I’m very excited. I had a second letter on Salon.com today that was selected as an Editors Choice. Call me a geek, but that thrills me to no end. I try not to write unless I have something to say, something meaningful, something that hasn’t been said before. Which brings me to actually saying something (as opposed to being excited for myself.
Mmmmm Hot zombies on my desktop. Wait, that’s a distraction. Not what I meant, not what I wanted to say.
I’m sitting in the living room, watching Jesus Christ Superstar. This is the 2000 version, and oh my wow is it fascinating. I will admit that I don’t love all the music, but the cinematography and the way it was put together are the fascinating parts. Jesus is s a curly-blonde with a rather body-builder face, and Judas is played by a greasy shyster type. The Pharisees are officious looking members of some corporate Board of Directors.
Neither George nor I have ever seen it before. I think the original must have been better, cause wow. With the exception of this one scene “See my eyes…” the whole thing is just a bit awkward. I’m wondering how it was made in 2000. It looks as though it was filmed sometime in 1986. But no. Oh and Jesus, sweetie, you don’t have that note. Really. You don’t have it. At all. Stop trying. Please stop trying. It’s not pretty. No joke, he’s tried to sing the same note at least a dozen times so far, and every time it’s come out uglier than Judas’ purported sin. I just heard the line “your omniscient brain” sung. Yeah, it’s that bad. Hmmmmm. Now there are Jewish ninjas on the screen. Fascinating. (I’m not sure they’re supposed to be ninjas, but that’s what they look like)
Anyway, I was thinking about how awesome it is to have Netflix. If you haven’t already guessed it, I’m working up to a discussion of communal living. We have a Netflix account, and we share it. I admit that I spend more time on it than anyone else, but we pick what movies we want next. Right now we have Kinky Boots (Because it’s awesome), Jesus Christ Superstar (Because we’re weak and curious), and Bang Bang You’re Dead (Because I love it and insist everyone else sees it.)
I’ve been reading more and more about living communally. I figure since this great experiment of ours is flowing forward whether we like it or not, I should know what I can about it.
Now is a good time to talk, since I’m beginning to encounter some of the rough spots. In organizational life cycles, I would say that we’re going through a phase of storming.
Right now there are a lot of stress factors building in the apartment. I’m the only one of the four of us who is currently employed. I won’t be able to manage all the bills on my own for more than another few weeks, so we’re all feeling the pressure of that. Above and beyond that, Josiah is a new element, that we’re working hard to incorporate. We love him dearly, but he’s caused an energetic shift in the apartment. We’re all struggling to incorporate this, but we haven’t gotten there yet.
So when you live with other people, what do you do when the energy doesn’t feel right? How do you handle it when things get a bit weird, or when you don’t feel welcomed by your home? Lots of communal situations have long and detailed lists of rules for how to handle all personal conflicts, and house rules. I haven’t seen any of these things taken from a mystical point of view, or from the point of view that we share here at Ceann Widhe.
There are a few primary tenets we operate on.
First, organicism and balance. We strive to create natural communal living spaces. By natural I mean uncontrived. Our living room is primarily a pillow room. When we watch dvd’s we pile into the living room and make ourselves as comfortable as possible. I often work on the laptop (as I am now, I’ve been conditioned since a child to do something else while I watch the television, don’t ask.) The altars that are in public spaces are earth tones, nothing that is garish or intrusive. We try to create a space that feels warm and embracing. The altars in the public room are also altars for things that are generally honored in Ceann Widhe. An Ancestor Altar, A Faerie Altar, a Hearth Altar, and a communal working altar. We strive to carry this principle throughout the apartment.
Second, the concept of harmony. We work to support each other, to be more than just house-mates, but family. We try to keep each other healthy and happy. We try not to get in each others way and to oblige each other however we can. When we have conflicts of personality we resolve them harmoniously where possible. We try not to leave hurt feelings or bruised hearts lying around in the open. We each commit to being responsible for our own feelings and ensuring that they’re addressed.
Third, the concept of mysticism. We are a household of mystics. We are spiritualists, witches, pagans, mages, psychics, healers, and shamans. We honor and respect the spirits and gods with which we reside, and strive to maintain a healthy, spiritually active environment for ourselves and our extended family.
Fourth, we are not a family of hippies. We love hippies, they have their place in the world, but we aren’t hippies. We’re young, urban mystics and professionals. Two of us serve on the Board of Directors for the Brotherhood of the Phoenix. All of us partake in activist opportunities that interest us. All of us are urbanites, fascinated by, and in love with the city and the community we are building here. All of us enjoy having money to spend. We’re all curious about how communal living will function INSIDE a capitalist environment. (Most often, communal collectives strive to remove themselves from capitalist society as much as possible. This may be an eventual goal for us, more likely it will be a side effect of trying to live healthier, better lives. But none of us are actively trying to get out of capitalism)
There may be more, we’ll have to discuss them, but these seem to be pretty essential to the way we live. So with those things said, how is it that we resolve conflicts that arise? How do I explain that things feel a bit wonky? As mystics, we need to embrace our intuitive knowledge of these things. If I am feeling that there is an energetic pressure, there is a reason for it. That reason may be my own, or it may be the manifestation of something larger. Either way it needs to be addressed. This is a rule in all walks of life. When something begins to fester, or rot, or stagnate, you need to address it appropriately or it will continue to fester.
Alright, that’s it for now. Namaste.
Yesterday (2007 10 21, Sunday) I went to a service at the Center on Halsted by Pillar of Love. The Brotherhood was asked to give an opening benediction. Being devoted to interfaith work, and friends of this congregation we obliged gladly.
But I’m not really intending to write about our work in the community. This is not the place for that. The service yesterday had a single powerful message, one that was more potent than most people would realize. The message, or what message I received, is a simple one, that many of us forget.
Family has nothing to do with our differences, nor our similarities. Family has everything to do with Love. This is the season of balance, although we are fast approaching the dark tide of Samhain, the winter months are not here yet. This is the time to remember the convergence of opposites, the places where we find our own unique balance points, find the stability in that knowledge to let us walk bravely in the world without fear.
I am blessed to have family that is strong and noble, family that gives me the strength to spend every day of my life out of the closet, to acknowledge myself as the key to living a happy and fulfilling life. There are no separations but those that we create out of fear or hatred. We are the gifts that are given unto the world each day and night, and how we spend those gifts is the true measure of man. We can spend those gifts wastefully, squandering them on the effort that it takes to build walls, or we can spend them creating families.
I for one, choose to create families. I am blessed in that I grew up in a strong family, and not a day goes by that I don’t honor the strength I have been given through that. And now, I am working to create my own family. True, I am not related to them by any blood bond, nor even a bond of true similarity (although it would be foolish to pretend that there are not many things we share). No, the family that I am building is based on the simple concept of love. I have found people that I deem worthy of love, who are willing to offer me their love, who are willing to make new communities with me. There is nothing but beauty in love, however it manifests, and I will challenge anyone who says otherwise.
Because in the end, love transcends sexuality and gender, religion and creed. Love transcends these things and many more, because it is honest. Love is the center of the Divine spirit, the Queer Spirit, and the Spirit of Humanity. And it is because of this that I base my family on love, and try every day to share that love without hesitation or question.
Okay, so I haven’t posted in several days. I’m sitting in front of the computer now, typing because I feel compelled.
I’ve been writing plenty, I just haven’t been writing here. It’s hard to always have something to say. I love the organicism of blogging, but there is also a demand placed. Not that I think I have any loyal readers, I don’t know whether or not I desire that. Of course, the ego-fulfillment that is blogging suggests I probably do. I shan’t be troubled by it either way. For whatever the motives, I want these words here, that is in fact why I’m writing them.
You see, the internet is more than a communication tool, it is more than a media platform. It is more than semi-random connections of computers around the world. The proprietors of large media companies would have us believe that the internet is simply the new television. But you see, this simply isn’t true. The internet holds new promises.
More than anything else, the internet is becoming, and holds the promise of art. Let me be clear, when I say art I refer to the expression of the human spirit in any media. Art, at it’s core, holds the premise that we are more than just complex sets of proteins and enzymes animated by some neurological spark. The internet, this vast web of interrelations and connections, is the only medium thus brought into being by man that even begins to approach the complexity and variety which establishes the reality of the human animal. Because of this, the internet provides a forum for the creation and distribution of art that is unlike any other. It allows humanity to view itself from above, and gives us the opportunity to share ourselves in reality.
Art is no longer relegated to galleries, or libraries, or private collections. The internet makes the creation and expression of art into a fundamental human activity, and through this fundamental change in the way we make art, we have the opportunity to revolutionize our culture. When I write here, or when my friends make a movie or write a song, the internet immediately allows our culture to encompass these new thoughts. If they are original, they are brought into our culture clearly and although they may never be core, these new beauties become part of us. If the art is derivative but expressive, it becomes part of our cultural lingua franca, and if it is derivative and dull, it is immediately assigned to the corridors of expression, the artistic knowledge that supports our culture by reminding us of it’s commonalities.
Have you ever had a job that drives you insane? Good, you’re normal. So here comes my job rant. In principle I love my job. I have easy hours, great benefits, and sit at a desk all day doing things that I love (coding, coding, and more coding). The thing is though, every once in a while, meaning daily, I have to stop doing what I love, and fix other peoples messes. Messes made because other people didn’t test what they built, or think very far ahead when they coded.
Now don’t mistake me, I’m not getting all high and mighty about programming styles, but I find that I have a pretty easily negotiable style, and I like it.
That’s not really the point though, nor is my preference being ignored by others the point. But I have a seriously difficult time trying to grasp the ‘just make it work’ philosophy of so many people. Not even the people I work with particularly. Just people in general. I don’t understand why people don’t ever want to take the time to do it right in the first place. Instead they put band-aid after band-aid on the problem until they have a heaping pile of gauze and sticky and plastic. Then they wonder why they can’t feel their finger anymore.
I see this in my job daily, but it occurs to me that it’s a much much larger problem then lazy developers. It’s cultural. To look at the band-aid analogy, only from a different light. Look at the way our allopathic practitioners handle our medical care. They ask you what’s wrong, and then give you a perscription medication to ‘fix’ it. Except the medication doesn’t fix it. It alleviates the symptoms. To fix it, you need to know what caused it, and that would require a much better understanding of the human body than western doctors have. (Yes, I know there are a lot of great doctors out there, many of whom take good care of their patients. But there is a philosophical epidemic in the western world, particularly in North America, that indicates medication is the solution to our ‘problems.’)
But even looking at the poorly conceived concept of medicine isn’t a big enough picture. Why do we get sick in the first place? Laziness. We do exactly what some of my co-workers do. Instead of taking care of ourselves and building a healthy life to begin with, we do what’s easy, and work to get by. Then we are constantly supporting and reevaluating, and changing our lifestyles, or adjusting our bodies chemical balance to try and restore ourselves to a comfortable state of living. Just like my coworkers who just keep adding an extra line of code here and there to ‘get by.’ Eventually the projects source is so fixed that it’s unmaintainable and requires an expert who has studied the monstrosity just to make a minor adjustment, or it works in some frankensteinian manner that is unweildly and ultimately ineffective.
This is exactly what happens to our lives. Instead of making the changes that will bring us back to Actual health, we settle for the easy choice that returns us to an operable state. And every time we compromise and attain an operable state, we go a little further into that morass of chemically altered confusion that becomes more and more difficult to maintain and uphold.
I’m no better. Just like every one of us I’ve been conditioned to pursue a livable life with as little work as possible. It takes me enormous effort to make small changes to my lifestyle and patterns, to try to live a healthier, cleaner life. I struggle every day to detoxify my body and mind, to cleanse the misconceptions and damaged awarenesses. And I often fail.
That said, I am trying. And I encourage those around me to do the same.
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