Eyy ... long time uh ... no update this thingie. I've been sucked into Facebook like Basketball Diaries ... sorry ...
No. Basically ... been moving ... moving moving moving out of a house that I lived for the better part of the last ten years ... which is almost a quarter of my life.
Wow. Where did the time go?? Does and doesn't seem like ten years. Seems like an eternity ... and also hard to even grasp what I've done with those ten years ... but ... yeah.
Anyway, really enjoyed that house ... classic westside Bend bungalow ... tricked out and very well loved. But ... time like that tends to create ... I don't know ... dust ... decay ... something about that much time in one place that doesn't seem healthy. The process of moving is, however .. very healthy. Feels great to get rid of tons and tons of old crap. And holy shit was there a lot of old crap. And a lot of it wasn't mine.
I'd like to take this moment to thank all the former housemates that left shit for me to deal with there. You know who you are. Appreciate it, guys. Thanks.
But now it's done ... the place is clean and starkly empty when it used to be a riot of stuff and color and plants and animals and people. I gathered up my last rug and locked the door tonight and said hasta luego. And the wierd thing is that I didn't really feel sad at all.
I thought I would ... I totally thought I'd be all choked up ... but for whatever reason it didn't affect me like that. Probably firstly because I'm moving in with the lovely Erica and that's been amazing and our new house (her old house) is super super nice. Really happy here.
Also, change is good. Fresh horizons are exciting and good. And also, the old house, as much as I loved it ... just developed a certain entropy that was kinda unavoidable. As renters with no budget for home improvement and even little for maintenance (and little talent in lawn care) ... there was a certain slow decay that eventually reached a certain level that was difficult to ignore and difficult to address.
And damn if I didn't collect a fuck-ton of CRAP. And I ... am totally aware of the virtues of simplicity and I consider myself the type of person who tries to keep it minimal. Lord knows I am in the bottom few percent of Americans in terms of consumers. I would think. But still ... your space becomes full of crap. Don't even know where it comes from. It's kind of humbling and kinda makes me hate myself (or people in general). Definitely dwelling on it quite a bit and am hoping to keep an eye out to keep from doing it again. Try to at least.
So anyway. The holidays were pretty damn fun and the move is done ... and I have a lot of hope for '09 to be a good year ... despite early signs of plenty of abominable shit going on around the globe. Many people might agree that this time feels like a time of change ... of shift ... of something evolutionary or big. Certainly feels like it. I just hope it's a time of alignment and re-tuning to balance and shifts in wisdom and consciousness for the better and not the disintegration of human civilization and/or the planetary ecosystem. It's sort of wierd in that both things feel possible right now.
I'm hopeful though for the former and there's plenty of things I'm enjoying and looking forward to. I love the new house and I love and adore the lovely Erica and the feel of fresh air on my face and fresh horizons. I've been absolutely painfully in love with a lot of music recently and am almost done with a new mixtape. Starting to feel a little travel bug brewing ... loving friends and family ... and looking forward to a lot of cool new ideas and projects. Feeling like things have never been better in my life or in human history ... though certainly there's a lot of dark clouds in the world right now. And I don't mean the economy because give me a fucking break about it already. Life is fucking amazing with or without a big paycheck.
And really ... what we as a species need to do, and what the planet needs is for us to consume less. And that means a smaller economy, plain and simple. "Economy" is too often a measure of consumption ... how many trees fell to make how much paper to be printed on and sold and consumed and thrown away. How many fish caught and killed and sold and eaten and turned into sewage. Notice how other species create fertility through their life cycles? We don't create fertility we create blight and destruction and sewage.
What am I afraid of right now? Deeply and most ardently? That we are running in the red ... that we are mining and destroying and depleting the Earth faster that it can regenerate and that we show few signs of doing anything differently .. and that we will simply destroy the world and our civilization will degenerate into a post-apocalyptic dark age. Or that even if we don't destroy the world we'll still be so awful to each other that it won't be fun anyway. That's what I'm afraid of ... (sorry it just isn't gay marriage or the Blazers or Rod Blagojevich).
That's what I'm afraid of. And we seem to teeter on the brink ... possessing the skills we need to break the mold and move forward with a radically shifted consciousness ... and showing a lot of promise ... but the future is still very unclear.
At heart ... I feel that we will pull it out.
When I ride across the mirror pond bridge at dusk and I see the first star ... and make a corny wish ... the wishes in years past would involve a cute woman or some hope about my life ... but these days I wish just that humanity can find a way to live with nature and not destroy it. Simple as that. That we won't snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by destroying the biosphere.
The venerable and long dead EB White knew this about humanity ... when he said "I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority."
We need to consume less. This economic "downturn" is our opportunity to do that. Yet so many people see it as nothing but an impediment when it could just be the hand of our guardian angel. Our government is obsessed with jump starting the engine to keep driving towards the cliff when this is really our opportunity to shift how we think and how we live for the better.
I think we can pull it out. I'm struggling very hard to see the lessons and the ways that we can evolve. Human history has been a process. Each of our lives is a process. There's things you don't know or haven't accomplished. What are they and how do we get there? 50 years ago it was a crime to be a different color ... today is the age of Obama. Change for the better is possible.
Enough of the heavy talk ... people ask what we're doing these days ... Erica is working at a local jewelry company and working on joint stuff that we're doing and her cocktail catering and consulting offshoot called Plum and nesting and generally loving friends and family and good times.
For me ... ruminating on new facets of life to come to life in the spring. Music will be in there ... good shows planned and new approaches to doing things and opportunity to create art and good times. Food is big ... and planning to be working in the food world. Travel ... always ... Up to the minute connections and looking forward to helping out and contributing to the community. And always thinking about learning. Never stop learning and teaching yourself new things and pushing your horizons. Also doing design work and technical work and generally just being a freelance asset slash secret agent.
There's a bunch of things on my to-do list that I'm excited about ... around evolution of many things ... progress ... education ... re-inventing ourselves and our lives and getting freshness going on for real. That's what this year is going to be about.
Anyway, this has degenerated into a long-winded mutant Christmas letter or something and for that I apologize. I'm sure you all have long drifted off and are now watching YouTube videos or checking I Can Haz Cheezeburger. But if you are still here ... happy fuggin' new year! Stoked for it.
tue 13 jan 2009 bend oregon usa 4:43am
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