When Activists Date Each Other….
“Hmmm,” He’s not sure I should extend my carbon footprint by coming over tonight. It’s a long drive, but I canceled last night, when I would have been in his area. He sites writers who point out that monogamy, indeed marriage, is more sustainable. Divorced couples haul kids between households. Come to think of it, this polyamory thing could become a significant contributor to greenhouse gases.
Perhaps, but so could the piteous groans I emit when I don’t get laid. So here’s the plan: I’m coming over and I’ll drive the speed limit. I’ll pick up any hitchhikers I see on the way and we’ll stop every fifteen miles to plant native trees and spay stray dogs. In my current state, I may not be thinking clearly, so I’m not sure how stray dogs contribute to global warming, but I’ll spay them for our collective karma. You have your pet issues and I have mine…
When I get to your house, I’ll graze locally on your lawn and shrubbery for dinner. Then I’ll let you slowly peel off the seven layers of Goodwill clothes I’m wearing because you minimally heat your house. Then, after all these mitigations, we’ll commit some serious global warming…Ooh, baby!
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D.C. Area Heart of Now Weekend Still Has a Few Openings
From Wren:
I’ve had the pleasure of attending an evening introduction to Heart of Now, a weekend workshop in “being who we want to be in the world,” that was developed at Lost Valley Community. I had previously experienced some of the exercises as part of ZEGG Forum facilitator training, held at my home, Heathcote Community. Besides giving me food for thought and tools for my self work, Heart of Now is a wonderful opportunity to meet new people, make close friends and become a more grounded, honest, loving soul in the world.
As of this writing, there are 5 spaces remaining!
Here is HON trainer Debby Sugarman’s announcement:
Registration is now open for the DC area Heart of Now weekend course!…
I am happy to announce that the second DC area Heart of Now workshop will be held the weekend of November 21-23, 2008 in a beautiful location just outside Winchester, VA.
After many wonderful introductions, triad practice groups and triad assistant trainings over the last 2 years, I am excited to be offering a full workshop once again this area!
What is Heart of Now?
Heart of Now is about being who we want to be in the world. Throughout our lives many of us have been encouraged to hide our feelings and ignore our bodies. Were taught stories of how were supposed to behave at school or work. We’ve been told not to make mistakes or certainly not to admit it.
At Heart of Now we look with curiosity at the stories we’ve been told. We pay careful attention to our bodies and our emotions. We learn to listen to ourselves deeply and trust what is in our hearts.
Heart of Now is not just about ourselves but about our communities and our world. When we are present and honest with ourselves, we open space for intimacy, easy working relationships and creativity that are the building blocks for creating a better world.
Time: The course will begin on Friday evening, November 21, and will go until Sunday evening, November 23.
Location: Our location is The Land Celebration, a beautiful retreat center in Gore, VA, just outside of Winchester, VA. Visit www.thelandcelebration.org.
Cost: The cost is $350-$650 sliding scale. A fee of $200 is requested when you register, the rest of the fee will be due by the end of the course. Financial assistance is available. Please inquire about this if the fee is a barrier to being able to join us for the weekend. The cost will include lodging for 2 nights and all vegetarian meals.
Assisting: If you have previously been through a Heart of Now weekend (previously called Naka-Ima), you are invited to assist the course. Assisting is as much about continuing your own growth as it is about service to the students. Assistants of any level of experience are welcome. Assistants are asked to make a donation of $75-$125 sliding scale to cover room and board. The assistants’ program starts on Friday afternoon. Contact Debby if you are interested.
To Register: Our website, www.heartofnowdc.org is under construction but will be coming soon! In the meatime you can register by contacting Debby Sugarman at 716-479-1490, dsugarm@efn.org or Darrell at 202-667-8728, d@duane.com. For more information about Heart of Now, call us or visit www.heartofnow.org.
You…are not…my priority.
Tiva’s sweet nothings…
I’m not that into you. I feel like you have expectations. You’re grabby. You look at me all doe-eyed. You’re making plans for the future. I’m not that into you. You’re just so passionate. You’re mildly interesting. You want us to have a life together. You want to see me. I’m not that into you. I’m afraid you’re going to leave me. You’re crowding me. I’m lonely. You’re kind of cute. You’re not my priority. Why don’t you want to be my lover?
Friendly Skies: Flying to Poly Partners
…Curio Coast,
Where beach and wave define each other,
Hold each other in some dependency,
Maybe love, maybe war.
I seek my border.
What piece of matter is me, what is you.
At the edge, movement is change and
Results are visible.
The wave and the sand are restless dance partners.
Boxing partners, business partners,
Negotiating territory in an uneasy waltz.
But I grew up on the Ohio.
Misters Mason and Dixon don’t know that
Nothing marks a border like water.
Water like a highway, water like a fence,
Depending on your species.
But a river is a means to an end. The coast…
The coast.
–excerpt from “Curio Coast” by Wren Tuatha
I’m on a plane to Kentucky to visit my mom, Patti, my ex, and John, a friend and lover I’ve been commuting to see for about a year and a half. From there I fly to Virginia (ironic name) to see Harold, another sweetie. I’ll be visiting him in his home for the first time. In September Harold and I will attend the World Polyamory Conference in California–We’ll share two oceans in in two months!
The sign in this picture is a warning along Louisville, Kentucky’s waterfront. It amuses the hell out of me!
Pilgrim of this Moment
My new pet, gurrlfriend/boifriend, speaker of those bottle rocket fears, operator of those hands, and what else can that mouth do? I am so edgy tickled you have landed here for a while. Welcome to the possibility that you might get what you need even as you protest that you may or may not want it/trust it/taste it.
Welcome to my hut in the woods that smells like pond dogs and sounds like a relaxation birdcall CD. Take scratchy dreadlocks and three hours sleep. Take or leave the chore list and remember to warm the hammock with slow streamside breaths. When my work is done I might squeeze in and hear you tingle and purr and set off fire crackers of doubt and flow chart scenarios.
It’s about this moment.
The next will have its way with us. Specific as a seed, a thistle won’t grow from the acorn you bring. There’s more in the site you pick, the depth of planting, a drink of water, getting dirty, respiration and the waiting.
Give breath to this presence, like a wordless animal noticing the planet as it turns, then taking another bite of bergamot; like a pilgrim arriving, the stony muscles of travel loosening with an inhale at the sight of the temple–more honest, quiet and timeless than the brochure could show. Touch me here. Pray this moment. The next will have its way with us.
Wren Tuatha & the Five Fairs
I have the subtle stamina of a marketing campaign. I have the tenacity of a beaver. I have the productivity of an entire bee hive. I can do this. I have Earl Grey brewed by the gallon and quinoa cooked seven different ways. Orange juice. Check. Organic corn chips. Check.
Heathcote Earthings is appearing at five county and state fairs from now till the end of September, about sixty fourteen hour days in a row without a break. In the whirlwind, I’ll be squeezing in trips to Kentucky, Virginia and California to spend time with significant others. I have a feeling I’ll be the needy one…
Why torture myself to sell crystals and smudge sticks between pig races and tractor pulls? Well, I will mention that when I scheduled this, I didn’t know that by the summer I’d have three long distance polyamorous relationships, with sweeties visiting me at Heathcote and inviting me to travel to and fro. We at Earthings have been exploring county fairs for a while. It’s wonderful to be set up in one place for eight to eleven days, almost like have our own brick and mortar! So it’s an evolution that is an outgrowth of our genesis. (Anybody else enjoying that juxtaposition?)
I’ve been working with my friends Herb and Rita Jane from Crystal Cottage in their booth at the Maryland State Fair. They’ve been in the same southeast corner of the Exhibition Hall for about twenty-five years and I’ve been having a blast helping them for maybe eight. They operate a brick and mortar in Tanglewood Mall, Roanoke, Virginia, about half the year. That allows them to travel, garden, make jewelry and do volunteer work for School of Living through the summers.
Crystal Cottage is my inspiration and model for Earthings. When I discovered tumbled gemstones and soaked up their names and meanings, when I discovered glass teardrops, gemstone donuts, Swarovski Austrian crystal prisms, etc., I knew I had the spark to sell them. And when I saw how people from all far flung walks of life were drawn to gemstones with such awe, as if gemstones made them remember something forgotten, as if all the colors, banding, mottling, inclusions and fissures were a lost language, a key to some universe, I knew there was value in putting nature’s art work in front of the public.
Earthings started with the Howard County (Maryland) Fair. Last year we added the York (Pennsylvania) Fair. This year we’re trying Cecil County (Maryland) and Bloomsburg (Pennsylvania). Crazy enough? No! While I’m visiting my mom in Kentucky I’ll help her with her Harmony Habitat booth at the Kentucky State Fair!
Our goal is to determine if we can find enough customers while moving and schlepping less. Some fairs and some festivals are better than others. For example, we’re missing Baltimore’s Artscape to attend Cecil County Fair. We’ll see how they compare.
I’m amused to see our goddess batiks and bumper stickers like “Come the rapture, can I have your car?” in the same hall with a Gideon Bible booth and church groups, with the Boy Scouts selling ice cream on waffle sandwiches outside.
Surviving a mission like this is all about planning, flexibility, good food and sleep. I have several vendor secrets:
- Good shoes. Fourteen hour days on concrete floors in unairconditioned buildings can melt you from the soles up. Crocs are good. So are nursing shoes and walking or hiking shoes.
- Rubber mats and carpeting. I carpet my booth with institutional rubber mats at the stations where staff stand for long hours. Often the isleways of my booth are carpeted to give customers and staff a break from brutal concrete.
- Fans. I point fans where I’m stationed and customer areas. Shoppers really appreciate it!!! If you’re a vendor, pay the silly overpriced electric fee that the facility charges if the hall is unairconditioned.
- Food. Bring your own food. Fair food is not designed to sustain life. It is designed to teach you humility when you ride the midway. Since I’m vegetarian, almost vegan, I seriously have to bring my own food. Fair fare is all fried flesh, broiled flesh, grilled flesh, flesh-on-a-stick, you get the idea. Often even the french fries have been cooked in the same vat with chicken fingers, fish things, etc., and are not strictly vegetarian. These food vendors are working from a very mysterious food pyramid. I can’t fathom it.
- Water. Bring it. Bottled water at fairs is often three dollars and you’ll need lots of it.
I can’t wait to see what happens next. I have a sweetie arriving tomorrow. I hope he likes Ferris Wheels!
Brilliant Contact Community Aquires Land
I just got great news on Facebook. Brilliant Contact Community in California is buying land! I won’t be able to make this meeting but I’ll be in the area in September for the 2008 World Polyamory Conference. Maybe I can visit and see things progressing then!
This is Brilliant’s announcement:
July 14th is the biggest day yet for the Brilliant Contact Community™. After almost six years of negotiation with the owner of a gorgeous property in the California wine country just north of San Francisco spanning over 10 square miles, we’re sitting down to sign the deal.
The owner, his lawyer, my lawyer, the project manager, the lead financier, and a supportive local rancher are all meeting with me to pen the deal. The owner has been difficult on the final wording although we’ve agreed on all the basics.
It’s all coming down to this meeting. Your inner support and sending energy to manifest this vision is requested and gratefully appreciated. Please RSVP so we can tell the owner how many people are in the meeting with us from afar and more importantly so I can know you’re there with us, albeit behind the scenes.
Whatever way works for you to support this vision in your heart and being is what I’m requesting. I trust in the perfection of whatever unfolds.
The times are PST. EST is three hours later. Greenwich mean time is eight hours later. The meeting starts at 10am and we’ll stay as long as it takes so I can’t really say the finishing time.
Thanks for being present for the vision. You can see more at our preliminary website at:
In our plans are the following:
• Conference facility and sprung-wood dance floor to accommodate 500 people
• Artisan facilities
• Extensive organic gardens, pools, greenhouses, trails
• Wonderfully embracing social engagement spaces
• About 1000 homes
• High-end fitness facilities and spas
• Much more!
Our commitment is to environmental and ecological sustainability and to supporting the highest possibilities in consciousness, well-being, and interpersonal integrity.
Feel free to pass the word to all who may wish to support the manifestation of this vision by holding space for it within.
April in Myth
April in Myth
April is old like water, prehistoric, recycled. Womb and bladder.
To my Third World parched skin, she’s America, running the tap.
And now, in a foreign hottub, she mothers me, as if she
has it to spare. Water and muscles, air and my salty grief.
April has bloomed before, on schedule, sometimes an early surprise.
She has chased and she’s been cupped to the lips, been drunk in,
and done someone’s share of drinking. Me, too, always in August.
On April’s flesh, tears and kisses evaporate, leaving shine.
On mine, brine, crusty, leaving in cakes like the ice shelf.
I watch it go, with foreboding that natural disasters will result.
But water and her children won’t be possessed. In time,
she does the possessing, pooling foolish souls like shrimp,
pulling us through hurricanes and extinction and silence from space.
Mammoths, raccoons, wrens and Americans.
Like water, April is old, knows how to crest and trough, be a beating
organ of the beast, a good germ on the living planet.
Some herons are like pterodactyls pulled by hunger too far from shore.
There are fools and there are fish. Drink, says April.
Extinction breeds myth. And oh, what a magnetic myth we make.
–Wren Tuatha
The Memory of Snow
The Memory of Snow
The souls of women float just above the ground
as if walking on the memory of snow.
Ready to be air if struck, water if kicked,
stone if belittled, fire if ignored.
The souls of women laugh lightly in most moments,
beaming pinpoints through the skin. It makes you
want to touch. Priestesses and party dresses.
And so you touch. Shocked to find flesh, you
notice a bad memory. Soon each woman is the
same woman and her soul is bitter lamplight,
bitter, insatiable lamplight.
The souls of women reel and swoon with
art and moon and business meetings. They
encircle bitter sisters and float just above the ground
as if walking on the memory of snow.
Harold’s Challenge for a Better Answer to War; Wren’s Answer: Blue Jellyfish and The Line of Other
[My sweetie Harold, an osteopath from Virginia, is pictured above teaching tantra–quite a peaceful practice itself!]
Now that I’ve had my tea, I’m thinking about the human history of war and peace. Within Heathcote, my Intentional Community, everyone who lives here commits to our conflict resolution policy. It’s developed by consensus, so members who see improvements to be made in our process can bring them up. It’s a living, evolving agreement. But it’s only practiced among those who stay. Someone, for example, with a strong need to be right can just say, “This is bullshit,” and leave. The members who stay with Heathcote’s culture of processing end up being of similar temperament, having tremendous patience and commitment not to their own plan but to the higher good. So within the bubble of Heathcote, the process works fairly well. Extending that bubble to the entire planet is another issue. I can’t even get Heathcote’s neighbors to return my calls to meet with me about our beaver issue. I don’t feel equipped to stop a war among those determined to have one.
Yet the yield of any war that humans have waged has only ever been some land grabbing (creating historical amnesia and generational resentment for millennia, as pointed out in my favorite t-shirt, to the right), some winners, some big losers and countless dead. Still, my own generation continues this tradition, this entitlement to tunnel vision. I wonder how evolved we really are. Am I wrong to believe that we have the capacity to come together as humans planetwide?
Last night I caught a nature program showing the blue jellyfish. Its body is a bubble shaped to act like a sail. But half the creatures have their body sails pointing them left and half point right. So half sail out to sea to live life and procreate and half wash up on the beaches of Australia (see picture below). The randomness of evolution dooms half their population to death.
So even as I feel within me a tremendous capacity for peace, why should I assume that’s a universal human experience? How do nature and nurture influence a person’s ability to justify war, or violence of any kind?
Maybe I should switch to herbal tea. But my answer to such questions has always been to make my own choices, such as living in community and buying in to our process, and being available as model/guinea pig for those who want to come and learn. Maybe, Harold, witnessing is my personal answer.
A huge influence on the actions of humans seems to be what I call the line of other.
Individuals and cultures have this invisible line they cast out around them. Some people and living things are on their side of the line–family, friends, community, pets, nation. Then there are living things and people that are outside of this line–plants and animals one eats, other nations, people who are different in some triggering way. The line defines how we treat others. If you’re inside someone’s line, The Golden Rule applies. If you’re outside someone’s line, it does not. They can torture animals in factory farms and slaughter houses because they’re not like “us,” they’re “other.” They can invade another country with no obligation to understand its people’s culture or objections because they’re “other.” The line of other creates an impunity that terrifies me.
I hope my life and my choices help to negotiate a collective moving out of that line of other to include all life on Earth and the planet itself. I try to model this in my Open Classroom teaching, promoting fair trade with Heathcote Earthings and inviting dialog on Hippie Chick Diaries.
I get frequent emails from partners in this work who are fearful of humanity’s direction and impatient to make major changes.
Looking at the systems of nature, as Permaculture teaches me to do, I see that lasting change happens in two ways–catastrophically and incrementally.
War and natural disasters are catastrophic changes. They happen without my help, and will continue to. I don’t wish for them, as some do. I try to make my peace with their rhythms and minimize my carbon footprint. Incremental change feels more peaceful to me and I am satisfied with my little victories of having information about sustainability or Intentional Community when someone comes asking, or witnessing for animal rights or human rights when I hear someone being intolerant. And I live as lightly as I can every day. I’m not a monk but I’m not a soccer mom, either.
Maybe, Harold, walking my talk for those who will notice is my answer. And like every creature that evolves, my answer is a work in progress.
I’m looking forward to everyone’s thoughts!
–Wren Tuatha
Hi. I really like your website. I noticed the photo of the sign outside your main building “War is not the answer”, but no suggested alternative. So I wondered if it would be more in line with your philosophy to offer what COULD be the answer? Maybe that should be a topic for discussion, leading to a second sign offering the new direction for those who would like to agree with the first one if they had any other ideas?
Harold, Hi! And thanks for visiting and commenting! Good idea to phrase things in the positive instead of the negative. I just woke up so all I have right now is, “Tea is the answer.” A good backrub would solve a few of my woes, too…
Funny that you make this comment now, because I’ve just spent a week intensely processing conflicts within the community and with some neighbors. And it’s clear that peace, or specifically conflict resolution, only works as an answer if all parties buy in. Still, you won’t catch me buying in to the war…