Why do we persist in this haze? How do we continue to walk around in this stupor as if everything is normal? How does the world not collapse around us, so tenuously built on so many of our non-existent concepts?
I look around me and I see layer upon layer of illusion. There is the illusion of the culture that exists eternally. Despite our frequent libraries full of histories, we know our culture has always been like this. Despite science telling us that the sun will eventually collapse, we know our culture will last forever. It is fundamentally non-existent and therefore not bound by the laws of physics or even logic. I grew up surrounded by it, like a slimy birth fluid. This culture can easily be washed off in the shower, but we are encouraged, via advertising, to subsequently coat ourselves in it; oily paint that destroys our skins pH, petrochemical and alcohol skin products, constructs of metal and stone and woven fabrics.
The illusion is enforced. I say it is easy to wash it off, and I know many people who have, but life must continue. In the city we are surrounded by people in uniforms dedicated to surrounding us with threats and weapons. We know that if we do not at least pretend, we will be attacked. If we do not exchange the currency of this culture daily we will be attacked. If we want a home, we must pay this currency to a rich person who claims to "own" it, because they have a piece of paper and because they possess more currency than we do. If we choose to not pay this lord to live in our own home we will be attacked. If we are hungry we cannot take food without exchanging this currency or we will be attacked. If we try we must remain invisible.
Why do we maintain this illusion at the expense of everything? Who are these people, these demons, these law enforcers, these one percent? Are they not us, members of our own species, members of our own culture, people like us, doing their jobs like us?
Illusion upon illusion. Every morning I wake up surprised that I am not lying naked on the earth surrounded by my sleeping family, that I am clothed, surrounded by artificial light and concrete. Where did all this come from? I have been to Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Scandinavia, Central America and California, and it's the same everywhere. What is happening?
I grew up in New Zealand surrounded by the voices of the other side of the planet. I grew up with media that defined my world to a large degree but was not related to the area and people amongst whom I lived. It was produced in Los Angeles, California. In all of the places I have been, they are watching and listening to the same media, the same messages, the same culture, the same subliminal propaganda. We take very seriously our consumption of media. I cynically criticise here what I am undoubtedly a part of. I put a great deal of energy and time into finding the best cinema available in my environment and exposing myself to hours of it, when I could be sitting on the grass in the sun. I am hopelessly trapped in this layer of illusion and thus seek not to liberate myself from it, but to refine and improve the quality of the meida I expose myself to. I avoid television completely but I continue to go to the cinema. I avoid microwaves completely but I continue to eat cooked food.
In my lifetime another layer of illusion has carefully been laid upon us, with nobody flinching. I did not use the internet until I was 17. How quaint and hilarious I thought it was when my mother told me she didn't have television until she was 12. I couldn't imagine a home, a living room or a life without a television. We have barely noticed as this complex layer of wire and information has been laid upon the world like a protective coating. Where does all this come from? Google, Facebook and Twitter are all based in San Francisco, California. When I was a child I knew nobody with a mobile phone. Now I cannot communicate without a mobile phone and Facebook. I upset people if I only have Facebook and not a mobile phone. I am trapped in this world. This world is California. This world is Purgatory. I give it names, though the names mean nothing.
We don't know how to respond and so we play along until we figure it out. In the meantime we get old and die, blamelessly perpetuating and further developing the illusion because we didn't know what else to do. What should I do? I ask, again and again, already having figured out that I am no longer capable of getting a job, paying rent or buying food. Destroy it, I hear. Destroy it without compromising what you value. Destroy it with the unique gifts that you possess. Destroy it in a way that has never been done before, in a way that reinforces everything you know to be true.
When I walk through these streets I see people avoiding my gaze, I see people staring right at me and I turn away frightened because they are threatening or because they are beautiful. I see polite people just trying to get on with things and I don't have the heart to disturb them, so I try to be polite. I see unshaven men muttering to themselves facing the floor, I see men limping, I see women pushing trolleys and going through garbage, I see dandies in purple pants, I see drunk blonde women laughing, I see bums accosting everyone for cigarettes and coins. Everyone I meet is intelligent and beautiful and caring and gentle. Everyone I don't meet is terrifyingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous. I see zombies stomping down the street with their eyes bulging out of their heads. I see zombies striding with the confidence of a suit and the justification of a credit card. I do not understand why we allow it to continue.
People shout in the streets. We ignore them, including I, the morally superior one. We see those who commit "low level quality of life crimes" being harassed by bums in blue uniforms and we pretend its normal in our consciousness though our stomachs claim otherwise. We sit at home or in the park and we talk openly about it all with the people that we trust and we wonder why it is not changing. Jesus announced the apocalypse as the Roman Empire encroached on the villages he was born amongst. My global tribe, goddess bless them, announced the apocalypse at the end of last year. I knew what the apocalypse would look like cos I knew what the apocalypse needed to look like. I was disappointed to the core, though I had carefully veiled myself in scepticism.
I suppose it will go on as it has, illusion layered upon illusion when the old illusion wears thin. I suppose I will get old and die and never feel comfortable to have children. I will find a niche and fill it and be satisfied.
2013-02-28
2013-02-27
Living in houses
It's time to get back to the earth. Living in houses destroys us in more ways than we can comprehend.
For example?
Sleeping patterns. There is one reason why we don't go to sleep when it gets dark and wake up when it gets light. Houses (and electric light). One example.
Partying and live music is another good reason we don't go to sleep when it gets dark.
I guess if things were different we would party and perform live music during the day, or at night under the stars and especially the full moon and around the fire (rather than in houses).
They promote compulsive behavior. They disengage us from reality; earth, air, water, sun, other plants and animals. They separate us from our neighbors and even our friends. In houses we sleep in different rooms and different beds; when we sleep on the earth we naturally sleep together, if only to keep each other warm.
Agreed Chris, I am completely off balance after coming back from Mexico, main reason being where I'm living.
If you clean up your house sufficiently, you will be vacuuming the floor until you are back on a healthy living soil and you will be dusting the roof and walls until they no longer protect you from reality and the air flows and the sky is visible in all its beauty.
I am a fat slob. I live in a house. I may not be actually fat, but I feel like I am. When I eat a big meal I look at my stomach, it juts out rudely. After eating a big meal, I feel like eating. While eating I feel like I should be doing something, like reading or watching TV. I want my food to be cooked and heavy with carbohydrates, specifically crude grains; fried rice, tortillas, bread or pasta. I eat because there is nothing else to do. I eat because I can't relax. I eat because my environment is entirely uninspiring. I create my own space, I cover the walls with beauty, I keep it clean and I fill it with comfortable furniture and meaningful objects. I enclose myself in this space, surrounded by these objects, alone. Here I am able to create a fantasy world, in my thoughts perhaps, or when asleep in my dreams. At my best I create stories to reach out to the world from this space, but usually I don't have the energy.
I remember when I used to be alive. I used to sleep on the beach. I used to make fire before going to sleep at night. I used to fall asleep looking at the stars. I used to breathe fresh ocean air, cleaned by the salt. I used to run naked up the beach when it was empty and leap into the water with exuberance and submission. The ocean would always deposit me back on the sand, safe and refreshed; reborn. No matter how many hot chlorinated showers I enjoy I cannot recreate this type of cleanliness. No matter how many times I masturbate down the drain pipe I never have the feeling that I have entered the vagina of the Earth and been accepted.
I am a filthy smelly bum. I sleep in the park. I carry bags around with my everywhere I go. I have everything I need on hand. I sleep in the bush, surrounded by trees, cosy on a yoga mat in a sleeping bag, wrapped up in a woolen blanket. When I wake up in the morning I eat my stolen breakfast on a picnic table in the sun. I wash my hands and face and collect water from the public toilet. I rarely shower. Sometimes, when I am on a crowded bus or in a crowded cinema, I feel self-conscious about my smell or wonder if I have dirt on my face. In the park this does not matter. I love being in the city, I love to meet people and to have experiences and to expose my self to cinema and theatre and live music. But public transport and shedules are so stressful in comparison to the world where the clock is the sun and the moon and the agenda is sitting on the earth and urinating on a tree.
When I am in a house I crave to be alone, to have my own room, to be able to close and maybe even lock the door. When I am outside I love to sleep with everyone, in a row, to snuggle, to keep each other warm. I look at the pigs I live with, sleeping in piles, and I envy them. I sleep alone in a bed. I sleep on the earth by the fire beside all my friends. I sleep in a pile of humans in the bush.
For example?
Sleeping patterns. There is one reason why we don't go to sleep when it gets dark and wake up when it gets light. Houses (and electric light). One example.
Partying and live music is another good reason we don't go to sleep when it gets dark.
I guess if things were different we would party and perform live music during the day, or at night under the stars and especially the full moon and around the fire (rather than in houses).
They promote compulsive behavior. They disengage us from reality; earth, air, water, sun, other plants and animals. They separate us from our neighbors and even our friends. In houses we sleep in different rooms and different beds; when we sleep on the earth we naturally sleep together, if only to keep each other warm.
Agreed Chris, I am completely off balance after coming back from Mexico, main reason being where I'm living.
If you clean up your house sufficiently, you will be vacuuming the floor until you are back on a healthy living soil and you will be dusting the roof and walls until they no longer protect you from reality and the air flows and the sky is visible in all its beauty.
I am a fat slob. I live in a house. I may not be actually fat, but I feel like I am. When I eat a big meal I look at my stomach, it juts out rudely. After eating a big meal, I feel like eating. While eating I feel like I should be doing something, like reading or watching TV. I want my food to be cooked and heavy with carbohydrates, specifically crude grains; fried rice, tortillas, bread or pasta. I eat because there is nothing else to do. I eat because I can't relax. I eat because my environment is entirely uninspiring. I create my own space, I cover the walls with beauty, I keep it clean and I fill it with comfortable furniture and meaningful objects. I enclose myself in this space, surrounded by these objects, alone. Here I am able to create a fantasy world, in my thoughts perhaps, or when asleep in my dreams. At my best I create stories to reach out to the world from this space, but usually I don't have the energy.
I remember when I used to be alive. I used to sleep on the beach. I used to make fire before going to sleep at night. I used to fall asleep looking at the stars. I used to breathe fresh ocean air, cleaned by the salt. I used to run naked up the beach when it was empty and leap into the water with exuberance and submission. The ocean would always deposit me back on the sand, safe and refreshed; reborn. No matter how many hot chlorinated showers I enjoy I cannot recreate this type of cleanliness. No matter how many times I masturbate down the drain pipe I never have the feeling that I have entered the vagina of the Earth and been accepted.
I am a filthy smelly bum. I sleep in the park. I carry bags around with my everywhere I go. I have everything I need on hand. I sleep in the bush, surrounded by trees, cosy on a yoga mat in a sleeping bag, wrapped up in a woolen blanket. When I wake up in the morning I eat my stolen breakfast on a picnic table in the sun. I wash my hands and face and collect water from the public toilet. I rarely shower. Sometimes, when I am on a crowded bus or in a crowded cinema, I feel self-conscious about my smell or wonder if I have dirt on my face. In the park this does not matter. I love being in the city, I love to meet people and to have experiences and to expose my self to cinema and theatre and live music. But public transport and shedules are so stressful in comparison to the world where the clock is the sun and the moon and the agenda is sitting on the earth and urinating on a tree.
When I am in a house I crave to be alone, to have my own room, to be able to close and maybe even lock the door. When I am outside I love to sleep with everyone, in a row, to snuggle, to keep each other warm. I look at the pigs I live with, sleeping in piles, and I envy them. I sleep alone in a bed. I sleep on the earth by the fire beside all my friends. I sleep in a pile of humans in the bush.
2013-02-26
The Homosexual Solution
There are too many people in the world; too many human people to be precise. Derrick Jensen suggests that with six million human beings on this planet, we are actually taking away available biomass for the life of other species, all the non-human people who are dying rapidly. Aside from the denial justified as morality, the morality that it is wrong for humans to die, even more wrong than other species dying, there are solutions to the population crisis that are worse than the problem, reeking of the worst totalitarianism. Some people claim these solutions are already happening, that the governments are poisoning us through our tap water. Others resign themselves to the necessary unpleasantness of some mass natural disaster, like a tsunami or earthquake. Some people stress the importance of solutions allowing the economy to grow, some value solutions that adhere to pre-ordained codes of conduct, such as laws and dogmas. No one seems to suggest pleasure as a guiding principle, or love as a process.
Why are there too many people on the earth? Isn't this a silly game to be playing? Surely one billion is more than enough human beings to praise Economy and Yahweh. There is evidence that in previous human societies, tribes that lasted sustainably for thousands of years, population was controlled. Some people hear that they killed foetuses and infants and disabled people and are horrified at the idea of human beings dying. There is also evidence of very simple birth-control methods involving simply awareness of a woman's menstrual cycle, surely the sort of information that was violently repressed by the Catholic Church during the Holy Inquisition, or women burnings.
My suggestion as to why there are so many people on the planet is the same reason that we created all these civilisations that are merging via globalisation into the mega-culture that will digitise the planet. Grain. Civilisation, and therefore ever-growing population, is a result of the addiction of an entire species to grain. Look around the world, every civilisation is defined by their grain. There are the American corn cultures, the Asian rice cultures and the European wheat cultures. Apparently 75% of the food eaten by humans on this planet is these three grains. When we were gatherer-hunters, back in the garden, we would have eaten a wide variety of plants, whatever was available in our environment, taking a little from each plant so the plant could continue to flourish and provide. We would never have eaten huge amounts of one thing as agriculture allows. But then we discovered grains, wheat being the most popular in the world, native to the Fertile Crescent as civilisation itself is.
Why would we create agriculture when we were living a balanced life in which nature provided us everything we needed, we did not take too much and we did not threaten our environment with over-population? Grain. We discovered grain and the more we ate the more we wanted to eat. I have noticed that when I start the day with a big bowl of satisfying comforting nutritious organic oats I am hungry again an hour or two later, much hungrier than I would otherwise have been. It is no secret that these things that we use to bulk out our meals, to "fill us up", actually expand our stomachs and therefore fail at the one task they are given. We grow up in a culture of lies. I was told throughout my childhood by advertising and all my elders, that dairy is a source of calcium. Scientific tests show that cow milk contains calcium, they conveniently do not mention that the human body cannot assimilate dairy and the accumulation of dairy in the body actually leeches calcium out of our bones. There are many lies around, but the greatest lie of all is that grains "fill us up" when they actually expand our stomach.
We are addicted to grain and we can't stop ourselves. Why would we create agriculture when it is so much easier to gather? We decided to work hard stripping the land and planting monocrops of wheat, rice and corn that require a lot of maintenance, simply so we can eat more grain. This is very hard work, so to take some of the burden we make more children to help. With all these additional human beings we need to grow more grain to feed them. Thus, expansion. More expansion equals more work equals more people equals more grain. Soon there are so many people it is necessary to form cities, where we can organise ourselves and divide labour so we can enjoy everything more comfortably and easily that facilitates the growing of grain.
If you do not believe me, give me another reason why we would go to the hassle to create civilisation. "God said, "Be fruitful and multiply.""? I do not believe you. A page or so later he curses us with having to toil with the earth and watching as the earth becomes dust; after the beauty and simplicity of the garden.
There is one solution that has been overlooked, that will enable our population to slowly decline, reduce violence against women rapidly, allow us to value and honour the children we already have and bring great pleasure to everyone who participates. The solution is Homosexuality. Women have been the victims of male violence for generations and it is going to take generations to perform essential and necessary act of healing this pattern of behaviour. Why have women been the target of such violence - domestic abuse, sexual violence, witch burning and marriage? To oversimplify, because they are women, because they have vaginas, because they threaten men's ability to control. The solution is homosexuality. Not only have marriage and heteronormativism removed vast areas of sexuality from human life, but the simple act of touch has been channelled into violence as its only suitable expression; wrestling being the healthiest form of this, war being the least.
All violence is a form of sexuality, and mostly it is men fighting men. The solution is Homosexuality. I believe that it is necessary for all men to be sodomised at least once in their life, otherwise a fundamental human experience has been lost and an entire aspect of the psyche has not been allowed to develop. To empathise with those who are temporarily weaker or submissive to us in some way, we need to experience the receptive. To experience the intensity of being penetrated is to empathise with the person you penetrate.
The solution is joy and love and freedom and sexuality and humanity and can be started and enjoyed immediately.
Why are there too many people on the earth? Isn't this a silly game to be playing? Surely one billion is more than enough human beings to praise Economy and Yahweh. There is evidence that in previous human societies, tribes that lasted sustainably for thousands of years, population was controlled. Some people hear that they killed foetuses and infants and disabled people and are horrified at the idea of human beings dying. There is also evidence of very simple birth-control methods involving simply awareness of a woman's menstrual cycle, surely the sort of information that was violently repressed by the Catholic Church during the Holy Inquisition, or women burnings.
My suggestion as to why there are so many people on the planet is the same reason that we created all these civilisations that are merging via globalisation into the mega-culture that will digitise the planet. Grain. Civilisation, and therefore ever-growing population, is a result of the addiction of an entire species to grain. Look around the world, every civilisation is defined by their grain. There are the American corn cultures, the Asian rice cultures and the European wheat cultures. Apparently 75% of the food eaten by humans on this planet is these three grains. When we were gatherer-hunters, back in the garden, we would have eaten a wide variety of plants, whatever was available in our environment, taking a little from each plant so the plant could continue to flourish and provide. We would never have eaten huge amounts of one thing as agriculture allows. But then we discovered grains, wheat being the most popular in the world, native to the Fertile Crescent as civilisation itself is.
Why would we create agriculture when we were living a balanced life in which nature provided us everything we needed, we did not take too much and we did not threaten our environment with over-population? Grain. We discovered grain and the more we ate the more we wanted to eat. I have noticed that when I start the day with a big bowl of satisfying comforting nutritious organic oats I am hungry again an hour or two later, much hungrier than I would otherwise have been. It is no secret that these things that we use to bulk out our meals, to "fill us up", actually expand our stomachs and therefore fail at the one task they are given. We grow up in a culture of lies. I was told throughout my childhood by advertising and all my elders, that dairy is a source of calcium. Scientific tests show that cow milk contains calcium, they conveniently do not mention that the human body cannot assimilate dairy and the accumulation of dairy in the body actually leeches calcium out of our bones. There are many lies around, but the greatest lie of all is that grains "fill us up" when they actually expand our stomach.
We are addicted to grain and we can't stop ourselves. Why would we create agriculture when it is so much easier to gather? We decided to work hard stripping the land and planting monocrops of wheat, rice and corn that require a lot of maintenance, simply so we can eat more grain. This is very hard work, so to take some of the burden we make more children to help. With all these additional human beings we need to grow more grain to feed them. Thus, expansion. More expansion equals more work equals more people equals more grain. Soon there are so many people it is necessary to form cities, where we can organise ourselves and divide labour so we can enjoy everything more comfortably and easily that facilitates the growing of grain.
If you do not believe me, give me another reason why we would go to the hassle to create civilisation. "God said, "Be fruitful and multiply.""? I do not believe you. A page or so later he curses us with having to toil with the earth and watching as the earth becomes dust; after the beauty and simplicity of the garden.
There is one solution that has been overlooked, that will enable our population to slowly decline, reduce violence against women rapidly, allow us to value and honour the children we already have and bring great pleasure to everyone who participates. The solution is Homosexuality. Women have been the victims of male violence for generations and it is going to take generations to perform essential and necessary act of healing this pattern of behaviour. Why have women been the target of such violence - domestic abuse, sexual violence, witch burning and marriage? To oversimplify, because they are women, because they have vaginas, because they threaten men's ability to control. The solution is homosexuality. Not only have marriage and heteronormativism removed vast areas of sexuality from human life, but the simple act of touch has been channelled into violence as its only suitable expression; wrestling being the healthiest form of this, war being the least.
All violence is a form of sexuality, and mostly it is men fighting men. The solution is Homosexuality. I believe that it is necessary for all men to be sodomised at least once in their life, otherwise a fundamental human experience has been lost and an entire aspect of the psyche has not been allowed to develop. To empathise with those who are temporarily weaker or submissive to us in some way, we need to experience the receptive. To experience the intensity of being penetrated is to empathise with the person you penetrate.
The solution is joy and love and freedom and sexuality and humanity and can be started and enjoyed immediately.
2013-02-16
In the beginning was the word; in the end will be the word
In the beginning was the word.
In the beginning of the story is the word; in the beginning of the world the story depicts - the world the story inadequately conveys, the universe that the story dishonestly embodies - is the spirit, the unmanifest, formless, unspoken, the unspeakable, that which simply is.
On this particular day God, or someone without a name, spoke into existence the form in which he would temporarily experience the spirit that hovered over the surface of the waters. The waters, it seems, are the conduit between the spirit and the form, the unmanifest and the manifest. The water is receptive and selflessly conveys messages between these two dimensions, often bringing spirit into form through life in the material world.
God is like us humans and his every motivation, his compulsions and his true nature is largely hidden by the incessant noise of the voice in his head, obscuring everything but its own insanity. Because of this no one remembers why God did what he did, any more than we know why we speak religions, wars and industrial economies into existence.
Often after doing something and not knowing why, God will simply wait for it to finish, knowing everything manifest is limited in time. Or he will use the time to figure out why he might have manifest such a thing and what lesson it could possibly teach him about himself and about he universe. At what point are we now in this process? I suppose we are deep within this lesson of God, anticipating the end but with no idea where the end might lie. It seems we've lost sight not only of the beginning of this process, we have lost sight of our present position, so desperately focussed on the end as we are.
If God can speak into existence the beginning, can we speak into existence the end, we wonder? Or can only God speak the end into existence? And if God can do so, why has he not yet done so? Surely he's figured all this out by now and can end it all and inform us of the punchline. Surely, we say.
So perhaps it is us who must declare the end, like we declare war. In so many ways we have already attempted to say the right words, to declare the end, to announce to the manifest world that the story ends here, or at the end of this sentence, this paragraph, this chapter.
In the end was the word, and the word was spoken by the species who suffered the most, and who caused the most suffering, and the darkness on the surface of the waters was permeated by light, and the light illuminated and revealed all the curves, all the rhythms and vibrations of the waters who make up the living systems of the manifest world on the Planet Earth. The waters know what time it is, and when the time is right the water will flow with an unrelenting momentum along the most gentle path to the vastness of the ocean, that of which we humans know so little, that of which we respect and fear much more than we would admit.
How can the beginning and the end be so close together? How can the beginning and the end be so far apart? Has this God abandoned us? Is he observing dispassionately? Does he love us and wish the best for us in some vague ineffective manner? Is he the image of our own distant all-too-human father who we project onto the dark panel of our forgotten? Is he the will and the intention and the powerful creator within us, obscured by the symptoms of our schizophrenia, falsely externalized and objectified to avoid the responsibility of manifesting our own necessary apocalypse?
In the beginning was the word, at least as I remember it, because I do not remember the beginning, my culture and my education have obscured the genetic memory that connects me to my ancestors.
In the beginning was the word, because all I remember is the story told about the beginning, made fully of words, revised and retold very recently. When I truly listen and try to comprehend these words that reverberate through my body as the rhythms in which they are spoken, I become very confused and disoriented.
These words, this story, are like a nasty paranoia, separating me from the world in which I was born with my own resistance, my own anxiety about my inability to resonate with the vibrations offered to me. I listen to this official story again, it is the same story, I notice, that is told in the schools, in the cinemas, in the speeches of presidents and parents. It is the same story told in 99% of our books, 99% of our conversations and 99% of our laws.
I am trained in the perpetuation of this story, so when I don't listen, when I do not notice the vibrations moving through my body, the vibrations which may or may not manifest the first cancer cells to consume my earthly form, I can correlate the story with all the buildings, all the institutions and all the expectations in my environment. Everything which does not correlate with the story falls into two categories: that of which we can deny the existence, and that which we can dismiss as "Nature".
"In the beginning was the word," I read in a weighty underrated overemphasized book that blatantly defies everything that is said about it. I feel strong and confident and I dangerously allow the words to reverberate through my body as the spoken vibrations which they transcribe. I am briefly confused by my inability to correlate the official interpretation with the intelligence innate in my body, my manifestation in the manifest world, my conduit between my home-universes. I realize the words I am reciting in my head, read from the pages of this exceptional book, tend to create an image in my mind, like a projection onto a blank canvas, and do not seek to acquaint me with the reality I experience through the conduit of my body, therefore there is no reason why these words should resonate with my body.
I breathe easier and the paranoia eases off, I relax and am able to perceive my environment more easily. I observe with my senses, create images and theories with my mind, and constantly try to place myself in relation to everything I find. I test everything against the body with which I experience reality.
"'In the beginning was the word'?" someone says. "What a crock of shit! In the beginning was genetic determinism." They tell the story of the determined Gene who made us all in his own image, who loves us and compels us to be fruitful and multiply and spread his good news around the world, subduing and repressing all other species in favor of the One True Gene, on Gene to rule them all.
In the beginning was the word remains because God must have used some word to speak this process into existence. The best I can come up with is AUM and I get together with hundreds of people in nature and we hold hands in a circle and chant our word long and slow, with a full deep prolonged breath as a single word. We focus and we respect the process and afterwards, in silence, we check the resonance with our body, with the sky and with the earth. We notice the calm, the peace, and the acceptance with which the elements receive this syllable.
But the dream from which so many of us are aware we need to wake, this unusual and unknown and now unconvincing process that God spoke into existence at the beginning, persists and we must continue to live within its bounds. We know little about this process or the reason for it, but we know that it is unacceptable because we are experiencing it as humans and the world we have culturally manifested does not promote human life. We notice our dependence upon and interconnectedness with all life on this planet and we notice the cultural process persist in destroying all life on this planet and the environments in which life flourishes. We notice the love we use to orient us, to stabilize and guide us in this world subjugated in favor of money as a guiding force and how love makes us feel beside love.
This world is unacceptable, we tell God, and he does not respond. We tell our peers and they stare at us blankly; they don't care. We gather together with others who have noticed and who care and we no longer need to state the obvious. We do, however, need to continue living in this world, and moving through this process.
In the beginning was the word and in the end will be the word, but they may not be the same word. We attempt various formulations and keep record of our closest approximations to the word that will finally bring about the ending that we're all anticipating.
In this world, regardless of the relationships we have with this or that deity, anticipation is not enough.
We are responsible beings, intelligent, creative, empathetic, adaptable, and we all must manifest this word in whatever form comes most naturally to us, that correlates with the innate responses of our body, our connection to the manifest, our connection to the unmanifest, the conduit for spirit and life and finally truth, that Holy Grail, that elixir which may just bring down this whole unholy edifice, this Babel Tower, this false god, this refuge from responsibility; the resonant realization that will release us from ourselves, from Jahweh and Allah and from the selfish gene, these demons who do not exist and therefore we cannot understand.
~
Don't tempt me with the few insidious myths that provide futile solace to my often overwhelmed heart.
When we breathe deeply we not only calm and centre our body and its modulating emanations, but we inhale the scent of our environment, we smell the hormones and the pheromones of each others' bodies, released via our pores. We inhale the particles of light that we cannot see surrounding each of our bodies and we learn a lot that we cannot necessarily speak or think about with the language of our birth.
We are present for each other and that's all that matters. I can feel the warmth and scent of your body and I feel love though I do not examine the conditions that accompany that love or the timeframe during which it is allowed to bloom and blossom. I do not cling to it any longer than necessary and if I do I simply experience slightly more pain before inevitably letting go.
In the beginning of the story is the word; in the beginning of the world the story depicts - the world the story inadequately conveys, the universe that the story dishonestly embodies - is the spirit, the unmanifest, formless, unspoken, the unspeakable, that which simply is.
On this particular day God, or someone without a name, spoke into existence the form in which he would temporarily experience the spirit that hovered over the surface of the waters. The waters, it seems, are the conduit between the spirit and the form, the unmanifest and the manifest. The water is receptive and selflessly conveys messages between these two dimensions, often bringing spirit into form through life in the material world.
God is like us humans and his every motivation, his compulsions and his true nature is largely hidden by the incessant noise of the voice in his head, obscuring everything but its own insanity. Because of this no one remembers why God did what he did, any more than we know why we speak religions, wars and industrial economies into existence.
Often after doing something and not knowing why, God will simply wait for it to finish, knowing everything manifest is limited in time. Or he will use the time to figure out why he might have manifest such a thing and what lesson it could possibly teach him about himself and about he universe. At what point are we now in this process? I suppose we are deep within this lesson of God, anticipating the end but with no idea where the end might lie. It seems we've lost sight not only of the beginning of this process, we have lost sight of our present position, so desperately focussed on the end as we are.
If God can speak into existence the beginning, can we speak into existence the end, we wonder? Or can only God speak the end into existence? And if God can do so, why has he not yet done so? Surely he's figured all this out by now and can end it all and inform us of the punchline. Surely, we say.
So perhaps it is us who must declare the end, like we declare war. In so many ways we have already attempted to say the right words, to declare the end, to announce to the manifest world that the story ends here, or at the end of this sentence, this paragraph, this chapter.
In the end was the word, and the word was spoken by the species who suffered the most, and who caused the most suffering, and the darkness on the surface of the waters was permeated by light, and the light illuminated and revealed all the curves, all the rhythms and vibrations of the waters who make up the living systems of the manifest world on the Planet Earth. The waters know what time it is, and when the time is right the water will flow with an unrelenting momentum along the most gentle path to the vastness of the ocean, that of which we humans know so little, that of which we respect and fear much more than we would admit.
How can the beginning and the end be so close together? How can the beginning and the end be so far apart? Has this God abandoned us? Is he observing dispassionately? Does he love us and wish the best for us in some vague ineffective manner? Is he the image of our own distant all-too-human father who we project onto the dark panel of our forgotten? Is he the will and the intention and the powerful creator within us, obscured by the symptoms of our schizophrenia, falsely externalized and objectified to avoid the responsibility of manifesting our own necessary apocalypse?
In the beginning was the word, at least as I remember it, because I do not remember the beginning, my culture and my education have obscured the genetic memory that connects me to my ancestors.
In the beginning was the word, because all I remember is the story told about the beginning, made fully of words, revised and retold very recently. When I truly listen and try to comprehend these words that reverberate through my body as the rhythms in which they are spoken, I become very confused and disoriented.
These words, this story, are like a nasty paranoia, separating me from the world in which I was born with my own resistance, my own anxiety about my inability to resonate with the vibrations offered to me. I listen to this official story again, it is the same story, I notice, that is told in the schools, in the cinemas, in the speeches of presidents and parents. It is the same story told in 99% of our books, 99% of our conversations and 99% of our laws.
I am trained in the perpetuation of this story, so when I don't listen, when I do not notice the vibrations moving through my body, the vibrations which may or may not manifest the first cancer cells to consume my earthly form, I can correlate the story with all the buildings, all the institutions and all the expectations in my environment. Everything which does not correlate with the story falls into two categories: that of which we can deny the existence, and that which we can dismiss as "Nature".
"In the beginning was the word," I read in a weighty underrated overemphasized book that blatantly defies everything that is said about it. I feel strong and confident and I dangerously allow the words to reverberate through my body as the spoken vibrations which they transcribe. I am briefly confused by my inability to correlate the official interpretation with the intelligence innate in my body, my manifestation in the manifest world, my conduit between my home-universes. I realize the words I am reciting in my head, read from the pages of this exceptional book, tend to create an image in my mind, like a projection onto a blank canvas, and do not seek to acquaint me with the reality I experience through the conduit of my body, therefore there is no reason why these words should resonate with my body.
I breathe easier and the paranoia eases off, I relax and am able to perceive my environment more easily. I observe with my senses, create images and theories with my mind, and constantly try to place myself in relation to everything I find. I test everything against the body with which I experience reality.
"'In the beginning was the word'?" someone says. "What a crock of shit! In the beginning was genetic determinism." They tell the story of the determined Gene who made us all in his own image, who loves us and compels us to be fruitful and multiply and spread his good news around the world, subduing and repressing all other species in favor of the One True Gene, on Gene to rule them all.
In the beginning was the word remains because God must have used some word to speak this process into existence. The best I can come up with is AUM and I get together with hundreds of people in nature and we hold hands in a circle and chant our word long and slow, with a full deep prolonged breath as a single word. We focus and we respect the process and afterwards, in silence, we check the resonance with our body, with the sky and with the earth. We notice the calm, the peace, and the acceptance with which the elements receive this syllable.
But the dream from which so many of us are aware we need to wake, this unusual and unknown and now unconvincing process that God spoke into existence at the beginning, persists and we must continue to live within its bounds. We know little about this process or the reason for it, but we know that it is unacceptable because we are experiencing it as humans and the world we have culturally manifested does not promote human life. We notice our dependence upon and interconnectedness with all life on this planet and we notice the cultural process persist in destroying all life on this planet and the environments in which life flourishes. We notice the love we use to orient us, to stabilize and guide us in this world subjugated in favor of money as a guiding force and how love makes us feel beside love.
This world is unacceptable, we tell God, and he does not respond. We tell our peers and they stare at us blankly; they don't care. We gather together with others who have noticed and who care and we no longer need to state the obvious. We do, however, need to continue living in this world, and moving through this process.
In the beginning was the word and in the end will be the word, but they may not be the same word. We attempt various formulations and keep record of our closest approximations to the word that will finally bring about the ending that we're all anticipating.
In this world, regardless of the relationships we have with this or that deity, anticipation is not enough.
We are responsible beings, intelligent, creative, empathetic, adaptable, and we all must manifest this word in whatever form comes most naturally to us, that correlates with the innate responses of our body, our connection to the manifest, our connection to the unmanifest, the conduit for spirit and life and finally truth, that Holy Grail, that elixir which may just bring down this whole unholy edifice, this Babel Tower, this false god, this refuge from responsibility; the resonant realization that will release us from ourselves, from Jahweh and Allah and from the selfish gene, these demons who do not exist and therefore we cannot understand.
~
Don't tempt me with the few insidious myths that provide futile solace to my often overwhelmed heart.
When we breathe deeply we not only calm and centre our body and its modulating emanations, but we inhale the scent of our environment, we smell the hormones and the pheromones of each others' bodies, released via our pores. We inhale the particles of light that we cannot see surrounding each of our bodies and we learn a lot that we cannot necessarily speak or think about with the language of our birth.
We are present for each other and that's all that matters. I can feel the warmth and scent of your body and I feel love though I do not examine the conditions that accompany that love or the timeframe during which it is allowed to bloom and blossom. I do not cling to it any longer than necessary and if I do I simply experience slightly more pain before inevitably letting go.
2013-02-10
How Australia Made Me An Anarchist
How Australia Made Me An Anarchist
Journey of a homeless poet through the stolen continent
by Chris Kirk
A new cover is coming for the new edition and there will soon be copies available. Please message me via Facebook if you would like a copy of this book.
https://www.facebook.com/chris.kirk.7503
Journey of a homeless poet through the stolen continent
by Chris Kirk
A new cover is coming for the new edition and there will soon be copies available. Please message me via Facebook if you would like a copy of this book.
https://www.facebook.com/chris.kirk.7503
2012-11-30
Smiling fully and submissively with my famiy
I travel from across the ocean because I dedicated my life to the human species, and I seek the most pure expression of human nature I can with my imprinted culture and language. I seek to wash myself of this culture and language to the extent that suits me at any one moment, and I succeed only so far. When an old man who only speaks Q'eqchi' grasps my hand with some unknown intent and I look into his eyes and can only say, "No entiendo," I realise I have shed little of what was given to me by my culture as a child.
I have found a culture full of refugees of the same culture I try to escape. They come from North and South America, Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand; and almost never elsewhere. They are my brothers and sisters and I do feel comfortable to express myself exuberantly and joyfully when I feel inclined. We meet only temporarily and always in a different place because we share a distrust of permanence and an avoidance of responsibility. We meet under many names, but there is a banner that has developed and which many of us wear with pride. Under this banner many gatherings occur all year round across the planet.
I have met eight times under this banner, for one month at a time. Over this time I have noticed our own culture developing, some of which is 40 years old, some has developed over many years and some emerges from the experience of a single gathering. Like the culture that offered us concepts and objects to believe in and buy, this culture is utilised as a limiting factor for the maintenance of a shared experience. How can a man who is embedded in a culture that he loves use such a cold sentence to describe the sight of 100 people singing, dancing and drumming around a fire under the fullmoon? The night sky is thick with clouds and the ground is wet with mud, but this is not the reason; perhaps it is the waves of digestive disturbance that I haven't figured out how to avoid. Perhaps I have cultivated an alienation from my own culture that facilitates the observations that the thoughtful appreciate reading on the internet or in a book at quiet moments. When I am strong I throw my joy and my love around our Sacred Circle as an alternative to whatever else is going on and the more smiles I give, the more I have to give. When I am weak I have nothing to offer and cannot accept the oat and hash "blissballs" that circulate as a pathway into the mindset of the crowd, my family, the culture we collectively cultivate and unconsciously consent to at every moment.
It is my job to contradict any culture I see developing around me, I tell myself. At times of hysteria I promote calm and at times of cultural haze I provoke chaos. But I also like to sink into the lap or into the gaze of a beautiful person who simply accepts me as I am, lazy or busy, poet or person, sad or happy. I sleep alone surrounded by too much food and ants who often respect the space I borrowed from them. My eyes open so wide sometimes that it must seem like a blinding headtorch in the night, perhaps this overwhelms the beautiful I most seek connection with. I do not know how they respond to my rejection of the drugs - wheat, rice, marijuana, tobacco, hippie slop in huge pots, spiritual noise and new age chatter - or whether they internalise the rejection as if I believe in something different.
I believe only in love, not in The End of the Mayan Calendar or The Law of Attraction or the need for excessive consumption of overcooked grains. I came here to open my heart and to have the most beautiful people open their hearts to me, I tell myself. I came here to experience disappointment and love and ecstasy and whatever else I haven't found yet. I came too far to be able to turn back when I feel sad from eating too many tortillas and peanuts. I am here and I don't know who will invite me or where, but I will go where the most beautiful lead and I will be ready for whatever I have never experienced before and warms my heart and brings smiles to those around me and allows me to smile fully and submissively with my family.
I have found a culture full of refugees of the same culture I try to escape. They come from North and South America, Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand; and almost never elsewhere. They are my brothers and sisters and I do feel comfortable to express myself exuberantly and joyfully when I feel inclined. We meet only temporarily and always in a different place because we share a distrust of permanence and an avoidance of responsibility. We meet under many names, but there is a banner that has developed and which many of us wear with pride. Under this banner many gatherings occur all year round across the planet.
I have met eight times under this banner, for one month at a time. Over this time I have noticed our own culture developing, some of which is 40 years old, some has developed over many years and some emerges from the experience of a single gathering. Like the culture that offered us concepts and objects to believe in and buy, this culture is utilised as a limiting factor for the maintenance of a shared experience. How can a man who is embedded in a culture that he loves use such a cold sentence to describe the sight of 100 people singing, dancing and drumming around a fire under the fullmoon? The night sky is thick with clouds and the ground is wet with mud, but this is not the reason; perhaps it is the waves of digestive disturbance that I haven't figured out how to avoid. Perhaps I have cultivated an alienation from my own culture that facilitates the observations that the thoughtful appreciate reading on the internet or in a book at quiet moments. When I am strong I throw my joy and my love around our Sacred Circle as an alternative to whatever else is going on and the more smiles I give, the more I have to give. When I am weak I have nothing to offer and cannot accept the oat and hash "blissballs" that circulate as a pathway into the mindset of the crowd, my family, the culture we collectively cultivate and unconsciously consent to at every moment.
It is my job to contradict any culture I see developing around me, I tell myself. At times of hysteria I promote calm and at times of cultural haze I provoke chaos. But I also like to sink into the lap or into the gaze of a beautiful person who simply accepts me as I am, lazy or busy, poet or person, sad or happy. I sleep alone surrounded by too much food and ants who often respect the space I borrowed from them. My eyes open so wide sometimes that it must seem like a blinding headtorch in the night, perhaps this overwhelms the beautiful I most seek connection with. I do not know how they respond to my rejection of the drugs - wheat, rice, marijuana, tobacco, hippie slop in huge pots, spiritual noise and new age chatter - or whether they internalise the rejection as if I believe in something different.
I believe only in love, not in The End of the Mayan Calendar or The Law of Attraction or the need for excessive consumption of overcooked grains. I came here to open my heart and to have the most beautiful people open their hearts to me, I tell myself. I came here to experience disappointment and love and ecstasy and whatever else I haven't found yet. I came too far to be able to turn back when I feel sad from eating too many tortillas and peanuts. I am here and I don't know who will invite me or where, but I will go where the most beautiful lead and I will be ready for whatever I have never experienced before and warms my heart and brings smiles to those around me and allows me to smile fully and submissively with my family.
2012-11-20
Now is the time
We are in the centre of the New World at the End of the Time. Many of us have travelled from afar to be here together. We have left behind the stifling comforts of Civilisation to sit in the dirt around the fire. We have rejected the promise of various forms of success for something more tangible, perhaps a social acceptance that resonates in our bodies and stimulates a feeling some might refer to as the "soul". Our presence is bolstered by various Native American prophesies; one that announced our new age tribe by name decades before we first came together; one that placed cosmic significance on this specific time and place. We don't know what we're doing, we are standing together in a circle in a maize field in the rainforest holding hands naked under the sun and the moon.
What are we doing here and how do we find out what we are doing here? We can listen to our bodies or we can discuss and form a rational religion based on superficial explanations of common understandings. So many of us are post-Christian and post-Scientific Materialism and post-Adulthood to the point where we resist and deny any point at which a religion seems to form. Some of us possess watery minds within which a drop of anything colourful can spread rapidly, but many of us wait patiently for that which is simple and proves effective time and again; cooperation, gentleness, love. Surely we need an empirical source of information. Luckily, we have our bodies to provide us with all the information we could hope for within a universe in which we are literally manifest as human bodies. Our bodies are extremely sensitive and malleable and so we can adjust and adapt to many environments and climates. We learn a lot as travellers and vagabonds, experiencing many variations of reality. In our rich and civilised First World homes we frequent Health Food shops, choosing to expose ourselves only to the best consumables available.
When we come together here in ceremony outside of the concrete and education we grew up with we choose to desensitise our bodies with chapattis, wheat grains refined into flour, mixed with flour and burned to a crisp on the fire until they form crusts of indigestible delight for those who identify as hippies. We carry around huge pots of overcooked post-food to serve to one another with filthy hands in our Sacred Cirlce. We reach out our various containers like refugees, desperately begging for more mass to fill our bulging bellies, craving the nutrition that has been deliberately boiled out of our hippie slop. Having shared our meal and still feeling joyful almost to the point of being overwhelmed with the beauty of our environment and each other and the envigoration of life, we must further desensitise our bodies with the smoking of tobacco and marijuana. Our goal is surely the reduction of intensity of the fullness of experience of a life devoid of distraction and toxic influence. Everything we need to know is contained in that moment of silence after our collective AUM, seconds before the inevitable noise necessary to organise the feeding of 200 people.
We try to work hard and we try to enjoy free time, we become agitated to leave and we plan to form communities with dreams of sustainability and the relief of the alleviation of nomadism. We are free from the idiotic ideologies of all societies and yet we are trapped by our own addictions and traumas. We hope for far more than we are willing to accept when it is offered to us, but we anticipate great change soon. Our dreams creep into our waking minds as memories when we don't smoke too much before bed. We are forced into fasting when our bodies become sick with parasites that beg us to starve them. There is so much waiting for us when we decide to allow it that our imaginations fail us. What if we take our clothes off forever? What if we only ever speak the truth, even when it provokes emotion? What if we eat and smoke no more and only drink the water and breathe the air that is clean and full of goddess? What if we accept fully the divinity of creating the state of our bodies that maintains the state of our world?
What are we doing here and how do we find out what we are doing here? We can listen to our bodies or we can discuss and form a rational religion based on superficial explanations of common understandings. So many of us are post-Christian and post-Scientific Materialism and post-Adulthood to the point where we resist and deny any point at which a religion seems to form. Some of us possess watery minds within which a drop of anything colourful can spread rapidly, but many of us wait patiently for that which is simple and proves effective time and again; cooperation, gentleness, love. Surely we need an empirical source of information. Luckily, we have our bodies to provide us with all the information we could hope for within a universe in which we are literally manifest as human bodies. Our bodies are extremely sensitive and malleable and so we can adjust and adapt to many environments and climates. We learn a lot as travellers and vagabonds, experiencing many variations of reality. In our rich and civilised First World homes we frequent Health Food shops, choosing to expose ourselves only to the best consumables available.
When we come together here in ceremony outside of the concrete and education we grew up with we choose to desensitise our bodies with chapattis, wheat grains refined into flour, mixed with flour and burned to a crisp on the fire until they form crusts of indigestible delight for those who identify as hippies. We carry around huge pots of overcooked post-food to serve to one another with filthy hands in our Sacred Cirlce. We reach out our various containers like refugees, desperately begging for more mass to fill our bulging bellies, craving the nutrition that has been deliberately boiled out of our hippie slop. Having shared our meal and still feeling joyful almost to the point of being overwhelmed with the beauty of our environment and each other and the envigoration of life, we must further desensitise our bodies with the smoking of tobacco and marijuana. Our goal is surely the reduction of intensity of the fullness of experience of a life devoid of distraction and toxic influence. Everything we need to know is contained in that moment of silence after our collective AUM, seconds before the inevitable noise necessary to organise the feeding of 200 people.
We try to work hard and we try to enjoy free time, we become agitated to leave and we plan to form communities with dreams of sustainability and the relief of the alleviation of nomadism. We are free from the idiotic ideologies of all societies and yet we are trapped by our own addictions and traumas. We hope for far more than we are willing to accept when it is offered to us, but we anticipate great change soon. Our dreams creep into our waking minds as memories when we don't smoke too much before bed. We are forced into fasting when our bodies become sick with parasites that beg us to starve them. There is so much waiting for us when we decide to allow it that our imaginations fail us. What if we take our clothes off forever? What if we only ever speak the truth, even when it provokes emotion? What if we eat and smoke no more and only drink the water and breathe the air that is clean and full of goddess? What if we accept fully the divinity of creating the state of our bodies that maintains the state of our world?
2012-11-06
Behind the cultural haze
Having surrendered to the will of the universe in which I exist, I continue to find myself at home in places that I could not previously have imagined.
I was warned about travelling through Central America by people who have never been here and know nothing about it. I forget what I am supposed to worry about here. Years ago I chose a life without stress, I'm not sure I would be alive today otherwise. I also chose to listen to my body, and the pain of loneliness and boredom has pushed me into situations that could appear to be dangerous or stressful. I can only push myself as far as I feel comfortable.
I do not speak the local language, I don't know how many people do, or when they get the opportunity to do so. There is a common Spanish that is mostly spoken, and my grasp of even this language is thin. I could not have come here without the knowledge that I was walking into the wet tropical forest to find 100 brothers and sisters from all over the world who blessedly speak in a common English. Can I remain in this bubble of international love and hippie culture?
I look at the locals and we both grin stupidly. Am I the retard who can't even speak Spanish? Am I the exotic foreigner, equally hilarious and intriguing? Or am I just another human being? I am rich in this country. One US dollar is worth almost eight quetzales and everything is considerably cheaper. Still we haggle and try to talk down the price, fearful that we might be ripped off by a quetzale or two. We gringoes bring in our phones and our laptops and leave them in our Made in China tents and then we shout our complaints when they disappear. In Cobán, the local town, the cellphone companies announce the importance of their products on the streets and the thirdworlders clamour to buy into the advertised glory of Western Civilisation. There are so many things that we didn't know we didn't have.
I am always an outsider, at least as long as it takes me to have a conversation in Spanish, but I am with my friends so it is okay. Sometimes I want to escape to Civilisation somewhere, but it is too far away and I won't know anyone there and I will need money to survive and my meagre savings won't last for long. I think about San Francisco, where I spent five days with my friends on the way to Guatemala, and I yearn for the convenience and the good food and entertainment and English. Instead I sludge through endless mud and rain, cross lines of ants carrying huge pieces of cut leaves into their underground cities, and end my day curled awkwardly by the fire on a brother's lap or laid out alone in my tiny stolen tent surrounded by my belongings and food. I wonder at the life I chose for myself and how far away it is from what I was educated for. Here, the currency is touch and music; in town, the currency is quetzales and smiles.
My brother discusses the possibility of buying land; it is cheap, and here we can be free and be together. We are all searching for something we cannot name, we searched each other out from across the globe and together we know we feel the same about something. We span the American continents, all of Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. I notice a distinct dark patch across much of the populated globe. We agree that we reject much of what we were taught to value, though a lot of it we are addicted to. We say, "No alcohol, no drugs, no meat," though we suck into our lungs a lot of tobacco, marijuana and industrial grains. I reject oats and wheat, though I am smitten by a new love of corn. We expect the world is changing, though we make plans as though it has always been like this and always will be. I feel my love for the new people around me grow much more rapidly than my ability to speak Spanish, but I fantasise about the most beautiful and cause awkward inabilities to behave normally in their presence.
I am confused human being, placing myself in environments in which my habitual behaviours are not appropriate or useful, forcing myself to discover what it really is I am doing, behind all the thoughts, behind the cultural haze that binds and confuses me, behind the throbbing in my loins to the beating heart in my chest.
I was warned about travelling through Central America by people who have never been here and know nothing about it. I forget what I am supposed to worry about here. Years ago I chose a life without stress, I'm not sure I would be alive today otherwise. I also chose to listen to my body, and the pain of loneliness and boredom has pushed me into situations that could appear to be dangerous or stressful. I can only push myself as far as I feel comfortable.
I do not speak the local language, I don't know how many people do, or when they get the opportunity to do so. There is a common Spanish that is mostly spoken, and my grasp of even this language is thin. I could not have come here without the knowledge that I was walking into the wet tropical forest to find 100 brothers and sisters from all over the world who blessedly speak in a common English. Can I remain in this bubble of international love and hippie culture?
I look at the locals and we both grin stupidly. Am I the retard who can't even speak Spanish? Am I the exotic foreigner, equally hilarious and intriguing? Or am I just another human being? I am rich in this country. One US dollar is worth almost eight quetzales and everything is considerably cheaper. Still we haggle and try to talk down the price, fearful that we might be ripped off by a quetzale or two. We gringoes bring in our phones and our laptops and leave them in our Made in China tents and then we shout our complaints when they disappear. In Cobán, the local town, the cellphone companies announce the importance of their products on the streets and the thirdworlders clamour to buy into the advertised glory of Western Civilisation. There are so many things that we didn't know we didn't have.
I am always an outsider, at least as long as it takes me to have a conversation in Spanish, but I am with my friends so it is okay. Sometimes I want to escape to Civilisation somewhere, but it is too far away and I won't know anyone there and I will need money to survive and my meagre savings won't last for long. I think about San Francisco, where I spent five days with my friends on the way to Guatemala, and I yearn for the convenience and the good food and entertainment and English. Instead I sludge through endless mud and rain, cross lines of ants carrying huge pieces of cut leaves into their underground cities, and end my day curled awkwardly by the fire on a brother's lap or laid out alone in my tiny stolen tent surrounded by my belongings and food. I wonder at the life I chose for myself and how far away it is from what I was educated for. Here, the currency is touch and music; in town, the currency is quetzales and smiles.
My brother discusses the possibility of buying land; it is cheap, and here we can be free and be together. We are all searching for something we cannot name, we searched each other out from across the globe and together we know we feel the same about something. We span the American continents, all of Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. I notice a distinct dark patch across much of the populated globe. We agree that we reject much of what we were taught to value, though a lot of it we are addicted to. We say, "No alcohol, no drugs, no meat," though we suck into our lungs a lot of tobacco, marijuana and industrial grains. I reject oats and wheat, though I am smitten by a new love of corn. We expect the world is changing, though we make plans as though it has always been like this and always will be. I feel my love for the new people around me grow much more rapidly than my ability to speak Spanish, but I fantasise about the most beautiful and cause awkward inabilities to behave normally in their presence.
I am confused human being, placing myself in environments in which my habitual behaviours are not appropriate or useful, forcing myself to discover what it really is I am doing, behind all the thoughts, behind the cultural haze that binds and confuses me, behind the throbbing in my loins to the beating heart in my chest.
2012-10-18
The next journey
Hello to all my friends, readers and potential lovers. I have completed my story of the most recent journey around Australia and have recorded it in audio form. I look forward to sharing it with you and with all the friends you feel would benefit from it. Feel free to make requests for these materials, and I will get them online when the moment presents itself to me.
I don't know what access I will have to the abstract digital dimension of the internet from now on. Today I fly far away to what has been called the New World, but which geologically is the old world. A great man will meet me at the airport and hug me and together we will go visit another great man, who will not get the opportunity to hug me because we will be surrounded by thousands of other people who are coming to visit him too. The latter great man is Bob Dylan and the continent is North America.
From humble civilised beginnings this journey will wander deep into the unknown, the uncivilised, the chaos of nature and the otherworlds. I don't know about these places either, so I cannot explain them, but I am being called into the depths of the unknown and I am not afraid. I know I will be strong enough to fulfill my role when I arrive there because I trust that the strength necessary will be waiting upon my arrival.
I don't know what access I will have to the abstract digital dimension of the internet from now on. Today I fly far away to what has been called the New World, but which geologically is the old world. A great man will meet me at the airport and hug me and together we will go visit another great man, who will not get the opportunity to hug me because we will be surrounded by thousands of other people who are coming to visit him too. The latter great man is Bob Dylan and the continent is North America.
From humble civilised beginnings this journey will wander deep into the unknown, the uncivilised, the chaos of nature and the otherworlds. I don't know about these places either, so I cannot explain them, but I am being called into the depths of the unknown and I am not afraid. I know I will be strong enough to fulfill my role when I arrive there because I trust that the strength necessary will be waiting upon my arrival.
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