MUC to the ANC, and the TRC

Fly out of Munich to Jo berg, scotch in conference so I get last minute flight to Cape Town. Leaving the misty old stone world of Munich and Germany for a continent of red earth I have never been before. Cradle of civilization. Financial Times on seat. Pick it up—the world is falling apart. And here I have to make the lexical distinction—“world” does not mean “earth”. What is “world”? When I think of that I mean by “World”, I do not mean bears and forests and vast sweeping plains. “World” always has to do with people. “World War”. It was never called “earth war”. Because the earth is not at war, and the earth is not falling apart. The games we have been playing on earth are falling apart. The financial game. The world markets are collapsing, and it puts into further relief the importance of this story, this film, this exploration. When the fundamental system on which we organize our lives—capital, economy, is undermined across the globe people can no longer trust money as a stable reflection of value, of labor, of nourishment. How will we negotiate a world where a group of men can determine the volatility of a market, of an economy, and thus of a peoples ability to nourish themselves with the words they choose? When they say the Japanese may need bailing out, suddenly it does, overnight. The value of my labor two weeks ago as represented by kroner has decreased 20%. The value of what I did has not decreased, but the value of the paper that represents my labor has decreased.
The land continues to slide under the wing. I am standing still and the earth moves beneath my feet.
Oh mother, what earth is this? How can I bring it back to my people? And my people are all people. All people my soul meets. Which is an expression of my soul and not just theirs. We must create a new myth. The old myth is falling apart. It doesn’t work. Most simply put, the sensuousness of the human being on earth is being denied. This is a sensuous existence. Who can deny the organization of the human body and impulse? It is for pleasure. External enjoyment through material (if one would include even a sunset as material, as it comes through the eyes) and the internal enjoyment of spirit, (ho is this separate from anything else? Is spirit not felt with the same senses I experience the rest of the “external” world with?
How can we live in a new myth of man and woman and time? All I want is to love and be loved, loving. To explore and exclaim this existence. What for are all these power brokers brokering? The desire to own another mans water, his land, his labor; his physical freedom is a great prison. Their identity is dependant on the mans domestication. So they are slaves to their slaves, for if and when they walk away, where will they go? To what community can they flea? They have been busy denying love in the world. Who will cherish them for who they are, when who they have been has been defined by whose energy they could leverage and what water and air and land they could put a fence around. They cannot own the land. No one can. They can only own the fence. But the fence is only as good as the man who guards it. And they can only get him to guard it when he remains under the belief that he must guard the gate to have access to a small ration of what is inside, when before there were no fences, and everything was his birthright.

Georgy, Narcissism and Community in the Post-Communist Bloc

"I want my relationships to be sharp." Georgy is a psychoanalyst. He is a powerful man. His words come out sparsely, but when they do, they stick. As if this whole story really is connected, when I arrive there is a reunion of two groups of fasters Jora (as he is affectionately called) has taken out on the land since he got back to the Ukraine after the Death Valley experiment, and one of these was not only fasters, but their families came with them. He says it was like a village, almost thirty people in camp together, and then sending out their fathers and sons and wives and the rest staying, tending the fires, making food together. Perhaps there is space, room for our families in this work, indeed for all families. And what if it is even more potent, more powerful, that the families are there? That there is a community there to receive the fasters, and that while they are out, there is a community supporting each other in base camp?

How simple, how original. I don't know what it means. But it happened. And it worked. And all were touched by it--every member of the family had a new unique experience, and each member of the family participated in the story that came back from the mountain. How can these stories remain only personal, when there is a community there to send them off and to receive them, and not become something more?

It seems like Georgy answered the Uwe and Rebekka directly. You make room for and honor the family by doing just that, include them, and see what alchemy is there hen the many small circles of family join together once again around the camp fire.

The State of Learning and Bumble-Bees

Thoughts after an interview with Lonnie Gould of Suggestopedia at Psycho therapeutic Conference in Kiev:

Our current education system is based on the French mechanical model.
But...
Nature functions at 7-10 kHz. Productive human mode is 22-28 kHz, but receptive Alpha wave state is 10-12 kHz, so to learn we must be relaxed—in state of nature-to allow more information in. The mind can focus on multiple levels—birdsong, highly complex, non-random. So when we are "just sitting in nature" we are actually learning—processing information. To learn we must be at rest. Learning is not about being productive, it is about being receptive!

Much like the state one enters into in the wilderness.

Lonnie says that our first memory becomes a blueprint for what sensations we seek in life. I remember my wonder and fear at a huge buzzing bumble bee in the kitchen. It was the first moment I remember discovering that I was I and there were other things that were not me-- that were separate, an alien reality, both exotic and frightening.

I wonder...

How are we constantly reliving our first memories?
How am I constantly reliving the bee- that excitement and fear of something not me? And from another world? Because the first memory is the first separation from wholeness—the differentiation of instinct, of pure reaction and thought—a moment of decision? A moment of popping above the surface of pure experience—realizing self through other? Through contradiction—a pleasure and a pain—or a contradiction of experience, or a sense of time—of self above something?

What does it mean to be receptive, what does it mean to re-member? To create a memory, must we stand outside of the flow of time?

The Fertile Void with Lucy Hinton and Sarah Howes

You cannot see the white horse from the road. I can't see it from the hill, so I walk down a small footpath over the road to the top of dragon hill, a place where it is said that the youth would sit on a golden sheep skin through the night as a way of crossing the threshold into manhood. Still can't see it. I can make out a few of the contour lines-- thin gestures, from this angle, highlighting the curves of the hill. The only place to take the white horse fully in, to see it in it's swiftly frozen leap into the otherworld is from the perspective of the sun, or the low hanging haze that caresses the hills at each end of the day.

Certain places have an energy and a power of their own. Like a great artist on fire or a composer gliding through a melody with religious poise, this place moves and swirls in its own dimension. This soil has felt the feet and blood of man throughout the history of time and before-- before there were words to mark the passage of one deed to another. Before these times, there were pictures, spirits of the natural world brought forth upon a rock with blood and charcoal, or upon this landscape with the ghostly white chalk of which this system of hills spanning the East-West latitude of Britain is composed.

I am here to drop into "the Fertile Void" with Lucy Hinton and Sarah Howes in this place where dusk brings the fog falling quickly. Fog, a medium for spirits, mortal coils shuffled long ago, to move safely upon this warm earth. Fog, a being all its own, soaking up the night, distance, sound and light into one amorphous presence. We adventurers walk into the fields, heavy with blackberries and dew, to gather something to represent ourselves on this quest into the fertile void that we are setting off into.

I look and look. But I am looking with eyes looking for things. How do I walk into the world of voids-- of not-objects, of absences, holes. How often (always!) I am looking-- I am searching out objects, solid things, to grasp hold of-- even identities, occupations, actions, which have a distinct definition in the cultural lexicon. To define myself. To define my surroundings. To mark my route with markers and signposts? What would happen if I let go?

What happens when we walk into a void of seeing, of seeing the void, of empty places? How can I bring the Hoof Deep Imprint of Cow Walking back with me? How can I bring back, not this fallen, eaten dove, but the space within its breast? That pocket in which once it's lifeblood beat? How can I walk back holding the space that time and rot have hollowed from the center of this tree? How can anything new live where there is no space for it to grow? How can I carry this void within me--how can I walk with nothing? What does it mean to rest in these forgotten spaces, these non-places--in between what was alive and the life yet to be; to grow out of the rich humus of experience had and surrendered to the elements of becoming?

Between two trees with Uwe Werner

Uwe is standing below a 400 year old oak. I cannot see the sky--the canopy of trees overwhelms it. But this oak, standing taller than the others transmits the light down to the road we are on. The leaves are phosphorescent green, brimming with light, as if they are convincing us that we too could generate our energy from the sun. Uwe looks up. I see in his face an old warrior-- he is a German man. He is a father with two families, one of girls, the other of boys. What gift does his story bring to this greater story?

Sylvia, his wife, had a vision. She had a vision that the community of people taking people onto the land opened itself to the families. A year ago sh was planning to come to Death Valley for the fast, but then she found out she was pregnant. Rebekka took her place, and now Rebekka herself is expecting.
The theme of family keeps coming up here. Mothers and fathers to be, mothers and fathers already, all looking, calling, for a community to receive them, and more so, calling for their communities of which they are participating to honor and make room for them in their new roles. Not just room for them as individuals in a new role, but room for them as the families that hey have become. How do our communities receive us when we transform from "I" into "US"?

Dark shadows pass through. A great grief that I can only witness in moments beyond laughter. Not far from here St. Boniface cut Thor's Oak, a mystical tree for the early Germanic peoples. Because he was not struck by lightning when he cut it down, they believed that his god was more powerful than theirs. He knew how powerful their connection was to nature, especially to the trees, and so he knew that to establish the church he must destroy this sacred life at the center of their rituals. He built the church out of it. There is a statue commemorating this act. I am hurt to see this statue--a man holding a cross and an ax stands atop the amputated trunk that was a great tree. He holds up a model of the church he will build on that site. He will build it with the tree he has cut.

It strikes me as completely barbaric. And yet it is a local monument. And I suppose it is. We celebrate that we were created. Not the means by which this creation took place. And perhaps we do not question that we are, we will be, will continue to be, even if such barbaric acts were not monumentalized. That the tree could still stand and we too. That our standing here is not and has not been dependent on the destruction of something so grand, so alive.

7000 oaks, Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung

Unexpected discovery-- here I am in Kassel, Germany. Rebekka, the first of the interviews in Europe must go to take care of Jan, her fiancee and father to her child on the way, as Jan's father has just passed on. What am I doing here, I wonder-- how is this project going to reach beyond itself and the lives that each of the participants is immersed in and dialogue with culture? If this has no reach outside of personal lives, then why have I devoted the next year of my life to it? What am I here to create?

I understand the benefits of engaging on an individual level, and I have already seen on an individual level how bringing film and questions into space catalyzes the processing, understanding, and meaning of experience. But how does it transfer beyond the life of Kent and Farion, Rebekka, Uwe, Lucy, and the other fasters and their elders? How does what happened in Death Valley, how do those questions transfer out into the world and speak to more than just the few whose direct experience and experiment it is?


Enter Kassel, Germany. Little do I know that the night I arrive is an all-night free museum festival. Later on Uwe is to tell me the story of Boniface destroying Thor's Oak as a symbol of Christianity's superiority over the native Germanic religion, and how this connects for him to the work of Joseph Beuys planting of 7000 oaks in this town of Kassel. Beuys refered to it as "Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung", which to Uwe's translation calls forth "the governance of the forest instead of the governance of bureaucracy."


We are sitting with this work of Bueys, and the coming Dokumenta International Art Exhibition in 2012, and seeing how a dialogue can be continued between Bueys and the EarthlinkProject. Are there any connections to it at all? What is this work that is in it's larval stages?

The Mortal Conundrum of Arrivals and Departures with Rebekka Schilling

Rebekka's soft voice belies her fiery nature. She is an elegant balance of sensitivity and ferocity. Namely, she ferociously defends the sensuous, sensitive, and vulnerable. Now she is expecting. A new life is being born in her, and another life has just passed away from her on the eve of my arrival. She has also just returned from her first Overnight with a group on the land.

We have very little time together. There is something strange and archetypal about our meeting, there is both pause and rush, urgency and calm. The sounds of students outside the bar down stairs rise and fall with the background rhythm of clacks and rumbles on the cobblestone street below. I am standing in a room whose objects have yet to find their place yet. There is an antique baby-carriage filled with pillows, cd's, and clothes. Six-month pregnant Rebekka is leaning over her bed. She is packing her suitcase with black to attend the funeral of her fiance's father. Three months from now she will be holding her motherhood in her arms.

Paris Charles De Gaul and Blueberry Pancakes

Sept 2nd
Though I think I return from new haven in time, I am frantically stuffing my bags at 8:15. The shuttle will pick me up at 8:30, I run outside to say goodbye in person to Michelle, then see Mark for a few minutes before the shuttle arrives. I figured I should not leave til later, but recommended travel time to JFK is 1.5 hours, and check in time is 2-3 hours, so—I am in the van and we are off—still feel I have too much stuff—not enough gifts for people, but I am recording their story, so—
The French serve bread with everything. On the plane there is a basket of bread brought out with every meal. First there is some strange shrimp and couscous thing, which is almost not terrible, but I don’t know who would eat shrimp on a plane. Breakfast however, is very nice—Pancakes or omelet? Pancakes or omelet? Because I hate pancakes, assuming they will be some horrible buttermilk stuff go for the omelet, but then I see they mean crepes, blueberry crepes!
I think of Koz, yes, pancakes for some reason make everyone happy! Why is that? Half of it must be the name. Pan-cakes. Pan- cakes. How the n rolls into the c, that soft into the hard. And its blueberry pancakes. I hold this up as one of the most beautiful words in the English language—next to "cellardoor". Cellardoor: Blueberry Pancakes.BlueberryPancakes. It sounds like an album, like "Tubular Bells". It feels good to say. I can almost taste them.

How do we listen to the sound of another persons life?

That’s what I discover going to see Milton and Doris last night. Before I was trying to tell stories. But the stories that are more interesting are those that reveal themselves to the camera. That is Documentary. It is a challenge. It feels invasive sometimes. But it is a meditation on moments that exist—partially due to the camera, and yet always from the core of the person. What is the balance between the person and the performer? That is the story—the space in between the person off camera and the person on camera. I wonder if this is why actors are like gods? But being a character and being oneself is much different. There is a certain pressure to presenting oneself. Self imposed of course—but the more beautiful of means—

So what is taking care of myself? To sleep long enough? I wonder if all of that post wake sleeping processing was beneficial? It felt very good. Very good. And here is the battle—is taking care of ourselves always about going towards the good? What feels the best in that moment?
This is actually not Hedonism. Because drinking, (other than sake) never is what will feel best to me—a glass of wine perhaps calls out on specific occasions. But drugs not. Usually I am moved towards the positive action. I don’t like to rely on the word “positive” though. It is a weak, misused word.

Action towards a mystery or a question that is living inside of me. Action towards illumination of obscurity. What word can possibly say this? It is like—there is a fear, a question, a doubt, a desire. Action, a movement, or a sitting still, contemplating this thing, it feels like a shuttle ride towards my own destiny. It does. I feel as if the world is spinning past me—that I am going forward toward myself, towards becoming. Not that I am anything in particular, but that I am a movement, or a settling into consciousness, into being, and when the attention of my senses, the movement of my physical body is in congruence with this being, then I feel alive. And this is taking care of oneself.

Moreover I wonder how I could adopt each guides passion towards filming them. Or the previous guides passion upon them? No. Show each person according to their own process- their story. See how congruent it is with their reality.

How do we know who we are?

What does it mean to take care of ourselves? What is the difference of doing something I think I need to do and doing something that is my morning ritual? There are many directions to be pulled in the city—I am pulled in many directions on the city. To be with friends, to go to museums, to make art. I see from my own behavior that I am still largely social-centric. I make my decisions on being with people that I love. But who is Noah? What is Noah?
As Michelle says “Noah is finding out who Noah is right now.”
It’s nice to hear that. Soothing to know I have a friend who understands the process I am in and does not get frustrated with me about it—passively watching me I think would be relatively entertaining—running here, running there. Doing this and that and shooting for the moon. It’s hilarious. All while balancing these family dramas that I have given meaning to but otherwise without my attention would not exist. Why do I feel the need to see my father? For resolution? Of what? No, I want to see him just to see him. I want to witness him.

Walking with the Beloved

After Trebbe's Endless Mountains Quest, I ask myself, what does it feel like to walk into New York the way I would want to walk into the Beloved's arms? The city is repulsive after being in the marshland and blueberry filled meadows of Pennsylvania.

But don't run away from this city, this place. Be here the way I was in the woods. Feel it. Stop resisting it. Feel it. Head a total mess-- hot. Armpits suffocated, breathing shallow, tired behind the eyes- a cloud, my eyes try to push through-- my heart tries to push through. I am here-- these streets, this city, all the sound and sex of it. I want to devour everything , to own everything, to to chew on the air i pull through my nostrils like a cat or a bull, ready to charge and pounce on something smaller than it. Is this city so much larger than me? It is only buildings and streets and bill boards overwhelming-- All the people slanted this way and that, sitting and sipping and shouting and frowning seem so big mixed in together with so many sounds of sirens. But take them one by one. Sift them each from the city arcing and cawing around them, and they are just me, moving, looking through wonder and anxiety-- what do these streets these hundreds of streaking faces have in store for me? Spin them up with a smile, twirl them around with a shit eating grin-- look in wonder at the bubbling streets- they all become children again, that coffee shop is the stream they dangle their bare feet in, hoping for someone to play. And the games are all in busy hearts, waiting waiting waiting, and the streets are waiting, the great planes are waiting for your face, the great streets are waiting for your Fred Astaire roulette, their horns solitary and full of loneliness wait for your ears and the clitter clattering sky is waiting swallowing you up--its the city, and its going to pull something out of you or you're going to pull something out of it and it must be this way-- you must destroy each other, if you hold on to who you were, it can only eat away at you, but if you let go, let every smile fly without the necessity of commerce, let your heart out the door to all those passing strangers, paint the walls with your most startling desires, let this churning consume you and a new spirit raises itself out of the waddle not to be seen or heard but to sing out, to call out across the Hudson to places lost in America-- I am. Let me be a part of this great myth!

OUR EYES MET, or Alluring Ourselves In, Hook, Line and Sinker, with Trebbe Johnson

Luscious dripping blueberries. Thick fluffy baked bread. Warm tea, chilly afternoon. Trebbe Johnson knows how to make the small pleasures in life a big part of her own. So much so that her voice itself almost sounds like caramel dripping off the spoon of her words. "Go take a walk around, and pay attention to what allures you." Allure. Allures. Allurement.

What happens when we follow what allures us? What happens when we dive right in to what calls us forth, in, or out of ourselves, to passionately follow the passion of ourselves daringly wherever it may lead? We are walking on dangerous ground here. We just might fall in love; not with something, someone, but with love. We might just fall in love with love. I think if Trebbe was a superhero, her superpower is to enchant people into being inspired by life. To clear the ground so we can find a way back into falling in love with something. To connect her back to Dave Talamo; to find our way back into the wondering again. To rediscover our wonder!

Sierra Quest with Dave Talamo

Standing with Dave Talamo breathing in the rolling stream below, the crisp air makes my vision shudder; this is NATURE, both absolute and receptive in it's ISness. And this is Dave's gift to this story as it unfolds: that everyone along the path has a gift, a magic potion, viewpoint, perspective, value, or standard that clears a way, that gives life and meaning to the path. Dave's gift is a deep care and respect for this natural world within which we stand and breathe.

Dave's emphatic wonder with these grand trees creating their own thin bed of soil upon this impenetrable rolling thunder of pure granite mountain and the dipping flight of little russet-brown birds is not just youthful joy. It is a wonder that he has cultivated into a knowledge, respect, and honor of the natural world. He is both a pilgrim here, and a part of the landscape. Watching and listening to him is a window into the most basic form of human alchemy: wonder, tempered by experience into knowledge, transforms itself into a respect and honor for this observed, experienced otherness. I wonder if in this deepening of the relationship of wonder, the observer becomes both a part of the wondering, and a witness to it?