Poetry - 2005

Calendar Dates
After the memorial service for Larry Gaffin
Vicki Robin
July 1, 2005

Years pass
One by one
Dates become "the time when...
He was born
She died
We met
You left
I swam in the ocean naked at dawn."
Even now,
When that day rolls around,
I feel a chill
Pegging skin to bone
Goose-bump quills fending off the water
As cold as spears of ice,
And taste again brine and freedom.

Entire weeks fill with remembrance
When we took that trip up north, just the two of us
When I sat in the woods without food, calling out for my soul
When Christ died on the cross and was resurrected.

The taste of whole seasons becomes richer
As the complex flavors simmer year after year
Summer becomes...
Dappled light
Roasting heat
Swimming pools, ponds, holes, beaches
Grilled meat
Naked arms
Chilly basements
Snoozing
Walks in the merciful cool of the evening
Fresh picked tomatoes that just rolled out of bed with the sun
Flowers pulling out all the color and fragrance stops
Overwhelming our ability to name anything
Every summer tastes this way... And more

Dates fill as a life ripens
The soul seed awakens
Hungry to root and branch and be
It's very vigor cracking the hard shell of linear time
Sweet flesh yields its juice, then
Wrinkles
Pulls away from the pit
Shrivels
Becomes nothing
All those dates, it seems
Simply food for that invisible issue
For that other life carried inside
A life that’s melon-round and full of living.

* * * * * *

To build a house

Vicki Robin
September 23, 2005
For Terri and Tom to bless their foundation


First, find the place where you will build.
To do this, ask, “Where do I belong?”
Ask, “Is this where I can live my days in joy and die in peace?”
Imagine you can hear your ancestors – those who knew your mother’s mothers mother – say “Yes”.
Then say yes.

Sit naked in this spot
Send your ancient tail down, down, down into the earth
Dowsing for the truth of the land and your belonging
Ask, “Who are my neighbors?”
Ask, “How will I get what I need in this place?”
When your breath comes easy,
When the community you’ve entered has said, “Yes, we will feed you,”
Then you can plan your house.

Walk the land, feeling where you like to stand at sunrise,
Where your feet go when you think, “Food.”
The sun on your back when you labor will bind you to this place.
The breeze that rises from the valley at sunset will freshen your linens for sleep.

Let the house grow around you like a bowl arising from a potter’s hands
Be hollow. Respond.
Go from beetle to fir tree to stone making friends
“Hello. How are you today?”
You’ll call out cheerily on your morning rounds.
Need anything from town?” you’ll ask these neighbors
Many of whom will never leave this place you’ll call home.

Paths will develop through this walking.
Soon you’ll know where the house’s walls and doors and windows should be.
Where they already are.
Only then, call in the architect and draw up the plans
Only then, call in the builders and build you a house.

Today is not the beginning. That was years ago. Perhaps before you were born.
Next year it will not be finished. That will never happen. Just one day you will move in and
Year after year your whole clan will make merry and merry and merry
And your neighbors the ferns and salal will feel safe in your presence
And you will belong.

Simpler Living in Tougher Times

Reflections on Katrina, System Breakdowns and Simpler Living

September 15, 2005

Amidst all the shocking, infuriating, moving emails and news stories since Katrina struck, a few have resonated more deeply with me - and together suggest a place to put our feet as we walk forward from this event.

The first, surprisingly, was at Op-ed by David Brooks on Sept 4 NY Times called The Bursting Point. Brooks is a conservative commentator often dismissive of ideas and actions that make perfect sense to me and mine. He likened this moment to the early 70's when Vietnam, Watergate, and the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and MLK woke us from the dream of America as the innocent, optimistic, good guy nation. We lost faith in our institutions and those breakdowns opened political and cultural space for breakthroughs... some to our liking, some not. He suggests to those with a new vision for America that 'now is the hour' - strut your very best stuff.

The second was from Deena Metzger. Katrina, she said, isn't an event that happened to a few of us. It's part of an unfolding reality that's been happening for decades to all us. She suggests the best speed is slow, and the best approach is sobriety and community We need to discover, together, better responses to crisis through sitting in "council" - circles of conversations - that go as long and as deep as necessary. I quote:

How do we proceed? We do not know. When wise people are
confronted by situations that are beyond them, they admit their incapacity and
they call councils. We must call councils. We must call the elders,
wise ones, scientists, et al, the experienced ones of the world community to
confer with us and each other. Wise cultures call councils especially when
they are, as we are, in grave danger of escalating the damage by taking
short-term methods that can produce even greater devastation… We
must ask each other to set aside, entirely, our personal hopes for our future,
for our security, for our advancement. Let us all be like those who have
lost everything. We are those who have lost everything. We have all lost
everything. We have. There is no future unless we understand that we have
lost everything and we have to begin again. No one and no system in the
living world are safe at this
moment.

The third article I will insert below in its entirety. It's from Bill McKibben, a journalist in the Cassandra tradition who for decades has given us well researched, deeply human books and articles to show us where our society's preference for money as the measure of meaning and value was taking us. He locked on to the Global Warming issue long ago and earned his right to use Katrina as a portend of the environmental whirlwind that's coming. His other occupation - a Methodist Sunday School teacher - I believe gives his journalism a prophetic yet protective quality that speaks to me.

Before Bill's article, I want to tell of a few recent experiences of my own. They may seems 'beside the point' (as much of our daily lives do in times of crisis), but make a point eventually.

The weekend before Katrina hit I attended the Fifth Annual Simplicity Forum Congress - a group of educators, activists, authors, academics, and organizers committed to "honoring and achieving simple, just and sustainable ways of life." In the middle of this intense, strategic meeting we took a break to enjoy our beautiful setting in the High Rockies. Half the group hiked down to a river and literally chilled together with their feet in the water. Suddenly a large dead tree toppled right into the middle of the group, injuring several and hitting one woman directly on the head. Quickly, people arrayed themselves according level of injury and according to skills and capacities, forming a spontaneous team of nurses, wilderness medics, transporters, runners, counselors, witnesses and such. The badly injured woman was stabilized and carried up and out, then ambulanced to the hospital. The group processed the shock while continuing to work very effectively as a team on building the Forum. Of course, in the background everyone wondered what it meant that a near tragedy literally descended into our midst. By the end, it was clear. Simple living doesn't mean that nothing bad happens anymore in your life. It's the low-ego, high-equanimity and community way you go through what happens. It allows the best to come from even bad situations. A tree falls in the forest, and people who live more simply seem to respond naturally with directness, resourcefulness and skill.

Two weekends later, I spent 4 days in the hospital for a high-tech surgical repair way beyond woodsy simplicity's capacity to deal. It was revelatory, though, in what hospitals no longer do. It sometimes took an hour for overworked nurses to respond to my call button. After the response, I'd often find the call button, pain med button and/or phone left out of reach. Hygiene was a packet of heavy-duty handy wipes given to me on day two for me to use. No teeth brushing or hair brushing. One procedure was stymied because the right tool wasn't available. My discharge doc had done his internship at a Community Hospital in LA. He said that such conditions were so common there that sadder-but-wiser nurses and aides would buy supplies at Costco - at their own expense - so they'd have what they needed to care for patients. "You're a writer," he said, "write about that. Someone has to tell that story." I realized that America is closer than ever to the conditions in less 'developed' countries where family members must accompany you to the hospital to do your nursing care. Will busy Americans, as the tempo of such breakdowns increases, need to take back their time for basic caring duties of family and community?

Katrina showed us many things. One was that the systems we have empowered to care for us have gotten careless to the point of being cruel and inhuman. Real humans want to take care of their sick and dying, but we've come to believe that someone else, somewhere else, is in charge and knows better. So people died in the streets, in the Stadium, in the hospitals, in their homes and were left for days. There are big changes we should have made decades ago that could prevent what McKibben warns is coming. Now these are dead snags just waiting to fall. Worse, though, is that we seem to lack to political and social will to make the sober, mature changes needed to deal the "trees that fall" with competence and good grace.

Simpler living seems tied to the expectation that oneself is the grown-up in one's own life. That if change is to be, it starts at home and is practical as well as philosophical. That big systems must be understood for what they can and can't do - and never be allowed to leave us more vulnerable, less able to respond intelligently. I've always said that the last place to look for financial independence is in having a pile of money. If you don't accumulate critical thinking, clear communication, loving relationships, an understanding of give-and-take, networks of friends and mutual help groups - all parts of 'resilience' - no amount of money will protect you in a destabilized world.

As David Brooks says, now is the time to face up to the dark side of America and make sober changes - and hope the forces of intelligence and good sense will mobilize more vigorously than the forces of fear and manipulation. As Deena says, in times like these wise people know that none of us knows what's going on but all of us, in deep conversation, will learn together a way through. As McKibben's article below indicates, Katrina might be the recognized surfacing of an era of breakdowns of a magnitude we never thought possible. As my small experiences indicate, if we rely less on ego and more on community, human resilience and good sense, we can mobilize ourselves to achieve small greatnesses right where we are. If we ask large systems to do only what they are best at - complex surgery, for example, or complex policy making for global conditions - and give as much resource as possible to the people on the local front lines of care, we may be able to weather the coming "perfect" storm.

Where each of us acts in this shifting landscape of crisis is really up to each of us. I trust us to know our neighbors better, to develop skills that will be truly useful in the years ahead, to open our homes to what needs our care, to stay calm, to contribute what we know and get out of the way of those who actually know better. Where can we turn in crisis? To one another, actually. Not letting large systems off the hook on their responsibilities and failures, but not forgetting that at least here in America, it's still "the consent of the governed."

Y2K. 911. Katrina. Are we listening? Every free individual for him or herself is now a loser strategy of enormous magnitude. Simplicity, community, common sense, calm, resilience are really the core curriculum for survival. People in other lands have not had the luxury of forgetting these basics. We have. Katrina was a pop-final. We failed. But we are wired for survival through connection, council, community and what my friend Tom Atlee calls co-intelligence. It may be too late to have predictable future, but we can wise up together. For some great ideas from Alan Atkisson on a community revisioning exercise that's now relevant to rebuilding "the Big Difficult" , go to http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003425.html


and now, Bill...

Not Our America?
by Bill McKibben
September 07, 2005

http://www.tompaine.com/

Bill McKibben is the author of many books on the environment and related topics. His first, The End of Nature, was also the first book for a general audience on global warming. His most recent is Wandering Home, A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape.

If the images of skyscrapers collapsed in heaps of ash were the end of one story—the United States safe on its isolated continent from the turmoil of the world—then the picture of the sodden Superdome with its peeling roof marks the beginning of the next story, the one that will dominate our politics in the coming decades of this century: America befuddled about how to cope with a planet suddenly turned unstable and unpredictable.

Over and over last week, people said that the scenes from the convention center, the highway overpasses, and the other suddenly infamous Crescent City venues didn't "look like America," that they seemed instead to be straight from the Third World. That was almost literally accurate, for poor, black New Orleans (whose life had never previously been of any interest to the larger public) is not so different from other poor and black parts of the world: its infant mortality and life expectancy rates, its educational achievement statistics mirroring scores of African and Latin American enclaves. But it was accurate in another way, too, one full of portent for the future. A decade ago, environmental researcher Norman Myers began trying to add up the number of humans at risk of losing their homes from global warming. He looked at all the obvious places—coastal China, India, Bangladesh, the tiny island states of the Pacific and Indian oceans, the Nile delta, Mozambique, on and on—and predicted that by 2050, it was entirely possible that 150 million people could be "environmental refugees," forced from their homes by rising waters. That's more than the number of political refugees sent scurrying by the bloody century we've just endured. Try to imagine, that is, the chaos that attends busing 15,000 people from one football stadium to another in the richest nation on Earth, and then multiply it by four orders of magnitude and re-situate your thoughts in the poorest nations on earth. And then try to imagine doing it over and over again—probably without the buses.

Because so far, even as blogs and websites all over the Internet fill with accusations about the scandalous lack of planning that led to the collapse of the levees in New Orleans, almost no one is addressing the much larger problems: the scandalous lack of planning that has kept us from even beginning to address climate change, and the sad fact that global warming means the future will be full of just this kind of horror. Consider the first problem for just a minute. No single hurricane is "the result" of global warming. But a month before Katrina hit, MIT hurricane specialist Kerry Emmanuel published a landmark paper in the British science magazine Nature showing that tropical storms were now lasting half again as long and spinning winds 50 percent more powerful than just a few decades before. The only plausible cause: the ever-warmer tropical seas on which these storms thrive. Katrina, a Category 1 storm when it crossed Florida, roared to full life in the abnormally hot water of the Gulf of Mexico. It then punched its way into Louisiana and Mississippi—the latter a state now governed by Haley Barbour, who in an earlier incarnation as a GOP power broker and energy lobbyist helped persuade President Bush to renege on his promise to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

So far, the United States has done exactly nothing even to try to slow the progress of climate change: We're emitting far more carbon than we were in 1988, when scientists issued their first prescient global-warming warnings. Even if, at that moment, we'd started doing all that we could to overhaul our energy economy, we'd probably still be stuck with the one degree Fahrenheit increase in global average temperature that's already driving our current disruptions. Now scientists predict that without truly dramatic change in the very near future, we're likely to see the planet's mercury rise five degrees before this century is out. That is, five times more than we've seen so far. Which leads us to the second problem: For the ten thousand years of human civilization, we've relied on the planet's basic physical stability. Sure, there have been hurricanes and droughts and volcanoes and tsunamis, but averaged out across the Earth, it's been a remarkably stable run. If your grandparents inhabited a particular island, chances were that you could too. If you could grow corn in your field, you could pretty much count on your grandkids being able to do likewise. Those are now sucker's bets—that's what those predictions about environmental refugees really mean.

Here's another way of saying it: In the last century, we've seen change in human societies speed up to an almost unimaginable level, one that has stressed every part of our civilization. In this century, we're going to see the natural world change at the same kind of rate. That's what happens when you increase the amount of heat trapped in the atmosphere. That extra energy expresses itself in every way you can imagine: more wind, more evaporation, more rain, more melt, more... more... more. And there is no reason to think we can cope. Take New Orleans as an example. It is currently pro forma for politicians to announce that it will be rebuilt, and doubtless it will be. Once. But if hurricanes like Katrina go from once-in-a-century storms to once-in-a-decade-or-two storms, how many times are you going to rebuild it? Even in America there's not that kind of money—especially if you're also having to cope with, say, the effects on agriculture of more frequent and severe heat waves, and the effects on human health of the spread of mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever and malaria, and so on ad infinitum. Not to mention the costs of converting our energy system to something less suicidal than fossil fuel, a task that becomes more expensive with every year that passes. Our rulers have insisted by both word and deed that the laws of physics and chemistry do not apply to us. That delusion will now start to vanish. Katrina marks Year One of our new calendar, the start of an age in which the physical world has flipped from sure and secure to volatile and unhinged. New Orleans doesn't look like the America we've lived in. But it very much resembles the planet we will inhabit the rest of our lives.

A Modest Proposal in response to Katrina

A modest proposal in response to Katrina
The power of an MPG meter
Sept 6, 2005

Here's something every driver can do right now to address the rising prices at the pump and looming gas shortages.

I drive a Honda Insight with an electronic miles per gallon gauge that gives me constant feedback on my driving. Every millimeter of pressure on the gas pedal shows up instantly, driving that little line of lights down towards 0. Every bit of coasting drives them up towards 100 mpg. Getting that line of lights to dance upward becomes a game. Getting the total average mpg per tankful to ratchet up becomes a challenge. In the process, I've become a champion gas-saving gal in my little 2-seater silver bullet. All from feedback. This game saves perhaps 20% in gas consumption. At this moment, that's significant. With a tank of gas for ordinary cars inching over 50 bucks a pop, just the financial savings alone might attract you to installing such a miracle meter in your car. You can - and it will pay for itself in a few tankfuls. Right online at http://tinyurl.com/dxf4q you can buy a little $30 "vacuum gauge" your mechanic can install in an hour. Before my Insight, I always installed one on my dash. You could try your local auto supply store as well. A "vacuum gauge" is not quite as jazzy as my onboard computer, but that little needle will still train your foot to be lighter than Fred Astaire's.

Behind the utility of saving money is the imperative in this moment of using less oil. Our supplies are vulnerable - politics and storms can both wipe them out. Violence associated with diminishing essential resources is an age-old problem for our species. Wars are fought over water, food and fuel. People turn mean, hoard, abandon their neighbors, disregard calls for sacrifice when they fear their personal needs won't be met. They vote down collective solutions like public transportation while they have access to oil.

Retooling the whole fleet of American cars to get better gas mileage will take many years. Building public transportation that is so good that people would rather use it than their cars will take even more years. Getting the right policies in place that reward efficiency and penalize waste will take ongoing political wrangling. But if everyone in the US put one of these little $30 gauges in their cars, we could better defend ANWR. We could reduce the temptation to bully other nations for their oil.

Imagine the whole fleet of American cars with little vacuum gauges driving delicately down the highways at the optimum gas-saving speed of under 60 miles per hour. Imagine a 10% or more reduction in demand for gas. Imagine arriving at destinations a little less frazzled. Imagine bumper stickers that say "I know my MPG - do you?" "Driving for a solution - MPG meter on board". Imagine a little thing each of us can do that would actually help this big mess.

Of course the big work of engineering a more fuel efficient fleet, changing policies, building public transportation and developing new sources of energy all needs to be done. But what's the little guy to do in the meantime? I say, spend $30 and join the exciting game of getting that gauge to go in the right direction.

By the way, I regularly get 52-55 miles per gallon. Please save me from my gloating by getting an MPG meter too.

Be well,
Vicki

PS - I know acknowledgements are the custom in books, not emails, but I want to briefly bow to the late Dana Meadows who introduced me to systems thinking. For Dana's article about her experience of that mpg gauge on her Honda Insight, go to http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/index.php?display_article=vn844insighted

PPS - What if, with the stoke of an executive pen, such meters were required equipment along with air bags? Hmmm. Know any executives...

Cancer Poetry

Cancer poetry
Written between March and December, 2004, when I had stage 3 colon cancer
Vicki Robin
P.O. Box 1501
Langley, WA 98260



Spring
March 25, 2004
The morning of my surgery

Swollen with fat-belly buds birthing leaves and flowers and fruits and sweet honey summer
We awaken from long winter's darkness along with the crocuses,
spirits thread-bare, worn by loneliness for our lover, the sun
out we come from hibernation, full of stories about rebirth and chattering yes.

yet from years sitting at this garden window
riding the seasons that pass like ocean swells
rocked into knowing the ageless thrumming of the summer-winter summer-winter beat
these buds speak not of ripples dancing with light moments that pass in a flash
but of the breathing of the earth
out with spring
in with winter
pausing at the equinoxes as on the crest of a wave
when up has ended and down hasn't come and you hover,
an eagle before the dive, in that wild in-between when all is visible, when all is visible
or like that pause in breathing when out is over and in isn't yet
and something the sun will never see appears...
a shimmering ocean of now.



Chemo
Vicki robin
June 1, 2004
After round one of chemo

So next time you do that chemo, dearie,
Remember this
You will get dressed up in your finest duds and smiles
All chic and attitude
While your insides are screaming
No
No
No
While your mind is shushing all your beautiful screaming cells
There there, you’ll croon
Now now, you’ll soothe
It will only hurt for…

A fucking eternity
Yes
You will go down in your slinky duds to the poison center and say,
I’ll have some more, Maude,
On the rocks
Straight up into
My tired veins

Straight into all my baby cells, those bright hopeful new lives
And I will have to tell them they are just
Collateral damage in a war they didn't start and will never understand

And they will burn
Like all the tender bodied creatures of this earth who are poisoned by our will to have our way
Like mosquitoes and slugs and rats and every leafy thing we deem a weed
They will burn
According to the instructions on the box that says, without shame, "guaranteed to kill..."
Kill that one little confused cancer cell that's wandering, separated from the home where it was born, looking for a place to unfold its destiny.
Just like me.

Yes.
You will suck it up and gussy up and take yourself down to that cancer center and say
“What poison you serving today, Maude, I’ll take the special one
The one
That burns

Hair
Mouth
Tongue
Throat
Stomach
Intestines
Asshole

That burns and blisters
That frightens every little newborn cell
Screaming
Like that
Frail child
In Vietnam
After
Napalm.

So that I will live?



Cleaning
For Taylor
Vicki Robin
June 2004
My first house-sitting place on Vashon Island; moved during worst side effects from round one

I couldn’t stop cleaning
Dust and grime and webs and
Everything that shined
Showed the next
Grime and webs and dust and so…

I couldn’t stop cleaning
Because he’d put a teddy bear on his pillow
Now my pillow for a while
As I live in his house by the water
Which is living inside his love, really

Inside a love so big even the sky can’t hold it
Because he said, “Feel free” and left for 12 days
Giving me tides to heal and waves to soothe and water to…

Clean, I couldn’t stop cleaning
Because, weeping, I find I can’t feel free to take without giving
To be in a love so big that it can hold him and me and the sky and more
So big it doesn’t need me to give, but I need to or I will die of shame

Cleaning the shame from my soul
Shame at being so small and needing so much
From him and them and the sky and the sea and…

God, I can’t stop cleaning or I will feel the crashing weight of this wearisome need
Dios mio! I need, I need, I need, I’m so sorry I will never stop needing…

To clean or I will know a debt I can never repay just
By scrubbing the grime from this world with my life just
By polishing the pain and grief and good grief…

I can’t stop cleaning or this cancer will sneer
“I am bigger than you,” as it
Squats in this house refusing to move,
Searing my pretties while spreading its fire.

I can’t.

And so I take something small, a shelf perhaps, and clean it
Soft sponge, warm water, stroking with care
The small things here in this house by sea
Spice jars and spoons and saucepans
And learn, by cleaning, that small is no sin
And weak is no shame
And at least I am here

Cupped, not crushed,
Between Death and God,
Warmed by water and his “feel free” love and
I, too, can be
Cleaned.



Empty before filling
Vicki robin
August 3, 2004
As I suffered through side effects from round two

empty your bowl
your stomach
your bowel
be hungry
empty your day
your week
your year
have time
empty your closet
your shelves
your drawers
be simple
empty your mind
your heart
your swarm of opinions and ways
be still

we do not know desire
we do not wake at 4 in the morning
with a strange feeling of something wanting to enter our emptiness.
who is this intruder come to penetrate us,
to plant the seeds of ‘next’ in our field of open now?

this is serious, for much is lost in letting such a stranger in

do we want a poem
a lover
a walk in the moonlight
do we want more food than we need
more respect
or power
or allure
heavy burdens that will never let us empty again?

beware

we do not know want
we do not allow lack to build
until we salivate
until our stomachs growl
until an honest need can come
dusty hat in hand
with an honest request

our fullness upon fullness
says
“here lives fear,
sell me what you will
for in my house
nothing is ever enough.”

it says,
“i have heard of a universe that will never let me down,
but i have lost faith.
i do not trust.
if i do not pack my life with
people and things
i will starve
for nothing and no one is there for me.”

spin
in the vast emptiness
trailing the dust of your past like galaxies
sink
into the gossimer fullness of the space in between
feel
the touch of this velvet lover who has
waited, waited
for you to be
done

empty your bowl
your stomach
your bowel
be hungry
empty your day
your week
your year
have time
empty your closet
your shelves
your drawers
be simple
empty your mind
your heart
your swarm of opinions and ways
be still
be peace



Lessons
Vicki Robin
August 18, 2004
As the side effects began to recede

Surely
For all the anguish
There is a gift

Surely
For all the insult
To tender cells and self
There is some wisdom

Surely
For all the knives and poisons
Some trace of words should stay
Some reminder to the well
Of what the ill can tell

Surely
There’s something more than
Brush your teeth
Take your pills
Say your prayers
Touch your toes

Surely
This valley of the shadow of death
Has more truth in it than
Eat your vegetables
Chew well
Don’t overdo

Surely
Having stood on the edge of the abyss
Having borne the howling winds
Tattering my life, silencing my plans
Some whisper will come to stay the willful one
Now returning to claim her throne.

What can I say to her
This Queen of Heaven
About the Hell she’ll soon forget?
What will draw her glance and slow her step
As she catches the scent again of
New lands … new quests?

Will she listen if I say…
“This too shall pass”
If I say…
“In the end all that counts is
receiving and giving
and kindness
and reverence
and gently touching this sacred thing called
living.”

Will she – big, bold, beautiful – turn her head if I whisper,
“Cherish,”
If I say
“Breathe”
If I invite her to pause
Lay down her glorious crown
Take off her wing-ed shoes
Feel the cool grass
And hear the one-life’s
Sweet melodieslike angels singing
Like angels singing?

Surely she will.
Surely.
She will.



Out to pasture
By Vicki Robin
September 29, 2004
As I realized I was no longer who I was… but who was i?


Was it the ankle that never set right?
Or the patch of mange that wouldn’t heal,
That wept and bled and attracted flies?
Or just that she didn’t win anymore,
Couldn’t earn her keep?
Whatever.
One day the old trainer
Clucking, talking sweet, apple in his leathery palm
Led her from the stables and
Out to pasture.

She stood there for days
Still.
Blinking.

Then she pushed her mighty, rich chocolate breast against the fence
Until it creaked and bowed.
Not quite able to remember what in her heyday she might have done.
Jump.
Run.
With tail high, nostrils flared and
Rivers of salty sweat criss-crossing the delta of her flanks.

The racehorse in her
Twitched her mane
Pawed the ground
Sniffed freedom in the air
Saw again that opening in the race between the pounding hooves and pumping rumps
Every cell alive with get in.
And win.

But something else was there
Something new
This fence.
This limit to her will
This being stopped
And all she did was lean and whinny like a nag
Whinny like a stupid nag.

Catching a scent she turned her head, like a bee turns its whole round body towards a blossom.

A farmer in a distant field was cutting oats.
Methodically driving his tractor up and down the rows
A steady whisper of thwack thwack, oat grass falling beneath the cutting blades,
A steady commotion of pistons and great tires – tall as farm-boys –
bearings grinding, treads pushing thick loam down, out, back and over.

It was the cell honey of the cut oats that called her.
Heavenly scents.
That other instinct – pleasure – floods sharp saliva under her tongue.
The smell of freshness, the remembered feel of green sugar pumping down her throat,
Lured, she turns further.
Her great brown breast now leaves the fence
Her fine leg lifts, steps back and moves her towards those fragrant fields
Towards green honey taste as lips swirl freshness into her mouth.

The pasture is lush, high with grass and shimmering with life
A big cottonwood stands in the middle, promising shade and delicious scratches for that patch that never heals
And water somewhere near.

She moves slowly, feeling the easy sway of her back, flicking flies off her haunches with her long tail.
Some other memories come, of the smell of her mother’s rump, always near, always promising safety and milk.
Of a life not of running, but standing in tall grasses, head slightly up
Sorting through a bouquet of scents
Not knowing who or what she was.

Colt-, racehorse- and nag-minds join in her flesh
As her head buries itself in fresh grass, lips sending clumps towards her teeth which grind in easy circles
Sweet green honey, sweet green honey flowing.
This new mind, this mind of work and pleasure, of youth and fullness and age
Comes alive as she ruminates in the clover.
As she leans into the cottonwood and satisfies that itch
As she drinks from the stream the cottonwood said would be there
As she drinks from the stream of all beasts who live and die
As she drinks a new knowing of what it means to have a life
As she tastes for the first time some new flavor called death.

Her ears prick. A sound.
Refreshed she runs towards it
Not to win but to feel, to feel, to feel
Who she is in her essence.

There, in the pasture, she rears
And whinnies like a colt, like a stallion, like lion might roar
And the racehorses, clad in blinders and blankets,
Pampered and prettied and feeling their oats
Pause.
Their heads turn towards the pasture
Towards this strangeness
This knowing
This promise of life.
They feel their future in that sound.
They feel the plains and running and snorting and freedom.

But their jockeys rein them in.



Cancer tribe
Vicki Robin
February 26, 2005
At a cancer care retreat

We are the tribe of the
Cut
Burned and
Poisoned

We are the ones
Who’ve been healed by our pain.

We are the ones who’ve
felt death’s breath
Behind us

Cancer has spoken:
“Your life’s not the same.”

We are the grievers
For life before cancer
When out bodies were free of the
Tracks made by knives

But pain has not bowed us
And death has not caught us
And our bodies still throb
With lust for our lives

Yes we are the tribe of the
Cut
Burned and
Poisoned
And our souls sing out yes
And our wounds make us strong.



Moving to Vashon
February 2005
Upon leaving the island I went to for healing

I was moved by my mother’s womb to be born and then
Everything moved me to tears and laughter and wonder.
Pink and orange, smooth and scratchy, sweet and tangy,
And the soft whooshing of blood in my ears.
Every noise, every sight moved me to crawl and walk and talk.
I wanted everything in my mouth.
I ate milk and bananas and toast and peas and chicken and words…
Oh when I found them I ate words and made sentences
I ate paragraphs and made pictures in my mind
I ate lectures and made meaning
I found ideas, everywhere ideas, and they moved me.
Moved me so.
Moved me so I gave my heart to these shiny ideas, ideals
And moved across country following them…
To Canada and California and Mexico and Wisconsin
To Arizona and Colorado and Idaho and Washington and Seattle…
And there I became the mover, my words moving others to be free
But me, I stopped moving.
I became the lighthouse not the light
I became the rock and ceased to roll
And so life got stuck in my gut,
Fed on blind feelings and grew in darkness until it became
A cancer which when the surgeon lifted it out my soul stumbled home
Parched, parched for water, for living water, for living by water,
And so
I moved to Vashon
Lived by the sea
Dove deep
Swam free
And healed.
And now, dear friends,
I’m movin’ on.

Feeling Free - Birthday Message 2005

July 4, 2005

Hello friends,

Like kids who were born around Christmas, I've always secretly considered July 4 mine - the bonfires and fireworks I took as warm-up celebrations for my birthday, July 6.

In two days, I'll turn 60. And George Bush will turn 59. And the Dalai Lama will turn 70. Ever since I found out who shares my birthday, I've wanted to make some something of it (being the meaning junkie I am). Given that we three have been born between two Western liberation days, July 4 and Bastille Day (July 14), and now that I am 6 months away from finishing my book on freedom (Feel Free; Rethinking Freedom in a World with Limits) I'm gonna make something out of that.

All three of us have pledged our lives to freedom. At a material level, W considers himself a liberator of the Iraqi people, not to speak of the Afghani and everyone globally beset by terrorists. His Holiness the Dalai Lama (HHDL for short) has spent decades trying to non-violently liberate Tibet from Chinese rule. And I, too, have spent decades promoting independence - from money worries, but also from the whole consumer mindset. I have, to be honest, sometimes had the fervor (unto righteousness) of W. If you could hear my thoughts (many of which go right by without my notice), you'd catch sentences like, "This consumer feeding frenzy of stuff must stop! Now! I said NOW!". To my credit, I have also had the spaciousness of HHDL, often seeing with equanimity the vast, multi-faceted context out of which our delusional consumer culture arises.

All three of us are also in the soul liberation biz. W has found his salvation in Jesus, and some might read his kowtowing to the Religious Right as a sincere belief that we'd all be better off as Christians. HHDL is, first and foremost, a Buddhist monk engaged in the precise work of freeing himself from illusion at every level - lifetime after lifetime. I am more of a spiritual mongrel. I have the salvation bent of my Western Religious heritage, believing in the Kingdom of Heaven as my true home. I also seek liberation into the infinite now through attention and intention, influenced by Eastern traditions. And I've engaged in Native healing practices, from weekly Lakota sweat lodges to ceremonies with shamans from the lush jungles of South America. As I say in my book,

I’ve nosed along the fences between me and freedom my whole life, keen to openings where something fresh might blow in and swirl out musty ideas or now-dead routines. At age five I insisted on going to sleep-away camp. By eight I’d been to Cuba, by sixteen to Paris, by nineteen I was living in Spain for a year and at twenty-four I went cross-country in an old van with a guy and a dog. I started studying Utopian communities in high school, continued in college and was inventing my own within a decade. Every scrap of income was put into buying time rather than stuff – time to really taste existence up close and personal.

The range of meanings of freedom - from HHDL to W to me - says a lot. It means that the lived meaning of freedom in America in 2005 does not cover the whole territory. A NY Times July 4 editorial this morning had a welcome tinge of Patrick Henry...
The word "freedom" especially seems to have hardened around the edges in the last few years. It has lost some of its ability to suggest the open-ended potential of our lives, the possibility of coming to new terms with the expectations we have been handed by earlier generations. The overtones of discovery the word once had seem to have been put on hold. Instead, there is a new complacency, a certainty that we know just what freedom means and exactly how it should look. There is an unwelcome comfort with the inequitable distribution of freedom even in our own country. There is a poisonous tolerance for the idea that freedom encompasses only the right to say positive things about America and its mission in the world.

The liberal tradition of "freedom from" (tyranny of every stripe, from the state to overbearing neighbors) has become "I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, as long as ... it's my property, it doesn't hurt anyone (ahem... that I can see), it's not against the law or at least I don't get caught." But the freedom of "away" - getting away (with it), going away (from it) and keeping "it" away from you - has to be coupled with "freedom with" - the capacity to be with whatever arises in your life, whether inside your noggin or right in your face. If "away" is the only way to freedom, we're doomed. We do live in a round world. Materials go round and round - never away. People can run, but, given our roundness, they can't hide; away and back home are the same thing. Karma says, "What goes around, comes around." So does the Golden Rule. Anything we won't ultimately embrace, love and heal will meet us again on our next road to Samara - or in our next lifetime.

There's also the profound question, "What is freedom for?" Were we given freedom (by the Creator, by the Constitution, by the embedded principles of the Universe) so we could run, hide, invade, take, dominate, rule, escape, care for only our own? Or were we given freedom to be designers along with the Divine? If so, the holy secret is that limits along with other constraints like containers, boundaries, edges, borders, criteria, agreements, laws, principles, values, covenants and such, are the tools the Universe uses to create. Away and With are both essential. Freedom is the necessary raw expansive power of life, but limits are the shaping power of existence. All the beauty we make - in marriages, in art, in sustainable societies, in great religions - comes from knowing this secret of the "away/with" "freedom-in-limits/limits-in-freedom" paradox and embracing the exquisite tension of living where the two intersect.

For me, personal freedom comes from being present to everything that arises - within and without, touching everything with love. Janis Joplin had it half right: freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose... or gain. Relational freedom comes from knowing that everyone and everything is enacting their freedom, just like me, and is equally worthy of my respect and attention. Social freedom comes from knowing that no matter how dense and encrusted social/cultural conventions might be, they were made up by people like me, and people like me can change them. Political freedom is being engaged in the conversations that create the rules we live by and the collective plans we make. And spiritual freedom is the loving, generative space in which all this arises and passes away.

So there you have it - my birthday message along with a preview of Feel Free. Happy 4th, and for that matter 5th, 6th, 7th and all the rest.

Be well,
Vicki

Tiffa and Peri

Vicki Robin

Published as “Transformation” in Imagine edited by Marianne Williamson

Tiffa watched her daughter Peri laughing and talking with several friends over by the old boathouse at Green Lake. She recognized Peri's arched neck, tilted head, and cocked hip. Yes, Peri's in heat, Tiffa thought, recognizing body moves a woman never forgets. Do all mothers hold their breath in these years, unable to protect, direct, and…well, mother?

At Peri's age—17—Tiffa was still Tiffany (she'd disabused herself of that Barbie name when she turned 50 and gray). It was 2000. She had just graduated from Seattle's Garfield High. Forty years ago. Tiffa had been part of the “environmental disaster” generation, the one brought up on horror, on the thought that there might not be a world to grow up or grow old in. The one that named their children after dying species like the peregrine falcon (Peri). How odd to think of all that had changed—and in ways they never imagined.

Green Lake. In most ways, it looked the same as it did in the year 2000. People bicycling and roller-blading and power walking the 3-mile course around the lake. Pairs of friends engrossed in deep conversation. There were clearly differences…but what?

Facile with multiple ways of knowing (as most people were these days), Tiffa allowed herself to sink into a reverie that drew on her meditation practice, her scientific training, and her keen Web columnist's eye for the current and the quirky.

Her mind swam upstream like a spawning salmon, attracted to the headwaters where true explanations arise. The change, as always, happened first in the invisible and mysterious, in tiny shifts in thinking and feeling that alter the whole watercourse of history. At some point, the lonely majority of closet meditators and weary activists reached critical mass and came out in force, wearing their love for life on their sleeves. Before the tipping point, we all answered the question "What do you do?" by describing our jobs. After the shift, we’d reply to the same question by mentioning what we do to serve one another. Spirit was out of the box called church. It was everywhere and everywhen.

Who or whatever is running this show is a great “just in time” manager, Tiffa thought with the wryness of her columnist self. We needed that base of shared communion to deal with the shared time of Sorrow. Who could avoid being a mystic, thinking about the many arks that were sent to us to ride those rough waters? What a time. .

People now seemed different too—and not just because of Afro-Asian fashion or the features of the young people who now carried more and more races in their blood. Strangers talked openly with one another. People hugged a lot. And they were forever whipping out their pocket communicators (PC’s)to exchange useful information or arrange s-n-s (service and swap) barters, enriching their lives without spending a dime. The self-proclaimed Nosy Neighbors were out in force, using their PC’s to match people in need with offers for beds and meals in private homes. Great outdoor volunteerism for folks over 80!

There was also the Green Lake community café. That was different too. As with so many of the changes, it had come out of recognizing the obvious—in this case, that all the boating and walking and fishing was really an excuse for conversation. So now there was an open-air conversation pavilion with tables and fresh-food stands. Anyone could announce on the Web or the ubiquitous electronic kiosks a topic and a table number and get a conversation group together. Several clumps were congregated now, probably talking philosophy or poetry or astronomy or politics (with six political parties and election debates free on the Net, there was no shortage of things to talk about) or who knows what.

Neighborhood conflicts also got aired in the "con-res" circle. Now that everyone was trained from kindergarten on to use the whole range of awareness and conflict resolution tools, grievances had gone from private hell to public pageants. People loved the basically good-natured verbal brawls where you proclaimed your bitch as eloquently as possible, listened fully and accurately to your "opponent's" version of the same predicament, and together found a creative solution. "Mention the tension and resolve the dissension" was the motto for these public "con-res" sessions. Crowds gathered, cheered for elegant innovations, and often reenacted the conflict with hilarious skits. At best, there would be some musicians who'd get everyone dancing and people would go home in a happy mood to some juicy private celebrations of good feeling. Strange, Tiffa thought. In the old days, we watched music and sports—now we play music and sports. We stuffed our feelings and our faces and went to the movies. Now we are the movies. It's so different.

The other difference (and it was hard to remember how it had been) was silence—there wasn't even the whisper of an internal combustion engine. Small electric cars and buses glided along the street behind her, all filled to the brim. It was so easy with a communicator to pick up hitchers: Just punch in your destination and route and the names of everyone needing a lift popped up. A quick series of e-mails and barters and you'd have a full car and parking credits. Thank Gaia that the Chinese got smart and decided to leapfrog over the fossil fuel economy. They sure cornered the market on alternative-energy technology, Tiffa mused. Talk about a survivor civilization. .

Peri had pulled out her communicator to make a date with one of her friends; she talked to another on the celly and then punched in “off-line till 3 pm” and put it back in its holster. She came over to Tiffa and went from standing to bench-sprawling in one gangly plop. "So I have to write something about modern history for my Webzine group and I thought you could help."

“Help…or do it for you?”

Tiffa got the look that said she had damaged the delicate trust a mother needs to rebuild as her child becomes an adult. Backing off, she inquired, "And that topic is. ."

"Money and stuff. Like I know when you were growing up there were so many people starving and that the rich didn't seem to care. Some people had it all and wanted more. Some had barely anything. That's like totally gonzo. I need to interview three old-timers”—Watch your language, lady! Tiffa thought—“about why and how they think things turned around."

"Funny, I was just thinking about the changes. But why did they happen? That’s a great question. Tomorrow I might give a different answer, but today what occurs to me are three big trends: the Great Sorrow,”—Peri rolled her eyes; why does everything start with Great Sorrow stories?—“the Simplicity Pioneers, and the strange way e-commerce actually transformed the economy from a market for things to a market for needs.

"I saw your eyes, honey. I know you've heard about the Great Sorrow years. But if there's anything we learned, it's that wisdom comes from keeping our stories alive. That, and the Journey of the Eighteenth Year.”

“Do you think I’m not up to it?” Peri suddenly looked like a young colt, nostrils flared, a bit of wildness in her eyes. Tiffa knew bravado when she saw it. The Journey of the 18^th Year was devastating for so many young people brought up since the Sorrow. As they visited the global sites of past ecocide and war, they pondered our blindness as a species and the darkness that could filter again into our midst.

“No, Pumpkin…I mean, Peri. I think you will come through it a wise woman. You will understand the Sorrow from inside. You know, anyone could have predicted it, and many did, even in the 20th century, but we didn't really know it was upon us until we were years into it. Everyone knows that the Great Sorrow came from the synergy of the crash of the global financial markets, the terrible die-off from AIDS and other antibiotic-resistant diseases, the flooding of coastal regions around the Earth, and the end of the fossil fuel era.

“My generation—into whose childhood was woven mourning for the loss of nature and culture—was so much more able to handle this era than our parents were. They'd grown up in the 1950s and ‘60s and believed in the economic boom, like previous generations had believed in a flat Earth. They kept thinking there was going to be a rally. We understood ecology and cycles and limits to growth. We knew that the economy existed within the natural world; they thought they'd transcended the laws of nature. They were like children, really. They just couldn't cope with it. It was so sad. They'd developed so many medicines for life extension but they just didn't want to live in a world that looked so diminished.

"So while the old-timers were partying themselves to death in Hawaii and OD-ing on everything they could find, we were prepared to hospice the death of the old mindset and midwife the new world that was being born. Within a decade, our numbers were decimated and a third of the species were destroyed.”

Against the will of the savvy adult she was cultivating, Peri had sunk into that quiet space of storytelling.

"Yet we survived, and for good reason. Your grandparents’ generation also had some shining lights. Like the Simplicity Pioneers. These were "my people." We started having congresses in 1999, I think. Give or take a few years. The whole movement was a loose-jointed, grassroots-y affair. People everywhere were hitting the same cultural lie—that more is better and it’s never enough. They were bone-tired, from overwork, overstimulation, overspending, and overconsumption of stuff they didn't need. It's like fifty million lonely, spent consumption junkies hit bottom in one decade and started seeking solutions. With some kind of ancient homing instinct for health, we turned from competitive consumption to the shelter of community. Study circles, conferences, chat rooms, church groups, books, journals, barter nets—you name it, we flocked to it. At first we only wanted to heal ourselves, but soon we saw that we couldn't be healed inside a sick system and on a dying world. We organized and got active, developing trade associations and activist pods and policy and research institutes and, of course, the PopEcon Pranksters, with our wicked street theater. There were some great leaders at that time—a whole group of them that seemed to instinctively know that they would all be stronger if they worked and played together. They were like a moral compass, pastors of the whole culture. I think that was the beginning of the end of the old days of the lone charismatic leader."

"Why would any one person want to be a lone leader? That's like so not natural."

"Surely they've taught you Western history, Peri! The whole saga is the story of just that struggle for dominance."

"Get fluid, Mom. The guys who played that game wrote your books. My books tell the story of the universe, not that penis-dueling junk. Maybe you think humans have changed since you were born. I just think the rule makers, the process guides, and the storytellers have changed, and”—Peri's eyes sparkled—“they tend to have vaginas."

Peri was right again. Tiffa felt old and rejuvenated both at once. Will the young people celebrate the die-off of her generation as holders of the old way of thinking, just as her cohorts secretly prayed for the boomers to be gone? Yet sitting with Peri and her many friends always gave Tiffa the tingle of youth, the desire to live forever and keep participating in the great unfolding mystery.

"To continue with my oh-so-antiquated interpretation of history. .” Tiffa said, feigning indignation. “With all that talk, action was bound to happen. Buy Nothing Day got bigger than Earth Day. A Million Meek March on Washington was planned for the 2005 BND. The theme was “The tide is turning” and the motto was "We want less." But none of the organizers anticipated how big it would ultimately be. It was like Woodstock meets Seattle WTO.” (Do they still teach about those events? Tiffa wondered.) “The message was risky, sophisticated. There were signs that read, “In the land of more, less is radical”. People with bullhorns led chants: ‘What do we want less of?’ they'd bellow. ‘Pollution!’ or ‘Greed!’ or ‘Overwork!’ we'd reply. ‘What do we want more of?’ ‘Species!’ or ‘Time!’ or ‘Justice!’ we'd shout. And then, even louder: ‘What do we want enough of?’ and we'd say, ‘Enough for all!’” Tiffa hadn't realized that her hand had gone to her throat, a gesture the scientist in her often used to smooth emotion out when Tiffa the teacher was weaving the tale of a great historical moment.

“Why doesn’t anything trans like that happen anymore?” Peri moaned.

“I thought the same thing about the 1960s when I was growing up in the ‘90s. Like I’d missed all the action. Your generation has big challenges ahead, Peri. I can see them coming. Despite the Journey of the 18^th Year, people will forget the Sorrow. They will decide the World Wisdom Council is a bunch of reactionaries. Every generation has its revolution. Just watch the horizon. And maybe watch those young guys a little less…” Gaia, I sound like my mother, Tiffa thought. Age—who knew it would creep into my radical life?…

“Keep telling, Tiffa,” Peri demanded, mesmerized by the story and willing to overlook Tiffa’s slide into mothering.

“Two million people. .thirty cities simultaneously…never before. .never since. So many people and concerns that had been pushed to the margins in the quest for the material ‘more’ were pushing back together for a new set of values. We were speaking with one voice about the world we wanted and were creating, not just protesting the world that was being forced on us by large institutions. The labor movement joined, realizing that they could fight for shorter work time rather than higher wages. The tax shift folks joined, promoting their consumption tax/guaranteed minimum income/no subsidies for extractive industries package. Youth was there, with their message of ‘We want a world to grow up in.’ Kids. Toddlers. Heartbreaking. .and very media-genic. And, best of all, the poor were there in droves. They were marching for more libraries, computer centers, swimming pools, and free public transport in their neighborhoods. And right alongside the poor and homeless, the Millionaires for Justice marched. They were mostly in their twenties and thirties, people who'd made out like bandits on Wall Street—and knew how true that term really was. Call it guilt, call it giving back, they were advocating an end to corporate welfare and a voluntary lowering of CEO compensation.

“Representatives of NGOs from the two-thirds world came too, protesting the domination of commercial interests abroad. From that BND on, money as the sole measure of value had lost its stranglehold on the public psyche.

“The third fascinating occurrence was the surprising social renewal that evolved from e-commerce. It’s all so obvious to you, I’m sure, but it really was a revolution equal to, well, alt-fuel. It took hold just after women discovered that e-mail was a cheap, easy way to keep the family connected. Everyone and her grandma were online then, and e-commerce was an obvious next step. Cutting out several middlemen between producer and consumer lowered transportation costs and perhaps had something to do with the decrease in carbon emissions and global warming.”

“I cannot believe those old stories about doing errands in a car,” Peri chimed in, rolling her eyes with what she thought was a sophisticated flourish indicating disgust.

“Nor I, frankly! I think the next step was when somebody coined the term ‘be-commerce’—that whole service industry of coaches/salespeople. I love the way they not only help you figure out what product to buy and how to use the damn thing once you have it, but ask you whether there might be nonmaterial ways to fill your needs better than getting more stuff. Once be-commerce caught on—and it wasn't cheap back then, but the triple savings of buying less, buying cheaper, and liberating shopping time offset the cost—other specialized type of transactions surfaced.

“‘We-commerce’ became the new name for public spending. People thought afresh about what they wanted to own personally and what they wanted to borrow from a community source.”

“Like transportation,” Peri offered. “I can’t imagine everyone wanting a private car, when a little intelligence and a few taxes so easily created the mobility system that we have today. I mean, how could people be so solid, so, like, 2020?”

Tiffa silently voiced the mother’s prayer of hope: May she have a daughter just like her. But what she said was, “It is strange what a name will do. The ideas had been around for years, but calling it we-commerce captured the entrepreneurial spirit of the times. Libraries became we-commerce in books; the vidi-wall became we-commerce in entertainment, and fees for cable television disappeared. Suddenly, we were thinking about the kind of world we wanted for everyone and looking for we-commerce solutions rather than government regulation or private consumption. It was easy—once we could see it. And cheaper. So American.

“Then there were the Simplicity Pioneers, who started pushing nonmonetary ‘you-and-me-commerce’—the barter nets that became the s-n-s system today. It was such a no-brainer to realize that none of us use all our possessions all the time. Sharing brought our costs of living down dramatically—and brought back good old-fashioned neighborliness. The you-and-me-commerce folks eventually grew beyond barter to all sorts of consumer-owned buying clubs. Neighborhoods organized and partnered with organic farms. A group of my girlfriends designed a kind of tunic that we thought would be cool to wear and partnered with an immigrant women's sewing club to produce them.”

“What I love, though,” Peri said, “is the see-commerce. I’m glad someone figured out that getting out is fun. For me, see-commerce in mall showrooms is more about seeing my friends than seeing stuff I might want to buy on the Web. I mean, once I’ve played with the latest techno toys at the mall, I just don’t want to spend my e-script on it.”

“I guess mall showrooms are like window-shopping down on old-time Main Street,” Tiffa replied. “I like being able to visit my purchases with no pressure to buy. Well, except for the ‘flea-commerce’ areas. I remember when we ran flea-commerce like squatters in the parking lots of the old malls. Once shopping centers became showrooms where no money changed hands, though, I think us ragtag tag-salers were no threat, so they just let us move inside.

“I just realized that e-commerce used to only mean ‘electronic.’ My oh my, times really have changed. You take enviro-commerce for granted, but back in the beginning, there were no ecological screens for products. People had no way to know the cost to the Earth of what they were buying. So much has changed!

“Gaia, we were so worried in the early days that the Internet was going to be one more tool of the commercial devil, but look how inventive and playful we became. For all our activism, for all our protest, I don't think we ever thought that commerce itself could be a force for healing.

"Peri, I think it all comes down to good people living in elegant human systems that enhance the big system—the living system that includes us all. Frankly, I'm damn proud of this little species we have here. We've gone through such a terrible time, but look what we've learned and invented. Look how we've grown.”

Peri started going solid, braced for a lecture about the bad old days—but it didn't come.

“In a way, honey, you are a celebration for me of all that is good about being human and being alive in the universe. During the Great Sorrow, no one wanted children. After the Sorrow, those of us who made it through knew we had to reproduce very carefully to survive in a world where ten million other very precious species shared the world's natural wealth. Having you was my way of saying, ‘The tide has turned.’”

Peri had gotten more than a Webzine story. She’d gotten to bask in the attention and intelligence of the woman who, truth be told, she most admired. Tiffa, normally not very demonstrative, hugged Peri and cried. Peri, normally not very tolerant of mushy emotions, cried too. Then her communicator beeped. It was 3 o’clock—time for her online chat with her three best fillies. Not that Tiffa wasn't like a filly too, but after all, she was kind of prehistoric.

WTO UPDATE

WTO Update

By Vicki Robin

December 20, 1999

Dear friends,

Gratitude first. Gratitude to all of you who responded from your hearts to my last letter about September in India. I felt deeply met and encouraged by all of you. These update letters have grown from sharing my "unedited life" with a close circle of amigos to messages that are hopscotching through cyberspace to friends of friends of friends. I am liking this form of network publishing – it feels close and personal. Even people I don't know find their way to these words through people who respond to what I've written. So, please accept this as a personal response to you as a real person. I feel you out there – and it feels good.

These last two months have been so rich that one letter can barely contain it all. So I'm breaking it in two. This letter will be Vicki trying to make sense of the vast event focused around the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Seattle. In a subsequent letter I'll makes sense of the rest of the richness of the past two months. From now on I will be posting these letters (perhaps with some edits for brevity and clarity) on our web page (http://www.newroadmap.org). You can forward them to friends if you like, or just direct them there.

Daunted by the sheer volume of this letter? Here's a map:

1. WTO AS MIRROR

2. WTO AS WTO

3. WTO AS MANIFESTATION OF A WORLDVIEW

4. WTO AS A FRONT FOR THE TEN TON GORILLA: OVER-CONSUMPTION

5. WTO AS THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

6. WTO AND ANARCHY

7. WTO AS WAR?

8. WTO AS INFOTAINMENT

   Okay, let's roll…

   WTO AS MIRROR

   
   

   This was no picnic, and not because I got tear gassed or faced down by the police (which I did). The battle in Seattle happened inside me as well as around and through me. The week was a constant encounter with my conscience. Courage and bravery are important to me. My "fear style" is to step as far as I can into the center of every terrifying unknown and let my gut lead me to the next truth that sets one free. It's really a coping mechanism. Being anywhere less than on "the front lines" leaves me uncomfortably messing around in moral ambiguity. I am also slow to anger and quick to inquire into the human being behind the point of view. Every time I was attracted to joining the direct action, I looked down and saw that for me no line in the sand had yet been drawn. I wasn't convinced that I personally was at war with the WTO. Not until I'd seen the whites of its eyes and smelled its breath and found what made it tick. But the passions of the week kept challenging me to ask, "What is MY demonstration? Where DO I take a stand?"

   So I spent the week in the center of marches and rallies and workshops, but on the sidelines of the major conflagration. I didn't plan to do civil disobedience. I took a non-violence training in case the marches stumbled into violence but I didn't plan to get arrested. I have not been a political activist. Ever. I've been a cultural activist. I've been a consciousness activist. I've stepped over the line of many friends' comfort zones to speak the truth as I saw it. But this was the first time I was taking to the streets for anything. My most incendiary act was to carry a huge sign on a march through a boarded-up downtown that said: LOCALIZE CHRISTMAS – GIVE LOVE NOT STUFF. (Well, the day after the WTO left Seattle I did go downtown dressed as Mrs. Claus with a sign on my red coat saying "MRS. CLAUS SAYS: MAKE COOKIES NOT DEBT FOR CHRISTMAS." Luckily, none of the merchants trying to get back to the buying bacchanalia stoned me. So, you get the picture, I wasn't directly part of the story most of you read.)

   WTO AS WTO

   
   

   For an excellent summary of the WTO, please go to Making Sense of the WTO #679. My awesome friend Tom Atlee has collected the best of the best of the WTO writings on his web site http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_CIWTO.html. Beyond this, you're on your own. I'm sure you have your own sources and are forming your own opinions. Rather than offer another personal account of events I want to make three simple observations.

   1. THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF ALTERNATIVES

   The WTO thrives on selling the idea that there are no alternatives to globalization. It's an ideology nicknamed TINA – There Is No Alternative (Trekkies, sounds like the Borg, doesn't it?). It's ironic that the acronym turns out to be a woman's name. Most women I know are much more inclusive of a range of opinions than TINA is. The world I live in, however, could be called TATA (There Are Thousands of Alternatives – a term used at the IFG teach-in). I like that. It sounds like a kindly grandmother. And it is.

   I admire and participate in a myriad of successful, common sense design strategies for a world that works for all of life. I'll name a few to indicate my meaning, but the list only points a finger to a rich, diverse and densely populated territory. The Natural Step. Ecological Footprint. Non-violent Communication. Barter Networks. Indigenous wisdom. Meditation. Engaged Buddhism. Appropriate Technology. Results. Mindful Markets. The Universe Story. Beyond War. Holistic everything. Natural foods. Community Supported Agriculture. Biointensive Gardening. Permaculture. Citizen Juries. Consensus. Home Schooling. Ecological Economics. Town Meetings. The Genuine Progress Indicator. Ballot Initiatives. Boycotts. The Ceres Principles. The Earth Charter. And yes, http://www.yourmoneyoryourlife.org Your Money Or Your Life. You get the drift.

   Globalized free trade could be seen as putting the economy on steroids and amphetamines. TINA is having delusions of grandeur and is in the midst of a serious psychotic break. If "she" were a person, we'd institutionalize "her". The lock-out of the WTO in Seattle was the beginning of her lock up by the citizens of the world. TATA is respectful, humble, curious, sincere, ethical, devoted to the common good – in other words, sane.

   The teach-ins, marches, rallies, workshops and NGO meetings in Seattle marked the beginning of the many alternatives finding one another and making common cause and commons sense. Hallelujah! Every place I went I met wonderful people, heartened to know one another. We listened to each other's views, learned, shared stories, exchanged email and web site addresses and generally shifted from the loneliness of the long time-frame critic to the knowledge that we are legion and we aren't gonna let TINA run the world by default. There is every indication and reason to hope that a new global grassroots citizens movement was born at the end of the second millennium.

   2. GLOBALIZATION "R" US

   So shoot me. I'm in favor of globalization. First of all, communications and travel have woven our world together to such a degree that I don't have to believe in quantum physics or metaphysics to know that when a butterfly flaps its wings in China my world changes. I'd personally like to globalize quite a lot of things: Non-violent conflict resolution. Tolerance. The world's religions in dialogue and functioning as wise elders. Ethics. Awareness of our common heritage in the heart of the Universe. Preservation of indigenous wisdom. Ecosystem protection. Equity – the fair distribution of wealth. Freedom from want, from tyranny, from hate crimes, from abuse. Freedom to protect from harm one's own body, one's own community or tribe, one's own bioregion, one's own nation. Reconciliation between the sexes, the races, the nations, and people and nature. Celebration of non-material forms of wealth. For starters. What's your list?

   The WTO's version of globalization is a fantasy of material progress. It has its good points. Free trade certainly is effective at stimulating the production and distribution of more, better and different stuff – just like the free-traders claim. I am grateful for many goods and services the global economy has made available to me and I do want others to have access to them. But it's pitifully insufficient as a Utopian ideal for humanity. We need to fold in our perennial aspirations to have it make any sense at all. The people in the streets, by and large, were not against trade, but want the "goods" of globalization to make room for "goods" like clean water, fresh air, intact ecosystems, respect for non-human life, wholesome foods and sharing the benefits of prosperity more universally.

   3. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE UNITED NATIONS?

   Given this perspective, I came to wonder why the WTO isn't just another UN agency. I'm not dumb. I know the UN has been rendered impotent and irrelevant in many ways. But it's what we have, along with the World Court, to embody global ethics, global decency and global decision making. Underfunded and with few binding powers, the UN cannot put any teeth to the hard-won agreements that emerged from the series of conferences in the 1990's. Rio. Cairo. Copenhagen. Beijing. Istanbul. These events could be guiding our future – and regulating the activities of the WTO. That would be putting money in service of our values, rather than having our values be distant side rails in a vicious bumper car carnival game where everyone is trying to get the best of everyone else. A German microbiologist who has been involved for decades in international negotiations explained to me that the WTO is an attempt to actually create a supra-agency beyond the reach of and with control over the UN. I intend to investigate why the necessary global trade agreements can't happen within the United Nations. Are we so far gone in assuming the dominance of corporations in our lives that we can't imagine a world in which "we, the people" call the shots? Remember, both the UN Charter and the US Constitution start with "We, the people…"

   WTO AS MANIFESTATION OF A WORLDVIEW

   
   

   One of my favorite teaching tales: Two monks sat in contemplation by a river. Suddenly they heard the cries of a baby and saw the infant struggling for breath as it floated by. They waded in, brought the child to shore and revived it. Satisfied, they returned to their peaceful state. Again they heard cries, saw a struggling infant, fished it out, revived it and settled down for meditation. But the tempo of drowning babies increased. Both men shuttled from river to shore, saving babies as fast as they could. Soon they were soaked and exhausted and totally out of peace. Suddenly one monk ran away. Now the other was REALLY out of peace, angry at being abandoned. Hours later the stream of babies stopped as mysteriously as it had started. Then the second monk returned. "Where were you," cried the first monk, "when I really needed you!" "I went upstream to see who was throwing babies into the river," the absent monk replied.

   Fishing out babies is a front lines holding action, necessary for immediate survival. Such actions take courage, commitment and a willingness to get waist deep in the torrent of the times. A great deal of activism is just this sort of heroics. Shutting down the ministerial meeting was, among other things, a holding action. It was like lying down in front of a tank or climbing a tree in a threatened forest. As I said, many times during the week I felt the tug to this moral high ground, but I was there on another mission.

   For years I've "battled" the blindness and manipulation at the heart of overconsumption. It's as far upstream as I could go. I have been deeply distressed by the whole tempo of trashing the planet to fill the pockets and presumed needs of those who already have more than enough. Yet "overconsumption" seems to be a many headed beast – lop off one and 10 other brains seem to kick in to keep it going. So I've been searching for its lair and its source of nourishment. I've been searching for its heart. (More on this later.) The WTO, for me, is extremely dangerous, but it isn't the problem. The mindset it stands for is. I spent my week deepening my understanding of the WTO worldview and learning as much as I could from the full range of activists present how to reveal its assumptions so stunningly that it might melt like the Wicked Witch of the West.

   The WTO is merely the handmaiden of a worldview that is:

   1. materialistic (profit is our most important product, economic growth = well being)

   2. undemocratic (of, by and for the people with wealth)

   3. cut-throat (do what you have to do to compete successfully today – even at the cost of compromising the future – or you're history)

   4. cynical (purporting to be for the poor – a rising tide lifts all ships, y'know – but actually fueling the increasing rich/poor gap) and

   5. sociopathic (greed is good; altruism is suspect; cynicism is de-rigeur).

   It is a self-organizing system that would, from its own point of view, work better without the constraints being placed on it by worry warts. It has removed as many natural and artificial controls to its ascendancy as possible, against all good sense. Money isn't tied to any form of natural wealth. The natural world is a subset of the economy and, if any natural limits are transgressed, technology is called in to fix it. The ability to overturn national laws that limit free trade is a completely coherent demand of such a worldview. Never mind that global warming, water shortages, loss of topsoil, overpopulation, rising inequity, collapse of fisheries are flashing "red alert". The worldview cannot let this in without cracking its internal logic. My favorite recent example is that Clorox, the leading global manufacturer of dioxins, has purportedly bought out Britta, the counter-top water filtration system to make our drinking water pure again. Do I hear double speak? Hate is love. War is peace. Instead of "polluters paying" (a sensible principle of ecological economics), polluters can profit from both ecological destruction and remediation. We need this world view like we need another hole in the head. But, as Seattle demonstrated, worldviews die hard.

   Think of it this way. If you are a farmer and your farmland is taken away, you don't only lose your land and your livelihood – you lose your identity. Even if you are given a job in the new prison facility built nearby or given a pension for the rest of your life, a hole in the center of your being has opened up. And if you are a rich person profiting from the Industrial paradigm you will be hard pressed to change. Even if you have no time for your family. Even if you have had to do things that violate your original sense of fairness. Even if your doctor says you have to slow down. Even if you learn that your company's product is doing harm.

   In fact, I suspect that the faithful followers of the dominant economic paradigm are as much its victims as are the voiceless. The managerial class is being milked for its productivity like forests for their logs and chickens for their eggs and sweat-shop workers for their labor – and they know it. Perhaps this is why Your Money Or Your Life appeals to people in every income bracket – it's a defector's manual. Yet, if you are a winner in the casino where the future of the biosphere is being gambled away, it's still hard to push away from the table. Aside from people influenced by compelling moral figures like Mohandas Gandhi or Jesus, few privileged individuals in history have voluntarily given up their advantage.

   So, in my view, the materialistic mindset is what's throwing the babies (living systems) in the drink. The WTO is just a visible representation of a mindset that puts profits over people and the planet.

   The emergent worldview, in my opinion, has it all over that old one. It starts in the vastness of the unfolding story of the Universe, cracks open the future by showing that evolution is still going on. It affirms that spiritual values are as determinative of outcome as material ones. It lifts up the non-economic side of life (laughter, generosity, dance, intimacy, caring, art, music, philosophy, inquiry) and embraces the economic side of life like a cherished younger brother. It wants the economy to do what economies do well – meet real material needs. And it wants the rest of life to flourish. It honors democracy, decency, civility and law as part of what it takes for humans to live together. It honors the earth as the home of all life, the only home we have. It is practical, sane, common sensible.

   In terms of worldview activism, I believe that my recent choice to devote more time to writing will be my primary form of demonstration. But I'm not sure. Is the keyboard mightier than the sword? Or, for that matter, than the commercial culture…

   WTO AS A FRONT FOR THE TEN-TON GORILLA: CONSUMPTION

   
   

   One anarchist and a couple of wise women associated with the International Forum on Globalization (Anita Roddick and Helen Norberg Hodge) were the lone voices of the obvious. If we want to really get globalization where it lives, we need to look at our consumption. We don't buy... they can't sell.

   Of course, there's more to it than that. There always is. But being simplistic helps sort things out. We are in a condition globally of overshoot – we are living beyond the means (the productive capacity) of the earth. Like any family digging themselves deeper and deeper into debt, we've got to stop, yet we've built a lifestyle based on excess. So many habits, preferences and conflicts would need reconsideration that denial sounds like a better alternative. Rather than share (TV's, bathrooms, phones, cars, parks, public transportation) we consume. And externalize the costs onto the future (credit) or others (our creditors, the poor, ecosystems, the privilege of polluting the biosphere).

   One of my favorite TOLES cartoons has a guy watching TV. The announcer is saying, "The Worldwatch Institute says we have to stop consuming or die". Several panels go by as the guy absorbs the message. Then he says, "Decisions, decisions." The subtitle says, "How long am I going to personally need the planet, anyway." So within decades we will enter a time of paying the piper for over-production and over-consumption. Livelihoods will disappear. Families will be hurt. Land will become unproductive. Water will be used more efficiently and then, I fear, run out – especially for those who are stranded in rural areas with no political clout. Floods and droughts and other by-products global warming will come. Who needs an angry God when we've got human blindness to visit such pestilence?

   As we face this as a culture, I imagine we'll indulge in blame ball for a while. Blame ball? That's when everyone will want to shed the full weight of responsibility and toss blame to another party. The rich. The poor. The government. Advertising. The corporations. Inflation. Truly, since over-consumption comes out of a paradigm that's dying (there's always more where that came from) we're all innocent and we're all to blame. The question is: Who will have the strength and sanity to say, "the buck – literally – stops here." Will it take breaking the eco-bank before we face our predicament?

   If I fault myself seriously for anything, it was not seeing how necessary this point of view was to the whole challenge to the WTO and at least passing out some printed jeremiad on street corners. Because at one level, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that as people and as a planet, we need to live within the means of our productive capacity. And it's obvious (to me, at least – what about you?) that the less dependent we are on the economy, the more we can challenge its core premises.

   Remember, no matter how much we criticize the global economy, we are tied to it. Fans of Monty Python may remember the scene in THE LIFE OF BRIAN, set in the time of Jesus, when the small political cabal is stoking their revolutionary ire. "What have the Romans done for US anyway???" one cries defiantly. "The aqueducts?" another tenders, sheepishly "Yes, but besides the aqueducts?" "Sanitation" "Yes, but…" "Education" "The roads" "Yes, but besides, aqueducts, sanitation, education, the road, what HAVE the Romans done for us."

   What HAS the global economy done for us, anyway? It turns out it's done a lot, and not just for us but for many people in the two-thirds world as well. We need and appreciate some commerce to support ourselves and meet our needs. But what needs is the economy – global or local – good at filling and for what needs is it just gross and clumsy? For some things I need money. I won't bore you with an accounting of how I spend my $850 a month income. I know that even if I were more of a gleaner or gatherer than I am, I would need aspects of the money economy to survive in today's world.

   Many other needs, however, are met by my own self-responsibility, creativity, struggle to learn, willingness to feel, and, of course, by my relationships. Once basic needs are met, most real human emotion is centered on the joys and sorrows of living itself. Birth. Marriage. Death. Overcoming challenges. Missing out. Achieving. It's more about love than a Lexus, no matter how much advertising tries to sell the latter with the former.

   In Your Money Or Your Life, a daily practice is established of distinguishing between purchasing to meet real, tangible needs and buying to try to fill non-material needs. Quantity is differentiated from quality. Calculating real hourly wage and the fulfillment curve (simple analytic tools used in Your Money Or Your Life) illuminate the true cost of the product-intensive American way of living. That's why people's expenses drop like a rock. What if we could energize such a process globally? What if we put serious restraints on advertising (c'mon folks, that ain't free speech!)? And what if we taught media literacy so that even toddlers could differentiate between commercially stoked needs and a wet diaper? What if we reclaimed some of the air waves from commercial interests, used them to inspire, inform and empower, and made citizenship a better game than "more" (consumerism)? What if we established a really progressive income tax again, just like in the good old post-war days when the poor were getting richer faster than the rich were? And what if we actually started a national and international dialogue about the big "R" word – redistribution of wealth? What if we overturned the Supreme Court ruling that gave corporations the rights of personhood to corporations? Initiatives in all these areas are already underway. So this isn't idle chatter.

   Now, what about the two thirds world where basic needs are still not met for billions and those that are entering the middle class are clearly better off. Am I advocating voluntary simplicity for the poor of the world who've had their appetite for consumption whetted by our media? Am I saying that the billions of poor shouldn't have their crack at the good life? Fortunately, a great deal of research has been done about how to provide room for the poor to expand their consumption while the rich moderate theirs. Studies by Friends of the Earth Netherlands, among many others, reveal that consumption fairness can be achieved while still giving the wealthy (us) as high a standard of living as we had, say, in the 1950's. Implementing such a system, of course, will take much political will and courage, but in times of real need people have shown a remarkable willingness to pull together for the common good. Do you think polluting our scant water supply, for example, might be a crisis worthy of making some adjustments?

   WTO AS THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

   My favorite chant in the marches was, "This is what democracy looks like!" Free speech. Right of free assembly. Freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Of course democracy is more than marching in solidarity against the WTO alongside people who might disagree with you on a host of other things. But there was a whiff of citizenship in the air – especially heartening during the Christmas shopping season in a country where consumerism has all but supplanted the quaint virtue of civic participation.

   Then the Empire struck back. Conservatives, shoppers, shop-keepers, business people, downtown workers and the Federal government that insisted on a show of force might all think that all police actions were justified – necessitated and provoked by the actions in the streets. But there were hundreds if not thousands who were brutally treated by the police, assaulted, injured, and some in jail tortured and denied basic rights to food, water, legal representation, etc. The police wore riot gear. The protesters wore sweat shirts, rain gear and sported a few signs. Sure, if this had been elsewhere in the world, there would have been real bullets, so in a sense we got off easy. But real damage, psychic and physical, was done to some pretty harmless people.

   To me, the show of force was a show of something much more troubling. Those of us who are white, polite and off the streets don't know what many others in America do know – that the police are the friends of the dominant paradigm. Our government gains power and legitimacy not by the consent of the governed (democracy) but by the consent of the governed who have money and other forms of clout. Most of us don't see the chain link fence that surrounds us because we rarely get anywhere near it. Whether or not we were hurt on the streets or in the jails, even if we just watched it all on TV along with the rest of the horrified world, our noses hit the fence and our sense of freedom and justice was bruised. We have the illusion of choice – but within the chain link compound. It's chilling.

   I was also troubled by how easily I and many others adapted to the tear gas, curfews and police blockades. "Oh, tear gas on 7th Avenue, let's head over the freeway and down Marion." It only took minutes for my reptilian brain to develop survival strategies for current conditions. All but the most devoted protesters exercised their incongruous option of dropping in and out of the action at will – to grab a quick bite to eat, take a walk, go to a workshop or catch a nap. Human adaptability can absorb horror and get on with daily life. It's like stepping over or routing yourself around street people. How much have I already adapted to? How much will I adapt to before I draw my own line in the sand?

   The police and National Guard, in their frightening array of force, was the old paradigm baring her teeth. The temporary loss of democratic rights in Seattle demonstrated vividly the undemocratic nature of the world order the WTO is designed to enforce. It was the WTO's version of "This is what democracy looks like." Of, by and for the people who have the wealth (and want more of it). I've designed a test for WTO supporters (up to and including Michael Moore) who tell me they're doing it all for the poor, who still believe in the trickle down theory. Let's have a lottery, monitored by the likes of Vaclav Havel, Desmond Tutu, Thich Nhat Hanh or other respected moral voices. Every child between the ages of 10 and 13, say, will draw the name of a family somewhere in the world and go live with them for a year. Suburban jocks could end up in a barrio in Mexico City. Indian farm kids might join city sophisticates in Paris. And maybe some of the millions of kids who die daily of malnutrition diseases could end up dining for a year at tables heaped with luscious, plentiful food. The kids might all love it. But what adjustments might the well-heeled parents in the North make if their own children were the recipients of their corporate policies?

   The problems weren't specific bad cops or "anarchists". The problem is that we thought we had a democracy and we may not. Worse, I think many of us have forgotten how. I've not thought much about democracy, just like I hadn't thought much about the economy until 10 years ago. I learned in 7th grade that we have one and left it at that. Now, I'm reassigning myself to Poli Sci 101 (I actually never took that class in the first place). The beauty and hope from all this is that there are, I believe, millions like me who have been rudely awakened from a civic laziness. My guess is that once I catch hold of what democracy really is, I will be in awe of its beauty and proud to be part of the species that invented it.

   WTO AND ANARCHY

   
   

   Luckily I had a couple of anarchist friends staying with me or I might have dismissed their cause as incoherent at best and counter productive at worst. We stayed up late into the night talking. Amber saw in anarchy a utopian ideal – self responsible, aware people making considered choices that benefit the whole. She was quite aware that pulling off a functioning anarchist society would take a level of maturity that humanity might never achieve, or only after some profound growth at a species level. Mike saw anarchy as an appropriate response to an insane world. "I don't have to understand the phonebook-fat trade regulations to know they don't work. Just look around. Injustice. Unhappiness. Uncaring corporate power." For him, crimes against property aren't like crimes against people. Only those corporate outlets that exploit people and nature had been targeted. Their property, in his view, was ill-gotten. Those plate glass facades literally come out of the hide of underpaid workers and abused ecosystems.

   I thought of my own sentimental affinity for Luddites and Monkey Wrenchers. If I believed that smashing things would actually work, I might do it. But I'm just far enough along in life to know that in some perverse way such acts are good for the GDP (the clean up and repair WILL happen) and ultimately bad for the natural world (more resource consumption to tidy up the mess). But what struck me about Mike's argument was the fact that the world he's expected to inherit and uphold makes no sense to him. He doesn't want it. And he's no "trust fund hippie." He rides the rails, dumpster dives and plants trees for money – embracing a marginal existence as the only thing that's consistent with his stark view of reality. While the ones who did the tagging and window smashing were few, I suspect there are many Mike's out there, and this is as much a by-product of the consumer society as deforestation.

   Before leaving the anarchists, I want to tell one more story. At the end of the final big march on Friday, the labor contingent had chalked DEMOCRACY in large letters down a whole city block. They had us arrange ourselves along the lines so a media chopper could take our photo for the evening news. Perhaps to say, THIS is what democracy looks like. I was on the spine of the E. Behind me, a young man, standing precisely on the curve of the D, shouted until he was hoarse: "Don't cooperate. If we are peaceful, they win. Go back to the jail. Protest. Don't just do what you are told." All the while his feet never budged from the line. He could have broken rank. He could have run around every letter, fomenting revolution among the obedient. Instead he protested as he complied. I thought about those two forces in me – the one who thinks "outside the box" and the one who counts on the box to maintain an orderly world. I don't think that anyone really wanted it all to collapse – however much we might fantasize about the demise of western civilization in moments of disgust with crass materialism and gross injustice.

   WTO AS WAR?

   
   

   A dear friend of mine – a man enamored of truth and beauty who happens to be a Republican – wrote me last week saying: "The worst thing about highly contentious situations is that they can come between friends." People I cherish are strung out along much of the spectrum of opinion about the WTO. I wonder who might feel required to distance themselves from me because I haven't taken quite the right stance.

   During the year I lived in Spain, I remember long, eye-opening conversations with an older friend over Galoise-like cigarettes. She told me about her recollections of the Spanish Civil War. There was no electricity, much less telephones, in rural Spain at that time. News of the war filtered into the hinterlands via word of mouth. And people, who'd harbored ancient enmities, having nothing to do with the issues of the war, grabbed the occasion and started killing each other. That image of war releasing the beast of hatred has always stayed with me.

   Listen to the rhetoric. The Battle of Seattle. The war being waged by the global corporate and financial institutions. These are fighting words.

   So skirmishes began on the streets of Seattle. The beginning of a global citizen revolution? Time will tell. But if war it is, then war means sides, fathers against sons, brother against brother. Lines get drawn. The metaphor of war justifies behavior that in peace would just not happen. And war means people get hurt. Some, like those who choose to join the army (even the civil disobedience army), are choosing personal pain over turning a blind eye to evil. Civil disobedience IS disobedience and WILL be punished. It is breaking the law. That's the point. So it's no surprise that people were met with force. Much as we might like the Empire's army to have been trained in nonviolence rather than violence, their behavior was predictable. In war, too, bystanders are hurt, as were the shoppers and coffee drinkers, the street people and the folks doing their laundry at the wrong time. So declaring war, even righteous war, has profound costs and need be done with full awareness of the narrowing options war brings.

   Perhaps, for me, the luxury of empathy with all the humans I met that week will be sorely challenged.

   I recall now the young policewoman with braces who was part of a three deep blockade of a small group of middle-aged women carrying a non-threatening banner and chanting peace songs. She stood at attention but whispered to us conspiratorially "Hey, if you'd just roll up the banner there would be no problem." She was much less inclined to fight than some of the feisty old activists in our group.

   I recall the girls in anarchist garb joining me in trying to give a small dog a drink of water from the bottle they were carrying to wash tear gas from their eyes. The dog, one said behind her bandana, was "the only person who'd been nice to me all week."

   I recall distributing fruit to the people in vigil at the King County Jail. One girl declined, saying she'd not been so well fed in her whole life. People were coming by non-stop with food. "There was a pizza a protester," she said.

   I recall the calm of the peace keepers, their tense good cheer as they shepherded thousands through incendiary intersections.

   I recall the tireless work and patient repetition of explanations on the part of intellectuals in the Third World Network and the International Forum on Globalization.

   I recall the exasperated woman who came out of her shop on Friday, took one look at yet another rag-tag throng of protesters marching up 4th Avenue and angrily said to no one in particular, "They should put them all on a bus and send them home." ("They ARE home", I thought, but would it serve this woman to say it?) She wanted normal life back.

   I recall the woman in a "WTO for Beginners" workshop with me who on Monday hadn't even heard of the WTO. She'd been at a bus stop and struck up a conversation with someone who gave her an earful. By Tuesday she was at every teach-in she could find. By Friday she was in the March. By the next Wednesday she was front row center with her tape recorder at the first City Council hearing. She'd gotten radicalized – along with many other people on the streets and in front of their TV's that week.

   And I recall an old folk song about the civil war: "Which side are you on? Which side are you on?" If lines get drawn and sides picked, which way will all the people I know and those I met on the streets go?

   Something in me wants to stand up for the perfection of the whole pageant and all of the passion and outrage and courage that flushed the old paradigm out of hiding. I want to stand up for the camaraderie and bridge building I saw happening outside the "war zone." I want to have those who were locked down give respect to the people for whom the greatest act of courage was just to show up at a rally. I want us to celebrate those who were disobedient and got arrested, to remember what we learned dutifully in American History books – it was the SHOT heard round the world, not the teach-in or march. At the same time, I want all of us who protested to remember the humanity of the delegates and ministers. I want us to heed people like Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel and playwright Anna Devere Smith who have had the patience and vision to tell the whole stories of horrors like the Holocaust and the LA riots. I want the precious possibility of new alliances to flourish and not get beaten down by ideological hair splitting. If "Turtles and Teamsters" are going to have more than a fling, they will need all the courtesy and respect they can muster to deal with their real differences.

   I'm not just being nice in this call for respect. I'm being practical and fierce. And true to my own conviction that all elements have information that will lead to unheard of solutions – if we will listen deeply. Demonizing is running rampant now, filling column inches and email boxes globally. It won't help. Having trained in many forms of Aikido, on and off the mat, I am deeply concerned by my colleagues demonizing the WTO and what it stands for. I was especially troubled when this attitude spilled over into subtle and not-so-subtle put downs among the broad range of citizens and NGO's who formed common cause for a few glorious days. A few folks engaged in direct action seemed to be wearing a bit of "You Wimp" cologne that the rest of us could smell. Any choice short of battle mode was capitulation. But there was other polite sniping going on. I literally fear that after years of careful work we will arrive at the crest of the hill, see the "whites of the eyes" of the old paradigm, stand up and turn our guns on one another for some obscure differences of analysis and strategy. (Monty Python could do this skit up good.) The battle lines need to be drawn between paradigms, not between people or preferred tactics for change. We are choosing the rules for the future. Let's do it eyes wide open. In a way, the ideology of greed and growth thrives because it is simple-minded and single- minded. How can we, diverse as we are, be of one mind too?

   Some of the people who impressed me most for their inter-NGO bridge building were representatives of Alliance for Democracy, United for a Fair Economy and Sustainable America. They said… We need to watch out for the turf and leadership and funding wars that break us apart in petty ways. We need to take reflective time to scout upstream for the source of drowning babies so we don't repeatedly solve the same problem. And we need to keep our eye on the prize – healthy people on a healthy planet – and not just the next phone call or campaign. Can we do these few simple things?

   WTO AS INFOTAINMENT

   
   

   I have annoyed my enviro friends by asserting that the future belongs to the press agents. Surely science, public policy analysis or ethical debates should guide our cultural conversations. But they don't. Publicizing Your Money Or Your Life taught me that the media mediates reality and bestows validity much as the church or royalty did in bygone eras. If it's on TV, in the papers, in a book, well, it must be true – or at least worthy of forking over some my limited attention span to consider.

   Sound bites. Photo ops. Conflict. Sex, violence, scandal and celebrity. Face it, we eat that stuff for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So isn't it pitifully predictable that the stunning show of outrage and concern about what the WTO represents made headlines thanks to our much maligned anarchist compadres? They knew how to make news, and, in making news, they made all of our concerns a bit more newsworthy. It's not their "fault" that they upstaged everyone else except, ultimately, the police. Those two factions, with the direct action folks playing the Greek Chorus role of highlighting the morality of the moment, captured the media's attention and thus the attention of the world. That's how the media environment makes us make news. In a way, the media fosters the very misbehavior society is bound to condemn. Could it be that our capitalist epidemic of busyness and distraction are making us all into the cartoon yuppie parents. Civil society has to throw a tantrum of major proportions to get any attention. Ironically, the media makes money reporting on the very insanity it fosters. Oh well, who said the world isn't weird and getting weirder.

   The media isn't recognized as a player in these pageants, but it's got the central role. In this century's revolutions, guerrillas have learned that they must capture the media if they want to capture the state. Campaign finance reform is really media manipulation reform – politicians use soft money to capture the minds the media is adept at delivering. How can activists for the "new paradigm" capture at least their fair share of the media? How can we cut through the palaver and trivia that the media churns out? "Alternative" media is marginalized and serves only the already converted. Mainstream media seems to be such a huge fortress with commercial interests in every gun turret (as well holding a pistol to the heads of Station and Program Managers). So part of a measured, coordinated strategy post WTO Ministerial meeting has to be, dare I say it, a good media strategy.

   Your Money Or Your Life was, in a way, a media strategy. A life free of financial constraints yet strangely dismissive of traditional wealth and status symbols had enough curiosity to capture media attention. It irked and attracted people all at once. And I got hundreds of hours of air time – very frugally I might add. Then I used my thousand hours of fame to educate people in a new way of thinking about money, success, savings, status, freedom, purpose and stuff. Ironically, I would gently use the sponsor's ads on interview programs to enhance the points I was making. Somehow, no one recognized this work as subversive. And somehow I have a feeling that this experience has educated me in as yet untapped ways for the kind of transformation I believe we all yearn for. Many friends call me when they want media contacts (especially Oprah!). But that 's not what I am talking about. Rather than getting our messages out singly, we need a two-prong media strategy. We need the grit and moxie to reclaim some rightful space on the media for the leading cultural edge. AND we need to Aikido the current sick set-up to give us power (air time) using the very tools (shock, celebrity, style, sound and video bites) they use to make news. We can change the rules by playing their game better than they can. I know we can. I already know people who are doing it.

   WTO AND SPIRITUALITY

   
   

   Say what? Where's the link? I only bring it up because I am determined to integrate my devotional side and my activist side. And, as I do that, to seek this reconciliation in outer events. We all look with dismay on how religion and war have made common cause with every side claiming God is with them. Result: a lot of suffering. So what is the role of spirit? I am not a contemplative; I don't believe that prayer alone is sufficient to change the course of events. I am also not a materialist; I distrust any process conducted in the absence of the sacred. Perhaps it is with the natural love of a mother for a newborn that we need to hold the affairs of the world. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, when asked about evil in the world, spoke about the centrality of teaching happiness. Everyone wants it, yet to achieve it ultimately requires that everyone's happiness be assured. Peace Pilgrim, our American "saint", said, "Overcome evil with good." Saint Paul said love was the greatest force. So perhaps along with all our strategizing, we need to just love the shit out of the WTO. Here's a wonderful story I recently got over email:

   In the Babemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, about all the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy is recounted. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. The tribal ceremony often lasts several days. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe.

   I can see the faint outlines of Direct Spiritual Action. Blockade the entrance. Form a human chain. Then praise the WTO functionaries for all the good the global economy has given us and for all their hard work in making it happen. Thank them for the cell phones and computers that make our civil society hum. For the planes that brought us to the demonstrations. For donations to Universities where we got the training in law and medicine that allowed people to be protected and defended and healed on the streets. For the factories that make the bricks and mortar that make our homes. For our cars and trains and televisions, because we use them to bring us together and bring our message to the world. For providing some of the food we cannot grow ourselves anymore. For their good intentions. For being parents who want the best for their children. For standing up for their belief that they are doing the arduous work of stitching together the world economically so it doesn't fall apart politically. For every unknown act of kindness and courage they have ever done. For…

   Too improbable. Too idealistic. Every religion teaches such love. I suspect it will take incredible courage for me and everyone else to be boldly wise and fiercely loving in the face of all that needs repair in this world.

   AND SO IN CONCLUSION…

   
   

   I am famous for poor wind-ups to my public talks. Sorry, there's no summation for this story. It's unfolding in front of all our eyes. I am grateful to be part of it. I am grateful for every disturbing aspect of that week. I am grateful to the WTO for having given us a visible target for our distress; so many friends now are saying, " When I thought about the WTO I realized I needed to change a habit or a plan or a point of view." I am grateful to know more about the world I live in and know it's going to require more of me than I've ever given. Never before has the simple intention to be a responsible and compassionate human being meant stretching one's awareness to encompass all natural and human systems. Ouch. As hard as it is, the alternative of living in a plastic world or a comfortable bubble no longer cuts it. I'm going to need my sense of humor big time. And kindness, because I'm going to fall down a lot of times on the road to real global citizenship. And discipline. Discipline to use my time really well, which means knowing when to stare out the window and think as well as which meeting to attend, which project to start, which essay to write, which friend to join for an intense discussion over tea, which book to read. Discipline to strengthen my spirit, deepen my reflection. To learn those tools and skills that will provide comfort and encouragement for everyone on the journey with me – including me. And I'll need all the help I can get.

   With love,

   Vicki