The Furious Spinner

"My heart is moved by all I cannot save. So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." —Adrienne Rich

The sun is just rising over the trees by the elementary school, spilling gold onto the rhododendron outside my window. In the gorge beyond, wispy clouds float above smoke that is being pushed through the river gorge by a West wind. Yesterday an old plywood mill used to store wood pellets went up in flames, and black smoke filled our sky like dark clouds before a monstrous storm. Later officials claimed no toxins had been released, and everyone sighed with relief, believing the officials, despite the reality they had witnessed with their own eyes. Black smoke equals toxins, usually plastics; untreated wood and trees burn white.

Ah well, the wind pushed the toxins east. Now the smoke is white.

I slept five hours last night. The night before I slept four, the night before that, four. I need eight hours of sleep a night, so I am now in an altered state of consciousness. Since I don't consume recreational drugs or alcohol, I sometimes wonder if my unconsciousness (if there actually is such a thing) orchestrates these bouts of unrest to get me to go those places I don't want to go: Those places where I can't have any illusions that I am in control.

During one of these nights, I was listening to someone talk about Chris McCandless, the young man who walked into the Alaskan wilderness looking for a place where he belonged and who died four months later from starvation. He's the subject of the Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild (and a new movie with the same title). When I first heard about what happened to him ten years or more ago, I felt sorry for him. I also wished for the sake of his family that he had known more about the world he was walking into. Explorers live for maps, almost literally. Apparently, he hadn't wanted that: He wanted to live outside his comfort zone.

I thought, geez, I am always living outside my comfort zone but not by choice. For the last twenty-five years of my life, I've been looking for comfort, any kind of comfort.

Why had that become so important to me? After all, twenty-six years ago, Mario and I had quit our jobs—uninspiring deadend jobs, but jobs—and we had packed up our belongings, said goodbye to family and friends, and moved cross country to a place we had never seen before. I hadn't wanted a middle class 9 to 5 existence, so I had turned that all on its head and gone West.

We had gone West into a world I knew very little about. We had a free house on the coast of Oregon. What else did I need to know? I didn't need a map. I didn't need advice. I was young. Nobody could tell me nuthin'. When we got to the free house, we discovered it was moldy, musty, and falling apart from termites. We were in a small town in the middle of nowhere with no transportation and very little money. We figured we'd write until our money ran out, and then we'd sell what we wrote and life would be grand.

Within six months we were nearly broke and looking for work. We had come from a college town in Michigan where it was relatively easy to find work. It had never occurred to us that we would be moving to someplace where that wouldn't be possible. We didn't realize that the poverty that was often so hidden where we had come from was out in the open in this poor Oregon town. There were no good jobs. Within a few more months, I was ill and we were on food stamps. I felt humiliated, desperate, and like a failure. We eventually found jobs that barely sustained us. If we had had to pay rent, we would have been in trouble.

And then life moved forward...

As I lay on the couch in the middle of the night remembering all this, I wondered: Why didn't we leave when we ran out of money? Why didn't we go back home? Why didn't we make other choices? And the answer came instantly to me: poverty and illness. Poverty and illness had almost instantly reduced our options to nothing. We couldn't see any options. (Couldn't see the forest for the trees?) We were only able to put one foot in front of the other and try to survive.

Since then, I have been trying to find home in this world and in my body. I have been trying to get my bearings for...ever.

I remember sitting on moss in the woods behind our house watching an ant walk beneath the golden hair on my leg. I remember being fascinated, engaged, enthralled, in love, enraptured. I was home, home, home.

I was probably eight years old. Was that the last time?

My experience is not unique. My poverty was transitory. I did have options. I could have gone home to my parents or to Mario's parents. My old boss would have given me my job back. Something else was going on. Despite my illness, despite my transitory poverty, despite my incessant desire for comfort, I knew something was wrong.

I knew there was more to life and the world than I was seeing, hearing, experiencing. I probably got sick for a number of reasons: the environmental conditions of that house, what I was eating, stress, genetics. But also during that time, I re-experienced Nature again. I learned the rhythms of coastal life. I walked along the deserted beaches for hours nearly every day. I fell to sleep to the dull roar of the ocean. At the same time, I was doing research for a novel I was writing. I learned that the United States was dumping chemicals in Latin America: pesticides and other products that were outlawed here ended up there. In some places, these chemicals had caused horrific birth defects and mutations. I also learned about the genocidal war in El Salvador, as well as the efforts of the United States government to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. My innocent American eyes were open to the atrocities funded by our tax dollars. And I learned so much more. All these experiences and this new knowledge mixed together, fermented a bit, and made me drunk. Tipsy. And nauseated from the truth.

And I felt as though I was on the cusp of understanding something, of realizing the truth, of coming up with some grand solution.

Something.

Instead, I got sick.

There's more to this story than me. Wait for it. You know it.

During that time and since, I have known so many people who have worked in their own ways to help others, to correct injustices, to save this person, this place, that community. During the heyday of the Sanctuary movement, our peace group took in a young man who was traveling up the I-5 corridor from El Salvador. He had escaped his country's brutal civil war, but he was here illegally, shielded by the Sanctuary movement. Mario and I offered to let him (or someone else who needed sanctuary) stay with us permanently, but Bandon was a small town filled primarily with Anglo people, and he would stick out, we were told. Better to have him and the others in big cities where they would blend and be safer. The young man, David, did talk to our community one evening, and I can't imagine that anyone there went away unmoved by his quiet dignity and his gentleness and poise despite the horrors he had witnessed—and his courage. He spoke out publicly even though he could have been arrested and deported back to El Salvador where he would have been killed.

David wasn't unusual. There are millions of people like him all over the planet. Perhaps even billions? People like him all over the world have woken up, either because of circumstance or natural awareness, to the deadness and deadliness of life as we know it. They have come to know the soulessness of modernity. Millions of people like him all over the world know down to their pilgrim souls that life is supposed to be different than it is.

Since the fall of communism, people who once lived in the Soviet Union have come to realize that capitalism has not brought them the life they had hoped for. Like communism, capitalism is just one more of the "isms" that make up the modern world. Capitalism and communism are just different sides to the same coin. While in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, brilliant scholar and writer Charlene Spretnak saw how perplexed so many people were that they weren't happier or more satisfied with capitalism.

She writes, "Considering the profound differences between living in a communist police-state or a democracy, why, they wondered, did so much feel similar to what they had known under the old regime? The answer lay in an understanding of the larger context: modernity. Marxism-Leninism was one of several economic systems that share the assumptions of the modern worldview...They each subscribe to the following values of modernity: The human is considered essentially an economic being, homo economicus. Consequently, the arrangement of economic matters is believed to be the wellspring of contentment or discontent in all other areas of life. Economic expansion, through industrialism and computerization, is the Holy Grail of materialism, the unquestioned source from which follow abundance, well-being, and the evolution of society. That evolution is understood to be decidedly directional: the human condition progresses toward increasingly optimal states as the past is continuously improved upon.

"Above all, modern culture defines itself as a triumphant force progressing in opposition to nature. As such, it harbors contempt for non-modern cultures, which are seen to be 'held back' by unproductive perceptions such as the 'sacred whole' and reciprocal duties toward the rest of the Earth community."

The people Charlene Spretnak talked with knew something was wrong, they just didn't know what. In the past, they assumed that "something wrong" was communism and that capitalism would fix it. They were falling into the same trap that nearly every government falls into: That we are primarily economic beings. We are so much more. In David's El Salvador, conflicting sides were fighting over capitalism and communism. Yet neither "side" would bring about peace and happiness for the people of El Salvador.

My guess is that David is still working to make life better for himself, his family, and his community. In Paul Hawken's book Blessed Unrest, he talks about people like David, and people like you and like me. He says we are part of the largest movement in the history of the world. It has no leader. It has no hierarchy. It is attached to no religion or ideological movement. No "isms."

Hawken writes, "A worldwide gathering of ordinary and extraordinary people are reconstituting the notion of what it means to be a human being. While they are organizing themselves into the largest movement in the history of the world, the movement only happens one person at a time. But how does one become an environmentalist or human rights campaigner? There are no missionaries. There are no postings offering lessons. Concerned individuals have to work it out for themselves and find colleagues that will mentor them. Movements are the expression of changed attitudes, and how each person comes to realize his responsibility to a greater whole is a unique experience...In 1787 a dozen people began meeting in a small print shop in London to abolish the lucrative slave trade. They were reviled and dismissed by businessmen and politicians. It was argued that their crackpot ideas would bring down the English economy, eliminate growth and jobs, cost too much money, and lower the standard of living."

And yet look what happened because of them.

Thirty years ago, I remember hearing a woman on NPR talk about her concerns over the web of communication that was forming around our world. On the one hand, she believed it could help to educate and inspire millions. On the other hand, it could be used to terrorize us and keep us in a state of perpetual fear and worry. She didn't talk so much about this being a deliberate act but rather as a consequence of getting news so quickly and so often. We wouldn't have time to process and understand what was happening. I've often thought of her insight since then. Sometimes I feel like I'm caught in that web and I feel as though I'm the prey waiting for the spider to come and finally devour me. It's the damn waiting... I think many of us get caught up in this constant barrage of bad news and we can't see what options we have. We can't see what we can do. I have to pull myself out of this trap again and again.

So my blessed unrest these last few nights has given me time for contemplation. Context. I knew twenty-five years ago that something was not right. I knew that there is another way...

A few years ago, I mentioned to a friend my frustration over the work I'd done over the years to help protect the environment. He told me that he had worked to stop a development once but they hadn't succeeded and he never did anything like that again because it took so much time and seemed so useless and unproductive. I remember I felt very uncomfortable when he told me all this, although I wasn't really sure why then.

I think I know why now. Being human and being alive means that we do have a responsibility to ourselves and to our community. We have to keep doing the work even when the forces around us seem so much more powerful. I'm reminded of this spider in our laundry room. She's got a web just beneath the lip under the threshold of the door that leads from the kitchen to the laundry room. She's a small spider, and on the grand scale of things, it's amazing she's still in our house and still surviving, especially since we've been oblivious to her for some time. When we vacuum, we usually give a shout out to the spiders to let them know they should run and hide or else they're going to be sucked into oblivion. We then vacuum up the webs. I noticed this web after Mario had vacuumed one day; he had missed it. In the web was a dead hobo spider. I was glad to see it because I don't want hobo spiders in my house since they're poisonous to humans. I kept a watch on the web and eventually a small spider let herself be seen. I welcomed her and told her to have at it. And there she sits to this day, catching bugs and living under the threshold. She's surviving and doing her work.

In other words, the small can live amongst giants, do their work, and thrive.

As Hawken pointed out, each of us is different and we each can come up with our own way to be a part of our world. But stepping out of the flow of life or saying we can't be engaged because it is too difficult is really nonsensical in the true meaning of that word. It's like saying we're not going to pay attention to our arm when it's bruised because it takes too much time away from the attention we're giving to the rest of our body.

We've all got stuff going on in our lives. I've got depression, acute anxieties, and other medical issues I deal with every day. You've got your stuff. But we're on this planet together. And as Mary Oliver asks, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

I admire you for taking care of your children. I admire you for carrying placards in front of the White House. I admire you for teaching children how to be conscientious objectors. I admire you for feeding the homeless. I admire you for writing about what you know. I admire you for having an organic garden. I admire you for providing sanctuary. I admire you for your unending kindness. I admire you for your work at the school. I admire you for speaking out in so many ways. I admire you for trying to connect to the real, to the heart of the world. I admire you for hugging trees. I admire you for talking to the crows...

And I am pleased to be one of you.

Paul Hawken writes, "Inspiration is not garnered from the recitation of what is flawed; it resides, rather, in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider."

Wise words. I will take them to heart.

Anne Hillman wrote, "to live sacred lives requires that we live at the edge of what we do not know."

We can't wait for politicians to do the right thing. We can't even wait for our neighbors.

We are the ones we've been waiting for.

The fire is still burning, although the smoke is less, somewhat dispersed. The sky is blue. It is mid-morning, and I can barely keep my eyes open. That's all right. My dream world is always beyond the edge of what I know.

Blessed be.

May You All Rest in Beauty!

Labels: sustainability

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Thursday, September 20, 2007

Wolf Slaughter