Faraway, So Close: Barack in Berlin

My Berlin peeps were excited; even my mother said she wished she could go hear him.

And he spoke eloquently. “The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.” Yes.

But I didn’t love his speech. Did the Berliners love it? The video I watched stuck with a close shot of his face for all 25+ minutes, so I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them, when they stayed silent, and when they erupted into applause (at: we will finally end this war in Iraq and at: no more nuclear weapons and at: my country must take climate as seriously as you have here and at: the world is more interconnected than it ever has been).

And I found myself wondering whom this speech was geared towards. I found it… not quite in touch with the Berlin and the Germany I know.

The speechwriters clearly held the romantic notion (not uncommon among USAmericans) that Die Wende—the reunification of Germany—is a source of pure pride and joy for Germans. But in my experience it’s a fraught issue, with a good number of Wessies still upset at the drain on their resources and lowered quality of life, and a lot of Ossies missing the ideals and sometimes even the realities, of communist days. Meanwhile, many of the students in that crowd of 250,000 weren’t walking, talking, or even born when the Wall fell.

So Obama crescendoed with the glorious defeat of communism, the victory of capitalism and democracy… but the Berliners cheered far more heartily at the mention of the downfall of apartheid in South Africa.

And his opening, about the Airlift (about which I blogged a while back)… this story showcases the graciousness of the United States, taking pity on the starving people of Berlin despite the atrocities of the recently-concluded war.

What was he trying to accomplish with it? You better remember that we saved your asses? Or…remember once upon a time when we were a force for good?

I would have made the Airlift part of a resounding conclusion, to call America back to the magnanimous spirit of yore.

Yes, the historical stuff all felt a bit off—down to the mention of the Victory Column behind him as a symbol of…victory… when really, don’t we all associate the Golden Else (as Berliners refer to her), with Wim’s angels?? I think the Wings of Desire would have been a far stronger reference point than wars and victories, myself.

We Made History—and the News

Just back from a conference on the environment. Sort of.

This was like no green event I’ve attended, and I’ve been to my fair share of them: the sprawling Green Festivals, brainy Bioneers, well-intentioned SVN sustainable business gatherings, crunchy Harmony Festivals…Burning Man 007…

So what made it different?

Well, for starters, it took place in Memphis, Tennessee, not California or upstate New York.

And it didn’t have “green” or “sustainable” in its name. It was called The Dream Reborn.

And we didn’t get eco-bags stuffed full of flyers and “eco-friendly” trinkets that got dumped into hotel trashcans.

There was gospel singing, and praise for God. Mmn-hmm. Let me hear you say it now.*

And, get this: Global warming—and scary statistics about ice melts, water levels, storm forces, disease vectors and endangered species—were hardly mentioned.

And: thank the gods!—there was hardly a pair of Teva’s to be seen. Instead, people had style.

It wasn’t the typical green event crowd. The ratio was perhaps 1:6 whites to people of color. We Euro-Americans were a few raw nuts folded in a rich brown batter.

And the speakers? There was no Al, Arnold, or Amory. Neither the James** nor the Julias*** made appearances. No one from the covers of green Vanity Fairs was given top billing.

The participants didn’t even identify as “environmentalists,” just as ordinary people who drink water, eat food, and breathe air.

Come to think of it, “conference” felt like the wrong word, though the event took place at the Convention Center, and there were plenaries and workshops and fancy receptions, and everyone had badges hanging around their necks.

As one fine speaker said, it was more like a family reunion, where you can sit down with any given perfect stranger, and after a few moments of talking, discover how you’re connected, and experience that eerie recognition of the traits you have in common.

So what WAS this thing?

The Dream Reborn, held on the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, marked the launch of the U.S. civil rights and human rights movement of the 21st century.

The new Dream: to engage those people lacking dignified jobs in work that heals the planet and that not only creates a pathway out of poverty, but leads to The Good Life, the American Dream.

Because it’s going to take a significant amount of work (and sacrifice!, on the part of some of us—but that’s another conference… and mostly for a different crowd) for us to pull back from the brink of catastrophic climate change. And there are lots of people in this country, poor brown and black ones in particular, who really need and want work that they can feel good about.

At the end of an intensely productive day sharing strategies and models and diagrams and messaging and leverage points and technical assistance and business cards…, when the Hot 8 Brass Band of New Orleans rolled in, some half of the thousand of us kicked up our heels and clapped and snapped and snaked and ground and clowned around…and when our procession left the Convention Center for the streets, the sheen of our smiles lit the night, and our chant “GREEN FOR ALL! GREEN FOR ALL!,” it carried.

It’s carrying still.

..

.. ..

*Note: I do believe that there is a powerful, beautiful and creative force greater than myself that includes myself.

**Hansen, Lovelock

***Roberts, Butterfly

the planet, the people too

Where I’m headed next weekend.

mayacamas ranch

Shouting out & Appreciating my host in Calistoga last weekend.

I lost something–maybe on
a half-light hike…
in a scruffy tuft of sage
or in an ochre artery
in the beds of rock?
Maybe I dropped it
for raptors to capture,
or in the chatter
where two creeks converge?
Maybe it got caught
by the spiderwebs of spanish moss
or smooth red-skinned madrones?
Or was snapped up
by a flapping goose,
honking in happy pride?
In any case, I lost my heart,
which at the time was full.
Please advise if found.

The Last of It

I have taken a certain amount of pride in being tatless. Nearly one in four U.S. adults between 18 and 50 has one or more tattoos, according to the American Academy of Dermatology. Among my age group I’m certain it’s distinctly over half, since we were in our impressionable late teens and 20s during the tattoo boom of the 90s.

Nowadays it’s tattoo removal that’s hot, a procedure that’s costlier and more involved—although apparently recent developments have improved its effectiveness.

Infamously, there’s Johnny Depp’s “Wino Forever,” which—before its retooling— commemorated his romance with the Petaluma-born Ms. Ryder, of shoplifting fame. (Vanessa Paradis and France: well done.)

I took pride in being tatless not because I dislike tattoos—many people I love wear beautiful ones… I think of M’s Escherlike wreath of cranes, birdclan member B’s saturated wings, the red star on S’s wrist, and the blacklight-reflective cuttlefish wrapped around B’s thigh and torso… And of course tats are no pet rocks—for thousands of years before the 1990s people have been adorning and marking their bodies with ink.

But I felt proud just cuz I hadn’t ever felt compelled to get one to get one, and was here, distinctly past the halfway mark of this first decade in the new millennium, as a 30-something with a trampstampless and butterflyfree body.

And then somebody did something nasty to me, which left a small scar about the size of a nickel. After regaining my balance in the wake of that experience, I decided I wanted a tattoo to cover the scar. Something that would remind me of my beautiful transformation.

I was drawn to science and mathematics, to symbols, then to sacred geometry. An intricate geometric figure with mystical meanings spoke to me. I changed the wallpaper on my laptop to the figure so I could stare at it every day for months and imagine it on me.

I had made up my mind. I started asking folks where they got work done. And then out of the blue my tatless friend Caroline told me she was getting a tattoo to honor a heroic rescue operation her brother had been part of. She had a solid recommendation for an artist.

Both of us went in for a consultation with the dude—Scott at Black Heart Tattoo. When he saw my drawing, and the area where it was headed, Scott shook his head and sent me to Mike. To the drawing, Mike said no problem. When he heard I was a virgin and saw where I wanted it, though, he raised his eyebrows. We set a date anyway.

About five hours ago I was lying under a bright light and his steady gloved hands, getting zapped with ink over an area about the size of a hockey puck. I couldn’t really see him working. I had to Just Trust that he would get the fiddly pattern right.

Caroline sat by my side. Just one spot was especially sensitive, and hurt more. Caroline squeezed my hand and said “that was the scar.” I think she also said “that was the last of it,” but I can’t be certain, since I was under the influence of a little something I’d had for the pain, and amped from the endorphins that my besieged body was releasing.

Mike did a brilliant job. I’m thrilled. Mine, this body. I’ve marked it as such.

FutureFuel Reads The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, by Thom Hartmann

Anthropology, philosophy, spirituality, ecology… Where does this book get filed? The keyword on the upper left corner of the back cover says Current Affairs. I guess those are current affairs; I guess it’s high time they were.

I actually bought this book after hearing Hartmann speak at Bioneers in 2006, impressed by his reasoned (intellectual) and grounded (spiritual/emotional) presence on stage. But I never got around to cracking it until I realized it might inform my current researches for Van Jones’ book on Green Collar Jobs.

Hartmann’s first goal is to explain how humanity exceeded natural carrying capacity on earth. For most of human existence, alongside every other living creature, we lived off what he calls “current local sunlight,” the amount of sun that hit the earth and got stored in plants, which fed the herbivores, which in turn fed the carnivores. Human shelter and clothing were derived from plants and animal parts too, and thus also from sunlight.

Population densities stabilized at the level which local sunlight could sustain, growing slightly when we developed herding and farming practices, which more efficiently converted sunlight into food.

Then we discovered what he calls “ancient sunlight:” coal, a material derived from plants that had stored sunlight for hundreds of millions of years. As coal replaced wood as a main source of heat, forests in turn could be cleared for food production, and global population jumped: from 500 million people around 1000 A.D. to one billion in 1800. And then we discovered another form of ancient sunlight: oil.

So while it took us 200,000 years to produce our first billion people, with the discovery of oil, it took just 130 years for our second billion, and a paltry 30 years for our third billion. Then, leveling off from exponentials into more linear growth—14 more years until we hit 4 billion, 13 more years to 5 billion, and 12 additional years to hit 6 billion in 1999. And growing.

And now there’s almost no more ancient sunlight left. Experts differ on the exact amounts remaining, but everyone is clear we’ll be totally OUT within the next 40-60ish years at current rates of usage– and increased use is predicted. Since demand and population is still growing, and since even our alterative energy technologies require oil (to produce photovoltaic cells, for example), and since we’re running out of all sorts of other things (water, metals, trees) we obviously need to Get Smart now.

Then Hartmann switches tacks entirely, in order to introduce us to the people who may hold the answer to effective resource management: the Older Cultures, such as the San, Kogi, Ik, Kayapo. He spends a lot of time debunking our Younger Culture’s prevailing narratives about these primitive peoples, and questioning our Younger/Dominant Cultural values. What is enough? What is wealth? What is growth? Who really attains leisure or contentment? Whose culture is deeper?

There are so many gems in this book that my copy is riddled with dog-eared pages, underlined passages, asterisks and exclamation points. There are far too many to convey here, so I’m just going to ask very nicely—maybe even beg you—to read the book yourself, and believe what he conveys about transformation rippling from the individual to the community to the global level, and how individual acts of grace, generosity, and gratitude can change humanity’s trajectory.

It’s Summer in the Underworld

As an adult I’ve liked the queerness of Halloween, the flamboyance and the facepaints, but there’s always been a shallowness to the occasion. It wasn’t that different than just about any weekend night in the Castro.

But this year I was invited to perform in a ritual for the pagan holiday Samhain, which takes place at this time, midway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, at the end of the harvest season. Many people consider it the Celtic New Year; it launches the dark half of the year, which ends with the feast of Beltane on May 1.

The ancient Celts—and today’s pagans—believe(d) that beginnings happen in darkness, just as we’re carried in the darkness of the womb before being born. All things have their origins in the dark, fertile and irrational underworld; seeds lie buried underground in what seems to be death but is in fact a precursor to springing to life and ultimately bearing fruit.

On Samhain, the veil between this chaotic primordial Underworld and the world of the living is at its thinnest, so we can reach out and connect with the spirits. Renewing social ties with the dead ensures a safe, fruitful future. The structures of the old year/life are ritually dissolved—just as death dissolves our identity in this world—through bonfires and acts of social disorder, especially related to social rank or gender-appropriate behavior. Cross-dressing was traditionally one of the most widespread and popular ways of expressing the snubbing of social categories.

In the Bay Area some pagans celebrate the occasion with a huge ritual called the Spiral Dance. Despite my utter unfamiliarity with it, they invited me to take a small role—to invoke South, the direction of fire and eros, with a solo hoopdance performance. I happened to have just finished a red and orange costume, layers of glittery material, ornate brocades and silks, and bootcovers of red fur. If you believe in coincidence or destiny or Intendedness, it was that; as far as I’m concerned, the hours I spent pinning and sewing brought the dance upon me. These days I avidly believe in my powers to manifest opportunities for myself.

It was only afterwards that I realized I’ve never really done a solo performance before, under spotlights and the riveted gaze of half a thousand people, with no other hoopers to share the attention. The cheering, whistling crowd reached out their arms to me as I whirled and leapt with Christabel’s small psi hoop (no real flames were allowed in the venue). I was fire, people told me after my dance. Towards the end of the ritual, after the long guided meditation that led us all to the Otherworld to commune with those who are no longer in the human world (I dedicated the night to my father) and then back again, everyone in the hall linked hands and danced together as one entity. The long long line of us spiraled and curved back on itself, chanting one verse over and over and over again, our intention to renew the earth:

Let it begin with each step with take
And let it begin with each change we make
And let it begin with each chain we break
And let it begin every time we awake.

Dropping into the glowing eyes of hundreds of dancers who swirled past me and spoke these words, I felt hope coursing through us, me. Maybe we can transform the earth yet.

Back from the Future

I buy the New York Times at Booksmith, laughing at the financial transaction (with tax, I surrender five of these greengray paper dollars and forty nine cents comprised of silver and copper coins). Do you have glitter on your arms? The cashier asks me. I have glitter all over my body, I respond, and laugh maniacally.

I buy ciao bella lemon sherbet for breakfast. And Kombucha. Pulled from frozen and refrigerated cases, respectively, from behind doors fogged with the cold. Can you say miracle? I hand over more dollars and the man behind that counter says he likes my necklaces, tooth and claw hanging around my survivor of a neck. I thank him, vacant.

I read the paper over spoonfuls of sorbet, with a spoon I pull from an entire drawer full of gleaming silverware in the kitchen. So many drawers filled with so many clean and purposeful objects. On the second page of the paper I am drawn to what they’ve taken time and space to Correct for the Record. It describes how a picture caption from last week’s fashion magazine had included misinformation about one of the garments—it was a cashmere sweater, not a long-sleeve T-shirt, and costs as many dollars as there are days in the year, instead of $965. I split my sides laughing, I spit sherbet down my dress in driblets, kombucha spills from the pooch of my cheeks.

Everything’s ridiculou, opulent, unnecessary.

I got home around 8:30 last night. I turned on every light in the flat. Then off, then on again. I got into the shower. The water trundled dutifully out to greet me, beat patterns down on my skin and the tub’s floor. It grew a little too cool for my sun addicted skin, so I nudged the dial leftwards towards hot, and the water responded immediately, like the best lover in the world. I had to sit down I felt so overwhelmed.

Thank you, water, I say. Oh my gods, thank you. Thank you for this abundance, and responsiveness and presence.

I let the water run on and I look up at the lights shining on and I inhale tea tree oil shampoo and I watch the playa dust washing down the drain, that complex system of tubes and turns and tunnels I never think of, and I’m whispering thank you, thank you.

Divine free wet secrets,

or, how I love Mark Morford.

See http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/a/2007/07/25/notes072507.DTL for today’s prickly column about the chaos of love & relationships.

Also from him, from a while back, one of the most inspiring things I read in the past decade. He calls it a “spiritual perspective frappé”:

1. Choose not to believe much of the disinformation spinning forth from the White House at this time. Look at Donald Rumsfeld’s shockingly beady and pitch-black eyes and realize this man, these people, they are deeply convoluted and power blinded and do not have your best interests at heart.

2. Choose, furthermore, not to believe the world is really full of these vile power-mad slugs and lizards and prevaricators and fools and Rumsfelds. Stop thinking this is all there is, war and suffering and apparently very pale and egomaniacal and spiritless men running the world into the ground.

Realize that for every ongoing war and religious outrage and environmental devastation and bogus Iraqi attack plan, there are a thousand counterbalancing acts of staggering generosity and humanity and art and beauty happening all over the world, right now, on a breathtaking scale, from flower box to cathedral.

3. Resist the great surges toward nihilism about the media, in seeing them all as either a bunch of depressing snickering pansy-assed gol-dang liberal scum or corporate-controlled sensationalistic J-school lackeys all parroting the same old pro-Shrub war stories and beating the same thudding pro-violence drum.

Seek out nuance and counterargument and subtle irony and contrarianism and balance and perspective. Realize it’s never as one-sided as they want you to believe. Read more outside your normal box of viewpoints and interests. Find out for yourself.

4. Remember the world does not consist of simpleminded and reductive good/evil polarities, but, rather, is a living organism, interconnected and breathing and dying and renewing in constant flux, religions interflowing, beliefs inbreeding, crammed full of ecstatically bejeweled people who are just as contradictory and confused and gorgeous and kaleidoscopic and baffled and sleepy and horny and lost and desperately craving of juicy unfiltered spiritual nourishment as you are, in this very moment, as you read these words.

5. Resist the temptation to drown in fatalism, to shake your head and sigh and just throw in the karmic towel and head for the mountains with a case of Grey Goose and a box of Scharffenberger chocolates and the entire DeLillo collection and “Baraka” on DVD. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.

And instead you can more fully engage, openly celebrate and share the items you happen to love — vodka, chocolate or otherwise — as tools of knowledge and power and luscious imbibing of life, throw them right smack in the face of all the Ashcroftian scowling and limpness, upping the vibration instead of merely enduring it, thus countering the urgent federal mandate to please live in a constant state of shuddering obedient paranoia and fear.

6. Realize the divine is not quite what you think it might be, that old methods of imploring, say, a cantankerous bearded patriarchal figure to please please please let you win the lottery and help you have better orgasms and oh yes smite your enemies might be a bit antiquated and prohibitive and just slightly lacking in vital ancient sordid chthonic feminine power.

Realize, further, that it is just these very outmoded and fervid mind-sets that are fueling a great many current hatreds and arming a great many warheads, and that maybe, just maybe, blind devouring adherence to any narrow doctrine — Christian, Muslim, Jew — is potentially fatal to the soul, bad for the skin and also just no fun at all.

7. Change the way you pray. Choose to believe in true orgiastic, energetic, self-realized divinity inside the self and emanating out, as opposed to an angry vengeful righteous God out there, one who demands that everyone must pay and suffer and kill and die, in His name, same as it ever was.

After all, it is your intention that sends the energy into play, that directly affects the world, every single person and every single soul, and your hate and fear and self-righteous belief does nothing to up the patriotism not just for country but for the entire planet. You have so much power. More than you know.

8. Realize that this is the perfect moment to change the energy of the world, to step right up and crank your personal volume, right when it all seems dark and bitter and offensive and acrimonious and conflicted and bilious, right when the snakes and pit vipers and squinting finger-pointing cowboy wanna-bes are all distracted — there’s your opening.

9. Remember magic.

10. And, finally, believe you are a part of a groundswell, a resistance, a seemingly small but actually very, very large impending karmic overhaul, a great shift, the beginning of something important and potent and unstoppable. You can breathe like this is the most lucid thing there is to believe. You can walk down the street like you are full of divine free wet secrets.