Remember the earth whose skin you are. ~ Joy Harjo

Today's practice was very different and powerful, and I'm excited to articulate it here.  After many days of struggle trying to settle on an exercise, I began reading the Ecoshamanism book and realized why I had been intrigued by Endredy's work when I came across it years before.  Though he does use the term "shamanism," which I personally find abhorrent, unnecessary, and potentially manipulative, the rest of the book nearly redeems itself for this error with its unique integration of nature-based awareness with radical lifestyle changes.  For example, amidst numerous exercises involving climbing trees, chanting, and ritual, he suggests several "prerequisites" for beginning the work, including "maintaining a material standard of living that is not significantly higher or lower than that of the so-called third or fourth world" and "purchas[ing] only products that fulfill vital needs."  He describes "counterpractices" as practices that are designed to reverse our habituated entitlement, such as fasting or "food journeying" in which one researches the origins of all the food one eats.  This practical orientation to nature seems rare in the ecopsychology literature and seems to indicate a sincere investment in doing work that results in reducing harm, as opposed to inconsequential theatrics.

I had a brain flash after watching this fascinating video by a Georgetown University economics professor, Pietra Rivoli, about a book she wrote called The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade.  She describes her process of tracking a cotton t-shirt over three continents from production to disposal and the implications of a global economy through her encounters with the cotton growers in Lubbock, Texas, the factory workers in China, and the seller of used clothes in Tanzania.

I realized that the consolation that "nature" offers me is the coherence of an interconnected world where all vital activities are visible from start to finish.  When I see a bird, I know that it eats, drinks, sleeps, poops, mates, plays, and will eventually die within a (seemingly) comprehensible and contained ecological network.  If I am indeed a part of the earth's body, then the union of the mind and body of the earth can exist within me.  Perhaps there is a form of interoception that refers to the ability to sense my interactions with other earth phenomena.  Yet the global economy and industrialization have made this extremely difficult, as I can barely even imagine (let alone know) all the different places and people and animals that are involved in even the most commonplace of my activities, such as typing on the laptop I'm using now.  Derrick Jensen's analysis of the relationship between civilization and social justice underscores the futility of spiritually-oriented solutions, which resonates with my failed practice from last week:

The purpose of my mind-body practice of re-wilding is essentially to realize my enlarged identification with the world around me, not as an abstract, idealized, or nostalgic fantasy, but as an embodied awareness.  So for my practice this week, I decided to create a visual image of my undeniable embeddedness in the world.  I used the reverse side of a large piece of wrapping paper that I had saved, and after sketching a layout, I used markers to depict my home with all major appliances, my car, grocery stores, gas stations, internet and cell phone towers, banks, sewage treatment plant, power plant, waste disposal and recycling center, and laundromat.  I drew drops of blood around some of the power, gas, and water lines to include the wars, illnesses, and catastrophes that have resulted from the misuse of these resources.  After I covered the immediate ways I take space on the earth, I added many lines leading outward to represent impacts that continue far beyond my imagination and knowledge. 

I found myself taking many deep breaths at unexpected moments as I was doing the activity.  It was as though I was starting to find my footing on solid ground after swimming through the air in a free-fall.  It has been exhausting and exasperating to continually mistake nature for some other place where I don't belong.  Though the drawing seemed to be a mechanical reproduction of mundane processes, I would pause at times and notice that the activity was affecting me emotionally.  I had a sense of undoing my willful ignorance, like I was opening doors in my psyche that had somehow been hidden from view though they were under my nose this whole time.  Beneath this disarming sense of relief, I also noticed a subtle layer of confusion and anger that I had never encountered this activity before.  How is it that I have been involved in environmental activism and ecopsychology for so long with so many exponents in these fields who preach about connection with nature but had always learned to remove myself from the equation, rendering my authentic interdependence invisible? 

I also felt, at times, a comical kind of guilt, like I had been caught doing something naughty that I thought no one saw me doing.  For example, I noticed that I totally forgot to draw the toilet in my bathroom, as if I had completely blocked out the reality of my dependence on a sewage system.  I also had forgotten to draw a faucet on my kitchen sink, and I could feel how some part of me had bought into an imaginary universe based on these dissociated experiences with my environment.  You mean faucets don't just miraculously create water from within their shiny chrome beacons?

I am relieved that I was able to address my disillusionment from last week and devise an activity that has allowed me to go further into this work of re-wilding.  I still don't know what I will do next week, but I trust that the next step will become clear.