I attended this year’s DWeb Camp https://dwebcamp.org/. (“Discovering Flows” was this year’s theme so I really had to go.) There were scores of presentations on decentralizing technology (which my “go high in the drainage” sort of fits into) but lots of other opportunities were also presented.
During the first morning of camp, I gave a small group discussion about ideas I was working with concerning “a Commons culture.” For example, I gave my definition of the Commons as (a) anything that did not exist before Life, (b) that was brought into existence by Life, and (c) which helps create additional Possibilities for Life. I gave the example of singing. Singing did not exist before life. It was created by life and creates upward possibilities such as the power of hymns, a tribal rite of passage song, or a quieting lullaby. The example of singing helps expand the Commons beyond what most people think of it as.
During the following lunch, I was conversing with a woman who had attended my talk. She lives in Hawaii and she described how the water used by the small local farmers had been diverted to water golf courses. Without the water, some of the beautiful native trees were falling prey to termites. Her face grieved for the injustice to the farmers and the loss of the trees. Her grief was so expressively visible that it evoked a “felt sense” of grief in me. I held her hand and shared deep eye contact for several minutes. During our shared silence, I realized that I have been resolutely refusing to feel grief because my Work was to nourish Hope. Hope that by shifting relative balances, we can create Upward Spirals. I thought that to allow grief in was to betray that hope. But in those minutes together, I intuited that hope and grief are not opposites. Perhaps, allowing equal expression of hope and grief creates a powerful alloy that I’m inexperienced with. Optimism can recline into passive complacency. Grief makes hope more desperately vital. Hope longingly calls me forth.
But allowing grief in is to “risk” feeling anger because some grief stems from injustice, greed, and uncaring destruction. By what justification can water be diverted from farms and forests to golf courses?
I can intellectually explain why the water is diverted through a spiral of monetary cause and effect: The more idyllic (i.e. green) the golf course, the higher the price that can be charged to play it so wealthier players fly in to golf. They create greater profits for the golf course and greater inflow of money into the local hospitality industry. This leads to greater employment opportunities for local workers. This gives the golf courses greater political clout in the obscure local agencies and departments that influence the distribution of water. Understanding this spiral of cause and effect is important but it focuses just on money which can lead me to overlook the replacement of native farms and forests with broad expanses of non-native grass. I remember a book (Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions (Lance Gunderson, C. S. Holling, Stephen S. Light : Columbia University Press, ©1995)) that described how focusing one’s management and decision-making on just a few variables leads the managed system to gradually grow brittle.
After lunch, there was a class of improvisational contact. (In Roaming Upward, I describe how forty-five years ago, a few hours of improvisational contact freed me from a serious depression I had sunk into over four months.) So I approached the class like a dear friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. The teacher was very alive, making energy-filled movements I tried to emulate. Over the course of the class, I could see I have grown slack and flabby. I longed to do the work that would bring more energy back into my living.
Right after that, I participated in a wonderfully-led improvisational comedy class. One set of exercises captures the essence of my experience. The first time through, I am asked to present a gift (big, heavy, small, fragile depending on how I mime it) to the other person. That gives me a good amount of time to decide what I’m going to give the person so I can prepare a script for how I’ll respond to that person’s response. But a few minutes later, we begin the same exercise by miming presenting the gift but this time as the recipient thanks me, they identify what the gift is. Now I must explain why I thought the gift was so perfect for that person. No script possible in that exercise because I have no idea what the gift actually is until the recipient says. I must respond right then with an explanation of why that now-identified thing suits them so well. As we “played” together and let go of fears of what the others would think, a lovely creative group consciousness emerged..
Several times, the teacher said that kids under five are always improvising. They are always expressing just where they are at that moment. The exercises planted seed thoughts about scripts that germinated throughout my dreams that night. As we gain experience, we refine scripts by which to smoothly navigate various situations with less effort. Much of the time, I am performing well-honed scripts. This might be fine for brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed but my scripts might dominate my focus, blinding me to at-that-moment opportunities beyond the script. Or only letting us see the financial green of golf courses and not what has been lost. Or blindly turning my heart away from grief,
For the rest of the camp, I consciously strove to interact with people “improvisationally.” This resulted easily in several deep, eyes-to-eyes conversations like I had shared with the lady from Hawaii. Very special way to live. I hope to explore this further than my current scripts allow.
Snippets
Mojave
Last month, I spent three days camping at 5600’ in Mojave Desert Preserve. The first night, there was a mighty lightning storm to the northwest, too distant for me to hear any thunder. Just a great light show. To the northeast was a weird, almost fungal bright yellow glow which, the next day, I realized was Las Vegas, 70 air miles away.
Most of the juniper trees around me were amazingly full of berries (the blue-green round clusters). The region received abundant rain this winter. Life responded with abundance. As I walked cross-country, grasshoppers kept rising up before me. When I tried to track where they landed, they were hard to find because they blended in so well.
The next day I was watching an ash-throated flycatcher perched close to the ground. It moved its head back and forth and then went hovering out over the ground. After a couple of seconds, it dropped down and then flew away with a grasshopper in its bill. That one didn’t blend in well enough.
Seeing Through Time
In Shifting (Seeing Nature), I described a gradient of plant growth that develops around a melting snowbank. Here is a picture I took last week of such a gradient. The further from the receding snowbank, the more time the emerging plants have had time to develop. Therefore, by moving your focus outwards from the snowbank, you see the stages by which the plant develops. You see through time.
Crafty
In my last post, I mentioned how a friend’s use of the word “crafty” was leading me to notice all the fixes, improvements, and solutions Alysia and I have crafted on our homestead. The following improvement delights me each time I take out the trash. It’s a loop of rope with a hand-width section of PVC pipe (for a hand grip) looped through the handle of the trash bin.
Simple but it tips the heavy trash bin’s center of mass forward and gives space between my heels and the wheels of the bin. This allows my arm to more closely align with the force of pulling the bin as I pull it along our long gravel driveway.
If you couldn’t find the grasshopper, it is parallel to and at the center of a straight-across line that’s about a fourth of the way down from the top.
Worth a Letter
Might want to write your congresspeople about this bill.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/26/earl-blumenauer-agriculture-farm-bill-congress
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