Birds Go Where Winds Blow
Over the past few days, there's been an honesty in my home that hasn't been so prevalent since the spring, and it's giving me good space to seriously consider where we are, what we can do, and where we want to go.
At some point over the past couple years, and then acutely this year, I got scared out of talking honestly about what I was seeing in the world with the Web, and while I'm not able to do that yet, I'm being supported in getting back to that sort of work. That's my unfortunately inadequate way of saying, for now, that I see things as being very different than it is easy to see them as, and the divergence is only increasing.
Recognizing my currently limited capacity to see past those illusions, I've been browsing through my past writing. I don't have any explicit pieces to point to, but a few ideas keep striking me as relevant, as I look to where me and those close to me are going to go, in the spring, when we need to move, and, after that, when we're choosing where we are.
[
Of ducks and illusions
](https://emsenn.substack.com/p/of-ducks-and-illusions)
·
November 16, 2020
Read more about the illusions that guide us and our society in my 2020 retelling of a Lakota story.
[
Read full story
](https://emsenn.substack.com/p/of-ducks-and-illusions)
One part of that is, well, working to enable a choice over that, and that means moving back away from some of the ways of making a home that have become our practice, as a cope in reaction to the COVID pandemic and other stresses. Until I was in a disabling accident about a decade ago, I traveled - on foot, with what I could carry - a lot, and while I recognize that a lot of parts of that travel were facilitated by other folk having, well, literal facilities that I could rely on, there was, on-the-whole, less energy being used by the folk living our lives.
After my accident, once I had recovered enough to give it some thought, since I couldn't move as well, I tried to become the sort of person who helped keep facilities in order for other folk. But... something happened in the years I was working to heal my body. I don't wanna digress too much into it; I usually short-hand it as "late liberalism levered most everyone to abandon themselves," but I recognize that might not make sense if you aren't looking at things from a similar philosophy.
The point is, for external - and internal - reasons, that's not what me and the folk around me see as my role, right now. I'm meant to be, we reckon, trying, failing, and talking about what I see through taking those actions.
Pragmatically, this means I'm going to try enacting, myself, some of what I've been trying to help others find their way toward. A first step in that is working to un-home myself, so I can better go where I'm needed, even just on a daily basis, in terms of land stewardship.
...I can admit to some honesty here, and that is, I feel like I'm talking around what it is I'm trying to say, and I can feel its because of the hesitation toward honesty I mentioned when I began this letter.
I used to live in such a way that I would use my portable solar panels and battery packs, even if there were outlets nearby. They weren't a backup, they were the way I handled that sorta stuff. My daily habits reflected my values better, and in many ways, that was a better service to the people around me, being that model, than trying to be of service to them directly. (Here, I could, in more honest times, ramble toward Fanon's colonized mindset, but oh well.)
I'm trying to re-approach that way of life, but it's going to be different now. I'm in partnership with folk who are committed to these values and the path they have us walking, and - while I have barely stated it at all this letter, I feel it cannot be overstated - the material conditions of the United States have changed significantly than even a few years ago, in ways that cannot be overcome simply through the state's own gumption.
We're all going someplace, and no one knows exactly where. I'm making ready to go where I'm going, though.