Vanity (January 2014) by Renee

There it is again,

That finger pointing inward,

calling forth a retchedness

hiding within. I want it out! 

People can see it

swelling up in my gut

and rolling from my chin.

I'll point that finger of blame

at myself, until it scores the gullet.

I know this is wrong.
I am so ashamed.

But shame is just one more motive.

The crying isn't self-pity. 

It's scary, but the tears
are not from fear.
 There's an acidity suiting
to this corrosive experience.

It stains my nose. Great. 

Now I stink too.

Once that feeling of drowning

passes, I feel better. For now. No,

forever this time. No more of this!

But I am too indulgent. Too impulsive.

So blindly ambitious.
I'm just like my family. I feel

that choleric inheritance land,
like a knighting sword, squarely 
on my shoulders as I kneel

 in front of a white throne

where I must purge myself

of myself and my true hungers

for that insatiable appetite for perfection.  

Consumers Anonymous (December 2013) by R

Addiction is tricky. It’s in our brain. It’s in our muscles. It gets tangled up in every aspect of our life, so that when we try to quit, the negative habit is triggered by other, healthy pieces of our life that we do not want to lose.  

There is a tendency in our culture to use clinical services of counseling and medicating for addiction; an individual’s solution to the individual’s problem. But a popular intervention has been the twelve-step program. The steps provide people with a course of action (which we all feel we need from somewhere outside ourselves), as well as a built in support network, or ‘fellowship’.

The steps differ based on the culture of the addiction or compulsion. Narcotics. Sex. Gambling. Work. But very generally, people are asked to admit that they cannot control their addiction, see strength in some higher power, reflect on their life with a sponsor, make amends for their errors, develop a new code of behavior and learn to live it, and then to help others through the same path.  

Consuming is an addiction, but a culturally sanctioned addiction. Other addictions, like alcoholism or sex, may be glorified in our culture, but they also come with negative moral connotations. Consuming, on the other hand, is considered responsible. Necessarily. How do you declare yourself addicted to something as assumed as breathing? But we’ve been paying to live on oxygen tanks while we go indoors to escape the wind.   

Twelve steps:

1.                   Admit we are disempowered by the compulsion to consume—that our lives have become unmanageable.

2.                   Believe in a restorative power greater than ourselves as individuals.

3.                   Decide to turn our lives over to the care of this Earth and Her Spirit and a family of life.

4.                   Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5.                   Admit to the Spirit of this world, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our over consumption.

6.                   Be entirely ready to have the sufficiency of this world end our addictive behavior.

7.                   Reach within and beyond ourselves to overcome limitations.

8.                   Consider all in the family of life we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.

9.                   Make direct amends wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10.               Continue to take personal inventory, and when we are consuming beyond the design, promptly admit it.

11.               Meditate to improve our conscious contact with the Spirit of this world and the entire family of life, praying only for a better understanding of our relationships and the power to carry out our role in sustaining one another.

12.               Carry this message to other consumers, and practice these principles in all our affairs.

Hello. 

My name is Renee, and I’m a consumer. 

I don’t know how else to live. 

I trust there is a Way. 

I commit to exploring my behavior and its impact on all in the family of life. 

Consumers Anonymous (December 2013) by L

I wasn’t’ offered health.  A whole way of being in the world was not my inheritance.  So here I am an addict, trying to be whole with things.   

thing

noun

1.a material object without life or consciousness; an inanimate object.

Things.  This is all we have to satisfy us.  So we say, so we create, so we have.  Only things.  Nothing is sacred, nothing mysterious, nothing alive and conscious and loving to join us and make us whole.  Only things or the hope of supernatural redemption.  (i.e. this world is a joke, a game, the real deal is somewhere else--hang around it’ll be sweet)

What the hell. No, I don’t buy it.  I’ve tasted wild water. I knew this as a child. The earth is alive.  We are all the family of life and we sustain each other.  It’s all here. 

But how do I drop my addiction?  How will I be cared for?  It’s not like we have people showing us the way.  I’ve only started to meet a few people I think to be on that path.  And damn is it hard.  How do you let go?  How do you trust it at this point? Certainly it’s all going to fall apart?  How does an entire global culture drop an addiction?

How do I drop my addiction?  When everyone around me is killing the earth how can I put my trust in it? How can I leave my comfort?

But what else is there?  JUST THIS MOMENT OF BLISS. Indulging again.

HELP ME, FRIENDS.

Consumers Anonymous (December 2013)

Society, by Eddie Vedder

Good Byes (November 2013) by Josh W.

When the activity of the day finally stops,

I stand still in a clear, starry night looking up to the moon.

I remember that you can see it too. 

Maybe not at this same hour,          

Maybe you forget that it is even there.

When it is New it can easily be forgotten.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Perhaps only when it is Full do you remember.

Reflecting on the abundance of moonlight.

There are moments of Waxing. 

Times that you happen to look up and remember.

Mostly the memories are Waning,

With the passage of time.

So Good-bye.

I am merely becoming New.

When I return we will again be Full.

Good Byes (November 2013) by Renee

The love of my life still remembers, with pause, this childhood thought:

That all he lived and learned and loved were just the vivid dream

of a single palm tree – the sole occupant on a distant planet.

We all have this fear, don’t we? That in the involuntary flutter

of a waking eye the contents of a life can turn to crust

on sleepy lashes. Gone, to the fleeting memory of a finite slumber.

I can imagine the scene so clearly. My love returns to consciousness 
on that lonely planet, drifting in eternal space. Slowly, he returns 
to his bark skin, heavy and numb from sleep.

His coconut eyes fuzzy and unfocused, still trying to look

through some avatar’s strange squishy eyes. What is real?

He stretches his root toes and feels rock. He scans

the familiar landscape of his barren planet, and ruffles

his leaves, attune to that sound. And yet, there was that dream.

And this feeling. Can you miss what you never really had? Or,

can you mourn what you never really lost? Why, 
in the midst of everything warm and human, do we feel, 
in our pumping hearts and with real tears, 
the loneliness of an imaginary palm tree

in an unfathomable eternity?  

Good Byes (November 2013) by Renee

When I stop to think about good-byes, I think about the big ones. The sad ones. The ones that haven’t even happened yet. But our parting traditions are generally so habitualized we hardly think about the gestures, phrases, and rituals we practice daily.

Parting phrases, in particular, click off the tongue like a compulsion, or run together like a meaningless alphabet soup of acceptable phrases (Brian Regan’s “Take luck and care for it” comes to mind). We rely on tradition and habit to make such transitions with minimal effort. But we do still take some time to acknowledge those transitions.  

Even in such a mobile culture, where we consider ourselves independent if not disconnected, we acknowledge separation. We express it. We use the air in our lungs moving through us to say good bye.

We say it in just about any context, whether it’s a daily occurrence or an extended leave. Even when it’s final, and someone is dead and arguably unable to hear us, we still say goodbye. In formal situations and the most un-ceremonial encounters. With people we barely know, people we meet in passing, and those we  hold most dear.

God is in our good byes. A Dios. A Dieu. Even in English, from “God be with you” to Shakespeare’s “God b’wy”, to modern day good-bye. Good-byes are scary. Even the small ones seem to sum up this questionable existence we have on Earth. So naturally we call upon God.  

Even if we don’t mention a specific deity, a good bye is often prayerful.  An appeal. A blessing. A hope.

Fare well.

Have a good day.

Rest in peace.

We can’t give these things to people, but we offer it like a gift. We wish it for them.

Our good-byes are expectant.

Au Revior. Hast la vista. Auf Wiedersehen

See you later. Until I see you. Until later. Catch you later. Like it or not, I will see you and I will latch onto you. This-is-not-good-bye Good-bye.  

It can be full of the most Intense emotions, or said without any thought or feeling, but the parting wouldn’t seem right without some expression.

 So long.

 See you on the flip side.  

 Smell you later.

 Piso Mojado  

 Live long and prosper.

 May the force be with you.

 Take it easy.

God bless.

Toodles (from the French, à tout à l'heure).

Remember we are all aspects of one universal soul (Or, Namaste).

Keep it real.

Happy trails.

Piss off.

I miss you already.