Toward Ecosophy

Mark, it's me, Erika. i've been ruminating on all you said and i felt like we moved on from you, or you kinda' facilitated that, and i'm not gonna let you go just yet:

i wasn't being defensive about my emotionalism, i just didn't want to be the ...what's the word?... the designated "Emotional One." designated. transactional analysis worked for me most when i was confused and overtaken by emotions, and one of the things i remembered was that i was the designated train wreck. that was my role, my shtick.

so i didn't want that to me MY area, and implied in that is that all others are the RATIONAL or yes---blocked or disconnected people. rational. ha!

and while we're re-evaluating our assumptions, beliefs, and habits, i'm saying we're ALL a little bit country and we're ALL a little bit rock n' roll, ya dig?

from there, i - we all- see how EMOTIONAL you actually are-- full of LOVE and connection you are. maybe it wanted to be leaky messy frizzy, but we're all products of this society at this time. we're all cheated by the unfettered soul myth or fantasy.

someone insinuated that you'd re-channeled re-directed all that emotion into other areas. yes! exactly.

and as far as men being repressed or whatever you said, i'm confused and will seem unclear here because i thought that about men too, along with a ton of other things, that turned out to be wrong. especially now in the era of Sheridan's and Violet Cabra's "Devouring Mother."

you're not ALLOWED your deepest romantic (in all ways) expressions. so y'all tend to tip really way and take a lot of things on the chin, but are comfortable doing the sweetest things on the low, while us women (and men who act like us) are publicly yelling about how GREAT and GOOD and LOVING we are. (liberals now)

when you tilt your head a certain way, you see just how DEEP and profoundly expansive men's love can be. i'm not gonna do the habitual "balancing out" by trashing men after that statement. notice it's expected, though. no free compliments to men. they might start feeling themselves.

good!

anyhow, that's what i see of men and of YOU here. i don't have to KNOW you any further.

that said:

i HEAR you that YOU FEEL DISCONNECTED EMOTIONALLY.

good. that's something you can mess with just like Murmuration is, in order to get over that feeling.

and like St. Catherine Alexandria, you're opening yourself up to new possibilities for expression or reactions within YOURSELF, and i find this all exciting and inevitable.

i hope i'm making sense. i've been "writing" a response for a couple of days. like with St. Catherine Alexandria, i have nothing to "tell" you, only PROMPT YOU.

i'm saying you come from sensitives (your ma) and ARE one. you love the birds you can scale the tedious data and bring it to us who don't understand or find it all so tedious.

now that the world as it was is ending, you can push into new ways of no longer being disconnected now that you notice it and find it uncomfortable. i stammer because i'm still re-arranging my old assumptions about myself in this world. they sneak up on me, you know?

but the world is different now, and in the upside downness of everything, i'm the rational one compared to these emotional freakouts of the so-called rational normals.

i'm not really saying anything here. i'm stammering in type. but i don't want you to defend yourself or shake off this conversation. i wanna pick up on you feeling disconnected emotionally because you are important here to all this and men always take it on the chin. no more!

so cut yourself slack for being emotionally disconnected. even as "emotional" as i seem, it's self-indulgent because IT'S HERE. this is all performance even as it's real.

it fits with what you also said about trying to have an eco meet up that devolved into wanting to talk about more IDEAS and how to get them out there.

that's like WRITING and talking about WRITING for me. where's the DOING???

so little DOING. that's why i wanna do a craft fair or some REASON to meet up instead of just blabbing about "what to DO?"

I was talking about this with James. same here in SF. we used to meet up locally and grow relationships.

we're all socially retarded... ANXIOUS. that's the bedrock of all THIS and WHY THIS: we're all anxious.

i'm almost done re-reading Mattias Desmet's book, and am now more confused than EVER. because i didn't realize how much the world had changed and so many were on anxiety meds. i had NO IDEA.

i remember going to costco awhile back and the woman at the register suddenly looked like she'd been punctured and the air had been let out. i gasped and asked, "ARE YOU OKAY???"

she smiled through half lidded eyes and said, "my meds just kicked in."

how can anyone NOT be emotionally detached in this world? you've done amazingly well to have stayed as connected as you HAVE. see what i mean about coming out ahead of where you thought you were?

i've no answers. i'm new here, too.

i just see things a little differently than most people and hope that there's something you can use in this to cut yourself some slack as you do struggle to find creative ways to be more emotionally connected.

see, you might be surprised to find that you're waaaay more able to be connected than most of these folks walking the earth right now because you're also alive in your writings here.

maybe this is all mashed potato nothing but i just didn't want you to be blown off. you men tend to blow your own needs off. i've said before that men now remind me of timid women in the '70s before all those feminist consciousness raising groups. back when feminism was about MEN being emancipated from the shtick, too.

you all came out short in all this. so i just didn't want you to excuse yourself so fast after all you've given here.

thank you for YOUR service!

xxxxx

erika