In & Outs of November

Augie in Machu
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I miss Jeanette Winterson!
She has not written her monthly column since last September.
So, I went to November, 2005 and took these snippets.
Both wise and cooky.
I love that.

Then, I came across this picture from my nephew
traveling in Peru.
Thus, the lama and the sacred site.

I will let you connect the dots…
Like: November is springtime in Peru…
(unless - they only have two seasons)… but still, it’s all about opposites.

Or, Why is it so many of the world’s sacred sites
seem to be deserted? Dot. Dot. Dot…

Is this really what Jeanette is trying to tell us?
A warning,
Global warning…
Deep inside us…
… and wasn’t Machu Picchu big on keeping guinea pigs?...
And what’s that say about eating one’s experiment…

I am sure you’d prefer to listen to Jeanette, rather than my be-dotted brain…

I long for emptiness and silence.
From November 7th I am hiding away, disappearing into the woods, because
there is a book I have to write,
and one of the many things that can’t be done in public is to write a book.
Though I expect some one will try it soon as an installation.

And I am so tired that I dream about sleeping when I am asleep.

It is difficult to get a balance between the public and the private.

I am sure that the time we live in right now needs us all to be more public than we might like.
We have to speak out, make our voices heard.
I can’t believe that our home-grown lunatic Tony Blair is planning to spend 20 BILLION on a new generation of nuclear weapons.
Of course we have to speak out…

We aren’t living in a quiet time.
We aren’t going to lie easy in our beds.
I would like to be a hermit, but I can’t be.

At the same time it must be said that living more publicly- that is speaking out, raising our hands, getting in the way of the power mongers, needs a balance on the other side.
Private lives can easily shatter under public responsibilities, and,
what is less talked about
and just as dangerous,
is that the public cause can lose touch with its real values,
if we don’t have a private life to sustain those values….

I watch Tony Blair running from crisis to crisis,
and know that as he gets more and more out of touch
with the real things in life,
he is less and less able to make sane decisions.
Sanity is found in so many inconsequential things,
the small and sustaining pleasures of life,
like kids and dogs and a walk and a steaming cup of coffee in the back yard,
and a poem you want to learn,
and picking up twigs for the fire,
and spending all day cooking for your friends,
and letting your mind play and swim and leap and jump,
instead of forcing it endlessly down the same routes.

Peace is not optional,
and I wonder if we find world peace so difficult because our own peace is so hard to find?

So I am sitting here with a pulled muscle. Me! Atlas!
With a pulled muscle.
I am furious and have to give in.
My body is not stupid,
but I am….

Meanwhile – for everyone worrying about bird flu, let’s start by treating chickens properly…
I am very fond of fowls myself, and keep them very well
and they reward me with eggs and cause no trouble,
and why would I want to put them in cages, feed them steroids,
cut off their beaks and let their feet weld to the floor because they can’t move?

Would you do that to a chicken?

Then never ever eat any chicken product where that could have happened.

Simple stuff, changing the world.
It starts in your mouth.


. . . Happy Thanksgiving. Gobble, Gobble.