eat pray love barf

Julia Roberts, looking placid
in an Ashram in India

Rachel, my daughter, had seen the book when we were shopping at Goodwill one day about 6 months ago. She had picked it up and considered buying it, saying that it was popular amongst some of the young women she knows. She ended up putting it back on the shelf, saying she didn't have time to read anything except her books for her college courses.

The previews of eat love pray captured my attention. The main character was a woman who seemed on the verge of an epiphany, one Gloria Steinham put succinctly decades ago: "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle". I made a mental note to watch for the release of the movie.

In the past month, my amazing and beautiful daughter had endured yet another heartache over a man she'd been involved with. I showed her the trailer for eat love pray, and we both giggled over the line, "I've either been in a relationship or breaking up since I was 15." So true of Rachel. I thought seeing the movie would give Rachel another perspective about life and relationships.

So, the release date of Friday the 13th of August arrived, and Rachel and I circled the Roseway Theater here in NE Portland, looking for a parking space a few minutes before the 2nd showing of elp. There were about 10 women lined up for admission. We got our parking space, bought the tickets, and settled in to a theater 1/2 filled with women.

Long story short: Self-absorbed, privileged woman who holds her partners to a higher level than she does herself paints herself as some kind of victim and goes globe-trotting to culturally appropriate other peoples' spirituality to assuage her pain.

First, she goes to Italy, where she grows to an immense size 4 from her liberal ingestion of comfort carbs. Next, she's off to an Ashram in India to meet the guru of her past lover. (Ironically, the guru is in New York, from where the main character hails. Coulda saved a trip.)
The essence of the movie, for me, is when the main character is in a cab in India, and she is exposed to the abject poverty of the people there. The audience is left uncertain of her feelings upon seeing these sights. It was a stark representation of the insulation money and americaness provided to this woman.

The scenery was luscious as she went from India to Bali. Here she works with a medicine man whom she had met a year earlier. She also meets up with Javier Bardem, the fantastically bad baddy of No Country for Old Men (which I liked exponentially better than eat love pray). At last, it seems, our heroine has bought sufficient enlightenment to enter into a healthy, loving, mutually satisfying relationship. But wait! A critical moment arrives when Bardem's character professes his love for the leading lady. He wants to take her on a boat trip to a nearby island for a few days. She gets weirdly panicky and there is a standoff between the two forces. I was tempted to jump up and yell, "CALL IT, FRIEND-O!"

Javier Bardem

In the end, after a whopping 140 minutes, the heroine's enlightenment earned her the love of a hunky guy. It's a Cinderella story. Pretty typical mainstream cultural hollywood bullshit.

Anyway, Rachel and I shared a few good laughs about the movie over a bottle of wine after we got home. I know she'll be fine without flying to Bali to get enlightened.

The Talented Celeste Astara!

Celeste Astara

Lookinghawk arranged for a musical guest to be on last night's Mitakuye Oyasin on KBOO. Celeste Astara showed up with her guitar and her mother. Celeste gave us a sample of her amazing, golden voice and talented songwriting. More than that, though, she offered herself as an example of one who believed in and followed a dream, one which is coming true for her. Celeste recommended focusing on the dream itself, and getting rid of attachments as to how that will happen. Her mother, Margaret, said that Celeste composed her first song at 18 months when she was toddling around the house happily singing, "Jesus loves you, God is love". That might not be so unusual, except that Margaret said, "I never used those words in my house!" I guess inspiration comes uninvited at times.

Check out Celeste Astara here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Celeste-Astara/134220806616625

Heartbreaking betrayal of trusting geese. Nice, Bend, OR

This makes me so sick I want to cry. (see article, news clip; click here)

The humans of Bend, Oregon, decided that the fecal matter from local Canadian geese was more than they could tolerate. So, 109 geese, habituated to living in the city, were captured and murdered by these thoughtless humans. CO2 gas was used to kill the birds. The "meat" was given to a food bank to distribute to humans.

Creatures of beauty, adapting as well as they can to the encroachment of civilization, were executed because they did not know how to dispose of their poop properly.

How sad.

And may the little geesey spirits find their way to a world that is kinder to them than this one.

Who speaks for earth?

Jeanette Armstrong, Okanagan
Speaker for the Land

We would not have destroyed one ocean entirely and the rest nearly had civilization not trampled under its sweatshop boot the teachings of the indigenous. The prevailing spirituality of most indigenous, if not all, was one which held other earth dwellers in the same regard as humans. Like Jesus' utterance to "do unto others", and in the case of indigenous humans, "others" included people like bears. And deer. And water. And air.

By contrast, the predominant religion (christianity) of the civilized humans who invaded indigenous lands in the americas was one of domination of the land. A perusal of the Hebrew scriptures will quickly yield glorification of the genocides of various peoples in order for God's "chosen" to take their land. Such accounts no doubt spurred the faithful conquerors to commit the atrocities towards the people who were already living on the land in the americas. Things like rape, mutilation, and throwing babies into fire. You know, the usual genocide techniques.

I suggest that we consider the spirituality of the indigenous of this continent. Suspend the teaching of the dominant culture that land, trees, water, cattle, and even ourselves are "resources". Then, when a tract of forested land is to be logged, or a new deep sea oil well is to be drilled, let someone speak in defense of the voiceless.

Here is the Okanagan model of this process, as explained by Jeanette Armstrong:

I looked at the Okanagan decision-making process in its traditional sense…when we approach the decision-making process, one component is reserved for the land…we have people who are called “land speakers”. We have a word for it in our language. I was fortunate in that I was trained and brought up as a land speaker in my community…We have different people, trained as part of the family system, to be speakers for the children, for the mothers, for the Elders, for the medicine people, for the land, for the water - for all these different components that make up our existence. My part has been to be trained by my Elders to think about the land and to speak about the land…Each time a decision I made, even the smallest decision, my responsibility is to stand up and ask, How will it impact the land? How is it going to impact our food? How is it going to impact our water? How is it going to impact my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, what’s the land gong to look like in their time? So in that process of en’owkinwiwx, there’s a built-in principle in terms of how we interact….Someone has to ask those questions. That’s their responsibility. When we include the perspective of land and we include the perspective of human relationship, one of the things that happens is that community change. People in the community change. The realization that people and community are there to sustain you creates the most secure feeling in the world.

Excerpts from An Okanagan Worldview of Society by Jeanette Armstrong from Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a sustainable Future edited by Melissa K Nelson © 2008 Bear & Company in collaboration with Bioneers

Israel kills humanitarian aide workers in international waters

Soldiers move wounded people from ships trying to reach Gaza,
that were stormed by Israeli forces. Photograph: Roni Schutzer/EPA

A flotilla of aid en route to Gaza was attacked by the Israeli Defense Force early this a.m., with 19 fatalities reported by some sources. At least 10 activists are reported dead, and dozens injured.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon stated in a press conference that the flotilla was delivering weapons to Gaza, specifically to Hamas. He accused the organizers of the flotilla of committing a "premeditated and outrageous provocation." He described them as being "well known for their ties to global jihad, Al Queda, and Hamas." Further, he said that "On board we found deadly weapons, prepared and used against the [Israeli Defense] Forces."

Now, was that before or after the IDF came out of the sky by helicopter and shot up the activists, who were still in international waters? From the news reports I've seen, here was no time for the IDF to ascertain whether or not there were weapons on board - so spare us the "practice nonviolence" rhetoric.

The purpose of the flotilla was to deliver humanitarian aid like water purification systems, and reconstruction supplies like cement.

Yes, the flotilla was meant to mitigate the illegal blockade of Gaza, the stranglehold of oppression that Israel maintains with tacit and overt approval from the United States. Although there is worldwide outrage over the incident, Israel will get away with a light slap on the wrist from the U.S., who supplies loads of weapons and money to Israel, for this brutal act to keep Palestine under siege.

Sources:

Guardian UK

CNN

Al Jazeera

Not giving up

Tourism trade impacted.

Collapse of fishing industry.

Environmental disaster.

Extinction level event.

I'm no more optimistic now than when I wrote my blog entry on May 2 that the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has a solution, or that it ain't as bad as we all thought. From all the chatter I heard on KBOO and NPR this week, it is precisely as bad as I read and imagined, and then some.

The difference is that now I feeling less "sucker-punched" than I was, and I am not ready to give up on all efforts and hope to fight for Earth.

Friends Tyler and Karly and Ink all recently visited our family. It was a pleasure to see them and to touch base with these like-minded individuals. In an email to me about my feelings of despair and of wanting to give up, Tyler's words were helpful in restoring the strength to keep speaking up for our planet. He said, in part,

"I am just one red blood cell in a body so large I can't even understand the way the whole thing works, but I will continue to serve the larger body until I'm suffocated or dried up by the shutting down of the body's pump. As long as I am still able to take in food and oxygen this community of life is not so dead that it can't provide for my needs and I am not so dead that I can't do my best to provide for the needs of the community of life which is still alive enough to feed me what I need to survive.

When I can no longer breathe the air, that is when I will know it's too late. Until then, even if the majority of the Earth turns to moonscape I will cling to and fight for my little corner of the community of life in hopes of preserving it and encouraging her spread."

As long as we have breath to draw, fight for life.

First hand account of GOM disaster on LATOC

If you haven't clued in to the Life After the Oil Crash Forum, you should do so right now. Warning: If you want to continue to "hope" for the survival of industrial civilization, don't go there.

On the LATOC forum today, there is a first hand report from a medic who was aboard a ship skimming up some of the oil. He posted photos, including this one, with the caption, "A bird, covered in oil on the lower half, showed up on the second day to take a moment of respite on the deck. It would later die."