UnderneathOrion

so this weekend I attended the School of the Americas protest at Fort Benning. this year they estimated that 22,000 people were there which is the biggest crowd ever.

For everyone who doesn’t know, the School of the America’s is a US. Army (taxpayer-funded) training center that is a product of the cold war. In the 70’s it was moved from Panama to Georgia. It’s purpose was originally to train Latin American soldiers, thus staving off the perceived threat of Communism (Cuba etc…). After the “threat” of Communism subsided, the US kept the school open and now it trains Latin American soldiers in counter-insurgency techniques, encouraging torture, “dissappearance,” blackmail, and extortion of Latin American civilians. It’s basically one more way for the US to keep Central and South America under it’s thumb. We put these military dictators in power, train their armies to return home and commit genocide against the country’s populace, and thus reinforce the oppressor-oppressed power structure that keeps America so powerful. The SOA has trained numerous soldiers who have become some of the most notorious human-rights offenders in recent history, including Noriega.

The School of the Americas Watch has been organizing this protest for years now and every year thousands come out and some even cross through the fences (built to keep protesters out) where they are immediately arrested and usually serve between 3 to 6 months in prison. If you’re interested in direct action, non-violent, civil disobedience, the SOA pretest is a great example.

To read more about, go to soaw.org

i’m realizing more and more that that trite saying about how you have to love yourself before you can really step outside of that and love others is so true.

And sometimes i really really love myself. not in an arrogant way. just in a way that acknowledges that i’m not perfect, but honors that i really am on my path, doing my best…

but…

I still have a strong enough dose of self loathing that i think a relationship of this caliber would be borderline unhealthy

If you want to figure out your ecological footprint, there’s a really cool estimator at ecofoot.org

I sometimes buy adbusters when i have the spare cash (its pretty expensive) and over the past few issues i’ve noticed the extreme focus on their whole blackspot campaign. They started out with these sneakers made out of recycled tires and hemp and the point is that they’re “kicking corporate ass” etc. but now they always have a few pages devoted to how they can expand the blackspot idea into other arenas (blackspot bottled water, blackspot bio-diesel, blackspot textbooks [!!creepy], stuff like that) and i consider myself pretty attuned to the whole subtle humor thing, but is this for real? honestly…does anyone know if this is a joke? because it just sounds like a huge fucking corporation to me. what happened to the whole buy local, small business thing?

i’m really hoping it’s a joke (although i’ll feel like an asshole for this longwinded rant if it is)

isn’t necesarrily meeting new people. Because i feel like almost every time i’m out i encounter someone i’d like to know. the problem for me is bridging the gap between first seeing someone, maybe saying hi how are you, and being hang out buddies. this is so hard for me. i’m socially confused…blargh

a band with drums and piano and harmonica…or something.

something new ideally

i’ve always had this romantic image of myself aging gracefully in my beautiful white house on top of a hill in the mountains. I’d live there with whoever i settle down with and there will be a vegetable garden in the back and we’ll only eat what we grow and make vegetable tarts for all our neighbors and friends and have lots dinner parties and at night we’ll count admire our wrinkles and scars and sit on the porch and play mandolin and then on a really pretty spring night i’ll call everyone i know and tell them how much i’m in love with them and then i’ll go out to the garden and fall asleep on the ground watching the stars and never wake up.

I bought this book called the Great American Detox Diet and seriously it is fantastic, and i’m not in love with tofu normally. If you’ve seen the movie Supersize Me, then you’ll remember that Morgan Spurlock (the guy who did it) has a vegan chef girlfriend and it’s the plan she put him on for eight weeks after the Mcdonald’s binge. it’s meatfree, dairy-free, and wheat-free. i know it sounds borderline insane but the food is delicious and really healthy and theres desert too. Although the purpose of it wasn’t to lose weight, i did end up losing like 10 pounds.

I’ve done the 150 for the past four years and it is consistently one of the best things i do every year. its such a feeling to realize how powerful your body is and what you are capable of. and the collective spirit that everyone on the ride shares is amazingly warm. its such cameraderie. if people took this into their everyday lives this cooperation and work toward a common goal…i can only imagine.
but biking is basically the best sport ever. i love that, although its essentially you and your bike, you can have such a feeling of community with other riders, especially if you ride with a team.

I had no idea going into it what a mindfuck it was going to be. I pride myself on being an adrenaline junkie daredevilish type but this was…like nothing else. The whole letting yourself lean back away from the rock in order to gain better leverage was pretty hardcore as my natural instinct told me to stay as close to the rock as possible. It was actually a pretty intense (maybe even spiritual) experience in trusting myself and others….DO IT!

I ran into him in SouthEnd at like 11 on Friday night and I was with a bunch of people trying to get dinner at Phat Burrito and i saw him but played the whole I’m-going-to-pretend-i-didn’t-see-you-and-then-see-how-you-react-when-you-see-me-game. And he saw me! Wanna know how I know? Because he split off from his friends and crossed the street to TALK TO ME! Knowing what a ridiculous giggly school girl I sound like, i will proceed. Then we talked for like five minutes about nothing. We were just talking like two people who wanted to be in each others time. And his friends waited on the other side of the street and mine did too and then we said bye and see you around and i’ve been seeing him for like the past three days on the backs of my eyelids.

And I want nothing more than to ask him to hang out but there is an undeniable (if unimportant) age difference that is making me feel undeserving and ridiculous. I will challenge apprehension to a duel and hopefully come out of it with a hang out date.

maybe this doesn’t count because the squirrel’s back leg was broken so he really wasn’t as scrappy as your average squirrel. The thrill was still there though because let’s face it…feral animal…skin to fur contact…pretty awesome. Anyway I just drove him to the nature museum and they rehabilitated him and let him go.

Okay…i say it counts.

is anyone interested in art swapping, snail-mail style?

let me know and let’s hook it up!

I’m so incredibly glad i did this. It was…really hard to explain. Everything is amplified like a million fold. Colors bcome so saturated and intense and the hallucination element is amazing. Food tastes better and you’re totally immersed in this sense of well being and happiness and the beauty of everyhting. However, it is really easy to spiral into a bad trip so here are my “fucking awesome trip tips”...

1. eat them in a totally relaxed, stress free, pressure free environment
2. keep the conversation positive (don’t talk about the state of the world or anything too heavy/depressing)
3. drink orange juice!
4. being outside feels amazing. Also, if you get uncomfortable, scared, whatever….go outside. fresh air helps so much!
5. make sure you have plenty of time to adequately come down.
6. do them with a very small group for your first time, at least. too many people is scary your first time.
7. have so much fun… do everything (within the bounds of safety)

i joined the Green Party last week which was really exciting. They stand for everything i do and i’m trying to dive in headfirst to the whole “vote your hopes…” thing. We can never really have a democracy with a two party system. I just want to do my part to change things

i tried this once and althoug it was fun (really fun) neither of us could really focus b/c it was such a highly…uh…public area. so we basically fooled around under a blanket for like an hour then headed to his place.

I dn’t even have anything to lose really. i mean except my hope that he could reciprocate. and the ability to walk into my favorite camera store (where he works). arggghhh! Some people are just so damn nice it makes them really hard to read. i love that about him (as well as about a million other things) but its so damn hard. i should just grow some nerves and ask him to coffee. it’s not like fucking marriage or something! But even that seems so excruciatingly hard. alas…i’m a pussy.

I’ve driven stick since i learned to drive. i’m an arrogant fuck and although i fight it, i do think people who drive stick are cooler and should be in my club.

Last year on a camping trip i did this and it was magnificent. because we were in such a beautiful spot on such a clear night we decided to ditch the tent and chill under the stars. It feels so much closer to the world than being cooped up in our little nylon-y two-person. It was one of those intermittent moments when everything is absolutely clear and ok.

I went through a thing last year where i’d draw little things on post-its and leave them all over the city. It was really awesome because i did it enough that i overheard a few people comment on it. almost noone knew it was me so it was even more rewarding. It was one of the best things i’ve ever done and I’m not even sure how to explain the meaning it took on in my life.