The End Of The World As We Know It

Yesterday, I had a brief conversation about gas prices with an over-the-road truck driver. I mentioned that a lot of us would be shocked if we had to pay the real price for gas. He said, "We don't as it is; we pay over 60% in taxes." I knew where he was going with it: Gas is over taxed; we need cheap toilet paper; and government is going to tax the working man out of a job. I more or less bowed out of the conversation and took in what he had to say.

But before I went on my way I did mention that no matter what the government does I'm afraid the price of gas will continually rise until a lot of us can't afford it anymore. I pointed to the fact that in the mid-eighteen hundreds the first oil well in the United States was only about 60 feet deep and produced a gusher of oil. About 150 years later we had the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that was at least a mile below the ocean's surface and a couple more miles below the bottom of the ocean. "I'm afraid we're running out cheap oil. It's becoming harder to find." I said. He said, "We have all the oil we need in Alaska. It's just that pipeline that's holding it up."

I wished him a nice day

Welcome to the end of the world as we know it. (Thank you to the band REM for this line)

"Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy" Has Arrived

The other day I received "Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy" and immediately started reading essays out of it. I can't believe this book is out of print. I think it's essential reading for any citizen that wants to fight for democracy. It's clear after reading a few essays that things really do not have to be this way. Anyway, the first essay by Jane Anne Morris is one of the best titles to an essay that I've come across in my short and limited reading life:

"Help! I've Been Colonized And I Can't Get Up..."

Ain't that the truth. It's going to take generations to get this thing turned around...if we do. Right now, as I type this Plum Creek is clear cutting (liquidating) close to 100 acres of red pine plantation next to my neighbors house. And if that isn't horrible enough they have plans on spraying the whole section with herbicides to kill anything that'll compete with the trees (assets) they are going to plant.

To show you how naïve I used to be, when I first read "Ishmael" and quit logging back at the turn of the century, I thought for sure we'd be well beyond this type of forestry practice within a decade. I really thought that enough minds would be changed and more sensible and sustainable ways to cut trees would be common.

On my way out the door to shovel a foot of wet, heavy snow so that I can get out of my driveway. I wonder if this is the last storm of the year.

Another Sunday Morning

It's Sunday. Hopefully home all day. Making an effort to not get in an automobile to go anywhere. The Beatles are playing on the Bose in the background. Daughter is dancing to the beat. Starting on my fourth cup of coffee to help fuel the ambition to cut some firewood. Surrounded by books, one of them is Jim Harrison's "Just Before Dark: Collected Nonfiction." Two lines speak to me this morning. One by the author and the other by W.B Yeats. Harrison says, "Poetry at its best is the language your soul would speak if you could teach your soul to speak," and Yeats, "Those men who in their writings are most wise, own nothing but their blind stupified hearts."

Time to work with wood.

The Lower Brains Run The Show

I found the internet quote I was looking for yesterday. I'm beginning to think about the only thing the internet is good for is an organizing tool.

"Virtually reality, touted as an alternative reality, really means no reality at all, or rather it means that the neocortex, outflanked and pressured, creates a place it can be in control for forty minutes, while the lower brains [reptilian and paleomammalian] run everything else in the universe.

"The internet is a perfect creation of the sibling society, particularly in its belief that no codes of literary behavior and no standards are called for, and information can come along fruitfully without any filtering. But civilized proceedings cannot proceed without filters." (Robert Bly, Pg. 258, The Sibling Society)

Wrong Book

Yesterday I wrote about my oldest son and how I read him a passage about Thoreau. What I forgot to mention was there was another passage that I was searching for and wanted to read to him but couldn't find. Well, this morning I found it. I couldn't find it because I was looking in the wrong book! I found it while looking for another passage on how the internet has made us even less political than we already were before it became popular. Here's the passage:

"[Thoreau's] aunt, who admired an ethical man named Dr. Chalmers, complained, 'Henry will stand for six hours watching frogs hatch, but he won't read the biography of Dr. Chalmers!' When Thoreau was dying, a neighbor said to him, 'How do you stand with Christ?' Thoreau said, wittily, but truthfully for him, 'A snowstorm is more to me than Christ.'" (Robert Bly, Pg. 56, The Sibling Society)

Living Sincerely

Lately, our oldest son (He's 14) has been spending a lot of time in the woods lighting campfires, shooting his homemade bow, watching the birds, climbing trees, etc. So while we took a break from doing firewood I felt inspired to pull down "The Winged Life: The Poetic Voice of Henry David Thoreau," by Robert Bly. Prior to me doing this we were talking about how Thoreau had changed his name from David Henry to Henry David. I wanted to find the passage where Bly talks about the name change but like usual I was sidetracked and read this passage to him instead. It's about what it means for a human being to "live sincerely." I hope he remembers it in times of need.

"To live sincerely is to live your own life, not your father's life or your mother's life or your neighbors life; to spend soul on large concerns, not to waste your life on your neighbor's life; not to waste your life as a kind of human ant carrying around small burdens; and finally, to live sincerely is to 'live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,' as Thoreau declares in "Walden." (Pg.25)

I hope I remember it in times of need.

It's a Corpocracy

Despite what we've learned since kindegarten: We do not live in a democracy; we live in a corpocracy. If we want to eventually live sustainably on this planet we're going to have to learn how to govern ourselves again. And that is going to involve fighting to elevate community rights above corporate rights. As it stands right now a corporation can come into your community and commit whatever harm it sees fit. The only thing that you can do as a community is try to regulate this legal fiction. In other words, it's a given the corporation is going to commit the harm. You just get to regulate how harmful the harm is going to be. Where I come from that isn't democracy, and its not a good recipe for sustainability.

Time To Blow Snow

If you live in northwestern Wisconsin, and haven't been outside yet, there is close to a foot of fresh snow on the ground, and it's still coming down. Time to put on my bibs, boots, hat and gloves and trudge out to my pic-up to head over to my dads to load up the snowblower. That'll be close to a dozen times this year. I don't think I've loaded up the snowblower this many times in total in the past decade. It's just been a tough winter. I can only imagine what the deer and turkeys are feeling right now. The robin that I saw last Saturday, it's probably packed up and is almost to the Wisconsin/Iowa border by now.

Another Week

Yesterday, after work, I made up my mind that I was going to return Jung's "Red Book" to the library. It was a day overdue and it's hard to get an extension on inter-library loan books. Plus, I've got plenty of books and magazines around here to read but not enough time to read most of them as it is. But when I got up to the counter to hand the book off to the librarian I changed my mind. I asked her if I could keep it for another week and she didn't think it would be a problem, they just had to do some paperwork on it. Once again, I walked out the library with "The Red Book." This time not feeling excited but slightly obligated and overwhelmed.

This morning, to justify my keeping it, I was determined to randomly open it and just start reading a section or some footnotes. So, I did. The first paragraph that I layed my eyes on was underlined in pen by someone else. It read:

"It is better to be thrown into visible chains than into invisible ones. You can certainly leave Christianity but it does not leave you. Your liberation from it is a delusion. Christ is the way. You can certainly run away, but then you are no longer the way." [Pg. 293]

I think it's noteworthy because this is more or less what I've been getting at in some of my posts after the sermon from my fundamentalist neighbor. I also wrote down another quote that I think is somehow related to telephone sermon:

"Like everything healthy and long-lasting, truth unfortunately adheres more to the middle way, which we unjustly abhor." [pg. 293]

Seeing more blue herons around here. Time to go add to my firewood pile.

The Lorax and Beauty

"A think of beauty is a joy forever"-- John Keats

Believe it or not I first heard this quote while the kids were watching "The Lorax" about a month or so ago. After I wrote it down I'd assumed Dr. Seuss came up with it until I googled it this morning. It looks like he stole it from Keats.

I've heard James Hillman say that beauty is proof that the gods exist. Without it we'd only have theology.

Off to work we go this morning. That wasn't the plan until the phone woke me up at around 10 last night.

From Jung to Uecker

I had someone tell me the other day that I had to let the telephone sermon with the fundamentalist, firewood cutting neighbor go; that I should just let it roll off my back. I don't know if the person thought I was wounded or hurt or what. Somehow I got the feeling that they thought I needed support in this. Or perhaps that I needed protection. That's not the case at all. I'm geniunely interested in some of the things the guy had to say. Of course, when you're interested in anything there is focus, attention, emotion and values and so on. And anyone that knows me knows that I don't just let things go. I can't. It's impossible. I still brood and think on things that were said to me 25 years ago. Anyway...

During the conversation my neighbor said that he hears the prophetic voice of the lord on a daily basis. I think the guy does hear voices. And I'm not saying that in a contemptuous way. I don't think he's a nutcase. Granted I don't agree with some of the things that his voices are telling him, but I'm interested that he's hearing voices. Why? As I've mentioned before, I'm reading bits and pieces of Jung's "Red Book", and that's what the whole thing is about. It's an account of a man dealing with the voices of his internal figures. He's telling those of us in the Western tradition that we all have internal figures and voices that we hear. That's your soul. And we need to get to know and discern which figures are saying what. I think that's what good fiction writers do by the way. I've heard authors say that the characters they create actually take over their life at times.

All of that interests me.

Last night, while I was grilling burgers, I saw two blue herons fly over and heard some Canadian geese off in the distance. I'm not sure, but I think I heard sand hill cranes as I was getting into the Park Avenue to head off to work. There's still alot of standing water and snow around here. Our old horse barn finally caved in.

Oh, and Bob Uecker thinks that Justin Upton beat B.J. to the table quite a bit when they were kids.

Those are some of my thoughts and observations before I head out to cut firewood on this gray day.

A Two-Thousand Year Curse

The other day I posted about the telephone sermon that my firewood cutting, fundamentalist Christian neighbor felt that he needed to give me. I'm a bit worried that come across as anti-Christian or anti-religious or just beyond all of that at times. I don't think I am. I was born and baptized a Christian for gods sakes. I may proclaim that I'm not Christian on the surface but below I am. The great thinker and psychologist James Hillman convinced me of this last year, and he alluded to it here in Lament of the Dead (A conversation about Jung's Red Book that I highly recommend to anyone interested in Jung's work.)

"When I'm talking about the Christians, I'm not only talking about those who are denominationally officially Christian, or go to Church or whatever. We're all Christians. We're all suffering the two-thousand year curse that has been laid on us by what you all like so much, the early Church." (Pg. 218)

Perhaps, I'm just one of the billions suffering from the two-thousand year curse.

Love Pitched Its Mansion In Excrement

The other day I called a neighbor to see if he had firewood left to sell. I soon found out that he was a fundamentalist Christian. Approximately 85% of the 30 minute telephone sermon was biblical quotes, his philosophy on how Obama is the apex of evil; how our nation is suffering because of abortions, men marrying men and women marrying women, and how he hears the lord speak to him while he's cutting firewood.

I should've cut him off five minutes into it. I don't why I didn't. I'm almost 40 and my time here is getting shorter by the day. I don't need someone telling me what they think is the truth. Oh well, here I am a few days later looking up "Crazy Jane," by William Butler Yeats because of it. I should have read him these lines:

"But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent."

Next time...

Waking The Dead

Rumi writes: "Those of you whose work it is to wake the dead, get up, this is a work day." (Pg.106, A Year With Rumi)

Me: We're up and out of bed. My son and I will be reading "My Ishmael" to each other in a few minutes. Doing what we can do to step out of the Great Forgetting into the The Great Remembering, Rumi.

My Big Red Friend

I spent some time with my big, red friend this morning. I ran across this statement that Carl Jung made in a seminar back in 1930.

"We are prejudiced in regard to the animal. People don't understand when I tell them they should become acquainted with their animals or assimilate their animals. They think the animal is alway jumping over walls and raising hell all over town. Yet in nature the animal is a well-behaved citizen. It is pious, it follows the path with great regularity, it does nothing extravagent. Only man is extravagant. So if you assimilate the character of the animal you become a pecularily law-abiding citizen, you go very slowly, and you become very reasonable in your ways, in as much as you can afford it." [Pg.296, The Red Book]

It's interesting to note that the other day when I called into Wisconsin Public Radio the guest from the Wisconsin Towns Association kept repeating throughout the program that local ordinances must be reasonable. I'd say that if the citizentry assimilates the "character of the animal," as Jung recommends, a very reasonable response to any potential harm moving into a community is to simply say NO. You cannot mine our sand, spray pesticides on the fields, spread shit across a 1000 acres, or pack close to a thousand head of cattle on less than adequate acreage.

A Call To WPR

I called into Wisconsin Public Radio yesterday. I don't rememeber the last time I did this. The hour long program was about local governments in Wisconsin regulating the frac-sand industry. It had two guests: One from the Wisconsin Towns Association and the other a corporate attorney representing a frac-sand company down by Eau Claire.

Here is the point I made when I called in for all the listeners to hear: This is about Community Rights. A community should have the right to say NO to a frac-sand mine. Right now, in Wisconsin, this is illegal and considered unconstitutional for a community to do. When a community forms a citizen majority and tries to say NO they run up against a structure of law that clearly shows them that a corporation has more rights than their local governing body. In other words, corporations (a legal fiction) have more rights than they do. We do not live in a democracy.

They cut me off before I could make any follow up remarks. Both guests said that I missed the point.

It's also interesting to note that during the whole hour the words "rights" and "community rights" came up once in the conversation (It's not really a conversation), and that is when I called in.

If we want to live in a democracy we've got a long road ahead of us.

#

Read the quote below to my 14 yr. old son this morning. He immediately got the dictionary out and looked up Eleusis and epitaph. Next we start reading "My Ishmael" to each other.

It's a good unschooling morning so far...

“Truly the blessed gods have proclaimed a most beautiful secret: death comes not as a curse but as a blessing to men.”- Ancient Greek Epitaph from Eleusis

Unchained

It's at least 10 degrees below zero at sunrise this morning. That set a record for this area on this day of March according to my phenology calendar. We've been seeing mallards, Canadian geese, and hooded mergansers on the crick that runs behind the house. A few days back I saw a skunk standing on the side of the road. Still well over 2 feet of frozen snow on the ground.

Masonry stove fire roaring. Van Halen's "Unchained" playing in my head.

The other day author and psychologist Thomas Moore wrote on his Facebook page: "Freud, Jung and others explored the mysteries of the soul, but the psyche has largely gone out of modern 'psycho-logy.'"

I asked: "What would be some good indicators that the psyche has gone out of modern psychology from a therapist's perspective?"

He said: "Therapists thinking they know what a particular person should be; using only meds; using evidence-based methods; trying to change behavior instead of listening to the soul. . . ."

Off to feed the animals and start the car....

Jung's Red Book

Yesterday I got the chance to pick up Carl Jung's "Red Book" from my local library through inter-library loan. The book is huge. My wife says it's bigger than a sheet-cake pan and it looks like a real page turner. She also said it'll also cure me of falling asleep in bed with a book. It's possible that it could give me a concussion or a bloody nose if I hold it just right and doze off. My son laughed at me when he walked by the kitchen table as I was reading it. He said it looks like a giant wizard's book. When I walked out of the library with it I felt like a boy again. Similar to what it felt like when I walked out of the grocery story with a new pack of baseball cards thirty years ago. Part of it, I think, is because of the sheer size of the book and the other is that I'm giddy about having it in my hands. I'm interested in reading about an intense conversation between a man and his soul.

Like usual I was looking through the footnotes and found this quote: "If he [A Man] accepts the feminine in himself, he frees himself from slavery to woman."( pg.263) D.H. Lawrence once said something like if a man doesn't organize his life around his vision he will become a slave to a woman's sex nights. I'll have to look the quote up again. I probably murdered it. I wonder if this is why some men can't live without pornography. They have a hard time accepting that other half of themselves.

That's my amatuerish psychological insight for the day.

When It Finds You

"When death finds you, may it find you alive."--African proverb

Rubber Boots and Soul

I promised myself I'd read the section titled a Democrat's Platonism out of James Hillman's The Soul's Code before everyone got out of bed this morning. I did it, and it's left me with a few questions to ponder as I go about my day: Democracy has Founding Fathers, but does it have angels? Can I imagine democracy more than just a collection of opinionated victims?

Reading this section also cuts to the question that Paul Cienfuegos asked at the beginning of the We The People workshop I attended last weekend: Why are you here? I wanted to simply say for the soul, but I didn't....

Time to cut firewood then a trip to town for haircuts and new rubber boots. Our front lawn will soon be flooded and rubber boots will be required if we plan on venturing anywhere out of the house.

The Pinch of Pain

This morning I find myself sitting next to the fire reading through material that I've been asked to read for a community rights workshop I'm interested in attending next weekend. The paragraph below hit me hard:

"Corporations and their owners have learned quite well that when you control the law, you can rise swiftly to power and wealth by shedding -- and shredding -- bothersome laws adopted by communities. By configuring and perpetuating a corporate culture -- that embeds corporate values into the culture: government bad, free enterprise good; jobs vs. the environment; efficiency and modernization good, leisure time bad -- people are slowly colonized to believe the unbelievable."--Thomas Linzey

We live in a corporate state. Corporations run our country. We simply go along without resisting real heavily. And if we do we know the consequences. I've known this for well over a decade now. But for some odd reason it hurts more this morning. I think the psychologist Thomas Moore referred to it as the "pinch of pain."

I don't know why. My only guess is that if one is going to stare this corporate state in the face one is going to feel pain and grief. I've learned that much on this path so far. To hold back these feelings takes more energy and just creates flatness.

The only thing I can say to myself is welcome to adulthood. You're not a child anymore. Welcome to the pain and grief of manhood. Real men know grief. Real men know how, as Robert Bly says, to go down in the ashes.

I continue on down the path from laws to legends.

We're all on it whether we like it or not.

New Generation

The "new generation" isn't just those born at a certain time, but all of us living now. We can all cultivate a new vision.-Thomas Moore

I see Ishmael as one of the foundational building blocks of that new vision.

Belief and Believing in God

I read the quote below to my 14 year old son this morning. He's a big fan of The Percy Jackson series (My wife is actually reading it right now) and the rest of Rick Riordan's work. And he occasionally wonders out loud if the Greek Gods actually exist. The answer I usually come up with usually is: Well, Carl Jung use to have a latin saying above one of his doorways that said: "Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit. ... Summoned or not summoned, The God is present."

Also, the quote below also reminds me of deer season a few years back. On the afternoon of Thanksgiving, my dad and I were in the bar having a couple of beers after registering a deer I'd just shot that morning. There was a guy about my age (I'm 39)sitting across from us that was close to falling-of-his-barstool drunk. He looked over at me and asked if I believed in Bigfoot. I shot back with, "I don't believe in anything." It just came out.

"James Hillman: Belief is captured in the realm of religion and Christianity makes a big deal of it. Credo. And the Christian God, you know, starts with the credo, I believe in Jesus Christ, and so on and so forth. That's part of the testament of faith. And I often wondered what would happen to the Gods of Christianity in no one believed in them. They require belief. If the God says you have to believe in me, then belief is what supports the God. The Greeks did not ask people to believe in their Gods. The Gods asked for certain rituals, or not to be forgotten, that was the most important thing. Not to be forgotten.

"Sonu Shamdasani: Belief automatically valorizes disbelief. To say 'believe in something' is a statement: the addressee is starting from a position of disbelief, or nonbelief, and is asked to move from that state to one of belief. This is the whole shift that Jung completely tries to discount. It's not a question of belief, nor was it a question of disbelief." [Pg.128, Lament of The Dead]

The Soul and Imagination

I had a guy tell me the other day that he didn't believe that we have souls. I don't know if we do or not. But I found this quote referring to Carl Jung and "The Red Book" interesting:

"...actually what he [Carl Jung with his Red Book] reestablished was that the psyche is a living world of imagination and that any person can descend into that world. That's your truth, that's what you are, that's what your soul is. You're in search of soul, and your soul is imagination. As Blake said, Jesus, the imagination, meaning the very creative power, the redemptive power, the strength that you are, is given to you by this remarkable thing that Coledridge called the esemplastic imagination, this force that presents itself figured. They are your teachers, they are your motivators, and they are your landscapes. That's what the habitations of your depths are. This seems to me the prophecy. I think this is the teaching that DOES come out [of the Red Book]."--James Hillman, Pg. 114, Lament of the Dead

One More

I had -5 F at the official sunrise this morning. It's warming up! You know that you've had bad winter when you start feeling this way.

More signs of spring are in the air. Last night, at around 8 o'clock or so, Hayden (4 yr. old) approached me wearing his spiderman suit, his left hand wearing a baseball glove holding onto an orange Ripken foam ball. We ended up tossing and rolling the ball back and forth to each other for a half-hour or so. Me on my knees in the middle of the kitchen and he standing on the pitcher's mound in the middle of our round house. He didn't catch any balls I tossed to him. He did well on grounders, though. He let me know that Cal and Billy (He's watched my Baseball Fundamentals by Ripken Baseball videos more times than I can count) taught him how to take grounders. Despite all of the missed tossed balls he doesn't give up. He'll go close to a hour and catch only a handful of balls. I'll be begging for mercy and he'll be asking me to throw "one more." Someday I'm going to have a T-shirt made that says "One More" on it. I'll wear it during baseball practices. Why? Because that is one of the most oft repeated phrases you hear when your throwing batting practice or catching pitches from Little Leaguers.

I'm afraid my son is going to one more my arm into retirement sooner then I wish. Time to load up the boys and start hauling slab wood for next winter...

Sentience

Last night at the dinner table our teenage son posed this question: "What does it mean to be sentient?" I couldn't come up with an answer off the top of my head. Which is terrible because I don't know how many times I've read about sentience in Derrick Jensen's work. Annie threw her definition out there which was being conscious of your own existence. I then fumbled around for awhile with idea of perception. Then got my feet underneath me and a head of steam and explained to him that this is the problem with our culture. Most of us at some level believe that humans are the only sentient beings on the planet. We think that we are the only ones that can perceive with our senses that we exist. The rest of the creatures are basically unfeeling machines. If we didn't think this I'd probably see a lot less frozen dead deer plowed up into the snow banks along the roadways as I deliver mail. Perhaps we wouldn't have cars or roads either.

My Webster's Random House College Dictionary that sentient is: 1. having the power of perception by the senses; conscious. 2. Characterized by sensation and consciousness.

Before posting this, Annie asked: "Isn't that why we believe animals don't have souls?"

Time to get the van warmed up to head to town for a doctor's appointment

Cold Again At Sunrise

It's well over 30 below zero Fahrenheit this morning. The starter turned over hard on the Saturn (Our mail car) at 6 AM. And that was after the oil pan heater was plugged in for a couple of hours. I didn't think it was going to go but it finally popped and Annie was off to work.

Had breakfast with my family yesterday. My dad and grandpa let me know that folks around the area are finding frozen wild turkeys on their land. One women said that she found some frozen up in their roost and on the ground below it. On the mail route I almost had a deer jump in the car with me as I was cruising down the road at 40 miles per hour. It just stood on top of the snow bank and decided to bolt as I was passing by. The plowed roads and driveways are some of the only places they can go right now where they're not up to their chests and neck in snow. The black bear: They just sleep through it.

Broken glass by baby hands in the house. Time to go..

15 Years Or So After...

The other day I ran across this line out of "Lament of the Dead:"

"There's something very different about feeling that I'm being lived by a story."--pg.92

Yes, there is, Mr. Hillman. And that is one of the big reasons, I think, Ishmael had such an impact on me. I had no idea at the time that you could be lived by a story. Or maybe at some level I did, but it helped me to have it brought to light by a good teacher.

Next I ask myself why I'm thinking about this book 15 years after its reading. Am I being like Alan Lomax, the main character in Ishmael, and just hanging around my guru and not got out into the world to live my life with these teachings. No, I'm not. The soul, as Plotinus and others have taught us, moves in circles. It's not linear and therefore not progressive. I'll probably circle around and periodically return to these teachings for the rest of my life.

Ishmael helped me remember that the soul is immanent.

Impatience

It's 20 below zero before the sunrise on this Thursday morning. Despite the frigidly cold weather I noticed a couple signs of spring on the mail route yesterday. Saw two eagles sitting together on the branch of an oak tree over looking a farmer's pasture. From the looks of them I got the impression they could be thinking about having little ones together. Also noticed a lot of oak leaves blowing around on top of the waste-high snow in my front yard. Perhaps the oaks have gotten impatient. They're decided to start pushing their new buds out and shedding the old, brown, shriveled up leaves that've hung on all winter.

These two lines from Rumi keep running through me head:

"My worst habit is I get so tired of winter
I become a torture to those I'm with."

Off to unexpectedly deliver mail again this morning.

Wrestling Machines

Spent most of my waking hours yesterday wrestling my dad's John Deere snow blower up and down our driveway. Now, it's off to work this morning to wrestle our 1996 Buick Park Avenue through snow banks in an attempt to deliver two-days worth of mail for the United States Postal Service. It'd be all more worth it if I handled more mail like the mail one of my customer's has waiting for me whenever I work. He has a hand written letter in an artfully crafted envelope with a U.S postage stamp stuck in the right hand corner addressed to I'm presuming a friend of his.

Saving The Buffalo

If anyone is interested in the fight to save the last remaining wild buffalo this interview is worth listening to. This interview also inspired me to go back and look up this quote about the buffalo and extinction:

"About ten years ago, I spoke to members of the Society for Ecological Restoration. I told them that traditional Indian knowledge says that beings never become extinct. They go away, but they have the power to come back. I predicted that, in their restorations, if they were preparing the area right, plants they thought were extinct would begin coming back unaided after four or five years. Plants would come back first, and then animals and then birds.

"Of course, my audience thought I was crazy. But later, when I went to get a cup of coffee, several people followed me. They said, "You're right. We're seven years into a swamp restoration in Wisconsin, and all the original plants are coming back."

"This is not as extraordinary as it might sound. The elders tell us that the buffalo used to go back and forth between two worlds. In the summertime, people would find themselves in the middle of a big herd for weeks. But in the wintertime, there would be only a few buffalo down in the river bottoms, or up in the grasslands. Where were the huge herds? According to the Sioux, they were underground. There were about ten places where they went in or came back out.

"When I first heard that, I didn't believe it. Then I talked to some of the elders, who said, "Of Course," and showed me the buttes where the buffalo used to come out in the springtime. I thought, this is insane, so I scoured the literature, but I couldn't find any accounts of big buffalo herds in the wintertime. Then, come June, the damn plains were so covered with buffalo. In the fall, they started disappearing again.

"I'm still working on this one. But that's what life is all about. You take disparate facts, bring them together, and say, "Now, what's the real question?" And so often you're amazed to find that the matter is much deeper than you ever imagined. But the point is to ask the questions, and keep asking them."--Vine Deloria Jr. in an interview with Derrick Jensen back in July of 2000.

My Letter To The Editor Concerning Environmentalists

This letter is in response to [Writer's name] letter criticizing environmentalists two weeks ago. A couple of things he wrote jumped out at me as I read his letter. They are: "It seems that to diehard environmentalists the earth and it creatures take welfare over humans." Then he finishes his letter with, "According to scripture human beings were God's prize creation."

Perhaps this thinking is part of the problem that you and others have with the environmentalist movement. They, and the science they're using--roughly 200 species a day going extinct, the planet warming up, human population doubling every 50 years or so-- to fuel their actions are showing us in no uncertain terms that we are indeed not "God's prize creation." Is it possible that we're as important to the creator as woodticks or wolves? Can we go the way of the dinosaur without God batting an eye? Pope Francis recently was quoted as saying, "God always forgives. People occasionally forgive. But nature never forgives. You drive a creature extinct, that creature is not coming back."

The possibility of our species going extinct is a frightening thought to some, [Writer's name]. I think it's important we give them the space and listen to their concerns before we jump to conclusions.

Beyond The Playground Fence

"Schooling of any kind is unnecessary and counterproductive in human children." Daniel Quinn, Pg. 166

My sister recently inspired me to go back and reread the chapter titled, Unschooling The World out of "My Ishmael." That chapter helped me understand why as a boy I always wondered what was beyond the fence that surrounded South Beaver Dam school's playground. And why I entertained the fantasy of me and a few friends packing up a some clothes, matches, and primitive weapons and spending a couple of nights next to a campfire under the stars. Perhaps James Hillman is right, the heart imagines its way out of things

The Willingness To Look

A brief reflection after looking at this page and map concerning Wisconsin's frac sand industry.

"The white man seeks to conquer nature, to bend it to his will and to use it wastefully until it is all gone and then he simply moves on, leaving the waste behind him and looking for new places to take. The whole white race is a monster who is always hungry and what he eats is land." ~Chiksika, (1760-1792), The eldest brother and mentor of Tecumseh

When discussing war and resistance, James Hillman once said that we must think ourselves into the heart of the enemy. We must go to war ourselves. Asking: What are there beliefs? What are there fears? Why do they do what they do? And If we don't, he warns we remain innocents. We remain children not wanting to know. Not willing to look.

Children, Celebrities and Madness

More on the theme of children and learning with a little depth psychology thrown in there:

"We educate our children to make a good living rather than to become thinking persons, and often we honor as celebrities those who have not made a genuine contribution to society but who mirror our own madness."-Thomas Moore, pg. 97, Original Self

I remember Thomas Moore saying in a talk that I have downloaded that people locked away in insane asylums are living our madness for us.

Indian and Non-indian People

"If you are concerned about the mounting evidence of catastrophic climate change or the fate of the world's forests and the loss of global biodiversity, then you cannot afford to overlook the critical role of native peoples in defending their lands and culture from mining and oil corporations. Their success or failure is inextricably tied to the fate of the planet and the health and well-being of its people."--Al Gedicks

Litima

My son's 14 years old. And has friends around the same age. They exhibit, among many other things, a sense of heightened irritability and energy. The body races. The head is ready to explode with plans. It could just be a dragon in the blood. Or is it what Michael Meade and the Gisu of Uganda call Litima?

"To them [the Gisu], Litima is the violent emotion peculiar to the masculine part of things that is the source of quarrels, ruthless competition, possessiveness, power-driveness, and brutality and that is also the source of independence, courage, upstandingness, and emotional force that fuels the process of becoming an individual ... Litima is ambiguous ... it has two sides. The source of independence and high ideals can also be the source of ruthlessness and brutality."--Michael Meade

I find it easier looking at this way compared too seeing it as a thirty-fold increase in testosterone.

Mysteries Are Not To Be Solved

Reading Rumi before heading off to carry mail this morning. I really like these two lines out his poem titled: "Someone Digging in the Ground." I've heard Robert Bly quote the "eye goes blind" in at least one of his talks.

"Mysteries are not to be solved. The eyes goes blind when it only wants to see why."--Rumi

Before The World Was Made

A perfect poem on this holy day: Sunday.

From mirror after mirror
No vanity's displayed
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.--William Butler Yeats

I'm adding this a few hours after my initial post because I feel it's important: The overriding question of our time is: How are we going to stop murdering the planet before it's too late? The Community Rights movement is one way to stop it, I think. The excerpt below shows why Corporate America is taking this style of organizing seriously. We're already seeing bills being circulated (Thank you to Tom Tiffany from Hazelhurst) in Wisconsin to diminish the autonomy an authority of local governments to decide what goes on in their communities. In other words, there are politicians at the state level that don't like direct democracy.

EXCERPT FROM: Energy New Mexico
A Publication of the Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico

WHY CORPORATE AMERICA NEEDS TO PAY ATTENTION

"...Earlier this year, Mora County, New Mexico became the first county in the nation to pass a complete ban on oil and gas development. The Mora County Community Rights ordinance states that corporations may not drill, extract, or contract for any oil and gas development. Further stating, corporations have no rights to free speech or the right to go to court to protect their corporate or even private property.

"Specifically, corporations have no rights under the 1st, 5th, or 14th Amendments of the United States or New Mexico Constitutions and the county has the right to ignore all federal and state laws regulating oil and gas development.

"Framed as the “new civil rights movement for the younger generation,” the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is leading the fight against corporations and the oil and gas industry. The CELDF drafted the Mora County Ordinance and has announced that it will defend the county against any legal challenges all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

"In November 2013, IPANM and several land and mineral owners filed a suit in Federal court against Mora County. The suit alleges violations of corporate constitutional rights. Effectively, the Mora County ban and other ordinances seeking to limit corporate and private rights is a test of ‘home rule’ that allows any local government to create its own laws. This includes banning any unpopular businesses without the protection of the state or federal laws.

"While industry, the media and the public might ignore all the commotion created about the hydraulic fracturing discussion, this issue is the beginning of a social movement that is greater than just the oil and gas industry, it is a potential game changer for all of corporate America." This was posted on The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund's Facebook page on January 31st

End Modern Capitalism With Good Books

Finishing up Thomas Moore's Original Self this morning. This quote has got me thinking:

"The way out of the dehumanizing effects of modern capitalism and industrialism is not to change the system but to read good books."(Page 143)

Some brief reflections: I didn't start reading good books on a regular basis until my mid-twenties. It all started about 15 years ago after I read "Ishmael." Given my lifestyle--unschooling 3 kids, taking care of a horse, a dog and a cat, plus 4 vehicles sitting in the driveway and a cordwood house to maintain--I barely have enough time to finish a good book these days. And I'd guess that I work at a job half as much as a man my age living in a similar situation. We've worked hard to stay out of debt. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. There isn't a day that goes by where I don't feel blessed. It's been that way since I started reading good books.

I'm also thinking of an interview that Derrick Jensen did with Lierre Keith on the Progressive Radio Network a few months ago. At the end of the interview she made a distinction between a liberal and a radical. What I heard her say is that liberals spend most of their time trying to change individual minds. They concentrate more on personal transformation. Radicals, on the other hand, organize and try to change the material conditions that keep them oppressed. They are not afraid of wanting to seize and obtain power...

Religion and Sex

One of the Townships near me is working on banning any kind of adult entertainment within the township. I don't know where I'm at concerning the issue, but I've always like this quote by Alan Watts: "Religion without sex is a rattling skeleton, and sex without religion is a mass of mush." Or this one by Thomas Moore, "Sex and religion are closer to each other than either might prefer."

An Insight into Manhood

This morning I ran across one of the best insights into being a son, grandson, and father that a guy could ask for, and that you will rarely hear mentioned in our innocent American culture. The Tallensi of Ghana say: "Your son is your rival." This also explains why my neighbor has a bumper sticker on the bug shield of his work truck that reads: "I hate [Insert his son's name here]." Talk about being transparent.

Redskins

Growing up I used to be a Washington Redskins fan. I still remember watching Joe Theismann falling behind center wearing eye-black, a single-bar kicker's helmet, and the #7 on his jersey (My favorite number to this day). And Joe Gibbs giving the ball to John Riggins sometimes up to 40 times a game. The glory days of the franchise. Of course, now I've come to my senses and am a die hard Green Bay Packer's fan.

Why am I remembering and writing about this?

Yesterday I learned that "redskin" refers an image of a body of an Indian that has been skinned alive. I guess when you take the skin off from the human body most of the blood comes to the surface. This used to be a common practice as the settlers moved westward towards California. I always thought that redskin just referred to the reddish color of their skin.

I was wrong. And I can see why the natives want the name changed.

Fever Setting In

As the snowflakes gently fall from the sky and the temperature drops outside these cordwood walls on this 20th day of January, my 4-year-old son stands facing me with baseball cap on head, baseball glove on left hand, ball in right hand, and a naked bottom. My 14 year old son's bat bag has made it's way from its spot in the old abandoned farm house a stone's throw away from the house we're living in now.

I'd say not cabin but baseball fever is setting in.

Patriarchy

"We have weakened the nobility of fatherhood in our time by mistaking imperialism in business and government for genuine paternal leadership. Mistakenly we complain about patriarchy instead of paternalism and weak-kneed authority. Patri-archy refers to the archetypal or original father, the ur-father, the father in heaven who permeates every created thing with his seminal possibilities."--Thomas Moore, Pg.51, Original Self

Masculinity and Gender

This is some of the best writing on gender and masculinity that I've seen in a long time. It also speaks to my experience.

"Gender is an aspect of our individuality. I am a man as no one else is a man. My masculinity is like my American spirit, a defining facet. The variations of gender are infinite, and so it is absurd to reduce gender to two categories and insist that everyone fit into one or the other. Besides, all dualisms doom us to division and conflict. They are simplistic descriptions of experience and tend toward easy literalism. Paradoxically, to become less certain about one's own gender may be the turning point at which one begins to discover the richness of one's masculinity and femininity."--Thomas Moore, Pg.55, Original Self

Roosevelt and The Future

The other day I listened to an interesting radio program about Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. The guest made the point that Roosevelt understood well that industrialism caused a huge gap between the rich and the poor, and he did all that he could do within his presidential powers to save capitalism and lift people out of poverty.

I often wonder what a future President's rhetoric will sound like when most of the population comes to the understanding that civilization is the cause of poverty; that when civilization walks in the door poverty comes with it. Or will there even be a Presidential office when this is realized?

Anxiety and Collapse

"Anxiety is nothing but fear inspired by an imagined future collapse. It is the failure of trust."-Thomas Moore

A few questions come to mind after running across this quote this morning. What kind of future collapse do you imagine? Where should we put our trust to alleviate the general feeling of anxiety in this day in age?

Priapus's Hard-on

My morning started with a question. Why does priapus have a permanent hard-on? Then while doing some research on that I got sidetracked by a quote:

"Tell me for what you yearn and I shall tell you who you are. We are what we reach for, the idealized image that drives our wandering."--James Hillman

Back to priapus. A few reflections: From what I know about priapus so far health class would've been much more interesting if priapus would have been introduced. Sex would have lost some of its heaviness, I think. He also lightens things up when the subject of sex comes up with your 14 year old son. If you don't believe me look up some images of him.

Now it's time to go deliver mail in the polar vortex. While doing the route yesterday the temperature didn't get above -12 F. I've been noticing a lot of deer tracks along the wood edges. They have to be really struggling right now.

Listening To The Dead and Adulthood

"It is an adult perception to understand that the world belongs primarily to the dead, and we only rent it from them for a little while. They created it, they wrote its literature and it songs, and they are deeply invested in how children are treated, because the children are the ones who will keep it going. The idea that each of us has the right to change everything is a deep insult to them."--Robert Bly, pg. 238, The Sibling Society.

"The work is [Carl] Jung's 'Book of the Dead.' His descent into the underworld, in which there's an attempt to find the way of relating to the dead. He comes to the realization that unless we come to terms with the dead we simply cannot live, and that our life is dependent on finding answers to their unanswered questions." Sonu Shamdasani, pg. 1, Lament of the Dead

More Cold On Its Way

The thermometer let me know it's 30 degrees warmer than it was yesterday morning about this time. It sounds like it's going to be a brief warm up. It's not suppose to be much above zero while the Packers face the 49ers tomorrow. The Governor of Minnesota has already called off school statewide because of projected cold temperatures. More on the cold theme:

"Tom Brown once asked Stalking Wolf why the cold didn't bother him. Stalking Wolf answered, 'Because it's real.'"--Ran Prieur

Keeping The Cold Out

It's 5AM. The thermometer on the wall reads -10 degrees F. It's warmed up 5 degrees since I went to bed 6 hours ago. The pine fire has just started to take off. Not much of a struggle to get it going, but it's work. Minutes later I sit down with my coffee and a book before heading off to pedal mail. A few minutes later the pen is uncapped and my hand is moving across the page writing the quote below.

"Stop struggling to keep the cold out. Let it flow through your body. Give it the space it will have in any case. Then you'll see that it isn't malevolent or hostile--or indeed anything that is thinking of you at all."-- Daniel Quinn, pg. 38, Tales of Adam

Cold Again

It didn't get much above zero again today. I had -20 on my thermometer at 5AM. I'm wondering if this past December has been one of the coldest we've experienced in northwestern Wisconsin. And with the consistent cold temperatures I found myself going back through author Timothy Scott Bennett's Facebook updates to find where he talked about his experience with the cold and the stories he tells himself about it. With a little persistence I found it. It was a pleasure to read again before I get ready to go out for another run in below zero temperatures.

TSB's update from 12/17: "Isn't it amazing? I get up and it's 4° F below and still there are gulls in the sky, still there are crows looking for handouts, still there are deer stepping quietly across the driveway trying not to wake anyone. How do they do it, I won...der, and why can't I? Over the years, I've schooled myself to walk barefoot on the ground, and can now easily do so when it's 15-20°F. I go out without coat and hat for as long as I can, and let the wind rip right through me. It seems that story and fear and culture and belief are as much a factor as anything else, when it comes to our experience of cold. So I work at that level, knowing that I won't always be able to control my external circumstances, knowing that the stories inside of me will determine my experience just as much as any outside force, knowing that if I can meet things like cold, hunger, and discomfort without fear and judgment that that will give me an edge, knowing that Nietzsche was right about what makes me stronger. In the end, it's my resistance to what's so - whether it be cold, heat, biting ants, or feelings of anger or grief- that causes me all of my suffering. The story 'this should not be' creates so much of my upset. And it's a silly story, don't you think, as anything that "should not be" surely "is" already. The cold surely "is." And I think the gulls and crows and deers just take it as such, with no thought of personal punishment, no offense, no inner mumbling of 'this should not be.' Thank you, teachers."

New Year's Resolution

My New Year's resolution: To entertain more radical thoughts.

Insulted By 115

The other day I was insulted while doing the mail route. The sting of it still being felt like salt being rubbed in a wound. It arises every other hour or so. I return to it like a horse returning to a salt lick. The insult a number that won't go away. The guy spreading the insult is probably a pretty decent guy; he's got a job to do like the rest of us. But an insult is still an insult no matter the character of the insulter. 115 is the number. That's how many operational frac sand mines and processing plants are in Wisconsin. That's the insult that filtered through the car speakers that day.

It's 25 Below Zero

Rolled out of bed this morning at 5:30 AM to get the fire started in the house. The thermometer reads 25 below zero. We've been burning wood for well over 3 months now and will be for at least another 4. It's our only source of heat. The other day I read a quote by Sinclair Lewis about winter that a facebook friend shared, it went something like, "Winter is not a season but an occupation." Makes about as much sense as the oft repeated quote by Lewis, "It's hard to make a man understand something if his paycheck depends on it."

I hope I didn't butcher those quotes too badly.

Flaubert on Order

I wrote down this quote by Flaubert this morning. It was buried in this week's Sports Illustrated article about Detroit Lion's wide receiver Calvin Johnson's drive to become the best wide receiver the NFL has ever seen.

"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

Derrick Jensen Interviews Chris Hedges

This interview with Chris Hedges was very sobering to listen to the other day on the mail route. Given his many years of experience being a war correspondent, and witnessing how countries domestic politics play out during periods of violent and bloody revolution, it seems that we're well on our way to a similar revolution. Of course, no one can predict it, but all of the signs and symptoms are there according the Hedges. I like the idea of how the state will determine how we resist (violently or nonviolently).

If you want your current way of looking at our political situation in this country to be shaken or rattled this interview is definitely worth the listen. If not, don't waste your time

A Subtle Truth

If you want money more than anything,
you will be bought and sold.

If you have a greed for food,
you will become a loaf of bread.

This is a subtle truth.
Whatever you love, you are. --Rumi

Moyers on the End of Democracy

This 3 minute video with Bill Moyers lays out nicely how our political system is totally corrupt. The other day, while listening to Wisconsin Public Radio on the mail route, I heard an author talking about how in this day in age if you're a white male (That statement made me pay attention for obvious reasons) you're either going to become a right wing-tea party type that is pissed off because you've lost your God given sense of entitlement or you will move to the left and follow in the footsteps of the early 20th century populists that challenged the wealthy of there day that had totally corrupted their political system. I identify with the latter. Day by day I move farther to the left and entertain radical thoughts. Mediocre-middle-of-the-rode political thoughts bore the hell out of me.

Reading "Lined Paper" This Morning

A few quotes that caught my attention while doing some reading about human rights out of Daniel Quinn's If The Give You Lined Paper Write Sideways.

"If there are still people here in two hundred years, they won't be thinking the way we think, because if people go on thinking the way the way we think, then they'll go on living the way we live--and if people go on living the way we live, there won't be any people here in two hundred years."-- pg. 128

"To us, having to assert a right in to order to have the things we want or want to do is taken to be a sort of human norm." Pg.92

"I've searched many dictionaries of aboriginal languages, and very few of them seem to have a word for right in this sense. In all the reading I've done about aboriginal peoples, I've never come across any instance of them arguing about rights or asserting a right to do the things they do." Pg. 91

Soren on Sunday

"The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays." ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Government Does Not Need To Show A Profit

I have been searching for the excerpt below for a couple of months now. Low and behold it appeared this morning while I was looking for another quote. It's important to me for a couple of reasons. One, is that I have been carrying mail for the USPS for close to five years now. And since then jobs have been eliminated and wages cut so that it can be run more efficiently. It must show a profit, they say. Secondly, my grandfather serves at the town and county levels of government, and he is one of the biggest opponents of the "lean government" trend. For example, in the county that I live in, certain public servants under the spell of Tea Party ideals want to cut the number of county board members from 21 to 15 to run the government more efficiently. This time to save the taxpayers money.

I like the idea of judging government institutions on the quality of the service they provide rather than the profit they show. In other words, the post office and other government institutions don't necessarily have to show a profit. I think James Hillman has done a good job of expressing below.

"It is well to keep in mind the image Treblinka when we ask government to be more "efficient." To expect the post office, the passenger railroads, the interstate highways, the prison system or the national parks to show a profit forgets that government is fundamentally a service industry as stated in the Constitution. It's efficiency can be judged only in terms of the services it provides--that they meet the needs of the people who grant its power. For a candidate for political office to campaign on a platform of efficiency in government suggests an infiltration of fascist ideals. Mussolini made the trains run on time--but at what cost?

"The extermination camps belong continually in our Western consciousness, not only to remind us of the human capacity for atrocity, the pathological potential in systematic technology, the virulence of racism, the existence of evil or the death of both the Jewish and Christian God. The camps belong continually in the consciousness because the devotion to efficiency continues unconsciously in the Western psyche, bearing witness to the shadow side of the current living god, the Economy, the god continues to urge Western civilization onward by means of ever more efficiency." [James Hillman, Pg. 44, Kinds of Power]

Heraclitus on a Sunday Morning

Some Heraclitus upon my return from the deer stand on this Sunday morning:

What is not yet known
those blinded by bad faith
can never learn-- Heraclitus, pg. 81, Fragments

He Read My Mind

I had something interesting happen to me this morning. Before I head out to the woods to my deer stand (It's the gun deer season in Wisconsin) I usually try to get some reading in. This morning I had the intention of reading some passages out of the Book of Job and Ecclesiastes. I'd read the other day in "Fragments"--a book about Heraclitus that James Hillman wrote a forward to-- that those two sections of the bible are considered books of wisdom. And I've heard James Hillman say that he assumes the readers of his work have a basic western education and therefore know the bible well. I don't. And since I can't seem to leave his work alone I've had the intention lately to become more acquainted with the bible. Anyway, the sun was about rise. So I got my bible out and put it on the kitchen table before I walked out the door. I had the intention on reading a few sections when I returned from the hunt. Well, a few hours passed by and I returned from the hunt. I stepped in the door to put my rifle away before I had to do my daily chores. I looked across at the kitchen table and noticed my bible was open. I didn't think I left it open so I asked Annie if she'd opened it. She laughed, and said, "No, Hayden (Our 4 year old) did. He opened it up Ecclesiates and I read the first section. It's fascinating writing. There is a lot of truth in it."

They beat me to it.

Mail

I ran across this passage last night before bed. The United States Postal Service would be a thriving institution if letter writing was imagined this way. Perhaps the USPS's problems are not so much about the amount of emails sent or paying bills on-line or politicians making the wrong decisions; but our loss of soul and imagination.

"One of the most potentially soulful aspects of modern life is mail and all that attends it: letters, envelopes, mailboxes, postage stamps, and of course the man or woman who delivers the mail. Junk mail and bills are only the shadow of an otherwise blissful institution. A great deal of pleasurable fantasy surrounds the important soul task of writing letters. An envelope is one of the few things in the modern world we seal, thus creating a private space for expression. Stamps are usually not mere tokens of monetary exchange, but small paintings, the closest thing we have to medieval miniature art, and they are also of interest to collectors, partly because of the variety of fantasy they contain, from national figures to local flora and fauna.

"The mailbox is a mysterious item, too. For the most part, we place our treasured letters in this box, and mysteriously our letters find their way around the world. I sometimes have the fanciful idea that the box is a black hole into which my thoughts and feelings fall, to be retrieved somewhat magically by another person participating in this ritual of self-expression. I can understand why people in other ages sealed their letters with wax--not only to keep them private, but also to acknowledge the sacredness of a letter through the ritual of stamping one's seal with fire and a material, wax, that is not just functional, like glue, but has aesthetic and religious properties." Thomas Moore, Pg. 124, Soul Mates

Reflection Isn't Enough

"...in feeling and desire we tend to realize the importance of something for the soul. Desire is holy, as D.H Lawrence, the romantics, and the Neoplatonists insisted, because it touches and moves the soul. Reflection is never enough."--James Hillman, Pg. 273, A Blue Fire

Unacted Desire

"Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires."--William Blake out of Proverbs From Hell

Emotion

A life after Ishmael reflection: One of the effects that reading Ishmael back in the late-nineties had on me was that it moved my emotions out it into the world. In other words the inrage started to change into outrage. Reading Derrick Jensen's work then pushed it further.

"Emotions are mainly social. The word comes from the Latin ex movere, to move out. Emotions connect to the world. Therapy introverts the emotions, calls fear 'anxiety." You take it back, and you work on it inside yourself. You don't work psychologically on what that outrage is telling you about potholes, about trucks, about Florida strawberries in Vermont in March, about burning up oil, about energy policies, nuclear waste, that homeless woman over there with the sores on her feet--the whole thing."--James Hillman, pg. 12, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and The World's Getting Worse

Born On This Day...

Just learned that along with my son also born on this day were Kurt Vonnegut and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Joseph Stalin once said that "Nobody understands human psychology like Dostoyevsky, and that's why I've banned him."

Resistance Radio and Rights-Based Organizing

Spent time with Derrick Jensen and Thomas Linzey on the mail route yesterday. I highly recommend this interview to anyone concerned about our children's future. With the planet warming faster than most expected we are going to be faced with the issue of whether or not Nature has the right to exist and flourish sooner than we think. Atleast that is my humble opinion. Or maybe I'm being too hopeful.

Mencken on Rights and Privileges

I think H.L Mencken is describes our current political climate quite well with this quote:

"What men value in this world is not rights but privileges."

What Makes You A Man?

Having lived with my grandparents in my late-teens and early-twenties, and now watching my son board the train of adolescence, this poem by Rumi has a lot of wisdom in it, I think.

The Core of Masculinity

The core of masculinity does not derive
from being male,
nor friendliness from those who console.

Your old grandmother says
“Maybe you shouldn’t go to school, you look a little pale”

Run when you hear that.
A fathers stern slaps are better.

Your bodily soul wants comforting.
The severe father wants clarity.

He scolds but eventually
leads you into the open.

Pray for a tough instructor
to hear and act and stay within you.

We have been busy accumulating solace
Make us afraid of how we were.--Rumi

A Sad Philosophy

"My philosophy is fundamentally sad, but I’m not a sad man, and I don’t believe I sadden anyone else. In other words, the fact that I don’t put my philosophy into practice saves me from its evil spell, or, rather, my faith in the human race is stronger then my intellectual analysis of it; there lies the fountain of youth in which my heart is continually bathing.” -- Antonio Machado

The First Snowfall of This Season

As documented last evening. It's 8 PM. The snow is falling. It's been coming down for a couple of hours now. The ground is white. I'm shoveling off my front porch. The light above my head allows me enough to see what I'm doing in the ethereal darkness of a new winter's night. I hear a sound to my left, turn to look, and what I see is a naked four year old boy wearing camoflauge mudboots flash by. A sure sign that the first snowfall of this winter season is being honored and appreciated by some in my household. I, on the other hand, will be shoveling heavy, wet snow with my clothes on.

My Letter To The Editor Concerning The Regulatory Certainty Act

Below is a letter to the editor of my local newspaper that I put together this morning. I don't know if I'm going to send it yet. It has to be submitted before the Tuesday.

Senator Tom Tiffany and the rest of the politicians that are supporting the Regulatory Certainty Act(LRB-3146 and LRB-3408) to restrict local communities to regulate Wisconsin's booming frac sand industry and other destructive activities have forgotten that prior to the writing of the Declaration of Independence there were over ninety local “declarations of independence” issued by community governments throughout the colonies prior to July 1776. This is according to historian Pauline Maier. Why? Communities at the time were frustrated with the central government serving the interests of British empire and preempting their necessary local laws.

Today we see history repeating itself. Communities throughout the United States are starting to put together Community Bill of Right's to protect the land and the welfare of their citizens. Politicians like Tom Tiffany are using the power of the State to try and preempt this from happening. Essentially they are serving the interests of corporate wealth over the public by not allowing communities to stop organizations like mining companies from moving in and poisoning their air, water, soil and bodies. If they will not allow communities to govern themselves then we really need to consider this excerpt of the Declaration of Independence:

“Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.”

Local communities are simply trying to provide a new Guard for their future Security. Politicians that are in support of the State government preempting the power of local governments to democratically govern themselves ought to be ashamed of themselves. They are going against the very fabric of our American democracy.

A Dialogue Between a Couple of Guys

"How do I get out of this story* I'm in?"

"You don't understand, my friend. There is no way out. There is no program. You're a wanderer now."

"A wanderer?"

"Don't you remember the lines you read to me by Machado a few years back?"

"No, refresh me."

"Here they are: 'Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road-- Only wakes upon the sea.'"--Antonio Machado

"You're not going to go on and talk about the unconscious, dreams, the sea, Moby Dick and all that bullshit again are you?"

"No, I've got a building to build..."

*A story is a scenario interrelating man, the world, and the gods."--Pg. 41, Ishmael

Democracy Doesn't Last Long

"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide."--John Adams, 2nd President of The United States.

We're in for a long ride...

Why I'm Here

Two decades ago I moved up to northwestern Wisconsin. Right before I left a friend of mine said, "What the hell you moving up there for? There is nothing up there." There are moments when I wonder why I'm still here. As James Hillman has said, we never really know why. But I'm going to speculate as to why anyway. The answer might be found in this quote by Lewis Mumford: "Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers." Both of my grandfathers grew up on farms in northern Wisconsin. I was nourished by stories from northern Wisconsin since I can remember.

Mind Over Body

Two women talking at work yesterday. One of them mentions to the other that her knee has been hurting her lately. The other relates with her own knee pain story then concludes jokingly saying, "It's all about mind over body." I smiled and thought of this poem by Rumi that I heard the other day:

On Resurrection Day

On Resurrection Day your body testifies against you.
Your hand says, I stole money.
Your lips, I said meanness.
Your feet, I went where I shouldn't.
Your genitals, me too.

They will make your praying sound hypocritical.
Let the body's doings speak openly now,
without your saying a word

as a student's walking behind a teacher
says, This one knows more clearly
than I the way. --Rumi

To Women As Far As I'm Concerned

Another poem that James Hillman read in the Men and The Life of Desire. This one by D.H Lawrence. It resonates on some level. That's why I'm posting it.

The feelings I don't have I don't have.
The feeling I don't have, I won't say I have.
The feelings you say you have, you don't have.
The feelings you would like us both to have, we neither of us have.
The feelings people ought to have, they never have.
If people say they've got feelings, you may be pretty sure they haven't got them.
So if you want either of us to feel anything at all
You'd better abandon all ideas of feelings altogether.--D.H Lawrence

Feeling Fucked Up For The First Time

The other day I received Men and The Life of Desire, by James Hillman, Robert Bly and Michael Meade. It's a recording of a men's conference that took place in 1990. I think the men's work is more relevant today than it was back in '90. About halfway through 1st CD I was moved by James Hillman reading this poem by Ehteridge Knight.

Feeling Fucked Up

Lord she’s gone done left me done packed / up and split
and I with no way to make her
come back and everywhere the world is bare
bright bone white crystal sand glistens
dope death dead dying and jiving drove
her away made her take her laughter and her smiles
and her softness and her midnight sighs—

Fuck Coltrane and music and clouds drifting in the sky
fuck the sea and trees and the sky and birds
and alligators and all the animals that roam the earth
fuck marx and mao fuck fidel and nkrumah and
democracy and communism fuck smack and pot
and red ripe tomatoes fuck joseph fuck mary fuck
god jesus and all the disciples fuck fanon nixon
and malcolm fuck the revolution fuck freedom fuck
the whole muthafucking thing
all i want now is my woman back
so my soul can sing

First Bukowski Poem

I ran across my first Charles Bukowski poem in "Born to Run" yesterday. I first heard of him in a New Dimensions interview with Coleman Barks, the poet and translator that brought us Rumi. I will definitely be looking into Bukowski.

If you're going to try, go all the way
There is no other feeling like that
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with fire....
you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, it's
the only good fight there is.- Charles Bukowski

Q & A With Thomas Linzey

I learned a few interesting things in this Q & A yesterday. Did you know that once you cross through the door to work for a private employer you no longer have constitutional rights. So watch what you say at work.

Another thing that stuck out was the statement that progressives and liberals will not be the constituency to carry the community rights work forward; they'll be the ones to stop it. That doesn't surprise me. I've always found it peculiar that Derrick Jensen has received well over 900 negative emails from folks on the left and less than handful from folks on the right.

"They [Move To Amend] think the progressive/liberal community is actually the constituency that's going to do this work, and we've been convinced otherwise. They're actually the folks that are going to stop the work for happening, but they're not necessarily the folks that are going to move it forward. And that always sounds harsh too, but we have a limited number of hours in our day from waking to quitting work at night and I'm not spending one more iota of time with liberal/progressive groups trying to convince them that their work that they're doing is not achieving results. And so you're looking at generating new people. There is not an existing natural constituency for this work."--Thomas Linzey at 12:40 in the Q & A

Problems

"Problems sustain us--maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without them? Completely tranquilized and loveless, too. There is a secret love hiding in each problem...."--James Hillman

It's The Story

“There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will ACT like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.” - Daniel Quinn

Through The World

The way through the world
Is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.-- Wallace Stevens

Twain On Fooling

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."~ Mark Twain

Hope and Hopelessness

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise." (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up)

Building Things That Fall Apart

It never fails, ever since we've started building with cordwood and other materials on our place this philosophy and image comes to mind. It also has kept me from strangling my kids.

"In the village, people used to build their houses out of traditional materials, using no iron or lumber or nails, but the houses were magnificent. Many were sewn together out of bark and fiber. Like the house of the body, the house that a person sleeps in must be very beautiful and sturdy, but not so sturdy that it won’t fall apart after a while. If your house doesn’t fall apart, then there will be no reason to renew it. And it is this renewability that makes something valuable. The maintenance gives it meaning.

"The secret of village togetherness and happiness has always been the generosity of the people, but the key to that generosity is inefficiency and decay. Because our village huts were not built to last very long, they had to be regularly renewed. To do this, villagers came together, at least once a year, to work on somebody’s hut. When your house was falling down, you invited all the folks over. The little kids ran around messing up what everybody was doing. The young women brought the water. The young men carried the stones. The older men told everybody what to do, and the older women told the older men that they weren’t doing it right. Once the house was back together again, everyone ate together, praised the house, laughed, and cried. In a few days, they moved on to the next house. In this way, each family’s place in the village was reestablished and remembered. This is how it always was.

"Then the missionaries and the businessmen and the politicians brought in tin and lumber and sturdy houses. Now the houses last, but the relationships don’t."--Martin Prechtel in The Sun Magazine

Wolverines and Badgers

Just when I get to feeling slightly hopeful about things in steps a friend of mine to set me straight. This time it was about the Michigan Wolverines playing the Minnesota Gophers in a recent Midwest college football showdown.

Friend: Do you realize that 100,000 people attended that football game; and there have been at least 100,000 fans that've attended each Wolverine home football game since 1975.

Me: No, I wasn't aware of that. I'm a Badger fan.

Friend: How many badgers are left in United Wisconsin?

Me: Again, I don't have a clue. Over the years I've seen a few around our place, so I know they're around.

Friend: When it comes to real wolverines in Michigan that's not the case. Did you know there was a wolverine spotted in 2004.

Me: No, I didn't.

Friend: It was the first one spotted since 1804.

Me: That's 200 years ago!

Friend: Yeah, and that one died in 2010.

Me: So, what's your point?

Friend: Do you think more people in the Wolverine State care about real wolverines or the wolverine football team?

Me: Point taken.

One Big Yawn

"Every action flick depicts the destruction of civilization as some kind of crash-boom-bang, a nuclear war or hurtling comet or a self-aware-cyborg uprising, but the true cataclysm may already be creeping up right under our eyes: because of rampant obesity, one in three children born in the United States is at risk of diabetes--meaning, we could be the first generation of Americans to outlive our children. Maybe the ancient Hindus were better crystal-ball-gazers than Hollywood when they predicted the world would end not with a bang but with a old yawn. Shiva the Destroyer would snuff us out by doing...nothing. Lazing out. Withdrawing his hot-blooded force from our bodies. Letting us become slugs."--Christopher McDougall, pg.99, Born to Run

Dad Shaved

Sophia (1 yr. old) is keeping a safe distance from me this morning. Periodically she stops, stares with widened eyes, and searches for the dad she once knew in my face. She doesn't wander too far from the safety of mom's arms, keeping them close by. Sometimes taking it as far as raising her arms to give mom the pick-me-up sign; perhaps to get a safer and slightly different angled look from mom's arms. The world has changed for her; daddy shaved.

George Washington God King

I was following my nose this morning and doing some reading on Wikipedia about William Blake and Orc energy. I found this excerpt interesting:

"Blake had many expectations for the American revolution, which is described in a prophetic way within the poem. However, he was disappointed when the fallen state of existence returned and that slavery was not immediately ended. He was also disappointed when there was not a sensual liberation. After Napoleon declared himself emperor in 1804, Blake believed that the Americans would start treating George Washington as their god king in the manner that the French treated Bonaparte and the English George the III. He continued to believe in an apocalyptic state that would soon appear, but he no longer believed that Orc man, the leader of a revolution, would be the agent of the apocalypse. Instead, he believed that God could only exist in men, and he distrusted all hero worship."

I've heard more than a couple people refer to George Washington as a god king.

I Eat Ants

The first thing my 3 year old son says to me this morning is, "I eat ants." Ten minutes later I run across this quote over at NaturalAwareness.

"It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?"--Henry David Thoreau

Sendivogus on The Soul

Maior autem animae pars extra corpus est (The greater part of the soul is outside the body).--Sendivogius

I think about this quote often, especially on Sunday mornings.

Robert Sund's Mother

What Robert Sund's mother told him:
"Without love of earth
There is no love of Heaven."

(Thank you to George Draffan over at NaturalAwareness for sharing this.)

Boys and Baseball

Last night we drove into town for dinner and an interview that I was asked to do. A former Little League player of mine had to interview some coaches for a school project. During the interview he asked what one of my fondest memories was of coaching. I couldn't think of anything. Well, that's sort of true. I did but didn't think it proper to say it. The first memory that came to mind was from the 2011 season. I was standing on the mound throwing batting practice to the team and out of all the chaotic noise and laughter I hear a 11 year old voice from centerfield razzing my second baseman of equal age, "Billy's got a boner. Billy's got a boner. Billy's got a boner." I tuned into listen. The two of them proceeded to razz each other for a bit then let it rest. During the exchange I fought back the impulse a few times to tell them that they'd better put a lid on it. After all, there were parents around, and what kind of coach would let this go on at his practice? I persevered, though. I silenced the voices, buried the impulse, and smiled.

I don't know why it's one of my fondest memories but it is. Atleast it was the first one out of many that came to mind last night. I remember returning home after practice on that chilly spring evening and looking up this quote by Dostoyevsky:

"There are 'certain' words and conversations unhappily to eradicate in schools....Boys, pure in mind and heart, are fond of talking....of images of which even soldiers would sometimes hesitate to speak....There is no moral depravity...but there is the appearance of it, and it is often looked upon among them as something refined, subtle, daring and worthy of imitation."

My centerfielder's razzing chant and the exchange that followed was nothing close to what " even soldiers would sometimes hesitate to speak," but I knew it was a start. I'm glad I silenced the internal voices that evening. They were on their way to becoming young men.

Another Day of Digging Post Holes

It's 7:40 AM. My back's stiff. My hands, fingers, and wrists don't want to move from a day digging holes and planting posts to hold up our pole shed yesterday. My body is asking, almost to the point of crying, for a day off from digging. But I must soldier on before the predicted 3-day rainstorm hits. The plan is to finish my cup of coffee, force a bowl of oatmeal down my throat, and be out there digging within a half-n-hour. Before doing any of that I have a request to fill. Hayden (My 3 yr. old son) has just asked me to read him Work, Work, Work, by Daniel Quinn. I smile and say, "I'd be glad to son." We sit down on the couch and I read it to him. I look up, smile, chuckle, and shake my head. Why? The character in the book is a gopher. And before his day's work of digging and burrowing, he says, "Another day. Ho hum. I suppose I may as well get at it." A few minutes later the book ends with the gopher saying, after he goes through a full day of digging and burrowing and missing all the going-ons around him, "Sometimes I think about taking a day off. But what would I do?"

He hit the nail right on the head with that one.

Half-gods and Devils

Sitting with a couple of books before I head out to plant some more posts in the ground for our pole shed. I've called it a barn in the past but it's actually only half the size of your average barn. We're hoping to have the framework up and the roofs on before the snow flies.

One of the books I'm sitting with this morning is The Conduct of Life, by Lewis Mumford. I like this quote out of it: "When the god in him is repressed, the half-gods and devils take possession of man." Another one of the books that I'm sitting with is, of course, Lament of the Dead. And in it the authors explain how the half-gods and devils appeared to Carl Jung in the form of figures in his active imagination. He named, had conversations with, and sketched them. From what I understand so far this is essentially what Jung's Red Book is about.