Sent Mail Excerpts, December 10 2004, Part 1

Debbie Timmins, Oct 3, in response to
"So what do you reckon was your most significant revolutionary activity to date?"
deciding firmly in my mind that i am no longer the citizen of any one nation if being a citizen means i have to abide by that nation's laws and accept that nation's State as my leader/ruler, and that i have to do my best to live in coherence and consistency with that decision, while at the same time developing my own guidelines (not rules!) of living, along
the lines of the principles of a) non-violence, b) health, and c) oneness of all of life.
mmmph. bunch of talk if you ask me, but i suppose i have the rest of my life starting now, at every now, to put it into practice.

Ammayi/Ammama, Ammamma, Amma, Shashi, Oct 3
hi all,
aaaaahyoooh, did tush try and walk his ninja across the tightrope and break a glass vase again?
acchan and acchamma asleep. acchan drew a clothing-debatable monkeyman and a victorian hardhat manual labor woman today. amma's working on class notes so the computer is going click tringwhoosh.
finally a day without rehearsal today, back at it again early tomorrow morning, so i should head off to sleep too.
love ammz

Sitara, Oct 4
aratiS
sheeit. well as usual youre a few steps ahead of me.
last year i started thinking about law school. when i went to india in mid-july it was still a possiblity, and one i had talked to my parents about, so unfortunately they got kind of excited, i wish i had upped them jjust to down them. a couple weeks into being in india, during a three day train journey, which is when so much soul searching finally gels into verbalizable thoughts, i realized that i could compare going to law school to use that education to do the work i wanted to in the world would be like drinking a bottle of coke to stay up at night to write a paper on why the company, Coke, is bad. so yes. i too want something that doesnt make me throw up. and i also firmly decided that i will not pursue higher education, though since i have given up predicting what i will think in the future, of course i might change my mind.
prisons. my main reason for considering law school. forget smash the state. i've already decided that i'm committed to dissolving it, not smashing it. but i thought i could do some prison smashing if i became a lawyer. but then at the same time this decision that i've recently made was formulating, the decision to no longer be a citizen of a nation's state, and abide by any state's laws, and that instead i have to develop my own guidelines, not laws, that allow me to live in health and ahimsa with myself and the community around me. how am i supposed to be a lawyer and use laws if i dont abide by them? i'm not talking about the kind of civil disobedience that we did, deliberately breaking a law to make a point to a government, and thereby in a way validating both the legal system and the government. i'm talking about the henry thoreau kind of civil disobedience. i'm hereby signing off all those societies i never signed on to, henry, you got it. have you read it? if not, you should. if yes, you wont be as confused as you would be if you hadnt read it.
oh my gosh look what you did you went and typed open my stream of babble and now i'll have to build a big fat world bank sponsored dam to stop it.
another way youre a step ahead of me, i STILL havent heard arundhati roy speak even though i have such a big crush on the woman and i was in the same room as her TWICE at the world social forum and she waved at me (i think) and i went and talked to her, cuz i missed her talk on the opening day of the forum. blitzpoop.
yup. i'm still in singapore. i got back from india this week. i'm here till december at least. and then where, who knows not i, no sir, no maam. i dont know how to put this thing into practice, especially because i'm so desperately detached from anything remotely revolutionary and definltey have no peeps to discuss these things with in person and then act on the ideas, so i'm waiting in limbo for the Dissolve the State God to tell me what to do next.
thank you for lending me your eyes and your e-shoulder to babble on, off i go now, my love to you and yours and the rest of my beloved bay area.
re.paz.olucion siempre
mali mali mali

OED, Oct 5
Dear Lee Peng Chuan,
I am a resident at Kent Vale. I am glad that there are provisions for recycling of some of the waste materials we generate, and I went to the office to find out about development of further waste management systems and was given your name.
I would like to inquire about setting up a compost area in one of the corners of the estate where interested residents can bring their organic material. It will not require much work, and will allow the organic matter to turn to useful soil, instead of being stuck between plastic and metal waste. I will be happy to set this up, but I did not want to intrude on the gardeners who work the grounds every day, so I would be grateful for any advice you could give me on this matter.
Sincerely,
Malavika Mohanan
Blk A, #09-08

Miriam (WSF '04), Oct 5
tell me more about cambodia too! nope, i didnt see anything about it at
wsf. oooh, definitely tell me about burma too. a long time after i
realized i was politically aware, i'd taken the red pill and all that, i
thought back and remembered how in middle school i half-joked about going
off to be a freedom fighter in burma, but i was also half serious. funny
how things like that start in your mind before you really know yourself.

Pete, Anne-Lise, questionnaire thingy, Oct 5
39. FAVOURITE TIME OF DAY? any time where i remember to take a breath and then realize that i'd also been forgetting to remember that life is beautiful and it's all good cuz really i could be perfectly happy with oh so little and whats the use of all that tension about nothing at all and oh hell yeah zippedeedoo da.

Bhumika, Oct 5
singapore's really changing so fast, i love being on the MRT and people watching, whizz blur swish eye nose skirt moustache spiked hair newspaper baby plooey.

Becca, Oct 6
during one of my scouts i went to the hills of north kerala and fell in love. with the land that is. you would love it b-dawg. its trees and animals and birds and people and life at its richest. i saw a coffee tree for the first time, after all this while!! coffee is what first got me into activism you see, and it has a special place in my heart, even
though i barely ever drink it, because i know it where it comes from and who picked it and how the land is ruined by it the way its usually grown.

Adrian, Oct 6
i'm so very glad you wept and i know exactly how you feel about seeing all those people and being part of them. there was this time in DC at the IMF/World Bank thing, we started off in front of that big monument that i cant rememb er the name of, and there werent that many folks, but as we were marching up hill i looked back and saw a swell of humans rise out of the ground like in Lord of the Rings, and my heart popped out of my head and stayed there levitating for the rest of the day.

Pam, Oct 7
i got back last week to singapore from two and a half months in india and i'm here at least till deccember, planning and plotting and deliberating needlessly my next step. not having firm plans is liberating and all that jazz, but it would be a lot better if i could discipline my mind to give in to that liberation and not worry too much about it, or just go ahead and make a plan and stick with it, but unfortunately my baby mind tends to dwell on futures that might be and is trying to find out exactly the right future that should be, instead of just lettinng this baby future of mine just be whatever it would like to be. hmmmm. does any of that make sense?
i went to a meeting with my mom yesterday with this group called Food From the Heart. they started off getting bread from bakeries that was thrown away and collecting it for the poor and expanded from there. sound familiar? theyre hardly as revolutionary in their approach as Food Not Bombs, but theyre good people, and theyre doing a good thing. i'll see
where my non-organizational non-permission asking self can fit into their scheme. i'm craving what i call a "crew" of folks to activate with, but i'll do the best i can with what i got, and what i got is actually pretty amazing, cuz right now my crew is my parents, and they really get me. they not only put up with my little box of pre-compost waste next to the sink, and the pile of plastic food boxes that get washed and barely used, and my rants about the state of the labor conditions for (foreign) construction workers (i havent done a damn thing about it yet), and my deliberations over whether i really need to use the car to get to dance rehearsal or not, and my decision not to vote because dennis kucinich is out and i'm not going to take part in the acknowledgement and validation of anyone else as my "leader" or any administration as my government, and my decision not to go to law school or any other form of institutionalized higher education beccause of this that and the other reason, yeah, like i said, they not only put up with all this crap, they also support and love it along with all the rest of me that they love.
wow. that little recap of my life right now makes me sound anal retentive, i'm annoyed by myself even, but i promise i'm not really that bad, i'm actually using time to discover much abandoned delicious joy of being part of this big thing that some call gaia, and when i'm not sleep deprived and cranky and beating myself up about not having re-joined the
revolution yet i'm generally fun to be around.

Mike Kaufman, Oct 7
there's a few reasons why my Awake and Enough dont immediately translate into voting for Kerry to get bush out. to name a couple:
one. i am no longer america and america is no longer me, even if i say it politically correctly, united states. i have attachment to the bay area and a few other parts of that land known as U.S., singapore, and a few parts of india. this takes me all around the world for home. even with these places, i dont prize the lives of those in other countries any more than i do in these, so what form should my nationalism, my patriotism, my identity, take?
two. lets take the point above a little further. i was born in the US and i got a passport saying so, but if being a citizen means i abide by the laws of the state that has claimed this land as its own, and accept the president, any president, texan or otherwise, as my leader, then count me out. i am hereby doing a thoreau. (have you read civil disobedience?) i'm signing off all the societies i never signed on to inn the first place.
i'm not signing off your society though, so drop me a line kid and tell me whats the what jiggity bam.

Lauren Dietrich, Oct 8
dearie,
i'm performing this dance thing ont he 15th and 16th, so i'm not gonna start on the 15th when ramadan starts, but i was thinking of starting a ramadan style fast on the 17th, like last year, but this time with more maturity and discipline hopefully, and with each night break the fast with thought of two places of conflict, iraq and palestine, in mind. join me? or at least, wish me peace and health while i attempt it?
also, whats your address? and whats your mom's address in ashland? and how are they both, i never wrote to them cuz i lost their address.
love
me

Blair, Oct 8
i've been kind of vagrant and wandering for the last one and a half years, eventually thatll wind down and i'll settle for a spell and then be off in the winds again, i suspect.

Andy Simpson, Oct 12
the necessity of revolution is irrelevant. it will happen/is happening whether you believe it is necessary or not, and the only thing to do is jump in, find a seat that will cushion at least some of the bumps, lock yourself in and lift your arms in the air for the ride. try not to puke, kiddo, this one IS being televised, and aired shots of flying puke aint too good for getting dates.

Debbie, Oct 12
never been very patriotic, but there was definitely a time before now that i didnt realize that life could exist without governments/states. rules/laws and their consequences do apply when certain laws and actions by the states that make the laws break the rules of my own moral/ethical system, and my commitment to prevention of what i see as injust will result in the breaking of another of the state's laws, in a manner that will most certainly bring on arrest. think salt and gandhi. think thoreau and taxes. and even if youre not doing that, the state is very much present, though often invisibly so, in every single person's life. i'm not blaming all problems on the existence of governments, but i'm keen on freedom from the idea that the state is necessary for civilized life to go on, freedom into the notion of individual right and responsibility, and a re-evalutaion, a narrowing down, of the scale of community interaction and decision making process.
nah, i thought i wasnt going to vote, but then i looked at the ballot and saw leonard peltier still on there, and changed my mind.
ow. theres a crick in my back which i havent figured out how to uncrick. aaah, bliss will be found with the advent of uncrickability.

Amy Chen, OCt 14
i have a dance performance tomorrow and day after. my grandma is here, and her sister is coming day after tomorrow, so she'll get to see the performance too. i'm reading one straw revolution with my parents and thats very cool. eventually we're going to set up a home for ourselves that will be a home for kids who dont have a home, and old folks who live
alone or dont have a home, and we'll live on land that grows Fukoakan and wild. yum.

Amy Chen, Oct 19
more about the home, itll come, my dear, its still in the pipe dream pipe lines. for now we're pretty sure itll be somewhere in kerala, and i know its going to have grey water system and be naturally built, hopefully no concrete, and therell be a library and a wood stove and solar panels and wind turbines and biomass fuel and coconut trees and coffee trees and vanilla plants and the kids, human and otherwise, will grow up wild and free, and you will come and visit us and play and teach and learn.

Shashi, Oct 19 (resent?)
when you came to panamanna on a whim that day we were going to kottakal, the last two things i said to you while you were leaving were 1) when you said something about being my long lost uncle i said you can stay lost as long as you want, and 2) when you tried to start your bike i jokingly offered to start it for you. neither of these meant, or did (i think) any harm, but as you rode off i had a sudden and stupid flash of how i would feel if you crashed and died and these were the last things i said to you and i wished i had instead said that i really respected the way you cut short and wound up our coca cola argument with the spot-on insight that we both probably essentially agreed anyway, and that i was glad you made a surprise visit because it was nice to see you even briefly. and then you came riding back to get the thing you forgot and i was gladder than glad and i felt like i had been given a second chance. i think from now on when a parting is taking place i'll take more care to say things i really feel about the person (if i like em, if not, i'll just shut the hell up) instead of trying to be funny and quippy and sarcastic.

***Alpha fell in love during these days, and his life was wonderful***

Gillian, Nov 8
so i'm way late with wishes and whatnot. my reason, you will understand, I'm sure. I don't do the whole computer thing so much anymore. but i'm hoping you reached that great milestone, the equivalent of 453 Behogian years, without ever having to meet a Behogian, ensuring your utmost happiness. In other words, I hope youre utmostly happy.
as for me, i have not had the misfortune of meeting a behogian either, and so am bumbling along quite dandy. i'm in singapore, back after 2 and a half months in india, i'm dancing, i'm theatering, i'm sort of composting/mulching, i'm baking, i'm fasting for ramadan in solidarity with the occupied peoples of iraq and palestine, i'm helping my mom and
dad with their work and generally exchanging energy with them, i'm trying to remain as patient as i can with my grandmother and her sister who are staying at home with us right now.