A Thought for Election Day

Coincidentally. A nice antidote to media-hyped election hoopla. From The Blog of Henry David Thoreau. It reminds me of going out to stack firewood and plant garlic today, not to mention walk around the neighborhood with colorful leaves dancing down in the breeze, highs in the seventies, the sky clear and sunny. How many times did I say "OH, it's SUCH a beautiful day!"? I may have done work, but I'm sure glad I wasn't employed, stuck inside under fluorescent lights, or outside sweating toiling, and either way counting minutes til break.

I got three "I voted" stickers today--on my permaculture shirt that I wore for the occasion. I want an "I planted" sticker to go with them. But I'll be enjoying the garlic, and the heat from the firewood. November weather is on the way in a few days. I'm pre-paying my utility bills by refusing to work full time and instead taking advantage of the "waste" that litters our yard from disasters that interrupted the Disaster. (link to pdf, sorry I can't find the text in html)

Oh yeah, the quote:

Thoreau's Journal: 04-Nov-1852

Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present. Let a man have thought what he will of Nature in the house, she will still be novel outdoors. I keep out of doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me.

Selling vs. Saving

In order to save your soul, stop selling your soul. In order to save others' souls, facilitate their stopping selling their souls.

paradise communities

I posted an excerpt here, and then looked at the next part I had noted to note, and decided to post it here. It's topical. :) From Richard Heinberg, Memories and Visions of Paradise (1989), p. 157:

The effort of creating and maintaining an intentional community, even for a few years, brings with it a kind of experience that is unattainable in the ordinary urban environment. In the best instance, communal life offers the chance to associate closely with a few friends who share a commitment to living consistently according to their highest vision.

What makes some communities thrive and others dissolve? There are a few essential issues that inevitably arise in every communal group-questions of leadership and decision making, of the division of labor, and of the distribution of material goods-whose resolution requires an ongoing compromise on the part of the egos of all concerned. The communities that survive the longest are those in which members are somehow motivated to transcend their own wants and fears for the good of the whole. In the great majority of cases, that motivation arises from a shared paradisal vision and a shared sense of the sacred. Every sociological study of cooperative communities has come to essentially the same conclusion: when the vision dies, the community dies.

the idols fall

I get the distinct feeling this is how people act when their idols' falseness is revealed. How sad that people commit suicide over stuff like this. It's just a little reminder, Hu is really in charge. Same with the hurricanes that sweep away our poorly designed coastal developments.

Remember the overarching underlying reality. It's by grace that we're here to play these little games to begin with. Just remember where it all really comes from and is going to.

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'

We do not pwn the land, the land pwnz us.

And it's all within the uncontainable container.

Paradoxically, the most transcendently high is the same as the deepest within.

Now listening: Beck, "Rowboat" ("Pick me up, and give me some alcohol.")

Iblis, the Devil, the Double

The story goes that, when God commanded the angels to bow to Adam, Iblis refused. Did he know we could go astray?

Iblis proved it by leading us astray. But now that we're there, he leads us astray again--back to the Garden.

Iblis is that part of Allah that best knows our hearts. When we ate the fruit (or grain of wheat), we gained not the knowledge of good & evil, but the pretense of that knowledge, appointing ourselves emperors of the world. We decide which species should live, and which should die. If the Truth is actually otherwise, then the one who flouts authority & encourages us to undermine and abandon it is, paradoxically, our saviour. Leading us away from living in the hands of the pharaohs, toward living in the hands of the god(s). The Empire itself, of course, exists only within the hands of the god(s), if only it would realize that!

The dervish, continually stepping out of the comfortable garments of ritual, routine, rut, continually turns the eye of hir heart toward hir Lord, allowing hirself to be led toward ex-stasis. We, then, are trying to grow the Garden within the walls of Empire. We live in both worlds at once, liminally--again, the poor sap in the doorway straddling the threshold.

Jesus Hussein Christ

Jesus was a taqwacore
dready, pierced, and drinking
kicking it with the crusties
and chasing the bankers from his father's house

"You are my center as I'm spinning away"
--Radiohead ("Videotape")

Jesus H. Christ

Jesus was a wino
waitin' in the breadline
FUCK THIS!
Seize the bakery!
We make bread for all!
And wine!
And healing!
You are free!

DON'T LOOK!

DON'T LOOK!
the world is already ending
DON'T LOOK!
new hardy wild adaptations
are thriving in the cracks

In this way, all things may be at peace.

Lao Tzu's Tao: Plain English Adaptation

as clear as the light of day, it's beautifully unpretentious.

(another great find of Ran Prieur's.)

Only Criminals Have the Right

to speak of right and wrong

from a poster by CrimethInc.

Only Criminals Have the Right To Speak of Right and Wrong

It's convenient for those whose obedience is rewarded with financial stability and social status to moralize about submission to the law. When they insist that the established channels are always the most appropriate and effective, we have to ask: are they capable of honestly considering the alternative?

There have always been people who consider the law of the land more important than the dictates of conscience. They hanged John Brown for treason; they looked the other way as Jews were carted off to Dachau; for them, statutes and property rights are more precious than rainforests, polar icecaps, or native peoples. In abdicating the responsibility to determine right and wrong for themselves, they elevate the Nuremberg defense to a moral principle--a principle they don't shrink from forcing on others.

Only those who are willing to break the law can be trusted to do what they truly believe is right. In stepping out of line, they prove that they are not acting solely out of cowardice, obedience, or conformity. They may make mistakes, they may have questionable motives of their own, but they never make the excuse of duty.

declare independence!

More from Shaykha Sharqi!

od bless you all.

hakim

Infinite Evil from Finite Games?

I've blogged about this elsewhere, and since then I've read the book, and just the other day I grabbed it off the shelf to see exactly what it said about the origin of evil. From section 31:

Evil is never intended as evil. Indeed, the contradiction inherent in all evil is that it originates in the desire to eliminate evil. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."
....
Infinite players understand the inescapable likelihood of evil. They therefore do not attempt to eliminate evil in others, for to do so is the very impulse of evil itself, and therefore a contradiction. They only attempt paradoxically to recognize in themselves the evil that takes the form of attempting to eliminate evil elsewhere.

Evil is not the inclusion of finite games in an infinite game, but the restriction of all play to one or another finite game.

The refusal to join a crusade to eliminate evil is shirq.

Shaykha Sharqi on Shirq

I like having my life at such a slow pace, with my consumption at a minimum. I have time to tap into my own waste stream and reclaim it because my waste stream is more like molasses than lightning. And these are brief glimpses of what brings about this intense feeling of community. It's coming from the inside, and even though I'm telling you perfectly boring things, they are the most satisfying in the world. And you can't buy it, no matter how many credit cards you have.

from a comment over here

WANTED

WANTED:
A new twist. To prevent our past from becoming our future.

Hocus Pocus & Mumbo Jumbo.

Can we only hope that by keeping our heads down & nurturing local grassroots community, we will be too well established for the authorities to eradicate once they catch wind of us?

Qahvistan.

4 1/3 = 13/3

prayer

"I tripped on the threshold &
spilled my qahve
oops."
--Dervishy Daoud, folktalez



Thanks & praises to
the Source
from which all comes
to which all returns
unknowable mystery
within us
without which, nothing
thanks & praises
amen

Doing More With Less

Doing More With Less in defense of creative loafing!

from the Bhang-Nama

by Hakim Bey

The Indo-Iranian version of this international dervish style clearly also owes something to the much more ancient Shaivite tradition, which at one time spread as far north as the Kushan and Saka Empires beyond the Pamirs. The Indian dervishes are Islamized saddhus--but in fact the way of life and the veneration of Cannabis may be far older than any religion: we may be looking at the survival of world-wide Neolithic shamanism. In some syncretistic sects of North India and Bengal sufism and tantra merge seamlessly. Ganesh Baba claimed sufi affiliations.

If this kind of "Orientalism" now seems too romantic, nevertheless it reflects a kind of romanticism with its own adherents in the Orient. A popular universalism of roses, hashish, the tombs of saints, yogis who quote Hafez, dervishes who venerate lingams, etc., etc., can be picked up direct on the ground, not just from books by Oxbridge dons. The poet laureate of this tradition was Kabir of Benares. The political program is radical tolerance and mutual respect, a rapprochement often eased by a shared tasted for Cannabis--and where else better than Benares, Shiva's sacred city?

shirq is

shirq is like a pun so obvious it only makes fools laugh.

shirq is edible weeds that are more nutritious than vegetables.

shirq is what makes the TAZ work

shirq is the permaculture principle of leverage

I won't say it but shirq is wu wei

shirq is when a reliable cog pops free

shirq is heresy.

shirq is experiencing the divine where others insist on its impossibility.

shirq is refusing to pledge allegiance to the Empire in all its guises.

shirq is widening the cracks from the Cave of Treasures--also known as the Black Iron Prison--to nurture the Palm Tree Garden.

shirq says the people were not made for the law, the law was made for the people.

shirq is being prepared for surprise, rather than being prepared against surprise.

shirq is gleaning, scavenging, foraging, sharing, and

shirq is the wealth of knowing enough is enough.

shirq is food, water, shelter, and recreation.

shirq lifts the spirit, shakes off the unnecessary burdens, and lends a hand.