The New Americanism

Although I abandoned the United States seven months ago to take up a new national identity on non-nuclear shores, I still have hope for its future. I'm still invested in revitalizing it and steering a fresh course towards social and environmental harmony while rescuing it from the clutches of the military industrial complex and all of those classic villians.  Most of what I write on this blog is in hopes of a better future for the States. I might joke about it with friends, but I haven't simply jumped ship to New Zealand because California was failing to live up to my expectations. The States, and California especially, is pulsing with creative energies simply begging for release into the wider sphere of consciousness. I'm actually quite eager to go back and be a part of the movement I feel coming, the movement I feel a part of. There's more happening on that grassroots revolutionary level than down here in the southern hemisphere. Americans (myself included) are crying out for a more meaningful and interconnected existence than the current model provides.

But don't take it from me. Orion Magazine, an incredibly thought-provoking bimonthly publication has published a two part series entitled "America the Possible."

The articles provide both a summary of everything that is wrong with our beloved country, and a vision for an American future that openly engages those issues. In effect, I see in it a perfect reflection of this blog's agenda. Except written in a more concise and comprehensive fashion.

Check it out:

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6681 (part one)

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6810 (part two)

Been reading Gary Snyder lately...

Hawks, hobos, drifters and madmen
Thus run my companions of late
Wiser than you'd at first think
All mumbles, screeches and dirt
The lot of them dissenting
Hostile towards flaccid, limp modernity
All blood, bone and sinew
Pumping and rushing towards an ecstasty
Unknown to settlers, passive folk, liars

Theirs is an unnamed freedom
Floating in the choking mists
Hanging at mind's edges
Transcending focus
Carving souls from the rock and
Watching them drift softly upwards
Any hint of reason eroded
Leaping and playing, not giving
A good god-damn about it
Whether that god be Avalokitesvara
Yahweh, Allah, or an open boxcar
Equally absurd and beautiful

The grass grows thick underfoot
Writhing, rapt in truth.