Epistle to the Ecotopians
By Ernest Callenbach

[This document was found on the computer of Ecotopia author Ernest Callenbach (1929-2012) after his death.]

To all brothers and sisters who hold the dream in their hearts of a future world in which humans and all other beings live in harmony and mutual support — a world of sustainability, stability, and confidence. A world something like the one I described, so long ago, in Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging.

As I survey my life, which is coming near its end, I want to set down a few thoughts that might be useful to those coming after. It will soon be time for me to give back to Gaia the nutrients that I have used during a long, busy, and happy life. I am not bitter or resentful at the approaching end; I have been one of the extraordinarily lucky ones. So it behooves me here to gather together some thoughts and attitudes that may prove useful in the dark times we are facing: a century or more of exceedingly difficult times.

How will those who survive manage it? What can we teach our friends, our children, our communities? Although we may not be capable of changing history, how can we equip ourselves to survive it?

I contemplate these questions in the full consciousness of my own mortality. Being offered an actual number of likely months to live, even though the estimate is uncertain, mightily focuses the mind. On personal things, of course, on loved ones and even loved things, but also on the Big Picture.

But let us begin with last things first, for a change. The analysis will come later, for those who wish it.

Hope. Children exude hope, even under the most terrible conditions, and that must inspire us as our conditions get worse. Hopeful patients recover better. Hopeful test candidates score better. Hopeful builders construct better buildings. Hopeful parents produce secure and resilient children. In groups, an atmosphere of hope is essential to shared successful effort: “Yes, we can!” is not an empty slogan, but a mantra for people who intend to do something together — whether it is rescuing victims of hurricanes, rebuilding flood-damaged buildings on higher ground, helping wounded people through first aid, or inventing new social structures (perhaps one in which only people are “persons,” not corporations). We cannot know what threats we will face. But ingenuity against adversity is one of our species’ built-in resources. We cope, and faith in our coping capacity is perhaps our biggest resource of all.

Mutual support. The people who do best at basic survival tasks (we know this experimentally, as well as intuitively) are cooperative, good at teamwork, often altruistic, mindful of the common good. In drastic emergencies like hurricanes or earthquakes, people surprise us by their sacrifices — of food, of shelter, even sometimes of life itself. Those who survive social or economic collapse, or wars, or pandemics, or starvation, will be those who manage scarce resources fairly; hoarders and dominators win only in the short run, and end up dead, exiled, or friendless. So, in every way we can we need to help each other, and our children, learn to be cooperative rather than competitive; to be helpful rather than hurtful; to look out for the communities of which we are a part, and on which we ultimately depend.

Practical skills. With the movement into cities of the U.S. population, and much of the rest of the world’s people, we have had a massive de-skilling in how to do practical tasks. When I was a boy in the country, all of us knew how to build a tree house, or construct a small hut, or raise chickens, or grow beans, or screw pipes together to deliver water. It was a sexist world, of course, so when some of my chums in eighth grade said we wanted to learn girls’ “home ec” skills like making bread or boiling eggs, the teachers were shocked, but we got to do it. There was widespread competence in fixing things — impossible with most modern contrivances, of course, but still reasonable for the basic tools of survival: pots and pans, bicycles, quilts, tents, storage boxes.

We all need to learn, or relearn, how we would keep the rudiments of life going if there were no paid specialists around, or means to pay them. Every child should learn elementary carpentry, from layout and sawing to driving nails. Everybody should know how to chop wood safely, and build a fire. Everybody should know what to do if dangers appear from fire, flood, electric wires down, and the like. Taking care of each other is one practical step at a time, most of them requiring help from at least one other person; survival is a team sport.

Organize. Much of the American ideology, our shared and usually unspoken assumptions, is hyper-individualistic. We like to imagine that heroes are solitary, have super powers, and glory in violence, and that if our work lives and business lives seem tamer, underneath they are still struggles red in blood and claw. We have sought solitude on the prairies, as cowboys on the range, in our dependence on media (rather than real people), and even in our cars, armored cabins of solitude. We have an uneasy and doubting attitude about government, as if we all reserve the right to be outlaws. But of course human society, like ecological webs, is a complex dance of mutual support and restraint, and if we are lucky it operates by laws openly arrived at and approved by the populace.

If the teetering structure of corporate domination, with its monetary control of Congress and our other institutions, should collapse of its own greed, and the government be unable to rescue it, we will have to reorganize a government that suits the people. We will have to know how to organize groups, how to compromise with other groups, how to argue in public for our positions. It turns out that “brainstorming,” a totally noncritical process in which people just throw out ideas wildly, doesn’t produce workable ideas. In particular, it doesn’t work as well as groups in which ideas are proposed, critiqued, improved, debated. But like any group process, this must be protected from domination by powerful people and also over-talkative people. When the group recognizes its group power, it can limit these distortions. Thinking together is enormously creative; it has huge survival value.

Learn to live with contradictions. These are dark times, these are bright times. We are implacably making the planet less habitable. Every time a new oil field is discovered, the press cheers: “Hooray, there is more fuel for the self-destroying machines!” We are turning more land into deserts and parking lots. We are wiping out innumerable species that are not only wondrous and beautiful, but might be useful to us. We are multiplying to the point where our needs and our wastes outweigh the capacities of the biosphere to produce and absorb them. And yet, despite the bloody headlines and the rocketing military budgets, we are also, unbelievably, killing fewer of each other proportionately than in earlier centuries. We have mobilized enormous global intelligence and mutual curiosity, through the Internet and outside it. We have even evolved, spottily, a global understanding that democracy is better than tyranny, that love and tolerance are better than hate, that hope is better than rage and despair, that we are prone, especially in catastrophes, to be astonishingly helpful and cooperative.

We may even have begun to share an understanding that while the dark times may continue for generations, in time new growth and regeneration will begin. In the biological process called “succession,” a desolate, disturbed area is gradually, by a predictable sequence of returning plants, restored to ecological continuity and durability. When old institutions and habits break down or consume themselves, new experimental shoots begin to appear, and people explore and test and share new and better ways to survive together.

It is never easy or simple. But already we see, under the crumbling surface of the conventional world, promising developments: new ways of organizing economic activity (cooperatives, worker-owned companies, nonprofits, trusts), new ways of using low-impact technology to capture solar energy, to sequester carbon dioxide, new ways of building compact, congenial cities that are low (or even self-sufficient) in energy use, low in waste production, high in recycling of almost everything. A vision of sustainability that sometimes shockingly resembles Ecotopia is tremulously coming into existence at the hands of people who never heard of the book.

___________________

Now in principle, the Big Picture seems simple enough, though devilishly complex in the details. We live in the declining years of what is still the biggest economy in the world, where a looter elite has fastened itself upon the decaying carcass of the empire. It is intent on speedily and relentlessly extracting the maximum wealth from that carcass, impoverishing our former working middle class. But this maggot class does not invest its profits here. By law and by stock-market pressures, corporations must seek their highest possible profits, no matter the social or national consequences — which means moving capital and resources abroad, wherever profit potential is larger. As Karl Marx darkly remarked, “Capital has no country,” and in the conditions of globalization his meaning has come clear.

The looter elite systematically exports jobs, skills, knowledge, technology, retaining at home chiefly financial manipulation expertise: highly profitable, but not of actual productive value. Through “productivity gains” and speedups, it extracts maximum profit from domestic employees; then, firing the surplus, it claims surprise that the great mass of people lack purchasing power to buy up what the economy can still produce (or import).

Here again Marx had a telling phrase: “Crisis of under-consumption.” When you maximize unemployment and depress wages, people have to cut back. When they cut back, businesses they formerly supported have to shrink or fail, adding their own employees to the ranks of the jobless, and depressing wages still further. End result: something like Mexico, where a small, filthy rich plutocracy rules over an impoverished mass of desperate, uneducated, and hopeless people.

Barring unprecedented revolutionary pressures, this is the actual future we face in the United States, too. As we know from history, such societies can stand a long time, supported by police and military control, manipulation of media, surveillance and dirty tricks of all kinds. It seems likely that a few parts of the world (Germany, with its worker-council variant of capitalism, New Zealand with its relative equality, Japan with its social solidarity, and some others) will remain fairly democratic.

The U.S., which has a long history of violent plutocratic rule unknown to the textbook-fed, will stand out as the best-armed Third World country, its population ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-educated, ill-cared for in health, and increasingly poverty-stricken: even Social Security may be whittled down, impoverishing tens of millions of the elderly.

As empires decline, their leaders become increasingly incompetent — petulant, ignorant, gifted only with PR skills of posturing and spinning, and prone to the appointment of loyal idiots to important government positions. Comedy thrives; indeed writers are hardly needed to invent outrageous events.

We live, then, in a dark time here on our tiny precious planet. Ecological devastation, political and economic collapse, irreconcilable ideological and religious conflict, poverty, famine: the end of the overshoot of cheap-oil-based consumer capitalist expansionism.

If you don’t know where you’ve been, you have small chance of understanding where you might be headed. So let me offer a capsule history for those who, like most of us, got little help from textbook history.

At 82, my life has included a surprisingly substantial slice of American history. In the century or so up until my boyhood in Appalachian central Pennsylvania, the vast majority of Americans subsisted as farmers on the land. Most, like people elsewhere in the world, were poor, barely literate, ill-informed, short-lived.  Millions had been slaves. Meanwhile in the cities, vast immigrant armies were mobilized by ruthless and often violent “robber baron” capitalists to build vast industries that made things: steel, railroads, ships, cars, skyscrapers.

Then, when I was in grade school, came World War II. America built the greatest armaments industry the world had ever seen, and when the war ended with most other industrial countries in ruins, we had a run of unprecedented productivity and prosperity. Thanks to strong unions and a sympathetic government, this prosperity was widely shared: a huge working middle class evolved — tens of millions of people could afford (on one wage) a modest house, a car, perhaps sending a child to college. This era peaked around 1973, when wages stagnated, the Vietnam War took a terrible toll in blood and money, and the country began sliding rightward.

In the next epoch, which we are still in and which may be our last as a great nation, capitalists who grew rich and powerful by making things gave way to a new breed: financiers who grasped that you could make even more money by manipulating money. (And by persuading Congress to subsidize them — the system should have been called Subsidism, not Capitalism.) They had no concern for the productivity of the nation or the welfare of its people; with religious fervor, they believed in maximizing profit as the absolute economic goal. They recognized that, by capturing the government through the election finance system and removing government regulation, they could turn the financial system into a giant casino.

Little by little, they hollowed the country out, until it was helplessly dependent on other nations for almost all its necessities. We had to import significant steel components from China or Japan. We came to pay for our oil imports by exporting food (i.e., our soil). Our media and our educational system withered. Our wars became chronic and endless and stupefyingly expensive. Our diets became suicidal, and our medical system faltered; life expectancies began to fall.

And so we have returned, in a sort of terrible circle, to something like my boyhood years, when President Roosevelt spoke in anger of “one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-fed, ill-clothed.” A large and militant contingent of white, mostly elderly, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant right wingers, mortally threatened by their impending minority status and pretending to be liberty-lovers, desperately seek to return us still further back.

Americans like to think of ours as an exceptional country, immune through geographical isolation and some kind of special virtue to the tides of history. Through the distorted lens of our corporate media, we possess only a distorted view of what the country is really like now. In the next decades, we shall see whether we indeed possess the intelligence, the strength, and the mutual courage to break through to another positive era.

No futurist can foresee the possibilities. As empires decay, their civilian leaderships become increasingly crazed, corrupt, and incompetent, and often the military (which is after all a parasite of the whole nation, and has no independent financial base like the looter class) takes over. Another possible scenario is that if the theocratic red center of the country prevails in Washington, the relatively progressive and prosperous coastal areas will secede in self-defense.

Ecotopia is a novel, and secession was its dominant metaphor: how would a relatively rational part of the country save itself ecologically if it was on its own? As Ecotopia Emerging puts it, Ecotopia aspired to be a beacon for the rest of the world. And so it may prove, in the very, very long run, because the general outlines of Ecotopia are those of any possible future sustainable society.

The “ecology in one country” argument was an echo of an actual early Soviet argument, as to whether “socialism in one country” was possible. In both cases, it now seems to me, the answer must be no. We are now fatally interconnected, in climate change, ocean impoverishment, agricultural soil loss, etc., etc., etc. International consumer capitalism is a self-destroying machine, and as long as it remains the dominant social form, we are headed for catastrophe; indeed, like rafters first entering the “tongue” of a great rapid, we are already embarked on it.

When disasters strike and institutions falter, as at the end of empires, it does not mean that the buildings all fall down and everybody dies. Life goes on, and in particular, the remaining people fashion new institutions that they hope will better ensure their survival.

So I look to a long-term process of “succession,” as the biological concept has it, where “disturbances” kill off an ecosystem, but little by little new plants colonize the devastated area, prepare the soil for larger and more complex plants (and the other beings who depend on them), and finally the process achieves a flourishing, resilient, complex state — not necessarily what was there before, but durable and richly productive. In a similar way, experiments under way now, all over the world, are exploring how sustainability can in fact be achieved locally. Technically, socially, economically — since it is quite true, as ecologists know, that everything is connected to everything else, and you can never just do one thing by itself.

Since I wrote Ecotopia, I have become less confident of humans’ political ability to act on commonsense, shared values. Our era has become one of spectacular polarization, with folly multiplying on every hand. That is the way empires crumble: they are taken over by looter elites, who sooner or later cause collapse. But then new games become possible, and with luck Ecotopia might be among them.

Humans tend to try to manage things: land, structures, even rivers. We spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and treasure in imposing our will on nature, on preexisting or inherited structures, dreaming of permanent solutions, monuments to our ambitions and dreams. But in periods of slack, decline, or collapse, our abilities no longer suffice for all this management. We have to let things go.

All things “go” somewhere: they evolve, with or without us, into new forms. So as the decades pass, we should try not always to futilely fight these transformations. As the Japanese know, there is much unnoticed beauty in wabi-sabi — the old, the worn, the tumble-down, those things beginning their transformation into something else. We can embrace this process of devolution: embellish it when strength avails, learn to love it.

There is beauty in weathered and unpainted wood, in orchards overgrown, even in abandoned cars being incorporated into the earth. Let us learn, like the Forest Service sometimes does, to put unwise or unneeded roads “to bed,” help a little in the healing of the natural contours, the re-vegetation by native plants. Let us embrace decay, for it is the source of all new life and growth.

Ernest Callenbach, author of the classic environmental novel Ecotopia among other works, founded and edited the internationally known journal Film Quarterly.  He died at 83 on April 16th, leaving behind this document on his computer.

Copyright Ernest Callenbach 2012

Workers of the world, take a break and celebrate International Workers’ Day or as I prefer to call it: May Day. It’s a day to remember the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago. It’s good to recall that the eight-hour work day was not always a given, but something for which workers had to fight and even give their lives.

Absurdly, the US government has installed something you never heard of called Loyalty Day on the first of May, “a special day for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom.” It’s a laughable attempt to undermine the celebration of May Day.

Of course, there’s an even older history to May Day that goes way beyond 1886. Europeans brought this tradition with them to the New World as early as 1627. It’s a cross-quarter day, halfway between the equinox and the solstice. Technically the halfway point falls on Friday evening, so maybe we should extend our celebrations all week long. There are a cluster of old traditional holidays around this time that have interesting stories. Many are seasonal observations with an emphasis on fertility and the coming of summer, and some are a little spooky, which I like. May Day — Beltane — Walpurgisnacht — Vappa — Roodmas — Whitsuntide — whatever you want to call it — I’d celebrate them all if I knew how. I’d like to combine the pagan and labor traditions, the “green root” and the “red root” into a single holiday. A protest, a party, a ritual — all in one.

Hopefully if you’re in New Orleans you can make one of the marches planned here. No matter where you are, there’s probably something going on near you. Get out there.

Afterward as I walked to campus, I stopped at the Brown Derby #3 for some breakfast, since I’d been fasting for the sake of the blood work.

I got some buttery grits, scrambled eggs and sausage. It would be cooler if they offered at least one healthy option. But I digress. My point is that I was feeling pretty healthy.

I felt even healthier when I got up before dawn Thursday morning and went for a jog. Have I mentioned that I started back up with the jogging recently? It’s been a few years, and I’m still not back in the habit. It felt good.

Weighing less, eating less, drinking less alcohol, exercising more. Yes, I was feeling more hale and hearty than I have in a while.

And then, Thursday night, what’s this? Do I feel a little feverish? I ignored it.

But on Friday afternoon the feeling crept up again. I went home from work a little early and took my temperature. Sure enough, above normal. I promptly began resting.

Alas, I had a very tempting invitation for that evening. Should a wee bit of fever keep a man from sampling single malts at a friend’s house? I gave discretion the finger and went down to Michael Homan’s house in my night clothes. There were a bunch of theologians gathered around sipping scotch. I limited myself to one dram plus a couple tastes. By the time I made my way back home, I was not feeling bad at all.

On Saturday the fever was still there, still mild. I tried to take it easy, resting and napping as much as possible. I was still functioning more or less normally, and I made it through the day without incident. I was drinking lots of water too, trying to stay hydrated.

That night I noticed something peculiar. Naturally, since I drank a ton of water before bed, I had to get up several times during the night to urinate. The weird part was, I noticed: It kind of hurt. Come to think of it, it hurt the night before too, but my fever-addled mind ascribed this to some kind of temperature differential from my overheated body. Makes no sense, I know. But now it hit me. I must have (drum roll please) a urinary tract infection.

So, Sunday morning, I went to the nearest doc-in-a-box. I was poked and prodded some more. They took a urine sample, but detected little evidence of bacteria. They X-rayed me but didn’t find any stones. The doctor pounded on my back, but it didn’t hurt, so the kidneys probably aren’t infected. In the end, he decided to treat it as if it was a bacterial infection of the lower urinary tract. He prescribed me a course of trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (also known as Bactrim) and sent me on my way.

The fever kept coming and going. I took some ibuprofen, but even so I was feeling mentally muddled. I was also baking that morning and had my worst bread disaster ever. The fever may have been a contributing factor. But I was well enough at least to participate in a little parade with the samba drum corps Boombador, from City Park to the bayou, to celebrate Earth Day.

Maybe I should have rested more. Monday the fever was worse. I stayed at home. I tried to rest, but I also feel compelled to bake more bread to redeem the previous day’s disaster. I was feeling pretty miserable, but the bread came out very well.

Tuesday I finally stopped trying to do anything and slept ’til noon. By evening I was feeling halfway decent, and the fever had abated. The doctor had said the medicine would take three days to work its magic. I guess he was right.

I felt well enough to go in for a half-day of work Wednesday. But I was not out of the proverbial woods. That evening I found myself being a little short with Xy and Persephone. I chalked it up to my latent impatience.

Thursday morning my mood was worse. I was out of sorts. I was anxious. This was unusual. I am not a nervous person as a rule. Sure, there were plenty of things to worry about. Aren’t there always? My mind kept hopping from one to another. I was falling behind on so many things because of this illness. Fortunately I was able to take a step back and observe the panicky madness that seemed to be growing within me. I was not feeling myself. Perhaps it was a side effect of the antibiotic? I didn’t think antibiotics affected mood.

I noted I was supposed to drink plenty of water with the medicine, so I drank a big glass of water. It felt good, and I drank another. I felt even better. I could feel the anxiety dissipating with each swallow.

I don’t know how that works. I can only report that I soon found myself drinking what felt like gallons of water, and feeling better but still not normal. A call to the doc-in-the-box and I got a new prescription for some Cipro, which I’ve taken before without adverse effects.

Finally, the next day, I felt back to my old self again. So that was one full week.

Lessons learned? I felt that my mindfulness practice helped me to deal with the bizarre mood swings, and to identify their source — if indeed that diagnosis was correct. I also was given pause to realize just how fragile my cherished equanimity really is.

It only takes a feather to upset the balance.

Dear Persephone,

You are fifty months old today. To celebrate we counted to fifty together.

The month got off to a rough start. You had a couple severe meltdowns while playing with friends. You’ve not had big issues with sharing before, so hopefully that was just a phase.

We read A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. That took about a month, reading a chapter most every night before bedtime. Sometimes we split long chapters in two. Though it’s clearly aimed at children, I would say it’s the most adult book you’ve read so far. There were some concepts that were new and I daresay a little disturbing to you, such as overt classism or an orphaned child starving on the streets with no one to care for her. It was frankly kind of heartbreaking to behold you encountering such harsh possibilities for the first time, and I seriously considered shelving the book, saving it for a year or two. But we toughed it out. All for the best I think.

Now we’re reading Prince Caspian, which is closer to your speed. Last night I was amazed that you’d already identified Nikabrik as “a bad dwarf,” even though we only just finished chapter six. Granted, the clues are pretty obvious, but you’re only fifty months old after all. What was even more astonishing was the way you put it: “My brain is killing me.” You meant that you kept thinking this thought to the point that it was aggravating. I can relate! Perhaps you’ve inherited my hyperactive mentality. That lead to an interesting discussion of how we can moderate mental events. I pointed out that you generally can’t force yourself to stop thinking about something. But if you “step back” and observe, it tends to help.

Speaking of books, there’s a popular one called Hunger Games which has just been made into a movie. You saw a picture of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen drawing back a bow and exclaimed: “It’s Artemis!” I used my phone to post your remark on Twitter, which is a popular social media service, and as I did so I read my post to you. The problem was that I’d specified Athena rather than Artemis. You swiftly corrected me. Which just goes to show that you know your ancient Greek mythology better than me now.

Some weeks ago I instructed you to say “Send in the clowns!” if your hear someone say something silly in a serious voice. Then I forgot about it. But you remembered, and you used it on me. I forget what I was saying, but it was well-played on your part.

On a similar note, here’s a transcript of a conversation we had last week:

Me: “Are we a part of Mother Earth?”

You: “Yes but we’re a funny part.”

Me: “A funny part?”

You: “Yes because we can forget that we’re a part of Mother Earth.”

I was about to fall out of my chair until you reminded me that you were repeating back something I’d said myself a couple weeks ago. Still I hope you can hold on to the idea.

One day, after a discussion of what meat is, you swore you were going to be a vegetarian from now on. Your resolve did not last, however. You ate some chicken a few hours later. Given how many vegetarian friends we seem to have, I won’t be surprised if this comes back up again later. I wouldn’t mind going back to a vegetarian diet again, but I think your mother might have different ideas.

On April 12 we celebrated Yuri’s Night with some friends and neighbors. It was a trip to hear you lecturing us about Yuri Gagarin.

Last week you announced that you want to get married to one of your pre-K classmates, a boy named Joshua. His qualifications? “I’ve never played with him.” Hopefully your standards will elevate with time.

I can’t close without noting one of the most touching things you said to me this past month:

Dada, once I see you I sort of smile, and I don’t know why.

I feel the same way.

We gather by the side of the road on the edge of an urban forest. I know the others only because they are dressed like me, in white clothing. We talk amongst ourselves, getting to know each other.

The signal comes at twilight, just as the sun is setting and everything is growing dark. We walk into the woods along a gravel path. We can hear the sound of drumming.

Soon we come to a clearing. There’s a circle made of lit candles and strewn leaves. Inside the circle, an altar and a pentagram. There are two women here, also dressed in white. These two I know, a little. One is inside the circle, drumming. The other is outside the circle, singing. She strides toward us. Her voice is beautiful. She reaches out and takes my hand, leading me and all the rest toward the circle.

We are each in turn ritually purified with incense. When all are within the ring of light, the circle is cast by calling the quarters and invoking the elements. And within this sacred space the ritual unfolds, as the full moon slowly rises.

This is an esbat, not a seasonal celebration, and so something new and unfamiliar to me. The heart of the ritual I might describe as energy work and group therapy. H. Gunaratana Mahathera describes Buddhism as “much more akin to what we would call psychology than to what we would usually call religion.” This is not a Buddhist ritual, but I’m reminded of this nonetheless. We are invited to think of some area in our life where we’ve reached a plateau, some area of our personal or interpersonal development where things have stagnated, where we’ve grown complacent or are just plain stuck. We think about ways to release that energy, and we engage in a few activities to visualize that release. Strategic symbolism, perhaps.

This may all sound very solemn, but there was a lightness to it as well, and laughter. We also drink margaritas.

Later, we sit in the moonlight sharing food, drink, and conversation. I hear a voice through through the trees. Soon it comes again, and again, impossible to ignore because the unseen person is shouting. He sounds angry. Then another voice joins the first. A woman. Their exchange becomes a song. Then instruments kick in: accordion, double-bass, sousaphone. The music is lusty and uproarious. There’s a whole band back in the woods somewhere.

After a few verses and a rousing chorus, the song crashes to a halt, and there is a round of applause. Judging by the sound there must be at least fifty people there. A couple members of our party are dispatched to scout out the situation. They report that it’s a gypsy-punk interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s Salome.

Many strange and wonderful things happen by light of the moon.

Photo: Moonrise / Eric Miraglia / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The coolest thing about this year’s hike, from my personal perspective, is that I’ve had hardly anything to do with organizing the event. (Term limits, y’know.) Yet still it chugs along. That’s extremely gratifying.

But there are other cool things: This year we’re reversing direction, hiking toward the river for a change, so people can tap into French Quarter Fest if they so desire. Also we’ve got a brass band this year. It was just a matter of time. Aaaaand this really should be your last chance to hike the corridor in its current (neglected) state as I just heard plans are to break ground in October.

Please join us as we TAKE A HIKE along the Lafitte Greenway on Saturday, April 14, 2012. The annual hike is roughly 3 miles, and parts of the path are overgrown and weedy. So dress accordingly, and you might want to bring some sunscreen. Flip-flops are probably not appropriate footwear!

9:30 AM: Bike Easy will hold a bicycle safety workshop in the Delgado Community College parking lot. Bike Easy will also offer FREE bike valet services for all participants of the hike.

10 AM: Meet at the Delgado Community College in the parking lot (parking and bike valet available).

1 PM: Finish at Congo Square in Armstrong Park with a culminating celebration featuring Baby Boys Brass Band, refreshments and more.

2 PM: Head to French Quarter Fest!

These times are tentative, as we’ll be hiking in small groups with plenty of fun activities along the way. Different groups will probably move at different speeds.

The Hike and Bike Valet are both FREE and open to the public.

Please register in advance to help us gauge how many participants to expect. The more the merrier!

And just in case it’s not clear, I will be there hiking with the rest of y’all. In fact I’m a Greenway Ambassador so I should be leading a small group. Maybe you’ll be in my group. See you there.

Back in August when Persephone started school my morning routine changed severely. Instead of being responsible for bundling a toddler off to daycare, suddenly I was seeing wife and daughter on their way. I waved goodbye and then they were gone.

And there I was, with the house to myself, and at least an hour before I needed to leave for work.

What to do?

After a couple weeks I’d exhausted the more obvious possibilities. I realized this would be the perfect opportunity to establish a regular contemplative practice, to fit meditation into my daily routine. This was something I’d been wanting to do for at least a year, since reading Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry and attending the Contemplative Academy.

OK, great idea, but again: What to do? There are many types of meditation. Hmm, well, how about mindfulness meditation? That’s something I’ve heard about repeatedly. Sounds interesting. Maybe I could try it.

I found a short article in Psychology Today, titled “How to Practice Mindfulness Meditation” by Karen Kissel Wegela. She made it sound so damned easy.

So I decided to start, just five minutes a day.

I didn’t really know what I was doing. It must have felt good or something because I kept on doing it. In those first few weeks I got some of my most dramatic results. They are hard to describe. The practice seemed to induce an altered state of consciousness, a subtle euphoria, a feeling of mystery. I might say that it evoked a sense of the numinous. After my brief sessions, I tended to want to listen to ambient music rather than my regular eclectic mix, because that seemed to keep the mood better. I also noticed a slight increase in impulse control, and a corresponding negative correlation with alcohol consumption. When I meditated in the morning, as a rule, I seemed to drink less in the evening.

However, as I kept at it, these effects seemed to wear off a bit. The shock of the new practice was over, and my mind was reverting to form. After a time I realized I didn’t even know what “mindfulness” meant. I decided if I wanted to deepen and strengthen my practice I would need to learn more.

I cast about the net looking for resources. They are plentiful, but the diversity of perspectives was a bit confusing. For example, one guy says mindfulness meditation should be limited to five minutes, whereas others talked of sessions lasting for hours.

I needed something deeper than short web articles. I found Mindfulness in Plain English by the Venerable H. Gunaratana Mahathera. It’s a full-length book, available in print but also floating around on the web in various forms.

I read my way through this book slowly over several months. I’d never read anything quite like it — a practical meditation manual. It’s written from a Theravadin Buddhist perspective. I don’t know much about Buddhism, but I gather the Theravada branch claims to be closest to the original teachings of the Buddha. Despite this, or because of it, there was little religious baggage. There was some, however. I’m not sure I buy the talk of enlightenment and liberation and Nibbana. There were also some passages, such as a brief allusion to sign-objects, that I found mystifying. But for the most part the writing is admirably clear, and I found the practical advice very helpful.

My favorite passage:

We are learning here to escape into reality, rather than from it.

According to this author, the ecstasy I sometimes experience is not really the point of the practice. It’s a pleasant side effect, but just like the unpleasant side effects, one should not get distracted. Getting attached to any experience, however pleasurable, is a distraction. That’s a tough pill to swallow for a hedonist like me. But I do see the point.

Let me recount one particular experience I had somewhere along the way. This was several months ago. Like all such experiences it is hard if not impossible to describe. I’m foolish to try, probably. I will have to resort to metaphor because that’s all that I have.

So I’m sitting there, and I seem to become aware of a wind blowing through me, through the house, through the earth, through the entire cosmos. It’s blowing through all of us right now, and has been for our entire lives, through all time, only we don’t ordinarily perceive it. It not only pervades all but gives shape and motion to all.

I guess that’s a classic mystical experience. I find those kind of experiences compelling, but I also understand the need for detachment. If you sit down with a desire for some particular kind of experience, or any particular expectations, you won’t be fully alert and aware to what is actually going on.

There’s a paradox there, of course. We may be drawn to meditation because we perceive we’ll gain some benefit. And there are benefits. But the practice is worth doing for itself with no end in mind, and I suspect it’s more beneficial when it’s approached without anticipation or expectation.

But what do I know?

A truly wonderful thing about my job is that I’m able to explore so many divergent interests. And so it was that I found myself headed to Bryn Mawr College for the Fifth Annual Mindfulness in Education conference. It was a pleasant trip and an interesting experience. (I took some photos.) The conference concluded with a day of silent mediation. I’ve never done anything like that before. On the way home, I wasn’t sure what I’d really gotten out of the conference, but after a few days I realized I’d learned plenty. Sometimes it takes a while.

I’m now able to offer a definition of mindfulness off the cuff. Several definitions, in fact. Mindfulness is paying attention to your attention. Mindfulness is awareness of the present, moment to moment, without judging. Mindfulness can be practiced at any time; formal meditation is just one way to promote it.

I think virtually every human being values and practices mindfulness to some extent. It’s a basic part of being alive. But we also do plenty of things that run counter to mindfulness, sabotaging ourselves and our own best efforts without even realizing it. Formal practice can help us figure stuff like this out, and allows us to cultivate mindfulness in our whole lives.

Footnote: The license attached to Mindfulness in Plain English indicates it may be “freely copied and redistributed.” So I’m taking my first venture into e-book publishing. You can download a copy of the book, reformatted with minor corrections by yours truly, in EPUB format. I’ve not done this before, so if you run into trouble please let me know.

It recently occurred to me that I am drowning in food.

I have often remarked that during the Katrina crisis and the flooding of New Orleans, despite being displaced, I never missed a night’s sleep, and I never missed a meal.

What’s even more remarkable is that I don’t think I’ve missed a meal in many a year, and I could hardly remember what true hunger felt like. Until now.

Because of my metabolism and narrow frame, I’ve never been labeled obese. People still sometimes call me “Slim.” Nevertheless my doctor usually advises me to lose a few pounds. He’s a stickler.

Once upon a time, I was alarmingly skinny. I ate like a teenage boy well into my twenties, yet remained almost skeletal. I gained twenty pounds after getting married in 1993, and another twenty pounds or so upon moving to New Orleans in 1999. I got fatter, but it wasn’t all fat. Several rounds of strength training regimens added some muscle mass as well. But I was still eating like a teenage boy. Meanwhile my metabolism was catching up — a little.

Eating voluminous amounts of food became part of my identity. I would always go back for seconds or thirds. I was a human garbage disposal. Once upon a time I needed the fuel. Now it’s just habitual gluttony. If the average American eats like I do, no wonder we have an obesity epidemic.

But about a month ago something changed. As part of my seasonal purification rituals, I thought about fasting. Hmm, fasting, what a concept. That would involve being hungry.

And that’s when I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I was truly hungry.

I was never taught to fast. Fasting was not a part of the religious or secular culture in which I was raised. One might even say that I was taught never to fast, not explicitly but implicitly. The very notion seems to run counter to our national psyche. As Americans, we like to believe we live in a land of plenty. We like to celebrate abundance.

I went looking for information on the subject of fasting. Here a few resources I uncovered:

• This month’s Harper’s features a relevant essay that looks interesting. You have to be a subscriber to read it, and sadly my subscription has lapsed. But the Tulane library has it and I hope to bike over there and read it soon. A friend who’s read it tells me that, “Apparently Mark Twain would always cure himself of cold and flu by fasting until it went away.” Intriguing.
• The International Natural Hygiene Society is ostensibly grounded in science. Then again it may be pseudoscience; I haven’t done the research. They’ve got an article on “What to expect on your first fast.” I’m skeptical of orthopathy by reflex, but this seems like pretty solid advice, at least at first glance.
• Associated: Fasting for Renewal of Life by Herbert M. Shelton who seems to be an authority on the subject. Shelton was a key proponent of the Natural Hygiene movement. The book is several decades old, which makes me wonder if the science is current.
• A more recent volume is Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor’s Program for Conquering Disease (1998) by Joel Fuhrman, M.D.
• And there is a functioning Yahoo Group on the topic of Water Fasting.

I’m not sure I’m ready for a fast quite yet, because I’m exploring a radical new concept, namely eating less on a daily basis. This means experiencing a radical new sensation, namely hunger.

At a rough guess I figure I’ve knocked out about 10-20% of my daily calorie intake by the following simple measures:

1. I’m not drinking alcohol.
2. I used to eat a snack every evening before bed, essentially a fourth meal. Usually this was a small meal, a bowl of cereal perhaps. But it often was more substantial, especially if I’d a few drinks earlier in the evening.
3. I’m not having second helpings at dinner, and I’m trying to keep what portions I do have at dinner modest.

In fact I’m aiming to follow the advice of fellow Hoosier Adelle Davis, to “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.”

But most of all, I’m learning not to mind being a little hungry, or even pretty darn hungry, from time to time. It’s not a bad feeling. It reminds me that I’m alive. Mindfulness meditation has taught me the value of simply observing such sensation, and realizing I have a choice to respond to them or not. And if the craving for food gets me too cranky, a glass of water or a cup of tea often helps.

What’s especially interesting to me is how quickly my standards have changed. After just one month, I’ve already noted that if I eat a large meal like I used to enjoy, I now feel bloated and overfull. In fact, even my standard lunch (carrot, sandwich, apple, water) is starting to seem like a lot. I no longer crave a cookie or something extra afterward.

Even more wonderful, I’ve noted that healthier food, like fresh fruits and vegetables, are more appealing when I’m really hungry. Ironically, something about overeating seems to make fatty and salty foods more attractive, to me anyhow; I don’t know how other people experience this.

Despite what I wrote above, these changes are not truly radical. They are incremental. But I think that’s for the best.

We may even save on our grocery bill.

Photo credit: Cropped from original, Four Baby Robins by Ruth Everson.

Dear Persephone,

You are forty-nine months old today. I thought after your fourth birthday you might slow down, but no. You continue to develop at an astonishing rate.

A few weeks ago you drew your first real representational drawing. As a would-be cartoonist and visual artist, I consider this a huge milestone. I know I mentioned something similar last month, but that was a virtual drawing using an iPad app, and I coached you pretty heavily, drawing shapes first and then undoing them and letting you try. This time you drew with marker on paper, and I didn’t touch anything. I only suggested what to draw, “two circles for the eyes,” like that. And the result was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

I tried to teach you to draw a cat, but that requires triangles, and you don’t seem interested in mastering that technique yet.

A couple days ago I took you to the doctor for your annual checkup. You were due for a round of vaccinations, the last you’ll need for seven years. A dilemma: to tell you up front about the shots, or to wait until the last moment? The latter would seem to spare you some dread, but perhaps there’s value in confronting fear, facing it down. I kind of hinted that shots were a possibility beforehand, and then when we were waiting we discussed that more explicitly. And you handled it very well. You were brave, and only really cried after the fourth and final needle stick. And you so charmed the nurses neither of them wanted to be the one to administer the shots. But you got over it very quickly. In fact, you were mostly excited about the stack of stickers the nurse gave you.

Speaking of being poked and prodded, we recently had you tested by a couple child psychologists. It’s not something we would have done if left to our own devices. Nope, it’s just an attempt to grapple with the bizarre school system(s) in this city. And here’s where this gets tricky, in terms of knowing what to write here. I have to consider your privacy. So let’s just say we had you tested for smarts, and you came through with flying colors. In the end I’m glad we did it, no matter where you go to school, because it’s assuaged some of the fears I’ve had relating to lead poisoning. I take such tests with a grain of salt, but at the very least it’s an indication that you do well at tests. Perhaps you take after me; I’ve always done well on tests, and it’s made life much easier.

I do have to agree that you’re pretty quick on the uptake. For example, we’re now reading A Little Princess by Francis Hodgson Burnett. It’s a bit over your head but you love it all the same. In the first or second chapter we came across the word “pupil,” which I figured you wouldn’t recognize, so I defined it for you. You’ve heard the word again in subsequent chapters, and apparently you’ve learned it, because last night you casually mentioned that “there’s a pupil in my class named Christian.” That led to a discussion of the word “vocabulary,” how each person has their own vocabulary, how it keeps getting bigger each time you learn a new word.

Finally, I wanted to mention that you asked me a question I’ve been anticipating, and also kind of dreading, for quite some time.

“Is the Tooth Fairy real?”

“That depends. What do you mean by real?”

“Real means that something is real.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“Well, I think the Tooth Fairy is not real.”

“I’m so proud of you for thinking about these things and asking these questions. Let me ask you this: Do you like the story of the Tooth Fairy?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a fun story, isn’t it? Sometimes that’s what really matters. Did you notice I never actually answered your question?”

“But Dada, will you tell me, is the Tooth Fairy real or not?”

And so forth. I never really gave you a straight answer. Maybe when you’re old enough to read this you’ll understand why.

Now we enter that half of the year where the days are longer than the nights.

The equinox came this morning at fourteen minutes past midnight. I have to make an effort not to fixate on that single moment. I was asleep anyhow. Better to extend the celebration. The equilux was last Thursday here in New Orleans. Why not start there?

I got a second equilux this year, as I flew up to Philadelphia. The equilux, that day when sunrise and sunset are most nearly twelve hours apart, varies by latitude. It comes a day later there.

I went to Bryn Mawr College for the fifth Mindfulness in Education conference, which culminated in a full day of (mostly) silent meditation. I’ve never done anything quite like that before.

In retrospect, it was a great way to celebrate the equinox. Mindfulness surely cultivates balance. But I missed my family.

Then I came back home, and kept Persephone home from school Monday, so we could celebrate the equinox together. In addition to baking our weekly bread, we dyed eggs to decorate an “egg tree,” prepared a vernal-themed feast for dinner, and ran to the doctor for the girl’s four-year checkup and vaccinations. The meal was delicious: spring greens with sprouts, quiche, and charoset for desert. I also made black and white cookies, but didn’t get them done until later that night. By the time I finally hit the sack I was quite exhausted. I bit off a little more than I could chew. Not very balanced.

In the spirit of purification, I haven’t had anything to drink since Mardi Gras. (Well, actually since the weekend after Mardi Gras, but really, who’s counting? We had a visit from Ed the Meat Poet and I popped a cork.) I’ve been tapering off the coffee too, down to just a few swallows this morning. I hope to start on some dandelion-chicory root tea later this week. The idea of a seasonal detox session is appealing to me. In the same spirit I’ve even looked into fasting, but I’m not sure I’m ready for that quite yet. I am eating less, but that’s a topic for another post.

And if the spirit of the season can be maintained why not continue until Hellacious Saturday? Or Easter? Or Passover? Or forever?

Six months ago, at the autumnal equinox, I dedicated myself to a full year of discovering or uncovering my religion. This is the halfway mark, the inversion of that time across the mirror of the year. The dark half of the year is behind us for now, the light half ahead. The past six months have been fruitful, but my spirits have often flagged. I haven’t written about that much. The idea was to post less often and to write more thoughtfully, but to remain continually engaged in that process. Instead I’ve lapsed into periods of complete disengagement. Perhaps I need that reflective exercise to maintain a proper perspective.

It’s always a good time to begin again. Looking forward, I feel a buoyancy.