between what I am doing and what I could ("should") be doing

I am sick of being asked what I am doing right now. Living at home. Working spottily. Taking a course. Teaching myself how to hula hoop. Growing a garden. Enjoying life. Writing, reading. Thinking about how I can make the most difference. Acting in small (seeming) ways that I believe can make a difference. And all of those are fine things to be doing, and mostly acceptable to people, but only on a temporary time period. I am expected to be trying to be doing something else--namely getting a "real job" and moving out. And maybe I do want that, but maybe I don't.

I don't want to do those things just because it is what I am supposed to do in this culture, that's for damn sure, because this culture has no reason behind what it does except that it will help the "economy." And then there are all the reasons we are conditioned to believe, like the pride of supporting yourself individually, being "independent," being "successful." But all that is just more and more becoming white noise to me. I have my own ideas of what those words mean or not, and while I may not get in depth about that right now, I believe they are more substantial, meaningful, and real.

I want to do the things I do because they bring me alive, or because they help someone, or because they are beautiful, meaningful, important things to do.

What am I doing right now?

I am trying to be alive in the most full and authentic way possible. I am trying to stay true to my values and visions. I am trying to create positive change in the world. I am trying to learn in love, be open, be true. I am focusing on my body, mind, and spirit. I am creating daily practices of movement, prayer, and learning, thinking, and action.

I am living at home. I am spending time with my cats who are lonely and domesticated and stuck in this house unable to fulfill their wild nature. I am spending time with my dad while my mom is away helping her brother who is dying from a disease created by a toxic culture and environment. I am spending time with this place, which I love, which is being stripped and desecrated. I am spending time with myself, alone, trying to release and reveal the love and life that is bursting from my heart, in a way that is meaningful and effective and true and beautiful. I am trying to live into my anger and allow it to fuel my work (and my words). In my work I am trying to stop these desecrations and diseases that pervade this country, this culture, and the human world by grieving them, feeling them fully, raising awareness about them, and acting against them, or toward something better.

I am trying to heal from a sick society. I am trying to find ways to live in greater harmony with myself and human others, and animal others, and other beings, and the earth. I am trying to resist the feeling that I need to do something that I don't want to do in order to make money instead of doing what I actually want to do which is make change. I am trying to contend with my privilege of even even having the choice to not get a full-time job or of even being able to contemplate this, and of even being able to contemplate half of what I contemplate.

I am trying to contend with all the contradictions, injustices, and criminalities of western culture, American politics, and mainstream media/society bullshit in general.

I am trying to create a new story for our time based on older stories of land-based living, and newer stories of global community, to create real community, true economy, and a grounded balanced spirituality. I am trying to reignite curiosity, passion, bursting flowering expression of self and soul and earth.

I am trying. I am feeling connected, and not separate. I am feeling more alive than not, and that is certainly something.

I don't want to stay in my current circumstance for much longer, but I whatever I step into next, I want it to be on these terms.

Mount Si wildfire.

Fire on the mountain. Smoky river valley. Wildfire reminds me to accept.

(Some things.)

I would rather lose trees this way than by the mindless expansion of sprawl. Why didn't everyone get all up in arms when they clear-cut the ridge for homes? Suburbanization is a wildfire, but worse. At least the fire knows to leave fertility in its wake.

Trust me, my heart breaks for the mountain too, but my heart has been breaking every day for years for all the things being burned that aren't in our backyards, or right in front of our eyes; the things that are hidden but are the direct fuel for the monstrosity of industrial civilization--people, animals, trees, places enslaved, mined, and burned for the convenience of our daily lives.

I am guilty if anyone is.
I too have been basking in ease of summer.

And well, this season, this year, feels like the first really summer of my life (of my mind) since childhood--finally feeling joyful and alive. Finally happy.
I deserve it.
But so do the people working in the sweatshops to make my fashion, the minerals manipulated into the tools of my passions.

I am finding peace
and the world burns.

How does this work?

Wildfire reminds me to accept.

(All things).

with and between

enchantment and groundedness
flow and fidelity
commitment and change
imagination and physical reality
pride and humility
soul and spirit and body
solitude and community
who i am and who i could be

both

(from journal)

I don't want to be ignorant. I want to fill the world with truth.
I don't want to be cynical. I want to fill the world with love.