Coda

A tree receives 95% of it's mass from breathing, according to Michael Pollan. The nutrients it receives from the ground acts as a medium through which the air is transformed into tree. Moreover, the breath we exhale, having been converted from O2 to CO2, carrying our mark as carbon-based lifeforms, has in turn been transformed into what the trees inhale. Moreover, the underside of a leaf is covered in lips that open and close; the wind carries the little breaths of millions of lips upon millions of leaves to our lips and nostrils and back again. We use air to oxygenate our blood, which is crucial to our livelihood, like the livelihood of a good wine's bouquet. Pulling a bottle of fermenting ginger beer off of the shelf, I first listen (itself a sensation only made possible through air,) to the sound of bubbles continuously upping from the depths of a yeast paradise. They are eating the sugar and acid I put in the bottle two weeks ago, and are turning it into carbon dioxide and alcohol. Symbiosis. And its all in the air. I then smell, drawing the very carbon dioxide the little critters farted out while living, sexing, birthing, and dying at breakneck pace, (relatively speaking,) I'm filled with memory of meadmaking from high school, of homebrews fine and crude, of bread dough, and dusty earthy crunchy country homes. Memory too is facilitated through the air. I then exhale the memories and they carry off into the breeze, to be considered by the trees. But one modality of breath, the sacred breath that animates and enlivens matter into live being, is expatiated on by David Abram eloquently in a section entitled "The Forgetting and Remembering of the Air". Air is the sacred medium through which we make sound, vocate, communicate. Because of written language, and the subsequent exactitude of language's structure, we have lost some of that sacredness in our contemporary culture. Abram invoked Kabbalism, and the Abrahamic tradition of reading the Torah without vowels, how it was a continuation of oral traditions because reading ancient Hebrew was an interaction with the text. We each add our own vowel sounds just as we add our selves to the text, our meanings, our emphasis. The text reads us too. Abram points to the Native American conception of 'winds within us' as the touchstone metaphor for spirit. It was the same way in our etymological past as well. In fact, the word respiration and spirit have a common root, and it is not that the wind animates, the wind is itself 'animation'. Personally, I have experienced energy like a wind up and down through my central core, through yogic breathing. It is very evident for me. There is air, and then there is air, the prana that I can channel with mind, emotion, body. But most notably, I can suck it in through the top of my head and spout it back out with breathing exercises. But perhaps Abram would want to stress how much air is less a metaphor, less a likeness to something esoteric, and is more of a concrete manifestation of the divine; One that we miss for the esoteric part. Just as the ants were the spirits, the air is the divine. For the Navajo at least, the air is the unmanifest unconscious, which crystallizes into things and thoughts and beings.

On Another Note:

I truly enjoyed our second-to-last class, where we saw Kat's pottery art, then attended the alumni party, and then went to the Wailin Jennys. (the things they do with air are amazing.) I picked up some great pictures not only of our class in the woods, but of the party and jubilation on the porch. It is great to see us all hanging out as a class. It is also great to have an open bar. We milked it for all it was worth. In the next class, too, I was struck by how far we have come as a class. The way we just reminisced for the last hour of class on being a first year was truly touching. I loved that the class just took itself to that place, from a basic question to a big open conversation about changes and memories and reflections. That might have been my favorite conversation from the whole class. And then we cleaned up the woods together. Good coda to the class.

I also believe there was one speaker I have yet to reflect upon, her name I don't remember, so I'll just call her Ms. Foxglove. She was my favorite speaker. She seemed closest to myself in disposition and intention. Her whole point about accepting that you might end up working at a fresh market, and that that's ok, is an important one. I think one danger of being a graduating liberal arts student is that we won't 'settle' for a regular job, and will starve to death first. I certainly feel like she suggested, that I must get some awesome internship making positive change in the world. My concept is probably different from hers, but I certainly am a candidate for starving to death rather than bagging groceries. A housemate of mine just got just that job after just such a problem. But it's fine. Its money in the bank. (As far as money in the bank is concerned, her actual job confounded and flabbergasted me.) I am excited to accept that there is money in this world, that I need to save, and that it is not the demon our culture sometimes portrays it as. It is energy, and it must be churned back into our culture, like kneading. We need to keep it moving for everyone's livelihood, or it stagnates and everything deflates. Anyway, a fermentation metaphor is the best I'm going to be able to do on economics.

All in all, this was the mose epic IDS ever. It completely embodied what I had dreamed Guilford could produce for me when I was looking at colleges. It incorporates everything in a fast-paced way that allows us to glean the good bits and make connections across disciplines. But the overall focus on the land and passionate engagement helped me feel liberated from any perceived machine that could eat me up after college. I'm excited to expand and grow out of this little think tank. Thank you.

Hydroelectric Prayer Wheel

Leading bio-heirophant Alex Caliva has co-conspired with me to resurrect Nicola Tesla's experiments with direct energy transfer from da 'ert. However the wires here are consciousnesss of observers, human and daemon. The creek's divinity has signed off on construction of a small-scale waterwheel to generate spirituoelectric power for those willing to take the time to harvest it. Using birch sticks, Caliva tested the geometrically succinct pine cone cell, and observed a strong wood shock! Success!

The main spinning structure is comprised of the dead organic energy shell of poke berry plant. This provides a light-weight material. Thin sections were poked through the poke, and the whole beam was nestled into leaf-lubricated Y sticks. The pleasant and constant speed of the generator was perfect to cause double-takes on the part of passers by.

Ok, so therer is a space-time boundary that is approached by acceleration. As one asymptotically approaches lightspeed, space is flattened outin front and behind you. Think tunnel vision, except where the tunnel thins into a line. This is what Star wars was representing when the ships jump into hyperspeed and all the points of light stretch out into lines. Time stretches too. Basically, the faster you move, the more time you experience. People in orbit, moving faster than humans on earth, are actually experiencing slightly more time than we are! Time is speed. The universe is as big as it is old.

This is also true of life for humans. Einstein famously portrays it in negative corelation with enjoyment. Time flys when you're having fun. But I also see it disappear from homogeneity. All those routine highschool days bleed into one spatiotemporal place comprised of halls and lockers and thoughts all at once. I feel like the past and future are contained within the present, within our minds. Things make sense going forward as much as they do going backward. Tnink about it, if we lived backward, constantly fulfilling our memory, only knowing what will happen, the past being a total mystery...

It's also amazing to see what people can do with their time. Today we get people like Gilbert Bailey, who have worked and developed multiple businesses, worked internationally, and lived a variety of experiences, all within relatively few years. He seemed very time-conscious. The metaphor about buckets was like saying "go get while the gettin's good!" But I did find his description of a job interview interesting. It was revealing to see just how in-depth they can become. As somebody thoroughly interested in working with nature (plants in particular,) it just seemed way too means-end oriented for me. I hope to close the gap between work and benefit. Making sauerkraut is a good example. I just see these things in such stark contrast, the speed, the social institutions of government, money, reputation, consumer base; the necessity-to-stay-afloat paradigm; Buzzing and buzzing away, while the sauerkraut changes slowly, living and dying at the same time, transmogrifying into biotic gold for the human body. And it keeps for years... The ease of mind engendered by sauerkraut is my minds answer to the busyness I sensed from Gilbert.

What was so nice was seeing that contrast embodied in the biodynamic farmers in Efland. At least, their hearts were in it. There was still means-end stuff going on, but my perspective is skewed, after living with a maniac genius homesteader zen farmer in Black Mountain. The Biodynamic farmers were great. I love the cycle-oriented approach. The image of that little bud steadily expanding and contracting with the moon just reminded me how much we are like the plants ourselves. Another thing I love about Anthrposophy is how effective it is, while being pretty much spiritually inspired. Realizing the proper rythm in this pulsating earth being is possible. I remember a moment in Floyd, Virginia, weeding little parsely sprigs, and philosophizing with every breath, every motion of my body, looking down at each little being, keeping them safe, wondering if they have any idea that I'm here doing it for them, when suddenly out of a clear blue sky, a single fat raindrop landed from above me, right at the little rootbase of the parsely sprig in front of me. And I looked up, knowing.

I think when we really slow down and experience the complexity and necessated design in nature -- that expression of copasetic perfection in each part--we can realize that our own minds are of the same nature. Conditions make us up. I am a conglomeration of all my friends and family and culture and childhood and early fears and loves, and at the same time always freely expressing a self. I think the realization that I am a manifestation of universal copasetic energy can synthesize the duals of determinism and freedom, divinity and mechanics, morals and blind force. I mean, they all exist anyway, don't they?

Pollan is an amazing articulator of hard-to grasp realities. One of these is evolution and species-level dynamics. He explicates the coevolution of human crops and humans. We enter into a symbiosis where we provide all the perfect conditions for them to thrive, and we consume them in some fashion. But the consumption only happens on the individual level. On the species level, the plants are benefiting much more. Corn has conquered the midwest. Grass covers the outskirts of human settlements worldwide. These beings have developed ingeniously. And its not that they were designed that way, or intend themselves to become that way, but it is a manifestation of interbeing. The conditions of interaction with the world have given life its structure and function. Those words miss it though, for the structure is filling in the negative space of everything outside of it, and its function is the function of what everything else needs and gives. We are shaped by everything around us-literally. But there is this will that keeps it all moving from the inside. Subjectivities always differentiate themselves and create the level of time-experience we call life. But when you expand time-space in a conceptual space that allows for a species-level observation, what we call life dissipates in lieu of a massive explosion of organic force, tending outward....