leaving
I had booked the “tropical island sanctuary” on Airbnb months before, thinking it sounded idyllic. What better than a secluded, wild, overgrown acreage on Hawai’i Island, living in community but with my own cabin, shared meals, and a chance to “chop wood, carry water” in service of the sacred land?
Earlier in 2019, I had completed a certification in permaculture design and another in ecovillage design—goals I’d held for nearly a decade—and I was excited to put my new knowledge into action. Beyond that, though, I knew even then that what I was reaching for, what I’d been heading toward for the whole of that decade, was actually a wholesale departure from my way of life up until then.
I just couldn’t quite figure out how to do it. I still thought I had to leave.
Like many others (I now know), I’d been learning to garden and planting seeds, building community, following burgeoning movements in living lighter, living smaller, and building with natural materials and human-centric designs. I’d adopted a raw vegan diet and loved it, and my knowledge of plant medicines and wild animal welfare had propelled me into an entirely new interrelationship with the rest of the natural world and with my own wild nature.
My time at OUR Ecovillage, and then at a resident service volunteer at Hollyhock on Cortes Island, provided new experiences of community and reciprocity and living more in harmony with the land. But those experiences had definitive end dates, and I knew that what I was seeking—or seeking to co-create—was something much more enduring.
I picked up a rental car at Hilo Airport and used my host’s emailed instructions to find my way to her well-hidden property. She greeted me at the gate, which was entirely obscured by tropical vines, and led me inside.
My heart sank. Her land was dotted with poorly constructed plywood huts interspersed with high grasses and former food gardens overgrown with sugarcane grass. My orientation consisted of a laundry list of tasks I was expected to complete over the next week in order to balance out the “service rate” I was paying for my stay: literally the laundry from seven weeks of previous guests, housekeeping, weeding, transplanting, and repainting my own cabin. What’s more, I was her only guest that week, and she was busy with work, so I was on my own.
Before I headed over to my accommodations, she handed me an orange Home Depot bucket that said GET IT DONE! on one side, and a roll of toilet paper. “You’re welcome to use the washroom at the house, of course, but you might not want to be walking over here after dark. Scorpions and stuff.”
That night—around 7 pm since the sun set just after 6—I lay on my sagging bed staring up at a light fixture full of dead flies, listening to a tiny high-pitched choir grow louder by the minute. I soon turned out the light and let the velvet starry black of the jasmine-scented night permeate my senses, so that I could listen in earnest.
The koki, or coqui, is a small tree frog, apparently yellow to brown in colour although I never did see one, that makes a distinctive KO-kee vocalization. In particular, the males are exceptionally vocal in their search for a mate. The koki are not native to Hawaii, but were introduced accidentally in the late 1980s on nursery plants imported from Puerto Rico. Without any natural predators in Hawai’i, they now thrive in population numbers evidenced by the tremendous volume and geographical range of their nighttime song. Voracious little creatures, they have also become a threat to indigenous insects and spiders, and many of the locals have undertaken a massive and deadly campaign against them.
I crawled under the covers as the night cooled, but tired as I was from traveling all day, sleep did not come. The romance of that chirping chorus of a hundred thousand frogs soon gave way to annoyance, and then to a kind of panicky auditory claustrophobia. These frogs were loud. I located my earplugs and shut them out as best I could. When I woke up at dawn the next morning, there were only the songbirds and one distant rooster welcoming back the day.
alone
I have spent the preponderance of my adult life living alone. Without question, the central element of what I was seeking at this point was community. So the intensity of my aloneness at the “tropical island sanctuary” soon came to feel deeply uncomfortable. I completed all of the tasks on my to-do list, but I left early, heading west across the top of Hawai’i Island toward my next destination and people I knew. It would take a death followed by a global shutdown a few months later to fully waken me to the realization that I was never alone. That I was surrounded by life in infinite manifestations and companioned at all times, if only I would open my eyes—and ears. If only I would reach beyond my constructed reality to the more real, more-than-human world, as David Abram calls it. Always and everywhere around me, it teemed.
But that is a story for another post, and it requires me to criss-cross back over ground I prefer not to traverse again at the moment. For now, what I’m curious about is this idea of leaving.
edgeworkers and gameworlds
Culture has edges. This is an idea that does not occur to the fully immersed. When most of us consider “culture,” we think of someone else’s, often someone considered Indigenous to the land they inhabit. A majority of us who inhabit North America are increasingly aware, if we weren’t already, that we are immigrants to this land and descendants of immigrants. Much has been said about our having been uprooted from the ancient cultures of our ancestors, and the poverty of the pop culture that has filled the void. Martin Prechtel is one of my favourite authors on this topic, and he speaks and writes in a kind of extended poetic lament that is, to use his own phrase, at once a song of grief and praise. More clearly than most, he offers an intimation of what is possible if we can open memories to our own ancient pasts and our minds to our infinite possible futures.
Much has also been said about the flattening of global cultural diversity—by the ubiquitous imposition of English and the disappearance of Indigenous languages, by the Internet and its algorithms that drive us in directions preferred by unseen agents, by the corporatization of media such that the stories we see and hear are those that meet the approval of an increasingly small handful of players. In fact in Canada, it is not uncommon to hear people say we don’t have a culture at all (although you won’t hear that in La Belle Province, or from those First Nations peoples here who are rebuilding connection to their own ancient cultures).
In about 2011 or 2012 I started to experience the sensation of bumping up against something I couldn’t see … something I had always unconsciously experienced as infinite or at least unquestionably expansive, but that was turning out to have edges and a ceiling. I was halfway through my forties by that time, but although there were still many things I was studying and learning, I sensed that none of them would lead me out of this invisible-ceilinged room. I didn’t know it at the time, but I know it now, two years into this global transformation, that what I was hitting up against were our human culture’s end-limits for the support of Life on this planet.
What I didn’t know then but know now, was that one timeline had played itself out, and we had already embarked on a new one. What I didn’t know then but know now is that there are many who are driving the human world in a particular direction characterized by an ascendancy of AI, and many more who will either happily or obliviously follow along. What I didn’t know then but know now is that those of us who (re)call a vision for something far more organic, compassionate, and humane are going to have to fight for it, with everything we have and everything we’ve become—and not by fighting at all, actually, but by embodying that vision in our very selves.
If these ideas … that humans create culture … that culture is, in fact a human creation, a story we agree on … that we get to decide and change our minds and decide yet again what it is we want and how we’re going to build it … that it can be much like any game, like Dungeons & Dragons for example, or a theatre production, or the floor is lava, and just as much fun … if these ideas intrigue you, you’ll want to listen to Anna Kovasna of the Global Ecovillage Network interview Anne Chloe Destremeau and Clinton Callaghan of Possibilica, an archearchal nanonation gameworld. When I first heard this conversation, just a little over a week ago, I understood for the first time that leaving did not have to be a physical thing. That in fact true leaving is never physical, but can only happen by a shift in consciousness.
At this juncture in time, there are many who find themselves feeling a powerful impulse to flee. To leave. Simultaneously, there is the realization that there is nowhere to go. Once the understanding begins to dawn that a different kind of leaving is required, then the question becomes, Leave what? Leave how? And, For what? What can the future be, if not a direct continuation of the past?
The denizens of Possibilica point to a way forward that bears a far closer resemblance to play and imagination than to planning and grind. One sacred essential that the past two years have badly injured is the imaginative freedom of play. The 1997 film Life Is Beautiful is a poignant reminder that play is a quality no one can take from us, no matter what the circumstances.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Albert Einstein
As I write this, I find myself right back where I started—quite literally, in my childhood home. I am getting ready to leave, yet again. But this time, I think, will be different. I have left here so many times before—in rebellion, in anticipation of an adulthood I expected to be conferred by age, a job, and an apartment, in anger, in grief. This time, maybe for the first time, I will leave in peace.
buddhist frogs and big change
Caterpillars and butterflies get all the press when it comes to transformation, and to be fair, they earn it. The caterpillar doesn’t change into a butterfly. Nuh-uh. The caterpillar dissolves. For all intents and purposes, the caterpillar dies. Once dissolved, the remaining cells—an amorphous goo inside the chrysalis—each have the potential to become, well, anything. Thus they are categorized by lepidopterists as imaginal cells.
If you’re wondering when “all this” will be over and when we’ll “get back to normal,” I’d say you can safely calculate our progress and trajectory in that regard by ascertaining the degree to which we have collectively achieved maximum amorphous goo status. For better or worse, I’d say we have a ways to go.
This moment calls, therefore, for frogs. Frogs are also potent totems of transformation, and although transformation is arduous and near deadly for all of us, a preponderance of frogs do manage it without that goo phase.
So emblematic are they of transformation that Buddhists have looked to them for centuries to point to the moon—to illuminate for us grasshoppers the nature of, well, illumination. I remember this little story from my university religious studies days, although the addition of the fish friend here is new to me and such a profoundly timely element, and I love this beautiful piece on Tricycle, by Clark Strand, in which he shows frogs to be Bodhisattvas, enlightened ones who choose to return over and over to the world of suffering, death, and rebirth in order to pull a few more of us sleeping ones across the line.
Here, to complete my inaugural and rambling post, is my own version:
Pond and the Beyond
Once upon a time, a tadpole was hatched from a clutch of 4,000 glistening, globulous eggs. Instantly, he sensed how to undulate from side to side and sweep his tail to move through the World, how to open and close his gills to take in life-giving oxygen, and how to find nourishment from the shining Greens around him. Instantly, he was content and at home. Surrounded by hundreds of his brothers and sisters, instantly he felt he belonged. Together, they explored the Heights, the Depths, and the Edges. Together, they celebrated the Light of Day, and told their tales by the Dark of Night. This was Home, and Home was his whole World.
And then one day something started to change … not in his environment but in him. Small, hard nodules began to form where once there was only smooth slippery skin. He grew alarmed as soon tiny, weak, floppy appendages sprouted from these nodes on his body. And then just as he was wondering what to do with these useless and anomalous appendages, his tail—the rudder and compass and engine of his whole life, shrivelled up to nothing.
He began to sink.
Flailing feebly, watching everyone he loved disappear in the receding distance, he sank down, down to the Depths of the Pond, deeper and deeper, perilously far, in fact, from the surface and ever nearer to the rock bottom bed of his once-homey and beloved pond. All at once, he realized he couldn’t breathe. Flapping his gills frantically, he managed to take in a tiny breath, but he knew this soon would not be enough to sustain him.
It was as if everything around him had become dangerous and deadly all at once. His perfect and comfortable home had become his mortal enemy, he was now utterly alone, abandoned and bereft, and he knew with dread certainty that he was about to die.
Down, down he continued to sink, a thin trail of bubbles rising from his despairing mouth … until he felt himself bump gently … bump … bump … against the sandy bottom of his once-beloved paradise.
What treachery! What betrayal! How was it that the world had become so ugly and fearful? How tragic that he was to die like this, alone and tailless in the pit of despair!
Goodbye, cruel world! he cried out in a wrenching sob. His own voice seemed to boom, surprising even him, and its echoes rippled and reverberated out to the edges of the Universe.
And then, to his great astonishment, an answer came. No, not one answer, but thousands. Thousands and thousands of deep booming reverberating thunderous voices called back to him:
Come! they cried. This way! Come, come!
What?! he screamed in shock and terror. Come where? Who are you? What is happening??
Come! they cried again. Look up! We are here, just beyond the Light you see above you, waiting for you! Come!
What were they talking about? he wondered in bewilderment and dismay. There was no one there. There was nothing beyond the Light. Everyone knew that! Whatever could these distant disembodied voices mean? And why (o why) did they sound ever so slightly familiar?
I cannot move! he called back, in wretched shame. I cannot come. My tail is gone and I am cursed with these useless and woefully unattractive bendy bits that serve no purpose whatsoever. Appendices of Doom! he wailed. And besides, he added in a quieter voice, this is the only home I’ve ever known.
He felt himself sink deeper into the sand, until only his eyeballs rested above the murk. Here I have lived and loved, he thought, and here shall I die.
He breathed his last, closed his eyes, and prepared to die.
After a few interminable seconds, he did not die but rather that curiously persistent Light lit up the backsides of his marvellous double eyelids until it filled his vision. It was all he could see, shining way up there at the very top of the World. And still, despite having buried himself right good in the mud, still those vaguely familiar voices called to him. They would not let him rest. They would not let him die already.
Oh for fuckssakes, he said finally, shaking off the muck and dreck. I can’t stand it. I can’t seem to die and I can’t seem to live. What the fuck …?!?!
Then, as he was making to flop over onto his backside, the better to appear pathetic to any water worms or other creatures that might be passing by, he heard a tiny cry.
Turning toward the sound, he saw a tiny one like himself, flailing her tiny useless appendages (well, gosh, they actually looked kind of okay on HER!), decrying the disappearance of her tail (honestly, he thought, she seemed to be doing just fine without it) and squealing in terror about her immanent death.
Without a second thought, he ran to her (what means RAN?), his brand-new bulbous and sticky toes gripping the slippery rocks with ease, and instinctively nudged her toward the Light.
She was feisty, though, and fought him with everything she had, as if her little life depended on staying right where she was, even if it damn well killed her.
Instinct and … something else? … drove him on and he nudged them both closer and closer to the fiery golden orb at the pinnacle of the beautiful blue world … until …
BLOOP!
What??!
He had pushed her, without meaning to, without even knowing it was possible, Beyond. And in the process, he had gone a little bit Beyond, too.
What?!
He hadn’t known there was a Beyond.
Oh! And the voices!
The little one had dropped back Below, out of sight. He dove, like an arrow, shooting down below her and lifting her up again. She was crying. No! No, I don’t want to go! I want my mom! Where’s my mom?
She slipped from his reach and he felt himself tearing in two, one part of him desperate to reach her and help her to the Light, and the rest of him dazzled by the beauty and wonder of the Beyond.
For it was beautiful and wonderful. It was High and Earthy and there was Blue, which he loved, and Green, which he also loved, but there were other waves too and other emanations in the waves that had not existed in the Below or even is his dreaming.
And there were the voices. Except now they were an incessant and joyful chorus and he knew them and knew why he’d recognized them, for they came from all of the Below people he’d been born to and with, people he hadn’t seen in aeons, it seemed, days at least, people he’d thought gone forever … his sisters and his brothers, his mother and his father, his cousins and his aunties and his uncles. And many as well whom he’d seen only in the Quiet Realms of sleep and daydreams.
One voice broke in on his reverie.
Help! Oh, please help me! My little girl! She’s still Below! Please help!
He turned toward the sound and saw a creature something like himself, missing her tail and bedecked in a number of strong and speckled appendages. (They really are quite remarkable, he thought. I may get used to these things yet.)
He recognized her instantly as the mother of the little one he’d brought to the Surface (or had the little one brought him? he was no longer sure.)
Without thinking, he dove again through the veil, reaching with his mind for the powerful tail that had once propelled him through his life. Nothing. He sank once again like a stone to the bottom. The Surface closed over him. The Light blurred and dimmed. The voices, which had been so loud and clear, now were muffled and distant, perhaps not even real. He realized all of a sudden that, much like Bobby Ewing, he must only have been dreaming.
Around him in the Real World swam beautiful silver beings with long, powerful tails, utterly devoid of the useless ugly appendices that so burdened him. He felt wrong and stupid and grotesque, and foolish for having even dreamt of a place where he Belonged.
He scrabbled at the sand with his useless appendages (surprisingly efficient actually but whatever) until he was once again buried in muck up to his eyeballs, and closed his eyes and waited to die. It all felt like so much deja vu.
Did … did you see it, too? a tiny voice broke through his sad stupefaction.
He opened an eye. It was the kid again. See what? he growled.
She jumped a tiny pace back, startled by his cantankerousness. You know … she ventured softly. The More Beautiful World. Did you see it, too?
Oh …! The Colours and the Light and the emanations and the chorus of voices and the ancestors and the relations and all the Beauty washed through him instantaneously like a tidal wave. The memory was so powerful it brought him to tears. Yes, he said truthfully, blinking at the little one who stood before him (what? what means STOOD?). I saw it, too. She was brave, this kid.
How do we get back there? she asked softly.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. He had no idea. He still wasn’t even sure it was real. Maybe they had just dreamed the same thing. At the same time. Yeah, maybe.
The tiny one started to cry. He could hardly bear it when she cried. Her crying seemed to squeeze something in his own heart.
I miss them, she squeaked between sobs. I miss them so much.
And then he remembered. And then he knew what he had to do.
Listen pipsqueak, he said gruffly, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing and I can’t be responsible for what happens. But I think I know where your ma is.
Abruptly, the pipsqueak stopped crying. She looked at him, her tiny tear-streaked face shining with joy and eager anticipation. Man, when was the last time he’d felt that excited about anything?! The kid was cute, he had to admit. And if he was going to make this foolhardy journey, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that he had this little companion by his side.
C’mon, kid. Work those quads and don’t stop for nothin’, even after we break Surface and see the Beyond. Keep going. Keep going until it feels solid between these bulbous little toe things and you see your ma.
And I guess … she whispered … I guess if it doesn’t work we can always come back.
It was more of a question than a statement.
I guess, he answered slowly. Although I’m not sure my heart could take it again. But he didn’t say that part out loud.
Ready? he asked her.
Ready! she squeaked.
Together, they both pushed off the bottom, their new, powerful legs propelling them up through the World, water streaming by them in thick, viscous ripples. They were leaving behind everything they’d ever known … and it occurred to them both as they glanced back that maybe it was all exactly the same as it had always been… beautiful and turbulent all at once … that maybe it had not changed at all, but rather that they had.
At almost exactly the same time, they broke through the Surface into the Light, their crossing accompanied by a chorus of cheering and singing and tearful happy welcome.
Fearfully the tiny one turned frantically in one direction and then the other … and in every quarter saw faces she knew. And then she spotted the one face she’d been looking for ….
MA!!!! MAMA!
He stood aside (seriously, what means STOOD?) and let his own tears fall. He found they really helped lubricate his stupendously bulbous eyeballs in this new environment, so, you know, that was good.
Jerry?
He quickly wiped his eyes and turned.
Great Uncle Jim??!
They hugged … none of that man-back-clapping stuff, but a real hug. We’re all over here, Great Uncle Jim croaked. We’ve got a great pad right near where the water hits a rock and creates a constant spray so we’re always moist! This sounded like heaven to Jerry and he started after Jim with alacrity. Damn, these leg things were awesome.
He turned back to wave to the kid. She was just standing there, looking at him and saying something to her mom, like maybe she was telling her the whole crazy story.
He hopped over (he did it in one single leap, okay … freaking awesome) and after introductions, he paused.
Thanks, pipsqueak. I never would’ve done it without you.
Her eyes grew wide. You saved me! she protested.
He shook his head. You saved me.
The chorus of joy rose around them as songbirds and herons filled the sky, the river burbled over the rocks, the deep woods rose high and majestic behind the pond and a rainbow stretched from one corner of the sky dome to the other.
As Jerry headed back toward the Family Pad, he heard the little one say, Mama, what’s behind the sky?
Oh shit, Jerry thought. There’s more.
And then he settled down with his ancestors and all his relations to a feast of algae and fresh flies.
The End
Intriguing-a long post, much to digest - than you for providing food for thought