Days can be challenging. Overwhelm and frustration can pile up, grief and despair erode comfort and hope, entropy churns on. At a certain point, as Friday afternoon approaches, there can be a rush to wrap up and a yearning for relief. This is a time-based technology of the work week. There is also the Jewish time-tradition of Shabbat that invites relief. It is a merciful offering – to rest, to put down your burdens. It is also a mighty discernment: the work is over, it cannot proceed.
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THE NEXT BREATH: a Memento Mori for Sobriety
Are you ready?
To receive
To be response able
Not to be taken for granted
Aspired aspirations, who knows the world to come?
The cats are ready
Calm like they’re waiting
Careful like they’re knowing
Unknowing,
Steady, ready for what’s next
What’s one’s life like? Breathing
Something low and guttural
Something sharp and high pitched
A rough and chaotic trough
A flat and orderly sequence of peaks, plateaus
An enrichment and spreading (inhale)
An exhaustion and discard (exhale)
The discard, one’s life
Food for branching trees
Forestablishing what’s next
Where will the waves go?
Where will the ripples flow?
For a brief time one holds then passes or drops the ball
The ball passes on to the next
Through the next
The ball goes and leaves another
Lost, rediscovered
The ball hits the next, bounces, finds an other
Each ball a single note in a grand Song
Forming Family, in the greatest sense
Are you ready?
For the next breath,
What’s next?
Now,
Is it savoring?
Is it stewarding?
Forestablishingalivablefuturity
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AND FOR MY LAST ACT
What if this was my final act?
This moment, this action
What’s happening at this breath?
Reading this post?
Well, at least you’re not listening to an Exxon advertisement
If that is the kind of thing you’re exposed to
How we spend our time is affected by the systems around us
Where we are, when we are, much of that beyond us
Under the stars
Here now
Spinning mightily on this big beautiful blue planet
Evolving alongside fellow lifeforms,
It does appear we have some choices within our purview
For if this was my final act,
It was I who chose to be typing at this moment, isn’t it?
Chose in that it arose in my clothes and genes and experiences
And it will be I who lives with, and ends with, that moment
Each moment a new beginning, potentially
Moment to moment
To momentum and beyond
(What’s the best next step?)
(What’s the f(x)?)
With love
What if this was my final act?
Practicing qi’gong, East or West
Perhaps singing a song
Or listening
~ ~ ~
שְׁמַע
~ ~ ~
Taking It All In
One Self
Actualizing
Actual I’s in the vicinity of
Temple
Peace, peace, peace, One Love
Will Today
Will today be repeated, relived, endlessly as in Nietzsche’s eternal reoccurrence?
Or will today be a last, a final day, bursting with meaning as if facing death (or not) at dawn, as in Dostoyevsky’s story?
…
Either way, today one’s present self is the most able accomplice for the wellbeing of one’s future self.
“Whatchya gonna do today?”
Time is of the essence. A few practices seem rarely wasteful, whether one has lots or little time: meditation, physical fitness, when in doubt tidying up.
With this precious gift – these fleeting grains of time we are given generously and with no certainty – how can we reciprocate?
No doubt we can spread our time too thin, there’s only so many…
Or we can squander time, “casting pearls to swine” (or attension to IT)
May we cultivate
Gardens, discernment, and peace
Balance and gratitude, to apply our times treasures and talents
Forestablishingaliveablefuturity
Sol dialed: remembering mortality with grave stones and grave stories of near death
A friend shared a beautiful tombstone with a sundial and it served as a prompt to remember death. The sundial “says to those of us above ground: this is the “last hour to many – possibly to you”. What would you do if this was your last hour, day, week, month or year? Hour/day seems easier to conceive of. Nice to have a little advance notice and time to think about it eh. Just shooting the breeze a little… Maybe phone up loved ones, tell em what they need to hear good and bad, and make them brave. Whatever one is generally too chicken to do/say. Chickens are almost certainly less cowardly than most humans. Go out in the street/digital town square and loudly try and share whatever seem like the best ideas you learned in this life for this struggling humanity to find joy in one another and the earth; good luck guys. If it’s a whole year obviously stop as much as possible doing anything that isn’t EXACTLY what you want to be doing; differentiating one’s existence as a part of creation from any limited or misjudged human notions of what one should do...”
And to that I replied:
Thanks for this important message. Wise words. The idea that the goal before dying is to find the best ways to give everything away – that hits home.
A year? Probably adding to the list, write a book of aphorisms/wisdoms/educational autobiography and share it most goodly.
A day? For sure say hey to my loved ones and homies. Deuces
An hour? Oh there’d be hard feelings. Hugs and squeezes. A note of the nearly dead. Some sort of meditating to tune the star ship.
I had a few near death experiences, one intense one when on a trip with the professor I think we met via. Homeboy [WW] swam and saved my life, but for some time I didn’t think I’d be saved, as I was facing death in a slow but fast way. Slow enough to notice, fast enough not to tell a soul, as I got dragged further and further away by rip current at a remote coast on the Pacific. I tried all the things to remedy the situation. And then I tired. Wave after wave, it’s daunting, nature is so vast and exhausting, its flows so relentless and big. What would I do if I had moments left to live? I’d sorrow for the suddenness and shock with which I’d hit the hearts of those who’d miss me. I’d long to tell some folks my heart, mainly just that I love them dearly. I’d take deep comfort in knowing who already knows that love and it needs not saying. I felt no concern about stuff or unfinished projects, beyond the impact it’d have on those I loved.
It comes down to relationships. And the preciousness of breath.
Breathe easy frend
Jovial present potential
“There is no limit to what one can do who does not care who gains the credit for it.“
via https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/21/doing-good-selfless/
“All the Power that ever was or will be is here now.“
via https://bota.org/resources/index.html
There is immense possibility in the present. Ultimately we are guided by a mixture of drives and inner voices, and what we are capable of is greatly expanded by the consciousness of limitlessness and wholeness. May oneself be guided by love of oneself and one another, and by the light and life that calls up. “Peace, peace, peace, One Love”
Northeastern Indigenous Agroforestry
Thanks first peoples for simply living so that others may simply live. Thanks Jono Neiger for sharing this 1984 paper on indigenous agroforestry to the Northeast Permaculture Listserv.
Some Ecological Aspects of
Northeastern American Indian Agroforestry Practices
This paper was written in 1984 while I was a student of Professor Arthur Lieberman at Cornell University. Professor Lieberman was then Director of the Cornell Tree Crops Research Project and taught landscape ecology in the Department of Landscape Architecture. This version was submitted to the international journal Agroforestry Systems in 1988, but never published there due to its length. A somewhat condensed version was later published in the 1994 Annual Report of the Northern Nut Growers Association (Volume 85). For a broader perspective on Native Americans’ land management practices, see this online article by Doug MacCleery.
http://www.daviesand.com/Papers/Tree_Crops/Indian_Agroforestry/
Growing love of hazels
These relatives of birch, ancient and awesomely rugged, adding golden bark and kindling salvation to tree lines around the world
These shrubs with long flexible bows
These fruits from charming hot pink flowers that greet the spring and stay
These nuts that come in energy-dense compostable packaging, shelf-stable for years, made by arboreal solar panels
These nuts that are easy to eat raw and one of the healthiest snacks I have
These nuts that are even tastier roasted; simply apply fire and enjoy a sweet, earthy, ancient gastronomic ally
These branches, that have been warmth in peaceful and desperate times
These branches, that have been homes in peaceful and desperate times
These branches, that have been the crux of countless wooden items
These gifts, that have come from ancient hedges, woven into the fabric of lives over time
These gifts, that host the humans and other kin, who enjoy them and who need them
These gifts, that can make the giver better as they enrich the recipient, when given and received in good relations
Ancient hazels, though we face harshly changing times,
Your past and present company comforts me, knowing you have helped my ancestors through ice ages and then some
And so, knowing we work together even where we are not in touch,
I wish peace upon you, and I love that in that, peace may be upon me too.
World eater, world propagator
Dichotomies
conventional & organic
degenerative & regenerative
degrading & restoring
I like the last pair because they feel difficult to green wash. Take any feature that is necessary for the systems that support us, and see if it is being restored/enhanced, or if it is being degraded. Water quality. Soil fertility. Biodiversity.
Alas, if there is a will there is a way, and all of these terms will be “greenwashed” to some extent, making environmentally degrading acts seem restorative.
And by what means is the greenwashing motivated and manifest? Who done it? Some words commonly attributed to the complex system in question, which degrades essential qualities while feigning friend of fundamentals:
The man
The system
Capitalism
Neoliberalism
Globalism
...
These terms too are not perfect. Each has assumptions and complexities, they lack precision and can be tricky. Then I read something which shared a term so precise, so empirical, it could not be misconstrued or exploited:
The cosmophagous world: that world which devours all other worlds to feed itself.
cosmo-
From Ancient Greek κόσμος (kósmos, “universe”).
-phagous
From Latin -phagus, from Ancient Greek φάγος (phágos, “glutton”), from φαγεῖν (phageîn, “to eat”).
And what is the alternative to devouring other worlds? To multiply, to propagate, to support many worlds. Consider, as you go about the polarized and dissonant world, whether this dichotomy fits: some ways grow themselves by devouring other worlds, while other ways grow all by propagating many worlds.
I think of this as I visit small farms and see the countless worlds that are hosted there: the worlds of the orchard and of the pasture, the worlds of the meadow flowers and of the insect colonies which enjoy them, the worlds of the varieties of people who are part of the community affected by the small farm, and the worlds of the countless communities which have other small farms of their own.
That world catalyzation is a stark contrast to the vast monocrops, moonscapes, and mines producing homogenized ways of life, wherein one world grows larger while the others are whittled away.
May this be a high-level guideline, leading us toward Earthbound mutualism rather than parasitism.
I end with an excerpt from the text that introduced me to this concept of cosmophagy, and with a wish that you will celebrate and support the many worlds we coexist in as One.
Power is inseparable from the capacity to be affected. We find potentialities in our shared sensitivity: that sense of urgency that pushes us to seek new ways of living — to want to change this world; that feeling of belonging that pushes us to act, and likewise to risk everything. How can we unleash these potentials? The paths suggested by the existing order — call it what you will, Empire, capitalism, colonial modernity, white supremacy, the cosmophagous world — aim to capture the affects that make life worth living.
Neither sinners, nor victims: we inhabit climate change. We see that this period of disillusionment with centuries of misdirection is also one of infinite potential. Each of us have within us the remote possibility of stemming the tide of the catastrophe. By organizing pessimism, the fundamental affect of the times, and giving it a creative consistency, we can hope to bring about other worlds. But first, it is essential to make a break with this one. We did not choose to be thrown into a world that seems doomed to its own destruction, but we can decide to continue it or break free from it.
via “Re-Attachments: Toward an Ecology of Presence” by Dispositions Collective (2021 Jan 29) @ https://illwill.com/re-attachments
Visions of Love, Gardening with Theurgy: An Imaginative Practice to Empower Plants
Plants are people that participate in our world in wondrous, mutualistic ways. Plants serve as the foundation of our human lives, in so many ways, grown by Solar rays of a very high Source. Plants bridge us and the Sun. How can we serve plants? A mystical practice, known as a type of theurgy, is one way to empower plants to give greater gifts as they go forth in life, using the power of human mind to imagine and visualize colors and light.
Definitions of theurgy tend to be vaguely described, as hints of it seep out from the mysticism of various traditions. Definitions often include compelling or querying supernatural beings and deities. I offer this definition based on my learnings and experiences on alchemy:
Theurgy is the mental animating of matter, so to bring out more of matter’s inherent qualities and potential capacities, without imposing a state or process on the matter that is not in harmony with its nature and natural laws of cause and effect [1].
There could be a lot to unpack here, but I will leave that to your own inner and outer inquiries. I raise this work to share an ecological application of it. Based in imagination, it is the use of visualization and color to enliven objects with their vital three-part nature.
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