As is per usual for my cycles of things, I’ve spent the last two weeks or so in a weird funk, anticipating the next stage of my life, which has me leaving the van behind with friends in Texas and traveling to Mexico.
“So I’ve noticed a lot of procrastinative anxiety and difficulty articulating the source, even though I can sorta tell what it is.
And I get the sense that if I can get it out somehow, even imperfectly, that maybe I’ll feel some movement happening with the energy that’s been sitting in my fucking large intestines and backing me up doubled over in gas pain periodically for three days now. (I HATE WHEN MY BUTTHOLE BLEEDS ARGH takes FOREVER to heal stupid giant hardass shit..)
*ahrm*
I know that I write about stuff and talk about stuff and seem to be pretty clear and focused about looking at my own uglyass faults and dipshittary, but it’s hard. It hurts. Not like it used to when I was mostly uncovering the horrible crap I’d pulled in service to my unconscious avoiding bullshit, but it hurts. Worldviews are sacred and delicate, and even though I do challenge mine periodically, getting there fucking sucks. For every goosebumpy triumphant blog post imbibed in clarity and direction you may have read, there were weeks or months or more of petulant, painful fucking suffering to come to terms with what I wrote in it.
So, here’s the thing; for the last year or so I’ve been really focused on unpacking my role in a structurally oppressive hierarchy that favors, on a systemic basis, people who look like me and/or choose to maneuver socially the way I do. I can fill out spreadsheets and have a nice phone voice and charm people at social gatherings, I can easily look fitting for success, I am fluent in basic technology, I have a lot going for me — if I want to play the game, I can play it.
I’ve recognized I really don’t want to play it. I really just want to tell the whole system to fucking fuck itself, I want to dig a hole in a mountainside and never set foot in a city again, I want to be off the grid, I want to create a tribe with a new social order, I want to unplug, and I want to leave this entire festering pile of colonized bullshit behind.
In fact, in these fantasies, I don’t much mind if the way I do that equates to tearing the whole fucking thing down entirely. And in many ways I do think I am an abolitionist, but we’re talking like, bombs and shit, which in reality, I’m really not into. I’m more into tearing the system down by refusing to participate in it and starving it, and on many levels, my peeling away my belongings, getting out of residing in typical housing, and giving myself the freedom to move around has been a part of that life trajectory.
But there’s a thing, a nasty little thing, that keeps bugging me about this phase in my life right now. An aspect of my ‘privilege’ I haven’t really dug into, yet. The part where I grew up in tech, have tech at my disposal, and rely on tech as my avenue to receive my income — and simultaneously fucking hate it and everything I’ve come to see it standing for.
I can’t find the words to properly illustrate how uncomfortable I am — how uncomfortable I’ve been, under the surface. As I am looming over my trip to the Bosque — a move that was rooted in my desire to shed, to leave tech behind, but quickly became about my bringing tech and my technical skills to help the social reach of the forest expand and grow — it’s boiling over, hissing out from under a shuddering lid.
I’m unable to ignore the symbiosis, the reliance, how intrinsically the net and computers are a part of me and have been a part of me, how fucking privileged that makes me, and how deeply fucking conflicted I am about it. How fucking disgusted with myself I am that I use Apple products of slave labor whether they are handed down to me or not, that in attempting to extract myself from the machine my entire livelihood, even more so, revolves around using, leveraging, and myself slaving over technology that represents, to me, so much of what is profoundly, disturbingly, hopelessly fucking wrong; What is, quite literally, fucking destroying *everything*.
And I’m just really not fucking ok with it, right now.” — Facebook, Aug 25th
Just like the process I went through when I was choosing to leave Seattle and all the shit I was deciding that meant, I’ve been going through that again lately when processing my temporary move to The Bosque.
And, just like the process I went through when I came to a point where I broke through all the worry and displacement and inner voice naysaying that accompanied my new mobile life, I’m coming to the point now that I am starting to trust that I’ve actually got this thing maybe.
“I don’t think anyone will understand what I am trying to create until It has been created, and even then it will evolve.” – Brian Fey, regarding new ways of communicating, documenting and publishing The Bosque.
My response? “Proof of Concept; it’s a thing for a reason.”
I realize that is what I am doing, here. My proof of concept that I can survive, thrive, make a difference, live, and find some form of solace by doing things this way. I have to remind myself that this is brand new. I left Seattle 3 months ago. Each new step is a challenge in so many fashions, confronting my views of myself, my limits, what it is I need, why it is I chose this for myself.
I googled images of Patzcuaro, the small Michoacán town nearest The Bosque, for the first time today.
It is beautiful.