this is nice.

from the hope archive

"When trying to live hope, we believe it helps first to start where we happen to
be.

Hope works better when it's here.

Second, we believe that it is helpful to
think of hope as the acknowledgement that nothing is fixed (though much is
experienced as stable), that nothing is necessary, that nothing has to be the
way it is.

Third, we find it helpful to think that we are active participants in
our experience of meaning, power, and social interaction and in and through that
participation we are always-already making a difference. The job, it would seem,
is to make the character of those differences transformative.

How is always a delicate issue.

For us, the fourth element of hope is that gentleness is both a possible and a powerful politics.

How to begin to consider the effects and influences of our lives in the light of at least fourteen degrees of separation, especially if we don't just think in terms of people living right now?

An understanding of hope is, for us, very much an understanding of the politics of possibility and the possibilities of power. "

in other wor(l)ds, it's a sunny day of a rainy week here in oakland--half of hot mess converges at the library, i run around stealing supplies for a sex toy workshop, i smoke cigarettes, we make bread. the buckwheat groats in our oats were pretty sour this morning and i had a scrabble hangover when i woke up. what makes a life? i am feeling myself rush in small things, rush when i think i am relaxed, to do all the small joyful things i want to do. something funny in that.
there are tiny baby plants growing in egg cartons in our front lot and i feel my days to be closely intertwined with their progress, their minute but almost visible growth.
today, down the block, someone got shot in their car because they had just won the lottery. paul says it is black self-hatred. i don't know exactly what to think. similar with the japanese tsunami, nuclear meltdown, may 21 judgment day, peak oil crisis, birds falling out of the sky and cars running over bicyclists at the sao paulo critical mass...what to do? what can we do? today i will bike around, make bread, make sex toys, hug my friends, nurse my new tattoo, read some marquez. is that wrong?

happy birthday lelz!
another pisces... geez, all my friends are dreamers.

I am in San Marcos taking shiatsu classes and learning magic tricks from little Guatemalan boys.
quite happy, brilliant, etc.
but thinking... that maybe this central american journey is soon coming to an end.
how will it end?
I am starting to rely too much on my tarot cards. the hanged man says chill out, go with the flow, wait and the answer will come.
but my tendency to jump the gun says... I would love to visit chicago. wow. so, pregunta:
will those I love currently living in Chicago be there for the duration of april? perhaps bike around town with me for a couple weeks?
will it be warm yet there?

imagine... flying! no more crowded chicken buses and ladies selling coconut water and cashews. sterile grey seats, sterile little plastic food trays. time-space leaping.

i am coming to resent white people here, somehow. like, we talk alot about all of our internal baggage that we are letting go of, delving into the harms of our past, releasing...
and then I talk to veronica selling banana bread on the street. my age, providing for her 5 sisters and brothers. smart, beautiful, funny girl.
somehow, I can connect with her better than the folks at the meditation center.
somehow.

also, parasites, geez. need to stop being a raw foodist here.
also, cacao is really yummy. i´ll bring some back for you all if i come to chi-town

an update

hello my darlings
my first post about not drinking mentioned that the start date of my experiment was january 26th.
that was just 4 days before my 23rd birthday. I broke the fast last saturday, march 5th, for a total of some large amount of days.
as i sit here now with a mug of wine, i reflect on the fact that it was nice. i had more energy to do other things. i don't think i'll start drinking every night again, at least not for a while. what a waste!


by the way if you want to see something that might have something worth seeing over the weekend that I made you might check out crowdCTL.com. It's a thing.

check

one: maple syrup
flamin hot
anti freeze bile of the mommabouge
time collapses in on itself
i casually refer
to
autumn

Jupiter is passing through Aries, which explains all this luck I´m experiencing....

Guatemala, lago d`atitlan. San Marcos is a little town on the lake where every other house is a meditation or healing center. Music every night at the ganesh collective, up the giant elephant trunk staircase. I feel a bit like I´m back in California with the new-age hippies and rainbow kids down by the lake, but then I walk up into the village and am greeted by all the guatemalan families, the kids asking for a quetzal, the girls wondering about my jewelry.

A coincidental series of events upon my arrival led me to climb up the mountain and find Fernando´s house, an architectural masterpiece in progress with the most fantastic view I´ve ever seen. You can see the entire lake, the volcano, and all the surrounding villages. He wasn´t there upon my arrival, but a young Austrian traveler gave me a pair of keys and said I could probably move in. My room has a buddah on one wall decorated with turquoise and sea shells, opposite a mural of the ruins at Palenque.
Met Fernando yesterday- a Mexican man in his fifties who made a lot of money when he was younger, and since then has been living in ashrams, traveling, and being an artisano. His dream now is to turn this place into an eco-community to survive next years financial apocalypse, and so he´s grounding out to build and garden. He even has another piece of land in Oaxaca which is Plan B if San Marcos gets swept away.

He´s open to Brea and I doing whatever we want while we´re here-- painting, gardening, chilling. He´s not interested in money and just wants to make community. To share love and spiritual growth. I am so astounded by this blessing. Wow. I sense I´ll be making a home and sticking around for a while, maybe taking some shiatsu classes, but mostly reading, writing, and helping build up on the hill.

Ripe mangoes, pineapple, and avocado... rainbow family... a room of my own surrounded by coffee plants and banana trees. Somehow it keeps getting better.

I´m learning that the more specific intentions I have for my space, my life, my crafts, the better they manifest. Have been doing a lot of mind-mapping to clarify what this world can be for me. And it seems to work.
I feel somehow overly positive for this blog, but it´s like- damn, there is another reality out there if you are open to it. As Don Juan says, just watch for the signs.

and

we're famous!
(but we all knew that already)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYCRqvvtj0Y
we show up halfway through looking beautiful/fucking absurd.
http://www.bilerico.com/2011/01/gay_shame_on_roe_v_wade_protesters.php#more

oh oh oh

mochi pie in oven, CA

didnt know life could be like this in america.
places like this are what i thought i desired>>>>>
but no.
desire is taken at the instant i call it my own
then churned through THE MACHINE (a kind of joke) and
spit out charading as the same desire
but so different
now fetishized, aestheticized.
disambiguation has happened
and so has hollowness

desire is not being able to have exactly what you want.
the machine, or whatever we want to call it doesnt get that. better yet:
we dont get that
when we get what we want
we die:
our exact undreams stand erect as graves before our sleep is even over
but made of balsam wood and echoing no substance

tonight i am in california and am in the mood to think: no this is not what i have wanted.
i dont want anything anymore .
but by saying this i imply i want everything
genuine
intentional
and more
which just might happen by rejecting wanting in order to have and be
dunno


so, ill try and try again to take all i care for and choose my own movement
not the movement of the collective with all its trinkets and insignia
and lies like hope + mass awakening.
perhaps choose to be poor but rich.
choose how to be possible and why.
the sun will be out
and i might ask you
what do you care about ?
let's keep together