In occupation and cooperation with my fellow humans

I haven't written anything as of yet on this because I have been involved on several levels organizing and preparing for it:

Occupy PDX.

If you haven't heard about the movement that began as a media-blacked-out protest in New York City and has continued to gather steam all over the country, then you need to educate yourself:

Read about Occupy Wall Street.
Read about Occupy Together.

People like myself have finally raised their voice and have come out of their houses and themselves and are working toward something exciting and challenging and new. People who were fed up having to serve this system that serves corruption and violence and crime all over the world. People who were tired of having their voice and their ideologies and their ideas tossed away and dwindled down by "just getting by" in a world where we have plenty to go around, but hoard and hoard and hoard so that everyone is suffering. People who knew that these systems were bad but felt like they had such a tight grip on us that there was no way out.

But, in realising together that we all felt this way - we have discovered that there is another way. And so, we have begun taking it.

We don't know where exactly it's going because it's a work-in-progress, something we will continue to evolve and change as we evolve and change. Something, though, that gets at the spirit of life and human interaction. Something that gets at human needs and human desires. Something that fills the hole that our systems throughout our lives here has created.

We, the people of our communities, are beginning to move.
Expect us to make a change.
Because, if we all keep on and keep heart and keep on the course - we will.

This is extremely important

In a world when we're constantly climbing uphill to learn the things the generations before us thought okay and even necessary to forget, we need to fight battles like this. Because food is one of the basic building blocks of life. And without an understanding of it and the right to take it into our own hands, how can we consider this life?
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A teacher in Memphis Tennessee is trying to have a garden and teach his students about the ability to grow food and understand nature. In response, the neighborhood is annoyed by the nuissance and the courts have ordered he get rid of it.

Read the following and take some action with me: Adam Guerrerro's front yard garden

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Here was my response to Judge Larry Potter:

Dear Judge Larry Potter,

I am writing to you about the issue of Adam Guerrerro's front yard garden. Please reconsider this issue and allow him to maintain the front yard garden. It is good for the individual, good for his students, and good for the community in which he resides to see someone taking charge of their own food.

I think it is a shame that front yard gardens are discouraged in this country due to the petty issue of appearance. When did we become so concerned with the outward look of a thing over its true functionality?

Growing food is one of the most basic ways of meeting the human need of nourishment. Why should taking control of what one consumes be illegal? I thought it was the goal of this country to protect personal freedoms and autonomy. It is a sad day when the government cares more about how a thing appears over what its function is. And, it is an even sadder day when the government moves to take away a person's autonomy and ability to sustain him or herself, placing their basic human needs instead in the hands of companies that grow food on large scales and don't answer directly to the individual.

What's more, it is imperative that the children of this country understand that food comes from the ground, not from a shelf in a store. How do we expect to be able to show the youth what food is and how it is grown if the mere appearance of a garden is a nuisance?

Again, please allow Adam Guerrerro to continue his gardening efforts in plain sight of his neighborhood. Naturally, the garden should be kept in good working order, free from trash and free from obstructing walkways and pathways and driveways. But please, don't allow the mere look of the thing to trump its use.

Besides, how much better would our neighborhoods be if we began seeing the beauty of nature and how it produces our sustenance, instead of thinking that anything out of the ordinary grass lawn (which has no nutritional benefit and wastes water to the end of mere appearances while a garden can be useful and educational)? My opinion is that they would be wholly better.

Sincerely,
Rae Ashenden

Equinox

It seems only a few days ago that it was the longest day, and we stood in the balmy evening, overlooking the river and that magnificent fiery orange sunset until nine at night. Just a few days since we felt the coming of the darkness.

And now, here we are just about halfway through, babe.

It wasn't or hasn't been as bad or as good as we thought it'd be. In reality, it's been somewhere in between both. Half awful and have awesome. Half unbearable and half wonderful.

And so, with that in mind, the coming Equinox feels wholly appropriate. The coming of the rain and the grey and the half of all this that brings us closer to the death of winter, the covering up and hardening down of life. The sleep.

I'm always excited by the prospect of change. Always eager to delve right in. Always read for something strange and uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Discovering a new mode of being and a new way of feeling and a new way of dealing with new struggles is, for me, enlivening.

And then it all comes down, calms, mellows. And then its back into the normal swing of things, only from a slightly different angle that has - hopefully - realigned me. Back to writing and playing music and learning and reading and working and practicing. Back to having no "spare time" other than time for socializing and engaging in whatever "community" I can still cobble together in this day and phase of things.

There really isn't anything other than those things. In an existence where our physical survival is met, there is only philosophy left. Art and creativity that strives for some purpose. Some enlightenment or engagement of its audience. Some truth of some value to be shared.

Entertainment for entertainment's sake as a means of life is complete bullshit, an enormous waste of life.

And yet, the argument goes: when there is such an over-abundance of life,it is not only understood but necessary for some of it to be wasted on vapid activity or mere inactivity.

I can't agree. When there is such an over-abundance of problems we still have yet to solve, that fragile excuse simply doesn't hold weight.
Let's throw it out, once and for good.

Who says adults don't fall?

I'm falling.

Only now learning those things about myself I "should have known" years before. But I was never told to bother learning them. Only told to be put to sleep by my entertained mindset and told to seek the thrills of my entertaining lifestyle. So that I thought I knew myself and the world around me.

Which is how I got to where I am now. Faced again and again with myself sitting afraid in corners of rooms I never thought I'd be in.

Receding, fading.

Not so much pushed back as pulled away. Split. Almost directly down the middle. Two sides of one shape, you say? Or just two angles of the same face. Two views of the same vista.

Or, perhaps - two weathers that this vista gradiates between.

I guess I thought the darker, colder, quieter, stripped back part of me was gone. The uninterruptive one. The unimpressive one. The silent, invisible one. The one that hid in rooms from life when life felt too heavy. The one who hid in closets when life was unbearable to lift. And yet, here I am. As far away from you, from this life, from all of it as I can go. Hiding inside myself because I'm afraid I have no recourse now.

Honesty and openness and frank directness failed me.
What is left?

When there is no other course, we have to learn to walk the one before us anyway. When we can't bear the one we've found ourselves on, we have to find a place where we can breathe the air again. When we've become something we can't imagine being, we have to find some way back to where we used to be.

Or, when we fall from where we've climbed too, we have to find another route back up.

I've fallen and I have to find another route back up. Even if it changes something about the way I used to climb. I have to get back to where I was, at whatever cost it bears. Because I can't bear what I've become back down here. And no Asher or Brandon or god is going to save me with any magic mysticism.
No matter how hard I cry.

And there won't be any rescue from behind or beside me. Because out here, we're all alone. Because we all live at a modern pace. And at that pace, at some point, we all decided that we'd be better off alone. So, we all go it solo because, at some point, we all decided that we could do it better that way. So, we just have to go forward from here into wherever there is to go. Just hold on to whatever scraps of truth about ourselves are left and just move on.

Which means, now the question stands more than any other:
Where would I go if I went, and what would I do when I got there?

To be honest, it's the only thing stopping me. It's always been the thing stopping me. I can't just go. I can't just walk out of a door without knowing where I'm headed when I get out. I can't keep moving unless I know why.

Unity. It all has to come together for some reason with some purpose. Then, I could get through anything. I could believe in anything. I do be and do anything. I could live anywhere. I could live through it all.

If I only knew what it all added up to.

This is the problem I'm always faced with. When I can't see what I'm doing adding up to anything, but I can't see any other option that does, either. When I'm stuck between nowhere and no-one. In a hole of nothing amounting to anything.

I can't go on, but I can't go back, and I can't just stay where I am.
So then, what?

What is there for someone like me who can't add it all up but who can't do it without the addition? Who can't find the purpose and can't function without one?

I guess I'll just do what I've always done. What Jay and I decided I had to do way back beside the fire in my early college years. Pacing back and forth along a ledge I knew I couldn't jump from and couldn't turn round on.

Just wait, until the wind pushes you over the edge. Just wait, until you can stand to jump.

So now, I'm just waiting for the push. Waiting for a wind that's strong enough to push me over. Or push me down.

Whichever comes first, actually.