Failure to recognize reality is the norm. It is also alienating when we try to live in a way that is authentic, demanding we pretend to subscribe to the norm in our daily lives. The artificial things we have been taught to value have come to mean little to me over time. Even living far differently than a typical American, I have to sadly recognize that I am a monster simply by being one. To a great degree, we are trapped by not just the choices we make, but the choices we have.
Yes, this is a hard thing to let sink in. We live in a time of a Great Dying. Much of what we need to do is to grieve. A lot of that grief needs to focus; at least at first; on how we have always been…, that is, people alive today have spent our whole lives within systems, expectations, institutions, from family to government to the grand absurdity that we call an "economy," that are and have always been horrific.
Until we pass through this grief, very much what James Baldwin asked of us, we cannot even begin to see a wider view. Find room for imagination and intelligence to operate.
Nemesis will continue to up the ante until we do….
The Great Dying is hidden from the artificial reality we have created. I mostly grew up in urbanity, although was fortunate to have a woods to run in as a little kid for a while. In my early adulthood, my career took me to the rural hills and mountains of upstate NY. I fell in love with the landscape and the creatures who were managing to make a living in spite of us. That is what's dear to my heart. I wish I could make everyone feel it.
My great fortune as a child was to have grown up on the beach on Cape Cod. I explored those memories, taking them back another generation in Shoal Hope:
Failure to recognize reality is the norm. It is also alienating when we try to live in a way that is authentic, demanding we pretend to subscribe to the norm in our daily lives. The artificial things we have been taught to value have come to mean little to me over time. Even living far differently than a typical American, I have to sadly recognize that I am a monster simply by being one. To a great degree, we are trapped by not just the choices we make, but the choices we have.
Yes, this is a hard thing to let sink in. We live in a time of a Great Dying. Much of what we need to do is to grieve. A lot of that grief needs to focus; at least at first; on how we have always been…, that is, people alive today have spent our whole lives within systems, expectations, institutions, from family to government to the grand absurdity that we call an "economy," that are and have always been horrific.
Until we pass through this grief, very much what James Baldwin asked of us, we cannot even begin to see a wider view. Find room for imagination and intelligence to operate.
Nemesis will continue to up the ante until we do….
The Great Dying is hidden from the artificial reality we have created. I mostly grew up in urbanity, although was fortunate to have a woods to run in as a little kid for a while. In my early adulthood, my career took me to the rural hills and mountains of upstate NY. I fell in love with the landscape and the creatures who were managing to make a living in spite of us. That is what's dear to my heart. I wish I could make everyone feel it.
My great fortune as a child was to have grown up on the beach on Cape Cod. I explored those memories, taking them back another generation in Shoal Hope:
https://antoniodias.substack.com/s/shoal-hope