Well, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again…”I don’t need to get kicked in the nuts twice to know that once is too many times.” Yea, that’s right, I said that. I was in the Navy the first time I said it, but it’s become one of my little credo’s – I think everyone ought to have a credo. Something odd but cool like “I don’t take any wooden nickels, dawg.” I think my dad’s secret credo was “don’t stop fighting until you can’t get up again.” My dad wasn’t a fighter like in the violent sense, but he was pretty fucking tough, in the “keep on keepin’ on” department. I think getting kicked in the nuts once is a real attention-getter – you know, painful and all. But getting kicked in the nuts twice is a paradigm shift. At the very least, it’s cause for wanting a paradigm shift.
I just found out today that my unemployment benefits will be awarded in the sum of $57 per week. This will continue until I have received $720. And then I could qualify for extensions. Extensions? Guess in two years I could be a homeless, broke ninety-niner, spending my $228 per month on malt liquor and hanging out down by the river, with all the other motivational speakers. I’m trying to count the amount of times I have been kicked in the nuts over the course of this recession, but just taking a wild swing at it, I’d say it doesn’t really matter after the first handful of times. What followed was a paradigm shift, and the beginning of my Freedom at Point Zero” phase. Today, the news I have received certainly qualifies as “kick in the nuts 3.0” but I am kind of at a loss for what a paradigm shift would look like this time.
How proud I am to find that I have indeed fallen through the cracks in this recession. I don’t qualify for anything that looks like public assistance, unemployment insurance, or whatever, because I’m a man, I’m not crazy and I don’t have any kids. I did apply today for food-stamps, because hey, a man’s gotta eat. It was kind of cool to talk to my mom today, and receive her admonishment that I keep buying good quality food, no matter how bad things get. I’ll have to drag her to the Co-op one of these days, and see what she says. My new business cards came in the mail the other day, and little postcards that I can use to canvas around my neighborhood, promoting “the human-powered handyman.” But truthfully, this human is feeling a bit less powerful in the face of diminishing options and bleak prospects. My postcard says “Finally, a neighborhood-based, eco-friendly way to take care of your precious home.” Finally! I hope my neighbors here in Curtis Park get my irreverent, tongue-in-cheek greenie-ism, and don’t take my slogan too seriously.
There is this whole Judgment Day thing that the Christian fundamentalists are screaming about, and I have been posting a lot sarcastic comments about on my Facebook page. I’m probably going to hell for taking the end of the world so lightly. I think it is fascinating to see a group of people wishing so deeply for an end to their painful existence in the human realm – I understand them on some level – and yet, I think it is a kind of mental illness to have such faith in something like THE END OF THE WORLD, or even going to heaven. What they could be praying and hoping for is a paradigm shift. I suppose that Jesus coming down for the last roundup is a kind of paradigm shift, but I don’t know if it’s all that realistic a vision. I have seen God work many times, and (s)he is more subtle than that – more clever, and certainly a lot less interested in making a scene. But a paradigm shift I could see – I could get behind that. Maybe, all the money that all the countries spend on military weapons could instead be spent to get folks fed and off the street, and into drug treatment programs – that would be a paradigm shift. Maybe the money that’s left over (because you know there would be money left over) could be used to insure that the disabled and mentally ill, and all the broken down veterans received their fair shake and a way to build productive, satisfying lives for themselves. You see where I’m going with this.
They just killed Osama Bin Laden for being a terrorist, and for hating America, or as George W. Bush said, for “hating freedom,” but I think someone hating freedom is about as likely as someone hating chili dogs, or donuts. They might hate the results, but…I don’t think Osama Bin Laden was a good man, but I think he would taste a chili dog and dig it just like everyone else does. Nobody hates those things. We could have been building schools and hospitals in the same countries that we have been bombing and killing in for the last ten years. Probably it would have been cheaper, and somehow, the world would be a safer place than it is now with Osama Bin Laden dead. That’s all I’m saying.
When I was a freshman in high school, I started smoking weed. I was pretty into smoking pot, because it was such a new experience. Intoxication, mind-expansion…these were new things, and they felt good. Talk about a fucking paradigm shift. It was kind of hard to hide what I was into, and my parent’s did not like the fact that their son was “on drugs.” I don’t think my dad ever really believed that I would be a good man once he caught me smoking weed – once he found my bamboo bong and smashed it into a hundred little pieces. Well, I got over weed, got tired of the anxiety, the hiding and the nagging voice in my heart telling me I was destined for better, greater things, if I could only get my shit together. I have never sworn off marijuana as evil, but have certainly acknowledged that people can get addicted to it, just like we can get addicted to anything else. There is little room for it in my life, as I’ve moved out into the world, and so it’s shocking to me now to pick up the Sacramento News & Review and see that 50% of the content is pot-related advertising. I think it’s surreal - Quite the paradigm shift from the days of my youth.
I would have never guessed when I was 14 years old, that I would ever see magazine ads for weed, and coupons for “one free joint when you buy an eighth.” Look, I’m 42 and I still hide my stash even though it’s one doctor’s note away from being legal. I have weed in my bedroom closet that is three years old, and I often forget where it’s hidden. I get high like less than once per month, and it still feels like a big deal to me. That is a good thing, and I cannot imagine walking into a store to buy a bag of weed. And yet, that moment is upon us.
A defining moment happened for me back in the year 2000. My dad was diagnosed with cancer in 2000, and cascaded headlong through a relatively brief cycle of surgery, disease, and chemo that had him circling the drain inside of two years. At some point, he called me and asked me if I would get him some “grass” and show him how to smoke it – he needed something to help manage his pain, and I had to explain that it wasn’t called “grass” anymore. By that time, pot was widely regarded as effective for this purpose, and so it came to pass. This, the man that almost kicked me out of his house for smoking pot as a teenager, straight as an arrow, and I’m showing him how to hit the bong I bought him for his last birthday, just a few months before he died. “Here dad, you see that little hole, it’s a carb – you gotta cover the carb with your finger, and then suck real hard…Ya gotta hold yer breath in there. Hold it, hold it…ok now exhale”
That’s a paradigm shift, ok - A mighty, mighty paradigm shift. When things that used to be rotten and bad, aren’t seen as quite so bad, and maybe some things that used to be ok are no longer tolerable, like judging folks about who they want to love. I’m looking for another paradigm shift right now – a big fat one that will make it so that a man with three college degrees, and a thousand different skills can find some way to stop having to claw and scrape for his basic sense of economic safety. That’s the kind of paradigm shift I’m waiting for, but I think it’s going to take awhile. The evidence, by all indications, is that even more education might not help substantially. But I know one thing…I can take another few kicks in the nuts and I’ll just keep getting up, because I know how to have a good time, and because life is rich and sweet. I’ve got a groovy new girlfriend, and there are a lot of people around that really care about me. I’ve also got chickens now, and they are laying some pretty big eggs.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Shooting the Pier
When faced with the question of whether to create or not to create something…that is to say, whether or not to do something creative, it is quite easy for us to fall back on a default position of unavailability, where either the time, money, or other resources are not available to us. Maybe we are simply not emotionally available to create – this is actually the most common problem that I encounter when inviting myself to create. Sometimes the various obstacles that I have internalized around creativity are accessible far more easily it seems, than all of the gifts, talents, intuitive impulses and energies are. This can be quite crippling, and yet, I remain in those moments, quite aware of the ache that I have inside – I must create something. I am learning that I am most creative when drawing on, or at least synthesizing my angst – that fight or flight response to the stressors around me.
I could make the argument that it is hard to be creative when our world is in flux – when our sense of safety is challenged, or our heart is broken, or the struggle to survive financially is bearing down upon us. By that logic, the obstacles preventing creativity have been plentiful in this time of economic scarcity and transition. Interesting then, that the most renowned artists in history seemed to inhabit lives of incredible adversity and emotional chaos, addiction, and personal tragedy.
It’s true that creativity is a process of decision-making – of drawing the most from a thousand possible choices at each turn. There are certain circles that believe we have too many choices in this country. I’m leaning in the direction of that belief, as I continue the sometimes painful process of reinventing myself. This process has been unfolding over the last few years, and of course, coincides with the economic recession, which most would agree, is redefining almost everything about the way we hold not only vocation, but such common priorities as family, leisure, health, and material success.
Personally, I have had the experience of almost completely abandoning my material world, in preparation for travel abroad. While this travel has not yet materialized, a deep sense of openness has. The experience of moving often, not knowing what my income for a given month or week will actually be – this over the last few years has had an effect on my state of being, and my creative impulses. As if I were some kind of ascetic, some California ninja-monk, what I have noticed is that, on the good days, I am more spontaneous, much more alert, and receptive to the blessings that can arrive in any given moment. On the bad days, I take a nap. This cannot be a bad thing as it relates to creativity - and to life - I am thinking as I write this. The question of how one can create and be creative arises, and I think my response to the question has been to create on the fly – with no attachment to having something tangible, or to any sense of completion. Of course, this does not apply when I am “handymanning” – in those times, I need to be attached to completion, and good results. I believe that there is a liberation that arises, in having one’s impulses squeezed, filtered through the membrane of life’s great challenges.
Creating on the fly takes many forms. When I was in the last semester of finishing my art degree, I told all of my instructors that I was not going to purchase any more art supplies, but rather, would complete the next several weeks with only what I could forage from around the art building there at Sacramento State. I dug through the dumpster, the scrap piles, and even the backsides of other department buildings, for materials with which to make my art. I carried with me, things that I found on my bike-ride to campus. The results were quite compelling. For my assemblage / collage class, I could scatter about broken plates and wood shavings, balance on edge two ripped umbrellas, or paste discarded chunks of paper mache together into a bold abstract sculpture. In a painting class, I would walk outside and gather sticks and rocks, with which to scrape some lost and found canvas into submission…removing old paint in fragments, and then splashing new paint like a wicked vomit-launch. For my final project, to be displayed in the graduate’s exhibit, I welded three rusty pieces of scrap metal together, capped with a sheet of mesh – then installed the motor from a vibrating sex toy, into the mesh like an insect caught in a spider’s web. This made the entire structure rattle and hum, as visitors walked through the gallery, gravitating towards the curious disturbance.
The semester-long process of foraging was like a purification - a blazing fire of freedom, with the wind of new discovery fanning my flames. Sometimes I could not sleep at night from the adrenaline coursing through my veins after finding some really serendipitous rubbish, from which I would compose my next day’s assignment! It was approaching orgasmic at times.
My life had been coagulating back into normal size chunks until this morning, when I lost my job. My chest was full of bravado and clean air after climbing 3000 feet on a multi-day bicycle trek to Mt. Diablo and back, up through the Delta this weekend. My friends and I made some memories to be sure. I made my way to work like a triumphant swashbuckler, swaggering up the dock upon his return from the high seas, only to be met with my final paycheck, a limp handshake, and some pity thrown in for good measure. The State Council of Whatever, that manages this nonprofit’s grant, decided that my newly created position was just as well to be newly eliminated. By all indications, my life is still coagulating into chunks, albeit different sized chunks.
I have three new jobs scheduled for the “Human-Powered Handyman” this week, and there is an amazing, delightful new woman in my life. Oddly, as the news reports of economic recovery pile up, I am finally eligible for unemployment benefits! God plays a mean banjo, that’s all I can say. I don’t have the sense of implosion that I had last year at this time. William, my friend, statistician and trusty fact-checker, pointed that out to me this morning, that it was exactly last year, within two days of a year it turns out, that I was laid off from my previous little job. This year, Life is good and rich and full, and I am riding the edge of my board - poised to shoot the pier, as it were. I am going to crouch down and point my little surf-board at that mutha, and if I loose a few teeth crashing through the pylons, then so be it – I am gonna aim for the tightest gap I can see.
It's an interesting experience to re-habitate a house that one has left previously. I already knew where I would put what little stuff I had left, and I already knew the sounds of the neighborhood, when I moved back in last November. I have no plans of leaving this Spring, even after this morning. I plan to stay, and create something magical. I'm getting chickens, and I'm going to plant my fuckin garden. There is a good reason why I feel such resolve, aside from the fact that I get to collect unemployment this time. It conjures up a warm fuzzy feeling in my body, when I think about the cathartic moment that pushed my decision to stay in Sacramento rather than go into the Peace Corps. It was a sunny Saturday morning last Spring, and I was preparing for my move to Marin County, where I was to secure a yearlong job as caretaker of a Buddhist retreat center, pending my departure into the Peace Corps. I was running some errands on my bicycle, traversing the neighborhood with multiple stops. That morning, I ran into a continuous stream of friends – some simply pleasant acquaintances, and some friends from my meditation community…I think a total of 7 people in all. There were a couple of encounters just in the form of waves as I rode by on my bicycle, and a couple of people at the Co-op that I had to stop and chat with for 20 minutes each. This string of visits and connections chewed up the clock, and left me both glowing inside and deeply conflicted, by a clear sense that this place – this village…is indeed my home.
That day stuck with me. It kept churning, the way a man gets an incessant voice of his father’s stern warning on some practical matter, stuck in his head for days on end. It simply began to haunt me that I might choose to move across the planet for two years, while I could be here feeling a sense of BELONGING – something I had waited so long to feel, and worked so hard to cultivate. What I have learned over the last several months is that I gained much more than I let go of, when I sold all my stuff last Spring. In letting go of my material existence, and also the expectation of legitimacy around those possessions, I also found myself boiling the content of my life down to it’s essential ingredients. Thinking about leaving my dog with my mother for two years could flood my eyes in just a few seconds – choking back a full on sob.
And so here I stand, ready to create something new. I am still in survival mode, still hunting and gathering – called now to forage in an even more intense way than I was at the beginning of last Summer, when things fell apart. Ready to forage the way I did when I was finishing my art degree. These uncertain times can suck the wind right out of a man’s sails, give him a swift kick in the groin, and leave him doubled over on the sidewalk like he’s been drinking whiskey on an empty stomach. Or they can inspire a man to the edge of his board, and expose what’s real and true…cut loose the tethers of mediocrity and burst the sleepy bubble of daily living. The gravy train never comes down this track, but if it ever does, I should like to lift my eyes from my toil, hear the whistle blow, maybe wave at the conductor as he rolls on past.
I could make the argument that it is hard to be creative when our world is in flux – when our sense of safety is challenged, or our heart is broken, or the struggle to survive financially is bearing down upon us. By that logic, the obstacles preventing creativity have been plentiful in this time of economic scarcity and transition. Interesting then, that the most renowned artists in history seemed to inhabit lives of incredible adversity and emotional chaos, addiction, and personal tragedy.
It’s true that creativity is a process of decision-making – of drawing the most from a thousand possible choices at each turn. There are certain circles that believe we have too many choices in this country. I’m leaning in the direction of that belief, as I continue the sometimes painful process of reinventing myself. This process has been unfolding over the last few years, and of course, coincides with the economic recession, which most would agree, is redefining almost everything about the way we hold not only vocation, but such common priorities as family, leisure, health, and material success.
Personally, I have had the experience of almost completely abandoning my material world, in preparation for travel abroad. While this travel has not yet materialized, a deep sense of openness has. The experience of moving often, not knowing what my income for a given month or week will actually be – this over the last few years has had an effect on my state of being, and my creative impulses. As if I were some kind of ascetic, some California ninja-monk, what I have noticed is that, on the good days, I am more spontaneous, much more alert, and receptive to the blessings that can arrive in any given moment. On the bad days, I take a nap. This cannot be a bad thing as it relates to creativity - and to life - I am thinking as I write this. The question of how one can create and be creative arises, and I think my response to the question has been to create on the fly – with no attachment to having something tangible, or to any sense of completion. Of course, this does not apply when I am “handymanning” – in those times, I need to be attached to completion, and good results. I believe that there is a liberation that arises, in having one’s impulses squeezed, filtered through the membrane of life’s great challenges.
Creating on the fly takes many forms. When I was in the last semester of finishing my art degree, I told all of my instructors that I was not going to purchase any more art supplies, but rather, would complete the next several weeks with only what I could forage from around the art building there at Sacramento State. I dug through the dumpster, the scrap piles, and even the backsides of other department buildings, for materials with which to make my art. I carried with me, things that I found on my bike-ride to campus. The results were quite compelling. For my assemblage / collage class, I could scatter about broken plates and wood shavings, balance on edge two ripped umbrellas, or paste discarded chunks of paper mache together into a bold abstract sculpture. In a painting class, I would walk outside and gather sticks and rocks, with which to scrape some lost and found canvas into submission…removing old paint in fragments, and then splashing new paint like a wicked vomit-launch. For my final project, to be displayed in the graduate’s exhibit, I welded three rusty pieces of scrap metal together, capped with a sheet of mesh – then installed the motor from a vibrating sex toy, into the mesh like an insect caught in a spider’s web. This made the entire structure rattle and hum, as visitors walked through the gallery, gravitating towards the curious disturbance.
The semester-long process of foraging was like a purification - a blazing fire of freedom, with the wind of new discovery fanning my flames. Sometimes I could not sleep at night from the adrenaline coursing through my veins after finding some really serendipitous rubbish, from which I would compose my next day’s assignment! It was approaching orgasmic at times.
My life had been coagulating back into normal size chunks until this morning, when I lost my job. My chest was full of bravado and clean air after climbing 3000 feet on a multi-day bicycle trek to Mt. Diablo and back, up through the Delta this weekend. My friends and I made some memories to be sure. I made my way to work like a triumphant swashbuckler, swaggering up the dock upon his return from the high seas, only to be met with my final paycheck, a limp handshake, and some pity thrown in for good measure. The State Council of Whatever, that manages this nonprofit’s grant, decided that my newly created position was just as well to be newly eliminated. By all indications, my life is still coagulating into chunks, albeit different sized chunks.
I have three new jobs scheduled for the “Human-Powered Handyman” this week, and there is an amazing, delightful new woman in my life. Oddly, as the news reports of economic recovery pile up, I am finally eligible for unemployment benefits! God plays a mean banjo, that’s all I can say. I don’t have the sense of implosion that I had last year at this time. William, my friend, statistician and trusty fact-checker, pointed that out to me this morning, that it was exactly last year, within two days of a year it turns out, that I was laid off from my previous little job. This year, Life is good and rich and full, and I am riding the edge of my board - poised to shoot the pier, as it were. I am going to crouch down and point my little surf-board at that mutha, and if I loose a few teeth crashing through the pylons, then so be it – I am gonna aim for the tightest gap I can see.
It's an interesting experience to re-habitate a house that one has left previously. I already knew where I would put what little stuff I had left, and I already knew the sounds of the neighborhood, when I moved back in last November. I have no plans of leaving this Spring, even after this morning. I plan to stay, and create something magical. I'm getting chickens, and I'm going to plant my fuckin garden. There is a good reason why I feel such resolve, aside from the fact that I get to collect unemployment this time. It conjures up a warm fuzzy feeling in my body, when I think about the cathartic moment that pushed my decision to stay in Sacramento rather than go into the Peace Corps. It was a sunny Saturday morning last Spring, and I was preparing for my move to Marin County, where I was to secure a yearlong job as caretaker of a Buddhist retreat center, pending my departure into the Peace Corps. I was running some errands on my bicycle, traversing the neighborhood with multiple stops. That morning, I ran into a continuous stream of friends – some simply pleasant acquaintances, and some friends from my meditation community…I think a total of 7 people in all. There were a couple of encounters just in the form of waves as I rode by on my bicycle, and a couple of people at the Co-op that I had to stop and chat with for 20 minutes each. This string of visits and connections chewed up the clock, and left me both glowing inside and deeply conflicted, by a clear sense that this place – this village…is indeed my home.
That day stuck with me. It kept churning, the way a man gets an incessant voice of his father’s stern warning on some practical matter, stuck in his head for days on end. It simply began to haunt me that I might choose to move across the planet for two years, while I could be here feeling a sense of BELONGING – something I had waited so long to feel, and worked so hard to cultivate. What I have learned over the last several months is that I gained much more than I let go of, when I sold all my stuff last Spring. In letting go of my material existence, and also the expectation of legitimacy around those possessions, I also found myself boiling the content of my life down to it’s essential ingredients. Thinking about leaving my dog with my mother for two years could flood my eyes in just a few seconds – choking back a full on sob.
And so here I stand, ready to create something new. I am still in survival mode, still hunting and gathering – called now to forage in an even more intense way than I was at the beginning of last Summer, when things fell apart. Ready to forage the way I did when I was finishing my art degree. These uncertain times can suck the wind right out of a man’s sails, give him a swift kick in the groin, and leave him doubled over on the sidewalk like he’s been drinking whiskey on an empty stomach. Or they can inspire a man to the edge of his board, and expose what’s real and true…cut loose the tethers of mediocrity and burst the sleepy bubble of daily living. The gravy train never comes down this track, but if it ever does, I should like to lift my eyes from my toil, hear the whistle blow, maybe wave at the conductor as he rolls on past.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Hunting and Gathering
(From late March)
I was talking with someone last night, and out of my mouth came this theory about how we are evolving as a species, back into hunters and gatherers. More specifically, the elements that are hard wired in us to make us good hunters and gatherers – those elements are being called upon again in a time of rapid change, constantly shifting circumstances around home, work, and basic survival. It occurred to me that there really is something primeval and animal-like about the way I, and anyone else who has been touched by this great recession, has been living. Of course it looks different, but the basic impulses being employed, I think, are the same as those that made our ancestors successful at hunting and gathering.
I may have a skewed perspective. I mean, not everyone - in fact, few - of the people in my circle of friends, have experienced the kind of continuous change that I’m often engaged in. Back in 2005, I moved to Marin County for a job working for a nonprofit organization. I had been unemployed for several months, after serving briefly as Deputy Director for a rather dysfunctional Statewide nonprofit in the midst of a leadership meltdown. I was laid off after the new Executive Director squandered our precious last dollars and drove our account balance to ZERO. A few weeks earlier, I had managed to stop this gent from paying a consultant $3000 to create an employee handbook for us, noting that “we’ve got two employees, you and me…We can make our own fucking handbook, dude.” Now I was doing some freelance writing and nude modeling for artists, to supplement my unemployment checks. I had very little cash on hand for the move, and I found a woman on Craigslist that was offering a room, in exchange for handyman work around her home. That got me on the ground in Marin, and within a couple of weeks, I had arranged to rent a room from a friend. As it turns out, over the course of the next year, I lived in three different places. That kind of change is not ideal, but it taught me some things about being able to travel light, and execute change. At some point, feeling quite the nomad, I acquired a cohort of plastic bins, labeled them according to their contents, and on subsequent moves, simply reloaded the bins with their appropriate contents. It was highly efficient, but what’s more, I think I was utilizing my inherited gathering instincts.
The earliest theory is that indigenous humans did more scavenging than actual hunting. Updated theories say that in fact, early tribal man was quite skilled at cultivation of land and livestock. I know one thing, I have found my scavenging instincts to be quite sharp in recent months. Indeed, I have gotten really good at finding free stuff, and I think doing so is a great antidote to American culture. It’s something of a blessing to be forcefully disengaged from the treadmill, and so it is that some of us out here have gotten pretty damn resourceful in ways that we might not have imagined five or ten years ago. I have become an avid user of an online group called FreeCycle, where people give stuff away. Several months ago, I found myself a toaster oven by posting a request with my friends on Facebook. Within just a few hours, I was able to “repurpose” a toaster oven that had been in a friend’s closet gathering dust. It’s really amazing how much free entertainment is out there - I have been to three free movie screenings in the last month or so. As well, I can testify that there are all manner of completely dignified ways to happen into cheap yoga, free food, and discarded household items.
Now, hunting on the other hand, is significantly more taxing than gathering, a bit more dangerous, and I dare say, without guarantee of success. I went on a job interview a few weeks ago for a position with a small nonprofit nature center. Dare I say that it’s high time I moved myself into the “for-profit” sector? They were in leadership transition of course, and yes, funding transition as well. I sensed a fairly high level of anxiety present in the Executive Director, and the Development Director, who were both interviewing me. At some point, I expressed reservation about the fact that the position featured no minimum hours per week, making it not quite an on-call position but pretty stinkin’ close. What I got back from my prospective supervisors was a 15 minute spew of subtle complaining about the way that their jobs were in flux, and the unclear road ahead for the nature center as a whole. While this did inspire my compassion, it did not inspire my confidence, or interest level, and I passed on the position.
Obviously, this generation of professionals sees the world very different than my father’s generation did, in terms of job security, loyalty to The Man, and one’s ability to settle into a situation. My dad worked the same job for 29 years, and would have worked another 5 if cancer had not killed him. It is well documented that most people my age have gotten used to changing jobs, and careers, and a great many have embraced the freelancer’s life, out of necessity.
I personally have had a resume at the ready for the last several years, continuously updated, locked and loaded...like a tactical missile, poised to fire off at the first indication of trouble. This is, according to my theory, my little caveman hunting gene kicking in. I have certainly become a networking hound, unabashedly contacting old friends, former colleagues, and even women I have dated, to gather professional leads. It is hard not to see myself traveling the professional landscape in warrior pose, spear drawn back, ready to take down a caribou. Of course, this time around, I’m trying to avoid striking on the slowest caribou in the herd.
I was talking with someone last night, and out of my mouth came this theory about how we are evolving as a species, back into hunters and gatherers. More specifically, the elements that are hard wired in us to make us good hunters and gatherers – those elements are being called upon again in a time of rapid change, constantly shifting circumstances around home, work, and basic survival. It occurred to me that there really is something primeval and animal-like about the way I, and anyone else who has been touched by this great recession, has been living. Of course it looks different, but the basic impulses being employed, I think, are the same as those that made our ancestors successful at hunting and gathering.
I may have a skewed perspective. I mean, not everyone - in fact, few - of the people in my circle of friends, have experienced the kind of continuous change that I’m often engaged in. Back in 2005, I moved to Marin County for a job working for a nonprofit organization. I had been unemployed for several months, after serving briefly as Deputy Director for a rather dysfunctional Statewide nonprofit in the midst of a leadership meltdown. I was laid off after the new Executive Director squandered our precious last dollars and drove our account balance to ZERO. A few weeks earlier, I had managed to stop this gent from paying a consultant $3000 to create an employee handbook for us, noting that “we’ve got two employees, you and me…We can make our own fucking handbook, dude.” Now I was doing some freelance writing and nude modeling for artists, to supplement my unemployment checks. I had very little cash on hand for the move, and I found a woman on Craigslist that was offering a room, in exchange for handyman work around her home. That got me on the ground in Marin, and within a couple of weeks, I had arranged to rent a room from a friend. As it turns out, over the course of the next year, I lived in three different places. That kind of change is not ideal, but it taught me some things about being able to travel light, and execute change. At some point, feeling quite the nomad, I acquired a cohort of plastic bins, labeled them according to their contents, and on subsequent moves, simply reloaded the bins with their appropriate contents. It was highly efficient, but what’s more, I think I was utilizing my inherited gathering instincts.
The earliest theory is that indigenous humans did more scavenging than actual hunting. Updated theories say that in fact, early tribal man was quite skilled at cultivation of land and livestock. I know one thing, I have found my scavenging instincts to be quite sharp in recent months. Indeed, I have gotten really good at finding free stuff, and I think doing so is a great antidote to American culture. It’s something of a blessing to be forcefully disengaged from the treadmill, and so it is that some of us out here have gotten pretty damn resourceful in ways that we might not have imagined five or ten years ago. I have become an avid user of an online group called FreeCycle, where people give stuff away. Several months ago, I found myself a toaster oven by posting a request with my friends on Facebook. Within just a few hours, I was able to “repurpose” a toaster oven that had been in a friend’s closet gathering dust. It’s really amazing how much free entertainment is out there - I have been to three free movie screenings in the last month or so. As well, I can testify that there are all manner of completely dignified ways to happen into cheap yoga, free food, and discarded household items.
Now, hunting on the other hand, is significantly more taxing than gathering, a bit more dangerous, and I dare say, without guarantee of success. I went on a job interview a few weeks ago for a position with a small nonprofit nature center. Dare I say that it’s high time I moved myself into the “for-profit” sector? They were in leadership transition of course, and yes, funding transition as well. I sensed a fairly high level of anxiety present in the Executive Director, and the Development Director, who were both interviewing me. At some point, I expressed reservation about the fact that the position featured no minimum hours per week, making it not quite an on-call position but pretty stinkin’ close. What I got back from my prospective supervisors was a 15 minute spew of subtle complaining about the way that their jobs were in flux, and the unclear road ahead for the nature center as a whole. While this did inspire my compassion, it did not inspire my confidence, or interest level, and I passed on the position.
Obviously, this generation of professionals sees the world very different than my father’s generation did, in terms of job security, loyalty to The Man, and one’s ability to settle into a situation. My dad worked the same job for 29 years, and would have worked another 5 if cancer had not killed him. It is well documented that most people my age have gotten used to changing jobs, and careers, and a great many have embraced the freelancer’s life, out of necessity.
I personally have had a resume at the ready for the last several years, continuously updated, locked and loaded...like a tactical missile, poised to fire off at the first indication of trouble. This is, according to my theory, my little caveman hunting gene kicking in. I have certainly become a networking hound, unabashedly contacting old friends, former colleagues, and even women I have dated, to gather professional leads. It is hard not to see myself traveling the professional landscape in warrior pose, spear drawn back, ready to take down a caribou. Of course, this time around, I’m trying to avoid striking on the slowest caribou in the herd.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
New And Improved (lost and found retro-post - written January 2011)
New And Improved
Back to the question about Freedom at Point Zero. Do I have it, and did I ever achieve it…or was I just waxing poetic about the process of rebuilding a life wrecked by collective American greed? Would I simply wait here for the next bus to economic recoveryville, and jump on with gay amnesia, licking my chops at the prospect of achieving legitimacy, and resuming a life of “normal” American pursuits?
In fact, on paper, things have gotten worse over the last several months, but another truth is that the process of becoming free has gradually deepened, as I let go into possibility. It is incredible that I have made it through this entire recession having never been eligible for social aid of any kind, but it is also a spiritual lesson to recognize that I have never truly been at the edge of my capability to survive. My basic wellbeing has never been threatened the way an average man’s wellbeing might be threatened daily in say, Calcutta. This fact provides for me, a basic space in which freedom can reside.
Coming into the new year, I have a part-time job that is only barely meeting my financial overhead, and still I feel quite fortunate. I have applied to two graduate school paths, and have committed to continue here in Sacramento, building my life from the inside out. I am focusing my energy, reinventing myself, and reimagining my next career. This is not the first time I have undertaken this process…but it’s the first time that everything is on the table.
So, the freedom is all in my head. That’s what I told my friend Lary, when he asked me how the FAPZ was hangin’. Being debt free is a kind of liberation that cannot be fully described, and in the refractory period, one can get a great deal of mileage out of being a scavenger and a miser. Really, after years of sheepish consumerism, keeping life materially simple is a reward unto itself, and I have become quite clear that I would like to keep my monthly living expenses as low as humanly possible, like, forever. My vision for doing this even includes going carless, and utilizing my fleet of bicycles to get me everywhere, and accomplish everything. I have embraced this life before, and in fact, it is something that I have been eagerly anticipating for months.
I have been doing Kundalini yoga since last June, and have found myself opening up new heart space - A space of simple contentment. It’s a raw awareness of passion that arises, and an embracing of renunciation. It’s so ironic to be feeling contentment amidst what can accurately be described as an unraveling, but in fact, the unraveling is a catalyst for letting go. It feels like love. I have reached a kind of contentment with being single, without kids and all the trappings of middle class existence, contentment with being in flux in my career-life, facing intense uncertainty in my immediate future, and for extended periods…I have achieved contentment with the moment, just the way it is, unencumbered by my desires.
Not that I don’t have any desires…I have been really desiring bike gear lately – really into my bicycles, building my stable as I prepare to divorce my car (and use the cash to buttress my bank account.) I’ve generally been gathering my outdoor gear for a Spring and Summer full of cycling and backpacking adventures. I have been obsessed it’s true, with preparing, and pursuing adventure, and I think it’s a symbolic recoil, a bursting forth into new freedom consciousness. I feel passionately committed to a continued life of adventure, in a way that I don’t think could have happened before.
A big part of cutting myself loose has been renunciation of the subtle dependencies that I think have colored my life for most of my adulthood. In the last several months, I have quit consuming any kind of fast-food, which had remained an odd self-soothing habit of mine, incongruent with my core values for quite some time. I have severely restricted my intake of refined sugar, and I also quit drinking coffee, or any other form of caffeine, which helped me to quit the off-and-on one-cigarette-per-day habit that accompanied my coffee. Several months ago, I chose a path of renunciation - of all forms of intoxication for an indefinite period. That period turned out to be six months, at the end of which, I decided to soften my ascetic desire for extreme health.
But it was very instructive, to feel into bare aliveness, without reaching for anything outside of myself - to abstain from the relief of separating from my experience. For years now, my buddhist practice has shown me how to soothe myself by staying engaged, and healing my heart. It's an unfolding process to be sure. It’s fascinating the way that our culture supports and even facilitates a numbing of one’s mind, body, and soul, through various escapes and crutches, dependencies and distractions. These reside at the core of our consumption-life, and gaining the upper-hand with them is clearly the only path to Freedom that I can see as truly reliable. This also seems to be the only clear path to sustainable living, which by definition, honors the Gaia – the living, breathing organism of which we are a part. I don't think there is any healing of the heart without embracing the Gaia. These are not new ideas, and there are far more radical, committed people on this path than I. But this is clearly my path…I want to break the code, buck the system, and live new and improved - from a place of uncommon rebuttal to the assumptions that I was born into.
Back to the question about Freedom at Point Zero. Do I have it, and did I ever achieve it…or was I just waxing poetic about the process of rebuilding a life wrecked by collective American greed? Would I simply wait here for the next bus to economic recoveryville, and jump on with gay amnesia, licking my chops at the prospect of achieving legitimacy, and resuming a life of “normal” American pursuits?
In fact, on paper, things have gotten worse over the last several months, but another truth is that the process of becoming free has gradually deepened, as I let go into possibility. It is incredible that I have made it through this entire recession having never been eligible for social aid of any kind, but it is also a spiritual lesson to recognize that I have never truly been at the edge of my capability to survive. My basic wellbeing has never been threatened the way an average man’s wellbeing might be threatened daily in say, Calcutta. This fact provides for me, a basic space in which freedom can reside.
Coming into the new year, I have a part-time job that is only barely meeting my financial overhead, and still I feel quite fortunate. I have applied to two graduate school paths, and have committed to continue here in Sacramento, building my life from the inside out. I am focusing my energy, reinventing myself, and reimagining my next career. This is not the first time I have undertaken this process…but it’s the first time that everything is on the table.
So, the freedom is all in my head. That’s what I told my friend Lary, when he asked me how the FAPZ was hangin’. Being debt free is a kind of liberation that cannot be fully described, and in the refractory period, one can get a great deal of mileage out of being a scavenger and a miser. Really, after years of sheepish consumerism, keeping life materially simple is a reward unto itself, and I have become quite clear that I would like to keep my monthly living expenses as low as humanly possible, like, forever. My vision for doing this even includes going carless, and utilizing my fleet of bicycles to get me everywhere, and accomplish everything. I have embraced this life before, and in fact, it is something that I have been eagerly anticipating for months.
I have been doing Kundalini yoga since last June, and have found myself opening up new heart space - A space of simple contentment. It’s a raw awareness of passion that arises, and an embracing of renunciation. It’s so ironic to be feeling contentment amidst what can accurately be described as an unraveling, but in fact, the unraveling is a catalyst for letting go. It feels like love. I have reached a kind of contentment with being single, without kids and all the trappings of middle class existence, contentment with being in flux in my career-life, facing intense uncertainty in my immediate future, and for extended periods…I have achieved contentment with the moment, just the way it is, unencumbered by my desires.
Not that I don’t have any desires…I have been really desiring bike gear lately – really into my bicycles, building my stable as I prepare to divorce my car (and use the cash to buttress my bank account.) I’ve generally been gathering my outdoor gear for a Spring and Summer full of cycling and backpacking adventures. I have been obsessed it’s true, with preparing, and pursuing adventure, and I think it’s a symbolic recoil, a bursting forth into new freedom consciousness. I feel passionately committed to a continued life of adventure, in a way that I don’t think could have happened before.
A big part of cutting myself loose has been renunciation of the subtle dependencies that I think have colored my life for most of my adulthood. In the last several months, I have quit consuming any kind of fast-food, which had remained an odd self-soothing habit of mine, incongruent with my core values for quite some time. I have severely restricted my intake of refined sugar, and I also quit drinking coffee, or any other form of caffeine, which helped me to quit the off-and-on one-cigarette-per-day habit that accompanied my coffee. Several months ago, I chose a path of renunciation - of all forms of intoxication for an indefinite period. That period turned out to be six months, at the end of which, I decided to soften my ascetic desire for extreme health.
But it was very instructive, to feel into bare aliveness, without reaching for anything outside of myself - to abstain from the relief of separating from my experience. For years now, my buddhist practice has shown me how to soothe myself by staying engaged, and healing my heart. It's an unfolding process to be sure. It’s fascinating the way that our culture supports and even facilitates a numbing of one’s mind, body, and soul, through various escapes and crutches, dependencies and distractions. These reside at the core of our consumption-life, and gaining the upper-hand with them is clearly the only path to Freedom that I can see as truly reliable. This also seems to be the only clear path to sustainable living, which by definition, honors the Gaia – the living, breathing organism of which we are a part. I don't think there is any healing of the heart without embracing the Gaia. These are not new ideas, and there are far more radical, committed people on this path than I. But this is clearly my path…I want to break the code, buck the system, and live new and improved - from a place of uncommon rebuttal to the assumptions that I was born into.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
The Virtues of Zero
Having decided to resurrect this blog, it seems fitting to explain a bit about why I am still here - that is, in Sacramento - and not in the outback of some developing country, as was my plan almost a year ago. I changed my mind about going into the Peace Corps, and made the decision to stick around and trudge through the mud of this shit-can economy. As I worked on my Peace Corps application, I was imagining myself missing my world, on the other side of the planet, surrounded by strangers speaking a strange language. I was homesick and had not even left yet. It really felt like the best option in this stage of my life was to stay close to home and stay connected. Today, I can’t say that I am not open to reconsidering my options, because after one year, things are not much better. But the whole Point of Freedom At Point Zero, was that I had jettisoned the entire package – lost my job, sold my stuff, and generally let go of my world. Like the song says “freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to loose.” What is interesting is the way that even “nothin’ left to loose” is like peeling an onion, shedding layers of bullshit and getting down to the good stuff.
What I mean is, the freedom part is a state of mind, and the rest is simply degrees of “nothin.” And I am not talking about simply the stuff that we lose. The unraveling of a man’s life at the age of 42 is a potentially unnerving process to witness, unless one moves with the unraveling…embraces it, swings and bends and jumps to allow the debris to pass gently by. This unraveling I speak of is of course, happening right now on some collective level also, which certainly makes it easier for me to embrace. I’m part of history, baby, so let the pieces fly! After letting my truck go, I was still able to continue my handyman business by becoming the “hatchback handyman.” When I needed to sell my car for rent money, I became the human-powered handyman, doing small handyman jobs on my Xtracycle cargo bicycle! I'm finding that the only thing worth being attached to is the truth of who I am.
A friend of mine asked me a few weeks ago if Freedom At Point Zero is still alive, now that I have taken a part-time job, moved back into the house that I moved out of last Spring, and just generally “recommitted to the grind of daily survival.” My answer is that Freedom At Point Zero is all in my head. It was there the whole time. I am learning that choices are part of each moment, and they are present to the extent that I am present. Choices that constitute freedom are sometimes about what I can get, add, do, or control, but more often my freedom is contingent on what I am willing to let go of, do without, or accept. I had an amazing summer chasing adventure, but had to tolerate living with my mother when I was home. I moved back into my house in beautiful Curtis Park, but this time with a house-mate. There is always something to trade for what we need.
And the truth is, times of financial scarcity usually push us to peak efficiency. There was a time many years ago when I filled my own three-bedroom house in the suburbs, had two cars in the driveway, and drove an hour each way to work. That is a huge footprint, and I was a very different man back then. When pushed off of the money treadmill, living a mainstream lifestyle begins to reveal itself as incredibly inefficient. I mean, cable T.V. becomes a foolish obligation at $80-$100 a month, and driving a car sure looks like a huge waste of resources once we try living without one for a few months. I had been eager to divorce my car for awhile before it actually happened, and now I am amazed at how my stress level has dropped off. I am getting my exercise every time I need to go somewhere, which has allowed me to forego any gym membership. Also, the question becomes “How busy do we really need to be?” I used to cram things into my schedule and then count on speedy travel to make it all work. I would find myself taking silly risks on the road, and frequently arriving late anyway. Now, my level of mindfulness around travel has brought about some revelations - about what commitments I will and will not allow myself to take on, and which ones I actually have time for. In other words, I am doing less, and enjoying it more.
I am cooking much more and eating out less, which equates to SLOW food, and some really wonderful mindfulness around the quality of my meals. I have probably lost about 25 pounds in the last six months, and I feel healthier than I have ever been. I currently only work about 18 hours a week, which has provided me with much more time to visit with friends, walk and run with my dog, practice meditation and yoga, etc. I am planning to start a garden in the next couple of weeks, and get backyard chickens for yummy home-based eggs. What this all says to me is that, holy shit, I am not poor at all, I am free! It may seem impoverished for a man my age to be living on about $1000 a month, and it has taken me awhile to stop holding it as a crisis, but you know what, at the end of the day it’s not bad at all. It’s not something I want to make permanent, but for right now, it ain’t that bad.
What I mean is, the freedom part is a state of mind, and the rest is simply degrees of “nothin.” And I am not talking about simply the stuff that we lose. The unraveling of a man’s life at the age of 42 is a potentially unnerving process to witness, unless one moves with the unraveling…embraces it, swings and bends and jumps to allow the debris to pass gently by. This unraveling I speak of is of course, happening right now on some collective level also, which certainly makes it easier for me to embrace. I’m part of history, baby, so let the pieces fly! After letting my truck go, I was still able to continue my handyman business by becoming the “hatchback handyman.” When I needed to sell my car for rent money, I became the human-powered handyman, doing small handyman jobs on my Xtracycle cargo bicycle! I'm finding that the only thing worth being attached to is the truth of who I am.
A friend of mine asked me a few weeks ago if Freedom At Point Zero is still alive, now that I have taken a part-time job, moved back into the house that I moved out of last Spring, and just generally “recommitted to the grind of daily survival.” My answer is that Freedom At Point Zero is all in my head. It was there the whole time. I am learning that choices are part of each moment, and they are present to the extent that I am present. Choices that constitute freedom are sometimes about what I can get, add, do, or control, but more often my freedom is contingent on what I am willing to let go of, do without, or accept. I had an amazing summer chasing adventure, but had to tolerate living with my mother when I was home. I moved back into my house in beautiful Curtis Park, but this time with a house-mate. There is always something to trade for what we need.
And the truth is, times of financial scarcity usually push us to peak efficiency. There was a time many years ago when I filled my own three-bedroom house in the suburbs, had two cars in the driveway, and drove an hour each way to work. That is a huge footprint, and I was a very different man back then. When pushed off of the money treadmill, living a mainstream lifestyle begins to reveal itself as incredibly inefficient. I mean, cable T.V. becomes a foolish obligation at $80-$100 a month, and driving a car sure looks like a huge waste of resources once we try living without one for a few months. I had been eager to divorce my car for awhile before it actually happened, and now I am amazed at how my stress level has dropped off. I am getting my exercise every time I need to go somewhere, which has allowed me to forego any gym membership. Also, the question becomes “How busy do we really need to be?” I used to cram things into my schedule and then count on speedy travel to make it all work. I would find myself taking silly risks on the road, and frequently arriving late anyway. Now, my level of mindfulness around travel has brought about some revelations - about what commitments I will and will not allow myself to take on, and which ones I actually have time for. In other words, I am doing less, and enjoying it more.
I am cooking much more and eating out less, which equates to SLOW food, and some really wonderful mindfulness around the quality of my meals. I have probably lost about 25 pounds in the last six months, and I feel healthier than I have ever been. I currently only work about 18 hours a week, which has provided me with much more time to visit with friends, walk and run with my dog, practice meditation and yoga, etc. I am planning to start a garden in the next couple of weeks, and get backyard chickens for yummy home-based eggs. What this all says to me is that, holy shit, I am not poor at all, I am free! It may seem impoverished for a man my age to be living on about $1000 a month, and it has taken me awhile to stop holding it as a crisis, but you know what, at the end of the day it’s not bad at all. It’s not something I want to make permanent, but for right now, it ain’t that bad.
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