Saturday, December 18, 2010

Becoming

Having completed this semester, out at the Campus Coffee Bean savoring the damp chill and the faint sweetness of my Darjeeling tea, I have the strangest sense that I am becoming someone. This person is not a stranger, but someone pike a first cousin or half-forgotten childhood friend. I wonder if this is a person I see in the mirror in the morning, my eyes still heavy with the sleepdew of dreams. Ravens swoop and circle and I recall the daemons of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, the external manifestation of conscious or spirit, and how I was reflected on the notion; a raven seems fitting now more than ever. I am both unhinged and increasingly placed here. I have never been so busy as I have been over the past few months, and having weathered them well, I savor the potential to do it again. Insight and experience, I imagine, guiding me more and more in this direction - Flagstaff, sustainabilities, cultivating spirit, constructing place, fostering myself in applied academia, through applied ethics. The raven is a totem heavy with symbols, of transformation, intellect, life and death, persistence and change, adaptability and learning. This is both aspiration and action. The raven practices patience, reflection, creativity; but also wanders, explores, meanders. I am happy here, in a heady and rich way, feeling somewhat drunken with the spirits of this place, time, and labor.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Finally, in more ways than one.

Thus ends the semester and my life comes back to me. A few friends have asked after me this past week, especially with a certain anniversary placed last Friday, and I finally feel capable of answering. After making veggie lasagna with homemade everything, listening to wonderful music, and savoring certain fine company, I slept in until nine in the morning. Nine in the morning: The latest I have slept since starting at the bakery. Even the nights I was up until four or so, I woke up around eight. Surely, I am living a new life as of this morning with the ability to sleep in so luxuriously.

Papers were handed in by email Thursday morning or by hand (my roommate Tim's, to be exact) on Sunday. Their subjects plagued my mind through the previous month and given an appropriate reprieve, I look forward to reading them over and savoring that work. For the moment, though, I am occupied by comic books, housecare, cooking, video games, and attending to those pleasures like Philosophy that Bakes Bread. Last night's quiet evening was spent lounging and listening to Bill Callahan, Bon Iver, some Bill Withers (the album gets a little too synthy halfway through), Neko Case, The Kinks (new purchase from the freshly reopened Bookman's where I also bought comics), and the reassuringly rich selections on Alela Diane radio on Last.fm. I doubt very much I could have had a similar evening any time since classes began with the slight exception of Thanksgiving weekend in Lincoln. (Sidenote, I slept in until nine in Lincoln, but my bodyclock was on Rocky Mountain time, so it doesn't really count.)

I think about food all the time again. Pre-dawn breakfast on Thursday was hashbrowns with onions and chard; last weekend's dinner party was bruschetta on baguettes for hors d'oeuvre and vegetarian paella that was immensely well-received, followed by maple-pumpkin muffin-cookies (accidentally muffin-y) for dessert as well as tasty additions from Miss Nina Porter and her company; I broiled and sautéed veggies and sweet potatoes the other day for a mid-afternoon lunch with happy results; a study-time dinner took leftover bruschetta and dressed a toasted sandwich with spinach, radish, and Asiago cheese on a baguette (also leftover from the dinner party); and have even begun adding sliced apples and pears to just about any piece of bread with peanut butter on it. My brother's gift of a kefir starter is well-received and I look forward to culturing some when I return from Lincoln; hopefully I can lift some recently expired milk from the bakery for the task.

Over Thanksgiving I decided I wasn't going to purchase more alcohol over Advent (the Catholic season that precedes Christmas), which has failed absurdly. Besides last weekend, which called for especially enthusiastic celebrations, I have not overindulged; that said, paper-writing, reading and rereading notes, constructive reflections, and the overall rigor of finals has been made that much easier by a beer or glass of wine - more often a beer - by my side. Perhaps it was an intoxicating endeavor to provide myself some calm in the absence of the real thing, or I may have also been taking Professor Doug Huff's advice to heart, or I may even have been hankering for the delightful evenings of senior year spent in fine company over books and computers with drink near at hand. It isn't something I feel guilty about, especially with the other fasts I have imposed on myself for the season, but a little surprising given how successful my prohibition on snacking and sweets has been.

Sleeping regularly and unperturbed by bothersome dreams - not nightmares in the sense I am used to, but stressful or heckling in their own way - even just one night has its own recuperative qualities. The experience seems to reflect forward, a notion I considered in papers and now think of more, into what will be for a while. A classmate once described how she preferred having the winter holiday between classes and finals, but now the notion seems especially absurd. My classwork, studies, and reflection are valuable to me, producing critical work that always feels unfinished in the best of ways; but having them over makes even my eyelids feel a little lighter. Or, I might add, feeling satisfyingly heavy when I have the time to sleep as was the case last night after reading Doom Patrol comics (Rachel Pollack's run that immediately follows Morrison's). I sense a richness in the scents of the world: a clean house, a bustling coffeeshop, cooking food, hot tea, chocolate undertones in ales and stouts, the sweetness of softly biting red wines, and more intimate aromas of hair and skin and active bodies; I feel them prickling over the surface of my skin.

Strange and a tidbit funny. I think of Mr Smith's (Hugo Weaving) oratory on the "smell" of being a program in the Matrix, the human smell. He says its saturates him, and that he feels infected by it. I have not thought too greatly on this description, at least not since high school, but it comes back to me know. The smells and tastes and textures of the world, I want them to saturate me, to fill and surround me. I have been washing great swathes of dishes from the cooking endeavors of late and think of the dish, filling over with warm water and how it rises around it; or how I submerge a dish into the water to fill it up. Being that dish, that bowl or glass, and letting myself succumb to the earthen gravity of this place, its tidal thickness, its picturesque fat-flaked snowfall.

I am returning again to a state of general happiness. It was lost to me for a spell - four, six, maybe eight weeks - while I lacked the time and energy to savor my labors. Since Thanksgiving, I think the state has been returning to me, gradually; my baseline rising as the day shortens and my obligations become more specific and, in that way and others, less demanding. I have stacks of books, comics, movies to attend to; friends near and far to call, write to, thank; and the warmth of familiarity both new and old dawning. Temporality is increasingly vague, my sense of self pleasantly unhinged in time but increasingly bound to place or places. I sense myself-in-the-world in a different way. A paper I wrote for Professor Deane Curtin on the characterological virtues of the landscape comes back to me, perhaps expecting revisions and additions. I want to be open to a landscape that, I feel, is increasingly open to me, welcoming with its own austere sacredness.

I looked out on San Francisco Peak earlier, its summit shrouded in rich white and gray cloud cover, and its body blanketed in stolid pines and snow. Its beauty played pleasurably on my heart, my eyes; and I hope that, if it were given the appropriate form, it might find pleasure in what I have written lately.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Harvest, Thanks, and Stamina

My semester is closing down with papers rolling along, presentations coming together, and certain minor homework assignments being consigned to the waste basket. The days in Lincoln were refreshing, enthusing, and surprising; I return with just enough rejuvenation to get me through. Conversations with friends, unremembered acquaintances, and family have left me with a strange sense of myself. I am not feeling displaced, but perhaps dislocated; a term with particular weight in the classroom. In Flagstaff, I do not feel dislocated so much as that I feel dislocated from the realities of Lincoln and I think I have even when I was living there. Now, though, I sense a gratitude and assurance that allow me to dwell somewhere effectively, vividly, even if it is only briefly. When I lived in Lincoln, activity took on a sort of burden that slowed it all down and discouraged me thoroughly. Upon returning from Flagstaff, I was baking, chatting, reading, biking, debating, sharing drinks, sparking conversations, trading phone numbers, setting dates and making plans... it all came upon me, even sleep felt much more like sleep than I really expected. (The latter, likely the result of my gradual sleep deprivation and the demonic softness of my bed.)

It is strange to think that I have so little time left to get so much done. Then, I go to Lincoln for two week for more family, friends, acquaintances; concerts, coffee dates, conversations; baking, cooking, and plenty of eating. I only now had the attention and time to read a letter from Miss Mary Depuydt and I feel so blessed, given her own consternation, to sense such peace, excitement, and activity in the world; a world in which I feel increasingly integral and participatory. The work right now feels more and more like keeping up the pace before the deadlines pass.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Sustaining Sustainability: My Efforts on the Sustainability Café

This is a first draft of a reflection paper on my efforts in the Sustainability Café Action Resource Team. It may not be all that intelligible, but it is one of three tasks I am supposed to complete for class tomorrow. I hope that it will do.

I recall once reading in high school about how an essay ought to provide a thread between disparate pieces, binding them not only firmly, but intelligibly together. I think I aimed at doing something like that.

...

I leaped into the project when it was proffered, unassumingly, to me in the form of a partial graduate assistantship. The sound of it, though clunky, was warm and reassuring, solid even in its sound: Sustainability Café. It is both smooth sounding and sharp, lengthily Germanic but imported from the French. And the word café itself, a space to welcome people, to converse, share food and drink, to while away an evening with words and music and art.

The space, whenever it actually is, remains at least a year away. It has been confounded with administration confusion, corporate assumptions, and the overall shortcomings of passing the torch from one person in the know to someone utterly clueless. In this case, I was the clueless one. Bryan McClaren had led the way with the Café for the previous year when I began. He knows the names, faces, and many of the emails for contacts; he has documents loosely filed away and conversations in his head with key players; and he knows NAU and Flagstaff infinitely better than I have managed in the past three months. If only I could have downloaded it all, I would perhaps have been prepared for the task ahead.

Instead, I ended up with a list of two dozen people to put to work on the Café. Some loose goals hovered in my mind – most having to do with a menu and local ingredients – that have fit into my set of responsibilities. Instead, I have fumbled, even I have fumbled with a certain grace, through leading group meetings intended to inform and organize and attempted to find my voice in some harmony with the voices of my team members.

More than accomplishing the goals set out before me, this quest for harmony between enthused participants has been a primary aim. That is not to say I am unconcerned with providing a solid foundation of knowledge and community from which the Café can be built and with which the Café would be engaged. Rather, as I read through emails and connect with first-year students, seniors, and my fellow graduate students, and dig through the material at-hand and ahead, I am listening attentively, sharply to what is said, how it is said, and look for how to wrap it around my role in the project. I recognize, and at times quietly savor, my pivotal role in this process has given me a vantage in the very center of things; you see things differently from the center, at least when you manage to see things at all.

Perhaps the pivot is the best way to go about it. Most doors don't have a single pivot, but cooperate with others to get going. When one is under-performing, the door itself continues to function, but not as well and certainly not as pleasantly as when they are all accomplishing the task together. I am a pivot for the Café and my role is to assist that everything progresses, builds, improves. Most of my work at the moment is directing and checking for the follow through. Where the follow through is lacking, I push a little harder with a guiding hand, and feel for what is working and what has malfunctioned along the way.

What the pivot has little control over, though, is in what direction the mechanism turns; employing the pivot makes the pivot into a tool, with some other force showing the direction. This is not just a shortcoming of the metaphor, but part of the issue of my role as a facilitator. I am, more often than not, functioning as a means and have only sparse knowledge of the method to apply the tool of myself to the task it needs to accomplish. In some ways, I full like a lever when what we really need is a wedge.

The difference between the two is that the lever can push and lighten, shift a load from here to there, and activate – like a toggle or switch – some great mechanism into action. For a time, I might have fancied that was activating just such a mechanism, but I doubt that more and more. The wedge, on the other hand, splits and forces and breaks. I want to do that, I want to be capable of working in just such a way. I want to split apart the conception that we students and faculty are anti-profits for Sodexo when we talk about local sourcing and serving real food. I want to force the conversation toward real sustainability and not just simply the absence of bags or throwaway bottles. I want to break, I very much want to break, this project into small pieces, bite-sized even, that I cold hand to each person who could savor the task and be proud of their contribution to the whole afterward.

At the end of the day, I am not a wedge. I am not a lever or a pivot either. I am a facilitator. I am learning skills of understanding, communication, and leadership; skills I have not had the demands to practice so extensively. Understanding, I suppose, I have cobbled out of lectures, debates, arguments, mediations, workshops, and so on; but putting it to work with so many individuals, keeping each face and name and expectation in mind is not the same sort, at least not until I have done it.

Communication in the form of an article on environmentalism and Buddhism or arguing the cultural epistemology of sacred groves or what a community-oriented business looks like; well, that turns out to be the easy stuff. Communication, it turns out, involves reading the curves of a face and the accents of tone that show the way to what someone is vibrantly passionate about. Then, there is the communication that explains, off the cuff, how that is connected to the activity at-hand, the one s/he and a dozen or two dozen or one hundred others are busy make happen. And finally, if you can communicate just how exciting it all is, how much potential there is for transformation; once I get that part figured out, I suppose I'll have passed the introductory course.

Leadership on the other hand, well, it is its own game. It is two parts communication to one parts understanding to one parts personal vivacity or some adequate substitute. Leadership isn't about one skill or another, but the smooth fusion, the chemical reaction of putting the elements together and providing the catalyst. More often than not, I am expected to be the catalyst. I take the latent energy in the group, stir in the knowledge, find some source of heat to plug it into, and then I just have to figure out how to make that special event, that miraculous moment happen. Afterward, I can feel for temperature, measure for a change in volume, smell the air for some gaseous product; and as I watch I read for success or failure, for the signs of a mind or body enervated and a group newly bound together.

I would like to describe more than simple machines and chemical reactions, but in a way that is the most accurate gauge of this activity. I constantly feel like I have a wrench instead of a hammer, a nail instead of a screw, or a phone instead of a computer. The task presented to me seemed somehow simple – I have no idea how I made such an assumption – but as I feel for its intricacies, explore each socket and widget, peek behind the plates into the mechanics behind the surface, I witness more and more but know less and less about what I am intending to accomplish.

That is not to say I am distressed. Perhaps I have too little time to feel distressed. Rather, what I have is a desire to succeed. That success would mean creating a café to be shared by all campus members with issues of local, seasonal food and sustainable materials at its heart. I know that this is what I want. Such a space would foster a space warm with student artwork, music, and politics; it would intertwine issues of agriculture, food, and justice; it would explore the potential for transformation through cooperation, synthesis, and synergy.

Somehow, I know this space already. I have met some of its patrons, a few of its performers, and have heard the echoes of the conversations therein. I have taken students there – twice now – through words and quiet, space and company, and the collective work of dream. Though I have led the way to this place, I have not so far been there; it is a place a know from the insights and inspirations of others. In the process, I have showed them away, but it is only through their visions that I know the sounds and smells and sights of this shared space.

This role as a facilitator is not, in itself, one thing or another. I am party to various engaged and lively cooperators or – as Rom Coles would prefer – conspirators. We are conspiring, I have no doubt, for this chance for revolution, for a fundamental turning around and coming back again to the start. Such a coming back again to the beginning, we conspirators seem to think, gives us new eyes and new ears on what has always been there waiting for us to see. More importantly, though, this revolution gives us new hands from the old, new hands to construct and to explore, to touch and feel, to knit together new and old into a strong, supportive, and warming space.

Monday, October 11, 2010

An Ongoing Project: Condemned to Narrate

A project of my introductory seminar for my Sustainable Communities program is the public narrative. The public narrative's aim is to articulate the connectivity of the individual to her/his family, community, and history. To do this, one writes of oneself in a matter that elucidates one's character and history, reflects on a particular personal project, and explaining the way that such a project blends into the larger social project in a specific and demanding way. It is part a memoir, part creative nonfiction, part political rhetoric, and part activist cheerleading.

I dislike this project.

I dislike this project because I believe it disagrees with me on a fundamental level which I hope becomes clear in the examples below. I have attached the second and third attempts I have made at writing a public narrative that is simultaneously satisfying of the project (and the professor) and honestly descriptive of myself and my position concerning the project itself. I hope that they might be found to be enjoyable and illustrative.

...

From 29 August 2010

When you begin to bake, you have some notion of what you'll end up with. Hopefully the product of your labor will have certain qualities: savory or sweet, a quality crumb, lightness or heartiness, perhaps a satisfying crunch, maybe some medley with cheese or jam or honey. Starting out, though, you can't really say it has any of these things, nor can you say for certain that it will have any of these things If you put all your emphasis on the product, on the goal, then when it comes up short or surprising or something entirely new you don't know what to do with it. On the other hand, the process, the building, the character of the ingredients, sponge, dough, and final loaf have their own subtle wealth to enjoy. When you take the pieces as they are, embrace them, and turn them loose, then each incarnation is its own manifestation, hopefully delicious but definitely a joy through and through.
When I think of the places I have lived, the people I have met, the projects completed, I don't think of it as part of a grand scheme, a plot with a riveting conclusion. Rather, I take each subtle spice, each substantial encounter, each aromatic episode for itself; each contribution yielding something greater than what you can determine from the beginning. I would like to think that that something greater is myself, my person, my virtues and shortfalls and delights. In a way, this is true: I am the medley of all these ingredients into something else, to some evolving, blending, maturing, rising, proofing concoction. In the process, I cannot emphasize the final run, but can affirm the efficacy, the quality of each incorporation in the expectation, the aspiration to yield something of special character.
I am tempted to remark on each place I have lived, each neighborhood street, the friends with their challenges and light-hearted expectations, the confounding family politics, the frustration and triumphs of high school or college; and if I were to, you might understand something about me. You might even appreciate or identify something in me that I do not myself recognize. In speaking to me, working with me, celebrating in my company, sharing those episodes to be fondly recalled again in late night sessions, you will not be handling those inputs; in the end, you will be dealing directly and unadulteratedly with me, the all of me, even the bits that I leave out and the facets that have matured or spoiled.
If I were to explain where I have lived, with whom I have lived, and how I have lived, you would know certain things about me. Knowing the wheres, hows, and with whom doesn't really get you into the texture, the aroma, the sensation of my life. That is, whatever narrative I might construct is inadequate to describe the context not of choices, but of conditions that I have fostered and that have been fostered around me to shape myself into who I am. My commitments have not been singular moments, but peculiar mutations that metamorphose me into that reality, to that jewel lying somewhere in Indra's Net that reflects and is conjoined with or into the world.
When I was in middle school, I was dealing with potent emotional instabilities and socialization issues. The transformative moment was triggered by no specific entity, no person or place or time, but this rich context of striving in a certain direction. A new friend, my first girlfriend, and a multiplicity of supportive communities committed me to being a more outgoing, energized, and community-oriented person. When I discovered the delectable rigors of academia and philosophical inquiry, it was the result of a community of intelligent, impassioned, and challenging friends, classmates, and instructors that infused me with that particular drive. Their presence and participation in a particular social and political world that transformed me. When I was in Brazil, it was inadequate to have the interest in agriculture and policy and trans-cultural justice to develop the skills, questions, and inertia to complete the work of my independent study project; rather, I required the support, guidance, and frustration of those around me in a place that seemed to force me in that direction. The reality of Brazil was as much about being pushed, dragged, and pulled in a certain direction than any success at finding my own way; I had not way of my own, only that which was shown me.
Claiming responsibility for paths taken is quietly misleading. I do not deserve the commendations for the hard work I have accomplished, the celebrations of the sights I have seen, the delights in the experiences I have luxuriated in or trudged through. These are feats accomplished by myself-in-community, as part of a world I can only glimpse from a certain perspective. I have been mixed and kneaded and sculpted by innumerable hands, only some of which I can claim where guided by myself alone. These triumphs and travails are the result of a fantastically unrehearsed collaboration in which I am only one actor. In this presentation of my life, I am much more of a node than a unit. Whereas a unit is atomistic, sharply defined, and solitary, a node carries the energy of the network and transforms its potency, defines a message, and moves it along. What we need today are transformative channels, new and reawakened connections, and the lively current of social energy in between. The necessity is not to abolish or atrophy within the concoction of our communities, but that of a deeper activation and foundation of ourselves together, in a transparent and knowable world.
The increasingly recognizable and personal motif around which many are reinventing that notion of a common world-place or world-vision is through food; including the means of its production, methods of distribution, the justice of the harvest, the ethos of sharing it, the culture of preparation and dining, and the politics and society that a new understanding necessitates. The current agricultural system is not only inadequate but clearly destructive. It endangers the soil, pollutes the water, poisons those who work with it, debilitates those who consume it, and fosters a culture divorced from the reality of agriculture and sound eating. The policies in place support magnitude over health, consumption over nourishment, and price over community.
When we think of a new conversation, a new society, a new social ethic we ought to reflect on forming it not for an end product but for a rewarding process, a series of ends to be savored and appreciated for their own. Take the richness of the soil and a healthy agroecology, not the endless field of fertilized and sprayed corn and soy. Absorb the pleasure in the contact with families of farmers and artisan chefs rather than cheap freeze-dried meals. Savor the treasure of time spent with loved ones preparing a meal together and dining at one table. And at the close, celebrate a community not of indebted farmers, wealthy corporate distributors, and the questionable health of children, but the unity of a system understood, a community interwoven, and a landscape rejuvenated.

...

From today, 11 October 2010

Somehow I ended up here; Flagstaff, Arizona and staring out at sacred peaks, patrolled for centuries by those searching for healing, purity, and wholeness. Choices were made, certain words written here or there and key phrases inputted, but from here they feel inadequate for getting me to this particular location, this specific time.
I am somewhere else as well. The bus rocks with each pothole on the rise up the Himalayan foothills, my classmates and I balance on edges of seats or sneak ourselves tightly into corners as we round ever closer the ubiquitous edge, precipitous plummet adjacent to every road on which we find ourselves. A nagging thought has settled into my mind for days, weeks as I live out of a backpack, bathing with a saturated bar of soap and baking soda, always finding tires or wings or my own feet underneath me, every morning seeing different walls and a different bed. This thought has come with me through the poverty of Rajgir, the cold nights in Minneapolis, that odd weekend in upstate New York with well-loved friends, and back again to the cloud-strewn foothills of these ancient peaks.
I have thought of poverty and of necessity. I have seen lives defined by the rhythms of tourists and generous hands, houses built on military refuse, necks and backs curved by the weight of bricks and stone, and glimpsed the depth of lives rooted in community and practice and unity. The air up in Darjeeling and Gangtok is cleaner, clearer, lighter than the lowlands and the heavy exhaust exhaust of two-cylinder took-took pedicabs. The people dress in down jackets and odd amalgamations of knock-off brand clothing and illegal imports from the Chinese next door. No one sees the young men and women working midnight shifts at tech support centers up here.
Here, in this place intermingled with clouds and within eyesight on a clear morning of the very peaks of the world, I have seen people living within sheet-thin walls without running water, sparking up kerosene or trash or coal for light and heat, eating the produce of their neighbors or just down the hill. And through it I have been placed into a vantage of seeing, not of perceiving, but of clear sight. Somewhere in the image I glimpse the reflection of myself, of living a life on so very much less than I have ever known. I realize the impetus for a life defined within limits of an ecological space, an economic space, a spiritual space that is simultaneously smaller and so many times grander than what I have thus far allowed myself.
My trip to India was under the banner of a Buddhist pilgrimage. Any insight into Buddhism, though, ultimately relates the possibility of insight into oneself. I had put time, energy, work, and thought into conceiving a community, a world in which a more ecological lifestyle is practiced; it was not until my time in India that I considered the reality of a lifestyle for myself, a lifestyle of both less and of more. What I saw in India was both dire, painful, and sickened poverty and indefinable satisfaction and even joy. For many, not even the very least is made available; but for many, many others just enough is more than enough to live productively and even joyfully.
How strange, it now seems, that it was not until such a leap that I was forced to consider what it would mean to live a life harmonious with my own expectations of living any life. Perhaps it is the insulation of a certain school, a specific type of community, this nation instead of that which allowed me the limits of perspective and understanding. Being so divorced from my norm, from my expectations, from any sense of stability in my setting that stripped out the usual blinders on my eyes. When it happened though, when the sight and the questions emerged, the sense was more of familiarity, of finally acknowledging a deeply lounged certainty of my life.
We provide ourselves innumerable opportunities for distraction. Our leisurely entertainments and insufferable demands of labor each claim attention. When provided the least moment of serene contemplation, it slides into out minds like a stone through the membrane of a lake: Everything knows instantly of the change. The confrontation of that disruption, that keen edge of awareness requires either an effort to smooth out the waves, the chaos, the new knowledge; or we take the energy, each reverberating wave, capture the attention and ride the wave into something novel, fresh, and demanding.
No one can ride a wave forever, and any attempt to capture it just disrupts it. Indeed, it is easier to make smooth the lake and allow the stone to sink and be forgotten. Beneath the surface of the lake – mine, yours, ours – are innumerable stones, building, gathering mass and definition; and each has left its mark and potential for transformation. The question is of each disruption is increasingly clear: What does it mean to live on less? And its parallel question, What does it mean to live for more?
Somehow I ended up articulating the correct words on the proper forms and here I am. Still, I am bothered by these questions, by the experience of seeing those on whom the demand was placed to live on less but who I saw live for more. In one way, the latter question is easier: When confronted with necessity, we live more and more for one another, for a strong community that will hold us and our children up. Through that lens, we understand that living on less also means living on our neighbors, on our communities, on the tight local webwork of our families, neighborhoods, towns, cities, and regions rather than spreading our burden wide and far and deep.
Living such a life has proven neither cheap nor straightforward. One aspect has clearly been engagement; engagement with neighbors and the community and the reality of its politics. Another has been lightening my imprint, stepping lightly, leaving little wake; a practice manifested in working simply and well, purchasing less and wisely, and taking what I need and sharing the remainder. More powerfully and more rewardingly, I am learning the practice of living for more; whether that is for community, understanding, spirit, depth, ecology, rootedness, I cannot easily say. It is, I imagine, the practice of living organically, the practice of growing down and up and intermixed with those around me. Such an endeavor stretches through the times and places of my life, not just shifting my direction in one way, buy aligning my life with the project of wholeness, of depth, of more and of less.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Letter Writing: Joys and Tribulations; Also, A General Correspondence

Dear Readers,

I have had the interest in writing letters of late. I have not had the time to do so and those to whom I have promised correspondence I apologize. Time is not what it once was.

That said, I am still very much in the mood for correspondence and hope to send a little out this way as well as writing later this weekend, if time allows. I suppose that is the thing right now, "if time allows." Fridays are deliciously open for me and so they make space for repose, thought, and joy in a way that most of my week quashes. Still, most of today has been bouncing between conversational meetings--as opposed to procedural or action-oriented meetings, which are also common--or doing this or that for my graduate assistantship. Maintaining accurate records on participants and projects for the Sustainability Cafe is one, long run around; and I have always loathed run-arounds. The work, as much as I gripe, is rich and will over time be fruitful as well.

Today I finally made it to the public library and picked up a few films (Koko: The Talking Gorilla [Criterion], Before Night Falls, The Golem, and Buffy Season 1 Discs 1 & 2) and books (Some Philip K Dick and The Tiptree Awards Anthology Volume 1). I mentioned to classmates that, even with all of this reading for class, if I had a few days to myself, I would probably spending it watching movies and reading books. I have learned to skim reading material and do it rather well, though I still do not devote enough time to the books even with that skill. Sitting down and leisurely leafing through it provides a sort of succulence, like the slow breach of the skin of a fruit, and gradually tasting the flesh underneath, absorbing the tactile stimulation of each. That, I can safely say, is not on the schedule most of the time. My classmates thought that I was mad.

Also, I have stuck to my bike. Over the past month, I have driven the truck twice: I went to get the oil change and make sure it started in case my roommate needed to use it, and then again the following Sunday for work when I popped a bike tire on the way home and just before going to bed. Luckily, the truck starts and all is well, my tire is in moderate repair--it always feels like it is falling to pieces, just a little--and is regularly weighed down with gloves, hat, sweatshirt, books, food, and I am generally wearing my laptop bag over my shoulder besides. I can't help but feel like a tortoise or one of those hermit crab ladies from Labyrinth. More than once I can be seen biking with a loaf of bread gripped tightly as I bike around because my satchels are too full to be bothered with it.

I long for the Raleigh that was left in Lincoln, though. An investment of a mere $75 and it is one of the most pleasurable bicycles I have ever saddled up with. All in all, the speed isn't much greater, it is only slightly larger and that much closer to my size, and has its own technical foibles; but when I am on it I feel so much more like I am moving. As for the Cannondale, the posture and size feel inappropriate, and more because I so reliably heft around all my earthly belongings does it feel slow. For riding, though, I long for something narrow and smooth and sleek. Also, the Cannondale has that frustrating habit of leaking air just about all of the time no matter how often I replace or patch the tubes.

Schoolwork is some medley of insightful, refreshing, familiar, frustrating, and cyclical. Strangely, it isn't demanding except temporally; in that way all things in my life are demanding. I have considered taking next academic year off to pursue a cooperative housing possibility. I want to purchase or cooperatively purchase a foreclosed property and renovate it with the purpose of having fellow classmates buy "shares" of the house and split ownership finances and responsibilities. I learned about co-op housing a few years ago at Gustavus and have been itching to put it together. The space that is fostered by passionate, clever, supportive, and demanding individuals in a shared living situation is one I recall fondly and long to recreate. Also, my desire to refashion notions of property and ownership, while acknowledging their importance in identity has grown and shifted since I started writing about such subjects in Philosophies of the Environment. Now I am in a place of doing, building, and action in a way that ill-disposes me to highly theoretical class work. I often think of the work of Jane Addams and hope to read more of her work soon.

I long to share this place with others. Friends and family and old acquaintances all come to mind. It is such a lively and creative community and blessed as it is by the scenery and clarity of the landscape. My friends have spent weekends hiking and climbing and biking, adventures I have not had the timing to attend, but sojourns I hope to sooner or later enjoy. In a way, I feel like my life is just as it is, though I don't really believe I can articulate it much more thoroughly. Perhaps it is a feeling of thusness, and immediacy with the world that requires its own hidden vernacular. I feel attuned to the motion of my life, not just having a sense of direction but perceiving that motion and the surroundings that that motion can obscure. Obscurity, clarity, immediacy, transparency, and obfuscation are terms that come to mind frequently these days.

The other term I see myself using is "foster." I am all about fostering space or relationships or myself in a certain way. I mean this very much in the sense of fostering children, though it lacks the institutions and responsibilities that such an endeavor demands. What I am doing is assuming a certain role, certain necessities or demands on my person to provide certain services or roles to others and in the world. Perhaps it is my role as a facilitator for the Cafe, or that I have been composting and gradually building for gardening a row-box, but I sense so much more of myself as someone who provides a basis, a safety net for others, even when those others are non-humans, non-persons, or non-physical. My mother--who was not the last--identified in me a strong nurturing ability and I feel that that is in some way manifesting through this activity of fostering.

Now though, I am off to foster up some dinner for myself, and perhaps a little moving watching or reading. A crazy Friday evening, I know, but sometimes it is what a week like mine calls for.

Amicably and ever (even in absentia) yours,
caleb

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Kindliness: A Link

I am looking for feedback on my short piece, Kindliness. At Miss Eldredge's suggestion, I am pursuing publishing it somehow, somewhere. To do that, though, I need it to be trimmed, polished, and buffed. I do not have abundant time to do that now, but to do it right, I would enjoy critical, revisionary feedback. Just click on the word and you can access the GoogleDocs copy. Please provide comments here. And both of my roommates have read it and enjoyed it, so don't worry about me freaking them out. I hope you find it enjoyable.

Between Meetings

The other day I calculated my time commitments. Assuming 35 hours per week at the bakery (that is a minimum, really), 9 hours for class, 2.5 hours of study per hour of class time (when it is usually 3 hours) or about 23 hours, and 10 hours per week for my assistantship, I end up with a total weekly commitment time of 77 hours per week; or 11 hours of commitment per day. I am on my third day (likely of four) in which I leave home for work around five o'clock and don't return until after eight. What is all of this about? Well, it is about work, study, and meetings; oh goodness, the meetings.

I am between them for the moment, so I am not getting into them. Scheduling, let it be said, is a sorrowful time-sucking part of my life. Everyone's is different and no four people seem to share any time at all. What madness. I am not the only participant in this absurd scheduling debacle, but I worry that it is having a numbing effect. My nights of sleep are progressively shortening while my days never seem quite long enough. I still haven't made my mascarpone & cranberry brioche, though I am on my second batch of brioche dough from work and my cheese needs consuming soon. Nor have I had any opportunity to work on my compost bin, though I think I need a few more pieces of wood, maybe a few pallets to deconstruct in order to make them.

That said, I affirm that in the face of exhaustion I am happy. Classwork is demanding and abstract, potentially too abstract for me right now, and my work is satisfying. My friends and colleagues, when I see them, are dealing with similarly debilitating lifestyles, and so we commiserate together taking what sustenance we can from each other's small successes--book reports, led class discussions, cooking and baking delights, bicycle endeavors, and so on. For some crazy reason we are happy. Crazy, I know.

For some time I have felt that I did not know what to do with my time, but now I feel inundated, saturated with the potential to accomplish. Even my days off involve research, cooking, cleaning, building, biking, and learning. I feel infused in a way that I have not known for some time. Not only that, but I recognize a sense of myself-in-the-world as lively, active, motivated, and connected. My frustrations are generally frustrations of "not quite" rather than "not at all;" that is, I am bound to that I believe in and take pleasure in, even when those burdens are difficult to handle.

Now, if I can manage to pay the bills, everything will pan out just fine.

Friday, September 17, 2010

I am still alive; Lavender Cake and Farmers' Market Recipes

Almost two weeks since I last wrote. Wow. I feel like I ought to confess or something. This has been a whirlwind, constantly moving from one endeavor to another, spinning and spinning and spinning, but here I am and rather than being in the same place, I feel that I have accomplished so very much. First, I would like to post some recipes that I have made recently because I have been baking and cooking plentifully, much to the joy of my friends here in Flagstaff--especially my roommate Tim. Some of these have been grand endeavors and some small affairs, but they have spurred an admiring little following to devour whatever I produce. Here's the list: peach pie with homemade crust, lavender cake with lavender frosting, hearty pear-walnut/almond-basil soda bread (two different times, mildly different recipes), chocolate brioche, farmers' market bruschetta, and farmers' market marinara. I won't provide recipes for all of these delights, but I want to provide a few.

White Cake with Lavender
Original at AllRecipes.com
I made this for Cori's birthday and though I liked it, the frosting ended up very sweet. The lavender amount was nice, but I could have used more, I think.

Ingredients
2 3/4 cups sifted cake/pastry flour
4 teaspoons baking powder (I used 3 tsp due to my high altitude)
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 egg whites
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar (though I plan to blend turbinado sugar and honey in the future, probably about 1/2 cup honey and 1/2 cup turbinado sugar)
3/4 cup butter
1 cup whole milk
2 teaspoons dried lavender flowers
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
9 inch round cake pan

Directions
1. Gradually heat milk until just before boiling--try not to scald, which forms a thin layer on top--and stir in dried lavender. Allow to steep while preparing other ingredients.
2. Blend flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl.
3. In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Blend sugar and honey if applicable. Mix in 1/2 cup sugar or sugar combination, beating only until meringue will hold up in soft peaks (peaks may not be possible with turbinado and honey).
4. Cream butter in a mixing bowl. Gradually add remaining sugar or sugar mixture, and cream together until light and fluffy. Add sifted ingredients alternately with lavender-milk a small amount at a time, beating after each addition until smooth. Mix in flavorings. Fold meringue into batter thoroughly. Spray nine-inch cake pan round thoroughly or use parchment paper to line the pan (I found a spring-form pan at the thrift store I plan on using in the future), and pour batter in.
5. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 to 35 minutes. Cool cake in pan 10 minutes, then remove from pan and transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling. (Original directions use a 15x10 inch cake pan, or two 9-inch rounds which I did, but the cakes were so thin the tore as they came out. Experiment for yourself, but I think that one cake in a 9-inch pan may provide the best result. Baking length will increase appropriately.)

Lavender Frosting
Original at Everything Baked
The same recipe, sans food coloring and I kept the flowers in the frosting.

Ingredients
1/3 cup whole milk
1/2 teaspoon dried lavender
at least 3 cups powdered sugar

Lavender Frosting Instructions

Gradually heat milk in a saucepan until just before boiling, stir in lavender and remove from heat. Cover and allow to steep for at least ten minutes. Pour lavender milk into mixing bowl and beat in powdered sugar a little at a time until reaching the desired consistency. (A glaze uses less sugar, whereas a frosting requires more but is sweeter. If you are using this for a single cake rather than a layered one, I would suggest a glaze consistency.) Spread or pour (if a lighter glaze) immediately over cake.

~~~

Farmers' Market Bruschetta
I did this last summer and really enjoy it. It is a way to make use of cheap seconds at the market, enjoying the great flavor of tomatoes later in the year. Bruschetta can be frozen and lasts well in the fridge because of the red wine vinegar. It is highly flexible for local accents and personal tastes. Cutting everything up takes time, especially the tomatoes which can be blanched, peeled, and smashed if preferred.

About 8 lbs fresh tomatoes, diced (I'm pretty much guessing here)
1-2 Tsp coarse sea salt
About one bulb of garlic, coarsely chopped
1-3 big red or white onions, diced
About 1/2 cup shallots, finely chopped
Other fresh veggies as desired
About 1/4 cup dried oregano
3 Tbsp dried thyme
3 Tbsp dried parsley
2 Tbsp dried rosemary
2 Tbsp black pepper, preferably coarse ground
1 to 1 & 1/2 cups olive oil
1/2 to 1 cup red wine vinegar

Prepare fresh ingredients and add tomatoes with salt to a large pot and bring to a boil. Allow tomatoes' excess water to boil out before adding onions, shallots, and herbs. Keep the mixture at a low boil to allow the dried herbs' flavor to disperse and for them to absorb some moisture. (This will also drive roommates crazy.) Add olive oil and red wine vinegar, stir, and return to boil. Taste and add further herbs, salt, and veggies to taste.

Allow to cool and store in the refrigerator or freeze. Allow frozen bruschetta to thaw thoroughly (24 hours in the fridge), stirring regularly.

To serve, lightly toast thick slices of bread (French or Italian styles, preferably), evenly spread bruschetta on toasted bread and broil for 7-11 minutes. Optionally top with grated cheese. If the bruschetta is room temperature or warmer, toasting on bread will go more smoothly; if cold, the bruschetta tends to saturate the bread quickly.

Farmers' Market Marinara
To get rid of my rapidly spoiling tomatoes, I used most of my remainder for marinara. A similar process, but involves more boiling and no red wine vinegar.

4-6 lbs fresh tomatoes, finely diced or smashed
1 Tbsp coarse sea salt
6-10 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/4 cup shallots, finely diced
1 onion, finely diced
1/4 cup dried oregano
2 Tbsp dried rosemary
other herbs as preferred
1/2-3/4 cup olive oil

Boil tomatoes with salt until thick, stir in remaining ingredients and cook to desired consistency, season to taste. The marinara will thicken somewhat when cool, but may loosen up when heated for eating. Can freeze, but similar to bruschetta for later use.

Both of these can likely be easily canned if you know what you're doing. At this altitude, I would need equipment I don't have and time I can't really afford, so into the freezer it went. I probably made the equivalent of a half-batch and, after all the water boiled out, got something like a big bottle of marinara. It is pretty good, though.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Kindliness: Reflecting on Writing Horror

I wrote another horror story today. Strange. I read plenty of weird, macabre, and suspenseful fiction these days and have always enjoyed scary movies, especially those that are tongue-in-cheek funny. Writing, though, comes with its own baggage. Generally I am very perturbed and uncomfortable writing these stories. Violence increasingly turns my stomach whether it is fictionalized or real. I still enjoy my frights, but prefer them to be suspenseful and quick rather than the increasingly popular drawn out torture-style violence. (Cultural anthropologists are examining more and more the relationship between torture-style violence in entertainment and the reality of torture in global politics, finding some illuminating tension therein.)

The parts in these stories that I write most rapidly are the violent parts. In a way, I can envision them most clearly and that plays its part, but I think what is really at play is the clarity of that vision frightens me and I want it out of me. This is particularly true with the torture scene I have written in my weird fiction-style detective story. Most of the torture is twice removed, first because a character is telling the story to the protagonist/narrator, and secondly because it occurs behind a heavy wooden door and is mostly auditory. When the image is clear, it comes all at once to the character and weighs on him for the rest of the telling. Vincenzi--the protagonist--even muses later that Murlough wanted to tell the story to get it out, to get it away from him. In a way, my writing of horror fiction feels very akin to that: Getting away from it.

Not only that, but my stories can be so readily cited to a medley of memories, acquaintances and friends, present conditions, and new challenges. This present one was inspired pretty directly by Joyce Carol Oates' reading of a Eudora Welty story which takes place from the perspective of a murderer of a black man involved in the Civil Rights Movement, being moved by the story, going to my apartment bathroom, and noticing the shower curtain was pulled to the side. I almost immediately had an opener:
She would leave the shower curtain to the side, not spread out to cover it all. Every time I might go in for one thing or another I would tidy it over, maybe rinse a little out of the tub. Just practice a little kindliness by not mentioning it. That's how I look at it: A kindliness.

You see, cleanliness has played a weird and powerful role in moving in. I want to make the place welcoming for my roommates and guests, especially since I have been here longer, and so cleanliness is a means to make space for them. I don't want it to be perfect and I am not pathological about it, but I was struck by the potential to be so.

I drew very much from a former roommate who drove me up the wall. She condescended regularly and made even my room a very small place to live. Ultimately I found escape in the library and an unused common room. I sort of set up a camp away from my place where I knew she would have to go out of her way to complain, an issue I couldn't really handle if I were to complete the papers on which I was working.

Again, I am struck by the oddness of writing the story. The protagonist is, to me anyway, a clear hybridization of this former roommate and myself. The narrator is an uncomfortable and passive-aggressive synthesis of this characterological conflict with a subdued pathology about her. Really, though, believable characters--especially villains--must be heavily founded on specific people. It is the flat, bland character that destroys the functioning of a story and the color of sound writing.

Simultaneously I am very hesitant and distinctly anxious about sharing this story. My current situation is panning out very well and the violence has nothing to do with my own situation. Rather, it is a magnification, a frightening examination of the realities of sharing space with someone; especially when the attempt to share space results in the failure of real cooperative cohabitation. In a way, it is all about potential energy. I recall physics class in high school where we discussed potential energy, like a boulder at the top of the hill having the potential energy to roll down the hill and build up momentum. The narrator in this story recognizes that potential energy and acts on, descending in this tidy, maddened way down the hill and into action.

If you recognize my commitment to non-violence and want to read the story, let me know. I am happy to share it, but the notion of posting it is anxiety-producing. I think about this process openly because I am on ground I have only ever seen from above and now I am on it, navigating it with my own feet and hands and eyes and ears. I can't say that writing macabre fiction is especially satisfying except in that it is patently unsettling and I generally hold that being unsettled is positive. Being unsettled, one sees the world in its shakiness, in its uncertainty, and its various conflicting potentials.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Display and Connectivity

An aside:
Due to the lack of connectivity in my apartment, and in the spirit of trying to make sense of Flagstaff, I expect that I will be posting more regularly via the Tumblr account than through Blogger. For those who notice these once in a while on the Facebook feed--as all posts are routed to the Facebook via the Tumblr--nothing besides slightly more frequent posts will be noticed. For those who follow the blog itself, you may want to check more regularly at the Tumblr (http://bakingphilosophy.tumblr.com). The Tumblr will continue to be where articles, videos, images, and links will be posted more regularly.

~~~

For many people, this will be nothing new. I have had many conversations with women that have included this sort of consideration, but I felt it rather potently today, just a few scant hours ago.

The undergraduate students are returning to NAU. Many, many of them appear extraordinarily young. I suppose that is in part due to the playful activity of first-years in the early stages of orientation. They have some sort of treasure hunt afoot in order to get a lay of the land around here. I suppose I have done something similar in my few trips to campus--when I visited in early summer, last Tuesday, the Monday before--and have biked through and adjacent to it while in Flagstaff. Suddenly there is the grand transition about the campus, a metamorphosis or awakening into itself. Very soon, it will be an academy again where classes are commonplace, professors instruct, and students are everywhere.

I spent most of my morning amidst the SLUGG garden, a student-run garden near my department's offices, where I read and thought and wrote and generally enjoyed the clear air, bright but shaded light, and near absence of fellow students, my age or younger. I moved to North campus for lunch and after lunch, read for a spell outside the library while ominous clouds scuttled in overhead. I realized my posture and demeanor, and at one point my tone, were just so, sculpted as it were to make clear certain personal affectations.

Somewhere along the way, I had put myself on display for people to see. It has occurred to me that I make more of an effort to dress this way or that over the past year, but this had all the more to do with composure, eye contact, stature were intended to inform everyone of my status, my persona, my image of myself as a graduate student, intellectual, and informed--let's use the term...--resident. I can't say why, exactly, but there I was strutting my feathers just as any other peacock might.

Anyway, I have since moved inside to use the internet, power, the facilities, and to avoid the rain. I feel more myself inside, less strained to make myself into a particular manifestation. Instead, here I am working on my computer, taking advantage of wireless that I do not have in the apartment. I want to feel like the showmanship was a sort of game rather than a mask, that it is something I can play that doesn't play me. All the same, I know that the line between them is thin and that worries me.

Alterity, Binary, Solidarity: Reflections on Cultural Alterity by Ofelia Schutte

From 26 August 2010, around 10:00 pm

I feel inspired. I picked up a few books from the Cline Library at NAU the other day and couldn't help but snatch a few philosophy books. It has been over a year since I have taken a philosophy course and it seems... unsuitable. Perhaps I have begun wearing clothes that do not quite fit. (This is actually true, I have taken to enjoying the fit of large tee-shirts despite—or because of—their slightly too small cut.) One of those books is Women of Color and Philosophy which contains the essay mentioned in the above title.

Here are a few lines that have me thinking:

“What are the points of contact today between feminists from developing countries and western feminism?” (60)

“Postcolonial feminisms differ from the classic critique of imperialism in that they try to stay away from rigid self-other binaries... Postcolonial feminisms call attention to the process of splitting of culturally dominant subject in terms of the demands placed on the dominant subject by culturally disadvantaged others.” (61)

“People in mixed unions that are based on parity... are very strongly motivated to understand each other, as well as to communicate with each other so as to communicate with each other so as to deepen and strengthen their understanding. Such individuals commit themselves to lifestyles in which giving of one's time to reach out to the other, as well as making space for the other's differences, are part of the very fabric of daily existence, neither a forced nor an occasional happening.” (63)

The first half of the essay—which I read yesterday and so is somewhat less fresh in my mind—has to do with the mechanics of intercultural dialogue, especially in the context of asymmetrical cultural authority. It provides a solid means to the later parts, but it is difficult to parse clearly from the quotes themselves.

Well, it got me thinking of an article I am very interested in writing. I want to understand a means for engaging in trans-cultural ethical conversations in an egalitarian way. That is, I want understand or articulate the tools needed to fairly converse about ethics between cultures. This is a long-term piece that was set by the wayside last summer but hope to return to eventually. It is still a puzzle that thoroughly interests me.

But being in Flagstaff, a stranger to this town of visitors (I think of A Garden in Winter, which I wrote this last Winter in and Spring and have posted here), these words and my thoughts steer elsewhere. I feel deeply motivated to explore “points of contact” and to negotiate out of “rigid self-other binaries.” I have no one in this town I know well; that is, even with the earnest and heartfelt kindness of Miss Johannesen, I cannot deny that we are still getting acquainted. This is by means a sleight to Miss Johannesen, only a recognition of the brief—if noteworthy time—we have known one another, and I refer to Julia here because if I am friends with anyone in this town, I am friends with her.

That said, I have an abundance of acquaintances I am eager to understand better. In no great amount of time, I would like to call many of these people friends; unfortunately I feel that doing so now would be somehow premature. Nonetheless, Ms. Schutte's words ring deeply. In exploring the dialect of this specific place (by specific, I mean this point in my personal history; this time of beginnings, firsts, and mottled understanding; this particular locale being Flagstaff, NAU campus, the Village Baker, the apartment complex; and the network of friends in Lincoln, around the country, and new bonds here) I wish to foster a tongue appropriate for dissolving boundaries and authoritarian expectations of those around me.

How is it that one might make light conversation with someone without imposing on her/him the sort of filter or rules of engagement that Schutte describes? Mostly, it seems, one makes a quiet, even tacit effort to open one's mind and ears to listen more carefully. Schutte decries the way a dominant audience will splice together the easy bits of a cross-cultural conversation and make up a conclusion to fit her/his expectations. (She uses particular gendered grammar mechanics I here avoid.)

A broad openness to the language of another person—not just words or tone, but body, gesture, accent, reference, personal narrative play a part in her/his language—necessitates a disrobing of the tools we have come into the habit of using to understand one another. Especially in this town of visitors and transients—words with intentionally overlapping but not synonymous denotation—such an effort to unequip oneself is especially demanding; it leaves one more open to harm, naked before a person. Such nakedness may lead one into blunder all the same, but erring in such a way almost equally facilitates a resolution. Whereas the dominant interlocutor claiming understanding where there is none is much more likely to fatally wound a developing relationship.

In some way, I hope I have been engaged in this vernacular for some time. I often attempt to articulate my understanding back to someone in the midst of a conversation. In effect, I hope to say, “If you mean this, then I understand you pretty well. If you do not mean this, then I would like us to step back again so that we can right my course.” The effort here is to work simultaneously in the same direction. This, I suppose, developed out of attempts to actively listen to people I want to understand clearly, but it also plays into this role of spacious conversation. With this sort of interpersonal, cultural space we can more clearly navigate around as well as with one another.

Traveling Meditations III - Water

Meditations on Water – From 11 -13 August



(Note: The night of 10 August was spent in a hotel in Santa Fe. That part of the trip was very enjoyable and included the St. Francis of Assisi Basilica, the Contemporary Native American Museum of Art, a stroll through the Old Square, and other events. My aims for this series of reflections does not include Santa Fe.)



Coming upon the Painted Desert has its own sort of reality to it. I recalled a story in one of my Lovecraftian story anthologies—the specific one I forget—in which an adventuresome couple goes into the Southwest in hopes of discovering this poorly mapped establishment. The suggestion is that it is a ghost town, but in truth it is a weak point between boundaries between our world and something like the dream world of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Through the Gate of the Silver Key. Out in the Southwest, one has a definite sense of proximity to some other place or thinness of our own sense of time and space. The air is thin and changes quickly, in the summer monsoons footsteps are rapidly washed away, animals are sparse and elusive (except for the damnable mosquitoes), and distances can seem inaccurately far or near. Not to mention the brilliance of stars and the weight of the sun playing their own peculiar mental tricks.



I can also recall the fantasy novels I read in my adolescence based on the Magic: the Gathering card game, a significant notion of which were bubbles of disparate time. These spatial bubbles took on faster and slower temporal movement, sometimes drastically so, which made transport between them of living matter very difficult. (Imagine stepping through an invisible barrier and suddenly feeling numbness in your leg as the tissue therein used up its oxygen and half again or twice the speed as usual; meanwhile your heart moves at an expected rate and under-supplies oxygen to your muscles causing strain and potentially damage.) The trick between movement from one place to the other was through water, which acted to soften the temporal discontinuities and to dampen their effects so that one might move from one place to the other without damage. (The series also emphasized water as a transporter by crafting an interdimensional, the Weatherlight, as a flying ship, closer to a caravel than a spacecraft.)



In its way, these weird fiction and fantasy stories got something right. Water does play a profound role in facilitating the movement through time in a way that we cannot easily appreciate. Water has both the direct, short-view impact on the surroundings—saturated soil, hydrated plants and animals, replenishing groundwater, spurring growth, etc.—and the startling long-view effects—carved bedrock, soil removal and transportation, changing ecosystems, shifted rivers, filled in lakes, glaciers and their rending of stone, etc.—that are so outlandish it is difficult to appreciate without at least a little abstraction. Not only that, but these events happen simultaneously with each circulation of water.



The signs of water and its reflection left in stone are everywhere in the Painted Desert and especially in the Petrified Forest section therein. Over many thousands of years, water gradually deposited sediments that the stream was inadequate to carry. If a stream is fast moving, it can carry larger sediments; if it is slow moving, and likely lower, the stream can only carry fine sediments and will deposit the larger ones. In this way, one can see the seasonal variations in the ancient streambed in the sediments of the Painted Desert. Not only that, but the later carving of the Painted Desert was the result of water as well, water that cuts through the ancient bed and exposes the undulations of the streams forebear.





Shallow, ephemeral creaks and rivers carve out washes in the desert landscape, areas of calm, smooth sand that mark the easy and well-traversed passage of storms. In the monsoon season—summer months when brief but intense rainstorms, likely thunderstorms, roll it and dump fat drops of rain in the region—these washes will fill up in little time at all. The are the main vein of the innumerable tributaries all over the landscape, tributaries as thin as a finger that continue to reveal mineralized tree trunks and fossil caches all over the landscape.



Even before the present, intemperate impacts of rain, the landscape was dominated by a tropical or subtropical climate and ecosystem. The Petrified Forest is the result of a strong river that carried down whole trees during flooding events upstream, only to drop their driftwood loads when the river flow calmed. These stripped trees would become waterlogged and sink, where they would be covered by sediment and ash, the minerals in which would replace the original lignin of the trees resulting in the spectacular mineralization of the Petrified Forest. It seems that no matter what happens there, water will be a ruling factor in the landscapes manifestation.





I cannot help but ponder the sense of thinness in the air. Has it always been there? Is such a perception the result of desert aridity, a foreign environment, rapidly changing weather? Do I feel far from the usual because I am markedly distant from my normal circumstances of paved lanes and geometric buildings?





In a place so much defined by water, I laugh at the reality of carrying so many liters of it with us. Dustin and I would hike for miles, drinking occasionally in the not unpleasant heat. We are boys of the Midwest where heat is thick and humid and cold is sharp, dry, and painful. (Dustin's time in Louisiana, I think, does not breach this sort of expectation.) Strolling in the sunshine without humidity in the way, we feel ourselves clearly moving, unhindered by the usual weight of our previous circumstances. We are infused with not just our own energy, but the excitement and mystique of this uncommon realm.










Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Lightness - from 22 August

Internet access around the apartment is spotty and pirated, so I can't really post from there. I am currently at the graduate student orientation and taking advantage of the wireless. Here is an entry written the other day.

~~~

22 August 2010, Sunday late morning

For the last few days I have felt this peculiar lightness. Not weightlessness and not flightiness. I am not more urged or guided in one direction than usual, but I feel the more subtle tugs in each direction more finely. Not until just now did I realize what it was.

Yesterday I described in my personal journal my not unpleasant sense of aloneness. It is, at times, sharpened into feeling lonesome but has not yet manifested as loneliness. Feeling lonesome is, in a way, not unpleasant for me. Rather, it is an appreciation for those episodes or places that are enriched by the company of others. Eating my meals alone, I often sense that strange absence of another person with whom I might share that meal. Whereas loneliness is much more of a longing for that space to be filled, it is an attachment to a person or type that, in their absence, the present moment is degraded.

This lightness, though, has different qualities. It did not come together on the camping trips between Lincoln and Flagstaff or in the house I was staying in before the apartment. This ethereal sensation must have arisen Friday or thereabout despite my bicycle technical difficulties that occurred that day. What it is, I believe, is a sort of calm release of those responsibilities and concerns I have experienced for most of this year. Many of my obligations have been these long-term expectations and their slow conclusions; work applications, graduate school concerns, money issues, finding housing, arranging roommates, graduate assistantship paperwork and confusion, etc. Now, though, most of these issues are resolving or slipping out of mind. What I have now is immediacy and immediacy feels distinctly light.

Part of this sensation, I am sure, is an easily fostered sense of peace in my new quarters. I feel pruned and tidied. What I have is what I need and what I need is nearby. I can maintain a sense of quiet in my living room which makes a sense of quiet in my mind all the easier. (This notion of noise and tranquility play a part in my dislike of driving which is necessarily loud and my preference for biking which is, under most circumstances, rather serene—at least when it comes to the vehicle in question.) For most of the past week, I have been scrambling for those things a living space generally requires—light, cleaning supplies, certain tools, food, cookware, silverware, and specific items of furniture—and now that those items are more or less in place and the clutter is off the floor, I have this wholesome sensation of satisfaction.

That said, I look forward to my roommates arriving. The apartment remains rather sparse and I think their arrivals and expectations for the apartment will metamorphose the place beneficially. Also, I am excited to show off what I cannot help but feel is very much my handiwork. I could not have made the trip very easily without my brother, nor could I have moved in without Miss Julia J and Mr. Eric to assist in his absence. All the same, finding certain items on craigslist and arranging it just so feels especially personal, peculiarly reflective of me. When Miss Mari A. and Mr. Tim H. make their appearances, I hope it is a welcoming place for them not just to step inside, but to make their own as well.

Perhaps this lightness will fade with coming responsibilities. I may even begin working this coming week and I have scheduled events that require my attendance. The subsequent week I have classes and hope to have real work hours besides. Not to mention rent will be coming up again in no scant amount of time—rent I think my bank account can handle. Nevertheless, I cannot perceive those realities becoming painfully heavy. It may be that I have found a solid mental place, a psychic calm that has been rather fleeting up until now.

Traveling Meditations II - Earth

Concerning 10-11 August



The Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers argued persistently about the elementary substance, the fundamental material that composed the world. Most Ancient Greeks acknowledged a sort of elemental physics, that the world was principally constructed by combinations of wind, water, earth, and fire. Many of these philosophers argued that three of the elements were derived from the fourth, through some process of chemical or environmental mutation. If one were to argue that water were the primary element, fire might be the result of exceedingly perturbed water. After all, when one watches a flame, it looks very much like a current rising upward rather than streaming outward or downward.



In a certain way, this is comparable to one of the great issues in contemporary physics. Most physicists recognize that the four fundamental forces in the universe—the strong and weak nuclear forces, electro-magnetism, and gravity—are highly related. Originally electricity and magnetism were thought to be different forces, one having an effect on the flow of electrons, the other having to do with the organization of molecules; but when you run an electric current (an odd choice of term) through most metals, you create an electromagnet. This experiment elucidates a deep connection between electricity and magnetism that leads, in turn, to the realization that they are part of the same force. Not only that, but theoretical physics points to the likely synthesis of the four forces into one under extreme conditions, conditions that were likely present in the early universe. (Gravity's inclusion depends on the incorporation on many-dimensional space, a confusing but important characteristic of contemporary physics I will not here explore.)



Most of our travels and our destinations emphasized earth; not as a fundamental so much as indispensable element of the locales. Earth provides a setting, a sense of place, and the basis to build. Many world origin myths begin with a never-ending ocean, a pre-world in which nothing material exists, it all comes and goes with the slight perturbations of waves, swallowed again by the ocean itself. (This, I might add, shares somewhat with the curious depictions of quantum foam, the inconceivably minuscule realm below subatomic particles like quarks.) The creation of land, of earth is the first breach in mythical narrative, the singularity that makes the world itself possible. Endless ocean represents not an unknown, the way later explorers might see the ocean, but the cosmic, non-human unknowable. Water, here, does not represent a beginning, but a vast, chaotic void. (Enlightenment philosophers would later argue fervently about the seemingly impossible notion of the void in which no substance existed.) It is the climbing, jutting, solid explosion of earth that makes the world something other than insusbstantial and unknowable.



Climbing in the preserves and parks around Great Sand Dunes National Park, it was easy to make that connection between earth and being. The dunes themselves are formed by streams' slow decay of the landscape and carrying the sand, silt, and soil downstream. (Downstream, mind you, is always to the ocean.) Winds carry the soil back uphill to the flats and to the Dunes where the surrounding hills curtail the wind, creating a large vortex that results in the sands' deposition. At the very edge of the sands the elevation changes and with it the ecological conditions; just uphill the presence of water and more tenable soils provide strong footing for plant and animal life. (Like all healthy natural deserts, the dunes are lively and active in their unyielding way, full of tenacious, spindly plants and quick desert creatures; but the distinction between the two is profound.)



Here, we can see life in much grander design, much finer detail than the sparsity of the dunes supports. Coniferous trees, well-suited for the dry, thin air climb to the sky and fall to the ground, many with roots holding stolid to geometrically carved boulders. In clearings, thick scrubby grasses stretch and soak in the brilliant open sky. (I believe that the soil thickness plays a strong part in whether trees or grasses grow at the same altitude in these locations.) Birds sing in the morning and various insects call at night. Even here, one sees a strange symmetry between the elements: fallen trees, stripped of bark grow in tidal formations; fungi use chemical fires to digest cellulose in the wood; stone circles depict where previous hikers have made their fires; the sun heavy rocky stretches are particularly air thin in the heat. All around one senses a balancing, an equilibrium between the elements in its subtle and suggestive metamorphoses.



Dustin built a fire and we cooked with his jet engine-like camping stove. I fell asleep long before him, but woke many times due to the hard ground and the cold. It hovered in the thirties at that altitude with so little moisture in the air. I was painfully ill-prepared for the night. My face numbed because I could not slide deeply enough into my sleeping bag despite its 30 degree threshold. All through the trip I dreamed strangely, aggressively in my fitful sleep.



I woke early but could not manage a fire because dew had saturated most of the kindling. I felt markedly unhappy, a slow, creeping headache lined most of the day. It was beautiful out, clear and kind to us, but sleeplessness and frustration made me stubborn. During the late morning I witnessed parents refusing their children the joy of exploring the dunes and the landscape, while I wondered what they had expected from the park.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Traveling Meditations I - Air

Concerning 9-10 August

Despite being one of those distinctly earthy place, the Midwest seems inevitably ruled by air. It is not in the turbulent potency of tornadoes or the roiling brew storm clouds any more than it is in the soil and undulating tides of grasses and corn. To speak of a place or region being an air place rather than an earth place isn't to deny that everywhere is a balance of elements, but to elevate one characteristic to its distinct, prevalent, almost cognitively urgent quality. When one encounters the Midwest, one encounters the sublime breadth of air.



Driving through Nebraska and Western Kansas on our way to Comanche State Grasslands, farmland fanned out in all directions much of the way. In pockets of Kansas and then, later, in Colorado one could identify respectable stretches of prairie land, often but not exclusively near grazing cattle. Watching the populace stalks of corn or the medium prairie grasses, I felt some of that same satisfaction I have with the Midwest in its harsh, dry, windblown winters. This is not a warm or soft or even welcoming satisfaction; if anything, it is sharp.



Wind has that peculiar ability to cut. Metal and stone and wood and even ice have that potential to cut, but their wounds only go as deep as they are forced. Wind goes through you—if you are not careful—and carries something out with it again. The earnest airborne character of the Midwest is that it cuts, cleans, purifies its uninsulated inhabitants. A shoot of grass is, aesthetically speaking, a cleansed creature. (Here, I hope to adequately divorce the specifically [in]human connotations of cleanse or pure which may get in the way. The terms are intended to refer to some mode of sanctity; just as ablutions were intended to purify the person for sacred rights or ceremony, purity here entails a preparedness or clarity of character.) All of the grass is specific, simplified, pared down to just what it is. So much so that wildflowers in the Midwest act as veritable explosions, surprising the viewer with each splash of yellow, red, orange, violet, or white. Even the flowers generally exhibit a sort of respectful modesty about themselves—a calm demeanor, a particular size—as if the frills have been pruned.



Driving in the Midwest is more similar to sailing than it is to driving in, say, the mountains. The mountains force a vehicle—automobile, bicycle, feet, whatever—to yield and navigate and circumvent, but the Great Plains allow this grand, undiscouraged mobility through it. Albeit, a sail boat is determined generally by wind and the sails, one cannot help feeling a sense of riding rather than driving in the Midwest. One is on the move rather than just moving. I watched the sky as I tried to eke a few meager stretches of sleep that first day. Its blueness, its grandeur, its mature patience didn't grant me rest, so much as repose.

We slept in a park in Tribune, Kansas with two cyclists—Sara and Adam—making their way across the country nearby. Sara ate some of our food, happy to find something vegan friendly, while Adam found his own fare at a gas station down the road. They shared with us stories of elderly couples longing for their children and inviting in young strangers instead, of cross-country legends and rumors with pedals under their feet, of the ruthlessness of livestock truck drivers on their familiar two-lane highways. That night I slept poorly and dreamed anxiously, confusedly. The edges of the sky was lined with lightning storms, flashes and hard-edge bolts illuminating the soft, edges of clouds. In the morning, two women, on in their years, swam in the community pool.