A Day in a De-Growth Life

I like the work set up that I have going on right now.  I work three shifts per week at the restaurant, and I have four days off.  That's barely part-time...
So what do I do with the rest of my time?  (How do I make ends meet?)
I'm living very well, thank you.

Actually, I've now found a complementary job. Yep, I'll be joining the ''Echo'Scouade'', a team of animators-educators, which tours some of the biggest festivals in order to raise awareness on the topic of waste management, i.e. recycling your bottles while on site...and at home.
Between the two jobs, I should be able to feel a certain financial stability this summer.
And I still get to have about three days off each week.

My point in sharing all of this is to share one example of a life that is possible... A life of quality, of not being ruled by a work schedule, a boss, a mortgage.
What I'm really talking about is tied to a concept I've been musing over for some time: de-growth.

A couple of weeks ago I attended an international De-Growth Conference.  There, eminent professors and lecturers talked about different aspects of the transition our civilization might want to get into.
De-growth means stepping away from the illusion of happiness as progress and profit.
To me, it seems to point towards greater sanity and health, as well as creativity... and intimacy.  Instead of isolating ourselves by spending forty hours tiring ourselves out at work, coming home being exhausted, watching tv as an easy way into mindless relaxation, and wondering about that yearning for deeper and more meaningful relationships... We could work half, or even three-quarters of that time, and spend the remaining hours enjoying the presence of people we love, perhaps growing some plants that will give us food, and coming to terms with our fears of nothingness...
Don't you think?

I fear nothingness.
I fear the changes that are happening.  But I love the changes that are happening.
It has to do with Time, in part.

Am I inhabited by that old millennial, apocalyptic thinking?  I don't think so.  I don't think the end of the world is coming.  At worst, the human species would perish within the next fifty to two hundred years.  At best, we create a more sustainable world for ourselves.  Chances are, we're shifting from His-story to another kind of story...

Either way, Life and our Consciousness of it All is Divine and Beauty-full.

We could really use more networks of bike lanes and installations that make it easier for everyone who can use bicycles to get around.  We could rush less, move more.  We could spend less, and help each other more.  We could take time to communicate with our neighbors, get to know each other.  We could solve problems together.

Today, I ate breakfast with seven other people.  Then I cut my friends hair on the balcony, and after that I gave an intro of an astrological reading to a friend and I cleaned around the house.  After lunch I juggled a little bit outside while waiting for my other friend to return with his bicycle.  We talked about the choices he's trying to make, his aspirations and his fears.  We talked about going for a bike ride to the Canal Lachine.  But then a girl from work - she's gorgeous! - happened to walk by our house as we were sitting on the porch, so we invited her to sit with us a little bit.  We hung out, with two of my roommates.  We talked about synchronicities, about ''the hundredth monkey effect'', morphic fields (we didn't have the names for those phenomenon but that's what we were talking about), and collective consciousness.  We talked about sharing our greatest potential within the communities you are part of.
And then A. and I went to Parc Lafontaine, and we drew a huge chalk maze in the middle of a path.  People walked by with a smile.  They asked a few questions.  They wanted to walk it and they did once we finished the piece.  Two park workers drove by. ''We're making ephemeral art,'' I told them.  ''I was just taking a look'', one of them said with a smile.

We went to the market and bought lettuce and radishes (grown ''in Québec''), some pears, a mango, grapes, and avocados (grown far away), roasted sunflower seeds (where from?) and some balsamic and oil to make a fresh salad.  We made dressing out of mango pulp, garlic, ginger, lemon, balsamic, grape, and sesame oil.  We sat on the balcony and feasted while reminiscing about the intensity of yesterday's storm...
Yesterday, a crazy storm fell on Montréal.  Dark clouds and thunder quickly led to heavy... heavy rains, which, we soon learned, turned into flooded tunnels and metro stations!!!
Nature is mighty.

The climate here is so different than what it is in the Bay Area... I loooove these warm summer storms!

And tonight, I'm finally going out to dance!  It's been months since I've made it to a good dubstep party...

You can follow your bliss.  Take part in the beauty of existence.

Réflexions sur le St-Laurent

Life goes on... so fast!
Je ne sais pas quoi penser de se qui se passe.

Le Québec, ma tête,
en effervescence,
À voir une identité se forger,
les tensions qui l'habitent
Les peurs et les espoirs les plus fous

À parler de la langue
le français et l'anglais co-habitant sur une île
depuis 370 ans
Ville-Marie l'utopie
...

En ces temps politiquement chauds
En ce printemps de l'année 2012
Des manifestations d'hommes et de femmes
d'enfants et d'aînés
d'étudiants, de générations,

Des voisinages qui s'animent finalement
Des jardins communautaires

I am getting a privileged perspective into what it might be to be anglophone and live in Montréal, because I am seeing my friends looking for work and facing a reality I never considered before... to work here, you need to speak French.
And that's a good thing, I think.  I think I think.
This is how we preserve a language.  This is how we keep it alive.  The money, the economy, drives exchanges and thus keeps our connections alive.  What happens to our beautiful français if we let English take over the world of our daily transactions?
(C'est comme ça qu'on préserve une langue!  C'est comme ça qu'on la garde en vie.  L'argent, l'économie, c'est ce qui créer nos échanges et garde en vie nos connections. Non?  Qu'arrive-t-il à notre français si beau, lorsque l'anglais commence à s'imposer comme unique langues du monde des transactions?)  (C'est ce qui est arrivé au 20e siècle.)

The reality is that Montréal has always been populated by both Anglos and Francophones.  And there were Native inhabitants too, and soon came the Irish, the Italians, the Portuguese, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Haïtians... (who am I forgetting?) and now the Arabs, the Africans.. the Canadians, the French!

I asked my friends, ''Do you feel... discriminated against?''

''I love French and I think we should all learn to speak it'', responded K.
''I think one should come here and expect (I always rather thought ''to respect'', perhaps in my feeling victimized?) to live in a new language.  It's like going to Spain.  You can't say 'I should be able to work in English!''', explained E.

Québec is another, different place.

It's not too late to make something of it.

It's not the Berlin Spree, but it's still gorgeous.
(coucher de soleil au Canal Lachine)

Métro quelconque

We've been living in two ghettos, and that's perfectly okay.  in a way.
Two cultures of different values, or business meets religion.
(Two fundamental activities for humankind, I must say.)
...

Civil engineering
 

''It's a very interesting dynamic here,'' added E., ''because you can easily live and go by in Montreal without speaking a word of French.''

C'est bien vrai.

Quoi que tout le monde n'ose pas parler de politique.  ''On ne devrait pas parler de politique dans sa  famille.  Ça enflamme souvent les discours.  On le prend personnel.  C'est trop désagréable.''

''Oh! Je ne pourrais jamais afficher mes opinions politiques au travail!''

Quelle tristesse!  Pourquoi ne pourrions-nous pas débattre des meilleurs façons de vivre ensembles?  Pourquoi ne pourrions nous pas apprendre, dans nos écoles, à discuter et à écouter, à dialoguer et à médier, à s'organiser et à gérer tous ensembles les secteurs de nos vies qui nous concernent tous?

Je sais, je sais. Mais pourquoi ne pourrions-nous pas au moins essayer?

Je reviens encore à Nietzsche, mon éternel compagnon... Il y a ceux qui choisissent encore de se faire mener.  Ils préfèrent la loi du moindre confort, ils ne prenne qu'un minimum de responsabilités et se contente d'un minimum de liberté.

Et ils y a les sauvages, les illuminés, ceux qui ont le besoin de faire pousser la barrière du possible.  Ceux qui voient au-delà de la servilité confortable et se sentent appellés à la Créativité...

Ils y a ceux qui se veulent maîtres d'eux-même.

Bien sûr personne ne l'est vraiment.  Les forces du subconscients sont bien réelles après tout.  Il faut rester humble dans cette histoire d'Übermensch.

Orion nebulla / La nebuleuse Orion

100 days of strike: ''let's get together and feel alright''

Manif générale du 22 MAI

(100e jour de grève... et tout ce que ça soulève...)

Au départ, à la Place des Arts.  Le ciel est gris... mais on a le coeur à la solidarité et à la fête.

Sauf que le plus beau, c'est la créativité de tous !!!

But the most beautiful, it's the people's creativity !

Doit-on démoniser les individus personnellement? 

Je me pose la question.

:)

Gumboots !

Est-ce que ça ressemble à ce que les médias projètent?

Is this what the medias are showing? Answer: no.

Nos saints nous regardent...

La couleur surréel de ce building !!

La manif passe devant l'hôpital...  :)

We walked and walked and walked... drumming and dancing and chanting, smiling.

Patients from the hospitals encouraged us.  And we encouraged them.

Étions nous ''quelques milliers'' ?

Non, nous étions au moins 300 milles !!!

Were we ''a few thousands''?

No, we were 300 thousand !!! (or so)

Même la pluie n'a pas éteint notre joie festive !!

Even the rain couldn't dim the fervor of our solidarity and of our joy from simply being together.  And older woman told me, with her hand on her heart, ''Merci Merci, thank you so much! It's the youth that's gonna make things finally change!''

And I thanked her in return, because the youth cannot do it alone...

''Special Law'' kicks in a new season in Montréal

Une tite rangée de polices à cheval (pas des chevaux blancs, bien sûr!) avant le début de la manif.  Il était sympa le mec, et je fût impressionnée de par sa volonté à dialoguer.

Last Friday the Liberal government passed a special law to try to put an end to the strike...
Any organism, association, or person who organizes a public demonstration that counts at least 50 people is now required by the law to provide, at least 8 hours before the start, the exact rally point, the route, and the time length...
And if the police don't like it, they can ask the demonstrators to change their plans.

WTF?
This is supposed to ''keep and regulate the right to demonstrate''. .. But wait a minute!  Why should we obey these rules and voluntarily relinquish our power (numbers) to you, when what we are precisely trying to do is to emancipate ourselves from this abuse of your power?  And what about you really informing us about where you're leading this country?

This is clearly an attempt to try and control the power of public demonstrations... But the people aren't that stupid.  In fact, this special law might have been the worst strategic move that the government could make.
Because now, the general population is switching sides!  They are getting in the streets, along with the students!
We are denouncing fascist policies.
We are celebrating the potential of a nation, united.
(I always ask myself: and then what?)

I thus finally went out to my first demonstration last Friday.  Calling time: 20h30.  Place: Parc Émilie-Gamelin.
Number of demonstrators: more than fifty.
A few photos taken in the few days since that event...

Les chevaux n'ont par contre pas voulu commenté sur la nouvelle loi passée par le gouvernement Charest:
Loi Spéciale 78

Friday, 19 MAI 2012
I was not impressed when I saw the row of police on horses overlooking the beginnings of the rally.  However, I was impressed, after I got closer, to find this man actually engage in a dialogue with a young man.  Soon, more people came by...
We are so thirsty for that communication... we wish we could get through to the humanness behind the armor.

French-Canadians have a long history of fighting for self-determination, freedom, and equality.  French-Canadians have always been a majority here in Québec, but our values are shared by many...

In today's struggle, the divide is not language.  It's money.  Dirty money.  Dirty politics.  And we invite all those who feel called by our values to join us.

La soif d'auto-détermination, de liberté, et d'égalité du peuple Québécois remonte à très, très loin...

''We have become the ferocious beasts of hope''

''Angry but pacific.  (Don't hit me)''

Nous marchions pacifiquement... quand tout d'un coup les policiers  ont cru bon de charger sur la foule avec des bombes lacrymogènes.  J'étais à environ 40 mètres, alors pour la première fois,  j'ai pu sentir cette odeur poivrés... voir les gens autours de moi qui toussaient (... et c'était pas des étudiants, mais des adultes de la population générale.)

Apparemment, ils cherchaient à nous diviser.

...

Ils n'ont pas réussit.

Manifestation de casseroles
(pots and pans protests)


In 1971 Chile, the dictatorship (Alliende) passed a law that made any assembly of more than 4 people illegal.  Chileans protested from right in front of their houses... with pots and pans.  Since then, a number of ''cacerolazos'' have taken place in Argentina and in Spain.  But the most recent and amazing results from this type of protest movement happened in Iceland (why didn't we hear of it in the media?), when the nation banged their pots and pans to the point of making the right-wing government resign, in 2009.  Read more about the Kitcheware Revolution here.

Now... it's happening in Montreal city.

Lundi 21 AVRIL, 20h- 22h.  

Sur l'Avenue de Lorimier, au coin Marie-Anne, tout le quartier sort de chez lui pour faire la révolution des casseroles: monsieur et madame tout le monde, les jeunes familles, les ados, les personnes âgés, les professionnels... un voisinage se rencontre enfin!!

Et on fait du bruit, pour dénoncer la loi Spéciale.

Et on fait du bruit, parce que c'est tellement l'fun faire de la musique ensemble.

Avenue de Lorimier, on Monday night. We heard a neighbor banging on his pots and pans... A gesture to denounce and protest against the Special Law.  Soon, other neighbors joined in... and more... until the whole neighborhood was out of their apartments, on their balcony or on the sidewalks.

For many- including my roommates and I - this was the first time we were interacting with our neighbors.  

And we banged those pots and pans... for almost 2 hours.

Cars honked. We jammed.  We smiled..

We connected.

And today? Well after marching- and dancing and chanting - throughout downtown Montreal for three hours, we went home to have dinner. And at eight o'clock...  it happened again ! 

Pots and Pans !!!

If this was in a movie.. we'd think it's too surreal to be true.

From Spring to Summer... the Movement keeps on...

Helicopters are filming everything.  In the streets, violent clashes are taking place.. at this very moment.
The government of Québec just passed a ''special law'' making popular assemblies illegal.  Bad move: now it's explicit: you are fascists.
It's a strong word, but it's a reality: the government is desperately trying to repress the revolution.  Riot squads are out, day after day.
It's been 98 days.

The temperature has been particularly hot here in Montreal, and it got me thinking...

We are entering Summer season.  This means that Spring is ending, and what does that mean for the movement?  We've been calling it the Québec Spring, but now a new season is at our door...  What will it look like?  How long can the students persist?

They have been made to look like their are alone with their cause.  Everyday we talk about the situation, and everyday I raise the same point: for change to occur, there needs to be more sectors of society that join the movement.  Students don't have much power... they are just a bunch of idealists.  They're not part of the machine yet, so they can't actually stop it.  They can make a lot of noise, but it's easy for the common people to overlook what they are trying to say.

Who can say that this crisis does not concern them?  Who can say that education isn't the concern of everyone?  Who can say that they wish for education to become accessible only to those who 1) can afford it, or 2) play the game and get into debt?  Who can say that this isn't going to increase the gap between the rich and the 99%?

Now, some may say that they understand all of this, and they still choose to denounce the student movement.  Those people do not value socialism.  They have opted for the race... to the mountain top; they may believe it's a matter of ''survival of the fittest.''
They haven't understood the concept.

The fittest are those who know how to work together, how to share, how to communicate.  The fittest are those who understand that we are all interconnected.

I don't understand how the movement can be so isolated still.  Their are plenty of supporters: teachers, parents, professors, workers, thinkers, artists, doctors even... They are out there, marching every night.  They march in peace, by the thousands, and not a single newspaper is talking about that.  The media focus on the violence...

It must be the movement's ''fault'', in part.  How come they didn't try to get more unions to show support?  Now is the new season.  This Summer, every one who believes in a more equal and loving society must get up from in front of the tv screen and get out to see what is happening.

Historically, revolutions happen when the discomfort becomes too great; when too many mothers become unable to feed their families.  Then, they take to the streets.  It is true, many of us are quite comfortable and well-fed in today's Québec.  (Though many struggle, too.)
History is a spiral, however.  There seems to be a pattern unfolding... a mix of repetition and linearity.  And to me, something very special has the potential to take place.

Sure, we have made it this far.  Sure, we take long hot showers and we eat fancy foods.  We have worked hard to acquire all of this, we deserve it, and we shouldn't complain with our mouths full.  We shouldn't make a fool of ourselves by raising up our hopes, or ideals, our utopias...

Or should we?
Québec is a relatively comfortable nation.  It is a nation, yes.  We are proud of our unique identity, even though we are still working at defining it.  But the world is One now, more than ever.  My generation barely remembers a time before the internet.  We can choose to travel or work abroad, we are fully aware of the global village and of the issues other nations struggle with.  We are well aware, also, that we are all in it together.
This is why we march in the street.
This is why we want to bring about a revolution.   From our place of privilege, we want to create an even better world for our children to grow up in and take care of.  We want the integrity and equality of all human beings to be recognized.  We want to organize in ways that can reflect and sustain that.

If you are reading this from another country, please tell me, have you heard about the Student Protests?  Do you know about the DAILY confrontations between the police and the people?  Do you understand what I'm talking about?

Tsunami in Montreal

(What's up with Mars?)
(It's opposite Neptune and squaring Chiron, for one thing.)

It's day 95 for the student strikers.  In Québec, in case you didn't know, there is a war going on.
We are over 7,900 hundred citizens in this province, 3 millions in the Montréal metropolis.  These days a lot of things are going on as usual.  I'm sure many have families and they go to work everyday, they eat a decent dinner at night, and watch tv in the evening.  Other things are moving at the speed of light, or they are stalled - you could take it either way.
(Hiroko Tamano - a Butoh teacher- used to say that immobility is the fastest speed, because you can feel the earth spinning on herself and in the galaxy.)

Student protests are taking place everyday still.  The minister of Education resigned earlier this week, the government is uncompromising, and the media are in the trenches.  The police is in the spotlight.  Whether on the streets or at home, we are all witnessing a HUGE amount of violence taking place.
How do we react?
Is it true?  Are we truly in a ''police state'' ?
There are thousands of people demonstrating each day.  Creativity and anger are co-existing in a difficult and beautiful mélange...  The status quo is intensifying in self-defense.  The people are coming up with ever more creative ways to protest.  (We've even had two naked demonstrations (!) ... to ask ''for transparence'' on the part of the elite.  That's the symbolic at its best!)

Being naked ''to be playful and creative'', said one participants.  ''To show our vulnerability'' added another.  ''To show that we are a peaceful movement... We're obviously unprotected for batter... we're not going to go fight in our underwear!''

Yet the government keeps sending out his riot-squads.  (Not on the nude ''manifs''... but on the other ones.)

This is not a World Summit of some sort.  There are no congress of presidents or bankers happening. (Or maybe there are.)  This is provincial politics.  The images we see, the beatings, the pepper spray, the batons, the tactics, the blood...  This is not some news from a country halfway around the globe.  This is right here, in our schools and our streets.

On Wednesday a friend of mine went to demonstrate.  Around midnight, somebody at the top (who?) went ahead and declared that the gathering was now illegal.   ''This demonstration is illegal.  Move!    Moooovvve!!''  Hundreds of people, students and supporters, suddenly became... liable.   The police began dispersing the crowds... and charged.
It's been like this everyday.
My friend was walking towards the nearest metro station, along with about 20 other people, when a riot-squad unit of about 50 men showed up and cornered them.  They arrested them and packed 'em up in a ''panier à salade'' (the police wagon).  They brought them to jail, on the premise of ''attending an illegal demonstration.''

What!?
All of this a few thousand dollars of tuition fees?

This violence is becoming something else.  It is obvious now, and it's - I think - this very dynamic (the abuse of power) that the student are [unconsciously?] fighting to highlight.  It's not about tuition fees, it's about principles.  It's about free education as a symbol for democracy.  It's about the corruption, the power games, the selling out.  We are asking the government to acknowledge something: It is not representing our interests.

(And even though I do very much understand the anger of ''the masses'', I'm not sure that it's the smartest, most sustainable way for protesters to fuel the violence either.)

I haven't decided whether I think that the strikers (specifically from the CLASSE association) should accept some kind of compromise.
They talk about making the prime minister resign, make him fall.

And then what?

I can't help but ponder what this means in terms of sovereignty.  This movement is clearly re-affirming the cultural cleavage between Québec and the rest of Canada.  It is very clearly pointing to our difference and to the direction we want to take.  It think this is a great opportunity to refresh the debate about Québec ''souveraineté-association''.  That's why I've been reading René-Lévesque lately.
I also think that the situation is more complex than ever, and that the timing is overwhelming.  The crisis is happening with our provincial government.  If they were to launch elections right now, I wonder what the turn out would be.

Many citizens claim that they're fed up with the strike.  They just wish things were go as usual.
Would they vote for the Liberal party?
Or would the PQ win? or perhaps Québec Solidaire?!

And then what?

I see this as a huge possibility to help our politics take a radical new direction.
And what I'm thinking about, in truth, is what this means for new models of ''resource management''.

and more thoughts...
and more thoughts...

What are yours?

the concept of Economy

A sweet Tuesday en la casa.... doing nothing.  Doing nothing?  No.  I'm writing.

Yesterday, Yves-Marie Abraham - associate professor at the prestigious HEC and one of the main organizers of the De-Growth Conference - did a presentation about the concept of ''the Economy.''
''What,'' he asked, ''is the definition of the economy? "
He didn't mention the etymology of the term: oiko-nomia = management of the house, but he instead gave us the definitions of those who play at the top of the field.  And it turns out that the modern concept of ''economy'' is inextricately tied to the notion of ''rarity''.  He didn't use the word scarcity, but the idea is the same.  Economy has do to with the managing, that is the production and distribution, of our rare resources.
 (I didn't write the definition verbatim, because I was busy doing some half-assed whisper translation for my anglo neighbors.)
Abraham went out to ask, ''Is the concept of economy then fundamental to all of humanity?''   What he found out, is that a brief research through anthropological lenses and research (what he called ''the anthropological detour) shows that many societies of hunter-gatherers do NOT live with this notion at all.  Even though they do not accumulate as much as we do (my addition), they do not know ''rarity'' (perhaps they know scarcity, however, and perhaps this is where the difference lies between those two words!), simply because they don't seek to satisfy a increasing number of their needs.
They are a-economical.

And this uproots our conception of human nature as homo economicus, doesn't it?

We can envision another mode of social patterning.  We could reconsider individual value as coming from other realms than ''professional'' or ''marketable'' value.  We can come out of our isolation and wake up to each other, and the ties that have been there all along: you are not alone.  And once you see and know that, you don't have as much of a need to go out and buy things.
It's become a cliché already and it doesn't seem to affect people anymore, but it is so true:  capitalism sleeps in the same bed with the advertisement industry (which has benefited so much from modern psychology uncovering our fundamental fears and insecurities) by creating more insecurities and fears, more needs...

Seeing this side of reality makes me sick to my stomach.  Because I participate in it everyday.

How can we change an entire system then?

By creating another one at the periphery.

In a post-economical world, we won't be working 40hours/week.  We'll work much less in fact, and we'll spend more time together.

De-Growth and Re-ligare

Most days are made of labour and wonder, boredom and anxieties, delights, communions, and questions.
Most days I pray, not in the form of penitences but in giving thanks, and praise.
Every day, I wake up with the knowledge of one world,
one planet, cast in a spiraling dance,
since hundreds of thousands of years,
and I, descendant of an exploding star
pondering
the feeling, of wind on my skin
this phenomenological presence
in the midst of an ''ecological crisis''

not only am I anthropocentric
I am also ego-centric
for I am trapped within the confines of my body
craving for an umbilical connection with All there is
an embrace
not as a hope that my thirst be quenched
but as a celebration, of the dance
pushing and pulling
sinking and soaring
between Mother Earth and Father Sky
a child, a navel and a star gazer
knowing myself, as the Self,
as one concentric being of possible becomings
amongst infinite networks, of centers also unfolding
amongst patterns, of a Life,
Self-organizing

Today I attended a conference that's taking place on the Concordia campus.  I hadn't planned on going.  It got decided over breakfast and freshly baked banana bread.

My roommate was looking at the program trying to decide which panels and activities to go to.  I had heard about she and A. signing up to volunteer and attend that De-growth conference, all week.  I was curious, but I also thought to myself: ''Well, here's another wonderful thing happening in Montreal and I won't get to be part of it... because it's expensive and overwhelming, for it's attracting all those wonderful people who are involved in the gardening movement... and blablabla... how come I can feel so close to this intellectually and yet not get more involved?  What's keeping me from getting my hands dirty?  blablabla...''

In short, I hadn't planned this day.
But there I was, 9 in the morning, biking down Rue Sherbrooke along with two of my friends.  Sunshine in and out.
How did it happen?  She said there was a film being presented this morning, and she wasn't sure she wanted to go because it was so nice outside.  I asked about the title of the movie, and she answered: ''Journey of... ''
'' ... of the Universe!?'' I interrupted with a big smile.
''Yeah''.
''Oh my God!  That's my professor!', I explained with overflowing enthusiasm.  ''I totally want to see that movie!''
''I bet you could just get in like that,'' she said, ''they don't really monitor.''

And so I walked into Concordia University's auditorium.  And there he was on big screen: Brian Swimme, one of my dear professors from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Invited for this projection were three imminent panelists: two professors from Yale - creators of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology - and the producers of the film: Marie-Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, whose names I have heard so much about during my time at CIIS, as well as William Rees,
professor of public policy at the University of British Columbia... and the originator of the ''ecological footprint'' idea and co-developper of the method.

Listening to Brian Swimme reiterate his wonder about the unique circumstances that made human consciousness possible in the Universe, hearing talk about that 14 billion years old journey to this new scientific narrative, witnessing his praise of play and wonder being communicated to people gathered right here, in the province of Québec... I personally experienced the bridging of what often comes off as two worlds...
San Francisco meets Montréal!  My mind: hyper stimulated, the way it gets when I attend those ''academic conferences''.
(''In my days'' while I worked both at UMaine and for CIIS Public Programs, I attended a hella those lectures and conferences, and I've been reflecting on that recently as I went through the résumé process.)

But it wasn't only CIIS and Montréal, it was my bachelors at UMaine also, the environmental and political philosophy papers, the thought process...
I was inundated with flashbacks from my trajectory, hearing my own personal worldview and conclusions being investigated.
Part of an important conversation.

So I guess that the International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas is right along the lines of my work.  I might not know exactly what this work is, I suspect it is going to play out in several aspects, but I cannot deny that I am strongly tied with this community of thinkers and ecologists.

I regularly get down on myself, for I find it difficult to see that even though my understanding points to the necessity of re-learning re-lating with the natural world, of re-incorporating and re-localizing the process of food production, even though I know and praise the importance of urban agriculture, I still haven't planted a seed this year!
I'm surrounded with people who do, though.
I tell myself it'll unfold in due time, when I have landed a bit more in my new reality (Is six months long enough?).  I tell myself that it's good I am surrounding myself with all these community and guerrilla gardeners while I'm attending to whatever needs to happen in my own life at the moment.  I am learning by osmosis, through conversations and observations mostly.  I am cultivating kefir.

I did dig up rocks in my friends' gardens last week, when I went to St-Élie-de-Caxton to spend a Monday afternoon with the ground, massaging the Earth's body, turning mama's soil and giving her oxygen so that seeds can grow.

Little by little... I am grounding into something... and that's something is changing, evolving, at a pace unprecedented.

I have physical theater plays flashing in my head, doctoral theses waiting to get delivered, and dance phrases burning to get drawn in space and time...

I have visions, and Professor Tucker said that's exactly what we need right now: visions to guide us.

I have visions.

Touski tyrade

What a splendid day!  First, the excursion with my roommates, and then, working...
At Touski!!
I guess I haven't yet declared - because I try to write less about myself and more about the so-called objective world  - that... I have found a dream job!
Café Touski is no big business, but it's quite an enterprise: an anarchist co-op, a neighborhood hang out, a space for arts and talks and good homemade quality food.  I say it's anarchist in the sense that it is completely owned and managed by the ensemble of its member-workers.  It's an experimentation with ''auto-gestion'', self-management.  And it works wonderfully!
The best thing about the spot is the ambiance: the wood, the colors, the wall division.  The dining room is split in three rooms, and there is an additional quarter set up as a space for kids to play!  Is this the café I have been imagining during all those years?!

Working in a tiny kitchen is a sport!  I mean it, this is real hard physical work.  Imagine it for a moment: a greasy floor, orders coming in and you are constantly handling knives and hot plates, in a tiny space, surrounded by 2 other people.  You bend down to the fridge, you reach up for the plastic container on top of the shelf, you fill up giant buckets of meat an you lift them up on the counter for a minute, then you place them, Tetris-style, in a bigger fridge...

In the midst of this madness and given my passion for conscious embodiment, I can't help but bring my mind to the body: my bones, my muscles and tendons, my posture, my feet, my hands, my fingers.  Feeling them so vividly, being so conscious, and realizing: this is a meditation.  I will be dancing-meditating on a slightly splippery floor... ''doing'' Butoh... because Butoh follows me everywhere.

Thinking about the reality of ''labour''.  The human condition.  Supposedly, a price to pay for the Fall...
but I want to question that.
Because I believe that labour should be considered a noble thing.  Enough of the guilt; be proud of what you do, so that you'll want to do it with all your heart.
Why should work be so alienating, so heavy?  Physical or mental work, it's all the same; it's where you put your energy.  So what are you building?  Who are you helping?  Who to you respond to?  Who owns the fruits of your labour?

... I'm just asking.

Because I've seen enough of my fellow humans who do not belong to themselves.  What would Karl Marx say to this?  And what would Nietzsche say?  Would he present us with his idea of the Ubermensch, he (or she, I decided to add) who can surpass him or herself, and grow ever better, deeper, stronger?

Tonight I am tempted to think that Nietzsche developped his concept of the will-to-power from a moral perspective, rather than a physical one - and that perhaps he understood that they were interrelated.  This is why he said that our bodies are the masters.  Because the body is in direct contact with the outside world, with the Other.  Our body knows what is going on, it's for us to learn how to listen.

--------
In the kitchen,
delivering, like an athlete, high on the adrenaline.  Once again, hanging out with the boys. I guess it's my nature and I can't help getting myself in those kinds of environments.  (And I remember that I've always preferred to play catch, rather than with Barbies...though I played a whole lot with those too.)

I am also uncovering the reality of chemical products...
And ventilation takes all its sense.

Feeling doomed to this overly-physical existence, to get tired, injured, and to inhale toxic products.  That's part of the job.  I could be working with my head only; sit down and think things through, and compute them.  I could be smelling good all throughout the day, instead of sweating and staining my apron with creme cheese.  I could work in a safer place.
But perhaps labour comes with danger and decay... perhaps that's part of what's noble about it.  Giving of your body for the sake of the collective.
Bottom line?
I love all this mess and this materiality!  I love all this life! Vegetables, eggs, and tons of recipes.  I love working in a kitchen, as I knew I would.

spire for a car ride

''The inconstruable We-problem''

Assessing existence again because perpetually,
for the mind is a gang of grasping monkeys.

Thinking of Osho's words I read yesterday: ''A contentment that comes and goes again is not contentment, it is simply a gap between two miseries.''

Perhaps then, joy is made of those most authentic moments of sharing with a friend about underlying fears and anxieties.  Perhaps it's spending this time together, dancing in and with the unknown.  We wonder ''what to do with our lives'', but we already know, we are teachers and healers and leaders.

I just took my roommates A. and K. on a joy ride around the city.  I have a car these days, so I've been enjoying the irony and laziness of burning fuel to get around town.  It usually takes more time to go somewhere by car than by bicycle, because of street lights and one-ways and traffic and parking.  Oh well! I'm embracing the situation, naming the guilt, and taking full advantage of the engine while I have access...

Comment dit-on ''altar'' en français?
Je ne sais pas.

Concordia's bike co-op

K. asked if I would drive downtown with him to get a giant dry eraser board for the house.  I asked A., and we figured we could make a little adventure of it.
So we three hippies got inside the vehicle and drove through the city.  We listened to loud electronica music and watched out at the landscape... building features, monuments, parks. etc.
We got another perspective, noticed places we hadn't seen before, and went much further...

We went south-east in hopes of reaching the water and find a park there.  The weather was overcast but the temperature quite moderate.  We'd find a park and I'd perhaps guide a little Butoh exercise.

My roots are thirsty for context.  I want to learn this land and see its history.  So I open myself up to it...

This is not the Pacific Coast (how I miss the Ocean!)  This is a trading post, an industrial forest rising up at the heart of another particular geological landscape...

About 125 million years ago, magma rose through the Earth's crust in the Montreal region, crystallizing slowly at depth along many conduits. In this way, the Monteregian Hills were formed and with them, a number of rare minerals. Of all these features, Mount Saint-Hilaire is the best known as a source of rare specimens. In some cases, magma erupted at the surface, feeding volcanoes that have now completely disappeared. Since that time, erosion has removed several kilometres of rock. The hills that arevisible today represent the magma chambers and part of the conduits through which the molten rock rose toward the surface.

My new friends are a bunch of ''geographers''.  So I have been learning amazing facts about the natural world.  A few days ago, I learned that we live on the meeting point of two tectonically plates...

Mont-Royal is a dried up bubble from the center of the earth.  The sedimentary formation of both shores, and that of the island, are each of a different composition.  Isn't that amazing?  
The land is alive.  Its people are alive.  Geological conditions predate cultural epicenters.  And that's certainly the reason why people come here: the land and its people are deeply alive and intrinsically subject to transformation.  It's a matter of time-perspective.


What do we want for this island, a hundred years from now?

We didn't get to the River, but we found an industrial playground

Political ecology: we're relating

I had diner with about 14 roommates tonight. It was the Shire family from downstairs, and us all squirrels from the spire; a last supper before many leave us for the summer, to plant trees in British Columbia, to go back home to Barbados, or to move forward to new adventures as new parents! Next week, things will be so different.

We can all feel it. Something is changing. ''What's next?'', we ask.
The conversation some of us are having is the whole point.
Citizens engaging in endless debates, exposing their opinions, and thus exploring and exposing their values. Citizens finally having a conversation, so at least, there is finally some kind of communication happening. We are mobilizing, organizing, and talking about our pains and our visions.
Not everyone, but many are starting to consider the puppeteers casting shadows on the cave wall, we are naming it: the illusions propagated by the media. The veil.


Apocalypse:

Emprunté au latin apocalypsis (« révélation »), lui même emprunté au grec ancien ἀποκάλυψις, apokálupsis (« découvert »), et non pas « révélation de Dieu » comme cela est communément admis. Provenant du verbe grec καλύπτω, kalúptô (« cacher »), précédé du préfixe de privation ἀπό ápó. Littéralement donc « dé-caché », et donc par extrapolation, « dévoilé au yeux », « retrait du voile », « le voile est levé ». Ce n’est que bien plus tard que les écritures religieuses assimileront le mot pour l'associer au jugement dernier et donc à la découverte de la vérité de Dieu.

In Le Devoir online, a reader started a debate about strikers being constituted of a great majority of students of what she called the ''soft sciences'', i.e. human, social, literary sciences. Oh my friend, you should have read what other people responded! (You can click on the link above). This sort of debate is happening anonymously, which creates a certain distance, but I find it wonderful, that citizens be sharing their point of view.

Someone recently told me: ''We shouln't talk about politics when we're in family.''

Well, I think we should. It's hard to come face to face with disagreements. Discussions get heated. It's easier to shy away from conflict and mute the tensions that exist. It's also dangerous, as a collective, to deny the issues that concern us all.
We should gather around, people of Montreal. What we have is something so special: French, English, and a dozen more ''nationalities''.. we should open up that discussion about what ''nationality'' means, to acknowledge the inescability of ''politics'', and to generate thoughts and actions that will contribute to a better tomorrow.


We should share in the excitement of not knowing what tomorrow is going to look like, and share in the fears that come up for us too. We should see the web we have been waving, and use it for Good.
(So far, in my book, Good = sustainable.)


--------

I can't believe that I'm living in this city, at this time. i can't believe that I do live in the co-op I have been talking about for years! Yes it's hectic and it's sometimes crowded, but so is the world out there. We are social researchers, organizational revolutionaries, even though we're still so much working at what it all means.

Yes I live with ''a bunch of students'', and somehow I sometimes struggle with that thought. As if it was a pejorative classification. As if it was "better'' to have already found your place (read: a career) in society. But tonight as we were talking about politics and ecology, I smiled to myself and realized that it is a privilege and a huge responsibility, to be studying this society and this world we are about to ''enter'' and take part in.

students digging for books!

In other words: this is the way we take part in it. This is our way of showing maturity. We are rebelling, taking to the streets, as an existential response and a duty, as citizens of tomorrow.
Are we complaining with our mouths full? Sure. (Is it better to complain after you've gone hungry?) Our mouths are full of genetically modified food, soaked in pesticides and chemicals meant to kill other creatures. Our mouths are full of foods that are being produced by underpaid farmers and sent halfway across the world, in gas guzzling trucks, on highways that are built on the lands of indigenous people. 

We want to do politics with what we're learning through ecology. Everything is interrelated.
Seems to be the new cosmology. It would seem that humans have always organized according to the myths that underlie their understanding of the universe.