Mine!

Why is life such a heart breaking experience? I was reading a book to sweet, dear Huxley about the wind protecting us and the trees absorbing toxins and releasing oxygen for us to breathe and the earth holding us--and it made me want to cry. It made me want to cry because we cut down the trees that we need. That the term "tree hugger" is used as a derogatory disvalidating reference to those who understand the power of nature and our symbiosis with it. And we can't seem to figure out how to work together! Children fight over toys screaming "Mine! Mine!" They fight over balloons, balls, puzzle pieces, star wars figurines. Stupid material possessions that don't help us in the least bit, and yet children as young as two are establishing power dynamics and exhibiting hoarding tendencies. Why? Is it so innately natural? I don't believe that. Perhaps its being printed in the dna over generations of hoarding and fighting, but if kids spent more time in the woods the objects wouldn't be used as much as identifiers. Our identities are so closely bound to what we own in the cities and towns. In the deep woods, the earth is providing for you, and everything has its season, so its impossible to cling so tightly to things. What has happened to us?

fighting for what?

American soldiers don't die for their country. They die to keep capitalism going, to keep the people subdued and trapped in their financial cycles, and to keep certain people very very rich. Their homes often times are in hideous and desolate suburban spreads, homes with no vibrancy or community. How is this a home worth fighting for?

Buncha animals!

We all derive our energy and are lit by the same source. We're just different outlets. We're not as special and individual as we often believe. I know we each have our uniqueness to contribute and that our smallest actions to effect the whole, but we're each still one of many, elbowing our ways into the world. We flood the streets, pollute the air, strip the earth of its ancient and natural beauty and breed, all the while trying to be special to someone or someones. Some of us desperately need to be loved by millions, while others are okay with a small few. Are we the only species with such specific and acute egocentricity? Does the queen bee give herself airs for her unique place in the hive? Does the alpha of the wolf pack attempt to conquer other packs once he's succeeded in his own? Or is it because they don't know the difference anyway that they remain content in their positions. There's no anternet or tiger t.v. to facilitate in inter-species quantum communication. The seasons are their guide, their media, their providers. And the creatures less affected by the seasons are trapped in the cycles of survival.

In our own cycles, there are ghost prints of these earlier tighter days. We write love songs and put on make-up and get crushes. We react when we feel threatened, and binge in times of excess. And we covet our possessions as though our young. We're so in love with our creations in our culture of congratulatory egotism, where our human worth and value to each-other moves further from skills, reflexes, and ingenuity and moves more to aesthetic standards and power posture.

No wonder our brains are shrinking!

We hold the world in our hands. We each need to be aware of this, and start treating it with love and respect if we want it to live. It's as easy as being conscious about the products you buy and the words you choose. Jane Goodall is fighting the good fight. STILL!

Jewel

Mountain of Woman
Majestic streams
Light like consciousness
Flow from her brow

Her head held high,
She pulls at eyes as she passes
They'll never have her

They can't hold her heart
So gentle
Or please
All the women she's been

Her nature is to destroy
So something may begin

There's sadness in beauty
To be her friend

Planet Earth

I'm in my loft, David Attenborough speaking through my headphones with his soothing voice and comforting accent, explaining the cycles of the northern seal. As a seal waits for shoals of fish to feed herself and her young--shivering in an Alaskan snowstorm, I sit in layers. my blanket cocoon only giving way to the electric heat pumping out of my space heater. The image on my dvd player takes me around the planet and demonstrates its complex, dramatic beauty. I hear the muffled exclamations and song'n'dance rehearsals in the main space for Slim's "Super Secret Circus Social Club" grand opening "Klown Alley Muppet Show." But I'm pulling away from people right now. I want to be alone and do things that I want to do: work on my bike, make collages, read, domesticate, and watch Planet Earth. I am reminded of my time spent in Italy, alone and often in loneliness. But I was more productive than I have seen before or since. I am revisiting this place of productive alone-ness, only this time without the loneliness. I just want to feed my brain and be productive.

Animals breed when times are good: when there's plenty of food and good weather, low predators, etc. When chances for survival are the highest. These times are predictably cyclical. Each year has a high season and a low season. In the high season, when food is abundant, conditions for breeding are at their highest. The seal experiences its high season in the summer. The polar bear, winter.

For us here, food is always abundant. It's everywhere. The abundance that we require for our cycles is CA$H MONEY. Some with low cash crops may breed as a way of receiving income (welfare). Some others who are without breed for lack of education in connection with their religious beliefs. These poor keep populating the planet with armies of sheep: Capitalism's brilliance in action. And the educated poor (such as myself) may never breed for lack of stability and consistent income. Kids are expensive! It's not a shoal of fish or seasonal blooming algae that I wait for. What I wait for is financial abundance, as it was created for me by those that built the system and those that keep it going. And, like the polar bear swimming in search of seals in northern summer seas, I swim into the wide open with no intention of turning back. Doom and Fortune await me just over the horizon.

This is what optimism for the future has become. Just the opportunity to evolve and for other species to share in that opportunity. I don't understand how it's been possible for such control, corruption, and destruction to occur so sneaky and blatant. People work as a team to manipulate the many to feed the will of the few. These are the organizers of our systems. Like the humpback whale 'bubble fishing', tricking the fish, trapping them and feeding, these people harvest our time and our skills. And we, like the herring of the Pacific, enter into the trap. We're driven by our own needs and wants, and are too short-sighted to see what is waiting for us in the darkness ahead. This cycle continues around and around, though our cycles aren't with the seasons. They span generations, which gives plenty of time to distort it just enough to keep it going.

I'm playing games with my heart strings again, all in the name of warmth.

but i've got to remember the hologram: the closer you get, the less you see (until it all disappears).

Even these times that I let myself fall in, I have to remember I am human and it is my nature to fall. All is falling. Every moment rests in the tension between our free will and the tug of the earth. Every second we are fighting being swallowed by that which holds us.

"The fool who persists in his folly becomes wise" -Wm Blake

Letting go

I keep having to remind myself to let go. I feel like my life has been lesson after lesson of letting go, and i'm still struggling. Letting go of love, letting go of items, and letting go of homes; places. I've let so much go recently, and i am reminded of what life is. If we didn't let go of each breath, we'd never pull another.

Hollis is awake!!!!

Hollis Hawthorne is out of her coma! She is awake and alive and bubbling! This is amazing news! Tell everyone you know! Read her blog.