Dilemnas and Deer Hunting

I don't know if I should take my rifle or my chainsaw with me out in the woods this morning. Most of the people that I've talked to around here are saying they're seeing little or no deer. The other day walking down the trail I noticed an old, dead red oak that had blown over and pinned down a young white oak. It was still alive but bent over in the shape of the St. Louis Gateway Arch. So instead of sitting on my stand waiting for deer that aren't there I might just save this white oak since it produces more acorns than any other oak tree around here. Hopefully then my kids and their kids won't have to sit around and talk about the deer they aren't seeing because the deer will have something to eat. Plus, running a chainsaw is warmer than sitting on a deer stand when it's only 15 degrees out there.

Dilemnas like are common place when I finally make it out to the woods. Things could get out of control if I spent any significant time out there.

Day 4 of The Hunt

It's day four of the sacred Wisconsin-nine-day-gun-deer-hunt. Yesterday we were blessed with close to 6 inches of fresh tracking snow. My morning will be spent not out in the woods following tracks made in that snow but watching it blow out the chute of our Cub Cadet snowblower as I wrestle it up and down our driveway. By about noon that snow will no longer look like a blessing but a curse. I've done this before, can you tell?

I'm reminded of a statement often repeated by a fellow mail-carrier whenever he's asked how it's going. The carrier, who's been at it for over 40 years, milked cows for just as long and is well into his seventies, will pause, take a breath, and sometimes even put down what he's doing and say, "Oh, it's gotta go." Ever since I first heard him say that I often find myself wondering what the undefinable "it" that has to go is. Especially on days like this where I'd rather be out in the woods hunting but can't be because I have to make sure the driveway is clear, the cars are free of snow and full of gas, so we are ready to deliver mail at a moment's notice (Annie got called in at 6:30 yesterday morning).

But the hunt for the meaning behind the undefinable "it" is going to have to wait for now. Because, well, I hate to say it but "it's" gotta go. I'm off to blow snow.

It's Been Awhile

It's been awhile since I've posted here. I post something on Facebook almost on a daily basis. So if you have been following my blog and would like to see more of what I post just friend me on Facebook. I'd be happy to accept your request.

Thank you,

Curt

Some Psychological Thoughts on Robin William's Death

The other day, following Robin William's suicide, I was following an internet discussion about it. Of course, religion and how he lived his life was the central theme. And why wouldn't they be? Like sex, death and suicide cannot be explained on any rational level and are therefore religious matters. Anyway, a couple of the posters commented on how he was wicked, no friend of Jesus Christ, a sinner; and had free will and decided to take his own life and will suffer his fate in hell. My god, I thought, how could anyone say such things after someone has ended their life? He's done nothing wrong. He hasn't sinned. It's his life and he can do what he wants with it. His pain is his to suffer. So, on the mail route yesterday the urge to read a postscript that James Hillman wrote at the end of "Suicide and the Soul" presented itself. Having read it before I knew there were some answers to my questions there. This is what I came up with this morning:

"Old church decrees banned suicided bodies from burial in the common graveyard. Evidently, it was believed that suicide severed your body and soul from the soul-body of the community. Suicide not only took your life; it took you out of your inherent attachments with others, cutting the threads with the polis. By taking your own life you were asserting that you were ontologically not a citizen, not a member, as if utterly free of any kind of cosmic participation.

"Yet it is not the act that does the severing. It is the thought that my soul is mine, and so my death belongs only to me. I can do with my death what I choose. Because I can end my life when and how and where I please, I am wholly my own being, utterly self-determined, free of the fundamental constraint that oppresses each human's being--the uncertain certitude of death. No longer am I Death's subject, waiting on its will to pick when and how and of its arrival. I have taken my death out of the hands of Death. Suicide becomes the ultimate empowerment. I am my own redeemer-- 'Death where is thy victory....'[I. Cor. 15:55]-the superbia of individualism.

"This helps account for the common reaction against those who attempt suicide. They are not welcomed with sympathy by family, friends, or clinic, but rather are met with anger and disgust. Before we sympathize with a person's plight or pain that may have occasioned the attempt, we blame; we find ourselves spontaneously annoyed, outraged, condemnatory. I do believe that all too common response points to the enduring strata of the psyche that we all share, call it our archetypal humanity. We are indeed societal animals, as well as having individual destinies. Something insists we belong to a wider soul and not only to ourselves alone." [James Hillman, pg. 197-98, Suicide and The Soul]

If your soul isn't yours alone then perhaps some of their anger at Robin William's suicide comes from the simple fact that he didn't let us in on it before he did it.

Who Ya Gonna Serve?

The final authority in this culture is its technics and not the health of the land base. We serve the former before the latter. It's pretty fucking scary.

“My thesis, to put it bluntly, is that from late Neolithic times in the Near East , right down to our own day, two technologies have recurrently existed side by side: one authoritarian, the other democratic, the first system-centered, immensely powerful, but inherently unstable, the other [hu]man-centered, relatively weak, but resourceful and durable. If I am right, we are now rapidly approaching a point at which, unless we radically alter our present course, our surviving democratic technics will be completely suppressed or supplanted, so that every residual autonomy will be wiped out, or will be permitted only as a playful device of government, like national balloting for already chosen leaders in totalitarian countries.”--Lewis Mumford

The Face

Yesterday we were over at my parent's house having Dairy Queen cake to celebrate my sister's birthday and my grandma got to telling me about what they call "bath salts" (I've never heard of them until yesterday). I guess it's a white powder, somewhat similar to Epsom salts, that can be inhaled, injected, snorted, etc. Anyway, she was saying that some users will take it so far that they will try to tear their own face off or remove another's face with their bare hands. Just last week I read a line by the poet Robert Bly that has stuck with me. He said something like "the face is the barrier between the soul and the world". So when we get slapped in the face it's a pretty big violation. I wonder what tearing your face of symbolizes?

Why Is Food A Commodity?

Back to reading "My Ishmael" with my teenage son this morning. Right now this is probably one of the highlights of my day. I take great pleasure in doing this. Out of all the things I can pass on to him Ishmael's teachings are probably one of the most important.

After reading two chapters with him today I have to ask: What guy came up with the bright idea to make a food a commodity? I remember first watching Daniel Quinn's "Food Production and Population Growth" video and him making the comment about doctors being paid to deliver babies. His point went was doctors don't get paid by the pound to deliver a baby. Likewise, why do farmers have to get paid by the pound to produce food. Can't their services fall under the category of service? I had the hardest time with that point when I first heard it, and I still do to this day. Having been conditioned for close to 25 years to imagine there is no other way to be paid for food production, is a hard habit to break out even if it is only an act of imagination.

Unschooling The World With My Teenage Son

Started off my morning reading "My Ishmael" with my 15 year old son. We managed to get a chapter read before the house became to chaotic. That chapter's title was: "Unschooling the World." It's still as fresh and vital as it was when I read it back in my mid-twenties (I'm going to be 40 in a couple of months!) This time there isn't as much hope, though. There is a lot more grief this time around. Why? I imagine it's because things just haven't changed fast enough. 15 years after I first read it we value buisness over people to an even greater degree than we did at the turn of the century. If this wasn't the case corporations would not have free speech rights and be allowed to flood political campaigns with money. Scott Walker wouldn't be touring the central part of Wisconsin thanking God and glaciers for all of the jobs created by the frac-sand they left us.

Barbara Ehrenreich on Families

This quote makes whole lot of sense to me:

"The problem with families is not that you get stuck in the same persona for life, which is what everyone complains about, but that you're always getting confused with someone else and end up taking the blame for them. You may think of yourself as a freestanding individual, a unique point of consciousness in the universe, but in many ways you are just subbing for absent family members or departed ancestors. You may even literally change places with them..." Barbara Ehrenreich, pg. 34, Living With a Wild God

Politics and Coaching Baseball

Right before my son's baseball game got started my coaching partner told me that I needed counseling. Apparently he followed me and my family to the diamonds and got a good look at the bumper sticker on the back of our rusty 1999 Pontiac Montana mini-van. The bumper sticker reads "Wisconsin wants to be scott-free in 2014/ Remove Walker."

Here is how the exchange went in the dugout as our players were warming up on the field.

"So, you don't like Walker?"

"No, not at all." I said. "And you think I need counseling because of this?"

"No, no," he laughingly said trying to keep it light, "but do you vote for the other party automatically?"

"Ummm, no. I'd consider myself independent." I said. "But I'd say that I mostly lean left. You know, like on social issues; take care of the poor and quit giving so much money to the rich."

He nervously stood back and faced me straight on swinging a bat lightly as I sat on the bench in the dugout feeling like absolute shit from an allergy attack and lack of sleep. Psychically shrinking by the second and not wanting to have this conversation 10 minutes before game time, I said, "We probably should'nt get into this right now. This is a pretty deep subject for me."

"I know, I know." he said. Then in a faint fatherly tone he snuck this in there, "You can't enable them (I'm assuming he meant the poor). And the wealthy provide a lot of jobs." Then his mom (She keeps the books for us) looked over at me and said, "And he got our state out of debt."

I nodded. Thinking to myself how in the fuck am I going to coach this game with this bullshit out in the open. Things went well, though. We went on to win 15 to 5. Our bats finally got going late in the game and we played solid defense throughout.

Since I started coaching again that is what I have always loved about the game. For a couple of hours the political and philosophical tensions between the parents seem to lighten. Now that the game is over, though, the lightness is gone. It was gone as I soon as I got in the van to go home.

Nothing Worth Saying

This is one those mornings when I feel like I should say something but have nothing worth saying. So, I go looking through my piles of books looking for inspiration. I come across this statement by J.P Morgan stated back in 1901: "I owe the public nothing."

Robert Bly would call him an uninitiated man. A man stuck in adolesence. Donald Trump would simply bow.

Time for me to fire up the chainsaw and remove the tree lying over the top of our horse fence.

Two Neighbors Standing in a Clearcut

The other day, standing in the middle of a fresh 100 acre clear cut, a neighbor of mine told another neighbor of mine that people loved the creation more than the creator. Then the Pentecostal missionary/preacher went on to say that trees were put hear by God for us to use.

Religions, says the Buddhists and Robert Bly, are ruined by ignorant priests.

Soul and School

We don't send our kids to public school. There are times when I really struggle with this decision. Then someone smart and wise will throw me a lifeline:

"Politicians and educators consider more school days in a year, more science and math, the use of computers and other technology in the classroom, more exams and tests, more certifications for teachers, and less money for art. All of these responses come from the place where we want to make the child into the best adult possible, not in the ancient Greek sense of virtuous and wise, but in the sense of one who is an efficient part of the machinery of society. But on all these counts, soul is neglected. We want to prepare the ego for the struggle of survival, but we overlook the needs of the soul." (Thomas Moore, Pg. 52, Care of the Soul)

Perhaps this is what it comes down to for me: The state of Wisconsin wants to prepare our children's egos for the struggle to survive in industrial civilization. And as the child prepares for this struggle it kills his soul. No wonder the suicide rate among teenagers has skyrocketed over the past 50 years or so.

I'm off to mow lawn....

More Extreme Weather

It looks like I will be running a chainsaw for most of the day--thankfully I'm not delivering mail for the corporations today so I can help out friends and family. One of the biggest red pines on our place is now lying across our fence and driveway. Who knows what went down out in the forest. We've heard from a couple of neighbors that are facing similar types of situations. Why? Last evening more extreme weather descended down up on us. I just got off the phone with my dad and he said they recorded 85 mile an hour winds in our area. He said they were hurricane type winds.

Just another step in adapting to the extreme weather patterns of climate change

Faith Looks for Understanding

"Fides quaerens intellectum." Faith looks for understanding.

I have been thinking about why I support one of the most radical environmental organizations on the planet: Deep Green Resistance. Part of it comes down to the idea that The State will determine how we will resist. DGR and what they stand for exist in reaction to The State's unwillingness to adequately address the environmental horrors that we face as a species. We're literally facing the possibility of going extinct within the next 100 years or so. That means my great-grandchildren could be wiped out. DGR has the best plan that I've seen so far in preventing this from happening

Mouse Magic

Last night, I'm sitting at the table reading the newspaper and I hear a 4 year old boy's cry making its way across the yard to the door. Hayden opens the front and heads straight for my arms. I ask what's wrong as he wails away. "Mom let the mouse go!"

We have a medium-sized steel garbage can for storing our black sunflower seed in. It sits near the back door of the old, abandon farm house we used to live in before we upgraded to cordwood. Yesterday, somebody didn't tighten the lid on it. When Annie and the kids when to refill the birdfeeder there was a mouse waiting for them at the bottom of the nearly empty can. With the help of their hands the mouse got the opportunity to run circles around the bottom of the can for a few minutes. Annie then went to pick it up so she could give the kids a closer look. It had different ideas. As soon as the mouse made contact with her hand it scampered up her arm and onto her shoulder, across to Sophia's hand which was touching her shoulder, and down her back to her pant leg and was gone in a flash. Not what Hayden had in mind.

Annie decided to leave the lid off the can for another night in an attempt to recreate the experience. This morning, while filling the dog food dish, I looked down at the can and noticed two beady, black eyes looking up at me.

I gave Hayden the news upon awakening. A few minutes later I see a naked boy running across the yard with mittens on to handle a mouse. It's like Christmas morning all over again without the snow and presents.

Goosebumps and Nixon

If something moves me I usually get goose bumps all over my body. Chris Hedges did this to me the other day in the few comments he made about Richard Nixon. He said that tricky Dick was our last liberal President. Why? That was the last time there was a liberal class willing and strong enough to push a President into signing liberal-minded legislation. He also mentioned that Nixon was frightened to death that the 50,000 or so protestors marching outside the White House in the name of civil rights were going to come through the walls and get him. That's according to Henry Kissinger's memoirs.

Mediocre people usually seek power. It's up to us to keep them in check. That's democracy.

30 Hours of Podcasts

I downloaded close to 30 hours of author podcasts from The Philadelphia Free Library, and listened to all of them in the car while delivering mail last week. Out of all of them two authors and what they had to say stick in my mind. First, I'll paraphrase Alice Walker: Hope to sin only in the service to waking up. Sin is part of the discipline of who we become. There is no such thing as living without it. Secondly, Chris Hedges said that if we allow unfettered and unregulated capitalism to continue we'll be extinct as a species within a 100 years. The elites, he said, are preparing for the instability that every empire in its endgame goes through. That's part of the reason why they are collecting massive amounts of information about us and storing it in a building in Utah. He also said that theologists call the systems that our corporate state has created "systems of death." I like that term. I'm becoming more and more a fan of Chris Hedges. He's just as dark and doesn't sugar-coat a thing about the predicament we've got ourselves into, much like Derrick Jensen.

In House Exchange Between Wife and I

My wife and I had one of our typical exchanges this morning. While reading this morning I ran across some really good writing about James Hillman. It expressed well the experience that I've had reading Hillman's work. I liked the section so much, and noticed there was a brief silence in the crying and chattering children, that I thought I'd better take the opportunity to read it to her. Like usual, afterwards she shook her head and wondered what the hell that had to do with anything.

"What?" I asked.

She said, "It doesn't really resonate for me because his work hasn't had an impact on me like it has you."

"I know." I said, "But it was so good that I had to read it out loud to you."

"That's fine. I don't mind listening. It just doesn't have the same affect on me as it does you," she said.

Then I said to her, "You know, it just occured to me that I used to do this exact same thing with a girlfriend that I had when I was 14. We talked alot on the phone. And there were times where I'd sit feeling the same way I do this morning blabbering on about some fascinating idea that someone had talked to me about. I wasn't talking about books or other's writing back then because I didn't read books. But it's the same exact thing but in a slightly different form."

"Ha!" she said with a smile, " I guess some things just never change."

"Guess not."

Here is the writing that inspired this post:

"By the way, a nonromantic friend or partner, too, can be a muse. I've already told the story of how James Hillman entered my imagination, taking up room and board there for decades, giving rise to much creative work. He has done the same for many other people because of the seminal quality of his thoughts and writings. You read him and the seeds get planted in the soil of your mind and sprout in good time. Then you don't know for sure if the ideas are yours or his. He wrote about people starting out in childhood like an acorn destined to be an oak, but he himself was an acorn. You have to read him with care, lest you lose yourself in his brilliance.

"Hillman's anima, his soul, his aesthetic sense mixed with his sharp ideas, the spark of imagination within him, revealed the nature of his muse. He inspired with his imagination and with the world he loved. On the other hand, to me Hillman was a muse taking on the disguise of a friend." ( Thomas Moore, pg. 193, A Religion of One's Own)

It's Been Awhile

I did something last night that I haven't done in probably close to 20 years: I ate a Big Mac. Afterwards my wife looked over at me from the driver's seat and jokingly asked: "Do you feel violated?" I thought I could just go with the flow and perhaps even rise above it. But after a night's worth of indigestion and reflection I can honestly say that it'll probably be another 20 years before it happens again.