Survival
Tools—Farming, Stories, Poetry, Writing, And Leaning
By
Shepherd Bliss
06 January,
2008
Countercurrents.org
I
farm with an old-fashioned scythe, which I use to cut grass. I relish
how my body feels as it dances in the field while swinging this long,
efficient tool. I enjoy seeing what I am cutting and thus avoid killing
small oaks and redwoods. The sharp blade takes my gaze to the ground,
which holds up all of us and merits our attention and even devotion.
Each creature--no matter how small--has an important role in the whole.
The sweet sounds that the scythe makes as it swishes through the grass
comfort me.
The loud,
ugly, industrial sounds and smells made by gas-operated mowers do not
appeal to me. Beautiful sounds like swishing grass and recited poetry
relax me. I love the multiple utterances that my chickens release from
their joyful beaks as they ecstatically celebrate their appreciations
of the new day and still being alive. When the wind sweeps through the
tall grass and bamboo I planted on my Kokopelli Farm here in the Redwood
Empire of Northern California, it soothes me as if it were a harp. I
hear Orpheus—the father of ancient Greek poetry and music--playing
his enchanting lyre. The wind and the redwoods make incredible dance
partners.
An incense
cedar and giant sequoia on the land where I also live lean on each other
and inspire me. I call them “the couple.” At night I sometimes
sleep out in the cozy forest bed beneath them and drink in the fragrant,
sweet darkness revealed by the diffuse light of the moon and stars.
I benefit from and bask beneath their leaning.
Everything
that lives dies—individuals, nations, and even planets. The Grim
Reaper gets all of us, even empires. The United States seems to be at
the end of its rope in many ways—loosing wars, a falling dollar
and declining economy, decreasing prestige among the peoples of the
world. A key question now is how to live during the transition from
the no-longer of the American Empire, trying to salvage the best of
America, and make it to whatever not-yet we can create. The deepening
darkness can be more manageable if we lean on each other.
MOVING TO
KOKOPELLI FARM
After 25
years of college teaching and administration, I left college as my primary
work environment for agriculture in the early l990s. I sensed that many
of humanity’s support systems and the natural capital that sustains
us were breaking down. I wanted to learn more about the basics of food,
water, plants, animals, the soil, climate, and the elements. I wanted
to be able to feed myself and others with good, nourishing food during
an uncertain future of diminishing natural resources and heightening
conflicts.
After a search
I decided to move to Sonoma County, remaining in the state of my birth.
Whenever this native son tries to leave my home-state, California, my
body goes where I direct it, but only for a while; then my feet take
me back home. Sonoma has nearly 500,000 people and is within the creative
San Francisco Bay Area. I bought land with berry vines, apple trees,
oaks, redwoods and a tiny house in the uplands of the Cunningham Marsh
near the small town of Sebastopol, where less than 8000 souls live.
Our community
actively deals with issues such as making a transition to alternative
energy sources and the increasingly chaotic global climate. We have
active neighborhood groups and support each other to buy local and re-localize.
Among the effective groups here are the Climate Protection Campaign
and the Post-Carbon Institute. Sebastopol citizens regularly elect well-informed
officials who seek to deal with the real issues. We welcome newcomers
as we work together to build community during this transition to a post-carbon
future.
As the US
begins to have more political, economic, and social problems, certain
geographical areas where people have gathered to pursue sustainability
and relocalization are more likely to prosper. Thinking strategically
about where to live—where there is enough food, water, and the
social capital of community—is crucial.
I recently
returned to part-time college teaching. I sense that we are approaching
a tipping point, so I decided to re-embed myself within institutions
to have more contact with people and resources to help make a transition
to whatever we can create to thrive during the changing times. I have
also recently returned to working within religious institutions. I have
been appointed to the arts and spirituality board of a local Episcopal
church and have preached about the themes in this essay at three Unitarian
Universalist churches in our region.
Kokopelli
Farm is what I decided to call the place that I have inhabited with
animals, plants, the elements and a few people for most of the last
15 years. I named it after the legendary humpbacked flute player of
the pueblo Anasazi people. He went from village to village— even
those who were fighting each other—and brought peace. Kokopelli
is an agrarian deity, man of peace, and trickster. Known as the great
sprinkler and fertilizer, with his antenna, Kokopelli is a member of
the insect clan. I wanted the blessings of the insects on my food growing.
They can have their part, as can the deer and others who also need to
eat. I was, however, glad when a mountain lion returned a few years
ago and thinned out the deer. Too much of even a good thing can be problematic.
The old but short oaks—made into bonsai by too many deer--shot
up tall in a few years, leaping with joy from their sturdy and deep
taproots. Plants have so much to teach us about survival and adaptation,
as do animals.
When obstacles
to appropriate growth are dealt with, amazing growth spurts are possible.
We need such growth spurts in public awareness to deal with the substantial
problems created by over-population, war-making, increasingly extreme
climate, and the depletion of natural resources such as fossil fuels.
As I write
in my redwood cabin built with wood salvaged over a decade from old
chicken coops, I hear my neighbor’s dairy cows bellowing in the
distance and I see his large, gentle workhorses calmly eating grass.
The majority of people used to farm and live in the countryside. Now
less than 2% farm in the US and most people live in urban areas. As
our high tech energy sources diminish more people will have to turn
to farming to survive. It is not such a bad option. Agri-culture, after
all, is a basis of culture, which is more important than agri-business,
in my opinion.
THE ORAL
TRADITION OF RECITED POETRY
We have a
small group of minstrels and troubadours who call ourselves the Kokopelli
Players. Some of us met through the Sons of Orpheus, a group that gathered
weekly for years to tell our stories, recite poetry, and play music.
The oral, musical, movement, and artistic traditions take on a special
importance during a time—such as ours—of cultural change.
Political and social change are not enough; we need what Brazilian educator
Paulo Freire describes as “cultural action” to dig deeper
to craft new stories and ways of being to lead us into a better future
where humanity can live in balance with nature.
The blind
French resistance member Jacques Lusseyran was condemned to Buchenwald
concentration camp by the Nazis. He survived by reciting poetry and
helping organize other prisoners to do so. In “Poetry in Buchenwald,”
translated by Noelle Oxenhandler, Lusseyran writes the following:
“I
saw the lines of prisoners who trudged toward the central square to
report for work. I saw the cold, the hunger, the fear…I began
to recite verses…Little by little, another voice was added to
mine… the verses were being repeated in the darkness… More
men came. They formed a circle. They echoed the words…They leaned
toward me, gesturing, swaying, beating their chests, lisping, muttering,
crying out, seized by a sudden passion. I was dumbstruck, happy like
a child.”
“One
dark winter morning…we were about thirty exhausted men, shivering…Boris
suddenly…recited from Peguy’s ‘The Tapestry of Notre
Dame’…when the poem was over, a little man…said to
me, ‘Touch my forehead. It’s sweat! That’s what warms
us up, poetry!’ In fact, the iciness had disappeared. We no longer
felt our exhaustion.”
“…poetry
is an act, an incantation, a kiss of peace, a medicine, one of the rare
things in the world which can prevail over cold and hatred…To
nourish the desire to live, to make it burn… Man is nourished
by the invisible…Man is nourished by that which is beyond the
personal.”
The blind,
young Lusseyran was one of the few to survive Buchenwald.
IN PRAISE
OF SWEET DARKNESS
Our Kokopelli
Players roam around blending earthy sounds with recited poetry in the
oral tradition. We offer sermons at local churches on subjects such
as “In Praise of Sweet Darkness, Luscious Berries, and Endarkenment.”
We honor the night, sleep, dreams, and chocolate, seeking to recover
the benevolent aspects of the darkness that the ancients, mystics and
indigenous people seem to understand. Some contemporary poets--including
Wendell Berry, David Whyte, and Mary Oliver—also embrace sweet
darkness. Industrial culture often hides in the glare of too much brilliant
light, which combat needs.
The current
over-emphasis on industrialism’s bright lights needs to be balanced
by the multiple gifts that the dark offers, which many 21st century
Western people fear. As the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote in the
6th century BCE, “Darkness is the gateway to all understanding.”
The Greek poet Noonus requested the following in the 6th century A.D.:
“Make long the sweet darkness.” In his poem during the Vietnam
War, “In a Dark Time,” l966, the American poet Theodore
Roethke wrote, “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”
We once again live in such a dark time when global war-making threatens
us; would that more of our eyes would begin to open and see.
In his song
“Darkness, Darkness” Jessie Colin Young longs for darkness
“to ease the day that brings me pain.” As the great German-speaking
poet Rainer Maria Rilke affirms, “I love the dark hours of my
being/ in which my senses drop into the deep.” From those depths
we can create better futures.
THE VETERANS’
WRITING GROUP
This past
summer an attorney summoned me to Chile to appear in the torture and
execution case of my good friend Frank Teruggi. We lived there during
the democratic government of Pres. Salvador Allende. When Gen. Augusto
Pinochet took over on Sept. 11, l973, he began killing many people,
including Frank, and continued his reign of terror for nearly 20 years.
The prompt
for me to write this essay was the Veterans’ Writing Group that
I have been meeting with for over a dozen years. Initiated by the Buddhist
monk Thich Nhat Hahn, it has been skillfully lead by Maxine Hong Kingston.
We recently published our first book, Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace.
Knowing that I would sit in circle again with these men and women evoked
certain memories. Story-telling—both orally and on the page—can
heal and help set us free. In our vets group we investigate, reveal,
and write from our memories, attempting to integrate them. We seek to
distill the sweetness hidden within the darkness.
LEANING ON
EACH OTHER
“I
know I won’t always be here,” the co-host of our vets group
comments as she looks out the window from her hilltop home into a marvelous
Redwood Empire valley. “So I want to appreciate and care for the
Earth while I can,” she adds, leaning on her World War II veteran
husband. We recently celebrated his 80th birthday.
“I
see when I walk how well all things lean on each other,” Robert
Bly begins his poem “In the Month of May.” As our vets group
goes on its afternoon walking meditation, I notice how well the trees
and other vegetation lean on each other. Such leaning can create great
joy and capacity to endure pain and suffering. The reverence and humor
of our being together enable me to speak more of my truth, ask for help,
and lean toward others, thus breaking the isolation that characterizes
industrialism.
I talk and
write about my memories from Chile in order to replace them with sweet
winter images of leaning on each other. It is warmer that way. I recently
received a load of wool, which I am placing around the berry vines as
mulch to help them through the winter and to suppress the weeds. Stories
and poems can help us mulch and compost our experiences.
As we walk
on our meditation through the giant trees, a women vet takes my arm
as we go down the hill. “You can lean on me,” I think. “May
I lean on you?” I wonder.
(Dr.
Shepherd Bliss, [email protected], currently
teaches at Sonoma State University and has run an organic farm for the
last 15 years. His most recent contributions to over 20 books were to
“Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace,” www.vowvop.org,
and to “Sustainability,”
www.hopedance.org.)
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