I’m struggling to find my hope for anything right now, partly because how defeated I feel about the oil spill. The situation is so unbelievably bad. If you are plugged into independent news sources, you might know some of how bad it is. If you watch mainstream news, you might not know, because BP’s PR machine is busy making it look better than it is.

So, in the face of this disaster, what can I have hope in? I am generally the most optimistic person I know, but lately I have been feeling very doom-y. I don’t think this negates my work or my ideals at all to admit I feel doom-y, but I admit I am really struggling to see how things are going to be okay. The hardest part for me is watching how everybody seems completely detached from this disaster. I had originally hoped it would be an awakening turn-around point for people to see how off course we are as a species in general. I’m not seeing that awakening yet. How much of our planet do we need to kill off before we wake up?

I still haven’t given up hope on awakening, but I’m starting to lose hope that we are going to have much of a world left to live in once we do wake up. I’m trying to find my center around this issue, my calm clear center that can guide me, but I’m having a hard time finding it. I will find it. And, I will do the work I feel called to do in this time, and I will find a way to do it with peace and love in my heart. I do hope we can find a way to save ourselves and preserve the existing beautiful eco-systems on this planet. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Wouldn’t this be cool? A freak welcome wagon to formally welcome freaks as they move to town? I sure could have used this when I first moved here!

This, like many of my other amazing ideas, may never happen because I don’t have time to do everything I think of. But, how cool would it be to have a formal welcoming service for freaks new to Asheville? We can use all the artists, activists, healers, musicians, consciousness shifters, anarchists, punks, rebels, pagans, buddhists, taoists, geeks, meditators, yoginis, hippies, rappers, poets, slam poets, revolutionaries, hikers, bikers, skateboarders and natural mamas we can get! I think a lot of cool people move here because of the cool rep we have, but leave when it’s hard to get integrated at first. So, I think we need to find a way to help our freaky brothers and sisters find their way around and get acquainted with the local freak culture. Sound good? Who’s with me?

The more freaks we retain as they arrive, the stronger our freak culture gets. More people to go to cool events and to take action with. Plus, I’m all about having more and more interesting scenery. Did anyone else enjoy fanaticon’s display of people wearing superhero costumes downtown? That was amazing. I’d love to have the freakshow expand, gain more solidarity and variety, and keep Asheville as weird and interesting as possible.

Basically, I have a desire to welcome anyone with an authentic counter-cultural lifestyle, message, or vision. In the times ahead, I think we can use all the counter-culture we can get because our current culture is ripping apart at the seams. The more people in Asheville who are used to living “outside the box,” who are creative visionaries, free spirits, cultural revolutionaries, the better we will be able to create local solutions to the problems we face. So, c’mon all you who chose not to fit into the dominant cultural paradigm! Asheville doesn’t have a formal welcoming committee just for you yet, but you are welcome nonetheless!

For Evolver Asheville, I’ve been trying to compile a list of Community Resilience Resources. What I found out is that there already is a list, at a website called Sustainable Asheville. It’s not totally complete, but I e-mailed suggestions to the list coordinator.

See, I very much do not believe in re-inventing the wheel. If someone has done something or is doing something that I think is cool, I try to either join them, spread word about their work, or do something totally different. There’s enough work in the world to do without us competing over specific pieces of the work. That’s not to say that I won’t run into people who are doing very similar things to what I am doing, that has happened, but I think even in these cases we don’t have to feel competitive, we can work together. Generally, in cases like this, I have found that there are different takes on complex topics. With this list, however, these folks have already put a lot of work into their list, and I am just as happy doing something else instead of just repeating the same material. I’d rather share their website with people than waste my time doing the same work over.

Book reccomendation: “Making a Change For Good, A Guide to Compassionate Self-Discipline” by Cheri Huber. Lately, I’ve been feeling kind of mucked up energetically, and the thought came to me today that I should do her 30-day “guided retreat.” I’ve owned this book for years, and for that whole time been meaning to do this program.

The book itself is about living with conditioned mind, and how to free yourself from it’s grasp. According to Cheri, conditioned mind first convinces us we need improving, gets us going on a self-improvement binge, convinces us to give up, then beats us up for giving up. Conditioned mind is the part of us that has been socialized to think that we are not enough, and can never be enough. It’s also sort of a mixture of all the parts of ourselves that got stuck back in childhood when we were being socialized.

Anyway, meditation is all about learning how to live in the present moment and let go of the conditioned mind’s hold on us. Her approach to self-discipline is that if we learn to live in the present moment, we can not only make any of the changes we really want to make in our lives, we can also live in a greater sense of peace.

So, I decided I am ready to do this. The 30-day retreat (which is at the back of the book) is basically a combination of daily meditation (even just 5 minutes), and a very small amount of journaling, based on questions she poses. Basically, both the meditation and the writing excersize are designed to help create distance from the conditioned mind and live more in the present. It’s about learning to observe conditioned mind’s tactics to keep up distracted from being present. Also, she has us pick one thing we want to work on in the 30 days, some area of our lives we want to improve. I’ve decided to work on keeping my house clean, because this has advantages for every other part of my life.

So, I bought a little notebook, and I sat down and did a 5 minute (or so) meditation that she recommends (basically, following my breath and counting). After I write this blog post, I will also do the journal writing for today. So Today is Day 1 of this journey. I will try to do the whole 30 days, although she says it’s not that big a deal if you mess up and don’t finish. She says just restart. Restarting is the point.

So, I begin this journey towards learning to live more in the present. : )

I highly recommend the movie Naked States. I watched this movie in photography class in college, then again just this evening. When I first saw this movie, it entirely changed the way I looked at naked bodies, including mine.

The movie is about this photographer, Spencer Tunick, who does a lot of nude photography in public places. He is all about the body as landscapes of light and shadow. Sometimes, he will photograph only individual people, but often he will photograph large groups naked, like 100′s of people (or in the case of a Phish concert, over a 1000 people).

It was interesting, in watching the movie, how my perception of the human body changed. He doesn’t just photograph skinny people. He photographs all (adult) people, no matter body type. At the beginning of the movie, I would feel my cultural conditioning kick in as I felt uncomfortable viewing all the naked bodies (I was about 22 when I first saw this). But, by the end, I stopped having that reaction. Also, watching this movie changed me forever, because I stopped seeing some bodies as ugly. I started seeing all bodies as beautiful, because they are.

One funny part is that he went to a nudist colony, and they requested that he also be naked. He appeared to be relatively un-selfconscious about doing this, but at one point made a comment to the camera that he didn’t mind being naked in front of these people, or even in his movie, but that he was frustrated because had no place for his film. No pockets. : )

I think if you watch this movie, it will change your perceptions about the human body, too. If you are insecure about your body, all the more reason you should watch this. Shame has an awful energy, and I am all about releasing it. There’s something about this man’s artwork, and about this movie that challenges cultural shame about nudity, and it’s fun and inspiring too (I’m all about artist-makes-it-big movies).