i have found with cars
as with humans
you have to make your own
right of way
or they will take it
right away
by force, by size, by power
by imminent domain
maybe
we can't do that 
with corporations
who will frack the earth
and steal the park
but we can make them know
we aren't theirs 
and
we are still here 
 

            how can we breathe in imminent domain? it seems to take our very breath away.

for karin. i call your hospital room. it rings and rings. then disconnects. i'm breathing here, as deeply as i am able. while i breathe i think of you, in that room, busily breathing too.

taking everything you can get is not being free. killing for freedom is killing freedom. we will never be free, taking and killing.

reading wendell berry on the doctrine of inevitability where everything is extracted. now we seem so far advanced from living with the land, we live off and on it, distantly, not with it. we are not with it, and it seems we will never get back to it unless it is gone, and economy reverts to ecology. for now we are too advanced for life.

hi honey bear, will you sleep for me, i will breathe for you and you sleep for me, we will enjoin. 
thinking this morning the wind was clear. thinking it's hard to breathe. wind breath. illustrate something for me. a cherub in the blue air, breathing for us. 
a broken tree. breathe for me. 
thinking of the lyrics i hear. without the music you have to hear. in our head shared memory. music the art of memory. in our head we are living what is missing. we miss the living. i thought i missed the blood moon, yet i hear the super blue moon will be here tonight. 
we see what we think. we think what we see. we define by what's missing. we are so defined. we enjoin. we breathe.
for what we see and don't see.  

freedom in the free market the free world becomes what you can take freedom is theft, from people from land, from children, you extract freedom from resources, everything is resource for human extraction, you free it for yourself, you liberate it frm the commons, you confiscate open space by imminent domain.

not in order of priority but in order of what burns most, obama is hiring now, kids, and one thing sure, they seem to believe in imminent domain and the evil foregone conclusion of a done deal, and i fucking hate him for that. 
my friend karin is in emergency trying to breathe. i said to myself this morning it's getting harder to breathe. i said to julia i've been willing myself to breathe, i may have been innately trying to breathe for her. i wish i could breathe for her yet my breath is shallow. it feels like there is less air everywhere, and in it toxic molecules.  

when we speak of invasive species, we must reflect and consider, what sort of species 
 are we?

            what if health and ecology were the values that ordered society.

the good health of the land economies is a value that a market as such cannot consider and cannot protect.

wendell berry

we been had
comet.
we been colonized
by our own
technologies.

be still
it's happening 
still again 
it's happening 
still it's happening
again
still

if we own nothing
if we control nothing
if we exploit nothing
what is our value

his legacy comes down to us
his legacy comes down to taking us
for granted for free for the money for the building
of his tower in our park
his legacy is the sad return
of prodigal empire

he is the face of empire to me 
empire lost 
empire of exploit 
empire of loss
the face of empire
trumps everything



 

when everything is processed what commodity will i be.

what is called knowledge
what is called economy
uses people and land ruthlessly 
 

dispersed lives of dispersed individuals, commuting and consuming, returning at night to their screens and carryout meals.

wendell berry

what was a country turned into an economy. ecology was forgot.

as the local influences weaken, the outside influences grow stronger.

wendell berry

a culture such as this, that is predicated on war and dedicated to nature and people only as commodities to extract, will not value, respect, or preserve life, even its own. this culture devours.

my cousin shari is a veterinarian and dear to me. she is so sweet, and it's natural that she would be helping animals and animal people. i praise her heart here.
we were writing about divorce. i told her dogs save my life.

Oh believe me I understand when you say the dogs saved your life. I have had many people tell me the same thing. And I've seen the converse: when the animal dies the human loses their will to live. I have had people tell me (as I'm euthanizing their dog) that the dog is their best friend. That the dog is all they have to live for. That they don't want to live without the dog. That they want me to give the shot to them too....

It really can't be overstated how important a dog is to so many of us, myself included. I know there are people who live without animals but I don't get them!  And I really don't know any of them. Since I work with animals it seems that all my social interactions are with animal people.  Some people bond to their cats like that but I think the emotional bond is there so much more with a dog.

Regarding your childhood experience: I think adults who decide to leave their spouse selfishly talk themselves into thinking kids are resilient and the breakup of the marriage is just between the adults in the family, and not going to have much effect on the kids.  I suppose there are kids who are resilient like that but for every resilient kid there is a sensitive one who is deeply wounded. I remember when my parents told me that Aunt Anita was getting divorced. Even at my distance it really shook me up, just knowing this was a possibility and imagining what it would be like to have my Dad leave and have a new daughter that he lived with. And not me. For a long time I obsessed about every little sign that my parents' marriage might be in trouble after that.

I think even generations later those wounds are still present. My great grandparents were divorced (which must have been super unusual for that age.)  Grandma Connie's father left  for another woman and started a new family. Grandma's half brother (from that second marriage) just died a couple of years ago and I could tell that Mom still carried that hurt and resentment on behalf of her mother, 8 decades later. Grandma's half brother got all the love (and financial resources) from the father and poor Grandma was just lost. Her Dad moved to the other side of the country and she only lived with him for short vacations after that.  When she grew up she got into a bad marriage with my grandpa and of course that ended in divorce too. Although that divorce didn't result in a new family with "replacement" kids. I think that is a whole new trauma that affects kids on a totally different level.  I suspect that my mom was in part attracted to Dad just because he was so stable. And her top priority was to have some stability in her life.

Anyway, all that to say that I could well imagine having that kind of family fracturing would lead to some serious trust issues for the kids involved. love and hugs - S

 

it started with a cat here for me. walking the cat i found the dogs, so i credit the cat for that. and now renate has two cats and i love them, one is kind of hers and the other, the boy, is kind of mines. and he's like a dog.

i've been thinking of when copper dies. he's so alive inside me i feel i will die too. i've actually thought of asking for the injection myself. but i tell others the only way out is on, to the next dog that needs and is needed by you.

regarding the family break, i'm not sure if more damage came before or after, it's a continuum i guess. but the fracture was deeply damaging when the family was intact. i was resilient in that animals saved me then too. kids seek animals like nutrients that are missing in human society i think. kids want animals and the animal nature within themselves. they want a natural continuum in a culture so unnatural, predicated on war on life, and money.

the trauma gets buried and continues.

love, doug

 

*i'm not sure what to include and what not from email. maybe it's not interesting or useful to others. maybe it's my own stuff. if i had an editor what would my editor include? but i am my editor, so i can't differ to the editor, i mean defer. and i must admit the strong possibility that i am an awful editor. [ed.]

 

 

when i said the people on the point saw copp but not me suzanne replied, You can be hard to spot, whereas Copper is visible a block away.
why am i hard to spot? i was standing next to them. i get how some dogs are more appealing, hence more visible.

i'm the same way, i think. humans are often the background of their dogs. i get it. we all got to serve somebody. it goes back a long way with me though, feeling like a ghost. i just had a dream last night like that, i was in a party with professional photographers and their assistants. the photogs had a separate exclusive party room, and i was like an awkward ghost embodied with the professional assistants. i was in that realm in real life, and i was humiliated. i was a professional nothing, and not even conversational. 
yet i am grateful for the dogs so often for bringing me into the light of conversation, even when i'm muted.

(it's like a game sometime
when you match pictures and words
or separate them out 
by what does not belong)
                                                                                   ***
The elites in a dying culture confuse what the economist Karl Polanyi calls “real” and “fictitious” commodities. A commodity is a product manufactured for sale. The ecosystem, labor and money, therefore, are not commodities. Once these fictitious commodities are treated as real ones for exploitation and manipulation, Polanyi writes, human society devours itself. Workers become dehumanized cogs. Currency and trade are manipulated by speculators, wreaking havoc with the economy and leading to financial collapse. The natural world is turned into a toxic wasteland. The elites, as the society breaks down, retreat into protected enclaves where they have access to security and services denied to the wider population. They last longer than those outside their gates, but the tsunami of destruction they orchestrate does not spare them.

Chris Hedges



and sometimes they make towers in the park for dominion.

the park is trashed and 
it's not paradise on the inside either
the world is stupidly comprised
the stupid want more lights
less trees
they can't see 
how like the trees are
their minds are blind with 
the artificial light that
makes me weep

hope is a flown bird you wait for to return.

if you feel that i'm difficult and obtuse, just imagine what i feel. [ed.]

mister started out all springy, when i said the word renate, he got all excited and pointed toward the island. then he zoned after the meadow as though he had passed through a cloud of soporific gas or pollen from the past, and renate said, he shadows you, or rather he mirrors you, you're both in your own zone, and i said yeah, i wish he would shadow me in my zone and stop distracting my distraction to retrieve the retriever, gnome sane. anyway 
she had a point there, and i need to wake up.

when we came upon the fragments of an ice sculpture behind the museum he got excited again and lay in the mud happily crunching. i grabbed a hand size chunk and he gnawed it in my hand all the way home.

Residents should not be surprised by OPC process

Dear Editor:
It should come as no surprise to anyone living on the South Side, that the Obama Presidential Center is not properly taking into account the needs of the local community.
Wake up Hyde Park! Barack Obama loved to talk about the fact that he lived on the South Side, however in all his eight years in office, can you point to any single improvement to the South Side communities that were a result of his being in office?
Gun violence did not drop, schools did not improve, there are still food desserts and a lack of economic development. And the few improvements there might be, were the results of local Aldermen and nothing to do with Obama influence. Obama dropped the South Side like a hot potato. An opportunity missed.
I am not convinced that the Obama Presidential Center will do anything to improve the every day lives of black people living on the South Side, except drive up property values making it unaffordable and take away precious park land.
It is high time people stopped seeing Obama as some magical angel and began seeing him as just another politician. While he can make darn good speeches, he has done nothing for his own community and is primarily concerned for his own legacy.

Joseph Samuelson


 

  hi suzanne, i saw the group at the point this afternoon, and they didn't see me. they saw copp tho. i wondered if they were not seeing me because i didn't come to the party, or if i had disappeared into my sadness like a ghost.

	i'm feeling anomie. i feel a bit better writing about it. but i feel it and it feels bad, like i'll never be able to connect.
it was just this. having a hard time here. sad and disconnected. I'm in NY for another week. It's useful to be reminded that the cause of MY anomie isn't not being in love. I guess it's a common human condition. If I send some pix will that help or just clutter up your feed? yeah, i guess it's useful to be reminded that love does not cure anomie. we got to live it out, if not outlive it. feel free to send pix. did you see my 60 stumps? talk about anomie. Good idea--the spices not the felling of trees. My hotel is near a historically Indian district.are the natives still about, or historic?  are the natives still about, or historic? speaking of historic, and anomie, the historic obama land grab:
is that not a super fucking audacious land grab? in 3d it will blow your mind, and your sanctuary. when you are the x leader of the free world you can do anything, baby. behold.
Have you not made a hedge around him, around his household, & around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, & his possessions have increased in the land.
(found a) Job.
are the natives still about, or historic?

yes, i am under the bridge. 

Although Durkheim’s concept of anomie referred to a condition of relative normlessness of a society or social group, other writers have used the term to refer to conditions of individuals. In this psychological usage, anomie means the state of mind of a person who has no standards or sense of continuity or obligation and has rejected all social bonds. Individuals may feel that community leaders are indifferent to their needs, that society is basically unpredictable and lacking order, and that goals are not being realized. They may have a sense of futility and a conviction that associates are not dependable sources of support.

today of all days. if that were an isolated phrase. what would it mean? i'm just saying, saying to say, today of all days, i don't know why today.

i'm depressed. i can't connect. i'm even noticing, and r. notices, how mister and i are both walking in our own heads, that he mirrors me. and i get fustrated with his distraction, taking it personally. that causes me to ponder how much i depend on him in my dream state. and how my dreams state can veer from walking meditation to a kind of anomie.

Anomie is a social condition in which there is a disintegration or disappearance of the norms and values that were previously common to the society. The concept, thought of as “normlessness,” was developed by founding sociologist, Emile Durkheim He discovered, through research, that anomie occurs during and follows periods of drastic and rapid changes to the social, economic, or political structures of society.
It is, per Durkheim's view, a transition phase wherein the values and norms common during one period of time are no longer valid, but new ones have not yet evolved to take their place.People who live during periods of anomie typically feel disconnected from their society because they no longer see the norms and values that they hold dear reflected in society itself. This leads to the feeling that one does not belong and is not meaningfully connected to others. For some, this may mean that the role they play (or played) and/or their identity is no longer valued by society. Because of this, anomie can foster the feeling that one lacks purpose, engender hopelessness, and encourage deviance and crime.

hmm... 
Considering the whole of Durkheim's writing on anomie, one can see that he saw it as a breakdown of the ties that bind people together to make a functional society -- a state of social derangement. Periods of anomie are unstable, chaotic, and often rife with conflict because the social force of the norms and values that otherwise provide stability is weakened or missing.

i was thinking of it in terms of my past. not being able to connect. growing up disconnected. though i feel disconnected individually, no one is isolated in reality, and no one is isolated in the past, in a fractured family, without context. context is everything. even in isolation. i'm next to someone, locked in myself. i'm isolated, but i'm not alone. that's my anomie. 
it can blind you to the bigger picture, of the one next to you as well as the society. that was part of the narrative of the ghost dance, how different people joined in or avoided the dance, as both individual and member of the collective. 
i never felt part of society. i felt sometimes part of the dance. i don't quite feel it now. i feel fraught in isolation. and yearning to connect meets frustration. i go to try to write, as i went to books, as a kid when things didn't connect, i went to books, i wrote in my head, i had some counter-narrative that i couldn't name. if i had been part of a social group it may have been the ghost dance, though that would be fraught as well, but so was the white community of suburbia and small town and exurbia, subdivided country. i was missing the social connection along with the interpersonal. i was locked in, and to a sometimes debilitating degree, still am. 

the open question is, will i be influenced by something or someone else, can i emerge and foster and grow connection? i have connected before, generally as a prelude to disconnection and disenchantment. and back to books. will i ever be a part of a society? have a relationship that's abiding? or will i only have my personal ghost dance? the ghost dance grew out of the anomie of the native people in a hostile and alien world. i've always felt the world the way a native would, though i didn't feel the native part, and i was conquered by birth in the conquering tribe.

i try to think, but it's hard doing, and i have to ask your indulgence for my wandering diary.

i wonder how much mister is a product of my anomie.

i'll be with the birds and critters lost in obamaland. lost in his world of power and prestige, his world of hope and change, his vision of the landscape of wealth, his hope, his change. there will be less nature and more social control, and i fear we won't be able to walk free. now it's said the driving range won't disappear but expand, and those trees may be early sacrifices. the bobolinks have long been eradicated from bobolink meadow, and the meadow itself may go the way of the birds. but i have other people's dogs to walk, and i can't migrate. i'll stay where the park was and mourn this land. and beyond this millennial garden the vast wasteland of trump. we will have to grow our own nature, on the inside.

ooh, he's here again

i hear him
before i go to sleep
and focus on the day that's been
i realize he's there
when i turn the light off
and turn over
nobody knows about my man
they think he's lost on some horizon
and suddenly i find myself listening
to a man ive never known before
telling me about the sea
oh his love is to eternity

ooh he's here again
the man with the child in his eyes
ooh he's here again
the man with the child in his eyes

he's very understanding and he's so
aware of all my situations
when i stay up late
he's always with me
what i feel when i hesitate
oh i'm so worried about my love
they say no, no it won't last forever 

and here i am again my girl
wondering what on earth i am doing here
maybe he doesn't love me
i just took a trip on my love for him

ooh he's here again
the man with the child in his eyes
ooh he's here again
the man with the child in his eyes

 

 

 

kate bush

the man with the child in his eyes.

lost puppy found in the alley behind the bookstore just in time for the children's book group.


(photo by franny b.)

i want some new news that doesn't despair me.

i found a book called love is in the earth: a kaleidoscope of crystals. i found a book called bead on an anthill: a lakota childhood. i found 3 notebooks from japan, mostly blank. maybe the news i seek comes from the free book box. i remember the stump farm on gabriola island. it was a clearing, a small house and barn, a chicken coop, hidden in the pines. this clearing here is not a clearing, it's a harvest of devastation. 
seems like there's never any rest i said to r. waiting for the elevator. you rested yesterday she said. oh, yeah, i forgot. thanks, r. well that was last week. i'm tireder now. when i rest you see, i don't rest. so it's true, though i forget, there is no rest this week to last.

there was a thread on father pfleger on the opc and i learned he was all for the lucas museum and the money floated his way and he called the friends of the parks a gang. the friendliest gang in town i might add. i'm with that gang all the way. now this father makes me sad, and i ask gabriel, so he's with the land grabbers. is this what social activism comes to, getting a place at the table with the artful dealers? or tossed a roll of green bones?

I’ve come to believe that we have a shelf life as activists and eventually we are ineffective or give in to our ambition. gabriel says.

oh no. well i'm reading about the ghost dance, and they did everything to crush that, but it kept on. i just did a post on the most recent 60 fallen trees.

what if our ambition and our soul's ambition are the same, to fight for space and life. i say.

I think that is a beautiful vision and could very well be true. gabriel said. 

 

i sigh, i think he still has shelf life. 

i don't know about pfleger. he's no friend of the parks, apparently. shame. these museums in the park may represent sort of secular churches of money. the clergy are money men are in the park building temples.