Unabashed

This article is a work in progress, or will be for a bit longer. Feel free to critique it, because I’m writing it for my company and I’m not really a specialist in this field, although I do practice several of these concepts. But they all make sense to me, so.

The Simple Life Manifesto

There was a time, not very long ago, that when the sun went down people went to sleep. There was no television, no gaming console, no cell phone. No one to keep up with every moment of the day. No RSS feeds to keep up with. There wasn’t even a good light to read a book by. I’m not suggesting those people had it easier than us by any measure, but at least they got eight hours of sleep, generally speaking. Not so, today. It’s not unusual for a working person to dedicate ten to twelve hours to their vocation, one or two at home getting the children ready for bed, and then another three or four checking email and RSS feeds, watching television, working on their hobby of choice or otherwise not resting at all. Sometimes it’s a miracle if we can snatch three or four hours of sleep before the cycle starts again. 

Simplicity means different things to different people. For one person simplicity might mean watching one hour less television per day, or eating 200 fewer calories—simple changes they can make for the sake of simplicity itself. But other people may shoot for a more Spartan approach with stern discipline, seeking a rigorously simple, frugal, austere life. Whichever works best for you is the right answer, but there are very few people who couldn’t use just a little hint or suggestion on making the transition. Sometimes we just need someone to knock us on the head and tell us to give up one thing or another. I’m not knocking you on the head, though, I’m just giving you a few hints.

Why simplify? Because property can add stress. Being surrounded by uncountable knickknacks and forgotten belongings can too. Anything that takes time away from comfortable relations with yourself and the people you love can be stressful. By eliminating the things in your life that are non-essential and spending your time doing that which is most important to you, you might not only extend your life, but increase the quality of the life you live. You’ll appreciate the change, and so will the people you love.

Simplifying your life won’t to be instantaneous. It’s something you must cultivate, like a garden. In this garden you must grow a healthier lifestyle. Where once there was a jumble of weeds and grasses, now there are fine rows of plants, all bearing the fruit you’ve planted. In this list there are a lot of ideas that might initially be considered unrealistic, but if you think in the long term, you might see that they’re not as bad as they might sound at first.

Staying true to the rule of simplicity, here are the ten best ideas for simplifying your life (–I always find it odd that, when speaking of simplicity, a writer will invariably list 100+ items to be mindful of. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the list?).

1. Minimize your vegetative states.This is in reference to any form of entertainment that involves staring motionless for extended periods of time. Accomplish this according to what you are willing to surrender. If you absolutely must have cable or satellite TV, get a TiVo and record the shows you want to watch, and then watch them according to your own timeline. But consider that your life might be much better if you just cut the cable altogether. There’s still plenty of programming that you can get over the air, and you can still TiVo your favorite shows. Don’t forget DVDs: television shows are bunching together DVDs now for every season that is released. If you truly love a show, wait for the DVD to come out, buy it and watch it without commercials, which will lead to less temptation to make purchases. For ways to simplify your television diet, check out the Video Rebel series on DVICE. Along this same vein: many other forms of entertainment can be minimized as well. Your email and RSS feeds, for instance. Restrict yourself to email to specific times of the day, keep your inbox empty and your RSS feeds few.
2. Simplify your wardrobe. Stay as basic as you can. The rules of this, as with most everything, are dramatically different between women and men. The simplest rule you’ll find is to sort your clothes by season. Keep the current season’s assortment in your closet, and stash the off-season clothing in the attic or somewhere out of the way. When you break out your clothes for the new season to put them in the closet, consider which pieces you didn’t wear last year, the probability that you won’t wear them again this season, and get rid of them if you can bear it. At the same time, while you’re putting away the previous season’s clothes for storage, do the same thing. Consider what you didn’t wear at all this year and get rid of it. After a couple of years you might be surprised to find that you have enough room in your closet for both sets of clothes.
3. Downsize your auto. There’s never been a better time to downsize the family auto. Gas prices and the economy have SUVs from coast to coast sitting idle in driveways, their owners praying for a break in the trend. Personally, I don’t think we’re going to see gas prices go back down much, ever again. Car companies are clamoring to build a more efficient car, but in the meantime it may be best to just make do with what we’ve got right now. We may be drawing close to the end of the age when people bought cars based on what kind of message it sends about them. People are beginning to think less about what kind of car they would look best in, and more about what can get them from point to point without draining their bank account. And don’t look now, but ugly cars are rapidly becoming trendy. Remember the Geo Metro? 58mpg, yum.
4. Be satisfied with your job. If you hate your job, quit and get a better job. Haven’t you heard? People don’t stay in the same job forever any more. It’s almost expected of you to quit. Employers have become less and less loyal to their employees, while expecting loyalty from them. If that’s the case at your job, get another one and turn in your notice. When you finally find that one thing, when you’re doing something you enjoy, or at least doesn’t make you hate waking up in the morning, dedicate yourself to doing it to the best of your ability. Don’t worry about promotions and raises, those things will come if you work hard and take care of your company. Try to work close to home, and if you can’t, find a job close to home then move to where you work. The value of your life will exponentially increase if you don’t have a big commute. Shoot for a job where you can telecommute if your boss will let you. Beware that a self-starting mentality is a must for telecommuting, though. I’ve been a telecommuter for almost ten years now. When I get up in the morning I shower and get dressed, even if I’m going to be in my home office all day; I dress like I’m going to work. I treat the day just like a person who’s going to the office, except when lunch rolls around I walk downstairs and open the fridge.
5. Simplify your diet. Drink only natural liquids, eat only whole foods. Coffee, tea, water, wine, 100% juice (some will say that beer and whiskey are natural, and they are, too. Just take them in moderation, right?). As a friend of mine once said: “Coke will put the fat on the butt.” And he was right. As for whole foods, well, we all know that’s what’s best, right? It’s best to pick your veggies and fruit right out of your back yard, yes? And we also know that for most people that’s not even remotely feasible in our society today. But we do the best we can. Just stop buying foods that are packaged with weird ingredients listed. Did you know the original Frito’s corn chip has only three ingredients? Corn, corn oil, and salt. Get healthier.
6. Declutter and Organize. This is really a lot more simple than it sounds. Pick a closet, drawer or cabinet and purify it. First, declutter: get rid of what you don’t need, don’t use or don’t want any more. And then: organize. Put all your pens in one place. Put your note pads in one place. Designate a place for everything in your home and stick to it. That way if you ever need anything you’ll know where it is. Dedicate yourself to using this always. If you come home with a pen, don’t just drop it in a drawer in the kitchen, put it where it belongs. Beware: your friends might start calling you a neat freak, but in this case that’s a good thing. When you finish, relish the victory, and then plan to take on another drawer, closet or cabinet soon, and keep going until you’ve purified them all.  
7. Downsize your lawn. Think: pavers. Think: ground cover. Think: cut less grass. And make it happen. Here’s a nice article on making a smaller, nicer lawn. And instead of using chemical fertilizer, consider making a compost pile to sprinkle on your lawn and keep it healthy and green.
8. Downsize your debt. It’s hard, but it can be done. I’ve done it myself. In 2002 I had over ten thousand dollars worth of credit card debt. With the level of my income, there was no way to pay this amount off quickly, so I dedicated myself to paying it off slowly. I began spending as much as I could on the debt, and in the meantime I lived as frugally as I possibly could. Everything that I needed, I bought the cheapest, off-brand version I could find, and I bought very, very little that I didn’t need. As a result, in three years of hard-scrabble work, I paid off the debt. I now have no credit cards. I do have a mortgage and one car loan, but other than that I live by what I make and nothing else.
9. Buy better. If you want something, fine. Buy it. But don’t buy the cheap version, buy the nice version, the one that’ll last for a very long time. Take care of the things you buy. Shining your shoes can add years of life to them, whereas if you don’t shine and clean them once in a while, you won’t be wearing them for very long. And filling your home with knickknacks won’t generate nearly as much envy or conversation as one or two inspiring, artful pieces that you cherish.
10. Downsize your home. Once you’ve purged your belongings, you might realize how little space you actually need. If so, congratulate yourself and then buy a smaller house. Just remember, people have a propensity to expand to fit their surroundings. If you buy a big house, but don’t have enough stuff to fill it, watch out, because soon enough you’ll have so much stuff you’ll be wanting to get an even bigger place.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: declutter, enjoy life, Entertainment, job, living better, organize, play, simple life, simplicity, Television, wardrobe, work, zen

The spirit animal: is it a myth, or a misunderstood fact? Most of the information I can find on the internet can justifiably be categorized along with alien abductions and fortune tellers. Nobody really discusses the practicality or possibility of a spiritual connection between animals and humans, at least not that I can find. Animal familiars are a recurring theme in much of the fiction that I write, but, like super hero tights, it’s something that looks better on paper than in real life. In real life, people who claim to have animal familiars are generally:

• Middle aged white guys who claim to be Indians.
• Wacky Wicca practitioners.
• Twenty-somethings who never quite let go of the D&D habit.
• Tarot readers who stage seances and ”commune with spirits.”

Which is probably why nobody talks about spirit animals in a practical sense, even if they believe in the concept: they don’t want to get grouped in with the new agers. This is a bit discouraging for me, because I like animals, and I like nature, and I like to think that somehow we are all connected together. For me, it’s not so difficult to believe that animals do have some keen insight into humans that even humans do not share with one another. Animals can tell when an earthquake is coming, they can tell when a wildfire is spreading, they can tell when the volcano is about to blow, and they might be able to tell a human that they’re about to get run down by a bus. It’s been proven that dogs can predict when someone is going to die, and that they can smell cancer inside a person who’s still alive.

So, it’s really not the practicality of the idea that has me drawn up, it’s the function of it, and the corruption of the concept by people who never understood it in the first place, but proclaimed to. But it’s in our nature to take things too far. Someone latched onto the concept of the totem or spirit animal and filled in the blanks without really understanding what it was all about and then the false version spread like wildfire. The fact is, I do believe animals can communicate important tidings to humans. But I believe humans are too self important to be able to hear the message.

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I’ve taken several online quizzes, crafted to unveil your totem. Twice I got a wolf and once I got a wolverine (maybe that tells you something about my mentality). But there aren’t many animals to choose from, generally, and there’s no separation of breed. If your animal guide is a hawk or an eagle, it only says hawk or eagle, it doesn’t specify any particular breed. This is a problem for me because the behaviors of animals from one breed to the next can be radically different. The golden eagle vs. the bald eagle, for instance. The bald eagle is noted as primarily a scavenger, whereas the golden eagle is a fierce predator. What am I to learn from my spirit animal when I have such a wide array of behaviors? Essentially, of course, I have nothing to learn, because they aren’t my spirit animals, and neither, I suspect, are a wolf (which has several different breeds) or a wolverine. There’s usually even a bird entry. Just, ‘bird.’ And if a bird is your totem animal then your characteristics are “unity, freedom and individuality.” But then if you read on you’ll find entries for quail, heron, hummingbird, sandpiper and seagull. Among others. And on that same page you can buy a dream catcher. Now this all just smacks of a modernized version of astrology. Nobody’s asking you for your sign anymore, now they want to know your spirit animal. It sounds like the same game played in reverse. But I’m out to find truth, and there’s truth here, I believe, it just takes digging to get to it.

The similarities don’t end with astrology (which I do believe in, but like spirit animals I think humanity has zero grasp on what’s actually going on out there), there’s also reincarnation, when people it seems are always the descendants of an ancient princess or king or explorer or Duke. They’re never the descendant of a hooker or plumber or farmer. Likewise, people always seem to have cool spirit animals: wolves, bears, tigers…you never hear someone saying: “My spirit animal is a house fly.” Or a dung beetle. The only insect I’ve found so far has been a dragonfly, which is a pretty cool insect. But there are other really cool insects: fireflies, Luna moths, honey bees, June beetles, etc., all of which I think are very interesting and lovely to behold.

Sometimes we inherit our spirit animals, like this unlucky native New Zealander Papua New Guinean from Austrailia who didn’t like hers:

My mother said that the Bird of Paradise is what we take care of because it is the totem we have been given by our village. Yet I think of the vain male Bird of Paradise and nothing speaks to my spirit. When I think of the plainer females who are watching the display of these male birds I reflect on cultures where the women serve in the background and their men do not appear to give them freedom. I don’t want this bird to be my spirit animal.

She goes on to explain:

Totems are often given in traditional cultures. The animals are the responsibility of that village or tribe and are incorporated into art. A totem as well as being something you are a custodian of is something to tell stories about, and in some cultures you may not be allowed to eat it. Many creative writers chose to give a character the qualities of an animal - to make them mouselike, cat like, etc for the purpose of creativity.

Today the modern conservation movement asks people to adopt koalas, whales, dolphins, tigers and in fact any endangered species and to care for them. Is this a revival of the tradition of totems being applied to modern needs.

And that is one of the keys of all this to me: that our mystical relationship with animals isn’t necessarily all that mystical at all. We have animal qualities sometimes, and if we observe animals we can gain knowledge about the environment. For instance: When the tsunami struck Indonesia in 2004, there was a group of indigenous people on an island who survived, intact, because before the water began to swell, they observed that the animals were all heading for higher ground. They had taken a key from the animals, deduced that the animals were trying to escape something, and followed them.

It isn’t necessary that we have one spirit animal apiece, but that we observe the animal kingdom that surrounds us. And the animals don’t necessarily tell us what’s going to happen willingly, but if we are in tune with their migrations and habits and behaviors, we can deduce from their actions certain details that we might not have known before. Have you ever seen a kettle of vultures circling and thought, “There must be something dead underneath where they’re circling.” In the indigenous mind, this is the spirit of animals speaking to the human. It’s really not as mystical as we’ve made it out to be.

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But there is a mystical aspect to spirit animals. Thomas E. Mails’ The Mystic Warriors of the Plains has an entire chapter dedicated to visions, and animal helpers or guides make frequent appearances. One Sioux named Plenty Coups had a vision once in which he found that a chickadee was his animal familiar. He observed the chickadee and found it to be ever present and always seeming to be listening to what was being said. He therefore began to emulate that pattern of behavior and became a powerful warrior and chieftain. Mails delves into the specifics of the practice of visions and medicine to the Native American, and how, often, animals manifest in significant roles.

Visions, to Indians, involved extended and sometimes torturous rites that might include self mutilation, fasting, purification by smoke inhalation, etc. So, it seems to me that if we really want to experience what the indigenous people experienced, if we truly want to meet with our animal guides and find out what they can do for us, we must emulate the methods by which those guides were found. We can’t take an internet quiz or look through a picture book to find which animal we think is most pretty, we’ve got to get down and dirty, suffer a little bit for the sake of our souls, and see what the other side has to offer.

How, exactly? Well, for one, you’ve got to get away from people. All people. You’ve got to get somewhere high up, preferably with water flowing nearby so you can cleanse and purify yourself, after which you’d need to cake your body with white clay. There needs to be some element of danger from wild animals or falls or the like; you need to be out of your comfort zone by a wide margin. You’ve then got to assemble a sweat lodge and sweat it out for a long, long time, occasionally giving yourself a little cut here and there to bleed out the bad spirits. All the while you can’t eat or drink anything, and it would be preferable if you were inhaling the smoke of sacred sage or pine straw. Sometimes they would slowly walk in a circle or figure eight, praying, letting loose of everything. This can continue for days on end, until finally the visions come. Of course, the thought might cross your mind to just go out in the woods for a while and come back and fake it, but to the indigenous mind this would be tantamount to suicide. To lie about an encounter with a vision was one of the utmost sins. No, it was understood that some people were less patient; it was also understood that visions sometimes took several tries before they would manifest, if they ever did at all. And if they did, the visions manifest in different ways, for different people. You weren’t guaranteed a spirit animal; sometimes they would see a specific star or other celestial body, and sometimes they would see a vague human shape that they couldn’t identify at all, which sounds particularly nightmarish to me.

In South America, native Peruvians blended a powerful hallucinogenic called Ayahuasca. In the Southwest US, peyote was utilized to the same effect. I’m sure elsewhere all manner of mushrooms were eaten and hemp was smoked, all in an effort to stimulate the vision that would guide them.

Of course, this is exactly why the concept of spirit animals has devolved into the state it’s in today. People don’t have the time to dedicate to vision questing; nor do they have the inclination to suffer for extended periods for the sake of something that may or may not even become evident. And if any modern person samples Ayahuasca or peyote, it’s usually just to get high. Forget about spiritual experiences or connecting with nature. So they added a little extra goofy mysticism, packaged it as something that’s easy to do, and gave it away for free as a new age solution to modern mental maladies. If there’s true power there, it’s hidden underneath years of misinformation and a riot of phony, fanciful fiction.

But I’m game. Who’s with me?

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: animal, animal guides, animal helpers, ayahuasca, mysticism, peyote, quest, spirit, spirit animal, spirit guides, vision quests

How many stories are there in a day? Every day, every one of us is a story. Some are boring, but some are fantastic. Every soul on Earth has its own story, set to the cadence of every heartbeat drumming up the words. The most frustrating thing is not knowing the stories of the lives that we intersect with. Points of interest along the route of life compile without definition: we don’t meet, we don’t know, we only move on, just as the story does. Today I met four stories, but I have no idea how they began or end, I only have the snapshot in my mind, a single page or paragraph, and the frustration and wonder at what it is that made that story fantastic.

In order of occurrence:

There was a dark-haired woman and a toddler sitting at a table in McDonald’s eating breakfast. Her arms and legs were crossed and she stared down at her food, but the little boy, with a pacifier in his mouth, watched me as I walked by. When I left, walking back by them to get to the door, I noticed a car right outside the door with New York plates, and I wondered if it belonged to her and the little boy.

A big, tall man with copper-colored long hair was walking along the side of the road with a petite blonde woman wearing short-shorts. The woman was holding the hand of a little girl who might have been five years old, and the little girl had a dolly wrapped in her free arm. All four of them stared straight ahead, without expression or conversation (at least in those ten seconds that I saw them). The man was walking with a deliberate gait, and the other two were just keeping pace as well as they could. Or so it appeared.

A woman wearing a white dress and a black backpack was standing by a patrol car with the police lights spinning, and the officer, a burly macho type with mirrored sunglasses, was standing beside her holding a book or a pamphlet of some type, staring down at it. The woman wasn’t looking at him, but past him, at nothing I could see. There was a church nearby, but the road they were on was a connector route between Centreville and Tuscaloosa. There are a lot of houses along that stretch, but not much else, so it was kind of odd to see a woman walking alone through there.

Another woman, barefoot, wearing a tee shirt that was just long enough to make it look like that was all she was wearing and with a big blonde hairdo of loopy curls, was walking smoothly across the pavement around her car, which was stopped at an intersecting road between Centreville and Montevallo. She wasn’t walking with the “I think I have a flat tire” hop, but as if she was thinking something through, something very distracting. I didn’t stop to help because she got back into her car, and I saw in my rearview that she was pulling onto the main highway, heading back toward Centreville.

All of these people were beautiful, from the burly cop right down to the little dolly. They were all people in my own story’s margin, people whose lives I’ve glimpsed but whose stories I’ll never know, no matter how boring or adventurous or scandalous or petty or eager or psychopathic or horrific or desirable or melodic or distressful or macabre or mischievous. All I know is each one of those stories was interesting, for those few words I was able to read of them. All the planets this morning were spinning out of line–or into a line–and gave me a glimpse into the eyes of ordinary grandeur, everyday wonder. And I liked it.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: stories, story

Automobiles have never been efficient, but they’ve always been economical. And that’s even more evident today than ever before. I remember when I was younger how common it was to see an older car or truck running on the road. But you don’t see that much any more. It’s too easy to buy a new car, or even a new-used car, just a few years old. When I was a kid it wasn’t unusual to see a car driving down the road that was 20 years old or more. Today, it’s unusual to see a car much more than ten or twelve years old. Most anything so old as twenty years is considered vintage and is considered a collectible.

There was a time when buying a car didn’t mean you were identifying yourself, too. Today, you have to consider what the car says about you, you have to consider what it means to drive a Sebring, or a Hummer, or a BMW. Status has always been a consideration when buying a car, but it’s never been anything like it is now. Now there are tons of cars in the $50-75k price range. You don’t just choose from one or two. You decide which of the ten or twenty you can choose from correctly represents your personality. Everyone knows a similarly-priced Mercedes or a Hummer makes a statement about your level of income, but a Hummer delivers a completely different message than a Mercedes.

Buy my, how times do change, and how quickly they do it. Now, looking at someone driving a Hummer my first thought isn’t the desired “battle-ready” that I’m sure most Hummer owners want to project. I do think of dollar signs, yes, but the specific dollar signs I see are the ones they ring up at the pump. And it’s never been more evident how much pollution cars are spewing from the tailpipe. Now that it’s no longer exactly economical to drive everywhere, I’m hearing a whole new class of folks bemoaning their gasoline bills. The guy who sprays my house for insects mentioned this morning how great it would be if someone would invent a new power source for cars. I told him, “They’re working on it.” And then we had a nice little conversation about MIT’s pledge to deliver a more efficient photovoltaic system, even edging into the territory of all-too believable conspiracy theory, said he: “You know there’d probably already be something if it wasn’t for the oil lobbyists in Washington.” Yes, Big Oil definitely wants to keep us hooked on the pipeline they provide.

So what are the benefits of absurdly high gas prices? Well, for one, it’s entirely possible you might see a revitalization of small-town America. The super stores have all but killed commerce in the little towns, but it’s not too far beyond reason to presume that people will start shopping closer to home, that they might opt to drive ten minutes to a small grocery store than thirty minutes to a Wal-Mart. But the biggest benefit is one I’ve already stated: That more and more people, from previously unlikely places, are wanting to see a change. That the guy who drives the Hummer might just say, “Man, I sure wish I was driving a hybrid.” That people will actually begin to care what kind of efficiency the cars they buy might have. And, even better, that interest alone might be the provocation enough to develop a mass transit system for the country, and an improved drivetrain for cars. Personally, I find it rather appalling that we don’t have better mass transit systems than we do. Previously, if improved transit was needed from Baltimore to New York, they would just widen the interstate, rather than build a better system.

It’s hard to believe there’s no bullet train in America.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: big oil, economics, fuel, gas, lobby, mass transit, oil

I’m a very good sleeper. My wife has observed that I can lie down in bed, squirm a bit while I wriggle into the Optimum Comfort Position, and then I can say, “Watch this,” and fall directly to sleep. And she’s right, for the most part. When I get tired I can go to sleep. It’s a blessing I count, because I’ve known people who can’t sleep or who sleep fitfully, and I value the experience every day. But as a mechanism, a lot of things have to line up for it to work just right. I’ve spent a lot of time developing the process’s fundamentals. All the basics apply: I have to have the right temperature, the right pillow (or combination thereof, because I use two pillows. One my wife jokingly calls “Nurse Nancy,” because I hug up close and tight to it. But it’s really just a way to keep my shoulders from slouching, because I sleep on my side), and I need of course a good blanket over me. After that, things get really serious, but if I succeed at two key functions, then sleep is just a moment or two away.

The first requirement is some level of white noise. A small fan works well enough in this department. The reason I need the noise is pretty simple: I have an active imagination, and when I hear a noise I try to identify it. I try to figure out why that pipe might have rattled, I imagine the water flowing through it, down and down, the clogs along the way: is there a faucet running somewhere? Is it the dishwasher? And the level of noise at nighttime never ceases to amaze me. Minutiae of every sort, encroaching upon my imagination’s wildest forthcomings. What kind of bird was that? What is that growling noise in the closet? Did I just hear that noise the night-vision goggles made in Silence of the Lambs? And it gets worse, of course. But a certain level of white noise efficiently eradicates those mental wanderings, to the point where I am able to concentrate on only those things that increase my chances of drifting off to sleep.

The concentration is paramount in the process. I can’t think about things that are happening, and things that have happened in the past are a death knell for the sandman’s visit. Oddly enough, what I find most settling for my mind is something that I find very exciting, too, and it’s a result of that same imagination that would otherwise keep me from sleep if I didn’t have the white-noise generator. I think about my projects. The stories I’m writing, the ideas I’m nurturing, any and everything that keeps my mind active during the day somehow allows me to unplug when I turn out the light. Maybe it’s just a result of positive thinking, because with my projects I am always positive. Anything negative–bad memories or past failures–spells doom for sleep. I’ve turned over many an idea in my head in those final moments of consciousness and come up with a gripping new twist or a sensational, settling ending. Some of my best thinking happens in those few moments right before I fall asleep, and when I awaken, I find that I can expound and even improve the idea.

Saturday night I decided to sleep outside. I made a pallet on the back porch and let my dog know she was on guard duty, and then I settled in for a night of reconnecting with Mother Earth. She did not disappoint. There’s something satisfying in sleeping under the stars, waking up with a trace of dew across your forehead and pillow, and it’s always a bit startling to experience the world waking up, something I can’t do in my cocoon of comfort and white noise in the bedroom. Sunday morning I awakened with the rest of the world around me, those parts of it that are mostly only seen flitting in the periphery when you live in an industrialized society. The cool gray dawn met me with songbirds by the seeming multitudes, including one particularly throaty mocking bird who I think was about two feet from my head. I lay there soaking it all in for about thirty minutes, and then I staggered into the cocoon and got another hour’s restful sleep.

The experience was worth it. It reminded me of camping trips when I was a kid, when I used to throw down a sleeping bag anywhere and sleep with perfect comfort. I didn’t worry then about ticks or ants or mosquitoes, I just plopped down and didn’t care. But most importantly it reminded me of the life that lives on the periphery, of Earth herself, struggling to be a good home to us all, despite our virulent ways.

And now I’ve got another project in mind: a permanent dwelling, that I want to build somewhere on my six acres, fashioned after the example of the native Americans once of this area, the Creek Indians. A wigwam, if you will. A retreat, yes, but also a hub, a place to recharge and reconnect with primitive, fundamental elements.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: dwelling, Earth, indigenous, Nature, reconnect, rest, sandman, sleep, wigwam

Southern culture on the skids…

I don’t really like the term “The New South” because it suggests progress, and as I drive around the South I don’t see a lot of progress. Economically, yes; the industrialization of the post-Civil War South has given us jobs and money that during antebellum times only a tiny percentage of Southerners enjoyed. But culturally, the New South has digressed. Now it’s just carbon copy sprawl. Sure there are some cities that are doing good things–Huntsville, Mobile, Atlanta, Miami. But for every good example it seems there are five bad ones–Birmingham, Montgomery, Jackson, even Savannah, where you could say the only true southern culture exists to this day outside of maybe Charleston, but even there it is meticulously cultivated. Some would offer New Orleans, and I would agree to a certain extent, adding that New Orleans has a culture all its own and, proud as I am that it is a southern city and a city that I dearly love, it is unlike most any other place you can visit.

What I see when I travel around the South, and I do travel extensively throughout the “Deep South”–Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida–is a loss of identity. I see culture flying out the window. There’s no architecture to be proud of, and the restaurants are at least 90% chains. Churches are going up in metal buildings now, springing up daily it seems, and trailer parks–despite good interest rates for mortgages over the past ten years (or so)–have surged to heretofore unrealized numbers. What does it all mean, though, when you get right down to it? It means that being southern doesn’t have any romance any more. Where once there was a culture, now there’s just sprawl and loss of identity. Sure, I’m the first to admit the culture we had was founded on the backs of slaves, and I’ll tell you that even though I am deeply ashamed of that, in one way I am grateful for it–because those people who were brought forcibly here from Africa brought their culture with them. They made our food worth eating, our music worth listening to, and our entertainment entertaining. There are parts of my heritage I am deeply ashamed of, but there are other parts that I, like most southerners white and black, cling to, and how I wish that part of it could remain. But it seems to be floating away on a magnolia-scented breeze.

I’m not saying it’s all bad. Things couldn’t have been much worse if you were a black person living in the slavery states, or even in the segregated South. And for that progress I am glad, and the term New South does ring true there, but racism still exists (and not only in the South). Maybe it always will, but there are those of us who believe MLK was right in many ways. Still, though, there are those who don’t, and there still exists a separation of class, despite desegregation’s best intentions.

Granted, southern culture wasn’t all peachy even at its height (can any culture ever be?). But it was distinct to the region. It was our own, and we were proud to live here, and to talk the way we do. It wasn’t all Tara, no. There was a lot of poverty, but there was a lot of family, too, and in the South there weren’t very many things more important than family. From our great familial bonds came southern hospitality, probably what we’re most famous for, but even that trait seems to have gone by the wayside. How can I tell? Because twenty years ago you couldn’t pass another vehicle on the road and not get a friendly wave. Seriously. But not any more; maybe it’s because there are so many more vehicles out on the road today–you’d be waving the whole time you were driving, today. Or maybe it is indicative of the situation, that Southern hospitality is just another fading relic of a bygone era.

So where is our culture now, and what happened to the cool, halcyon southern solitude? We once had uniqueness–in our architecture, our food, our style. We once felt noble and proud. Shouldn’t desegregation only have freed up that pride for all Southerners, white and black? The fact is that the Old South was built on farmland and steel mills, tobacco and king cotton controlled the economy. If you weren’t in one of those two vocations you were probably a very hungry person. And today there are no farming communities left. The steel mills have all, for the most part, shut down and moved away. Today’s economy is driven by the same paper as every other corner of the nation, all rolled up into the petrodollar. And all those things that made the South unique and grand are withering away, fading into obscurity. 

Is the South a better place? Sure it is. Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad I have my job. I’m glad the Southern economy is what it is–even with the country in recession, the gripping poverty that once ruled in the South has become, comparatively, a miniscule thing. I’m glad I can be friends with a man who is black without white elitists whispering insults at me. I’m glad for all those things, yes, but I sorely miss the things that were embedded in our culture and made the South unique.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: antebellum, Culture, deep south, desegregation, economy, halcyon, petrodollar, recession, segregation, south, southern

If science is right, the sun still has a good 5 billion years worth of fuel left to burn. At that point it’ll turn into a red giant and swallow Mercury and Venus, possibly Earth as well. So a million years really, in the Universal time frame, is still just a smidgeon. Our entire history, as a species, on the Universal timeline, might occupy a single pixel on an image a hundred feet long. All I’m asking is: what will our history look like when we’ve got a few inches worth of history to look back at?

I think about this often. Our civilization is so young, our species is so young, and even though we’ve come so far in so little time, humanity is still in its infancy, even though the planet we live on (as well as our Sun) is middle-aged. I think of the history we’ve accumulated so far, how much of it is actually recorded, rather than speculated on. Realistically, we have recorded history from two to three thousand years ago. Beyond that, back into the last ice age and beyond, it’s all just speculation. And the Universe is roughly 13 billion years old. And here we sit, a fledgling species, at the cusp of many remarkable discoveries and accomplishments. What will the human race be like when it’s a million years old? I rarely hear any speculation. Even in science fiction, the future we explore is normally what could be classified as near, within, say, one hundred to one thousand years. Maybe even ten thousand if the author is really stretching it out. But a million years…that’s something that kind of makes my mind shiver and turn to water.

Even in that near future of SciFic we see mankind exploring the universe. Rarely is he evolved, though. Sure, there are usually some technological modifications to the bodies, but I don’t think I’ve ever read a story in which man was evolved. Maybe one where the pancreas had disappeared, but what about skin: will we all be cafe aulait colored? Will our hair be all the same color? Will we still have hair?

And this history we’ll have piled up… it’s staggering to think of the amount of information that might be immediately available to us, to any one. Only recently, since the advent of the Internet, have we really begun to make information available, to sufficiently put the world to record. If we continue to chronicle our lives and store the data, if the petabits keep piling up, the possibilities are limitless. Just think of it from one aspect, like ancestry. I’ve tried searching back through the census records to find my ancestors, and I have found some, back into the 1700s, but even that is only 300 years. At the rate our data is being stored a person in a million years will be able to track their lineage across that entire gulf of time, have pictures, video, imprints of lives. We are a nostalgic people, and I can’t help but think that we will still pine for the days of yore, even then.

How many ice ages will we have endured? How many catastrophic events? How many species will be extinct? Will we still have a moon? Will Saturn still have rings? Will we have finally solved the riddle of time? Space travel? We’re so close to so many things, and the possibilities are so exciting, it’s almost a shame that I won’t be there to see it. But maybe my great grandson (x1000) will be able to look back across the ages and see his old papa, in that little white house on that six acre patch of grass in Montevallo, Alabama, and smile. And, whether my book ever gets published or not, he’ll have a copy of it that he can read, because people will still love the feel of a good hardback in their hands. Of course it’ll be translated, and the antiquity of its ideas might seem simple, but it’ll be a connection, something I don’t have even with my father’s father, who died when I was very young.

There’s been a lot written about how rotten the future might be. But usually when I think of it I try to send some positive thoughts that way, I paint a nice picture of it in my mind. I still see grass and mountains with billy goats on top of them. I still see little houses where people farm for their food. But I see a people who have solved many of the big problems our civilization has today. Sure, they’ll have their own batch of problems, but they’ll have fixed a lot, too. One thing’s for certain: at some point, a few generations of humans will have to dedicate themselves to cleaning up the mess we left them.

I think that they will. I’m sorry that they’ll have to, but I believe they will.

What do you think life will be like in a million years?

written by Matt Mitchell

I wrote this back in 1997 and I like to read it this time of year to remind me of where I came from.

Turn Up the Thermostat
By: Matt Mitchell

Autumn invigorates me. The crisp morning chill, splash of color, and promise of festivals never ceases to bring life back to my summer-weary bones. I can almost mark the day it begins for me–that first morning shiver at sunrise when my breath comes out of my mouth like a car’s exhaust; I hate to see it by winter’s end but early on it gives me a delicious thrill. Early morning fog clings to the hills. Squirrels clamor for the season’s last nut. The geese above me fly grouped together like a giant arrow pointing toward the Caribbean. I hug myself and breathe in the air of the Month of the Harvest and it seems like every molecule in my body is energized and excited with the approach of the Hunter’s Moon.

Inside my cocoon of wood and warmth I live comfortably and turn up the thermostat a bit. I savor the thick whisper of warmth that envelopes me and I remember those days long gone when it wasn’t so easy to control my level of comfort. Standing in front of the thermostat I can look outside the window and, in the wake of the southbound geese, I’m left with the emptiness of yearning for yesterday, so much like the ache of seeing a loved one leave when you don’t want them to. There was a time when autumn meant something more than turning up the thermostat.

In our modern age, fire is used mostly for ambiance. When I was a young boy, fire was the giver of heat, and I knew the value of a hard day’s work meant another week of warmth when the cold came. To stay warm through the winter meant work, blisters, blood and pain. I spent many an autumn busting logs of shagbark hickory and oak into suitable pieces of firewood. I grew up on the Coosa River and my father wanted things done the old way, so the old way was the way we did them. I guess I figure now that his way was best. It taught me to respect life and what it meant to survive.

Back then, when time came for bed I would step out into the cold and bring an armful of wood in to pack the fireplace full. Then I would dress in my pajamas and crawl beneath the covers of my bed. The door was always left open to let the heat in, and I could see the red flicker and hear the crackle of the fire beyond. The sheets would be bone-chilling, and I’d curl up tightly, teeth chattering, and wait for the bed to warm up. In those days three blankets were a requirement, and my mother took great care in quilting them herself.

With cockcrow, I would lie there with the covers up to my chin, dreading the cold of the hardwood floor–and of the toilet seat. Eventually, though, the need overcame the dread, and I would leap from the bed and run to the bathroom, and then run into the den to dress beside the still-warm coals from the night before. Darkness would still have hold of the world as I set off to tend the chores of the morning.

Before breakfast there were many critters to feed, a cow to milk, and a mean old Billy goat that would chase me just to see me run. From the barn I could see the orange glow of the kitchen window, and a plume of smoke rising from the chimney to mingle with the wafting layer of thick fog that suffered to cling to the Earth. All this in the gray dawn–stars still in the sky but fading fast as the one sun came to melt the night’s frost and burn the remains of the suffering fog away. On the river the mornings were always foggy, which added to the charm, but by ten o’clock I knew it would be sunny with no trace of mist to be seen.

At the table mom would serve home-scratch biscuits and gravy that was country before it was called country gravy. After breakfast it was off to the forest, my father and I, neither of us talking, just riding in that old pickup to the eighty-five acre wood my family owned.

Chopping wood, adding blankets to the bed, and enjoying the thrill of the new season made life exciting and new every day, despite the hardness of the times. Come October there would be hayrides on horse-drawn wagons. I know where my father’s wagon is still. It hangs in the old barn, a victim of time, dwindling interest and long commutes; and in the wake of its passing is left some things more shameful to us all–pollution, laziness, and boredom.

With my central heating, I no longer have to worry myself with the cold mornings; it’s always warm throughout the house. Nowadays, there really isn’t much to be done at all. The only real meaning fall carries now is that the dog days are finally over. Back then, when that silver layer of frost blanketed the countryside, when the moon shone through winter clouds and lit the farm a ghostly white and all the firewood was cut, split, stacked, and in the process of being burned, then I would know that my part was done and we were ready for the short southern winter, made comfortable through our labor. Today… I just turn up the thermostat.

As I sit before my computer and type these words on the first day of autumn, I look out the window and see that the leaves are just now beginning to change. I see a few red, some orange, even more yellow, but still they remain mostly green. They have embarked on a journey of renovation of life only too soon to end as, day by day, the cold measures fuller cup by cup. But for now I get to marvel at this transformation from inside my warm home, and the outside air is just beginning to cool, and more and more it seems I’m segregated from that place from whence I came: from life itself.

Now, people spend more and more time seeking out excitement; redefining life on the edge and how to make it dynamic. Times have traditionalized us into being people, and as people we have completely lost the essence that once made us animals. As an animal, we’ve lost the vigor that made us see the challenge in life, and to be able to be challenged by it. Socializing and civilizing the world as we know it has done little more than ensure the boredom of generations to come. As a people, we have succeeded to the point of drudgery. In striving to make the world a better place, we took the life out of living. If only we could get past being human for a moment and just be animals, we may realize once again what life was meant to be: not living for greenbacks or new cars or promotions, but for chasing buffalo and climbing trees and watching the way water passes by a rock in a stream. I think in my youth I felt that vigor, but now? Now when it gets cold I shuffle over and turn up the thermostat.

There’s a blue indigo bunting that eats at my feeders every day. Even as the leaves change, his feathers keep pace by shifting from neon blue to a mottled brown, and then to brown all together. Soon, the forest will be full of antlered whitetails in full rut. Life throughout the wild, from flowers to trees and from birds to bears is going through a new genesis with the change of every season, the same as we once did.

And what do we do now? Our seasonal genesis takes us no farther than the thermostat.

In this day of mediocrity and drudgery, it would be well worth our while to rediscover our roots, to rekindle the old ways, and to retrieve that piece of us that went away not so very long ago; that piece that made us animals.

Matt Mitchell

September 21, 1997

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: blue, bunting, essay, fall, indigo, thermostat, warmth

I’ve been ruminating on a short essay I wrote in January, 1998. At the time I was beginning work on my second novel (the first one I would complete, but it is sadly unreadable) and had just completed work on my first website. I have had an Internet presence ever since, in various degrees. I’ve never had a particularly popular website, but then I haven’t worked at it very hard, either. It’s just something I’ve done because I enjoy the design and the creation, much like I enjoy writing. Anyway, the State of the Web Address was one of the first journal entries I posted, and I wrote it in raw HTML (at the time we called them journals, not blogs). The writing is very stiff and not very good (my skill in this area has gained considerably, even though I still have a long way to go before I might be considered “literary”) but it’s interesting to look now, ten years later, at what I thought then, when the Internet was really just starting out. So I’ll post it, and hope you enjoy it, realizing it was written by me, sitting in a dark room in deep winter in my home at the time which was out in a deep forest, long before I had very much skill or craft at writing.

The State of the Web Address

I once had the opportunity and honor to see a fledgling bald eagle testing out its wings. It had been in the nest for some while and was coming of age to fly. The young bird would spread its wings wide and leap into the air, wildly flapping in an attempt to stay aloft. Within a few hours of constant jumping and flapping, the eagle finally decided to take the big step and, under close scrutiny by its mother, leapt off the edge of the nest and began tumultuously flapping its wings. It paid off, for after a brief moment of shear terror (by human standards), the eaglet caught an updraft and launched itself up to the top of a neighboring tree, followed by another scare when it couldn’t seem to find a suitable perch atop the tree and fell down a few limbs before finding a grip. Of course, occurrences like this aren’t unordinary in the wild, and with a little practice, the young eagle is sure to be soaring with the great aerial skill for which eagles are renowned.

The state of the Web right now sometimes reminds me of that eaglet. The Web is young, and has a body that it must grow into, just as do all youths. But the body of the Web is massive, and growing still, and it will take a very long time for it to grow into its body. Right now, the web is being filled with so much information that it may have trouble at times keeping up, and making matters worse, a lot of the information is of a sort that need not be published in any medium. Yet still, the cup fills. Soon enough, there will be billions of users of the web, and the web will likely play a role in transforming all forms of communication, from radio to TV to newspapers, and could possibly consume all other forms of communication. The fact is, the web is an entity of the like this world has never seen, and when it is all said and done, will be the number one media medium in the world. It all contributes to our own evolution. The dark, gothic future that has been predicted by so many films and books will never come to pass. The web will not allow it. I’m not saying the sun will shine brighter because of it, nor am I claiming that the future will not hold corruption or infirmary; I am simply stating that the Web will become the unifying force of the world at large. Governments and despots have tried to conquer the world many times before, but they have always failed because ultimately the people would not allow it. I believe the people of Earth will allow the Web to unify them. Peace might be achieved through the Web, and that’s something that no man, woman, child, government or army has ever been able to do.
The regulations that the government is being influenced to impose on the Internet will not pass, for when the web grows into its own, it will need no guidance. It will take care of itself and its citizens, the unified citizenry of the world.

Perhaps in years to come we will look back on this tumultuous time with reverence and awe, perhaps we will see the now as a dark and gothic age. If we will allow it, and I think we will, the web will end hate, greed, and hunger. It will find its wings and fly, and we will fly with it, in a way that we never have before.

8Jan1998
Matt Mitchell

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Future, Internet, web