Our Lady Burns: Civilization Is Over-Rated

(But the only thing more over-rated than civilization are symbols of civilization.)

If we believe the narrative that is fed to us, this thing we call civilization is the epitome of human existence. The most logical and only desirable arrangement of the human experience, realized.

We have become civilized therefore we have, become.

But what is civilization?

Is it a socioeconomic arrangement? 
Capitalism Vs Socialism?
Is it intellectual thought?
Is it agriculture? 
Domestication?
Is it technological and scientific development?
Is it culture?
Is it religion? Language? Art? Literature? Politics? 
Is it global interconnection/ interdependence via modern forms of communication and travel?
A combination of development of all of the above?

We are told it is something to revere and without it we will surely perish. Without it we are nothing and we will return to a form of existence that was 'nasty, brutish and short.' This is a myth that has been busted many times.

Really, civilization is nothing but symbols. Abstract ideas that ultimately life does not require. It is a collection of ideas that often get in the way of the very things we are told depend on it. Harmony, quality of life, connectivity, a meaningful existence.

To blindly accept that pre-civilization, we had none of these things, is arrogant and incorrect. A number I like to quote often, is that for 99% of human existence we were not civilized. We were not domesticated, we did not farm, we did not have much of a religion (if any), our technology was very rudimentary, language was not necessary, and art was not needed or prevalent. What we did have was direct lived experience with very few symbols disconnecting us from real life. Arguably, day to day life was art, was religion, was science. We can look to the few remaining gatherer-hunter tribes for evidence of quality of life, pre-civ. 

Ultimately, untouchable abstract concepts do not substitute lived experience.

When we watch the flames of Notre Dame lick the Parisian sky, we naturally mourn the loss of a massive symbol of civilization and its achievements. Yet, we aren't mourning in quite the same way, the breaking up of the ice bergs, species extinction, young black men shot by police, Palestinian homes getting wrecked, the murder of trans-gendered person, kids dying in ICE detention and on and on. Yet, these are the natural outcomes of civilization. Religion, technology, economic disparity, politics, 'society,' are killing the planet and pitting us against each other. Now one of civilizations greatest symbols is up in flames, so perhaps it is a good time to seek some perspective and to ponder what really matters to us. Whether this thing we call 'civilization' is really all its cracked up to be... 

Nothing lasts. 

It will fall. It will crumble. It will burn. 

But everything that matters will survive.

Don't believe me? Or want to consider this more?

Start here:

-The Hazda
-Against Civilization
-The Garden of Peculiarities 
-Abundance Without Affluence
-A People's History of Civilization
-Why Hope?
-Feral

Winter Sanity Update

Trying to stay sane with The Upsetters, Black Monolith, Rocket Coffee and low impact street skateboarding. Reading Stephen King for the first time in about twenty years (don't ask) and hammering out my own version of 'The Body.'

Thanks to the daughter for the stills.

One Hundred Blocks of Solitude

T'was a classic case of the streets. A couple of decades later, they still call and sometimes I even answer. Even when the back is stiff and the knees are sore. I spent the day trying to hide from them. Fixing surfboard dings, stretching, drinking coffee, attempting to ignore the falling leaves and drying tarmac. But when the house emptied it became too much and the urge to shed some urethane and aluminium overwhelmed the homebody apathy. 

'I'll just take it easy.' I told myself and I did, at first. Enjoying the simple push, a few power slides, lazy ollies, as I call them. Then I began deliberately seeking out manholes to snap over, curb cuts to assist my lead-legs into the autumn air. And the body began to loosen up as the sun went down.

There's more gray in my beard these days. There's no going back. The hair-line continues to receede. This won't ever correct itself. It is correct. And even though this is Southeast Portland, I still get some funny looks pushing through the neighborhoods. Perhaps, I invent and invite the reactions and project them on my on-lookers to beam back at me? Who really cares that a nearly forty year old feels compelled to go nowhere fast on a little wooden plank? To be honest I had these concerns when I was fifteen and my history teacher Mrs Sirl saw me blasting through the streets of Manama. When I saw her, I picked up my skateboard and smiled, a little ashamed for some reason. I wanted her to think I was an intellectual. 

I skate past the first house my wife Alison and I rented together and suddenly, I'm taking my year 2000 route through the streets. I still know most of the cracks to bounce of, the patches of rough and smooth road. Sacred urban psychogeography. Push like fuck through the four-way stop sign, past the early evening drinkers who are mostly younger than me.

Then I get reach SE 16th and Brooklyn. It is the first time, I've been there since they demolished our neighborhood DIY skatepark. It was a nice little sanctuary for a couple of years, now it is back to being more-like the Elliot Smith song it once was in the late-90s. Onwards to a couple of shitty street spots nearby. There are lots of discarded belongings from the local homeless residents to navigate. As I contemplate piles of soiled clothing and syringes, the streets become a bit more real and I am reminded its not just about the skateboard and it never was. The skateboard was always just the way to see it all, take it all in and get out there. And I miss it all. The confrontations, the falling, the discovery, the pure reckless joy, the pointless drifting, going nowhere faster and faster.

A few crusty banks and then I'm down by the river under the bridges, pushing past people bedding down for the night. Bridges for roofs. The frontside slappies on one of my favourite curbs keeps my mind off them  huddled under mountains of blankets with their pit-bulls. I hit the curb over and over again. A well-to-do couple shoot glances my way as they try to get a nice city-scape photograph of downtown Portland at night. Perhaps they are worried my board will shoot out and hit their car, which it eventually does. Say something to me, people. They do not. 

On the Eastside Esplanade I push towards the floating jetty as I know it is going to be a nice little hill-bomb down the ramp onto it. I get excited about the up coming sounds my rock hard wheels are going to make on the metal plates. It is going to really upset the photographers who are trying to frame the perfect shot of the lights under the Burnside Bridge. Disappointingly, they are cool with me. But I am really getting into the spirit of this directionless nonsense now. I turn around and walk back up the ramp and up the tucked-away stairs to the Burnside Bridge that briefly bring to mind the stairs from The Exorcist. Aglow in artificial light, leading the way from a forgotten little corner of the city. On the stairs, I cross paths with a local Burnside skateboard legend Osage Buffalo. I offer him a nod and he briefly stairs at me and continues his descent. Despite his cold reaction, I could not ignore a brother. I take a breath on top of the bridge and then head East. I could go under the bridge and see what's happening at church, the holy sanctuary of transitional based skateboarding that is Burnside but it is all about the streets this evening and I keep bouncing of the paving slabs south. Clack clack clack. 

Really, for this type of mission, if I was being practical, I would be riding soft wheel, perhaps a longboard or a 'cruiser.' But this is not about practicality. This is about authenticity. Like Max Schaaf once talked about. Riding a  'proper' skateboard, with its rock hard wheels and loose trucks is like riding an old Harley, you don't ride it for comfort. Except, as Schaff also once said, you can't fake it with a skateboard. It is easy to point out the 'tourists' in skateboarding. Unlike the weekend lawyers and dentists on classic old motorcycles, one can tell within a few pushes who really skates.

A few more curbs to slide and grind and then I cut through a car-park. I dare myself with a quick 180 no-comply and my board shoots out into traffic. I almost want it to get hit. Cars honk and come screeching to a halt as I casually walk into the busy road to pick it up. A woman shakes her head in disgust at me. 

I raise my eyebrows and smile. She peels off to her dinner date on Belmont or Hawthorne or Division, at some interesting new restaurant that was featured in the New York Times, that I am about to walk past, sweaty and dirty and I will think Alison and I should really get out and live the night-life again, get a nice meal, have a drink somewhere, wander the streets, be a part of this new Portland that I hope is boosting the value of our house on the outskirts of a newly celebrated neighborhood.

And once I'm done walking past the restaurants that I made mental notes to check out somedaysoon, I am now on Se 39th (I still call it that despite my respect for Chavez) a pick-up truck speeds by and the passenger leans out the window, 'Hey Faggot!' And now my night is almost complete. Just like 1985 or  1999, the hate feels somewhat heart-warming. So I grab a fancy can of stout (I could never do cheap punk-rock beer), brown bag it and skate through remaining few blocks of my now hundred or so block loop, through the leafy neighborhoods, taking beer-swigs in between pushes, until I reach home. 

The lights are on. The girls are in. It looks cozy inside. 

This was a Pizza Hut, Now it's all covered with daisies

This morning, the nine year old and I were arguing over radio stations and so we found a compromise and then the Talking Heads came on. Now, when I was young, I never really got The Talking Heads and have not spent much time since listening to them. But these lyrics were just too good to ignore...

Here we stand
Like an Adam and an Eve
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
The birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it's nothing but flowers

There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
you got it, you got it

We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner
we got it, we got it

There was a shopping mall
Now it's all covered with flowers
you've got it, you've got it

If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
you've got it, you've got it

Years ago
I was an angry young man
I'd pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it's nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong

Once there were parking lots
Now it's a peaceful oasis
you got it, you got it

This was a Pizza Hut
Now it's all covered with daisies
you got it, you got it

I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
you got it, you got it

And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
you got it, you got it

I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
you got it, you got it

We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
you got it, you got it

This was a discount store,
Now it's turned into a cornfield
you got it, you got it

Don't leave me stranded here
I can't get used to this lifestyle

Don't Surrender The Streets

Public space, city centers and the urban realm should be about much more than just consumerism and commerce. Unfortunately, the 'Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill,' looks set to suck the remaining life out of what's left of British cities. In other words if you're not making or spending money you shouldn't be there. Buskers, the homeless, Skateboarders, artists, people with a challenging opinion (protesters), young people who just want to muck about and hang out- get lost. If you want a sterile environment where the only 'art' is billboards and where you can safely seek fleeting satisfaction in shopping therapy without being distracted by real-life, open your arms. It could be a nail in the coffin of authentic urban life. Anyway, good old George Monbiot breaks it down nicely: HERE.

The wilderness is important but so is the freedom to be wild for those of us who can't reach it. Forget this is basically a glorified advert and you'll get the picture.

La beauté est dans la rue

I am working on a thesis, that goes a little something like this. For most of human existence we have lived in the wild. It is only the last 1% of our history that we have settled, domesticated and civilized ourselves but do we really we think we can suppress our wild instincts? We have turned forests into deserts and have paved over vast expanses of nature but do we really think we can smother it in concrete and it will never break through? 

Nature will always win.

Wild wolves now roam the streets of Pripyat (once devastated by the Chernobyl meltdown). The wild will have the last laugh but there is no reason for us to fight it. On the contrary, our very sanity depends on us remembering how wild we once were. There are obvious ways to do this. You can climb a mountain or go surfing. You can drop out, live off the grid and off the land. But how do you tune into your wild heritage, perhaps where it is most crucial, deep in the urban realm? Some of us use a skateboard to redefine the urban landscape and to slowly chip away at the tonnes of concrete and tarmac. Others, spray graffiti and use the city as a giant canvas. Traceurs, use the city as a training ground for elegant escape techniques. Some people insist on breaking into and exploring off limit locations deep in the urban underbelly.

 Photo by Scott Pommier on Murray Siple's website.

And then there is a group of homeless can collectors in North Vancouver. I have high hopes that Carts Of Darkness will bridge the gap between social commentary, fly-on-the-wall/reality-docu-drama and 'eXtreme Sports' film.

Beauty is in the streets.

Blue Ruin

My friend Andrew keeps a very good Portland photo blog BlueRuinPDX, with lots of great perspectives on Portland architecture. However, what I really dig is his documentation of graffiti. I liked this recent one by a writer named 'End.' Well its either 'End of communique' or, signed by 'End.' Who knows? Anyway, End must be some form of Anarcho-Hipster who likes to comment on the state of Portland, gentrification and that sort of thing. The irony is and I'm sure End is aware of it, is people like him or her, (possibly a young arty white male or female but maybe not... Reed graduate?-- I'm being terrible now...) pave the way for gentrification. First the young white hip kids move in and make the ghetto safe for the home-buying middle class whites (like Basquiat in Brooklyn?- yes I know he wasn't white).

But here's my favourite. If you've lived in Portland more than five years you might sympathize with this. I rode my bike and skateboard past this one many times, each time meaning to take a snap but never did. So thanks Andrew. Again, who is the hipster and who is the criminal? Either way, I'm enjoying this conversation with the End.

More of this in Foulweather #3. Andrew, care to contribute?