decompression & reintegration

waking up from a nap that lasted a solid 15 hours.

              a smoke & a coffee.

                       sounds of the city supplanting birdsong & the rustling breeze.

or

glimpses of reality

it's been a week of slippery days since we left Cayuta Sun, the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute, the beauty of the swamp and the white pines, new family & friends, shooting stars, camp coffee & stretch breaks...

             and already i want to go back. so let me take you back with me.

                                  allow this semi-domesticated monkey to reminisce awhile

                                                   & ease my weary way back into a world

                                              that consistently forgets the simple joy of being.

or

bottled swamp magic

bear with me as i dive into the murky waters of memory in hopes of re-entering society with my heart full of hope, my mind full of heart, and my blood full of swamp muck;

& beware that the memory of this mind operates, as does much in this world, in discordant pulses.

so if it's a chronological narrative yer after, create the connections in your mind based on your own imagination & experience, as i have in my own.

i remember late nights starting at dark-thirty and ending around a hundred o'clock...

      where the time of day was only as significant as how many hands of light we had left...

                  and a horn would blow to warn that the time to collectively gather was at hand....

a community formed beneath the protruding lower extremities of the white pines which would, depending on the relative location of the water table and humidity, droop or engorge with water and stand erect at a jaunty eye-poking angle.  

i remember staring at the roof of the cocoon of a tent, feeling all the indicators of human habitation: the crunching of forest detritus, the murmur of conversation, rhythmic snoring strategically placed throughout the trees, the alien sounds of zippers thoroughly zipped.

the experience of outdoor living taps a primal aspect of the bipedal primate mind.  it's as if we recall the mores and customs ground deep within our bones by countless generations of our migratory ancestors.  masks tend to drop quickly, fomenting genuine experiences.  it seems almost ridiculous how fast a self-selected group in relative isolation could bond, but bond we did. with a quickness.

the purple-footed tarp people (love that tribe) call it 'exponential friend growth.'

"Turns out we're all connected......which is weird."       -senor sass

this rapid micro-community development was possible in no small part due to the existence of a mycelial network of talented, capable folks who are developing a community of their own up there in the Finger Lakes. we were all privileged to stumble into it. 

  

     The days were packed to bustling with intensive information transference and tactile activities.

Always moving from patterns to details the curriculum led us through a history of life to the present and begged the question: "What is life here to do? And what is our role in it?"; helped us further develop the foundational ethics required of conscious beings bent on the restoration, regeneration and sustenance of life on earth; outlined the core principles of permaculture, or the "thinking tools that when used together allow us to redesign our landscapes and communities in a world with fewer resources"; and brought us to interconnected specificity, tackling topics from whole systems design, (community) ecology, reading the landscape, natural patterns, site assessment, liberation ecology, economics, soil, compost, water & landform, climate & change, appropriate technology, waste, permie plants, polycultures & guilds, design strategies, (agro)forestry, mushrooms, animals, renewable energy, and eventually, intentionally or not, to social permaculture & small group dynamics.

                          sheesh. i'll upload some notes if i don't abandon my robots.

the mornings began with a member of the group sharing something: a stretch, a song, a chant, a breath,  a poem, a meditation, a moment.  and each morning was precious...each pulsed with connections...and i let go of many things...and i finally hugged my uncle jonny and let him slip back into the web of life...and i gathered energy...and i saw beauty in the world...and i laughed at the joke of reality...and it was like drinking life through a straw everyday.  and hell's bells that smoothie was pure.

how many new sets of eyes were collected there!

     the owl eyes that unfocus to catch motion and take in the whole scene
            the green eyes capable of discerning the forest from the trees...of differentiating the        

                       herbaceous layer of the land
          the blue eyes that can see the sheets of water sloughing over land and the vapor in the skies
                       the fung-eyes that notice networks of life below the duff

               the dark eyes that find paths glowing in the starlight.

everyone should feel gooey swamp mud squishing through their toes

          & the smoothness of a beaver's toothmarks

                   & the exhilaration of running barefoot through the trees,

                           & scratching a hog till it squeals in pleasure

                                    while, feeling guilty about not feeling guilty, you lick your chops.

with televisions abandoned, we found more entertainment in the pig channel, the sunset channel, the campfire channel, the same-bat-time-same-bat-channel channel, and the shooting star & satellite shows on the nightsky channel. Commercial-free, we could see that the only thing this media wanted us to buy was into life: to look & see & say, "yes" & "please" & "thank you."

this media taught that the planet will provide food & fuel & all things we need to build homes & communities & beneficial interactions between we humans and the web of life...

& reinforced that "we are nature, working." (-penny livingston)  

dreams were shared and tended to grow intricately patterned.  selves were exposed & accepted.

o ye gawrds! the walls of stone! glacially-gorged and worn smooth by water for millenia... steep paths held erect by the sheer will of the trees, leading to secret glens & pools below the falls... and standing in the roaring rush of water shooting down a narrow channel & feeling all the bullshit and baggage sloughing off yer spirit to be diluted and worn to infinitesimal grains downstream.

i remember the fire-red salamanders and i recall a certain undine bathing in a stone pool.

i'm getting lost now. i think i could spend a lifetime reliving the experiences i was fortunate enough to have gathered this summer. but now it's almost lunchtime, and, in the interest of making a long story slightly less long, i'll try to wrap this thing up and savor it later.

Time seemed to stretch out during the first week of the course.  Each minute contained an hour's worth of experience. Each sliver of the crashing moon going dark marked another week's worth of life seamlessly stuffed into a day.

Then as we entered the Practicum and the second week, cause & effect kicked in.  Time is a slingshot, apparently, so if you stretch it, it'll shoot. with a quickness.  

but you're still living the same amount whether time is moving fast or slow.  it just takes a little longer for everything to sink in when time flies fast&true.

We had 3 days to clear up the site we had spent 2 weeks preparing and we finished too fast. A day and a half was all it took before we were packing up our moldy pillows, soggy shoes, loose gear & memories.

howling a fond farewell, Kevin&Kyle&I piled into kyle's pickup while the breath of the trees commingled with the clouds & unleashed an o-so-appropriate torrent.  

we began our reintegration into the paved part of reality slowly, in fits & starts. sleeping under the stars, moseying on down the Susquehanna, connecting with friends & fellow stewards, staring into fires, sharing food, savoring the water from each place...

and as we've all drifted back homeward, we've passed into the embrace of families...who cushion our landing.  rest assured: we'll ripple...we'll take the understanding we've found with us back into the pool of society... we'll plant seeds and continue collecting and sharing knowledge, food, medicine, water & life.

because we must.

because life begets life.

because we are here, now,

                    surrounded by insurmountable opportunities,

                                (because we are human)

                                              we will begin climbing

                                                          by observing, interacting with

                                                                  & optimizing natural cycles.

functional interactions will multiply

and that shit will creep.  

yes.

please.

thank you.