Flowers of Rotting Flesh

:::Thanksgiving on the border of another forgotten genocide:::

After several days spent in the far northern forests not looking at screens, inner visions slowly return. Dreams become greener. For too long my senses have become saturated not with what is actually going on in the world, but with what people’s reactions are to what they think is occurring. Now the warm, fleshy screens behind my eyelids display upon them fractaline images transmuted by vegetal gods. Where before the angry A.I. overlords of empires extractive algorithms managed the understandably reactionary rebuttals of countless planetary citizens unwilling to speak face to face with those carrying opposing views covered Dreamtime in a veil of unnatural light, now hopeful visions of a path beyond “us” v.s. “them” begins again to arise. Away from the noise of “progress”, Silence can be heard.

I remember this. It wasn’t that long ago after all, when we managed to carry what now seems nothing short of supernatural ability. We had friends, even lovers, who thought differently than us. There was a time, (can you remember??), before social media and iPhones stole our capacity for true communication, magical memory making and extraordinary navigational skills, when we would talk to each other, or not talk to each other, directly, side by side, face to face, heart to heart. How easy it is to be violently angry with someone we cannot touch. How easy to yell at the person in the car in front of us whose eyes we cannot see. Yet how hard to hate them when they sit beside us, gazing outwards at the same silver moon. When the forests filter out the distractions of modernities incessant shrieks, we can actually hear the caring hearts of our supposed enemies. Nowadays however, if your facebook “friend” carries a view different than yours, its off with their head. In some mad attempt to be right we “unfriend” the other, convinced that a cyber relationship where no flesh to flesh embraces are ever made equates to a real relation, something to fill the empty post modern existence with meaning. Strange days indeed.

Yet amidst the debates as to what news is real, wars are most certainly going on. There is no doubt about it. Several nights in the jungle and this becomes an omnipresent understanding. The entire mythical corridor of chaos and chance that enshrines the wild world is built on the bones of countless other beings who lost the battle…Or, observed with a less warlike vernacular, the forest thrives as it does because of the noble generosity of countless initiated beings both seen and unseen whom were mature enough to die at their appointed hour so that others might be offered the opportunity to live too. Are the Pines taking sides? Is their real motive to steal someone else’s land? Is might right? Is god himself rooting for the most purebred among the vegetal realms? Is there a hidden scroll under some mossy stone where can be found a verifiable list that can prove who this side of the mountain belongs to historically? Will a proper democratic election ensure equality and fairness for all those botanical invertebrates seeking sunlight?

*sapria himalayana

I look down at the forest floor and see a rare holoparasitic flower I have ben searching for for over twenty five years. The infamous Sapria Himalayana, the “hermit's spittoon”. She is adorned with a magnificent arrangement resembling that of an Amanita muscaria mushroom and to be sure amongst the elite realm of flowers she is in a league all her own. Boasting one of the most extreme manifestations of parasitic mode found in Nature, she is completely dependent upon her host plant for water, nutrients and products of photosynthesis which she extracts like a settler-colonizer through a specialized root system called haustoria.

For decades this elusive mountain dweller has taken residency in my dreamscape as an almost otherworldly being. Having never actually seen it directly before now, a magical river of awe-inspired yearning initially brought me here. I smelled her before I saw her. The putrid scent of rotting flesh. I beheld her charred sisters before I came face to face with her briefly shimmering floral reminder that even parasites can be beautiful. In a week she will be dead. That which she steals life from however will go on living far after her demise.

Our lives depend on the existence of others. Our lonely, traumatized souls swarm about whatever illusions of connection that scroll flippantly in front of our tired eyes in search for union. Yet modernity prizes the individual, forgetting the inseperability of all things. Empire is a monument to forgetfulness. How much of our own minds have merged with empire? How quick are we judge, forgetting how we art that. Is it even possible to separate ourselves from any of this?

I sit at the summit of a mountain that once housed the throne of an ancient empire. Nothing remains now but a handful of bricks. With me are several students from an elite private school based in Vietnam. They are all too young to remember the war their parents had with my parents. We sit side by side, eating sticky rice together, glancing at the emerald hills before us that serve as the border between Thailand and Myanmar. On that side of the border, a genocide is occurring. The world is not paying attention to it. Indeed, these privileged youth know nothing of it themselves. They have been well educated as to how to best to serve empire, to make money in all the modern ways that de-animate the world and numb our ability to be empathetic, but they know little to nothing of the living world in which they now are immersed within. It’s as if they aren’t even here. Their minds are stuck back in the hypnotic realm of modernity. The culture devouring education that will ensure they remain in the elite club of “The Haves” has atrophied their senses and made them blind.

*looking at Myanmar from the Thailand side of the border.

Today is the National Day of Mourning across the big pond, in what many refer now to as The United States. When I was a child we didn’t call it that. We called it instead “Thanksgiving”. In kindergarten, to celebrate this day, we made little turkey cut outs traced by our hands on colored construction paper. We dressed up like pilgrims and Indians. We were told nothing of genocide, of a near total erasure of countless cultural lifeways. We were instructed to eat whatever was before us without knowing where any of it came from, no origin stories, no knowledge as to whom tended to the seeds of these foods, what forces and relations made it possible for us to thrive. Hell, the cranberries were mashed into some odd tin can shaped blob not resembling a cranberry at all. For all I know it wasn’t cranberries we were eating at all. But we did as we were told. We memorized the faulty narratives in order to pass our tests and that was that. Staring into the medicine bundle as if it wasn’t there at all, food and culture lost its magic, as modernity enthroned Convenience.

That night we spent with a Lahu “hill tribe”. Recently transplanted throughout the northern hills of Thailand to escape imperial rule, they finally settled in the remote hills of Lanna, seeking to live outside the constricting clutches of state authority. There is a saying amongst the inhabitants of what James C. Scott has termed “Zomia”, that “It is good to live close to the water, but it is better to live far from the ruler.” Contrary to the arrogant opinions of missionaries and aid groups, these people are not dumb. They do not need modernity. They have deliberately walked away from it for centuries. Well aware of the spiritual costs of adopted such an extractive lifestyle.

I cringe as several of our students’ don the usual tone while “engaging with the local culture”. It is moment like these I question if this kind of educational emersion work is doing more harm than good. While taking photos from a safe distance and never actually attempting to connect one on one they form an opinion of the other, “How kind and sweet are they! I love this simple life!” To be sure, there is nothing simple about living in the mountains, living a land based life, living in community, etc. Mere survival requires a level of life skill here few in the so called “civilized” world possess. Yet to live in a way that doesn’t destroy ones ecosystem but actually improves it, as do the indigenous tribes living in these hills, requires a skill far more complex than the most advanced systems now embraced by modernity. These “simple, hill tribe folk” are far from uneducated. I dare say their education is, if anything, superior to ours.

It is rice harvest time in Asia. Indeed, just a week ago my own community gathered and brought our most important food source home together. It was a beautiful time. It is a special thing to live within a community who still comes together with the intention of keeping alive thousands of heirloom seeds. I don’t take it for granted. We do a good job and I am very proud of what we do. Yet, our ability to maintain spiritual traditions that honor the past and initiate youth into the Big Stories that give life meaning has still managed, as it has in cities, to all but fade from view. Yet here in this tribal village as the “rice mothers return home” all are ensconced in ritual farming. They head into the fields as though they are going to Church, which they kind of are, as nowadays their ways are masked with the awkward face of empires god, thanks to the curious works of missionaries. Yet all is nonetheless a collective prayer of gratitude to that which gives life. The Land resonates in a different way here.

*Mae Phosop, The Thai Goddess of Rice

At night they dance around the fire, adorning their best hand-spun clothes, singing more Christian hymns in their ancient language that, for those with ears to hear, are actually songs being sung to the Spirit of Rice, for the water that allows the rice to grow, for the sun and the soil and the ancestors who generously took ample time to properly pass down the ornate details of How To Live Well In A Place. What they know and as Martin Prechtel so eloquently shares; “It is not enough to save heritage seeds. The culture of those people whom each seed belongs must be kept alive along with seeds and their cultivation. Not in freezers of museums but in their soil and our daily lives.” Empire is not absent from this remote village, but with a genius seldom seen, they use the very thing killing their culture to keep their culture from dying.

This is giving thanks. All else is, at best, a performance. Instead of posting on social networks images of how amazing our expensive lifestyles are we might instead offer real gratitude to the earth and our ancestors by asking ourselves, “Can I overthrow the empire in my mind? Can I learn how to see seeming simplicity as grand? Can I let go of my skewed version of paradise? Does my definition of freedom align with that of empire, i.e. “getting what I want” (as one of my students said when I asked them to tell me their definition of freedom.)? Do I still view success in terms of my financial worth or in how others view me? Do I still dedicate most of my time to a kind of work that ultimately destroys the planet? Am I unable to admit that what I do does this? Do I justify my version of capitalism as somehow less extractive than other versions?

Gratitude resides within honest re-membering. The hill tribe farmers my wife and I have befriended over the years here know very well that when they take fruit from the tree they are killing it. They aren’t trying to be saintly and deny that they too are the destroyer. The terror the seed sees before it is buried alive is not lost to them. The fires they ignite for their yearly forest clearings will haunt the animals. How to justify this?? No one of us are off the hook here. We cannot escape who we are. We all feed and are fed. This is the essence of life, it is the essence of ritual. It is easy to blame governments. And we should most certainly do what we can to hold these foul institutions accountable. But as we do so, might we reflect on the origin stories of the oil we consume? By continuing to live this privileged first world lifestyle, am I unconsciously voting for the continuation of genocide? Are my actions all that different from those at the head of empire? Do I ignore sacred original agreements that require respectful reciprocity, conveniently calling those guys over there the terrorists while lazily avoiding to do my own research that will empower me and my community to know where That Which Feeds Us comes from and what She needs in order to live again?

Breathing in, I know I am breathing in.

Breathing out, I know I am breathing out…

There are many well-meaning families who made millions from selling arms who are truly grateful for what God has given them. They love their children. They feel sorrow when they see rainforests die. There are many earth loving hippies who use iPhones and have not once made the proper prayers to the mountains from which the precious metals that made their phone talk were stolen from. They want the best for their children too, unaware how many child slaves were forced to dig for the insides of their precious “necessary” tool.

We art all this. None of us can escape this. My Palestinian friend is right to call for an end to the Israeli occupation. My Israeli friend is right in pointing out how ironic it is for woke Americans to voice disgust at what the Israeli government is doing in Palestine. How much of the average “woke” Americans’ wealth, a wealth ultimately acquired on the backs of hard working, enslaved black bodies stolen from their homes in Africa to work for “Americas” lazy forefathers on land they stole, has been properly redistributed to those whose land continues to be wrongfully inhabited? Are you willing to give up your home, to give it back to the original caretakers of Turtle Island or wherever else in the world you now reside? Have you begun taking the steps to build a relationship with the native peoples living of your region? Have you asked them if they are ok for you to be there? If they say no are you willing to leave? If not, I dare say that empire still occupies your mind. I sure see its cruel view wrapped around my thoughts, yearning for security, justifying my privilege, inspiring me to be lazy and forgetful. Modernity is a motherfucker.

Our time here is short. That Whom We Depend Upon will live long after modernity decays. Earth not only knows how to live well She is what allows life to live well. How can we then, as Sophie Strand says, become good soil? Can the composting of this parasitic era offer hope in its death? Might this offer a way to hospice modernity in a meaningful and noble way? Such questions ought not bring about terror. All things must pass and ours is certainly a time of dissolution. Such mature, interspecies thinking might offer an opportunity to be truly inspirational, like the Sapria himalayana flower, whom, like civilization itself, has lived its life as a parasite upon this earth yet died in a inspiring explosion of rare beauty.

It angers some that I do not formally take sides. The most woke amongst my beloved anarchist friends are hell bent on the notion that there are hard lines and we all must choose what side we are on. To them I say, “Yes.”. And to my Buddhist brethren who are unwavering in the view that emptiness is ultimate, to them I say, “Yes.”. We art that. And that and that and that. I am Palestine. I am Israel. I am a white American male whose DNA traces back to Wales married to a brown Thai villager from Laos. I am the earth worshipping buddhist son of evangelical christian parents. I am a father in a time of dizzying uncertainty. I contain multitudes and I know I can do better. I am disgusted, I am heartbroken, and still, amidst all the ugliness plaguing these in-between times, I am in constant awe at life’s miraculous beauty. I am confused and trying my best. I am unlearning and relearning and slowly growing a capacity for feeling deeply again. I am the offspring of empire, trying to regenerate hope for a time beyond now. And… I am deeply grateful. I am determined to learn everyones history, and to listen. I vow to overthrow the empire in me and find again my own indigenous soul.

#maypeaceprevailonearth

---

Please Call Me By My True Names

-A poem by Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh

…

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow—
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am also the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion.

---

#ceasefire

#freepalestine

#freeisrael

#freemyanmar

#freexinjiang

#freetibet

#freeturtleisland

#freeafrica

#freeearth

#etc.

#freeourminds

#liberateusfromignorance