The Future's Not Hard to See Here, It's Just Hard

Well, here we are again. Stunned by events in our country with sadness the only emotion that is able to mature in the face of confusion and questioning. More shooting. Unexplained motivation. How does this not point to a deteriorating society? How does tomorrow not plead in a shrieking voice from a desolate future-scape of loneliness, fear, isolation, paranoia for drastic changes deep in the soil, in the soul, in the withered divinity of our culture? In all my yearnings for and striving to awaken in those fellow humans with whom I do not agree, those I perhaps dislike, I can not find the place in my inner being, in my intellect, in my silent listening caverns to see through the eyes of the perpetrator of such an act as this most recent shooting.

I started this entry one month ago and was not able to finish it. Where does one take such a sentiment? To congressmen? To neighbors? To a depressing and apocalyptic end? We often feel so removed and distant from any sphere of activity that could have real influence on affecting change. Today, on the radio, I heard a story about the modification that allows a store bought weapon to fire similar to a battlefield machine gun. Directly after the shooting, it felt as though there was some momentum to make such a device illegal. Now, only one month later, it has largely been forgotten in the public conversation. The influences are just too powerful, the money just too influential. 

In the month since I started this entry things have not been pretty. Most of Puerto Rico still does not have power. Acres upon acres have burned due to wildfires in California and elsewhere. The future is ranting to us to make drastic changes in every facet of our lives. We act locally, supporting social groups, teaching children, conserving resources, caring for our neighbors and our loved ones.

We once dreamed of a new world order based on radical love and truth and progressive use of technology and sustainability and artistry. Now we hope to simply survive the pressing war on geo-political and inter and intra-human emotional stability.

It's not a whisper from a far distant voice. It's a megaphone to the ear.

Transformation of Barren and Gigantic

Yesterday I escaped from the school in which I teach and ran on gravel paths through prairie dog fields, uphill into the rolling plains undulating at the feet of the Front Range like gently rolling waves pulsing out at sea preparing to transform into menacing curling whitewater and glassy hard faces pounding beaches and rocky shorelines. I was winding my way east- if I continued to run, as sometimes I wish I could, slowly run across the countryside, across parched earth, across bridges spanning mud and clay-brown rivers, across shrinking forests, across maddening and enraged city sidewalks, until I reached the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean, where I stop, toes kissed by the flow and dared by the ebb of the sea that brought so many of our ancestors here- aiming for a water tower a little more than two miles from the school. I turned around before I reached the water tower because I needed to return to school, to teach, to supervise recess. When I turned, I was once again confronted by this Front Range of the southern Rocky Mountains, much of which rises to more than 10,000 feet. Moments before I was dreaming of the vast expanses of the Great Plains stretching their way to the Appalachian and Taconic mountains. The fullness of time and devotional will in the forces moving the earth and the sun and moon and planets and galaxies and universes nearly strikes me down each time I perceive these mountains- truly perceive them, devote a moment to breathe the earthy grays and splotchy whites, the angles and ridgelines distorting depth perception, the scale, the blue sky or huddling billowing clouds. Part of me would like to stop here, here where we can leave with an image of the stoic plains contrasted with the majestic mountains, an image of humanity moving slowly across the earth, minuscule yet infinitely expansive in that he is conscious. But it is not that easy. The mission of these writings is to attempt to perceive the heralding of the future in the activities of the present, and the future here is monotonous housing developments and gas and oil exploration and cultivation. The plains are filling with skeletons of plywood and rapid growth lumber, plastics and solar panels. The earth beneath riddled with venous circuits of pipes and wells, benzene laced water. The oil pumps and beige coffee can containers are in the back yards of future children and family pets. This is not to say fracking or housing developments or oil production are bad or good- this is to say this is the future, and it is happening at a pace that is noticeable day to day. The horizon, the endless plains, the brazen relief of mountains rising out of oceanic flatness is disappearing into angular, hard lined constructs. Aesthetically, it is not a change to my liking. To catch the last glimpses of a planet in a state minimally or negligibly impacted by the workings of humanity is an honor. To live in a home with heat and hot water from gas burning appliances is a privilege. As I run down the hill, the sun warms my bare chest and makes me squint my eyes, the air nearly void of moisture is palpable in my straining lungs. I could keep this up indefinitely and in days and years watch the landscapes transform in rapid frames and remember what the mountains looked like and the horizon so far away and keep running until there was no more space for my footsteps and they were only landing on pavement anyway and I was forced to stop and stare at a wall of vinyl siding whose kiss and dare are not so inviting as the ocean.

It looks so gloomy, is their work to do?

Oh fuck. i can not think of a better way than that to start a commentary on the world of today. Hurricane Harvey recently ransacked Texas and surrounding areas. It's whirling water wheel reached the area of Houston and decided to set up camp in a gesture that certainly seemed malevolent. Then, Hurricane Irma, cited as one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, rolled across the southern North Atlantic, with egregious visits to various Caribbean islands, Cuba and Florida. Another hurricane is behind it, lurking in the shadows of its recent predecessors. This excess of wind and water has been accompanied by more than seventy wildfires burning in the western United States producing tangible and noxious smoke at least as far as the eastern front range region of the Rocky Mountains. And these are only the natural disasters. And this is only those events with direct and undeniably tangible effects of the United States. Part of me knows these things have been happening all over the world for as long as the earth has been spinning in its harmonious sway with the sun and the other planets of our solar system. Part of me feels the end of times upon us. The social situation in these environs- initiated by the events of early 2017 that finally motivated me to begin this blog- has not improved either. In fact, it feels like something genuinely evil is moving through and hovering, Harvey-like, over North America. So, what is the future telling us now? The most obvious answers are diametrically opposed but both would direct their attention to all the evil in the world. Some would consider the evil to be left-wing, liberal, green peaceniks. Some would consider the evil to be the gross mistreatment of the earth, her resources and her multi-cultural inhabitants. Either way, it seems most would agree that some group of humans are not good and are to blame for the current state of the world. It comes back to one of the themes recurring here in this blogsphere: the seemingly widening polarities in the social dynamics of the inhabitants of planet earth. This gap needs to be reconciled if we are to continue to progress as a species and as a culture and perhaps if the planet itself is to remain a viable abode for we humans. We hear the calls from the future to attend to our brothers and sisters, to our friends and enemies, to the winds and fires and water.

"Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. 7The LORD said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” 8The LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” 9Then Satan answered the LORD, “Does Job fear God for nothing? 10“Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11“But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face.” 12Then the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power, only do not put forth your hand on him.” So Satan departed from the presence of the LORD." Job 1:6-10   http://biblehub.com/nasb/job/1.htm

Will we all be Angels in the Future?

Sometimes, in the evening, as I am getting my two-year old son ready for bed, into his pajamas, after his bath, he looks up and points to a brassy colored metal silhouette of an angel which adorns a wind chime hanging from the window, "Like Meets," he says. Meets is the name he calls himself, an abbreviated version of his name, and one his Grammy often calls him. The first time I heard him point to the angel and say, "Like Meets," I was not quite sure what to think- what level of intentionality lay behind the statement? Does he really think that image of an angel is what he looks like? But, since that first time, he has done it a few more times, and I believe there is meaning and a true perception he is articulating. So, what is an angel- or more relevantly- what does the typical representation of an angel, depict? The wings, perhaps a halo, the flowing robe, the androgyny, the benevolent gravity- where does it all come from? One thought is that the angels are one step ahead of us in their evolution. In the far distant (from our limited human perspective of time) future, the angels will have progressed and we will be where the angels are now, looking over some species and compassionately trying to guide them without impinging upon their freedom. Some task. I imagine an angel as a guiding force, as a more perfected version of my self untainted by my persona, as a being who patiently waits for me to ask for guidance, who carries the weight of my transgressions and ignorance without blame. My two-year old son is much closer to that being than I am. His wings are nearly visible in his eloquent posture and clumsily maturing relationship with the earth and the mysteries of gravity. It is not a matter of belief or religious dogma- whatever these beings, these angels, may be, it is clear little children are closer to it than we who have trod upon the hard earth long enough to be identified as adult. There is an innocent wisdom in them, the children and the angels, a knowing lacking in judgement, an eagerness to learn and an attention and receptivity to the entire sense world, especially human beings. If you are wondering why you made a decision that shaped your life, or faced a challenge you believed was beyond your capacities to overcome, or dodged a bullet, imagine a version of your self, an infant, cherubic and chubby like Raphael's angels, full of gentle understanding, hovering above and behind your head, urging you to attend, and know it is you and it is yours and there is nothing you can do for which you will have to ask forgiveness, and ask and listen quietly for hours, for days until the wind blows through a chime and you finally notice, point and say, "Like me."

The Birds Came Back. Where will they go?

The birds finally came to our yard. For the last two months we have had two feeders in the yard, one hangs from a hook extending about eighteen inches from the house and is attached to the kitchen window frame, and the other, hung later, when no birds came to the first feeder, hangs from an apple tree in the yard, about forty-five feet from the house. Through all of June and most of July, the only birds that came were two brave black-capped chickadees who bounced to and from the feeder hanging from the apple tree, but they hardly put a dent in the level of the seed in the feeder. Then we went away for nineteen or twenty days and returned to find both feeders empty, but still no birds for two days. Then, finally, as if an invitation had been spread to the entire state, our yard was atwitter with those old courageous black-capped chickadees as well as house finches, what I think are song and/or house sparrows, red-breasted nuthatches, and four bluejays who decided to join the party following an afternoon thunderstorm. Chirping and singing and calling and munching, dashing off and flying their horizontally wavering flights parallel to the earth through the yard, into the neighbor's, even flitteringly resting on the rocking chairs on the front porch. It is said that the frequency of bird song lies in the middle of the range of human hearing. Some hypothesize that human hearing developed in this specific range so that it would be attuned to the song of birds, for where there are birds, there is most likely water and food. This is what has been concerning me for the last two months. Is the yard of my home, the yard in which my young child plays, is it void of life? Is this why the birds shy away? So my joy at seeing the birds today, at hearing their song, at drawing the attention of my son to their feathered fluttering, at getting the bird book back out and the casual binoculars, was seemingly disproportionately gleeful. There was an inner warmth stirred in me that somehow made me feel that things in the world were ok- contrary to the threats of nuclear war, to the aggression and death in Virginia, to the general insecurities in the social, political and global arena. There is a nobility and a surety in even the most fleeting and flitting head tilting song bird, small as they may be. Over the next few days, the doves decided it was finally safe to come over and peck at the fallen seeds on the ground below the feeder after weeks of watching from the electricity wires strung just beyond our property line. Then, two days ago I woke, my son and I made our groggy way to the kitchen to greet the birds outside the window and begin our morning rituals of oatmeal and coffee, trucks and dishes, and there, on the decades old, leaning, nearly falling over aged grey farm fencing that may have served as a corral of some sort in the early twentieth century when the house was built, there on the horizontal rail of a fence defying gravity, was a hawk, casually resting, studying our yard in no hurry, most likely a young red-tail, though my birding skills are still in the developing amateur stage. Our yard had gone from a barren landscape to a wildlife refuge. We've now settled in to the activity in our yard, the birds seem quite happy and unthreatened, as do the squirrels and bunnies. We devoted attention to our yard, to make it beautiful and safe and full of food for small animals, but we also devoted attention to the future, to the world in which we were hoping to live. Attention to a world where the song of birds assured us that life indeed did thrive here. Their songs fill our mornings and our days, our hearing more acute, as we eat our oatmeal and drink our coffee and wait for the hawk to return, to perch on our fence, to show us it is still standing, and something mysterious is still working in the world and it is good.

The Sculpting Senses of Tomorrow

Today was the last day of a lengthy visit to my childhood home, my family, the surroundings in the midst of which I was raised and grew toward adulthood. Around here, everything smells of the ocean, a potato chip left exposed to the open air for twenty minutes becomes soft and chewy, birds are in constant activity, feeding and flitting and there is an accent more in the way the people walk and interact than in their actual speech. As if engaged in a dance with the dramatically changing seasons, with the wind and rains and snow, the storms and sunshine, their gestures roll and bounce, their steps sway both light and intentional, jokes and wisecracks mingle with talk of life and death. In my teaching as well as the rearing of my own child, I pay attention to the sensory intake of the developing human being. These past few weeks I have been reflecting with gratitude and wonder at this gentle yet dynamic sensory environment in which I grew and changed and learned and played. Many children in today's world receive a large percentage of their sense impressions from a screen, either television, computer or phone, with studies showing children watch an average of about thirty hours each week of television- this does not include the many other activities on various devices. There is also the homogenization of housing developments, big box stores, chain stores, highways, music, clothing. Of course there are exceptional situations in which children are exposed to a diverse and, if uniquely, beautiful array of sense impressions- whether natural environments like that into which I was born or eccentric multi-cultural city-scapes like Brooklyn or Oakland. There are ideas and evidence which suggest that sense impressions not only help to form our minds, our psyches, our beliefs, feelings, prejudices- but they actually help to form our physical bodies, our organs, our hairlines, our pathologies. The future sends forth the question, "What will human beings look and feel like five, ten generations into this technological revolution?" It gives the term cyborg a new nuance. Perhaps we will become robotic not only from the devices with which we engage but also from the inside out. Perhaps our liver will begin to function more in a simple code like html and less in the vast and mysterious code of human chemistry and spiraling forces of growth. The future may reveal in the very structure of the human body the sensory input with which individuals and hereditary lines have engaged- cheekbones and chins carved by salty breezes and prairie winds or thin and agile fingers and flitting eyes of the technologically superior. I like to see children with fingers in mud and rain on their faces or squinting into the sun, corners of eyes wrinkled, but to truly be citizens of tomorrow's world, their fingertips must type and eyes adjust to the hue of liquid crystal and LEDs.

Words, words, words

My son will be two years old in about three weeks, and his language is developing at an exponential pace. He is linking groups of words together to form rudimentary sentences, repeating nearly everything he hears and using new words and phrases in unexpected, timely and appropriate situations. It is truthfully a miracle unfolding before us. In juxtaposition to this joy, wonder and mystery of the human use of language, I joined Twitter yesterday- the medium of word sharing limited to 140 characters- poetic, brash, empty, insulting to the genius of language or an homage to it. I have yet to post anything on it; I am usually just getting warmed up by 140. I will experiment with the platform, however, to see if it can be something beautiful, creative, artistic in the sense of attempting to represent a small piece of the divine. Many famous and powerful people use Twitter, and it seems many things tweeted are not well thought out or carefully constructed in the sense of wordsmithing. Will we be able to save language from becoming a dry, corpse-like means to voice or vent an opinion rather than an artful and heartful vehicle to truly communicate? Perhaps we are being given the opportunity to bring language to an even more elevated state by the mediums of texting and tweeting and snapchatting. The future may be asking us to limit our characters, carve them carefully and share them with the world. Rather than full of emotionless arrangements of letters, the future will be full of poetic sharings both between individuals and on a global scale. If we are to take advantage of these tools, we must not sit idly by while public figures draw down the standards and potential of words and manipulate the power therein with harsh, often shallow and damaging sentiments. My son cannot yet write- his language emanates from a voice high and scratchy as he works to exhaustion to form words and phrases. The effort, the determination, the sheer will he exhibits throughout the day to join the human community of language based communication is thrilling, inspiring and beautiful well beyond any adult-created arts. 

Polonius  ....What do you
read, my lord?

Hamlet. Words, words, words.

Polonius. What is the matter, my lord?

Hamlet. Between who?

Polonius. I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2

Art, Activism, Localism- Future Alchemy

I haven't much interest today in socio-political commentary. I spent the day outside with my family, beneath the sun and clouds, submerged in salty water or with sand and pebbles nuzzling through toes. My child laughed and lay on rocky shores and threw stones. I napped in the semi-shade early in the day and never really woke- even now my eyes are closing as they do when the day has wound down and I sit to write. I vacillate between a desire to become intimately devoted to and active in the political realm- fighting for social justice with congressmen and senators, lobbying for education reform or sane and contemporary healthcare- and working in the comfortable bubble of my own family life to make small changes such as using less natural resources, buying local and organic and raising a courageous child with manners, morals and a general interest in the well-being of his fellow human beings. I even attempt to quell my partisan opinions by searching for a place in myself that agrees with the social and global policies and opinions of the current administration- after all, it seems like so much has been left undone in the past, the rich getting richer, the poor getting nowhere. The other pole to which I vacillate is that of art. Perhaps art is the only thing truly worth our time and energy. Creative efforts to make both the present and the future more beautiful, more thought provoking, more moral (yes, I think art has a moral component. I will have to save that for another entry into the old blogosphere). Music, poetry, painting, sculpture, these are worthwhile uses of glycogen and amino acids. Art, activism, localism- perhaps the future demands all three, perhaps vacillation is an unnecessary use of energy. This derives from a lack of interest in socio-political commentary, and we've moved from salty bays to fresh water ponds, poems and co-ops.

Light, News, Digest

The sun shimmers in the ripples and waves of the bay. The moored sailboats and small wooded island provide anchors for vision on its journey toward the horizon. The wind might blow the light as its descends from the sun, causing it to dance across the water and play against the lens of the eye as it passes on to the retina and further to the optic chiasma until some remnant finally reaches the optic centers of the brain and allows us the gift of an image- though it would be difficult to tell. These are easy sensations to ingest and digest, the light on the water, the sound of waves crashing, gulls screeching. However, the words produced by news outlets these days are fried jalapenos dipped in mayonnaise and chased by a pint of vinegar. Staggering and numbing in quick procession, they intrude upon the senses and linger in the mind, heart, feelings and memory off gassing as they painfully and slowly break down and assimilate themselves in the depths of our consciousness and manifest as anxiety and fear and anger and sadness. If the consequences were not so tangible, it would be comical, fun and worthy of mockery and jokes. As it is now, however, the news we read and hear constitutes a weighty proportion of our daily nourishment. We ingest the world and all it provides, whether images or words, prismatic light or melodic song, hot dogs or kale- the world provides the sustenance and the very substance of our being. In turn, we have to digest all of this as well, food and drink as well as the constant bombardment of sense impressions of today's world. I wonder what the future will bring as we carelessly create and ingest stuff we do not recognize or understand. Our digestion will have to mature and evolve- the occipital lobe as well as the intestine. Occilating us from grateful and full of wonder to staggered and numb, the world is currently providing tremendous opportunity for development, equanimity and aggressive nourishment. Can we provide the future with the tools, the strength, the courage, the dynamics to digest, to assimilate it all? The beauty, the grossness, the enormity, the humanity. The oars of my boat leave symmetrical ripples for moments after I pass- an army green helicopter roars above leaving unseen ripples in the light and wind. 

Future, post-holes and icebergs

I've been digging holes in the yard of my new house, nearly three feet deep, and filling them with fence posts and concrete. The permanence is daunting and the physical labor remarkable. The ground is hard and dry, a handful of dirt comes out of the holes with each stab and draw of the post-hole digger. How many handfuls to make a hole big enough for a fence post? More than is productive to count- the tedium would bring tears to our eyes and make the physical pain unendurable. This is clearly a project the vast majority of the materials and labor of which is intended for use in the future. In the present, a shallow hole into which to place the post and some dirt packed solidly around it would suffice to withstand the gentle breezes and children's inquisitive nudges. But these posts are intended to resist the forceful invitations of the near-tornado strength winds and small ball stones of hail accompanying the electrifying storms raging through these first brave miles of plains stretching eastward from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Work undertaken for the future carries a meaning, a mystery and a value clearly well beyond that of simply earning wages or increasing the number of digits on a bank statement, this is well known. Perhaps beyond and above this is working from the future. To reach into the future to draw the impulse for meaningful work in the present requires a bravery and a willingness to continually search for the highest ideals and capacities in humanity, in children, in world leaders. For there, in the unrealized divinity, in the glimpses of unknowing genius, lie the seeds of the future and the starting point for the truly meaningful work of today. By working in this way we can create individuals, organizations and social structures that will have time to mature into the future and reach ripeness before or as the needs arise. It is a duty and responsibility of an innovator or self-described progressive to continually strive to not only work toward the future but to courageously propose ideas that seem unreasonable and fantastic to the rational mind of today but are relevant for distant tomorrows. A massive chunk of ice dislodged from Antarctica recently. It was the size of Delaware. My fence posts are less than three feet deep, laid in concrete. Permanence is a fantasy. Ice and fences.

What Drives The Vision the Future Offers

It's been more than two months since my last entry. The insanity of life in transition took over, and I have not been able to focus my thinking into any sort of poignant commentary on the present social life of the inhabitants of planet Earth- nor to extend the purview of my will to include the future as it presents itself today. I also lost the content of my last entry because I didn't save it, which was a blunt dagger driven into my solar plexus. Not nearly fatal, but enough to leave the alveoli unable to draw oxygen for a short time. A portion of my creativity and willed thought driven out prematurely and lost into vapors. I am newly inspired, however, in part by a documentary about Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre called "The Defiant Ones." It's made me think of passion, drive, motivation, dedication, success. In an attempt to look to the past to see what the future holds, to see the impulses streaming toward my younger self out of the dark chasm of the unknown, I am wondering what dreams I had as a young person- to see where that led me and to see if there is more I can or should be doing to honor that which illuminated the daily meanderings of my imagination and nighttime wanderings and fantasies. I sincerely thought I was going to be a professional athlete for much of my childhood- that is the predominant dream of my youth. For a period from reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" in ninth grade until I failed out of college four years later, I wanted to be a lawyer like Atticus Finch, defending the underserved, the unjustly persecuted of the world. A magician, a circus performer... I have always had the slightly debilitating gifts of being better than mediocre at many things, sincerely interested in nearly everything and secure and comfortable in home, family, surroundings and social life. These privileges have led me into and through many truly wonderful experiences and conversations and have hopefully led me to add some beauty and good to the world, but they failed to propel me blindly, bluntly, forcefully into a career, a vocation, a form of expression- a singular vision without which the world and I would not be viable or livable. It could be laziness or insecurity, but neither of those seem to fit. Creatively, when I dive back into my youth, the thing to which I was most attracted, perhaps showed some promise, was writing. As though drops of words dripped from the petal of a flower held by a future me reaching back in time to bestow wisdom. So I'm writing again. In hopes of honoring the gifts of the future, in hopes of honoring the deep past of previous lives in which I prepared for this short time on earth, in hopes of still bringing some light to this world as it contorts itself into shadow. The future is as unclear as it was two months ago, the notion of truth as vague, the social life of the country still trapped in a pre-boil ferment of antagonism and discomfort. It is a gift to be able to look back, to see a life unfolding, drawn taught by the future which is today and continues into tomorrow, pulled forth by an immense wisdom of which we are a part. The future we follow the future we are.

The Future of Nationalism

The concept of nationalism has been in the news lately, on the minds of people all over the world. As I stood waiting for my fish tacos on Cinco De Mayo in a "taqueria" in the less than diverse town in which I live, tacos that would never arrive because they lost my order and then ran out of fish, I had a flash of understanding of the fear many people feel toward globalization. I have an "All One" sticker on my car. It comes from the soap company, "Dr. Bronners." I have been using this soap for as long as I can remember. I used to read the label on it that listed the many uses of the soap, "18 in 1" along with the dictates of some perhaps cultish holy order that manufactures it. "All One God Faith," as I remember it. This always made sense to me, and I never really questioned it. Sounds good to me. We are all humans. The vagueness of the "God Faith" part was perfect for me. No need to go any further. But today, as I waited for my tacos on this day commemorating the Mexican defeat of the French at the Battle of Puebla in 1862- an inspiring victory but a short lived defeat of the occupying French- I sensed that not everyone is interested in all humans getting along and agreeing to respect each other's cultures, languages, traditions. For some, this gesture is scary, threatening, economically destabilizing. It seems the sentiment of nationalism is on the rise around the more developed world. Where will this lead us? Though a healthy dose of pride of place and love of home and those close to you is appropriate and helpful to ensure your safety and general well-being, the animosity and competition it can create can be a detriment to the perhaps larger call for each individual and each country to carry a responsibility toward the physical earth as a whole and each and every one of its inhabitants. I love the United States of America, and I feel a kinship with each and every one of its citizens and residents. However, this does not make me feel less responsible for the suffering of Syrian refugees or displaced Haitians or Christian and Muslim rivals in the Central African Republic. It is difficult to imagine a peaceful and productive future populated with insular nations isolating themselves and ignoring the toxic clouds blowing across the Pacific Ocean or the garbage piles adrift in the sea that stretch for hundreds of miles or the inhumane treatment of any citizen of planet earth. We eat tacos on Cinco de Mayo and sushi and pizza and falafel. I would hate to see extreme nationalism leave us all hungry.

The Future of Collective Sadness

I have been having the hardest time writing for the last few weeks. Perhaps it is this idea that our thinking flies off into the cosmos during the spring and into the summer, abandons its domain within the confines of the skull where it can be used somewhat effectively to solve problems and form various observations into coherent arrangements of words and concepts. There is also the matter of the social situation of modern humanity that can be continually blamed for any series of maladies. A colleague said to me today that her doctor told her she was sick because she was carrying the collective sadness of our country. I think many people are still carrying this burden, unsure what to do with it, watching it manifest as anger, illness, depression, hopelessness or some unnamable emotion that slowly morphs from day to day as though intentionally eluding definition. This onslaught from without, this disagreeable sense of otherness and alienation, seems to be part of a world to which the future is asking us to adjust, embrace even. There does not appear to be a slowing of this divisiveness in society, but we can know that there is an other that is feeling a similar dislodged relation to his or her fellow humans on planet earth. All over the planet there are people utterly confused and astounded by the profoundly alien opinions and perspectives of their neighbors, their countrymen, colleagues, clients, family members, lovers. So, how do we sculpt this knotty and gnarled social stump into a useful tool, like a table, or a piece of art, a heron in flight? Again, the call comes to strive with all urgency to perceive from the point of view of that other person, truly attempt to enter their shoes and walk around for a bit. The future seems more and more to be asking us to grow increasingly whole, complex and loving- despite our best efforts to shrink, to simplify, to hate. It is futile and untrue to blame our inability to write on the times or the season. I am the only one who can make the choice to take action, even if it's a blog no one reads. We can't afford to be silent or to become ill; if we are to carry the collective sadness of our brothers and sisters, we have to learn to transform it. Redwood burl displays its struggles and meanderings throughout the course of time, twisted and rough, in its utility and in its beauty.

episode

Imagination Bomb

My country has recently engaged in violent and destructive military action. We dropped several bombs in separate countries against what I understand to be separate enemies. One of the bombs has the enchanting moniker, MOAB, Mother of all Bombs as the news reports tell us. According to Wikipedia, it is actually named GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast and is apparently the most powerful conventional (non-nuclear) bomb ever used in combat. In the Bible, Moab is the place where Moses was buried, and it is said the prosperity and pride of the people of Moab may have incurred the wrath of God. In Utah, Moab is an outdoor sport hotspot, especially for mountain bikers- a stunningly beautiful landscape and a strange haven of around 5,000 people in the midst of a conservative, largely Mormon state. Interesting the names we give things. Isis too, a name laden with mythology. The devoted and magical wife and sister of Osiris, she gathered his remains and brought him back to life after his body was chopped into little pieces and spread around Egypt by his brother. That was a different Isis. There are echoes of the past in these names, in the feuding, in the attempts at domination, but the stakes seem to have increased exponentially. Set, one name for the evil brother of Osiris, did not have the potential to launch a nuclear bomb and eradicate half the earth. Even the wrathful God of the Old Testament did not seem to have such a broad scope of annihilation as the destructive powers of today. So what does this say for the future? It looks bleak, certainly, if these are signs of things to come. I do everything I can to look at the activities of today and search for indications of what the future might bring. In this case, though, I do not see signs of a future full of violence and destruction, but I do see one full of humans in desperate search of meaning, one void of its own mythologies and relevant cosmologies- a world in which imagination, parable and archetype are vague words pointing longingly to a bygone time. It is true, many things seem to under attack in today's world; there seems to be a dizzying array of threats looming in shadowy corners- threats to all things deemed sacred or vital. But the essential shriek echoing from the caverns of tomorrow is from the dying voice of Imagination, freely moving thinking which is the basis of true morality. The new mythology lies in pieces scattered throughout an increasingly virtual world, awaiting its resurrection into buoyant actuality.

Physics of the Future

My son took my hand today and led me down the street. It was the first time he has done this, and the draw of his intent was utterly compelling and absolutely undeniable. I felt pulled by a force unrestricted by muscle, gravity or magnetism. Later, shortly after the sun set, the full moon rose. I thought of its forces acting on the Earth from such a distance, undeniable and compelling. These thoughts drew me toward musings on the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy and to the oracle of Google where I read about the four fundamental interactions in the natural world-- strong force, weak force, gravitational and electromagnetic. The pull from my son's tiny hand and hurrying steps did not seem to be any of them. I am wondering under what classification the interaction related to intention and attention would fall. Or love. Or the feeling you get when speaking to two people after they have been speaking to one another about you. Or when you know someone is lying to you. I've spent years testing many "fundamental interactions" that occur in the social realm and in the non-human world of nature, but I did not know about these classifications. The distinctions are not entirely clear to me, but it seems there is something being left out of the research at the Large Hadron Collider, the 17-mile long tunnel buried deep in the Earth in which humans study the interactions of particles. Something closer to a unified theory may be discoverable, not through formulas or in laboratories and perhaps not verifiable by the current standards of physical science, in the pull of a young child intent on exploration. They supposedly have found that in fact weak force and electromagnetism are different manifestations of the same force-it's called electroweak force. I imagine they will find all the forces to be manifestations of the same power of interaction that begins with a pulsing of will, intent brought into action. The interaction of my son's tiny steps and tiny grip with my attention to his needs created a force immeasurable. We were particles colliding at invisible speeds creating as of yet undiscovered quantities of massless light, only detectable by the ripples left in the wake of its activity. Our walk down the street a demonstration of timeless forces still mysterious to the science of today but an open secret to children and those willing to be drawn by tiny footsteps.

The Future Remembers the Sea

My son is experiencing his first encounters with broad sandy beaches and waves and the salty waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It is clearly a deluge of sensory experiences for the 19 month-old boy. Just walking through the fine white sand could easily take us the greater part of an afternoon. He stops to inspect his toes, the hardly perceptible particles of shell, dune grass, seaweed; he hunches down, stands again, a few steps, the sensations impressed against his plump, pale feet again overwhelm him. This is not to mention the light and heat of the Florida sun in April, the moisture in the air and the wind that carries it and has been driving from the south, the gulf a mess of intersecting waves and white-caps frolicking amidst turquoise vainly trying to remain calm and undulating. Before even reaching the sea, he chases the black rebel-spiked crowns and white bodies of the teams of Royal Terns in mating season, disturbing their attempt to appear regal as they perch on the beach and squawk into the wind, forcing them to take wing and join the black masked Bonaparte's Gulls swooping on the gale. Or he pauses, and stands staring at them, lost in thought or in the timeless moments of pure thoughtless observation. Sometimes while running he falls, tripped up by the seemingly random landscape of countless footsteps in expanses of sand. I imagine his neurology like a fireworks show with trails remaining after the explosions and slowly filling the sky with a finely woven net of light, a proprioceptive melange exciting hormonal cascades the likes of which his little being has never known. Then comes the sea, the rhythmic, crashing, unpredictable dance of waves, the ebb drawing the sand from beneath his feet, nearly drawing his feet from beneath his body. The first day, he would not dare to stand in the water; he spent much of the afternoon in his mother's arms, crying when she braved the waves for a swim without him. On the second day, his bravery grew into a surprising and gallant dash directly into the breaking surf. He stood with the help of his parents with the water caressing his shins, sometimes splashing up to his waist and sending droplets onto his face, eliciting a triumphant squeal of glee as loud and joyous as I have heard his little voice sound. His thrill waxed and waned with the rising and withdrawing of each pulse the waves brought, his body shaking in the excitement. Since this primary encounter, he has been flirting with the shoreline, nonchalantly standing in the surf, earnestly digging his hands into the sand or lying down, his face coated with dusty white particles or running back and forth from the beach to the water, as we, his caretakers, struggle to simultaneously allow for his freedom and his safety in this phantasmagoria of sea and sand. We watch the sunset together, the gulls and terns, children, parents, grandparents; he chases the birds, a small silhouette bounding through the sand against a fiery backdrop of oranges, reds, pinks, colors more expansive than words can contain. The future still gathers to watch the sun descend into the horizon, and we secretly pray it will return to grace our days at the beach and our days in times less full of joy when we need to remember the light of a child in sand and sea and sun.

A Truly Social Future

Today, at the school where I teach, there was a discussion about governance. We are a small school, with perhaps sixteen full-time teachers and staff and a limited group of part-time employees. The school is undergoing a transition, has reached a stage in its development in which it is time to create new forms, new patterns of activity, new modes of organization and accountability. The pedagogical work taking place in the classroom is solid, substantial, relevant and creative. Many of the teachers have years of experience, and all are devoted to their craft of both sharing the content of the curriculum and inspiring the children to fulfill their utmost potential in all facets of life, whether it be social, intellectual, athletic or moral. However, there are many other responsibilities and duties that come with running a successful school. Public schools and well-funded private schools often have a team of administrators to accomplish the day to day tasks, the hiring and firing, the budget considerations, payroll, supplies ordering, record keeping, phone answering, admissions, licensures, insurance... the list goes on and on. Being a school that is neither funded by the government nor endowed with an excess of donated capital, much of the weight of these duties falls on the shoulders of the teachers. Without a healthy model of and participation in governance, this work ends up being tackled by a small group of devoted and incredibly hard-working individuals who, despite their most sincere and tireless efforts, are not able to accomplish all they would like. This is not a new challenge in the realm of organizations, but the solution needs to be new and dynamic. The time calls for it, and it is more important now, perhaps, than it has ever been. In the evening after our discussion at school, a melancholy tinged with anger slowly swelled in me and lingered, gnawing, and I could not quite make sense of this discomfort. Finally, I lay down in my bed, took one of the books from my bedside table, and almost immediately came across this quote from Rudolf Steiner: 

If we allow things to take their course, in the manner in which they have taken their course under the influence of the world-conception which has arisen in the nineteenth century and in the form in which we can understand it, if we allow things to take this course, we shall face the war of all against all, at the end of the twentieth century. No matter what beautiful speeches may be held, no matter how much science may progress, we would inevitably have to face this war of all against all. We would see the gradual development of a type of humanity devoid of every kind of social instinct, but which would talk all the more of social questions.

This was in 1921 and the world-conception of which he speaks is one focused on materialism and intellectualism and devoid of any spiritual understanding. This struck me like a humungous plastic inflatable sledgehammer swung by a bitter teenager with vengeance directed toward me personally. This is why the conversation at school lingered with me in this way. Such opportunities for developing a new, vital and dynamic form of governance for our school are opportunities to impart essential social change within our culture. This is not about who does what job or who stays at school too late or who is the most selfless, this is about creating truly human social forms constructed out of love and service that will be the remedy for our increasingly diseased culture. If there is any trace of truth to the sentiment of Rudolf Steiner, the challenges we are facing in our culture today with its dramatic polarization and enmity between political parties and diverse social, ethnic and religious groups, will continue to increase. Such opportunities to create forums for human beings to interact in freedom, out of a gesture of love and service will become not merely opportunities but absolute necessities. The future is demanding we create; it is demanding we seize upon such a chance to devise a new model of governance for a school not as some administrative task, not a utilitarian exercise, but a highly spiritual act, a creative act imbued with beauty and nobility, one with consequences that can reverberate throughout our culture. The future may be difficult; we may be engaged in a "war of all against all;" but the "all" for which I choose to work is motivated by love, profound empathy and devoted creativity directed toward beauty in all facets of life. These are revolutionary acts in our times--a stroke of color, a subtly shaded curve, a relative minor, a gesture, an inflection, living thinking, an unexpected word. This is an invitation.

We, Nature, Future

So, nature. Somehow, somewhere along the way, the natural world and its resources fell into opposition with economic growth and prosperity. In the present day atmosphere, it seems as though to be a lover of old growth forests, pristine water sources or undisturbed wildlife habitats is to be an enemy of job creation, a stable economy and national security. I sincerely love untrammeled spaces where the forces of life and the mechanisms of geologic forces have been allowed to work with minimal disruptions from human beings. Such spaces seem to provide the conditions for a different type of thinking, a perception of a more harmonious state of being that might be able to serve as a model or at least an inspiration for a healthier society. Such spaces also help provide clean water and air--necessities for human existence. Currently, though, there are many threats to the relatively few remaining environments in which human activity has not drastically altered the conditions for life and the interaction of flora, fauna, mineral, air, water and warmth. This is not to say that humans are not natural. Indeed, we most certainly are a part of the natural world, no matter how hard we try to mechanize it, to manipulate it, to utilize it to the perceived advantage of our species. This is where I find myself questioning my devotion to these pristine spaces. As I continue my endeavors to truly understand the thinking and feelings of my fellow human beings, particularly those with whom I least agree, I strive to understand how we can continue to alter the earth and her atmosphere to such a degree in the name of what I understand to be economic well being. If we continue in our search for and seizure of coal, oil, natural gas, rare earth minerals and water, and if we continue to create radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, and if we continue to cut down forests for lumber or cattle or palm oil--all of which generate capital and create jobs--what will the world look like? I ask this question in earnest. The human race has been in a fast-forward, hard-driving. planet-dominating quest for quite some time now. We have not stopped our development as a species. We continue to invent and explore, to consume and reproduce. Our current path may lead us to a mechanized society with little of nature as we currently understand it left to observe or utilize, an earth where air and water are cleaned by machines rather than rainforests and layers of earth, where the only animals are pets, where temperature is controlled by satellites and gigantic phase changes of hydrochlorofluorocarbons. Perhaps this is the direction in which our culture needs to progress. Perhaps those, like me, who cling to the forms of the natural world that have persisted for thousands of years are the ones who are actually holding up the development of humanity towards its ultimate potential. This is the direction my thinking takes when trying to empathize with those who claim economic necessity for the alteration of the earth and expansive use of her resources. It is difficult for me to imagine these people-- many of whom are clearly intelligent, have the capacity to follow thoughts to a productive and clear conclusion and who certainly are able to grasp and conceive a broad and long term view of consequences for actions--see any other outcome. I am doing all I can to understand these world-views, these economic necessities and take strides to help bridge the gulf of belief and perspective in our current culture, though, I must admit, I am tempted to go sit next to the shimmering mirror of a high mountain lake or upon the sands of a lonely, cold and windswept ocean beach and spend time with an old friend before she's changed forever and we no longer recognize one another for what we once were.

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