Today began as I'd hoped it would, with work on my book about zombies. The rain drops only picked up after I had walked 2/3 of the way to Seven Virtues Coffee, and my $4 mug of mixed soy chai soothed my sleep-deprived body. I did research for 45 minutes, and then left to get to the yoga class I haven't made it to in a month. I thought, this has got to be the day.
The rain had picked up since I'd started sipping chai, so I decided I was going to drive to yoga. Usually, yoga on Saturdays had been my weekly solace point. I'd ride up the foothills of Mount Tabor and arrive early to soak up the singular moments of calm in the studio before the owner's sister launched into her typical explanation of basic asanas. Then I'd ride home up through the foothills again and not have to worry about my body (and mind) for the rest of the day. Driving seemed wrong, somehow, so when my car wouldn't start, it was easy for me to switch gears and go directly into problem-solving mode without getting upset that I was going to miss another Saturday yoga class.
I asked for a quote from the shop and waited for a tow truck to show up. A former coworker had once been a tow truck driver, and he'd bequeathed to me a ripe wariness for tow truck drivers in general, having told me stories that involved surreptitious car stalking in the middle of the night. His three mag lights still reside in his possession, lined up like cell bars. The man who showed up smiled and "got" me immediately, something I have learned through healing from P.T.S.D. that certain zombies are too wound up in their own dramas to do at all. His cheeks were rosy, which seemed to say, 'watch for fun' despite the way things seem.
On the drive to the shop, I learned towing wasn't his dream job, that he'd worked as an on-site property manager before his current job, and that unemployment disbursements had run out so he'd found the tow company. When he was ready to leave after dropping me and my van at the shop, he came into the lobby and shook my hand with another smile. I'd recognized that he was gay during the drive, and I smiled inwardly, which I wasn't doing when my car wouldn't start that morning.
My trusty roomie came to pick me up at the shop, and on the drive home I shared my experience with the tow truck driver. Somehow I began talking about mycelium, and then it hit me.
Paul Stametz showed the first video ever of mycelium in action a year or two ago at the Oregon Country Fair. His laptop kept shutting down, and he rebooted five or six times before ending his presentation early. I had been working on the Front Porch crew that year, and Paul's talk was the one presentation I made it to at my camp's booth, wandering by in the early evening on my way back to camp and realizing I'd happened to make it to the talk even though I'd forgotten about it from a full day of frolicking in the woods. I lied atop the numerous carpets and cushions we had spread under the canopies hung from the forest and watched little streams of material flow along the fungal network.
Paul had discovered from making the video that mycelium make a web of routes so that if there is a dead-end at any point along the network, the fungus always has an alternate way. In my roomie's car, I had been talking about Taoism, reminding myself to go with the flow and not see the day's turn of events negatively, since they weren't done yet. In 2010, I decided that being a Taoist, which I've been since roughly 1996, was mainly about going with circumstances instead of resisting and judging them, since they were a part of a large orchestration that didn't start at a specific point in time and didn't particularly have an end either.* It seemed to me today, when I happened to find myself in my roomie's truck instead of the yoga studio, that mycelium are actually directly demonstrating this principle.
What if circumstances provide the architecture for energy to flow through our lives and carry us somewhere? Under the colorfully lit nighttime canopy of Oaks and Vine Maples that night at the Country Fair, I'd reasoned that the streaming stuff within the fungal network of the mycelium was information of some kind, and that it had to move, but that it didn't necessarily have a destination or end-point in mind. Paul showed slides of the human brain next to the mycelial networks, and it appeared that the human neural network is practically the same as the mycelial one. In a macro/microcosm, the most mammoth principle can be seen in the smallest forms, and vice-versa.
Today has given me insight into how to be a better Taoist by working with circumstances as if they are the architecture through which my experience is able to flow, that accepting the avenues that present themselves allows me to continue to move and thus grow, change, and evolve.
If nothing else, evolution is certainly a prime goal, for we do not know what we are, regardless of what our science thinks this week, and we cannot see where we are headed, except that there is a path opening before us in every moment. We can live in a rut, retracing the same path until we move out of a living death into the Great Mystery, or we can choose to see the beauty in the ever-changing structure which houses the immaterial substance at the core of our bioenergetic species identity and go with it.
*See Alan Watts.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Friday, July 16, 2010
Costco Only Place Big Enough For Zombie Meet-Ups?
Breaking News: Zombies have been seen using big-box stores to meet. The implications are grave, with possible strategy sessions for infiltration and takeover occurring during these Z meetups. This article breaks down an analysis of what's happening and makes recommendations for nipping further outbreak in the bud.
The issue at hand for discussion is how contagious the disease is, and whether or not the zombies' use of big-box stores will spread the virus or could perhaps contain it, as the types of people who shop at Wal-Mart may be of a similar demographic.
Sourcing demographic information for Wal-Mart might be as easy as making several trips there and extrapolating the data collected to stores nation-wide. Several photographers have already begun documenting certain regular appearances of what seems to be a specific and unified population visiting Wal-Marts across the country. The typical behavior of those infected seems to include habits similar to those detailed in the article documenting Black Friday earlier in this blog. Shuffling, slumping posture, empty gaze; lack of eye-contact, missing consideration for others present, surrender to store conditions and situational dangers associated with the general shopping frenzy, etc.
Stores like Wal-Mart are possibly a kind of breeding ground for the zombie virus. They may be, however, places where these creatures are actually being contained to some degree, cut off from portions of the population less susceptible to consumer culture/adverting. They do leave the stores to sleep at home, though, and this commute may expose others to the disease. It is unlikely that many shoppers of Wal-Mart use public transportation to get to and from the store, so the car (or personal transport pod) shields people from direct contact. Family members can be considered exposed and infected for the most part. Neighbors most-likely are either safe from transmission for the time being, as modern suburban and urban design leaves out public gathering spaces or pleasant walking routes to and from homes.
Keeping up with the Joneses as a sort of way of life in America has implications for cross-pollination, much of the supplies used for growing a greener, more uniform "monolawn" coming from big-box stores, where zombies no doubt at least make visual contact with one another and susceptible parties some of the time. Observation does impact choice. Store culture, malls and big-boxes in particular, establish mores for dressing (to hide the unique soul and any human vulnerabilities), behavior, and lifestyle choice. Elements of this 'culture' include product tastings, interactive displays, food courts, and sales.
Recognition among shoppers occurs via products stacked on carts for purchase, attendance at sales 'events,' and the clothing worn by participants. Even if shoppers do not interact verbally, they are visually reassured by each other of their normalcy (fitting into American standards) and subtly encouraged to spend even by their level of purchasing power in comparison with each other.
The virus may therefore be being transferred in stores like Wal-Mart and Costco via a subtle strand which links sensory hubs without requiring any physical contact between people. Disease transference by proximity without touch frustrates the standard triage and patient zero medical containment approach. Without an understanding of how to prevent the subtle yet pervasive suite of disease transfer avenues at play in shopping centers and big box stores, containment and protection turns difficult. Touch made unnecessary and replaced by visual prompting then supported by a competition-based set-up (get the new deal before your neighbor does) makes elusive the hero's approach. Being aware of the elements of transference of this disease is usually not sufficient to make any difference. It is like a child throwing a pebble in a pond already bombarded by rocks tossed by a group of adults, the ripple is not enough to effect a change in the wave pattern.
Additional obstacles include sound controlled inside the stores to cue passivity, dullness of mind, and consumption, including probable subliminal advertising tracks under the musak. Developing and maintaining a strong mind and healthy sensory reception template as an individual is not so difficult, especially if one starts out in a less susceptible place within, such as with basic progressive consciousness or little time spent inside these kinds of stores. However, even talking with the infected in these places becomes ineffectual because the hero and the infected are both surrounded by multiple streams of sensory interference. One might be able to maintain independence from the virus while the other remains unable to make a mental bridge to lead them out of the inundation and system domination occurring in effect via their lack of appropriate protections against the stimuli all around them in the big box or the mall.
The issue of zombification affects more than might originally be obvious, such as what people wear or think. One major area of importance remains the nation's food supply. Those who shop at big-box stores make up a large portion of the mainstream population and therefore determine supply within the heavily-controlled boundaries of what the stores offer up for purchase. Perhaps reports on factory-farmed beef sales are weighted by contracts between big-box stores and those producers, the infected being largely unquestioning of the back story of the food on display, by way of their disease. In this way, these kinds of stores make perfect breeding grounds, petrie dishes for zombie 'culture' to grow like a silent fungal colonial takeover. Meanwhile, the animals in factory farms suffer unspeakably and zombies gobble it up like fresh brains.
Without comment or improvement (more human and humane considerations), the pseudo-places commonly referred to as malls and shopping outlets are projected to remain hot breeding grounds for the zombie virus. The method for infection is largely unrecognized, and therefore unchecked, and infection is thus spreading steadily in the ways postulated above.
The actions one could take in prevention of further spreading of the disease include a general list of basic activism. Letter-writing to Congress, the Senate, and the big-boxes, regular use of the technique of visualization of a much more sane store structure and relationship with suppliers, including accountability for inhumane treatment of food animals and corporate pollution generated by production facilities as well as consideration for local and organic growers, is one major avenue of containment of this plague. It is easy also to boycott, as if one thinks about it, none of the things sold at them are that necessary. The lower prices are not actually low at all, when one stops to account for the loss of life, ecosystem integrity, indigenous communities, and small farms that are just some of the parts of the equation not shown on typical accounting sheets. Shopping instead at local cooperatives, buying directly from local farms, and visiting farmers' markets are easy and fun ways to change the tide. Another action with concrete results is to create or join a community discussion/action group, one in which members write letters to the editor of local and national newspapers and create artwork to expose and encourage discussion about what is happening inside big-box stores.
For more information or to make inquiries, please feel free to become a follower of this blog, leave a comment, or contact the author directly.
The issue at hand for discussion is how contagious the disease is, and whether or not the zombies' use of big-box stores will spread the virus or could perhaps contain it, as the types of people who shop at Wal-Mart may be of a similar demographic.
Sourcing demographic information for Wal-Mart might be as easy as making several trips there and extrapolating the data collected to stores nation-wide. Several photographers have already begun documenting certain regular appearances of what seems to be a specific and unified population visiting Wal-Marts across the country. The typical behavior of those infected seems to include habits similar to those detailed in the article documenting Black Friday earlier in this blog. Shuffling, slumping posture, empty gaze; lack of eye-contact, missing consideration for others present, surrender to store conditions and situational dangers associated with the general shopping frenzy, etc.
Stores like Wal-Mart are possibly a kind of breeding ground for the zombie virus. They may be, however, places where these creatures are actually being contained to some degree, cut off from portions of the population less susceptible to consumer culture/adverting. They do leave the stores to sleep at home, though, and this commute may expose others to the disease. It is unlikely that many shoppers of Wal-Mart use public transportation to get to and from the store, so the car (or personal transport pod) shields people from direct contact. Family members can be considered exposed and infected for the most part. Neighbors most-likely are either safe from transmission for the time being, as modern suburban and urban design leaves out public gathering spaces or pleasant walking routes to and from homes.
Keeping up with the Joneses as a sort of way of life in America has implications for cross-pollination, much of the supplies used for growing a greener, more uniform "monolawn" coming from big-box stores, where zombies no doubt at least make visual contact with one another and susceptible parties some of the time. Observation does impact choice. Store culture, malls and big-boxes in particular, establish mores for dressing (to hide the unique soul and any human vulnerabilities), behavior, and lifestyle choice. Elements of this 'culture' include product tastings, interactive displays, food courts, and sales.
Recognition among shoppers occurs via products stacked on carts for purchase, attendance at sales 'events,' and the clothing worn by participants. Even if shoppers do not interact verbally, they are visually reassured by each other of their normalcy (fitting into American standards) and subtly encouraged to spend even by their level of purchasing power in comparison with each other.
The virus may therefore be being transferred in stores like Wal-Mart and Costco via a subtle strand which links sensory hubs without requiring any physical contact between people. Disease transference by proximity without touch frustrates the standard triage and patient zero medical containment approach. Without an understanding of how to prevent the subtle yet pervasive suite of disease transfer avenues at play in shopping centers and big box stores, containment and protection turns difficult. Touch made unnecessary and replaced by visual prompting then supported by a competition-based set-up (get the new deal before your neighbor does) makes elusive the hero's approach. Being aware of the elements of transference of this disease is usually not sufficient to make any difference. It is like a child throwing a pebble in a pond already bombarded by rocks tossed by a group of adults, the ripple is not enough to effect a change in the wave pattern.
Additional obstacles include sound controlled inside the stores to cue passivity, dullness of mind, and consumption, including probable subliminal advertising tracks under the musak. Developing and maintaining a strong mind and healthy sensory reception template as an individual is not so difficult, especially if one starts out in a less susceptible place within, such as with basic progressive consciousness or little time spent inside these kinds of stores. However, even talking with the infected in these places becomes ineffectual because the hero and the infected are both surrounded by multiple streams of sensory interference. One might be able to maintain independence from the virus while the other remains unable to make a mental bridge to lead them out of the inundation and system domination occurring in effect via their lack of appropriate protections against the stimuli all around them in the big box or the mall.
The issue of zombification affects more than might originally be obvious, such as what people wear or think. One major area of importance remains the nation's food supply. Those who shop at big-box stores make up a large portion of the mainstream population and therefore determine supply within the heavily-controlled boundaries of what the stores offer up for purchase. Perhaps reports on factory-farmed beef sales are weighted by contracts between big-box stores and those producers, the infected being largely unquestioning of the back story of the food on display, by way of their disease. In this way, these kinds of stores make perfect breeding grounds, petrie dishes for zombie 'culture' to grow like a silent fungal colonial takeover. Meanwhile, the animals in factory farms suffer unspeakably and zombies gobble it up like fresh brains.
Without comment or improvement (more human and humane considerations), the pseudo-places commonly referred to as malls and shopping outlets are projected to remain hot breeding grounds for the zombie virus. The method for infection is largely unrecognized, and therefore unchecked, and infection is thus spreading steadily in the ways postulated above.
The actions one could take in prevention of further spreading of the disease include a general list of basic activism. Letter-writing to Congress, the Senate, and the big-boxes, regular use of the technique of visualization of a much more sane store structure and relationship with suppliers, including accountability for inhumane treatment of food animals and corporate pollution generated by production facilities as well as consideration for local and organic growers, is one major avenue of containment of this plague. It is easy also to boycott, as if one thinks about it, none of the things sold at them are that necessary. The lower prices are not actually low at all, when one stops to account for the loss of life, ecosystem integrity, indigenous communities, and small farms that are just some of the parts of the equation not shown on typical accounting sheets. Shopping instead at local cooperatives, buying directly from local farms, and visiting farmers' markets are easy and fun ways to change the tide. Another action with concrete results is to create or join a community discussion/action group, one in which members write letters to the editor of local and national newspapers and create artwork to expose and encourage discussion about what is happening inside big-box stores.
For more information or to make inquiries, please feel free to become a follower of this blog, leave a comment, or contact the author directly.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Black Friday
A group of 4 or 5 friends grabbed a video camera, a still camera, and a voice recorder and stayed up 'till dawn in order to interview these people while they waited in lines at the Malls and big stores for Black Friday. We thought it would be revealing to talk to these folks and find out what motivated them to wait in lines all night long just to shop. We shared a sort of fascination for uncovering the intriguing reasons behind the popular support for this consumer holiday.
I have never particularly enjoyed shopping myself. I do it more because I occasionally need something from a store. So I expected to be disgusted, but what our little group found surprised even me.
We started at the Lloyd Center Mall. One woman waiting at the front of a line for Old Navy in the mall wore a pink sweatshirt and carried her own personal television to watch while waiting to shop. I can't imagine what was on at that hour of the night, infomercials maybe? I haven't owned or watched a television in over a decade, unless you count that one time I met a date in a sports bar, where something like 15 T.V.s guaranteed that any direction I looked in kept me up to date on the basketball game.
Strangely drawn to her pill pink coat, we made our way over and talked to her first. Her family, she proudly told us, had come to Black Friday for the past 25 years. We asked her why she had a television along, and she explained that she used it to keep up with what was going on. I held my tongue, because I didn't have anything nice to say.
Another woman in the line had brought along a tote bag that she had stocked with an organized 4" thick pile of ads she'd carefully removed from newspapers in anticipation of the night. I was more surprised at the way she showed these to us as if nothing was at all wrong with any of it than I was by the pile of ads on the edge of careening forth from the bag at any moment.
My team of compatriots loosely interviewed and interacted with those waiting in line. Not carrying a recording device, I was free to roam, observe, and converse, some of which was caught on tape and some recorded for posterity in my memory. From what I could tell, people in the lines were blissfully engaged with the event. They didn't question the situation in the least, and they actually reacted defensively when questioned in some cases. One grade-school teacher gave our cameraman an earful after he engaged her in a playful dialogue about American consumer culture.
Later in the night, we discovered a tired line stretching the equivalent of two city blocks creating a pseudo-social scene in front of Best Buy out by the airport. Moisture from a light rain reflected from the dark pavement and created small puddles in the low points of the asphalt landscape. At the front of this line, a gaggle of about 6 twenty-something kids giddily shared with us their plan for buying as many laptops as possible and reselling them for a profit. They had eaten their Thanksgiving dinners in line.
I was struck by my observation that a number of people I talked with displayed an almost humorous attitude towards what they were doing, as if they were aware on some low level how F-ed up it was to stand in line for three days and nights to buy electronic gadgets. To me, their upturned lips were a thin veil hanging between their decision to be there and their full sensory awareness. Despite how close some of the Best Buy line seemed to admitting their craziness, all of these folks stood their ground, like I might at any time seek to pull them out of their place in line. The energy of the scene felt dysfunctional, disturbing, akin to that of a factory farm or other place where you know things aren't right.
Later in the night, we discovered a tired line stretching the equivalent of two city blocks creating a pseudo-social scene in front of Best Buy out by the airport. Moisture from a light rain reflected from the dark pavement and created small puddles in the low points of the asphalt landscape. At the front of this line, a gaggle of about 6 twenty-something kids giddily shared with us their plan for buying as many laptops as possible and reselling them for a profit. They had eaten their Thanksgiving dinners in line.
I was struck by my observation that a number of people I talked with displayed an almost humorous attitude towards what they were doing, as if they were aware on some low level how F-ed up it was to stand in line for three days and nights to buy electronic gadgets. To me, their upturned lips were a thin veil hanging between their decision to be there and their full sensory awareness. Despite how close some of the Best Buy line seemed to admitting their craziness, all of these folks stood their ground, like I might at any time seek to pull them out of their place in line. The energy of the scene felt dysfunctional, disturbing, akin to that of a factory farm or other place where you know things aren't right.
Everyone on my team agreed that the richest material by far of the night came from Wal-Mart. At first not being allowed to enter with recording devices seemed indicative that something going on inside was officially being hidden from scrutiny. After about fifteen minutes of useless haggling, we actually got past security due to a more pressing issue suddenly needing the attention of the security staff.
When we got inside, all of us were simply blown away. Everywhere, people pushed shopping carts loaded higher than their shoulders with crap. They drove the carts in all directions, and so it was simply mayhem inside the store. The strong lights, the muzak, and the drone of urgent voices (oxymoronic perhaps, but true) all combined to make me have to physically and psychically shut down my natural flight responses.
When we got inside, all of us were simply blown away. Everywhere, people pushed shopping carts loaded higher than their shoulders with crap. They drove the carts in all directions, and so it was simply mayhem inside the store. The strong lights, the muzak, and the drone of urgent voices (oxymoronic perhaps, but true) all combined to make me have to physically and psychically shut down my natural flight responses.
I witnessed one young man narrowly miss tripping an elderly person walking gingerly with the aid of a cane, after which he unaffectedly ran onward toward whatever product special was calling his name. It was like watching ice-skating championships - I held my breath and then let it out only after the elderly man carried on in an upright position.
One of the most bizarre elements of the scene was the effect created because shoppers were made to wait in lines filling the store from wall to wall until 5 a.m., when check stands opened. My team of hobby investigative journalists couldn't break through the lines inside the store and had to walk around to the ends of them to exit the building. I felt like I had a numberof years ago when the bus I was on sat in traffic for an hour in an attempt to leave New York City one weekday evening a few years ago, utterly trapped.
One of the most bizarre elements of the scene was the effect created because shoppers were made to wait in lines filling the store from wall to wall until 5 a.m., when check stands opened. My team of hobby investigative journalists couldn't break through the lines inside the store and had to walk around to the ends of them to exit the building. I felt like I had a numberof years ago when the bus I was on sat in traffic for an hour in an attempt to leave New York City one weekday evening a few years ago, utterly trapped.
Our still-photographer began pushing a cart filled for display with all of the store's supply of GPS for automobiles. This one act carried much weight, as many people proceeded to glare at her or check out the stack of green boxes as if shopping in her cart. That's when I first noticed the eyes of Black Friday shoppers. Each person's attention seemed to dart around jaggedly, no one made eye contact, and all body language was slumped and shuffling.
I realized that people had to slip inside a kind of zone to blend in and get into what was occurring in that unnatural place. People couldn't unfurl their senses there, or they'd all be burnt off, singed beyond later functionality in the real world outside by a deadening combination of atmosphere, program, and a landscape that bred disconnectedness.
It seemed an agreement made silently within each individual person, some mixture of observation and feeling that when set produced a sort of zombie stance that stuck to the program of buying and milling about, getting excited about gadgets, distracted and lured by packaging.
It seemed an agreement made silently within each individual person, some mixture of observation and feeling that when set produced a sort of zombie stance that stuck to the program of buying and milling about, getting excited about gadgets, distracted and lured by packaging.
After we went home, exhausted and simultaneously awakened by what we had witnessed first-hand, I was lucky to speak to a former employee of three stores regularly participating in Black Friday. She unabashedly told me that people shopping seemed like they had an uncontrollable illness, a need for a bargain so deep that they didn't realize anything that was going on around them.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Outreach Project #1
Riparian restoration - my initial outreach project for the state of Oregon is launching now in celebration of both Earth Day and Arbor Day. Through my ecological design firm, Eco-Logic, I'll be developing original product and program content for a series of educational workshops aimed at connecting children with Nature.
This launch will be put into effect here in Oregon through workshops and replicated nationwide starting with Northern California in time for Arbor Day, April 30th, 2010. More details to come! Please follow PermaZombie for updates or to get involved in this awesome program for kids and the environment.
This launch will be put into effect here in Oregon through workshops and replicated nationwide starting with Northern California in time for Arbor Day, April 30th, 2010. More details to come! Please follow PermaZombie for updates or to get involved in this awesome program for kids and the environment.
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