Civilization is the Vamire God

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered vistage lays, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well these passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mockt them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains, round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

“Ozymandias,” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817)

Civilization, that demon God of madness, power, and war. He floats ethereal through the mind of man like a smog born of the overzealous industriousness of his hands. In a dark irony he has tried to clear the fog from his eyes only to fill his mind this putrid smog. Stranded within this dense smog of his own creation he knows not where he is, nor remembers who, and feels alone. We all know where civilization lies and where it does not, but we fail to know also where its boundaries lie and what defines them. Though still enmeshed within its confines I have come to see it for what it truly is; a prison. For I have looked between its barred windows to the life that lies outside. Nay, the outside that is itself life, the inside the undying death. Inside of these glimpses, have often looked back over my shoulder, back towards the confines, it is from this vantage point that its boundaries take on form and contour. The walls of its citadels are constructed with the brick and mortar of words and beliefs. Built to the precise blueprint of logic by many hordes of devout monks to its sanctity. Each a specialist in its unceasing construction. Each a specialized cog in this mega-machine. In its phallic towers, as if to penetrate the heavens, the bells of manifest destiny sound. I hear it, despite my loathing, all the time, for it is broadcast from every word. What does it sound like? The civilization, this death cult. It sounds of the drone of power plants and the roar of the highway. And the crunching smashing sound of clear cuts and construction. It’s the sound of guns sirens and jets. It is the shallow backdrop of elevator music, and the cacophony of a million talking heads talking to themselves. It abhors the silence necessary to think, and so, my thoughts are clouded and elude me. I see it, geometry of grids, squares, and boxes inside boxes. It is like a fishing net, thrown upon the earth to catch our lives and take them for its own. Or a mold creeping across the landscape and the meaningfulness of it. I taste it; a copious blandness, that numbs and sends jolts of temporary highs while it sickens me and rots my insides. I am addicted to it, as I often try and fail to tear myself from it. They call it food, but it is not food. It is a fake food that we stuff our faces full of while we continue to starve. Oh how I smell it! What stink! It is the musty smell of rot and of death. It is a hot repulsive smell of tar, oil, exhaust, and plastic. It makes my stomach coil and my head ache.
But more e than anything I feel it. Deeply like a sword plunged through the pit of the soul. It’s that omnipresent fear that staves off total revolt. The rage at the fact that the chains remain. That it remains and nothing changes. The pain! Oh the awful pain. It’s the pain I have endured and the scares that remain. The suffering of others that we all know is going on. The incomprehensible amount of accumulated suffering and pain of all the genocide and extinction of our bloody history. The void. The utter loss, and the becoming numb. But under all this, behind it, is the immense feeling of sorrow. That total sorrow. All this, and for what? Nothing but even more of the same. We, our species, stand here with the blood of all life on earth on our hands. We are all responsible for this, the biggest extinction event in the entire history of earth. It could possible take us to extinction as well, and for what? Yet we continue. We all wish to die, it seems. One can see all this in the eyes of all the humans crowding these monuments to our mass suicide we call “cities.” We are all in pain and to varying degrees insane. I am sure of so little, but I know in the depths of my being what has caused all this. I know it all too well. It is my enemy and it is civilization in its totality and has always been so. It is the rightful enemy of all that truly wishes to live. Why do so many plants and animals resist it, these dear friends of mine derided as ‘weeds’ and ‘pests’? They do this out of necessity, circumstance, and the will to live.

the march of the clocks must be stopped

How one perceives and experiences the passage of time is the fundamental phenomenon that determines how fast, or slow, ones life goes by, which is intimately connected to whether that time is or is not of quality. With the rise of civilization, that perception has been completely altered. While we can never really know how Paleolithic peoples experienced things, I don’t think that is completely necessary to understanding change wrought to our perception of time by civilization. One need only be able to distinguish between what is natural; that is, what is not the creation of civilization, and what is artificial; that is, what is created by civilization. As I have said before, the actual order of things underneath all of civilizations delusions, is of cycles within cycles within cycles, etc. that is circles, which are anarchies, not hierarchies which are triangles. Our current ideas past and future are a twisted bastardization of these circles which, I believe, was enabled through a steadily expanding degradation of the present moment, that in turn was fundamentally enabled by, and the result of, a apparent widening separation from natural cycles and our dependence on these cycles day to day. But the drastic change from the eternal present of hunter-gatherer perception bound in all the cycles of natural existence (as is my current understanding) to the hegemonized, measured, mechanized, and then subsequently internalized, bought and sold by humans perception of time did not happen overnight, but was a process that expanded right along with the pace of civilizations expansion. While I am sure there is more to this process than what I know and will describe, these are the factors that are most easy to spot and thus subvert. With the adoption of agriculture, the cycles of planting and harvesting of the staple crops come to determine the perception of time among agricultural settled societies. Though this is still a cycle and thus circular, it is disconnected from the natural cycles of the ecology in which they reside and is instead connected to the cycles of a few, most likely non-native, domesticated plants. Thus in many agricultural societies we see measurements of time still based on the natural cycles of the day, the month (origin: moon-th), and the seasons of the year, but the regional differences in ecology being plowed over by the relatively uniform cycles of domestic plants. Thus enter standardization. These cycles in turn became broken up by the expanding of the use of number and measurement. Eventually, this lead to the creation for the ultimate domination of time: The Clock. Make no mistake, this process from the get go was about the quest for the ultimate control over people by the ruling class and/or the ruling religion/ideology. Because by standardizing time, the party who does this takes away from their followers and/or slaves the ability to have their subjective experience of time inform what they do with that time, or even the acknowledgement that that subjective experience exists as the defining factor. This allows the subjugation of those lives to happen on a scale, and with a depth, that was hitherto impossible. The Roman ruler who first imposed Christianity on the empire did so in a large part through the standardization of time through the creation of on of the first instances of the arbitrary blocking of time in the creation of the week. Which itself was stolen earlier Mesopotamian civilization. The first clocks where then erected to facilitate this program (or was it the other way around?) were bells in Christian monasteries that marked the week and the call to church for large masses of people. When the technological complexity of this machine was increased with the invention of the mechanical clock, the first ones where installed in churches. The mechanical clock paved the way for the planned mass standardization of production called “progress” and industrialization. All that follows would not have been possible without the clock. The clock is the foundation of modern industrial civilizations domination over the time that makes up our lives; therefore, I think it should be subverted individually, socially, and totally. The relationship between the subjective nature of ones (animal) experience of time, and that of the hegemonized machine time of clocks and the technological and economic structures that rest upon them are inherently antithetical. This is a war that takes a toll on all of us. For it is the fault of the clock and our obedience to it that we stress over being late to someplace or the creation of these week based schedules in the first place! Problems of having to “save time” or be able to “buy enough time” is at base a problem of time being scientifically measured and broken down into pieces, which are then bought and sold as units of economic value. Liberate your perception of time, for it is nothing more than our very lives that are being broken down and sold. This war is a front in the war that is all wars; the Primal War. So one is not only able to choose which side one is on the individual level, but can also choose to go on the attack on the social level. Remember Y2K? How I wish it had been for real! But could it be artificially created? Someday the clocks will stop…

Log-off the (dis)connected life. Smash the Internet!

What does a totalitarian culture look like? Bland, homogenous. But I think it is most of all experienced as a silence. Mass culture’s silent spring, the invisibility of the voices and manifestations of any storyline that does not fit into the plot of The Mass Culture. It is a absence that gnaws at the pit of the soul. The modern Nation-State’s mechanism for keeping “unity,” for keeping the mass a mass is through the propagation and maintenance of a Mass Culture. How do I know this? I am immersed in such a culture everyday (that is except the ones during which I’ve retreated to the forest) against my will. This mass culture, this American (which is apparently very much an –ism) culture, is an especially totalitarian one. It is a condition ruled by fear; a dictatorship of a single social ideal. “you’ve got to succeed”, own a home, a car, keep up to date, etc. it is the same message that has been shoved down so many throats since after world war 2, the difference being they’ve refined the message and gotten better at getting it into your head without being too obvious. “the fascists didn’t loose world war 2 they just switched sides.” A dictatorship enforced by the might of the technologies of mass media and their helmsmen. All in the service of a never named aloud social engineering program, a distinctly American fascism. You of course already knew this, and have heard it before, but do you, or we, really know it? It is not a new process but has gone into overdrive recently as the clock winds down. For example: have you noticed that all the media, even now on the web too to some extent, cover the same stories whose overall message is the same, as if representing a orchestrated play. Have you noticed how the government is so very particular about when certain events and information are to start and end, and of when information is released? Modern society is the product of a conscious effort for more than 100 years, and continues to be so. This country pioneered this, and continues to do so. Have you noticed that as this countries fascist developments become more and more egregious the broadcasting of this fact has become more and more meek. I think many of us understand this intellectually but have yet to come to terms with its reality. The internet will soon not be a place for communication of any dissenting opinions, especially anti-civilization ones. I think it is high time we stop using it as our primary way of communicating with each other and organizing things. If we put all our creative and expressive energy into the internet system than we become reliant upon it and thus if it goes down so do we. Not to mention that the internet allows a unprecedented amount of power to those in control to monitor, track, and be in control of what we and other rebels are doing and saying. How many times must it be said that technology is not neutral? That the medium IS the message!? So without further ado, let us make zines not websites, support GA/AP magazines in their print form not their online one. Post our messages on the walls of buildings rather than on message boards. Smash the internet! Life is elsewhere!!

PS: B&G Bulletin also makes zines, if you want some just e-mail at primalwarnow@riseup.net

Stinging Nettles; easy, tasty, and healthy

leaves alternate, ridged. most notably, they sting you. although all species of nettle are edible, and/or medicinal.
WHERE? they grow throughout North America, in wet and shaded soil.
USE: they are a yummy spinnich green and make a tasty tea too. this is convienient because you just boil them and you get both a spinnich and a tea out of it. diaretic, astringent. good for lung congestion apparently, my book tells me at least. its iron rich! and it is also calming. but that it relly tastes pleasing is all it took for me to highly reccomend this plant.

Assasinating power at the point of production!

get the idea?

LEBANON, OR. - August 18th: "Somebody had used firearms to shoot out insulators on a Bonneville Power Administration transmission line, the BPA said from Portland." "The vandalism to BPA’s Green Peter-Lebanon 115-kilovolt line occurred in a densely wooded area approximately 11 miles east of Lebanon. The line faulted at 6:22 p.m., and power to the Lebanon substation was restored at 10:28 p.m. Spokeswoman Mary Zimmerman of Consumers Power said the outage affected about 5,000 of the company’s 20,000 customers, most of whom are in Linn and Benton County. She said she received outage reports from Lebanon and Sweet Home and a few customers in Scio."

a personal anarcho-primitivism A MANIFESTO

this is a manifesto i wrote which i am making into a zine with colages and stuff but am reprinting here, if you want a copy of it email me at primalwarnow@riseup.net


I am an animal, as is every humyn being. I Breath in, and breath out. A child is born and elder dies. The sun rises in the east, and the day is thus born, and the night dies. The sun sets into the west, and night is born, and the day dies. So too the seasons come and go, for this is the earth breathing in; spring into summer, and the breathing out; autumn into winter. These patterns are all the same pattern, and that pattern is inherent to all existence, even the universe itself (read the big bang theory/entropy). It is the circle completed; it connects everything into its true wholeness. For each of these circles of life and death, contains within itself many smaller such circles, and also is itself a smaller circle within a larger one. The words ‘smaller’ and ‘larger’ however are confusing as to the interrelationship that they represent. This relationship is not synonymous with less/more, worse/better. For every scale (small/large) continues in their prospective directions indefinitely, and so ones understanding of what they are is simply a reflection of where on this scale they are. And to refer to this relation as on of direction I think is most accurate, for it is most interrelated to time. All of this is me, and I am it. I breathe in, and then out. This action is itself a complete circle of a lifetime, birth and death. Contained within this action is the birth and subsequent death of innumerable single celled and microscopic organisms; a lifetime of ups and downs, through adolescence, mating and old age. The breathing in; a bringing together of dead matter to form new and unique living matter, the animation of matter with the breath of energy. The taking of others life to enable yours. The breathing out; the breaking apart of living matter to form dead matter, the draining of energy from matter. The giving of ones life to enable others. A giving and taking of life and death, it comes and goes. These are the bonds formed of cooperation and Mutual Aid that hold the community of life together in a state of Anarchy. This is the ecology and cannot be ignored. It is how the cells of my body stay together and continue to function. So it is with the insects that buzz about my head and the plants and animals that I eat, and so too with the earth itself and the elements that make up its components. And so on into the atom and out into the universe, this is what holds everything together, it is everything.
This is not an abstract diatribe of metaphysics, nor is this pattern and it’s interconnections an abstract concept to be chewed on by the intellect then spit out upon the ground. But it is who you are, and will become and it is the key to the health of our planet. One must come to terms with it, for it is nothing more than the inevitability of death, and too the persistence of birth. But it is not enough to simply come to terms with it, to know that in the mirror there is a face and it is mine. But it must be drunk like water, like the ocean to swim and bathe in, and to drown. It is to be embraced, lived, and loved. There is no other pattern than this. Understanding this, loving it and considering it sacred, is the key to the fabled happiness that all the human cultures of the world so often seek, but never find. This understanding is not the sole providence of humyns either. In fact, it is humans that have the sole providence of not understanding this. All other life forms that are not under the iron hand of the civilized humans touch understand this intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, instinctively, and they live it fully. It is us that do not. But are we not also part of this pattern, why are we alone in this condition? The most basic myth of civilization proclaims this condition as our gift. But this is most egregious lie, for it is no gift, but a curse. However it is not curse put onto us by some controlling “god” that we cannot escape. It is a curse we brought upon ourselves, that we can reject at any time. We can indeed have our paradise, but not in heaven, right here, right now, on Earth.



It is not that humans haven’t or can’t understand this and live within the paradise of abundance that all other creatures do, but that civilized humans, meaning they are both domesticated and the domesticator, and that they are both the inhabitants of and builders of civilization, don’t. These poor creatures have not always been so miserable (in fact, for 99.9% of the history of our species we lived in peaceful state of anarchy), nor will they (which is us) forever be. However, we are right now miserable, sick, weak, psychotic, and suicidal, and seeming hell bent on taking all the biota of earth with it towards extinction. This is where we find ourselves at the present moment, which is the only moment that has ever or will ever exist. All this craziness that our species is enmeshed in though, originates in, and is fundamentally based upon, single precept: that humans are the smartest, most capable, most unique, noblest creatures to on this planet to have ever existed and that we are therefore above, and the rulers of, all other life and thus earth itself. And conversely that all other life forms are therefore bellow us, inherently incapable of our amazing mental and physical feats, that they are stupid, unconscious machines. BULLSHIT. You say insects and plants do not think, oh no! and that other animals little or not at all. We, the Humans, and us alone posses the awesome power of abstract(ed) thought, we alone can search the universe in our quest for understanding. What total folly, the fools. You search and you search, but what for really? Is it that you have lost something? Up there at the top of the food chain, so high it is! Be careful, because you can (will) fall. Way up there all by yourself, are you feeling a little lonely? Ever wonder why the belief in the existence of space aliens is so prevailing and prevalent in the most ‘advanced’ of cultures? The cry of these believers that is so oft repeated sums up their feeling so succinctly “but there must be other intelligent life out there somewhere” maybe, but there is definitely right here on earth. With your supposed ‘gift’ of disconnected thought you seek to connect things. You point to as proof of your superiority that since other creatures are not on par with your ‘intelligence’ because they are not enmeshed in the never ending searching for understanding, as you do? They are not intelligent, you go on to cite as further proof, because they do not use their understandings for purposes of control of everything about them, like you do? What arrogance! Maybe they are not constantly searching for understanding because they already have it. As it is simply a recognition of what is inherent in all life, and the universe. And that if they were in fact intelligent, like us, they would of tried to take control of their environment, like us, which inevitably causes of the climate and ecology which gives us life in the first place? Maybe other life forms don’t do this because it is stupid, is ultimately destructive, and benefits no one.
We used to understand all of this, and a very few of us still do, but we have succumbed to a great forgetting. So then the big question, the question that humanity must answer, is Why? The cause of this Great Forgetting is the same as the processes of its expansion, which is the same as its ultimate result; which is the same cancerous sameness. Existence for us was once a beautiful painting, it is the iron surgical knife that tears that painting to pieces. We are the pieces, each just a color that used to be a painting but now just pieces, each in our own box, a cage, a cell. All these boxes stacked nice and neat in columns and rows, towers and pyramids. These are the fruit of Progress. It is the counter and the clock. The farms and the factories. The Machines and the work. The Worker and the Soldier. The weapons and the towers. It is the Cities and the Altars. The masses and the Kings. The Prisons and the guards. The Gods and the Priests. The Truth and The Law. It is The Man. It is The Plan. It is The Man with The Plan. Most of all, it is The War, the first war, the last, and the next. It is the war that is all wars. It is the war of self against other, Us against Them. Order against Chaos. Tame against wild. Man against nature. Man against animal. Man against woman. Man against child. Man against man. The Truth against lies. Religion against sacrilege. King against commoner. Upper class against lower class. Capital against community. Law against crime. Government against autonomy. Hegemony against diversity. Forward against backward. It is the omnipresence of war. It is all the time, everywhere. It is the quest for, the acquisition of, and the exercise of control and power. It is control and power themselves. It is civilization in its totality. It is the aggressor in the war that is all wars; The Primal War. But there is another side to this war, that which resists, and fights back. And like all wars, of the two sides, only one will win, but which?



The Primal War is raging, now more than ever. The time has come to choose sides, for there is no neutral ground. It is high time we recognize this, and arm ourselves accordingly. Now is the time, and this is the Endgame. The battles we fight today are the decisive ones, the ones that will decide the ultimate outcome, and the ones that truly matter. We, the writers, have chosen our side. Against the Great Forgetting; against Civilization, for we are the Remembering. We are the perpetual other, the barbarians at the gates. We are ancient and eternal, and we have just arrived. We are the weeds that keep coming back and the ones that resist the pesticides. We are the cracks in the monuments and cities. We are the rabbits that steal your carrots, and the raccoons that eat your garbage. We are the criminals who steal from the stores and the people rioting in the streets. We are the dogs, cats, cows, and pigs who escape and become feral. We are the children who pull the fire alarm, disrupt the class, and vandalize. We are the antibiotic resistant bacteria, germs, and viruses that grow stronger by the day. We are the women who kill the men who try and rape them. We are the black youth who shoot police officers. We are the storms that tear apart cities. We are the trees whose roots crack the sidewalk. We are eco-warriors who burn down developments and the animal liberationists who free animals from factory farms. We are suicide bombers. We killed McKinley, Lincoln, the Russian Czar, JFK, and every authority who was ever assassinated. We are outlaws and outsiders. We are the wild and free, who refuse to be tamed. We are all the animals, plants, and insects in the forest, in your yard, in your house, and we’re buzzing in your ear. We come from without and we come from within. We are armed and we are dangerous. For we are everywhere and we fight for nothing less that survival. We will not stop until civilization destroyed and gone. Forever.

i'm back! i will hopefully be posting much much more frequently. here is an essay my friend sent to me, i know the feeling, but the state does indeed try to make it impossible as free range organic human blog has pointed out



To be the change we want to see in the world, we are putting effort
towards living life as we see fit. We, as earth, partake in daily
revolution …dramatic, bold, life-changing and cyclical paths around the
sun and we seek a tangible revolution around and in relationship. As we
examine our relationships with each other, other humans, all other
members of the land community and begin to shed the armor of
civilization and feel, again, the actual sensation of being a part and
not apart, we rejoice.

How do we find peace in this world that seems so filled with domination,
fear, dependence and violence? We have learned that peace is not to be
found snug in the confines of our personal fences, in the pages of
magazine, from the flashing lights of the living room box nor in an
empty Coke can, a bottle of Allen’s Coffee Brandy, the last cigarette in
the pack, fast food, the bright lights of the supermarket or the green
fields of a local farm. We have learned to look through, outside of, and
around the edges of ‘this world’. We have seen civilization and
recognize, once and for all, that we are separate from it. Humanity does
not equal civilization. Civilization is our ultimate oppressor and from
within it peace is war and war is peaceful. Woman identified people
become property and dehumanized, demonized and eternally associated with
wildness. The whole of the earth is split, as we are rent from it, and
the left side of the human mind dominates landscapes, ecosystems and
spreads its creations far and wide until we impact it enough that even
we can no longer ignore it. Once this sinks in, this full, tingling
realization that civilization itself is anti-life, one can never be the
same.

As we rewild and return, relearn, unlearn and remember, we heal. We
heal an ancient and forever now relationship. Our sense of self
broadens as we realize we are not our cars, nor the contents of our bank
accounts, we are not our jobs, nor our clothes. And our sense of self
deepens as we realize we are made of wildness. Our hearts are wild; our
bones are wild, self-determining, self-willed, untamed and free. We can
not truly separate ourselves from the ancientness of every atom or the
beat of the drum in our very chests. Mountains and rivers have shaped us
as savannas have too. It is now harder to see where all becomes I and I
becomes all. And thus, we realize we can break ourselves from this
ultimate addiction to civilization and once again, trust earth and trust
ourselves. Letting go of false security and finding true security.
Examining our true human needs and dropping all the ‘but don’t we’
needs. We find peace in community; those direct, buzzing, wild face to
face experiences of a group of others, human and otherwise.
To free ourselves, we see that choosing to move away from the entwined
systems of domination known as domestication is key. Domesticating
others can never be done if we don’t domesticate ourselves. The first
thing colonizers colonize is their own peoples minds. As RedWolfReturns
states “How you get what you need is how you control others and it is
also how you are controlled. Unless this fact is faced and owned,
everything else is self deception.” It becomes possible to even imagine
living without domesticating others, without exploitation, without
control when we see what it does to us, when we see the true cost.
Slaves to wages, gender roles, schools, and hierarchies we can not
imagine life outside of the illusions of success and progress. Sold a
bill of goods that technology and the new priesthood of science will
save us now or in the end. We blindly accept this because we fail to
imagine since our imaginations, which are rooted in the forever wild
-here and now, are stolen from us moment by moment.

Anesthetized by toys, entertainment, drugs and therapy, we spend our
money receiving ultimate lifetime guarantees that we won’t see through
the lie. One fundamental part of the lie is property as freedom. Our
lives are consumed in the service of projects that are not our own in
order to earn money. Since property is defined as a thing and we need
money to purchase it, subsequently freedom lies in things that can be
bought and increases with their accumulation. So, in the lie, we are
free to choose to starve or sell the time of our lives to the highest
bidder. And since we can not move freely, responsible for our own
survival and thriving lives, due to property, we are all slaves in a
system of enclosures. Property creates divisions. It is a social
relationship between things and people and is an institution that could
not exist without the force of the state. This institution makes us work
and pay to reproduce it. We believe, as Wolfi Landstreicher does, that
“All property is ultimately state property since it exists only by
permission and under the protection of the state.” This lie keeps us
from any relationship that is entirely outside of this system of
property or the state. We long for unmediated collaborations,
experiences and connections with others and this includes land.

We seek others, ones…like us… who can never be the same again, to rewild
with, creating community and struggling together to reveal the depth of
our addictions and oppression. And healing from the deepest wounds, laid
bare when we wrench the penetrating claws of civilization from our very
being. In solidarity, with our burning eyes, tearing like from pepper
spray, but truly from opening them for the first time. We seek to
rebuild the inherent trust in ourselves and earth. We seek others who
have armed their desires and are willing to take back their lives moment
by moment.

As freely associating individuals we expect to grow to a size of 35-50
people and not much larger since the potential for direct relationship
will decrease with the abstraction of greater numbers. Self-empowerment
will be the norm rather than the exception. We will have time to share
the wisdom found throughout the real world as we forage and hunt within
an ancient/new relationship, a gifting relationship. Gender roles will
be abandoned as we realize our full potential as whole human beings
forever immersed in all that has recently been separated as feminine and
masculine and judged. Our internalized judge and jury will be banished
as our hearts grow, fed by passionate connections. We will find
compassion for ourselves. Rewilding and healing are two words with
direct relationship. The amazing healing power of our natural bodies
being fed by natural diets and relationships will again become the
central focus of health. No longer will disempowering institutions of
medicine keep us from taking direct responsibility. There will no longer
be experts to rely on. There will be little, if any, distinction
between healer and patient. Our direct, unmediated relationship with
plant allies will be part of our healing.

The coming world changes can paralyze us with fear and despair, but, as
someone has said, the antidote for despair is action. The life of our
desires just so happens to provide us with the adaptability to survive.
Since no intertwined multi-layered human created and controlled systems
of extraction, production, consumption, exploitation and domination are
necessary to meet our needs, technology can be replaced by tools. Tools
are created and maintained by an individual or a small group of
individuals with materials found at hand, used and then dropped out of
hand to return fully to the totality of creation.
As we remember what it is exactly to be human, one among many, never
again will we romanticize the misanthropy of civilization and we will
not forget that it is red in tooth and claw and that within it our lives
are nasty, brutish and short.

The vision for this community both excites me and scares me. I am
excited because if this vision comes to fruition I will have been a part
of something big, something life changing, Earth-changing and
relationship changing. I know that in this experience I will “come
home,” that scattered pieces of me will collect themselves, reconnect,
and I will feel completely whole again. I know that I have been missing
my tribe for so long-lifetimes long and my soul has mourned for its loss
of connection to the whole, as my mind has lived the life I have been
told is “normal.” This “normal” life never fulfilled me, not even for a
moment, there has always been something missing.
I filled this void with the same things my family did, with food,
school, clothes, toys, gifts, television, and with the hopes of
financial freedom so that I can lead a “decent” life. It’s all an
illusion though. I was taught to value things and have dreams that
didn’t contribute to a life of communion with the Earth that I am made
up of. I was taught that technology was the way. I was told not to get
dirty. Eventually as I got older I just wanted to stay inside and watch
life happen on TV, even though it only portrayed an illusion of life, I
didn’t question much. I was a good slave, a servant, and a consumer for
the bill of goods the advertisers sold me. I allowed them to take away
my dignity and I believed their lies that told me that I am not good
enough just the way I am. I sold myself, no questions asked. My
lifestyle also helped to sell out the Earth.
I have taken more than I have given to the Earth. I know this now but
I used to be asleep. It was easier to be asleep, or to think I was the
truth is that I was in denial of my participation on this Earth. I was
aware of changes occurring in the environment but I wasn’t honestly
looking at how I contributed to them. I thought it was someone else’s
problem but now I realize how my negligence has helped to create massive
dis-ease to this planet, and my soul.
Now I see the Earth, my home, my creator, crumbling before my eyes. I
realize that I’ve brought two children into the world and that we may
all be suffering due to low oxygen, polluted water, lack of food and
competing with others for these needs to be met someday. I cannot
change what has been done but I can make better choices now. It isn’t
easy though because I am sick. I have been bitten and partially
devoured by civilization. I have been tainted and I’ve passed my
addictions down to my children. I feel scared to face the truth, to
change because the claws of civilization are so deep in my flesh that it
hurts to move.
Every moment that I look away from the materialistic world that tells me
I am not good enough unless I buy their products, I get a little
stronger. The addictions are so powerful though that thinking of giving
them all up and living with the contents of my backpack, the clothes and
shoes on my body and the knowledge of how to make the things I need to
survive scares me so much.
I will be giving up the illusion that I had a position of value in
society, I will become one who is truly different. Instead of looking
clean in decent clothing with my hair and face well kept, I will come to
town in buckskin clothing that I made myself, and my valuables for trade
in my handmade birchbark basket. I will smell like an animal because I
won’t smell like perfume or deodorant, I will smell like me. My smell,
my hairy legs and armpits and my buckskins will divide me from the
onlookers but I will feel unified with my natural world. As the
onlookers talk of me on their cell phones and get into their plastic and
metal cars I will walk away to go tell my friends, my tribe, in person
what I saw that day. As those same onlookers go to the grocery store to
purchase their products wrapped in plastic and cardboard made in who
knows where and drink their Pepsi’s I will re-enter the woods. I will
stop along my walk home to occasionally eat wild edibles and drink my
lovely water. As they go home to cook their supper on their electric
stoves, wash their dishes with instant hot water, turn on their lights,
and settle down for their evening shows I will cook wild caught or
roadkill meat, and dumpstered veggies over the fire and clean up with
water we heated in a clay pot we made. Then I will relax into the
evening as the sky turns gently from light to dark and feel the rapture
of the firelight in front of me. I will feel joy with my tribe near me
as we tell tales and make music, real, live music. I will have been a
part of my world and not just a spectator oblivious to the resources I
could have used without a care.
This is the life I want to live. Am I there yet? No. How long until I
get there? I don’t know. I know that I feel sick at my daily
participation in the ills of this Earth and yet I feel some fear at
changing myself. I have always had a position of acceptance in my
society because I have followed the normal expectations and I feel
nervous to step into new territory even though I believe it is the way
for me. I face rejection from my family, my friends, my children,
society and on the other hand I face a freedom that I know will feel so
sweet. I will not ignore the delicious consequences of a life lived in
community. Besides, there are others like me who are leading very
different lives. I will be creating a new family. I will be helping to
create a community with shared values and the intention to support each
other while also supporting the Earth, our mother, our life force, us,
me. I will have come home.