“Civilized”

is not a compliment I’m digging anymore.

I know people aim it at some pleasurable things and I’m not at war with pleasure or those things   but the feral is where it’s at for me right now,

I’m either feeling particularly feral or recognizing that I never wasn’t

and I feel more namaste towards the feral in you right now than I do towards the cultivated

   it’s in there hello, wolves

    When we’ve got our civilized eyes on, the feral looks traumatized, wrong and in need of fixing.   Oh, no Brush its hair Wash it Bring a psychologist over to see it

  Poor thing Good thing we know more than it does

don't forget that some "healing" is really just civilizing in the not good sense trying to make someone make the same sounds we've all decided we're making these days

and I say that as someone who loves healing as a concept. I mean, I'd like everybody to get out there and heal hard — especially everybody who never tried it — but some healing is just rearranging the furniture and calming down which is fantastic if a) you can't calm down and b) you're trapped under a circumstance  non-emergency healing is the real forgotten hero, though  I AM DIGRESSING

ANYWAY

We’re walking around all civilized and smug chopped off from our instincts anesthetized, on autopilot, busy, entertained, full

and chattering chattering chattering 

I was mad a lot as a little kid. I remember walking around irritated hither and thither. Under a certain age that's practically all I remember doing. Patronizing grownup smiley faces pissed me off in particular. I knew that grownups thought there was no way I knew anything about anything.  But I knew I knew things. I had eyes, a brain, a body. Your full set of perceivers.  So where did they get off.   Who are you smiling at.

We had a friend of the family, the nicest man you could imagine. John Abbenhouse. He was like a balding, clean-shaven, fitter Santa in perpetual work overalls. A solid, kind tree of a man. He meant genuinely well when he was visiting our house when I was five, and my parents gave him some kind of lead-in that I didn't hear or can't remember,  and he knelt down beaming to greet me and ask (in the softest Mr. Rogers voice)

     Are you a nonconformist?

            you honey-voiced motherfucker, you know I don’t know what that word means and now I’m going to have to look like an asshole in order to respond  and everybody tall is looking down at me right now, waiting to hear what I’m gonna say             I muttered something like "I don’t know" and the moment was over but here’s what I can tell you now:

   YES I BELIEVE I AM YOU NAILED IT, JOHN ABBENHOUSE       It's not a compliment. It's not not a compliment. But if that's what it takes 

(for __________,  where __________ is the thing I want out of life,   to live ___________, right?  ”!”  I can’t choose words for it without killing it)

I'll wear it. I’ll wear it, John Abbenhouse.

(next time ask differently without everybody looking at the person though)

 feral mode

• hesitating to make agreements, even tiny unspoken social ones hiding inside normal human interactions, because you have an instinctive worry about how many things you're agreeing to WHAT IS IN THIS SOCIAL CONTRACT YOU'RE HANDING ME TO SIGN, WHAT'S THE FINE PRINT ON THIS THING

• the awareness that something in civilization is dying (which it always is + other things being born but sometimes it's doing it faster and more comprehensively, like now) and the impulse to shut up more because silence is better when big death is around

• and not even out of respect, exactly, or only out of respect

• but so you can hear any sounds coming from the giant doorway through which the big dying thing is passing because it's the same door through which the new things come

• and if it's not the same door, the new things are coming from somewhere so shhhh if everybody could just shhhhhh I'm trying to listen

• one new thing that could be coming is how we talk how we talk might be one of the things that's dying what kinds of sounds do we make on the new earth leave me alone so I can practice some sounds because as you well know civilization loves to embarrass people

  Everything from the world doesn't come in bad when you're in feral mode It's not a rejection of everything everywhere even if it's a rejection of a lot of things and some babies are probably going out with some bathwaters The things that originate outside of you that feel good feel really good Amazingly good because you need them badly when you're so civilized and that part of you is dying as part of a dying collective

 With that I'd like to make a recommendation.

I stumbled on a podcast this week called The Body as Teacher, created by a dancer/performer/movement teacher here in Seattle, a person named West Liberty.

I don't know about your body but mine needs some now hang on I was going to say "mine needs some help" but that's some civilized crap Mine, yes, is under pressure, and it hurts and it would enjoy more freedom, strength and ease but it's not a sorry old thing that needs help. It has mysteries in it. Knowledge.  SOME RESPECT.

The podcast episode I listened to and followed along with was this one:   All About the Bones Guided Movement Meditation I tried ten times to link it on Spotify but it wouldn't go but look it up: The Body as Teacher podcast, the All About the Bones track  It's an improvisational movement sequence where different parts of your body get to be in conversation with each other. Feet, pelvis, rib cage, skull, all the bones, and then all your cells. They get to talk, that's it, in movement, however they want to.   I hate most movement classes because things hurt and I hate feeling "I can't" and I'm a nonconformist. Don't tell me the good way to move.   But this invitation to let different parts of my body talk however they wanted to talk put happy tears in my eyes not even five minutes in. The wonder of it.

the music, too the accompanying music, the simple repeating, what was it, a xylophone? not rah-rah, not canned new age meditation sounds just good sounds

  my mouth dropped open laugh-smiling    my index finger bone shooting up to the sky my rib cage swinging back and forth like a protective canopy for my pelvis my pelvis, that creaky cradle, that honored guest for once, dipping greetings to my feet

brief tail bone monologue

and other pleasures

 I could have gone on and on and on

  I definitely didn't convey how wonderful it is to spend half an hour this way. I wish this experience on all of you. Think of how many fascinating mini-beings there are within each of you reading this right now that haven't been asked to weigh in in a while,  and would say things if asked,  and then multiply that by all of you. What a populace.  You, individually, are countless such beings all convened in one person-location, and only small corners of you are generally invited to speak, and only then in such tightly proscribed ways

That seems like a loss       because it is a loss

      but not irretrievable

   /

here's where all the photos came from I like the captions by themselves without the pictures, too: Nature has taken back this house in Norway. You can see thousands of stars through the open roof of this abandoned building in Spain. In southern Namibia in Africa, sand has quietly taken over the rooms in this house. These stairs on Oahu, Hawaii seem to lead to heaven. Now, this greenhouse is truly green. This train still looks futuristic long after it reached its final destination.