Happy birthday to someone in the past.
I hope you're finding your days comforting or ecstatic. Feeling optimistic and creative, loving and engaged. And that any rough patches quickly reveal themselves to be learning opportunities. And that the people in your life celebrate and mourn with you. And that everyone is healthy.

My friend asks me about consumerism. How I keep getting fantasies of consumerism. Its hard to explain, and so I mumble some response about wanting a large open kitchen. I ramble about having book shelves, she drops some name of a fancy furniture store and I have to ask to clarify. She asks me about pillows, we are getting basic, I say I don't know, I like pillows, but I don't like the ones just for decoration on the bed.  It is some mix of aesthetics and functional need that I can't explain.

Aesthetics:
I tell her that sometimes when I am doodling, I let the lines go where they want, but at a certain point I look at the whole, and suddenly the lines, the colors, begin to desire a direction. They simply can't go that way, and if you force them they will ruin the whole. Sometimes you have to let the colors layer to build a texture worth making, and sometimes you have to let the empty space have its place.

When I walk into a space, I want to be comforted by it. I want it to charm me. I want it to fuse some of that aesthetic beauty energy through my eyes, and finger tips. I don't have the picture, until it asks me for direction. I don't know the names or value the objects in themselves, I am attracted to their shape, their shade, their feel. The same pillow that might call out to me at Target would not look good in my bedroom, I have the wrong color pallet, the wrong set of angles. The space gives direction, try to mesh your style with the wrong space and it will come out frustrated, I've always lived in frustration. I desire the comfort of a well crafted space.

I've been living functionally, with scraps and piles jutting every where. I want a space, where everything has a place, and if there is a messy room or closet where the scary things heap, then I'll know thats its story. I have a dozen tapestries, throw cloths, pictures and paintings to hang, and if they have their place to shine then I would like to display them. But if it isn't time. I'll continue to hide them away. But wouldn't it be nice to have a space.

Consumerism:
And then there is the drive, that little buzz in the back of the mind, your eyes drawn wide, and then narrowed, and then enlivened again with the next step. When I find myself in a market of any kind, (given the right mood) I scan and devour, take it all into the imagination, flare and hold back my grin. But again this is not knowledge of value, or craft, I'm simply consuming. Each item is it's own idol. Each thing, a world of possibilities. So I step down the wrong aisle and am smacked with a vision, a story. And some are dismal -the countless wall decorations at a thrift store that once adorned some elder's kitchen, unwanted by the children, or the grand children. Or cynical -what plastic molding machine cranked out a trillion of these, folding the oily toxic and poisoning our modernity. Or enthralling and imbued with a vision of timelessness, the indigenous craft in the market, reminiscent of the thing in a museum in Britain.
And in the mallshops of America, or the mallshops in India, there is a radiance to the lighting, and a stacking of trinkets, and I want to buy these meaningless things despite knowing full well I'll forget them. And its funny knowing that, because I can recognize it isn't alway their worth or beauty that calls me, but the desire to be part of their story -which says nothing but that they are an item of mass commercialism, to be bought by a person who looks and acts like me, will be carried home in plastic bags, pulled out and immediately recognize that I'll never treasure them as much as in that story -of purchase.

I am reading this book by a community organizer, its one part journal, one part reflective manual to inspire better organizing.

She has a section on interdependence, and her difficulty with it personally, but also how essential it is for community work. In the chapter, she talks about things like: learning from nature, the benefits and pitfalls of charismatic leaders, the difficulties of finding a balance between personal generosity and vulnerability - and how they are equally necessary for real connection.

            I watch this youtube channel called “AntsCanada” which is basically a very charismatic story teller creating little episodes about the dramatic world of ant keeping. The videos are educational, and surprisingly riveting at times. He keeps it pretty dramatic with little cliff hangers, and also draws out the tension through sharing how meaningful the hobby is for him, and how he is constantly learning lessons from watching the ants. He also lets his viewers vote on the names of everything in the ant communities, so they feel like they are part of it. The last few days I’ve been thinking about how some ants (maybe all?) have a personal stomach, and a social stomach. Because they are a big colony, they will send out workers to go gather food and fill their social stomachs and then they come back and redistribute it to the ants that were doing other things.

            Sometimes I like to take a step back and consider whether my particular traits and life are serving some other purpose than the one I’ve been told about. Like if humans are actually more collective than we think, maybe (as some researchers have proposed) homosexuality is an adaptive communal trait that some humans have to maintain balance, and support the collective –like helping to raise children, without requiring as many personal needs. I was thinking that maybe our society does this anyway without the genetics, things like taboos, productivity, attractiveness, prestige, work, war/military and prison all serve to potentially broaden or narrow the pool of eligibility. But on the flipside we are also living in a time when people have so little support – for instance, a friend of mine just had a baby, she lives in England with her husband. He is going back to work soon. She is far from her family… and I’m worried that she is going to end up becoming super depressed and isolated. Where is her community? Who will bring her food in their social stomach while she does the very important work of raising a child? Yesterday when another friend was feeling frustrated, I didn’t know how to help. I was also kind of critical of the way we end up living… nuclear families don’t make sense. Sure, we can have them as a core component, but it sets parents up for feeling like failures, and it sets children up for feeling like they are alone in their pain.

            Maybe all my desires to help and my caretaking skills are just my role in helping the community, and maybe I am not supposed to have a personal family or feel individually fulfilled, because that would keep me from giving to the wider community. I don’t know that I actually believe this completely, but sometimes I wonder. And if I could just reconcile myself to that, rather than wanting all these individual things… would that be a better life? I can be the godparent, the uncle, the friend. Whats wrong with that. 

            Today I was walking around the lake and thinking I was superfly or whatever because I was listening to good music, and the sun was out, but there was enough of a breeze that it was pleasant and blowing my hair around, and I was just enjoying it…  Sometimes when I am listening to music, I start conducting or dancing. Sometimes I make faces while I sing or mouth the lyrics. People walking around the lake will sometimes stare or smile, and I start to think, yeah maybe I am attractive to some folks?  But on this particular day I was thinking about how aesthetics can be so magnetic and also so distracting.  Like you’re all in a good mental place, and then you see something or someone who is “attractive” and your mind goes somewhere else. Maybe not a bad place, but a distraction. At the same time, would you wish them to be “unattractive?” If they were, would you be as drawn? Would you want to be “unattractive?”

What are the benefits and drawbacks?

            This reminded me of the charismatic leadership thing, because it can be such a distraction, and lead people down such unhelpful roads. Our perception leads us to assume that people with charisma have better lives, are inherently worth more, that they know more, that everything they touch is honey. We start to cater to the people and things we find attractive, rearrange our lives for it. And measure our worth by them, questioning the absence of beauty or charisma as being less worthwhile... Suddenly then, the absence of this very surface level beauty means we are unfulfilled.

            If I walk around all day and see nothing beautiful, I believe my day was less exciting. But as an artist, I often find this particularly hard, because I am socialized the same as everyone else to see certain things as beautiful, and I crave beauty. However, if I am mindful, I can adjust the muscles of my eyes to recognize more color, let in more or less light, and see something “mundane” as “miraculous,” just by bringing awareness to it. Charm and aesthetics then seem like they must be a distraction, right? NO? How can one know?

            I think it’s especially weird, because we are socialized and perhaps genetically inclined towards seeing youth as beautiful. A friend of mine has been dating younger and younger guys, and though I can recognize that she is perhaps feeling developmentally similar to them, I am also aware that she is an artist who is drawn to pretty people. I think it’s funny. If she were a man, I would apply the same lens of judgment that I hold on myself. I am also attracted to people who look younger than they are. When I am being voyeuristic on dating profiles, I think that is a common feature of the people who I might swipe for –that they are my age but look younger. When I look in the mirror and see signs of aging, I am sometimes ok with it, and sometimes wish I could maintain my youthful glow. Maybe I just need to drink more water, or less fluoride and open up my third eye to seeing the reality.

            Lately we have been talking about how easy it is to feel burned by those we are generous with, but are we generously vulnerable? Do we ask for what we need and want?  Do we share our hopes and dreams openly? Do we acknowledge our feelings during, and not just after they can no longer hurt us?  I’ve been trying to do that more often with people, but it doesn’t come easily, especially when I am feeling vulnerable. And of course, that is just within individual relationships. Interdependence asks us not just to be interdependent in our one to ones, but explore and expand our joy in community. I have dozens of folks who I check in with one on one, but when do I ask them to get to know each other? How do I promote that type of generosity and vulnerability? And in myself, how often do I turn down the opportunity to get to know someone else’s world of relationships –despite knowing it is essential for true connection.  Is it just the limited capacity? Or is it a fear that I would be held accountable for that deeper relationship?

Sometimes I want to read into the words of the story, want to paint them upon my experience. That’s how the vampires in each story become my friends, that’s why I miss them when the book ends. It’s harder when the sentiment resonates, like when the activist writes her poem of inner requests, and each line presents a thought I’ve kept hidden, and she ends it with a question; “can you listen while I feel this? Again? Again?”

And I’m wondering what you are doing tonight, in your human bed, tossing and turning to the day’s inner consciousness, wrestling and rolling with the unspoken, the mistaken, the fear of needing, and also the desire of it. And I’m wondering if you’re lonely, when you awake to a startle, or if the emptiness beside you is just a new opportunity for tomorrow. And I’m wondering how I could safely worm my way inside your sheets, press my skin to your skin, and feel the beat of your heart so that I’d know just when to react, and tighten the muscle of my own, squeeze out the joy and longing before you steal them from me.

Because I’m finding it harder each day, to pull back. Despite my attempts to fortify with bricks of angst, with spears of cynicism, with that moat of realism full of crocodiles swimming by. But they look so beautiful atop this vaporous fantasy, and your stories are lulling, your smile enticing, your hand so warm when you offer it to mine. And sometimes it feels like torture to deny your offering to dance, even when I know it’s just a dream.