Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Hope and inspiration.
I’m feeling good today. Inspired even. I’ve got a Boulevards Alive meeting tomorrow night, and I’ve been thinking about local community organizing all day. As depressing as Eaarth starts out, I’m just getting to the end and McKibben’s prescription for the future is as hopeful as any I’ve come across: small scale farming, close-knit communities, sane use of technology, an end to energy dependence.
And I’m thinking also about how I broke my writer’s block this morning, after several days of frustration in front of the screen typing the beginnings of various things only to discard them one by one. I decided to come look at my blog and draw something from the past to edit-up… but instead I caught on the 100 things I live for (up above, in the tab) and chose one of those to write a poem about instead (“rescued flowers from a dumpster”). This exercise not only gave me an image and some words to work with, but I felt good recounting where that came from and so nice agitated that now I want to write the other 99 thoughts into verse.
Remarkable isn’t it? The happier, the more hopeful I am, the more productive. Which sortof runs counter to all the subculture I’ve come out of. The outsider culture, the place that said “I’m going to be happy to spite everything!” but never quite made it there, the anger response trained into me. Hard habits to break, but essential to avoiding burnout. Anger and alienation may be a part of where I come from as an activist, but increasingly over the years they have been less and less a motivating factor for me. These days, I gotta admit, I practically leave the room at the first sign of them in political organizing meetings because they feel like such counterproductive states to be making change from.
Many years ago I adopted this Raymond Williams quote as my email signature line: “To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing” and I still invoke that saying a lot. Perhaps now more than ever because it is so easy to get caught up in the bleakness of a world balanced on an ecological precipice, the landscape burning while world financiers fiddle with our very last chances. I mean, if you want to be depressed and angry – there is certainly a whole lot to be depressed and angry about! But if I stay there too long, I can’t believe there is any possibility of making change so why bother? Why not just indulge myself in tropical holidays and plastic gadgets and forget all the hard work of meetings and organizing and trying to make a little change here and there? Without a little hope, and happiness, and joy and dancing and good giggly neighbours and amazing moments of beauty and cuddling with my sweety…. well there wouldn’t be any point would there? It’s really all that good stuff that makes me excited about extending the health of the planet, that gets me moving on the streets for workers rights….. That I believe not only we *can* make change, but it can be uplifting to do so.
I guess I’m thinking of all this because in the wake of the G/20 we’re back at finger-pointing and name-calling and the notion that if 100 people can’t smash things it’s not a serious demo… and wow is that ever tiring. And not inspiring. 20,000 people in the street? That’s amazing. Several hundred of those people breaking off to challenge the police securifying the G/20 leaders? Yeah, totally go for it! 150 boys smashing store windows and jumping up and down on cop cars?….. Meh. And the infighting afterwards is a total bummer.
The older I get, the more entrenched my belief in the need for change becomes, but the weaker my resolve in making it. Mostly because of my scars, and my aches. My lost comrades and the dark places I’ve been. They wear on you after awhile – and it takes a lot of communal dinners, drinks with friends, gardens, music, art, and love to make that energy to keep going up. So much so, I don’t want to give any of it away to infighting. I don’t want to give it away for someone else’s pain.
The opposite of inspiration.
For the record – the Rockies were amazing – and we had lots of good hiking days despite the fact the weather wasn’t always on its best behaviour. As someone who has always eschewed that part of the province because 1) it’s too close to Alberta, and 2) we’ve got mountains on the coast so why bother – I am quite readily humbled to admit that our mountains are just babies in comparison and there are some amazing and historic trails in there which just blew me away. So there. It was great – and along the way we discovered Conkle Lake Provincial Park which is a gorgeous, tucked-away spot with a fishing lake and a waterfall, and happened by the Silverton Inn as a stop-over which had it’s own serindipity which I’ll write more on later. I’ve posted photos on Flickr of the trip for those who are interested.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take long after returning to work for me to start feeling really spazzy, not because of the stuff waiting for me here (which is all routine and not a difficult catch-up), but the fact I’m suddenly innundated with media after taking a bit of a break from it all. I mentioned yesterday that I’m reading Bill McKibben’s Eaarth at the moment which is a bit of a bombshell in terms of describing the environmental catastrophe we’re living in (as well as proposing possibilities for at least surviving in this new world), and I’m sure it’s not helping either… but f*$k, sometimes this civilization seems preposterous. In terms of waste, I mean, in terms of useless distractions.
But I don’t even want to go there – the BP spill, the denial of rights to Omar Khadr, the fires and floods most likely related to climate change that are destroying large swaths of the western provinces right now. It’s too demoralizing, and it doesn’t get to the heart of how we propel ourselves to work for change in a world gone off its axis.
Earlier today I read the article Calling All Fanatics with the subhead “Protecting nature should be more important than enjoying it” in Orion magazine. Written by Derrick Jensen, a tireless promoter of ecological activism (his main contributions these days are as a writer and speaker), the article exhorts that every single thing we do (read, write, paint, make theatre about etc) must be in defense of the planet and to do otherwise is unforgiveable. Unforgiveable! And that while he recognizes that even the most ardent activist needs rest, there are so few people involved in saving the planet that those of us who are shouldn’t really take much time away from it because there aren’t others ready to fill the gap when we do.
Now that’s inspiring isn’t it? First of all I should make no art that isn’t about saving the planet, and secondly, taking a break to recharge really just underscores how much I don’t care about making change. I’d like to think Jensen was just making a rhetorical point to stress the importance of planet-saving activism, but since he also advocates the type of underground activism which completely removes one from their family and peer group, I’m pretty sure he’s quite serious when he says “for anyone not to devote her/his talents and energies to defending the planet is a betrayal of the worst magnitude, a gesture of contempt against life itself”. I suppose most of us by that definition would be up against the wall should the eco-revolution come.
But besides that, it’s exactly the *opposite* of what drives me to want to save the planet (or change the government or whatever) in the first place. Moral hectoring is not an effective motivational tool!
What is it then? As in my post yesterday I am really just working through these thoughts, but what I have recognized for some time is like anything – activism requires a large degree of faith not unlike the spiritual. The belief (against all odds) that things can get better, the understanding that each of us does have a role and purpose in a world which continually tells us otherwise. And like any other spiritual practice, our faith must be bouyed by two things: 1) supportive community, and 2) the occasional evidence that change can happen (even if it’s very small evidence). Additionally, time off without guilt is much-required in order that we remain healthy enough to continue the fight without damaging each other in the process.
All that said, I’m going to leave off here for the day, and try to come back to this tomorrow. More posting about inspired activism awaits!
You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out….
Back from our holiday in the Rockies and where do I begin. It’s been three days of re-immersion into the city and I’m by turns glad to be home and frustrated with the general political state of things. It doesn’t help that I just finished reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Bright-Sided and am now onto Bill McKibbon’s Eaarth in the midst of the World Cup colonial frenzy that has taken over Vancouver. (The take-away message in Vancouver seemed to be “go white people” – despite the fact we’re talking about the Dutch in South Africa! History anyone?) All very distraction-oriented. Bread and circuses and riots and soccer. I’m feeling a little disenfranchised from it all.
At last night’s Lit Bitch social I had a bit of a discussion with a friend about this feeling – going to demonstrations in the spirit of showing support (or opposition) on one issue or another, only to be overwhelmed by the sense that the whole thing is simply it’s own kind of show and as protester-participant we are just props to be moved into the street, blocking traffic, providing cover for the ego needs of others. To predictable outcomes every time – sometimes large and frightening (G-20 police violence), but most often just tedious (and ignored even by passers-by). On Friday night, at the I heart alt media fundraiser, I couldn’t help but feel like the aftermath of Toronto is just a re-run of APEC, the WTO, Quebec FTAA, and other summit demos where organizers promise that this is just the *start* of a movement only to have it fizzle into the endless legal procedures and court cases that drain all the best energy from organizing into repeating loops of outrage orchestrated for media conferences in a desperate attempt to prove the injustices (re-traumatizing, always re-traumatizing oneself in the process).
Which is not to judge in any way the impulse, the desire, the motivation to march and press forward with demands of justice. The end of the world feels very imminent, civil liberties and environmental conditions eroding every day, the people of the world with their eyes cast downward ignoring what is right in front of them. How does this stop? How do we stop it?
In the last few years I’ve ceased attending most demonstrations – I still go to them when I’m moved to – but I usually end up feeling so alienated by the protest community itself that I leave early or stand on the sidelines making only a very half-hearted attempt to chant in solidarity. If there’s any threat of brick-throwing through windows I just get right out of the action – so futile does it seem to get arrested on the motions of a few young men so quickly undone by insurance payouts. So what to do?
Increasingly I’ve found myself turning to community organizing, and not in the broad sense of the “activist community” but as defined by the people who live on my street and the streets around me. And I keep thinking about the Bolivarian Circles concept as applied to East Van neighbourhood groups and how we can work our way up from gardening our boulevards and alleyways together to resisting the proposed highway down 1st ave to creating a vibrancy that eventually even city hall will have to listen to. Which seems so small and stupid compared to stopping the G-20, except that we never do get to stop the G-20 and it’s very easy to convince a few neighbours to garden together and from there we might event be able to build networks of trust that might sustain us in the very perilous times ahead.
Not to be too idealistic, of course, I have at least one neighbour who I’m pretty sure would shoot us to get at any food stockpiles if it came down to that – hell, he’d probably shoot us if we looked at him the wrong way…. But still it seems worthwhile to try and knit together people who define themselves as apolitical if only to prove that real communities can still define their relationship to power and that it’s not only the “enlightened” activists who understand at a very deep level that our world is in profound crisis.
It’s not that going in the street is a waste of time, because I think there is still great energy in the collective mass showing itself to entrenched power, but I also know that if I feel slightly stupid in the middle of a protest, there’s got to be thousands of other people who won’t even put themselves there to start with. It doesn’t mean they don’t want change or don’t care, but that different constituencies require different organizational forms.
I’ve got more to say. More to say on all of this, as I depart the keyboard to go back to reading about how we make ourselves more resilient in the face of climate change and other environmental degradation…. but for now I’m going to leave this post for pondering. There’s a lot going on in my head upon our return.
Returning to harvest and photograph.
I’m brushing ants from the backyard table as I write this under the shade of our new garden umbrella – such is the heat wave that descended during our holiday
One of the really great things about going away in the summer is the changes wrought in one’s absence… and I don’t mean from lack of watering 🙂 We were really fortunate that a friend offered to caretake our garden and dog while we were gone (a landscape gardener no doubt – he edged my lawn!) so things got watered and generally paid attention to. I planted a few things before we left that have begun sprouting in my absence, but the biggest surprise of all was the potatoes.
Just as I was leaving I noticed that one of my potato plants looked like it was wilting off and I figured that it must be due to the wet weather. From what I understood, the weather remained grey until only a couple of days before our return, so I wasn’t surprised to discover a second plant completely keeled over when I inspected the garden on Thursday night. Ah well, I figured, that’s just the way some years go.
Except…… when I cleaned the plants up on Friday afternoon I was pleased to discover that there were in fact several fully formed potatoes in those burlap bags – firm of flesh and ready to eat. And not tiny ones either – but some fairly large as far as Yukon Golds go. I’ve got another three bags that look as though they are on their way to harvesting too, though I’m a bit bewildered because my plants have not flowered and it seems a little early for them to be done.
The other big harvest yesterday was the shelling peas which were just plumping up when we left town. Normally I don’t harvest all of something at the same time, but as the vines were turning brown I realized it was this weekend or never for this particular batch. I’ve shelled them all as of this afternoon and put half in a salad to take to a party, freezing the other half for later use. I’m going to plant more peas tomorrow for a fall crop, as well as a number of other things for fall and winter.
I’ve also returned to summer squashes galore, which is a big improvement over the yellowing leaves I was fretting over in June. I’m hoping that we are finally at some sort of weather truce for now, whereby I can just expect things to grow as normal. We will see.
Advice on action.
I’ve done a bit of a food gloat over at http://amongtheweeds.ca for those of you interested in our harvests and dinners as of late. Despite the frowny weather, we really have been eating out of our garden a lot lately and I’m really quite happy about the state of our yard even as the world outside of it falls to pieces.
I’m not sure I can express any more outrage than has been so eloquently expressed elsewhere regarding the G-20 policing debacle in Toronto over the weekend. In fact, I’m afraid if I try to dredge some up for these pages, I might find an anger left best buried as I prepare myself to go off for a couple of weeks of family vacation. I’m just feeling a little too worn down at the moment to bolster the energy needed to manage such deep-down-in-the-pit-of-my-being-feelings…..
On the other hand, I look at the retrospective piece I just handed in for the Under the Volcano guide and I feel so proud at the movement of people I come from and continue to know. Instead of just writing a “blah, blah, blah this is what I did and think” piece, I used Facebook to canvas activists on what advice they would give other activists, and what actions have inspired them over the past twenty years. Fortunately, lots of people responded, giving me enough fodder for a found poem based on the words of my activist peers which I’m pretty happy with. It’s not high art, nor is it supposed to be – it is a reflection of what lots of us think about when we’re torn on our own ability to stay in the struggle.
Now I have to figure out what to do with the workshop piece, but I think I’m going to stay with the theme of inspired lessons somehow and work from there. It’s things like this which keep me from walking away from movement organizing altogether- really – the ability to reflect on the amazing, strong and wise people I have had the opportunity to meet along the way, and realize how much better my life has been for all these influences. It’s not as if there aren’t frustrations and arguments, but I’ve seen more awesomeness than not in people generally, and I know if I walked away forever I’d be giving up on a whole lot of good.
So I’ll say that I’m sorry for the trauma friends in Toronto experienced over the weekend, and I can empathize having been in scary demo situations myself, but it’s important to remember that you’ve got comrades at your back to support you through this – here, there and everywhere.
Red Cedar 