Thursday, January 27, 2005

The world is appearing more and more insane to me each day. You should pick up a copy of the latest Newsweek.... if you can handle it. Did you ever see that movie Devil's Advocate? There’s a powerful lawyer who is Satan and the people who work for him are his minions. One woman is able to see the truth. When she sees them as they really are, they turn into horrific-looking demons with horns and fangs.

Open up Newsweek and you'll see a picture of Bush and his wife dancing over a huge symbol of the White House. There are his two daughters, looking like young strapping fascists. And a picture of a crowd of people all dressed in black and white at his inauguration. It looks like a scene from Nazi Germany. Turn the page and you'll see the beautiful Iraqi children, their faces covered with blood and terror, crying because their parents have just been shot and killed by American marines. What is the point of all this genocide and destruction?

Day in and day out I walk to a job where I kill trees and poison the Earth. A job that is completely and utterly meaningless to me and offers absolutely nothing useful to the world. But I do it because I have yet to find some other way survive.

Whether I like it or not, I live in fear and play my dutiful role in Ahriman's plan. But I ask myself, what choices do I have? Adding myself to the ranks of the homeless and unemployed people drifting the streets of Denver won't help me or anyone else. I have to find a viable solution.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

It's been a busy week. Friday night was my writers' meeting. Ken, Eric, Jeff, and I went to Old Chicago's. Sarina came along too. It was a good meeting. Jeff's science fiction story "The Unification Chronicals" is coming along well. He'll be publishing it on-line soon as a serial and I'll post a link on my website. Eric's story was good too. Ken didn't submit anything because he was out of town on business. But he did pay for the food! And that's always appreciated.

That reminds me that I'm planning to post the first chapter of three novels I'm working on. I'll post new chapters on a regular basis after that.

On Saturday, I went over to Ken's house for a photoshoot. We rented some movies too. I got to see Cat Woman and now it's my favorite movie. I loved the strong female character. I also liked her because she's an artist. I could really relate to the character.

On Sunday, I went over to Ken's again for another photoshoot. In the afternoon, we went to meet David McKibben in person whom I originally met though the New Tribal Network at www.Ishmael.com. He's building an intentional community in Mitchell, Nebraska. You can check out his website at www.PioneerTrailsInstitute.org.

Well, that's about it for now. Back to the daily grind.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Well, it's Tuesday morning. I should be getting ready for work (at the law firm), but I'm exhausted. I need more sleep. I don't feel like getting ready for work, but I'm afraid to let myself go back to sleep. So I'm writing in my journal since it's been a while.

On Sunday, Ken and I went to a photographers' meeting. It's a group called Denver of Iniquity. They have a website at www.DenverofIniquity.com. We decided that we're going to focus on selling prints and posters of my paintings and his photography. We'll sell on-line through www.BohemianArtStudio.com. I also need to get us signed up to sell at the Ball Park Flea Market this spring. Of course, we have no idea how successful we'll be in this venture, but we have to start somewhere.

I need to get the website set up for ecommerce. We'll be getting together this evening to work on formatting the pages and take some pictures.

Other than that, I'm still working on writing essays and reviews for the website. I'm currently reading Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism by Murray Bookchin. So hopefully I'll have something to post on that soon.

Well, friends, I think that's about it. I guess it's time for me to face the cold harsh reality that I must soon be outside in the chill gray Denver winter, walking to the posh corporate law firm where I will spend the next eight hours killing trees and poisoning the Earth so that I can pay the rent and feed myself.

Note: I should acknowledge that I do appreciate my employer. There are many good people working at the law firm. It's just that things are out of balance in this world and we need to get them back into balance by making the needs of other living beings a higher priority.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Yesterday I walked home for lunch and while I was at home I started crying because I didn't want to go back to the law firm where I work. Of course, I did go back. What else could I do? I'm still dependent upon that system for survival. But it breaks my heart to have to spend my life locked inside all day, killing trees and poisoning the Earth all the time in order to survive. Most of the people I work with can't even make the effort to notice the difference between the recycle bin and the garbage can, much less anything else.

Recently they implemented a new system at the firm where you have to enter a client number in order to print anything. That way it gets charged to the client. I'm happy about it because the accountability will reduce wastefulness. But one woman in the office was complaining about it so I pointed out that it would make people less wasteful. Her response was, "Law firms have always been wasteful. That's just the way they are." I was so dumbfounded, I didn't even know what to say.

So I'm STILL trying to figure out how to survive in this world without killing the planet and contributing to the suffering of other human beings. I'm working on the website for that purpose (and selling art). I love writing the articles and reviews so much, but as always I need some way to make money and I figure helping artists will be less of a philosophical crisis for me. And it will be good for them too.

Sunday, January 9, 2005

Of all the seasons in Denver, winter is the least attractive, but it could be better if we made a little effort. I wonder if other artists are like this: I’m always envisioning the world as a work of art, as if I’m walking through a work of art. It’s sort of like the movie What Dreams May Come. The main character Christi dies and when he arrives in the afterlife, he finds himself inside of a painting; the paint is still wet. It’s sort of like that (except the paint is dry). But it’s especially true because I express myself in so many different media.

Sarina and I walked to the library today. It was a beautiful day in January. The sky was clear blue, the sun shining bright and warm. If I didn’t know it was early January, I’d think it was spring. There were still some patches of snow on the ground from a recent snow storm, but that is common in spring as well. I’m already looking forward to hearing birds, seeing the birds on the trees, the grass turning bright green, and the spring flowers emerging. The block I live on is owned by a property management company and is well-kept and beautiful, but as soon as we crossed the street to the next block, things changed drastically and I was disturbed by what I saw. There was trash strewn all over the ground, and dog shit on the ground and on the sidewalk.

I watched Sarina in her shiny black shoes skip around the offending, smelly shit. Then we approached a pile of junk on the ground in front of one building. Someone had been evicted; their whole life thrown out on the street. I was horrified and my mood plunged by the ugliness of the world. I sunk into a deep melancholia and my head ached. For the rest of the day, I felt depressed and couldn’t figure out how to pull myself out of it. Stuff like that makes me so angry and depressed, I just don’t know how to deal with it.

At the library, I picked up a couple of interesting books, hoping something would engage my mind, inspire me, and lift me out of the depressed mood. I’m not saying it’s the best solution to the problem, but I didn’t know what else to do.

I checked out Radical Simplicity by Jim Merkel. I’d read it a year ago and was impressed with it. I wanted to read it again for the purpose of writing a review for the website and continue to increase my awareness of my impact upon the Earth and how I might live more in harmony with the Earth. (Click here to read the review.)

So I’m reading Radical Simplicity and writing a review, but my head is still aching and my stomach is still nauseous. Sometimes it feels so painful, I guess because I can’t understand why it’s not painful to others. How can humans live this way? How can they be this way? I just don’t understand it. How can we not live as a community? How can we be so hurtful, wasteful, and destructive?

Am I saying that the landowner should not be allowed to evict a tenant who doesn’t pay or behave responsibly? No, that’s not quite the point I’m trying to make here. What I’m saying is that we desperately need better solutions because this solution is not right! There have to be other solutions – better solutions. Throwing a human being and everything they own out on the street in the middle of winter is bullshit!

Friday, January 7, 2005

I want to explain why I created this website. The reasons are basically two-fold, but they are intimately related in my mind. One of the reasons was my desire to be self-employed. I want the work I do to come from my heart. We live in a world that requires us to work. Even if money weren't an issue (imagine living in a tribe or a commune where money is not used) everyone would still have to work. It's a necessity of survival -- building shelters, gathering food, clothing ourselves (as protection from the elements), gathering fuel, collecting water, cleaning up. These are tasks that are basic to life no matter where you live or at what time in history. In fact, money is an invention that allows some people to avoid work, and/or to hoard more of the collective fruits of labor to themselves.

Work is something that will always be with us. What is at issue is the quantity and quality of work that we do. It would be beneficial for all people to begin to take a serious look at this issue for two reasons (and these are related to the two reasons why I created this website).

The first reason is that we don't need to work as much as we do. The idea of full-employment (every able adult working 40 hours per week) is preposterous! And the second reason is that it's destroying the Earth!

Our economic system is like a fast-spreading cancer across the body of the Earth because it's based on growth and consumption. We need to slow this down, get the cancer under control. But I know this isn't easy. It's a catch-22. We end up forced to work 40 hours per week to make money to pay the bills because the prices are based on everyone working 40 hours per week. You can only cut back so far because the water level is set at everyone working 40 hours per week. Some people can't cut back at all because their hourly wage is too low.

Most people find it impossible to go against the flow and give into it. Not only do they give into it, but because they work so hard, give so much of their life-energy to their work, they then spend every penny (plus go into debt) in an attempt to salve the pain. And that too is part of going with the flow. Buy a big house; fill it will nice furniture; buy fancy clothes; buy a shiny new car; go on exotic vacations. We all know how it works.

Well, most people are simply sold on this system and nothing short of utter environmental or economic devastation is going to change that. But I know for a fact that there are many people out there who would give anything to get out of that system for the chance to do work that comes from their heart. But like everyone else, we need money to survive in this world too. I can't say I've found the solution, but I won't give up trying.

I have some idea of what's needed. I have a vision in mind and this website is the first glimpse of that vision. The things humans need first and foremost for survival are: clean water, food, and shelter. I could probably survive on $750 per month if I didn't have to work. That's enough to cover housing and food for myself and my daughter, but since I have to work in order to earn that $750, my daughter has to go to day care while I'm at work, so that raises my monthly expenses to $1000 per month. So when I think about my goal, I can think about finding a means of self-employment that allows me to earn at least this much.

The second thing is to find other people who share my vision and we can put our resources together to live and work communally (or tribally, as Daniel Quinn says). If we put our resources together, it will actually require less from each person to provide ourselves with the clean water, shelter, food, energy, and other things that we need. Right now, our economic and cultural system pushes us to be individualistic which requires more from each person to provide these basic needs. As I said, this system is based on growth and consumption and individualism works in favor of growth and consumption.

So one reason I created this website was to create a means of self-employment for myself and others, and to begin to build a community in order to free ourselves from the current economic system.

The second reason, which I said is intimately related, is the environment. A system based on growth and consumption, which makes profit the highest value, has led to serious environmental devastation. I'm not blaming everything on it. There are plenty of examples of environmental destruction that had nothing to do with capitalism (but were still caused by growth and consumption). And there are many examples of capitalism that have worked to benefit the environment, such as new forms of technology that are better for the environment.

I'm not going to make the simplistic statement here that all problems in the world are caused by capitalism. It has to do with values. If we value the environment, we will protect it regardless of our economic system. If we don't value the environment, we will destroy it.

Yes, we live in a world where we have to earn money in order to survive. But that doesn't mean we have to destroy the environment to meet our needs and live comfortably. We can be conscious of the way we exist in the world.

Yet it does appear that our work in the world is intimately tied to how we interact with our environment. As Thomas Berry pointed out in The Great Work, creating jobs and protecting the environment do not have to be in opposition to each other. The two can complement each other. In fact, this makes more sense to me than just about anything I can think of. But unfortunately, the world hasn't yet caught on to the logic of this.

If you are here reading these words, and you understand the vision I'm trying to create, what I'm asking of you is to put yourself in the vanguard. The world is going to change drastically in the next 45 years. Things can get better or they can get worse. The human condition is dependent upon what we do now.

If you can imagine yourself stepping into a time machine and visiting the year 2050, what do you see? Do you see a world of 12 billion people where the majority live on the edge of death in a barren desert while those of us who are "fortunate" scrape by in concrete and steel jungles?

Or do you see all humans living close to the Earth, breathing fresh air and eating nutritous foods and drinking clean water, where the beauty and bio-diversity of nature have been preserved? Can you envision a world where you work fewer hours in a way that is deeply meaningful to you?

The future will arrive on schedule, but what will we see when we get there? It depends on what we do now. It's not just about the future. It's about the here and now. Create work that is meaningful to you right here, right now. Learn to live in harmony with the environment right here, right now.

Why?

I won't bother to answer that question because if you don't already know the answer to that question then nothing I say will make a bit of difference. My words will just be little smudges behind glass.

If you understand my vision, if you share that vision, then bring it forth with all the passion within you and create your work, create your community, create the world. Right here. Right now.

Wednesday, January 5, 2005

I woke up feeling like my skull was exploding because there's so much I want to do and so little time. But I feel like I'm finally becoming my true self. I wish it hadn't taken so long.

I want to explain this because I think the tendency to hold back is fairly common in most people and if we could let go of the chains that bind us, break out of our self-imposed prisons, the change would be so profound it would be like evolving into a new species.

I have thought a lot about this. What form might a new species of humans take? I don't necessarily mean what physical form because we might stay very much the same. You might not even detect it on a physical level. I've read that if you could take Homo sapiens neanderthal and dress him up as a modern-day man, you wouldn't know the difference. So how would we know that we had evolved into a new species? Maybe the brain might indicate some change, but species are delineated based on the ability to produce viable off-spring. That can be affected by genetics or by behavior. In other words, if two species can produce viable off-spring genetically, but would never do so in the wild due to differences in behavior, then they are considered separate species.

So a new human species might look much the same, but it's behavior might be very different. I think that if there is any change on the physical level, it will be in the brain -- perhaps a higher-functioning brain with a thicker, more intricate cortex.

This is an idea I've been exploring for years. I came up with a name for this new species. I call them Gaia sapiens. "Gaia" meaning Earth and "sapiens" meaning "conscious." Conscious Earth.

"But we're not Earth," you might say. Ah, but that's the whole point. That's what will make this species so different from Homo sapiens. Gaia sapiens will understand it intuitively and say, "I AM EARTH. I AM THE PLANET EARTH." These people will not see themselves as separate from the Earth.

What does that mean, exactly? Well, it's like this: Imagine your hand constantly thinking, "I am not this body. I am the hand. I don't need that dirty body. I'm going to do everything in my power to separate myself from that dirty body." So for thousands of years, your hand does everything in its power to separate itself from your body. Finally, it even begins to poison the body. It cuts deep gashes into the body and strips it of vital nutrients. It's killing the body. The body grows weaker, withered, less able to provide for the hand. One finger begins to wither and fall off, then another, then another, until there is only one withered finger left wondering, Why did I do everything it could to kill my own self?

Even if you understand the analogy I'm making, you might still ask, "Well, if we are the Earth, then does that mean we are no longer human?" Absolutely not. Just like in the body, the hand is still the hand, the brain is still the brain; each part down to the smallest sub-atomic particle plays its part in the whole. But the brain doesn't need to separate itself from the body in order to be the best brain it can possibly be. In fact, if you cut the brain out of the body and set it on a table, it will be completely useless. Your brain will function at its highest capacity if you see it as an integral part of your whole body (including the Earth body).

I know this well from experience because I have very sensitive brain chemistry. If I don’t take care of my body (poor diet, no exercise, consume poisons like alcohol and cigarettes, put myself under a lot of stress), my ability to function will quickly fall to zero. I become depressed and my brain literally can’t even think. So I’ve learned to take care of my body.

I make sure I eat a healthy diet, take nutritional supplements, get exercise, fresh air, and sunshine every day. I avoid putting poisons into my body. I try to keep the level of stress in my life as low as possible, though when I’m at my healthiest, I’m practically unstoppable.

But I can also see how the environment affects me. I NEED to be surrounded by the beauty and the life-force of nature. I can literally feel it, feel my being mixing with the life-force of the Earth. When the air is polluted, I know it. I’m sensitive to it like a canary in a mine shaft.

Well, I’m sure I’ve made my point. Whether or not others choose to agree is another issue. What I’m attempting to do with this website I’ve created is to reach into the air surrounding my skull (it feels like that’s where my mind is hovering) pull the ideas down and put them into a form such that others can see them. But there’s a lot there and it takes time. I’ve barely even begun to scratch the surface.

At some point, I’ll need to index the website and set up search capability within the website. I guess that tells me what I need to work on today.

Tuesday, January 4, 2005

In December I bought a digital camera, which was not an easy thing for me to do because I'm so anti-consumeristic. For me, it was a big deal. It's something I've been wanting for a long time. In fact, a few years ago, a friend bought a $300 camera for me as a gift and asked if I wanted a digital camera. I said no because that's when they were new and I didn't know anything about the technology, so I was intimidated by it. Then my friend Ken gave me a free digital camera. It can only take 5 pictures at a time and the quality isn't very good, but it got me comfortable with the technology.

Now I'm in love with digital. I live in two worlds -- dirt (nature) and digital. Of course I do love to paint, but I have to digitize all of my paintings. I don't want to sell the originals.

I just want to make a point that this was not mindless consumerism. I'd wanted a digital camera for a long time and felt I needed one in order to continue expanding my art work. Ken had been doing some research and found an updated and upgraded model of his own camera (which is very good) on sale for $199 with a free memory card. If I was serious about buying a camera, I couldn't pass it up.

So now I've got a digital camera and suddenly I feel like the whole world is opening up to me. I think that's the way it should be. This is a major event in my life. It brings the smallest details into high relief.

As I get older, I feel like I get closer and closer to my true self, but it's a difficult thing to explain. It's like our lives, when we're born into this world, are so shaped by the world around us. We don't really know who we are or what we want. So we spend much of our lives letting the world tell us who we are and what we're supposed to want.

It's like standing in the midst of a storm. When you know who you are, when you are centered and connected to the source of all being, you are in the peaceful eye of the storm. When you don't know who you are, when you're not centered and connected, then you are blown every which way by the storm and at some point you make look at your life and not be able to understand any of it.

That's not a bad thing -- just to stop and look.

I don't know why we are here, but I did eventually come to the conclusion that we don't need an ultimate reason for being here. We just are. We can make it whatever we want. We are creative beings. We are the Earth and the universe, and like the universe, we are creative, dynamic, expansive, and evolving.

So, for most people, buying a camera is not a philosophical or life-altering experience. But for me it is. That's just the kind of person I am.

Now my mind is opening up. It's almost as if I can see that lavender-white, thousand-petaled lotus blossoming from the crown of my skull. I want to invite the world in to see what I see. But it will take time.

Sunday, January 2, 2005

With another full day to myself, I was still locked up in my studio, working like a maniac. Just like every morning, I brewed a pot of coffee and sat down to read and write emails. Once that was done, I went to see about starting to paint and noticed that last night I had left three tubes of paint lying on the table next to my easel with the caps off. What was I thinking? As I put the caps back on, I noticed that one tube of dark green paint even had a squirt of paint globbed out at the top. Fortunately it was still soft. So I grabbed a paint brush, smeared off the glob of green paint and got to work. All I did was paint the edges of two canvases. None of my canvases are framed so I paint the edges to make them look nice.

Already there were a million things to do. I was feeling overwhelmed, not sure where to begin, so I sat down to meditate and collect my thoughts in order to begin the day. Four hours passed like minutes and I nearly have to wrack my brain to sort through all I’ve done today.

One of the first things I wanted to do was get my book Creative Careers posted on my website. I’ll do the actual posting on Monday, but I wanted to at least get prepared. Just about every day, I spend time surfing through the website to see what needs to be done. I make a list in a notebook. I’ve already got nine things on the list. It will far exceed that by the end of the day. The ideas rush as me like a tsunami and sometimes it's all I can do just to keep from drowning in my own mind.

My priority for the website right now is to get all of my books published on-line. Having my writing stuck on a floppy disk is useless. Whether or not anyone wants to read it or finds it helpful in some way makes no difference if they can’t access it. So I’m making it available on the website for those who might be interested. This includes my on-line journal which is titled Living the Artist’s Life.

I’m sure I could go into further detail about all of this, but don’t want to bore anyone with too much hair-splitting detail. Besides, at 1:00pm I still had a million things to do. Having spent most of Saturday painting, I decided not to do anymore painting for the day, and instead turned to reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn in order to write a review for the website.

I really like the character of Ishmael because I feel like I can somehow relate. As I mentioned yesterday, I sometimes feel like a wild animal myself. It’s interesting the way Ishmael talks about his captivity and compares it to our own. Why humans treat wild animals so horribly I really do not understand. It’s not surprising that he must remain in his captivity in the midst of human culture. It is difficult to imagine a gorilla walking around the city like any human primate. But what makes Ishmael such a sympathetic character is that in spite of the obvious difficulties, he wants to contribute something to the betterment of the world, including Homo sapiens sapiens. He wants to share his unique perspective with human beings...if they will listen.

Saturday, January 1, 2005

I love the first day of the year. It feels so full of possibilities. I had the weekend to myself because my daughter, Sarina, was with my mom for the new year weekend. I didn’t even go outside my apartment for the entire day. All I wanted to do was lock myself inside and create. I feel like my mind is bursting with ideas, practically exploding. I’m desperate to get it all outside of my head and into a finished form before the energy dissipates. With the creation of the Bohemian Art Studio, it’s like I’ve finally found a canvas on which to create my masterpiece. Now every idea is exploding in my mind, wanting to come into this world.

I started painting two years ago. But sometimes I’ve held back for months at a time, as if I were afraid to touch the brushes and paints for fear that what was in my mind wouldn’t be translated clearly enough onto the canvas. I think that’s a problem for many artists, especially painters and writers. We have to let go of the fear and just let the playful creative child come out to have fun. When I do let her out, she feels such joy in the process, it’s like the best drug I could possibly imagine, better than any drug out there because there are no negative side-effects, just a beautiful work of art – or at worse, an experiment that didn’t quite come out as expected.

Building the website has made me even more excited about painting because I want to post the images on the internet for the whole world to see. It’s exciting to be part of the process of creating art and sharing it with the world. I have a total of thirty canvases right now. Ten of them are at a friend’s house. I like to go over there occasionally and we paint together. The rest are in my studio and nine of them need to be finished. So I spent most of the day painting. I worked on six of the canvases in progress.

Generally I work that way because of the different effects of painting while the paint on the canvas is wet or dry. If I change colors while it’s wet, the colors that touch each other will blend together. Sometimes I want this effect, but sometimes I don’t. If I don’t, I have to let the canvas dry before starting with a new color.

While I painted, I listened to Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell on tape. I’d been wanting to read it for years, but I never would have had the patience for it. I’m glad I listened to it, mainly to learn more about the history of that time and place – he was in Spain in 1937 and 1937 – but I found the whole mindset to be very difficult (or impossible) to assimilate. The revolutionary fervor of the anarchists was exciting, but in the end their revolution was demolished. All that was left was useless fighting, killing, and destruction of war. Even as Orwell describes it himself, the so-called “fascist” enemies that he was shooting at and trying to kill were just working-class men like himself. They had been conscripted to fight for the fascists. And in many cases the young men fighting were as young as eleven and twelve years old. I wondered what was really gained from it all in the end. I guess if anything, it made me realize that if we want to create a better world, we’ll get a lot farther through peaceful evolution --though it may be slow -- than through violent revolution, which many times leads to dictatorship rather than freedom. Anyway, after I finished listening to the book on tape, I spent a little time writing a review for the website.

I was still painting as the light from the window was waning. It was becoming difficult to see what I was doing. I got up to wash my hands, which somehow always end up covered with paint. Just a few minutes later when I returned to the room where I had been painting, it was nearly dark -- impossible to paint by natural light. By then I was tired, having worked hard all day. I closed the curtains and lit a candle and laid down for a bit of rest.

I had the feeling of wanting to be alone, like a wild animal in my den. I can relate to wild animals because sometimes I feel like a wild animal myself. I want to stay hidden away from the humans. I like being enclosed in my den where no one can see me or bother me. I don’t want to hear the sound of the computer. I don’t want to see the electric light. I just want the peaceful darkness of evening with the warm flicker of the candle-light.