Life on Earth, With a Body, in the Presence of Our Machines

I almost wish I could afford the time to write everything I've noticed about my experience of showing up here at Gaia. It's all very illuminating and exciting to me, and I love sharing fascinating things. Synchronicities left, right, center, up, down and sideways. Insights, precognition and many good deeds done to me and by me. Wow. Words actually fail, and if you've noticed anything about me, that doesn't happen often.

But, brothers and sisters, writing everything well takes a long time. And I'd prefer to spend my time living in the moment, instead of nervously hurrying to diary snapshots of a series of moments. So, this entry is then for a few of you who might find this interesting because you've already interacted with me. You might know who you are by my comments or e-mails to you, but I want you to remember it's because who You Are  --  how you show yourself here  --  is why I'm very fond of you. I haven't communicated with very many people and I'm not a promiscuous "friender" online ;) - those of you I've written to or about are very special in my eyes. Gaia takes time, and introspection is not an art well-practiced in popular culture.

But also, it's my enlightened self-interest (thank you, Ayn Rand) which compels me to write this. People are allowed to get what they want and need as long as it does no harm. Life is about balance.

I've already noticed that in some respects I'm a little different than the usual Gaian. For the sake of this blog entry, I'm someone who has devoted significant time not only to environmentalism, these days named sustainable life practices, but consciousness and auto racing.

I've paid dues. A long time ago, most people thought I was daft when I commuted on bicycle with a prominent, custom-made (by me) bumper-sticker display. The green colored sticker said, "Conserve energy. Your children will thank you." Times have changed, no?

Once I was told by the board member of a national environmental group that I had just secured their first-ever corporate contribution, although I'd attribute that sentiment to sketchy record-keeping. I owned a signed copy of John Barnes' Mother of Storms before it was on popular culture's radar. I'm old enough to know who John Muir, Ansel Adams, Rachel Carson and importantly, Garrett Hardin are.

Look up Hardin's essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons" if you want some interesting perspectives on human nature. Maybe I should rephrase that; his writing was more like a "slap upside yo head." He's one of the first people I noticed who had workable ideas on how to police sustainability among our competitive race of beings. And, please, my friends make no mistake, we are competitive and will remain that way. But, being competitive doesn't mean we can't be successful. In fact, I believe the converse is truth.

At first blush, anyone paying attention would instantly proclaim that a machine-heavy society will be doomed. I tend to agree. But, if there's anything I've learned being here, it's that life must be about balance. Proclaiming or decreeing that something must not, be done under any circumstances, is -- at best  -- a slippery slope. And that's coming from someone who was smitten by the romance that David Foreman brought to environmentalism. Just remember Foreman did time for his philosophical and legal convictions.

The Nature of Earth is clearly worth fighting for, and that's a sentiment I'd like my sensitive, non-violent friends to remember. And I do consider you my friends in balance. We are all part of the Earth. Would you defend your Mother or stand by, frozen, while someone did violence to her? Defend. Then get aggressive. Don't fight your nature with inflexible pacifism.

ALL of that said, I'll now say this. Holy, sweet Jesus, I love racing and racers in the proper proportions. This is important to me because I'm now in a position to realize some of my fondest dreams. I need to ask for the people I want in my life, and, as I live and breathe, these aren't common people. Please forgive me, because I want desperately to fit in, but I'll seldom sacrifice my happiness if it means membership in something.

I need to recognize and remember who I am/was/will be (thank you, Roland Topor!). And I've found that fighting against my own nature, as would a child, and trying to be someone I don't want, will surely backfire.

Now, this: when you feel like your experience, whatever it is, is on the fringe, you aren't even gonna think about talking with someone about it. And I didn't. But, last night as I drove home from a client's I got soooo excited about the fantasy of teaching an acquaintance's son about road racing. Because her son is especially intuitive. Would you like to hear what that would mean to me? WOW!

It means that I could, without sounding like a nut-bucket, talk to him about precognition while on track. I don't talk to anyone about this! Talk to him about the "heads-up" display I see in my eyes when I'm racing; how I "inflate" the sphere of my field (I prefer that term over aura) by 300 feet to feel who and what's in front of me, behind me, beside me, underneath me, above me. All that! And he'd probably understand!

How when I'm racing down a straight at 140 MPH or through a corner at 75 MPH, that my breath actually slows down (!!!), and it's almost like I'm "in my own film," the observer literally becoming the observed, dancing through a corner with the Knowledge that I'm gonna be just fine. Jesus! I could talk to the boy about my "Checking In" before ever setting a wheel on the track, to find out if everything's gonna be O.K. before you go. If it feels O.K., you go. If it doesn't feel right, you wait. Same thing an airliner-mechanic friend has done with a plane he would certify to be air-worthy.

That's SOOOO EXCITING!!! Do you have any idea how many people would grok AND appreciate those things as an aficionado of racing? Almost none! The men I know who race would confine any discussion of this to something irrevocably between their ears, talking about things like reaction times, corner exit speed, down-force, power to weight ratios, and only those things.