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life_less_ordinary
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dafremen
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Imagine growing up in a world full of green mohawks. The anchormen and reporters on your daily news program sporting them, the smiling people in the Claritin commericals. The stodgy English professor in the documentary, the scientists digging away at the red dirt in search of ancient bones. All wearing mohawks, expressing their "individuality" through slight variations in hue and height.
What if everyone around you had that same strip of green hair plowing up their heads like sailfish fins all around you? What if you lived in a world where some historically established rite of passage was a baby's first "cut-n-dye"? Some surreal baptism dealt out by custom and a societally prescribed common sense?
"Oh Ned! Our little baby's growing up!"
Imagine one day, in a world such as this, that a green mohawk was the standard and that you somehow felt..that something was very unordinary about it..
What if one day you sat down and thought to yourself: "Why this isn't ordinary at all. In fact, this is ridiculous! No one's hair grows this way naturally. No hair has ever been this color of its own design. No child has been born with hair like this and until society foists it upon them by force or example...no child ever would."
Imagine that one day you decided to let your hair grow out, trimming the green from the ends when it was long enough to do so. And imagine the scorn that would greet you on the streets. Imagine the employers passing you up, imagine the police hassling you. Imagine laws being passed forbidding your sort from feeling the way that you do. Imagine society wrapping itself in a thick cocoon of legislation to keep your sort and your less than ordinary ideas from spreading like wildfire among others who had always felt this way...but were afraid to speak out for fear of embarrassment...for fear of standing out and being made examples of...of being vilified.
Imagine a life less ordinary that to you makes perfect sense and try to discover a reason, not imposed upon you by the people around you, for choosing not to it.
Rules are a fence to corral us. Norms are a hypnotic trance to draw us in. The stated opinion of society is little more than a cattleprod which surrounds and stings us unless we stay in that cage 'til we die.
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080926
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dafremen
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"Imagine a life less ordinary that to you makes perfect sense and try to discover a reason, not imposed upon you by the people around you, for choosing not to it."
should read:
Imagine a life less ordinary that to you makes perfect sense and try to discover a reason, not imposed upon you by the people around you, for choosing not to live it.
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080926
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zeke
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convention reassures many. i am amazed at the vast number of people who prefer format food. ruby tuesday's, taco bell, ruth's chris, and benihana all offer standard units of reassurance. so many people i know are risk-averse when it comes to food experience. phrases like "i don't eat that" or maybe i'll try that one day" are brandished like shields against the novel.
but, non-conformity has a steep price. have you ever eaten sardines for lunch at work? i once overheard some coworkers talking trash about another who dared to do just that. they actually took covert action to punish the offender.
it is one thing to be a loner, another to defy convention and yet another to advocate for tolerance. i am not a joiner, prefer not to define myself in conventional ways, and try hard to challenge my own assumptions, but i am not a martyr.
respect!
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080926
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dafremen
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We gathered wild carrots, chicory and crab apples in the meadow today. Tried our tastebuds with a little clover (tastes like bean sprouts) and worked on the process of de-assimilation..deprogramming our heavily conditioned minds.
What freedom is there in dependence upon society for all that you need to survive? None at all is my suspicion.
To be free..truly free..requires grit, the ability to take risks and more than a bit of self-reliance. Just because we earn our own money does not make us self reliant. If the grid went down tomorrow and the promised value of a dollar were moot..who would feed themselves or their kin then? We are babies..helpless infants suckling upon the teat of this manufactured illusion as though it were our salvation...when instead..it has become a cage and our master. Try to leave it and see if I'm mistaken. See how far you can wander into the wilderness before your habits and tastes beg you to run back into the arms of Big Brother. Slowly but surely, I will take these steps, toddler that I am to the ways of nature. Nature is the only reality. All else crumbles and fades with time.
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080926
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dafremen
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The meadow is a great healer; it's cover open skies. There is little that I'd rather do than move through tall grass looking for wild edibles these days.
Today I gathered for 2 hours..a meal's worth or more. Wild carrots, clover and chickweed to start. We found crab apples practically breaking a limb the other day and received a few to share. While my wild grapes are almost raisins. (An exercise in preserving food for colder months.)
I know nothing about this. Nothing..and now some. Little by little, wending through the weeds..learning self-reliance.
There's not a feeling in the world like filling one's own belly without a soul to thank but your own, just the wisdom of creation. It's a risky venture this. But not so risky as one is led to believe. I saw the poison ivy 3 steps away and passed it without a care. The deer marked out the good spots to rest and so I rested awhile there.
It's a slow process, but not impossible. Less a chore than a vacation. Who kept me from this? Why, it was me and my conditioning; a marriage of convenience..cause for divorce and celebration that kept me penned up like a mule.
It's a gloomy thing to return to these endless rows of boxes and lines after having spent a few hours there. Perhaps I'll find solace in the learning..perhaps I'll shuck these velcro beans attached to me and give them also a try.
I learned how to make a fire with a stick and some wood. It's not as hard as you'd think. But it takes patience...a good 5 minute work-out under most conditions..3 in the most ideal. I've been considering making a magnifying glass part of my survival kit..but two sticks are the thing, for they're plentiful and work night and day...rain or shine.
Maybe I'll build a shelter to pass a week or two in..leave this house when the first blizzard comes to test my mettle and learn my lessons.
It can do no harm to turn the fat of convenient submission into the lean muscle of self sustenance toned by the adversity of this new, real freedom I've found.
Yes the meadow is a great source of comfort these days, where the grasshoppers roam so free. If my soul can be mended, I'll find it there..the antidote to what's killing me.
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081002
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