2024 Recapitulation: 5 of 5
November/December
#1 First snow
#2 I finally find an A+ restaurant in boulder county.
#3 My 4th Dave Tipper show this year, in Denver. I travelled to Florida, Texas and Arkansas just to hear this man in 2024. He creates dynamic and changing musical masterpieces.
#4 Sméagol at the Utah face-mask hot spring
#5 Reminder
#6 Karatin spiraling out. Bone spiraling in.
#7 Geological road trip to my homeland. Mushroom form in stone and mirrored in the negative space.
#8-#9 Vegetables from my Mother’s garden in San Diego. I arrive in Mexico, taking care of my father whom got a viral form of Parkinson’s during çovid. I’m preparing him 100 percent raw vegan foods for one month. We will see if it makes him feel good enough to demand it in my absence.
2024 recapitulation, 3 of 5:
July/August: #1 The garden pillar throne
#2 Colorado life. Velvet horns are amazing.
#3 Birthday hike to 13,000 feet. On psylocybin, this was my power stone. This hover fly was attracted to it. He let me pet him once we established my state.
#4 The garden is in full swing of green and flowering growth stages.
#5 The impromptu homie spa, between service and prayer at the Lakota Sundance on pine ridge reservation, their new year. Year 3 helping for me. A great honor as a wachishu (white man).
#6-#10: Fruiting flora, established long before we got there, possibly before I was incarnated. Old growth apple and grape, which we preserved much of via pressure cooking and canning into recipes through the help of the residents and community. Grape jelly, apple sauce, juice and apple butter. The whiteboard, at some point, notifying current garden plant stages.
2024 recapitulation: 2 of 5
June:
#1-#3- The garden, growing. The water hole I bathe in after long summer work days.
#4- Solitude reveals the aloneness and distraction in superficially experiencing ourselves. Conversely, in solitude, the movement of our emotional channel reveals depth and peace. Society fears the wild realm.
#5- The Nestival: A success. We generated enough donation money for our mini festival to float the garden and it’s financial needs through 2024. This was the community garden’s 3rd year.
#6-#9 Pathways
2024 recapitulation: 1 of 5
#1-January- I invested in a $5k laptop and began creating a course for people on “sacred geometry”. I completed 1/5 of it, learning skills along the way. ✨
#2-February- I built this cool prefab sauna for a client. 🔨
#3-March- Through donations from family and friends, I was able to purchase my homeless brother a live-in van and deliver it to him in California. He is safe.🙏
#4-#5- April- Road trip to a Texas festival Elipse. 🌙
May-#6 I witnessed my first aurora borealis, in Wyoming. 🌈
#7-Good friends 🖤
#8-Suwannee festival 🎶
#9- Freshwater spring, Florida. 💧 🏊
Another sneak peak into the FLORA section of my course. Here, I’m exploring mental models of understanding the mostly unfathomably long evolutionary timeline of life arriving to flowers.
Shoutout to Ms. Frizzle, a geologist and my $1 Chinatown bus to Boston many years ago; as part of the inspiration of this part of the section.
#sacredgeometry
#flora
“To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd. People should grow their own food, and in the process, reduce their reliance on the industrial food system. Growing your own food is the most radical form of protest against a society that is constantly trying to control you. It’s a way to regain your autonomy and reconnect with nature.”
-Wendell Berry
In a poll, 40% of people in today’s world believe that native Americans don’t exist and are merely a part of the past. This is a result of systematic cultural genocide.
Pine ridge reservation is economically the poorest place in the country. It’s a third world within a first world. With the additional help of the Mexican cartel, about 500 women annually disappear/are abducted/are killed/put into trafficking from the reservation.
But their culture, amongst all oppression, dismissal and lack of opportunity, is not poor. It wasn’t until 5 years before I was born, nearly 1980, native religion practice was finally allowed by law. *Hundreds* of years of oppression and genocide equating to the deaths of at least 50 million natives.
During this time of Native Americans and their connections to Tȟuŋkášila (Tinkashala) (Lakota for the great spirit) being systematically suppressed and eradicated at large, they would travel to inhospitable lands (badlands) in order to practice their spiritual ceremonies anyway; to keep them alive and be close with creator. Among the people that brought back the Sundance, was the medicine man that began the spotted eagle altar which we help support, which is a type of Lakota spirit clan. There are many; Elk, Bear, Hayoka etc.
I cried at a wounded knee grave this year and saw a native man i met there last year. He said he cries each morning. The genocide lives in their bodies and the oppressor lives in mine.
We read a passage from Black Elk’s account of the massacre of 150 women and children by the U.S. army, and then we met his great-grandson at the trading post. I’ll call him next year.
The most known saying from the Lakota is Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ (We are related to all things).
This is why many outsiders are invited to participate and help preserve their ways. Pictures of ceremony space and people are not permitted.
Pictures:
1) Mni Wiconi (Water is life).
2) Security-shift breeze
3) Pine ridge Sunset
4) Poker face
5) OO
6) Katydid/garden orb weaver
7) Wašíču (wah-shee-choo)(White man) appropriation: culturally dry spiritual waters.
8) Extraction:profit:ignorance:genocide
9) Walking stick
10)Final Sundance ceremony-day sunrise.
