What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire

Seems I’m feeling impatient this morning. I noticed it as Sally and I sat together for our daily check-in, drinking coffee, watching the sunrise, watching the small black cat prance about on the roof of the mobile home across the road, and speaking whatever is most on our minds and in our hearts. I kept noticing these feelings of irritation, boredom, impatience, as if there was really something “more important” that I needed to “get to.”

Now I’m up in my lab where, ostensibly, I can follow whatever fascinates me. And yet that feeling has not dissipated. There’s a wanting in me. A dissatisfaction with the now. An itch for something else. What a waste that seems. I’ve got hot coffee, beautiful music, warmth, freedom, sunshine, work to do… what more could I need?

Perhaps it’s this need to write a blog that is poking at me. As if it’s something to be “gotten to” so that it can be “gotten over.” As if I hate so much to be told what to do that I even hate being told what to do by myself. Even when what myself is telling me to do is something the both of us really want to do. Yar. The joys of owning a “civilized” human ego. Now where did I put that instruction manual?

But it need not all be something “egoic” (read “habitual” or “reactive” or “programmed”), something that needs to be patted on its head and sent to bed with a cookie. That’s the problem with sorting out “ego”: it wraps itself tightly around the true and free and real and essential, to the point where it can feel almost impossible to tease apart. And that, perhaps, is a deep motivation for coming to my lab in the first place: I can do my sorting here.

I’ve been thinking about Facebook this week. I thought I might write about the “coming end of the Mayan calendar” today, but right now that feels boring and obvious and defensive. I thought about following up on last week’s piece about “getting free from limiting stories and stepping into what I really want” with a preemptive strike against my many imagined “arguments” to what I said. That feels boring and obvious and defensive as well. When I look through my list of possible blog topics, I notice that many of them are defensive in nature, blogs that explain or reply or claim or defend some point of view. But I just don’t have the heart to get defensive right now. Even with the coffee, the beautiful music, and the sunshine, mostly what I feel are tears of exhaustion. I’m so tired of defending. I grew up in a bantering family system that was face-paced, clever, intelligent, funny, and ultimately, for me, at least, combative. I’ve already fought in that arena. I did that. Now I want something else.

What I notice about Facebook is that it allows me to live both in a tiny village and a huge metropolitan area at the same time. The tiny village exists all around me in the physical plane, and is peopled with gulls and crows and the world’s most badass bird, the chickadee. It’s peopled with artists and merchants and thinkers and feelers and workers and players of every sort, good people wanting good for themselves and their community. It’s peopled with the ever-changing bay, the solid sun, the insistent wind, the steadfast ground, and the talkative, flirty stars. I quite love this place and its many peoples. I’m glad to be here now.

And yet my fascinations seem to take me far afield of this place. Some of my interests fall more than a few standard deviations from the mean, I gather, and might leave me feeling quite alone in the world were it not for Sally, to begin with, and the many souls with whom I can commune online. Were I living in a huge metropolitan area, there might be enough of even such rare mutants as myself to form a meet-up. But since I do not, I can find that online, and that is a precious thing to me. This past week I’ve been involved in threads about destructive White Guy™ language patterns, UFOs, the “horrible” state of the world’s environment, reincarnation, the immense power of the Stockholm Syndrome phenomenon, and the origins of the swastika.

I’m not sure to what extent I might have these conversations in my village. What I know is that, if these conversations are here, waiting to happen, I’ve not yet found a way to fully access them. And I know that, online, in Facebook City, there are folks who have studied some of these things deeply, and who can speak to them with insight and knowledge. I am endlessly informed, challenged, inspired, and motivated by the people I meet on these cyber streets. I know there is a danger of addiction here. There are strangers with trench-coats lined with funny pictures of cats. But I also know that I am also drumming, getting more connected with local musicians, spending time outdoors, running, writing my second novel, stacking firewood and eating lots of salad. I feel like I’ve got this addiction “under control” right now. And if not, I live with a fierce and compassionate woman who will tell me otherwise.

Since every wave in the ocean is ‘made of’ the ocean itself, since it has the same ‘substance’ as the ocean, pushing away a wave of yourself - a thought, a sensation, a feeling, a sound - numbing yourself to it, rejecting it, denying it, trying to escape it - is equivalent to pushing away the entire essence of the ocean. Pushing away a moment of sadness, or pain, or doubt, or fear, or joy, or delight, is the same as pushing away all of life. Even the smallest wave, in essence, is as vast as the ocean - there are no insignificant thoughts or feelings, no ‘ordinary’ experiences, no moments unworthy of kind attention.

Jeff Foster, posted on a wall in Facebook City

So if I do not simply push away my impatience as some Bad™, Egoic™ thing to be dispelled as uncomfortable or unhappy, and embrace it as a teacher, as the ocean in which I swim, I can begin to see it not as a irritant, but a longing. And my thoughts about Facebook City reveal to me that what I am longing for is connection. I don’t want to be right. I want to be known. I don’t want to defend. I want to open up to a larger knowing than I already have. I don’t want to be alone. I want to be in close, loving communion with other souls who walk the path beside me. I want dialogue, the deep, rich, challenging, assumption-busting sort of dialogue I’ve already tasted, that can take me far beyond the boundaries of my own limited ego and wash me up on the unknown shores of something far more powerful and mysterious than I. And my greatest fear is that I am so different from the others around me walking around in human suits that I will never get what I want in the flesh. We wandering mutants are too spread out, it seems, like seeds scattered by the winds that rush toward the end, toward the bottleneck, the crash, the awakening, the great reset, the transformation, the apocalypse, the singularity, the end of the Mayan calendar, and the end of the world as we know it. The distances between us make the physical level a difficult inn in which to gather.

I think it’s that desire for connection that makes me impatient checking in with Sally, as it’s just the two of us, and I can envision it being so much larger. It’s that desire for connection that makes writing these blogs more challenging, as they feel, at least so far, less like dialogue and more just self-expression. It’s that desire for connection that makes it so hard for me to answer emails and letters. It’s that desire for connection that has made non-fiction books feel so much less interesting than they used to be. All of these activities feel smaller, more contained, and more private than I want them to be. I’ve come to love and even crave the back-and-forthness of Facebook City, the swiftly flowing river of posts and comments, the “is this a private fight or can anybody join in?” public-ness of it all. It’s as if Facebook City has become, for me, an ongoing dialogue circle, of sorts, with different people showing up at any given moment to state their positions, argue with others, attempt to convert and reform, learn to listen, open up to other points of view, identify and suspend their own assumptions, step into empathy, compassion, and deep understanding, and find, together, in the spaces between us, something new, and even something greater, than that held by any one of us.

And perhaps this online connectedness can begin to function not only as a substitute or “toxic mimic” (to use Derrick Jensen’s term) for the sort of extrasensory connection and holographic access for which I long, but perhaps even as a training ground and a path toward that very thing. Right now I can pick answers out of the air using an iPad with Google search. Is that helping or hindering my ability to learn to pick answers out of the air with my mind, heart, and spirit? To learn to trust my own feelings, knowings, and intuitions? Is it helping or hindering my ability to listen to the land, or the soft whisperings of the Muse? I don’t know. I suspect that, as always, it’s a bit of both. But I do have a sense that the cyberworld is giving me, in some small, strange way, a feeling experience of the tech-free cosmic connectedness I seek. This tech-bound connection, built as it is on an unsustainable foundation, will probably not last forever, and maybe even for much longer. It may be that my long desire to free my consciousness from the purely physical and learn to connect in other realms is based in some deep wisdom, a knowing that we can only do unsustainable things for a limited time, and that we should make sure we get where we’re trying to go before the gas runs out.

But I don’t know. That could all be more “ego.” So I explore. I try things on. I ponder out loud. I check in with Sally. And sometimes I even ask the chickadees. Always, their answer is the same: be bold, they say, not caring in the least, it seems, that they are quoting Basil King, or perhaps he them. Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid, they tweet, bribed with sunflower seeds. So once again, I open my mouth and take a risk. Tweet.

I’m done for today. Time to go post this on the walls of Facebook City.

Pax, ya’ll. T

Foremost in my consciousness this week, as I continue to heat other experiments on the back bunsen burner, is how I’ve ended up doing what I’m now doing. It seems, looking back, that most of the things I’ve accomplished came about after the rather simple realization that “oh… I can do that!” And it seems that this realization has served, every time, as a counter to the quiet, hidden, background voices that told me otherwise.

You name it. Whether it’s getting involved in theater or sword-fighting, going to seminary or film school, making a documentary or writing a novel, at some point it dawned on me “oh… I can do that!” and only then was I able to see how, in some way I hadn’t before noticed, I’d been holding that I could NOT do that, and that I’d been settling for something less than what I really wanted.

What has me thinking about this again is music. As I learn to play the drum kit, as I reacquaint myself with my mandolin and figure out how to fit it into rock and roll, as I pick songs and start singing them, and as I ponder with excitement and anxiety the possibility of playing with other musicians, I can see clearly now how Paul’s drum lesson advertisement on the IGA bulletin board sparked the fire of “I can do that!” And now I can look back at my long history with drumming and realize that, when it gets right down to it, I’ve always wanted to play a kit, but never thought I could, and so settled for the hand drums as the only option available to me.

I used to attend a fabulous music festival in North Carolina called Merlefest. I quite love the various forms of music that now get combined under the genre label “Americana,” but what I really loved most was when those banjo-pickin’, high-lonesome croonin’, fiddle-scratchin’ musicians would break out into a rock groove. Sam Bush. Bela Fleck. Chris Thile. John Cowan. The Dirt Band. Yonder Mountain String Band. Leftover Salmon. The Horse Flies. Peter Rowan. These guys could kick out the traditional bluegrass and old-timey and country blues like nobody’s business. But they could also rock out. I remember one afternoon at Merlefest. It was The String Cheese Incident, I believe. In the middle of a bluegrass set they broke out in a Yes tune. Roundabout. The crowd went wild. I remember watching an Emmylou Harris set at the Festival for the Eno in Durham. In the middle of the show, Emmylou took a break and her band, the Nash Ramblers, led by mandolin virtuoso Sam Bush, launched into a Sailin’ Shoes/Crossroads medley that, to this day, brings me to tears just thinking about it.

I used to say of these guys that what they all really wanted to be was rock stars, but their mamas handed them banjos at an early age and they were trapped. Turns out that the person I’ve mostly been speaking about is myself. I’m the one who always wanted to be a rock musician. I remember, as a kid, seeing some local folk doing a skit at a street fair that included Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild at the end. My heart pounded. I remember watching Tommy James and the Shondells on television. I must’ve been ten or so. They were singing Crimson and Clover, with the full-on psychedelic lightshow pulsing and blobbing behind them. I was never the same. Truly.

In my own case, I’m the one who handed myself the banjo. I picked it up in college. Took lessons from the great Joel Mabus. Later got an acoustic six-string. Then a lap dulcimer. Then an acoustic 12-string and a mandolin. Added various hand drums along the way. Played folk music. A bit of bluegrass and Celtic. Did lots of drumming in circles. Took various lessons. But I was never inspired enough to get really good at any of these instruments. And the reason, I think now, is that all this time, unbeknownst to my conscious awareness, and even as much as I do love bluegrass and old-timey and Celtic music, what I really wanted to do was play the music that most stirred my heart, the music that came through those tiny television speakers and broke me open, the music that the Lester Bangs character in Almost Famous called “gloriously and righteously dumb.” That music was, is, and always shall be that monster called “rock and roll.”

I blame my brother Dave for this, of course. As a high-schooler, he got involved in a rock band with some of his buddies, those cooler, older kids with long hair and cigarettes who both frightened and called to me at the same time. I had to be different from my brother, you see. While I’m at it, I can blame my brother Chris, who took up the drum kit at an early age. And my parents, who never really seemed interested in music. And my extended family of origin: sweet, loving, down-to-Earth farming folk who seemed to have little time for such frivolities as music. And I can blame the entire culture, as well. As Lester Bangs put it: “A hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you might want to accomplish on your own.” Yes. Exactly. How could little Timmy even think of playing the same music as these obvious gods and goddesses? He could not.

But, in the end, blame feels inaccurate, unsatisfying, and disempowering. No matter where those limiting stories came from, no matter how reasonable they were, and how necessary their adoption at the time, I am the one still holding onto them.

Until something like an advertisement for drum lessons shows up on the IGA bulletin board and thrusts those limiting stories into consciousness. Until a blurb about the community college film school shows up in the local paper. Until a friend suggests I might like a science and theology course he took at MSU. Until, watching backstage from the wings, I begin to feel the allure of the stage itself. Until something comes along and challenges a story I did not even know I was telling myself. Until something moves, until a foundation shifts, until a brick crumbles, and the entire edifice of my ego structure falls a bit closer to the living ground of my being. Until…

There is much more to say about this. There are connections I want to make with the Great Reset™ and the Limitations™ of the Physical Realm™, I think. Connections I can make with Evolution™, Maturity™, and Redemption™. Connections with the more Spiritual™ layers of Our Present Predicament™. But I shall leave such undefined terms, and the teasing apart of such connections, for another day in the lab.

Right now, I am filled with gratitude. That I get to be here. In this time. On this planet. With Sally. Both of us doing our work. Gratitude that there’s a drum kit from a yard sale sitting mere feet from my desk. Gratitude that, once again, I realized what it is I most deeply wanted, and that I could find a way to get it.

And outside, the sun sparkles on the bay. The air warms. As does the ground underfoot. Gulls and crows ride the thermals, searching for calories, ecstasy, and connection.

Slowly, I become more like them.

Gratitude.

It feels like I am struggling today. Suffering. I have lots of ideas for what to write, but am finding no joy in the writing. I’ve got a couple of blogs half-begun, and yet cannot seem to make myself finish them. Part of it is that most of my ideas lead to long, deep analyses “with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was,” and right now I don’t trust long, deep analyses. I’m tired of my monkey-mind and its constant need to figure out and explain and know and demonstrate. Today that just all feels like control and domination, like the serving of some vague egoic need I can’t even surface long enough to understand. There’s an all-alone, listen-to-me, I’ve-got-to-explain-myself quality in my body today that I do not like and do not want. I want to find my heart and just say something from that. I want to be in touch with something else besides my mind. Perhaps it’s because Sally is away this week. Perhaps I am less grounded with her gone.

The most difficult thing for me here is to simply accept that this is how it is and let it be okay. I promised myself that I would write a blog every week. You know… the kind of blog a “pure research man” would write, full of insights and notions that chip away at the great puzzles of our time. I’m a guy who does what he says he’s gonna do, know what I mean? But this is how it is. And so I will let it be okay. Some days, I guess, when a “pure research man” goes to the lab, nothing much fascinates him. He can’t even seem to get the bunsen burner lit, and he eventually goes home and takes a nap, or reads a book, or walks along the ocean. Finding no words and ideas that really fascinate me today, I’m going to head back home and “pick up my guitar and play.” Music has fascinated me of late. And I’m beginning to find ways to share music face to face with real human beings. And I have found, when I do so, that I get a huge grin on my face, and a feeling of excitement in my body just as strong as the terror of vulnerability that’s there whenever I step into that level of self-expression. It’s still pure research, when I think about it. It’s just not in the realm of words and ideas. It’s in the realm of ears and eyes and guts and hearts, the realm of tapping feet and vibrating vocal cords, the realm of the “soft animal of my body,” as Mary Oliver would say, the realm of my beautiful but wounded soul sitting knee to knee with another beautiful but wounded soul and somehow, as if by magic, creating something joyous in this big ol’ goofy world.

So I will quit the struggle and relieve myself from suffering. My lofty ideas about science and spirit and hope and doom and love and life and death and redemption shall have to wait for another day. The Universe says shut the fuck up and sing me a song. So I shall. Who am I to say no to the Universe?

Pax. T

PS: That’s my Great Aunt Marj playing the fiddle in the photo. She was one of the people who loved me and cared for me as a young child. Aunt Marj… this one’s for you.

“Vote your values,” I hear.

“Vote your conscience.”

“Vote your future.”

“Vote your faith.”

“Vote your hopes.”

“Vote your head.”

“Vote your interests.”

Okay. Good idea. So I’m off for the day, to spend it in barefoot isolation from the news media, with my face to the sun and the wind in my hair. Looking forward to conversations with crows, gulls, and chickadees, some mud between my toes, salad from the greenhouse and cold water from the well. I’m voting for the living world. Time to go hold up my sign.

Pax, Otters…