How can I moderate when I'm so immoderate?
The IncomparableAstrokaiju has handed off the moderation of this little scene to memyselfandI.
Here's what I have to say (this be my testament may it save & not condemn me)
So my shamanism is shabby right now. It's true - there is the matter of persistent change, of the only constancy being transformation. In the long view there's no saying just what changes will be or what they'll bring but it's plenty good to speculate about what'll come of them - my temperment tends toward the Jeremiad form of prophecy.
I walk my mandala in the Cleveland metropolitan area - 18th biggest in the nation of the States United. It's the buckle of the rust-belt & comes in first in all the sorts of polls you don't want to be first in - mortgage forclosure rates, murder & obesity - I like to call it the wasteland and it's fine with me that it is exactly that. Sometimes you might imagine that it might improve or change that way and maybe it does, but my eyes aren't built for seeing the best in anything and I'm like a grindstone noticing everything that could go bad in a dozen centuries of a current trajectory. That's the fantasist in me thinking & I must say that when I make my labrynthine pilgrimages to the stations of the city or else when I weave my mandala walk through just my neighborhood - I do my best to see it all in a different way. Sometimes it really is the wasteland that it could be - power flickering in the too-many signs, all broken up with rocks and shotguns broken down cars with a hundred people riding shotgun. Sometimes it doesn't look too different from that at all. Sometimes. And sometimes I see the after-world, my favorite version of the city, grown over with trees and almost empty of people. The indians abandoned this place before the new nation of connecticut decided to establish their own xanadu here - it's not hard to see that later inhabitants might do likewise, walk out on the bad weather and malicious air, fierce pollen count and snow belt & lake effect - there's not a lot to keep anyone here, I've learned that to my dismay, friends & fellow travelers all gone off to the brighter spots on the map. And what's left when it's all gone? Overgrown and weedy, dogs in packs running after the few remaining residents living in the top floors of the tall buildings gone to seed and everything always green. I like that vision of what the city could be. It's conflated with another vision and that's of the city never been - the forest primeval never been touched, the glacial till plain and the passenger pigeon and what would it be like to walk here only a thousand years ago? My people aren't from here, my people come from a place that still has some of the same streets from 1,000 AD and 1 AD and 1000 BC - some of them anyway. So there's that - the new land burned and flaring out young and pretty and fierce and now grown old ahead of its time. That's now. There's plausible futures - ones that I should think about a little harder since I'm going to be in them, part of them. On the radio they talk about everything - psychic & single path, the best kind, thinking of McCluhan and cold & hot and what's the radio Marshall? Never can remember and barely understood - but the media shamanism's not for the simpleminded. They tell me that the county of Cuyahoga - the crooked & burning river - that'll join together sometime soon maybe and we'll all be in a bigger better city - I've no doubt of the bigger and better, I wonder what it'll really be though? And another tower goes up out of nowhere? And some new sports calamity to rally and enrage and maybe another departure and another arrival - comings and goings - that's the nature of the city & young and aged before its time - that's the Wasteland/Cleveland - getting in line with the changes- that's the hardest part of your shamanism, or mine anyway.
Think of when it all glowed inside you, when it was like a pearl in your palm - the best time ever when you were synched to your city and it to you and maybe you were the best wizard you'll ever be. Well it has to go another way - it's not going to stand still for you and it's not as if you'll stand still yourself. They dam up the river, change the course, knock down dams and dredge up streams to help the parklands grow- what's that do the chakras then? And they is everyone else getting by and sometimes noticing what the city even means - the unity of people, hands and heads bent toward simultaneous action - all in a row - deeply lined up - and you'd never notice it in anyone's life but that's what their life is - seen from the right angle and the right eyes. So wake yourself up and don't guess at what your city has become but see it for yourself and be ready to be in it and of it. You are surrounded.
Here's what I have to say (this be my testament may it save & not condemn me)
So my shamanism is shabby right now. It's true - there is the matter of persistent change, of the only constancy being transformation. In the long view there's no saying just what changes will be or what they'll bring but it's plenty good to speculate about what'll come of them - my temperment tends toward the Jeremiad form of prophecy.
I walk my mandala in the Cleveland metropolitan area - 18th biggest in the nation of the States United. It's the buckle of the rust-belt & comes in first in all the sorts of polls you don't want to be first in - mortgage forclosure rates, murder & obesity - I like to call it the wasteland and it's fine with me that it is exactly that. Sometimes you might imagine that it might improve or change that way and maybe it does, but my eyes aren't built for seeing the best in anything and I'm like a grindstone noticing everything that could go bad in a dozen centuries of a current trajectory. That's the fantasist in me thinking & I must say that when I make my labrynthine pilgrimages to the stations of the city or else when I weave my mandala walk through just my neighborhood - I do my best to see it all in a different way. Sometimes it really is the wasteland that it could be - power flickering in the too-many signs, all broken up with rocks and shotguns broken down cars with a hundred people riding shotgun. Sometimes it doesn't look too different from that at all. Sometimes. And sometimes I see the after-world, my favorite version of the city, grown over with trees and almost empty of people. The indians abandoned this place before the new nation of connecticut decided to establish their own xanadu here - it's not hard to see that later inhabitants might do likewise, walk out on the bad weather and malicious air, fierce pollen count and snow belt & lake effect - there's not a lot to keep anyone here, I've learned that to my dismay, friends & fellow travelers all gone off to the brighter spots on the map. And what's left when it's all gone? Overgrown and weedy, dogs in packs running after the few remaining residents living in the top floors of the tall buildings gone to seed and everything always green. I like that vision of what the city could be. It's conflated with another vision and that's of the city never been - the forest primeval never been touched, the glacial till plain and the passenger pigeon and what would it be like to walk here only a thousand years ago? My people aren't from here, my people come from a place that still has some of the same streets from 1,000 AD and 1 AD and 1000 BC - some of them anyway. So there's that - the new land burned and flaring out young and pretty and fierce and now grown old ahead of its time. That's now. There's plausible futures - ones that I should think about a little harder since I'm going to be in them, part of them. On the radio they talk about everything - psychic & single path, the best kind, thinking of McCluhan and cold & hot and what's the radio Marshall? Never can remember and barely understood - but the media shamanism's not for the simpleminded. They tell me that the county of Cuyahoga - the crooked & burning river - that'll join together sometime soon maybe and we'll all be in a bigger better city - I've no doubt of the bigger and better, I wonder what it'll really be though? And another tower goes up out of nowhere? And some new sports calamity to rally and enrage and maybe another departure and another arrival - comings and goings - that's the nature of the city & young and aged before its time - that's the Wasteland/Cleveland - getting in line with the changes- that's the hardest part of your shamanism, or mine anyway.
Think of when it all glowed inside you, when it was like a pearl in your palm - the best time ever when you were synched to your city and it to you and maybe you were the best wizard you'll ever be. Well it has to go another way - it's not going to stand still for you and it's not as if you'll stand still yourself. They dam up the river, change the course, knock down dams and dredge up streams to help the parklands grow- what's that do the chakras then? And they is everyone else getting by and sometimes noticing what the city even means - the unity of people, hands and heads bent toward simultaneous action - all in a row - deeply lined up - and you'd never notice it in anyone's life but that's what their life is - seen from the right angle and the right eyes. So wake yourself up and don't guess at what your city has become but see it for yourself and be ready to be in it and of it. You are surrounded.