East Bay Alternative Medicine-A collaboration of local alternative medicine practitioners that is just getting going.

Insurgent Summer- This is a “guided” summer reading of one of the greatest pieces of  anarchist literature of all time.  Starting this week, it will take place over 10 weeks.

The good news is that we expect to be back in matching by the end of the summer, so I may have a whole lot of new material coming up soon. This will be especially exciting for those following my parenting/fost-adopt life.

ShareThis

We finished our month of PRIDE classes, minus one that we missed because I was sick with exhaustion.  We will make that up in March and at the same time expect to be finished with the rest of our application by then, as well. Hey, maybe we will even get our taxes done from 2008 by then :)

When I haven’t been busy, I have just needed down time, time for self-care, time for vegging out and time to exercise my self and my dogs.

But, I am missing something. I am usually a very social person. I have noticed that when I do see people, it is more often than not a goal-oriented meeting.  Either they are getting a massage, I am dropping something off, or we have a project to talk about.  It reminds me of times when I sat lazily with a girlfriend and giggled on a bed with her.  I am missing some leisure, some extended intimacy, some chill time.

I have no shortage of folks that I would love this time with, but when I am so overscheduled, I become protective of the time that is not work-related.

On one of these few-and-far-between social outings, I visited with a friend and we discussed our favorite book. A line says something like, “I understand the difference between people and things.”  And I do know the difference, but when my life gets so bogged down with logistics, I am not sure of how much  it  matters.  Sigh…

So a goal for the rest of the year will be to tidy up my schedule, which means containing my work a bit and having days that are completely unscheduled that will free up this kind of emotional room.

ShareThis

I never had the site down, but things did break along the way. Thanks goodness for google, apparently everyone else had run into the same bug and being persistent in searching for the problem finally paid off when I found someone’s posted solution. It turned out that one of the plugins was not compatible with the new version of wordpress, which screwed up the whole dashboard plugin interface.

But what turned out to be far more interesting than these technical details is the affect that adding a stat program to my blog has had on how I perceive the blog, itself.

To back up a little, I had alreadywalked into a blogging identity crisis.  My blogging has really been fueled and buoyed by these really remarkable experiences that I have had in foster parenting. I mean, here are stories worth telling and it is not hard to make them readable and interesting.  Now that I am taking a break from that life, the content and the tone and form of my writing and interest is rapidly changing.

So, how does this relate to adding the stat counter… It related because I am very surprised at where my search engine hits are coming from and this can’t help but influence me in thinking about the direction of my blog. I get multiple hits every single day for an old post that discusses a postural analysis class that I took and “rotoscoliosis”, which I suffer from (a very mild case).  Somehow, it got towards the top of google web and image hits.  Looking at the post in retrospect, if I had known how many people would see it, I would have written it differently and made to be much more useful to people.  I also see that it is also my only single post in my “massage” category (which was a surprising fact, in itself).

Probably many of my regular readers don’t even know that I am a massage therapist!  I have been using my facebook massage page to post regularly about massage and health related topics, although most of what I post is not actually my own writing, but links to useful resources that I find.

So in the end, this question of identity becomes a question of scope.  I have, after all, created all of these categories that I expected to represent the scope of my blog, which in turn represents the scope of my life. (Yes, sometimes I do consider the scope of my life to be a bit broad!) A blog is a  more personal form of writing than many other forms (although there can be exceptions), and this is something that draws me to it. As my life meanders, so will my blog.  It looks like the side of my river has filled up with sediment and the opposite bank is beginning to move.

ShareThis

This blog is how I decided to replace that energy in my life. I have long wanted to write more and get back to my zine. I have always considered blogging a great method (if done well)–certainly to keep up a regular writing practice and keep the volume that I am writing high.  On the other hand, there is a lot that is off-putting to me about my political involvement in the world being rooted in words and the internet versus daily real-world interactions.

So, in turn, I have been thinking quite a bit about virtual space and the ways that I do and do not want to participate in it. I think that my whole concept of geography has been shifting. Overall, more and more of our cultures interactions are taking place virtually. This may be more or less true for certain subcultures, but as a whole…this is absolutely the case.  So although, it is not physical; this space does have geographic value.  In part, because the web adds so much to the equation of how things happen over space, which I consider to be a question of utmost importance.

What does this mean for the future of the internet? For the future of our social lives? For the physical space that we move through when we leave our computers? For our bodies and emotions?

 I often think about all of the things in my life that I wouldn’t have (or would be more difficult) without the internet, but I often forget to ask, what am I missing in my life because of the internet?  I am shocked to think of how long it has been since I have been to a library, for example.  I now drive more, work from home and use the internet more than I ever have and I randomly run into people much less than I ever have.  I also meet fewer people, and many of the contacts that I do have have moved away over the years.

I do not consider virtual interactions qualitatively equal to actual ones.  I do know people that feel more comfortable dealing with other people online and their complete social networks are built and maintained that way.  I think that it is aesthetically, I just can’t give that my rubber stamp…it seems wrong.  Yah, you pegged me….I was born before 1980, lol.

I often hear people making judgements about the internet, like “I think that geocaching is a great use of the internet,” or “I’ve decided that blogging is a complete waste of time.”  But, isn’t that like saying that your underwear is better than anothers or that sports are something that no kid should do.  Kinda arbitrary…

There seem to be two distinct areas of social networking–building and maintaining. To my parents, building a social network on the internet is off-putting. They don’t like the idea of internet dating, for example. This is the primary way that many couples that I know have met each other!

Many people that I know find maintaining social networks through the internet to be off-putting. It is one thing to have your social network facilitated by the internet, for example getting notices about upcoming shows or make plans by email. It is another to use the internet for all of ones social interaction. These are extremes, but I do know someone whose primary social network is composed of people that he has never actually met. Of course, there is also the phenomenon of people spending most of their time (and even having actual financial transactions) through virtual communities and games.

 I feel lucky that my social network is actually fairly wide. I do spend a great deal of my time on-line supporting this network. I do try to see the people that I know regularly, but I have come to realize over the last few years, that it would actually be impossible to see everyone that I want to see regularly without compromising some of the intimacy and regularity of my other relationships.  With some awareness that it was happening, I started following a rule around my friends; the closer they live, the more I see them.  This actually has been working for me very well.

I have always taken “non-intentional” community very seriously, even while I have been working on “intentional” communities and cooperatives.  I have always considered being place-based to be the primary consideration for happiness and sustainability.  The thing about the internet, though is that you can “see” folks that aren’t neighbors more regularly and the shape of space is morphed and becomes more a question of presence.

ShareThis

…and the butterfly soars again

The web was wrapped so tightly around her small body

That she forgot what it was like to move, to fly

In mummification, emotion and body numb.

Resignation had become the only life to be lived

Her life spirit co-opted, making her a living dead.

Such a small circumstance it took to change her fate

As you approached me with her in your hand.

She signaled the life presence in her oppressed body.

We removed the web carefully.

Little by little,

freeing her

More and more intricately

Her wings,

Her Feet,

Antennae.

We witness her sight, once blind

We witness her movement, once constricted

We witness her rebirth.

Exhausted, wounded.

Present again.

Fine feathers stripped from her wings

Just enough to bare a scar of a time once spent trapped,

Just enough to remind her to treasure life

To treasure freedom.

…and the butterfly soars again.

ShareThis

To make available a lifestyle option of the forest renunciate-one that hasn’t emerged in our culture, yet-but includes living outside of the economic system. I, too, am doing a zine and came up with three points that are important to looking at the forest renunciate. One is that they live outside of the industrial physical creations of man. Two is they choose to live outside of the larger economic order. Third is that it is a priority that time is devoted to spiritual practice.

Can people replace what are currently economic functions with more spiritual practices?

Yes, the point is that spiritual and artistic purposes are prioritized and that philosophies are based on giving rather than acquiring.

That is what I am doing theoretically. Specifically, I am looking to establish communities where groups are practicing this way. My first plan is to be at a forest activist site and locate them there.

So, you are basically trying to bring together spiritual practice and forest activism?

I don’t see them as different things. To me they are inseparable. Gandhi wrote specifically that his activism was an expression of spirituality.

So, are you saying that forest activists are innately spiritual practitioners?

It depends on one’s intention. Forest activists aren’t always spiritual practitioners, because they may not bring a spiritual consciousness to what they do. They may be more naturally inclined to spirituality. Being a spiritual practitioner means that you are giving yourself and your actions over to greater power, whether you call it God or intuition. You are trusting in something greater for guidance rather than intellectual dogma.

Describe your personal history and how you got into forest activism and spirituality? Which came first?

Spirituality and activism emerged together with me, and they are both things that have always been a part of my personality. My spirituality is the hardest to say, it has been mysterious, but also very natural feeling. In 8^th grade I wrote a story, which, amazingly, got at the core of meditation practices and understanding that the minds conceptions can be limiting. The story was about an 8 year old boy, modeled after my cousin, who can’t speak. Actually, it is about the day that he starts to speak and it is ironic because everyone thought that it was great that he was finally able to speak. Later there was evidence that his consciousness was far more limited after he began speaking. I also remember reading a JD Salinger story called Teddy about a boy who was a reincarnated Yogi that I found really interesting.

My interest in forest activism is just an extension of an interest in nature. It was always a highlight for me, even living in the city [New York City] to go to the country or the woods. I remember really feeling a greater power there, which just highlighted my spirituality. It was a natural extension, then, that protecting the forest is protecting the opportunity for spirituality. I was a part of Redwood Summer, joined the Sierra Club (until I realized that was silly!). The first physical manifestation of my spirituality was my last year of college, when I began to sit.

Why do you find this project important?

There are dual reasons why it is a good idea. It clarifies the deepest levels of why we need to protect the forest. The spiritual inspiration isn’t dependent on campaigns. The real inspiration comes from deeper and greater spiritual connections with the forest.

Currently spiritual practitioners are limiting how deep they can go, they are closing themselves off. They need to ground themselves in compassion to see how their spirituality changes and grows. Otherwise it is in a vaccuum. The deeper purpose of sitting is lost unless its fruits are allowed to grow. Some people are naturally activists by how they are with people, and that is great. This is another way to bring that aspect out.

In our society, the spiritual practitioners and forest activists are two pretty separate camps of people. Alone they are not so strong. Being informed by each other would make each more powerful and a very strong coalition, as well.

Forest activists don’t always address the seed of what is destructive in our society, which is separating the self from the other. The root cause will endlessly corrupt itself because of greed. On the other hand if Buddhist practitioners do not apply their inspiration, it remains theoretical, and fake.

How do you rationalize bringing a foreign religious practice to a land that once had a native, local practice?

There are two kinds of spirituality. One is a located and one is a universal. The original spirituality is a located which is shamanism. While shamanism has similarities around the world, each particular region had it’s own expression that is culturally based. At a certain time, as indigenous cultures disappeared, universal religions rose up as a response. This form of religion dealt with the way the mind works.

As India developed, class stratification began and the systems stopped taking care of all people. In response to this, the original forest renunciates arose. A whole class of people rebelled against society and the suffering, alienation and competition that was a part of it. The cast of Brahmin’s were paid to hold the societies spiritual practice. People began to say no to that and went looking for their own alternatives.

Gary Snyder writes about the close correlation between the universal and shamanistic religions. This is controversial, but he compares meditation to the hunter waiting for a kill.

Buddhism moved through many different cultures from India, China, Korea and Japan and now the US. It is essentially dead in Japan, but has jumped over the Pacific. It is informed by shamanistic and native practices, it implies that we are educated about them. For most people, who are cut off of any origins of indigenous cultures, it is less realistic and productive to try to imitate these spiritual practices. It is unlikely that we will ever return to being hunters and gatherers. One aspect of Buddhism that has been important to maintaining it’s popularity is that it never contradicts science. Although it didn’t come from a Western Culture, I see it as being more applicable to our society today. Most monasteries maintain signs of located, or original practices.

What does it mean to you to be a monk?

A clarified direction of spiritual practice and to have a definition as a spiritual practitioner. Being a monk is superficial. It doesn’t make one more insightful, but it does give the practitioner space, rules and economic support. There is a social function, also. India saw a strong integration of monks in society. It is useful to people to see intention because people are inspired to see someone directing their life in a spiritual way. It is good just to see an example of people can live in a different way.

How do you see your practice leading to change?

It is viable that communities of people practicing in the forest are going to ultimately protect it. In Thailand the old tradition of small groups living in the forest died. Now there is no forest left, the trees essentially died with the practice.

I envision loose communities living in simple ways, through donation, accepting anyone. Historically, spiritual wanderers have been from upper classes. I hope that a vision like this could be appealing to alternative and mainstream culture. It could provide mainstream culture with inspiration, a way of integrating alternative culture into their life for a short time and may make them desire a longer term commitment.

I don’t believe in the dichotomy of traditional and radical. Over time, what conservative or radical is shifts. Now, appreciation of breath, appreciation of nature are two of the most radical concepts in our world. I would say that could be considered conservative. It is definitely conservationist.

How does this fit in with your concept of education?

The main problem to overcome is our fear-based culture. The homeless are seen as failures or as sufferers. People work desperately to hold onto their place in society. To break out of this is really to fall back on a natural belonging on a trust and a dependence on the warmth and compassion that people do have. In some cultures this is aspired to. It is inspirational to support a ritual begger.

Once people are able to live outside of consumerist lifestyles, it will shift important things in the power structure. There will be challenges to that kind of lifestyle, much like the homeless experience. Buddha experienced some of the same difficulties. It is problematic for the status quo that the homeless don’t make good consumers. Everyone has different roles or “kharmic constitutions” but if people are able to discover that their fear is groundless, then returning to a consumerist lifestyle may be based on more practical reasons or spiritual reasons, but they will have grown and they will relate to life more truthfully.

ShareThis

ShareThis

These are gardens of resistance. Life is strong enough to flourish and overtake the difficult conditions that civilization has created for it. Things of persistence, color, and creativity in a world bombarded with concrete and asphalt oppression. Surviving in a mechanized and routine environment where growth, nurturing and integration are secondary to the maintenance of institutions. A place where the lifecycle is thwarted.

I like to see the same kind of social-life forces in people. I often feel sad, angry and exhausted by all of the things that are oppressive about the world. Sometimes all I can see are the confines of my time, my relationships, my breath, and my flourishing. But, I find joy in moments outside of the mundane and outside of the commodity.

My truth is in moments of nurturing, vitality and creativity. It is an emotional place where I can live critically and love uncritically. This beauty is the spirit in a struggle for survival. And like the weeds growing in the sidewalks, revolution and resistance can be found in everyday life.

The goal of this project has been to find the gardens of resistance in my life and share them. It seems that I have more often had access to an education of oppression than to celebrations of resistance, so it may be skewed towards the former.

In working on this zine, I had to answer a few questions.

Why do it?

This is a way of sharing.

I have spent a lot of time in the last few years finding things that I think are essential. I have tried to reference, include, or capture the spirit of a lot of those things. Many of my friends or acquiantances don’t have political or theoretical connections, while they do have interest. This is exposure.

This is a way of reaching out.

For the last few years, I have been looking to myself and to the resources around me to be strong and true and to understand and build community. I have done a lot of listening, a lot of checking things out and assessing. Some of this writing dates back to 4 years ago.

While I have been developing my Anarchist politics, I have not established an Anarchist identity. Because of style and personal connections, I have felt tangential to the Anarchist scene. It is not just Anarchists that I want to reach out to, of course. Everyone experiences oppression, whether they can articulate it or not.

This is a benchmark.

What I really value is intimate relationships, and those are difficult to develop in groups and at events through which I have participated in the anarchist scene. This project has been a process of discovering intimacy with myself, with my pen, with my politics and emotions. I think there will be something new in here for everyone, even those of you who know me so well. I discovered new things, too.

This project marks something in me, but I can’t really articulate what. This little book is filled with stories, reflections, and compilations that will articulate it for me.

Is what I have to say interesting enough?

This was kind of easy to answer, especially since I decided not to force anyone to read it. I looked around and saw 1) that a lot of the things that I find interesting are really more boring than this, and generally the competition isn’t very tough. 2) My insecurities were probably more influential in this question than anything else.

Where should my boundaries be?

This comes up for two reasons: I expose myself and I expose others by printing this.

One of my biggest conflicts how to balance my relationships with people and my criticisms of the world and ways of operating within it. It often would be tactically smarter and certainly easier to not talk about how I am feeling, to not call people on shit that I see going down. Needless to say, this is hard. I have alienated a lot of people that I care about by being true to myself and talking about it. I have left relationships in ugly ways. I have also seen people that have the same feelings keep their mouths shut and leave “cleanly”.

In some cases, I make decisions to simply not engage in relationships that can’t be had honestly and openly. This has been alienating and disappointing for me and others. This has been particularly difficult in dealing with progressives who often fail to understand the dialectical nature of activism.

Some work that went into this writing was the product of emotional work for me personally. Here, I expose myself to the backlash of my words. Some of my criticisms of institutions are harsh. Important people in my life are a part of institutions, and they aren’t easily separable. I think I have opted to be on the “safe” side here, especially in exposing others. I avoided going to far into details of touchy issues that have already been emotionally trying for myself and people that I care about.

ShareThis

Lived poetry has shown throughout history, even in partial revolts, even in crime…that it is the protector par excellence of everything irreducible in mankind, that is to say, of creative spontaneity. The will to unite the individual and the social, not on the basis of an illusory community but on that of subjectivity-that is what makes the new poetry into a weapon which everyone must learn to handle by himself. Poetic experience is henceforth at a premium. The organization of spontaneity will be the work of spontaneity itself.

-Vaneigem

Take this moment never away

Love the trees and the grasses

And the Wild flowers

Jasmine, sweetest

Jasmine

Patchy clouds that stars shine through

Deep blue blanket.

Insulated Bay Area

summer midnight.

Light breeze blowin’

Shuffle and kiss my hot tub soakin’

Arm is glisten-in’

This moment

I thought that Leor was my “first love”. What I know now is that he is the first person who didn’t want to trap me or expect me to be anything that I wasn’t already. The last I heard of him, a mutual friend told me, with a sad look in his eyes that he was no longer allowed to talk to girls who aren’t Jewish.

For Leor

It is in the deepest sparkle of your eyes where we have met.

Where you hold your strength.

Where you feel your pain.

Where I receive your passion.

It is here where only the present matters,

but where only the past and the future allow us

to appreciate our meeting.

Here, you are my kin. You are my grandfather,

my teacher, my brother and my son.

You are my lover.

Here is the unknown and it is the only place

where one is complete.

It is here that new lovers watch night become day;

the moon becomes the sun in an arch over the duned coastline.

It is here that a gift is given seemingly to insure that no matter what passes,

This meeting will be remembered as sacred.

It is here that being is living and it is here that I love you.

What better way of abolishing the poem could there be than realizing it?

-Vaneigem

This is about a guy who came through the East Bay to help start a local currency. He had worked with one in Colorado for a while and studied them elsewhere. I was really busy when I met him, doing activist stuff. I think he is the first person that really made it stick with me that the most important part of being an activist is to have room in your space, your time and your head to connect with people. I was also struck by what an impact he seemed to make on the local currency project as well as on the people that he was working with. I really started thinking about solidarity and about how open many groups are for someone to come in and “fix” them./

About Jhym

Breeze of Inspiration

Blowing through our town

Really no pretensions,

Just an open hearted kin

Who is real enough to really live

In the place that he is and with the people that he is around

What a world where an outside touch can affect community formation,

But for a brief moment, he wasn’t outside.

The ability is startling,

You are charmed,

Generous and Warm,

Loving and Strong.

ShareThis

Where does the desire for understanding foreign lands come from? A desire to understand the other. To participate in, specifically to dominate, the exotic…By understanding the scale of foreign means taht understanding the local is immediately sacrificed. By dominating the other, it immediately follows that one is dominated. It ensues that the resulting mode necessarily be the exploitation and commodification of travel and understanding; that is cultural tourism.

This isn’t even going into the basic physical ramifications of movement. Travel isn’t sustainable for the masses. Environmentally, modes of travel like flying and driving are disastrous. Most travel experiences are alienating. The “Armchair Tourist” was a mainstream movie that addresses this. People don’t travel to connect with people, to live their lives, they travel to see things and buy crap. Most tourism is about visiting things that are set up specifically for tourists, not experiencing anything native or real to a local culture. At best, tourists participate in a nationalistic nostalgia.

Being Somewhere in the Geography of Nowhere

While the economic, communication and power systems that surround us and lead the masses in their daily lives continue to become more global and centralized, the most crucial form of resistance remains in being local. This resistance lies in the intimate networking of people within a geographically oriented community. This is the only scale on which we can realistically talk about empowerment, resisting consumption, and creating a living reality of liberation.

On the other hand, because of the global climate of our modern political economy, we must turn to non-local contacts for inspiration, information and solidarity. Some of the most stimulating events to other activists in the recent past have been actions which people have converged to fight global capitalist forces.

How community actualizes itself over space may be the most crucial element of community, in terms of its (dys)functionality and certainly sustainability. This is very different from how people currently and loosely use the term community. As far as I can tell, geographically oriented communities are termed as “neighborhoods” (it seems rare to find one that is really a community beyond block parties or neighborhood watching…gangs may be an exception to this), “intentional communities”, or “indigenous people”.

I often hear the term “community” to refer to a sense of community that may be appreciated by people sharing common projects, which it seems may or may not have common goals. For example, the “dance community” or vegetarian dining clubs…okay, probably even Amway meet this criteria. Although this is not necessarily a false sense of fulfillment, I would like to suggest that it may be an inappropriate or detrimental cooptation or evolution of how community is perceived.

The work of “community” implies an idealistic, long term, sustained and multifaceted support network. The needs that these loosely defined communities fulfill for the most part are social. Typically, the economic aspects of these communities are not separate agendas from an overarching capitalist system, in fact they are often complementary. I have rarely seen exchange of goods or services in any significant amounts that subverts dominant economic relationships or challenges status quo producer/consumer roles. These communities serve only to appease any vague dissatisfactions that participants may have.

Social needs in the US are mostly transitory. Kind of like plug and play. I work in the computer industry right now. Plug and play is a term that means you can take a disk drive, mouse or printer and just plug it into the computer to start using it. Social outlets such as bars, cafes, cycling clubs, are venues that can be found anywhere. Styles and interests are manufactured on a national and global scale. Some areas might have certain kinds of cultures in less density than others and some areas might be slower to get certain influences. I am not saying that thingsdon’t change at all, I am saying that mainstream American doesn’t change enough to draw lines. The only lines that are generally drawn are separatists’ lines, which are often attached to a localized community.

These interest oriented communities are an inevitable development of capitalist alienation. Specialization leads to special interest groups, which keeps individuals pacified by meeting their social needs. Rather than holistic education, myth, self-reliance and rites being the basis of interaction, alienated individuals boxed into sterile living quarters are compelled to find ways of relating to others with a limited knowledge base outside of alienated exchange.

So, this isn’t ideal, but why is it detrimental? Beyond the soical pacification and the perpetuation of specialization, I contend that this lie of community allows us to collectively forget the most fundamental factors of subsistence.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

-Source Unknown

ShareThis