Remembering Who We Are (part one)

by Nowick Gray

Remember When…?

Remember when going out in nature was our favorite fun activity, not just our only fun activity?

Remember when we could go shopping and not have to remember the mask, or fear the consequences, or resist, and face the consequences?

Remember holding and hugging and hanging out with your beloved elder, not boxing them up before their time?

Remember kissing your child goodbye and off to school, and it wasn’t real Halloween every day?

Remember when the police were paid to prevent crime, and honored for their service?

Remember when patriotism and terrorism weren’t considered synonyms, and democracy was a living thing?

Remember when our teens could remember a time not digital?

Remember when toppling statues was a Christians vs. Pagans thing?

Remember when tropical winters seemed like a basic Canadian human right?

Remember when a handful of global technocrats taking over the world was just a conspiracy theory, and not a live action roleplay?

Remember dancing in a vibrating room of sweaty bodies in ecstasy?

Remember when shots were something you got and hated as a kid?

Remember that Woodstock happened in the year of the dreaded Hong Kong flu?

Remember when the media called the government to account and exposed their lies and corruption?

Remember when all your liberal friends believed in power to the people, our bodies, our choice?

Remember when you believed everything you were taught in school about history, and science, what was real and important?

Remember when your church told you how to get to heaven, where “You will own nothing, and you will be happy”?

Remember when you could speak your native tongue and not have to consult monthly updates to the dictionary, to prevent demerits to your social credit score?

Remember when Social Credit was actually the name of a political party?

Remember when the local newspaper and exchange forum did not take sides, but tried to accommodate all local interests?

Remember when the Green Party wasn’t cheerleading for the Government’s latest decrees and directives?

Remember when nonviolent protest was a lefty thing?

Remember when a thriving neighborhood outdoor market was a vibrant hub of human interchange?

Remember when the arts center, the community hall, the dance studio offered rich tapestries of culture?

Remember the yoga classes, church services, festivals and celebrations keeping spirits high and in harmony?

Remember samba bands, salsa lessons, tango nights and gumboot galas?

Remember when life wasn’t so black and white, us and them?

Remember when spats with your siblings happened mainly over inheritance, and not what you or they posted on Facebook?

Remember when your so-called best friend didn’t ditch you because of some random meme you retweeted?

Remember when going back to the land to survive the apocalypse was something you did in the eighties, and then hoped wasn’t necessary?

Remember when transhuman bio-digital engineering was a cyberpunk sci-fi premise, and not an operational launch in real time of Human 2.0, under the direction of the world’s most famous software pirate?

The Last Holiday: Ruins Before Their Time

3 March 2019, Placencia, Belize

Sitting by the perfect beach, ringed beyond with yachts at anchor, a deserted pier, two swimmers doing lazy laps close to shore, from the smoothie shack with the million-dollar view, I feel detached.

It’s my last day here, end of a two-month trip, and I’m itching to get back to work, familiarity of home, reconnection with friends. Bored, in fact, by the aimless wandering on the boardwalk past the souvenir shops, squinting in the hot sun from juice bar to restaurant to café to bar, as the dregs of Canadian travelers prepare to depart for home and still subzero temperatures, remnants of snow.

I wanted to say, it’s not about me, or them… but it is about us, since this place has been created in our image.

It’s a hybrid, actually: the laid-back, friendly vibe of the locals; and the aimless, empty days in the sun for us snowbirds, roosting out of our cold nests for a while on these tropical shores. One local black man, clean cut in a small real estate office on the strip, told us of growing up in poverty where it’s not about material things, but bonding with each other. The woman from Austria sits on our shared porch with a book and barely says hello. Me too… especially when I sequester in my room with a fan, for privacy to do my thing, writing. Detached from my usual travel self, as from home.

In this theme park of paradise, I consider what’s around me in the smoothie shack: the sand pocked with footprints, the palms and the yachts and the calm warm waters… these constitute a sort of reality that consists of prepackaged experiences. Starting with the laid-back ambience of that simple scene. On top of the creature comforts come opportunities for adventures and excursions, tours and charters: fishing, snorkeling, diving, cave tubing, waterfalls, jungle…

I sit in the wafting fan and reflect on it all, missing home with its cold and snow and all—its living context, its whole fabric. Here, the context is two-dimensional, manufactured—made, in fact, for me and my kind. It’s a kind of virtual reality, or conceptual art, even if experiential. But it’s concocted, contrived; something is missing.

Even if the Tutti-Frutti gelato is the best ever; even if the paranda rock band has authentic Garafuna drumming; even if there is a real French patisserie. Because, as the mademoiselle there complains, “When all you have is gluten-free flour, you cannot call it a French baguette; it is a Belizean baguette.” And when the second act doesn’t get paid enough for a full kit drummer, they switch on the same drum machine track for every song, 126 beats per minute.

Sand, water, drinks, meals, trinkets… tours, adventures, gifts, curios… “culture.”

This, I think, is why I resisted being a tourist, until age forty-eight. This is why, now after finally travelling winters for a few years in a row, I took a year off and stayed home in Canada and loved it.

For now, it’s just another day of hanging out, browsing, shopping… being a tourist. Enough already!

But talk to me again next week. And before I leave, I will have to at least sample that “margarita omelet” chased by an “oreo mochaccino”…

New Age Meccas, Dark to Light

Lounging in the New Age bubble of a Maui spa, a Bali massage parlor, a Lake Atitlan dance temple, or a Salt Spring Island yoga class, one tends to miss the darker side of enlightened ease. How karmically synchronistic that these cool hot spots on the global circuit of high entertainment and consciousness all fall on a map that papers over the genocidal sins of the modern nation state.

Hawaii, USA, the playground of the superpower, the evil empire itself; Indonesia one of the most repressive regimes on Earth; Guatemala a virtual labor and extermination camp; Canada the colonizer of un-ceded territory and admitted perpetrator of cultural genocide, as a plea bargain—leaving aside vast resource rip-offs in Africa or Ecuador.

Do we gather, dance and pray to burn that karma in real time, with healing community, reinvented tribe, nourishment of relations with all live brothers and sisters, reverence of the mother? Is it to reclaim and maintain centers of spiritual power and human light, freedom and truth, and natural immunity to mind and body viruses alike?

A world in hiatus, 2021, awaits the outcome of the battle for the soul of humanity. Will the nation state win, in service to its spider-master in Bern or Berlin? Or will the face-to-face intermingled tribe tap its magic to set this blue and green crystal spinning tracks with perfect 432 pitch?

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image credits:

(feature) Big drum: Ricardo Chargingbear
Woodstock: amazon.com
Fear timeline: Imgur.com
all others by Nowick Gray

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Nowick Gray writes from Salt Spring Island, BC. His books of genre-bending fiction and creative nonfiction explore the borders of nature and civilization, imagination and reality, choice and manifestation. Connect at NowickGray.com to read more. A regular contributor to The New Agora, Nowick also offers perspectives and resources on alternative culture and African drumming, and helps other writers as a freelance copyeditor at HyperEdits.com. Sign up for the “Wild Writings” email newsletter for updates and free offers.

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