Talking down a dragonfly

Yesterday I was thinking about that phrase we use, "connecting with nature"...and noticing how finely attuned my senses are right now, to the sounds, the smells, the very life of the earth around me.

I went into the Temple, knelt by the altar, said my prayer:

Until I awaken, I take refuge in the buddha (the light within), the dharma (my teachers human and non), and the sangha (all the people of this world, my ancestors and my descendants).
Through the goodness of generosity and other virtues,
May I awaken fully in order to help all beings.

I was about to settle into my sit when I heard a buzzing and beating at the window. Not unusual, there are always bees and flys trapped behind the huge panes of glass, and I have to carefully trap them one by one with a cup and cardboard. But this time when I went to the window there was a large dragonfly, beating itself violently against the glass.

I was afraid that I would injure it if I tried to trap it in a cup so I got a piece of paper and held it under the dragonfly. She scrambled away, once, twice. And then I started talking to her, I said, trust me, please. I'll carry you outside. I promise. Shhhhh....be still, I'll help you.

And she crawled onto the paper, and stood still, vibrating with fear. And I kept talking her down, and slowly carried her to the open window. And I said OK, there you go...fly.

She stood for a moment and then gathered her legs and flew off.

Connecting.

Just what the buddha ordered

Made this flyer today, and posted it up around Cortes. Bit by bit, the mysterious vision is taking shape! We have our first hostel guest, a sweet guy named Michael. Today the plumber came and made the outdoor shower work, a delicious fine spray in the bright hot sunshine. A young Inuit man may come for a few days, to do chores and learn a bit about buddhism...and we are running a wonderful 4-month course on the Four Immeasurables: Equanimity, Compassion, Lovingkindness and Joy. One month per immeasurable :)

Meanwhile, I am gorging on fat juicy grapefruity salmonberries. And yesterday I decorated the altar with wild roses, a bit of blood shed in the picking, but the temple smells so sweet.

Arcosanti Revisited

Once again I find myself mysteriously, in a place of pure Love...built plank by plank by one man's will and vision, as a gift to the community and the future. And as it is, pure Love, it is crazy and beautiful, extreme and irrational, crumbling and decaying and fertile and fecund, sensuous and heart-achingly beautiful...a death-trap, paradise, a challenge and a joy.
Dorje Ling, I have arrived at your door, one clumsy and curious sky-walking dakini...here to serve the babbling buddha, in all his bumbling ways.

Car-Free Screed

Going Car-Free

(this is my "discourse" for The Great Turning this Saturday – come! tinyurl.com/cna3eh)

My name is Carmen Mills. I am a Vancouver-centered Director of Free Will. I am really stoked about the fact that people are finally starting to figure out that we can actually reclaim our freedom by letting go of our cars.

A friend of mine, Charles Montgomery, is writing a book about “hedonics” – the economics of happiness. He’s been researching in cities all over the the world to find out what makes people truly happy. One of the most consistent indicators he has discovered is that the shorter the average car-commute, the happier the people are. The more time people spend in cars, the more unhappy they are. Cars, for all their convenience and ease, are a constant and cumulative source of human misery. We sell our souls to buy cars, and the cars destroy our souls.

The irony of the thing, of course, is that we have we have totally bought the notion that cars=freedom=happiness. In fact, to be car-dependent is to be just the opposite of free: it is to be a slave. We live and die as slaves: to jobs we hate, to the military-industrial complex, to marketers and puppeteers, to the matrix. Somehow no matter how hard we work, life just never manages to be like a car commercial. What’s happening here? We were promised freedom (with air bags and aircon, no money down and guaranteed financing) – but somehow we ended up as slaves.

It’s boring and oppresive as hell. And sometimes it feels like car culture/the fossil fuel industry is such a massive behemoth that we will never bring it down. But the fabric of denial is wearing very thin in spots these days, and glimmers of sanity are starting to break through. Car sales in Canada are down 16% over the last year – and although you can chalk that up to the “economy” or whatever, lots of people are also just waking up and gearing down. Speaking of which, kudos to the global artificial economy for collapsing – self-preservation kicks in, just in the nick of time.

Anyway, I know we are well into The Great Turning, because I’ve been working on this stuff for a long time and nowadays I am consistently flabbergasted by how quickly things are turning around. I know for example that when we started the first Car-Free Commercial Drive Festival in 2005, we encountered massive suspicion and defensiveness and downright animosity. Some people got really pissed, and the “decision makers” were skittish as all getout. To question car-culture in 2005 was to question an unassailable core value. No one wanted to risk the ire of the car-dealers. And if we wanted to communicate beyond the fringes to the mainstream, we had to walk on eggshells in order not to offend.

But things are changing so quickly! People are really starting to get it at every level, and now we are definitely moving along with the turning tide of public and political will. The sarcastic media comments have just about melted away. Car-free celebrations, street-reclaiming, and regular street-openings (vs. “traffic-closures”) are happening everywhere. Bike sales are going through the roof. Cities all over the world are tearing down freeways and getting their shit together.

It’s not that I don’t think we still have a long ways to go, or a bunch of fights still to fight, or that things won’t get worse before they get better (in fact, things are getting better and worse simultaneously, I’d say we’re neck and neck). But I can see that on the path toward car-freedom, in the world that I can touch and see, things are turning around. This is very fortunate, because car-freedom means people are free, not slaves – and free-thinking people make better decisions.

So what does it mean, then, to go car-free?

To go car-free means to get free.

It means to feel your freedom in your body – in your legs, in your lungs, in your heart. To go car-free is to remember that no matter what General Motors may have told you, you are self-propelled and you have power. And your free movement need not depend on someone else’s misery.

To go car-free is also to reconnect to the land – to experience your environment directly. You are free to really see and smell and hear the world – without a metal shield and an air-conditioner between the world and you. You and the world get to merge. You get to taste the un-conditioned air. You get to feel the gravity of the earth sucking at your feet. You get to take off the blinders and see.

To go car-free means to reclaim your commons – the space that belongs, collectively, to us – that has been stolen away bit by bit and paved in the name of mobility. Our public squares, our back alleys, our markets. Our STREETS. So much concrete taken from people and given over to cars! And why? To isolate us, to discourage public assembly, to suppress revolution. Stick us each in solitary confinement, in a metal capsule. Force us to live in sidewalkless cul-de-sacs, and to spend a quarter of every day in the soul-crushing commute to the downtown parkade. Separate us from our neighbours. Put us in little cells and watch us get all lonely and scared and timid and angry, and, um, alienated. Well guess what? We are social creatures. We want to talk to each other. We have a right to communicate. We want our zocalos back, and our mercados and our our Tiananmens and our STREETS back. Streets are for people, and we the people demand freedom of assembly. Car-freedom. Freedom to communicate.

To go car-free means to throw a big fat monkeywrench into the matrix of self-deceipt. To go car-free means to escape from the machine. To go car-free means to recognize our free will and reclaim our common destiny.

People are always asking me if I think we will ever see car-free areas, or car-free cities, or car-free streets. Oh seriously folks – car culture is collapsing all around us. Car-freedom is inevitable. Lets not debate the issue, let’s just start right now to love our bodies and give ourselves the self-propelled pleasure we crave. Let’s get on with the job of creating the urban paradise we deserve. Let’s cut to the chase and start conjuring up the victory party.

We are going car-free. Free at last, free at last, free at last.

My body knows

Even my body, my poor klutzy body, the body that hid from gym class, the body that ducks baseballs, the body that is wobbly and injured and aging, the body that loves coffee and cheesecake and a grilled sausage on a bun –
While my brain lunges and snaps for elusive rationale,
My body, my one and only body, speaks the truth.

Defrag me

My mind feels like a heap of breadcrumbs. My attention span reduced to seconds. I swear, I cannot even concentrate long enough to make my bed – I shake out the sheets and then check my email and then smooth the pillowcase, then put the kettle on, then search for a pen to make some notes on a slip of paper but before i make the notes i get distracted by that funny smell coming from the fridge. And then the phone rings. And then I smooth the pillow case, plump the pillow, put it on the bed, check my email again and decide to go out for coffee and finish the bed later.

I need to unplug now.

Unveiling

Just got back from my dad's "unveiling" in Toronto - that's a Jewish thing, a year after someone's death, the unveiling of their gravestone.

Family stuff, you know - surreal and wacky and painful and aggravating as shit -- are everyone's relatives as fucked up and crazy as mine?! (rhetorical question). Family stuff.

Death is all around me, it's all around all of us, as much as life is. I just keep getting caught up in these dumbstruck awestruck moments, and all I can do is cry (like publicly and embarrasingly) with joy. It's all so beautiful and fleeting, dying as fast as it can be born.

:)

me and my bro

we have a similar sense of humour, as you might guess...
at 5'6 he is the tall guy of the family.

I really like my bro and am trying to forge a genuine human (i.e. non-sibling) relationship with him – a lifelong project.

Leap of faith

I have always had, not a dream but a vision in the back my mind -- that one day I would arrive as a stranger to a place, and feel immediately comfortable and comforted – like coming home. And then I imagined, that I would simply march up to the door and say "I like it here. I want to stay. Can I?"

And finally after so many years the deja-vu moment arrived. I knew when I saw the Welcome - Ring Bell and Enter sign, that it was time. And I let myself be guided.

So now having seized on the moment of certainty, I am spiralling through exhillaration and terror in seesawing proportion. I am not afraid about money (i won't be making any), or about the projects i am laying aside or the things I will be away for (i'll be away for Car Free Day!) or the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that i might miss. I am not (really) afraid that when I come back no one will recognize me, or that all my friends will have moved to other countries.

I am a little bit afraid of being irresponsible to things I am committed to and which feel urgent -- especially Gateway. (this is otherwise known as GUILT). But I feel like I will help in other ways while I'm away, and it is likely that I will be back in Van in the fall, rejuvenated for the joyous battle.

Mostly though -- this is my mundane confession and it really pisses me off: of all the fears the big one is of being "bored." How horrendously banal, to be terrified of boredome, but that's what gives me the worst moments of heebie-jeebies -- what if i get there and there's NOTHING TO DO??!! Will I go INSANE? Look. There is NOWHERE to rent videos. it is a 45-minute trek uphill to the microhamlet of Mansons Landing. there is a DIALUP MODEM. And most of the time, there will be NO ONE THERE EXCEPT ME.

What if I go insane?

I am absolutely terrified of being with myself. "Bored" is an addiction, a chronic fear of being with self.

So among other reasons, I am going to Cortes Island to detox. To dare myself to boredom. To confront my addictions. To be with myself.

But really, mostly, I am going because how the hell can I not?! What lame excuse do I have?! My god, its paradise, its my frickin dream.

It's a dare.

Red pill or blue?

Leap of faith.

Dorje Ling

So I went to visit my spinsta sista Romina on Cortes Island. With one knee swollen from hitting a curb and taking a flying header off my bike, and a heart bruised from over-exertion (from such loving, from loving so hard).

Borrowed a rusty bike and went for a ride. Heard there was some Buddhist kind of place down the road, so headed that way. Downhill, then up, then down, and up again. Soon along the gears seized and the knee began to throb so I abandoned the bike, leaning it up beside a sign like a wheel, and began walking. My body started to buzz and tingle, and then I saw the sign, the red sign with no words, only a golden stupa painted on it. Followed the signs. An odd wind was blowing, a warm pulling wind, drawing me forward. I passed under the prayer flags and rang the bell.

And so starting in June I will be living at Dorje Ling, also called the Babbling Buddha guest house and dharma center...keeping an eye on the place, helping to organize retreats (or at least one retreat, over my birthday weekend on July 4), convene work parties, garden and clean. Most of the time I will be alone there, just me and the wolves and the treefrogs and the owls.

Life is so peculiar.