Surf That Wave

The basic principle of surfing is to gain a little momentum just before being hit with a lot of momentum.
When you are already flowing with the direction things are headed, potentially destructive change becomes a powerful and useful force.

That is the underlying thought behind what I am trying to accomplish here.
It is abundantly clear to me that our current 'business as usual' model has a very limited life expectancy, for the simple reason that a society based on consumption will consume itself.

I see a huge transition ahead for us. How well we survive it will depend on how well we "learn to surf".

Learning how to live as a tribe, learning how to produce our own food and energy locally without depleting our resources, and creating new local economies are critical skills we need to figure out fast if we don't want to be pounded into oblivion by the massive wave coming at us.

When the current economy fails to meet the needs of the people it is supposed to serve, alternative economies will arise to meet those needs.
So here are some tips on starting your own underground economy;

1. Identify your needs.
Look for ways to meet them that do not involve the almighty dollar changing hands.

2. Focus on being a producer, rather than a consumer.

3. Know your neighbors.
What do they have that you need? What do you have that they need?
Can you trade skills for your needs? Do you produce anything you can trade?

4. Pay it forward.
Help a neighbor in need. Cultivate useful relationships.
Network and identify ways to meet community needs.

5. Resources are everywhere. Practice seeing them.
Where most people see a trashy junked car, I see a new generator, a new chimney top, plumbing repair parts, a solar dehydrator or cooker...the list goes on. Use your imagination, and procure the tools you need to work with those resources.

6. Don't overlook government programs as a resource.
They might not be around for long, but while they are you can use them to gain capital to increase your efficiency or trade for your needs. I paid into this system my whole life, so I may as well try to get something out of it before the whole thing takes a shit.

Community "free markets" are being organized as a way to exchange goods, cultivate a gift economy, re-purpose useful items that would otherwise go to landfills, and network with neighbors.


Some progressive towns are going so far as to come up with their own local currency, called "scrip" which is accepted by most independent local businesses. Using scrip helps support the local economy since it changes hands among residents and small business, and discourages shopping at chain stores which drain local economies by sending capital to "corporate".
From the "local currencies" page at The E.F. Schumacher Society Website;

The local and decentralized banking systems of a hundred and fifty years ago had the advantage of diversity. The failure of a local bank-even a New York bank-was still a local failure, and its costs were internalized. But today we are facing the failure of an entire system. Consider the billions of tax dollars spent by the national deposit insurance system to bail out the Savings and Loan industry. And recall that billions were added to the national debt in order to bail out large banks when developing countries defaulted on their loans. These systemic failures are bound to occur if local economic control of banking customs and money supply is compromised by centralization and sacrificed to serve the heedless demands of growth.

Underground economies already exist wherever something is illegal. I'm not saying you should cook meth for a living, but I have observed a vast migrant workforce that hitchhikes up and down Hwy. 101 in the PNW following harvest season with their own tiny scissors to trim the best kind bud the US has to offer. Regional hardware stores realize this and stock up on small pointy trim tools and turkey roaster bags just before harvest season. Look for ways to take advantage of existing underground economies, or organize your own.

Lots of us don't have jobs anymore, so we should have plenty of time to do something useful.

Underground Economy

After much thought and meditation on my recent challenging situation, I realized that most of what I do, and much of what makes me who I am (in an egoic sense) arises from never feeling safe.
I can find/grow/butcher my own food, I can build shelter, I can invent and assemble contraptions to meet my needs. I have made it my business to learn these things because I know I can never count on anyone to take care of me.
When I went ballistic over my sex life being thwarted, it was because I was trying to protect an experience that afforded me a few moments of illusory security.

After a few days I realized how ridiculous it was to expend so much energy to protect an illusion, and decided to get busy protecting something that gives me a very practical feeling of security; this land and community.

This decision was partly catalyzed by the announcement that my friend K and her partner, Chef, are leaving the community. Both K and Chef are highly functional people who fulfilled many critical responsibilities here on the farm.

A couple days after their announcement, it began to sink into my brain. I started to see how much there was to do, and how I would have to take the lead if I wanted it to get done. I thought about the world out there falling to bits, and realized I might be the only thing between chaos and sanity.
All that fear, that unsafe feeling, that knowing that it was ultimately up to me to protect what I care about, came rushing in.
I was shaking, and felt like I was watching myself from a point outside my body.
The only times I've felt that way before is in severe grief or severe adrenalin rush.
My whole being was screaming;
"A STORM IS COMING! GET WITH IT! BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES!"

One of the big questions I had in exploring egalitarian community is the fairly obvious fact that we are not all created equal.
There are leaders among us and there are followers. There are self-starters and there are slackers.
Each of us is a unique individual with characteristics that fall somewhere on a spectrum of human experience on many, many different levels.
So how can we be equal?
How do we distribute responsibility fairly?
How do we ensure that that the leaders and self starters don't take on too much and burn themselves out while the slackers coast along in pipe dreams of rainbows and unicorns?

I wish I had the answer.

But I do know that this is the best thing I've ever found.
I am happier than I've ever been, and even in times of stress I am thrilled to realize that my life no longer consists of fading into a gray haze of wage slavery, mind controlling media, and poisonous subsidized food.

So hell yes I'm gonna fight to protect this.

Any way I can.

Even if I have to suddenly take on a management role (ugh).
Even if I have to make little(slacker)girls cry, or tell our founder and matriarch that she needs to release financial control because the farm is slowly going broke while she is slowly going crazy.
Even if I have to start an underground economy here because MommaHen just can't bring herself to hand over the checkbook to someone with a little fiscal responsibility.

The People support me in this. The financial situation is the main reason people leave this community. Everyone agrees something needs to happen, but everyone is too scared to make it happen. And they are too grateful to MommaHen for manifesting this place 40 years ago to tell it like it is to her face.

Am I scared and grateful?

Hell yes.

Has that ever stopped me before?

Hell NO.

There's a big storm coming. We don't have time to waste.

I love my People and I love my Land.

I will do what I need to do to protect this security.

Reality Bites Back

So I seem to have manifested some pretty challenging personal circumstances for myself.

I should know by now that nature always seeks a balance, and no highly positive experience exists in this life of drama that doesn't have its equal and opposite negative experience.

What was developing into a very interesting romantic relationship has now been derailed by the residual possessiveness of a jealous ex-girlfriend and the lack of backbone on the part of the male involved.
Since I am involved in this situation, I am not without fault, and I need to examine my motivations very closely and learn the lessons this has to teach.

The more removed I am from mainstream reality, the more I realize how much we are still animals, and how much of our behavior comes from biological programming we are mostly unaware of.
It is easy, with all the distractions, over stimulation and separation of our culture to deny this side of us.
If I found myself in this situation back in the "real world" I would think to myself "Oh, he has baggage" and I would disassociate with the male and the jealous ex, pursue other relationships if I felt so inclined, and generally ignore him until he either kicks her to the curb and chooses me after all (a previously effective strategy) or until he just goes away.

But part of why I'm here is to stop running away from difficult situations, and since I live and work with both of these people, ignoring it until it goes away is not an option.
One of the patterns of our culture that I would like to change is possessiveness and codependency in sexual/romantic relationships. The depth of anger I felt when my opportunity to copulate during ovulation was thwarted by manipulative tactics of another female was quite astonishing to me. Obviously I need to evaluate possessiveness and attachment within myself.

I just finished reading a book called The Female Animal by Irene Elia. The book goes into lengthy discussions about the evolution of the genders and sexual reproduction, from amoeba to primate, with many comparisons of animal gender roles to those of humans. The effect that hormones can have on animals, including humans, is pretty astounding. From suppression of ovulation in weaker females by the presence of stronger females, to resulting in individuals who are genetically male but physically female and a range of other results, hormones play a much larger part in our experience than I was previously aware of.
So perhaps the extremely dominant and aggressive behavior the situation inspired in me was due in no small part to the hormones of ovulation, which have always affected me much more strongly than the so called PMS portion of the cycle.

Recognizing that I felt threatened, angry and dominant, I looked for a productive way to express my intensity of emotion and spent most of the day splitting and hauling firewood while listening to some good, angry metal on my Ipod.

I am a firewood splitting machine when I'm pissed.

Damn it feels good to swing that axe.

Not only did I fill the woodshed, I managed to completely exhaust any energy I had to be angry. I highly recommend chopping wood to anyone who needs to burn off some aggressive feelings in a productive way.

We have a process for resolving interpersonal conflicts here. The first step is for the disagreeing parties to talk to each other and try in good faith to work things out.
I have talked with him, I've talked with her, and she has talked to him. So far this doesn't seem to be getting us anything except more frustration and hurt feelings. We could all three get together and talk about it, but despite my best efforts at nonviolent communication I feel like she is not hearing me or him accurately. I think the three of us talking together would just make the situation worse.
The second step in the process is called a Third Person meeting, where the conflicted people choose an arbitrator or neutral third person to try to help them hear each other.
This can be challenging, since no one within the community is ever completely neutral. Fortunately, I might have a good option in K, who has been friends with the male and the jilted ex for a long time, and who I also consider a friend.
K happens to be one of the better communicators and peacemakers we have on the farm, so as weird as it seems to drag someone else into my messy relationship issues, I think I will talk to her about being a moderator for us.
Of course, the moderator must be acceptable to all parties involved, so I first need to talk to the other two involved in this dispute to see if a Third Person meeting with K is OK with them.

So what is causing me to react this way? What issues do I have that could be blinding me in this situation?

I am used to being an Alpha female. I am usually the strongest, most independent woman in any situation I encounter. I have a large skill set, which includes most of the tasks that are normally reserved for males. I think this comes from deep security issues.
I hate being dependent upon anyone, because in my experience being dependent = getting screwed over. I have a strong need in my life for security, both for myself and for the people I care about. The only time I can pretend for a little while that I am safe and everything will be OK is when I am in the arms of a (usually submissive) male. Even while feeling secure I realize that it's a complete illusion, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying it for the hour or so it lasts.

Yep. Pretty sad.
And difficult for me to admit.

But a big part of the reason I came here was to face the ugly truths about myself, so here it is;

Rule 1: Don't threaten my security. I will defend myself.

Rule 2: Don't mess with my friends. They are part of my security. See Rule #1.

Rule 3: Don't engage in manipulative behavior. I can see right through it and I will call it out.

Rule 4: Don't undermine my sex life, especially when I'm ovulating. I am an animal as much as any other creature, and I get very aggressive when my opportunity to breed is thwarted.

So much anger over a male and a few minutes of illusory security. I guess if this land is threatened I can expect my attitude to go thermo-nuclear pretty quickly, since the land affords me a strong sense of practical security.

Hippie peace and love is all well and good, and generally a fun way to live, but it only works so long as the inner animal isn't threatened, and the flow of wacky tobaccy isn't interrupted.

Humanity ain't pretty when the animal comes out.

And the animal is only sleeping lightly under the thin veneer of being "civilized".

The up side to all this mess is that my buddy Demon is gonna make a shirt that says "Alpha Bitch" for me.

Sweet.

Seed Corn

This year in The Garden we grew a variety of corn called "Painted Mountain".
It was described as one of the most genetically diverse corn varieties available, and seeing is believing.

It was difficult to plant this corn without admiring every kernel, for each was a different hue or a different pattern.

This corn crop overcame some serious challenges. Crows watched as we planted, and waited for a moment when our backs were turned to sneak seeds.
We covered the crop with Reemay floating crop cover to protect it from the crows; they especially love it just after it germinates. It stayed covered until almost 6" tall, since they just wouldn't leave it alone.

When we uncovered it, we discovered that a visitor planted the seeds too close, so we transplanted the thinnings (carefully, they had brittle roots) from 2" apart to 6" apart, which planted 2 1/2 more 100' rows in addition to the 3 100 footers we were transplanting from.

It grew fast. With our late spring it was not quite "knee high by the 4th of July" but it grew to its expected 4-5' height.
When it set tassels some of them were deformed. It looked like little white threads coming out, and the little male flower pods that hang down and make pollen were deformed and shrunken. After consulting the almighty Google oracle, we determined it was likely smut, a fungus that can infect the ear or the tassel of the corn.
Probably because of the increased heat and humidity under the Reemay at the beginning of its life the fungus was able to gain a hold.
Fortunately not many plants were affected (maybe 1% of the crop) and we pulled a few of the worst affected, but they mostly seemed to pull out of it when drier weather finally set in.

The garden was happy through the summer, and with orange tape, I tagged the most vigorous corn plants and the ones with the most ears per stalk to save those seeds.

The description of this variety said it could be eaten as sweet corn when young, but it was rather fibrous so we let it mature to a flour corn.
We harvested three times about a week apart to get the corn as they started to dry and before the coons ate any more. We wheel barrowed loads of corn into the greenhouse, stripped the husks and silk, snapped off the stems. and set the corn to dry on the top tier of the greenhouse.
As more corn came in, the greenhouse ears were rotated to my trailer. A shelf runs around the top of the living room, all the way around. It stays very warm because the wood stove is in here. I kept track of those orange tagged ears, and set them aside to keep seed for next year. I added some of the biggest, fullest ears to the seed corn stash.

It was pretty easy to remove the kernels from the cob once the ears were nice and dry. By firmly but gently twisting and applying friction the kernels loosened up and fell off. Some ears were difficult, and the bottle opener on my leatherman was good to loosen an initial row before twisting.


The gallon jar is the seed corn, the quart is a blues and purples mix, and the big sack is for flour/meal. My cat is looking annoyed in the background.

It makes your hands hurt after a while, but its a nice thing to do by the fire in cold rainy weather.
And hey, I gotta do something to keep my pitchfork callouses in shape through the winter.

The Pattern

A like minded spirit over at the Tinfoil Hat society has written a fantastic piece on how fractal geometry is changing our paradigm of understanding;

"Mandelbrot brought back the sense of the whole, the old time Pagan sensibility that the part is more than a piece of the whole, even if you don’t understand quite how, and that what affects one part affects the whole in ways you probably won’t understand for quite a while. It reminds us that we are a part of the whole, and reflect the whole in our being, from cell up to organism."
Read the complete entry here:

http://thetinfoilhatsociety.com/2010/10/18/as-above-so-below/


I've loved fractals for a long time. Not just because they're fun to look at, but because I sense they are an important metaphor for understanding how this amazing experience called life is actually structured.
When I watched a PBS special on fractals, some 15 years ago now, a seed crystal of awareness started growing within my subconscious.
I started to learn more about 'sacred geometry', Fibonacci spirals, the golden mean.
I found myself fascinated by the idea that there are mathematical formulas to describe erosion patterns, or the self organizing principle of a sunflower.
The patterns within patterns, always repeating but never exactly the same, seem descriptive of the processes of life itself.

Perhaps there is a Grand Pattern, which always exists yet we are necessarily unable to perceive with our limited human senses. If we did fully perceive it, we wouldn't BE human.

We would just be the Pattern.

The point of our human existence, I reasoned, was for the Pattern to perceive itself.

If I am the pattern, and the pattern is me, everything I do or think or feel sends ripples of change out into the larger pattern.

That is the Next Iteration.

It is happening NOW.

This is why taking ultimate personal responsibility for my own life is so critically important.
If I want a future that includes a fruitful, balanced ecosystem I need to make personal choices that reflect and support that.

If I want a future filled with love and respect and understanding, I need to start loving and respecting all of my fellow beings, be they human or non-human.

It is vital that I make these choices with my whole Being and intent, and not to just "buy green" or drive a hybrid car so I can feel less guilty about all of the other destructive choices I am making.

Any difficult situations that arise in my life have something to teach me. Challenging circumstances when interacting with other humans invite me to take a closer look within myself for areas that need attention.

Real change starts from within.

We must live ourselves into the future we seek.

Separation Anxiety

Who would've thought being part of a tribe could be so challenging?
It's amazing to me that we as humans lived in small tribes or communities for most of our history, and yet when you stick a bunch of us "modern Americans" together, you realize we no longer know how to act in community.

It took such a short time to culturalize us as the ultimate individuals. Even just 50 years ago we lived with extended family, or at least larger nuclear family. Many families lived in small communities, where much of what was consumed was locally produced. The Grocer, the Postmaster, the Butcher, were still friendly faces on a first name basis.

Now, thanks to the miracle of plastic currency, self check out, texting, cell phones, computers....
we can go through our entire day without having a face to face conversation with another human being.

So what?

We are losing something vital.

It is much easier to dehumanize everyone when you have few honest human connections. Its much easier to care only about yourself; to numb yourself to the fear and depression and anger all these other poor trapped rats are feeling, when you never look someone in the eye long enough to see their soul.

I got tired of numbing myself, of killing my soul just to survive in "consensus reality". So I left consensus reality behind.

But once I got out here I realize just how broken we are.
Just how enslaved we are.

We don't know how to communicate. We are used to being hurt and scared and trampled upon and talked down to and brainwashed into liking it. It's quite a novel experience to communicate honestly with people who are trying to cooperate, not to conquer.

We have been trained in divisiveness our entire lives, so it's almost funny when we wind up arguing a point, only to find that we are making the same point.
"I'm an individual!"
"No, I am!"
"You don't know what I want!"
"You don't speak for me!"
"You don't understand my needs!"

All negative emotions; fear, anger, resentment, guilt, happen because our needs are not being met. We have learned very poor ways to communicate our needs, and in many instances we are not even aware we have an unmet need. So we get frustrated, confused, and angry. We attack or defend. We send out these angry, confused vibrations, and they are reflected back at us by nearly everyone we contact. So we have a confused, angry, hurting world.

I think I found a piece of the solution.
Last week I read Non Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.
"Nonviolent Communication contains nothing new. It is based on historical principles of nonviolence-- the natural state of compassion when no violence is present in the heart.

NVC reminds us what we already instinctively know about how good it feels to authentically connect to another human being.

With NVC we learn to hear our own deeper needs and those of others. Through its emphasis on deep listening—to ourselves as well as others—NVC helps us discover the depth of our own compassion. This language reveals the awareness that all human beings are only trying to honor universal values and needs, every minute, every day.

NVC can be seen as both a spiritual practice that helps us see our common humanity, using our power in a way that honors everyone's needs, and a concrete set of skills which help us create life-serving families and communities.

The form is simple, yet powerfully transformative.

Through the practice of NVC, we can learn to clarify what we are observing, what emotions we are feeling, what values we want to live by, and what we want to ask of ourselves and others. We will no longer need to use the language of blame, judgment or domination. We can experience the deep pleasure of contributing to each others' well being."

This description was taken from the NVC website;
http://www.cnvc.org/

This might sound like a bunch of hippy dippy happy speak, but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
I have experienced good results so far with the minimal efforts I have made to apply this style of communication.

In community we have two choices:

We can choose to communicate honestly and with thoughtful compassion to create a beautiful, loving reality.
Or we can choose to keep our old patterns and create so much stupid painful drama for ourselves that we decide community is too difficult; too real.
So we go crawling back to our comfortable little cage.

There may soon come a day when we no longer have the second option.
Might as well be ahead of the curve.

My New Reality

Thinking I can manifest my reality might sound like a bunch of happy horseshit.

Billy Bob down at the bait-n-tackle store would probably consider me to be well and truly off my rocker if I told him he could manifest his own reality. But hey, I like my reality. Its fabulous.

I live in a cozy double wide trailer with my mom and our three cats. The only neighbors I can see are the herd of elk who hang out in the south hay field, and the bald eagle who perches on an alder snag outside my window to eyeball the creek in my front yard for returning salmon.
The trailer has an efficient wood stove, and *gasp* gravity feed spring water.

Just up the road is the main farm. Somehow after only being here 6 months, I am team leader of a 2 acre vegetable garden with the most beautiful soil I have ever laid eyes on. Irrigation for The Garden is also gravity feed.
I am blessed with a mild climate that can grow everything from artichokes to zucchinis. I have two market towns within an hours drive; in cities that value local organic food more than most other places in the country.

If I get too hot while working in the garden, I can walk 200 feet to the swimming hole in the clear, rocky creek and cool off with the trout and crawdads.

I have fantastic conversations about the human condition, the future of our species, the nature of love, breaking old conditioning, and the meaning of life with intelligent, awakened individuals.

Every day is a new day, with new adventures. Time seems odd here. I often think something that happened two days ago took place last week. I rarely know the date or the time. No cell phones work here.

This valley is desperately beautiful and unspoiled.
From here I cannot see the rape of clear cuts across this land.
Our creek still runs clean enough to drink out of.

I can buy raw milk and grass fed beef raised by my neighbor 2 miles away. Or if I don't have money I can do a work trade for it.
This morning on my way to the farm, firewood had fallen across the road, so I hopped out, sawed it up and put it in the truck.

Every time I think my reality just can't get any better, it does.
And yeah, mind blowing orgasams from a walking wet dream of a young tasty hippie are fun too.
Hold on, wait, he's intelligent and deep!

Holy shit.

I really love my reality.

I'm gonna go eat a gluten free ganja cookie and braid my armpit hair.