Category: Post-modernism

Bulldozing Montgomery

We lived on Montgomery St., just below Vista Avenue, before Hwy 26 went in. The construction destroyed miles of large beautiful houses built at the turn of the century.

Beautiful large homes, in the West Hills, like this one, were bulldozed to make way for highways.

Portland exemplfies the song “Yellow Taxi” written by Joni Mitchell, which goes, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot… Portland was being raped and thousands of long time residents displaced. No one who was making a killing cared.

Our yellow house was built with four apartments. The front was built at street level on a steep hill leading towards downtown to the East, and to the North, the land was even steeper giving each apartment spectacular views of the city.

I couldn’t find an historic photo of the area but this is the type of house sacrificed for development

Each apartment took up an entire floor. The ceilings were at least 10 feet in height with windows almost to the ceilings. There were at least three bedrooms, a large living room, a kitchen and with just one bathroom. The back door opened out from the kitchen onto a balcony with stairs that led to the ground below.

This is not the house but reminiscent of the types of houses in the area.

This was in the late 60’s. Pure LSD was easily had and weed was $10 a “lid”. Our rent, if I remember right, was under $100/month. We didn’t need much money to live, so we bought pounds of marijuana, divided it into plastic sandwich bags and we put them in a large container just inside the front door. Whoever wanted to buy pot from us could leave their money and grab however much they wanted. The honor system at work.

Marijuana, LSD, psilocybin, peyote and the like, were all illegal. But at the time, we were more concerned that the house would be raided by FBI agents looking for draft dodgers and those who were AWOL. It had happened and it was scarey but if they’re looking for people, they had no jurisdiction to bust us for drugs.

Our life on Montgomery street was mostly peaceful. It was a good time for exploring both internally and the world around us. We were protesting the right of the US and other countries to invade others to procure resources. We were protesting a culture dictated by corporate greed and materialism. We wanted a simpler and more peaceful world.

Unfortunately, our idealism could not, and has not, changed the white and wealthy. We were using psychedelics, meditation and exploration into philosophies both western and eastern, to found a new path to a kinder and gentler world. But what I know now, is what history teaches us: the few wealthy are lords in the earth and the rest of us… well, we work for them and try to keep our heads above water. No one benefits from war but the wealthy and the young are sacrificed to that purpose.

Those were days that I would return to. Those were days when we thought that on that LSD trip, the answer had been given to us but language failed us. The answer slipped away as we “came down”. One definition of reality that I can recall so clearly came out as I sat looking out over the city as “loud tomato raisin”. I’m still looking for the translation. Perhaps one day I’ll be enlightened enough to translate. 🤭

Those were days of infinite sexual energy, which I didn’t experience again until my 40s and 50s. Hormone saturated freedoms. Dancing in the moonlight. Light shows. Live music and open mic poetry readings. Unbridled idealism anchored and tempered by existential nightmares that things always stay the same.

David Byrne sang, “Burning Down the House… same as it ever was, same as it ever was…” and it appears that we are burning down the house. We can see the ashes. But now it’s not just the big beautiful houses that were once our abodes but it’s the planet where we live.

Earth is on fire

Does This Alarm You?

I was talking today to another about a conversation I was having with a friend about the meaning of dreams, of spirituality. She thinks that I should not be talking about spirituality because my perspective is not spiritual. She thinks my friend would be better talking to someone who is spiritual. Perhaps she is right.

It’s not that I do not acknowledge spirituality, it’s that I stand there, face to face with it and am not afraid to ask questions of something that, to me, does not exist. Why do I need something to believe in?

I see only the stories made by men. I acknowledge the stories. Yes, I acknowledge that others put faith in them. I can acknowledge the creative beauty of the stories but I also recognize their sinister intentions, their dark, shadow side. I put faith in nothing. I believe in nothing.

This is a great comfort to me… that I can live in this world, with a beating heart and understand, that my courage consists of this: I know, only, that I am. I know nothing for sure, not even that and that is OK for me. I know that I am vulnerable and that I will not be here for long. I know that my existence consists of both joy and sorrow and that I have no control over my experiences and that is terrifying but true.

I will talk to you about anything but know for sure, that I do not live with belief or faith in belief. My perspective might frighten you. You would not be the first to be alarmed.

Our Mother’s Cycles

Change Will Come

We have been in lockdown. We have been quarantined since mid-March 2020. We are expected to wear masks when in public places. Stores and restaurants and bars were shutdown, many to never open again. Businesses have closed. There is massive unemployment. People are infected with Covid-19 and some are dying.

And worse yet, we have a toxic president pushing for a fascist regime. He is up for reelection in November and his campaign is deeply rooted in white supremacy. He is hell bent on destroying not only America but the world. I’m terrorized.

I could write a list of what is wrong but it would be too long for the post I want to write. I will say only that we need real change. We need a universal awakening to stop the engrained systemic racism resulting in police brutality and injustice and inequality in every aspect of life.

We are destroying our home. We have raped and pillaged our only source of life. This just might be the end of us. And yet we persist in this destruction. My heart is sick.

And yet, the earth will heal after our self-inflicted demise, there is no doubt. When we no longer strip the forests, pollute the air, soil and water; when we are no longer here to burn down our home, the earth will recover. I should be hopeful.

While I wake every morning to face yet another day, to sort through what new tragedy has taken place, what new atrocities await us… how much money we spend on war machines to annihilate innocent people, to count how many children are in cages, how many refugees are in transit, and are hungry and homeless, how many US citizens are homeless and hungry, and not to mention the working poor, I become more cynical and without hope. I can hardly take it.

And yet, I am one of the lucky ones. I have shelter, food, clothing family and friends, but that brings no solace. Solace will only come with real and lasting change. History teaches us that only hatred and greed are the only constants in this world.

You will argue with me, I know that. I have heard all the arguments. There is nothing new that you can come up with. NOTHING!. You will say, “but look at all the beauty that surrounds you: nature, music, all of the arts, people who are good, people who are protesting and working towards a better world.” I know. But that doesn’t make change. It never has and I doubt that it ever will. I feel desperate.

But my initial intention for this post is to celebrate our mother, our great mother, who would provide for us everything we need if we weren’t so full of hate and greed. We do not understand her.

Two people have mentioned the changing of the season though we are not quite half way through summer. Do we somehow, intuitively feel the change, see it in the shadows, and see the end of life of earth’s flowering? Fruit and vegetables and all that carry seeds are ready to burst and fall upon the ground.

I have resisted and complained when folks start talking about the season’s ending when we’re fully engulfed in the present season. But I am beginning to understand and to embrace it. I think this follows my lack of recognition of changes in my own body.

I was never really conscious of my own, very intimate, monthly cycles of ovulation and the impending expulsion of my eggs in a flood of fluid and blood. I never experienced PMS symptoms or cramps with my menstrual cycle. I never knew when those changes were about to take place or were taking place until there was obvious evidence. And when the cessation of that cycle came, I wasn’t conscious of the internal changes taking place. I didn’t equate the changes of my emotions and psychology together with the changes in my body. The symptoms of menopause were slight and short-lived.

I am not saying that I didn’t sense the changes as one season was ending or another beginning but I was fully present: summer was summer, winter was winter, etc. Don’t talk to me about spring when it is still winter.

I am just beginning to understand how others more overtly acknowledge and accept mother earth’s cycles, her seasons and how that pertains to my own lack of consciousness of my own cycles… her barreness, her fertility, her impregnation and fullness of pregnancy and then her birthing. And of course there is the building up to each cycle, so I should have been able to put these together. I could be more joyful at the slow turning of the seasons and to welcome other’s acknowledgement that they sense the preparation of the mother to the changes.

Though the universe, the planets and the stars, tell us that the solstice and the equinox turns on this date or that date, we are in the fullness of earth’s cycles everyday and even in the smallest of increments.

How to tie the world’s demise to the earth’s resilience? Well, as chilling March turned into April, winter awoke from slumber and sprang forth in exuberance. Trees grew leaves and flowers. Sprouts burst out of the cold soil. Color was everywhere. Even in April’s cold rains, life emerged, undaunted by the turmoil produced by humans.

If I could wish for anything, it would be peace and justice and a consciousness that this earth is our mother, the very source of life, and that everything is dependent on our loving care.

So friends, let’s talk about the changing seasons. Let’s talk about how “a change is gonna come”. Let’s talk about it. Just maybe it will.

A Woman’s Bravery on Display

Brave but Naive in Portland

Has no one heard of soldiers stripping women of their clothes, raping them, cutting their unborn children from their wombs, excising their genitals, executing them, leaving them for dead, buried in unmarked graves?

It has happened and happens all over the world in authoritarian countries where men rule the world,  own all the resources and mandate the military. Very Franco-esc.

She’s lucky she wasn’t grabbed, thrown in the back of an unmarked car and hauled off to jail and/or “disappeared” or simply raped and thrown back in the street.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of women clothed and unclothed die everyday while protesting, while the world watches.

History: read it. It happened in the past, it also happens now. News: read it.

Do you really think that soldiers are afraid of naked women? A womans body is not powerful. It’s vulnerable.

This reminds me a little tiny bit, but much less dramatic, of Thich Quang Duc who set himself on fire in Saigon and the student who stood against a line of tanks in Tianamen Square… other than a big news flash and it being documented in history, what good did it do? What permanently changed in the world?

What permanent good has been done by the imprisonment, torture and death of millions of women and men protesting injustice when small groups of wealthy men own the world?

Am I saying give up? No. Adamantly no. Just acknowledge reality before you put your bravery on display.

Why are you a Skeptic?

Documentation only sometimes provides consensus and memory rarely provides consensus. Just spent a lovely evening with my siblings, Steve and Kristi. We shared the same family and the same events while growing up but if you had been listening in on our conversaition you would think that we lived in different worlds. Perception is always and only just that. Why are you a skeptic you ask, a post-modernist historian? Do you really have to ask? It’s the completely unreliable evidence of experience that convinces me of nothing.