I have some hope to offer. Follow your bliss. The world has always been a fucked up place. It’s always been a place where joy is intermittent at best and suffering stays attached to each of us as a planet sized ball on an infinite chain. “Life is suffering,” and to my knowledge this was the seed of the Buddha’s message. Start from there and work your way to the joy, cause otherwise you’ll never find it. But it’s not my intention to get all newfangled W.A.S.P (white anglo saxon protestant) spiritual on my kind readers (as I wrote this paragraph Zee Avi’s “Mileston Moon” was playing, and it seemed very fitting for the tone, mood, and message I’m trying to convey...so listen to it as you read.) I suppose inserting “life is suffering” here was my disclaimer for ultimate truth. I mean such being the case, what should we expect from reality? Right?
I’m supposed to be in Asheville NC right now, 70 miles away from my home, participating in the final weekend of the Permaculture in Action class I’ve been attending all summer. Instead I’ve been catching up on blog reading and now blogging. My internet time has spiraled to almost zero due to my laptop dying. I was reading John Michael Greer’s blog a week ago when my computer screen blinked a couple of times and then went dark. My first reaction was to take up cussing and get all bent out of shape about it...but I refrained from that action. Instead I put my laptop in an obscure corner of our room and it has remained there. Fuck it...I don’t need a laptop, or the internet. Now I have occasional access via my wife’s work computer, so I won’t be blogging much going forward. I will still be around on occasion, and I still have every intention of posting a new photojournal entry at some point soon. In the past laptopless week I have taken to viewing it’s death as a blessing. I just wish I had a way to listen to spotify out in the garage while smoking herbage from a bong.
It’s just another obstacle being removed from the path my bliss follows. A couple of days after the laptop died I found myself with ten Delaware hens and a beautiful Rode Island Red rooster. I also found myself planting a cherry weeping willow tree in the garden. I dug nine two foot deep post holes and constructed a circular chicken run in a dandelion patch that I have let grow. I have made peace with “weeds” in my garden. I consider myself a weed gardener (and no, I’m not growing any marijuana). I actually have some prized weeds that I have allowed to grow to great heights in my garden. So if you cultivate weeds in your garden are they still weeds? I love weeds. I relate to them and draw strength from them. What is stronger than a plant that can grow in concrete dividers on the interstates? What is a better symbol for the magic in the plant world than a plant that can grow in concrete? I want to revel in those weeds that will one day be the pioneers that cover up all of the vial and insidious destruction our species has wrought on Mam Gaia. Isn’t there a word for hating your own species? I mostly hate the human race because I mostly see nothing worth caring about. No other species shows contempt for every other species on the Earth accept for ours. Shit...I’m supposed to be outlining hope here aren’t I?
I consider myself a Green Wizard...a sooth sayer, a prognosticator....I can see into the future...centuriessss into the future. I’ve even been there lad! And having been there, I can tell you that it’s fubar until we get to 2400 or so. We are headed into a dark age, and that is based on factual reality and not on the delusional technotriumphalism aided and abetted by the likes of the MSM. Where is the hope in a dark age? Being a Green Wizard, I figured I’d give the other end of the popular strategy being offered by members of the PPHT (post petroleum human tribe) a chance. Basically we have the Transistion/Permaculture end, and the Green Wizard end, and that’s what the PPHT spectrum of strategy looks like. I became involved in permaculture because I was looking for some hope. Asheville has a very healthy permaculture crowd, but where I live...not so much. My dilemma is that Asheville is the closest Transition/Permaculture hub and that ain’t exactly local. So start one here where I am right? It’s not so easy as that. You see if everyone in your community has their head up the American Hologram ass, what good are they going to be to your transition aspirations? Yet, the cabin in the woods is doomed to failure. What does that leave by way of strategy for dealing with the future? To my estimation it leaves Green Wizardry.
I would start a Transition/Permaculture movement where I’m at, but unfortunately I’m too optimistically pessimistic for that. Yet it is what I’m doing via my practice of green wizardry. It’s just that I’m planning that transition for my neighbors, who care about football and fried cheese just now, for the future. Which is pretty much what John Michael Greer has stated is the point in the practice. Our job is to learn how to live in a de-industrialized and petroleum scarce civilization ahead of the collapse curve. The predicament that is to be dealt with is the fact that nobody gives a shit about paying attention to much beyond the zombies chewing each other’s faces off in-between bouts of America’s got Stupid Fake Anti-reality Television show. However, when the not reality, reality television goes away, and they are forced into accepting reality of the reality persuasion, they will begin to care about things like how to dig a permaculture hole and how to keep chickens happily poopin’ out food from their poop shoots. They will care because they will be hungry. That’s where I come in (and also where the hope I’ve been desperately trying to tease out of myself to offer it up here comes in...and here’s another song to bring you to the end of my rambling rambles)
It’s not much hope, but it’s something. So there are nothing but zombies in my community who enjoy yelling at their children for digging in the dirt (I heard one of the trailer’s next door cussing and yelling at their four year old for digging in the dirt “how many fucking times do I have to tell you to stop messin’ in the fuckin’ dirt?” I had to endure that while digging in the dirt in my yard. Their four year old was simply copying me, an adult, doing interesting things in the dirt). Well we have chickens now, and they are very visible to the inhabitants of my anti-culture community. My wife and I have decided to attempt to get the neighbors interested in buying our happy chicken eggs next door for two dollars a dozen. It’s part of our “get to know the zombie neighbors” initiative. There is nothing but a chain link fence separating us from them. One would have to have one’s head up the American Hologram ass to not think that when the zombie apocalypse kicks off full steam ahead they ain’t gonna be jumpin’ the fence to ransack all of our green wizard creation for their bellies. Might as well deal with it now and start trying to form relationships with them.
The thing I’ve realized is that zombies are very hungry. So I’ve decided to work with that theme. Therefore my strategy is going to involve Zombie Whispering. I’m cultivating my son into a Green Wizard Zombie Whispering Permaculture Ninja, and I’m doing that by doing that myself. Yes, I am a Green Wizzard Zombie Whispering Permaculture Ninja...want to fight about it? Just be forewarned...I can shoot chicken shit out of my wand omnidirectionally and by design and at my command.
I enjoyed the permaculture gallivant I’ve been on this summer. I’ve learned a lot and etched out a reputation amongst the Asheville permaculture scene as one bad ass hole digger. I never knew that I had a proclivity and talent for digging holes. I even have a mattock that’s been dubed Axcalibur by my wife. I think the most important attribute about myself that I’ve come to terms with is that I’m a loner. It’s an attribute that makes for good green wizardry, but not so much Transition. I think it’s because I don’t like dealing with the hierarchy ingrained in our lower brains. When you are in a group you have to deal with pecking orders. I just want to be king...which is a topic for another blog. I’m beginning to think that a monarchy ruled by a genuinely good king is the best way to organize ourselves as a species. But then that’s the point of the once and future king isn’t it. So that’s it...my ode to hope. It’s the best I can do. Learn how to grow food and keep food producing animals and prepare for your local hungry zombies because they are going to be interested in the holes you dig and the birds you keep one of these days.
P.S. smoking herb out of a bong also helps with the hope bit. I find there isn’t much better therapy than watching the chickens that live in my back yard scratch in the strong weeds for bugs while stoned.
_British_Museum.jpg)
9 comments:
Excellent post! I especially love the Zombie Whisperer part -- in retrospect, that's what I've been trying to do for much of my life.
I'm with you on the monarchy, with one caveat: I think the key is have it based on merit, not birth. What exactly constitutes merit is a subject for investigations and debates that will last for generations.
I too am a fan of Wild Edible Earthly Delights. At one point I had a dandelion with leaves that were a yard long. (I wouldn't know about smoking any though.) WEEDs are also a great defense against the Zombie Hordes, as they think them worthless. I also use them for camouflage; I bet if I gave 10 herbalists a day to scour my yard looking for my betony, 9 wouldn't be able to find it.
Those neighbors of yours I'm guessin' are gonna be like, I can't eat no damn eggs that came out of a damn chicken! I'm gettin' the ones that come outa the damn store! Except the folk that grew up with chickens, probably. I knew a guy in Montana who raised chickens at a house he rented by the day to week, to parents of students attending the local college. He told 'em all, go ahead, eat the eggs, but no one would.
I have the tastiest weeds in the city of Minneapolis, lambs quarter and sorrel esp. They'd be welcome in the finest restaurants in this city, but my mother, a gardener, won't eat 'em. They're my primary sustenance in the spring, eating as I weed. I'd be growing that other weed too if I wasn't surrounded on all sides by zombie fascists. I'm out now, of money too, and miss it terribly (the weed, not the money.)
Everyone I ever knew who raised chickens said the most enjoyable thing was just hangin' out, watchin' the chickens.
Good to see a post again, Green Wizzard Zombie Whispering Permaculture Ninja.
As to kings...death to tyrants.
Greetings Brother!
I do not participate in debate. It's a violent form of communication modeled on war -- winner or loser. Not interested. Dialogue actually leads to wisdom and new understanding, so I like it better.
Just a couple of thoughts:
The Buddha said, "desire is suffering" not "life is suffering". And really the translation is more accurate as "craving is suffering". Desire is most accurately thought of as the gateway to creativity, I've observed. The Buddha, the One who Woke Up, also observed that suffering comes from a mistaken identification of who we are. So GWZWPN, just Who do You think You Are? (More a question to ponder every moment than one I am seeking your answer to here.)
And one final thought to offer:
All hatred is self-hatred.
warm fuzzies!
Michelle: you just gonna go unload all of that all quick like?
I’m beginning to think that a monarchy ruled by a genuinely good king is the best way to organize ourselves as a species.
If there is a best, then there must be a worst. If JMG were here, he'd caution you to be mindful of binary thinking.
Can any social construct (like hierarchy) be said to be ingrained in our brain function? I ask skeptically.
I believe that JMG is correct with stating that the majority of our decisions are ruled by lower, and unconscious, brain activity. I think embracing this fact, and understanding it as such, opens up an entire new realm of possibility. With that aside creativity is free to be unabridged.
Hierarchy is due to that lower brain activity. I see it while watching the chickens interact. There is a very literal pecking order. It's easy to see with dogs as well...they just do what they do and it's understood between them. They don't take shit personally.
When I feel like thinking...of the pioneering sort, I play with the idea of how best we humans should organize ourselves. What little Druid study I have done, Arthurian Myth has spoken to me loudest. The idea of the once and future king is a good one. A king, with husbanding life as his moral compass, sounds right. A king who is rightwise king.
We revel in that hierarchy whether we chose to accept that or not.
Hierarchy is due to that lower brain activity. I see it while watching the chickens interact. There is a very literal pecking order. It's easy to see with dogs as well...they just do what they do and it's understood between them. They don't take shit personally.
You watch chickens and dogs interact, your conscious invents a narrative. That narrative is partly a projection of your preconceptions as you interpret what you see through what you expect to see. You expect to see hierarchy, you see hierarchy - literally. How you get from a Chicken Pecking order to an evolutionary argument for the social construct of monarchic rule is beyond me.
I interact with dogs too, I don't see hierarchy. I see roles, fulfillment of those roles as the rules for pack participation, along with general equality.
There is nothing natural about a human being who claims to be the incarnate body and mouthpiece for divine wisdom, whether they claim to speak for humanity in general or gods. There is nothing natural or evolutionary about a social order enforced by violence for the purpose of maintaining gross disparities in material wealth. These ideas are killing us, if they are tendencies of our lower brain functions, then what the hell did we evolve a frontal cortex for?
If it's true that you expect to see something and then see it because of that expectation, then at what point is what you are seeing just simply the case because it's true? How do you know what's true and what's not if it can be whatever you want it to be?
Also, I don't want to be misunderstood. I'm not advocating for a divine king whom rules with violence. I just like to speculate on how best humans should organize themselves. I don't pretend to know, but I'm curious about it. With the little I understand, it seems that the tribal model works best for us, but that only goes so far. Maybe a democratic republic that does not have money?
As far as the reasoning behind the frontal cortex...you ever read Vonnegut's book "Galapagos"? It takes place a million years in the future and humans have devolved back into fish. Basically his idea is that our big brains were more trouble than they were worth.
Post a Comment