Jumbo Ski Resort briefing paper

Link to the briefing project I worked on. It was related to Environmental protection and assessment

I worked on this project January to April 2009 in a senior-level Environmental Studies class.

These Old Songs

These Old Songs.aif

Old Songs

These old songs I want to remember are an ancient doorway - an entrance to life's house where melody keys are a puzzle and perfect repetition illuminates the unlocked rooms of the mind. In ritual chant, a flood of consciousness flows almost seamlessly into the darkened corridors of the forgotten and unconscious; music is the soul's keyhole to insight. Spirit deftly sings through these songs - they're the spellings of life become animated, where swirling galaxies become the soup of seas and the backbones of DNA made spines that uphold on strings the world we get to see by dreams. Here, the incense smoke of life's flame is rippled by the breath of wind from the lips of shamans living in the eyes of animals who stalk these wild moments. These liminal moments when we sit in prayer, in trance singing the elder's songs, channeling the alchemical wisdom of ages. These songs that weave the patterned fabric that covers the hearts of every human, like a quilt. You'll hear this patterned fabric if you remember - so remember, this is where we're from! The songs that grandma sings & babies cry, that dolphins make and insects create with legs on wings, that runs the symphonies of forests and makes blaring in the silence of deserts. These songs are played in rush of blood through your own ears, almost hidden, but listen! The primordial beat of something we almost forgot; these old songs, I want to remember.



photo: rock man.

Wall

Can you only know immense suffering
 after it touches personally?
Will compassion only be skin deep 
until the mortars break apart everything you´ve known?
Who builds the walls between "us" and "them"? 
A wall is a division.

On windy nights, my cheeks touched with the freezing frosts of horror,

I am left stumbling and gasping at endless hate
Still warm to life’s goodwill, though growing cold by the second, and though my own hate cools, too,

I try to catch what life remains with peace throbbing through veins.

Is it true The Wall Will Fall? Whose wall?
I wonder when will bullets echo, and finally shatter into emptiness,

ceasing, and no longer hitting human shields carried as hardened human emotions.
What crumbles in the softness of tears?

Vulnerability is a human thing.
Every pool of blood,

it laps at eyes and hands and feet,
but festers only in those who swear it isn't theirs.

Buddha said breathe it in:
every scream, and fear and pain, 

every ache and sob and shudder -
 every mortar, every dead child.
all of this is ours to breathe in and out, released beyond the borders and walls of experience.

For each of us have these walls insde.
 Each constructed by every division.
And renewed we will be, to go past these walls in ignorance laid, past the headless graves, 
where concrete turns soil. Here flowers grow again 
despite what they know -
 despite what they saw.  Between the hard places and the soft. Heart.

We don't have to try to heal the pain from these walls. The pain is too great, too deep in our viens.
But Listen! What throbs! Memory touches deep into our cells.

Life enduring through every imprisonment, every death and every ricocheted dream.

Because oh! how our hearts keep persisting. Know we could be free. If the wall falls. 

All walls are just as high. 

(image: banksy, 2005)

Poise

 

Poised between Heaven & Earth is life.
Humanity – pulsing like a heart at the hearth –
the sternum cage holding us in breath.
There is a better way than what we think we lack,
a way of being in service to that which we belong to.
Here, in the centre of all we know, of all we are.
Knowledge originates from a verb – honour & doing -


An inner explosion of Awareness to follow the journey, weaving
In & Out: a thread that joins together all frames of perception & experience.
The Compass, and a Sense of Purpose are tools from within.


Humour of sweetness; Sword of Precision; Map of Mindfulness;
and Honed practice of listening to what draws us here, 

into the enormity of Heaven on Earth,
where we stand or sit or lay.
Our Mother is holding every story
of why our compass points towards reconnection with the web 

we only thought we were no longer part of.


Never Separate - only in various states of re-membering this state; embodiment,
poised in life between Heaven and Earth.

(photo: Samborek)

spider

in the world of dreams
i come to me, hanging on a thread of reality
- a spider dangling in the frame -
connected seamlessly in simple relation.
Eight legs for the eightfold path.

Cast up between heaven and hell, mountain and sky
in the centre of every duality, within and without,
I am in my own doorway
and my precious sleeping body is in bed.

The eye that sees I recognizes
my own fear, and i wake up
screaming from the spider,
and suddenly so aware of myself.

When is the last time you woke up,
unstuck from the glue of unconsciousness?

Hanging ,
I am seen so clearly and vulnerable
left exposed in the dark of bright corners
and light of hideous shadows.

Afterward, in the mirror, I see my my face,
carved in fine lines turned canyon
by all my relations.

The fabric of paradox is relational
and the confluence of merging
is emergence.

Everything that shall be, and is,
is here between us,
cast in the centre of duality,
dangling.

Too Big to Fail

disgracefully
we're too big to crash and yet the wall's
coming on unpredictably fast
coupled with natural capital decline
we won't last
because the cash cow is only cash
past the slaughter house
and with such a narrow focus
we're too blind to see
that to untangle this economic mess
we need a different policy
about what has value
its fiscal responsibility
to have measures of progress beyond GDP
something easy to communicate
with indicators that demonstrate
human behaviours for true wealth
to finally become non-disparagingly poor in money or health,
mental
we're masters gauging green transition
to the new solar tech position
economy
past the debt and the lack
the famine and the fat
balance THAT spread sheet
beyond the math, intangible
love economy to value the fact
that we're relations
because what is measured matters
Let this be inspiration
to align with the abundant metaphor of the sun
Run renewable run!
its death-life-death-life full circle close the loop
ride the cycles
and harness the conveyer
of the natural capital coup d' tat
flexible platform
and new lifeforms
that
grow eco-imagination
solutions for a smarter planet are navigation
to our future

we need investments
time, energy money and heart,
passion and spirit
for this state of the ark
don't skip a beat mr Bank
and private sectors should rank
natural value
its a big bang for your buck
to catalyze a green economy revolution
is not speculation or luck
with 4.3 trillion a year
to kick start humanity
past fear into the golden age
let's live to turn the page to build societal trust
clean tech, smart grid
and leave the guns to rust
no more fighting over fossil fuel we're free
for mama earth to grow us
true wealth
as a self fulfilling prophecy
if we see management of oikos as strength and what matters
drop our ego identity with what will shatter
when the bubble bursts
Because It's survival of the fitting that fits us in the systems
nested in systems
in systems

we are enough, and
we know when enough is enough
but greed says this a hard one, it's tough
a debt based economy
means enough is never enough
unless our consciousness shifts
acknowledge instant gratification does not equal happiness
multiplication of patience
is the flow of life
slow money is the economy
so slow down and enjoy delights
of this Earth's Garden,
but to enjoy it right
we have to be stewards
keep wealth going
keep money flowing
because money is energy
and stagnancy is disease
and we'll certainly, most certainly
never be free
if we don't feed the cure
which is pure
return of exchange
ease the pain
use our brains
reciprocity to gain
back each other
and trust
all relations, all roles, all hands on deck
so we can do our very best
together
humanity,
drop the vanity
thinking we're better than everyone and everything else
because when we're trying to hoard
only focused on self
is a ditch
beside the low road
with risk of sinking on lower than low.

well-off is abundant and not narrow money minded
abundance is the means and the end
so let's intend that
money be byproduct
directed by socioecological sustainability to extend
economy
after all this pseduoscience is our super power ability
so let's make adam smith proud with
endless growth
and grow life to infinity.