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 Goddess. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Goddess. Show all posts
Friday, July 30, 2010
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)