To Not Abandon OURSELVES

This is a interesting mythical approach that in some ways is a needed integrative response to the Hypervigilance in the Air.Is this Our Axial Age,maybe?
What Say U(All)?

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Thanks for sharing this, Michael. I have been contemplating this pandemic along some of the same lines as Michael Meade—trying to find the gift in it—and thinking it could be nice to host a ‘Corona Cafe’ to work with some of the material that’s coming for people around this global event, which we are all witnessing and undergoing in ways ironically both held in common and ‘socially isolated.’ I am curious how others are responding. What other field reports do we have. Maybe some other infinite conversationalists would be up for a dialogue later this week? Or maybe you’ll touch on it during your Axial Age discussion later today?

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We Did Conversate on the Pandemic ,give a listen.
It would be good to hear some field notes,do U want to share?

I am finding people are at this point doing their best of being civil & yet their Nervousness is chunky & mushy,maybe because of enacting “Social Distancing”;I experienced this going grocery shopping this morning & the store changed their hrs. from 6am to 8 am & I got there at 7:50am and a huge line of people was there. The first announcement on the speaker was WE HAVE No PAPER products!!! Good thing I am Good on Item!

Be Thankful

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Another thought-piece for the bookmarks. Thank you for sharing.

Going to be spending a lot more time with my kids as our pro-active school system experiments with remote classroom and working from home moves from contested privilege to standard practice (funny how that happens!)…

Interesting how the internet might literally become a life-line in the foreseeable future. Looking forward to being more of a pest around here than usual (LOL).

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That is becoming a new reality.

I agree. This is the kind of emergency that many of us have been preparing for. Now is the time to refine our meta-skills as well as creating conditions for collective knowledge creation. We did talk about this today. I hope we can get a temporary link so I can study the conversation and create a new thread.

Shall we make the most of this break from our routines? This may be an opportunity to re-model our meta-models. What fun!

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When CoronaVirus comes for you
it’s going to be a bad, bad day

Your blood will be a ’spurtin
& your crown chakra will be hurting
in the evolutionary game of who will host
& who will replicate

When CoronaVirus gets into your DNA
you’re gonna say, I knew you then…
I loved you when…
Who knew a new adventure would begin this way?

When CoronaVirus comes
we’re going to dance in our underpants or nothing at all—

Keeping a safe distance, being a partner in the coimmune resistance.

CoronaVirus in my lungs:
Who knew a poem could end this way?

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Yes, the history buff replies, we’ll be needin’ an appropriate verse for future children of all ages.

This one’s pushing 700: :wink:
“Ring around the rosie
Pocket full of posies
Ashes
Ashes
We all fall down…”

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Oh build your ship of death, oh build it!
for you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.-D. H. Lawrence

And I saw men in chains dragged through the mud-
And I cried," Do you want to live like slaves?"

And I ran to the place, where my death was waiting, on a high hill in a meadow, with a spot light shining upon the center of it and as I wanted to die, rather than live a slave, I stood in the center, and was pierced by javelins and arrows. But as I looked upon a pierced body, a worn out pin cushion, I wondered why I was not yet dead?

And a man’s voice, from above my head, said calmly, " Now go back and make a living arrangement."

" But go back where?"

There was no reply but a breeze passed through the tall grasses…

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And then what happens?

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And when CoronaVirus in my lungs-

whereabouts are those lungs?

And do those lungs have a size or shape?

And what do those lungs, when CoronaVirus in my lungs, want to have happen?

And is that what you want to have happen?

And does CoronaVirus have a size or shape?

And where does CoronaVirus come from?

And what does the CoronaVIrus want to have happen?

Can you make a sketch or a doodle?

This is what I want more of. For me, the poem has not ended yet…like a false awakening…I may be wrong…but I feel there is another ending that is the real ending…

Who or what wants to live?
Who or what wants to die?

I like the drunken, slightly off balanced rhythm.

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This is my Meat & Vegetables for the last twenty years.

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Richard Moss, whom I met in the early 80’s, when the gay community was ravaged by AIDS, was a huge influence upon me. From him I learned energy sharing, dream work. I used what I learned. Richard said to me, " The Gay community is being uplifted by this tragedy."

My ego didn’t like to hear that but where Richard said that from made perfect sense to me. Now, forty years later, and lots of blood under the bridge, I understand that epidemic has given me enormous faith, even in the midst of great suffering, that we can enter into coherent we spaces, as we have been trying to do here at Cosmos. Let’s get creative.

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Thank You John,a wonderful affirmation for this Day & the coming Days.Let It Be So!!

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The mad dance pauses. Door #2 opens and

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My lungs may run out of oxygen; my particular poem must come to some (provisional) conclusion. But I agree, our collective end is not written yet!

Naomi Klein riffs on Milton Friedman, with a heads up for our present moment:

Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When a crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend upon the idea that are lying around.

So, what ideas do we have lying around that were just waiting for this moment?

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Intriguing clip. I like Ms. Klein: a clear thinker. A bit optimistic for my taste, but certainly more than well-intentioned.

Riffing off of Friedman is a bold approach. The ideas Friedman and his ilk leave lying around were simply those that are so mean-spirited and oppressive that they can’t get them through in normal times.

I remember reading recently – I think it was in Hedges’ America: the farewell tour that FDR stated quite proudly that his greatest accomplishment as president was saving capitalism. It wasn’t creating Social Security or something resembling a social safety net. It was saving capitalism. And all the rollbacks that have been achieved thus far have been accomplished without crisis. But now that we have a crisis and now that money is flowing so freely – as Ms. Klein herself pointed out: first of all to the financial markets, and 30x as much as Trump’s announced aid package to fight the virus itself … whereby didn’t Congress just go home without passing an assistance package?

It would seem there are ides lying around, and it would be nice if they were helpful, social, and humanitarian ideas, but I’m skeptical that those are going to get picked up first. It looks like others are already in play. The rest of us are going to have to get damn creative to get those worthwhile ideas picked up when we’re being admonished to minimize our social contacts.

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I was glad to hear that the assistance package could include direct cash payments. It sounded a lot to me like a Universal Basic Income… a thousand bucks, or maybe two thousand, to every citizen, like maybe Andrew Yang will have his day after all (speaking of ideas lying around).

The case for a national health system in the US will certainly be stronger after this. Zizek is calling for a GLOBAL health system. He is definitely prone to a weird optimism when it comes to capitalism giving way to some form of communism in some extreme scenarios.

I think we might pick up on some of Sloterdijk’s ideas regarding co-immunity. I am oddly encouraged by how much advocacy is going on regarding basic personal hygiene (e.g., handwashing), including a new emphasis on the importance of sleep, stress management, diet, and all the rest. I’m sure plenty of horrible ideas will have their opportunistic champions; but it will be a mixed bag. If it takes a UBI to save capitalism this time, well then so be it.

I do believe that everyone getting to take an extended staycation just about now—when literally the whole planet was overheating—is a probably just what the doctor ordered.

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Yesterday, I saw a blue jay and two mocking birds, perched on a branch outside my window. I gazed upon them with a sense of awe. They were checking out the opportunities opened up by the absence of the human presence. No noise, traffic, empty streets, people indoors, out of site. I could almost hear them thinking. We have to get ready for Spring.

Later in the day, I noticed two doves, with twigs in their beaks, flying in tandem, towards an unknown destination, somewhere in the large courtyard, that I watch, like Jimmy Stewart did, in Hitchcock’s Rear Window. There is no human activity, just the birds going crazy with excitement, even as Spring has not arrived, yet, the air is cold and damp, the trees still bare. I also saw a robin, I am delighted to see a wider variety of birds than I saw last year.

I read that dolphins, fish, and swans are majestically re-appearing, after a long absence, from the Canals of Venice, where the Corana has hit the humans with a terrible vengeance. Unable to pollute with wild abandon, the humans are paying a high price but the waters have become clear and other than human life is re-emerging.

I am finding a new sobriety is starting to emerge, out of the nonsense, that Klein clearly articulates. We are not all so incredibly stupid as the clowns in Washington DC think we are. The Masters depend upon the creativity of the slaves. They also need our collusion. We are a network of unequal interdependence. This will change, if we are to realize our latent potentials.

A deeper logic, that we cannot fathom, may be kicking our collective butts off the planet. It may not be one of our options that we can stay here. If some of the three billion birds that have vanished from North America, and some of the coral reef, starts to have a comeback, other than human life will be given a chance to unravel the harm done by human folly. We need to start showing them some respect.

The window of opportunity is brief. Creative, we have often been, and the case could be made that we are as destructive as we have been creative.

Self-generated metaphor is what I believe the best of the human mind rides upon. If in the the next few months, enough of us can make use of the pattern interrupts that are occurring on a grand scale and initiate a turning in a different direction, we can make a difference that will make a difference. The time and energy many of us have given to this effort may not have been in vain, even if we fail.

I am devoting my efforts to a future humanity ( not our current late stage capitalist living dead) but the future peoples that have learned to share joint attention with the animals and microbes among us, of which we are apart.

Apart of and apart from, we who are about to die-salute you! Now is the time to be willing to cut the crap and open up to the impossible dream. The window of opportunity that is opening up will be very brief. As I consider myself an initiate into the Bird Kingdom, I feel I have nothing to lose, and much to gain. Farewell bipedalism and the false moves of a species run amok. I am ready to spread my wings upon the winds of time, of real time, and leave this culture of corpses behind.

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What you’ve explored here mirrors my own experience so closely! Will be back as I can with reports…hope we all will do this. How are the other-than-humans (especially Avians) responding to changes this virus has wrought?

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