While I’m here in this liminal sense of betwixt and between memories and milestones the urge to reflect and refract won’t let me be. We live in story, those of our own making and those in community. In this journey time seems irrelevant, or maybe just milestones we notice on our particular route…
Going Rougue
I left the dHome and closed the gate at the bottom of our red dirt road. The house would be empty as my partner was still with our two daughters in southern California. Heading out across Whychus Creek for a ten hour drive through southwest Oregon and northern California was too much to bear in a single day. I had recently returned from LA to Oregon with a 14 hour drive and telling my medicine story while in route. Anyway, my arrival wasn’t expected until the next day so I slowed my journey to drive off the main highways which had me going along the Rogue. I followed the creek to its full becoming a river with all of its confluences adding to the flow.
Springing into Poietopia
Eventually the backroads followed the Smith River Middle Fork all the way out to the ocean. There seemed to be a poetry in this path since our middle Smith brother David had just left his body. Sailor he be with the ocean setting him free, was the feeling I held upon reaching my destination for the night. This was a familiar sense of place and smell. I found myself in a bed overlooking the rough Pacific coastline seeing a distant memory in the mist.
Re-Membering the Future
The next morning I awoke excited to continue this epic journey to communing in the future with friends and soon to be friends. A small group were invited to participate in ‘Once Upon a Future: a Retreat into Futurecraft and Storymaking’ hosted by Roxi of the Design Science Studio whom I have been BEAM(ing) with since DSS started in 2020. She invited Catherine, a visionary of the DSS, to help weave this once upon a time together amidst the redwood coast into an experiential five days of storyliving and artifacting.
Tree Time
The one and only other time I had such an epic journey in the redwoods was back in 2018 at Esalen with a small group and Charles Eisenstein. I had arrived the night before awaking with the giant redwoods and asking if they were my elders… their answer rang of truth and had me giggling. Back then with Charles he had us engage in an exercise of remembering the future and how we got there — what I have since learned is a practice of backcasting (eventually leading to the formation of the Backcasting Evolutionary Alliance Mediums BEAM). Once pairing up, one of us would come back from the future, the other present in the now asking what were our successes, what changed and how did we get there.
The Mythstree of it All
What surprised me and the others was my voice from the future came though me being a tree. One with many rings hidden in its trunk, some tighter together from the generosity of water and other rings more spread out due to the dry spells. Now again years later here I was much further north but still in the depths of these beautiful mythtrees listening to what they wanted to share.
When the Fire Went Out
Throughout time we have sat in community around the fire engaged in tellings, the noticing of milestones. Weaving our ancestral memories from elder’s wisdom to youth’s curiosity. And so we found ourselves in the telling of “Once upon a Future” a co-creation handed from one teller to the next with the flames flickering across our faces circling the fire. Until it went out. Stories are funny beings that creep along or race to a sense of destination, yet usually never arrive at where you though they might. With the fire out the energy shifted dramatically and, as stories will of themselves, found a new life in those present to hold the threads felt deeply and continue the telling into the future of now what.
Felled or Fallen
Slowing to the pace of nature has been my mantra since moving from the cacophony of the cities to a rural life. Its been a curiosity since a kid with thoughts like, can I pedal across the United States and will that slower speed of being self-propelled enable me to see more, experience more of the tiny things in life we usually just pass by at a speed not really conducive to being human. Our memories can be that way too, rushing by them so as not to have to look too deeply. But I wanted to, I learned to take it all in and not just see the trees standing tall but also the fallen ones. This is who I spent my day with in the forests of pondering the future, our walk in the woods for me was about noticing the giants cut down and their kin fallen down.
Trains of Thought
Later that evening, our final night together, we went for a ride on the Skunk Train, the old winding rail line used years ago to denude the forests of its life. I had been anticipating this ride from Ft. Bragg to Willits since I had signed up for the retreat as it holds memories of being with my two bothers, our dad and his new wife back in 1967. I wanted to know if going on the Skunk Train as it headed up the switchbacks would trigger memories of my brother Dave. But that train of thought was quickly and surprisingly derailed as it ground to a halt at its final destination only a short while from the station where it started. Years ago the tunnel had collapsed and caved in not allowing the train or my memories to continue up the mountainside.
Crossing the Threshold
One of the first things that struck me upon arriving at the Weller House where we were generously hosted, were the playing cards — a scattered red backed Bicycle deck and its smashed box were lying across the threshold of the property. I stopped and picked them up not exactly sure why other than they seemed very out of place, they also looked like they had been there for a while and it was now up to me to collect them. Once we all gathered upon arrival we went upstairs to this storied house built of redwoods and made offerings to the alter we construed into whatever meaning our items carried for each of us.
Seedlings
My contributions collected from the meadow at dHome were two pinecones, one from the eldertree whose cone was fully opened releasing all of its seeds, the other a new tightly packed cone with plenty of potential fallen from the tree under which one of our daughters will be married in the near future. And now the playing cards that I couldn’t avoid joined their place on the altar as well.
Artifacts of Co-Creation
These items found their way into an unsuspecting art project the last night as we were asked to create an artifact for “Once Upon a Future” Micro-Museum of Future Culture (I am still looking for a new better word than ‘museum’ as it seems too fixed for a future still to come.) Anyway, as happens both when releasing an oral story or diving into an art project, it is difficult for me to remember exactly what I said or how I got there but being in context for days with others is a gift that seeds new gifts. For me that was the green luscious canopy, the overstory of trees that welcomes us into the mythelium, the roots that connect us all and feed us into a story of healthy futures for all life swirling within eairth’s gravity.
Welcome to the Mythelium
And then its time to pack up and head back to from whence we came all but altered in little ways yet to be fully recognized. This seems to be what I am feeling over these many years of the eleprocon epiphany and feeling a bit lost in the noosphere. This amorphous ‘cloud’ of the commons of mind which has somehow re-membered us back home from thinking of mythically designed operating systems, mythOS, into the depths of mythelium as an emergent living interwoven storyverse emanating from the world of insideout.
The Sense of Awe
The land of insideout where stories call to those who are willing to explore their depths. I found this in the local independent bookstore, Paulina Springs Books in Sisters. We are still finding our sense of community since moving here but words have beckoned us to sit with strangers exploring the sense of landscape, mind and spirit. Upon my return from the redwoods back to the pines and junipers, Amber Peoples of the first DSS coHeart held conversation at the bookstore which helped to ground me back into my sense of awe. Somewhere deep within I hold a memory of Ray Bradbury speaking of the commons, the town square, coffeeshop and bookstore where life bore witness.
Full Circle
And then along came the StorySLAM announcement. I signed up at the last minute feeling the need to honor the memories of my brother David, his courage in ending his ride and leaving his body with medically assisted induced death, as they call it in Canada. I had told the beginning of this story as a medicine story before he left us. I had hoped to have the Skunk Train of thought help bring me full circle but that got derailed and as it happens with stories when the flame dies down, they find a new stream to flow into for a confluence of re-membering.
Full Spectrum
I’ve never done a StorySLAM, or been to one live. For this one we would have five minutes for our stories integrating ‘Fresh’ somehow. I sat looking out the triangle and spoke my telling of our bicycle ride across the country in 1976, now including an ending I still have a challenge sitting with as it’s only been a few weeks since he left us. Outlouding to self as I timed it was exactly five minutes. Ok, I thought, I was ready for the StorySLAM, but not as a competition. I didn’t relate to how an intimate group of people coming to share what’s buried within could be or should be judged against another’s story. I was there simply to listen deeply and offer the fresh memory of my brother Dave.
Once Upon a Saddle
What a gift to remember where the 50 year old saddle was, the original one that was under my butt for 3000 miles and then some. A few years ago David brought me the seat, it was attached to a bike I had after the cross-country ten-speed and had left with him years ago when I moved to Europe. That bike had gone across Canada in a train with me to pick Dave up in Calgary with his bicycle where we pedaled over to Vancouver Island for him to see if this was where he wanted to move with their young son to be closer to the sea. It was, he did, their family grew to include their daughter and years later their son blossomed into a family with three grandchildren for Dave and MJ. This is where their bedroom with the extra large bed he built held their family as my brother acknowledged it was time. Time to not suffer any more, to be released from his body. He was ready and knew it. It was time. Time to play his favorite song Gravity, and dive headlong into the release of it all.
2birds and Artwalks
Slipping into the eddy of timeless moments we landed at the bookstore with plenty of time to discover the season for the streets full of people wandering through the many art galleries in Sisters. The first one we entered we were greeted by two birds created by a local artist. It wasn’t surprising to find them perched waiting for us to leave with their stories in hand. Then on to the StorySLAM we went, me apprehensively wondering if this was the place, the time, the people with which to honor my brother… knowing full well a story of 67 years of fresh memories could never fit into five minutes.
Storyseeds and Mythsticks
There were many fresh stories woven within the context of each tellers’ milestones… fresh sense of loss, fresh perspectives, fresh bread, fresh words and the one that seemed to sprout the true regenerative nature of re-freshing storyseeds. It seems as an older brother of three with a single mom it was natural for me to be the caboose. Be the last one out the door, the last to get a plate of food, the last to check and make sure all was good to go. It was no surprise at the random drawing throughout the evening of the ten storytellers for the StorySLAM that I wound up being second to last, close enough to being the caboose. I had already absorbed so much from the eight tellers ahead of me who had revealed so much in such short time that I couldn’t let their stories go unrecognized as I began my five minutes of fresh memories of my brother and ended out of time at over seven minutes… but who’s counting with all those teary eyes looking back at me.
One More for the Road
As the full house emptied out good nights were exchanged with new neighbors now known. I thanked Lane, passionate owner of the bookstore, and left him with this little synapse… “We lived on a small island with a main street that had a bookstore. Mom set it up so her three boys could go to the bookstore any time and get whatever books we wanted by simply telling the clerk to make note of what we got so she could eventually come cover her tab each month.” Looking into Lane’s eyes reflected the sense of community we were acknowledging gathered in gratitude, fresh memories, tellings of soul, courage and the sense of open hearts.
BTW — I am leaving this entry of fresh memories as is as far as editing goes and will publish it so… maybe making edits to glaring mistakes along the way. But there will be no AI editing or cleaning up the sense of my perception and lack of perfection herein. It is what it is, most likely imperfect as most memories are.
The Eleprocon Chronicles
Eleprocon mythOS 2birds BEAMing noosphere
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