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November 19, 2012 by Angie

Thanksgiving Crazypie (+ Book & DVD Giveaway!)

Sometimes the line between mental illness & regular jerkassery can be a fine one.

Case in point: Recently I was pulling a shift at a boutique that features our traditionally hand-lettered, hand-painted signs, furniture & decor. Just before closing a tall, disheveled man with a guitar case strapped to his back entered.

Guitars can cover a multitude of appearance-related sins, so at first I didn’t realize he was crazypie. He was getting ready to move up into the mountains, he said. “Natch-l” was more his style. Having to wear clothes down here in the city these past forty years had been chafing his skin & his spirit.

Okay. Well, nekkid musicians aren’t entirely unheard of round these parts.

“More than that, though,” he added, “Denver’s wickedness is driving me out.”

Great, I thought. Just please don’t mention “the Lard” speaking to you personally. In my experience, those can be some mean folk.

He let out a big grin. “The Lard’s calling me high up into His mountains so I can watch Denver light up like fireworks. I hope He’s a-preparin’ me a big ole bucket of popcorn to eat while I watch them people burn. Ha-ha, ha-ha!”

This being not long after the nearby Aurora shootings, I wondered what was inside that guitar case. “Well, best of luck on your journey, then,” I said in the neutral, I’m-not-scared-but-let’s-cut-this-short way of the mental health professional tribe, of which I’m a member, at least for the weekday job. Then cringed, because I’d caught my mistake too late:

“There is no luck, missy, only God’s will!”

“Of course. May your journey be…a fine one,” I answered, locking the door.

…And, sweetness, may your chosen ass choke to death on that popcorn. While fully dressed.

(Nobody said therapists – or philanthropic boutique workers – have to think nice thoughts.)

Though Perhaps the Poor Soul was Truly Mentally Ill

Yes, perhaps. Or maybe he belonged to some creepy sect in which delighting in the suffering of others come Armageddon while exalting oneself is perfectly “natch-l.”

It can be hard to distinguish between religious &/or culturally-derived nuttiness & individual, clinical mental illness. Or both, as the case may be.

When making a diagnosis of mental illness, it’s assumed that how the larger culture generally operates is correct. The disturbed individual, then, is not in step with the larger culture in clinically significant ways. How specifically one isn’t fitting in determines diagnosis.

Some attention does get paid to smaller subcultures within an individual’s framework. An Amish guy, for instance, would hardly be diagnosed with a mental illness if he didn’t want to work his little heart out for a smartphone like good people should.

But the mental health of the larger culture itself isn’t questioned.

After a tuneup, then, the soldier gets sent back into battle. It was obviously her problem, her maladjustment. Certainly there’s nothing to question about war itself, or any particular war. It is always righteous, meaningful & good, or at least necessary. Never question that necessity.

Unless of course you’re a loser.

Cold War Wishes, Nuclear Dreams & a Golden Giveaway

Unemployed losers, hippies & housewives, Kristen Iversen’s father called the protestors outside the local nuclear weapons factory. Many felt this way. Rocky Flats provided good jobs to thousands.

Decent citizens weren’t supposed to ask questions during the Cold War, Iversen notes in her book, Full Body Burden. Part memoir, part investigation of Rocky Flats & the nuclear weapons industry, this story transcends both to point out just how deadly silence can be.

Under the code of silence, you don’t question your own father’s alcoholism, much less the bizarre childhood cancers in the neighborhood, or the deformed animals popping up on nearby farms & ranches.

Lucid as a nightmare, this, for me, was a book to read in one sitting, with sleep breaks. And not just because Rocky Flats happens to be next door, or because I happen to meet former Rocky Flats employees in my weekday job. (Nice people. Most don’t blame the facility for their multiple cancers, their rosters of developmentally disabled children & grandchildren. Not that it would matter if they did.)

It’s the colossal human stupidity behind it all. Who could make this stuff up? The Atomic Energy Commission (now Dept of Energy) decides a nuclear weapons factory upwind from a major metropolitan area sounds reasonable. Dow Chemical running the joint? Solid as a rectangle.

But even more fascinatingly, why mass produce nuclear weapons in the first place? If one plutonium trigger, about the size of a human palm, contains enough breathable crap to kill every single person on the planet, literally, why would we need 70,000 of them?

Because they kept us safe.

(Wanna copy of the book? Don’t be silent, then. Leave a comment! Share on social media for more entries, with a comment to let us know.)

Tumortown Acres

Poor nekkid guitar guy. An angry deity hurling wrath upon the Denver area likely won’t be necessary. Rocky Flats, closed since 1989 after an FBI raid, of all things, will continue to release radiation into the metro area for the next, oh, half million years or so.

It gets better, though: With no irony whatsoever, the immediate area surrounding Rocky Flats is not only about to open to the public, but will be a designated wildlife refuge & recreation area.

…Perhaps they’ll put up a carousel.

One one-millionth of a gram of plutonium – about the size of a grain of rice – has long been proven to cause human cancer, slow-growing ones that don’t show up for a few decades. But all’s clean now, the Fish & Wildlife Service says.

It’s just that 2600 pounds of plutonium seem to have coyly slipped away from the site.

Did the soil, air & water steal it? The area is already known to be heavily contaminated, will be for the next couple thousand centuries, has & will continue to spread through fires, burrowing animals, water runoff, development, etc.

Requests for further soil testing? Denied.

Requests for signs to be put up, at least, to warn the current & next generations, the outdoorsy transplants & tourists, that their $300 hiking togs might stir up some crazydust?

Denied. Bad for business.

Beaver pie?

The War on Beavers + Giveaway #2

Why do we perpetrate misery upon ourselves, upon our own offspring, upon their offspring, even?

According to the documentary, I Am, the Native Americans of a few hundred years ago thought it was because we, their new continental overlords, were mentally ill.

(Like, as if they were qualified to diagnose. Any advanced degrees in stockpiling nuclear weaponry just in case they got invaded & needed to melt all life instantaneously? Hm?)

They believed the whites – as a culture – must be sick because they took more than they needed. Hunting local beavers for food, clothing & tools, for instance, wasn’t enough. Needed thousands more of them pelts for the huge hat industry overseas. Who could question the rightness of supply & demand? Until, within 40 years, the beavers just about went extinct.

Stupid beavers. Fashion had already moved on, anyway.

The Native Americans found this type of collective behavior weird. Decimating that which was essential to one’s own survival, namely the land & its contents? Again, nobody asked them, but there it is.

I Am isn’t one of those documentaries with doomy piano music in the background, by the way. It’s actually kind of zippy. Watch it several times in a row & then gift all your friends & relatives with the dvd, like me, because I’m annoying that way.

You can have a copy, too, if you’d like! Same rules as the book giveaway.

Not conforming to the pie theme, but actual billboard just a few miles from Rocky Flats.

Licensed to Ill

A child of mine once said she would kill – if necessary – for a house as big as her McMansionette friends. (Remember high school? Sociopath factories, I swear.)

No doubt this bit of sweetness was based on desire for “safety.” Social safety, that is, fitting in amongst friends, mainstream culture. This can feel urgent, especially in adolescence, & probably is based in turn on a truly fundamental need for community.

Regardless, Johnny D & I are always so pleased to see our values reflected in our children.

Certain kinds of acquisitions really do make us happy. Nothing brightens a cold, naked, hungry person’s day like a freshly killed beaver, for instance. (Unless said person is nekkid by choice. See photo above.)

Basic human needs must be met. As I Am points out, the problem comes with thinking lots & lots of dead beavers — or smartphones or popcorn or continents or plutonium triggers — will make us even more secure & thus happier.

Just about any excessive behavior can then be justified under the rubric of ensuring safety, or “safety,” especially when the whole culture operates under the same delusion. Thus we have the right to steal security, or “security,” wherever we can, regardless of the suffering of others, even our own tribe.

Engage in jerkassery, in other words. Take more popcorn than we need & watch from the top of the mountain while the city below burns.

Then, too late, realize that city is us, & we’re on fire, too. There is no true separation. It’s only us vs. us.

Homeland Security

Last anecdote from I Am: Martin Luther King, Jr. taught his followers to resist violence by helping them see themselves as teachers. By modeling dignified resistance to tyranny, their oppressors might in turn catch a glimpse of their own humanity, through which lay their potential healing.

And so here’s my pretend second chance with the nekkid religious weirdo. Perhaps this time, instead of thinking mean thoughts, I’ll recognize in his wobbly eyes our – likely — shared fear of random shootings, endless warfare, institutions lacking wisdom, or even common sense. Perhaps I’ll consider brain tumor, from contaminated water & culture, as a potential diagnosis.

The guy is sick, that’s for sure. My sick brother. Not the kind of brother I’d prefer at the Thanksgiving table, but my brother nonetheless.

To recognize him as anything less would be crazypie.

Don’t forget to leave comments & share to win Full Body Burden or I Am or both! Winners posted on 11/26.

Go here & here to learn about & take action on nuclear developments near you.

Do check out Hope Tank in the Santa Fe Art District if you’re local. Really cool handmade & vintage stuff, with 10% of all proceeds going to charity!

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July 26, 2012 by Angie

Maybe Pregnant Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Can Have it All With “Sister Wives” On Independence, Part II

“Help one another, is part of the religion of sisterhood” – Louisa May Alcott

Photo Credit: Cowtools on Flickr

Wanted: At least one sister wife, age unimportant. Fellow fermenting enthusiast a plus. Must be strong, smart & funny. Must enjoy sunsets & walks on the beach. But not actually sleep with my husband. Or belong to a cult. Or secretly compare thighs.

Must genuinely like other women, with an innate understanding that, to quote Alice Walker, “A woman is not a potted plant but wilderness unbounded.”

Position opening because we’ve noticed that just having a partner – even an enlightened one who pulls weight in home & child management – is sometimes still not enough to cover all the bases in a fast-paced, socially, environmentally & economically toxic culture.

Especially in a two-earner household. Even in a one-earner household, with one parent home.

Interested parties should write back in the comments section.

Ecstasy

What could drive a gal to even consider polygamy?

Well, let’s back up & start here: Several years ago our children had a therapist. (Long story.) We visited her once at her home. (Longer story.)

We may as well have taken our kids to a rave. Their pupils pinwheeled: vaulted ceilings, roller-skatable hallways, playrooms, sleek televisions, references to an elderly nanny who could apparently grant wishes.

Our littlest literally licked the therapist’s daughters’ candy-colored electronics. The middle two ran from room to room, then outside to jump maniacally on the trampoline, as if they’d never before seen such a magnificent beast.

The best was yet to come: At lunchtime, the therapist opened up her commercial fridge/freezer to a hugely colorful array of packaged foods. Also bowls of fresh fruits & veggies, some of which the gardener had just picked. Cabinets stuffed with more stuff.

All we had to do was point our glow sticks. She assembled.

And so we settled down to an unholy combination of pizzas, blue yogurts & edamame. Like her half-grown kids, ours drank juice out of plastic baby bottles.

Dinners, she explained, involved her preparing one main entree for her family, healthy! low fat chicken breasts in a healthy! low fat sauce, say. But if they didn’t like it, she would fix them whatever frozen meal each wanted.

“Like a restaurant!” our kids breathed.

Such choice & abundance was the best way to meet everyone’s nurturance needs & prevent eating disorders, she said.

I would have followed her lead in my own home, as heavily implied I should, if:

A. We hadn’t lacked working vehicle, much less commercial freezer, in part because I was a stay at home mom at the time; and,

B. I would not have rather eaten my own face off.

Betty Cracker

Accuse me of many things & you will be correct: Sneaking cod liver oil into smoothies. Thinking unteamlike thoughts at meetings. Duct-taping cloth diapers. “Researching” celebrity Scientologists.

Using innocent beet slices as makeup. Composting unladylike things. Walking like an Egyptian, naked, on a mountaintop.

But alas, not: Playing unpaid short order cook to my family’s diabolical food whims. Jaysus. Should I drop grapes, one by one, into their mouths as well?

Whether working outside the home, part- or full-time, or from the home, or performing as the homemaker from crunchy hell – & I’ve done all in various combinations, often simultaneously, always to mixed results – multiple entrees for my family will never, ever pour forth from my loving arms.

C’mon, I wanted to say to that therapist. Totally unfair to set such buffet-like precedent for womankind. Below the belt to even mention such things in front of my children, who would forevermore associate security, happiness & abundance with mothers taking orders.

Mark that woman off the list of sister wife candidates, I tell ya.

Aisle 3, Cultural Misfits

But back then, a sister wife was the vague desire that dare not speak its name. I didn’t consciously know I needed a sister wife until seeing “Sister Wives.”

Surely you’ve seen this reality show. Even I’ve seen it, & I don’t have tv. (Don’t tell me what’s going on this season! Will wait for Netflix & a very bad day on which to watch them all in a row, from inside an ice cream cave.)

But just in case: It follows Kody, an affable enough fellow, & the four fascinating wives who provide him ballast. Oh, & their many children. And the logistics of raising such a tribe, of course. But really it’s about the wives. Meri, Janelle, Christine & Robyn are the lights of the show & of my life.

Previously I’d read accounts of polygamy in various cultures at various times, but these were not at all alluring. “Sister Wives,” though, is modern, clean & bright.

Watch a few episodes & you start thinking plural marriage is as wholesome as shopping at Target.

Corporate Sponsorship

If last time we talked about the limits of male-identified rugged individualism in the context of a consumer culture, perhaps the popularity of “Sister Wives” points to female-identified longing for community & reciprocity as a way to gain independence from isolation & overwork.

And, if all the hubbub about Marissa Mayer being a pregnant CEO says anything beyond the media being stuck in a sound bite version of 1970s feminism, apparently a lot of the rest of us are buying it, too. It’s as if feminism were centered entirely around women staying at home & being wonderful/stupid vs. off to work as the only truly worthwhile achievement for selfish women who leave their kids to the wolves. What an oddly reductive but still ragingly popular view.

Yes. Well, raising children in a lonely, increasingly frenetic world is difficult for everyone.

Among other things, we forget that women have shared tasks & raised children together in every culture for millenia. Pretty much up until we were told – via advertising – we should instead make cults of our individual husbands, homes & children, then our careers. Or both, somehow.

Just, you know, figure it out, Mrs. America. Important point being: you will need a LOT of products & services to keep it all going. Let us serve you!

Pop Goes the Polygamy

Which is why perhaps Marissa Mayer, like me, could use a sister wife or two.

Say what we will about the socioreligious soil from whence sprouted the Brown family & others like them – certainly there’s plenty to say. Before shouting, “B-batshit!,” however, let’s acknowledge some practical benefits.

Built-in child & eldercare, for instance. These recently invented industries pull multi-billions from the rest of us.

Not to mention care for the sick. As Meri (wife #1) mentioned in one episode, she knows if she were to get cancer, her sister wives would automatically care for her & her family. I wonder how many of us would have anyone – at all – who could pick up the slack if we caught a bad flu, much less cancer? Our extended families live halfway across the country & anyway, they’re time-, money- or health-strapped themselves. Many of us haven’t even met the neighbors. God help us if we have to hire outside help, which is rarely paid by insurance. The lowest level of home care agencies cost around $25/hour.

Instead of simply offering more time off, some benevolent employers have begun offering, as a benefit, to pick up part of the cost of random caregivers for working mothers’ and fathers’ sick children so the parents don’t have to take one of their extremely limited sick/vacation days to be home with them, so that in turn they can get maybe one unbroken week together sometime later in the year. The caregivers’ pay? Barely above minimum wage, nationwide, caring for all ages & levels of disability.

Everybody – children, parents, families, caregivers, caregivers’ families – wins!

More Polygamous Perks

A sense of cohesion & identity, as part of a larger whole. Sharing shopping & cooking. Sharing income, for that matter, so that each wife has some degree of choice in whether or not to work outside the home.

The rest of us, on the other hand, are supposed to do whatever it takes to erect & maintain our own individual homes & families, like pods with little to no support structure underneath, floating. Pods of cleanliness & endless choices of things to eat & ways to be entertained.

You know, to meet everyone’s abundance needs. And prevent eating disorders.

The way good little wives & mothers should. We’re the sacred vessels of more consumers, after all.

Photo credit: 123RF

Rave On

Without the structural support of tighter community, including other women, the modern mama’s choices so often seem to come down to trading money for time or time for money, money for meaning or meaning for security.

Perhaps some of us have partners who happen to make enough bank for a small paid army to do the dirty work, like our children’s therapist’s did. Or perhaps we make bank ourselves, like Marissa Mayer. Perhaps conspicuous consumption simplifies the playing field.

I doubt it. For one thing, (under)paid armies tend to secretly spit in their employers’ bottles of Vitamin Water.

Those of us who would rather feed our children some lovely homegrown kvass with bits of grass in it over Vitamin Water (with or without plastic baby bottles) should tread carefully here. Debate over which kind of mother – working outside vs. inside, crunchy vs. conventional – has the biggest ovaries means jack.

These are the frozen mealettes of genuine discourse, fed to us straight from the corporate media’s gigantic commercial freezer/fridge. No nutrition whatsoever. Choose your flavor & feel smug & righteous while the real issues – an increasingly toxic environment – literally & figuratively – for human beings, not just women & families, marches on.

Okay, so maybe sister wives aren’t really the ticket. Sisters in arms is more like it. Here are two nonpartisan groups of mothers working for human & family-friendly social & environmental change: Moms Clean Air Force & Momsrising.

Also, I hear if you have the means, elderly nannies who grant wishes can be awfully nice. What’s your first wish & how are you helping it grow?

This post shared on Freaky Friday, Real Food Wednesday, Fight Back Friday & Natural Mothers Network’s Seasonal Celebrations!

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June 15, 2012 by Angie

Was John Wayne a Radical Homemaker? On Independence, Part I

At the moment of transfer

Secretly, I’ve always kind of thought I was, you know, just a little bit of a BA. Don’t you?

And when examining one’s inner badassery, isn’t it odd how much he/she resembles…John Wayne?

Perhaps it’s just me. I was, after all, the only girl on my Little League baseball team. Back then, this was a big deal. The first time I came up to bat in a real, live game, a well-intentioned but still scary hippie lady yelled, “Swing it, sister!”

Then there was my dad, who hated hippies & feminists & openly embraced the John Wayne spirit. (In a good, clean American way, of course.) He kept telling me to stop being afraid of the ball, dammit. Strike one. Strike two.

Oh, & not only was I a girl, but a left-hander. Not to mention one of the only kids on my team to wear jeans/tennies instead of those sexy white polyester baseball pants/cleats.

Despite all of this, I finally hit the ball. And ran directly to third base. (This is why women should never have been allowed onto baseball fields.)

So, yeah. Maybe that’s the moment when The Duke came to live inside me despite his having been way before my time & emphatically not of my gender.

Didn’t need no more laughing crowds, sexy white pants, hippies or fathers: It was just the baseball & me. And one mighty surprised third baseman.

Don’t Apologize – It’s a Sign of Weakness

Damned straight. John Wayne wouldn’t apologize for having embodied an Anglo-American, hyper-masculine type of national ideal that continues to exert steady influence, whether we notice it or not.

Heck. Even the boys & girls wearing black turtlenecks in my college film classes, of whom cowboys – even fake cowboys – would surely not approve, got excited about The Searchers. We wrote papers all up one side & down the other of that sucker. Our brilliance blinded.

Beyond the negative aspects of John Wayne’s roles &/or actual views, what remains indelible is his non-ironic portrayal of compelling qualities: Courage, integrity, stoicism, the ability to kill flashy or dishonest things dead with one cold glance.

In a word: independence. Which, though much overused & overblown, really just boils down to competence, self-sufficiency, self-reliance, self-support. Or so my computer machine tells me.

Git Along Little Doggies

So if independence is the western world’s generally agreed-on highest good, how does that translate within a consumer culture?

Well, whoever wrangles up the best stuff wins, right? Like real-life or movie cowboying, it’s not a subtle art. The key is seizing one’s own stuff, rather than outright stealing or, worse, having it given. (At least that seems to be the rule for those of us who dwelleth not in the wealthiest echelons.)

For regular cowpokes, distinct life stages are supposed to be marked by greater independence, marked in turn by increasingly large possessions: car, education, apartment, more convenient (not necessarily better) clothes/meals/toys, house, better car, better toys & so on. Each cycle increases feelings of warmth & security, at least at first.

Secondary developments often coincide: partner, children, further physical distance from extended family due to career or choice. None of these really counts as a gain, however, unless one has the possessions to match.

Think about it: What do people say about adults who live with a parent? People who don’t drive? Homeschooling parents who drive their children around in crappy cars? Women who make their own butter? Vocations like organic farming, which provide no boat, no lake house, no annual 2 week vacation? A group of friends who hand-build shacks together & create a community? Or those who work for few or no wages, relying instead on arrangments with neighbors to trade or barter?

Radical homemakers, in other words. Shannon Hayes defines them as people who make family, community, social justice & the planet’s wellness the central tenets of their lives.

(If you haven’t already read her book, you MUST. Immediately. There will be a quiz.)

Any kind of nonlinear arrangement, whether due to circumstance or choice, invites scorn. We say: Those people haven’t grown up. They’re not independent. God forbid: They probably didn’t establish good credit to buy more stuff.

Good credit being akin to a man’s horse on the open frontier.

Freedom Fries

Like John Wayne, I crisscross the great southwestern landscape. I search not for things that need killin’, though. Unless lonely old people need killin’.

I do this because working in the mental health field, along with spots of other things, helps support our artsy-fartsy ways. I can even pass for fairly normal with my coworkers, if I just smile, nod & keep my jar of oatstraw infusion in the car.

Right now I get paid to counsel people freaking out because they or their family member has gotten old or not really old, just disabled. Middle to upper middle class white people, in particular, seem quite angrily surprised when this happens. The complicated care needs & associated astronomical expenses come as a big blow. (Especially if one has diabetes, which about 85% of my clients over 55 do.)

The crisis forces the family of said old folk to deal with one another in person or – my personal favorite — by phone/email/text/Skype. Which means all the old family skeletons loll out their tongues in a trippy way.

That’s where I come in. (Don’t hate me because my part-time job is beautiful. I was once a baseball star, you know.)

Basically I tell them without telling them, in a very, very nice & supportive way, that this is what comes at the end of the decades of isolation & false, consumer-culture-defined independence.

Sorry, sad elders. Sorry, mad middle aged children. Sorry, grandkids who think moving across town or across the country & living in a nice house will buy your freedom, too.

The Continental Divide

We accept as the price of independence losses of connection between generations, of mutual social support, of skills & skills exchange, of financial reciprocity. It seems other cultures may not, though.

Now, Duke was not big on people from other cultures. But then he rolled across great open vistas, which can make a person feel like they own them.

The Rockies are still there, but derned if the plains aren’t cluttered with thousands upon thousands of cookie-cutter houses. I go into some of them for my jobby-job. Never know what you’ll find inside. A lot of Windex & angst, usually. Crates of extra Gatorade & diet sodas by the pantry.

Going into the homes of those originally from more colorful countries, though, can be a pleasant sensory experience. The flash of chiles hitting the skillet, for instance. A mural across the whole wall featuring a bowl of oddly-shaped fruit. Birdcages, flowers & vegetables climbing courtyard walls.

Like poor regular Americans, they tend to have stronger social networks than their comparatively well-off cohorts do.You’ll find a neighbor installing grab bars in the bathroom in exchange for meals while a granddaughter irons Grandpa’s sheets & Grandma sings or yells something to the babies.

Nobody seems to regard these activities as impinging upon personal freedoms or relegating anyone to less than adult status. They’re just practical.

This is not to say these families don’t have problems. For one thing, there’s a reason someone like me has been called in (poverty & language barriers, usually). For another, pretty soon they’ll assimilate & have diabetes, too.

Still & all, at those times I feel like Shannon Hayes when she was visiting the bursting-with-life homes of the radical homemakers she interviewed for her book. They seem to have the family & community part down, at any rate.

Horse Sense

It hurts to admit it, but: I didn’t really BA my way to third base alone.

That hippie feminist may have lit a spark, even if she scared the crap out of me at the time. And, while feminism may have been for ugly women & bleeding heart idiots, according to my dad, he still insisted his daughter be part of the team & spent hours preparing me for it. Our field came from taxpayers & our uniform shirts at cost from the local sporting goods store. There would be no crowd to laugh at me if parents weren’t taking time out of their days to be there.

Frankly acknowledged, even nurtured interdependence does not equal weakness. It’s a sign of strength, &, ironically, increased self-reliance. Ask someone in the military.

This still might sound kind of girly to John Wayne. The Hollywood frontier of the fifties was all about the power of the raw individual, made more heroic against the backdrop of communist fears. (Wrote that in a paper once.)

In real life, John Wayne was into yachts. Probably not a radical homemaker, then. Then again: He may have found something worth killin’ about raw shopping masquerading as independence.

True credit & wealth lie in relationships. That’s as American as baseball or organic apple pie made with a sprouted spelt flour crust. Ya think?

This post linked on Read Food Wednesday & Fight Back Friday!

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April 23, 2012 by Angie

Deep Thoughts About Building Sanctuary in a Disposable World (+ $125 Value Giveaway!)

Recreational pot smoking was never one of my talents. I was just putrid at it.

In college I was the killjoy in the corner, saying nothing for fear my lips might stretch hugely & stay that way. My boyfriend solicitously packed us more bowls. Surely my coolness would return, given the right conditions.

Would I care to order bread sticks? Chant softly about Jah People?

No. A spliff big enough to make me believe we were in an impoverished Caribbean island-nation did not yet exist. For one thing, his friends were white. As in a kind of white that goes beyond skin tone.

Their souls, I thought stonedly, must be made of soft, non-nutritive bread sticks.

Fraternity boys. Nicknamed after bodily secretions, these were the future corporateurs of America. Literally.

Marijuana cannot soothe such folk. Studies have shown it actually makes them bark.

Far Out

At least the hippies before my time had made gestures toward brotherly love, consciousness uplift, etc. Of course, back then, before the plant had been hybridized to produce higher & higher THC levels, the marijuana was a lot gentler.

Perhaps this made young folk feel tender toward one another. It was the dawning of the age of Aquarius, after all.

My day was more like the dawning of the age of Applebee’s.

Mystical connection with anyone or anything was no longer the point, even ostensibly. The point was to disconnect further so that the pain of lack of connection no longer hurt.

Homelessness comes in many different forms.

Hooking Up

Now more than ever, many of us seek respite from the disposable world, with its disposable products, species & people.

Finding community within such a cultural landscape can be difficult enough, with or without recreational lubrication. Communing with spirit, however one may define such, can be downright daunting.

(Going to Costco, for instance. Once you’ve shown your member card, your soul is instantly & painlessly tethered to a kite string to wait outside until your body has finished hunting for savings in the great white forest. They carry Kerrygold cheese, though, from pastured cows, & so, God help us, it may be worth it.)

So does locating a sense of the sacred then require a cave, a prophet-like air &, ideally, the Himalayas? Perhaps with a side of burning sands?

Well, good ole American transcendentalist literature tells us one reliable method for pulling off the whole finding-sanctuary & right-livelihood-thing could be a shack in the woods. And so I lusted for one.

This is how Johnny D later snared me like a love-hunter in a great brown forest. He had laid his trap: one room cabin, mountain, nonstandard employment.

…Also a prophet-like air, enhanced by the worst thrift store clothing ever engineered.

Thoreau's Cabin. Ours was not as cute.

Dumpster Divas

Pretty soon that cabin was a bustling little shack o’ life. It’s amazing how many children, pets, Mason jars & Dixie cups of 1-Shot paint one room can contain if only you keep building shelves. And building them. (Note: Children will not remain on shelves, regardless of threat.)

Thoreau may not have approved. This was not exactly a spiritual retreat in the woods, but our actual way of life. Our home & labors were – then & now – both sustenance, connection to community & source of starry-eyed wonder. (On unusually good days, anyway.)

As well as recreation. Though we’ve lived many places – rural, suburban, urban, trailer park – since the love-forest, our date nights will probably always involve scrounging for wood.

There is nothing more romantic than trying to laugh quietly when both of you get stuck in a construction dumpster, from which it is probably illegal to be harvesting scrap wood to make into signs, furniture & home décor.

Not exactly a night out at your neighborhood Applebee’s.

Flare!

Which is not to say Applebee’s & their ilk are soulless. Their boards of directors most likely consist of our own frat boys all grown up, after all. Salt of the earth.

If, in a disposable culture, fraternity houses substitute for Community while thoughtlessly ingested substances stand in for Communion, then the food & décor of mid-level chain restaurants must count as Hearth & Heritage.

From Marilyn Monroe to vinyl records to, like, whole snowshoes on the walls, we’re supposed to form an emotional connection.

And we do. At least, Johnny D & I do: Those old-looking signs straight out of the corporate office, for instance, induce in us a great gnashing of the teeth.

(Assuming they still decorate this way. My grandmother died a few years ago, so I haven’t actually been in an Applebee’s/Ruby Tuesday/Friday’s/Bennigan’s/Chili’s/Chotchkie’s in a while.)

Perhaps putting fake memorabilia on the walls goes beyond lulling the rest of us into buying more Kaj’n Chik’n, though. Maybe, secretly, the décor soothes the suits, too. Makes them feel a part of something bigger than themselves. Something fun, even.

They were never very cool when young, you know? Who else barks during “No Woman, No Cry?”

Yippie Kay Yay

Nor can their jobs be easy, truly. Imagine spending the better part of a lifetime convincing oneself that short-term growth at long-term cost is Important & Good.

Wrangling neverending profit from manufactured belongingness & pretend foodstuffs, sourced from fellow fraternity brothers’ Darth Vader companies, served to unsuspecting grandmas.

All for the purpose of populating a 3k square foot home with as many gadgets as possible. From which warmth & security will – surely — arise.

The anxiety must be horrendous. No wonder corporate executives of all stripes need annual retreats.

Getting high on nature calms them, like us, given our shared core humanity.

(It seems they may need special teambuilding games, challenges & amenities to make the effort worthwhile, however, according to this.)

Perhaps it’s their fraternity roots. Initiations often took place out in the woods, as I recall. Forest & fire add a certain gravitas, even for dubious ceremonies meant to seal dubious bonds of brothershipness.

If only…we could just sort of make them STAY in the woods, or out among the cattle. Just rock the simple life for a while, transcendentalist-style. Eventually, perhaps, they might pick up on some sense of the sacred.

Then maybe they might reconsider their policies of crapping all over the planet.

Click image to buy this print!

Walden Schmond

By golly if they don’t make this difficult, though, by deciding the danged trees are disposable, too.

Yes, this: Genetically modified trees. Despite the universally restorative comfort of woods, of simple homes made from free or cheap, locally available materials, of hot homemade meals within, made from actual food, grown in actual clean, rich soil.

You know, our true common cultural landscape.

Well, it wasn’t enough to mess up the food, soil, air & water. Now it’s time to go after the trees & thus the iconic cabin materials as well.

Whoa ho-ho, cowboy-Rastafarians!

Amongst the gigantic moral, ethical, environmental, practical & spiritual questions regarding genetically modified trees lie these burning questions:

How will Johnny D & I harvest scrap wood for signs & stuff if the trees are patented, the way frankenseeds are now? Will the wood watch us when we sleep?

And: Can we just go ahead & officially get marijuana genetically modified, too? So that we all may forget, blessedly forget, real trees, forevermore?

Please, mon!

Grooviness

Let’s hold hands now, brothers & sisters.

In the spirit of community, of gratitude, of good ole solid wood, of handmade by real humans, & in the spirit of pastured cows boldly showing their faces at Costco, we’re having us a giveaway.

If you’d like a chance at winning The Farm’s Fanciest Cameo Cow Coat Rack below, leave us a comment describing how you build sanctuary into your home &/or life, wherever it may be.

Extra ways = extra points. Signing up for the Bare Root Studio newsletter = another extra point. Be sure to put your total number of entries at the end of your comment. Let’s not get crazy here – one comment only, please.

Sharing this giveaway across the vast social webs would be awfully nice of you, though….

Winner will be announced on May 3!