Tag: deep thoughts hard feelings

hammock therapy

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i have started to consider this past summer as my season of hammock therapy. i spent a fair amount of time in my hammock reading…lots and lots of reading, but mostly i listened.

i heard the early morning birds, the late night birds, the coyotes, i listened for the lobos that are returning. i heard animals walking through the dry grass. the wind through the trees and the ropes holding me aloft. i heard rivers and streams, and the ground soaking in the rain.

and i heard my breath.

i heard my heart pumping.

i got quiet and still

i searched inward.

i’ve never really gone to formal therapy, for various reasons. and it is only recently that i have thought of hammock time as therapy time, and since i have, it makes me wonder how do people go to therapy for an hour once a week or once a month and heal what they are working on? no judgement, just wonder. for me, spending a coupe hours out hiking or biking or running for my “therapy” i feel great for the rest of the day, maybe two or three. then i can see myself sliding back into the behaviors and habits.

i guess some professions call this extended time away from work as a sabbatical. i saved up money so i wouldn’t have to “work” for a period of time, and this time i had a project to work on, and that project was me. i knew i couldn’t keep doing what i’ve been doing, but didn’t know what other options i had.

spending this time out of social bounds, i felt more connected to place than i have in maybe ever. unlike the other adventures i’ve gone on, this one had no itinerary no agenda or theme, so if i fell into the silver city vortex, no one was waiting for me to come up and out. i opened and allowed specific places to totally captured my heart. places i will return to again and again in some way. places i want to build relationships with.

what broke apart in me in my hammock sessions are the walls i’ve spent decades building as a buffer to a world that i do not understand. it seemed easier and easier to put up another brick then realize that the systems in place will never address the issues of violence and injustice i have spent a lifetime fighting.

swinging, suspended in the air, i no longer felt separate from but a belonging to. my identity larger then the labels i claimed or the ones slapped on me. i was beginning to get a glimpse of what liberation could feel like. out here i always feel safer. nature never bullied or beat me for being queer.

what i feel and believe is that i thought i wanted to decolonize myself: my mind, my automatic thoughts and ideas about the world and the beings in it. and i guess that is part of it. but i don’t want to de-anything. i want to re. i want to reconnect. relearn. release the unnecessary…re-member and the only way i can do that is by paying attention to what is out there that truly matters like the birds that greet me at times of day. the sun and moon and planets as they move in their cycles. how my cycles and moods and energy levels switch in rhythm with them. these are the things they didn’t teach me in school. i am learning them from beautiful beings that have been on this journey for along time and are sharing their knowledge. i am learning that these are now the keys for me to unlock something that got lost and hidden in me before i was even born.

in the opening of the essay“no spiritual surrender”, klee benally writes “For Diné there is no dichotomy between spirit and nature, we are of this Earth, and so where there is an environmental crisis there is also a social crisis.” he goes on to explain that there can be no justice on stolen land. where the land/water/air is being violated via resource extraction, there is also exploitation of humans and other lives. it is no wonder we have an epidemic of disconnection. we see it in the numbers addicted to so many substances and behaviors, as well as extensive levels of depression, anxiety, isolation, suicide…

so back to the hammock mind. back to the places i feel whole. my feet on dry land or river beds and ocean shorelines. back to my breath. back to knowing where the sun, moon, and planets are in their cyclical dances. back to my heart. how do i take this feeling into everyday life and language? how do i keep from sliding back into contributing to a capitalist mindset? how do i live in this culture engaged in an abusive relationship. how do we keep this revolution from being commodified like che t-shirts sold at the GAP and rainbow capitalism? can we use this connection to subvert capitalism and the separation and violence it brings with it?

i want to explore how we can break down language and words to get to the stories that got us so fucked up and hating, justified though “science” and language, nationalism, pride, glorified violence. can we tell a different story thank reconnects us?

what is your hammock moment?

activate me

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i’ve lived long enough that i am seeing cycles a couple generations before me, and now, a couple after me. i’ve experienced the pandemics hiv and covid. south africa’s violent apartheid, isreal and their genocide against palestine. i don’t even know how many genocides there have been since they said “never again”. i feel like i’ve been protesting wars and violence my whole dang life. also, the homeless crisis has only gotten deeper. you’d think that capitalism depends on this caste to raise the upper caste even higher. women’s reproductive freedom. people to safely love whom they love, and then there is the climate…

last night i went and saw the film aristotle and dante discover the secretes of the universe, based on the book by benjamin alire sáenz, who talked before the showing of the film. (he grew up here and the story is set in el paso…so you know…local connections) it was a delightfully emotional evening.

the film opens with a dedication to all who had to learn to live by different rules. 

and with those simple words, my stomach clenched, and with a smile, the tears began.

feels like my life has been made of trying to figure out my rules to live by and those to break.

i’m learning that my queer vegan adventures project has been my way of sorting myself out and finding those corners of hidden places that i have been trying to keep from surfacing that keep me from looking past the superficial anger, rage, frustration, fears, judgments… my rules of engagement that i let keep me from me and how i relate to community. and now i am learning to be able to witness these external cycles with a different internal lens. one of the questions that has come up this month is why am i an activist and why do i try to surround my self with people who live intentionally to not feed these violent cycles?

i mean, if you look at the footage of these actions, we look really mad and we are yelling and signing, shouting and laughing, wearing masks in case of tear gas, we have street medics to assist people when the violence erupts from the other side of the line…why? so why do we keep showing up year after year generation after generation?

somehow we want to get people to turn and look and care just enough to listen to what we are trying to say.

the answer i found, much to the surprise of my mind, is love. not the unicorn farting rainbows and glitter love, but love filled with empathy and compassion for people, the planet, all the creatures we share this gift of a planet with, land, the waters, the freaking cosmos…all of it is love. pure and simple.

the vision i created when i learned about visionary fiction, a kind of fiction written by activists, people who envision a world where we can ALL bring our whole selves to…i mean that is pretty fucking beautiful and terrifying. people without labels, just names they like to be called by, getting to do the things that bring them joy, mostly i see people trying new activities and us all laughing at the failures until we find our own ways to do whatever it is we want to learn. i see everything reused and repurposed. a healthy well-fed community with clean air and water to grow and thrive in with big beautiful colorful gardens. no fancy technology or gadgets. just people enjoying life and relations. being creative as hell!

how do we get there?

if you could envision your community where you, could bring your whole self to…what does it look like? i’d like to know.