I don’t listen to a lot of hip hop but, when I do, it’s usually someone from Rhymesayers. Today, Sa-Roc is blowing me away. 🎵
I’m thankful that the heat wave seems to have broken. It’s a beautiful morning out there right now.
A friend sent me a link to the No Labels organization and asked if I had any thoughts. I replied:
Personally, I’m a leftist so I’ll never be particularly interested in such a centrist organization. I can appreciate what they’re trying to do—ignoring partisan divides by taking mediating positions on issues—but my feeling that ours is a time of great change. No Labels is trying maintain the old order, to play it safe. I’m interested in what’s on the other side of the crisis.
To elaborate on this (and to make a point larger than reacting to No Labels), I do feel like we are in a time of crisis. We are already living in a post-apocalyptic world and none of the usual rules seem to apply. And for that reason, there’s something of the inevitable about all of this.
As Bayo Akomolafe says, “what if the way we respond to a crisis is part of the crisis?” We are told, for example, that we must take part in street protests and direct action; yet those very actions often entrench the opposition and become tools used against the protestors themselves. The levers which we have used in the past appear to be broken.
What if the crisis that is upon us is one in which humanity is being told to sit down and listen to teacher? That it is precisely our usual reaction—reaching for levers with which to work our will on the world—which is the source of our problems and what we must unlearn?
Spending the evening at a DIY music festival, listening to a bunch of local folk musicians. The cicadas are playing a set while the humans set up for their next performance.
Rachel is already planning for 2024. This will more than fill out the backyard, a.k.a., Green Man’s Grotto. Then we’ll start working on the little strips of yard on each side of the house. In a few years, we and the beings living here will have transformed this tiny city lot into an island of life.
It’s hot today BUT we’ve seen a hummingbird and a monarch butterfly in the Grotto.
Five Remembrances (Thich Nhat Hanh version):
- I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
- I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.
- I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
- All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
- My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.
I used to repeat these every day and I think it might be time to get back to that.
Rachel made a zucchini pie and–you know what?–it’s really good. (Y’all, we have so many zucchinis.)