into the dialectic

Elemental, nourishing, a retreat from the driven madness of the world, Big Sur, and Esalen in particular, rooted deep in the intrinsic power of nature, held between mountain wilderness and ocean, the redwood forests, the remote valleys, the oak lined ridges overlooking the Pacific. Esalen, on the green cliffs, the hot springs welling up from the deep… early 1960’s through early 2000’s, was a thing. Esalen itself was a phenomenal meeting ground of perhaps damaged, if curious and playful souls, seekers and characters of great heart and spirit. A wellspring. A degree of disfunction, as anywhere, a reflection of society, it’s various ills, and our variously twisted lives acted out in a safe place for reflection and growth, remote, held. Thus essentially good, true, beautiful, transcendent.

Since then that hallowed ground has, of course, become increasingly financially motivated, corporate driven,

the soul and heart of the place driven out – at least for me – along with the unintentional community that happened and thrived there for preceding decades. Such is the way of all things. Sometimes called the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy, but I think of it as life blooming in splendour, then fading, its seeds dispersed, to begin a new iteration of evolution somewhere else, out on some other periphery, spiralling ever outward and upward.

So where are the current vortices and healing grounds? Actually, I do think those are separate things – at least, I feel that where I find myself now, on the Mexican side of the political border, in the middle of an oasis in Baja California Sur, is in the heart of a vortex, and that too has it’s healing, though hard core, more chaotic, requiring more discipline, it being more stochastic in nature, than nurturing. Of course there are many vortices, or active power centres, scattered around the globe, and this may all be relative to who and when and where (and Esalen, it’s intrinsic primal nature still intact, is still what it ever was under foot one might suppose, albeit perhaps less active in a volcanic sense of upwelling…)

but here, now, Baja California Sur, feels like a final frontier – the last of the Wild West perhaps. Booming, or blooming, or fading, becoming gentrified, yet still absolutely raw and elemental. Vortex – means swirling forces with a unified core of calm, that is perhaps inscrutable. Yet I trust the greater knowing that brought [me] here, now, and the quickening at large, as the world and we go through radical, heaving, recalcitrant shift. There is a power here, and it is a good place to be, human.

Three years now, working with the one hectare of farm land we have been sitting on for 20 years. Here in the midst of the elemental oasis. I am a willing slave to it, again – and it has been a harsh mistress! It is all within the calling though. I have a fierce and lovely young lady partner, and her spirited kid, and other good travellers come and go and contribute to the project – creating Sanctuary

So, traveller, should you venture this way over land, you will find it wild, harsh, otherworldly terrain to traverse, and I recommend moving slowly through the Baja peninsula. There is infinite primordial wealth, ever waiting to be beheld, quite invisible to those travelling at the speed of colonisation. It requires of one to stop. Feel the profound power and stillness of the desert landscape. Feel its heartbeat. Listen to its call. Its voices are ancient. I have to remind myself, again and again, to stop, drop back in, to the timeless moment…

Time

Category: Sublunaray ranting

Posted on September 19, 2022 by Nik

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The Kingdom

Were I able to capture
within this flimflam frame
all the majesty of light

and space, scintillating
across the oasis
before me now
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Category: my poems, Poetry

Posted on May 18, 2022 by Nik

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Eclipsed

I am not really feeling it myself, and my friend Natalie doesn’t feel ready for what would be her first ceremony either, and we decide to let the idea go. So, we are sitting in Petite Leon café, meeting with a serendipitous group of enthusiastic plant experts from Mexico city, looking to collaborate in regenerative agriculture and medicinal plant cultivation here in El Pescadero. This is the beginning of something good. And in, out of the blue, pops English Iona. Infinitesimal probability of that happening by chance – time and space thing. She’s picking up Leah (name changed by request. One of the lauded Thirteen Grandmothers) on their way back from Los Cabos airport to La Paz. I see only the back of a little white haired lady, struggling a bit, to get into the back of Iona’s convertible white Mustang.

And here we are, surrounded by the forces of the divine feminine, and I, the only man besides Das, in a group of women, all dressed in white for this full moon night. A curiously diverse, eclectic and slightly odd little group it seems to me. Mercy, Das, Japa and Leah at the head of the rectangular ‘circle’, singing delightfully from the heart, Jamie and Michelle as “helpers”, angelic, priestess archetypes of youthful grace, sitting upright, guarding the spirit temple to my left under the palapa which we all sit.

The ceremony is the most beautiful I have attended. The music, the vocal harmonies – tender, loving, divine. Truly. And unexpectedly, the neighbours happen to be having a party tonight too. To me, it is a curious fascination, to be an outsider listening in, invisibly in the moonlit night, to the culture of Mexico, into which we have invited ourselves, celebrating itself through progressions of musical genres, intoxicating and intoxicated laughter. Albeit an intrusion into our own process. And the lights. And later, the booming bad bass. And the medicine remains sweet and gentle – if quite underwhelming in any psychotropic effect. And at the end, everyone is chatty and shuffling around while I feel stiff and frustrated and headachey and kinda pissed off and growly by this time, just wanting silence and stillness. Then we all sleep it off, both sides of the fence, as the burgeoning moon rises higher in the night.

We gather for a morning circle of sharing. I express some disappointment. Leah, in her turn, responds with perfect wisdom and grace. “She” gives us (not what we want, but) exactly what we need. I do not particularly concur. All respect, but I like my medicine strong else what’s the point. I’m here to do the journey work.

Iona comes over and quietly says, hey, I have some Bufo (Colorado river toad) I think you might like to try. I do. I have been waiting with years of patience for 5-MeO-DMT to present itself to me, and this, apparently is the right moment. And this is the potent medicine that breaks through and takes me where I need to go – and I do see the divine beauty of the whole process that leads to this moment now, and the weight lifted only by growling through the ceremony and process – crawling through the canal, to be ready, for birthing once more, by the grace of the midwife Iona, the dreadlock shamamma herself.

I appreciate now, the short cut to Bufo facilitated expansion of consciousness is harder to integrate in its short intensity, than the slower journey through the mother plants of Ayahuasca, though both facilitate the same, or similar chemical opening of the doors of perception. I glimpse the primal wound that is the very answer to my question. I feel the resonance in the DNA – generational. The recognition, acceptance and potential for transmutation and transcendence of this otherwise ever present fear – the primal fear at the core of the self. I feel a tortured man on this earth, not without reason, and yet my only simple desire, is to walk in beauty.

Phrases from Rilke’s Wendung – Turning Point, become present in my mind. “the imprisoned lions stared in as if into an incomprehensible freedom…” Later I go back and re-read them – and my own ekphrastic response poem, The Return. Wow, yup – a recurring theme. And yet, in Iona’s own reflection of the process she is holding space for, in a little tent containing the cosmos, under the shade of a Neem tree in her garden – the overpowering male story of subjugation, hierarchy and separation – is not the true story. The true story, so long as we are able to see and chose this path, is one of beauty and paradise on earth – the path of the heart.

During a blessing over breakfast, Leah pulls a card for the group process.

True dat. I continue to feel that the work I am doing here and now and overall, building sanctuary from the ground up, largely single handedly to date, this troubled fool, alone in the desert, is all as it must be. And sometimes I lose my way and forget – but I am on a mission, and I am, though I forget sometimes, and am terrified at times, fully supported in this process, by divine providence. “Exactly what we need.” All in its own time. And patience is the greatest virtue of this land.

The epigraph to Rilke’s poem states,

The road from intensity to greatness passes through sacrifice.

Is that what all this is then, I ask myself. I believe there is a kind of greatness that wants to move through me, to facilitate healing in this world – I simply need to continue the process of getting out of my own way. Let go. Listen deeply. Learn to trust ever more, the ground under my feet, to cultivate grace in the face of a troubled self and world at large. To let go of control – as if.

Then, the moon, once more, magnifier of process, introspective dam buster – I watch her slip quietly under our shadow, transforming, ever so slowly, into a deepening three dimensional amber icon of self reflection. Blood moon. Our own shadow revealed in the night.

I recognise that this overall ceremony’s period, process and effect, over 3 days during this eclipse moon, is the most gentle and profound of all. I feel a weight lifted, after over a year of grappling with self and place and story, there is light on the horizon. All is well.

Category: Sublunaray ranting

Posted on November 27, 2021 by Nik

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Thanksgiving

A man is grateful for his life, for the couple who brought him in
He is grateful for the land – plant creatures leaning in

The fragrance in the air – sweet earth, jasmine, cypress, sage
Life blooming in response, to his tender gaze
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Category: my poems, Soliloquy

Posted on November 20, 2021 by Nik

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Baja Baby

Dark, but let’s get real. On expatriate gentrification, in this instance, of Baja California, but could be Spain, Thailand, anywhere you like:

Natural borders – rivers and oceans;

political borders – economic and porous;

Privileged with dollars

we wonder across
the last frontier

aren’t we cool. Read More

Category: my poems, Sublunaray ranting

Posted on November 3, 2021 by Nik

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Space, Time and Consciousness

Creating balance with the inner and outer spaces we inhabit.

On his way back to earth, having just walked on the moon, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell experienced a radical transformation in consciousness. As he approached our planet from beyond its sphere of influence, taking in the exquisite poise of earth, moon and sun gyrating about each other within a 360º panorama of stars,

‘he was filled with an inner conviction as certain as any mathematical equation he’d ever solved. He knew that the beautiful blue world to which he was returning, is part of a living system, harmonious and whole, and that we all participate, as he expressed it later, ‘in a universe of consciousness.’ *

Mitchell became aware that, despite science’s dazzling achievements, we had barely begun to probe the deepest mystery of the universe – the fact of consciousness itself.

“I realized that the story of ourselves as told by science, our cosmology, our religion, was incomplete and likely flawed. I recognized that the Newtonian idea of separate, independent, discrete things in the universe wasn’t a fully accurate description. What was needed was a new story of who we are and what we are capable of becoming.” *

Consciousness as the primary force in the universe

Consider this idea. Space only exists when and where occupied by consciousness. Read More

Like the infamous “Schrödinger’s cat” experiment in quantum mechanics, our attention, or consciousness, is inextricable from the outcome of an event. This is a relaxed argument, but let’s just roll with the idea that, individually and collectively, the spacial reality we manifest, inhabit and interpret ourselves in relationship to, is predicated on consciousness.

I conceive and design a house. I build the house. I move into the space I have created. I inhabit that space with further imaginings, styles, objects and utilities, setting up further spaces to work and dream and create more spaces and things. Thus consciousness and imagination come before intentional, physical manifestation and can not exist without that precedent.

Current science tells us that the physical universe came first with the Big Bang, and its ongoing expansion represents time. Progressive evolution biologists (such as Elisabet Sahtouris) however, suggest that consciousness must be primary. That consciousness is the primary motive force in the universe, coming before physical manifestation. This idea may remain in the numinous, fringe territories of metaphysics and mythology, at least from the mainstream science perspective, but science is young and the difference in creation stories – between ancient wisdom traditions and modern sciences – are merging. They are beginning to corroborate each other.

Consciousness and Space

If you are a diver, when you are in that medium, hovering, buoyant in space, breathing with slow deliberation, meditatively over a coral reef, with all of its exquisite extra-terrestrial life animated below you, you are immersed in this space and spacial quality entirely. It is completely absorbing. Thus, perfectly relaxed, you, your body, does not feel separate from the environment you are immersed in. The terrestrial world above, your own house, outer space, are all equally as far from each other in this subaquatic moment as can be. To all intents and purposes, they do not exist outside of the present experiential reality. They may exist in another space-time for you, or someone else, but in this moment, for you, they do not.

Even sitting at your desk, when completely absorbed, only the space immediately surrounding you exists, until you project your consciousness to some distant place, thought, abstraction, but then you are no longer in the present. Sitting right here is the only reality, so long as you remain in this moment.

Consciousness and Time

Linear time is a social institution and not a physical reality— an agreed upon construct that has to be calculated and measured on a device, primarily in order to coordinate and synchronise with industry and commerce. Whilst it is a convenient abstraction, it’s one I personally struggle with. I manage, recalcitrantly, by muster and fluster to keep up with the regulated scheme of things, but it does challenge me to map space, time and activity in a linear fashion, as distinct from the naturally occurring cyclic rhythms of mind, metabolism, moon and mood. Maybe it was because my mum dropped me, I don’t know, but I do know I’m not the only one that is challenged by the clock.

Regardless, I maintain that there can be no other time (or space) besides that fully present point of attention and awareness you or I are ever in, in the immediacy of experience. Anything else must be delusional. Multitasking is a delusion. We can in fact only focus on one thing in any given moment, though we can shift that focus rapidly from one thing to another back and forth, creating the illusion of multiplicity. Witness however, how fractured we have become.

Still, we interpret and traverse space and time every day to varying degrees. I board a train or a boat or a plane, travel between points of space-time to make agreed upon rendezvous in other spaces and times. The office, the pub, the beach, but we are never anywhere but the present transitory moment. Memories are traces of the present moment, fading like the wake of a ship, or an evaporating condensation trail. Future desires and concerns also are not manifest, thus, ever is the illusory nature of time and space beyond the present moment.

Outer Space vs Inner Space

So what is space if, in experiential terms, it is either something we design and define around us through intention, or it is something we are passing through in a continuum alongside its counterpart time?

Or perhaps more importantly, why should we want to explore the far reaches, when we have barely looked to the depths of our very being, as Mitchell intimates. The implication is that we may not need to leave our body of Earth in order to explore the furthest reaches of the cosmos. Like the ancient metaphor of Indra’s Net, suggesting the interconnected nature of the universe, the atoms, cells and ganglia within our very being, reflect the same dynamics and patterns of solar systems, nebula and galaxies within the greater, numinous whole. As above, so below, the microcosm within the macrocosm.

Indra’s Net — the age old concept of interconnectedness. A sea of infinitely faceted jewels reflecting each other. Change in one is reflected in the whole system, intimating the repercussions of change in a complex system

I remember a wooden plaque staked at the perimeter of the grounds at a meditation retreat center in Thailand. It was in the middle of the jungle.
I was trying to escape. It said,

“There is nowhere to go, but in.”

Maybe, the answers to the otherwise insurmountable problems we are creating in our world, can only ever be found within, where this union of space, time and consciousness can be experienced. The separation of humanity from nature is the fundamental problem on our planet in this time.

The implication that the existing (Western) dualistic thought processes are what separates us from usurped indigenous immediacy, relevance and connectedness. Yet we have never actually been separate. What we do to nature, to our planet, to other people, we do to ourselves. Any native Lakota speaker will offer this as de facto. It’s encoded in indigenous languages. Yet not ours. I blame Descartes.

To be clear, putting any of this in words can have limited value, but any number of traditional meditation techniques demonstrate single pointed consciousness, as transcendent of the limits of time, space and separation, empirically, and have done so since civilisation began. The scientific world is beginning to re-cognise the same conclusions with its own methodologies. Though we remain challenged to comprehend the unity of space, time and consciousness, they may be experienced directly as such, simply by suspending the dualistic Cartesian thought process. Through intention. By directing consciousness beyond those confines, through the regular practice of various meditation techniques. The wetware time machine that has existed, unbeknownst to Hollywood and the rest of distracted humanity, for millennia.

Regardless, whilst outer space may be tremendous fun to explore through science and imagination – as a star gazer, I do both, it remains a place few of us are destined to experience physically in this lifetime. Detractors have long said, the incredible resources utilised in space exploration would be more sensibly put towards solving problems here on Earth. And when we collectively look to explore the near and far reaches of our solar system, what are we really looking so far for after all? To find life elsewhere that reflects back to us how life began here? Other world intelligence? We seem barely able to demonstrate our own intelligence with integrity, so what are we looking out there for? Salvation? From our own stupidity? How about mineral resources to replace those we are depleting under our own feet? That’s an old story we really should be laughing back at. And then there’s the possibility of colonising barren moons, or planets, whilst haplessly mismanaging our own beautiful blue-green world? Or, even more morally corrupt perhaps, as privatised space missions become de facto, branding, publicity and commercial opportunism. Isn’t this all like brushing the Earth under the carpet as our sustainability crumbles? But look at this other exciting phenomenon over here everybody! It’s bigger, brighter than ever before! And you can reserve your seat for only $35 million.

All I’m saying is, instead of projecting our consciousness and physical presence outward towards magnification of individuated ego, it might better be directed to the inner spaces that nourish and reflect our deepest connection with self and other. To the cosmos as an intrinsic, interconnected part of the whole of existence. We might find, if we venture to the depths, that this is where the solution to our personal and global problems lie.

Space and consciousness are inextricably linked. Sacred and vernacular architecture through time immemorial have embodied the principals of sacred geometry and the fractal nature of space and time. Designers and sacred sciences have observed these proportions and ratios for millennia. Instinctively, we seek and create harmonious spaces when we are attuned to nature and natural law. When we abstract space in order to display power, it becomes detached from harmony with nature. Consciousness becomes concomitantly less balanced and we, separated from the intelligence inherent in our bodies, heart and planet, go looking to shoot our wad into outer space. Hence the meme, “What if UFO’s are just billionaires from other planets?”

We appear to be on the fast track to matricide at the fraying ends of a great patriarchal cycle. Inner space represents as profound an exploration for humanity, as the outer spaces we inhabit, imagining we may find salvation without balancing the two. Space, time and consciousness remain inextricably linked. It is our job to restore balance in our world before we destroy our habitat and leave a handful of lonely billionaires as envoys of Earth, living in sterile pods on Mars perhaps, realising they just blew it. Maybe we should just send the big-shots ahead to the final frontier. I mean, Amazon is handy I must say, and I’d have fun tooling around in a Tesla, but I’d just as soon get a farewell spaceX postcard from Mars, and keep planting trees and creating green space in the landscape immediately around me. Oh, and do please let’s send Boris and all those other heads of state too. They all belong out there, mop-headed morons that they are.

If we manage to own responsibility for our individual and collective power in time, we may evolve across space and time, through consciousness – time travellers on good ol’ spaceship Earth. Destination unknown. We do seem to be veering rather rapidly off course though and all bets are off, but what a ride!

Now. What was I doing? Oh yes, time to turn abstraction to action, consciousness to space. I’m off to plant some carbon sequestering, nitrogen fixing, leguminous trees out beyond my desk. See you out there.

Category: Sublunaray ranting

Posted on August 17, 2021 by Nik

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Death In The Wings

Life, Love and the Human Spirit

Ever the irreverent rogue, defiant of establishment and death, there was my father, on the slow road. Nine lives cashed in, prostate cancer in remission, driving himself from his off-grid, country shack to dialysis in Palma, three times a week, until my younger brother Hieronymus (after Bosch, no less) had to confiscate his keys for driving faster than a man of his condition ought. The final year then, hospital bound, partial to the pain killers, he kept his own stash of fentanyl for self medication whenever he felt the calling. I tried it with him, for empathic, research purposes, the max strength inhaler – knock out gear. The same stuff that killed Prince, but not my old man. He was a rock n roller of the Kieth Richards calibre. The type that might do shots of embalming fluid before bed, courting death, yet living ablaze through opaque stretches of time, where the rest of their generation slip away, one by one. Keith and Lez, vampire crusaders. Yet time and death catch up with every man. It is the great equaliser.
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The hospital doctors never knew about his previously prescribed stash of fentanyl, but the nurses would reprimand him, finding nuggets of hash under his pillow, and for generally remaining as wilful and witty a character as ever was, to his own ends – not that of any authority, medical or otherwise. Still semi-mobile at this point, the old boy thus liked to shuffle about and wheel himself off to the elevator and down to the garden for a puff. Eventually they had to strap him down after he continued going walkabout against directives, falling here and there due to atrophied muscle. He persuaded them to untie him again if he promised to behave, which he managed for a while – until he got a bladder infection. The antibiotic and delirium combo that sets a man off like one possessed ensued then. Quite something to behold of someone and something beyond the self that we can only ever partly understand. I have the footage of him inhabited by other characters, speaking in tongues, hissing and spitting at us like an hirsute medieval madman. Quite enthralling. He came back after a week though, and remained the enigmatic gentleman he was capable of being, when inclined, especially to those he favoured. Most of the nurses missed him when he finally left his body for good. Not all. A wild and free spirit, defiant til a month shy of his eightieth. What a brat.

I hadn’t visited for a year or two previously and to be honest, if I had not fallen in love with a brilliant, vivacious and voluptuous gypsy lady I met on a Berkley dance floor in California, sparks flying, I would never have moved back to Europe to spend so much time with my father before he died. She, fled from erstwhile Yugoslavia, invited me to live with her in London where she was raising a daughter. A huge risk for us both, yet we were inextricably in love. It didn’t work out of course, for one reason or another, but how else do you take life by the heart of the matter, to not live a slow death. And then there I was, back in the land of my fathers, fled 30 years since… adrift.

And there you are, on the road to awe, with the father man, mother long since gone. And who are you when your parents are dead, have gone ahead? One begins to wonder at such times. How will I respond to such imminent finality when my time comes, as if it weren’t already always there in the wings? Well, if there’s one thing I do, I assert to myself, it will not be like him. Living his last decade by candle light, rather impoverished, albeit in an impossibly romantic hut in a field in the Balearics. He remained surrounded by exquisite objet d’art, wilderness and beauty, getting by on thinning art dealings and a lot of borrowed love and money, and for the last year, by the whim of state medical facilities. None of us had the cash for comfy care homes or hospice. In the end, the only option would have been to leave him with the Catholic nuns. That would have been interesting. And yet, by the mysterious grace of God, he was held to the last.

My father did not die particularly gracefully however. He was too much of a prima donna in his inimitable, aesthete, velvet, rock n roll gypsy way. Yet, by the grace of Hermes, the divine trickster, who moves freely between the worlds of the mortal and the divine, the fleet footed, patron saint of travellers, thieves and merchants, my father got a hospital bed in a room to himself, over looking the shimmering port of Palma. He told us then, that he’d finally had enough, couldn’t take it any more, was going to give up the dialysis and check out for good. We all honoured and respected this noble choice, to accept the inevitability of death, thus surrender – a graceful letting go. After all, after two years of intense care, decreasing quality of life and increasing discomfort, not to mention the ever demanding tag team attention, we were all ready to let him continue his journey, such as it may be, unto the aether. All his younger friends flew in from afar to offer their heartfelt farewells. He then of course changed his mind. I mean, why wouldn’t you after being graced by so much adulation? So he hung on to the bitter end, that primal will to survive setting in, till there was nothing left to hang on to.

As a father, he was complete rubbish, but we forgave him for all the colour he did bring to our lives, and the siblings and the wives. The last years of his life were born out with his fourth, of 40 years, back and forth. She, the fiery flamenco queen, was the one who, as promised early on in their passionate, if tumultuous life together and apart, was there to take care of the love of her life at death.

It was only after he took his final leave then, looking over photos shared on the family chat group, that this superlative artist, wife and mother of my kid brother, commented on a photo of the man back in his 40’s, handsome, dark, swept back hair, strong jewish nose and flowery shirt, exclaiming, “que gitano!” And it hit me then. The DNA of generations defining how we live and die. I never thought of my father as a gypsy, though born of Austro-Hungarian parents who, fleeing Vienna during Hitler’s march of death, created a new life, and birthed their son in England, and later a daughter. Thus my mum was the Swedish au pair hired to take care of my younger aunt. So what would that make me actually? English? By birth and culture, perhaps, but DNA doesn’t die. It evolves across creed, race, time and space, absorbing life experience, and it informs us, inhabits us. It is life, across generation after generation after generation.

Rilke says,

I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.

If the road to death begins at birth, every day is a trial and a baptism, a learning and a triumph, great or small. The gift of life, each moment, miraculous in itself, held, within the greater encircling arms of death.

Amidst the tumult of all this living, we may learn to listen, as attentively and courageously as we dare, to the only authentic voice there can ever be, the unwavering, quiet whisper of the wisdom of our own coherent heart. The word courage coming from the French, la coer of course – the heart. And so, with conviction, we may walk among forces far greater than ourselves, from womb to tomb – these great portals of life. The invitation to be present in the only moment we can ever know, as we follow our star.

Do you begin to see how all this works?

I took a photo of my dad in his coffin, just before trundling into the furnace. Great photo. He’s in his best flowery shirt, sporting an impressive shock of white hair and a flourishing, wild, two-tone goatee – somehow his final act of rebellion. There is a gorgeous bunch of fragrant tuberoses, clasped between his gentle hands, grace imposed there by death, and a sticky fat bud of weed placed neatly on top by my brother. There, our father lay, shrunken, except for that nose and all that hair. He looked like a sadhu in the photo. Outside, I watched the plume. Up in smoke. Ashes to ashes.

Later, going through some of his things, out pops an old photo he took of his dead dad. Interesting.

Well, the next big thing is Covid, media pandemia and global disarray a year or so later. I decide to bail and start a new life on that little bit of land I bought in Mexico some fifteen years ago with the ex-wifey. I’m sitting here now, in a field, in a trailer that belongs to my eccentric rock n roll psychic sister. I hauled it across the States from the Burning Man ranch, down to Baja California Sur, Mexico. It is beautiful here, elemental, an oasis in the desert, framed by dramatic mountains, tall palms, mango trees, and the Pacific. I’m sitting here, in a field, in a trailer, off-grid, working on my game plan. And then it hit me! Wait a minute! How did that even happen?

He’s here with me now, laughing, the fucker. We laugh a lot together actually. It’s a beautiful thing. The more I forgive him, the more I love him, the more I love myself. He is, after all, an undeniable and inextricable part of who I am. As of course is my mother. All our ancestors. We are all connected thus, forwards and backwards through time. Death, to that extent, an illusion, like time. A tough notion to grasp for the Cartesian mind. Yet what we notice is, that those cultures and traditions who remain close to death in their everyday life, who honour and embrace their ancestors and the thin veil that separates us, live life to the fullest. There is no life without death. Embracing both fully can be our only freedom.

I wandered off the street into the Victoria & Albert Museum one day in London soon after my father passed, a favourite haunt of his, and found myself in the sculpture wing, drawn inextricably towards a bronze that had a numinous effect on my psyche. As I circled around it, running my hands over its form, I felt an overwhelming, beatific sense of the embodiment of the mortal suffering of all of humanity. I felt the tears. The collective grief. This apparently was Rodin’s “Fallen Angel.” To me an exquisite expression of Life. Of Love. Of Death. Of Art.

So I wrote a love poem for death.

What heaving wings fell through the black night
spinning down to earth, hot body crouched
in the moist ground

pressed over naked form – the beloved
crumpled wings and heart
a kiss of tenderness, longing and loss

the angel has descended, into gravity’s well
she is no more, but the density of blood, feather, bone
upon this earth…

Youth, beauty, were fleeting. You must love this ageing body, now
the slow withering, sallow skin, crumpled leaf
scuttled by the wind

there can be no relief
but the yearning, the submission
to gravity, to grief

ever portentous of
the great beauty
death.

Bound in eccentric orbit
ephemeral grace, returning
to dust, slow embrace

offering a love poem
gasping, still
clinging to this body

all that has been loved

yet the tearing ascent

.

exhale…

Fly close to the source, brilliant
plenipotentiary, mesmerised, then
forgetful, falling, willingly

falling back, ever deeply
into the body of earth, once more
into love’s embrace.

Category: Poetry, Soliloquy, Sublunaray ranting

Posted on May 26, 2021 by Nik

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Lunar

Having to pee three times a night is great for star gazing, especially when you live in a field in an oasis in the desert. And then there’s a full lunar eclipse. Gotta be cool, right! So I watch her rise, magnificent, low in the evening sky, sailing through the palms. Silhouetted, their skirts swish in the breeze. She leaves them and the mountains, and enters the open sky. There’s a cool glass of Chardonnay in my hand (from the Guadalupe valley. I like to imbibe local nectar of the gods whilst beholding celestial bodies.) It is delicious. I celebrate all the rich sensory beauty of this world.
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Category: Sublunaray ranting

Posted on March 18, 2021 by Nik

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I got pillaged

It was perhaps an inevitability, given that I am currently living in an old trailer in a dark field with an obfuscating hedgerow adjacent, perfect for a little bandit to make away with my new TV and silver flute and the lovely pineapple I had been ripening. It’s a poor country. The little shit took my Kindle amongst the other items loaded into the royal blue wheelbarrow and carted off. I followed his footprints and my wheelbarrow tire tracks in the morning, through the fields and up the road. He started ordering books through my linked amazon account. At least the fucker can read, but Read More

Category: Sublunaray ranting

Posted on January 17, 2021 by Nik

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The Bees Reprise (nomadic meanderings pt III)

They left
I felt their absence every day
The curious thrill of knowing, there is this thriving
silent throng of dangerous
vital existence
right outside my door
I missed that life force.Read More

Category: Sublunaray ranting

Posted on December 28, 2020 by Nik

3 Comments

The Bees – nomadic meanderings (part II)

I’m sitting here with a cuppa in the early morning sun in my field in BCS. I’m taking in the expanse of tall shimmering palms, stretching out towards the jagged mountain ridges that divide this primal peninsula.

There’s a swarm of bees hanging low, 5 meters away from my little trailer home here. I have been watching them morph slowly over a week as they come and go, presumable scouting for a new home.Read More

The sky, palms, hedgerows and this fallow field are alive with woodpeckers, golden orioles, crimson cardinals, daft crested quail, the ever curious visiting hummers, little tits and big tits in the bushes (if only) all flitting about, squawking and chittering, and over head, cranes, kestrels, hawks, osprey. And I walk down to the long empty beaches to watch the elegant frigate birds soaring, captivating my soul, and I fly with them in their spirit of infinity. But here, in the middle of this great vibrant oasis in the Sonoran desert, I sit. And I have no water.

It’s complicated, like any currency, and water is arguably the only true currency of life. I feel like I’ve made all the right moves, spoken to the right people (the comisariado del Ejido, Juez del agua, tenant farmer neighbours and land owners and all their cousins (everyone seems related) who all have their water. But as yet, it is denied me. I am told by the spirit of place that it is coming, and I must be patient. Living out of water bottles for what, 6 weeks now, cooking, showering, watering my little nursery – total pain in the arse – and the spirit says, be patient. Fine.

I am on a hectare here and it is will be fecund, floribundant, productive and paradisical, as soon as I get water and on my game, and I am champing at the bit.

Still, I feel I have to earn my place somehow here, again, like getting to burning man, you haven’t really arrived till you get completely whited out in a dust storm and emerge a part of the place.

And whilst I am surrounded by life, a seemingly diverse creative community and infinite possibility, I still feel alone in my heart.

Therefore today, I am going to make a beehive.

Last night as I was sleeping,

I dreamt—marvellous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvellous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.

Finished the hive on Christmas morning, and spent the rest of the day on the beach. (See that sunset 😉

And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvellous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvellous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

– Antonio Machado

Anoche cuando dormía

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una fontana fluía
dentro de mi corazón.
Dí: ¿por qué acequia escondida,
agua, vienes hasta mí,
manantial de nueva vida
en donde nunca bebí?

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una colmena tenía
dentro de mi corazón;
y las doradas abejas
iban fabricando en él,
con las amarguras viejas,
blanca cera y dulce miel.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que un ardiente sol lucía
dentro de mi corazón.
Era ardiente porque daba
calores de rojo hogar,
y era sol porque alumbraba
y porque hacía llorar.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que era Dios lo que tenía
dentro de mi corazón

Category: Poetry, Sublunaray ranting

Posted on December 27, 2020 by Nik

4 Comments

On the current – nomadic meanderings (part I)

Right, so this little sojourn, to which you are invited, is predicated on the ongoing exploration of the idea that there are two fundamental forces in the universe, namely fear, (withdrawal) and love, (expansion) and that we get to chose in which direction we lean each and every moment, mid pandemia or otherwise. Like every day, all the time. (There is a third principle concerning power/greed, but that’s perhaps more anthropocentric and less universal and I’m not going there.)
You cool with that?
Then we shall begin.
Read More

I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages. My wrists have experienced in turn the caresses of silk, the abuses of wool, the gold of princes and the chains of slaves. My fingers have parted a thousand veils, my lips have made a thousand virgins blush, and my eyes have seen cities die and empires perish.
From my mouth you will hear Arabic, Turkish, Castilian, Berber, Hebrew, Latin and vulgar Italian, because all tongues and all prayers belong to me. But I belong to none of them. I belong only to God and to the earth, and it is to them that I will one day soon return.

– Leo Africanus (Amin Maalouf)

coded ninja training school insignia

And so it is. Well, perhaps not quite so many virgins, though my own journey began in Granada, many spins around sol past, and we may come back to that in some other journal, but for now we kick off in rural Japan, where I found myself during the advent of the novel corona virus, and where, after 6 months of ninja training – I decided armageddon outa here.

I could not get a flight to Baja California, which was plan A at that time, so decided to go home to ground in London.

Two outward bound flights were cancelled back to back and it was indeed looking armageddonesque but, outta the frying pan into the fire perhaps, the skies opened and I made it back to Ol’ Blighty, of course, just in time for lockdown.

Lockdown in London, as it turns out, was truly fabulous. Spring and summer were glorious this extraordinary year of our lord 2020, and I found myself meandering daily, on my bicycle, as one does, through the neighbourhood, across the heath, along the river, making friends through arbours and exuberant rose bushes, with those who would normally not have the time of day for some random wanderer, but wander and wonder one must. There is magic whenever and wherever we slow down and pay attention, I swear it. I heard a plenitude of simple stories, a 20 year devotional love affair with a magnificent crimson clematis, the architectural homage carved into a householders gable, about Victor Schauberger and Steiner from a paunchy sunburnt Austrian, playing haunting guitar music on a bench by the Thames. I followed the airwaves echoing across the water till I found him. After a moment outside of time, basking in liquid, sunlit, high tide shimmering bank to bank equilateral, I complimented the man on the ethereal music – and that was it, another life affirming, deep dive through the looking glass of an English summer afternoon. He tells me about the ancient artesian spring, Caesar’s Well, right by my very own place of shelter near Putney Heath, and this becomes my new source – not only of vibrant, fresh sweet water, but meetings with remarkable people all summer long.

Meanwhile, as shit gets more real, or surreal, and pandemia penetrated the minds of the populace, more and more drowning in the media kool-aid, one couldn’t help feeling ever more inclined to turn off the news feeds and just get on with life, right? We needn’t get into the contentious issues of epidemiology, the human virome and all that fervent ground, but as you may already know, I did find one cure – at least it worked for me.

BBC News

Yet as pandemia did not abate, and I got bored with wanking, I thought to myself, as one does, I’ll just go and rent a farm house and grow kind weed and make some hard cash for the game plan, til all this is over.

Thus, after finding a cool car, and a couple of months exploring the curious Midlands and the magical West country, I finally found an absolutely gorgeous old farmhouse, in way north Somerset, with a huge barn, and got ready to sign all the concomitant contractual obligations, relinquishing any remaining rights to fiscal liberty. But you know… something just didn’t feel quite right. That quiet little voice is my best friend. So… we think, fuck it, let’s cut our losses, do a 180º and reinvigorate that Baja plan. Besides… winters are crap in the UK. Time to fly.

Mulege coastline, BCS (you can hear the kayakers voices over a mile away in this solitude)

So. Baja California Sur is the peninsula that extends below the Mexican border south of California “Norte.” It’s the last frontier, wild, impoverished Sonoran desert. This long narrow appendix, crosses the Tropic of Cancer, harbours the grey whale spawning grounds of the Gulf of Mexico on the east side, and the wild Pacific romping grounds of the humpback off the western edge. Bought a hectare in an oasis here with the ex-wife and my mate Mark who won the football pools and put down some cash in 2004. That all didn’t work out as planned… so we begin again. And of course, this is where I may be found now, in a retro-fitted, solar powered, trailer-home, expropriated from the Burning Man ranch in desolate bum-fuck Gerlach, Nevada, and hauled all the way down here. That’s a long road and a journey in itself I can tell you. I might. But for now, let’s just have some bullet points.

Recalibrate all previous and variously waylaid plans
Go to California
Recalibrate again after being proffered a 2005, 9.75m (32’) long trailer-home from my inimitable sister, 24hrs before leaving the UK.
Find truck with capacity to haul 4.5 tons (10,000lbs) for under $3k
Buy 2002 6.0L V8 Chevy Suburban ($3.6k)
Figure out weight distribution hitches and trailer breaks, for real.
Pick up forlorn trailer from abandoned storage lot in remote high Nevada desert.

It’s October 2020. On the journey from Monterey (California) to Gerlach (Nevada, via Petaluma to pick up solar panels off a decommissioned commercial install, see, we’re thinking ahead the whole time…) I slept a night in the back of my new Suburban (big enough indeed for a whole neighbourhood, but it was just little old me.) … forgetting, the Black Rock desert is high desert, and after having become accustomed to day/night temperatures of what, 20/16ºC, it dropped to -3ºC (27ºF) but what a dazzling starry desert night it was, a little too invigorating for my blood type nonetheless. Of course it was too cold to shit when I got up before dawn, so fired up the bestial Tonka toy and set off on final stretch to the BM playa. (In case you are not familiar, the Burning Man “playa” is the vast open plane of a lake bed, flanked by apparently modest, though in fact massive (given deceptive scale of landscape) red mountain ridges – think Martian planes and you’re there.) It was, like, totally deserted. Came across not another living soul in days. Like, the whole desert, from Reno to the playa, except for when I finally decided to pull over to take a dump in a gulley below the road, when of course I hear a vehicle slow down and pull over while my trousers are round my ankles. It was, wouldn’t you know it, a cop. Busted with my pants down – how about that. He was just checking to make sure I was OK. Yeah, well. Wished I’d got a shot of him actually. Big fellah. Immense muscly police man, tattooed all over, wide grin. Fairly surreal, Twin Peaks moment to be sure. Anyway, driving through this god forsaken, harsh and remote country without 10,000+ free spirited revellers in hot pursuit – not even one – well, just the one, was exceptional, it must be said.

Dawn on Pyramid Lake, Nevada

Long story short, well lets do some more bullet points:

Haul trailer back to Monterey. (That was a dramatically long haul, way over the high Sierra’s, tranny and engine braying, endless no where to stop long central valley home stretch)
Sort out (two years of) playa exposure and the dust (this is infamous, high desert lake bed, alkaline, super fine, clingy clay dust – it never actually goes away – it’s antimatter.)
Order solar charge controller, inverter, hammock, hat, shade structure, bulk supplies (mostly looseleaf Earl-grey.)
Hit the road proper.

As timing would have it, I spent my last footloose night in California on a lone desert bluff, just north of the Mexicali border, Jupiter and Saturn on high. Dawn was the morn of the day of my birth – how bout that. I crossed the border into Mexico that morning and how could you not help feeling that was auspicious. Nevertheless, the really quite cute and sexy customs lady officers in tight fitted uniforms took all my money. Well, not all, but a good slice of my diminishing pie. Rebirth has always got to be a bit uncomfortable I suppose. Cunts. (No broader insult to the fairer sex there, just customs cunts.)

Wow. Mexico. Borders. The shocking contrast across a political high fence. A dramatic and charged line dividing culture, landscape, opportunity and liberty. This border presents a brazen contrast between poverty and wealth in stark relief – and depending on how you attribute all of these terms, I am not yet sure which side of this divide is the richest.

In fact, a man has to go far, from everyone and everything he knows, to be truly alone, to find himself, and that quiet voice, on a far away desert beach at dawn, waiting in stillness for sunrise, the divine whisper in the lapping waves…

I heard a voice say, a cup of fucking tea wouldn’t half be nice right now… could have been God’s voice, we were that close, but think it might have been mine – hard to say. Though I happen to know God does drink earl grey.

You read this far! Might as well subscribe for the next episode…

Category: letters from a fool, Sublunaray ranting

Posted on September 3, 2020 by Nik

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Transcendence

What ever you’re doing – stop. Close your eyes, listen…

a short journey to infinite embrace

Category: music

Posted on August 28, 2020 by Nik

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Freedom and Pandemia

What scares me is not death. What scares me is having our freedom to live responsibly taken away. This, it appears, is more ominous and imminent a threat than death by any virus old or new.

If I go out in the world and get into a spin on the motorway, heart disease, malaria, if I encounter fire, flood, earthquake, drowning, liver disease, electrocution, sky diving anomaly, cancer, TB, or any other form of misadventure and death – then so be it. This is life. We live with the possibility of death everyday in countless ways no matter how carefully we try to avoid truly living. Epidemics do indeed come and go every decade or so (pre and post the phenomena of global media sensationalism.) And depending on our luck, our number may be called at year 0, 3, 23, 49, 56, 78, 93, no matter how bravely or cautiously we chose to live.

If I get a virus, then I will deal with that reality. If I get a virus and it kills me, then I’ll eat dirt. Meanwhile, I reject any fear impressed upon me by pandemia – the hysteria born of unconscionable hype, mishandling and misinformation through media, authority – and increasingly, blinded by fear and coercion – public opinion. I, like the unsung global multitude of critical thinkers, do not carry this fear virus.

Let me be clear, whilst respecting others choices, giving deference in particular to the vulnerable and elderly at risk, I have been fortunate enough to travel relatively freely, not washed my hands any more than common good hygiene suggests, and not “locked down” my life per coercive “guidelines.” Maybe I am just lucky, maybe my own instincts and innate intelligence are valid, or maybe those guidelines are in fact what have kept this particular virus in check – though that is really what is in question.

“Sweden is betting that strict coronavirus rules like those imposed in virtually every other European country can only work in the short term. Treating citizens as children lacking the judgment to make wise decisions is not a sustainable approach. Addressing a prolonged crisis, or one that comes in repeated waves, will require citizens to be active and responsible participants in their security — not mere recipients of government instructions.”

(https://www.politico.eu/article/sweden-coronavirus-lessons/)

Yet the real question I don’t hear being asked by any public authority is, how are we in fact responsible for gross imbalances in environmental health globally? And, how can we change behaviours and responsibilities in order to mitigate the next “unexpected” viral mutation splashing back at us? How do our behaviours and encroachments on wilderness cause life at large to respond?

Like much of western science and politics, we continue patching and treating the symptom rather than looking deeply at the underlying cause. How about taking responsibility from the top down, instead of bludgeoning the citizenry with dubious controls, bandaids, smoke and mirrors, or other dumb political devices, divisiveness and assertions.

Asides from all this, there is the observable fact that the vast majority, and certainly the few people I know who have “had” covid, get over it soon enough like any pernicious rat-ass flu bug. There are many exceptions and those less fortunate, there is no argument here, but given the relative numbers, this is the exception proving the rule – NOT the other way round.

If you really want to look at the numbers without bias, review carefully, remembering that these numbers are all relative to inconsistent incidences of testing, unreported and asymptomatic cases, and those who have pre-existing conditions compromising their immune systems to any environmental dis-ease, just to name a very few frailties in the loaded statistics game.

Let’s just do a quick comparative reality check here anyway. After all the insistence of authorities, experts, doctors, independent researchers and alternative (conspiracy) theories around the world – very few, if any, verifiable let alone verified facts are apparent. This is evidenced by the extremely inconsistent views and ensuing policies, shifting government guidelines and expert advice. OK, maybe it is an unravelling phenomena, if there really is any truly novel phenomenon here at all besides pandemia.

And what is also not being discussed publicly, in so called democratic society, are the profoundly dehumanising and disempowering mandates being enforced with no transparency by appointed authority – much like those born out of the dubious Patriot Act, also born out of a climate of fear – generally increasingly restrictive measures across the western world. These restrictions are never retracted after the “emergency” subsides, nor in fact have they made the world a safer place to live. Yet slowly, steadily, behind closed doors, increasing control measures are passed into “law”.

These measures are not a debatable concern. It is a reality. Whether that be in how we manage our money, how we are screened, referenced and manipulated just for the privilege of renting an apartment, boarding a plane, purchase goods, and increasingly, how we transact our lives. Forgive me if this sounds dramatic, but this does represent an increasing police state, enacting a slow strangle hold on our liberties through coercion.

Meanwhile, elderly people are forcibly dying isolated from their families (a heinous crime against any dignified humanity) weddings, family businesses, art, and all the institutions that make us human, are being denied, destroyed, or at best eroded to the verge of non viability.

We are unable to socialise, gather, celebrate, explore life and art in the way we, as civil (relatively) society chose. This has already been taken away, and lets be clear, it is not coming back unless we understand that our freedom to live our lives together as human communities is our sovereign right – not as given to us by the dictates of any authority who, whether purely instinctively, opportunistically, or by design, through division and fear mongering, are taking control of our lives and our liberties.

So let’s just do a real number check here. As of end of August 2020, we have an official count of some 847,000 recorded deaths by covid globally. (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)

This is a big number for a viral outbreak. This is also at present, an absolutely unreliable number due to numerous countries apparently not being transparent with their count on one hand, and on the other, that these numbers include a very (very) large percentage of people who had previous severe health conditions and died with covid – not because of covid. But let’s just run with 847,000 for now – or better still, let’s double it up to

1.7 million as a random approximation for the year 2020.

Compare with global early deaths as recorded in 2017 (https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death)

Cardiovascular diseases 17.8 million
Cancers 9.6 million
Respiratory diseases: 3.9 million
Lower respiratory infections 2.6 million
Diarrhea 1.6 million
Road injuries 1.2 million
etc, etc.

In 2017, 56 million people died, 140 million were born.

Births and deaths are projected to be more or less comparable through 2016, 2018, 2019, and likely 2020 and 2021.

It comes back to the fundamental, primary and personal question of quality versus quantity. How do I want to live my life? In fear, controlled-protected by ever restrictive rules and regulations – or in self responsible freedom, as part of an increasingly autonomous, decentralised, civilised, adult global society – perhaps like the one seemingly sane stance exemplified by Sweden

Obviously, I chose mutually respectful freedom, even when that includes questioning the inevitable, agenda driven rhetoric of media and authority.

Category: Sublunaray ranting

Posted on May 16, 2019 by Nik

1 Comment

Extinction, Rebellion, or Obsolescence: A peer to peer platform to redefine humanity’s greatest challenge – itself!

The idea of arresting increasing climate related disaster was recently taken up by the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement in the UK. XR represent a confrontational if disruptive demand to hold government accountable for the denial or dallying of their roles in practices shown to disrupt climate stability. Greenpeace, NRDC, and countless other environmental and humanitarian organisations across the globe have continued their efforts to hold industry and government to account since the 1840’s. Read More

[…] The science is clear, the facts are incontrovertible, and it is unconscionable to us that our children and grandchildren should have to bear the terrifying brunt of an unprecedented disaster of our own making. […] Our government is complicit in ignoring the precautionary principle, and in failing to acknowledge that infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is non-viable.

from XR’s first open letter of Oct 2018, endorsed by a multitude of academics and scientists.

Skip preamble

The problem of exponential human growth and consumption across the planet (see compelling documentary Growing Pains), is nevertheless being challenged, by XR in this case, from within the dysfunctional socio-political system, of which we all remain an inextricable part. Given that capitalist, corporate, institutional and government interests – those entities that retain the balance of power – have hitherto not succeeded, or been interested in effecting a fundamental common understanding, respect and mutual interest in “the commons,” representing clean air, fresh water, ocean, soil, mineral, forest, human and animal resources; as not being subject to any form of ownership or sale at the expense of humanity and environment as a whole – there seems little chance that the burgeoning threat of climate change can be relied upon to be mitigated by said authorities. (In case you are in any doubt about the deep-set and unshakeable grasp of the dominant destructive forces, articles such as the LRB’s Gulf Bargain, or if you’re really brave Our Alien Planet ought to make it pretty clear.)

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”. Buckminster Fuller

It may be that, though resistance is a necessary challenge and stopgap to these forces, the scale and complexity of the entrenched causes mean that the relative mosquito whine of the eco movement can have only moderate enduring effect. (Note the erosion of civil liberties under the guise of national security, and the tendency of law to support the global “oil standard” rather than environment or civil humanity, let alone malfeasant activists. (See LRB article The Right To Protest.) Governments and private enterprise continue to expropriate planet-wide commons in covert operations at the abject cost of bio-diversity and humanity everywhere. (See documentaries Ocean Monopoly and Running out of sand respectively.) Lastly, compounding this dynamic, in the words of evolutionary biologist Dr Elisabet Sahtouris:

[…] Deep recessions happen when a financial system based on debt concentrates wealth unreasonably, the destruction compounded by other bad banking practices such as deceptively cheap credit, repeated ‘thin air’ derivatives and unholy gambling on peoples and nations’ debts. As banks require borrowing nations and businesses to shut down their economies, they cause massive unemployment and the reduction of services, while forcing them to sell off, to the already wealthy, vast amounts of infrastructure, from transportation systems to energy production to hospitals and natural land that should be commons. worldbusiness.org/celebrating-crisis-towards-a-culture-of-cooperation/

Maybe we need an approach that sidesteps rather than takes on the slippery and brutish old guard state of mind.

So what are the options for conscientious and concerned people across the globe? I might support the cause of XR, but I may not have confidence in the approach, so long as the balance of power remains squarely within the confines of such a divisive, if not duplicitous system – intentional or otherwise. As suggested, the problem with any confrontational approach, is that we can not be separate from the cause, no matter what our sensibilities and allegiances may be, so long as we are a part of the system we fight or uphold. But what about the evolutionary principal. The principal that may negate the need for a seemingly lame precautionary principal in a short sighted world.

Ecosophy philosophy

First and foremost, we must recognize globalization as a biological process – something that is happening to a natural living system we call humanity. Then we can see how an economics that violates the fundamental principles by which living systems are organized currently threatens the demise of human civilization. worldbusiness.org/celebrating-crisis-towards-a-culture-of-cooperation/

Our own bodies brilliantly model win-win living economies, as do mature ecosystems such as rainforests and prairies, thriving through sharing and recycling. The economic relationships concerning the acquisition of raw materials, their transformation into useful products, distribution, consumption, and recycling, is as applicable to human economies as to the economies of all nature’s ecosystems.

Towards a universal language

From the 2018 film Arrival

Consider an inter-dependent, peer to peer, global currency, reorienting monetary value towards a direct relationship with life and each other – as distinct from dissociative and disproportionate relationships with things, nation states, and the golden idols of wealth, power and ownership. Sounds like a fanciful solution to such a complex problem. Yet the burgeoning adoption of nascent blockchain technologies present a very real and timely opportunity to address the global socio-economic and political problems we are facing, from the ground up. To get a concise understanding of the principals and use cases scenarios for Bitcoin-like blockchain technologies, see this 6 minute video. Bear in mind that there already exists a proliferation of alternative cryptocurrency and blockchain solutions striving to solve problems like the one we are considering here.

[…] The Internet is perhaps the largest self-organizing living system on the planet, composed of living people using computers as tools for connection in distributed networks without central control. Thus it provides the practical possibility of its use for global cooperation, information sharing and distributed network governance, even for non-debt currencies. All of these are showing up more and more rapidly and extensively as our situation becomes more dire.

[…] Alternative currencies modelled on the equivalent ATP debit card system used in our bodies could restimulate economies overnight. worldbusiness.org/celebrating-crisis-towards-a-culture-of-cooperation/

ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) as quoted by Dr Sahtouris above, is the molecular unit of intracellular energy – the de facto basic unit of energy-currency across ALL life forms. In all biology, from cells to organisms to bodies to businesses to blockchains to ecosystems to Earth, homeostasis is only maintained by the equitable distribution of all available energy as required by parts of the whole. As such, ATP is representative of a scalable, biomimetic currency model that can support all of humanity, non human species and environment as a whole – the whole of life on Earth – if we collectively so chose to expropriate the responsibility for our own planet-wide wellbeing by utilising an ATP modelled blockchain protocol.

This is an idea who’s time has come, not perhaps, because it’s a new idea in itself, but because these emerging, distributed, peer to peer, blockchain technologies, egalitarian by definition, have not existed up until now.

They continue to evolve virally and have done so since the birth of the internet with increasing rapidity. And whilst the information age has hitherto been subject to the paradigm of existing hierarchy and market forces, there are precedents in the blockchain space to demonstrate the readiness of the heart-mind intelligence that this idea is predicated upon.

to facilitate the creation of a viral, biomimetic blockchain and token serving as a true unit of currency to facilitate the unification of core themes across individuals, cooperatives and organisations in all humanitarian-environmental initiatives. Namely those who strive to assume responsibility of care, where existing global hierarchical governance continues to fall short of a common cause of welfare for all human and non human species.
towards a redistribution of global resources in a fashion that considers only the whole of life on Earth as one interdependent organism, based on the natural design principles of Ecological Economics (Natural Capitalism) and ATP.
to generate empowerment and awareness of global interdependence through a common nominated currency.

There are a number of blockchain projects that are approaching this ideal, but most remain commercially oriented – none as yet taking the life first, biomimetic stance outlined here.

Development

Key Features

Branched Participatory Budgeting (see open source platform consulproject.org for basis of PB)
- community (seed – pod)
- city (colonies)
- global (system)
Localised communities of up to 150 members
- Based on localised community needs:
  - natural capital – environmental resource generation and protection
  - food / shelter
  - healthcare / education
Trustless / self-sovereign identity participation
Smart contract / DAO execution

Token

Sample value / attribution strategies:

Use ATPcoin pegged to stablecoins (USDT) as alternative to fiat currencies ($£€) to encourage broader public donations through ATP-Human coin, with the intention of on-boarding existing non profit organisations.
Airdrop (100 ATPcoins) to anyone prepared to register (anywhere on the planet, 800 billion supply.) When anyone either gives or receives ATPcoin to nonprofit cause, a portion of the coins are burned (countering deflation) and giver and receiver get a second coin (Humancoin) which has a monetary value of ATPcoin x 1.5
Donate (airdropped tokens) to increasing nominated non profit humanitarian / environmental groups or community pods. Groups acquire a wallet and accruing tokens until claimed / threshold reached for a given localised environmental / humanitarian project.
To be further defined and extrapolated…

This writer is no one in particular per se, but We are everything. If you have critical and constructive thoughts around this idea, please get in touch. We need everybody! But YOU are the one we have been waiting for! Your Planet Needs YOU

Everything you and your mum need to know about the new distributed currency and the decentralised information revolution – how and why to get onboard, in a nutshell.

Category: ecologic design, Sublunaray ranting, tech

Posted on September 4, 2018 by Nik

1 Comment

Desire

What’s not to love about a little love poem ; )

Waiting

impatiently to savour
the smokey taste
tobacco wine chocolate dark
traveller’s lips upon mine softly
once more to hear that husky voice
chattering like water coursing across
mossy mountain rocks singing

the delirious song of being
into my soul under my skin waiting Read More

Category: my poems, Poetry

Posted on March 20, 2018 by Nik

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Equinox Phoenix Rising

After an especially dark and internal winter, the light of new creativity and power have been welling up from within those murky depths, the looming horizon becomes present, the Phoenix rises – it must be spring! Here’s a graphic to honour the phenomenon.

Category: Sublunaray ranting

Posted on April 6, 2017 by Nik

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Your pocket guide to the digital cash revolution. Bitcoin and beyond.

Everything you and your mum need to know about the new distributed currency and the decentralised information revolution – how and why to get onboard, in a nutshell.

Bitcoin was born out of an extraordinary innovation to resolve the loss of faith in, and the failings of central banks, sovereign states and governments, after the economic collapse of 2008 in particular.

It does this in a way that has sparked a surge of innovation in the way information is stored and exchanged across the world wide web.

Here’s the deal

Bitcoin and alternative “cryptocurrencies,” or digital money, are staged to revolutionise civilisation as we know it. They are doing this because of the maturation of peer-to-peer networks that are able to facilitate digital transactions without relying on trust – that is, the system is mathematically self contained and does not rely on any central bank to lend you fiat promissory notes (“I promise to pay the bearer on demand…”)

Bitcoin itself is an open accounting system allowing any number of users around the world to track ownership of digital tokens. All transactions are logged in a public ledger called the “blockchain”. This growing chain of data blocks records every Bitcoin transaction since the launch of the system and every user has access to a copy of these transactions. Bitcoin therefore creates transparency and accountability.

There are other uses and evolutions of this blockchain technology, and there are other cryptographic currencies besides Bitcoin, which offer alternative flexibility and features (such as privacy, liquidity, speed, immutable contractual information exchange, and so on.)

Why do I care?

Because you own it, not the government, who owns all fiat currencies.

We are living in a time where the distrust of governments and nation-states is a survival necessity in increasing numbers of countries. Using Bitcoin, you own your assets in absolute terms. Unlike PayPal or a bank, no one is able to freeze your account for any reason. You don’t need to trust anyone else to handle your assets – no payment processor, merchant or credit card. These properties are valuable, and Bitcoin’s price today, in spite of nascent volatility, shows how well they are working.

Unlike the (oil standard) almighty dollar, the value of Bitcoin, along with the network itself, is not controlled by any government. The rate of inflation is fixed in code and can’t be changed. The government can print more money to compensate for its spending, thereby devaluing your pay cheque or savings.

It is exceptionally secure

The fundamentals of the peer to peer blockchain technology at the heart of Bitcoin are based on military grade cryptography and have been well tested. The Bitcoin network has developed ever increasing resilience after nearly a decade of attempts to attack it, alongside massive open source development. The Bitcoin network has demonstrated that it is over 18 billion dollars secure at time of writing, and the market capitalisation continues to grow.

Once you purchase or send any amount of bitcoin to anyone, that transaction is visible and verifiable on the blockchain forever. The blockchain is immutable and can not be edited by any party. These qualities, amongst others, make Bitcoin transactions many times more secure than using a credit or debit card.

Note that the Bitcoin network itself is solid – however, the point of entry or exchange, like any transaction that transfers value of any sort anywhere, remains vulnerable to exploitation. The usual caveats apply.

A) Centralised: Government, bank, telecom monopolies B) Decentralised: AirBnB, Uber C) Distributed: P2P networks, Bitcoin, Ethereum, other blockchains

The revolution will be distributed

Blockchain technology is turning top-down hierarchical power structures on their side by using distributed peer to peer, or person to person digital innovation. In traditional, centralised server-client hierarchy, the user remains subject to the demands and stipulations of central controlling authorities, corporations and service providers.

Any service built on a blockchain however, whether currency, social media, or any web based service, contract or application, is controlled by you.

What does this mean?

Basically, your value – in terms of wealth, resources, knowledge, attention, social media profiles… no longer needs to be stored, controlled or manipulated by any external authority or corporation – no centralised bank, censoring or marketing driven body.

Instead, your inputs and contributions to society remain yours and are distributed across a living global network instantaneously in these transparent secure ledger systems called blockchains.

“How the Moustache was Invented” Censorship? OK, fine – not everyone may appreciate or like my sense of humour, but you don’t have to be my “friend.”I prefer not to be censored by FB puritans on “my” own pages!

So this means a transaction, contract, or social media post I create and make public (for better or worse) is distributed everywhere at once and can not be censored by any third party.

Value, efficiency, peace of mind

Here’s the thing – my bank pays me something like 0.001% to keep my money for me, subjects me to endless inconveniences, restrictions, delays and charges, then turns around and charges the person in line behind me 29.99% interest on my money which the bank is lending them. It is investing the rest of my savings (such as they may be) in weapons (and arms proliferation), fossil fuels, tobacco and alcohol industries, and other old world power structures I do not wish to support.

By withdrawing our resources, we are no longer complicit in wars for oil, tantalum, or territory! Bitcoin is a global currency that transcends sovereign states and borders!

I can buy, sell or transfer effective cryptocurrencies in any amount (micro or macro sums) for an ever expanding number of goods and services for a negligible operational fee, without being encumbered by any third party. These transactions are propagated transparently and securely across an unstoppable distributed network instantly.

Human Networks As Living Biosystems

The cat is out the bag

This burgeoning distributed blockchain revolution represents the greatest evolution in global society since the internet heralded and changed everything about the post-industrial information age. Distributed blockchain technology is not going away. Though in its relatively early stages, it has made a solid entry on the world stage.

At the time of this writing, the sum of all cryptocurrencies (bitcoin holding around 70% and “Alt-coins” around 30% of the cryptocurrency market) are in the 185th place by S&P 500 standards, with a total global market capitalisation of some $27 Billion.¹

Banks, governments and other corporations are beginning to understand the relevance of, and therefore to take seriously and adopt blockchain technologies for their own infrastructure implementations, as their significance, presence and permanence becomes apparent. It is an irrefutably smart technology.

Institutional adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies should not usurp the control that these technologies afford the individual however, because Bitcoin as a fundamental technology is already out the bag as a discrete entity. By technological definition, it is decentralised and user controlled. However, the traditional gatekeepers hold sway. It is up to us therefore to dictate our own values by using these “disruptive” technologies for our own needs and interests.

Bitcoin is not alone. There are a plethora of alternative cryptocurrencies, each serving a particular need or function in the varied marketplaces of society, and each has their own value. But bitcoin, as the main-stage example, is the 1st ever global currency not controlled by government or bank. It can not be counterfeited or stolen. By design and utility – secure, versatile, accessible, wide adoption, limited supply – it can only increase in value over time, regardless of day to day price fluctuation.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained

Whilst blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies remain relatively new and volatile – the trend is clearly forward and upward. They may not be quite ready for mainstream plug and play adoption, but we would all do well to get on board early. They are growing extremely rapidly because they represent solid and meaningful technologies which solve many of the problems of access and distribution across all political and economic boundaries and strata of society.

So how do I get my 1st bitcoin?

It’s easy and I encourage you to play with it! You can get ahead of the curve and be a part of the revolution by investing any nominal fractional amount right now, $1 for example, here’s how:

You need two things; follow the links below – download and set-up should be as intuitive and straight forward as any greater or lesser online activity:

1) An account at a centralised exchange is perhaps still the easiest entry point. Not as painful as setting up an online bank account, but does requires uploading ID / verification. There are numerous exchanges you can explore, but Coinbase (referal link) has worked well for me.

If you do not want to set up an account with an exchange, and prefer to keep it peer to peer or person to person, you can try Localbitcoins. Also keep an eye on other emerging decentralised exchanges such as Bitsquare (BiSq.)

You can also ask anyone you know who has bitcoin to do a trade with/for you.

2) A digital wallet. There are numerous you can explore, but I can recommend Exodus for desktop use.

You can use your exchange to store your Bitcoin for small amounts, but it’s a good idea to get your own wallet which will generate your own Bitcoin address to which you can send and receive your BTC directly.

How do I spend it?

You will find increasing numbers of service providers and retailers which accept Bitcoin and numerous Altcoins . You can also send Bitcoin in any small or large amount across the web instantly to anyone else with a Bitcoin address anywhere in the world, so spread the word!

Limits of this article.

It’s purpose is to offer an accessible introduction to a large and bewildering area of information technology – it is basic in its intent, which is primarily an orientation and entry point. So hop in, the water is fine!

Knowledge is power. Further reading:

An introductory article complementary to this one – Everything You Need to Know About Bitcoin
What is money! Watch this video titled “Why can’t we just print money to pay off debt?“
Explore the current prices of top cryptocurrencies at coinmarketcap.com
The Cryptoversity is the place I have learnt most though. Great place to learn all about cryptocurrencies at large, with podcasts, videos and catch-up-to-speed introductory courses.
Andreas Antonopoulos is well regarded spokesperson for all things Bitcoin and offers any number of presentations via his youtube channel, though I recommend adding the query “disrupt” thus to keep it interesting. (Disrupt in this case, refers to any technology that challenges a monopolistic status quo)
The Blockchain And Us – low budget, but clear voiced documentary providing an overview of the implications of the blockchain.
Explore and play with new social media platforms built on blockchains like Steemit, Busy and Akasha
Your search engine is your friend – dive deep!

You might also like Extinction Rebellion or Obsolescence – p2p to the rescue

This website is an advertising free zone!

Support the decentralised currency revolution

Support your scribe!

Tips graciously received at Bitcoin Address:

17L1cc8dgmYVTYU54MrsURL2qZivhiTUdk

Category: Sublunaray ranting, tech

Posted on February 17, 2017 by Nik

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Revisiting India – Goa going gone

I had forgotten how completely and utterly fucking nuts India is. It’s so scuzzy and chaotic you still can’t believe it. But vibrant, colourful and exotic like nowhere else. Hop on your moped and into the foray and it’s adrenalin carnival all the way… Read More

Category: Sublunaray ranting

Posted on August 12, 2016 by Nik

4 Comments

Syzygy

poetry – I mean,

who fucking has time for poetry?

but,

there is a moment

when the light hits you

and you don’t feel

separate

a radiance obliterating

every atom and

purpose

as you stand

basking, blissful, desolate

at the edge

of the world

Category: my poems

Posted on August 6, 2016 by Nik

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Autobiography of Eve

an ode to sex, desire, rebellion and fallen women

The Triumph of Eve by Scott Siedman
Artist FB page Neverwuz Productions

Found this artwork in centre camp at burning man a few years ago (tracked down the artist through the playa vine for attribution) then stumbled across this poem and thought… they belong together!

Autobiography of Eve
by Ansel Elkins

Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
between Paradise and Earth… Read More

Category: Poetry, Sublunaray ranting

Posted on August 2, 2016 by Nik

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saved by beauty

Our one world, will be saved by beauty
when we remember, how to see
with the eyes of a child
into the golden heart, of every living thing.

We will feel deeply
the earthly memories
etched into the mountains of home
the forgetfulness in the oceans heave, the forgiving Read More

Category: my poems, Poetry

Posted on December 18, 2015 by Nik

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Another Earth

reflections after watching the haunting film of the same name.

Category: Sublunaray ranting

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Nik

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Burning Man, Carnival and A Pattern Language

Just as an individual person dreams fantastic happenings to release the inner forces which cannot be encompassed by ordinary events, so too a city needs its dreams.

A Pattern Language

is the seminal (1977) work of architect Christopher Alexander et al. describing a functional system to meet humanistic needs in the design of buildings, the urban environment and vital community.

Pattern number 58 “Carnival” is a prescient and perfect description of what has organically arisen as the ephemeral Black Rock City – otherwise known as Burning Man!

Category: Sublunaray ranting

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Nik

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Perspectives

On his way back to Earth, having just walked on the moon, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell experienced a radical transformation in perspective and thus consciousness. As he approached our planet from beyond it’s sphere of influence, “he was filled with an inner conviction as certain as any mathematical equation he’d ever solved. He knew that the beautiful blue world to which he was returning is part of a living system, harmonious and whole—and that we all participate, as he expressed it later, “in a universe of consciousness.”

Getting a handle on culture, perspective and future.

Consider this: there can be no omniscient, impartial chronicler of history, culture or identity – it is all subjective. Accepting this on the cultural scale has been a tremendous liberation as I understood that my people, my city, my country, the English speaking world, are not necessarily better. There are of course no “chosen” people anywhere and indeed, my spiritual beliefs are equal to any other aspirant of the divine whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Pantheist, Shamanic cosmologist, or astronomer on the road to awe. Read More

Category: Sublunaray ranting

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Nik

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ecstasy / rapture

This morning, through the twilight, the sound of lovemaking enters me through the open window – such an arousing, hauntingly beautiful sound – a sound that could heal the world. Strange though… whenever this ardent song strays on the breeze, it’s only ever that of the woman I hear, never the man lost in his own rapture. What’s up with that fellas?

Category: Sublunaray ranting

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Nik

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Invitation of the Ancients

Lithe bodied, we dance tall
swaying arcs of verdure leaning
into curved mists of space and aeons
as heaving earth-body
pulsing in tune, exultant
sun, sultry moon
we sink our roots, feeling
deep around you, and swirl
with wind, and stars reaching, we rise

upon the long song, of creation. Read More

Category: my poems, Poetry

Posted on January 2, 2015 by Nik

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The Return

Ekphrasis in response to Rilke’s Turning Point (below)

letting all the deep
rivers of the world – rush in /
cracking open the quartz prism
of your being – you surrendered
– you no longer had a choice Read More

Category: my poems

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Creating balance with the inner and outer spaces we inhabit.

Consciousness as the primary force in the universe

Consciousness and Space

Consciousness and Time

Outer Space vs Inner Space

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Life, Love and the Human Spirit

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Last night as I was sleeping,

Anoche cuando dormía

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Ecosophy philosophy

Towards a universal language

Development

Key Features

Token

See also Your pocket guide to the digital cash revolution

Everything you and your mum need to know about the new distributed currency and the decentralised information revolution – how and why to get onboard, in a nutshell.

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Everything you and your mum need to know about the new distributed currency and the decentralised information revolution – how and why to get onboard, in a nutshell.

You might also like Extinction Rebellion or Obsolescence – p2p to the rescue

This website is an advertising free zone!

Support the decentralised currency revolution

Support your scribe!

Tips graciously received at Bitcoin Address:

17L1cc8dgmYVTYU54MrsURL2qZivhiTUdk

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an ode to sex, desire, rebellion and fallen women

Autobiography of Eve by Ansel Elkins

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A Pattern Language

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Getting a handle on culture, perspective and future.

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Autobiography of Eve
by Ansel Elkins