the great unknown

So far, no comments on the general blog although I've had a lot of feedback on the novel from friends, family and strangers. I don't know if there's a way to find out how many people read the postings if they don't comment.

My wife started an Etsy store to sell her jewelry and custom made portable altars and she also links her store to her blog (Claire's Heart Space- check it out). The Etsy community seems very vital. She has had lots ad lots of contacts and conversations although very few sales. She stays up late at night, dialoging with people all over the world about deep topics.

It feels like the stirrings of a genuine new paradigm (have we worn that word out yet- paradigm?) This is a subject that has been almost an obsession for me since the late sixties, when we really thought we were at the dawning of a new age of thinking. My novel, set in 1973, has to do in part with the collapse of that initial vision. Still the impetus returns from time to time in fits and starts- remember the Harmonic Convergence (the harmonica virgins)? Now its the return of Quetzalcoatl in 2012.

I want to believe that we are truly on the verge of a new way of thinking, and that the chaos we see around us is part of the dying throes of the old ways. And maybe even this new leader who who is to be inaugurated tomorrow is to be part of the change, although I tend to curb my enthusiasm a bit when it comes to political leaders.

The change needs to be about a shift from the masculine to the feminine. As a man, I have no problem with that. Listen to a song called "Church of Women" by XTC. We need to move away from aggression, warfare, competition, retribution, punishment, hard-fixed rules, and more toward nurturing, sharing, respecting ourselves, each other, and the holy. Softness and mercy.

But if these are the dying throes it doesn't mean it's suddenly going to get better. This kind of change can be laborious and slow, and at the age of sixty I don't know if I am going to live long enough to see it come to fruition.

My recent loss of job has been a milestone for me. For twenty years the security of the job and the repetition of the work had lulled me into a sort of seductive somnambulence (spell check says that isn't a word, but I think it is) from which I might mouth allegiance to alternate thinking, but in practice I did little more than attend a few anti-war rallies and faithfully put out the recycling every week. Now suddenly that security is gone and I am trembling on the brink of the great unknown, wide open and terrified.

I read Derrick Jensen's Endgame. He presents a very convincing argument that civilization itself is a terminal illness on the verge of a collapse that will wreak tremendous suffering on everyone in its wake. Then he goes on to propose that the most compassionate thing we can do is work to hasten that collapse- take out cell phone towers, break down the internet, blow up dams, whatever you can do to hasten the demise and shorten the suffering. Here Mr. Jensen and I part ways. I'm watching closely the phenomena around me, including the internet and the possibility that technology might be able to offer some hope, or at least avenues through which hope can flow. I am aware of the down side of everything. The hope is not inherent in the technology but in the mindset that uses the technology. Can we put away our old way of thinking? Can we move forward into something new? Can we be courageous and supportive of one another?

Not rhetorical questions. Can we?