It's a game, all of this. Putting together words, images, language, code, symbolic communication. Exercising this muscle requires regular exercise. So here we go. Playfully, with abandon.
Thought can go many directions. So I sip coffee, and consider that my favorite form is the story, and the only story I know how to tell effectively is one I have experienced myself.
A lazy Sunday morning at my favorite coffee shop, sipping, sipping, playing with gimp plugins as the electricity begins to flow.
It is late summer, a time to relish the warmth before it leaves us once more for the southern hemisphere; winter is coming. All around, as a culture, as a people, we seem to be confronting a similar fate as the mythological Starks.
Then I stop and go, "What the hell am I talking about?" What the hell is anybody talking about? Telling stories, making it up as we go? Our fate becomes the product of our words, as we live the reality we have created out of these mental constructions.
Who's going to win the Presidential election, and what does it mean? Who gives a shit anymore? Why give that horror show of mass disempowerment any more of our precious mental energy than necessary? Of course we are well advised to be aware and take measures to protect ourselves in whatever ways we are able from the incursions of the state upon our natural rights as living beings, regardless of who is at the top of the pyramid. How such self-liberation is best accomplished becomes a matter of personal priorities, along with collective will.
So, what's my story? Dancing on life's playground?
Well, yeah, actually...
During various phases of life, I have found myself going to dance at the club regularly at least once or twice a week, especially when there's good electronic music happening at a local venue. Lately, this year, even during times when I've happened to be hanging out around town, I haven't attended so often. Been more in a solitary introverted mode for most of this summer. But last week, I found myself returning to the weekly electronic music night known around here as "Milkcrate Wednesday" at the Palace Lounge.
The only person I recognized was the event organizer, who I had met in the past on a few occassions, and while I don't know him well, he has always been friendly to me. "Welcome home!" He greeted me warmly.
I danced away all the tension and anxiety, as the dj mixed up some world-tilting vibrations and the colored lights flashed. This is where I remember, where I find myself again.
I return to the car for a few hours of rest, to awaken with the daylight.
"Back to work."
"No!" my mind and body rebel. Not ready for that again. Would rather create spontaneous, living experiences, turn them into stories, become fully immersed in the art of living.
But remembering also my goals of manifesting a kitchen, better food, a warm place to rest during winter, and more abundant living in general, and also knowing that people who have helped me are depending on me to complete a project already in progress, I relented. Eventually. Returning to the task of business.
It wasn't so bad. Work well suited to my skills. In order to focus mentally and get things done, the brain had to suspend all other imperatives. After a while at it, consciousness switches into pure "work mode", which tends to be good for getting things done.
Afterwards, the mind is blank, cycling and recycling in and out of awarness. The body might wander aimlessly, or it might go to sleep.
Awakened once more by the sight of true poverty in open daylight, as the ill, elderly, and disabled, having been evicted from their once affordable housing to pave the way for more bourgeois hotels, are now relegated to the sidewalks like pieces of litter. Influential downtown business associations have tried making noise to the local government, usually framed in terms of "cleaning up downtown", resulting in prohibitions on sitting or laying down within a certain number of feet of business entrances, panhandling restrictions, anti-"camping" ordinances, and other such authoritarian measures. All it does is give more for reasons for law enforcement offers to justify harassment and ticketing of local homeless people and wandering rainbow family nomads. These things do nothing to address the underlying causes of gentrification, particularly in the context of a society where wealth and power has been allocated in such a disproportionate manner that the greed of those at the top would leave the weakest and poorest with literally nothing at all. Not even a place to rest.
So what can I do about any of this? At this point, just the act of keeping myself alive and semi-sane as a wandering fool, a ghost in this strange machine, seems paramount. Then writing disjointed little anecdotes about it all, turning this maze of nonsense into something resembling a narrative.
But now, having powered back up on coffee and electric vibrations, I find myself ready to return to the lingering and precious warmth of summer sunshine, to see what else fate may show me, in gladness for each day that I am able to keep living in such a lovely place, even with all its madness and suffering, there a few spots where wildness still lives...
