From here on out, you'll notice I write in dialect. I apologize in advance if this makes "reading on" more difficult, but much the same as we'll see in other facets of life, language should be reclaimed and renewed (though I worry about the direction even this has taken in the over-culture.) Either way, my dialect will make an easy distinction between what's mine and what I drag over here from other folk with better ideas than my own.
So let's get down to brass tacks: Who the hell am I? My name is Brandon. I'm twenty-four years old. As I write now, I'm based out of Columbia, Missouri, where I've been fer the past five or six years. While I've been here, I've spent my time working fer various non-profit organizations, apprenticing and working as a tattooist at an amazing shop with great folks, and generally trying to find a comfortable niche as a productive member of society, while maintaining my sanity and self.
So let's get down to brass tacks: Who the hell am I? My name is Brandon. I'm twenty-four years old. As I write now, I'm based out of Columbia, Missouri, where I've been fer the past five or six years. While I've been here, I've spent my time working fer various non-profit organizations, apprenticing and working as a tattooist at an amazing shop with great folks, and generally trying to find a comfortable niche as a productive member of society, while maintaining my sanity and self.
Let's start back a little further than that fer our purposes, though.
The Wonder Years.
I was fairly lucky growing up, when I look back on it. We weren't well off, but we always had a roof. I had both parents around until I was twelve. The things I am most grateful fer, and will always remain to be remembered as such were my father's work ethic, and constant camping trips over the spring and summer.
My father worked produce in a grocery store, and later, distributing from a warehouse, and when he wasn't doing that, he did just about everything else one could imagine. He was, and continues to be, an amazing hobbyist carpenter, electrician, reconstruction specialist, mechanic, roofer - the man has figured out and carried out more and better work than any twenty men who dedicated their lives to these trades. He taught me to consume information, to apply it, to always work, and that the result would be the actualization of any aspiration.
I remember, once, after my father’s truck's bumper was left beyond repair, he built one - out of oak. With the right amount of work and thought, anything can be built, anything can be accomplished. Even if that were all I had to thank him fer, I am forever grateful to him.
As I’ve mentioned, another huge aspect of my early life was camping throughout the season. The spring and summer trips, weeks and weekends alike, blurred into an amalgam which to me then seemed as though half of life was spent out doors, where work even early in the morning 'til well past sundown was transformed: no longer something forced and contradictory, but an honest endeavor, a simple and unavoidable fact, its results immediate, its effect evident. And best of all, as the work gained these qualities, it no longer felt like work. It became something else entirely. Aching muscles, cuts, bruises, and all, the end result of a day in the field was still more real to me, even then. In Scouts, where I continued to learn skills and theory about sustainable life, we were taught that such a life was best; most beneficial not only to self, but family, community, and even country. It was most patriotic, most understandably and logically "American" to have at hand the tools, skills, and knowledge to be complete self-sustained and sufficient, and as such, enable ourselves to dedicate our surplus time, effort, and resources to helping all those around us achieve the same. To this day, regardless of constantly being told my political beliefs lie contrary to the idea, I consider this the definition of our nation, and the capability of its people.
Growing Pains.
Like most American households, my parents divorced. I lived with my mother and sister, as supervised visitation with my father fell to the wayside, and eventually I heard nothing from him at all. Somehow the state determined that while these visitations weren't worth upholding, I was in need of someone to talk to, which I came to realize was in fact someone who would attempt to prescribe me a solution to what were viewed by and large as my issues. I was prescribed (though I didn't take) a beta-blocker to "slow-down my thoughts and allow [myself] to filter my actions," (a heart medication I would ironically later be honestly prescribed fer my heart) prescribed fer psychotropic side-effects after a single session. I would continue to be bounced from one therapist to the next psychologist to the next psychiatrist until I was sixteen years old.
Logical Conclusions
Still following the standard fer a young American male, I was looking forward with great anticipation to my sixteenth birthday- not, however, fer exactly the same reasons. While my friends were preoccupied with cars, sports, and girls, I became heavily involved in politics, local and national, and theoretical. After 9/11, I could see the writing on the wall. While most everyone in my class could barely understand what had happened, I could see what would. High school, and the diploma it would result in seemed vastly insignificant to the storm brewing on the horizon. After reading The Teenage Liberation Handbook I settled on dropping in: reclaiming the remaining three years I'd otherwise have spent bored and regurgitating through school. I'd use that time traveling, helping out where I seemed needed, wherever a call went up against the horrors developing internationally.
As such, the time remaining until I could legally leave school became a primer course. I spent it investigating my local school board, following threats to teachers fer speaking up about the actions of the board. Tax fraud and corruption were rampant. I disseminated as much information about them as I could to everyone from students to the local media, and as a result of attempting to open a discussion, was threatened with expulsion.
I remember one time when the first lady visited, and I wasn't even allowed on the school grounds, with absolutely no justification given fer my ban from my right as an American to a public education.
I learned quickly that merely asking questions is generally taken by most with authority as a singularly hostile action, and reckon most of us who have stood up and asked an honest question have experienced the same. I don't know how to solve all the problems. We didn't know how to make lasting change and accountability a factor in our representative leaders, much less end a war which began to spread around the world like wild fire. We had our small victories, and continue to, to this day. However with as many rallies, boycotts, mass arrests, police brutalities and misconducts, investigations and infiltrations of civilians; however many rights we "lose" or "freedoms" we "sacrifice in the name of security," we seem to be stuck in neutral on an incredibly steep incline.
I've seen parks larger than Central Park covered in a thick cloud of mace. I've seen riot police battalions in full gear, mobilized and mowing through generally defenseless crowds of peaceful protesters- picnickers, even- in the name of security. I've seen piercings ripped out, heads wedged under car tires, brutal beatings, blatant theft, and trumped up charges enforced to silence innocent voices not even of dissent, but merely of questioning. Regardless of our political orientation, hell, regardless of my own, then or now, we know this is a symptom of something deeper.
I registered to vote when I was seventeen and a half. I have yet to vote in an election. I maintain that this is the true majority of any American election; by not voting, a vast majority of Americans have solidly, resoundingly, and deafeningly demanded something else entirely. At the very least, something more than the mere illusion of choice.
After several years of fighting tooth and nail with every resource available, in defense of what I knew and loved as singularly and wonderfully American, the respect and reverence fer all human life and thought, I could only see the same course being ground out by our leaders and those in control of the means of production all the same. Fer everything that we did, there were a thousand more reforms to be made, all just as important as the ones before and after. Every one of a million individual causes, each as vital as every other.
Realization
The one thing that became apparent through it all was this: We all have our own decisions to make, and we are the only ones making them, in the end. Thus, the change we need, the change we've all wondered about, the change we've been promised, was ours all along, and remains so. The only thing we need elect is to make that change a reality fer ourselves.
This is not to say there isn't an inherent need fer community within the human spirit and our very core. Indeed, we are social creatures, and our ability to work together, even with different ends in mind, is unsurpassed, and nearly capable of anything. Even loosely bound, we, as humans quickly become nothing short of incredible in our capacity to overcome anything at all.
Opting Out
Now, as I work in a matrix system of markets upon markets fer a representation of productive time which can be exchanged meaninglessly fer almost nothing that truly effects the quality of my or any other life, I can't help but wonder why, or even how. How it could possibly be easier fer a cabbage to travel hundreds or thousands of miles fer us to consume it , as opposed to us growing or foraging the same, or whatever else is still abundantly available or readily produced. Our nations and indeed our worlds farmers are over burdened, under paid, constantly under threat by corporate powers, and should their breaking point be reached, we will all realize the true costs of what is not truly convenience. Or, we can participate. We can end our passive roles in our own lives, our false representation by not only our governing bodies, but also our economic ones. If the idea behind a dollar can be socio-politically charged, so can its very denial. This is the basis fer my interpretation of what has become known as "permaculture."
[pur-muh-kuhl-cher]Coined by Bill Mollison, the term is defined as a system of cultivation intended to maintain permanent agriculture or horticulture by relying on renewable resources and a self-sustaining ecosystem. (dictionary.com)
To explain further, permaculture can be practiced anywhere, to any degree, from a box garden in a window, to a back yard orchard, to a fully self-sustaining tract of land capable of continuing to produce more than enough necessary fer those living on it, fer as long as desired. What I'm planning, and offering an open and permanent invitation to, is the latter, while providing enough information about my efforts and those of others to accomplish anything in between.
My personal solution fer overcoming the obstacles we currently face is simple: to opt out. While retaining the beneficial aspects of technology and modern human achievement, I plan on cutting out all excess. The final goal of all of this is to acquire enough land to sustain myself and anyone who decides to visit. My ranch will be entirely self-sustained, and with any luck, in fact produce a surplus which will allow fer donation to those in need in the surrounding communities.
That said, I hope as many people as possible get involved in their own projects, in their own communities and neighborhoods, or (if I should be so lucky) in the construction of the ranch I have planned. I hope my experiences, as related here, and any information shared on these virtual pages serves to help someone else realize control over their own lives and their ability to uplift those around them, even to reverse destructive consumer culture in the process.
