Tag Archives: environment

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The Senior Center

The Senior Center was a beehive of active waiting
to die.

Bingo
but not ballroom dancing.

Knitting
but not garden expansions.

Physical therapy
but not yoga
and not chi gong,
much less mindful meditations
sung in four part harmony.

The new guy,
just growing into sixty-five,
asked them
How would we like to be remembered
one hundred years from now?

That doesn’t seem likely,
I know,
but perhaps more likely together
than playing Solitaire
side by side.

I would like to be remembered
as healers of The River
said a somber SeptemberGenerian woman
surrounded by ancient lady friends.

No one needed to ask why.
We all knew
what was coming downriver
for future regenerations
of thirsty toxined minds
with biodiverse bodies.

And so we found younger allies
who owned property along The River,
beginning with the railroad company,
and the Mohegans
and the Pequots,
where a Senior knew a Senior
with a well-placed daughter,
and sometimes a son
of unusual cooperative and long-term focus.

Together we planted firs
and cedars along polluted and denuded banks,
for future generations to manage,
harvest for housing
and furniture
and fiber
and possibly even coffins
waiting for memories of polluted rivers
to die.

That was one hundred years ago
we started
in this regenerative Senior Center,
and still going strong
as each year
a new incoming class
of those who finally reached sixty-five
joined our river healing project,
more recently also producing fruit trees
and berries,
flax
and hemp,
mushrooms
and nuts
and sweetgrass baskets
woven by SeptemberGenerians.

Women and a few surviving men
and some more in-between
smiling together
at the round cedar table in the back,
remembering Elder healers
of our barren land
and naked River.

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Ecological Imperative

Ecologists seem more aware
than economic and political scientists
and capital and democracy leaders of state investments,
of the remarkable multi-functionality of natural systems,
like trees,
and river valleys
and their forests
with canopies of shade
enlightened from above by sun,
glimmered by moon and starlight,
creating energy,
nutrition,
predators and prey, but also beauty,
health and pathology,
feeding and bleeding co-invested systems
of interdependent relationships.

While multi-functionality of organic systems
is a complicated array of niches,
these are not just the economist’s consumer market niches
or just producers of goods and bads through labor,
through both WinLose and WinWin Games,
but more like all of the above.

This comes to mind
because as I have earned the perspective
of multi-functioning economic and political decades,
as both consumer and producer,
I have also noticed that polarized U.S. elected officials,
especially those working in, or even near,
our infamous District of Columbia,
have reduced the citizenry
to producers of tax revenues and votes,
expecting to consume diminishing returns
of peace and justice,
to expect Business As Usual,
a drought of functionality,
dwindling absence of Constitutionally protected returns
for health
happiness
and mutually cooperative prosperity.

Ecologists
and other health v pathology students,
learn to become more aware of the reciprocal,
perhaps even contagious,
relationships between producers giving care
and consumers receiving healthy care.

I don’t see many elected folks
working and living in our public sector
burning the midnight oil
pondering together
how to become more multi-functional care-givers
and care-receivers,
which requires cooperation more
and competition for votes and tax dollars less.

As a wanna-be culture of healthy ecopolitics,
we are too capital-mesmerized
by our own recent investment histories
in unhealthy pathologies,
driven to capture what’s left of value
on the verge of a no longer merely impending
humane energy production descent,
choking on our own culture of BadNews
competing consumer markets of polarizing pathology.

If economists and political scientists
and dipolar ecopolitical practitioners
like me
and you
and our families,
and our communities,
and our States,
and our Nations,
and our anthro-centric global population
were to burn what’s left of the midnight oil
discerning together this basic functionality
of balancing consumer markets for health and happiness
and producer forces and contagious flows
for cooperative wealth thereof,
WinWin Both-And options only,
like forest systems of democratic trees,
and other living, breathing cultures of Earth’s health,
I wonder if the return on our votes and tax investments
in mutual-care receiving
may pay off more robustly,
resonantly,
cooperatively,
organically,
permaculturally,
ecologically,
not quite so pathologically
polarized WinLose competitions.

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Subversive Dance

I hope we can help ourselves
and each other
become quieter,
more leisurely,
generous,
grateful,
graceful dancers of sound
rhythm
pattern
voices of color
to see and hear these quieter vibrations
of wildness.

Wildness
wilderness
relatively untouched forests of mountains
and oceans,
rivers
lakes
ponds
swamps of wildness
for quiet forms of song and Earth dance.

Dance
moving to louder voices of climate pathology
and landscape erosion
decomposition of home and safety,
but also quieter dance
of witness
stalking visual prey
we would not violate with unwanted harming touch,
turning and swirling whorls of joy
quiet
yet also loud tornadoes
hurricanes
tsunamis whirling wildly loud.

Loud dance thrashing
climates of disarray
for smaller subclimates within
remaining wildness of species memory.

Memory of meadow walks
and naked tree climbing
swinging dances with polyphonic gendered nature
nurturing quieter wilderness
teaching slowing leisurely dance
through each day
returning to healthy full moon wealth
of wildness,
ecodancing movement to sound
and pause for silent graced lines
of sight.

Sights of quieter fragrance
and pungent distant fear
remembering mountain
ocean
water and air
fire and Earth’s Wildness
dancing loud pathologies
of Her majesty and awful wonder
reminding me and us
to respect our wise gratitude
for quieter voices and movements of nature
teaching grace as gratitude
for wilderness within
as wisely without you and I.

I hope I can help
grow quieter listeners
of wildness songs sung together
with dancing graceful pause,
wish for wilderness witnessing partners,
mutually stalking copresence
within Earth’s cooperative quiet majesty,
ecodancing drums
too anthro-discentering loud,
yet sometimes refreshingly polypathic quieter journeys
dancing softly hummed,
paused within echoing forests
of bounding binding wonder.

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Evening Rainsong

Alone again
yet evening rain falls
cooling fresh breeze voices
anxious for everything,
angry about nothing.

Nothing to do about rain falling
as sure as gravity
of dripping issues
landing in my lap,
splattering naked children’s sleepy heads
and innocent soft shoulders.

Into each life…
Yes,
yet eventide rains inside voices
wet down dwindling life
of tiring consciousness.

If I could not read or write or speak
who would I sing with in new found leisure?
Scattered lyrical thoughts
of painful rain
for evening’s loss of light,
and dawn’s dew drop evaporations
raising praise for might
of rain rising up yet again
to grace some other’s night.

We each sing with rain dying alone,
a humanic nature feeling trapped
alien emigrant returning home
to Earth where all creations fail and fall
to rise again singing through new voices
and hues,
spectral rhythmic
dances of songs and cries
each our lived together owned,
rising up new throated sounds
disintegrated symphonies
of song sung out
toward tomorrow’s rain clouds
capturing moist radiant waves,
wet sounds of song
well-lived yet bound.

I hear too complex songs for living,
polyphonic evening rains
falling down alone
to rise again belonging songs
evaporating praise,
leaking radiance
gathering together.

Into and through each flowing melody
of rebaptising life
dirged this night alone
yet heard as well-sung rain forever.

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Underground Rivers

Underground rivers unsettle thoughts,
feelings on stable ground.

Real estate doesn’t sound as real
with thoughts of hyporheic flow
beneath our feet,
out of sight and sound.

Rivers are meant to have light on top,
transparency.
Underground flow must look more like a furtive capillary
than an upfront tributary,
bringing salvific moisture
down into and across and through
deep ecological roots of fertility.

Hypostatic unions
are contrasts between understory backgrounds
emerging into focal foreground,
like darkness of night’s flowing complexities
from which light emerges each day
then fades again,
like Yang creation stories
emerging from Yin
hypostatic partnering,
hyporheic flow
deep down within ecological consciousness,
subterranean channels
feeding timeless roots
of healthy real estates,
cooperative becoming.

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After School Jam Session

How was school today?

Fine.

Did you learn anything important?

Maybe. I’m not sure yet.

Really? What are you considering?

We talked about Howard Odum’s natural trinity
of altruism.

Maybe I skipped that day
way back in premillennial times
before Permaculture Design had taken over deep learning development.
Who is Howard Odum
and how does his natural trinity
diverge from my traditional Holy Trinity?
Or, maybe it doesn’t.

Howard Odum was an early systems theorist
who studied ecosystemic trends
of nutrition building and disintegration,
of sustainable balance
and runwaway monocultural disasters
like climate and landscape anti-nutritional pathologies.

Did you just say
climate change derives from monocultural overshoot,
a weedpatch taking over our garden,
also known as Earth?

I guess,
but in this case the weedpatch
is also known as over-industrialized
LeftBrain dominant
anthropoids.
But, the natural trinity of altruism
is about climates of inter-relational health,
and not about monocultures and anthropocentrism.

I’m sure I missed this class,
if they even had it back in my Baby Boomer day.

You probably just got the Holy Trinity part,
when you studied metaphysics.
I don’t think they were teaching ecosystemic theory
when you took MultiCultural Civics Development classes;
although Howard was published well before your high school years.

It probably took awhile for educators
to figure out the significance
of ecosystemic balance,
within and without,
rather than merely lecturing about unsustainable imbalances
hoping for civil democratically optimizing
multiculturing
and, thereby, self-other regenerative systems
as wellness,
and not so much sickness
requiring Anger Management.

Anyway, so is there a summary version of this natural trinity
that you might share?

Well, yes, I suppose the basic idea is as simple
as any convex and therefore also concave implicated triangle.

I’m already lost.
No recall of convex and concave
in my Holy Trinity.

Oh, right…
you missed postmillennial Bucky Fuller metrics too.
Let’s see…
OK, Odum’s natural trinity
is a dynamic model for balancing lifetime energy investments,
but at two levels.
The individual biosystem.
And, the collective species’ regenerational biosystem,
conceived as a not totally discontinuous
ongoing spacetime ecosystem
sharing Earth with other biosystemic ecosystems.

At both of these levels,
individual and higher-order species,
about a third of energy invested into the system
is required for healthy metabolic regeneration
of each and every mental-physical system.

Another consumed third of energy
feeds back to maintain mutually subsidiary subsystemic prey,
providers of fuel and energy.

The last captured third of energy
produces re-investments outward
to what Odum calls
“higher-order system controllers.”

Do you have an example?
What might be one of my potential investments
in a higher-order control/nurture system?

Well,
in class
the hierarchical trinity we used
was grass in relationship with rabbits
in relationship with a predator,
like a fox,
for example.

So the rabbit’s energy waste fuels the grass,
and the more vulnerable rabbits feed the foxes.

Yes, especially the young and lame.
The ones who see and sniff and move less well.

I don’t see how that works out so well as a trinitarian third.
If you are young or lame or blind, especially.
But how does Odum approximate this one-third math
at the individual creature level?

That’s what we’re talking about in class.
I would imagine
if you view successfully hunted and devoured
from a predator’s perspective
you might feel the prey had made nearly a 100% re-investment,
perhaps omitting the larger bones,
in your higher-order controlling species,
a hungry pride of lions.

This natural trinity of altruism
seems to suffer in the end
from more competitive taking without asking
and less cooperative giving without needing to be asked,
which is what I though altruism was more about.

I suppose Odum was looking at balanced ecosystems
as a resonantly deep whole,
in which about one third of a species’ generation,
as seen from God’s Higher Order perspective,
redeems the other two-thirds
by feeding the metabolic thrival needs
of higher-order predators,
controlling risks of overpopulation
leading to monocultural landscapes and climates
of descending, and increasingly rabid,
pathology.

You mean like mother pigs eating their young
to better feed those remaining in her litter?

OK, if that actually happens
I’m not sure I wanted to know about it.
Also, if that happens,
then we are talking about an out of balance system
between generations within the same species.
Perhaps Odum was speaking of some cosmic balance of energy.
Really big picture.
Global.
Polypathic energy exchanges.

And maybe higher order systems
are not limited to controlling predators.
Perhaps a higher order ecosystem
might nurture potential victims
of Earth’s imbalance,
especially our young and enslaved and addicted
to competing sensory blindness
and malnourished projects for ego-identity expansion,
continuation,
until we each discover
that pain and loss and death
could be revisited
reconceived
as equal to two-thirds of cooperative life
and multiculturing gain
through monoculturing absence,
emptiness,
loss of egocentric WinLose interest,
divestment of self
as re-investment in higher-order YangControl/YinNurture balance.

So, that would be the connection, then,
between Odum’s natural trinity of altruism
and Christianity’s Holy Trinity
of and for Earth’s multiculturing altruism.

Where is Holonic Spirit
in this dual level trinity
of higher order control
with lower order nurturance
producing self-regenerating healthy wealth
of ego/eco-systemic Earth?

That would be the middle ego/eco feeding balance,
growing out to extend family identity
to include gratitude for nurturing embryonic cousins,
extending on through our ultimate individual biosystemic loss
to and for and of higher order nurturing.

co-arising nonduality

of 0-sum polypathic spacetime energy regeneration,
in 4D bilaterally co-gravitating
Commons-squared Folds
with dualdark ExFolding ExFormations.

You’re making that up
as you go along
aren’t you?

About one third, I would say.
Another third comes from Elder RightYin memories
and the final third comes out through LeftBrain Yang-explicating
language,
not necessarily higher ecological orders of balance
and resonant octave-fractal harmonics,
yet that is our Cooperative Democratic shared ideal,
I suppose?

And do we intuitively and multiculturally share
this 0-sum ecopolitical metaphysical development
do you think?

I hope so.
Otherwise I have a serious case of idolatrous
toxic imbalance going on,
contributing further to climates of dismay
rather than natural-spiritual trinities
of ecosystemic balance,
as was my original matriarchal intent.

You need to update, Mom.
Re-sync.
Get more health-wealth centered.

I thought that’s what we were doing together,
just now.

Oh, I get it,
kind of a higher order cooperative nurturance
of ego/eco co-investing systemic paradigms.

Very good!
Building mutual trust and identity expansion
by each reiterating ego-convex
with eco-concave
0-sum bilateral nurturing
creolizing communication order.

Wait a minute,
creolization theory
has nothing to do with systems theory
at least as captured and re-invested by Howard Odum.

Oh, I thought they sound and feel alike,
while one looks outside physical
and the other listens inside metaphysical.

Right.
Change of subject:
What’s for dinner?

Not sure.
What would you like to eat
and help me produce
for our future re-investments
in higher-order thrival
and ego-ordering metabolic survival?

Mom, stop.
This happens every time you ask me
How was school?
And I respond with anything other than
Fine.

Oh, come on,
you’re the one who said I need to update.
And, besides,
you might be able to use this.
Maybe in Political Philosophy next semester,
if not Permaculture Systemic Design this semester.

I’ll have to think about that…
There’s also that Polypathic EcoPolitics of Cosmology thesis
I’ve not quite finished.

Sounds like a tossed salad?

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Catchers and Pitchers

Catch and store my energy,
said Yang-Sun to Earth-Yin.

Digest and absorb nutritional information,
said Earth
to Virgin Eve
to Fertile Adam.

Volcanize and subduct Earth’s embryonic Commons
says Mother Earth
to ReGenerative Ecologists.

Revolt and then creolize resulting multicultures
say EcoPolitical Democratizers
to TrustBuilding Psychologizers.

Deduce separate competing nature labels
to induce integrating cooperative enspirited relationships
said LeftCerebral
to Right ElderStem BiLaterating Root NeuralSystem.

Produce capital-nutritional earnings
and consume stored wealth deposits
through re-investment in further health production
say long-winded Cooperative Economists
to short-winded Public Health as Wealth Professionals.

Patriarch-led revolutions
are Matriarch-bled evolutions
said Yang
of co-evolving Yin.

Produce positive regenerators notnot re-investment degeneration
say Syncretic Prophets
to and for and of and within BiCameral PolyPaths.

Nondually regenerate Yang/Yin
to co-arise WinWin re-ego/de-eco-generate YinSquared RightLight
said Laotse
for cooperatively governing climate health,
and not DNA and RNA struggling pathologies.

Catch and digest health
to store and re-invest wealth
said Yang-Sun to Earth-Yin.

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Becoming PolyPathic

To become polypathic should feel regenerative, good, positive,
maybe even beautiful, graced,
like we are inviting only the positive karmic stuff of Earth
and humanity.

Pathology, on the other hand, is degenerative,
negative antipathy,
it is reductive.

While health, fed by consistently good sensory-neural nutrition,
is regenerative,
positive empathic trust;
it is inductive–
which is double-bind notnot deductive,
degenerative,
negative.

A polypathic double-negative
regeneratively inductively feels
like it could only equal a polynomial positive,
as notnot equals yes.

So regenerative life becomes equivalent to notnot fully degenerated death,
yet.

PolyPathology is the ecopolitics of how these two are
and are not
equivalent normative-descriptive
and ethical-prescriptive
positive WinWin values
and notnot double-binding LoseLose disvalues,
empathic trusts and anti-pathic distrusts,
with multiculturing-creolizing Tipping Points
of polypathic equilibrium in-between,
midway YangLeft and YinRight.

Paths,
to science and religion and philosophy,
share one bilateral nature/spirit
dynamically nutritional health/pathology,
ecology,
ethology,
theology,
one bicameral Way,
BothAnd bilateral truths,
multiculturing-acclimating-creolizing lives,
dipolar co-arising Tao,
Sacred Evolutions of EarthAcclimation
and YinFlow ReVolutions of ReAcclimation-Reversion.

You can imagine how the monocultural surface and interior of both sun and moon
appear and sound and feel,
hot and cold and airless.

But,
can you imagine how the multicultural surface and color-drenched soils of Earth
would so miraculously appear
and longingly sound
and polypathically feel
green and blue and ultra-violet,
dark and light,
neither too hot or cold or airless to survive
and potentially thrive,
as regeneratively viewed from either sun or moon?

Can you reweave this muticulturing miracle
of cooperatively owned and managed climate
for breathing in self-acclimating Yang
to breathe out re-acclimation of our WinWin-YinYin LightSquared-Fractal
re-investing Earth,
home,
ego/eco-conscious CenterCommons,
full-color violet transcendent denseblack/whitelight octaves
of fertile ergodic nutritional rhythms,
patterns ecopolitical notnot pathological?

If so,
then you,
like any creature capable of seeing both sun and moon,
and imagining how Earth’s regenerativity would feel fertile by comparison,
are well on our way of reweaving healthier cooperative climates
of polypathic WinWin consciousness.

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Making Hay

Make hay while the sun shines.

I grew up as a closeted polypathic nature-mystic
on a marginal, at best, family farm
in Michigan.

This farm was my embryonic home,
an extension of my vastly loved and nurturing Mother,
more than my workahoic homophobic Father,
who most emphatically did create a patriarchal god in his own image.
His farm was for slave labor.
Her farm was a garden for growing healthy wealth.

I loved Mom’s Multi-ReGenerational Family Farm
like an extension of my ego’s mind and body.

And, like a turtle without a shell,
when I first headed off to Ann Arbor’s University
I brought my happy and healthy ego with me,
eager to begin my new adventure story,
yet I emotionally stumbled,
felt naked and exposed and depressed,
for lack of my embryonic habitus,
my eco-center,
my home,
my interdependently embracing love of sacred spaces
and their seasons of regeneration and degeneration,
growing still and fading without ego me
conjoining.

I was homesick,
but not for Nurturing Nanny
and Fearsome Father
or even Perfect Princess Sister, whom I cherished,
whom I could talk and listen to as whim might invite,
and, although somewhat more of a sore detachment from our farmhouse interior spaces,
my disorienting alienation from Ann Arbor
was as a too-urban outside place
just as my recreating resident embrace
favored my dorm and classroom youth-learning multicultural race
against more oppressive monoculturing times.

To this day,
despite a six week backpacking hike
along California’s Pacific Coast Trail,
plundered by surreal vistas and fragrance and light and unspeakable beauty,
when I imagine a meadow, a field, a woodland,
a pond,
a barn,
an unpaved road,
a gravel drive,
a herd of cattle,
a pen of pigs,
a coop of chickens,
a litter of kittens with eyes still sealed shut,
I recall iconic scenes from this sacred originating home,
my eco-memory
calling my doubly-bound ego-enculturing self
back home
to where we permaculturally began together,
making hay while the sun did shine.

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Which Came First?

Who would argue
about which came first,
regeneratively intelligent design,
or a decomposing degenerating natural Earth?

No one.
To do so is too patently absurd,
when we choose to see these two
not only as oppositional cause-effect,
but also as appositional
dipolar co-arising balance
of regenerative information
tacitly implied within decomposing energetic balance.

The very idea that either regenerating purpose
or degenerating nature
could originally, foundationally, come one before the other
appears and feels anti-ecological,
like choosing WinLose degenerative static being
over WinWin positive equals double-binding negative deviant
regenerative/degenerative co-arising
toward further multi-generational co-becoming.

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