only consequences

About two years ago, as I considered how to make decisions and carry out actions, I felt myself being slowly paralyzed as my mind began to see more and more clearly the thought:

There is no good or bad - only consequences

I felt a paralyzing fear that this might be true.
I have been grappling with this in various ways for almost two years and I think I have finally come to terms with and even feel somewhat comfortable with this idea.

Who knows if it's right.
You could probably argue a lot regarding what this must mean for my ethical/moral condition or something.

For now I will choose to think that it this means I am less subject to thinking of how I should or shouldn't be doing something and more comfortable with making choices and proceeding to manage the consequences of my choices. Rather than considering what the 'right' decision is, I feel more comfortable considering the consequences of various options and choosing which consequences I would like to continue with.
I think there is something very good about this.

Li'l Oven

I remember being rather young and reading a picture book about a little girl who often plays at her friend's house.

While she plays there, she notices that the other little girl sometimes runs happily to her parents, saying "I need a li'l oven an' some 'uggin!". And then her father will put down his briefcase and bend over to pick her up and give her a hug.

The little girl feels very nice about this and wants this to happen to her too, so when she goes home to her own house, she walks up to her mother and says, "I need a li'l oven." The mother is a little confused, and says well we have an oven here. But the little girl shakes her head and says "that's not the one I want." She tries again when her father comes home, "I need a li'l oven." The parents are confused, but they want to make her happy and see her smile, so they say tomorrow, we will go and find a little oven for you.

Bright and early the next day they got started, and went around to all kinds of toy places. They even found a cute little oven that could really bake small sheets of cookies. But each time they say, "is that the one you want?", the little girl shook her head and says, "no, that's not the one I want." Her parents felt sad because they don't know what to give her even though they looked all day.

As they arrive home, they are getting home at the same time as the father of the friend who lives next door. As the girl's parents get out of the car, they see the neighbor girl run to her father saying, "I need a li'l oven, an' some 'uggin!" and they see him sweep her up in his arms.

They look at their own daughter. "Is that the one you want?" Their little girl smiles, "Yes, that's it." And they sweep her up into their arms and carry her inside.

*****

I remember reading this book and trying it on my parents. I told them about the book and they said that certainly if I ever wanted that, it was good to to ask. Because, they said, a lot of people want to be loved and hugged, but they don't ask. Why not? was my automatic response. Because, they said, sometimes they just don't know how.

(The conversation went something like that)

Corsica is now for sale

on ebay!

Even if you don't plan to bid,
the description is worth a read.

ins verderben (or, coin side dents)

no life without growth
no growth without change
no change without death


destruction is "one side of the coin".
All "coins" have at least two sides. A sphere viewed from the side looks like a coin, although a sphere has no sides in the way that we think of a coin.
I am learning to see and appreciate whole coins and unseen elephants.

Coins have many sides, and perhaps none.
Everything can be learned from.
Stories continue.


***************************

And I didn't tell you how the story continued, did I?


The captain sprang into action, commanding his crew to reverse direction, lighten the load, turn sails, row, row, row! as the sea and hollow wind compelled the ship towards the falls at the end of the world. But, it was too late - they were committed. The hound had gone, but its task was complete. The captain soon realized this and resigned himself to a new course of action: tie everything down, stow everything away. The only possible result of attempted escape was to be dragged backwards over the falls.

He ordered the ship turned and guided directly for the edge of the world. They would go over. The great ship swung, directed towards a nearer horizon than any had before sailed into. Their course set, the crew and captain scrambled to fasten themselves in Above the lip of falling water, great vapor clouds rose and wrapped in the chilling empty howl of wind. Carried on the roaring sea, the ship approached, and joined the falling waters through the empty air below.

When the captain awoke and pushed himself free, he stumbled out into a cavernous world. Slowly, he discovered more of his ship and his crew, in surprisingly good condition. The roar of the falls echoed in a constant atmosphere of sound. They had plunged into a deep lake far below the earth and washed onto a feature of twisted rock. He turned, surveying the environment and saw only rock, formed and molded like clay, rising on all sides around gaping tunnels.

If they intended to continue, and return home, they would have to find a way through the dark passages to the surface.

They had arrived in Hades.

(Here, I do not remember how the story continues. It involves exploring, daring, cleverness, and trickery. But they do return to the surface. And of course, even more story continues from there.)

(if any parts of this story sound familiar to anyone, I would really like to find this book again! It is not a novel. More of a picture-and-story book claiming to be Norse legends. I read it as a child, remember some, and am paraphrasing a LOT.)

"Competency vs Kindness"

For a long time, I had felt somewhat contemptuously about philosophy. The ways I heard it talked about, it always seemed too artificial and withdrawn to justify the tremendous self-important ego I considered its abstract entity to have.

Later in school and in my own time, I read more broadly and deeply about the 'earlier philosophers' and philosophies from other parts of the world, and I came to appreciate a sense of vivacity - the desire to seek life and the urge to live well.

That's what I appreciate about these guys: TrackersNW. Admittedly, I don't know too much about them, but from the few I've met and the things they seem to care about - despite how easy it would be to think they are being silly - I think they are some of the more real and honestly striving (and fun!) people I have met.

Please see following text from their email update (posted here because I don't see it on their blog)

Competent or kind? What type of people make a community thrive? Question I often hear in my personal village.
How many of us can parallel park a 35 foot trailer with a 32 foot skin on frame boat on it, organize the logistics to feed 30, 60 or 200 people, shoot an arrow straight and true, get a stuck vehicle out of the mud on a flooded bush road in Botswana, code a new piece of software that helps people communicate in radically new ways, use their leatherman to repair a broken walkie talkie or track a cougar, finally catching a glimpse of that elusive cat? All these things were accomplished by colleagues of mine in just the past 3 weeks. Maybe by coincidence, I find all these folks to be very kind.

Yet this is not always the case for competency. I learned a long time ago that mastery does not always mean nice. Around the world, some of the best trackers, survival skills experts, martial artists, primitive skills masters, herbalists, writers, artists, pundits, scientists, designers, permaculturists, engineers and especially educators can act like "A-class" jerks. Experts stale in the knowledge that no one does it as good or great as them. As an eclectic teenager, I grew up revering nearly any and all competence. In my older age, I have rethought this ardent reverence for such salty dogs.

It took me awhile to realize there are two paths to competency. One stems from insisting that a study, art or philosophy is more important than even the people and land around us. Enhancing science, style or reputation becomes the ultimate motivation. This awareness can cloister you from the living world. And in the long run, leave the "expert" old, sad and lonely.

The other "competent" is borne from compassion. Empathy transmutes to vigilance for tending land, family and the village. The point of knowing is not simply for knowledge itself, but instead its a choice to place your gifts in service to the greater whole. Individuals competent in this way rarely refer to themselves as geniuses or masters, yet their regard and attention for their work can always be relied upon.

The same can be said about there being two ways of "kind". By our culture's definition "nice and good" is equated with syrupy words, universal harmony, right emotions and world peace. Yet becoming truly useful often requires giving of yourself, courage, sacrifice, personal risk, confusion, standing stalwart through conflict, doing hard work, challenging the status quo, setting healthy boundaries and focusing your attention. Real kindness, real care for your community and fellows is rarely the easy or perfect way out.

There's really not difference between competency and kindness. They're one choice. The value of competency derives from the attentiveness and passion found through kindness. And the village thrives by this regard and care.

Project Sarurun

Project Sarurun
A grassroots arts and crafts campaign to benefit children affected by war or violent conflict. Great changes are an accumulation of many small deeds.

Please learn more about this project and the upcoming auction. It begins very soon.

babies

When I was young, I was told not to tickle the feet or stomach of my baby brother. "He doesn't understand what he is feeling," said my mom, "And he doesn't know to scratch it to make it stop."

After that I sometimes persisted in tickling my little brother, but I made sure to rub my fingers in a soft scratch afterward to stop his skin from feeling that weird after-tickle. What my mom said was true - he was confused and defenseless. He was a baby and could hardly focus on particular items, let along understand what it meant to be tickled. Even if he could have understood how to make the feeling stop, he did not have the means to bend and scratch his own foot. All he could understand was that he was uncomfortable, and all he could do about it was writhe.

I have been thinking lately, that one of the things about growing older and more experienced is to try to understand what exactly we are experiencing, where it is coming from, and how to respond.

A baby only knows what feels good and what doesn't. All it can do in response is enjoy something or begin crying. As the baby grows, it learns different kinds of feeling good and bad and why they feel that way. As it learns how different things affect it, it can begin to try responding and learn to take care of itself.

The example I have used is of physical discomfort, but I think this is true for other kinds of feelings as well. And just because I am no longer a small baby, doesn't mean that I don't discover feelings and effects that are as mysterious and confusing to me as a baby must feel when first being tickled. But I will learn, and become coordinated to understand what causes these things and how to respond.

One of these things is not like the others

I am not a particularly girly person. I spent a lot of time with male friends and tended to prefer them to female friends, (with the exception of the female friends that I felt good enough about to consider closer friends) and have invaded the male-dominated classrooms of physics and theoretical math.


I had thought that this meant I was not a victim or adversely affected by the 'patriarchal society' I'd heard so much about.

I now think this actually means that I was rather foolishly ignorant.

I have lived and grown in this culture for more than two decades, and only recently realized that the men elevated in history, science, and politics - the men with buildings named in their honor and whose likenesses are carved into public houses of justice, of business, and of religion -
I only recently realized that I am not supposed to grow up to emulate these men. I cannot. They do not represent me or my future.

I am going to grow up to be a woman.

And I am only beginning to understand that there is a difference, and to realize what this difference might mean.

stem

For the record,

I have been deciding not to write in this blog for my own good. When I can write clearly and honestly again, I will do so.

I decided this when, about 8 months ago, I wrote a letter home to my mom, and realized that it was the first time in too long that I actually felt as though I were preparing a message for someone other than myself.

Eggs in a Basket

Back in the early days,
sometime before 5th grade,
when the chickens still lived in the shack by the burning barrels,

I'd gone to collect eggs. And, while I was gathering the last few out of the straw in the opposite corner, the one with the lean neck - the one I'd dubbed 'Black Beauty' overturned the basket I'd left carefully at the top of the few cement stairs at the entrance. She'd leaped up to perch on the handle and in a few wingbeats, toppled the basket and eggs out onto the cold stairs -- I saw it begin, but couldn't stop it in time. The eggs cracked and spilled. Only the few in my hand were saved. The chickens rushed to eat the others. I felt terrible.

Not only would I return to the house with a paltry few eggs, but the others were wasted and it was my fault. Normally, we collected eggs in rust-dented Maxwell coffee cans which 1) the chickens rarely took interest in and 2) are more stable and solidly cylindrical. But this day, I'd been showing off to myself. I'd passed up the cans for a basket - the woven kind with a shallow basin and handle arched over top. I'd been feeling fancy, quaintly colloquial, and was playing my imaginarily scripted role of deftly-intentioned child egg collector and with a properly aesthetic basket.

It was the basket handle which attracted the chicken, the shallow basin which rolled and tipped, and my selfish game and subsequent carelessness which broke the eggs. I was afraid of what Mom would say to how I'd failed.


Trembling slightly, I walked back to the porch to turn myself in in early twilight. My mother was already standing there. I climbed each stair. Beginning to cry, I told how I'd lost the eggs.

The voice that came in reply lifted my head in surprise. She seemed unconcerned with the eggs lost and quietly stated that it wasn't my fault that the chicken had tipped the basket over. I don't remember the words, but I remember her even voice and comforting presence through sob-strained and blurred hearing. I hadn't expected that. I'm not sure if she was even looking at me when she said it. In my memory, her height and stature exceed my range of vision and she seems to speak mostly to the hill in the north, fading as the twilight moved in on the tails of sunset to borrow the hill, fields and forests, saving them for later.

She suggested we go for a walk then, she and I. We walked toward the cooling sunset and she told me about her dreams for the forest and trails around the house, how she wanted to plan places to sit and take in the view. We talked about which overlooks could be best taken advantage of, and I described to her the ones I liked. In her gift of descriptions, she let me come in close to things close to her. Perhaps, I only remember walking because of how she described her visions for the land and trees - in my memory I am transported in the same gray evening air from the porch to the site on the hill where she wants to put a bench.


This is one of the closest memories of I have to my mother. Now, it seems well worth the eggs, and that whole thing is so insignificant except in what it led to.