It's been so long...

I am not sure why words here have been so slow in coming. It might have to do with this Master's I am doing currently (which indeed takes up much time). It might have to do with the vast transformations I have been experiencing this past year. Their magnitude and depth leave little-ole' me feeling quiet like in awe. Perhaps the intimacy created in the face of genuine awesome has left my voice hushed or flat-out silent. At least in this form.

For now I am going to simply blame winter. Not that anything needs blaming, really. The hibernation of creature and sound and thought and body is so necessary. Yet I avoid it. We all do. Well, most of us. A cultural disdain for hidin' out and restin' up, I think. A fear of stayin' put...

It sure does run through these veins, that anxiety of being-not-doing. But what happens when the being part starts to take over anyhow out of necessity?

This Beloved Thing

The loving person is one who grasps non-relatively each thing they grasp. They do not think of inserting the experienced thing into relations to other things; at the moment of experience nothing else exists, nothing save this beloved thing, filling out the world and indistinguishably coinciding with it. Where you with agile fingers draw out the qualities common to all things and distribute them in ready-made categories, the loving person's dream-powerful and primally-awake heart beholds the non-common. This, the unique, is the bestowing shape, the self of the thing, that cannot be contained within the pure circle of world comprehensibility. What you extract and combine is always only the passivity of things. But their activity, their effective reality, reveals itself only to the loving person who knows them. And thus they know the world.
In the features of the beloved, whose self they realize, they discern the enigmatic countenance of the universe.

-Martin Buber

On Democracy, part II

I have recently started a Masters in something called Human Systems Intervention, which is too complicated to get into here (in this space, which is not really a physical space, but still represents and therefore IS space....uh....yeah....)

Anyhow, point being (for this moment, for the now-time) that I at first had no idea what the difference was between this program and say, Human Relations. Or psychology. And while they do indeed have much crossover, there are major differences between them all. Important differences. Differences which make the reason why I am studying what I am studying all the more obvious.....(to me....)

To highlight this, a website here devoted to Open Systems Theory, (OST) which was developed by Fred and Merreyln Emery. It is founded on the notion of creating environments that are democratic in nature. I will dive into more details soon. In the meanwhile, I find myself fascinated that my current interest in democracy (a reawakening in many ways) comes at the same time as my introduction to theories that not only talk about how people behave together in contexts, but how the contexts & structures themselves dictate in part, or guide, how that behaviour might look.

That democracy, or the notion of democracy as I understand it currently (and have been averse to for some time now) is somewhat paradoxical in the sense that the structures through which we try to achieve democratic realities in Western culture (parliament, representation by riding, etc) are not actually very democratic themselves. Which poses many questions that OST grapples with and offers some interesting solutions to....or at least, beginnings.....

But I am just starting out now, on my horse into the realm of this whole muck of a subject, so I know not much nor do I profess to be able to re-tell the tale in a fashion that speaks to its hearts and bones. With that disclaimer in mind, stay tuned....

On Democracy...

This is a new, old topic for me. I am agog and aghast at how I have kept the word at bay for years, similar to some of the other words in existence that I have held at more than an arm's distance. That I HAVE indeed, been pushing back on it, that as opposed to embracing and allowing democracy to integrate into my system, I have instead chosen to actively fight against what I thought would be a "small l", liberal suffocation. The radical bones in my body shook at the thought. And still, I admit, shake.

Meaning that while it's been such an integral part of how I feel about things, (this notion of democracy and what it means for myself as well as the other humans and beasts that populate this world), I have filtered it through a system of cynicism and paralysis that has rendered its fundamental heart helpless in offering the circulatory movement needed to keep it alive within me.

While these words need some distillation and clarity, perhaps, I want to simply begin vocalizing my coming home to a place I feared for quite a long time. And not without reason. As Malcolm X once said, democracy could be described as, "white nationalism"...and while he was referring to it (I believe) in relationship to his specific time and culture, to the way in which democracy was playing out around him (and I don't really feel like much has changed) I don't believe he was talking about its POTENTIAL, or what its heart-before-it-gets-cut-off pumps out.

The heart of democracy is something much more complex, inclusive, sustainable, difficult, tense. Hence the reason why it is so hard to even conceive of, let alone remotely begin to entangle myself in actively.

But it's starting to look like that's what I am indeed, supposed to do.....

More to follow.

Friends will arrive, friends will disappear...

If you want me, honey-baby I'll be near.

Out of the mouths of a thousand birds...

Out of the Mouths of a Thousand Birds

Listen -
Listen more carefully to what is around you
Right now.

In my world
There are the bells from the clanks
Of the morning milk drums,

And a wagon wheel outside my window
Just hit a bump

Which turned into an ecstatic chorus
Of the Beloved's Name.

There is the Prayer Call
Rising up like the sun
Out of the mouths of a thousand birds.

There is an astonishing vastness
Of movement and Life

Emanating sound and light
From my folded hands

And my even quieter simple being and heart.

My dear,
Is it true that your mind
Is sometimes like a battering
Ram

Running all through the city,
Shouting so madly inside and out

About the ten thousand things
That do not matter?

Hafiz, too,
For many years beat his head in youth

And thought himself at a great distance,
Far from an armistice
With God.

But that is why this scarred old pilgrim
Has now become such a sweet rare vintage
Who weeps and sings for you.

O listen -
Listen more carefully
To what is inside of you right now.

In my world
All that remains is the wondrous call to
Dance and prayer

Rising up like a thousand suns
Out of the mouth of a
Single bird.

Hafiz

Bees in Brooklyn, NYC

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is pretty unbee-lievable.

Okay, I actually can't believe I just wrote that, but....I was there recently and maybe went a little camera crazy over the amazing bees I encountered.

It was also a good time to reflect upon the importance of bees to our food chain systems and the global ecosystem on so many levels.

Click on the link above to listen to an interesting podcast about just how essential bees are.