverty is part of human destiny. This is precisely why we continue to have poor people around us. If we firmly believe that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have built appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world.” In other words, all it takes is the simple will to make the world a better place to begin making it a better place. Amen.

Stepping Outside of the US

Let’s do a little exercise together. For this exercise, we will perform some visualizations. First, I’m going to ask you to step outside of yourself, your American-ness, your cultural identity as an Estadounidense (unless of course you are not from the United States, in which case, you are already outside of such an is-ness, and can immediately proceed to step 2, which is as follows): Think of the United States as if you had no personal attachment or cultural fondness for its sports teams, its Christian fundamentalism, its Hollywood icons, its myriad consumer products, its McDonalds, its Starbucks–none of these. Now, standing outside of the United States, looking at it apart from all of its sprawling, ravenous conglomeration of consumers and consumees, tell me what you might think of this fact: The United States of America is the only nation in the history of mankind to have actually utilized weapons of mass destruction AGAINST OTHER HUMAN BEINGS. Now remember, you are standing outside of your Americanness, outside of Pearl Harbor and whatever racist or patriotic and cultural and political and historical reasons you might dig up to explicate the usage of said atom bombs. You looking at the simple fact, the piece of data, the raw information that the United States has dropped 2 bombs that harnesses the energy of the sun in an immediately explosive and long-lastingly radioactive manner onto a major city in another country. We’re talking a product of science manufactured explicitly for the murder of the largest amount of living creatures possible. We’re talking a conscious intention to eliminate mass amounts of human beings, to consciously inflict a tremendous amount of suffering onto another peoples. We’re not talking collateral damage, precision bombing, unfortunate casualties of war here. We’re talking families, dogs, fish, butterflies, birds, trees, buildings, whole histories and existences purposefully decimated, obliterated, scalded, maimed eternally–because no city, no people, no nation, no world could ever forget such an act committed.

Ok, now think of the fact that North Korea just tested a nuclear weapon. And now ask yourself: if I were a smaller country that has been directly labeled as “evil” by the United States of America, wouldn’t I want a nuclear weapon, even if it was just 1 or 2 vs the 10,000 that the US harbors, even if only as a negotiating piece, a shield, a dark assurance that at least maybe the US would think twice before invading or decimating my population?

Seems entirely reasonable, now, doesn’t it?
It’s an interesting exercise, to step outside of your given identity for a minute, and think of how an “outsider”, an “other” may perceive you. Because we have been trained since day one never to consider such perceptions. And so normally, we may not even bat an eye when our government chooses to murder other peoples, not so long as we can pretend that it is an act of self-defense, even if only “preemptive.”

I’m a little fed up with the tendency of many Americans, whether liberal or conservative or trailer park raised or silver spoon fed to purposefully close themselves off to anything that might challenge their well-being and comfort. It’s easier, sometimes, to simply create an enemy that embodies all evil, so that instead of questioning yourself, you attack, attack, attack. Progress, movement forward.

I don’t think that the United States, whether as a political and military body, or as a cultural institution, or as a consumer of resources, is evil. I also don’t think North Korea is evil. I think that maybe there’s a little evil everywhere, whether in your own heart, your own home, or in your nation or corporation or globe. And the only way this evil will ever come to light is through a constant looking inward, at yourself, at your intentions, at how you may be perceived by others. Scandals like Enron or Duke Cunningham or whatever the latest Washington downfall may be are examples of men who have chosen to only look outward, blinding themselves to their own loss of integrity.

While North Korea is testing nukes, our own people are going into schools and shooting themselves and each other. Which of these is the most threatening to our existence? I’m not really sure, but all I know is that it is a lot easier to cast North Korea as evil, a country and culture you most likely know zilch about beyond Team America’s portrayal of Kim Jong Il, then to look at the more complex and opaque issue of disturbed and dangerous Americans with guns.

So what should we do? Trumpet the horns, ride out into the East with guns drawn and hearts high, ready and willing to eradicate all Evil and spread the gospel seed of capitalism? Or maybe its time, as a people, as a nation, that we took a time-out, and took a closer look at who we are, and what we have become.

On Depression

Change is underway in the heavens as in the heart; summer hath terminado, fall’s begun. It’s great. I look forward to not knowing the future, with only the assurance that it will be as good as it is now. I trained my new staff on how to clean the shit out of toilets.
The only glitch in the system being that my ear is fucked up and I’ve somewhat lost my sense of balance as a result. Hopefully the inner ear will heal and I can get away with not going deaf.
When everything around you is beautiful, you’ve gotta climb to the top of the highest mountain so that you can see it right. Got to keep yourself in perspective. Stop and breathe and look down.
I’m getting older, I can feel it, and I love it. My life only gets better from where I’ve begun. I dragged myself through the mud to get to where I am, and I know what the sun is.

Which reminds me of a topic I wished to explore. I was thinking the other day of how depressed I was in my formative years, and of how I no longer ever feel that way any more, and I then thought of how there’s so much shit out there on the market about self-help and what not, such that it’s quite apparent that in a lot of people’s lives there is a lot of depression and anxiety, and I thought maybe if I figured out why I no longer get depressed, it might help other people.

I want to addendum that statement with the fact that I am not saying that I live like in some steady state of bliss or anything. I get very moody and I feel down and lonely some days, a lot of days. But it never gets in the way of my thoughts and my self-image the way it used to when I was depressed. Which may be the point to which I am leading: my own conceptions of what it is to be depressed have shifted, not necessarily the fact of “feeling down.”

First of all, let me tell you something: depression is NOT a disease. That’s some new age psychiatry bullshit. Depression is a state of mind by which you are letting yourself in on the fact that something ain’t right with your life, or your perception of life. Depression is you telling yourself you need a change in your situation, in your mentality. So even if you take some drugs that makes you feel happier, you’ve still got the root causes of depression laying all around you like snakes in the grass, just waiting to be stepped on. Which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t take drugs to make you feel happier. Just to realize that drugs serve a certain function, but that they can’t make you change–they can help you change, but they are not the change.

To be always happy is unattainable, and in fact not even desirable. To go up and down like waves is the way of life. We pulsate. We learn, we move, the current flows. We see things from high and low. To be low is not unnatural. To keep yourself in that state of mind, however, certainly is.

When I was in junior high and high school I had a lot of problems with my self-image. I was shy and introverted and kind of awkward socially. It wasn’t enough to keep me from making friends or anything, but inside of me it affected me greatly. I was extremely self-conscious and didn’t really feel like I could express myself around most people. Which later in life I’ve come to realize is a form of vanity. But beyond my basic social anxieties and feeling of inadequacies around cute girls, there was something deeper that came in the form of constant depression. I had a feeling of hopelessness. Like it wasn’t just me, it was everyone, it was the whole world that wasn’t good enough. Like people were just kind of hopeless as a species. Like all of life was kind of hopeless in general. It was just ugly, bitter violence and stupidity.

I thought about suicide and all that kind of stuff. But never very seriously, because at some level I realized that people did love me and care about me and that it would be just vindictive selfishness to take my problems out on them like that. And believe me, I can tell you for certain that that is what it feels like when someone you know kills themselves. Go read what I went through and you’ll know. If you’ve ever thought about it, even for a second, listen to me: it’s fucking selfish and if you really are hurting so bad that you can’t see a way out of it, do this: sell everything you own and buy a plane ticket to South America. Go to the Amazon and immerse yourself in the deepest darkest jungle. Then think about it again and see how the idea appears to you at that time.

My first year of college, I was so unhappy after a break-up and being in a place that I hated, that I would just walk from my dorms to class with one sentence running through my mind: “i want to die.” It was kind of scary. I was nearly to the point of going to seek professional help or drugs, but I decided that at that point, having already been through a lot of depression, that it would be a cop-out to give in then. I felt like if I could just get through that darkest period of my life, then I could get past it.
And I did. That was the worst time in my depression, and it was like I let myself get so low that I finally saw the way out, and the only time I’ve ever felt like that again was when my friend Toby killed himself, and he brought back all of those feelings in me for a little while.

Look, those feelings will always be there in some part of you, and they will come out in times of pain, when someone you love dies or goes away, or when something inside of you changes. It’s impossible to smooth out a steady happiness and contentment without destroying some essential part of your mind or soul. Pain is how you adapt to change. To change is to grow. To grow is to expand your capacity for suffering–you channel out in so many ways that even if part of you is up in flame, another part is embedded in water.

So for me what has become key is never feeling like all of me is low. Part of me might be down, but part of me is already moving ahead. That in fact, to be “down” doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with me. That it is a part of my existence. If I am down all the time, then what it means is that I need to change something.

2 winters ago I was down for a while, and I could tell that it was starting to affect my mentality and the way I treated others. So I sat down and drew up a list with what was wrong with situation and then set a plan on how to go about changing it. Even just the simple act of making that list made me feel better. I had to shift my mentality. The low is to make you appreciate where you need to swing up to next to get to where you need to go.

Positive Potentiality In Peops

I talk often in my writings of the need for openness in perception, the lack of expectations, such that another human being can exist more fully in their potential, which is ultimately infinite. I write of this often because it is one of my frequent, daily shortcomings in my interaction with strangers. By the way, if you ever feel that my writing is preachy, take it with a grain of salt, because I am not preaching necessarily to anyone but myself. Writing is a way for me to discuss issues and provide myself with advice that normally I can’t distance enough in daily life to see.

Anyway, so in the professional sphere, dealing with rich, complacent assholes is a frequent occurrence. Actually, a lot of them aren’t assholes. They are just weak minded and kind of pitiful in their ignorance of reality. They make a lot of money but they don’t have such basic social skills as courtesy or the ability to hold a conversation with someone outside of their limited social sphere. They drive an SUV mindlessly, without any idea of what cost such a thing might have to anyone else. They have spoiled, obnoxious children who will most likely grow up to be just as dumb and sheltered as they are. They like to power-trip over people who are only courteous to them because it is their job.

I can’t stand these kind of people, and unfortunately I have to deal with them frequently. But the truly unfortunate thing is that out of the numbers of people that I see every day, it is really only a few who are like that. But that few taints my perception of all the rest. And so I end up classifying a whole group of people and writing them off, such that I really don’t give any of them a chance to be anything more than just another moronic, well-off American.

It’s hard, incredibly hard, to shake off negativity once some stranger has been rude to you. I worked as a ticket seller for a gigantic ski resort one winter, and I dealt with a lot of rich to pretending-to-be-rich people who only knew how to be demeaning and dehumanizing to me once they couldn’t get their way. It got to be after a while that I wouldn’t be truly nice or open with anyone at my window, because every individual turned in my mind into a stream of idiots, bitches, and assholes. And everyday, every hour, there would be some idiot to reconfirm that. So I would just be indifferent and cold to all of them.

It’s like that receptionist, you know the one, at the doctor’s office, or that person who you talked about your refund with at the customer service window–that employee who was just outright rude to you, and seemed to derive no pleasure in life except to be rude to you for no reason. We’ve all dealt, way too often, with such a person, and they ruin our day. They are unhappy, bitter people. You know that all they do is go home and then talk shit about people from work.

I’ve been that person from time to time. All it takes is one rude motherfucker, and I close up and try to limit my interactions with guests as much as possible. And I thus effectively close off any potential in any of these people to be anything but what I view them to be. Every now and then there is that one person or family who is truly, genuinely nice and warm, and it is a shame if I can’t allow them to be that in my mind or in my interactions with them. And the fact is, further, that even the worst asshole, even the most representative complacent, close-minded sheltered bigot, has a side of warm intelligence and creativity, in which they can be viewed and understood within their own unique, personal context. It is simply that I must get beyond my own ego, I have to learn to see the bigger picture–such that if someone is being rude to me, that I should not take it personally. Such that even if someone has been sheltered and suckled on ignorance and wealth all their life, they still have that boundless potential as God. To allow myself to be mired in bitterness against them is a waste of my heart and mind.

It is, of course, much easier to say this than to manifest it in my life. But I’m hoping that if I say it enough, it will work its charm. Because I believe quite firmly that it is in the everyday that the world is changed, and if I or anyone else can’t get beyond appearances than we are just allowing the bullshit to perpetuate. It is not just Gandhis who change the world–it is the nurse you dealt with at the hospital, it is the guy who took your change at the Taco Bell, it is the person crossing the street at the stop sign, it is every person in your day, every person in your life, every little positive interaction. You know that warm feeling you get, when you smile at a complete stranger who is only interacting with you because it is business, and you get a smile back, and it is real? And you’ve actually connected to this person, and you’ve made their day, and they’ve made yours? That is what it is to cross boundaries and change the world. Positivity. Every day. Every moment. The potential in every person for love is boundless.

Free Dome

The greatest fear we have is of each other. How others will judge us, dependent on what we have or do not have. How wonderful it is when we see someone who is without shame in the face of the world. See, freedom isn’t just some political achievement. Freedom is that individual who dances without care, that one who speaks of the spirits, that one who is always only themself, beautiful, no matter what people may think.
The eyes of other people constitutes a powerful force. It drags down stars. It drives skilled musicians to mundanity. All of these closed, locked down perceptions. What we allow, what we perceive. This is what determines the world.

and god help you if you are a pheonix
and you dare to rise up from the ash
a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy
while you are just flying back

–ani difranco

Travel and Everyday Life

“Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.”

–Freya Stark

The Promise

Laying in my hammock in the jungle, listening to the gallìnas crow and the insects whirring and feeling my blood slowly draining through the continuous multiple straw sucks of the mosquitoes, I began to think of my journeys in Perù and of how these experiences have changed me. I really do not feel like the same person that I was when I came here. The windows opened to the vistas of a new world have shed light onto another person dwelling inside of me–there all along, of course. Once I return to the habits and customs of my nation of birth, I wonder how long these changes can persist. But that is perhaps not so important. What is important is that I have seen these new horizons at all and that I know now that they can exist.
I have been so blessed on these travels, given so much by so many people, that it would be impossible for me not to be changed. When one’s life has been filled with blessings, there is nothing to do but try to find some way to fufill the promise and opportunity these blessings have bestowed. Because I know that there has to be some kind of karmic payment for all of this wonderfulness. Maybe some of this debt has already been payed and this is the reward, I don’t really know, but what I do know is that I am humbled in the face of gifts that are beyond anything that I could have expected. All I can do is try to find a way to give this love back to other people and spread the light around.

Travel

You go there because there is nothing there to remind you of yourself. Who are you here? There are no predefinitions of what you are supposed to be, no established perceptions limiting the scope of your ability to change like the wind over the grass. The only thing that you are is what you yourself have held onto and retained imprinted throughout your thoughts and subsequently, your actions. You hold over your own head your limitations now, no one else can see anything but what you give to them. And you find that you are the same person that you always were, when you suckled on the back of your hand all day long, when you fell on the rocks and scraped up your legs, when you experimented with being self-destructive, when you first opened up your heart to another–what is it that has changed? What has changed and what will continue to change are the new worlds that you can perceive within yourself. The world sees what you have seen within yourself, even the dim lit crevices you pushed away in fear. What you have embraced the world must embrace in turn, because every portal opened within an individual is the creation of a new world upon the world that we thought we once knew. And we all must grapple together with what each person’s tormential beauty has unleashed upon us.

Idiomas

Learning a new language is teaching me about the importance not simply of words, but the connections which bind them together and imbue them with immediate and specific meaning. The words themselves are only meaningful within a context, a framework, a sea of personal signification. Because words express feelings, they express a flow of thought, the spitfire sparks of synapses in response to stimuli. They are cars transporting desire and love and life and death.
The hardest part for me in learning a new language is trying to force myself to accept irregularities within the language that don’t make any logical sense. I have to just accept that I have to memorize this shit and live with it and learn to use it. Another hard thing for me is that when studying, I will think that I understand and remember what I am studying–and when I sit down with a piece of paper I do remember it–but in actual application in real life I won’t be able to use it.
A language is not academic–it must be utilized, because it is not through memory or understanding of grammatical laws alone that it is learned–it is learned by the slow and stubborn process of opening one’s perceptions to a new way of being, of seeing, forging new connections in the mind between visualizations and words. You have to learn how to think in a new way, and this is why my mind rebels–it wants to figure shit out based on my prior understanding. Just got to jump in and start swimming

Vida

What is life? What is it to live? We travel to lands where even the sky speaks in different languages, we look into plated museum displays of ancient mystery–mysterious because of its ultimate uknowability. What is to be found beyond the established habitual confines of what is daily taken for granted? Only new forms to be learned, new boundaries, new vistas, new habits. But this shock of the new also jolts us into wonder. Wonder that we are alive, wonder that such temporal forms exist. Life is here, within us, even when the world has changed all around us, we are still what we were–an accumulation of things that could not be taken away or let go, the residual impressions of the river of life passing through us, the endless movement of fragments yearning for their source. Whether molded to cookie-cutter standards or strangled to the point of suffocation or wild like horses on the plains, it is life. Life flows ever onward beyond the grasp of conscious perception. We can get used to anything.

End of Fall

The Cock Crows Three Times

Here’s a little anti-rant against my own ranting. A piece of writing written in rebuff against its own past already written. I hate writing these indignant things about Bush and current events and then reading back over them and seeing the single-simple-mindedness of it all. I know even as I write it that I am settling for rhetoric over substance, for substance is not so easily confined to righteousness. Not that the two cannot meet, but when they do, it tends not to be in the forum of blame and anger. As if to be so naive to say that because one does not agree with George W Bush then one should become a Democrat, to solve all the world’s problems.

And another thing I can say with all due respect is fuck Republicans and fuck Democrats alike and equally. Fuck anyone who would spin events to construct a false reality based on strategic motives. Such as myself when I grow weak and feel the need to associate myself with political ambitions. We all do it for different reasons. I do it because I want to believe in something, I want to feel self-righteous, I want to feel that I can quell the destructive consequences of the structures I live within.

But there is only one thing which I can control in my life. I can control how I perceive things. That is a power that I have that no one can take from me if I refuse to relinquish it.

I forget sometimes and begin to think that there is this notion of “the people” and there is this notion of “the state.” As if “the people” were some coherent entity, gaining awareness, moving in a certain direction. As if “the state” were this repressive consciousness, manifested in billy clubs and guns and hoarded money. But all there really is are structures of definition. Avenues of coherence, paths of articulation. Watch a fish swim for long enough and you will begin to notice its personality. Everything has a line of understanding that can be hooked into invisibility. Pull it up and unearth the life living with or without your desire.

The only politics that I can speak with some authority upon is the politics of my life.

Reflections

We are like many surfaced mirrors, reflecting many different things from many different angles. These surfaces, these tops, tell us where things end. We must explore down deep within to find their beginnings, their roots, the quiet sacred places from which they’ve drawn their existance.

Never define someone based on what you know. For every person can be seen differently. So forget what you think, & learn to live by your heart, be guided by your love, & relinquish your desire over that which you cannot control. I could sermonize all day about this righteousness that can only be lived. I am human, & I will always feel this neverending need for security. I want to be warm, I want to be held, I want to be without individuality. So everyday I must make my way into words to be translated by the world’s empathy. Listen. You may find yourself here.

Road Trip Chronicle Installment II

becoming an alien visitor to new worlds is a matter of learning acceptance–if one is to do more than the prescribed touristy activity calculated for maximum drainage of your pocketbook. acceptance of standards of living and ways of perceiving people that are outside of the box of what you are accustomed to. eventually, the habits and customs of your history dissipate into the constant adaptation that is required to meet the demands of an unknown and spontaneous universe. anything can and will happen, for there are no ways of sustaining reductive expectations in the face of what you cannot prepare for. yes, in the heartland of America, it is easy to pigeon-hole the people into Wal-Mart herds of banality, to hold up their strip-malled, colon-clogging comfort food overeating ways as representative of everything which is wrong and thus, to be immediately dismissed. but when you are in the midst of that which you would from a distance define, you find yourself talking and relating to people–no matter their appearance–as what they truly are–sentient and intelligent beings struggling to live and find their own winding paths to the light. it no longer becomes a matter of relating to people based on things such as political views and consumerist habits–it becomes a matter of relating to people based on how they actually live, and taking into account the whole context and environment of their situation, including all the problems so evident on the surface. this is not to say that all criticism must be suspended–rather, to say that one has to take into account how a people view themselves and their world. for if someone can find beauty and ways of existence in a world that i would perish in, than i want to try to understand what it is that they find in it that allows them to sustain themselves, and i want to try to relate to them based on how they relate to each other. there is indeed a lot of shit out here that is pretty fucked up. but i haven’t found anything here that is fucked up in a way that isn’t just as fucked up in a different way where i’m from. and so i am discovering new perspectives on myself and what i have become accustomed to, as well. for what we often use as judgment of other people are things which those people take for granted, and do not even think about, so ingrained in their culture it is. so really, learning my way to an understanding of other people is a way of learning my way to an understanding of myself.

To This

i was watching the smoke from a stick of nag champa swirling in the light
directly neath the lampshade just now, and realizing that i can’t really see
it, can’t really feel it, not as it is, not with the attention and empty
focus that it requires, just like i can’t really appreciate the almost
imperceptible yet ever present iridescence of the snow covering everything
in the winter sun rise, the shimmering in the sky, in the air. it’s there,
and i notice it, and i look straight at it and yet all i can see and feel
are the things that bind me to my circumstances–work, or the latest love
interest, or my fucking ego getting in the way of everything that is good in
my life. i want to feel and appreciate all of the beauty that is all around
me, but i can’t get past myself. here i am, sitting in my den, looking at
the incense swirling, and yet it’s all just an act, all a pretense–and i
think, how can i get to that space where i can really feel it? or is it
impossible? but it seems like it can happen, in a different world, a world
where you don’t have to work a shitty job where they treat you like a dumb
animal, in a world where you don’t have to wonder if what love you feel from
another human being is really something that means something, in a world
where you aren’t always using other people in order to survive. i want to
be there, but i know that there is no shortcut there, and i know that it’s a
long road to where i need to be, that’s it’s such a long, long road, just to
get to here, just to get to now, just to get to where i am, to where i
really am.

Skyward

everyday the flood of feelings crashes over my view of the sky and i sink
down into the silence of blindness, frenziedly struggling to reach the air
in the deadened stillness of an empty vacuum, the emotions weighted down in
my body, my mind anchored to darkness, my heart fluttering for escape.
everyday i struggle to find moments where i can breathe, i struggle to find
calm, i struggle to let myself go and rise into the sky like a bird of
flame. and like unearthing a gem, sometimes i can reach a space where i do
not need anyone to make me happy, and i do not let anyone make me sad.
once you open the door to your heart, even for a moment, the flood will rise
and the levy will threaten to break, and all the bridges you’d spent so long
to build to the dry high sky will collapse, and you will be drowning in your
fantasies, and crying in the face of a reality in which you must start anew
with nothing.
you see, one day you might start thinking that you got something. and you
will begin to operate based off of this assumption. and suddenly, another
day, you wake up and the paradigm has shifted, and what you thought you had
has disappeared. and you are left clinging to the fragments of a past that
is no longer relevant.
i know this. i know this, and i know this. i know that i’ve never got
nothing. and yet, suddenly i’ll find myself falling in love with someone,
and even as i know that it is hopeless, i begin to grasp out, and i begin to
craft fantasies in which i do not fully believe, and when they break, my
heart breaks, and my emotions bury my face in the facts that i always knew.
it’s the same old song. and motherfucker, i’m tired of singing it. i’m
sick of hearing it’s pop culturally looped refrain in my mind. and i’m
ashamed of playing it for you.
it doesn’t matter what i have achieved in my life, of what heights or of
what lows i’ve been through. it’s doesn’t matter who has loved me, or who
has despised me. it doesn’t matter what i’ve written, and what i’ve left
unsaid. what matters is that i recognize that i am nothing, no matter what.
what matters is that i recognize that i am divine, no matter who. what
matters is that i recognize. what matters is that i change. what matters
is that i will build that bridge to get to heaven no matter what storms the
earth or my heart or your heart may arouse. i am going to find my way to
god. i will find my own way.
no matter how much i love you, i am going to find my own way. no matter how much you love me, i will find my way. no matter how much hate, how much fear, how much anger, how much hunger, how much how much how much, i will do it. i will reach it. i will
find my way without anything. i will find my way within everything.

Speculative Revolution Part IV

the saying “what you can’t see won’t hurt you” has a certain truth to it. this kind of attitude is inherent in the way we walk down supermarket aisles–we don’t see how these products were formulated, tested, slaughtered, chopped up, and we really would rather not see that. for instance, meat. if we witnessed what is done every day to the animals
that were sacrificed to sit in spongy chunks frozen and wrapped, then we would get sick to our stomachs when we looked at it. but take away the product from the process of creation (or destruction), and what you have is just this detached thing, isolated, hidden behind layers of coding, marketing strategies, masks of complacency. and so what you don’t see isn’t necessarily hurting you–but someone or something else is getting hurt. ultimately, i would argue, it does hurt you. but that’s a different can of worms. let me stick with the idea of blinders for a minute. think about yourself walking down a city street, let’s say on your way to class, or to work. you pass by numbers of people, some you look at, some you ignore, some you look at and then reject and ignore. think about that second when you take them in your eyes and see what they are, or what you think they are. think about that second when you look away. think about that as a form of destruction, as a form of murder. you have rejected them completely, at that moment, for whatever reason. they were not good-looking, not interesting enough, too weird, too yuppie, too not appealing, not worth your acceptance. i am going to make the argument
here that little rejections like this, which occur in an instant and may not even be perceived by the other person, are one of the major problems in our way of perceiving the world and in the way we live our lives. the way you look at others affects them. the way they look at you affects you.
one of the worst things you can do to a human being, or to any creature, is not to persecute it, but to ignore it’s existence completely, to let it pass by anonymously like a thing, like an it, to use it only to get somewhere, like a freeway. alone, in your car, on the street, what are you to anyone else but a set of darkened windows, a moving vehicle, an obstruction, a danger, an irrelevance.
do you think you can handle walking down skid row alone, without the barriers of your car locked doors? the people on the street would eat you alive, would tear you to pieces with their eyes. unless, of course, you learned the mentality of the police force, which is to ignore them as people and see them only as objects, as trash.
it’s easy to ignore the life around you when you’re secure, safe behind fortress tower walls of lifestyle signifiers you are barely aware of. walking the streets downtown are some of the most terrifying and appalling and beautiful and distorted forms of life. many people have become the monsters that society abhors in the news, creates in the inhuman working and living conditions, and leaves to roam the earth, hoping, like victor frankenstein, that this life arisen out of death will just go away and leave them to their imagined romances. you can see it in the people’s faces, hardened and stripped of emotion, devouring whatever they can get a hold of.
and some of these people have become god-like apparitions, goddesses of the night, their eyes liquid fire. i find women from the streets to be more attractive than the skinny teenagers in fashion magazines. and chances are that skinny teenager in the fashion magazine is wearing an outfit derived from the luring designs of the streetwalkers. what i am trying to get at is that there is a relation between the visible and the invisible in society, that there is a direct correlation between mass consumer culture and individual castigation. we marginalize in order to ignore what is not relevant to the lifestyle narrative we immerse ourselves in. and yet, without these margins, without these ignored
spaces, we would not be able to construct the heroic history of our triumphs, the tragic drama of our losses, the totemic identities, the nostalgic yearning for what never was. in order to maintain the polite surface illusion of society, we cover over aberrations, we ignore the dangerous, the unwanted, the unacceptable. we wear masks for the performance.

Speculative Revolution Part III

when i say that direct opposition is not the only way to fight, i am not condoning apathy, or trying to provide intellectual rhetoric to excuse personal lack of motivation and passion, or even trying to promote a turn-the-other-cheek stance of love and acceptance under conditions of extreme oppression. i am suggesting a new direction in thought. when confronting an opponent outright, you are not only creating (or at least, renewing) and solidifying a force in opposition to yourself, but you are filling the role of their misdirected energy, you become their image, their scapegoat, their oppressor, their teacher, their student, their lover, their killer. in other words, you are recreating opposition by opposing.
the reason why i say i am not promoting a stance of love and acceptance, in the traditional notions of the words, is that in some situations, under certain circumstances, it is necessary to make real and clear and visual the opposition to a force that is coming like a thief in the night. direct opposition is a legitimate and natural response to a force that is
indirect, pervasively ignored, and destructive.
but we are talking about a force that can’t possibly be directly confronted, as it exists in everyone, everywhere. direct conflict only becomes necessary in those specific situations where it’s effects are directly manifest.
hence the violence in certain racially and/or economically segregated districts. instead of ignoring the violence, or despairing over it, or getting authoritarian about it and trying to throw everyone in prison, we should be looking at this violence as a symptom. someone who commits an act of violence is trying to tell us something. and we should listen. ignoring these destructive voices is only leading to their greater need to be heard, and thus, escalating the urgency and hurtfulness of their acts. it’s like the homeless “problem.” they will never disappear as long as there remains the concept of property.
suddenly you realize that they are everywhere, in every little niche that you brush by without giving it a glance. just like the way you drive by in your car. drive by.

Speculative Revolution Part II

what i am suggesting is a way of life. thinking about things around me in terms of politics and commercialism only makes me angry, and then hopeless, and ultimately negative and pessimistic. and in becoming this, i am only furthering the whole bullshit. you see the problem is that a system is inhuman, and has no relation to my emotions. i thus say that it is not the system that is at fault, but our relation and interaction with it through each other. in tangible terms, take the example of our relations with each other based on cars, personalized packages of modern wonder. we get in our cars and turn on the radios and ac and drive deftly through streets we only know by sign-names and intersections. we get on the freeway and pass by a big bill-boarded advertisement every couple of seconds, just like commercials on tv, only faster. and when someone gets in your way, couldn’t you just kill them? it’s amazing how the most gentle and laidback people can suddenly become monstrous at the helm of an suv. you step into your vehicle and your relationship with the world changes. you become a machine, speeding towards your objective. it is hard to feel much compassion for a machine that is driving too slow in front of you, or cuts you off. now think of how this is similarly affecting your attitude towards the communities you drive through. you couldn’t care less, it’s just scenery, background to the game level you’re on. i’m not accusing you. it’s a natural response to the way we live our lives. we might crash if we started looking around us and stopped focusing straight ahead.
i’ve always been somewhat cynical, but i’ve always been basically positive in my view of general humanity. i’ve been getting more negative in recent years, and i realized suddenly that i’d begun hating people i don’t know personally. i had no relation to these people. they were usually getting in my way. and this isn’t the right way to live. so i blamed corporate colonization of our minds through tv and news and movies. i blamed imperialist minded politics. i blamed gender and sexual misunderstanding. i blamed academia, i blamed science, i blamed religion, i blamed family, i blamed self. and guess what? nothing, noone, holds up to this accusation. not the one asleep and innocent in their dreams, not the one looking away, not the one fucking someone else, not the one holding them down, not the one on the ground naked getting raped. not the one who judges, not the one who is imprisoned, not the parents, not the children, not the man and not the woman.
we are only as strong as our weakest link. anyone ever involved in some group setting understands this on the most basic of levels. it therefore is quite logical that those who are weakest are the ones who place themselves in positions of “power,” “dominance,” and “knowledge.” feeling threatened, feeling in need of some security? the nazis sure did. and somehow a cult of weaklings exterminated millions and threatened other countries’ boundaries. you remember that bully in elementary school? it’s a cliché, but most likely his parents either abused him, or his parents ignored him. and so he is insecure, and the only way he can relate to other people is by dominating them, so that he knows they will take him for real. this is what i mean by weakness. could this boy help the way he acted? maybe, maybe not. but i think it is clear that he is not the one who deserves all the blame. and i think it should not be too much of a jump to say that the parents are not the only ones who deserve the blame. and so on. and so on.
we are all involved in the violence that occurs everyday. this is what it is to be weak. this is what it is to be connected. this is what it is to be a human being. we must be “weak” together to be strong.

Speculative Revolution Part I

i have been becoming more politicized lately, more activist oriented, at least in spirit, speaking of such things as “corporate conspiracy” and “imperialist agendas.” i have felt the urge to become extreme, to don a black mask and throw objects at police. and i feel that these things are necessary, should be done and will continue to be done. but i was thinking today that perhaps such opposition to a constructed “force” of capitalism is ultimately only feeding into such a system, is promoting it by the very action of opposing it. there is a reason that police wear uniforms and politicians wear suits. distinctions are a manner in which opposition is created, for there is immediately created a caste of exclusion. in this way, those who oppose are really simply feeding into this game of illusion and power, for they reinforce these differences and further them to a position of direct warfare.

i will here remind you that direct warfare is social lubricant. when there is a physical enemy in confrontation with you, you of necessity bond and unite as a society. it keeps you in line, in service, focused.

there is thus perhaps a reason why the extreme violence and persecution of the ghettoes exist. you will notice that the newest trends in fashion come not from runways in paris but the streets in compton. you will notice that cop-killing is featured prominently on the highest grossing CDs.

our socio-economic system thrives off of the creation of compressed sectors of space filled with pain and pressure and confrontation. as the 60s demonstrated, corporations bank off of rebellion, off of youth counterculture. the reason capitalism has not gone the way of marxism is because of this great ability to assimilate instantaneously its
opposition. in fact, it even seems, in a sense, to control and regulate this opposition.

but i am of course exaggerating to make a point. i don’t want to feed into the notion of bureaucratic conspiracy here. i would never give corporations or governments that much credit. it seems to be more accurately a reflection of the market economy, of the oceanic rise and fall of a system that uses self-conscious irony in its advertising.

there is really no way to oppose a system that takes a self-opposing stance in preparation.

at least, not directly.

re: dispossession

hey, i hate to tell you but the world is flat, and square. i get my information from mars. you’d better listen.
the good news is that we can set it on fire.

(they have machines sent encircling a distance, maintaining for 24 hours a day 365 days a week the image of the earth as blue enfenced rotundity. turn on the weather channelTM. they will tell you what the clouds look like. they will predict the weather for you.)

i get my information from the voices in my head.

i’ll tell you about our world. this world is flat. this world is square. this world is split into claimed sections, pieces of a pie, all orbiting around the belly-center of the united states of america. Russia may be big, but it’s split
in half.
that’s right. our world exists in the form of image. our world exists in memory. pure memory space. now you stand for what you’ve truly accomplished, for all your successes, for all your purchases.

what have you accomplished?

oh, so you’re filed. oh, so you’re squared away. watch the tv and let it tell you what you look like. you are square, and you are flat, and you can see all the world with the push of a button, with the opening of a cover, with the click of a pointer.
hmm. it’s got pretty good special effects. hmm. can it keep your attention? hmm. it’s cutting away for an advertisement. . .

what
are your purchases? where
are they from?

)i get my information from mars. they’ve sent their machines there but they
can’t get a lock on anything. the truth keeps
shifting.(

so where is the good news? they feed you with all the latest disasters, with all the latest deaths, with all the gruesome images of their tragic wars.
where is the good news? that’s right, open up your bible. that’s right. fold up your hands. that’s right, you should be ashamed. that’s right, you’d better open up your mouths and pray.
alright, now try opening your mind. try looking at the world in 3d. try looking out the corners of your eyes. try listening to the sounds far away from you, to the sounds close to you, to the sounds inside of you.
it’s trippy, isn’t it? alright, now look at yourself. alright, now look at yourself.
where is the good news?
yeah, bend your head down to the board and bleed your fingers til they’re raw. yes, gather together with others in fear and fill the space of a place-time with sound. yeah, sit your ass down and listen.
yeah! get your ass up and dance!

where is the good news?

the good news is that we can set ourselves on fire.

the good news is that we can light each other
on fire.

the good news is that the world cannot be contained. the good news is that we spill out over the edges. the good news is that no matter how hard, straight, and square the information is, we can put it in our mouths
and we can swallow it
in fire.