New Year Prayer

May this world be blessed with peace.

May we be blessed with peace.

Inhabitation

Our footsteps on the trail scare up a ground squirrel.

He dashes through the hedge nettle to his burrow.

An astringent, citrus smell lingers in his wake.

What a joy it is to know the names of all the players in this simple story.

That wild mint and her distinctive smell have often been nearby,

but now we are that much closer.

The trail of inhabitation, of knowledge of place, is long and lovely.

A Song for the Sierras

Sugar cones & ponderosa pines stand here. They run down the hill to the river, up another hill and along the ridge forever. More ridges with more conifers rise and fall, distant, purple, hazy.

Ravens tumble through the air in quiet play. When they quork from tree tops it echoes out until another raven in the distance takes up the call.

The trees grow straight and tall, with eccentric branches thrust out pell-mell. Many wear staghorn lichen – florescent green.

When the river swells small stones spin in place, wearing holes in the granite embankments. In summer they fill with warm, dirty water away from the flow. Eventually they dry out leaving yellow pollen rings around the smooth sloping edges.

The night is thick with chirruping bats and silent stars. A few meteors seem to fall each hour of darkness.

A fine congregation of beings gather here. Life manifests as pine martin, rainbow trout, and spotted owl: prowling endlessly on down muffled wings – as cicada, yellow jacket, and wolf spider who spins a three-dimensional dome web between low branches – as incense cedar, thimble berry, and manzanita whose seeds only germinate when touched by fire, or when cooked by the inner heat of bear’s belly.

Beings rise in a 100,000 more combinations of sunlight, soil, water, and consciousness, whose names and habits are yet unknown to me – in these mountains and foothills they do dwell. Truly, The Song of the Sierras is sung by a beautiful choir of citizens.

Neighbors

Last week a colony of sea lions moved in next door. A bull and his harem of five females reside on the small rock island off shore of our cliffside home. They fish all day and fuck all night. The females bark and bark, and the male grunts, snorts, and chuckles like a self satisfied halfwit. They keep me up much of the night, since the tent walls of our yurt admit sounds in and out freely. At times it even seems quieter outside.

This is the first time in my life that I find myself so close to wilderness that I am actually annoyed by it. It is curiously comforting because the annoyance seems to me a mile-stone in a relationship with the wild growing fuller. The mists of romance have cleared, or are clearing, and though my love of sea lion, stellar jay, and adolescent crow remain unconditional, I am not so smitten as to ignore their faults, follies, and intrusive calls.

We are a family after all, a family of animals, a family of living beings, and family members often wear upon each other’s last nerve. I pray nightly for a high tide to come and put the pinnipeds off their love-play, and sometimes other members of our family join in the exhausted campaign for peace and quiet. I’ve heard an otter mewing from the kelp bed over and over, perhaps saying: “I’m trying to sleep, I’m trying to sleep!” And even a bobcat shrieking from the cliffs: “I hunt with my ears, shut up, shut up!” It seems I am not the only fussy little brother in the clan.

Within Reasons

In the river small, unnamed fish gather in little shoals at either side of me. Maybe they’ve come to sup a little salt from my sweaty body, or to eat flecks of dead skin, or to enjoy some radiant heat emanating from me. Or perhaps it is for some unnamed reason that these unnamed fish assemble, some explanation far out and hard to imagine – the chemical compounds of my B.O. compose a euphoric fish drug – these fish are necromancers and have come to commune with the many ghost fish that have haunted me since their consumption – or perhaps the presence of a human being is utterly terrifying and they are forced to swim near me as punishment for previous misdeeds.

When the sun sets, bats begin aerial maneuvers over the water. Again and again they swoop down and fly around me in a hundred clockwise circles. No doubt they are feasting on the mosquitoes intent on feasting on me. The warm blood in my head is a homing beacon for the skeeters and the bats find them easily with echolocation, or so it would seem… on the other hand, perhaps human blood has healing properties according to mosquito legend, a cure for impotency or an aphrodisiac well worth the risk of bat death. Maybe the electro magnetic frequencies of my nervous system compose an attractive tune within the advanced range of bat hearing, and they circle round and round to enjoy the song, uninterested in the insects.

At nightfall I head to the Zendo for a Dharma talk attended by sixty people. We have come to hear “The Abiding Teacher” discuss things as far out and hard to imagine as: non-duality, non-attachment, and enlightenment – or perhaps it is for another reason… perhaps we gather just to gather, and acknowledge together that these lives are sometimes hard and also very simple, and that the world is both beautiful and strange.

A Bat In The Zendo

A bat in the Zendo

Flaps around in circles

And chants in inaudible frequencies

He takes his meditation on the wing

And I prefer mine afoot

On some trail, dusty or damp

By the river or on the ridge

So many sutras mention mountains

Countless metaphors have described their nature

But all the wisdom regarding The Dharma

Would fit so easily in any mountain's shadow

Blacking out the pages

With its teaching

Exhale (Whaling pt. 2)

First we have to climb a chain-link fence, then creep under the structure of a bath-house, tie a long rope to its foundation and repel 100 feet down a steep cliff face to the rock beach. It feels like a prison break, or a James Bond movie… if James Bond was ever racing communists to reach the rotting carcass of a grey whale.

This cinematic opening marks my 3^rd attempt to see the whale body up-close, it is Noël and Kelsey’s 2^nd try. We strategically plan our assault for low tide, and unstrategically set out during the new moon, so there is actually very little difference between high and low tides. Halfway there the ocean stops us. Kelsey and I decide to swim past a barrier of rock and wave. Noël elects to stay behind so she can go for help if we become marooned or injured. She waits in a cove with bright green, mossy walls, thick like the pelt of a cold weather creature.

I’m so focused on the waves, and avoiding being battered by them, I actually don’t register the freezing temperature of the water until I am on the next stretch of shore. Now we start a steady trot over the rocks, with no time to waste. The human sense of smell is a running joke in the animal kingdom, but despite my handicap the odor of the dead whale comes into focus well before the image. We stripped down for the swim of course, but I kept my underwear on so they could be converted into a bandanna as we approached the putrescent threshold.

We chant in Sanskrit seed-syllables, and clap as we walk closer and closer. “Sa ta na ma, sa ta na ma:” birth, life, death, and rebirth.

Other than the smell, the first thing I notice are the birds, thirty or forty gulls rest on the whale, and a turkey vulture actually sits in its mouth, tearing strips from the tongue. Turkey vultures have the most powerful olfactory sense of any animal, ever; they can pinpoint small carrion from many miles away, and from high in the air. Comparatively I might as well not have nostrils, yet every cell in my body fights to keep its distance from the carcass, and the world’s greatest smeller is literally sitting inside the whale.

Of course the difference is: what smells disgusting and dangerous to me, smells delicious and vital to the vulture… a bakery is to me, as a dead whale is to it. Eventually our presence inspires flight, and I marvel at the inherent poetry of wild cycles: that whale spent its whole life (50 or 60 years) swimming in the ocean, and now it’s flying.

The whale’s penis is draped over several large rocks, it would normally be internal, like most mammals, but apparently the muscular release or tension that accompanied death forced it out into the open. It is about the same size as my entire body. Yes indeed, this was a male whale.

Huge vertebrae stick out of the rot-widened blowhole. The internal decay is creating a lot of heat, as microorganisms do their good work, and steam billows out of the blowhole continuously, giving the impression that the whale is perpetually exhaling. And in a sense, he is, as he releases all of the minerals, molecules, and atoms that he has been holding onto, back into the world. Complete decomposition is the final breath, and the moment of absolute rebirth… when every cell is free to roam in the belly of a vulture, the primitive body of a microbe, or in particles through the air and sea.

Majik Landscape (Whaling pt. 1)

We start walking on a narrow trail full of coffee berry and poison oak, and we stop short only a few yards in. The swollen innards of some small mammal lies in the middle of the path, next to them a clean picked, blood tinged skull, and a very small distance away the lower jaw. Everything else is gone. No hair, no bones, no flesh, no blood; just the lonely intestine of a recently eviscerated rabbit, and its empty skull.

It smells quite pungent, and our thoughts turn immediately to the huge whale corpse we are on our way to see. If this handful of carrion can smell so badly, surely we are in danger of asphyxiation if we can actually reach the whale.

Roughly a month ago a dead grey whale washed up on the rocky, isolated beach, a few miles south of my home. Everyday it grows tanner and tanner sitting stone still next to an old shipwreck. White water breaks nearby but misses the carcass entirely, it was deposited high on the beach during strong winds and Tsunami reinforced waves, truly, the whale body appeared dramatically right after an earthquake in Japan.

It could be a good or bad omen, these rabbit guts, either way it is remarkable. Kelsey sprinkles tobacco: a small offering. Sticky monkey flower, tall grass, lupin, and giant horsetail join us on the trail. After the tall grass and horsetail our pant legs are populated with ticks, five or ten species, some enormous. What a strange life, living on the end of a grass blade, waiting and waiting for some hot-blooded somebody to walk by. Once their dream is fulfilled, and they hitch a ride on three soft skinned apes, we just flick them off our pants in disgust. It is hard not to hate them, creepy little sanguinavores.

The trail washed out and was never rebuilt, so we repel the last forty feet. Our timing is not ideal, the tide is somewhere between high and low and will be getting higher soon. The steep wall to the east overflows with tiny mossy waterfalls, creating fresh water pools full of tadpoles, and (honest to God) a little patch of quicksand. We are forced by the encroaching ocean to climb over boulders and up crumbling rock faces past stinky cormorant nests. Two dead cormorants lie between rocks on our walk. One moldering right next to her nest, possibly not built far enough away from the pounding surf, a grim reminder that we must leave enough time for a return journey, lest we be battered in a narrow passage by the incoming tide.

This hike is full of crystals. Great bands of quartz run through the igneous rocks, so loose that big chunks can be removed by hand. Solid sulfur lies in little clumps, recently fallen out of the hillside, waiting for an alchemist’s invocation. And crystalline mineral deposits grow like a fungus on some of the boulders, tan and fleshy on the surface and then broken open in places to reveal shimmering cross-sections of pink and white.

Eventually we reach an impasse, two dangerous options: deep water and rough waves, or a steep and crumbling climb, which might not even get us over the ridge. Thwarted. The tide is really coming in now, so we’ve got to hustle. Running on slippery rocks that were dry on the approach. Occasionally we brace ourselves for potential wave death, but are mercifully spared. The salt spray in my face seems to say: “you might not be so lucky next time.” Thankfully the beach widens and the ocean is at bay, so to speak. The adrenaline drains away, and Noël spots an otter diving in the breakwater, body surfing, and smashing mollusks to smithereens on an anvil stone.

Before the long hike back we conduct spontaneous ceremony. First a little, gentle movement, improv Tai Chi, Kelsey chants at a distance. A raft of pelicans soar in from the south, they coast through the curl of a wave. I am moved to sing, exclaim in fact, to greet my soaring cousins with my power voice, my loudest and most resonant tones. A song takes shape, call and response between Noël and me, and then uncontrolled free-form shamanic verse. The tide surges in and a magic landscape is reveled, always there, just waiting for us to take a little time to tune in. The rocks and cliffs, the endless water, distant clouds, my friends and me, and all the beings: together again in a song.

Myself as Imagined

At 126 years old I am very tiny. Once I rounded 111, I started to drop a few inches every year. I currently stand about 2 feet tall, but am somehow stronger than ever… and, thankfully, I remain lucid and productive. My life has become as simple as I am diminutive – I need only a meager portion of food, and a little nook of a home. Long ago I asked to meet the Gnomes, instead I have become one.

My wife (125) insists that I continue to live clean-shaven, but at 99 my spectral aura started to be plainly visible, curiously it glows brightest around the chin. I suppose non-corporeal facial hair is better than none at all.

I’ve made a record every year since I was 22, number 102 just came out on wax cylinder and collective consciousness brain stream. When The Veil began thinning I started to collaborate a little with Robbie Basho, and Harry Nilsson, somehow they’ve become even better whistlers since they stopped breathing. Our new vibrational reality has really been a boon for the creative class – there’s a lot less urgency to produce when death is no longer an obstacle… but that also might be why I’m still working on my 2^nd novel.

The Singularity came and went with a real Y2K shoulder shrug. Oh some people Borged up obviously, but I decided to remain organic sapien, choosing to put my faith in a long life through an ever-curious mind; and true to my path, I’ve never known a moment’s boredom.

You Are Free (2 old poems)

I found some poems from several years ago in an old notebook. There is a certain comfort in knowing that time is passing in a spiral, but my thoughts have a clear trajectory, as these poems are as concerned with liberation and a sincere life as I am now. It is with humility that my past and present self presents them, just our little reminder, you are free!

Ironies Passing
Who does an ironic life serve?
What chance do critics have to be quiet, to say grace?
Can you grow grain ironically,
Or for that matter cook a meal?
What chance do cynics have?

Just Let Out
Shuck your husk,
Shed that old carapace.
You are not a pupating insect.
You are a wizard,
A landscape,
The ocean,
The sky!
You are a genie just let out,
Expanding beyond all horizons.
That voice that recites your story,
Is small and annoying like a mosquito.
Ditch that little vampire,
Leave it behind,
Now and forever.
Be born into color.
Your old life was not living.

A Prayer for Poison Oak

Food to countless animals, poisonous to only one: man, Rhus diversiloba (Poison Oak) is the gatekeeper and guardian of the sacred wild lands of the North American West. In my region, the Central Coast, Rhus reigns supreme – climbing trees and fences, crawling low like a vine, filling drainage ditches, and rising up proudly at the borderland of every highway, road, and trail. Rhus the Cartographer draws deep lines in the sand, making property rights plain. He seems to say “this land is our land: plant land, bird and beast land, spirit land; and this land is your land: people land… for now.” Indeed Rhus is ready to take back what we leave.

First to arrive when the soil is turned over and plants are uprooted – populating old clear-cut grazing land, reclaiming it and holding fast. Rhus appears, nearly overnight, in the scarred landscape as if to say: “never again”. Poison Oak grows on the fringes of nearly every trail, and makes his presence known at the trailhead too, fair warning right from the start – the wild land is fiercely protected, it would be unwise to stray from the trail.

In the past I have suffered greatly from Poison Oak. Twice a rash has consumed my face, swelling my eyes shut. Once the tenacious oil even managed to enter my blood stream, and the rash spread over my entire body (save the palms of my hands and bottoms of my feet), my skin was so dry that it cracked and bled. Two shots of amphetamine and a month long course of steroids were needed to overcome The Oak. It is safe to say I am intimately familiar with the power of this plant. It is said that a pin-head of Rhus oil could cover the entire surface of a swimming pool, and effect everyone in it. Anthropologists have actually acquired rashes from handling Native American artifacts that sat in the ground for several hundred years – the oil can wait, Rhus is a patient sentinel.

One can hardly blame Poison Oak for taking a hard line, some of us are kind stewards of the land, but for the most part a weaponized plant community seems like a really reasonable reaction to our trampling and greedy species. Rhus keeps people out, he holds space for other beings, and he is powerful enough to do so. I honor him for his vigilance, and for his checks and balances. I have looked many times beyond a sea of red and green leaves to find, with an ache in my heart, a pristine beach, a deep swimming hole, or an unspoiled grove beyond my reach – blocked by Poison Oak. I honor Rhus still, acknowledging that it is okay, even good, that some places are out-of-bounds. By keeping people at an arms length from certain wild spaces Rhus teaches us that we don’t need to conquer, colonize, or even physically touch a beautiful place to appreciate it, commune with it, or inhabit it. In this way the Poison is very effective medicine.

So despite my own longing for untrammeled places, and painful physical history with this plant, I offer the following prayer for Poison Oak, this grace for Rhus, a veneration of his power, his medicine, and tireless work…

I venerate you Shapeshifter, in all your forms: red, golden, green, and dormant stick manifestations. I honor you Sentry at the trail mouth, Shrewd Witness from the fringes. I honor you Foot Soldier in the field – you Warrior in the high and low lands, in the wood, in the valley, on the mountain, by the river, the lake, the ocean – you Guardian, Gatekeeper, Watchman – you Squatter, Undeveloper, Restorationist, Preservationist. I honor you Offering, giving to many what was given first to you by the sun, you Merchant of Energy. I honor you Freedom Fighter, you Activist, defending the equal right of all beings to sacred lands. I give thanks to you Poison Oak, Rhus diversiloba, for the places I will never tread, for the blank spaces on the map that remain blank, for the mystery you maintain. May your magic garden be forever beautiful, and may the Leaves of Three always be. Amen, or (if you prefer) Aplants.

World Literature

A muddy hoof print, coyote scat filled with bones, a blood tinged feather. The world speaks with signs.

Crooked calligraphy in a mossy branch, a Stonehenge ring of toadstools, tall thistles bending into an archway. The world speaks in symbols.

A bumblebee rolling in a flower, bull sea lions slapping fat necks in combat, a rattlesnake shedding its first skin. The world speaks in moments.

New growth on a charcoaly redwood; the full swing of the seasons; evaporation, clouds, rain, rivers, creeks, and oceans: the complete water-table. The world speaks in circles.

A wave rolling in, hail on gravel, a boulder rumbling down stream, a rockslide, thunder. Wind: through dry grass, among eucalyptus branches, whistling past a cliff face. Ice cracking, brush under foot, wingbeats. The world speaks.

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This World Literature is the subject of much writing and contemplation, by myself and countless others, stretching back long before a crude wall divided the world of man and the world of nature. Indeed many of us write and think about the wild because its presence in our lives is like a phantom limb, long gone, but still felt – and, of course, the stump is obvious.

The Wild is a vast physical place, and it is a habitat for mind as much as body. I see Wilderness as a knowledge system, not to be deconstructed, rather to be experienced in its completeness. Each being, thing, or event in the wild, is the wild. Every anything is a sentence in a chapter in a story, and each sentence stands alone, a complete tale told perhaps with a single syllable. In this wild library books are nested within books within words within letters. The headwaters of creation flow infinitely in all directions. The present moment is experienced in all places simultaneously. The axis of the Universe turns on every point in the Universe. Aha!

It goes without saying, the library is full of adventure and wisdom – cost of admission is careful attention, a peaceful mind, respect, and playfulness. And you have to leave human chatter at the threshold, like all libraries, it’s best to be quiet.

"Down to Earth – Reflections on Humanity in the Esalen Farm and Garden" by Noël Vietor

Recently a President of an enormous corporation based in South Korea joined the Esalen Farm and Garden morning harvest as a volunteer. As I set him up to harvest kale, he said, “I know this is simple work but I imagine there must be more to it. How do you do this? How do you connect with this land and these plants?”

I picked up a handful of the garden soil and encouraged him to do the same. I gave him my rap: “After winter rain, our soil appears in high contrast between black humus resulting from forty years of tender stewardship, and glimmering shards of abalone, remnants of the native Essalen people who dwelled here up to 5,000 years ago. The Esalen land has a powerful ancestry, and farming is appropriately ancient work. We Farmers and Gardeners feel a deep sense of honor continuing this sacred practice of cultivating soil, plants and spirit.”

As a businessman in Seoul with a 4-hour daily commute, he could not remember having touched soil in decades. “This is very special for me,” he said, eyes twinkling.

I love facilitating a visitor’s reconnection of body, mind and spirit to the earth through this work. In our modern societies and cultures, we are “richer” and longer living than ever before — yet a feeling of emptiness or disconnection persists en masse. We meet our basic needs through the purchase of goods or services, curating rather than creating the material of our existence. Is it possible that the self-sufficient acts of our ancestors — growing food; weaving clothes; concocting soap; building houses — were fundamentally creative, expressive aspects of humanity, which we unknowingly ache and long for now?

As Brother David Steindl-Rast reminded me recently, “humus”, the dark decomposed material in soil, reveals its sacred power through its etymologic connection to “human”, “humor” and “humility”. This supports my belief that growing beautiful food humbly expresses my creativity, connects me to my body, the universe and the present moment, and reforms my conditioned conception of “richness”. My mentor and Farm and Garden Manager Shirley Ward regularly rejoices “We’re rich!” as hearty beets or neon pink chard emerge gloriously in the morning hours.

We plant the seeds of our wild ideas now, and as former Farm and Garden Manager Steve Beck once wrote, “look forward with the hope that arrives every spring” to see what germinates in the coming years.

Noël Vietor serves as Coordinator of the Esalen Farm and Garden – Esalen is an educational retreat center in Big Sur California

On the Long Trail with Raven & Crow

I was riding my bike along 16^th Street, scowling as I passed my least favorite yoga studio in the universe. Upon turning onto Dolores I heard two ravens calling in alternating rhythm from the tall steeple of a church. Dark clouds loomed in the distance and rain began to fall. I thought to myself, a bit sadly, this is the most metal moment of my life.

Setting aside my longing for a more metal-mythic experience, I actually wish to discuss our cousins the crows and ravens, and their whole stately named family: Animalia Chordata Aves Passerformes Corvidae. Our relationship stretches back into time immemorial; in fact, the Corvidae tribe enters the fossil record about 17 million years back, we appear in our earliest form just 4 million years ago.

Crows and ravens are primarily scavengers, although I have seen a crow snatch a still squeaking mouse out of the tall grass. There is an assumption among many people (lay and scientifically minded alike) that predators possess the greatest intelligence among animals. We marvel, and rightly so, at the way a lion pride mounts its attack on a zebra herd – they carefully control and study the herd’s movement, identify the weakest member, and then isolate and overpower them.

The need to track prey, interpret signs, remain inconspicuous, and (in some species) organize hunting parties, surely requires a thinking brain. Some scavengers, however, seem to posses a cunning that far outstrips that of a predator, able, as they are, to thrive in the world with considerably less effort. “Work smarter, not harder” said Scrooge McDuck, world’s richest duck, and coincidentally a distant relative of this essay’s subjects.

Ravens will sometimes lead a wolf pack to prey, knowing that they can pick at the carcass when the dogs are done. Indeed Raven would do the same for our ancestors, leading indigenous hunters to herbivores unawares. This action may seem simple, so permit me to break it down for you: the raven finds a still living, large animal that he would like to eat, he knows he is incapable of killing it, so he sets off to locate a suitably intelligent and strong predator, or group of predators, somehow he communicates his intention and leads the way to the prey, the predators kill it for him, and he waits his turn to eat.

This behavior denotes a level of awareness present in the animal kingdom that I seldom hear dialog about, and even less so in regards to birds specifically. Raven seems to know the animals and their roles. He knows who eats whom, and where to find both. He can dream of an outcome and bring it into being, devise a plan and act upon it. He not only participates in the (eco) system, but also observes it, spectates from above, and arranges the players to his best advantage.

Crow and Raven loom quite large in the mythos of many primary cultures, often taking on the archetype of Guide, or Watchman; their ontological role reflecting their keen awareness and “real world” habits. Additionally many members of the Corvidae family possess an ability to mimic. Certain African and European raven species can repeat human words. A Norwegian acquaintance of mine had a pet raven that called him Pappa in a croaky voice (making him the most metal dude I’ve ever met, by a wide margin). The stellar jays (also Corvidae) of my watershed do pitch perfect imitations of redtailed hawks. It follows that in many majik traditions Crow is given to shape shifting. Some sorcerers are allied with these birds and can transform into crows themselves. Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda’s mentor, was a famous Crow Magician.

So, do the roles, behaviors, and abilities of beings in this world shape our myths? Or does the Subtle World of Spirit inform this Solid Place? I prefer to sit on the fence here. Not because I am afraid to commit to an opinion, but because I think it is entirely possible, even likely, that both are true. The World, spirit or otherwise, is created and discovered in the same moment. Which is to say an act of discovery is an act of creation, which is to say an act of creation is an act of discovery… now that’s a long and winding path! May Raven lead the way.

(paintings by John James Audubon)

"Mushroom Haiku" & "At the Middle" – John Cage

Listen, if you will, to the gentle voice of John Cage – Rinpoche of the west, Lllama to the avante guard.

Necromancy & Fossil Fuels

Long have I dwelt on the cosmic irony of our Fossil Fuel Culture. Our plant ancestors once lay at peace in their immeasurably old burial grounds, the most sacred grounds of our greatest grandparents; the ancient sustainers of the atmosphere, prodigium of consciousness.

We drag them up, wake them from their long deserved rest, and drive them like an endless zombie army. Enslave the plants of old, drink greedily of their untold power, and make them do great and menial things for our “advancement”.

We borrow from the dead, awaken our fossil family, but in our arrogance and drive, we did not take the time to learn the art of Necromancy. We disturb the spirits, but do not speak to them, and cannot listen either. It seems they may have offered some warning, perhaps a few choice words to throw our hubris into relief. The old mystics knew that you cannot live with the dead, and go on living; eventually the world of the dead becomes your world.

You were not honored Plant People, Great Ancestors, and this hard-handed lesson, is no less than we deserve. But I do ask for forgiveness, so that the Council of Beings might not all pay for our single species foolishness, and so we might have a chance to open a new age of reverence and love beyond “progress”.

"Ghost Culture" by Pete Huff

I am currently hovering Lakitu style in non-citizen space above the current nonsense of Australian climate change politics and find myself understanding the grievous loss that occurs when inspirational acts become codified into profession. I'm not so dull to believe that this is anything but the natural progression of most human minds given the hoarding tendencies predisposed by the prominent economic/social structure currently popular with Earth's current dominant species.

It has been demonstrated time and time again that the movement from the spiritual to the secular is hallmarked by the centralized and exclusionary movement into the golden temple, from which authenticity is banished for fear of the light revealing the deep fissures hidden in the darkness. When existence is defined by competition inspired by fear of loss rather than inspired by cooperation inspired by faith in communal security, the natural tendency is to develop the professional niches that feed like remoras on the detritus of authenticity left over by the systematic sharks.

Leadership, in my mind, started out as a natural occurrence of (relatively) altruistic and (relatively) selfless behavior for the greater good of ones own people. Call it a modified version of survival of the fittest or whatnot - altruistic leadership was a service performed beyond the realm of personal gain.

However, we exist in an age where the competition-based systems for human existence have picked up considerable speed on the tracks and the once noble pre-mass-civilization act of leadership is now a survival/accumulation mechanism that utilizes the mires of democracy to ensure job security.

We have fully accepted the human-production model so fully that altruistic acts have become akin to the once numerous American bison. Professional politicians no longer represent the good of the tribe and this is so readily accepted that it is admitted openly without public shock. Something intended to be a mechanism of inclusiveness has become bastardized to the point that the inspiration source is indistinguishable and, if stumbled upon it is often shot or disemboweled by the media/social blades that be.

It seems to me that the systems so vulnerable to destruction by their origin authenticity are often the best at convincing those it interacts with that they must pass through its systems to reach such authenticity – our own country, with its revolutionary Constitution and politico-media soma-induced social comas, serves as an excellent example. I take great interest in the events of Egypt and Libya as they dismantle the democracy-via-garbage-disposal systems in place of self-determination. Let’s hope that revolution-back-to-the-source cannot be trademarked and marketed by Coke.

So what of it all? It isn’t just politicians. Our mother culture is so connected that the loss of the spiritual in the secular is common, with efforts to shake up the system (art, music, environmental activism, etc) are quickly co-opted by competitive structures that they ironically turned into Borg without awareness. And in that transition, the flame burns lower and recognition of the authentic is more difficult. We have become a ghost culture that has eaten its soul to fill its belly. The taboos have been destroyed, the rituals have been marginalized, and the peace has become packaged.

But I believe the recognition of the authentic and the ancestral is undeniable. This story of existence is just that – a veil that holds no power beyond its ability to obscure and sow doubt. The power of an individual expressing authentically without hope for gain beyond personal fulfillment is bewildering to the system. The response comes in the form of ignoring the act in hope that its walls will withstand any losses. This quickly moves to the acquirement-model that attempts to trade such an individual shiny things for the power of their expression. If no ground is gained, social ostracism or annihilation assumes priority, as the survival of the system is paramount in light of penetrating authenticity.

It is the realization of what has been all along: a hollow dream induced by those who are so inextricably dependent upon a consumptive system. Power lies in the realization of the individual and the expression of the pure without hope for hoarder gain. Those shaking off the mantle and rejecting the need to pass through the system to reach the enlightenment, a fundamentally pure act, are mocked by those within the system. Such is the case with all that live outside of a system in which mockery and ostracism are the best ways for any individual in the system to avoid the pangs of introspection that come when an alternative sheds light on ones own choices. It is a lofty goal to slough-off and I hope that one day I can touch its edges.

(written & submitted by Pete Huff, 28/II/2011)

"Don't go to SXSW®" follow-up (short on poetry, long on wind)

I am honored by the many thoughtful comments that last week's article "Songs as Gifts Simultaneously Received and Given (Don't go to SXSW®)" has inspired. My first piece of was a more poetic, general, and less narrative work, but a few readers seem to be looking for a more specific follow-up, so I am happy to oblige...

Some have missed a key distinction, which I may not have made quite clear, I am not criticizing musicians who play at SXSW® or other inadequate venues or festivals, I am criticizing the festival. However, if musicians refused to engage with these exploitative and mediocre systems, the festivals/venues would disappear or change. Hence the call to boycott, and my strong language: “don’t go”.

I have personally felt very unhappy performing in many loveless commercial spaces, bars in particular, and eventually came to the realization that it is not necessary. Creative practice (a.k.a. art) is not the same as entertainment, sometimes they are interchangeable, but not as a rule. Spaces that want to sell something (other than the experience of the music itself) are interested in entertainment as a method of bringing people into the space to sell to them.

So are you revealing truth and beauty or are you selling drinks? Of course it is possible to do both at the same time, but why should you? Why should we cow down to a parasitic and mediocre set of parameters? And who’s pockets are we padding, and what exploitations are we propping up? Most musicians are underpaid or not paid at all for their hard work. In my experience it is the less commercial venues (art galleries, houses, community spaces, unofficial clubs, etc.) that pay artists a reasonable percentage of the money they bring in.

SXSW®'s clear commercial agenda is certainly enough to throw up a red flag or two. This little gem of a statement on there website kind of says it all: "With numerous avenues for exposure to over 36,000 key industry representatives, SXSW® 2011 is the most valuable addition to any marketing plan." Their key sponsors are… Chevy, Miller Lite, AOL, Pepsi & Monster Energy Drink… to my mind this kind of multi-national corporate underwriting is an obvious problem that doesn’t require overt analysis. May it also be noted that despite the distasteful sponsorship there is a $25 fee for all bands to apply to the festival. Tens of thousands of bands apply.

Unfortunately there are a lot of non-creative middle-men that profit while artists’ starve, and grasp in the dark for recognition. SXSW® uses a particularly shabby intermediary called sonicbids(dot)com that charges artists a monthly fee to set up a profile, and then collects additional money for submissions to venues and festivals. It is even more unfortunate that musicians are led to believe it is necessary to engage with similar parasites in order to share their tunes. Further more, these middle-men and bad venues contribute to a setting of competition that benefits them and not us. Bands will pay to be considered “legitimate”, and step over each other to play for someone else’s profit.

We sometimes pay a much higher price when we attempt to engage with the sacred in a place where very few, if any, could succeed. We may loose our way back to the ecstatic source, we may eventually no longer hear the songs, and we may give up the quest entirely.

So, a practical summary… Musicians who are interested in making a better artistic community/habitat ought to… demand payment if money changes hands anywhere in a venue, seek out spaces that care about music for music’s sake, make your own way as much as possible, and support each other! This is not cynacism, cynacism implies resignation, I believe that a better way is out there, I have tasted it, and I want more.

Songs as Gifts Simultaneously Received and Given (Don't go to SXSW®)

Dear musicians... Let me be plain, don't go to SXSW®. Mass consumer spectacle isn't very musical. Artists climbing over each other to get 50 shows so they can be "discovered" doesn't have much to do with truth or beauty. Stay home and record a song. Go into the mountains, the desert, to the top of a building, and receive one. Play a show in the town right next to yours that you've never actually been to.

Say no to vampires. So no to mediocrity. You make music and there is no one who doesn’t love music, this makes you one of the most powerful people in the world. Tastes may vary widely, but music is a universal good. You create the most important human export.

The Ainu (Japan’s native population) believe that songs are Man’s gift back to the Universe. As the top of the food chain we do very little to give back, so the Ainu played epic music at every meal and many times throughout each day to honor the beings, and land that sustained their lives. When they played the spirits gathered to drink the song, to bathe in the music.

Every primary culture I have ever studied believed that songs were received, sometimes smuggled back from another plane, usually the world of spirits. Or given to them from some non-physical beings, or some ineffable place. These songs were generally semi-secret songs that gave the singer power and specialized knowledge. So a song is a gift that is simultaneously given and received. That sounds right to me.

Let’s take a few (thousand) steps back and return to the sacred. Not the kind of sacred that is static, reserved or dogmatic. The sacred that is ecstatic, powerful, creative/destructive, funny, wise, overwhelming, honest, entheogenic (God manifesting), hallucinogenic (vision manifesting), and/or psychedelic (mind manifesting). Don’t fill your head or environment with simulacra songs, turn off the car radio, try to tune out the music in the market. And stop giving your songs to parasites. Play only where creation is welcome, where the sacred particles of music can do their good work, swirl for the spirits, and dance for our own.

Goodnight Majik (nature journal 20/II/11)

From the trail we clamber down to the beach. Garnet tinged, purple sand flows through the normal white stuff. Violet brush strokes swirl around green jade look-a-like rocks. Not an average beach.

Noël finds a perfect little abalone shell on the sand, slaps it in my hand and calls it my paycheck. A big rock shelf means radical tidepools, some deep and wide enough to paddle around in. Vast hermit crab and anemone civilizations have thrived in these shallows for centuries, and yet no monuments or temples have been erected, at least none that I can discern. Maybe the temples are in the shells, or maybe the whole place is a temple.

A seaweed-filled ravine cuts right down the middle of the rock jetty. It seems just the right kind of place to find another abalone shell, and lo-and-behold there’s a great big one a few feet away. When I tell Noël that I saw the shell before I actually saw it, she says matter-of-factly “why does that surprise you at this point?” Sometimes I forget about the world’s majik until it is dropped right in my lap.

Around the bend we find a tiny cave. We sing inside it, playing with the tones, feeling out which ones resonate in the space. The song brings on slow languid movement, and rock on rock drumming. Every sound and sign just right for the moment. Good shamanism, which is to say: good playful and loving engagement with the spirit of that place, with our spirits in that place. A fine gesture of cave/man love.

We’re all smiles when we get out, I hope the cave smiles too. I stare at the sky and it subtly flashes, kind of a “yes” flash, affirmative pulse from the sunset. Behind us a weird mark is set in the sky. A vertical cloud line, like the vapor trail from a plane, but upright, like a rocket’s trail. An optical illusion, a meteor, a spaceship? The trail/cloud is gone in a few minutes, evidence wiped clean by the wind. Aliens, meteors or men: the Sky is indifferent, and, come to think of it, so am I. Cavesongs seem so much more important.

The trail fills up with scattering bunnies for the hike back. Polyphonic owl hoots sound majikally from a eucalyptus grove, a three-tone hoot that boggles my mind. My first thought is of a giant spectral owl. Eventually the mystery unravels. There are really three owls hooting in different pitches. Somehow they managed to call out in perfect unison, giving the impression of a supernatural hoot. Amazingly this happened twice in a row before the band broke up.

A skunk waddles at full speed in front of us, zigzagging – evasive tactics. He leaves just a splash of mercaptan (skunk spray) behind him, just in case there was any confusion. “Don’t know if you noticed the stripes chums… can’t be too careful.”

A fox dashes across the highway as we drive home, barely more than a flash in the headlights. Our last visitation from the twilight kingdom. Goodnight Majik.

Belated Honorings

Rainbow, the dog, is attracted to the site long before we are. I only notice it because he does. A ring of fur, evidence of a deeply penetrating event. Speculation begins at once. A rabbit? A fox? Some manner of weasel? Couldn’t be a house cat, not this far up the trail. Allan pokes a bendy stick into the ground in the center of the ring. “Well whatever you were, we honor you.” Something we clearly should have done first.

Imagine is we stopped at a fatal car accident and acted like this. “Those look like a banker’s shoes to me. Yeah, but look at that ink stain on his shirt pocket, I think he was an English teacher. Well whatever you did, may God love and keep you.”

From that place on that trail one bodily life was extended and one bodily life ended. Maybe that’s all we need to know. It’s certainly enough information for reverence.

In the end we decided it was probably a bobcat.

My Real Costume is Underneath

Sent to me by my friend Em, by way of several other blogs... clearly working hard for the collective good of the internet.

Father in Law does not like connotation of "Dude"

What follows is a letter from my girlfriend's dad, the title was his original subject line... he makes a good case, with some very nice writing.

"Hey Fletcher, checked out your blog via this post and it is really intelligent and interesting. As Noel will tell you, I am hypercritical, but always with a positive end in site. I hope you won't take this criticism personally, but for me connotations that follow the word "dude" are not positive. From Wikipedia: One of the earliest books to use the word was The Home and Farm Manual, written by Jonathan Periam in 1883. In that work, Periam used the term "dude" several times to denote an ill-bred and ignorant, but ostentatious, man from the city. The rest of the Wiki article is informative also. Of course the most common understanding of the term is of a "dandy", an effeminate male who is consumed with fashion and clothing. But the most damaging to your blog image (from my perspective) is the dumb stoner connotation. The use of the J in Magic doesn't help to dispel this. I know you are intelligent and your esoteric/80's vision of the word probably trumps my historical one, with most of your blog followers not even thinking about it twice. - Just an old man ranting about the vagaries of youth." – Dad Dude (Noel Vietor)

"Big Time"

I mark my hands and face with charcoal, picked up from a burnt out redwood. – Signs for the spirits, silly and serious: Paleolithic clown priest. – How many can fit in a tiny cave? – Ah, but the real sage is the Cave. – The only Immortals that lived in the mountains were the Mountains.

All of this is little talk in some big time. – Sometime, like stone time. – Sometime like tectonic plate time, ridges and canyons time, endless caverns time. – Here in stone time my memories are like fallen fruit. – Enjoyed by some beings in a small way, and then… – Well where is the fruit? – In the bird or beetle? In the mushroom or mold? In the soil?

Microscopic soil life is vast and numberless. – The enlightened realms of the Buddha are vast and numberless. – That seems like quite enough for now.

Another Gift From the Amazon

The richness of the Amazon cannot be overstated... Millions of species interpenetrating, the densest and most diverse ecosystem in the world. Ancient civilizations of staggering technological and cosmological advancement. An estimated 3,000 unique languages over the many centuries. Plants that open the soul (Ayahuasca). Plants that cure cancer (maybe). And also this joyful albino man and his merry band playing some genuinely silly music, guaranteed to put a twinkle in your eye! Magicians were usually hermits, and his name's Hermeto.

Tidepooling (nature journal 12/I/11)

When I go to the water it happens to be low tide, what wonder! I walk my favorite stretch of pools and beach: where cormorants dip, harbor seals prostrate on rocks, and anemones abound. When the water is at its most withdrawn, when the tides inhale deeply, big pools are formed way out between rocks usually invisible. They are little oceans of their own, sand bottomed, clear and calm. Sea grass sways softly.

A barely dead gumboot chiton lies belly/foot up in a small pool, and hermit crabs diligently dine there, she is meal and table and the gumboot will disappear by tiny clawfull. Ah detrivores, how I admire the scavengers of this (and every) ecosystem. They live like kings and do no harm. I wouldn’t be surprised to find “waste not, want not” hanging cross-stitched on the inside of a crab shell, or behind a bark beetle’s wing.

Under a stone above the water line there is a bright purple rock crab, about the size of my fist. Sneaking my hand around his claws I actually manage to pick him up. Black eyes sit on opposite sides of his body, he seems to grimace, even though he lacks a face, he reminds me somehow of an old sorcerer, maybe he is. I must admit I want to eat him. I get an ancient hungry feeling often at the tide pools; they are teaming with slow moving, high calorie life, that is nearly alledible raw… Today I nearly sucked a limpet right out of its shell.

There are a lot of stranded creatures under the rocks above the water, and when I move I can hear them scuttle to find a safer place, totally unseen. I am picking up trash, but thinking of abalone shells, it is my custom to ask my totem (the sea otter) for a shell or two for my home alter, she usually obliges.

Next to a tin-can-top there is a shiny fragment of abalone, quite lovely, but just a little piece, so I toss it in the water. The water ripples out, and just below the rings there is a beautiful and big abalone the size of my whole hand, sitting plain as day on the sand. Of course it had been cracked by an otter, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. After I scoop it up I find another iridescent shell to my left wedged between two rocks, smaller, but whole. Then in a pool to my right I see another abalone, shiny side down, with a bright turquoise outer shell, which is completely new to me, I have only ever known them to be red or black. Overjoyed by the trinity I try to collect this Holy Ghost, but when I get my hand around it’s shell the abalone sucks down tight to the rock, it is alive, and won’t budge for anything! I can almost feel that playful otter swim up behind me and say “you can’t have it all at once.” So that turquoise abalone sits on its own alter, a future sacrifice, like everyone else.

"For All" by Gary Snyder

Ah to be alive

on a mid-September morn

fording a stream

barefoot, pants rolled up,

holding boots, pack on,

sunshine, ice in the shallows,

northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters

stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes

cold nose dripping

singing inside

creek music, heart music,

smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil

of Turtle Island,

and to the beings who thereon dwell

one ecosystem

in diversity

under the sun

With joyful interpenetration for all.