Big Cry Virus

Big Cry Virus

Sources: Tales From the Night Rainbow - Koko Willis and Pali Jae Lee - US Special Forces Veterans- All of Us going through it.

First let me say I’m culpable in all of this.

The state of the world. My ruined relations. Negligent homicide or the fog of war, when it’s done it doesn’t matter.

Everyone knows when they’re guilty, it’s just no-one wants to own up and bear the consequences. And the consequences are this whole mess we’re in together.

I’m not trying to dodge blame. I know it’s my fault. But .. I know you can feel your part in it too.

So I’ll tell you a story that helped me find a way out of this horrible guilty feeling. Maybe it can help.

You see I grew up in America, where I was told becoming a man means learning how to fight and win. I was taught how to ball up my fists, spit, and then beat my enemy into submission. Manhood is bragging about how many women you’ve had. Manhood is taking advantage of weakness before they see it in you. Most of all manhood is about being constantly terrified. Of other men humiliating you. Of women rejecting you. Of being laughed at and left alone.

The only way to win this game is to be a Warrior! Someone no-one can mess with!

You can do this with brute force, coercion, or money, but win this game you must. It’s your life’s purpose as a man. Opt out and be ridiculed as a sissy and a loser.

At least that’s what I grew up being told, and most kids conformed to these rules - severely punishing those who didn’t.

Things have changed a bit lately and I think I know why people are scared.


We’ve been infected by the empathy bug, and this could ruin everything.

What happened to me is, I had a lot of time to myself. Partially because I had very few friends left to talk to.

We didn’t wanna talk about what was hurting. We had some pretty bad memories together. Some of them were talking suicide, and I didn't want to go there.

I thought the veterans administration should handle this stuff, but I realize now our unit lacked the leadership needed to integrate back in society after the wars. When the war inside our heads started raging back at home, we didn't stand up for each other, we didn't define the mission, and we left a lot of good men behind.

So when coronavirus hit and everybody had to stay home, it was an election year. People were locked up arguing online full time. You had to pick a side - red or blue, god or the devil.

Everything was controversial. People thought what we did in the Middle East should be reckoned with, and we should be held accountable. A lot of people, including myself, felt what we did at the time was necessary. For God and Country. And you know, we did it to protect our families back home.

But I couldn't justify what happened to that little girl. I couldn't come up with any purpose for her death in my world. I should have overruled my CO and helped her. When she popped out in front of our Humvee that day, we ran her down like a dog, and I could have saved her, but our “safety” was more important.

Whenever the subject came up, I’d start raging and crying, and I couldn’t control it. It always ended the conversation.

Later I’d have to build my walls back up, so I wasn't right on the edge of fury, or breaking down in tears, which was shameful for me as a tough man and a soldier. I didn’t want my friends to see my pain, so I just kind of isolated myself, and eventually we all stopped calling.

The one person that didn't leave me alone was my mom. She was a pain in my behind, because she's super liberal, which is not me.

She’d call and rant about politics, try to get under my skin. Maybe I was the only one that she had to talk to - being so old and ornery. But she had a big heart for her son, right? She wanted to get through to me in some way and we fought really loud on the phone a lot. It was our way of staying connected, I guess.

I think it annoyed the neighbors. I had this one neighbor I didn't care if it did though. You know, he's like this peace and love hippie.. polar opposite of me. You'd hear him singing to his plants, spouting this Kumbaya shit all the time with his girlfriends. They’d have pagan rituals. I'm sure they were doing some kind of psychedelics or whatever back there. You'd hear peals of laughter, and it was torture for me, being by myself, so bitter and alone - hearing dis fake living his best life, rainbows and unicorns, gold pixie dust all over the place like it was a real thing.

I yelled at him a few times, over the fence, “keep it down weirdo!”, but really, he was just a convenient scapegoat for what I was going through, especially with my mother. He seemed to have loving, healthy relationships, and that's why I hated him.

You could tell he made his friends feel like family and people would come to his house for refuge. He had an acceptance of being I couldn't give anymore. Somehow it had gone away from my experiences through life, and I was jealous of what I had lost.

One day I was really going at it with my mom on the phone. I was screaming at her, blaming her for everything, and you know what, it never occurred to me that I might have an affect on this guy. That he could be struggling with what I was putting out there in the atmosphere.

I put her on speakerphone so I could pace around the house ranting loudly - and out of nowhere, he just blew up and yelled at me over the fence.

“Ho! Please! Do us a god blessah favor and shut the fuck up!!”

I was dumbstruck by this outcry. This guy I thought was so weak, so accepting of everyone in the world. Good! He was angry. An angry hypocrite. But he struck a chord in his voice I hadn’t heard before. It seemed our constant fighting had overwhelmed his joyful spirit.

I tried to enjoy his downfall. But I couldn’t. On that first day, I couldn't stop thinking about how much I affected this person next door. This gentle individual, who still believed we could work it out as humans. Something I was incapable of grasping. I kept looking for ways to be angry at him, to find fault, but all I could access was sorrow.

I dwelt on how much pain I heard in his voice, and I began whispering “I'm sorry.” I couldn't stop crying. And I couldn't stop saying I'm sorry. I had an urgent need to take responsibility for what I’d done in my life. Starting with my most recent mistake with the guy next door.

My resident anger was somehow far away. Everything was sadness. A deep down pain of realizing all I had done in this world to get to this point. I had to account for it.

I couldn't stop saying I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Every time I would think of that little afghani girl. I'm sorry. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Please forgive me.

The second day was worse. I couldn't see. I couldn't even go to the bathroom. I was wracked in seizures on the floor. I could barely breathe through the tears, so I opened all the windows, not caring about privacy. I’m sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please forgive me, please forgive me. Please forgive me. I sobbed at the windowsill.

I remembered from my childhood, when I felt under attack, I would find a dark corner where I could feel safe, and I would sing to myself. A song no one had ever heard before.

It was a peculiar feeling to have that ability to make a song never heard before and again. To me it was a vessel and a blindfold to go over an emotional waterfall. To let go of fear.

Towards the end of the second day, the tears had slowed down, but strangely I didn’t want to stop. I was drinking water to keep them coming. I was suddenly thankful for my life and happy for the things that got me through tough times. To go somewhere quiet.

I started thinking about the nature of my grief, and my mood changed like a dawning sky.

The dark times became hues of purple and peach, remembering all the people who’d helped me through. Even my insufferable mother, loving me despite all my stubbornness.

Everyone that pissed me off in life, pushed me over an edge, or stood in my way like a hurdle I needed to clear, or inspired me like a mountain I needed to climb.

I was so full of gratitude from that point on. I just shed rivulets of grateful tears. Saying, Thank you Thank you. Thank you.. for all of these things I’ve been gifted. All these people I’ve been honored to be with.

 No one escaped my heartfelt thanks, especially my neighbor, who’d gotten me to this point of breakdown. He was the last one I couldn’t stop thanking.

Then I thought to myself, maybe I could switch it up and project something different. I’ve really yelled some terrible stuff over the years.. But now I thought, maybe the next time I made a noise I could say something new and hard. I could say “I love you” and see what happens.

Like my grandparents used to say. ”It ain’t enough to just show up at church, you gotta sing the hymns! You gotta live the word!”

I never really understood what they meant until I started on that third day of my big cry. I was muttering “I love you, I love you. I love you.” I said it to myself at first, with the mindset of getting used to it. It was new to me, and I had to fool myself by saying it to a neighbor first. In doing so, I somehow returned it back to me.

I had to stop crying.

I started chanting out loud. Louder and louder and louder. First in my own room, and then I thought, this isn't working, I'm not stopping the tears, they're still coming. I was really worried I’d never leave the room or lead a normal life in this state.

So I opened the windows a little bit more, and I heard this strange noise coming from next door. It was the sound of my neighbor crying. Softly but unmistakable.

I don't know what happened, but I immediately knew what to do, and tears streaming down my face, I said “I love you. I love you. I Love You!”. I said it louder and louder, loud enough for him to hear. Loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear. 

It didn't stop the crying for either one of us. But it did help.

I started putting it all together.

I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.

Saying it over and over and over again. And by the end of the third day it started working! Slowly my tears ebbed, and then they dried up.

But my neighbor didn't stop crying. I could hear him all day and night. I don't know if he stayed by the window like me, but it seemed like a cry for help. A call out to lost family.

I didn't know what to do. But I wanted to help. So after the third day of his crying, I went over to check on him. I brought him some avocados from my backyard.

Chris greeted me warmly, and he said, “Thank you for the food! And the experience of being told I love you by a neighbor I thought hated me!”.

I said, “Hey, you know, whatever this is, we're going through it together.” And he knew exactly what I meant.

He gifted me a book about an old way of life on the islands of Hawaii. It was called “Tales from the Night Rainbow” and it describes living right, known as “being pono”.

It said we were all born as perfect bowls of light, emanating this light as pure love. However, if you hold on to bitterness or jealousy, these heavy stones in your bowl will take the place where the light can shine.

In the practice of forgiveness and reconciliation called Ho’oponopono, they recite these words, face to face, in order to leave these dark stones behind.

I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.

They bring people in conflict and place them, chest deep, nose to nose in the receding tide. Let the ocean take away their hurt feelings, and bring new commitment to unity and peace.

This is how I felt about my big cry, and I asked, “have you ever experienced something like this before?”, we laughed. It was a relief to laugh, but we wondered what was happening to us.

After that, maybe my ears changed, because over the next few weeks, as I walked around my neighborhood, I could hear more and more people crying.

At their windows, on their porches, in their backyards, sobbing. Unable to stop. I wondered if this was some sort of new tik tok trend. I didn't connect the dots right away, but it seemed if one neighbor could hear the others crying, they could catch it like a flu.

Then they’d want to pass it on. Wailing by their open windows at night, like lovelorn cats.

This spread throughout the village, and we started to see a change in people. They went through this experience, and you’d see them walking around afterwards, with this incandescent glow, like a pregnant person or an alien.

Lighter than most, they looked for a way to connect where needed, for some way to be helpful.

Crews formed overnight. Good things started to happen. No more wasted time and effort on hurtful things. People’s health was improving. In our community the Big Cry Virus was spreading exponentially.

The rest of the society was not catching on. Many other viruses were proliferating and accelerating. The government was involved in mandating vaccines. Artificial Intelligence was employed, and Rapid Response became a skin patch. There were wars over body autonomy.

Meanwhile the Big Cry Virus was giving a transformation that no-one could use for profit. And so it was shunned and feared.

Technology was creating more problems. Everyone was fighting, but in contrast, it seemed like those of us who’d caught this new lifestyle virus, were rejecting all of this.

We were pitching in to build commonwealth in our neighborhoods. As a matter of survival, we were coming together, and taking care of each other. Isolation as a social norm was beginning to melt away.

That’s when I made my biggest mistake. Naming this movement the “Church of the Big Cry”. I thought it was the best delivery system to share the virus, and change the world. Foolish pride, I guess. I never said the virus made you perfect.

We started performing organized rituals, and the virus, or trend, or realization, began spreading to many communities.

Our methods were picked up worldwide, to the point where I got a little scared of the impact it was having. The reflection that most people didn’t want to see.

You see it changed me forever. I would never pick up a gun, or try to hurt someone again. I couldn't bear it.. because, you know, I honestly don’t want to have to cry for three days again.

I want everybody to have this experience - to be this disabled. And I know, historically I’m an asshole, so maybe not everyone needs it. But for me, It was a revelation.

The virus is a dangerous development for people that sell the narrative that we're all ruthless competitors for an ever shrinking pie. It’s also been deemed a threat to public health, public stability, and public control.

I’ve had to spirit myself away for a little while, but I'm telling you this can’t be bottled up and sold anymore. We all have access to this power, and always will.

You know how to get started in your grief. How to come through it. There are ways out there and places of communion. You'll meet people who may seem like they’re throwbacks from a long lost culture.

They offer you love .. expecting no return. And they’ll want you to take the opportunity .. to be responsible for everything around you.

The other day in my garden, I realized I’d better make this recording, because there's many different forces and choices in the world.

To be offered this choice can seem like a threat. To believe no-one is above redemption is an idea maybe this world isn’t ready for.. there's a lot of minds that would rather break than sway .. But we got our little cross-pollination out there. Once the seeds are planted, and tended, and cared for and become strong. You never know how big it could grow.

It could be the beginning of something larger we can't understand. Like our next big step in evolution. I’m so grateful to be here right now. Bearing witness.

So now I see this ladybug on my arm, which isn't really a ladybug, but a government mini-drone. I can feel its mandibles sinking in, and the inoculation injection flowing into my bloodstream, and I know I can't stop this mutation, or retribution that’s been ipatched on me. I’m glad this message got out before they got me.

Remember from our past. From our religions long ago. A way of life back in balance with nature.

I know these things will find us when they’re needed.

I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.

Waiting Room

Living in the Before and After Times, I don't know.. Because the after never came, and after awhile I forgot there ever was a before

The Tree, The Flies, The Spiders, and Me

Today as I begin my 5th Spring living on this property in Wailuku, this week I’ve had an epiphany about one of my small parts in the ecological loop that is this backyard farm.

The land revolves around an Avocado tree of considerable size, and I’ve determined her age to be at least 70 years.

She is the Empress of the neighborhood, and when I first met her she immediately sealed the deal and rooted me to this ‘Aina. Knowing her potential and seeing her haggard condition due to the land being fallow for at least 5 years, I set about restoring her vitality and health by careful pruning, rot removal, and piling her fallen leaves around her roots as mulch and a super-compost.

I knew my future here depended upon her in some way, and 4 years later she is thriving, with an extended winter fruiting season that spans 5 months, and at it’s peak drops 30 huge Butter Avocados a day. This Spring she’s bursting out with more luscious bright green new growth than ever before, and I can really feel the love between us. How did we get here?

The land was long neglected and completely covered in crab spider webs when I arrived. Residents of Maui will be familiar with these armored rascals, spinning their webs faster and more prolifically than any other species I’ve seen. I don’t want to harm them as I go about my morning chores, and their hard, spiky exoskeletons make them almost indestructible anyway. This time of year the best you can do to give yourself, or any pollinator, a chance to enter the garden space is to brush the buggers off every surface with long-ass brooms as you go about your business. Their bite isn’t poisonous as they fall from the trees and into your clothes, but they are annoying.

I’ve found myself seeking a mischievous pleasure in knocking down their industries every morning, and as they scurry back up the stray strands of carnage, I joke to them out loud that I’m their ‘job security’. After all if I didn’t clear the air, there would be a daily massacre of the bees and butterflies who fly in to pollinate our beautiful flowers, and them I favor.

What I didn’t realize until recently, is that my clearing the air and tree branches of their daily crab spider blanket, is not only slowing down their coverage, it’s allowing a moment for another important process in my beloved Avocado tree.

The Crab Spiders only arrive one time a year. Halfway through the wet season and right before the Spring bloom they start breeding and covering the yard like a scene from Arachnophobia.. But they are only here in anticipation of another wave of insects. After the last Avocados drop in mid April the tree begins to be covered in small bud-like flowers. These in turn seem to attract a very specific species of blue-bottle like fly with large fuzzy orange eyes. These flies can be spotted in early spring (I saw one the other day!) but arrive in hordes as soon as Her Majesty is fully budding. They cluster around the flowers and sip the nectar from their tips, in turn ensuring the pollination of the tree.

They also provide a huge food source for the spiders, and that’s why they’re here too, it’s just that the spider population has been way out of balance here for awhile and the tree needed me to keep making longer sticks to my brooms and remain diligent about knocking ‘em down. Every year the flies come in larger numbers, the buds produce more nectar, the tree is pollinated more completely, and she grows more fruit and seeds for her reproduction, and food for us all.

It’s a good arrangement for everyone but the spiders, but they’ve had their turn at dominating, and they don’t seem to mind being knocked down a notch, as long as they can grumble, bite, and get back to work.

Love y'all!

-RG

Seven Fish

There is an island in the middle of the South Pacific named Aitutaki.

Just a six mile speck of land in a vast and lonely ocean, it's ringed by long coral reefs hugging azure lagoons full of bountiful life to it's coconut palm shores. The fish are plentiful and the land is rich, and with few worries, the locals lived happily for thousands of years - left alone with everything they needed, and nothing the rest of the world wanted.

The islanders shared everything amongst themselves. They had no need to acquire anything so they concentrated on enjoying life. Because of the abundance of resources, only one person per seven households had to fish or gather plants on any given day. In the evening the day's catch would be brought to the meeting hall, and meals would be prepared and eaten together.

This kept the community bonded, but also allowed the other six families to play all day. As long as the responsibility for collecting the food rotated among the seven households, the system worked perfectly.

Then came missionaries looking to convert souls to christianity, and with them they brought the 'civilized' concept of personal ownership, and it's ugly cousins - commerce, ambition, and shame.

They convinced the locals that - as in the image of their own god - each patriarchal head of household must rule and provide for his family exclusively. To share was a sin, unless you were giving directly to the church.. whose priests were more qualified to distribute god's riches.

This was a political construct, designed to take autonomy away from extended families, and give authority to the priests. They used the fear of hell, and shiny metal coins to sway the islanders towards their world view. When mass shipping and refrigeration was introduced, the last infrastructure was in place to transform the sharing-subsistence economy into hoarding and servitude based on acquiring arbitrary bits of colorful paper with pictures of far away kings and presidents.

Instead of seven houses living together and sharing food and responsibility, and thus making light work with many hands, now every household had to have a refrigerator to stack the fish up in.

Each man of the house was responsible for keeping the fridge stocked and the larder full, and so he had to fish every day and get another job besides to keep up with the demand for canned provisions and sugar lollies shipped in from New Zealand. Plus he needed more money to gas his scooter, which was a must-have if he didn't want to feel less than his neighbor.

Jealousies and worries piled up, and people began to steal from each other, necessitating the building of a jail, and taxes to pay for the courts and police. Because it was so hard to provide for a nuclear family in this new demanding way, society began to suffer from stress, unemployment, and poor health.

By the mid 1970's the people of Aitutaki were migrating in droves to New Zealand as refugees. Their traditional way of life was gone, and they were at the bottom of the economic ladder, taking the worst factory jobs with the least pay to send back home to their 'poor' families.

"What went wrong?" the government asked, and they sent my anthropologist parents to live on the island for a year to research how the fundamental sharing and altruistic nature of the Cook Islanders had been broken down.

This was the year I turned five and I began school on Aitutaki. I learned Cook Islands Maori as my first reading and written language, and I learned something else that I keep to this day.

To share with your neighbor is the way back to heaven on earth.

We have plenty enough to go around, if we learn again to pitch into the pot instead of banking on fear. If we remember that seven fish go farther feeding your friends than sitting in your fridge.. If we trust in our people and our island to give back to us - we could possibly learn not become sick and deranged, just trying to survive.

In a world (or a neighborhood) of communal abundance rather than individual scarcity, we could spend up to six days a week playing and being grateful, instead of just one.

What a sin and a shame that would be!

#oneisland #oneworld #onefamily #onelove
#wailukufarms #kahalawai #maui #aitutaki
#remember #share #alohasunday

Animal Squat

This is my offering of thanks. For the people and places who have made me.

An open book into a bygone era.. and a value system that could save us all.

Animal Squat

In 1980 My parents moved us back to California after a decade living in New Zealand.

I was a country boy, just turned eleven, and it was a tumultuous year for me and america. Right after returning home, Reagan had been elected, and I saw my parents tear up as Jimmy Carter cried openly while conceding on TV. I remember thinking that he looked like a good man, and I was sad too.

Then John Lennon was shot and my Mom sobbed all day. "Why did we move back to this brutal country?" she asked, and even though the Beatles kinda annoyed me - I was into Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath - I felt the loss of her hero, and I bawled alongside her, wondering out loud what was wrong with people.

The go-go eighties happened and we got to see what was wrong with a lot of people. Lots of us got hurt and left behind in the Reagan revolution, and as Wall Street gilded it's lilies, taxes and infrastructure spending were slashed, and america's inner cities began to rot to the core.

Meanwhile, I had made my way through middle school and high school, becoming a good american male by learning how to spit, fight, trade baseball cards, and brag about sex I wasn't getting. I also learned the ultimate importance of having the right haircut, designer jeans, and a preppy sweater. You couldn't get a date in the early eighties without these status symbols. So it's no wonder I turned to punk rock.

My friends were the weirdos and the scrotes who hung out in the smoking section. We were the gutter punks, hippies and losers - not the Barneys and the Bettie's, surfing the lane, or waiting on the cliffs, looking pretty.

By the time I moved to New York City in early '93, full urban blight had set in to most big american cities. Crime rates were skyrocketing, and New Yorkers had just elected a tough-talking mayor named Rudy Giuliani, who promised to clean up the town with tough policing, and make the streets safe again.

When I first walked into the neighborhood I was targeted by a group of young black kids on roller blades, who were wilding out throwing quarter sticks of dynamite at random folks walking down the street. I jumped as an M-80 exploded under my feet; the kids laughing as they bladed past me and leapt up on the rear bumper of a city bus, the driver trying to shake them off his backside - fishtailing the vehicle down Avenue A as it sped off.

"Fuck, this place is crazy!" I thought, my heart pounding - and it felt like coming home.

My friends and I had taken over thirteen abandoned buildings in a forgotten part of town called the Lower East Side. A place known for it's daytime muggings, junkies, and homeless encampments that took up whole city blocks. The thriving open-air drug market at the center of the neighborhood was known as Tompkins Square park.

The area was a grid of old tenement housing also known as 'Alphabet City'. It spanned from gritty Houston street in the south to the tony apartment complexes at Gramercy and 14th - From the trendy east village at Avenue A, to the sprawling and violent projects that ran the length of Avenue D. Mostly poor Puerto Rican families lived there at the time, but the neighborhood had traditionally been first landing for hated waves of immigrants washing up on America's shores throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

The LES had always been the where the world's wretched, tired, and displaced had arrived at our door - full of hope for a better life - only to to be warehoused in our worst ghettos, and left to suffer and die of overcrowding and tuberculosis.

In the 1990's the place was just as fucked. Vacant lots full of rubble and OD victims ruled the landscape. People lined up around the block to put their money in a basket that was trundled up to the roofs of buildings on pulleys, and then the heroin and crack would come back down the line.

The cops did not give a fuck. They were paid by all sides, and as long as people kept in their lane, no one would get busted. Compromises were made in order to get along. When the pastor of a local church on 11th street got tired of the lines of junkies blocking his parishioners from getting into Sunday service, he got the police to broker a deal with the neighborhood shooting gallery to not sell between 8 and 11 am on Sundays - and this was strictly enforced.

There was an awful status quo being maintained - as long as things remained this shitty, everyone got theirs. Across the village shady developers burned out buildings to collect insurance, and the city took ownership but got no revenue, so it didn't care. It was broke anyway.
All of this changed with the new mayor, and his declaration of war on "lifestyle crimes", starting with the "squeegee men" that were terrorizing commuters at the midtown tunnels. The cops starting busting ass on every petty crime committed in public. They had free reign and they used it, rolling many people up for the color of their skin, or for their perceived damage to the image of the city.

The city's homeless were rounded up and taken to huge warehouses in Queens where they had to stay if they wanted shelter. Times Square was drained of it's strip joints and prostitutes, and sold to the Disney corporation, and then the mayor turned his beady little eyes on the lower east side and it's potential for gentrification - total war was declared on the squatters.

We were by no means a perfect community, and with our best of intentions, we had helped to make the neighborhood more livable and ripe for the picking. With our community gardens replacing empty lots, and our buildings maintained more like artist co-ops than stereotypical flop houses, it was becoming a bohemian mecca.

Our allies took up our cause in the media, and some squatters began to think of themselves as celebrities. The extra attention created a vicious cycle of violent oppression and radical counter-reaction. Rioting squatters were pitted against paramilitary-style police in the news every night, and the mayor had no choice but to bring the hammer down. The forced evictions picked up pace and became more dangerous.

With the increased police, came uptowners feeling safe enough to "slum it" downtown in the east village for a weekend, and to accommodate their needs, the dollar-slice pizza joints, and beeper store weed-spots, started to give way to fancy Moroccan restaurants, and hipster theme-bars.
By the time I fled back to California with my daughter in 2000, the war had ground to a stalemate. Giuliani had been termed out, and the new mayor - Bloomberg - was concentrating on building bike lanes, and banning big gulps. Once again, governance of the lower east side was delegated to local officials.

A progressive city council was voted in and it was realized that compromise was the only way forward with the remaining, occupying force of squatters. They came up with a proposal that gave the squatters ownership of their buildings as long as they agreed to bring the dwellings up to code using city contractors.

Today the LES is an extremely unaffordable part of the world - unattainable by most american's wildest dreams as a place to live. About six of the original squatter buildings remain, and they are owned and managed by the residents, as co-ops.

I could have had a penthouse apartment in New York City for $700 a month if I had stayed! But that's not why most of us came there in the first place. We wanted to build a community, and be left alone to do our own thing.

My friend Pezent lives in C-squat still, and one day he got tired of all the drama that comes with communal living. He decided to strike out across the east river and set up in an abandoned building over there he'd crushed on for years.

It was on the last stretch of the waterfront yet to be developed, and hemmed in by gleaming high rise towers, it stuck out like a broken tooth in a dental ad for perfect smiles. Situated next to the burned out Dominoes sugar factory along the crumbling Brooklyn dockyards, to the untrained eye, the place was intimidating. It's gaping window holes stared across the river as if to say "come into my house, I want to hurt you."

To an old squatter like Pezent this was paradise, and a potential respite from his broken heart, and all it's needling, everyday reminders. For a year, as he set about making this huge vacant building his home, no one knew where he went. He left no clue behind, completely erasing his personal history as he arrived on the eastern shore of the Williamsburg bridge.

He occupied the top floors of the building by himself, and didn't interact with his unseen neighbors in the basement. He assumed from their screams and moans all night that they were CHUD (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers) - or at least dangerous drug addicts, and keeping a steel pipe at his side at all times, he settled into an uneasy peace, unbroken by trespass.

As the months passed he began to suffer from loneliness, but still he couldn't face going back yet. He had made a commitment to solitude, and he'd just have to adapt.

He began to develop relations with the local wildlife. He made friends and held long conversations with the pigeons that flew in the window holes every day, and he took in a baby cockroach as his pet.

One cold November morning, Pezent ventured up to the roof to catch some rare sunshine, but when he got up there he regretted it. Staring back at him across the frigid water was his former life in Manhattan. Forlorn, and eroded by weather like his face, the fallow rows of projects felt like his shambling and alcoholic friends, beckoning him back to familial and depressing habits.

Turning to flee back inside, he was suddenly distracted by a terrifying banshee-like scream from the vacant lot adjacent and below his own building. Straining over the edge of the buttress to spot it's source his mind raced with images of a murder and mayhem at the hands of his downstairs mole-people neighbors. Instead a large orange tabby with blood-matted fur and half a tail sanding straight up, darted out from behind the building and headed like a bullet for the busy dockside through-way on the other side of the lot, screeching bloody hell the whole way. He was closely pursued but an old stray mutt with blood in her eyes and on her teeth, snapping her fangs just inches behind the cat's furry and stunted tail explosion.

The cat made it to the road first and accelerated across the two lanes of heavy traffic, dodging oncoming dump trucks and taxis like a pro bike messenger. The old hound stopped at the sidewalk, defeated and snarling foam, as the tabby niftily jumped a chainlink fence on the other side and disappeared.

The scene fascinated Pezent, and during a warm string of winter mornings that month, he made his way to the roof to observe the daily drama unfolding between the stray animals.

He got to know the different groups of cats and dogs and assigned them names and rank matching their roles in the animal society. He noticed that "Nessa" - the old gray mare he'd seen the first day chasing "Sylvester", seemed to be the leader of the pack of mangy and starving dogs that searched through the piles of garbage for scraps. She would give them permission to pass if they showed her deference, but if they challenged her authority, they'd be quickly put on their backs, howling for forgiveness.

Nessa was a tough but fair leader, but nothing brought the dog clan together like their mutual hatred for the neighborhood cats that scrounged in even greater numbers along the docks.

They would chase them all day, but seemed to never be fast or agile enough catch any. One day Nessa led the charge on a group of fleeing cats, straight into a dead end air shaft with slick brick walls surrounding the trapped cats on every side. Pezent was sure the jig was up for these guys but couldn't see what was going on from his vantage point.

All of a sudden, a cacophony of braying and crying dogs came tearing back around the corner, some of them with hissing fur balls of vengeance attached to their backs, dug in and ripping helpless dog flesh to shreds. As they ran for their lives, a shock troop of half dozen vicious felines, led by Sylvester, the orange tabby, in hot pursuit.

Apparently ol' Nessa had led her troops into an ambush.

Other examples of Sylvester's devious and murderous nature began to emerge.He was the by far the oldest (and by extension the smartest) cat on the block, and his position offered him some security, so he got to spend a lot of his time resting. His favorite place to hide out and nap was under an abandoned low rider on the side of the road. Pezent thought no more of it until he noticed that whenever a local stray dog would amble by, Sly would always perk up from his nap and pay close attention. This wasn't unusual on it's own, but Pezent observed that the cat also seemed to be watching the traffic, and would raise himself up into a kind of crouch as the dog approached.

If there was no traffic on the street, he would let the dog pass without incident, but if it was rush hour, he would wait until the exact moment the dog was in front of him and a few mack trucks were barreling towards them on the road, preferably in both directions.

With precision timing, and with a screeching war cry, he'd jump out from under the car, and race across the street, zipping in between bus axles and truck wheels at an astonishing speed.

No dog ever didn't fall for it. Their instinct to chase was too strong. No dog's mother ever told them to look both ways, and they would always get halfway across the street before they'd realize their predicament - surrounded by careening death, the look on their faces, must have been priceless to Sly as he watched. Most of the time they made it across, or back to safety. But they never learned their lesson, especially the younger strays, and sometimes when he wasn't keeping his constant vigil up top, Pezent would hear the screech of brakes and then a thud of impact, and later he'd see a dog scraping himself across the docks, crushed hindquarters in tow.

"Got you too, huh buddy?" He'd say softly, and the dog would look mournfully up at him in the moonlight, as if he felt the pity, and appreciated.

As the hours of the day grew shorter with the approaching winter, Pezent noticed a change in the animals' behavior. They would still fight like cats and dogs all day, but as the sun began to settle towards the horizon, and a chill hung in the air, there were subtle approaches by the warring tribes.

Starting with the elders, small concessions were made, like Sylvester was allowed to pass to his favorite spot without being molested by Nessa, or any other dogs. Once the example was set, the younger dogs and cats began to allow each other free access, and as a slow dance of reconciliation commenced, dusky shadows lengthened across the lot, and a bitter cold set in.

Having never seen this before, Pezent was intrigued, and he made his way outside to get closer to the action. Sure enough, he could spot that the animals seemed to be gathering, or at least following each other down the same trail through the rubble.

As darkness surrounded them, my friend turned on his headlamp, and following a discreet distance behind, he watched as the animals arrived at another vacant building. Waiting for Sylvester and Nessa to lead the way, one by one they entered down a sunken concrete stairwell.

His curiosity straining every nerve in his body, Pezent waited in the dark until the condensation on the edge his hoodie began to freeze, and he was sure he could hear no more sounds of movement. He slinked around to the back of the building to see if he could gain access to the first floor, or peek through one of the barred up windows.

Using all his stealth, Pezent crept up towards what looked to be a first floor bedroom window. Empty tin flower boxes lined the sills on the fire escape, and as he envisioned on old maid leaning out to water her begonias on a spring morning, the moon came out from behind a cloud and lit up the scene with a silvery glow.

Peering through the window, his eyes followed the moonbeam down peeling victorian wallpaper to the bedroom floor. There, lying in various heaving heaps of quietly snoring and mangy fur .. were all the stray cats and dogs of the neighborhood.

"Blissfully sleeping, unaware I was watching, and cuddled together like .. well, like they needed each other to stay warm. That's when I realized it'd been a year since I'd left. It was time to go home."

Pezent tells me his story as we sit in his third floor apartment of C-Squat. He says that's why most of the squatters we know on the west coast are of the CHUD variety and never seem to organize. "It's not cold enough there," he explains.

It's years later and Hurricane Sandy has just blown through town. I'm here on a visit and we talk abut how things have changed in the village; how people reacted when a three foot wall of water rushed down Avenue C, blowing up an electrical transformer and plunging lower Manhattan into darkness for a week.

A crisis can bring people together, but not everyone knows how to act. It takes leadership to make the first step.

When Sandy hit, all the local businesses were wiped out in the flood. Fancy restaurant owners didn't know what to do with the food that was beginning to rot in their walk-ins and they threw it out in the gutters.

It took a squatter to see something wrong with this picture. Someone who's used to sharing what they have. The squatters organized, and proposed to the restaurants that they donate their food to an emergency barbecue for the whole neighborhood. They would be the cooks and volunteer their time.

The owners were skeptical at first. "How do I know I'll get my insurance money?"

"Is there anything in your policy that says you can't give away what's gonna rot and be thrown out anyway?" my friends replied.

Their logic prevailed and the party was on.

They busted out their pedal-powered mini generator and set up a long table in front of C-squat for passing yuppies to plug in and recharge their cellphones, while getting their sidewalk spin-class on. They BBQ' d and served kobe beef and maui sweet onion burgers to hundreds of people all day, then they hooked up their bicycle powered apparatus to a sump-pump, and pumped the water out of their neighbor's flooded basements all night.

For a moment, the squatters were the toast of the town. These people were society's rejects, unwanted by their families, and abandoned to their drug addictions - resented for bringing down home values with their facial tattoos and frightening pit bulls. And here they were, making the national guard irrelevant, by taking care of their neighbors.

The New York Times put the surprising story on the front page of the Sunday edition.

It wasn't an unusual way for my friends and I to be - and for that I'm very thankful.

Life in a Ditch

Usually this is my favorite time of year and I make a big deal about it.

Honoring the pagan ritual of death and rebirth, I revel in the miracle of rejuvenation ... But this year spring equinox sort of passed me by while I was caught in a vortex of ailing health, dwelling on failed relationships, and generally feeling like a failure for most of the winter. I've managed to keep my head up, in order to do what I have to, but depression can trap you inside yourself, and I have only recently been able to administer my best cure.

Get outside and let Mother Nature remind you how lucky you are to be alive in this moment! Even if you have to do it it in a begrudging and mopey way. Do it! Do it like the Goths on the beach in Portlandia .. Do it your own way, but open yourself up and let Her heal you. With her colors, sounds, and caresses - even her terrible smells and frightening surprises.

This piece is for everyone struggling with life. You're not alone.


Yesterday I was challenged to write more about my life in the present, so I went for a long bike ride up the coast to firmly place my awareness in the here and now, and then write about it. This is what I noticed ~

The traditional heavy winds were blowing against my progress north up the coastal highway. This constant beat down is humbling. I always tell my crew that "headwinds build character", and I use this motto to hunker down and concentrate on my form and cadence. Over and over, I tighten my core, straighten my back, and pace myself along with the hypnotic swish-swish of the crank turning over the chain. Rhythm ... Repetition ... Focus. Predictable patterns that I control, as I make my way up the asphalt ribbon dividing rutted fields of dark green artichokes and blooming strawberries.

A peaceful sense of purpose sets in, and I think of the history of this road. In California, a highway is so revered that we put an honorific "the" in front of it's number. "The One" was the first of it's kind. Linked by a chain of colonizing missions, this road made the state - but today, I'm thinking of the loneliness of it's travelers.

I swerve around a flattened, pregnant raccoon in the middle of my bike path. What was she thinking right before her life was snuffed out by a roaring truck? Did the truck driver even notice he was drifting dangerously off the road? Maybe the raccoon saved his life by waking him up to the sound of her skull being popped out the other side of eighteen wheels.

Onward towards Davenport, I give thanks for my continuing existence. I'm climbing up a long hill, and I'm drawn to the scenery at the side of the highway. I pull over next to a path speckled with constellations of dancing wildflowers. Dark blue spires of lupin pierce clouds of yellow wild mustard, shimmying up a fairytale hillside leading to an old rusty water pump.

"This is my spot!" I recognize, and I haul my bike up a path through the thistles, over to a concrete drainage ditch running parallel to the road. I figure this will give me the wind block I need to smoke my joint.

Pleased with my discovery, I set my pack down, and looking left and right before committing, I spot something that freezes me in a visceral terror. A huge, stretched out snake is coming out from his crack in the ditch to sun himself, and I can't yet see if he's a really well-fed gopher snake or a small rattler because his tail hasn't emerged. Little, blue-bellied lizards scatter as the snake and I size each other up cautiously. He's too cold to move fast, and by the shape of his head I can tell he's just a fat gopher eater. "Good on ya, bud. Get yours. You're no threat, and neither am I, so let's share this space while I smoke. Thank you!"

I light up, and the snake is motionless. I can tell he's alive by the glistening moisture on his skin, and the way he holds his chin slightly up off the ground, sniffing the air. Something in his eyes tells me this crisis is over, and in affirmation, a small female lizard edges back out from the shade, and parks herself next to me on the warm concrete. She's not gonna let some big, doofy human ruin her suntanning hour.

As I smoke, I'm kept company by these creatures. I think about their lives, their daily routines, and their perception of me. How did they conclude I wasn't a threat? Was it because I talked to them out loud, with respect? Or was there some magic conjured up when I asked permission to spend time in their home?

The snake is slowly inching his way across the trough towards the shade of a raspberry patch. When I see him freeze like when I first arrived, I instinctively look up. A red-tailed hawk is circling overhead in long sloping circles that seem to lead ever closer to our little cul-de-sac. I can feel her eyes sweeping across our bodies as if she was the Dark Lord Sauron and I was Frodo with the magic ring in my pocket. Searching, searching ... But, she's riding the wind, and I'm too close to the snake for her to consider striking. Her awareness moves on, the wind carrying her upward and outward, but her presence is still felt; by the snake, by the lizard, and myself. Be aware, she reminds us. We are being watched by death.

I decide that I saved the snake's life by showing up when I did, and I tell him so. The lizard laughs and tells me there are plenty of new bunnies in the fields this time of year that are probably a tastier treat for the hawk, but I'm not convinced.

At this point I realize that I'm carrying on a dialogue with critters, and I'm super-stoned! The snake is unimpressed, and continues his slow progress into the shelter of the raspberry patch. I notice that even after all we've been through together, he's still inspiring fear in me. With his head hidden in the bushes, I can't surmise his intentions. I thought we were friends, but my inherent distrust of snakes makes me believe he may slither back around through the weeds and bite me in the ass. Glancing nervously at the undergrowth behind me, I see several ladybugs making their innocent way up tender chutes of spring grass .. and I relax.

Bidding farewell to my new friends, I ponder how fortuitous this shared moment was. The snake, the lizard, the hawk, and I were all connected, and we changed each other's lives by our interaction. The snake slinks along on his belly, I walk away upright, and soaring above us is the hawk. In the eyes of God there is no difference in our stature. We're all just baby animals, clinging to the side of a rock.

put a bird on it

Crow is bored and causes a ruckus

Hawk is busy serving her purpose

Crow needs crow to pass her dark mutterings on down the line

Hawk's piercing cry resounds in all ears

Crow steals and hordes and jealously guards her treasures against other thieves

Hawk travels light and takes only what she needs

Crow likes rotting flesh

Hawk prefers a fresh catch

Crow only knows what she's heard from other crows

Hawk soars above to see the long road

These are archetypes .. that people live their lives by

How do you choose to fly?