Protect me from what I want.

If you're expecting much commentary on our great nation's most recent homage to the Second Amendment, look elsewhere. Frankly, I think we can all empathize with the families and loved ones of the victims, using our indoor voices, and beyond that there isn't a hell of a lot to say on the matter that hasn't already been beaten into the ground. There was a massive march here in the District yesterday to demand that the federal government extend the same pretenses of democracy for which we're occupying Iraq to our fair city... A demand recently underscored by efforts on the part of states like (wait for it...) Virginia to repeal our assault weapons ban against our will. Betcha didn't hear about any of it, due entirely to Virginia not being able to hold down its own fort. Well done, guys.

Moreover, a recent guest on Democracy Now! pointed out an interesting statistical nuance to american culture: Since such records were first kept (around the late 1940's), indexes of americans' happiness and fulfillment with their lives peaked in 1956; or at least so americans surveyed have said. Since then, the stats have steadily declined. Conspicuously, this has accompanied massive and sustained economic growth, throughout. There are two obvious (one more so than the other) ways to read said correlation. One: This steady and sharp economic growth has (at best) not left people with the impression that their lives are significantly better, or (at worst) has involved shifts that have significantly encroached upon or diminished happiness and fulfillment as americans experience it. Two: The steady economic growth in question owes something to economic opportunities offered by widespread dissatisfaction and alienation.

So, while one set of profiteers underwrites the entire mainstream political spectrum, to ensure the durability of the gospel of quantitative economic growth at the expense of qualitative improvements in the lived experience of those pinned beneath it, another set does everything in its power to see that we're armed to the teeth; usually against each other.

For those who haven't yet seen the film The Weatherman, I highly recommend it. It's a beautifully understated work that kinda came and went before anyone really noticed. Roger Ebert's review kinda hit the nail on the head, remarking that most depictions that fall within the tragic hero genre involve some titanic figure set against some expansive and foreboding backdrop, at an equally dizzying height; their fall from which constitutes the trajectory of the film. In the case of The Weatherman, the protagonist didn't have very far to fall, to begin with, which makes for a narrative into which one can quite easily read oneself; a narrative that in this particular case I would argue says something rather profound about how we see ourselves, and the vignettes we labor to replicate in our lived experience, often at the expense of what's front and center.

All of the people I could be... they got fewer and fewer until finally they got reduced to only one -- and that's who I am. The weather man.


Bigger Picture Darwinism.

A year or so ago, on a cool Thursday mid-afternoon, I soaked with a friend in a rear-deck hot tub just north of 4th and D SE, on Capitol Hill. It was a work day, and a client's house; a client that had invited me to make use of the extravagance, given her home's impending sale. Earlier in the week, I'd been forced to retire a cell phone after plunging it into the tub, attempting to multitask text messaging and swatting at a mosquito. By all accounts, it'd been a good week.

"So, let me get this straight," my co-tubber quipped. "You dropped out of high school, dropped out of college, earn more walking dogs four hours a day than either had to offer in the way of job prospects, and you're currently playing rockstar in someone else's backyard hot tub while the rest of Capitol Hill is just getting back from lunch. How does this work, again?"

Short of an explanation that involved the Good Lord lookin' out for me, or some speculative metaphysics vis a vis the rewards of "staying true" to oneself, I really didn't have an answer. Last I checked, the classifieds weren't exactly brimming with openings for Amateur Intellectual or Serial Flatulator, so I opted for the most honest answer I could offer (after insisting that Crimethinc had nothing on me): "I don't know. Necessity is the mother of invention, I guess."

And that's probably true in two relatively distinct, but intertwined, dimensions. I wasn't always doing what I now do. I've done everything from jockeying the graveyard shift in a 24hr copy shop, to selling roses to commuters on one of the more remote connectors between northwest DC and the Beltway, to gigs at bookstores, to pulling admin duties at an animal rights organization, to staffing a haven for homeless women . Oh, and I went to college for a bit.

Nonetheless, my fidelity to institutionalized learning was always short-lived. And my patience with the arrogance of employers who kept me at their whim for measly returns was threadbare by 21. No career that might entail any promise wanted the smartass who told the university to take a flying fuck. And my willingness to allow the small miracles of daily life play second-string to helping Larry King find the new OJ tell-all bought the farm about the time I saw my last retail paycheck. All of the people I could be... they got fewer and fewer until finally they got reduced to only one -- and that's who I am. The dogwalker.

So theory's dead, eh?

I'm hesitant to speculate as to the upbringing of others, but in this particular narrative, it's fair to say that mine was characterized by a dialectic of faith and disillusionment. Not in the dramatic sense of routine heartbreak or emotional duress (per se); more in the sense that virtually every time I took adults seriously, as to their descriptions of the world I was coming into, I ultimately discovered that taking the path(s) depicted therein as necessary was invariably little more than a gamble. And in most of those instances, I frankly hadn't signed up for a gamble; I'd sacrificed my time, desires, and (often enough) dignity for what I'd been instructed was a necessary chapter of some progressive narrative inhering tangible reward.

Well, shit. Life was a matter of gambling about the time I started breathing, I reckon. And if we're to (for instance) dispense with the notion that throwing ourselves through a set of hoops inextricably bound up with market imperatives (ask any of the umpteen-thousand med students defaulting on their loans on a given day) is somehow a fact of life, then we perhaps have the space to approach our decisions in terms of what they meaningfully offer us here and now, tangibly (see Foucault's Aesthetics of the Self). We have the space to determine what gambles we will and will not shoulder. We have the space to see our lives, not as something to sacrifice, but something to curate, something to adorn, something to fill out, and perhaps something that fits quite nicely between the gears of any of a number of repugnant systems.

And while I mean to denote something altogether different, it's perhaps ironic that I invoke the impasse any of us might pose to a given "system"; Lyotard's rejection of Systems Theory (in the closing passages of The Postmodern Condition) offers a fairly concurrent logic:

The system can only function by reducing complexity, and... it must induce the adaptation of individual aspirations to its own ends. The reduction in complexity is required to maintain the system's power capability. If all messages could circulate freely among individuals, the quantity of the information that would have to be taken into account before making the correct choice would delay decisions considerably, thereby lowering performativity. Speed, in effect, is a power component of the system.

The objection will be made that these molecular opinions must indeed be taken into account if the risk of serious disturbances is to be avoided. Luhmann replies, ...that it is possible to guide individual aspirations through a process of "quasi-apprenticeship," "free of all disturbance," in order to make them compatible with the system's decisions. The decisions do not have to respect individuals' aspirations: the aspirations have to aspire to the decisions, or at least to their effects. Administrative procedures should make individuals "want" what the system needs in order to perform well. [Emphasis added]

Perhaps that requires a bit of unpacking (and Dr. Seuss works just as well). Regardless, the operative tension is between our desires and a given system's performativity; its ability to meet some pre-determined objective efficiently; objectives to which our aspirations are daily "quasi-apprenticed."

The last few months, Brighter Days has been (no pun, here) like a dog, sprinting ahead of us with the leash whipping about, behind. We're all doing quite well materially, have been throwing resources to local projects in need of support, and are individually plotting a number of months away from work, pursuing everything from band tours, to language immersion in Europe and Mexico, to possible presentations at the US Social Forum in Atlanta and a conference on Self-Management in Buenos Aires. Slammed as I tend to be with my work, I wind through my day atop a 49x17 gear ratio, in a hoodie, jeans and beat-up slip-ons, kept company by whatever news I dumped onto the iPod during my (nearly) daily breakfast date with Seager at Sticky Fingers.

Life could be a lot worse. And not by accident. This week, the rest of the collective has agreed to free up my Fridays to allow me time to work for the IAS; a prospect I'm allowed largely because I didn't make other decisions. Namely, I chose not to want what the system in which I'm daily immersed needs in order to function efficiently; I chose to accept that when I shuffle off this stage, nothing I've accumulated will come with me and nothing that system could ever sell back to me will replace what it's taken away. That realization could've produced altogether other results, as I would hope Virginia Tech... and Columbine... and every other unspeakable act of despair might remind us.

"Even if this system were to go to the point of bluntly proclaiming that it imposes such an empty and hopeless existence that the best solution for everyone would be to go hang themselves, it would still succeed in managing a healthy and profitable business by producing standardized ropes. But regardless of all its capitalist wealth, the concept of survival means suicide on the installment plan, a renunciation of life every day." - G. Debord

I stand corrected, it would seem.

Once a member, I've grown quietly dismissive of recent IWW campaigns (particularly on the east coast... The west coast has accomplished some substantive shit, for sure). Most of the folks I know in the union resemble very little in the way of a departure from your average Civil War re-enactor; lovelorn for an era and a tactical format that breathes in the Postwar US the way a trout breathes on a river bank.

Nonetheless, this is an encouraging blow to the PR machine of an entity whose odiousness is only surpassed by its own ubiquity. My hat's off to you, brothers and sisters. DC folks may notice that a member of a certain, sorely-missed dance-punk trio had a hand in the Post's coverage of the campaign.

And while we're at it, abrazos to the Immokalee Workers in their second big win of recent years.

Notes on Misplacing Tragedy

[Note: Regular readers may find this particular post a bit esoteric and/or opaque. Apologies. My intent was to give words to a number of things for which I'd had little occasion or audience over the last ten or so years, and the audience in question is rather specific. If you find you're not part of it, do feel free to skip it. In the end, dispensing with shorthand and common references would've rendered this a rather boring read. Do feel free to skip it.]



Yes. So many memories. But sad? Really?

No, friends. Sad is that this selfsame NATO installation was used to carry out one of many massacres, while our vice principal was busying himself disabusing me of the notion that any institution exists to do more than perpetuate its own status quo. Sad is that prior to said massacres, and the impending UN sanctions that killed over a million people (half of them children), Iraq had one of the most secular and highly educated populations in the Arab world; certainly one of the most favorable toward women. Those fundamentalists driving payloads of explosives into produce markets? Yeah, they didn't just fall out of the sky. We created them, when we carelessly murdered their mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, wives; when we encouraged them to rise up, realized any democracy they'd establish wouldn't take orders from us, and then stood down while Saddam wiped them out; when we destroyed their health and sanitation infrastructure and banned the import of anything that might rebuild it; when we left their children to die of gang green resulting from paper cuts.

Sad? Sad was sitting at in a church at 15th and V, nine years ago, at Greg Proctor's funeral... And realizing that probably none of the Sig faculty ever apologized for making him their patsy in the infamous "Tennis Court Incident." Sad was being regaled on my morning bus jaunt from Nicolosi by a thirteen year old girl whose father routinely ordered her brother to "slap her till she bleeds" when the hot water happened to run out during her shower. Sad is that said brother took Greg's place overseeing the student council.

Sad is that no one blinked when certain athletes in our midst were quietly bee-lined Stateside when the cops came looking for the drunk americans that had put a Sicilian man in the ER during a night of rock-throwing in Motta; or when "Bum Day" was half the student body showing up with signs reading Will Work for Food. Sad was hearing all the third-party accounts of who sexually manipulated and/or abused who on whatever bus trip was masquerading as piety, charity or school spirit that particular week, and the fact that this was humored and filed under "not a problem" by every responsible party, top to bottom (never mind that said tropes remained more or less water tight).

And perhaps it's just the default american high school experience (Columbine, anyone?), but ... so many memories," as though it's somehow nostalgic? My memories involve watching my peers abuse alcohol like it was going out of style, watching them fail to experience any sort of epiphany or cognitive dissonance at the moment they found their lips around the nozzle of a gas can, retrieving them from the ER after a drunken game of "corners" (don't ask) in Motta, watching them abuse each other in some of the most vicious displays, hearing about the Ex-O's daughter poisoning a teacher's drink, seeing teachers bend the rules to cover for and enable the most thuggish and anti-intellectual of our ranks (diplomas were issued to athletes whose tirades against evolution betrayed a staggering ignorance of even the most rudimentary biology, for instance), and the recurring nightmares my first year Stateside, where I'm riding shotgun with my mother, sobbing, begging her to let me leave.

Let's not shit ourselves, last I gave it a gander (likely some eleven years ago), The Stars & Stripes was reporting that Sig's academic sphere suffered one of the worst behavior and lifestyle crises of the region. Kids setting locker rooms on fire, throwing each other through walls (in computer labs, no less), kleptomania, and youth center on the verge of structural collapse... And let's all not forget that (now legendary) incident in which a former wrestling team captain's ass-flesh was left dangling from the remains of a shattered glass pane. Anyone paying attention knew something was very, very wrong. And I'd go so far as to say that any of my peers who doesn't recall half their waking hours being swallowed up with their peers (quite rightly) verbalizing their outright misery is just plain lying. We lived for our departure the way many around the District live for Bush's last day in office, and the effort young women around me put into snagging whatever guy made for a flattering photo and envy-worthy story to send to friends Stateside (no matter how degrading, abusive, or just plain unremarkable he was in real life) was nothing short of dizzying. Most of us lived and breathed for a scenario well beyond our reach, and therein sought refuge from our actual conditions.

Perhaps most instructively, I remember the six months I got to skip my first class Mondays, to see a therapist after confessing to my mother that I'd begun to believe there might be a God, and that he had carried out every facet of his plan with painstaking precision and success... Except for one: He'd put me in a world in which all indicators suggested I was to aspire to the examples of the thuggish intellectual/ethical/spiritual bankruptcy and self-interest of my peers, or the mediocrity, resignation, and (in the worst cases) downright cowardice of the adults around me... All of this being the world He had planned; a world with which I felt fundamentally incompatible, with every inch of me that breathed... A world with which I had accepted I would never be reconciled.

She suspected I might've been suicidal, and she might not have been wrong. Sig provided me with such an unappealing (read: repugnant) sense of what adulthood and the world in general had to offer me, I'd come to accept that I probably wouldn't live beyond my early twenties. I don't say that for dramatic effect, I genuinely believed that. I'd not grown so cynical as to call it a day just then, but I was not confident that whatever cursory run I gave adulthood would be so compelling as to to prevent me from taking my leave of it shortly thereafter. And (as any who've known me for any recent period of my life can likely attest) the years since have seen me flatly refuse to hand over any quantity of my dignity, time, or energy in a gamble on my "future;" I'd given five years to one transparent lie after another, under conditions in which I had no choice. Even if longterm stability were at stake, I would never again cede my present to the idea that it would somehow pay off later. And the last twelve years have seen these legs carry me as far from what Sig offered as was physically, spiritually, and ethically possible.

The day I turned my books in and walked out, halfway through my junior year... It wasn't out of an apathy toward the life of the mind. It was the first day I'd seen my biology teacher in months, sure. But had anyone wanted to, I wouldn't have been hard to find. I was holed up in the library, reading. The school library, no less. And (quite shamefully, though perhaps desperately) much of what I was reading found its way out of the library with me. I walked out that day after being diagnosed with severe stress headaches. The closer we hurdled toward being released from that space, it seemed, the more adults around us became our cheerleaders. And for what? What exactly had we learned or become? It scared the shit out of me that anyone was satisfied with it, much less championing it. And it foreshadowed the precarious and (indeed) catastrophic mediocrity that awaited me. I left because my body could no longer take that.

When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, I was sitting on a couch in the home of a staffer at the US Embassy in Vienna, with a friend who'd grown up in East Germany and spent five weeks of his nineteenth year incommunicado, after being imprisoned for attempting the climb the Berlin Wall. Those in my company were appalled by the story coming out of Iraq. Fully nothing about it shocked me. Nothing. It was a logical and intuitive elaboration of the very racist arrogance that served as the foundation of life in Sig; a world in which we unquestioningly celebrated, rationalized, and believed any and all in which we saw oursevles, no matter how vacuous, violent, malicious, or transparently false. A world in which we ignored, dismissed, or suppressed all in which we did not. A world in which such patterns were afforded official sanction (indeed, encouragement). And not a day passes in which I'm not absolutely terrified by the casual and indifferent gaze cast upon such worlds, much less the manner in which hindsight might leave one with a nostalgia for them.

Worse still, after all those years suffering that shit hole right next to all of you, hearing and sharing your pain (perhaps in different ways), watching you cope (often in equally disturbing ways)... I've -- in all seriousness -- mourned the fact that so many of you have opted to duck right back into that community. Not for your own sake, mind you. The world is not a cake walk, and I don't discount that material stability and lack of contingency provided by life in the military community. But I mourn that you would be so willing to possibly subject your children to what we endured. I mourn that you've forgotten what that looked and felt like.

Ultimately, whatever paths we've chosen upon getting out from under that experience (certainly, many of you have not found your way back to the military)... Seeing all the emails back and forth waxing nostalgic about Sig, and our time there, and what a shame it was to see the structure that rendered much of our experience invisible demolished...

I guess I just worry that it's a reflection of what we've failed to do with our lives, since. If something so miserable, something that often drove us to the brink of irreparable self-destruction, something that stole so much of the challenge and promise and unknown of what those years should've held for us... If that's worthy of romance, if its physical representation is worthy of mourning in contrast to what's found its way into our lives since... It perhaps marks a point of reflection.

And in that reflection, I sincerely hope that every last one of you is happier than you've ever been.

The Inevitable Thaw

And I don't know why,
But I've been wasting so much time. And energy.
Relishing your opinions of me.
I'd much rather spread my own wings, than spill more of my blood...
The instilled fears, inhibitions, and tears
Have all disappeared, since I dared to ask myself:
What about my life? What of this life?
[Endeavor]

I re-read that little Foucault quote, here. Right after reading a message from an old friend who attended an event I set up a few nights ago; remarking that she was heartened to see that I'd once again softened to the idea of occupying some space of relative visibility in my work. I've tended (for some years now) to take up roles somewhat left-of-frame, insulating myself from the invariably petty and equally vicious assaults one seems to invite in this town, as soon as one puts one's name on anything.

Truth is: I haven't softened to jack shit. But maybe I need to. When I'd originally adopted the aforementioned strategy, I commented to a friend "The genuine assholes of the world number relatively few. It's the sea of cowards in which they swim that ultimately casts the deciding vote." And I haven't really lost sight of that contingency, nor do I believe that that sea is populated with any increase in promise, at present. Rather, recent events would seem to indicate things have hardly ever been more the same.

But I'm no longer and island, either. More on that, later.

The Party's Over.

[New Year's Eve at the Brighter Days compound]

Don't worry, kids. You didn't miss much. The last 1/3 of the Ought Six saw me doing little more than what you probably already suspected: Abusing coffee, tinkering with bikes, accumulating books, smooching a certain redhead (who has since bid the District farewell), and losing myself somewhere between my trademark procrastination and my newfound status as Business-Owner. A bit of spiritual housecleaning has allowed me to love a few people a bit more, and opened the door to possibly throwing a bit of that in my own direction one day. But beyond all that, my neglect of this vehicle has likely left very little unsaid. These things ebb and flow.

I've been working on a few bits of writing, with a bit more density, which will eventually turn up here. But I'm taking my time, and -- quite frankly -- my confidence with regard to all things traditionally creative was on its way out the window most of '05. So, it may not be a particularly speedy process.

A few random observations from '07 (thus far):

*The opening track of the new Damien Rice record is positively chilling. If you're going to steal the melody to What if God Was One of Us?, this is exactly what you should do with it (the fourth song ain't bad, either).

*Marina Sitrin's work on Horizontalism is finally available in English, and it just as easily could've been subtitled Badass as We Wanna Be.

*I've been living on the west end of the Hill the last week, dogsitting in an apartment just behind the Hart Senate Building. This means walking a dog in the general vicinity 3-4 times a day, frequenting the coffeehouses in the area, etc. Anyone who knows the neighborhood can picture the demographics; we're talking Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Judiciary, Republican National Committee, Heritage Foundation... And all the types that work in or in conjunction with said establishments. Judging by my (mind you, brief) interactions with women during my meanderings there, you'd think it'd been months since they encountered a gent who wasn't a complete and utter douchebag. Cue Trial's anthem, "Are These Our Lives?"

*Sticky Fingers, since their big move to Columbia Heights, has managed to produce the finest soy chai on the planet. No diggity.

*Seager's into ponies.

Three Years Ago Today...

As some of you may have noticed, I've been pretty slow to post here as of late. Not for lack of trying, I assure you. I've got two longer, more dense pieces I've been working on, and am in the process of applying to the Path of Engagement program out in California. I'm also absolutely slammed with paid and non-paid work right now, which doesn't offer much in the way of the sort of free time one needs to write in any meaningful way.

However, recent events in Gaza, namely the Israeli shelling of of a home killing some 18 sleeping civilians, and the US veto of the UN Security Council resolution denouncing it, saw me going back to the journal I kept during my time in the Occupied Territories. Reading it over, I almost feel like I've somehow grown intellectually and spiritually dulled since. It highlighted questions I seem to have forgotten, and cast a different light on things I've grappled with more recently (especially in my spiritual life).

So, I've created a separate blog, where (for the next few weeks) I'll be posting the entries from that journal. Hopefully, they'll offer some of you something; not necessarily in terms of insight about the Occupation (much has changed in three years), or the politics of solidarity or whathaveyou... But perhaps in the way of what it means to be present in this life, what it means to be still enough to observe exactly what we don't know; what's at stake in our relationship to suffering, perhaps.

Joshua in Palestine (2003)

Taking Refuge, Pt. 2

I had such a tremendously shitty afternoon; I've been so slammed with work-related tasks for the last month, and between unforeseen technical glitches, and my own inability to acknowledge when I've over-committed myself... I'm fucking up, left and right. And it's embarrassing, and it hurts, and while it prevents me from really being present, it also metastasizes into a sort of paralysis (which just makes everything worse). And in turn I have to fight even harder to catch up. It feels like it never stops.

And tonight, I had the opportunity to listen to a friend talk about how she's considering checking herself into a hospital for clinical depression; how she catches herself sabotaging her relationship with her partner, how she can't understand it, and can't forgive herself for it. Ultimately, how helpless she feels, and how sick she is of having it dismissed by friends as mere "stress." I feel like I'm the worst person ever, she said.

Nearly six years ago, at the outset of what would turn out to be one of the worst periods of my life, I turned back to the Dharma practice in which I'd dabbled since I was about 15, but I wasn't prepared or ready for the real work of it. I sat in my livingroom, and began a Metta (lovingkindness) meditation, aware as I was of my steadily escalating anger and lack of forgiveness for certain people and events in my recent life (a fact that was beginning to swallow me alive, and would continue to for a few years). Most Metta practices involve quietly offering compassion to various people, usually beginning with oneself and as one becomes comfortable, moving outward to people further and further removed from oneself. It's a practice, it's not like hitting an inhaler to diffuse the onset of an asthma attack. But I didn't care. I just wanted to stop being angry, I wanted to stop being swallowed whole.

Within just a few minutes of working with that meditation, I was sobbing. I'd discovered that merely quietly offering myself the hope of being happy, being free from fear, being free from harm... I discovered that in some really deep, hardened place, I didn't believe I deserved it. And I was crushed by the feeling of being unmasked as that liar, that person that hated himself so thoroughly. I quickly abandoned the entire practice, and wound up opting instead for dialectic of sleep and eating disorders and an utter refusal to allow myself to uncover that self-hatred again. Six months later I was 35lbs thinner, hypo-glycemic, had doubled my cumulative count of sexual partners, and quit a job of four years to move to the other side of the country.

Then I read Audre Lorde's, The Cancer Journals, in which she wrote of her own struggle:

I must let this pain flow through me and pass on. If I resist or try to stop it, it will detonate inside me, splatter my pieces against every wall and person that I touch.

Tonight, I was able to listen, and offer a few suggestions for how to think about that pain, how to offer it compassion and know that it need not swallow us whole. How it merely needs us to acknowledge that it's happening, and not try to shove it out the door or hide it or compensate for it or externalize it (or our reaction to it). Or, in the case of my friend, to "fix" it.

In the Suttas that temptation to distraction and control is personified as Mara (illusion), and during his enlightenment the historical Buddha never made attempts to repress or or otherwise manhandle Mara. He simply said, "I see you." What was fascinating about tonight was not that what I understood (intellectually) about my practice was arguably helpful to someone else. In fact, I wasn't even terribly sure that was on the table. Rather, in attempting to offer that attentive, compassionate presence to her, I was able to realize how ridiculous my attitude toward myself has been all day. I emerged from the conversation audibly chuckling to myself: "I see you, Mara. Hang out as long as you like."

Goodnight.

"They could be fascist anarchists and it still wouldn't change the fact that I don't own a car."

You scored as Anarchism. <'Imunimaginative's Deviantart Page'> Socialist 100% Anarchism 100% Communism 83% Democrat 83% Green 67% Fascism 33% Nazi 0% Republican 0% What Political Party Do Your Beliefs Put You In? created with QuizFarm.com

You were wrong when you said everything's going to be alright.

I woke up this morning, decided today was the day. I'd remember to live a bit, to do a bit more than breathe; but not too far in. Those butterflies interject, and remind me that this is unfamiliar ground. - Endeavor

Yes, yes. I know. It's been a month (nearly). After Jeff's passing, I opted to take a few moments to shut the fuck up and reflect a bit; maybe let someone else do the talking for a while. A few moments became a few weeks, which bled into my inevitable return to Vermont, which bled into my final days there, which bled into my return home, which has seen nearly two weeks pass into a blur of rain and work demands stacked against a rather casual (but nonetheless heartening) romantic affair stacked against a not-so-casual but thus far vicarious attraction stacked against an impending birthday stacked against fuckhead insurance companies stacked against playing air drums to Cobolt's Great American Lies stacked against that spasm in the morning shower when your body decides to inform you that it's not ready to function (even after eleven hours of sleep).

I'm going to go ahead and blame coffee.

And truth be told, I'm not terribly convinced that there's much to relay, beyond what was substantive for me; hardly a yardstick for what anyone's interested in reading, here. But as I wrote to someone the day I left Vermont to come home, I have, in fact, come to a place where I can do a bit more than breathe. That is, I've located some flash of coherence in what it is that I do on a day to day basis. There's a life buried somewhere in there, and by that I mean something demonstrable; something that can be built upon and elaborated. Something beyond what I engage in to avoid making eye contact with my own dislocation.

It peeked out in the most unlikely places. On the corner of 16th and S, when she spun around, pulled me by my hips and kissed me as though I were hers, in front of every passing car; the moment my hands left her hips, and the realization that the world was still conspicuously intact. Or during the Anzaldua session at RAT, speculating that perhaps infusing our work with the erotic means embracing and honoring the same vulnerability that we bring to sexual encounters. Or hauling the sandwich-board from Black Sheep out to State & Elm mornings, savoring the anonymity, noticing the ways my feet would fall differently from the tensing and slacking of muscle in my arms. Or reaching that point with someone where I realize nothing I would want to say to them would be wrong.

Or maybe just coming home to the knowledge that I've been living with one hand tied behind my back... and being a little embarrassed about it. I woke up a year older today. And the world is still conspicuously intact. Go figure.

Jeff Mendez, 1972 - 2006

Brother, I fear we would've never had enough time. I'd just begun to settle into the life that found us crossing paths with regularity, and barely got to glimpse into all I had to learn from you. Some other time, perhaps.

It is with profound sadness and grief that the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation learned yesterday of the passing of Jeff Mendez, a former Steering Committee member of the US Campaign. Jeff was instrumental in organizing the US Campaign’s 2nd and 3rd Annual National Organizers’ Conference in Washington, DC in 2003 and 2004. Jeff resigned his position on the Steering Committee after he was first diagnosed with a rare form of Leukemia in 2004.

Mark Lance, Steering Committee Chair of the US Campaign stated: “Jeff Mendez was a comrade in both senses of the word. He was a colleague in struggle and a beloved friend. Jeff was brilliant, tireless, insightful, loving, and hilarious. Though we tended to meet up, as he once put it, ‘on the atrocity circuit,’ life was good when hanging with Jeff. I honestly can't remember ever failing to have fun. Being with Jeff reminded me of why we care, why we bother to struggle against injustice. Because however much evil humans are capable of, they retain as well the possibilities of creativity and beauty. Working with Jeff and people like him, one sees glimpses of another world waiting for us to create it.

Jeff was both one of the best, and at the same time one of the nicest people I had the honor to know in my life. I will carry his memory with me all my days.”

The US Campaign would like to extend its deepest sympathies to Jeff’s family and his wide circle of friends and colleagues. In Jeff’s honor, we plan to uphold his life’s work by continuing our advocacy for human rights, justice, and dignity for all human beings.

Below is an obituary and details of a public memorial service that will take place tomorrow, Tuesday, September 12 at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC.


Jeffrey Librado Méndez, 33, died on Sept. 10 after a sudden relapse of Leukemia. He was surrounded by his friends and family.

Méndez was born on Dec. 5, 1972 in Cuero, TX where he grew up and graduated high school. He received his Bachelors and Masters of Arts degrees from Baylor University in Waco, TX. A Rhodes Scholar, he was enrolled in a PhD program in Political Studies and Gender at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. He also spent time in Germany as an exchange student.

Méndez was a dedicated seeker of social justice, and he was particularly committed to struggles for Immigrant, Gay and Palestinian rights. This commitment led him to work as a Program Manager at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations and at the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development/Palestine Center, where he served as acting Executive Director and Humanitarian and Development Director thereafter. Jerusalem Fund founder and noted Palestinian scholar-intellectual Dr. Hisham Sharabi considered him a son. Méndez had recently resigned from the Jerusalem Fund to be Development Director at the national office of the international Catholic peace organization Pax Christi.

Méndez founded the Africa Fund for Emergency Relief, an organization operating in Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland to serve the needs of HIV-positive orphans, and was active with the Latino Advocacy and Action Council, the National Minority Bone Marrow Foundation, the Leukemia Lymphoma Society of Washington, D.C., the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Edden Group for Social Justice, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the Coalition for Justice and Accountability, Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Church, and was an advisor to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Jeff was a source of love and strength for all who knew him. His always present smile and laughter will remain in our hearts forever. He will be brought home to Cuero where he will rest near the family home. Jeff is survived by his parents Librado and Cecilia; sisters Sandra and Nancy; brother Ron; nieces Crystal and Elena; and nephews Robert, Dustin, Kevin and Jacob.



Please remember me. Fondly.
I heard from someone you're still pretty.
And then, they went on to say that the Pearly Gates
Have some eloquent graffiti.
Like, "We'll meet again."
And, "Fuck the Man."
And, "Tell my mother not to worry."
And angels, with their great handshakes
Always done in such a hurry.
- Iron & Wine

What life gets in the way of...

There's an old Steven Wright joke that goes: The other day, I was walking through the woods, and a tree fell right in front of me... And I didn't hear it.. If you've ever heard the man speak, you know why this is funny. Even funnier, I outdid him.

Yesterday, I was walking in downtown Montreal, and a plane landed in the middle of the street, just half a block behind me... And I didn't hear it. No shit.

The day kicked off not unlike any other of my Sundays: Late breakfast, coffee. Meagan and I had walked down to what's referred to as Tam Tam; a weekly drum circle of sorts. The weather was having a bit of trouble making up its mind. After a few hours of throwing my hoodie back on every time the sun ducked behind a cloud, I suggested we make our way back east on Mont-Royal, offering to cook dinner and give her time to catch up on schoolwork. It was a quick affair: Tomato-basil penne with mock chicken. About the time I was finishing up eating, my phone began buzzing and sliding around the table. It was a 202 number.

The body of Jeff Mendez was moved from George Washington University Hospital less than twenty-four hours ago. Roughly a week prior, his Leukemia reappeared, and his doctors had him undergo chemotherapy immediately; compromising his immune system, allowing an infection to rip through his body like a flash flood. By the time I'd picked up the phone, he'd been unconscious for three days, and his family had gathered with friends to remove his life support. I had no idea he'd ever been sick. I spent the final hour of his life overcome by the urge to call him, buttressed by the knowledge he'd never hear it. Ever.

I've been on a train from Montreal for the last eleven hours, with another four to go. Around 1:30am, I'll make my way out of Union Station, walk the three blocks east to Stanton Park, then another four south to a client's house where Seager is dogsitting. I'll (hopefully) sleep a few hours, walk to Murky, find my way home, say hi to the cats, shower, and head out with Lance to the five hour memorial at the Palestine Center.

Later in the week, I'll borrow money from a friend to cover the train, and slip back across the border as though it were all just a bad dream, until I can make sense of a world in which Jeff Mendez is not alive.

I'm not in this movie, I'm not in this song.

Montreal boasts an all-vegan Thai joint that, were it not for its stroke-inducing prices, would easily put Seattle's Araya to shame. Specializing in mock meats, they do an absolutely stellar job at replicating traditional, authentic Thai dishes that steer clear of being overly-fatty and greasy (a nice change of pace in terms of Asian food). Of course, what the food offers in the way of health is just as quickly cancelled out by what one's body suffers upon gandering at the bill. Jesus.

I met Helen a year ago at Renewing the Anarchist Tradition, where she gave a talk on growing older within movements, and considerations for building communities that both enable and support that project. It turned out to be one of the talks I most appreciated, and it spurred several hours of subsequent conversations with other attendees. Having cut my teeth with anarchism in the District, where youth is the discursive boundary that circumscribes what passes for self-idenitified anarchist politics, it was almost surreal hearing folks even have such conversations at an explicitly anarchist gathering, much less conversations that did not hinge on reaffirming one's loyalty to a specific set of aesthetics.

When my body dragged me across that frontier (admittedly, with an albeit clumsy willingness on my part), I took up spiritual residence among those I'd worked with around Palestine; a rabble of vibrantly diverse constitution (especially in age), far less inclined to police each other's lifestyles or force each other's increasingly square bodies through the round hole of perpetual adolescence. Certainly, there was a liberatory quality to that. But there were also moments in which I felt the chasm between myself and my own reconstructive vision inching wider; to the point that when several local infoshop characters were facing potential legal troubles over something typically stupid and irrelevant, I openly contested any obligation to them, dismissing the contention that they were somehow "my people" as fully lacking in evidence or coherence.

Being in Montreal, it seemed simply given that I'd catch up with IAS folks where possible, and despite our mutual scheduling conflicts, Helen was insistent that we at least grab dinner Friday night. I'd holed up in a cafe on Mont-Royal most of the day, futilely attempting to export an IAS database query that seemed to have been corrupted in a few recent updates. But by 7:30pm, I'd given up and we were strolling down Saint-Denis toward ChuChai. On the way, it struck me that I didn't really know her well. Beyond her presentation a year ago, the only time I'd spent with her was in the IAS board meeting in Boston, where I don't even recall us talking outside of the meeting itself. My subconscious kinda peeked out, reminding me that her nursing student schedule wasn't likely to afford time beyond dinner, a block I could easily fill up with banter specific to our work.

Helen had other ideas. Between dinner and the first fifteen minutes of the following day, we must've walked nearly the entire eastern half of the city, not to mention climbing the mountain at the center (in the dark), and finding our way back down. I don't recall any particular gaps in our conversation. What's more, I felt challenged in much of it; in both reflections on adjusting to dramatic disjunctures in day to day life, and reflections on the reincription of colonialist discourses undergirding certain threads of "queer" solidarity in Iran. Oddly enough, a certain part of me felt like an impostor at times, though mostly in that "Hold on a sec, I need to pinch myself real quick" sort of way.

Ultimately, I caught myself (here and there) giving way to the idea that it is, in fact, possible for me to be this person I wake up to each day; that there's hope he might begin to make some sort of sense in the reasonably near future.

I'm a city boy. Who knew?

While the charm of Montpelier is ample, given its status as the capitol of a state overrun by people sporting bumper stickers reading Vermont: Most Likely to Secede and US out of VT (see Second Vermont Republic), and the manner in which even the most apolitical Joe Schmoe is disdainful of even modest departures from face to face direct democracy... It's still little more than a small town. And after a month comprised largely of coffee, Nietzsche, instant-message marathons, The Shield, and low-brow cold sesame noodles... I've smuggled myself across our border with our younger, smarter cousin; landing in Montreal just in time to catch A Silver Mt. Zion's final tour date (which was nothing short of jaw-dropping).

There's an irony in my long journey to Canada: Until about 6pm EST yesterday, I'd spilled across the Western Hemisphere (not to mention a brief residency in the Middle East), without so much as ever setting foot in either of the countries bordering that of my origin. And I suppose it makes it that much better that my sleepless urban withdrawal is momentarily colliding with the European motif of my adolescent years, to the tune of utter elation. Languages melt into each other in mid-sentence, hemmed between structures half-Brooklyn/half-any-European City (take your pick); the character of the communities inhabiting them evident in ways that give the lie to the meanings my country has invested in "democracy." Less than twenty-four hours down, and I'm already dying for someone to tell me there's a dogwalking market here.

On the Metro last night, transferring from the Green to the Orange Line, I made my way over to a somewhat crowded bench. Preparing to unclip by messenger bag, I set down the copy of Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition that I'd been reading since we set off from Montpelier. The guy sitting in the adjacent spot immediately picked it up, looked the cover over, and shot me an approving nod. I'm not sure why, but that sort of interaction registers with me as rare, to say the least (especially in the US); perhaps in part because we've grown resigned to a certain flavor of alienation, and in part because the range of ideas that enjoy that sort of broad currency in the US is shamefully narrow.

None of which is to romanticize my current surroundings as somehow utopian; given the work of a number of people dear to me, I know well exactly what (we'll say) imperfections lurk (and loom large) here. But it's a fairly jarring reminder that we can do better on our side of the border.

Right Guard will not help you here...

DC people, get your asses out to this. Seriously, the 92 bus stops about 4 times on 18th street (including a stop right across from Asylum). No excuses.

Rally at the Anacostia Public Library
Thursday, August 31, 2006
5:00pm to 7:30pm


Did you know that the Anacostia Library has been
shuttered since December 2004? Did you realize that
the Mayor and the City Council have never found it a
priority to make sure interim services are in place to
continue to serve the needs of this neighborhood?
Does this make you angry because you recognize the
important role libraries can play in a community?

TWO YEARS IS TOO LONG!!

Come on out to rally for the immediate reopening of
Anacostia Library and bring your friends and
children...

* Keynote speakers

* Children's activities and reading-time

* Food and beverages will be served

* Open mic for ALL - step up to the podium and speak!


WHERE:
Anacostia Public Library
1800 Good Hope Road, SE (18th & Good Hope)
(the 92 bus stops directly in front of the library)

WHEN:
Thursday, August, 31, 5:00 to 7:30pm

**

VOLUNTEER
We are looking for organizing assistance as well. Can
you help spread the word by email, flyer? Can you help
read books to kids or do you have a car? Contact >>
Robin Diener, 202-387-8030,
rdiener@savedclibraries.org

Between the Ones and Zeros

From Overheard in New York:

Girl #1: Anarchists are so dumb.
Girl #2: Yeah, totally.
Girl #1: I mean, just 'cause you hate the government doesn't mean you have to dress badly.

--Williamsburg

The word for today, kids, is impermanence.

As pertains this author, its significance is not so much (at the moment) anchored to physical, material phenomena. Instead, it figures in the arising and passing of thoughts, concepts, emotions, perceptions, and desires.

The Dharma has traditionally described it in terms of the fluid coming and going of the mind; the distraction, continual return from which constitutes the art of meditation. It is the quality of phenomena for which there is no stable agent or source, and the coming and going that characterize it are inevitable whether we hasten them or not.

It's also precisely what Derrida was describing in his assertion that language is not primarily communicative, but representative; in that the majority of our application of lanugage occurs in the form of internal monologue (in thought), where we are simply representing already known information to ourselves (in perhaps new ways). Given that language is an externally crafted and imposed set of constraints with enormous productive capacity in and of itself, its potential to speak through us and surreptitiously mold representations in which we fancy ourselves the sole author is likely impossible to entirely quantify (See also Foucault's What is an Author?). That being the case, the meanings we invest in representations that may never even be uttered are by their very nature instable, fluid, and impermanent. They will arise and pass without us so much as breathing.

Which seems to leave communication rather loaded. By communication, I mean the transmission of new or novel information from one point to another (say... from one person to another). What happens when we make those passing little flashes of emotion, intuition, perception, and desire audibly manifest? Foucault had a few ideas about this, as well -- some of which seem to illustrate the ways in which that practice invests otherwise essentially impermanent and instable phenomena with an artificial stability or lasting meaning; wedding and thus investing the speaker with said meanings, instability notwithstanding... Investing the speaker with an assumed responsibility for the durability of said meanings (a daunting and futile charge, to be sure).

Impermanence, as it interests me at the moment, is the precise description of what I've always found so volatile about communication (again, I'm invoking a specific definition, here). Since my adolescence, I've been utterly terrified of assuming that aforementioned responsibility, and given the rather physical and material demonstrations of impermanence that have characterized recent years of my life, my aversion to giving audible words to what I think I know has only increased. Thus, I find myself more and more inhabiting ambiguities, honoring the instability of my own thoughts, emotions, intuitions, perceptions and desires.

Quantitatively, their specific representations will pass, and there's certainly some refuge to be found in that. Qualitatively... The jury's still out, and it's not clear they're ever going to return a verdict. The passing of something may be no more than its evolution, growth, and bloom. It need not be merely be as simple or narrow as entropy. The change, the becoming that constitutes impermanence can hold enormous promise.

So, in waiting out the swirling storm of impermanence, in waiting for the passing of (specifically) one's desires (and the perceptions that undergird them), at what point does one cease to live? By that I mean, in refusing that responsibility for the durability of my intuitions, emotions, desires; in refusing to even give them words or sound... At what point does that awareness of impermanence merely become a form of self-imposed paralysis? Exactly where does one locate the border between a measured and thoughtful practice of observation, and merely being too cowardly to roll the dice?

I'm fairly sure you're reading this, and I'm fairly sure you know who you are. Thanks for routinely making me smile, for (perhaps unwittingly) making me a bit more at ease with myself over the last few months. If I leave it at that, it's not out of fear of the impermanence of my own desires, but rather a desire to honor and respect the impermanence of yours.

At least I hope so.

"Re-interpreting" apartheid

This made me throw up in my mouth, a little.

Oh, and by the way, if anyone's interested in taking me to see Built to Spill at the 9:30 when I get back, it's just days before I enter the final year of my 20's. Jess Hall, I'm looking in your direction.

Over and out.

Murray Bookchin, 1921-2006

Murray,

I'm honestly at a bit of a loss as to what to say, here. Our interactions were few, and left me feeling as though you'd resigned yourself to whittling away the last of your years as a bitter old curmudgeon. It always put me in an odd position; you were so preoccupied with establishing your legacy that you probably never knew that you'd blown my mind years before.

I stand by my position from our last argument, by the way. Whatever brought about your disillusionment, anarchism is not antithetical to organization, and I'm honestly still a little embarrassed that (having written all you had) you couldn't do better than parroting the most cliche caricature in the book. Rumor has it that, in your final book, you went through all the adjectives you'd used in The Spanish Anarchists, and replaced them with the worst insults you could think up. Well done, I guess.

Hopefully, your legacy will reflect your less bitter moments. Either way, there really isn't anyone stepping up to fill your shoes.

Last summer, I said my final goodbye to the Institute. It was really fucking hard. A school house where I'd studied under some of the most insightful, understated people I've ever met, and gathered for weekly community meetings where I internalized that we can actually do this shit. A bathhouse where I'd traced the body of a lover I no longer hear from, and the adjacent woods where we spent our first moments alone. A kitchen that taught me more than I could've imagined about empathetic joy, learning how to know and appreciate the people working next to me. A wood-frame barn I helped raise and plaster, the only sustainably-built structure I've ever laid my hands on. The pond in which we drowned a host of inhibitions, and the library that provided the inspiration for my own. All gone. Never to return.

It was empty that last morning. Ben was serving as groundskeeper since the programs had been canceled, and had offered us the opportunity to sleep there rather than the floor of the anarchist labor hall in Barre. I couldn't escape the thought that when we pulled out of the parking lot, it would never come back. This place that represented probably the most intense moments of healing and redemption that I've ever known would never come back. This place that represented the possibility of so many things, this place where I'd watched people organically draw out each other's best selves would never come back. This place that gave breath to the possibility of an integrated radical intellectual life would never come back. There was definitely something in me that felt if I just didn't leave, it wouldn't have to end. And while I don't often cry over much of anything, I felt that tense, burning in my gut and temples that would otherwise set the process in motion.

Murray, I didn't know you well. And you kinda pissed me off that last time I was at your place. I'd actually brought a copy of The Ecology of Freedom with me, to have you sign for me, but by the time you'd finished talking, I was so put off by your bitterness and your badly veiled, desperate insecurity that I didn't bother. It was miserable. I didn't even feel guilty when Brooke gave me shit afterward, for putting my head down on my arms and nearly falling asleep. You were a shell of whoever produced the work that still routinely speaks through me, that guy was nowhere to be found.

And now all possibility of catching a glimpse of him is gone. Never to return.

And I'm having a really hard time absorbing that, brother. Mostly, I'm aware of how your passion and steadfastness spoke through the Institute, and what that's written on me. And I'm really fucking sorry I never fully realized it, or thanked you for it. I'm really sorry you left us without hearing me say it, Murray. It was a beautiful and sorely understated gift to us all, and it saved my fucking life. You deserve far more for that than your 85 years could've probably afforded. And I'm sorry I never told you that.

Safe travels.

"To speak of ‘limits to growth’ under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be ‘persuaded’ to limit growth than a human being can be ‘persuaded’ to stop breathing. Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.” - M. B.

The Bridges of Washington County

Another installment for Mr. Sommers (or anyone interested in images)...

This is my buddy, Poopers. He and I are chillin' on Barre Street this weekend, while his daddy's out of town. You might notice that his ears are sort of blunted. Years ago, Poopers decided he was done with living at home. Problem is, he lives in Vermont. And during the winter, it ain't warm here. He came home with the tips of his ears frostbitten, they later broke off. Any of you had your earlobes freeze off? Didn't think so. Poopers is a straight up gangsta.



I'm officially whittling away 4hr shifts at Montpelier's Black Sheep Books, come by and see me. This is of course like putting a smackhead behind the counter at a pharmacy.


Amen.





High of 69F today. I'm rockin jeans and a zipup hoodie, early afternoon. Holy crap.

Vertigo, anyone?

I left my flat, I left my friends.
I left my job, it was bound to be this way.
And as I leave the ground, I start to think about
Everything you made me say.

Oh, things will never be the same again.

-R. Kellerman


Does anyone remember the final scene of The Neverending Story? It's actually the only part of the movie I've seen, to tell the truth. I must've been like 8, maybe younger. Yeah I know, I know. You're already ripping your hair out, screaming, "You've never seen that movie?!! What?! C'mon!" Go ahead, get it out of your system. At that age, I think was farming out a proper working class mullet, tearing up the neighborhood on a BMX with a card in the spokes and DIY cardboard vanity plate that said "BADASS", with my older cousin's metalhead boyfriend schooling me on the genius of Slayer. So, yeah. I didn't have time for typical kid shit. Deal with it.

Increasingly, I find that scene peeking out in the back of my mind; the sort of paradox of having nothing but this grain of sand left; this sole sacred remnant, upon which wishes are made toward -- not a resurrection -- but an entirely new totality. I'm quite aware of how dramatic that sounds, so keep it in your pants (I'm going somewhere with this).

Truth is, my place of residence is fairly stable; it's not going anywhere, and the rent isn't going up any time soon (nor is anything about living there prohibitive enough for me to keep an eye on the For Rent ads in Ward One). I'm more or less entirely in the driver's seat, vis a vis my economic mobility; I'm self-employed, in a line of work in which each incremental increase in actual work volume inheres an exponential increase in income. No one's really standing in my way, waving employee evals or updated (and invariably expanded) job descriptions. Mayor Williams has taken advantage of the lack of accountability that comes with a final term to structurally outfit the city on a fast track toward ethnic cleansing, and well... making the city uninhabitable for families; which (while appalling and catastrophic for anyone with a pulse) inevitably means a massive influx of high-income, childless residents... Many of whom have dogs, and jobs that will require them to hire the likes of yours truly to walk them.

So, when the question of "what next?" comes up, it's never really guided by any looming imperative to overcome this or that limitation or obstacle, or some externally-imposed frame of reference; it's almost entirely a question with few boundaries, of a wholly creative character. What can you dream up, guy?

Well, great, right?

To some extent, yes. Seager and I launching this worker-run dogwalking agency is one manifestation of that. There are a few legal and administrative hoops we have to jump through, and similar guardrails we have to loosely adhere to. But beyond that, the creative landscape is pretty broad. Writing bylaws for the agency actually means thinking structurally about how to make a collectively-owned and operated enterprise function as more than an abstraction or speculation. It's an extraordinary privilege to be in that position; making something ideal manifest. It's a process of routinely saying "Can we do that? Yeah, we can do that." Despite being bound up in largely mundane details, it's still a radical departure from virtually any decisionmaking scenario I've ever been a part of; where my mere desires are the determining factor of a given decision. It's difficult to even convey, in text.

Otherwise, it's fucking terrifying. Maybe not the business itself, but the parameters in which that takes place. Flawed as the structure of my past life might've been, it was familiar, and at least seemed intuitively reparable/salvagable much of the time. I've considered the possibility that I'm averse to taking more ownership of my own decisions, and I don't really think that quite describes it. In fact, I can say for a fact that my emotional health has improved considerably (in my work, activist projects, and spiritual life) due entirely to the increased independence and ownership I now enjoy.

Nearest I can tell, what I can't seem to adjust to is that I can utter the words "Things will never be the same again.", and feel the full weight of what's irrecoverable in all of this; feel the wholesale departure at work. Things I woke up to each day that were simply given, things that served some navigational function in my life... gone, never to return. Whatever is to emerge in their stead must be created from scratch. There seems even no real recourse to merely aspiring to prefabricated markers. It's a matter of wishing on the last remnant I seem to constitute, cultivating something altogether other and likely thus far unimagined.

And that prospect strikes me, some days, as nothing short of herculean.

Attempting to trick chaos into
Something beautiful. It's what I live for.
It's magic. Magic.
-Waxwing

I'd like to dedicate this one to the man with three Chrome bags...

So, Sommers asked for lots of photos. Here's the first batch.

This is the condo I'm living in for the next two months. There are five of us there (one for each bedroom), and our nextdoor neighbor ran the Vermont leg of Bush's last presidental campaign. I smell a prank war... Or a steel-cage death match.



This is the view from the back of the place, hinted at in the first photo.



Where the magic happens.



Light, summer reading.



Sore as I found myself this morning, I gathered I couldn't possibly fare better crawling the Main Street hill, so I opted to walk into town. On foot, the route involves a brief shimmy through the woods, and a stroll through a rather old graveyard.













Don't hurt yourself, Scott.