Um, Off the Grid?

Took time off work yesterday to bike down to the Utility Billing center to pay the water bill. Of course, the people behind the counter, particularly B. were very friendly and kind, a direct contrast to the people at the water department I talked to on the phone. When B finally asked for the 726 dollars, I set 726 one dollar bills on the counter. She looked at them and smiled. "That's going to be fun for me," she said, "But that's OK."

I had already told her about my problems with the water department. I told her I wasn't trying to be a jerk, I was just making a statement, that I was hoping the person taking the money would be a jerk like the people on the phone, not a sweetheart. I said I was glad she was a sweetheart. She smiled again, put the money in the bill counter and said, "I've had people pay with pennies." On the way out. both B. and the other person behind the Plexiglas, a gentle middle-aged man, thanked me for not bringing in 726 dollars in change.

I didn't prick each bill with a drop of blood either, like I thought I would. It seemed too tedious, too time consuming, and too angry. There is so much else to do that is more productive, more positive, more affirming. I'm all for revolutionary symbolism, but I don't really want to draw blood, mine or anyone else's. There's more than enough of that - the bloodletting, not the revolutionary symbolism. And as I've said before, bloody revolution is just that: bloody.

Good people, in that municipal office. Every time I grow disgusted with Government, I'm confronted by good people in Government who remind me, not all who exist inside the Institution are corrupted by it. There are good people in the Corporate world as well, even if many in that world are corrupted, as so many in Government are, in a similar but different way.

I've been wondering about good and bad, ever since I wrote about the prevalence of bad people in Government. What really do I mean by "bad people"? Is that statement even defensible? There is an idea in America that to be successful is to be good. There is another, in contrast, that to be poor and disadvantaged is to be good. Or, that to be successful is to be bad; to be poor is to be bad.

In my experience, people who are successful are no more or less likely to be good or bad than someone who is poor, and vice-versa. Basically, the system in which we are all raised - the entrenched hierarchy, the servile worship of money and technology, the near total disconnection from the rhythms of the Earth, the glorification of violence, the ubiquity of poisons, the sickness in the food, the unbalanced and unholy worship of a God with almost no counterbalancing respect and devotion to the Sacred Feminine - twists us all in unhealthy ways.

If we talk at all in America about health, it is almost always in reference to the economy. But guess what? The economy as it is established is leading us directly into ecological, systemic collapse.

We act well or we don't. The more we act badly, the more bad we become. The more we act well, the more well we become. What is it to act well, or not? Well, if an action is healthy for oneself, for one's family, friends, community and the Earth, that is good. If an action is unhealthy for any of these, it is unhealthy. Right now, on this planet Earth, the balance of actions has tipped far to the side of unhealthy, and there is not one of us exempt from that responsibility, no matter how poor or how affluent one is.

There are no hard rules about this. It can't be translated in Excel format. The so-called Holy books won't help much (has any major religion done a thing to prevent the ecological fix we are in, seven billion Homo sapien sapien and counting? Other than periodically contributing to the death of mass numbers of us?).

You are the best judge of what is healthy, in your heart.

So - after next Monday I will no longer be technically off the grid, with municipal water in my house. But if you are a regular reader of this blog, you know, I'm "off the grid" in just about every way, as a state of mind. I try. It seems there are a few people interested. Thank you.

What To Do About Product Loss

Already this week we have found two empty costume packages. One was stuffed under a couch in the ladies Boodoir, the other hanging empty on the shelf. No doubt there are more. I think we suffer less loss than the average retail store, in part because the energy of this place, from the music to the layout to the staff, is distinctly non-corporate. I recently walked the full downward spiral of that retail consumer vortex, the Mall of America. Our store has more character than any store there; we don't have to answer to a corporate elite unconnected to the reality on the floor.

Most people recognize the difference, if only on a subconscious level. Most people enjoy the place, most are respectful. There are others who don't care about anything but the fulfillment of their desire, for whom theft is justified in any case - except, probably, when it happens to them. The theft of anything on the floor is like a violation, a deep affront to all we stand for, to all we are trying to do here. Stealing from this store is stealing from staff bonuses.

It gives me a sick feeling, finding that something has been stolen from us, which taints my view of people generally. A reminder how important behavior is, how important is a sense of community. Every act of selfishness contributes to the rot of the greater culture. For generations now, economists have been telling us greed is good. Selfishness drives innovation and economic growth, which will raise standards of living globally, which will contribute to the betterment of society generally, which keeps us all from walking on all fours, dragging our knuckles, picking flies off each others backs, etcetera.

Selfishness and Greed lead in one direction only, which is to say, it is the destruction of all that is sacred. How can I really blame the people who steal from us, when theft of the resources of the Earth is foundational to modern economics? We are all models of behavior for each other, and the behavior modeled by so many leaders of Corporations, leaders of Finance, leaders of Government is, get what you can for yourself, however you can, whenever you can, regardless of the effect on anything but yourself.

That, and there was a guy here this weekend spitting sunflower seeds on the floor. This is called boorishness, which I take less as an affront to me and the staff, as an unconscious reaction to the culture as a whole. A guy just walked in as I write this, reeking of booze. I thought he had cerebral palsy, at first glance. He asked for Marcus, then Marcelle. I told him there was no one by either name working here. He said, "We'll see about that," and stumbled into the store. I cut him off at the pet costumes and told him he had to leave. He didn't put up a fight. He's outside now, leaning on a guard rail. He can barely stand on his own. He doesn't look homeless. He's roughly the same age I am.

A growing discontent out there. Pundits everywhere with an opinion, most of them saying, in one form or another, if we just generate more wealth the problem will be solved. Wrong. The problem is so much deeper, so much more foundational. Hierarchy, the Will to Rule, Every Man for Himself, the death of community, indifference to the health of the Earth and all its creatures.

"What can I do?" Undo what has been done to you. Be caring, gentle, humble, generous and kind. Be Fierce. Look to your origins, to the beginning of the Universe. Offer yourself up to the Earth, in service. Allow that you are much more powerful than you think you are. Give yourself permission to follow what you know to be healthy for you, no matter what culture has to say about it. Heal yourself and you will heal the world.

I'm home, for the first time this week. I arrived home last night at about ten, after another enjoyable experience at Patrick's Cabaret. Stayed up until midnight working on the House Playlist for Monster Halloween, adding songs I collected from the Central Hennepin County Library, more African beats with an emphasis on Mali, Middle Eastern etcetera and a bit of Latin jazz.

As soon as I laid down to bed I heard the sound of metal on metal, outside the back door. I walked into the kitchen and looked out the window. There was a man, kneeling next to the back step, sorting through my garden tools. I opened the door and he took off running. Smartly, he didn't try to take a tool with him, or I would have run him down.

Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor. In America, mostly, we have the rich and poor stealing from the poor to keep for themselves. This is called free-market economics and the ethic of Every Man For Himself. It is the ideal, even as it is immoral and reprehensible. I expect a lot more of it, as our Empire continues a long, downward slide into social disintegration. I'm sure we Americans are in no way ready for that. Ready or not, it's coming.

If he wanted my damn shovel, I would have borrowed it to him. And shown him how to use it. Established a relationship. Maybe help him connect to the rhythms of the Earth.

Reconnecting to the rhythms of the Earth is essential in this new Age, as existential dilemmas pile up, as a consequence of our species disconnection. Here in America, there is a movement afoot, an attempt to awaken. It is a movement toward sustainability, or the long-term viability of the social organism we call culture, in the face of very real, impending energy constraints. An attempt to otherwise prevent us from slipping into another kind of dark age.

In the sustainability movement, which is to say, those people who are aware the Age of Oil is coming to an end and are trying to prepare for it, there seem to be three camps. One, which I will attribute to Alex Steffen at www.worldchanging.com, has a deep and abiding faith that technology will save us from this debacle, with minimum impact to our standard of living. The second, which I will attribute to Rob Hopkins and the Transition Town movement, www.transitionculture.org, and the belief that community organization will prepare us for the unthinkable. The third approach is that of skills, as they manifest in the individual, which I will attribute to John Michael Greer, at www.thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com.

Lately, Alex Steffen has been taking swipes at Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins at John Michael Greer, and John Michael Greer at Rob Hopkins and Alex Steffen. Such is the tendency of movements, as leaders gain followers and fight for turf, for influence. Ironically, they are all right, insofar as they are trying to prepare for the reality that in the next few decades, everything we understand as normality is going to be undone, and we will be faced with energy shortages we have no first-hand reference for. Steffen is thinking on the Macro-social level, Hopkins on the local-social, and Greer at the Micro-Individual. All levels are essential, if we are to resurrect this grand experiment that was to be America; and a few other levels/perspectives besides.

Basically, the sustainability movement is trying to introduce into social consciousness the laws of ecology, which we have entirely ignored for most of the last few thousand years, which has led to 7 billion extant Homo sapien sapien, wars at every corner, collapsing ecosystems, the weakening of the individual and the collapse of community. I would like to add to the conversation a reverence for the Earth, a kind of cosmic consciousness that considers the whole of the Universe to be sacred, which is to say, every last thing is sacred, including humans, even if we have lost our way, acting badly much of the time, stealing shovels, issuing municipal citations unnecessarily and manipulating global financial markets, without any regard for the consequences except insofar as they seem to benefit ourselves in the short term.

What I'm suggesting is, the sustainability movement, the whole species in fact, is doomed, if we do not resurrect in ourselves a reverence, for ourselves, in relationship to the spiral nature of things, from galaxies to gardens to DNA. That we are as much children of our parents as we are children of the Earth and children of the Sun, should be a foundational premise from which all decisions arise, a prism through which we view the world and each other. Everyone is a unique, astonishing and utterly beautiful manifestation of the Spirit, a divine being, a child of the Earth, a child of the Sun, Homo sapien sapien, sacred. Even when we are acting badly, even when we are disconnected, even as we establish hierarchies that allow for the wholly unnatural aggrandizement of certain individuals above all others, a social structure that allows all of us to plunder the Earth out of all proportion to necessity.

Interestingly, this condemnation order from the city brings me right back to where I was. I had given up on the idea of making this house and this land a model of sustainability, a model of right relationship to the rhythms of the Earth. I was ready to give it up and wander the world with my stave, swords and deer horns. Maybe I still will. But maybe I'll build a cistern or two to hold about ten thousand gallons of water, so whoever lives in this house does not have to pay the City or anyone else a dollar, for the right to water, the most abundant substance on Earth. I would like to finish that project while I am still paying on the $3100 bill for a stop box I never needed. That three thousand dollars could have been spent to get this house off city water. Which seems a far more viable long-term, sustainable solution than a vast underground water distribution system prone to constant failure and cost-prohibitive prepare, in an economy that is weak and will grow weaker, even as the infrastructure, from water lines to roads to the electrical power grid, continually degrades.

And as far as the whole sustainability movement is concerned, in respect to the energy constraints of the next several decades, I'm inclined to think community is viable only if every individual in the community has useful knowledge and skills - namely, how to build, fix and grow things. And the maturity to recognize the coming Age as a time of healing.

Green Man

Late night at Monster Halloween, dancing, testing the green makeup, wondering about painting myself green, applying latex horns, and dancing at the opening party, trying to shake the feeling left by the condemnation order and all I am required to do to get myself out from under it. Wondering about Government and the war between it and Finance, which I have stepped into the middle of. Minneapolis municipal government stands to benefit if I walk away from the house. Thousands of dollars in fees applied to the taxes, which the bank will have to pay in the event of foreclosure. As the man in City Inspections told me, "we'll get our money one way or another."

Tea Party folk would like to starve Government. Of course, that is naive, as starving Government would only allow free-Market fundamentalists to increase the rapidity at which we are destroying ecosystems, to which we owe our existence as a species. I am inclined to starve both Government and Finance, for the sake of the Earth and species. Which seems to me a particularly American kind of sentiment, at its base a wariness of men who would rule; but certainly not a sentiment in common practice.

If it were me alone I would laugh at the stupidity of this arrangement and let the Government bleed the Bank. Except my father is involved, and the healing I have brought to this land will come undone, as evidenced by what City contractors did to my wildflower planting on the boulevard.

So, I will ask one of the partners to cover me, early next week, while I ride my bike downtown and hand over 762 bloody American dollars to Government, about half of which will pay for water I did not use. I think I'll actually get 762 dollar bills, draw some blood and apply a pin-pricks worth to each. Only, don't tell them; they'll declare it a bio-hazard and charge me with domestic terrorism, send me to jail with the rapists and murderers.

Didn't even realize it was the Equinox. It hasn't felt like a very sacred time. Though it is and I only forget.

Condemnation Update

I have a long list of things to do here in service to Monster Halloween. Instead, the entire morning has been devoted to a series of conversations with city employees about what needs to be done to turn the municipal water back on in my house, to avoid a condemnation order. I am terrified of that order. I am afraid it is a juggernaut that, once rolling, cannot be stopped, which will roll right over me. I want to do what needs to be done to stop it. All I want is to have a reasonable conversation, about the "Estimated" water charges for water I have not been using, and to arrange a payment plan so I do not have to pay a large sum up front.

Most of these conversations, with inspectors and the mayor's office, were calm and reasonable. It is the conversations I have had with people at the city water department, the only department that really matters in this circumstance, that have left me with a feeling of sadness, bitterness and frustration. These are the words I will use to describe some of the city employees I have had conversations with: condescending, arrogant, obtuse, unfriendly, unintelligent. One woman openly mocked me. I hung up on her. That's when I called the mayor's office, and was referred to a woman who is the only one in the city water department who has been pleasant to me. She offered me a slightly better deal - about $60 less up front - but not really a better deal, because she called me back and said her "higher ups" overruled her, that there would be no deal. I told her that I felt the city water department was holding the condemnation order over my head like a bludgeon. She said, "yep, they'll do that."

I have heard these "higher ups" referred to as "Supervisors," and "Bosses." They are otherwise nameless. They will not talk to me. The unpleasant people I have dealt with talk to them while I am on hold, then come back and say there will be no negotiating, there will be no discussion, basically, that I am not worthy of the bosses time, even to give me the message that there will be no negotiating, themselves. It has the essence of cabal, rule by fiat. Civil servant is not a phrase that applies to this energy. More like: I'm in this for myself, I don't care about service, I'm going to retire at fifty with a fat pension. I don't know if that is actually the case, but that's what it feels like.

So, I get to take time off work to go downtown to the city treasury department and pay $726 to have my municipal water restored. Plus, arrange to pay for a new meter, and $3000 for the new stop box. Then take more time off to meet the people who will inspect the meter, and then more time off for the people who will change it out. Even if the house was fully off-the-grid, with ten thousand gallons of water in cisterns and no need for city water, I would still have to pay. I would still have to take time off I cannot afford to take off.

It has been my own negligence that has brought this difficulty upon me. It is also an excellent example of all that has gone wrong in the growth of government. Government existing of and for itself. And the prevalence in government of genuinely bad people, who wield a power they do not deserve, in jobs they believe they cannot lose.

Oh yeah

Dance.

And...

All that we hold dear is passing. Do not cling. Embrace; and let go.

So High

Franti's "So High", at 2:31 in the am. Leading into "Soko Yhinka", Ali Farka Toure.

Three hours with one of the partners, a long discussion involving the price of pumpkins and gourds, a treasure map, staff hours, and the opening party. What more can we men do for this shrine to the Goddess, this shrine to all things Feminine? A post-it for "Black Heart", my toy gun sculpture. Amy Daws and a bid system for her paintings. Christian and Katrina on signage; and maybe with me, on the treasure map. Another woman, who has captured my attention. Back to Franti: Sound System, Pirate Radio, a Sword. Toure' again: Soya. A schedule to write, a long list - and oh yeah, the water bill. A long drive through the rain. What a drain...

Steady drums and a whistling beat from Rhythm of the Chakras. More wine? Ahh, Rokia Traore, "Tchwa". A sacred harvest at my side; a stem, a back bone like no other I have ever encountered. Dance, and the green man consort to the Goddess. Orangutan and rush hour traffic. KARE 11? "Walk With Me", Alice de Michele, which reminds me to add "Chinook Blues" to my favs. Rasputina, twice, More Toure'.

Nizar Lalani, Mujane Mugambe, live. What a beautiful thing, this existence.

A Gift

If the issue I'm having with the city is not enough, I bike. Yesterday morning I was nearly run over by a city school bus on the way to work. I had the right-of-way, but the driver rolled the bus through the stop sign and punched the accelerator. I was carrying a heavy pack, the brakes were wet. Had I been moving faster I 'd be under the care of the Health Care Industry.

The driver looked out the window, waved, and smiled. This, the morning after my bike ride to the mega-mall. Biking through the city can be both infuriating and dispiriting, when you realize that you have just biked a mile(s) one way, but you now have to bike back the way you came, because the people who designed this urban environ never walk or bike anywhere. A bike commute should be a requirement for all urban planners.

I've been feeling a bit like the whole world is against me, which is not a good feeling. Nor is it accurate. The guy on the phone from the city yesterday, when I asked him what would happen if I walk away from the house, said, "We'll get our money one way or another." He did not say it as a gangster, but as a municipal functionary who did not know what he was saying. All of the city workers I have talked to are like that, messengers for a system that has caught me in a downward spiral, as indifferent to the affect on me as the system is itself. It would be easy to say this is the work of a devil, or some other energy actively working against me. Really, it is just the massive, inhuman, institutional machine, grinding away, consuming blindly, destroying everything it touches. Which we are mostly helpless to affect as individuals. Which we could alter fundamentally if we did so as a community.

It's the political season. But really, the vote is almost meaningless. The vote that really counts, is the dollar. Which we exersize nearly every day. About 70% of the economy is consumer spending. That is immense power, latent.

Anyway, I digress. I set my toy gun statue on the floor of Monster Halloween yesterday morning. I was half expecting to get fired, which wasn't going to happen, but that was the mood I was in. Both owners came into the store and didn't see it, though they both walked past it. Finally, I pointed it out, to the partner who originally didn't want me to buy the guns. He looked at it awhile and said, "I love it!"

Which was an immense relief. Which gave me my confidence back. To know I am supported is a profound gift. A great blessing.

Condemnation

I called the city this morning about the condemnation order pending on my house. The city will condemn my house unless I turn the water back on. That will require I pay about $872, charges for water I have not been using, and to fix the meter. Once turned on, I will have to pay the $3100 I am being charged for the replacement of the stop box on the boulevard. If I do not agree to pay to have the water turned back on, the order will be set, I will be charged all of the above plus a $6550 vacant house fee, plus city inspectors will inspect the house and order me to update whatever they say I need to update. Thus, I am looking at paying between $4,000 and and $20,000 dollars for the right to live in my house.

No question, I have brought all of this upon myself. Four and a half years ago, I talked my father into helping me buy this house. The housing bubble was full on, and we paid what proved to be the absolute peak price for this small one bedroom. About twelve minutes after signed the papers, the market started to collapse. Considering the market, I knew the house wasn't likely to go up in price, but I had convinced myself that the price would not go down. I didn't know about the shenanigans at the sky-god Financial level. Now the house is worth about 20-30% less than it was when we bought it.

I walked away from the house in Autumn, 2008. I fell in love with a woman, followed her out west, then moving in with her and her two children in Wisconsin. My father continued to pay for the house, though he did not need to, and I did not ask it of him. That woman sent me away this spring, and I moved back into the house on June 02. As I was living off the grid, I ignored all letters from the city. Now I find myself in the midst of a perfectly amoral, institutional bind, a kind of mechanistic, obtuse, passive, unstoppable, governmentalized state of extortion. I am inclined to walk away from the house and let the Bank and City duke it out. See if they can do better with the house and land than I have. If the damage the city did to the wildflowers on my boulevard is evidence, in the replacement of the stop box, they will destroy it.

I wanted to turn this small piece of land into a bird and butterfly sanctuary, which it has become. Sixty-plus species of wildflowers and native shrubs, another 40 species of veggies, it is an island of habitat in a sea of sod, tar and concrete. I had hoped to turn the house into a model of urban, environmentally responsible design, a passive-solar, off-the-grid marvel. But alas, time has run out, the funding is not there, and I am not inclined to bow to extortion to keep it.

I biked to the mega-mall this weekend, to watch the movie Devil. Who knew the devil could be so dull? He has lost his power, the devil, because he does not actually exist. There are only men, creating institutions to support the power they seek, and the devils to distract from the behavior of such institutions and men. That there is no devil does not mean there is no sacred masculine. There is sacred feminine as well. Which any of us may model, just as so many model the behavior associated with the devil. In obvious ways, and in passive support of the machine, institutions. Extorting fees, as if it's all just a matter of order, code, rule and law.

It is appropriate, I suppose, that I should be condemned, as I have grown so disgusted with our culture and nearly all it has come to be. It seems I have nothing left to do but let go, and go full-on renegade.

So, I'm about to unveil my toy gun sculpture, on the floor of Monster Halloween. Nothing left to do but let go. Let go.