Drink Up, Dreamers - Part 1

so whereve you been Todd asked when I logged on Monday morning. The sticky color was pink, as if perhaps Todd was a bit peeved at my absence. Like I’m supposed to check calendars with him now or something.

“I was in a council workshop with Deena Metzger and fourteen other people,” I replied. “Why?”

I didnt know where you were I had something I wanted to show you but you didnt touch your computer all weekend

I clicked on Todd’s link to a short video called Red Hat’s Truth Happens. While it downloaded I began to type. “So, Todd,” I asked, “as a ghost, aren’t you able to, like, follow me around and travel to and fro upon the Earth and all that? I mean, you aren’t actually stuck in my computer, are you?”

no Im not stuck but I find it much easier to follow the waves the fields the electrons I can move around in computers and power lines and cables and fiber optics and wires and circuits much easier much quicker when I leave those lines those forces and try to move around freely I can do it but its harder its thicker I get lost I get confused I tried a bit but thought youd be back sooner and anyways I got distracted

“Distracted?”

do you know how much reading material there is online dude I went to your links page and went from site to site and then I got caught up in google earth I could see my apartment building from space so whos deena and whats this council thing

Deena is a writer and a healer, a poet, an activist. She’s an ambassador to elephants, a peacemaker, and a true elder. It says on her website: With her husband, writer/healer Michael Ortiz Hill, she has introduced the concept of Daré to North America. Daré, meaning Council in the Shona language of Zimbabwe, is a creative form of personal and community healing and cohesion, based upon Council, vision, indigenous knowledge and spiritual practice. Fifteen of us spent the weekend with her, speaking of dreams and of spirit, of the extremity of the planetary situation, of healing and vision, of our callings, our limitations, of what we are to do, and what stands in the way.

isnt this the woman you quoted in your last blog the one who said we should sit around and do nothing and watch the baby pelicans die like thatll really help did she talk about that about doing nothing do you still think thats a good idea arent you one of those people al gore talks about in his movie somebody who goes right from denial to despair and doesnt stop in the middle and actually do anything

So Todd had now watched An Inconvenient Truth. Good for him. I’m beginning to envy his ability to take in information as quickly as he does. Now if only I can teach him to ask the right questions. I put fingers to keyboard.

“Al Gore does seem to be poking fun at that response. David Roberts took on the same thing in his recent article about defeatism. To my mind, both comments are simply more of the same, the typical American response to just about everything: we can do anything we want. We can fix this. We are the masters of reality. We just have to roll up our sleeves and get to work. It’s an understandable reaction to the situation, perhaps, given the cultural stories in which we were all raised, and given the fear and grief that come up when we realize what’s going on, but it’s a reaction that fails to take into account both our own cultural history and the reality of the physical world.”

I dont understand

“We won’t get through this mess by enacting the same stories, the same agendas, the same assumptions, that got us into this mess in the first place. Inside of the current paradigm, “doing something” simply means doing more of what hasn’t worked, and isn’t working.”

you keep talking about stories and I think I know what you mean but then I lose it and my head begins to hurt and I dont even have a head give me some examples why dont our stories work what do you mean

Todd opened up iTunes and Peter Gabriel came out of my speakers. Here Comes The Flood.

and I cant get this song out of my head

I leaned back in my chair and listened and thought. About stories. And about the coming flood.

I closed my eyes and felt my body. An animal. Pulsing, vibrating, resonating with the song of the universe. And alive in this time.

What do I say to that?