The East Coast has welcomed me home with a momentary cold snap, biting at my fingers and chewing at the concrete jungle avenues. This cold city is tall and hard, bearing a family resemblance to stature of it's historical roots, now undermined by the slow slide of our Empire into sand. It's new yet familiar, the bones that built me long ago but carry me into new adventures. It's trying to tell me something, whispering from vacant lots and grandiose murals, produce stands and the grinding shuffle of homelessness. In a blink it all comes together, to collapse, and I re-open to the present moment as I slide tight through a Narrowing, Death Defying, No Chance, But Wait Just Maybe, No Room for Doubt gap between a grimy bus and indifferent Mercedes. Adrenaline tangos through my musculature, a smile flashes behind my seven-day beard, and I blow the yellow light to speed on.
Navigating deftly and hopefully, I traverse Walnut St. and cross Philadelphia in a bitter cold, asphalt grey evening. I crank my chrome companion, an impeccable steel frame lover, across bridges and vacant train tracks, through clouds of deep-fried enticement that scream a primal neon to my olfactory cells. Potholes and black ice whiz by by my buzzing wheels - the frigid lover Numbness curls up in my earlobes, and I think of Jack London, sled dogs, and trying to build a fire.
The homestretch is eight blocks of dodging trolley tracks and inopportune car doors that will catch you asleep at the handlebars. Stone churches rise up and fade away, beautiful red doors under a dim perpetual porchlight to welcome those who can go inside. Twitchy guys on the corners peddle a sparse version of community, on the tired blocks with sagging porches and occasional rubble piles that replace a forgotten house. I roll up to the stoop, and warm light comes faintly from inside where creative energy moves through the fingers of friends to craft valentine cards. Teapot whistles, I strip off my outer wool, and settle down to ponder and slowly bring my extremities back to warmth and sensation.
Sometimes I think we're analog creatures, struggling with our increasingly digital culture. Binary bits conspire to form endless streams of choices (the number of permutations on a swanky corporate coffee shop menu board is just staggering) which all come from the same vein - consume responsibly, take on some serviceable debt, stay ambitious with an appetite for a lifestyle that is a little more expensive and expansive than what you have now. The vast majority of questions in our lives occur within this boxed-in framework, rather than taking us beyond our existing habits into the realm of an imagined future. Which professional degree do I get? American Apparel instead of Gap or Forever 21? Geo-thermal or tidal power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power) ? It's like taking a cross-country road trip in a 1988 Volvo and not getting out along the way. Sure, you saw the sights, but what was it like? Heat or AC? Drive -thru at McDonalds or Wendy's? What about, "the Grand Canyon is so big I can't think of anything else so let's just sit in silence on the rim for a while"?
I read a little book once called Strategic Questioning, and in it Fran Peavey explains that long-lever questions help get us thinking in new and unexplored ways, while short-lever questions lead us to rationalize our past choices that have lead us up to this point, and to reinforce our existing opinions.
Short-lever: Do you want to ensure that everyone has access to basic utilities of heat and electricity? (Hello! Barely a question since there's only one answer)
Long-lever: What do you think about the link between energy production and the planet's ecosystems? (Hmmm... I was reading something about that last week. What do you think?)
What are our big choices these days? Everyone wants to know if it's Barack or Hillary, but I want to know what happened to busting the myth of #2 plastic recycling, and the hope that we might Free Tibet? (The answer is Barack, by the way.) Where did the Zero Population Growth people go? Seems like they went out for a beer after their last get together in the 70's and never came back. Who's talking about our water and where it's going to come from for our kids when they grow up? Who's talking about whether we want cars, instead of how are we going to fuel them with fair trade, sustainably harvested biofuels? Who's talking about McDonald's being the biggest purveyor of salads in the U.S.? Who's talking about healing ourselves instead of waiting for Merck and GlaxoSmithKline to lobby for a new ailment to be named so they can sell us the drug to cure it? What are we doing to fight run-off and dead zones in our coastal waters? Most importantly, when is the next potluck and dance party? Which of my personal habits do I want to keep and which do I change?
If you are at all susceptible to being called out, I call you out to dig up some long-lever questions, jam them in that fissure along your head where the bones healed in the first months after you were born, and pry open the rusty lock to discover a broader horizon. (Oh man, is Chris claiming he's got some extra insight that the rest of don't have? How pretentious...) False! I've been unlearning and rediscovering so much recently that I thought I knew before. I've been walking around proud yet blind, only to discover that I've still been in the box. I'm like a kid in a the cardboard fort made from the box of the new water heater that just got delivered. Give me a utility knife and point me towards freedom - I'll cut my way out. (Note to any over-zealous followers: Maybe wait on giving utility knives to kids, at least until they're old enough to appreciate the Beatles' Revolver.) I've got no claim on esoteric knowledge, just a passion to keep on liberating myself and going Further.
It's snowing now, in Philadelphia where I'm sojourning, and I've got to hit the streets to send some air mail love to far away places. The revolution will be human-powered, and I'm going to go practice for it. Send me your hopes and dreams via the last passenger pigeon of your soul, and I'll do the same. We've all got one inside, despite the rumours and strong scientific evidence of extinction - let them take flight and make headlines for a better tomorrow.
