“In 1649, to St. George’s Hill, 
a ragged band they called the Diggers came to show the people’s will. 
They defied the landlords, they defied the laws, 
they were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs. 
We come in peace, they said, to dig and sow, 
we come to work the land in common, and to make the wasteland grow. 
This earth divided, we will make whole, so it can be a common treasury for all. 
The sin of property we do disdain, 
no one has the right to buy and sell the earth for private gain. 
We work, we eat together, we need no swords. 
We will not bow to masters, or pay rent to lords. 
We are free men, though we are poor. 
You diggers all stand up for glory, stand up now.
From men of property, the orders came. 
They sent the hired men and troopers to wipe out the Diggers’ claim. 
Tear down their cottages—destroy their corn. 
They are dispersed—only the vision lingers on. 
You poor take courage. You rich take care. 
The earth is a common treasury for everyone to share.”

-The World Turned Upside Down by Leo Rosselson

just when i thought i was living radically a bunch of protestant, agrarian communists did it 300 years ago. power to the people.

before there was Eckhart Tolle…

There was Leo Tolstoy.

A great mind before that spoke eloquently of spirituality before the previous dudes did. Picked up The Wisdom of Humankind today and it’s been incredible. simple yet profound.

but i’ve soon had enough of all these privileged, educated men that merely echo the voices, minds and actions of countless great women not recognized or educated enough because of their gender. time for some Feminist Theory by one of my heroes…

bell hooks

The real transformation of society will come only in love, in work, and in stillness.

can’t get enough anarchist thought lately. i’m really diggin this guy’s contemplative, mystic anarchism. putting his newly translated works on the reading list…

read this article for more about him.

Everywhere you look, everywhere you turn
Illness is watching, waiting its turn

Did I go at it wrong?
Did I go intentionally to destroy me?
I’m suffering in noise I’m suffering in (touching ordinary body)
The burning from within the burning from with (ordinary hysteria)
I could not be at rest, I could not be at peace (extraordinary hysteria)

-Sufjan Stevens, “I Want To Be Well” from The Age of Adz

i’m trying to figure out if i’m really willing to do what it takes to be well again. i’m not sure. i’m not sure what that even means or looks like. i’m tired of playing the victim. i’m sick of self-destructive behavior that makes me a victim of my own self. but am i really willing to do the hard work of change? how do i begin? what do i do day by day? what suffering will it require? what death of self or habit?  life is not about love with someone else, but myself. how can i start loving, respecting and hoping the best for me? i want rest and peace which may mean a death of some things. what are they? how do i kill them? or do i accept them in love? and hope that my love for myself changes me? loneliness is a hard place to work from. but i know that i can’t accept love from another until i accept ir from myself first. love comes first from a place of  loneliness. how do i create that space? i owe myself the favor of being well.

and i want to be well. i’m not fucking around.

And then, very carefully, he touched the rose-a thing he never dared to do before. But when he felt the hard edges of the leaves he suddenly realized that the rose did not live. It was a plastic rose. And the young man stood up in anger, pulled the rose out of the dry vase, and crushed in between his fingers. Then he cried and he felt more alone than ever before.

We are not made to love immortal things. Only what is is irreplaceable, unique, and mortal can touch our deepest human sensitivities and be a source of hope and consolation.

…

“Everything that lives must die.”

“Why?”

“So life would be precious. Something that is yours forever is never precious.”

-excerpt from Henri Nouwen’s Turn My Mourning Into Dancing.

Ease is the disease!

Many of us are surrounded by conveniences that appear to improve our lives by making them easier. But the system of convenience comes with deep costs.

Some of these costs are obvious. The instant gratification world has given rise to a system of technology and industrialization that centralizes decision-making power into the hands of a few corporate leaders who treat people as objects for marketing, management, and exploitation. The rest of us are reduced to consumers, citizens, and laborers-our daily lives spent servicing a system that is beyond our control or comprehension. Meanwhile, an unsustainable global supply chain of oil, corn, and computer chips feeds the machine, devastating the environment.

A less obvious cost of convenience is the way it isolates us and robs our lives of meaning. For most of the 200,000 years Homo sapiens have walked the Earth, we have spent our lives in small groups, with the people close to us providing our food, music, shelter, warmth, and sex. Bur now many of us don’t count on the people in our lives to meet needs. Our food is instantly served to us by smiling strangers. Buttons control the sound that enters our ears. Machines and photographs stand in for sex partners. Fast food. Fast tunes. Fast orgasm. Fast isolation. Depersonalized convenience explains why people in the “wealthiest” nations suffer the most from loneliness and mental illness.

Convenience also robs us of the opportunity to solve problems. Advertisers would like us to believe that human beings dislike problems, that we want things to be as easy as possible. But we are nature’s most tenacious problem-solvers. When we don’t have any challenge-when convenience has robbed us of the opportunity to do things for ourselves-we go crazy with depression and anxiety. People need complexity. We are not computers. Capitalism seeks to conquer nature and solve all problems, but when it does, what is left for human beings?

Each time you choose to “conveniently” alter your state with a corporate-distributed object, you are building up the walls of your own prison and isolating yourself from others by becoming dependent on corporations to fit your needs. “It’s all about you,” the advertisers coo, enticing us to crawl into the corporate womb of instant gratification. As products become more reflexive, responding to our needs instantly, we become trapped in individualized cages of convenience. And the Cage of Convenience is precisely the thing that is killing the Earth and making our rulers more rich and powerful, while robbing our lives of meaning. Addressing the cage means smashing hierarchy and reclaiming our lives as dynamic, meaningful interactions with people we care about.

It won’t be easy. Some times when we cook for each other, the food gets burned or there’s a slug in the homegrown salad. And sometimes your housemates really can’t sing that well of the scarf your boyfriend knitted doesn’t quite wrap around all the way. Meeting each other’s needs doesn’t bring instant, easy satisfaction-which is precisely the point. People have their own wants, needs, and feelings that don’t always match ours. Sometimes your partner doesn’t want to have sex with you right now, but she’ll help you repair your bicycle. Maybe your housemate will cook dinner tonight, but not the lasagna you crave. It is in the moment when other people stop being convenient- when they say ”no” to our needs-that they are no longer commodities but people, with wills of their own. And it is people (not commodities) that challenge us and create texture in our lives.

And sure, sex toys are nice when you’re in a pinch, but they can’t stand in for the thrill of flirtation, the sublimity of seduction, the taste of another person’s lips, the rippling warmth of erections, ear nibbles, and ankle licks. And no fast food unit can compare to a successful home meal, to a steaming omelet with eggs from your own hens and garlic-buttered chard with a glass of dandelion wine. And yeah, it’s nice to drop the needle on a good Pink Floyd record sometimes, but the sweet sounds of In The Clouds can’t compare to the thrill of rocking out on the accordion amongst electric guitars and theremins in the new freakfolk/punk band you and your neighbors have just invented.

Corporations want us to forget that we have the power to create these deeply meaningful interactions. Our rulers seek to convince us that we aren’t ready for the hard work of building amazing lives with the people around us. But hard work is exactly what we need to make our lives meaningful and save ourselves from the machine that is destroying the Earth’s life support systems. The CEO’s and corporate advertisers will scratch their heads when they discover millions of abandoned cages, then they will throw off their suits and join us.

-Mos Def

been loving some conscious underground hip hop lately. healing racism and healing me. Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Black Star,  The Roots, Erykah Badu. Learning from my fellow community members, Inyang and DJ,and  my club friend Jared. I am much indebted to them and this incredible music.