I'm getting mail urging me to vote one way or another in the presidential election...
I would remind those people once again that sometime about eight years ago it was proven that our votes don't count; the popular vote went to one guy and the other guy has been president for eight years.
I believe that while change can be legislated (and I do not want repression legislated) true change happens from the bottom up, not the top down; and that railing against any of the "parties" on the ballot is energy that could go towards changing the system and maybe getting some new Parties on board. The 2-party system is not in the Constitution. each party has made concessions to the "more-of-the-same" culture of Washington while claiming maverick status (yes, represented mainly by Biden and Palin).
And I can only speak for myself in that I believe in the Taming Power of the Small--that my true calling is to ACT with as much love every moment that I can muster and despite what the prevailing cultural society might believe, that is the true power and each act of Love will help tilt the world balance--or change the world's vibration--so that the Age of Love and Truth will manifest, i.e. Heaven on Earth. But that is in every person's hands, not Obama's, or the Democratic Party's, or even the United States of America's. We need an Inner Revolution in order to manifest a newer, better, world.
In fact the only way to manifest it is moment-to-moment, person-to-person.
And a reminder, all inner traditions say, that world is already here, now--the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Haven't you glimpsed this in your dreams?
And the greatest weapon against tyranny is laughter.
Love & Peace.
Maurynne Maxwell, aka Em, aka Rev, muses on life, the universe, and everything.
13 September 2008
02 September 2008
Wacky Physics
I'll have to post later about the joys of Laughter Yoga--yes, yours truly now a Laughter Yoga Leader, equipped to laugh at all times in all places.
But the nerdfighter dudes should hook up with the rappin' hip-hop physicist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3iryBLZCOQ
You go, girl!
04 August 2008
Bourdain Experience II
He’s very tall and surprisingly energetic after having been on the road all day. Even though his demeanor is laid-back, you can see the ten-to-seventeen-year-old Tony, eager for new sights, sounds, experiences. I read the books, I watch the show, and I am pretty much counting on him being a no-bullshit guy; one of the few people on the planet where what you see is what you get, on the page, on camera, in person.
I relate to Kitchen Confidential, I am only two years younger than Tony and was two years ahead of my class and therefore those restaurant days and druggie 1970s were my coming-of-age as well—I was some of those people and knew the other ones. He did heroin and restaurants, I did LSD and went from restaurants to the religious commune.
While the guys are getting some film outside, Bourdain & I chat about quitting smoking and the effect of children on one’s will to live (positive).
The guys are done outside. We ask if we can get a shot of Tony toasting the success of “not” launching a Titan missile. Don’t really want to toast the annihilation of Switzerland on camera—or do we? The wonders of post-editing will tell. Then drinks for the crew, chips & salsa in the break room. Don’t know where I get the guts or stupidity, I ask him if I can shamelessly plug my book. He says yeah. He actually picks it up and holds it for the camera!!! Atomic Cocktail???, he says, with cameras rolling.
I was supposed to tell the story of how the book came out of the Titantini Cocktail recipe, created to celebrate the upcoming 25th anniversary of the museum. I think I say the press-release-atomic-angst shtick of writing the book, give the recipe, and we toast to peace. He says, It’s good, surprised. Awkward, all of it. Who knows if it will make the show.
But he does finish the drink, post-camera, and compliments my homemade salsa and guacamole. This doesn’t go to my head—I take it to mean the food doesn’t suck—which was my reason for making it instead of picking up from Tucson, or recommending a restaurant down here. There’s no place decent open from here to Nogales at this hour. (10 P.M., if you’re wondering. This was before the wonderful diner Spanky’s opened next to the 99cent Store.)
I hate those guacamoles that look like vomit or congealed pea soup and even when they’re fresh I don’t like tomatoes or jalapenos in it. Garlic, lime, and avocado, that's it. Bourdain says Mexican food is like Italian food, it’s either done so well it’s great or it’s truly terrible. I wax rhapsodic about fresh food, ask where they’re going in Hatch, say in a worshipful voice, chiles, and it’s another bonding moment—he says, Red or green, and I say without hesitation, green—he says, me, too.
He does sign my book, and I tell him I’ve enjoyed it and grateful to know that I can throw out most of the knives from my home kitchen that I’ve been lugging around for thirty years. He tells me the story of watching swords made in Japan.
Then that’s it, they’re done, just grabbing a bite, driving the 4 hours to Hatch tonight to have breakfast at The Pepper Pot in the morning. He accepts a copy of my book, we give the crew Atomic Cocktail T-shirts, he says on the way out the door, “I have a feeling we could have talked food a lot more,” and I am touched. He didn’t have to be so gracious. Don’t know what all will end up on TV, but I learned some things from reading Kitchen Confidential, cooking for, and meeting Bourdain.
I learned that I am a nurturer; I didn’t need to impress with the food, because I don’t want to be a chef, or run a restaurant—I cook for friends and family and get to pick my guests—that’s what I enjoy. I learned a long time ago that you can’t cook good food if you’re thinking about yourself—whether trying to impress someone, or being out-of-sorts—from piqued to suicidal. It’s all about the food and how it tastes. And thanks to a Shirley Jackson story I read as a teenager, love in every third stir.
One of the things Bourdain says in Kitchen Confidential is that food is power. I’ve thought about that from a political point of view, saying how dangerous it is to import so much of our daily produce and grains and canned food. I didn’t have an aha! from the book how in my own life food is personal power—but I had to make fresh food for those guys, it was imperative. I had to then think about how I have cooked for people since I was 10 years old. Even in the religious commune, I was the cook. (And I learned to grow my own food and can it, another kind of personal power.)
Making people feel good is personal power, and it’s what I do. As a writer, as a home cook, and hopefully more and more in my personal and working life, it’s what I do. So maybe it’s not a surprise that Bourdain is personable and gracious—because even when cursing and railing and even saying the truth about when things are bad—the end result for a cook, the result you hope for, is for people to feel a little bit of grace, of amazement, of freshness and beauty—a little bit of heaven. To eat is to live, to cook is to give--the end result a celebration of life.
So, I get to put together two more equations in my life: Love is power, cooking is love, cooking is power. And I learn from the on-camera thing I need to be as funny in person as I am on paper and be more of a storyteller if I want to be interviewed. So I still have my ongoing battle between the extrovert and introvert within—but all in all, I feel lucky, too. Lucky to have survived childhood, adolescence, restaurant work, drugs, depression—to be alive, to have love, and to be learning still in this precious world.
P. S. I confess, I do care if everyone really liked my food. The crew kept saying about the salsa, “This is homemade??” I sure hope it didn’t taste as bad as store-bought. And Todd said the hot version was not either that hot. But Jared said Todd’s been divorced 4 times. They were, however, happy to take the leftovers.
P. P. S. By the time Bourdain and the crew blog and edit the show, it’s clear that the Southwest road trip is just one long haze of heat, dust, fumes, and alcohol—and while their visit to the Titan Missile Museum is a chapter in my book, it’s a paragraph, a sentence, a joke, a blip in theirs. But thanks for playing, guys! It was fun--or should I say, It seemed like a good idea at the time...
I relate to Kitchen Confidential, I am only two years younger than Tony and was two years ahead of my class and therefore those restaurant days and druggie 1970s were my coming-of-age as well—I was some of those people and knew the other ones. He did heroin and restaurants, I did LSD and went from restaurants to the religious commune.
While the guys are getting some film outside, Bourdain & I chat about quitting smoking and the effect of children on one’s will to live (positive).
The guys are done outside. We ask if we can get a shot of Tony toasting the success of “not” launching a Titan missile. Don’t really want to toast the annihilation of Switzerland on camera—or do we? The wonders of post-editing will tell. Then drinks for the crew, chips & salsa in the break room. Don’t know where I get the guts or stupidity, I ask him if I can shamelessly plug my book. He says yeah. He actually picks it up and holds it for the camera!!! Atomic Cocktail???, he says, with cameras rolling.
I was supposed to tell the story of how the book came out of the Titantini Cocktail recipe, created to celebrate the upcoming 25th anniversary of the museum. I think I say the press-release-atomic-angst shtick of writing the book, give the recipe, and we toast to peace. He says, It’s good, surprised. Awkward, all of it. Who knows if it will make the show.
But he does finish the drink, post-camera, and compliments my homemade salsa and guacamole. This doesn’t go to my head—I take it to mean the food doesn’t suck—which was my reason for making it instead of picking up from Tucson, or recommending a restaurant down here. There’s no place decent open from here to Nogales at this hour. (10 P.M., if you’re wondering. This was before the wonderful diner Spanky’s opened next to the 99cent Store.)
I hate those guacamoles that look like vomit or congealed pea soup and even when they’re fresh I don’t like tomatoes or jalapenos in it. Garlic, lime, and avocado, that's it. Bourdain says Mexican food is like Italian food, it’s either done so well it’s great or it’s truly terrible. I wax rhapsodic about fresh food, ask where they’re going in Hatch, say in a worshipful voice, chiles, and it’s another bonding moment—he says, Red or green, and I say without hesitation, green—he says, me, too.
He does sign my book, and I tell him I’ve enjoyed it and grateful to know that I can throw out most of the knives from my home kitchen that I’ve been lugging around for thirty years. He tells me the story of watching swords made in Japan.
Then that’s it, they’re done, just grabbing a bite, driving the 4 hours to Hatch tonight to have breakfast at The Pepper Pot in the morning. He accepts a copy of my book, we give the crew Atomic Cocktail T-shirts, he says on the way out the door, “I have a feeling we could have talked food a lot more,” and I am touched. He didn’t have to be so gracious. Don’t know what all will end up on TV, but I learned some things from reading Kitchen Confidential, cooking for, and meeting Bourdain.
I learned that I am a nurturer; I didn’t need to impress with the food, because I don’t want to be a chef, or run a restaurant—I cook for friends and family and get to pick my guests—that’s what I enjoy. I learned a long time ago that you can’t cook good food if you’re thinking about yourself—whether trying to impress someone, or being out-of-sorts—from piqued to suicidal. It’s all about the food and how it tastes. And thanks to a Shirley Jackson story I read as a teenager, love in every third stir.
One of the things Bourdain says in Kitchen Confidential is that food is power. I’ve thought about that from a political point of view, saying how dangerous it is to import so much of our daily produce and grains and canned food. I didn’t have an aha! from the book how in my own life food is personal power—but I had to make fresh food for those guys, it was imperative. I had to then think about how I have cooked for people since I was 10 years old. Even in the religious commune, I was the cook. (And I learned to grow my own food and can it, another kind of personal power.)
Making people feel good is personal power, and it’s what I do. As a writer, as a home cook, and hopefully more and more in my personal and working life, it’s what I do. So maybe it’s not a surprise that Bourdain is personable and gracious—because even when cursing and railing and even saying the truth about when things are bad—the end result for a cook, the result you hope for, is for people to feel a little bit of grace, of amazement, of freshness and beauty—a little bit of heaven. To eat is to live, to cook is to give--the end result a celebration of life.
So, I get to put together two more equations in my life: Love is power, cooking is love, cooking is power. And I learn from the on-camera thing I need to be as funny in person as I am on paper and be more of a storyteller if I want to be interviewed. So I still have my ongoing battle between the extrovert and introvert within—but all in all, I feel lucky, too. Lucky to have survived childhood, adolescence, restaurant work, drugs, depression—to be alive, to have love, and to be learning still in this precious world.
P. S. I confess, I do care if everyone really liked my food. The crew kept saying about the salsa, “This is homemade??” I sure hope it didn’t taste as bad as store-bought. And Todd said the hot version was not either that hot. But Jared said Todd’s been divorced 4 times. They were, however, happy to take the leftovers.
P. P. S. By the time Bourdain and the crew blog and edit the show, it’s clear that the Southwest road trip is just one long haze of heat, dust, fumes, and alcohol—and while their visit to the Titan Missile Museum is a chapter in my book, it’s a paragraph, a sentence, a joke, a blip in theirs. But thanks for playing, guys! It was fun--or should I say, It seemed like a good idea at the time...
17 July 2008
Nerdfighter Happy Dance Project
When there are superheroes like this in the world, how can you keep from dancing???
And having hope in the younger, older, and in-between generations?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxYNUu_2egM
Dance the world to a better place today...
break down some barriers, release some inhibitions and resentments, celebrate.
get those positive endorphins going.
I ask in all seriousness, if everyone were blissed out on demand, would there be wars, hunger, homelessness? Isn't the effect of mellowness to smile, to share, to celebrate?
Go, and be blissed.*
(*pun intended*)
(*blissed=blessed)
And having hope in the younger, older, and in-between generations?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxYNUu_2egM
Dance the world to a better place today...
break down some barriers, release some inhibitions and resentments, celebrate.
get those positive endorphins going.
I ask in all seriousness, if everyone were blissed out on demand, would there be wars, hunger, homelessness? Isn't the effect of mellowness to smile, to share, to celebrate?
Go, and be blissed.*
(*pun intended*)
(*blissed=blessed)
16 July 2008
Big Brother: Election Edition
Big Brother—the Election Edition
Let’s turn the tables on the government.
Instead of carefully scripted and planned, utterly meaningless “debates” where the candidates show off their skill in filling the air with words while saying nothing, let’s put them in a house together for 6 months and see how they manage.
Politics is managing the polity, right? What better way to see how they’ll lead?
And far more entertaining—and less expensive—than the current process. Let’s see what kind of character they really have, what they’re really made of.
But please, let America set the challenges—not the sadists at CBS. Slop? Swimming through honey, then breaking open feather pillows—the July 15, 2008 episode—tar & feathers indeed! I stand by the sadist comment.
Are you ready? Big Brother, the election edition. The winner gets to be President, the runner up, V.P. (This is closer to the result the Founding Fathers had in mind. Remember, the 2 Party system is not in the Constitution.)
Give them a Hispanic (or Asian, or black) housekeeper for the first week. Watch how they treat the help. See if they learn anything—because next week, they’re on their own!
Have the Head of Household assign cleaning chores. Running a household is a lot like running a country. Give the house a weekly budget, and have them stick to it.
Can the candidates eat nothing but what comes from the Food Bank for a week, or will they try to call out for gourmet pizza in the middle of the night? Who is America’s favorite?
Have the challenges relate to the Cabinet Posts. Institute field trips—for education, instead of a visit to an inner city school where things are going well, have them spend a week at a school with problems—then a week at the other school. Live with a host family. Attend meetings with real people and classroom teachers instead of administrators.
In fact, I think it should be a requirement for every member of Congress and the Executive Branch to live, with their families, on minimum wage for six months. Then see what kind of laws get made.
Challenge: you slipped and fell while mopping the floor. You have no health insurance. What do you do for treatment? If you miss work to go to the health clinic—you can’t afford a regular dr. visit, so you have to miss a whole day to go to the low-cost clinic—your paycheck will be down that much—let alone if they say you should miss more work—and you’ll have to miss your car insurance payment, which means you’ll have to drive without insurance, because you live in a town with not very good mass transit—if you take the bus, it takes an extra 1.5 hours to cross town—each way! And no one’s there to watch your kids when they get home from school…
Challenge: dye your skin black and walk around town for a day.
Challenge: live for a week in the barrio, where you don’t understand the language. How will you eat? How will you get people to help you?
Challenge: a week in rural America, outside the cities.
Challenge: spend equal time on the West Coast and Washington D. C.
Challenge: spend equal time in the “red” and “blue” states.
Challenge: spend a week as a hospice volunteer.
Challenge: spend a week with a soldier; a week with a soldier’s family.
Welcome to the real United States of America, candidates.
Real Democracy…it hasn’t been tried yet.
Let’s turn the tables on the government.
Instead of carefully scripted and planned, utterly meaningless “debates” where the candidates show off their skill in filling the air with words while saying nothing, let’s put them in a house together for 6 months and see how they manage.
Politics is managing the polity, right? What better way to see how they’ll lead?
And far more entertaining—and less expensive—than the current process. Let’s see what kind of character they really have, what they’re really made of.
But please, let America set the challenges—not the sadists at CBS. Slop? Swimming through honey, then breaking open feather pillows—the July 15, 2008 episode—tar & feathers indeed! I stand by the sadist comment.
Are you ready? Big Brother, the election edition. The winner gets to be President, the runner up, V.P. (This is closer to the result the Founding Fathers had in mind. Remember, the 2 Party system is not in the Constitution.)
Give them a Hispanic (or Asian, or black) housekeeper for the first week. Watch how they treat the help. See if they learn anything—because next week, they’re on their own!
Have the Head of Household assign cleaning chores. Running a household is a lot like running a country. Give the house a weekly budget, and have them stick to it.
Can the candidates eat nothing but what comes from the Food Bank for a week, or will they try to call out for gourmet pizza in the middle of the night? Who is America’s favorite?
Have the challenges relate to the Cabinet Posts. Institute field trips—for education, instead of a visit to an inner city school where things are going well, have them spend a week at a school with problems—then a week at the other school. Live with a host family. Attend meetings with real people and classroom teachers instead of administrators.
In fact, I think it should be a requirement for every member of Congress and the Executive Branch to live, with their families, on minimum wage for six months. Then see what kind of laws get made.
Challenge: you slipped and fell while mopping the floor. You have no health insurance. What do you do for treatment? If you miss work to go to the health clinic—you can’t afford a regular dr. visit, so you have to miss a whole day to go to the low-cost clinic—your paycheck will be down that much—let alone if they say you should miss more work—and you’ll have to miss your car insurance payment, which means you’ll have to drive without insurance, because you live in a town with not very good mass transit—if you take the bus, it takes an extra 1.5 hours to cross town—each way! And no one’s there to watch your kids when they get home from school…
Challenge: dye your skin black and walk around town for a day.
Challenge: live for a week in the barrio, where you don’t understand the language. How will you eat? How will you get people to help you?
Challenge: a week in rural America, outside the cities.
Challenge: spend equal time on the West Coast and Washington D. C.
Challenge: spend equal time in the “red” and “blue” states.
Challenge: spend a week as a hospice volunteer.
Challenge: spend a week with a soldier; a week with a soldier’s family.
Welcome to the real United States of America, candidates.
Real Democracy…it hasn’t been tried yet.
13 July 2008
How I Know I Am Not a Good Person
It's driving that brings out the demons in me. It's gotten worse since I quit smoking almost three years ago. Other drivers drive me bonkers and I curse them uncontrollably. By which I mean that I have filled the car with peaceful music meant to soothe the beast within--and some **%%## cuts me off and "%**%%$$##@ you pathetic ##$$%% ###," leaps out of my mouth, bypassing the internal censor. There are no cars behind me; they could have waited. But impatience is a learned behaviour of this city (any city?).
I am a native Tucsonan and you can tell this by the fact that I think it's perfectly OK when on a four- or six-lane street with no or only two other cars on the road, to ignore whatever idiotic speed limit they've posted and go anywhere from 50 to 65. And the yellow light means try to get through the intersection. Of course I know that when my light turns green, some other idiot is going to run the red light--red and yellow being such similar colors--and green means proceed with caution. They've installed traffic cameras at certain intersections to catch red light runners--guess what, even the cops do it. On or off duty, not on a chase.
And you can't trust if someone who has their signal on will turn, because they've been driving in the right lane with the left OR right turn signal on for the last 3 miles, 6 intersections. And conversely, you can't rely on people to USE their signal when they want to turn, because THEY know what they're going to do, why should they let others in on the secret?
And now that guy ahead of you who's using two lanes to weave his way onward isn't drunk--no, he's on his effing cellphone.
Did I mention I clench my jaw and grind my teeth? By the time I get home, I have a raging headache and a muscle spasm that won't quit.
My dream of driving through the city, getting my errands done, spreading bliss and light wherever I roam, is crushed. I am a righteous, judgemental, better-than-you, road-raging warrior, and if you cut me off again, I'll ride your butt until you finally get out of my effing way, you ##$$%% ***!
I am a native Tucsonan and you can tell this by the fact that I think it's perfectly OK when on a four- or six-lane street with no or only two other cars on the road, to ignore whatever idiotic speed limit they've posted and go anywhere from 50 to 65. And the yellow light means try to get through the intersection. Of course I know that when my light turns green, some other idiot is going to run the red light--red and yellow being such similar colors--and green means proceed with caution. They've installed traffic cameras at certain intersections to catch red light runners--guess what, even the cops do it. On or off duty, not on a chase.
And you can't trust if someone who has their signal on will turn, because they've been driving in the right lane with the left OR right turn signal on for the last 3 miles, 6 intersections. And conversely, you can't rely on people to USE their signal when they want to turn, because THEY know what they're going to do, why should they let others in on the secret?
And now that guy ahead of you who's using two lanes to weave his way onward isn't drunk--no, he's on his effing cellphone.
Did I mention I clench my jaw and grind my teeth? By the time I get home, I have a raging headache and a muscle spasm that won't quit.
My dream of driving through the city, getting my errands done, spreading bliss and light wherever I roam, is crushed. I am a righteous, judgemental, better-than-you, road-raging warrior, and if you cut me off again, I'll ride your butt until you finally get out of my effing way, you ##$$%% ***!
12 July 2008
The Church of the Blue Margarita
The Church of the Blue Margarita
I can't help it; this is what I see when I look at a tree: whorls of bark, translucent leaves, beetles, birds, sap: like blood, like rivers flowing; clouds, roots digging into earth, ferns, cats, jungles, worms, children laughing, old forests, fires, volcanoes, leaves again trembling in the wind, sunlight, sun, stars—this wonder, from atom to cell to tree to mountain to solar system, galaxy upon galaxy flung like shells on the wide shore of the universe.
This is a late-night conversation under the stars. We're sitting on Bill and Karen's porch, drinking margaritas and smoking cigarettes, exploring the universe. Karen and Yvonne think that a tree is just a tree, it doesn't have to be anything else, and we should appreciate its unique treeness. Bill and I say, yes, the tree embodies treeness, but it's also the universe. Karen and Yvonne ask which came first, the psychedelics or the mindset. Bill and I agree that the drugs we once ingested are not to blame. When the two of us come back from getting refills in the kitchen, we find Karen and Yvonne hugging the tree in case they've hurt its feelings. And they're the practical ones.
Each of us is accepting a primal consciousness that says our very words and thoughts affect the tree. The tree is aware of us: we are interconnected in the fabric of being.
Once the world was a forest and we wandered in its trees, dependent on their fruits to live. We thought to tame the trees and their fellow plants and invented agriculture; then we became slaves to the fields. And we are still the slaves of trees, of all the vegetable kingdom; we must tend them or die. We need them not only for their fruits but for the very air we breathe; a forest is a vast oxygen factory. Maybe the ozone layer isn't being depleted only because of chemicals, but also because we're cutting down the forests. Maybe life is still as mysterious as it was when all of us were tribal peoples; maybe the progress we think we've gained through the centuries is merely an accumulation of facts, not answers. Maybe a prayer to the moon, that rock in the sky, is as valid as it was centuries ago; the moon still moves the seas. I pray to the god behind the moon: the moon may be a symbol, as words are, for the light behind the darkness, the god who can't be contained in rocks or statues, names or stars, yet Is—in all these things and more.
That is my Church of the Blue Margarita.
We light five candles, the tall plain glass ones. Karen has put labels on them: Love, Joy, Peace, Compassion, Health. I have brought a vase filled with water, and a handful of stones: crystals, cat’s-eye, obsidian, malachite. We are promising to work on what we think the Holy is telling us. Fire, the breath of spirit. Water, fountain of life. Words, which are also made of air. We make up the rituals as we go forward.
What if there were a church where the major rules were love God and love one another? Where the major sins were cruelty and meanness of spirit? Where if you quit asking questions, if you forgot to laugh, you had fallen from grace? What if there were a church where God-in-all-things was loved?
The Church of the Blue Margarita is a church without walls, without organization, without official membership. As a veteran of a failed religious commune and a failed spiritual discussion group, I still needed a community of believers. I don't get the community of traditional churches, and I was at a loss until I looked around my life. My dearest, deepest friends share my questing heart; we have spiritual discussions all the time. I live my life in church, I realized, in a body of believers who don’t know each other, and don't agree on everything but have hearts in common. We are all afraid of being trapped in the boxes of tradition, and we don’t want the Holy trapped in one, either.
I must admit that unnamed members (years ago) of the Pima County Attorney's Office helped make it a joke during a happy-hour at Gentle Ben's, a University hangout. Everyone was intrigued by a church in which drinking was not only allowed, but celebrated. I told them I was going to franchise--what is missionary work, after all? It will go over particularly well on college campuses--yes, Mom, I did go to church. Chips and salsa, margaritas, take the place of pasty bread and too-sweet wine. Corn is the body of the goddess, after all, it's not such a stretch. And cover charge=passing the collections plate, you just do it at the beginning.
The sermon? This weekend, the subject was finding the humor in everyday life, so we told jokes. There's a revolving pastorship, everyone has to take charge of the service in rotation. Of course that means deciding the drinks & appetizers of the day.... When I was in high school, I started a dinner club--my friends and I would make the foods of a different country each month. It's good to share the responsibilities of leadership, then everyone gets the headaches and no one gets too big a head.
I met Tama in a writing class. I had written about a character having a visionary experience, and she came up to me after the class with the strangest look on her face and asked me if I really saw those things. I was afraid to say yes to this weird stranger, but I did. She sees things too, it turned out, and she wasn’t nearly as frightening as she appeared. She and her husband were part of the disbanded discussion group. We found that talking the talk was not nearly as useful as walking the walk.
We lay out a spread of cards, looking for keys to the present. Tama brings tiny cymbals to my house on New Year's Eve. At midnight, she rings them to drive away bad spirits. At her house, we tear apart a cigarette, scatter a tobacco offering over little Po's grave beneath the hedge, remembering his brave dog spirit.
Marge attended a weekend retreat in a yurt set up in the desert. She felt the heart of the earth, heard a song in the silence of the stars. The women who were there danced bald-headed in the rain, celebrated life in the midst of their cancer battles. She makes chocolate bread for Christmas, delivers it to the door. We make email prayer chains, trying to heal the world.
Rita wanted to do a ceremonial writing at the spring solstice, inviting the fresh breezes of spring to whip away winter’s tired issues.
We meet in a church, play Gregorian chants on the CD player, light candles, write our heart’s prayers.
Each of us has experienced the sense of the numinous—the sense of something beyond the normal range of perception, a conviction that we can see more, be more, than we are. We'd rather live than make a living; none of us is rich, and not likely to be. We're misfits, living on the fringe, on the edge, on the border—we want to be pioneers of the spirit.
We want all borders to be permeable. Even flesh is permeable to light. We've all said that we want to cross the border, enter into a different state of being, learn how to live in that other perception. We’ve also agreed that we want to be in the world, yet not of the world, and we’re trying to live whatever that means, to the best of our ability. I think now that means to attain comfort in the borderlands: like the geographic area we live in, not wholly one thing or another. Perhaps the most desirable state of being is that of comfort with ambiguity, being able to cross from one side to another, adjust perception to the state we're in.
Other groups seemed to fail because they couldn’t agree on a group identity, or on rules, so I created a church without either, a church without borders, a church as hard to define as its name. It just is; it’s not trying to be anything, so it can’t fail.
I've co-opted a host of people, famous and otherwise, who by word and deed have made me feel they’re kindred spirits. Many of these people have chosen their own churches to belong to, and some would be horrified by the word church. (Although I worry that I’m like the Mormons, baptizing the dead, who never asked for it, I hope I’m more like God, who says, “You belong to me, even if you don’t know it.”)
What all of these people have in common is that they see the connectedness of all things and therefore have problems with dogma, or Final Pronouncements. When they seek understanding, they are not only seeking information, as some scientists and religionists do; they are seeking meaning as well. Mystery intrigues them, and they celebrate it.
My friend Gary, the mathematician, emails me about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that “we dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages ... by the linguistic systems in our minds.” I email him back that I've been pondering that very thing, but I don't think we're doomed to that perception. If as some of the linguists think, we're hard-wired for language, it has to be the original language, the language of stars and trees—which must still be there, deep inside us, to be rediscovered.
Mine is the Church of Questions, the Church of Misfits; the Quirky Church, the Church of Paradox—the Church of the Blue Margarita. Rita calls it the Church of the Blue Madonna, and that can also be its name. It’s the Church of the Borderlands, in keeping with the myth of the Goddess of the Americas, that in the “New World” there is hope of an assimilation, a marriage of spirit and technology, a hope for new creation: peace on earth and goodwill among all its creatures. The Goddess of the Americas is the reincarnation of the Mother-Creator, the Mother of all the gods: this is her title in the liturgy of Her Holy Day according to the Catholic Church. She is Mother of the Universe and of the Divine Man, Jesus; she is the goddess of volcanoes and rainforests.
A tree is a god; God is in a tree, in all trees; a tree holds the world within its branches, roots, sap, and leaves. A tree joins the worlds of earth and air, rooted in both; a tree represents the world in many spiritual traditions. We, too, hold the world within us, the holographic world where all living things are built up of DNA. Scientists say that in every single gene there are strands and strands of “garbage genes,” thousands of bytes of unused information. These may not be nonsense or garbage—they could hold the world within them, all the beauties of creation. We could clone the universe, if one scrap is left. We are the fools of faith in things not seen.
My grandfather died December 9th, and for the first time our family celebrates the holidays at my dad's place instead of my grandparent’s house. 60 miles from the city, under a sky full of stars, we hope for healing in the New Year. We’ve built a fire outside; my dad’s wife has made a straw man, and we’ve written down our secret failings on scraps of paper; we burn them with the straw man on this New Year’s Eve and hope the wind will carry our grief away. We drink margaritas and champagne and sing campfire songs under the stars. Through tears we sing a harmony of hope.
Ritual is a way of turning ourselves to face the Holy. In the Church of the Blue Margarita, we borrow rituals from many traditions and try to remember that even washing dishes can be holy. A kind word, a helping hand, are as beautiful as a star pulsing fire, as necessary as the work of trees.
These are our rituals: we sit on our back porches, drinking margaritas (blue ones, berry ones, the original lime); we hug trees. We light candles, we trade music, we play cards and sing. We make rubber stamps and with colored inkpads create our own note cards. We talk about work and family. We work and clean house. We cry on each other’s shoulders, trade wordless hugs. We go to dinner and the movies. We cook; we read; we write; we ponder; we paint. We live our lives, and we love each other. Our liturgy is laughter.
barefooted along the beach,
the wave-kissed sand as smooth as skin.
Gulls cry and waves swish
and we admire the glorious light.
To breathe this sea air is prayer
and this is worship: sun, sea, sky.
In this blessed space
we dangle outside time
with our sacraments of
salsa, cheese, and lime.
I can't help it; this is what I see when I look at a tree: whorls of bark, translucent leaves, beetles, birds, sap: like blood, like rivers flowing; clouds, roots digging into earth, ferns, cats, jungles, worms, children laughing, old forests, fires, volcanoes, leaves again trembling in the wind, sunlight, sun, stars—this wonder, from atom to cell to tree to mountain to solar system, galaxy upon galaxy flung like shells on the wide shore of the universe.
This is a late-night conversation under the stars. We're sitting on Bill and Karen's porch, drinking margaritas and smoking cigarettes, exploring the universe. Karen and Yvonne think that a tree is just a tree, it doesn't have to be anything else, and we should appreciate its unique treeness. Bill and I say, yes, the tree embodies treeness, but it's also the universe. Karen and Yvonne ask which came first, the psychedelics or the mindset. Bill and I agree that the drugs we once ingested are not to blame. When the two of us come back from getting refills in the kitchen, we find Karen and Yvonne hugging the tree in case they've hurt its feelings. And they're the practical ones.
Each of us is accepting a primal consciousness that says our very words and thoughts affect the tree. The tree is aware of us: we are interconnected in the fabric of being.
Once the world was a forest and we wandered in its trees, dependent on their fruits to live. We thought to tame the trees and their fellow plants and invented agriculture; then we became slaves to the fields. And we are still the slaves of trees, of all the vegetable kingdom; we must tend them or die. We need them not only for their fruits but for the very air we breathe; a forest is a vast oxygen factory. Maybe the ozone layer isn't being depleted only because of chemicals, but also because we're cutting down the forests. Maybe life is still as mysterious as it was when all of us were tribal peoples; maybe the progress we think we've gained through the centuries is merely an accumulation of facts, not answers. Maybe a prayer to the moon, that rock in the sky, is as valid as it was centuries ago; the moon still moves the seas. I pray to the god behind the moon: the moon may be a symbol, as words are, for the light behind the darkness, the god who can't be contained in rocks or statues, names or stars, yet Is—in all these things and more.
That is my Church of the Blue Margarita.
We light five candles, the tall plain glass ones. Karen has put labels on them: Love, Joy, Peace, Compassion, Health. I have brought a vase filled with water, and a handful of stones: crystals, cat’s-eye, obsidian, malachite. We are promising to work on what we think the Holy is telling us. Fire, the breath of spirit. Water, fountain of life. Words, which are also made of air. We make up the rituals as we go forward.
What if there were a church where the major rules were love God and love one another? Where the major sins were cruelty and meanness of spirit? Where if you quit asking questions, if you forgot to laugh, you had fallen from grace? What if there were a church where God-in-all-things was loved?
The Church of the Blue Margarita is a church without walls, without organization, without official membership. As a veteran of a failed religious commune and a failed spiritual discussion group, I still needed a community of believers. I don't get the community of traditional churches, and I was at a loss until I looked around my life. My dearest, deepest friends share my questing heart; we have spiritual discussions all the time. I live my life in church, I realized, in a body of believers who don’t know each other, and don't agree on everything but have hearts in common. We are all afraid of being trapped in the boxes of tradition, and we don’t want the Holy trapped in one, either.
I must admit that unnamed members (years ago) of the Pima County Attorney's Office helped make it a joke during a happy-hour at Gentle Ben's, a University hangout. Everyone was intrigued by a church in which drinking was not only allowed, but celebrated. I told them I was going to franchise--what is missionary work, after all? It will go over particularly well on college campuses--yes, Mom, I did go to church. Chips and salsa, margaritas, take the place of pasty bread and too-sweet wine. Corn is the body of the goddess, after all, it's not such a stretch. And cover charge=passing the collections plate, you just do it at the beginning.
The sermon? This weekend, the subject was finding the humor in everyday life, so we told jokes. There's a revolving pastorship, everyone has to take charge of the service in rotation. Of course that means deciding the drinks & appetizers of the day.... When I was in high school, I started a dinner club--my friends and I would make the foods of a different country each month. It's good to share the responsibilities of leadership, then everyone gets the headaches and no one gets too big a head.
I met Tama in a writing class. I had written about a character having a visionary experience, and she came up to me after the class with the strangest look on her face and asked me if I really saw those things. I was afraid to say yes to this weird stranger, but I did. She sees things too, it turned out, and she wasn’t nearly as frightening as she appeared. She and her husband were part of the disbanded discussion group. We found that talking the talk was not nearly as useful as walking the walk.
We lay out a spread of cards, looking for keys to the present. Tama brings tiny cymbals to my house on New Year's Eve. At midnight, she rings them to drive away bad spirits. At her house, we tear apart a cigarette, scatter a tobacco offering over little Po's grave beneath the hedge, remembering his brave dog spirit.
Marge attended a weekend retreat in a yurt set up in the desert. She felt the heart of the earth, heard a song in the silence of the stars. The women who were there danced bald-headed in the rain, celebrated life in the midst of their cancer battles. She makes chocolate bread for Christmas, delivers it to the door. We make email prayer chains, trying to heal the world.
Rita wanted to do a ceremonial writing at the spring solstice, inviting the fresh breezes of spring to whip away winter’s tired issues.
We meet in a church, play Gregorian chants on the CD player, light candles, write our heart’s prayers.
Each of us has experienced the sense of the numinous—the sense of something beyond the normal range of perception, a conviction that we can see more, be more, than we are. We'd rather live than make a living; none of us is rich, and not likely to be. We're misfits, living on the fringe, on the edge, on the border—we want to be pioneers of the spirit.
We want all borders to be permeable. Even flesh is permeable to light. We've all said that we want to cross the border, enter into a different state of being, learn how to live in that other perception. We’ve also agreed that we want to be in the world, yet not of the world, and we’re trying to live whatever that means, to the best of our ability. I think now that means to attain comfort in the borderlands: like the geographic area we live in, not wholly one thing or another. Perhaps the most desirable state of being is that of comfort with ambiguity, being able to cross from one side to another, adjust perception to the state we're in.
Other groups seemed to fail because they couldn’t agree on a group identity, or on rules, so I created a church without either, a church without borders, a church as hard to define as its name. It just is; it’s not trying to be anything, so it can’t fail.
I've co-opted a host of people, famous and otherwise, who by word and deed have made me feel they’re kindred spirits. Many of these people have chosen their own churches to belong to, and some would be horrified by the word church. (Although I worry that I’m like the Mormons, baptizing the dead, who never asked for it, I hope I’m more like God, who says, “You belong to me, even if you don’t know it.”)
What all of these people have in common is that they see the connectedness of all things and therefore have problems with dogma, or Final Pronouncements. When they seek understanding, they are not only seeking information, as some scientists and religionists do; they are seeking meaning as well. Mystery intrigues them, and they celebrate it.
My friend Gary, the mathematician, emails me about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that “we dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages ... by the linguistic systems in our minds.” I email him back that I've been pondering that very thing, but I don't think we're doomed to that perception. If as some of the linguists think, we're hard-wired for language, it has to be the original language, the language of stars and trees—which must still be there, deep inside us, to be rediscovered.
Mine is the Church of Questions, the Church of Misfits; the Quirky Church, the Church of Paradox—the Church of the Blue Margarita. Rita calls it the Church of the Blue Madonna, and that can also be its name. It’s the Church of the Borderlands, in keeping with the myth of the Goddess of the Americas, that in the “New World” there is hope of an assimilation, a marriage of spirit and technology, a hope for new creation: peace on earth and goodwill among all its creatures. The Goddess of the Americas is the reincarnation of the Mother-Creator, the Mother of all the gods: this is her title in the liturgy of Her Holy Day according to the Catholic Church. She is Mother of the Universe and of the Divine Man, Jesus; she is the goddess of volcanoes and rainforests.
A tree is a god; God is in a tree, in all trees; a tree holds the world within its branches, roots, sap, and leaves. A tree joins the worlds of earth and air, rooted in both; a tree represents the world in many spiritual traditions. We, too, hold the world within us, the holographic world where all living things are built up of DNA. Scientists say that in every single gene there are strands and strands of “garbage genes,” thousands of bytes of unused information. These may not be nonsense or garbage—they could hold the world within them, all the beauties of creation. We could clone the universe, if one scrap is left. We are the fools of faith in things not seen.
My grandfather died December 9th, and for the first time our family celebrates the holidays at my dad's place instead of my grandparent’s house. 60 miles from the city, under a sky full of stars, we hope for healing in the New Year. We’ve built a fire outside; my dad’s wife has made a straw man, and we’ve written down our secret failings on scraps of paper; we burn them with the straw man on this New Year’s Eve and hope the wind will carry our grief away. We drink margaritas and champagne and sing campfire songs under the stars. Through tears we sing a harmony of hope.
Ritual is a way of turning ourselves to face the Holy. In the Church of the Blue Margarita, we borrow rituals from many traditions and try to remember that even washing dishes can be holy. A kind word, a helping hand, are as beautiful as a star pulsing fire, as necessary as the work of trees.
These are our rituals: we sit on our back porches, drinking margaritas (blue ones, berry ones, the original lime); we hug trees. We light candles, we trade music, we play cards and sing. We make rubber stamps and with colored inkpads create our own note cards. We talk about work and family. We work and clean house. We cry on each other’s shoulders, trade wordless hugs. We go to dinner and the movies. We cook; we read; we write; we ponder; we paint. We live our lives, and we love each other. Our liturgy is laughter.
Rocky Point, Mexico
(closest beach to Tucson, AZ)
At low tide we pad (closest beach to Tucson, AZ)
barefooted along the beach,
the wave-kissed sand as smooth as skin.
Gulls cry and waves swish
and we admire the glorious light.
To breathe this sea air is prayer
and this is worship: sun, sea, sky.
In this blessed space
we dangle outside time
with our sacraments of
salsa, cheese, and lime.
20 June 2008
Max On Talk Radio
Thanks to the Titan Missile Museum, I was one of the guests on the Jay Parisi Show (KNST 790 AM) live broadcast event from the Titan site on Thursday June 19. It was great to see behind the scenes and talk about the book and the story behind it. How do you get from the Atom Bomb to the Atomic Cocktail Party? (One drink at a time.)
Not just in my strange mind, but the whole atomic pop culture thing. It's black humor, a fist in the face of death. It's eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may die, carpe diem, live life to the fullest, stop and smell the roses, and by golly, laugh more. But live and write with panache instead of cliche.
Jay was great, willing to look at all sides of an issue, and to go a little deeper on the questions instead of staying on the surface. I talked a little bit about "why humor"--because we learn better with emotion attached to the learning experience. Think about the best teachers you had--they motivated you by fun or fear.
I vote for fun, or as in the case of nuclear powers, fun and fear.
I hear i have a new nickname: The Margarita Girl.
That's me, an edu-tainer.
Slainte! Salud, amor, y el tiempo para desfrutarlo!
(Health! Health, love, and the time to enjoy them!)
Not just in my strange mind, but the whole atomic pop culture thing. It's black humor, a fist in the face of death. It's eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may die, carpe diem, live life to the fullest, stop and smell the roses, and by golly, laugh more. But live and write with panache instead of cliche.
Jay was great, willing to look at all sides of an issue, and to go a little deeper on the questions instead of staying on the surface. I talked a little bit about "why humor"--because we learn better with emotion attached to the learning experience. Think about the best teachers you had--they motivated you by fun or fear.
I vote for fun, or as in the case of nuclear powers, fun and fear.
I hear i have a new nickname: The Margarita Girl.
That's me, an edu-tainer.
Slainte! Salud, amor, y el tiempo para desfrutarlo!
(Health! Health, love, and the time to enjoy them!)
16 June 2008
The Bourdain Experience, Part 1
Some queries have been coming in…yes, Anthony Bourdain and the No Reservations crew were in Southern AZ at the Titan Missile Museum.
While the release one signs says nothing about remaining silent, it seems only right to let the famous guy get the first take. I’ll post my take after the show airs.
Who knows what will end up on the show? But yes, there was drink involved. And yes, I was there, on the sidelines.
I will say it was very cool to meet him. I’ve read the books, I watch the show, and I was pretty much counting on him being a no-bullshit guy; one of the few people on the planet where what you see is what you get, on the page, on camera, in person. This was true.
In keeping with this authenticity, the show is very much candid videography, minimal set-ups, no do-overs. He shows up, the cameras roll, and that’s it—all kudos to the crew and film editing staff and Bourdain himself for making such great television—we can’t even guess at what the final version of this show will be.
What has made Kitchen Confidential and No Reservations the most successful of the books and shows, I believe, is the consistent tone of a master memoirist—and therefore sensualist—Bourdain. It is that openness of the senses that enables connection to the world and to the people in it; the ability to retain and communicate sensation makes a storyteller, a chef, an entertainer. What we love to read and watch is Bourdain the raconteur.
Bourdain is bold, Bourdain is blunt, Bourdain is charming. He’s a regular guy.
I'm grateful for the experience, no matter what ends up on television. I hope to make the cut, but I forgot to use my teacher voice. I learned a lot and got to entertain a small bit myself, had a great evening, lived the moment. Coolness!
What really prompted this post was Jay Friedman in the Seattlest. (seattlest.com/2008/06/09/appreciating_an.php) Jay thinks Bourdain should thank his fans for making him a success. I don’t think Bourdain has to fall over with gratitude to his fans. Like any traveler welcomed in the door, he pays for his supper by telling his story.
Bon appetit!
While the release one signs says nothing about remaining silent, it seems only right to let the famous guy get the first take. I’ll post my take after the show airs.
Who knows what will end up on the show? But yes, there was drink involved. And yes, I was there, on the sidelines.
I will say it was very cool to meet him. I’ve read the books, I watch the show, and I was pretty much counting on him being a no-bullshit guy; one of the few people on the planet where what you see is what you get, on the page, on camera, in person. This was true.
In keeping with this authenticity, the show is very much candid videography, minimal set-ups, no do-overs. He shows up, the cameras roll, and that’s it—all kudos to the crew and film editing staff and Bourdain himself for making such great television—we can’t even guess at what the final version of this show will be.
What has made Kitchen Confidential and No Reservations the most successful of the books and shows, I believe, is the consistent tone of a master memoirist—and therefore sensualist—Bourdain. It is that openness of the senses that enables connection to the world and to the people in it; the ability to retain and communicate sensation makes a storyteller, a chef, an entertainer. What we love to read and watch is Bourdain the raconteur.
Bourdain is bold, Bourdain is blunt, Bourdain is charming. He’s a regular guy.
I'm grateful for the experience, no matter what ends up on television. I hope to make the cut, but I forgot to use my teacher voice. I learned a lot and got to entertain a small bit myself, had a great evening, lived the moment. Coolness!
What really prompted this post was Jay Friedman in the Seattlest. (seattlest.com/2008/06/09/appreciating_an.php) Jay thinks Bourdain should thank his fans for making him a success. I don’t think Bourdain has to fall over with gratitude to his fans. Like any traveler welcomed in the door, he pays for his supper by telling his story.
Bon appetit!
11 June 2008
Constructing Reality
James Frey is back on the scene with a well-received new novel. Frey got in widely publicized trouble for dramatizing his memoir, merging people (characters) and situations (plot). Or perhaps it was for marketing a novel as autobiography, although you’ll find some literati who would say that’s why one calls it a memoir instead of autobiography. And then I think you would find some people in consciousness studies, monasteries, and asylums that would challenge any attempt at distinction between fact and fiction.
As a book person, I noticed the favorable mentions of Frey. As a reader, I checked out my local library’s copy of Best American essays 2007 and therein read “ Shakers,” by Daniel Orozco. It’s far better written, but it reads like a Discovery Channel special, filled with scientific information, following an earthquake in a moment-by-moment way—with emotion-charged scenes of imagined people caught in the midst of it. At first I was offended, because I like reading science and nature articles and don’t much care for those Discovery Channel specials. But I must admit, it is that human element that gives the story its power and resonance, mimics the force of an earthquake in the mind.
Humans have always used the power of story: to teach, to learn, to attempt understanding of the world around them. Only when science entered the picture did this separation between fact and fiction—equating one with truth and the other with falsity. Ancient stories were relegated to myth. Science was looking to explain the world, not understand it. Science was a new culture, a new religion, stamping out the competition, limiting the world to what could be perceived with the five senses and the tools human beings created. And yet, every great leap forward in science came from intuition, dreams, thought—perception applied to observation.
Here in the 21st century, with our cell phones and computers, electron microscopes and deep space telescopes, internet and satellite HDTV, the lines between fact and fiction blur again. Not only the Discovery Channel, but also the History and National Geographic Channel (or Nat Geo, as its calling itself in the sound-byte age) are dramatizing, fictionalizing. One could say that introducing the human element is the beginning of fiction. The story is what people want, not the bare facts. This desire for story is the hunger for connection and identity, the desire to see ourselves in relation to the universe. Science and religion and story spring from the same hunger in the human spirit.
Are we truly any different than our savannah-dwelling, cave-lodging forebears? We light our cities against the dark night and its predators. In the midst of flood and earthquake, tornados and volcanic eruptions, science has the same power as religion to prevent them.
They really are the same, science and religion. In our quantum world where physicists, the priests and mystics of science, say that reality is influenced by perception, what is the difference between fact and fiction?
Is it such a large leap to change the term ‘influenced by’ to the term “created by?” In a world ravaged by greed (think war, gimme what you got), industrialization (think shrinking rainforests), and the unintended consequences of technology (think nuclear waste, which also encapsulates the former two)—in such a world, shouldn’t the quest of 21st century science be to harness the technology of the human spirit, the power of perception?
Isn’t that what it takes, a shift in consciousness, to create a new world? A shift in consciousness, the power of story. In the modern age, the ideal and story of freedom created the shift toward democracy—and a shift away from democracy to rampant capitalism, Nazism, fascism, communism, repression. Story and will shrank the British Empire. Stories of conquest, entitlement and fear planted the seeds for an explosion of terrorism.
The stories we tell ourselves, the stories we listen to—these are what create the forces of societal, political, religious, and scientific change that in turn change the world. At least, our perception of it. At least, our reality.
As a book person, I noticed the favorable mentions of Frey. As a reader, I checked out my local library’s copy of Best American essays 2007 and therein read “ Shakers,” by Daniel Orozco. It’s far better written, but it reads like a Discovery Channel special, filled with scientific information, following an earthquake in a moment-by-moment way—with emotion-charged scenes of imagined people caught in the midst of it. At first I was offended, because I like reading science and nature articles and don’t much care for those Discovery Channel specials. But I must admit, it is that human element that gives the story its power and resonance, mimics the force of an earthquake in the mind.
Humans have always used the power of story: to teach, to learn, to attempt understanding of the world around them. Only when science entered the picture did this separation between fact and fiction—equating one with truth and the other with falsity. Ancient stories were relegated to myth. Science was looking to explain the world, not understand it. Science was a new culture, a new religion, stamping out the competition, limiting the world to what could be perceived with the five senses and the tools human beings created. And yet, every great leap forward in science came from intuition, dreams, thought—perception applied to observation.
Here in the 21st century, with our cell phones and computers, electron microscopes and deep space telescopes, internet and satellite HDTV, the lines between fact and fiction blur again. Not only the Discovery Channel, but also the History and National Geographic Channel (or Nat Geo, as its calling itself in the sound-byte age) are dramatizing, fictionalizing. One could say that introducing the human element is the beginning of fiction. The story is what people want, not the bare facts. This desire for story is the hunger for connection and identity, the desire to see ourselves in relation to the universe. Science and religion and story spring from the same hunger in the human spirit.
Are we truly any different than our savannah-dwelling, cave-lodging forebears? We light our cities against the dark night and its predators. In the midst of flood and earthquake, tornados and volcanic eruptions, science has the same power as religion to prevent them.
They really are the same, science and religion. In our quantum world where physicists, the priests and mystics of science, say that reality is influenced by perception, what is the difference between fact and fiction?
Is it such a large leap to change the term ‘influenced by’ to the term “created by?” In a world ravaged by greed (think war, gimme what you got), industrialization (think shrinking rainforests), and the unintended consequences of technology (think nuclear waste, which also encapsulates the former two)—in such a world, shouldn’t the quest of 21st century science be to harness the technology of the human spirit, the power of perception?
Isn’t that what it takes, a shift in consciousness, to create a new world? A shift in consciousness, the power of story. In the modern age, the ideal and story of freedom created the shift toward democracy—and a shift away from democracy to rampant capitalism, Nazism, fascism, communism, repression. Story and will shrank the British Empire. Stories of conquest, entitlement and fear planted the seeds for an explosion of terrorism.
The stories we tell ourselves, the stories we listen to—these are what create the forces of societal, political, religious, and scientific change that in turn change the world. At least, our perception of it. At least, our reality.
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