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.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
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.
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
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
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