I Don’t Know

Conversations with Todd

so you wanna talk some more about solutions and responses

It was 5:30 AM. Still dark outside but I couldn’t sleep. I headed downstairs and started a fire. My laptop was pulsing in the darkness and I walked over to wake it up. Todd’s sticky greeted me. I sat down and read it.

“I don’t know,” I typed. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I stopped.

you dont know how come you dont know arent you going to write up part two of that last blog you called… uh… respondee vu… responze sil… shit dude my french sucks

I reached out to type a response and found that I didn’t have one. I sat back and thought for a moment, then reached out again. And again I stopped. I didn’t know what to say except that I don’t know what to say. Finally, not knowing what to say, I said this: “I don’t know what to say, Todd. I just don’t know.”

you dont seem yourself today dude

I sighed. “Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

I dont follow you

“Well… I mean… isn’t that the point of all this: to find some way into a new way of being on the planet? Don’t I have to stop being who I was?”

Todd thought about that a bit. I can always tell when he’s thinking: he tosses a sticky up, but then doesn’t write anything. It’s like his way of saying “So…”, holding the space while he gathers his thoughts. After a moment his words appeared.

thats what it took for me Tim I had to stop totally I had to die

“Yeah. That’s a good metaphor. In your case, though, not a metaphor at all.”

so are you dying

I stretched and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Yeah, Todd. It feels like I am.”

how so

“I don’t know who I am anymore, Todd. It’s like… I don’t know anything anymore. And that’s how I’ve survived in this world, that’s how I’ve won: I’ve known. I got caught not knowing as a young child. I got caught being out of control. A sunny summer day… I was just living, free and easy, singing a song I’d learned at school, a children’s bawdy bastardization of the Popeye song that my mother didn’t like. She told me to stop singing. But you know, when you get a song stuck in your head, how it doesn’t want to go away? I tried to be careful. I tried to control it. I tried to be aware and on top of it. But the song slipped out again. My mother heard it and dragged me off to the bathroom, driven with rage. She washed my mouth out with soap and sent me to my room. It was devastating. And I vowed from there on out that I was going to know. I was going to stay on top of the situation. I was going to be in control. I was going to have things figured out. So I would not get caught like I did before. “Won’t get fooled again.” That’s me.”

and now

“And now? Dude, look at what we’ve been talking about for the last year. Look at the doc. Read the news.”

you dont know how to stay on top of the situation now do you

“No! There’s a million things I don’t know! A million things. I know that I can’t stay where I am, but I don’t know where to go! The North calls to me constantly. New England. Do I go there? I don’t know. Does it make sense to go where winters are now long and cold? Will climate change make that a good move, or a bad one? Will the Northeast be the perfect place to be? Or will it end up under a mile of ice when the Superstorm hits? I don’t know!”

“I don’t know how to get my house sold. It’s in an intentional community. Selling it isn’t like selling a regular house. It’s complicated. It could take a long time. And I don’t know if I have time! If we sell it, do we buy a new place right away? Or do we rent? With the housing bubble bursting and the economy failing and the dollar plummeting, what’s the best way to do it? I don’t know! I don’t know, if we sell the house, what to do with the money, where to keep it, and in what form. I know that the best investment now is land and tools and knowledge and skills, but until I land somewhere, where do I keep what I have? Is it even possible? I don’t know. I try to figure it out, but it’s like there’s some Newton’s Third Law of Economic Analysis: every opinion is balanced by an equal and opposite opinion.”

“I don’t know what to do with the doc. I don’t know whether to keep doing what we’re doing or to do something else. We’ve got people from the mainstream movie machine interested in trying to put What a Way to Go into theaters in the international market. Do we do that? It looks like a major hassle, with little to no promise that it’ll put any money into our pockets. It looks like a huge loss of control. And I’m not at all convinced that it makes any sense. Right now, there’s a hand-crafted and sacred quality to the way we’re doing things, as people see the movie at local screenings, or in their homes with friends, at house parties or when we show up to do a screening and a dialogue. There’s the possibility of having time to process it, to come together as human beings and talk and feel together. Putting it into theaters could just turn it into an entertainment, an experience, a horror show. And the machine… I hate the machine! The machine is destroying the life of this planet! Do I even want to consider working inside of it? I don’t know!”

“If we don’t play ball with the machine, then what do we do on our own? How do we get the movie to the people who want or need to see it? How do we do it in a way that returns enough energy to us so that we can do what we feel called by the Earth to do? Again, there are enough equal and opposite opinions out there to fill a swimming pool, so it’s not like there are obvious answers. Do we figure out a way to get subtitles done in other languages? Do we go into wholesaling? Do we use Google Video or YouTube? Do we push to get that Bonus Disc finished before anything else? Do we spend money on marketing? Do we hire help? Do we do it all on our own?”

“And what else do we do? Do we spend time doing three day workshops? Five day? A full semester curriculum? Do we turn WAWTG into a book? A linked transcript? A Broadway musical? And if we’re doing that, how do we also sell a house and move? Where do we put our time, our energy, our money? What will serve us? And, more importantly, what will serve the Earth? Is there a way to know? I don’t know!”

I thought you didnt have anything to say

“Yeah, well… I guess I just had to get started.”

it goes deeper though doesnt it

I stopped. What the hell did Todd mean by that? Then the tears came, and I knew.

“I don’t know how best to help, Todd. Every time I publish a blog… every time… I’m terrified. Will this blog help? Will it hurt? Will it serve the life of this planet? I don’t know. All I know is that I stuck in my picket pin. I said that I would show up and say what’s true for me. So I keep doing it, even though it scares the shit out of me. But I don’t know. This conversation right now… should I write about it? Should I publish it? Will it help? Sally and I have both noticed that often, when we express our own fear, our own confusion, our own sense of helplessness or grief or despair or anger, the people around us react strongly to that. As if they depend on us to remain steady and calm. It’s like, ‘Shit, we’re staring into the collapse of fucking civilization! Tim and Sally have been staring it down for years now. They’ve even made a movie about it. If they can’t hold it together, how the hell do I?’”

“So what can I say that will help? I have to say what’s true for me, and what’s true for me is that I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. What’s true for me is that I’m often terrified. What’s true for me is that I’m grieving. What’s true for me is that I am so angry that I want to scream. Does it help, to say that? Does it help people to know that? So that maybe their own confusion and fear and grief and anger can be normalized, rather than held as somehow weak, or somehow wrong? Does it help? I don’t know!”

Todd tossed up another sticky that stopped me cold and left me sobbing: deeper

I rose as if compelled, put on my shoes, grabbed a hat, told Sally I would be back in a while, and stepped outside. Something told me I had to go into the woods, that I had to be alone, and I listened to that something. That’s what you do, when you agree to work for the planet: you listen and you respond.

An hour and a half later, I walked back into the house, where Sally had a bowl of creamed rice and yogurt and almonds waiting for me. I sat down, dug into my breakfast, opened my laptop, looked at Todd’s last sticky – deeper - and started to write.

“I don’t know how to help the people I love most, Todd. I don’t know how to help Carla and Karen. I don’t know how to help Dan and Jill. I don’t know how to help Carolyn, or Ted, or Iain, or John or Tom or Robert or Lynne or Vivienne or Janaia or Robyn or any of the dozens of others I could name. I don’t know what to tell them. I don’t know what to do for them. I don’t know where to point them.”

“And I don’t know how to help my own kids, Todd. I don’t know how to save them. I don’t know how to help my family, my parents, my brothers, my sisters-in-law, my ex. I don’t know what to say that will help them to take whatever steps they need to take in this world. I don’t know how to keep them from pain and loss and grief and disruption. I don’t know how to help them as they struggle against a culture that is trying to kill us all. I don’t know if my wisdom – to move North and try to create some safe space for my kids to land when things get crazy - has any merit. I don’t know if they’ll join me. I don’t know if they should. I don’t know, Todd, if I sell my house and move to New England, whether in doing so, I’ll be effectively saying goodbye to my own kids. The systems we now know are breaking down. Life is going to become very local. Our current mobility will disappear like melting snow. We will be split asunder, we who are now so easily connected across the miles. I don’t know if I can take that.”

I sat back. The tears were streaming down my face and I wiped them away with the back of my hand. I held my gut, as if to hold in my intestines, the ache was that fierce. Outside, one squirrel chased another up and down the trunk of a tree. Todd popped a sticky and started to write.

where did you go Tim

“I went into the woods behind the house. I followed the path and came to a log that crosses it, an old stripped pine that finally gave up and fell, years after it’s death. I sat down and just let loose, sobbing into my hands. For my kids. For myself. For my people. For all the peoples. For the tree I sat on and the land I walked on and the hawk that cried in the distance. I said that I was sorry. I asked for forgiveness. I told the trees I loved them and thanked them for their lives. And I asked them for help, Todd. Civilized ol’ Tim… Midwestern ol’ Tim… big tall smart white American male Tim asked some pine trees for help. Can you imagine? Crying in the woods and talking to trees is not something I was raised to do.”

you cant save your kids can you Tim

“I can’t save anybody, Todd. I can’t even save myself. I sit around with my collapse-aware friends and we try to peer into the future and figure out a way through it. The attempt to do that just exhausts me, and forces me to confront my own despair. I see no way to figure my way through this. And staying in figuring-out mode is just more control and domination. If we make it through the bottleneck only to come out the other side essentially unchanged, then what’s the point?”

so how did the trees help you Tim

I stopped. And then I laughed. Todd had no doubt that trees could and would respond to my request. When you get your ass kicked by a giant chicken, you learn to take such things seriously.

“After my tears stopped, I got up and followed the path a bit further. Down near the creek, there were a couple of crows up in the treetops, laughing at me. I looked off in their direction, noticed how completely dry the creek was, and decided to walk along the cobbled creek bed for a while. There was something about picking my way along those stones that was quite moving. It’s not a place one usually gets to walk.”

“As I walked I noticed a few bottles, a bucket, various pieces of trash. I marveled, as I often do, at how thoroughly we’ve trashed the place, that even here, in a place most people would consider “the middle of nowhere”, there’s more garbage to pick up than I can carry. I thought of future archaeologists sifting through the strata of this time and scratching their heads in wonder. I climbed over fallen logs and negotiated some wet spots and stopped to watch a vulture as it soared overhead. I kept moving, following the bed, lost in my thoughts, and in my noticing.”

“And then I looked up and found, quite to my surprise, that I didn’t know where I was! My intention had been to follow the stream all the way around the perimeter of our property and back to the main road. I thought I knew exactly where I was going. But here I was - lost. Somewhere along the way the creek splits and I’d missed a turn. Now, with the sky low and gray and no sun in sight, and with no identifiable landmarks to hang my mind on, I wasn’t even sure which direction I was headed.”

were you scared

“Yeah. For a moment I was. It’s unsettling for me. I’ve lived my whole life on the map, as Chellis Glendinning made plain for me. I feel pretty disoriented when I fall off.”

what did you do

“I stopped and just tuned in for a while. I climbed out of the creek bed and leaned against an old barbed wire fence and watched and listened. There was some hammering in the distance and I could see, through the trees, a huge new starter castle taking shape. In the opposite distance was the rumble and roar of logging trucks on the main road. On the other side of the barbed wire rose up a small pasture, with a line of trees on the hill on the far side. That was enough to get me started. I would head in the direction of the traffic noise. I got down on my stomach, crawled under the lowest strand of barbs, and stood to cross the pasture.”

“In the next tree line was another fence. This one I climbed, hanging onto the thin limbs of a small cedar and barely avoiding a tear in my jeans. I walked across yet another pasture, hugging the tree line, until I spotted a large gray barn. Knowing that the barn bone’s connected to the farm bone and the farm bone’s connected to the driveway bone and the driveway bone’s connected to the road bone and the road bone’s connected to the home bone, I headed off toward that probable road, keeping the barn in sight. Soon enough I saw where I was and I cut back into the woods, back toward my land, and my home, my fire and my Sally and my known… my known… my sweet, sweet known.”

Todd tossed a sticky up and, like the good introvert he is, took his time filling it: its a school isnt it

“What is?”

you know… the world this life this time the collapse its a school dude a school that is helping us to you know like grow up and become ourselves again

“Yeah. It’s a school. And I’m a student taking classes: Intro to Not Knowing with a lab in Being Lost. Giving Up 101 and Advanced Relatedness.”

so you can get lost and not know and just stop and listen and then find your way from there

“It feels like I’m driving at top speed on a winding road through the dark night with only my low-beam headlights, Todd. Like I get to see the next step, but I don’t get to see beyond that. Like all there is to do is crawl under the fence and walk up to the tree line and trust that, when I get there, I’ll be able to see a little further down the path.”

trust and also ask for help

“Yeah. Ask for help. Because, just in the asking, I take a step out of the dominant paradigm and into another one, a paradigm of relationship and connection.”

so whats your next step

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I laughed. “It’s funny, Todd.”

what is

“It’s such a relief. To not know. To just admit that I don’t know. Knowing has been such a burden. When I set it down…. I feel lighter. Free, somehow. It’s like… we’ve never really known, we white guys with our plans. We’ve just been making it up, a bunch of scared little boys trying to pretend we’re in control, covering our ears and deafening our souls to the songs that are stuck in our heads still, the songs of the animal, the songs of the world, the songs of the stars. Such a burden to carry, that control. So much harm we’ve done. And so delicious, so freeing, to set that burden down, to stretch our arms in the sun and look around and see, perhaps for the first time, what is really there.”

its scary

“Shit yeah it’s scary, dude. But it’s worth every bit of the fear. To feel alive again? To feel a part of the sacred Earth? To feel like I belong here? To be able to walk the planet without hanging my head in guilt? It’s worth every bit of that fear.”

A sticky popped onto the screen, bright yellow and bursting with excitement and joy: gotta go back in a bit

That was it. He was gone. In whatever way it works in Todd’s world, he had just grabbed his hat and took off for his own walk in the woods, off to the school, down the dark and winding road.

That’s how it goes when you start working for the planet… the world calls, and you respond. Your story gets crazy big in an instant and all at once you are a part of a living universe that had, just moments before, as in some fading nightmare, felt cold and dead and frightening.

Nice work if you can get it.

They’re hiring right now, I hear.

Applications available outside.