To see one's predicament clearly...

On the first day of Sociology 105: Social Problems, the professor asked the class to write a list of social problems in our notebooks, then circle the most pressing one. When he asked for students to share their opinions, common answers arose like homelessness, unemployment, drugs, hunger. Everything was as he had planned until my hand rose and out of my mouth came something that turned heads:
"Alienation."

"Uhmm.. sure. Yeah... mental health issues... that's good," the professor said, misunderstanding my remark.

I can't remember if I responded or not in the moment, but internally my mind raced. No, no. Mental health is something pinned on the individual. Alienation is a collective human experience -- one of the most painful and pressing of our existence. It's having countless ways to connect but feeling devoid of connection. It's existing cut off from our true selves, and therefore cut off from one another. It's believing that we're in this life alone and that our survival is completely up to us. As if we're not all going toward the same eventual end. As if we're not all hoping for the same things before we get there. As if we're not all present in this very single moment, capable of showing up for our own and each others big truths. Capable of making a better world to exist in.

The class moved on and alienation didn't come up for the rest of the semester. Years passed and I'd completely forgotten about what happened on the first day of Socy105 until I read this line in Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth:

Alienation means you don't feel at ease in any situation, any place, or with any person, not even with yourself. You are always trying to get "home" but never feel at home.

A heart-sinking feeling came to me as my eyes graced this line. My mind raced back to that day when I sat on that squeaky wooden chair and was quietly washed over by a feeling of alienation just as I tried to bring the very thing to light.

To this day I still believe that an inability to be present with one another is at the root of our social ills. There are cures and there are answers--things we each hold in our hearts when we slow down enough to listen for them--when we believe in our potential for progress and trust in Tolle's closing remark:

To see one's predicament clearly is a first step toward going beyond it.

recent mixed media creation

dear humanity

dear humanity,

can we overcome
paralysis in the face of cruelty?
consumption in the face of degradation?
extreme loneliness in the face of facebook?

it is us and only us.
we are the ones who must begin
reconnecting with the mother of us all,
gazing further than we ever imagined space for,
breathing in the great infinity of the wild,
the impending expiration of our lives.

touch the sacred
and see if your soul
wants to turn back.
wants to try to digitize a mountain,
upload a desert,
tag god
for all your friends to see.

humanity, can we remember
how it felt to come crying from our mothers bodies?
twig-sized fingers
reaching up toward a blanketing sky?
caring hands bathing bodies
like rocks in a stream--
deep and calm
motion by motion.

is rebirth in the vocabulary
of a people
whose mother
eludes us?

is renaissance
an image
we can google
and have painted for us?

through the funny feeling
that something just ain't right
where is the box
for our limited-word
response?
for our last shot at
brilliance?
for our data to add to the pool
where everyone's floating
but there's no room to swim?

i love keri smith.

i love her ideas (and the things that inspire her) so very much.

this, for instance.

"the problem today is -the only possible project (and young people should complete an active effort now) is working to ‘decondition’ people from the god of merchandise." -Enzo Mari

i both struggle with and am fascinated by ideas of deconditioning people from "the god of merchandise"... and the thousands of deeper layers of conditioning we've yet to free ourselves from.

it's only natural for me, after so much tedious production work, to surge full-force into innovation mode. and lately i've been playing with ideas of unfiltering and deconditioning my interactions with other human beings. for instance, learning about the unemployment in the city by talking with the unemployed as opposed to reading statistics in the paper. or standing next to a list of all my sexual preferences and being totally open to talking about them as opposed to letting a magazine ad vaguely and (most likely) incorrectly inform people of what i'm interested in. (hellloooo...everyone has individual, specific interests!)

i have ideas for a new collective of people who are committed to this kind of work in the public sphere--this kind of face-to-face, on-the-streets approach to learning about each other's lives. i see this movement as akin to the Do It Yourself movement that was a reaction to the distance and lack of ownership people were feeling in regards to the process of turning materials into goods. similarly, this Person-To-Person movement is a reaction to the constant filters through which we receive our information about others. i feel such distance from distance and lack of authentic connectedness that i feel with my community, my city, my generation.