My Willingness to Participate in the Matrix is Hanging On by a Thread

There's no inherent rush to drive into town to pay the outstanding balance on the prior tenants' electric bill. According to the customer representative's disembodied voice in my phone, I'm not even legally obligated to do so. I just want the all-caps texts from my landlord to cease. And that is worth $76.68 to accomplish.

But first, an essay.

I'm sitting by my woodstove. I was cold, and tended to the fire to supply more heat. I was hungry, and I ate food. Simple cravings, simple activities, simple satiation. I stretched this morning for the same purpose. Before that I tended to the goats and dogs and was rewarded with a quart of milk - a meager amount as Lani and Fiona dry up for the winter. Less milk, more baby-growing. The goat hide from this week's butcher (thank you for your life, The Gimp) sits tanning in a saline solution by the stove. I stir it occasionally. Last night's dinner was his brother. This summer they ate weeds and fed the earth. Now that winter has fallen, they feed me.

Yet now I'm in a web, getting harsh texts from the landlord, making multiple calls to the faceless electric association, tracking down information from my roommate who is driving somewhere through the abyss of the continent. I don't know what to feel. I'm a monkey, god dammit! What the fuck even is an "electric association"??? In moments I feel the thrill of uncovering a mystery, piecing together who owes what to whom. In other moments I'm anxious, about driving into town, worried the roommates will care about paying a bill that is only partially ours, figuring out a succinct way to communicate to the landlord that both "I got this" and "These notices have nothing to do with me being irresponsible." In other moments I'm self-congratulatory, that I can competently navigate this labyrinth of financial industrial artifice while my whole being dilates with psilocybin.

I've been watching a lot of Alone the past couple weeks. Season 9, now rewatching 6. (I've watched 7 at least three times now but shoutout to 7.) I feel miles away from being able to accomplish what some of the contestants do. But I am inching closer. Rewatching Jordan carve up a moose, I feel a familiarity with the process. Woniya skinning her rabbit and working the fur into a long thread - this doesn't feel like an alien possibility for me, like it might've when I first watched this in 2020, bundled up in my van somewhere along the Oregon coast. I met Woniya at Wintercount last year. I'm tanning a goat hide as we speak.

And yet in some ways I find myself moving back towards the matrix. I just moved into a house with a couple roommates. Yes the woodstove provides heat, but my refrigerator provided breakfast. I've been loving watching Alone. Putting twinkly lights around the house to make it cozy. When the mushrooms hit I reached out to friends with my phone to feel the comfort of companionship. So many things are at arms' length, at the push of a button. But what if they weren't? Like the simple mechanical satiation of tending my woodstove for heat - if I had no phone, would I walk to my neighbors' to strike up a conversation with them? I found a few envelope-shaped pretenses for going over there when I was digging through a pile of mail for an electric bill this morning. I just edited a podcast where the guest was talking about the importance of building those communities. But with only so much social effort to give each day, I'd rather focus on the people I already know.

Again, the possibilities paralyze me. One thing I've learned about myself in the past few years is that for all my competence, I am still quick to feel overwhelmed.

Back to stoking a fire to get heat. The simplicity calms my mind, like I discovered camping did back in the hey-day of the blog. You and your friends do the activity that meets your need - there's nothing else to worry about. In the van trips, things got even simpler. The electricity for my lights, fan, fridge, and devices came from the solar panels I'd put on my roof. My water came from the couple of tanks I filled myself every so often.

The title of this post felt fun to write. And I am looking out the window at my van and thinking how possible it is for me to let out a big "Fuck This" and go back to living minimally on the road. But even then, my food and gas always came from the Matrix. A lot of joy comes from the Matrix. And occasionally the access to healthcare. Why tolerate this anxiety-producing, nature-obliterating system? Lewis Mumford called it "The Magnificent Bribe," and now that that's lodged in my mind I can't think of a better name for it.

Personally I'm looking for the healthiest way to engage with the Matrix. I am carving out more and more of my food supply from outside of it. I try to spend time immersed in unspoiled wilderness everyday. The people who are super plugged-in pay me to take my goat herd to eat their plant matter away. In a way I feel like I am trying to outfox a fox. Foxes are clever, but as a human I should be able to out-clever anything else. That includes a world-spanning monolith of vampiric techno-scaffolding. It's a worthy challenge.

I have a million thoughts flowing off of these, but now I must pay my tribute to this overlord. As long as I use twinkly lights and a refrigerator, I can't be too upset about driving to town to face the Mt. Doom of the electric offices.

Viva La Blog ✊

Allegory

 I finally had a thought that I believed belonged here:

 

I think I had an allegory happen to me today. I wanted to share what the story was:

 

I bought some fancy smoked paprika from a food event with G. When I first tried it I thought,

 

"This is way too smokey. I can't even use it". That's how overwhelming the flavor was on anything.

So I forgot about it and didn't realize I had it until I wanted to put it on smoked fish.

After over a year sitting the flavor had become much weaker, so much so that

 

it didn't have enough flavor to be worth putting on.

I had given up on it for so long I missed out

on tasting the perfect amount of smoke.

The moral being:

dont wait

too long

 

to try something again. It might seem new. 

-

I hope we didn't miss the perfect amount of smoke on the blog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old Helensburgh Station

Oi gents! I wish I thought to take a clean audio clip while no one was there, but I’ll try to paint a picture for y’all cause this was the creepiest shit I have experienced in a long time. So I visited the Old Helensburgh Station, a train tunnel built in the 1880’s and abandoned in 1920, when they rearranged the train line. It was thought to be lost under rubble, but excavated in the last 20 years to find a thriving glowworm community. As I approach the entrance of the tunnel, light and visibility fall off about 15ft in and it smells of rusting sulfur. The ground is mush beneath my feet as I follow the mud tracks deeper into the cave. The echoes of my subtle foot sloshing is accented by water drips, what sounds like the occasional scraping of a man’s cane, and a knocking that I still can’t identify. The knock thumps irregularly. And then stops. I turn back for a brighter flashlight.

The damp cave reminds me of a basilisk labyrinth and I’m fairly certain the thick god-knows-how-deep mud pools along the side of the tunnel contain the remains of some poor sap, swallowed by the muck. I’ve never realized what it’s like to walk into a tunnel with no light at the end. I’m so hyper-focused on each footstep that I forget to look up and when I do spin my head to the graffiti-lined brick walls, the movement is so quick, and visibility so narrow, that I scare myself thinking there’s a pale creature living in the crevasses. There’s not - or at least that I can see. The train tracks are replaced by mounds of mud, rubbed smooth by other hikers and I have to zigzag my way across. The knocking is back.

Spots of ethereal turquoise light appear on the ceiling, which you would think is a relief in the darkness, but it somehow makes it worse. It’s like lifeless Christmas lights. No glint. No twinkle. The path eventually becomes more like a gray-brown cistern and I don’t have waterproof boots, so this is as far as I go. I stand and listen for about half an hour. A few travelers ruin the mood, but it was terrifyingly beautiful. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the worms glow and illuminate the tunnel to form a curved dead night sky with the occasional drip landing near my head.

speaking of the fog.

I Worked Through Some Shit, Pt 2: The Fog

We eventually moved on from the ruins. I saw mushrooms growing under an Asian tree. We made our way to the highest point in the garden, then meandered down to the Japanese pines. While everything did look cool, I was too nervous to really appreciate anything. Then we looked in the sky and saw a massive bird. A red-tailed hawk, I was told. The hawk landed on the top of one of the pines, where it was clear just how big it really was. We sprawled on the grass and watched the hawk, at one point recording its squawking and playing it back to try to get its attention. No success. Probably for the best. Then it was time to get moving. We had to get to the fog.

Things started to feel more and more interesting en route to fog. A sign said there were foggy ruins over in an adjacent park, but we decided the walk was too far. Foggy hills for us. We reached a tree that was planted in 1917. Or 1907? I don't remember the year, but I do remember that I started feeling the full-body effects of the tab at this point.

By the time we made it to the fog zone, the fog had just ended. We had hit the 2.75 side of our 1-in-3.75 chance of getting there while fog was happening. No worry. We find a place nearby to sit. I take out the 5-way splitter, we each break out our earbuds, and Rob puts on a playlist. He wanted us to hear a song transition. The first song is classical music, which feels somewhere between beautiful and goofy. The classical music transitions into Every Planet We Reach is Dead. Then it's time for fog.

Brandon wants to be there when the fog starts. Rob and I hang back, as to enter the area whilst fog is already happening. Once Brandon walks off, Rob and I discuss the rising imperitance that we call a Lyft immediately after this fog. Because shit is starting to elevate. Anyways, fog time is here.

A family of children is frolicking through the fog. Rob and I enter, overwhelmed with visual sensation, trying not to lose our shit. There is thick fog rolling through the forest. (Realizing as I write this that it was totally reminiscent of that time we tripped on the broken mountain road.) Anyways, time to play the find-Brandon game.

We find him. We explore the fog. I try fog with music, Animal Collective's live version of Softest Voice. It's hot fire, but I like being out in the world-soundscape more.

The fog is amazing. When it's over, it's time to get the fuck back to a safe base because shit is only getting crazier. We saunter over to the nearby park entrance and Rob orders a Lyft. We wait. At one point my hand just forgets to continue holding the steel water bottle I've been carrying around. It slams onto the concrete. The sound is jarring and startles a man walking by. I defend myself, saying "that's the first time that's happened." We start to almost lose our shit laughing and in the same second I see our Lyft pull up.

I Worked Through Some Shit, Pt 1: Beginnings

The two of us met up with our friend at the end of the line. We crossed the street and wandered down a path brimming with dense green life. Once we reached the tree garden, we veered off the main path, then veered off trail entirely, until we came upon the stone ruins of what was once the foundation of a house. We settled, and waited for all human activity on the trail still in view to pass. When the moment was as good as any, he removed some foil from a pack of gum.

I looked at tab in the foil handed to me. Expecting plain white, I was surprised by the small, intricate art. It was purple and a brownish orange, and was that a triangle with an eye in it? Too anxious to examine for much longer, I cut to the chase and put the tab in my mouth. For better or worse, the deed was done. The die were cast. I was on my way.

Eclipse Follow-Up

I was going through past blog posts to find the coral video that Geologist did the music for in celebration of Animal Collective's new album when I came across an old, offhand post about seeing the eclipse.

Well, (most of) we fucking did it, people. And I recently got around to finally uploading the footage, so without further ado: