Every morning my father feeds the deer in his yard with barrels of dried corn. On the coldest days of the winter, when I am staying at my parents house in Woodstock, New York, I will open my blinds to find him spreading each barrel of corn, one-by-one in an accessible place, both for the deer to find, as well as to make sure they feel safe doing so. Not too close to where the humans reside, but close enough to acknowledge the gift that my father has provided them.
This is his form of “practice”. While some people’s mediation is found on the cushion, his practice has always been with and among nature. This has been his way of being in a deeper relationship with the earth’s offerings, offerings in the form of friendships found among the other creatures that roam the planet we all call home.
The more we take care of the earth and the creatures that exist on it, the more abundance and reciprocity we receive from the daily mundanity, which is in fact life’s riches pleasures. This is something my father has always seemed to understand.
Waking up at 4am, for most, can be the precursor for a difficult day. For others, going to bed past the hour of midnight has the tendency of setting one up for failure. Myself, far more resonating with the former, would prefer 6am, as even this is early for the earliest of us. However, on occasion, especially when not being as social as an extrovert like myself would prefer to be, I find myself perfectly well fit to rise before the sun with a tea in hand sitting besides a candle lit window cracked open in the allowance of the late-spring-turning-to-summer air seeping through its screenless creaves to greet my skin.
Within moments of leaving the springtime friends and music gathering held in Monticello, a quiet town in the lush green hills of upstate new york, I took notice of the pace in which I was moving. My driving was relaxed and at ease, with no immediate rush to be anywhere. The muscles holding all my bones and organs in place were far more supple compared to when I drove up from the city. Most apparent was the lack of desire to immediately infiltrate my nervous system with the additional soundwaves of radio or podcast. Rather, it was a quieter self, that self that attempts to gently guide and usher me into managing personal care practices or forgo caffeine during the more hectic weekly hours. It was this self that was quietly cueing me to linger in the simmering silence reaped from the nurturance of nature.
Ever since I was a young girl I would idyllically obsess over a potential life for myself in New York City. I should mention that I am a New Yorker, however, it wasn’t until the age of 17 and moving to the city proper that I had come to learn there was a critical identity distinction between us upstaters and those who were born and raised in New York, NY.
The inadvertent cathartic releases that a less automated community provided with the traditional everyday exposure to a diverse set of people has shifted now. This shift is demanding us to build muscles in ways that perhaps were not requested of us before, or more appropriately put, are in fact innate instincts that we have forgotten in our rapid pace, plugged in and hooked up times.
I’ve done it twice before, but the old adage still rings clear in my mind “third time’s
a charm”. I tried it at 21, fled the Big Apple with zero intention to return again. Thinking I’d attempt the post-college nomadic life, living abroad with high hopes that I’d fall into either a passionate relationship or a passionate career abroad. Setting down roots in another country and perfecting a language that was foreign to my own always had its allure. In no less than a year of this pursuit I found myself washed up on shore, questioning what I was to do with my life at 22, while simultaneously kicking myself in the arse for not having inquired about such things sooner. “Sooner” being before I fell victim to the all too common middle-class-American-high-school-graduate decision of complacently pursuing a Liberal Arts degree in effort to just “get it over with”, so the ponzi scheme goes.
What do our current displays of anger, rage and hurt communicate? I asked myself this after returning home from another night of protests in New York City. The first protest I attended was Friday May 29th, 2020 at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn. The following Sunday, protesters gathered in Foley Square and marched up Broadway to Washington Square Park in Manhattan.
As paradoxical a title that this might appear, I have discovered to be truly successful at our own personal happiness, it is in the realizing that giving up is a readily available option at any moment in time. Ironic I know. Our entire life we are confronted- nearly bombarded- by the mantra of “never give up”. We have built a culture out of efficiency- efficiently and effectively doing things before it's too late. Even after hearing all the stories of people who have been on their deathbeds only to realize their entire life’s work-ethic of going into obtaining titles, accolades and accomplishments meant nothing in the end. How most people in this end of life scenario comment on how they only had wished to simply have spent more of their time with loved ones, or dedicated more of their life to exploring their creative outlets.
Anyone who has dealt with major life upheaval or a threatening health crisis will say the same. The very pulse that has kept me going over the years is the fact that I have become closer and closer to realizing that the key to personal freedom lies dead center in the fleshy palms of our own hands. I believe this is the key to healing all our wounds as well- in the acknowledgement of what is and what isn’t working. How to say no to a past-self- perhaps an inadvertent insidious self.
This past self is the self that has established as sense of nostalgia deep in our bones that may or may not be based on reality, as is often the case in the human mind. These blissful mental images and movies tend to take the creative license in glorifying a past image or event that never truly existed. It is in the clinging on to this past self that can maintain an illness, injury or emotional wound as it continues to stay associated to a certain ideal, identity, career, relationship or standard only true in the terrain of the mind. In fact to heal, it can be as simple as relinquishing ourselves of this past identity. This relinquishing has profound power to open us to the unlimited possibilities that exist at any moment in time, as long as we are able to truly absolve that which tetters us to the past. I think this is healing.
Over the past couple years in my own seeking to heal, let go and move on, I have become increasingly interested in how people become who they are. There has been three characters along my journey who specifically got my attention in regards to this inquiry: a mechanic in San Diego, a wood sculpture in Vancouver Island, and a bookstore clerk in New York. What did all these people have in common? They all gave up, so to speak. They all used to be something entirely different and each one at a very poignant time in their lives came to a decision that giving up was the only viable option that could offer them their happiness. What does this mean? Well, the mechanic gave up his career at a prestigious university as a biology researcher for what he considered a better life of beach living and more socializing. The sculptor left his career of practicing Law to escape to the redwoods and learn the fine art of wood-manship. And the bookstore clerk made the exodus from his career as a historian to a less academically demanding life that still nurtured his desire to read and learn, only at his leisure.
The lessons that these individuals has shared with me, unbeknownst to themselves, was that even though one might have invested money and countless hours and precious decades into building a career, an identity, and a purpose, if the summit ascended doesn’t feel appropriate or in alignment, then it is okay to try another journey. It is in the giving ourselves the option for taking a different path that can bring levity to an unhappy immediate situation. This is the most selfless act we can do- to be our most authentic gift in the world. As it is those very selves, not the roles or the masks behind titles and experiences, but instead our best selves that will inspire and change lives.
When I was teaching teen circus arts up in Northern California at the age of 25 one of the fathers asked what the next step for me was at that point in my life. I gave him a long laundry list of my hopes and dreams, that was delivered with a frantic energy of needing to implement my plans all at once. He looked at me kindly with eyes that had seen far more years that were possible for me to comprehend at that stage and said “life is long, enjoy it.”
So I’ll leave you with this, life is only short if that is the mantra we have been singing to our weary souls. It is the elders and the wise that understand that no matter what physical barriers time might entail, its the nuances of discernment, the unpredictability of attraction, and the liberty of the endless possibilities to the creative spirit that reminds us- no, in fact, this life is long, enjoy it. And if you stop enjoying it due to the miraid of things that shake the human condition, perhaps it can be in giving up a piece of you associated with that past self that you can in fact give more options and opportunities to a future life and a future you.
No matter how many times one had been hurt, broken, unrecognized or unfulfilled by another, it somehow does not dissuade humans from longing or seeking another just once more, possibly as a form of potential refuge from the daily demands of the physical reality. While the physical, individual realities can be just as creative and rich as that within the refuge often found in others, there is a perpetual falling into the monotonous gloom that transpires when one end up on their own for too long. It becomes forgotten that the embrace of another can reinvigorate anything that had become rot. The use of the other for the existential uplift, nudges one another of the omnipresent magic that exists. No one is unique and no one is alone in this need for the encounter of the intimate, as a reminder of our existence.
The liminal spaces in which momentary sighs of relief arise are so often not within the soils we’ve been turning. The traditional economic structure that has constructed our education, politics, and community lives have for many, led them to believe that purpose, pleasure, and belonging are found somewhere “out there”.
With the continuous proliferation of capitalism post 1990's New Order Regime, and the ongoing incessant expansion into what are now becoming fewer “wild” and ostensibly “empty” territories, there have been new developments in the “whys” and “hows” for extracting and utilizing both natural and human resources globally that are beyond “an enactment of commodification or conquest” (Tsing p. 33). The injustices of commodification and conquest have been seen and experienced for centuries. More recently, the relentless push toward a globalized world, although continues to include such century-old foundational forms of power insertions, also encompasses newer neo-colonialism/neoliberalism counteracting initiatives. Such initiatives, which will be described more below, that have been adopted by government and corporate relations, are used as an attempt to “off-set” the various destructive effects of globalization, as well as both the damaging short-term, yet perhaps productive long-term, effects on human quality of living (that is depending on what side of the 1% you might be on). Using Ulrich Beck's “Risk Society” as mentioned in Etienne Balibar's Politics of the Debt (Balibar p.1) and Joseph Schumpeterian's theory of “Creative Destruction” in Geert Lovink's Friends with Money (Lovink p. 6) the following paper will attempt to draw from these two theories to explain both the disadvantages of neocolonialism's heroic intentions for sustainability, along with some of the purported advantages that claim to be experienced in the long-run, in the ever-changing unstable economic system.
The philosophy behind the Sharing Economy – where access to resources and assets have become more important than ownership itself (Conrad 2014:7) – is far from new. Albeit revolutionary to the current neoliberal market economy in which all conventional monetary exchanges take place, the very concept of access to 'shared' resources can be dated back to medieval times (De Moor 2008:179), if not earlier. Essentially, the Sharing Economy – an economy marketed as an innovative alternative to the omnipresent capitalistic economy – has been predicated by multiple iterations of alternative models, which brings us full circle to the origin of shared access to resources – the commons. Although some have claimed that society is being redesigned to promote the commons (Conrad 2014:4), it is more appropriate to say that the concept of the commons is simply getting more bandwidth and notoriety via technology and collaborative communication outlets. The increased awareness is effectively emphasizing a need for a redesigning of society in more favor of the commons in the effort for citizens to reclaim ownership of public resources and their labor value, to build a 'market' of shared responsibility (Barlow 2014:36).
Whether or not one has attended a strip club, most people understand the general concept of the venue; nude, or almost nude women dancing for men. Although the clubs are legal facilities, the women participants are often stigmatized from outsiders who are not involved in the lifestyle. Once inside the club, however, the stigma dissipates and the female dancers are accepted from their male customers, even venerated. In contrast, while the females are stigmatized from “outsiders”, the males that attend the venues are rarely condemned. Since the men are not permitted or suppose to do anything with the ladies, attending a strip club is not viewed as an act of infidelity for the most part, if the customers do happen to have a significant other. Just like getting a drink or playing a game of pool, the institutionalization of a strip club makes it acceptable for men in committed relationships to look at another woman’s body; often considered to be just another male bonding ritual.
For this project I was hired as a writer to help share about the various trips the photographer took around the country with the goal of sharing about different people, places and cultures through the lens of Boudoir photography. I helped to tie in the client's experience as a boudoir photographer with historical facts about the areas visited and the different cultures. Each piece was fairly brief for content on their website, but packed with flavor and inspiration for boudoir photographers and travelers alike!
