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.

Two Quotes Today

Two quotes today. The first one I came across yesterday while browsing The Natural Awareness Facebook page."Of all the footprints, that of the elephant is the greatest. Of all the meditations, contemplation of death is the greatest." (Shakyamuni Buddha)The second I wrote down a couple of weeks ago. Michael Meade mentioned it in one of his talks that I downloaded and listened to on the mail route. “Take your well-disciplined strengths and stretch them between two opposing poles. Because inside human beings is where God learns.” --Rainer Maria Rilke

Martyrs and Victims

No post yesterday. I got called into carry mail at the last minute.

It's Sunday morning. I've found myself going through a few of the conversations in Lament of the Dead. I was hoping I would run across their conversation about Jesus banishing the demons to hell. I'm not familiar with the Bible at all. Someday I would like to find out where it's talked about in the Good Book. Anyway, I ran across a different quote that has stuck with me since I finished LoD last week.

"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. As Jung explains to the 'Red One,' his devil, in the Red Book, 'Do you believe that Christianity left no mark on the souls of men?' Don't forget what the early Church did, a lot of murder, a lot of victimization too. But you don't have murderers unless you have martyrs. So the enjoyment of martyrdom is all part of the same sadism."--James Hillman, pg. 218, Lament of the Dead

I think this is why Derrick Jensen refers to Christianity as a victim religion in Endgame. To some degree most of us are martyrs in this death seeking culture of ours. Why else would we allow 200 nonhuman species to go extinct everyday. You'd think we'd take a stand. We're talking about the murder of life on the planet here. It's sadistic. And I think there is a level of enjoyment in it. I also think Ishmael and most of his other work is Daniel Quinn's way of working through the wounding of Christianity.

Winter Is Just Around the Corner

Yesterday I wrote about my 3yr. old son's ability to repeatedly cover himself in the clay-like substance of our gravel pile as being the primary motivating factor for us to get it moved and spread in our pole buildings. Well, that's sort of true. The northern Wisconsin winter is on it's way, and the priorities shift from outdoor projects to just keeping warm. In other words it's a different kind of struggle. My uncle used to have his own way of expressing this as he was getting a fire started in the woodstove to warm the house, "It's time to fight fires."

We ended up moving and spreading 80 wheelbarrow loads yesterday. That's probably about half of it. The dump truck driver brought in another 10 yard load yesterday to fill out the other load and to give us enough to fill a few potholes in our driveway. It looks like we're going to be busy shoveling gravel for another day or two.

Family Fun Activity

The family fun activity for today is: moving 10 yards of freshly dumped gravel from pile to floor of pole building. All that it's going to require is strong backs, two wheelbarrows and a garden shovel for each adult and adolescent. The primary motivation for this is will be my 3 year old son's ability to cover himself in the clay like residue from the pile at multiple times throughout the day. We figure it would be more work to: police him to keep him off of the pile, give him multiple daily baths, and wash all of his play clothes on a daily basis until our guy shows up with his machine to spread it. I do not know where shoveling and wheeling gravel fits into the unschooling scheme of things yet but I'm sure it will show us by the end of the day.

Born To Run?

I have been running close to a mile six days a week for well over a month now. I really like doing it, which is surprising. I'm a baseball player at heart. And baseball players usually don't spend a lot of time running long distances on a daily basis. Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle come to mind. Ruth spent a lot of time drinking, smoking, chasing tail and not getting to bed on time, and he's still one of the greatest hitters of all time. Mantle, after a long night of drinking, said the next day the key was just to swing for the middle ball as it's crossed the plate. The first Milwaukee Brewer game that I ever went to as a kid I peaked around the wall of the dugout to see then all star catcher Ted Simmons smoking a cigarette.

Granted I haven't played organized baseball for close to twenty years now but I still love it. Some of my fondest memories have come from my time spent on and around a baseball diamond. This is partly the reason why I think I've kept myself in pretty good shape since I graduated high school. If need be I still could play. So over the past 20 years or so I've made sure to stretch in the form of some loose yoga poses and do sets of push-ups and sit-ups atleast 5 days a week. Currently I'm doing a variation of them everyday. But I always made sure not to run long distances because I didn't want to suffer any of the injuries that I've heard runners suffer, especially knee injuries. My mom has had a couple of knee replacements starting in her mid-forties. She weighs just over 110 pounds, so it's not because she's overweight. She's never been a runner. She has worked in retail since she's graduated high school, though. That means a lot of time spent standing on cement floors. Come to think of it, both my parents have been making their living standing on cement floors for close to 40 years now. My dad spent 30 years in a metal fabricating factory near where I was born and raised, then retired so he could move up to northwest Wisconsin by his kids to spend more time standing on cement floors in the sporting goods department at Wal-Mart. He's had his share of foot problems. So I've tried to stay away from cement floors and long distance running.

To top it all off I started reading Christopher McDougall's "Born To Run." I'm 15 pages into it and he's already layed out the common injuries that runners suffer and how often. The number that has stuck with me is 8 out of 10 runners will suffer some type of injury during their time at it. Now I'm really ready stop running, but before doing so I had take off my shoes and try running a mile barefooted. I know of a friend that started running barefooted after he read it. If I remember right he said that his doctor told him he'd never be able to run again. The last I checked in with him, he was running close to three miles every other day and getting stronger. So maybe I will continue on with the book and try some barefooted running before the snow flies here in northwestern Wisconsin.

On a different note. I stopped by a neighbors yesterday to pick up her garbage. She's done some activist work in the past and follows Wisconsin politics much closer than I do. She made sure to let me know that they (I forgot the name of the company) are now pumping water out of the ground near the Penokee Hills and shipping it over to China. She also made sure to let me know that the Walker administration was fascist. She even wanted to take the time to show me a list of reasons that was put together by a fellow citizen as to why this is so. I told her not to worry about it. I said to her, "I pretty much figure any government body that values products over people's needs is well on its way to fascism. And this is why I don't think Derrick Jensen is too radical of a writer."

More Than a Truck

The most important thing I got from my neighbor yesterday was not my 1995 Chevy pic-up but were a couple of stories from his wife. She told us (Annie drove me there) that her son would have been 45 years on that day. He's buried in the cemetary across the road from their house. I heard he died close to 25 years ago playing chicken on a motorcycle with my grandpa's cousin. Neither of them refused to stray from their direct path with each other and neither of them made it. I've heard it said they were going well over 80 miles an hour when they made contact. She also told me that she's been taking in foster kids for close to 40 years now but she's had enough. "One of the latest", she said, "was an emergency case. The kid showed up with nothing but the clothes on his back, and they were all full of holes." She then went onto say, "He got in the car and moments later he was eating food scraps off from the floorboards of the car." And at the end of the conversation she even threw in some politics. She didn't think it was right that Governor Walker thinks he can just take away BadgerCare (Wisconsin's state run healthcare system for poor people.) and food stamps. "There are people out there that need that," she said. "Yes, I realize it's not just up to the govenor, but it seems like he is sure playing a big part."

And that's my brief reflection on some of yesterday's activities before I head outside to do some work on our pole barn.

A Brief Reflection on The Insolent Chariot

How do I define pain? Having to go to the bank to pull out cash to buy a vehicle. Lewis Mumford wrote this back in 1966: "Only war can claim so many premature deaths; for the death rate from motor cars is greater than the combined death rate from falls, burnings, drownings, railroads, firearms, and poisonous gases, plus some two thousand other deaths from undefinable causes. And though only roughly half as many Americans were killed outright by autos in the last four-year period as were killed in our armed forces during a similar term in the Second World War, nearly three times as many were injured."

I imagine it's only gotten worse.

Our New Addition

We have a new addition to the family. Ernie, the owner of the junkyard a few miles to the west of me, had it sitting out by the road with the for sale sign. Annie spotted it on the way from work. She thought Ernie just put it out there and it was going to go fast. So as soon as she got home we loaded up the kids and headed a mile to the east to pay the neighbor for the 4 dozen eggs he'd given me earlier in the day, then we headed back 3 miles to the west to look at it. There it sat with not much rust. The number one selling point for me at this time. Especially on a chevy pic-up that'll be 19 years old next year. My Chevy pic-up that my dad bought after I rolled his Bronco II when I was a junior in high school is just about ready for the place our new addition is coming from.

The next thing I was looking for was if it had 4 wheel drive. It did. It didn't work, though. By the time I noticed that, Ernie had made his way through his front yard to the truck. He said someone had swiped the front drive shaft off from it while it was sitting in the yard amongst the hundreds of other vehicles.

"It happens all the time," he said.

"That's fine," I said. "Are you pretty firm on the price?" I asked.

"I'm negotiable," he said.

"Alright, I'll go home and think about it. I'll give you a call tomorrow."

"That sounds good. But before you leave I'm going to pull it out of the way so no one misses the corner and smashes into it. That tends to happen quite a bit right here." He said.

I got home and gave it a half hour's thought. I called him up and offered him two-thirds of what he was asking. He came back with his price. I told him I'd take it.

"Do you want cash or check?" I asked.

"Cash," he answered. "You gonna pick it up tomorrow?"

"No, I've got to wait for the bank to open on Monday," I replied. I just don't keep that kind of cash on me.

"Alright, I'll look around here for the title." He remarked.

We exchanged good-byes and hung up.

Not bad. I got 4 dozen eggs and a different pick-up without leaving County Rd. E. And I'm still in line with what I mentioned to a friend this summer; we both agreed that we haven't paid as much for a vehicle as most people pay for a new riding lawnmower.

Getting Out The Door

It's 6:30 AM. It's been one of those mornings. Annie wasn't able to get out the door before Hayden (3 yr. old) and Sophia (1 yr. old) got out of bed. That means nursing Sophia (I'm not equipped!) and a diaper change (I'm capable but not so much willing). They're sad that mom has to go to work in 10 minutes. Hayden has started his usual mourning process. Tears and the occasional scream. You'd think somebody had died. I'm questioning this whole attachment parenting idea as I'm holding Sophia. I don't think she knows whether to cry or jump back into mom's arms. Annie should be just about to the Post Office by now, but she's still trying to get out the door. She tries to make the final break by saying the usual, "Okay, now I really have to go." We all go through our final good byes with hugs and kisses again. She's grabs the door handle is able to get the front door open without too much trouble. She steps out onto the porch and is just about able to get the door shut when Hayden grabs the handle and opens it. He says with a concerned tone in his voice, "Mom! Watch out for mice, rabbits, and deer. Because they jump out on the road!"

Limits on Ammo

The other day my two sons (14 and 3 yrs. old) and I were at the store looking at shotgun shells. We were trying to determine what size of shell to use for shooting ruffed grouse. We weren't standing there but only a few minutes and a casually dressed man who looked to be in his seventies smiled at my 3 year old son and said, "Someday you'll be shooting those." My son turned his head and buried into my leg so he could get a view of the man out of the corner of his eye. I smiled at the man acknowledging his presense. Silence followed. We all went back to looking at the shelves full of shells and bullets. A minute or two passed by and out of the silence the old guy motioned toward a sign that was on display in front of us and grumbled, " This current President and his administration are why we have limits on buying ammunition." Tension followed. I said something intelligent like, "yeah." Less then a minute later he turned to walk away. And as he did he made sure to proudly smile at us as he walked by.

Brief New Technology Reflection

The other day, while my family was gathered at my parent's to celebrate my mom's 57th birthday, my 8 yr. old nephew excitedly said, "Hey guess what, Uncle Curt, I got my IPad at school today. We've just started learning about them." About two months prior to this I was over visiting my grandparents on a Sunday afternoon. Just before leaving to go home my grandpa says to me, "Here I've got to show you something." He unzips a black case and pulls out an IPad that he is currently required to use in his capacity as a publicly elected county board member. "This thing," he says, "will be my undoing. It marks the end of my service as a county board member. I'm not running again."

Death and The Other World

"I think it's more a matter of realizing that there is a porous permeability between the living and the dead. Between life and death. And the way we have set it up is that death and life are opposed and you must hold off death and it's the ultimate other, and you die alone, this sort of existential whatever. And it seems to me that this offers a completely different way of realizing that the day world is permeated with the other world--in all kinds of small ways, that they're always inner voices, that the dead are cautionary figures. That you are living with the dead. And what you think of as the way of life may be the way of more death. And the way of death may be the way of more livingness. That these are not necessarily alternatives or that first you do one and then you do the other."--James Hillman, pg.25, Lament of the Dead

Derrick Jensen made it clear to me with his work that our "way of life may be the way of more death."

All Learning is Remembering

I learned yesterday in a talk by Michael Meade that "all learning is remembering." What I'm hearing him say is that if you want to learn there has to be some remembering involved. In other words, the knowledge is already there it is just needs to be awakened. It's also interesting to note that in The Story of B Daniel Quinn titled one section The Great Forgetting and followed up later with a section titled The Great Remembering. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that if any schooling program isn't aimed at remembering then all it is doing is putting kids and adults to sleep and it isn't worth the taxpayers money. The Quote below out of The Story of B better illustrates some aspects of this remembering.

"B means to gather the voices of humans all over planet into one voice singing, 'The world must live, the world must live! We are only one species among billions. The gods don't love us more than they love spiders or bears or whales or water lilies. The age of The Great Forgetting has ended, and all its lies and delusions have been dispelled. Now we remember who we are. Our kin are not cherubim, seraphim, thrones, principalities, and powers. Our kin are mayflies, lemurs, snakes, eagles, and badgers. The blinding we suffered in the Great Forgetting has abated, so we no longer imagine that Man was ill-made. We no longer imagine that the gods botched their work when it came to us. We no longer think they know how to make every single thing in the whole vast universe except a human being. The blinding we suffered in the Great Forgetting has passed, so we can no longer live as though nothing matters but us. We can no longer believe that suffering is the lot the gods hand in mind for us. We can no longer believe that death is sweet release to our true destiny. We no longer yearn for the nothingness of nirvana. We no longer dream of wearing crowns of gold in the royal court of heaven.'"--Pg. 324, The Story of B

Not to be Forgotten

"I often wondered what would happen to the Gods of Christianity if 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, the was the most important thing. Not to be forgotten."--James Hillman, Pg.128, Lament of the Dead

I learned something interesting today while reading "Lament of the Dead." Back in the 1950's John Freeman asked Carl Jung in an interview if he believed in God. Jung hesitated for a bit then replied by saying something to the effect of: I don't believe, I know. This would mean absolutely nothing to me if I never would've read "The Holy" and the rest of Daniel Quinn's work, but especially "The Holy." The beings that drove David Kennesey over the edge and eventually to his death, I think, are good examples of beings that don't necessarily expect belief of any kind, but only ask not to be forgotten. Because, like Jung has said, called upon or not they will be present. I would guess it's better just to be aware of them instead of being asleep at the wheel. Too bad it's taken me close to a decade to come to this understanding.

An Ancestral Question Answered?

I haven't had much time in front of the computer lately. Still busy trying to get two pole buildings built before November 1st, and generally getting ready for winter. Posting will be light for awhile.

James Hillman writes in Lament of the Dead:

"...the way I understand archetypal psychology, that you must always understand who is asking the question. The task is not to get the answer, the answer is who is dominating my mind, so that that's my basic question, who is determining my point of view. It's like a deconstructive 'I'.' You don't just want to get an answer. The real answer is 'Why is that my question?'"--James Hillman, Pg. 56, The Lament of the Dead

Another reason why I think I cried with a sense of relief after reading Ishmael back in the late nineties was that an ancestral question was answered for me. A question that my grandfathers were asking generations before me. Plus, I had just come off from living and working with my grandfather for close to seven years. To a certain degree I had an understanding of his point of view and inner struggles. And if you follow Jungian psychology those inner struggles are also mine to some degree. This is probably why I tried my damdest to get him to take a look at some of Quinn's ideas.

A Short Letter To The Editor

This morning, amongst 50,000 other things, I typed up a short letter to our local newspaper's editor.

Corporations and Corruption

At the end of [editor's name] article he commented that although Abraham Lincoln was not considered one of the "Founding Fathers" of this great nation of ours he did have the ability to see into its future. I couldn't agree more, especially after reading this quote by our 16th President:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln was right, of course. The money power in the form of the mega-corporation has rigged our democratic system and the laws it creates so much in their favor that the majority of citizens are uncertain about the future and have little or no faith in their government, as [editor's name] alluded to in his letter last week. But I wonder why instead of singling out the power of the federal government he didn't go after the power of the mega-corporation. If Lincoln could see this starting to happen back in the 1860's why can't [editor's name] see it 150 years later?

We've Colonized Ourselves

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (Probably my favorite environmental organization.)posted this on Facebook yesterday:

End "capital-ism" for corporations--- you can help shut down the widespread acceptance of "corporate personhood" even before we amend the U.S. constitution.

It's a tell tale sign of the biases institutionalized in our society that each time I try to send an e-mail or write in a "word" document using the name of a corporation, my spell-checker tries to correct me for not having capitalized the name of the corporation. If we assert that corporations are things and not persons, then honoring the names of corporations with capitalization and accepting their names as personal pronouns seems to me to be a contradiction of the idea that they are things, not persons.

I think that if "microsoft" deserves to be capitalized, then why not Dog, or Dolphin, or Box Turtle...all of which I hold in higher regard than the corporation? In fact, I want never again to capitalize the label ("name") of a corporation.

We at the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund often capitalize local "Ordinances," because they are laws of communities. So too County, and Township and Borough -- respecting community self-governance. I generally capitalize People and Nature.

So, we can make a statement not only with what we say, but how we type it. And if we do not, we still make a statement...and it is that we continue to be colonized by the dominant culture, which elevates corporations (property) above People and Nature.

Who will join us in de-capitalizing corporations?

I like the idea of ending "capital-ism" for corporations. I also think they make a good point in saying that Dog, Dolphin, or Box Turtle should capitalized well before Microsoft (This computer does not allow me to not capitalize Microsoft.) Robert Bly was right when he pointed out in "The Sibling Society" that we are the first culture to have colonized ourselves.

Back After a Few Days

It's been close to four days since I've posted anything on here. Been busy with building a pole barn, canning garden produce, and just being dad. I've noticed my day goes better when I put something on here. A few thoughts and a quote below.

I think I've figured out the 50 Shades of Gray phenomenon: people are craving ritualistic sex.

It's the third day of school in these parts. It has caused me to reflect a bit on my school days some 30 years ago. Reflection: School would have been a whole hell of a lot more interesting if we would have been introduced to myth, the gods, and the other world. In other words, spent a lot more time on mythology than we did. Michael Meade has said no learning takes place unless psychology is involved.

"One always thinks you get your ideas from the masters, the mentors, the teachers. I found that ideas are connected with eros, and that where the eros is alive, the two work together. That's a crucial part of all the work. We always had parties surrounding it all. Eros is the whole key."--James Hillman, pg. 580, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

Jesus on My Mind

Here is an interesting psychological insight by James Hillman on Jesus Christ:

"Of all Jesus' strengths, above all his weakness stands out, his sympathy and understanding for weakness, 'Jesus wept.'"--Pg.521, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

This quote out of the bible was posted by a Facebook friend a few weeks back. I like the language. I also like how it challenges the sanitized-peace-loving version of Jesus that I was fed throughout my childhood. Mind you I never sat through a day of bible study or went to church on a regular basis but the ideas and images are still there.

“I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”--Luke 12: 49-53