Rethinking Mass Production

In fourth grade I remember being introduced to the concept of a plantation. We were given Styrofoam trays and we colored paper cut-outs of each aspect of an historically working Maryland plantation, which we then pasted onto the tray in physical relation to one another so that eventually the centered plantation owner’s house was surrounded by all the gardens and out-buildings necessary to sustain it. Integral to this lay-out were the slave quarters. In face, we were told, the plantation could not sustain itself without slaves.

Nowadays, I am told, the modern plantation system has overcome the need for slaves through increased mechanized technology. But I wonder how true that is. With the invention of flood lights and generators, the harvesting of massive-scale palm oil or sugar cane plantations and corn or soy monocultures and pine or eucalyptus tree plantations can continue 24 hours a day with petroleum flowing through the engines and chainsaws, but humans still work the levers, still haul the harvest, still fight off sleep and boredom and rage. All these harvests must then be transported and processed again on a massive-scale, with humans working vats of steaming heat or of corrosive chemical fumes where bureaucratically negotiated thresholds of waste matter, bodily fluids, rat bodies are permitted into the mixes. Humans protected by thin films of plastic or cloth or just their sleeves, sort and mix and bundle and dump raw harvests which eventually are transported to other large-scale factories, many times across international boundaries, across oceans; so far are the modern worker quarters and out-buildings geographically located from the centered owner’s house.

At these next factories, the original plantation harvests are incorporated by humans with the strength of machines into recognizable products: snack foods, condiments, sauces, cooking oils, and all their packaging, labels, boxes, crates. Hundreds, thousands of humans and long, hard labor-hours have been involved in the plantation harvests and product processing. Thousands, millions will benefit in the direct sale and consumption of these products as palm oil, refined sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, ethanol, soy meal, cardboard, paper napkins, toilet paper….

Modern-day humans are so emotionally attached to the sweet-sugar-salty-fats and paper products of the age, we are willing to ignore where they come from, the human energy entailed. In fact, we attempt to justify our continued consumption by the number of jobs such a system of harvest and production offers to the poorest of the world’s poor. The anonymous masses and their families who suffer night shifts and sickness, compensated by just enough money, just enough housing, not enough time-off, who may be beaten at work and who are always worried of being fired when production slows because consumption thousands of miles away slows, when harvests fail, when the land dries up, when the pesticides and fertilizers stop working, when the factories move on to a new location with new natural resources to exploit and less human-right protections or over-seers. These jobs are bought and sold, traded on whims of financial speculation from offices and cell phones thousands of miles removed. The faces of the workers and their families are always anonymous because they are exchangeable and temporary, oftentimes seasonal. And yet, they are integral to the greater economic system. The world-wide, modern plantations can not sustain themselves without them.

We humans have not changed much in our consciousness in the past few centuries. Our overall business practices are very much the same, our social acceptance-level and tolerance for individual ambition has increased and is continuously encouraged to expand. Our dedication to creatively masking the details of our lifestyle is as eagerly pursued as our dedication toward uncovering and exposing corruption. Despite bookmarks on the Civil War and lawyered acts of political promise, we humans in the modern age have never really confronted our slave-driven consciousness and our dependency upon a system of haves and have-nots, of conquistadores, of military control. And unless we do so, how can we ever open our consciousness to the possibility of the world lived by 6 billion and more humans in any other way? The web of our modern consciousness prevents us from dreaming any other outcome into being.

In my fourth grade classroom, with our integrated colors and cultures and sensitivities, we asked our teacher whether we could leave out the slave quarters on our Styrofoam trays. Someone asked if the slave quarters could be the center of the plantation instead of the owner’s main house or if the two houses could be placed side-by-side. It pained our teacher to explain to us that this layout had already been decided by history, that the world of the old Maryland plantations was separate and unequal; she was just teaching the curriculum, please finish the assignment quietly. But we had so many questions and no one to answer. We wanted to change history, to change the present, to change the future. A shift in consciousness is inherent and its unfolding can be systematically stifled for a time among a room of well-behaving fourth graders, but we fire-snakes are turning 32 this year and the world is preparing for a shift in power as our teacher and bosses retire. Can we dream a new vision creatively now that our borders are well-beyond Styrofoam trays and the limits of colored pencils and Elmer’s glue?

Seagull Showers

Learning cycles by observation, scientists track annual meteor showers across our night windows like celestial migrations, and somewhere a child in a field makes wishes on falling stars. Here in Los Brujos I too have been recording cycles of celestial visions, patiently waiting for annual repetition finding nature’s hidden symbols to mark the seasons, cycles large and small.

From the last weeks of October through early November, hundreds of Andean gulls flash white wings and black hoods through the quebradas of the coastal mountain range, steering toward the wetland plains, following the rivers to the sea. They pass overhead in the muffled wind of wing beats one flock at a time sometimes calling to each other, sometimes in uniform silence, just over the blossoming branches of the Notro trees arching red flowers. A vision of beauty, stark white formation passing at speed against a backdrop of spring greenery like watching the tail of a falling star suddenly blaze and then dissolve in the distance.

They are a symbol of the sea these gulls that migrate across our mountains, connecting us to the coast in their presence, their calls. At sunset drawing dusk in between Spring storms, the seagull showers bottleneck up our quebradas, flocks passing within minutes of each other, sometimes sharing the same breezy lift and then calling their kin back towards their group as they dive down the northern slopes of the pine plantations towards Valdivia and the sea. Their wings bent like aircraft they dive and spin and try to avoid the attention of raptors also soaring overhead.

On clear evenings I like to watch the seagulls pass, wish them well on their journey from atop the pine plantation hill across the street. Salvia and Trigo eagerly accompany me to search out quails or mountain pigeons in the grasses, foxglove pushing up green leaves preparing to unfold future flowers. But my attention is fixed elsewhere, standing upon a clear-cut stump like the Lorax, I gaze in every direction the horizon, as through mist and sun the seagulls come, great showers of flashing light, black hoods and darting white so close overhead or alongside you feel their beating wings in the air and they are gone. The seagull showers of middle-Spring, carrying us toward Summer, out of Winter, with a graceful migration worth pausing for, staring up in awe, a smile, a wish, a wave.

In memory of Mimi Hipps, Lou-Lou, and Grandma French who now all share this week in November as their time of transition, a lifetime’s migration, to distant shores.

Dissolving Gender

Waking up from a dream transgender ant, conversations with Noelle conjuring up old memories of my own childhood questioning, wondering over the divisions of gender in society, trying to imagine a different world-view…

What if when babies were born, no one examined between our legs and no one proclaimed us more one way or another. We could just be babies awakening into this world. In childhood we could play in the games of imagination, trying out the interests towards which we were most inclined, the hair lengths and clothing most comfortable, without adults always clucking out their expectations, without categorizing our actions. And when we reached an age of sexual awareness, we would not be divided by our physical bodies, we would not have to leave behind any part of our us in order to conform to a two-gender system. No one would ask us: Boy or Girl? Nurturers would keep expanding their nurturing, organizers their organizing, all artists would explore their artistry, what you had to share would be shared: inherent talents defining your path, your contribution, your focus in your community, your place in society.

What kind of world would we then live in? What kind of harmony, an inner calm, could replace those anxious years of conformity and failure, self-doubt and depression that now so plagues the Western concept of adolescence? If we could somehow remove the guilt and shame of being divided and defined by our visible/invisible sexual organs, not lose all those years in repression of self-expression trying to fulfill limited roles deemed acceptable by society, what kind of beauty could we collectively dream into being, each and every one of us giving the best part of themselves?

No one would fall through the cracks. We could find and nurture and let blossom the creative aspect imbedded within each and every one of us: our true birthright, the power of our divine imaginations. Our relationships between lovers, friends, families would be richly diverse, satisfying our spectrum of needs from platonic to sexual based on connection, on energy, on the universal spark without the overarching opinion of society interfering, limiting, confining, defining. Remove the concept of Man and Woman and we can return to being Human, like the Smurfs before Smurfette or like the Care Bears where emotions and feelings and natural talents defined their roles.

Give a child Love and Space and watch them shine. We have forgotten the art of observation, we are losing our intuition, so defined and pre-ordered have we made modern life, there is no wonder that we find the chaos and strife of human suffering so present. How many children are growing up today already feeling like failures at such a young age, categorized as misfits, in the endless competition to be the Alpha Male or Female; roles of which there are by definition only a limited number, non-inclusive by expectation. We Humans are many-faceted, diversely talented, uniquely created and our defining characteristics and roles should reflect these aspects. Value and worth can only be embraced, not compared.

Why do we waste so much time and energy in false rules, planned disappointments, absurd expectations in propagating a clearly failing Western gender model? We have convinced ourselves that there is actually an archetypal Male and Female, have built science and religion and politics around this concept, and then spend the rest of existence being surprised by and attempting to categorize the continual flood of anomalies; the current, popular catch-all being Gay or Queer. No more labels, no more definitions. Let experience and our stories, our unique emotional paths and propensities guide us. If we can open our hearts and minds to Love’s many forms, the human experience can be an explosion of creative expression, connection and joy from which no one need be left out or behind.

Human Transformation comes from reaching beyond our personal fog, through the think cloud cover societal fears place between us and the stars. We center our focus, become the superheroes of our dreams. Through peace, through love, our ever-present connection to the Sun we recognize our True Selves; unravel the myth and enter. Our imaginations individual and collective are limitless and so shall be the boundaries of our experience.

All Hail the Heirloom Hen

We let our first broody hen sit on two of her fertilized eggs as an experiment. And we were pleasantly blessed with a miracle of life as our first two chicks, Guavaberry and Pebbles, hatched a little over a week ago after being incubated naturally for exactly 21 days by their mother hen Wilma, whom has been diligently caring for her small brood ever since, teaching them all they need to know to find food and drink, keeping them warm and safe from harm. All hail the heirloom chicken breeds that not only still know how to care for their own, but that do so completely independently of, and really in spite of, human intervention!

The majority of poultry in the world, raised for commercial purposes, have been so regressively bred from their ancestors that their very survival as a species, their instinct to mate, to lay, to incubate, to hatch and to raise their young has been almost completely bred out of them. The majority of commercial poultry are extremely dependent on the intervention of humans for feeding, the treatment of illnesses, insemination, and electrical incubation so that even though they remain biological beings, commercial poultry have been transformed into little more than commodities in a system of food production. The widespread prevalence of these human-dependent breeds makes small-scale poultry raising difficult and expensive in costs, time and energy. But through the internet and special interest community groups, stocks of heirloom breeds are becoming more and more available to all aspiring self-sustainers the world over.

Thankfully, finding and raising fairly self-sufficient heirloom breeds of chickens or other domesticated farm animals and seeds is still the norm in southern Chile, which has made our forays into the raising of poultry one more of observation rather than aggressive intervention. We receive an egg a day from each of our hens all year round with our only feeding being a little handful of grain in the morning and again before sundown. They graze on grass and insects and their egg yokes are a deep orange from the natural diet. With a rooster at the lead, our few hens graze freely among the forest undergrowth under watchful protection and come home every night to roost in their coop. This is the way chickens were raised in all those old idioms repeated down from our great-grandparents, where the animals on a farm lived in a rather cooperative exchange with humans, at least more so than can be found on the modern, large-scale industrial farm. Come Spring, any visit to the farmer’s market in Valdivia is a colorful display of heirloom eggs for sale, blues and greens, every shade of brown and cream laid by hens of a whole range of colors and patterns. It leaves much to aspire to. In the meantime, a toast to our dear Wilma and her beautiful instinct toward motherhood and the raising of two healthy chicks!

The Solar Revolution in Los Brujos

We started experimenting with solar energy passively in Los Brujos. Our second year in the forest (February 2008) began with the installation of a passive hot water system on our roof; really just running some water through a few giant coils of black tubing in the sun. Although the temperature of the water was divinely hot, the gravity dependent pressure of the system was sometimes barely a trickle and when water resources became scarce towards late summer, the roof system would not even refill and eventually we abandoned the passive solar heat for the more controlled system of summer bathing by heating water over campfire and then pouring the water over ourselves with a tin cup rather than actually showering. But the Sun had our attention and we knew that our roof received plenty of direct solar rays….

Fast forward to the beginning of this year, our third year in the forest when we installed a single solar panel (putting out 1500milliAmps) under peak summer sun and suddenly we were able to charge our and our guests’ cell phones, mp3-players, and other small electronic devices like camera batteries. Unfortunately, the laptop battery proved too much for the single solar panel and visions of connecting to the internet through mobile wi-fi and amplifying speakers for spontaneous dance parties were placed on hold. But we kept observing and monitoring the solar panel’s ability to charge our small electronics, and it did so flawlessly even through the Winter Solstice as the sun’s rays grew weaker, the days grew shorter, the rain clouds swarmed in an impenetrable fog. Through cloud cover and planet tilts, the solar panel gave us electricity and we knew that we could safely invest in more of the same technology. The Universe granted us an extra bonus for our patience and put a free-shipping sale on our Sunsei brand solar panels so we ordered two, which my in-laws graciously brought down to us during their recent visit, a secret goal of which was to bring us into the 21st century. And so they have. Thank you, Gray especially for your persistence and encouragement.

And so I now type alongside my wood-burning stove where I could once only scribble thoughts, hoping to recapture a moment of inspiration to send during my next visit to a cyber café in town. The final investment in our electric system was a deep cycle battery to store charge for non-solar moments and it glows green even with the laptop plugged-in and the panels under partial cloud-cover. Such successes in alternative energy really do leave one wondering, if it can work in a Valdivian temperate rainforest, where else could the options be tested? Here’s to joining the revolution!

The Year of Harvests

I heard somewhere that the Year of the Ox in the Chinese zodiac calendar is a year of harvest. Through labor and dedication, the Ox helps the land bear fruit. This second year in the 12 year Chinese cycle, our third year in the forest, has pushed us toward the harvesting of various resources in Los Brujos: drinking water from our stream at the end of January, honey from our bees in March, the first eggs from our chickens in April, and now in the budding spring of October, enough solar energy to recharge a computer to connect our patch of forest to the digital age. It may seem odd to place basic water and food achievements on equal footing with something so seemingly mundane as internet communication, but if we can not share our journey, how can we inspire others to dream and seek and imagine into being their own adventures?

We have spent so much time and energy in just establishing our presence and ensuring our comfortable survival in Los Brujos over the past two years that communicating the experience, demonstrating the transformation in words and images and dialogue has been an afterthought or something scribbled in the night into a journal and not shared beyond the forest’s borders. It is my hope the our launching some of the stories from Los Brujos into the ethers of the digital internet will reconnect us, will help to inspire us and expand our dreams as well as those of others. I have come to understand in my few years of technological hiatus that the worldwide web is exactly that: a channeling of a modern consciousness, training wheels for a telepathic mind. It is that imaginative inspiration I next wish to harvest…. But in the meantime, a special note about how we harvested our drinking water:

The Atlas Ram Pump is an ingenious invention which pumps water without the use of external energy sources, only the kinetic energy of falling water. We used the design outlined by Don Wilson in his book All About Hydraulic Ram Pumps and have had amazing success, even through a severe summer drought which limited our water pumping to only an hour a day. Nearly all visitors to Los Brujos at the end of January this year actively helped assemble our system, whether by hauling water tanks, gathering stones and running pipe, or by building platforms and piecing together the pump itself, altered check-valves and tightened fittings. All the pieces are common items found in any hardware store (the pressure tank is actually just a bicycle tire inflated inside a confining PVC tube) and can be assembled without the use of power tools. It is an ideal way to pump water from a stream or spring source, using gentle slopes to create the funnel of pressure necessary to run the pump, and best of all, by assembling it ourselves we know exactly how to maintain or trouble-shoot the system. Our Atlas system utilizes a 1000 liter cistern that collects the water from our spring source through a filter and then water falling about 3 meters from the cistern through a 15 meter drive pipe to the Atlas pump is pumped vertically 30 meters over the distance of approximately 100 meters to the water tank above our cabins, supplying fresh drinking water to our home. The Atlas is only about 10-15% efficient in pumping water since most of the water that descends the drive pipe is used as kinetic energy to make the pump function so that, in our case, we pump approximately 100 liters in an hour. This sounds like very little, but it really adds up, especially since the past two years of water trials have ingrained in us a new appreciation for water scarcity. We are very conscious of our water use and needs and regularly consume our harvested rainwater for whatever cleaning or flushing or watering needs as appropriate and available. I hope to build a second Atlas pump further down our stream where we have greater water flow; animal and forest traffic may not warrant this water useful for drinking purposes, but it's a perfect source for agricultural water needs in the summer months. May the harvest continue.

Long Story Short

Well, long story short, Christine and I moved into the house with 13 roof rafters sometime in November 2007, once all major construction had ceased, the floors were sealed and most of the walls were covered from the inside. I had been working on the house practically alone since June 2007 when our dear friends Loreto, Jorge, and Horacio had to head back to Santiago, but help always appeared for the more difficult passes: Christine, Marcelo, and Chayito assisting on the most stubborn windows, Erin tackling the sub-floor, Anita and Teri stuffing insulation while Christine and I developed a rhythm for interior paneling (foro), and of course Moises ever teaching and guiding each pass when he could come up. We inagurated the house with a fine half keg of Torobayo and much merriment among friends and family, toasts to all those present and not just before heading North for the winter holidays.

Upon our return, we celebrated the beginning of a new cycle of 12 in the Chinese calendar, welcoming the Year of the Rat with Christine's family present, all of us snuggly in the new house. Recalling our ancestors and all the magicians that have walked before us in this forest throughout history and for all those that will walk these paths after us, we named the land Los Brujos under a strange and beautiful eclipse of the full moon in February 2008.

The last important detail, the house hearth, in this case a black wood-burning stove from Temuco, arrived in March 2008 as Summer headed toward Autumn and the chimney popped out of the roof in April 2008, just in time for the first rains. We have been warm and dry ever since. The finer details of sealing all the windows and making the house a home have been and will continue to be in process, but such is home-ownership I am told.

As for the house's name, we have adopted the symbol of the Mayan integer 13: ruler of the lunar cycles, feminine energy and transformation. Fittingly, the symbol is painted on an abandoned pine disc from the plantation across the street, rescued as the pines came down and our first beams were being erected.

And the transformations continue, as always, Los Brujos ever growing, construction projects in the works, new creatures invited to stay as we strive toward the dream of self-sustainability, creativity, freedom and love.

Los Tijerales

The celebration of a roof raising is a sacred event in many cultures and in Chile Los Tijerales are a great excuse to get together with the friends you haven´t had a chance to see while you were busy working on your house and also to thank those close friends who have supported you day in and day out. Instead of a traditional barbeque, we served fish with empanadas del horno and toasted much beer to our three passionate flags handing from the highest part of the roof: gay pride, aliens, and la patria. Also, Marcelo invited two of his students, volunteer teachers from Japan, who shared the Japanese tradition of throwing candies from the roof to bless the house. A good time was had by all and the sun shined gloriously. May our roof be blessed and now for the rest of the house.

Roof Raised and the Pines Start Coming Down

The day of San Jorge, we finished installing the principle roof of the second cabin during a brief break in the clouds, the last nails pounded in as the wind shifted from South to North, the mist returning to rain. We paused to reflect in the work done in little less than a month’s time without electricity, impressed at how our muscles had grown and our luck in learning new skills, but also a little daunted by the remaining tasks at hand. As if plaguing our thoughts, that same night the chainsaws in the pine plantations crept closer than ever before, tearing holes in the night with the shattering of trees and the grinding of machinery in the darkness.

Rafters and Rain

After a weekend of heavy lifting and overcoming the fear of heights, 13 roof rafters were finally in place and the second cabin began to take real shape, but the return of Autumn rain sent us in a rush to cover the whole structure with plastic sheeting, creating a bizarre scene in the forest reminiscent of NASA’s invasion of Elliott’s house in the movie E.T. Still, only a slight set-back as there are always support beams to attach and walls to finalize under the plastic.

And the stray dog that followed Christine home from the busstop some weeks ago and who we have come to know as Trigo (for his wheat-like color), was finally granted the permission to stay, even though he did participate in the eating of our baby ducks. El Bosque continues to teach us many lessons in patience and understanding.