So much for viral.
Home, watching video of my performance at the Riverview Cafe, getting drunk on the Frontenac wine I made last year (which is mellowing out quite nicely), I realize, holding a pair of deer horns doesn't make me a better dancer. There is some polite applause. Ho hum. I have to remember, I'm more shaman than dancer. The horns translate better in front of a fire. I brought the swords too, but I didn't pull them out for lack of time. Maybe in a couple of weeks.
I sent an email to a friend who has read my book, asking, "What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of my book? No filters please." He replied with a list:
Big
Bold
Authentic
Arrogant
Visionary
Service
Mission
Needs editing
Won't sell
Start a Revolution
It's all that. He forgot Purpose, which is a word I like in place of Mission. The "Arrogant" and "Won't Sell", are of particular importance. Reading through my manuscript for about the fifteenth time, recently, it came to me that a particular arrogance of mine is the idea that I might make enough money on the sale of this book to pay for this house, soon enough to prevent the property from changing hands. I forget that society is not in the habit of supporting revolutionaries, even peaceful ones advocating awakening and reverence for the Earth and all its creatures.
The only thing to do at this point is finish the book and make it available as a PDF, for free. Everybody loves free stuff. A suggested donation, if you think it worthwhile, helping me keep writing. The second book is taking shape. It will be considerably more accessible than the first one, if more direct and no less compromising.
My last hope, that video, for keeping the house. An absurdly long shot, and it missed by a proverbial mile. Damn. Service to the Goddess and to the Earth is no simple thing, in a culture that can't conceive of the first and sanctifies the ongoing exploitation of the other (they really are the same thing, the Goddess and the Earth.) Making money is a grand difficulty when you see the bulk of Trade as legitimized plunder. A true art form, which apparently, I do not excel at at all.
Showing posts with label William Hunter Duncan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Hunter Duncan. Show all posts
Friday, July 30, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Food for Thought
Lunch and dinner from my yard, yesterday. Browsed through the snap beans like a rabbit. Yellow cherry tomatoes, dinosaur kale, four different kinds of basil, arugula, purslane, mustard greens, radish, Anasazi spinach, nasturtium flower, wild black cherry, western sand cherry and a pepper. Supplemented with organic kefir, bagels and peanut butter, from a nearby food-product outlet. Soon there will be potatoes, and eggplant.
It's about fifty-fifty, what I eat from the yard and what comes from somewhere else. That percentage isn't likely to change much, as long as I'm making a little money here and there. Forty from the consignment shop, forty-five from a friend I did yard work for, eighty pulling sod for a neighbor. That's the past two weeks income.
It looks like I'm going to lose the house. When I returned to Minneapolis, I was hoping a community would coalesce around my manuscript, in support of what I'm trying to do with the house and yard. The reality is, more than half the people I've given the manuscript to have not responded in any way; several of them are not returning my phone calls. Those who have read it have been less than excited. I am aware I have written a book that is a challenge to read. I am aware there is something in it to offend just about anyone. I didn't realize it would alienate me from my friends.
I'm not sure if it bothers people more that I call them Children of the Earth, divine beings and sacred, or that I tell them the way of life we have all grown accustomed to is coming to an end.
The second book is begun. Not much else matters at this point. The house, if I lose it, could go to a worthy family and the healing I have brought to the land would not be undone. It is a transition I support.
There are limbs further out than the one I've chosen, but this one's pretty far out. I'm as far as I can go before I have to leap. Tonight I'm bringing the swords and the horns to the Riverview Cafe open mic. Two new dances I'm not really comfortable with yet, but it's time. No point in putting it off. If it translates well on video, who knows what could happen. I'm hoping for viral. It's about the last hope I have of keeping the house.
It's about fifty-fifty, what I eat from the yard and what comes from somewhere else. That percentage isn't likely to change much, as long as I'm making a little money here and there. Forty from the consignment shop, forty-five from a friend I did yard work for, eighty pulling sod for a neighbor. That's the past two weeks income.
It looks like I'm going to lose the house. When I returned to Minneapolis, I was hoping a community would coalesce around my manuscript, in support of what I'm trying to do with the house and yard. The reality is, more than half the people I've given the manuscript to have not responded in any way; several of them are not returning my phone calls. Those who have read it have been less than excited. I am aware I have written a book that is a challenge to read. I am aware there is something in it to offend just about anyone. I didn't realize it would alienate me from my friends.
I'm not sure if it bothers people more that I call them Children of the Earth, divine beings and sacred, or that I tell them the way of life we have all grown accustomed to is coming to an end.
The second book is begun. Not much else matters at this point. The house, if I lose it, could go to a worthy family and the healing I have brought to the land would not be undone. It is a transition I support.
There are limbs further out than the one I've chosen, but this one's pretty far out. I'm as far as I can go before I have to leap. Tonight I'm bringing the swords and the horns to the Riverview Cafe open mic. Two new dances I'm not really comfortable with yet, but it's time. No point in putting it off. If it translates well on video, who knows what could happen. I'm hoping for viral. It's about the last hope I have of keeping the house.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Our Return From MO
The Joplin MO gigs, unlike those in St Joseph, were raucous, lively, as are most of Val Kyrie's performances. Not too surprising. Joplin is no economic mecca, but it's in better shape that St Joseph, which is an excellent example of the mis-allocation of resources, and the absence of restraint of outside economic entities that have no interest in the health and well-being of community. A terribly eroded downtown, and vast sprawling landscapes empty of trees, full with corporate retail. It would be hard to grow up in a place like St Joseph and maintain any kind of traditional American Dream.
Which must be why the image and name of Jesus is everywhere down here. If you can't really believe in the Market, the next best thing is Jesus, though it seems to me, from what I hear on the radio, and the nature of the signage, Jesus is held up more as a threat, a kind of King with apocalyptic proclivities, i.e. you better follow him or else. The message, whether it's about the Market or Jesus, is bow down.
We needed a spare tire, having blown one recently. We were directed to Grande Tire, where we dropped the name Grandpa Pat, from the KOA. Grande Tire didn't have what we needed, used. To save us some money, in good-ole-boy southern fashion, the man-in-charge sent us to his competitor, the Tire Center. Three of the men working at the Tire Center were grimy, sweating in the hideous heat and humidity, smoking; they were also the most impressive physical examples of Homo sapien sapien I have met in some time. I can't vouch for the state of their minds, but one at least caught me off guard with a little wit. Pulling the thoroughly shredded tire from under the van, he looked at me coolly and said, "What are you doing here. All you need is a little duct tape." I told him I tried to glue it.
So many of the men I meet these days are physically inflated. Whether by high fructose corn syrup or dead weights, it's inflation that has behind it a kind of uselessness. No wonder, so many men using so much energy in service to an Institutional way, in air conditioned stasis. The paradigm after fossil fuels will require men to come fully into their bodies, to let the full power of their manhood flow outward from the core, their physicality attached to some skill or set of skills in service to a community. That won't be easy, for men who are conditioned to bow down in service to Government, Corporations, or the men who speak of God. Men will have to learn to give themselves permission to rise up and expand outward in every direction, in service to the Earth.
We left Missouri, passing through Iowa and its vast mono-crop corruption. Encouragingly, Iwegians have planted the ditches with wildflowers, which will quickly spread outward when there are no fossil fuels to maintain industrial agriculture. Des Moines, it turns out, is very cosmopolitan in an exceptionally white bread sort of way. Iowa rest-stops are pristine, very welcoming.
Passing into Minnesota, my home state, the smell of cow shit predominant all along the southern I-35 corridor. We were locked in MN-DOT gridlock outside Owatonna for three hours, on a three mile stretch, on a hot afternoon. We stopped at a rest stop, plywood siding rotting off the walls, the area infested with a swarming plague of Asian Tiger Mosquitos, even in the ninety-five degree air, in the sun. Non-natives, another permanent gift of the Pro tempore Global Free Market.
On to another Val Kyrie gig, in my hometown, in a land that is the intertwining of three major North American ecosystems - Prairie, Deciduous Forest and Coniferous Forest. An art fair fundraiser, we got yelled at for setting up the merchandise in the wrong place, which was more or less where they told us to set it up (I failed Val, not using the hometown argument and demanding that they let us leave the merch exactly where it was.) Then we had to listen to a candyman musician/magician, handing out high fructose corn syrup to his slavish audience, babbling inanely for two hours, talented but without anything meaningful to say. Heyokah in shadow.
Everywhere the signs of EXCESS, turkey legs like lollipops and waistlines broader than any tree in the park. Not a single food vendor selling anything local, all of it industrial food-product to satisfy addictions, to make people ill. Here, it isn't Jesus held up as the thing to bow down to, so much as the American Flag. I was wearing a cat hat, in service to Val (she makes them herself, even puts little bells in the ears). A man with his young granddaughter walked up to the merchandise. He looked at me scornfully, a baseball cap shading his eyes, TEAM USA embroidered on the front panel.
"You call yourself a man, wearing a hat like that?" He said.
I laughed at him. "Got manhood all figured out, do ya?"
"You look like a sissy."
"It is because I am a man I can wear this hat and not be embarrassed by macho knot-heads like yourself."
He didn't buy a cat hat for his granddaughter, or for himself.
Driving back to Minneapolis, I-94W in lock down (shortly after seeing a USA Today cover story holding up the Twin Cities as a model of traffic management. Today's USA TODAY cover seems to be an advertisement for JEEP), we took a long meander through suburbiana. Everything so big, so shiny, so very impressive. Houses like castles, a new aristocracy in the ubiquitous mini-mansion, peasants all grown up, self-satisfied, fully ensconced in American materialism and the assumption that it will continue this way, indefinitely. A mythology reinforced by media, transparent as a light mist and equally lasting.
Americans. So many of us fat, self-satisfied, full of prejudice, genuflecting before the Market, subservient and practically useless. So much of the message, so much information, designed to prevent us from giving ourselves permission to wake up to our origins, to rise up fully in the heritage of our species, to be wholly ourselves in the full meaning of Homo sapien sapien, balanced and awake to the beauty that is this Earth. So much potential, the full story of our species available to us, one hundred thousand years of Homo sapien evolution to fall back on. We are going to need it.
Which must be why the image and name of Jesus is everywhere down here. If you can't really believe in the Market, the next best thing is Jesus, though it seems to me, from what I hear on the radio, and the nature of the signage, Jesus is held up more as a threat, a kind of King with apocalyptic proclivities, i.e. you better follow him or else. The message, whether it's about the Market or Jesus, is bow down.
We needed a spare tire, having blown one recently. We were directed to Grande Tire, where we dropped the name Grandpa Pat, from the KOA. Grande Tire didn't have what we needed, used. To save us some money, in good-ole-boy southern fashion, the man-in-charge sent us to his competitor, the Tire Center. Three of the men working at the Tire Center were grimy, sweating in the hideous heat and humidity, smoking; they were also the most impressive physical examples of Homo sapien sapien I have met in some time. I can't vouch for the state of their minds, but one at least caught me off guard with a little wit. Pulling the thoroughly shredded tire from under the van, he looked at me coolly and said, "What are you doing here. All you need is a little duct tape." I told him I tried to glue it.
So many of the men I meet these days are physically inflated. Whether by high fructose corn syrup or dead weights, it's inflation that has behind it a kind of uselessness. No wonder, so many men using so much energy in service to an Institutional way, in air conditioned stasis. The paradigm after fossil fuels will require men to come fully into their bodies, to let the full power of their manhood flow outward from the core, their physicality attached to some skill or set of skills in service to a community. That won't be easy, for men who are conditioned to bow down in service to Government, Corporations, or the men who speak of God. Men will have to learn to give themselves permission to rise up and expand outward in every direction, in service to the Earth.
We left Missouri, passing through Iowa and its vast mono-crop corruption. Encouragingly, Iwegians have planted the ditches with wildflowers, which will quickly spread outward when there are no fossil fuels to maintain industrial agriculture. Des Moines, it turns out, is very cosmopolitan in an exceptionally white bread sort of way. Iowa rest-stops are pristine, very welcoming.
Passing into Minnesota, my home state, the smell of cow shit predominant all along the southern I-35 corridor. We were locked in MN-DOT gridlock outside Owatonna for three hours, on a three mile stretch, on a hot afternoon. We stopped at a rest stop, plywood siding rotting off the walls, the area infested with a swarming plague of Asian Tiger Mosquitos, even in the ninety-five degree air, in the sun. Non-natives, another permanent gift of the Pro tempore Global Free Market.
On to another Val Kyrie gig, in my hometown, in a land that is the intertwining of three major North American ecosystems - Prairie, Deciduous Forest and Coniferous Forest. An art fair fundraiser, we got yelled at for setting up the merchandise in the wrong place, which was more or less where they told us to set it up (I failed Val, not using the hometown argument and demanding that they let us leave the merch exactly where it was.) Then we had to listen to a candyman musician/magician, handing out high fructose corn syrup to his slavish audience, babbling inanely for two hours, talented but without anything meaningful to say. Heyokah in shadow.
Everywhere the signs of EXCESS, turkey legs like lollipops and waistlines broader than any tree in the park. Not a single food vendor selling anything local, all of it industrial food-product to satisfy addictions, to make people ill. Here, it isn't Jesus held up as the thing to bow down to, so much as the American Flag. I was wearing a cat hat, in service to Val (she makes them herself, even puts little bells in the ears). A man with his young granddaughter walked up to the merchandise. He looked at me scornfully, a baseball cap shading his eyes, TEAM USA embroidered on the front panel.
"You call yourself a man, wearing a hat like that?" He said.
I laughed at him. "Got manhood all figured out, do ya?"
"You look like a sissy."
"It is because I am a man I can wear this hat and not be embarrassed by macho knot-heads like yourself."
He didn't buy a cat hat for his granddaughter, or for himself.
Driving back to Minneapolis, I-94W in lock down (shortly after seeing a USA Today cover story holding up the Twin Cities as a model of traffic management. Today's USA TODAY cover seems to be an advertisement for JEEP), we took a long meander through suburbiana. Everything so big, so shiny, so very impressive. Houses like castles, a new aristocracy in the ubiquitous mini-mansion, peasants all grown up, self-satisfied, fully ensconced in American materialism and the assumption that it will continue this way, indefinitely. A mythology reinforced by media, transparent as a light mist and equally lasting.
Americans. So many of us fat, self-satisfied, full of prejudice, genuflecting before the Market, subservient and practically useless. So much of the message, so much information, designed to prevent us from giving ourselves permission to wake up to our origins, to rise up fully in the heritage of our species, to be wholly ourselves in the full meaning of Homo sapien sapien, balanced and awake to the beauty that is this Earth. So much potential, the full story of our species available to us, one hundred thousand years of Homo sapien evolution to fall back on. We are going to need it.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Joplin, MO
We are camped at the KOA in Joplin, MO, surrounded by Interstate Highway, Industrial this and Retail that - Anywhere, America. The roar of traffic is incessant. It blends together in a way it did not at the AOK Campground in St Joseph. Here, it is a dull mono-tone, no vehicle but the occasional motorcycle standing out amid the cacophony.
Lights are all around, sometimes blinding even from a quarter-mile. I block certain lights with certain trees as I dance. I'm in the middle of the campground, dancing to the sound of tree frogs, about ten thousand of them within hearing at various distances. I key on one and then another. Sometimes an underlying rhythm compels them all and I am caught, as by a wave.
I stop dancing to hang a tarp above the tent. Val Kyrie is showering. A group of men are milling around a rentable trailer between the campsite and the shower house. It occurs to me that Val has been gone a long time, longer than seems necessary, and I begin to worry. There is a code to get into the shower house, but the code is the same for the men's and women's showers. An abundance of discomforting images fill my head as I walk to the shower house to check in.
Every so often air pressure is released, suddenly, behind a fence, truck and trailer air brakes maybe. It sounds like a giant animal snorting aggressively, maybe a dragon. Thinking about my fear, this fear of men, of what men are capable of. Where does it come from? Why should I be afraid for Val?
Thinking of St Joseph, four gigs in two days and a strange paradox. Exceptionally well attended, as library gigs for Val Kyrie go, yet so many attendees just sitting there, staring, vaguely hostile in some indefinable way, as if predetermined not to be open, not to enjoy the performance. Val, at one point in the last performance, a bit exasperated - from the heat, humidity, and overall unresponsiveness to her words, to her music - mentioned corn and soybeans. It was clear, many in the crowd had never given any thought to mono-crop corn or soybeans, or what they mean.
The energy, the vitality of a landscape funneled upward and elsewhere, the land poisoned and polluted, local community destroyed and the people made fat, listless and angry. I see the name Jesus everywhere, and yet this tour through the breadbasket has been a strong reminder - in America nothing is sacred but Hierarchy, and the Market.
Who are the men who have brought this fear of mine to this world? Who are the men who maintain it? Walking through this campground in this small but very busy city, revolving security on golf carts patrolling the grounds, I realize in some Nations, I could not say the things I say. In America, we are allowed to say almost whatever we like. We think that is because we are a democracy. I say it is because we are fat and listless, and in our fat listlessness we do not threaten the men who rule this Nation. We are angry too, though we blame everything but hierarchy, and the expectation that we must bow down to the Market. Sky gods telling us hierarchy and the Market are inevitable, that they sustain us, the only reason we do not live like apes.
I can say what I say because there are only about five or six people listening. If there were ten million people reading my words, then sky gods would have reason to be afraid for hierarchy, and the Market that sustains that social pyramid, which they benefit so greatly by.
Val is fine. She is flossing her teeth as I knock on the door and call her name. I walk back to the campsite and continue dancing to tree frogs channeling the Divine. All around us are the tones of Empire, the mad machinations of the Market, the crass, grasping, insatiability of the Machine. Yet even here, the rhythms of the Earth are calling and I know, there is a greater power inside me than any I can be given; I need not bow down to anyone, or anything.
And a message to Deerslayer, who set the tone for this whole tour with a violent criticism of Val Kyrie, in a public forum, though he would not take full responsibility for his words:
I have renounced the gun. What can you say for yourself?
Lights are all around, sometimes blinding even from a quarter-mile. I block certain lights with certain trees as I dance. I'm in the middle of the campground, dancing to the sound of tree frogs, about ten thousand of them within hearing at various distances. I key on one and then another. Sometimes an underlying rhythm compels them all and I am caught, as by a wave.
I stop dancing to hang a tarp above the tent. Val Kyrie is showering. A group of men are milling around a rentable trailer between the campsite and the shower house. It occurs to me that Val has been gone a long time, longer than seems necessary, and I begin to worry. There is a code to get into the shower house, but the code is the same for the men's and women's showers. An abundance of discomforting images fill my head as I walk to the shower house to check in.
Every so often air pressure is released, suddenly, behind a fence, truck and trailer air brakes maybe. It sounds like a giant animal snorting aggressively, maybe a dragon. Thinking about my fear, this fear of men, of what men are capable of. Where does it come from? Why should I be afraid for Val?
Thinking of St Joseph, four gigs in two days and a strange paradox. Exceptionally well attended, as library gigs for Val Kyrie go, yet so many attendees just sitting there, staring, vaguely hostile in some indefinable way, as if predetermined not to be open, not to enjoy the performance. Val, at one point in the last performance, a bit exasperated - from the heat, humidity, and overall unresponsiveness to her words, to her music - mentioned corn and soybeans. It was clear, many in the crowd had never given any thought to mono-crop corn or soybeans, or what they mean.
The energy, the vitality of a landscape funneled upward and elsewhere, the land poisoned and polluted, local community destroyed and the people made fat, listless and angry. I see the name Jesus everywhere, and yet this tour through the breadbasket has been a strong reminder - in America nothing is sacred but Hierarchy, and the Market.
Who are the men who have brought this fear of mine to this world? Who are the men who maintain it? Walking through this campground in this small but very busy city, revolving security on golf carts patrolling the grounds, I realize in some Nations, I could not say the things I say. In America, we are allowed to say almost whatever we like. We think that is because we are a democracy. I say it is because we are fat and listless, and in our fat listlessness we do not threaten the men who rule this Nation. We are angry too, though we blame everything but hierarchy, and the expectation that we must bow down to the Market. Sky gods telling us hierarchy and the Market are inevitable, that they sustain us, the only reason we do not live like apes.
I can say what I say because there are only about five or six people listening. If there were ten million people reading my words, then sky gods would have reason to be afraid for hierarchy, and the Market that sustains that social pyramid, which they benefit so greatly by.
Val is fine. She is flossing her teeth as I knock on the door and call her name. I walk back to the campsite and continue dancing to tree frogs channeling the Divine. All around us are the tones of Empire, the mad machinations of the Market, the crass, grasping, insatiability of the Machine. Yet even here, the rhythms of the Earth are calling and I know, there is a greater power inside me than any I can be given; I need not bow down to anyone, or anything.
And a message to Deerslayer, who set the tone for this whole tour with a violent criticism of Val Kyrie, in a public forum, though he would not take full responsibility for his words:
I have renounced the gun. What can you say for yourself?
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Tones
I'm in Missouri, the show-me state. I've wondered what that means, since I was a little kid. I've spent time in Missouri on four occasions the past two years, and I still don't know. I'm here helping a musician friend, Val Kyrie, on a mini-tour, six gigs in three days, two days in St Joseph and one in Joplin.
We are camped outside St Joseph, at the AOK Campground LLC, on the point of a small creek-fed reservoir, next to Interstate 29. I asked Wayne the campground attendant how old the "lake" is. He harrumphed, smiling, "Don't know. Lot older than I am." He's about 70, with a mouth full of gold teeth he had installed back in '62, after a car accident knocked all the front ones out. He can't remember what he paid for them, but, "They had a plastic coating. Wore off in no time. Gold's still the same, though." Val commented that she wished she had gold instead of mercury fillings. Me too. Makes sense. But then, why use gold for something useful when it makes such fine ornament? All those folks with poison in their mouth, planted before they had a say-so about it. All those folks with fancy bling, for the sake of gratifying a desire for fancy bling, a desire more empty than Wayne's mouth before he had this second set of teeth made.
Last night the humidity was somewhere around 100%, the temperature in the high eighties well after dark, something like a heat index in the tent of about 115. Sleep was not really an option. Normally, the frogs and crickets, in raucous abundance, would reverberate through me in a pleasant way and calm me to slumber. More penetrating was the higher pitch of rubber on asphalt at 75 mph, particularly the eighteen-wheel truck and trailer, especially when their drivers drifted off the lane and 9 wheels rolled across the rumble strip. Incessantly, all night. Good Goddess, the insatiability.
Thankfully a thunderstorm dropped an inch of rain, and the temperature and humidity enough degrees to require a bedsheet. The beat of the rain, the rush of the wind and the pounding of thunder managed to drown out the rip-whine of automobiles. It would have been better for my friend had that storm rushed through at about 10 pm instead of 3 am. Val had a 10 am gig this morning.
More penetrating than the frogs, crickets, automobiles, thunderstorm or the heat, were the cicadas. We have cicadas in Minnesota, but not like these. So many, calling together into the twilight, a rhythm, a pulse to which I danced at the edge of the water, to this side of a waxing half moon. A tymbal reverberation quickening to the core, a sound hardly changed these last few hundred million years. Who out there can feel it? Who out there cares to remember?
I can only speculate as to the affect of those two cellular towers, flashing blue just below the tree line across the lake. There is no affect, say the techno-fundamentalists. Right. The affect won't be apparent as long as cellular towers function, as long as there are Interstate highways. The affect will be abundantly apparent, as soon as they are gone. Which is why I reverberate to the tone of cicadas.
We are camped outside St Joseph, at the AOK Campground LLC, on the point of a small creek-fed reservoir, next to Interstate 29. I asked Wayne the campground attendant how old the "lake" is. He harrumphed, smiling, "Don't know. Lot older than I am." He's about 70, with a mouth full of gold teeth he had installed back in '62, after a car accident knocked all the front ones out. He can't remember what he paid for them, but, "They had a plastic coating. Wore off in no time. Gold's still the same, though." Val commented that she wished she had gold instead of mercury fillings. Me too. Makes sense. But then, why use gold for something useful when it makes such fine ornament? All those folks with poison in their mouth, planted before they had a say-so about it. All those folks with fancy bling, for the sake of gratifying a desire for fancy bling, a desire more empty than Wayne's mouth before he had this second set of teeth made.
Last night the humidity was somewhere around 100%, the temperature in the high eighties well after dark, something like a heat index in the tent of about 115. Sleep was not really an option. Normally, the frogs and crickets, in raucous abundance, would reverberate through me in a pleasant way and calm me to slumber. More penetrating was the higher pitch of rubber on asphalt at 75 mph, particularly the eighteen-wheel truck and trailer, especially when their drivers drifted off the lane and 9 wheels rolled across the rumble strip. Incessantly, all night. Good Goddess, the insatiability.
Thankfully a thunderstorm dropped an inch of rain, and the temperature and humidity enough degrees to require a bedsheet. The beat of the rain, the rush of the wind and the pounding of thunder managed to drown out the rip-whine of automobiles. It would have been better for my friend had that storm rushed through at about 10 pm instead of 3 am. Val had a 10 am gig this morning.
More penetrating than the frogs, crickets, automobiles, thunderstorm or the heat, were the cicadas. We have cicadas in Minnesota, but not like these. So many, calling together into the twilight, a rhythm, a pulse to which I danced at the edge of the water, to this side of a waxing half moon. A tymbal reverberation quickening to the core, a sound hardly changed these last few hundred million years. Who out there can feel it? Who out there cares to remember?
I can only speculate as to the affect of those two cellular towers, flashing blue just below the tree line across the lake. There is no affect, say the techno-fundamentalists. Right. The affect won't be apparent as long as cellular towers function, as long as there are Interstate highways. The affect will be abundantly apparent, as soon as they are gone. Which is why I reverberate to the tone of cicadas.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Blessings
The Riverview Cafe open mic, world premiere of two of my Sacred Theatre dances, was a rousing success, I think. It felt good. The crones loved it, four mature ladies thanking me directly afterward, one asking me on a date, another handing me a US Grant: "I found this in a Baltimore bar. I think you should have it." She plays a fine flute. I have the dances on video (and audio of S. with her extraordinarily generous blessing), thanks to my friend Kevin, who borrowed the video camera and tripod. My good friend Chad borrowed the ipod I needed to play the music. I'll put the video out there, if I can figure out how. My ridiculous PC isn't likely capable of compressing the data.
I think I'll bring the swords and deer horns on the 29th. I couldn't have danced in front of anyone a few months ago. I think it was William James, or was it Henry, who said one of the most remarkable things about this life is the way in which the impossible becomes possible. I lit a pair of swords on fire this past Wednesday, and danced in my back yard. Twice. I was nervous, but I don't think anyone noticed, and it all seemed a little mundane after. On the fourth of July, on my 37th birthday, I danced to a well-done fireworks show, to the impressive sax of a talented fellow named Raven Wolf, to a dozen djembe and doumbek, with my deer horns. That was fun. More of that would be nice.
Every so often a few dollars trickle in, unexpectedly, enough to pay for coffee and the occasional meal. I have friends who care deeply about me. My father can't understand why I don't get a job with an oil company or a trucking service; how can I tell him I'm done with the conventional, that I have become effectively unemployable from a mainstream perspective, that I'm not even actively looking for a job? I'm going to write a second book, even if I can't get the first one published. If that means I lose my house and end up living in a garage somewhere, well, I am alive. Thriving, really. Loving Life. Even if, from a mainstream perspective, I am a total failure.
The tomatoes are starting to ripen. I've had a few radishes this week. the western sand cherries are ripe, the lettuce is bolting almost immediately yet, it's all starting to add up to a significant portion of my diet, what my yard produces. The healthiest portion, really. Wherever I am in six months, I'm going to have an abundance of potatoes and beans, canned tomatoes and salsa.
This really is a beautiful life. Curious, that it has taken me off the grid. A strange fate. But I'm dancing. I have something to say, good friends, more useful skills and knowledge than most, and currently, shelter. If nothing else, I'm proving to my self at least, I don't need much to be happy.
Not that I want to be living in a garage, come winter. But I will, before I go to work for an oil company or a trucking service, or any other employer who requires me to participate, on a daily basis, in the plunder of the Earth, in funneling resources up the steps of a social hierarchy. Regardless what my culture has to say about value, wealth and productivity.
I think I'll bring the swords and deer horns on the 29th. I couldn't have danced in front of anyone a few months ago. I think it was William James, or was it Henry, who said one of the most remarkable things about this life is the way in which the impossible becomes possible. I lit a pair of swords on fire this past Wednesday, and danced in my back yard. Twice. I was nervous, but I don't think anyone noticed, and it all seemed a little mundane after. On the fourth of July, on my 37th birthday, I danced to a well-done fireworks show, to the impressive sax of a talented fellow named Raven Wolf, to a dozen djembe and doumbek, with my deer horns. That was fun. More of that would be nice.
Every so often a few dollars trickle in, unexpectedly, enough to pay for coffee and the occasional meal. I have friends who care deeply about me. My father can't understand why I don't get a job with an oil company or a trucking service; how can I tell him I'm done with the conventional, that I have become effectively unemployable from a mainstream perspective, that I'm not even actively looking for a job? I'm going to write a second book, even if I can't get the first one published. If that means I lose my house and end up living in a garage somewhere, well, I am alive. Thriving, really. Loving Life. Even if, from a mainstream perspective, I am a total failure.
The tomatoes are starting to ripen. I've had a few radishes this week. the western sand cherries are ripe, the lettuce is bolting almost immediately yet, it's all starting to add up to a significant portion of my diet, what my yard produces. The healthiest portion, really. Wherever I am in six months, I'm going to have an abundance of potatoes and beans, canned tomatoes and salsa.
This really is a beautiful life. Curious, that it has taken me off the grid. A strange fate. But I'm dancing. I have something to say, good friends, more useful skills and knowledge than most, and currently, shelter. If nothing else, I'm proving to my self at least, I don't need much to be happy.
Not that I want to be living in a garage, come winter. But I will, before I go to work for an oil company or a trucking service, or any other employer who requires me to participate, on a daily basis, in the plunder of the Earth, in funneling resources up the steps of a social hierarchy. Regardless what my culture has to say about value, wealth and productivity.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Introduction
The first thing I did when I returned to my house in Minneapolis was start tearing up sod, with a spade shovel and my hands. Started that project June 02, finished June 16. 1800 sq ft, ten new garden beds in addition to the 300 sq ft bed I already had. My theory is, I can grow enough food on this 60 x 180 lot to last me the year. That won't happen this year, this garden but a test garden for next spring. Still, I expect to grow about three hundred pounds of potatoes, about 50 pounds of dry beans, to go with preserves from twenty tomato plants, about thirty pepper plants, corn, squash, grapes, etc, and whatever I can gather locally, including serviceberries, currants, grapes, wapato, etc. I know I can keep the house until harvest at least.
I use the water I collect from what falls from the sky, and what the neighbors allow me to gather for drinking and the occasional solar shower. I'm using four 47 gallon Rubbermaid tubs, another smaller plastic tub, an old liner for a water softener and my Royalex canoe, la Vielle. I can hold about 400 gallons total, which is pitifully inadequate, but it's the best I can do currently. I dug a 400 gallon pond, but I don't have money for a liner. I should have a 5000 gallon cistern buried in the garage (which I would like to turn into a greenhouse, using recycled windows), and another cistern in the basement. That, and a few home-made filters containing charcoal and sand, and a few low-tech passive solar water panels, to heat water and the house.
Without a steady supply of fresh water, you learn quick what a waste of water a flush toilet is.
I really miss electricity. I use candles and an LED headlamp. I'm using an old beat-up radio and d-cell batteries to occasionally listen to the radio, and a smaller cd-player with c-batteries to play the music I dance to, part of the Sacred Theatre piece I'm working on. My computer is five years old, the hard-drive has been replaced twice in the past year, and the battery holds about a ninety minute charge. I have to go to a coffee shop to work on my book, to check email, to charge the computer and my cell phone, which is also falling apart. I could pretty much take care of most of my basic electricity needs with a pedal-power set up including a 12V car battery. Without grid electric however, the refrigerator is dead space. I should be using it to hold water.
I've written a book called The Dragon: Balance, Wholeness, Healing. It is primarily a challenge to men, to look inside and find their Origins, to access the deep well of power that is inherent to every man, to live in service to one's family, friends, community and the Earth, to open one's eyes to the predicament we face as Homo sapien sapien with the end of the Age of cheap and abundant fossil fuels. I need $15,000 to publish; I have approximately $5 and change, no job, and no prospect of any job imminent.
The garden isn't producing much at this point, though early in June I had all the strawberries I could eat, the raspberries and black caps are now abundant, and the asparagus still send up an occasional shoot even though they've long since flowered. Otherwise, I'm subsisting on serviceberries, dandelion greens, lamb's quarter, carrots, eggs, peanut butter, bread given away by a local church, and a bag of commercial food-product I gathered at another church food line. I can subsist quite well this way through the summer, but if I don't find income to start paying on the house again come September, I'll have the harvest but not the house. If it goes into foreclosure I can probably continue to squat in it until 2011, though I'm not looking joyward to a winter without heat, water or electricity. I'd rather just publish a book and start selling it, and continue writing the second one.
Don't think I'm complaining. Living off-the-grid in the summer ain't anything but campin' in the house. I spend the days writing, working in the garden, biking, gathering berries, sitting in coffee shops. Quite idyllic, really. Living in accord with the rhythms of the Earth is remarkably healthy. My life may look in a shambles from the outside, but I'm stronger than I have ever been. Money is only energy, and that energy isn't flowing my way right now. But the energy is shifting; the book is nearly complete and the Sacred Theatre is coalescing. I keep saying, I'm going to sell a million copies. No one believes me, yet.
I use the water I collect from what falls from the sky, and what the neighbors allow me to gather for drinking and the occasional solar shower. I'm using four 47 gallon Rubbermaid tubs, another smaller plastic tub, an old liner for a water softener and my Royalex canoe, la Vielle. I can hold about 400 gallons total, which is pitifully inadequate, but it's the best I can do currently. I dug a 400 gallon pond, but I don't have money for a liner. I should have a 5000 gallon cistern buried in the garage (which I would like to turn into a greenhouse, using recycled windows), and another cistern in the basement. That, and a few home-made filters containing charcoal and sand, and a few low-tech passive solar water panels, to heat water and the house.
Without a steady supply of fresh water, you learn quick what a waste of water a flush toilet is.
I really miss electricity. I use candles and an LED headlamp. I'm using an old beat-up radio and d-cell batteries to occasionally listen to the radio, and a smaller cd-player with c-batteries to play the music I dance to, part of the Sacred Theatre piece I'm working on. My computer is five years old, the hard-drive has been replaced twice in the past year, and the battery holds about a ninety minute charge. I have to go to a coffee shop to work on my book, to check email, to charge the computer and my cell phone, which is also falling apart. I could pretty much take care of most of my basic electricity needs with a pedal-power set up including a 12V car battery. Without grid electric however, the refrigerator is dead space. I should be using it to hold water.
I've written a book called The Dragon: Balance, Wholeness, Healing. It is primarily a challenge to men, to look inside and find their Origins, to access the deep well of power that is inherent to every man, to live in service to one's family, friends, community and the Earth, to open one's eyes to the predicament we face as Homo sapien sapien with the end of the Age of cheap and abundant fossil fuels. I need $15,000 to publish; I have approximately $5 and change, no job, and no prospect of any job imminent.
The garden isn't producing much at this point, though early in June I had all the strawberries I could eat, the raspberries and black caps are now abundant, and the asparagus still send up an occasional shoot even though they've long since flowered. Otherwise, I'm subsisting on serviceberries, dandelion greens, lamb's quarter, carrots, eggs, peanut butter, bread given away by a local church, and a bag of commercial food-product I gathered at another church food line. I can subsist quite well this way through the summer, but if I don't find income to start paying on the house again come September, I'll have the harvest but not the house. If it goes into foreclosure I can probably continue to squat in it until 2011, though I'm not looking joyward to a winter without heat, water or electricity. I'd rather just publish a book and start selling it, and continue writing the second one.
Don't think I'm complaining. Living off-the-grid in the summer ain't anything but campin' in the house. I spend the days writing, working in the garden, biking, gathering berries, sitting in coffee shops. Quite idyllic, really. Living in accord with the rhythms of the Earth is remarkably healthy. My life may look in a shambles from the outside, but I'm stronger than I have ever been. Money is only energy, and that energy isn't flowing my way right now. But the energy is shifting; the book is nearly complete and the Sacred Theatre is coalescing. I keep saying, I'm going to sell a million copies. No one believes me, yet.
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