Vision or Dream?
I never understood the difference between ones “dreams” and ones “vision.” I remember hearing Tom Brown Jr. exclaim at one of his classes that his dream was to go live with his family away in the woods and never talk to people again, but that his vision, to write and teach people made him stay in contact with culture. He said it made him sad he couldn’t live his dream. I remember thinking, what the hell is the difference? I think I know now.
I love it out here in Molalla. I do. I love living with my family, far from the city center and close to more wild places. I feel relaxed and centered. But I get this ichy feeling in my gut. I get ideas. Thoughts. They fester in my psyche, even when I travel far into the molalla corridor, far into wilderness. I can’t escape the feeling that I’m not supposed to be here. It’s not a fear of being alone in the woods. It’s not a craving to be in the city. It’s something deeper that I’ve never quite understood. It’s my vision.
Right now I’d love to live in Molalla for the rest of my life. Out here, the pace is great. I could get a simpler job that pays less, but out here I would need less anyway. I could spend lots of time in the corridor, tending the wild. I could really make a kick ass permaculture garden surrounding my moms house. And yet… Something inside me tells me that I have a different purpose. I like to argue with it lately. I make up all the excuses people have told me before. I tell myself that I need to learn permaculture and focus more on primitive skills because I’m just so tired of people judging me for “not walking the talk” or people who say you can’t live in the city and rewild. I even look at websites of places that teach these things and wonder if I could save the money to take their classes. Then I get an idea for a blog. Or an event. Or something else entirely.
I work on that for a while. But these days, my mind likes to argue too much and I end up feeling blocked either way. I can’t seem to listen to what my heart says, and my heart doesn’t let my mind get very far. So I sit in the middle doing nothing. Moving along in either direction at a snails pace, wondering what the next step will be. When I will break. I want to give it all up. Shut down my website and just play the banjo, eat paleo and practice boxing. People send me e-mails telling me that I’ve changed their life and I don’t care anymore. I see the topics people choose to talk about at rewild.info and I hate that I created that website. I hate my book, feel like it doesn’t say at all what I want to say. And what do I have to say now? Not much.
When I go into the city, it’s like a switch goes off in my brain. I know this place. This is where I belong. This is my element. This is what I was born to do. I am this place. The ideas come quickly. I know exactly what to do. I feel guilty for this. People say that cities are dirty and gross, and I agree… and this is where I finally think I get what Tom said those years ago. My dream is to live in the woods and tend the wild with a group of people, but my vision is to work in the urban places and spread the mythology of the rewild frontier. It’s what I was born to do, and fuck it all I don’t need any other explaination than that.
But right now I’m broke and the economy is collapsing. Will I ever be able to move back to Portland? To find a way of participating in the economy in a way that makes me feel like I’m following my vision? I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I do. I know exactly what to do and that is what scares me so much. I need to give in and trust the universe. I just have a harder time doing that these days because of the walls I felt I had to build to protect myself. Maybe that’s it. The next thing I need to do is take down those walls and reclaim my connection to the other world. To my muse. Hmm.
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Stoner Scout?
Are these walls you speak of a metaphor for the life you’ve built away from the city? What is the other world you want to reclaim connection to, the city? That’s what I’m reading. Makes sense with what you were saying throughout your post. It seems like the only thing left to do in cities is to use our hands and make things physically different. My mouth is tired and my hands are itching.
Here in Detroit the situation is different from Portland. Am I wrong? We have huge neglected areas of land. I have resolved to reshape and cultivate these areas with like-minded people. What would you be doing in Portland? I visited once. From the outside it seems like lots of cool shit is going on. Much more sensible and progressive compared to Detroit.
So yeah, just curious what you’d do back in Portland. Best of luck with everything! Looks the window for certain kinds of actions is getting smaller. Let’s go!
High fives,
Jason Parnell Hogans
On second reading…
“…my vision is to work in the urban places and spread the mythology of the rewild frontier…”
…Word up. I guess that says it. Worthwhile venture. Time for dirty hands!
I think of carrying capacity. Cannibalism creeps me out. Motherfuckers need to stop having so many babies, but I also want to reshape the urban environment to increase carrying capacity. Rewilding is a big part of that. By understanding what we have lost (or what has been beaten both out of us AND into us) we remember who we are as human critters. We come to understand that humans have not always lived in resource-gulping, biosphere-killing, hyper-competitive arrangements and that we can be happy without ANY of the industrially-enabled false conveniences that we consider indispensable. There are a few cultures left that never forgot how to live in balance. But this is not about going back. This is about applying an inner wildness to the external urban environment with the needs of the present in mind. This is for the kids, their kids’ kids and the entire (un)natural world.
Sorry if I am rambling. Hope something made sense or was encouraging. I appreciate you!
Peace,
JPH
Stoner Scout? Hahaha. No, I detest weed. More like, “up-late chocolate caffeinated, feeling schizophrenic scout.”
Jason, yeah Detroit has some serious shit going on, unlike Portland. There is potential there, but people are still too interested in the growth economy. Detroit it already sinking away, Portland is still growing do to the boom in so-called “Sustainable Technology.” Ha!
I think of it this way:
The hunter-gatherer is the ideal that many of us want to live up to. But there’s one big problem with that. They lost. They got their asses whooped. No matter if civilization’s lifespan is much shorter, we probably won’t see its death in our lifetimes. So what do you do about that?
Whatever’s necessary, even if it means going deep undercover, even if it means taking on a completely different appearance than what a native would look like. Because you gotta do what you gotta do to ensure the survival of that primal essence.
What urbanites need is reconnection with nature in civilization. Not in a commodified way, not in a romanticized way. But a true way, one that brings out the best in our humanity. A wild, dignified way.
The walls, barriers, mindsets and paradigms are beginning to be picked at, exposing hidden truths, revealing the impermanence and frailty of humanity itself. In times of crisis, people can either panic or come together. But in times of crisis, the entrenched power-holders can also impose traumatic events that sway, hypnotize, and convince people, that their “BigMan” inhuman, greedy, and self-serving ways are the answers that “SmallMan” humans need for social stability. (read Naomi Klein’s, Shock Doctrine)
I feel you on knowing exactly what you need to do, but being scared shitless to get started. It is only our life, sanity and social acceptance by others that is at stake. No small matter. However, don’t stop moving in the direction you seek. The earth and universe begin to collude with you when you embark with a true heart to seek your purpose. Don’t stop growing, learning and wondering. It is only truth that is at stake here. No small matter.
Hey Scout!
Maybe re: the book, it might be that what you need is a dialogue, not a monologue. Maybe you should get 3-5 of us crazy fuckers in a room, with the book as a guide, and let us hash it out, record it, then repackage it as a video, a film, a documentary, a novel, a work of fiction and a bible.
And yeah, that’s why visions are life-changing things. Bastards. Gotta love them though…
Scout – I think I knownwhat you mean. My relationship with my lovely girlfriend is falling apart befor my eyes because our visions are different… I’m going to live primitively with a small group of people, perhaps only one guy, and I’m not gay, just beause that’s where my vision has led me. And it scartes the fuckin’ bejeezuz out of me, cus it’s in the grand ol’ US of A where there’s no free health coverage and I don’t know what the fuck to expect or where it will lead…. but there’s one other courageous fucker at leat who’s willing to do it, and he’s willing to leave Canada where there is free coverage, and we don’t know what the hell it’s all about except that we won’t ever be able to forgive ourselves if we don’t at least try… so why don’t you join us and maybe together we can start something beautiful? There is strength in numbers, of this I am sure, and it won’t cost you a thing, except what it takes to get you here. You’ve got a wonderful (literally) voice and I have no doubt that people will help you get here before, or home afterwards…. I might even be one of them, even though I have little more than a pot to piss in ……
Scout:
You reminded me just now of Henry David Thoreau who said “I went to the woods to live life deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could learn what it had to offer, and not, when I come to die, discover that I had not lived” (or thereabouts from my H.S. memory)
Thoreau’s woods, by the way, were only a mile and a half from home, and he often walked home for dinner.
Yet, Henry David Thoreau’s legacy led to the development of the modern civil disobedience movement. Ghandi was a big fan. MLK was also a student.
Follow your own path, Scout. Refine your thoughts. I think your on the right track. Read Thoreau’s Walden. I think you are on to something cool.
Stoner Scout?… I have Mike Phelps on speed-dial.
😉
Aha. Yes. “Green growth.” What a bunch of cheese. It looks like Portland may be one of the last big urban areas to collapse/crash/lose control on the BAU (Business As Usual) tip. Maybe this means that they’ll be able to see what doesn’t work from the failure of other States, come “down to Earth” and radically depart from BAU? Maybe the next wave of collapse will hit too hard for ANY to respond in that way. This 2008 wave is hitting pretty hard. Who knows what will be left of the formal economy when oil rises again. You should be empowered by the shrinking of the formal economy, not crippled. Keep that last nugget in mind.
I’m trying to find work in the informal economy. Things I could even do under the table or barter with if I wanted. Things I do directly – between others and myself, with my own hands, without very much technology. Shit breaks or whatever and will become harder and harder to replace. Crafting, barter, repair, sewing, beer & wine making, food production/gathering/hunting/processing, educating, rewilding… These are the sorts of things that will constitute the new BAU, if there’s any business at all. Also consider the potential of local currency. It allows a degree of specialization among collapse-surfers that could prove handy for keeping the most hellish scenarios at bay.
Peace & love,
JPH
Hey Pe..Scout,
It is a beautiful thing to watch a creative genius go through such a dilemma as the one you describe. Give yourself permission to do whatever you want. You are not beholden to anyone else’s opinion about who you are. After all, anyone led by a vision or a dream changes by the day or by the moment; we’re not the same person now as we were even 10 minutes ago.
I can’t emphasize to you enough how important it is to follow what leads you or what drives you. It is important to everything else in the universe that you do so. Even if that means just picking up a banjo – or a burrito. It goes without saying that you have my support in these matters.
As for David above: It’s interesting that you frame the current dominant culture as being a winner. I think we – humans, plants, animals, air, water, etc. – ALL lost when civilization suppressed (temporarily) the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Shusli
Hey Destroying Angel, and anyone else with a vision and/or dream of living primitively in a tribe,
My partner and I, currently living in Portland, plan to move soon to northern CA to set up a permaculture homestead/national forest hunt & gather subsistence similar to Anthropik’s Escape Plan. We are actively seeking tribe members! You can see our list of needs & wants for our land and our tribe at:
http://farmerscrub.blogspot.com/2008/07/needs-wants-for-our-land-tribe.html
You can contact me at scrub@corrupt.net if you’d like to learn more.
And to Scout:
Nice post; thanks for sharing as you sort out your direction and goals. Using your terms, I’d say I have a dream, but not a vision. I appreciate the ease of focusing on a single, non-conflicting goal! But I also feel a bit sad that I don’t yet feel my place in the bigger picture beyond my immediate self & tribe. I have some intellectual visions, but nothing that fully compels & moves me. When I first learned about peak oil, I formed a selfless vision of staying in the city to help it adapt as best it could. But as I ran up against the denial and unwillingness of almost anyone to prepare in any significant ways, and as I learned more about historical examples of resource scarcity (particularly among the Ik of Colin Turnbull’s The Mountain People), that vision faded away and left me with just the dream of tribal, self-sufficient living far away from population density. I hope (and somewhat expect) that once we situate ourselves and have a good start at the dream, that I’ll find a new vision in caring for our landbase and for our wider community of non-rewilding, but not overwhelmingly overpopulated, civilized neighbors.
I can understand your frustration and indecision with conflicting vision & dream, and I wish you luck figuring out how to follow up on one (or, hopefully, parts of both) of those goals.
Scrub