SEEING ANEW

WHAT DOES THE GRASS WANT?

To grip the soil with its roots.

To send up a slender stalk or blade worthy of a mouse to shinny up,

Worthy of a bug to slide down.

And at the tip to form a bud

And then a tiny flower

And then a seed

So that the weight at the top sways with the wind

Along with all the other blades.

So when a cow lies down and crushes it

Pretty soon the cow gets up

And then the stalk lifts up the seed

Until some other cow tears if off in her teeth.

But the roots go on gripping the soil

And pretty soon the prairie is covered.

Everything on the prairie is about the grass.

The only institutionalized religion I know of that doesn't insist on a binary or at least a boundary that creates one, is Buddhism.  The "aporia" between individual and community, which is marked by a limit in consciousness as well as inskin/outskin, is not irresolvable so much as unaddressed.  Yet so many people in America try to escape themselves, to merge into a seeming intimacy with others.  They no longer fuss much about the boundary between one soul and that other world that is Heaven where we go on being our individual souls forever, a boundary marked by . . . virtue?  

This boundary idea supports the concepts of ownership, of what is or is not a person, of how we should relate to each other, and of our entitlement to claim for ourselves at the expense of others.  I need a better word than "participation" because I want it to have as much impact and dignity as the word "salvation."  Engagement, contribution, sharing, association, participant, joining in. I want it to suggest continuousness, radical mono-being, total inclusion, and yet a kind of ecology of uniquenesses fitting together.

Considerable discussion persists about the importance of people participating in their own government, which is unrealized today because many don't vote out of disgust or apathy, or others are from systems that never let them vote before, or they are opposed by forces in the government.  This is important, but it's not what I mean.

I'm thinking that if an individual looks at a group of humans or cattle or sees bugs or stalks of grass, they do not think rationally, "I'm a part of all that I meet," but rather FEELS unity with all of it.  What's that?  Why can some feel it when taking certain drugs, but not while going through an ordinary day? Must one be in a certain state to belong to the cosmos?

The two ends of the continuum are the obvious and scientific fact that we are all part of the planet whether we know it or like it or not.  To exist is to "participate".  The other is the tragic and painful fact that we exist and perceive only through our bodies.  Our whole bodies.  The recovery of the physical perception and sorting experience in our guts as well as our brains is very welcome -- but still not as easy as the magical implantation that some of us dream of, like sleeping with a book under one's pillow and in the morning knowing everything in it.  Or being struck with insight as though struck by lightning. 

I just picked a mental fight with Doug Muder, a UU ex-mathematician who writes The Daily Sift, well worth reading.  https://weeklysift.com/about/  He was grumbling about the quality of the presidential debates, uninspired and trivial except for Marianne Williamson who is what we used to call a "California Unitarian".  ("How many California UU's does it take to screw in a lightbulb?  None.  They don't screw in lightbulbs, they screw in hot tubs.")  Her theology is Oprah-ized for a certain kind of woman: "Love is all you need!"  She's anti-scientific: against vaccines, for instance.  Katherine Kuhlman without the lingerie.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtWXMdQyjOs

I didn't send my comment to Muder because I can't remember my password and it's not worth all the fuss to invent a new one.  It's a stupid system.  In fact, the Internet is so riddled with stupidities that it may just crash.  It's also a huge energy user, which everyone forgets.  The "cloud" is a snorting dragon of energy eating, while every little pocket mobile phone needs to be plugged in one way or another.

I just finished reading "Horizon" by Barry Lopez so I'm filled with his consciousness, his willingness to risk going to extreme locations, far from his home on the Oregon Coast.  It's a wonderful book, but so far I've not run across him facing the possibility that the Big Earthquake or renewed volcanism on the Ring of Fire might just eliminate his home base.  As travelers know, the "umbilicus mundi" where one can rest is crucial to roaming.  He knows that he's chosen a safe center for himself, the same as I think Valier is a safe center for me -- ignoring other people, of course, and how invaders find our corners so they can hide, too.

The world forces that endanger Lopez' hideout are at the plate tectonic level where the plate under the Pacific pushes under the plate beneath North America.  Or that's what we thought.  Now there are hints that the plate under North America has broken and is coming apart.  Could that -- in some subliminal and mystical way -- be affecting our politics?  We didn't even know a tectonic plate ever did that, so there's no evidence, no connections.  Is it the reconfiguration of the world because the polar caps are melting, so the weight of ice at the poles is becoming the height of sea water.  Is this the beginning of the complete repatterning of the currents of water and air that control our weather and travel?

Where is a religion, which is always human-based, that can cope with this?  Are we sinners in the hands of an angry planet?  Will we even be sane enough or in communication enough to know what is happening when it comes?  Ask the grass.

MARKETING WRITING

Suppose I got tired of producing written content and finally turned to the other half of what the middle-class worshipfully admires as “publishing,” which is the commercial exploitation of content.  I look at that alternative now and then, mostly when the bills mount up.

In the past, sales have been based on the idea of “quality,” dictated by experts, including institutions like the New York Times list of best-sellers (implying that the “cloud” reflex of paying customers is an indicator) or Book-of-the-Month club (without readers understanding that the choices depended as much on unseen contract negotiations as on the quality of the writing).  Today in this huge haystack of available content there are two governing indices:  one is the cult of personality that we are used to because of movies and TV; the other is sales figures, which are partly based on customer studies.

Alvina Krause

I’m using blogs several different ways: one is simply an archive and reflection about a professor of acting, Alvina Krause.  One is a repository of posts about Blackfeet matters for the Blackfeet to ponder.  (They can’t afford books but can get access to computers.)  One is an archive of materials about Bob Scriver.  These blogs are focused on a specific audience but they are not widely read.  

The students of Krause numbered maybe forty at a time, which over the years would amount to maybe 1600 potential readers of a book, many of whom are now dead or elderly.  Outside of her students there is not much prospect of sales based on her teaching.  There would be more if a writer were to focus on the fact that the School of Speech at the time was covertly gay-friendly which stirred up backlash among the righteous administration and ultimately forced out AK.  Then there would be the element of her post-retirement renaissance in Bloomsberg, PA, where her ideals support a fine repertory theatre.  The audiences of Northwestern, Eaglesmere, and Bloomsberg would be another source of sales, but only Bloomsberg is recent enough to amount to many numbers.  Raw population density is the secret of success for theatre audiences and physical book sales, though today -- through video and internet sales -- the world via google and UPS is the only real limit.  Still, people like to read about their own familiar world.  On the other hand, theatre has drastically changed from the “Method” based realism of AK to spectacles involving fire, trapezes and “flying.”

Bob Scriver

Bob Scriver’s case is a little different.  First, he is ambivalently “located” on the Blackfeet Reservation which can’t really decide whether they love him or hate him.  Second, he was on the periphery of what I call the Cowboy Art Cartel, which is based on the marketing of Remington and Russell, rigidly controlled and defending a mythic patriotic understanding of what cowboy art really is.  Third, most people would not be interested in Scriver as a person, except in terms of what makes his work worth money.  His work is ‘trading stock’ and books can increase or decrease value.  The interlocking complex of auctions and “museums” are really semi-religious institutions defending that same myth of cowboys and Indians that Bob accepted and illustrated in his work -- not in his life.  Revelations of reality will hurt sales.

available on www.lulu.com/prairiemary

The blog I call prairiemary (www.prairiemary.blogspot.com) is the closest I come to a personal writer’s platform.  But my life-path is in compartments located differently with different audiences.  Unless I could find enough readers for any one of them, or somehow combine them into a grand theme, they wouldn’t support a readership.  Two other people have tried to develop books about animal control, but were overwhelmed by the great romantic unreality of the Humane Society of the United Society which never saw an animal it didn’t want to convert into a human baby, though it is the American Humane Society that takes on both child-welfare and animal-welfare.  

Valier, MT

Small town infrastructure interests me greatly, since that's where I am, and could be developed if it were properly targeted.  A lot of people are struggling with the issues.  In fact, I think the pressure is great enough and closely enough related to Third World problems that a lot of technical breakthroughs that will change everything are in the pipeline -- not least the breaking up of grids and the most difficult the safety of the water/sewer cycle.  Doing this properly would mean a lot of research and travel.  It ought to be done by a younger, better- financed person.

The religious issues in the world consciousness are so potent and various that it would be fair to call them “fulminating.”  We are about to step away from the dogma, admit to the historical and territorial sources and expressions of religious institutions, and possibly to change the nature of the institutions themselves, finally recognizing them as variations in the theme of “nations” trying to defend and expand boundaries.  I don’t really have the chops to take on such an overwhelming paradigm shift.

My specific interest is reconciling neurological research about how the body operates to create consciousness and identity with what I know from experience as an ordained minister about creating ritual and deep experience.  Things are moving so quickly, partly in response to the chaos and damage of today’s world, that as quickly as I work, I fall behind.  Nevertheless, other people are strung out over a continuum between sorcerers to iconoclasts.  Those who could benefit from an intense spiritual retreat or a steady Sunday morning reassurance include just about everyone on the planet, but sales could only be made to a narrow span of that continuum.  Still, that could be a lot of people.

Available on Amazon

Now step over to the practicality of selling.  I’m told by publishers that they make few sales at the Montana Festival of the Book.  Placing ads in the Montana magazine of Western History produced no sales for me.  Despite a barrage of postcards I sent to them, the institutions that supposedly preserve Scriver’s work failed to realize his biography existed.  Review copies produced nothing. The blogs that monitor such things say that readings at bookstores don’t work, partly because there are too few bookstores, partly because readers cocoon.  Review sections of the major newspapers are defunct.  Magazines?  WHAT magazines?  Radio seems possible.  Both the local radio and regional newspaper are highly political.  I'm not.

Circles of people who know and promote each other are the real source of book publicity but they no longer lunch together. Recently the Missoula bell-mare went into the Bozeman range with mixed results.  Anyway, that foray was about a movie. The NY agents who used to have magic Rolodexes are gone, though a wave of dismissed editors has joined them.  Instead, the conversion of writing into actual books has migrated out to the grass roots, which haven’t existed long enough to form a thick and resilient turf, despite the efforts of a website like www.lulu.com, which represents itself as a printer with benefits, something like a friend with benefits.  (Sex is sales and replication.)  A book may require a bit of professional grooming.

Rhonda Abrams -- see what I mean about grooming?

Today’s business section in the GF Tribune includes an article by Rhonda Abrams of The Planning Shop.  http://www.planningshop.com  The topic is marketing.  If you are marketing by using a percentage of your profits, you will need to already be a major, prominent, advantage-generating entity whose simple existence IS advertising.  (Rhonda Abrams’ example is Costco.)  This is a variation on word-of-mouth.

If you are small and unknown, you will need venture capital.  The trick is to prove the product.  The third option is to create such a big controversial stink that people get to know your name and buy the book out of curiosity.  (Many will save money by reading reviews instead.)  For example, Krakauer is always writing about something sensational or purporting to reveal previously unknown and shocking facts -- regardless of consequences.  (Like, hiring big physical ghetto guys with respect-issues to be athletic stars -- and bringing them into a little white self-important town that aspires to be worldly -- will probably result in sexual boundary loss that will inflame a lot of cowboys.)  It works for the newspapers.  And lawyers.

So far, none of these options is attractive.  None of them would generate enough money to tempt me to give up the wealth I have, which is time and freedom.  I can sit here all day and write what I want to write -- immediately putting it out there for you read at no cost to either of us.  If you want print on paper, use your computer printer. Or go to www.lulu.com/prairiemary.  As for the cost to me, I prepaid with my life.