Joy Doesn't Betray But Sustains Activism. And

I Still Think The Revolution Is To Make The World Safe For Poetry, Meandering, For The Frail And Vulnerable, The Rare And Obscure, The Impractical And Local And Small.

At A Certain Fork In The Road Of Automatization, Europeans Chose To Have More Time, And They Work Far Less Than We Do And Get Much Longer Vacations. We Chose To Have More Stuff, The Stuff Sold To Us Through Those Beckoning Adjectives-bigger, Better, Faster: Jet Skis, Extra Cars, Second Homes, Motor Homes, Towering Slab Tvs, If Not The Time To Enjoy Them Or To Enjoy Less Commodified Pleasures.

In Her Novel Regeneration, Pat Barker Writes Of A Doctor Who 'knew Only Too Well How Often The Early Stages Of Change Or Cure May Mimic Deterioration. Cut A Chrysalis Open, And You Will Find A Rotting Caterpillar. What You Will Never Find Is That Mythical Creature, Half Caterpillar, Half Butterfly, A Fit Emblem Of The Human Soul, For Those Whose Cast Of Mind Leads Them To Seek Such Emblems. No, The Process Of Transformation Consists Almost Entirely Of Decay.

Too Many Of Us Seem Far Too Fond Of Narratives Of Our Powerlessness, Maybe Because Powerlessness Lets Us Off The Hook... But We Don't Need Everyone On Board; We Don't Need One Magic Person In Office; We Need Ourselves. To Act. It's The Wind, Not The Weathervanes.

I Grew Up With Landscape As A Recourse, With The Possibility Of Exiting The Horizontal Realm Of Social Relations For A Vertical Alignment With Earth And Sky, Matter And Spirit. Vast Open Spaces Speak Best To This Craving, The Spaces I Myself First Found In The Desert And Then In The Western Grasslands.