Geometrical Proof That Opposition Isn't

We humans love to imagine things in opposition. Night/Day, Black/White, Good/Evil, Male/Female, Mainstream/Alternative, Either/Or...To Be or Not To Be, that is the question. And it's always a fight. Us v. Them.

Dichotomize. Dichotomize. Dichotomize. That's what we do. It makes everything so logical and easy to understand. We want to understand. This is why we invented geometry. To give us a concrete/abstract way to describe the Universe, and our place in it.

But if we look at the idea of opposition through the lens of geometry, we can see how it's nothing but a fabrication. Imagine a circle. Draw a straight line through it that intersects its center point. That's it's diameter, right? Now look at the points at either end of this line we call the diameter. Lets call them points A and B. We see points A and B as being diametrically opposite. They're on opposite ends of the diameter line. Makes sense. But that's just what we call them. They don't care what we call them. They don't even exist. They're figments of our imagination, an attempt to impose order on what we perceive as chaos. But since these imaginary points are opposed, we extend this logic outwards, using it as justification for other made up forms of opposition. War, for instance. Or exploitation. Or the “conquering” of Nature. There are myriad things with opposition as an axiom.

We forget that it's still one circle.

Imagine a sphere, a planet, with two diametrically opposed magnetic poles...Earth, perhaps. Do the poles oppose each other? Of course not, they're part of a whole, like the points on the circle. If anything, they hold it together. The whole universe, in fact, is comprised of a fantastic array of push-me, pull-you forces...gravity/levity, attraction/repulsion, matter/anti-matter. It is vast. It contains multitudes. Contradictions. But it's all the same thing. Opposite forces are not at odds with each other, they are in concert...Yin/Yang. But, being geometry nerds, we can't accept that. We want opposition. It seems...right.

Aristotle said that if perfect logic proceeds from a premise that is false, then, no matter how good the logic, the conclusions thus derived can be nothing but false. He was right. But did he realize what he was saying?




Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com

Left vs. Right: What's the Difference?

Does anybody else see the absurdity of this bizarre party thing? Left? Right? What does that mean? It's like the people in Gulliver's Travels, the ones perpetually at war with each other over which end is better to start eating a soft-boiled egg. Narrow or wide. Left or right. It makes no sense. Yet both wings carry on like they've got it all figured out. Signing petitions, going to rallies, ranting and raving, puffing out their chests and feeling oh-so-important, oh-so-sure they've got it boiled down to what's really important. The so-called right-wingers think embryos are sacred but teen-agers make good canon fodder and the so-called left-wingers are exactly the opposite: kill the embryos, but stop the war! They’re both completely ridiculous, of course, and more alike than different.

The truth is, they’re mirror images of each other, each as mindless a pawn of corporate greed as the other. Their mutual hatred connects them as perfectly to each other as a perpetually spinning yin-yang symbol. Embryos and teen-agers are both sacred, and killing?…is killing. Yet they go forever in circles. What else can you do with only one wing, but flap about uselessly in a circle?

But this pointless bickering serves a useful function for the powers that be. It keeps everybody from noticing, or caring about what's actually going on. The absurdity of this two party system simply keeps the powers that be in power.

“Sure,” they say, smiling their Inquisitors smiles, “fight about this stuff. We don't care. And while you're doing that, we'll continue to make ourselves obscenely rich by sucking the life out of the planet. Good. Keep fighting amongst yourselves!”

It's like a shell game. We're killing ourselves and the rest of creation. But it doesn't matter. The infighting goes on. This is how we convince ourselves we've created something special. If we're fighting about it, it must be real, mustn't it? We must be free. So we fight. This perpetuates the illusion that our so-called democracy, is real...that it's something to believe in, be proud of, to kill and die for...that it's more important than anything. Even life. Our fragile egos depend on it. We need to believe we're part of something noble and great.

The powers that be continue on undisturbed while left and right snarl over the dried out old bones they get tossed. The extinctions go on and on. It's business as usual.




Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com

Happy Vernal Equinox!

Equinox. Equal Night. Equal parts of dark and light.

It's funny, isn't it? How religious holidays are centered around the geological turnings of the Solstices and Equinoxes...regardless of when the celebrated events may or may not have happened? We're still pagans at heart. Always will be. It's in our DNA. The force and power and feeling of these times are...well...sacred. Take Easter. The bizarre formula for figuring out when Easter falls has always amazed me. The first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox. Weird, isn't it? I mean, if it was an actual event, it would've had a date. Wouldn't it? And even though time was reckoned differently then, it should still be convertible into the current calendar. December 25th is a date. So what gives? Is it that important for it to fall always on a Sunday? I don't know, but I suspect that, yes, that's exactly what it's about. Another one of the Church's control issues.

But the Christian god is not the first one to die and be resurrected. It's actually been a very common theme among male gods. In fact, they liked it so much they got in the habit of doing it every year. Every winter they died and every spring they were re-born. Lots of them, in lots of different places, with lots of different names. Like clockwork. Like the crops, actually, and the birth of baby animals. Except they weren't gods so much as consorts of the Great Goddess. It's all about sex and fecundity and fertility and renewal and the cycles of life. The name Easter comes from Estrus. Which means being in heat. All those rabbits? Well, you know what they're doing! Look at how many there are! The thing about the Christian god is he's the first one to do it once and call it quits. He put an end to all that foolishness.

Well, he didn't put an end to it, the Church did. He was certainly not the first, or the last person to die for the sins of others. There have been millions. Billions. And every single one of them was an opportunity for humanity to redeem itself. But it hasn't. Partly...but not entirely...because of the Church's usurpation of all things even remotely related to redemption and salvation. They own it. Or they think they do. It can only come via them. It's pretty awful how a committee of jealous old coots can claim exclusive rights to the life and work of somebody...like that, somebody so incredibly great. They could never be like him. Ever. So they murder, oppress and exploit in his name and tell themselves they're doing god's work. They're the money lenders he whipped out of the temple. And they're the ones that killed him. The Church. They love to blame it on the Jews, for an excuse to hate them, but he was a Jew. His own people abused him then and his own people are abusing him now.

“Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” How many of us can say that? The Inquisitors, Hitler, George W. Bush. Can we implore the great spirit within us to forgive them? They knew not what they did...are doing. That's hard. Seemingly impossible. Yet something to be thought about and practiced all year long...not just during the Equinox.

For now, maybe it's enough to take joy in the renewal of life, to revel in the joys of Spring, the crocuses bursting up through the ground, the rising of the sap in our hearts and the feeling that it's not so bleak after all. It feels so good, like waking up, like life can finally begin again. That's what Spring is about. Renewal. And that, Dear Reader, is the precursor to Forgiveness.




Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com

It's NOT All Good

I'm extremely spiritual and metaphysical. I revel in the woo-woo. But enough is enouph. The saying “It's all good” bothers me. It's not. There's a whole lot that's bad...that's very very bad. Guantanamo, military spending, genital mutilation, both here and abroad, deforestation, rampant consumerism, rape, murder, ethnic cleansing, Monsanto...the list goes on and on and on, ad nauseum. And while it's true that good can and does emerge out of the struggle with bad, the way order emerges out of chaos, it goes the other way, too. Horrible situations do not always get resolved. Sometimes they get worse.

If we're here to learn lessons that improve the quality of our souls, we have to stop being so arrogant, simplistic and naive. We have to actually learn the lessons we're here to learn, not pretend we already have, like we're above it all, smiling benignly at the supposedly less evolved. “It's all good,” we say with a patronizing pat on the head. Ugh! The nerve! The arrogance! Because whatever we think we've learned? Is a drop in the bucket. We can choose our response to things, and we should. It does make an enormous difference. But it is most definitely not all good.

The economist Karl Marx described religion as the opiate of the masses. It helps oppressors oppress. When people believe they'll be “rewarded” in the after life for the suffering they've endured in this, plantation and sweat-shop owners smile. Metaphysics is no different. If it's all Maya, all an illusion, then the horrors can continue unimpeded. What's the difference?

Meta means beyond. As in better than? Or just in addition to? Either way, it's meaningless without the physics. The concept's impossible without first being alive, in a physical body. So why ignore physical reality in favor of what's beyond it? Opiate. It's like the thing with the cup. Is it half empty or half full? Positivists say “it's half full” while negativists insist, “no, it's half empty.” Actually, it's both. Positive and negative are not mutually exclusive. They are one and the same. Look at the cup in your mind's eye. The bottom half is full and the top half is empty.
There is immense power in positive thinking, but what about the power of lying to yourself?




Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com

WHAT'S Against Nature?

The religious right loves to use Nature when they think it supports their agenda, while trashing it the rest of the time. They say homosexuality is “against” Nature. It certainly isn't. Have they never heard of bonobo chimps? They're major lesbians. Large populations of mice display a lot of homosexuality. They have to...for population control. And I seem to remember something about penguins...

Many animals display some degree of gayness at some point in their lives. Why not? Nature doesn't care. She says, if it feels good, do it! The natural world is not as straight and narrow, or as hetero, as they foolishly believe. There are endless possibilities, and among highly social animals, the ability to bond is a prerequisite to procreation. And you bond with who you bond with for your own reasons.

There are oh so many practices the religious right thinks are good...and against Nature. Mono-culture is very much against Nature. Nature would never devote vast tracts of land to the support of only one species of plant or animal, poisoning everybody else. Any land steward or biologist will tell you so. Nature is about biodiversity and symbiotic relationships. Mono-culture devastates natural eco-systems, which makes it decidedly against Nature. But the religious right smiles benignly at agro-big-business and the trucking industry and the artificial insemination of livestock and chemical fertilizer...

Male supremacists point out so-called harem species, like lions and horses, as proof of the rightness of the subjugation of women. But these poor, exhausted, constantly challenged males are hardly masters of their domains. They exist briefly, if they are incredibly lucky, within female societies...mothers, sisters and aunties. The females stay together, pretty much for life. The males, fabulous specimens as they are, have only a short time to pass on their genetic information. After a year, maybe two, somebody stronger, smarter and better looking sends them packing. But hey! They can't be around long enough to get their own daughters pregnant, can they? That would be line-breeding, which is against Nature, too.

What about oil drilling? That's totally against Nature. True, it's not only the religious right who do it, but the mentality that perpetuates the exploitation of Nature, draining her every resource, using her like an old rag before tossing her into the landfill, is a mentality that springs, full-grown, out of the head of the Old Testament. In Ezekiel 34:25, Yahweh promises to rid the world of wild animals so there can be a utopia of cultivated gardens and humanity can be like sheep. Look it up. That's about as against Nature as it gets.

There are tons of things against Nature...awful, unnatural things...the religious right thinks are just great. So why do they worry about others doing anything they call against Nature...especially when it isn't?




Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com

Domesticated Animals

A domesticated species is one whose body and behavior has been specifically modified. Spastic, neurotic humanity is as much a victim of animal husbandry as any nervous wreck of a Chihuahua. And like our artificially selected cousin the Chihuahua, we are dependent and helpless. Useless, really, for anything but serving the whims of our master. This master, a.k.a., Civilization, has broken us so well, we believe we need it to survive.

We're so helpless, news broadcasters report on power-outages like they're a tragedy. Yeah, they're inconvenient, but we've existed a lot longer without electricity than with. But the grid is part of the illusion of control. When even a tiny part of the matrix fails, it's news worthy. It plays on our worst fears...that dangerous, untamed forces might rush in and destroy everything. And if a few people die? Oh my God! This proves the worst could happen to us, too.

This is the leash our master keeps us on.

Once upon a time, we were strong, courageous and intelligent hunter-gatherers, who took only what we needed. We enjoyed symbiotic relationships with other species. Scavenging canines hung out around our encampments, strengthening both their territories and ours. Ravens, who help many predators hunt, were our friends. We even grew into a symbiosis with herbivores by propagating the kinds of plants they liked. Being around human and canine territories meant fewer predators for the herds. These relationships developed naturally and were mutual, they weren't the result of our “superiority.” This peaceful co-existence lasted so much longer than anything since.

But.

We became greedy, rapacious gluttons. Simple pastoral and agrarian ways devolved into the obscenities of deforestation, mono-culture and mass predator-killing. With an excess of stored food, came the perceived need to protect the stores. As food stores grew, so grew the population, so grew the fear, which spun-off to infect many other areas of life. With the Bronze Age, lethal weapons fertilized growing fears, and with the Iron Age came even worse weapons. The more sophisticated the weaponry became, the deeper the fear was driven. This schizophrenic, divisive dynamic grew exponentially all the way into the really terrified Nuclear Age. And Monsanto.

People believe civilization was created for humanity. That's the dominant myth. It's the only myth never argued among your arguing factions. They'll fight endlessly about every other infinitesimal nuance of the smoke and mirrors, but never that. Yes, civilization emerged because of us. But for us? Hardly. It's murdered too many billions of us for that to be true. It exists only for itself, murdering the planet, extincting her darlings. When this planet is sucked dry, it'll just move on to another, and we'll pat ourselves on the back for being such clever colonists. We refuse to see the escalating sickness as anything other than progressive improvements on the way things used to be. We believe the way it is, is the way it's supposed to be. Because we are the most domesticated animal we have ever bred.




Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com

Arrogance & Stupidity

I was in my early 20's when I first started noticing something. I was meeting these people...not in great hordes, mind you, just one or two at a time...who displayed what I thought were contradictory characteristics: both arrogance and stupidity. I thought that was odd. But I was young. I was still foolish enough to believe if somebody was arrogant, it meant they had something to be arrogant about. Not only that, if they had something to be arrogant about they were entitled to be arrogant. Oh the foibles of youth!

I kept coming across this combination of personality traits. And even though I still thought it strange, I was getting used to it. By the time I was in my 30's, arrogance and stupidity in the same person was starting to seem common. Not only that, but I was starting to meet highly intelligent people who were...humble. And quiet. People who would frequently say things like, “I don't know.” I found these people much more to my liking. They actually had ideas, observations and impressions worth listening to.

Now that I'm in my 40's I can see it pretty clearly. Arrogance and stupidity go together because they're the same thing. In fact, I would say arrogance is merely one form among myriad forms of stupidity. But it took me this long to realize it. The artificial constructs of this culture so thoroughly saturate the collective consciousness, that even thinking people need a good 30 or 40 years to start seeing around them. This is quite depressing, considering the vast majority don't bother with thinking. Why should they? They have so many convenient alternatives.

From what I've read about gorillas, it seems the mighty chest pounding display of a big ol' silver-back is just that. A display. If you call his bluff, he'll back off. But he's so huge you'd probably not want to test that theory! So you believe him. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The person who yells the loudest is believed the most, regardless of what they say...or don't say. Who ever makes the biggest fuss gets the best service.

This society so over-values intelligence that its members feel compelled to fake a level of it they don't possess. “I don't know,” is not an acceptable response. But if they talk loud enough and long enough...even if it's about nothing...people with the same condition will forget the original question and take them seriously. Make an impressive enough display of assurance, authority or arrogance and most won't notice the stupidity...they don't want their own intelligence tested. It's like the mediocre garage band with loads of amplification but no talent.




Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com

Mediocrity Pays

We've really taken that Genesis story to heart. You know the one I mean, where we're instructed to not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Supposedly this kind of knowledge would make us too much like gods and that would make all Hell break loose. I've never understood this. Why is it better to be mediocre? Why shouldn't we be like gods? We have greatness inside us. Immortality even. Every now and then it manages to show through the cracks in the facade. If Michelangelo, Beethoven, and Einstein could do it, why shouldn't we? Why are the rest of us so easily dissuaded from letting it loose?

While a case certainly can and should be made for taking knowledge too seriously, of putting it on a pedestal, revering it for seeming unreachable...and we have done that, much to the detriment of the planet...that doesn't mean we should eschew knowledge, thinking it's fine for nuclear physicists, but not for us. There-there, dears. Don't worry your pretty little heads. We'll tell you what to think. Then you'll never have to worry about a thing. It's all laid out for you. See? Don't think for yourselves, don't try to rise out of the muck. Just do what we say, and everything will go smoothly. You'll never have to suffer those horrible pangs of doubt, learn anything the hard way or ever, ever...God forbid!...get lost in thought.

And we go along with it. We take and keep jobs we hate. We assimilate painfully boring information in order to live a life of regret. Only when we're sure it's “too late” do we allow ourselves a wistful sigh of “if only.” We hate our lives.

We want our children to feel better, so we build their self esteem. We believe false praise does them good, telling them “Good job!” when they have, in fact, done nothing. We tell them this repeatedly and they come to believe a good job is not screaming for toys in Wal-Mart, when everybody knows material things are of the utmost importance. They think a good job is sitting or walking or eating food. Something a little more proactive, like reading a book or taking out the garbage without being asked elicits an extra over blown response. Like they just discovered the cure for AIDS, or something. Praise in the right place...of course. But for nothing? This keeps us down.

We're so punished by rewards, we can't even remember what we're here to do. When we forget our inner greatness and settle for being a cog in the machinery, we're rewarded with large bank accounts, fancy cars and hearty congratulations. Good for us. We grew up. Figured out what's important. But those who cannot give up their inner godliness, who strongly feel the need to rise above mediocrity, are scorned for being unrealistic...like faith in one's self is a crime against humanity...like the world would end if everybody were true to themselves. We do have a purpose, and it's not doing other people's work, it's not making quotas, cranking out widgets or scrubbing toilets. It's something fabulous. We have to do what's in our heart, not in spite of, but because of it's being the more difficult path. This is how we evolve. Save a rain forest. Create a new economy. End world hunger. It is hard. But this is the work we are here to do. And it's our only salvation.




Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com

Animism Can Save The World

Animism is the “primitive” belief that everybody, every animal, vegetable and mineral is sacred. That seems naïve to the current mind-set, influenced so thoroughly as it's been by the war-mongering religions, the religions that think “man” is the only creature worthy of respect, that the Earth is a dead and inert thing to be used. This mentality has so saturated the collective consciousness that even so-called environmentalists talk about “managing” the environment while promoting economic growth. And so-called feminists...white women...demand to be able to live up to the sick, dysfunctional model of white men.

Nature and womankind have both been defiled by male supremacy (as have men...not that many would admit it). But environmentalists and feminists both foolishly cling to the idea that we can have it all...a petroleum-based, military-industrial complex with run-away consumerism and intact eco-systems? Hardly. And egalitarianism? In your dreams, sister. The environment is not an issue, a thing, somewhere out there, or a puzzle to work out. It's who we are, underneath the self-important blather. And women are only second-class citizens if they buy into the artificially created need to demand rights from something that is not right. Doing that is not feminism. It's misogyny.

Western civilization has made a mockery of Life, itself. It has brutally domesticated humanity into accepting the most ridiculous, unsustainable absurdities as truth. And being domesticated, we cannot see outside of our cage. We believe it necessary to our survival, trying only to make for ourselves a more comfortable captivity. Indigenous peoples had it right. But we've killed most of them. And the survivors...well, they're confined to unimaginably miserable reservations, situations no living thing should have to endure. The thing we call civilization, the past 5,000 years of arrogance, stupidity and fear is the problem. Nothing will get better until we get off our high horse, stop imagining ourselves the straw boss of every animal, vegetable and mineral in existence. The natural world is the only model that makes any sense because it's the only model that's real.

If we forgot the artificially constructed paradigms of the heteropatriarchal religions...and they're more a part of us than we like to believe, even when we've rejected them...and remembered Nature, everything would improve. Nature, who's been working on herself for Time Immemorial is Infinitely Intelligent. Compared to her, our foolish systems of logic, ethics and politics are a joke. The wisdom, sentience and eternal patience of a river or a mountain range or a desert can tell us everything we need to know, if only we had ears to hear. The perfection of the stars, the heart-breaking beauty in the veins in a leaf, the enduring phases of the Moon, the delicacy and strength of a spider's web, dewy in the sunlight, or the way a flock of birds move together with such synchronicity shows us, if only we had eyes to see, that we too are made of the same stuff, part of the circle of life.

If we lost faith in the medical industry and regained faith in ourselves, being again able to listen to our bodies, understand the wisdom of plants, we'd avoid the horrible sicknesses effected by our sick society. We wouldn't “need” to be cut, poisoned and burned.

There is a Voice crying out from what little is left of the Wilderness. Why can't we just shut up, already, and Listen?




Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com

Security

I once scared off a threatening, would-be bad guy by turning his verbal abuse back on him. I screamed at him with righteous indignation. When he ran out into the street to get away from me, a terrified look on his face, I told him to get back here so I could rip him out a new one. He couldn't believe my audacity and ran off. People looked at me in horror. But my 9 year old son and I had not a hair on either of our heads bothered.

Another time, when my son was a still a toddler, we were followed by a masturbating guy in a car. We were walking. I had made the mistake of seeing him, so he thought he should follow us, block by block, to, I guess, get off on our traumatization. This went on for about a mile, getting progressively scarier. When he was waiting for us in a parking lot, leaning against the back of his car, his thing in his hand and a smug look on his face, I traumatized him. I, very loudly, made fun of his nasty, puny little thing and repeatedly hollered out his license plate number as he roared away in a terrified cloud of black exhaust fumes. His license plate number was the first thing I said when I called 911 at the pay phone on the next block. I didn't have a pencil. He was long gone when the cops arrived, but the cops were clearly impressed with my treatment of him. I don't know if they ever found him, but I'm pretty sure he didn't get off!

I did not have pepper spray, an assault rifle, or any other so-called security devise. I didn't even have a pencil. All I had was a secure sense of myself. And ya' know what? That's all I needed. It's all anybody needs. The only thing we have to fear, as FDR so correctly said, is Fear, itself. Fear is how a woman becomes the victim of a creep on the street. And fear is how a country creates situations resulting in its being attacked. One is writ small, the other writ large, but it's the same thing. Fear. When we replace a belief in our inherent strength with a belief in the artificial systems designed to supposedly protect us, and our stuff, we make ourselves ever more weak and dependent. Which makes us more afraid. It's a vicious circle. It brings us to the point of saying things like, “Well if I'm not doing anything wrong, it doesn't matter if the government spies on me.”

Security is a state of mind, nothing else. Every brilliant innovation in the improvement of so-called security systems has its counter-part...an equally brilliant way of breaching it. Remember. The cops only come after the fact. They can't prevent anything. Only awareness and a refusal to be dominated by fear prevents becoming a victim. Wire taps cannot prevent foreign invaders. If they really want to invade, nothing can stop them. Where there's a will, there's a way. The only thing a fear-based system like this can do is make people more dependent, afraid and obedient to the forces who, in reality, care only about oil.

Was I afraid of these men on the street? Yes. But adrenaline came to my defense and I ran with it.

Oh yeah. There is something that can prevent foreign invaders. A foreign policy based on decency. That prevents a lot of trouble.




Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com

Menopause is Great!

Menopause is great. Fierce. Powerful. Wild and tumultuous. It's a whole new version of yourself, emerging from the inside out, like a butterfly breaking out of her cocoon, like a Shaman returning from the other side. It's exactly the kind of intensity the world needs right now...because Revolution has to come from within. Grandmothers have to reclaim the world...not for power, or the prestige of a puffed-up office, but for Love. For our grandchildren. Menopause is the last chance to re-create ourselves in our own image, to actually listen to that inner voice who's nagged us our whole life, telling us we're meant for something better. Because we are. And knowing this...living this...can Change the world.

Oh, but wait. There is something terrifyingly wrong about old women, isn't there? Especially if they have the nerve to wear purple or are outrageous enough to take lovers or listen to their hearts, of all foolish things. Old women are supposed to be helpless, with crumbling bones and no sex drive. They should never attempt anything daring like crossing the street...at least not without the help of a Boy Scout. If all menopausal women snorted and rolled their eyes and said “Hrmpf!” to this hideous enforced helplessness and embraced the fabulous ups and downs of Change, we could do anything. We could turn this world around.

When the ancient aspects of Maiden, Mother & Crone unfold naturally in a woman's life, she grows progressively stronger and more fabulous. But misogyny demands women grow progressively weaker, and the vast majority comply. We are social animals, after all, and need, all the way down to our DNA, to fit into a social structure. Even if it hates us. That, Dear Reader, is the real reason for all the so-called “female troubles” women suffer. Misogyny. Internalized misogyny. We are conditioned to conform, and we do...with our bodies.

This world is sick. Multi-billion dollar industries thrive on female stuff being disgusting, defective and dangerous. The sheer number of products, drugs and procedures that exist to put women down is mind-boggling. At their doctor's say-so, millions of women obediently gulp down the recommended doses of pregnant mare urine. Yes, that's what Premarin, your so-called HRT, is made from. The number of amputated female body parts is the stuff of the Inquisitors' wildest wet-dreams. How often do you hear about a man “needing” his testicles cut off? Practically never. Testicles are not any healthier than ovaries. It's the attitude towards ovaries, breasts and uteri that's sick. It's all about male supremacy. Medicalizing the mutilations of women's bodies is the modern way of burning us at the stake. And everybody believes the lie that it's for our own good!

According to Susun Weed, by the year 2013, fifty million women will have achieved menopause. 2013 is the time Native American teachers say massive upheavals in Earth will culminate, too. Coincidence? No. The personal is the planetary and the planetary is the personal. Imagine the potential for positive Change with fifty million women in their full power...refusing to go quietly. Will we? Or will we remain helpless and compliant? It's up to us. I say we tap into the incredible forces moving through our bodies, become outrageous grandmothers, and do our part to stop the insanity. Loser politicians are always blathering about change, yet never affect any. Forget about them. Menopause actually is Change. Real Change. It's the kind of Change the world desperately needs. It's the Revolution from within.




Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com

The US Presidency

The whole thing is ridiculous. I have a much better idea. First of all, instead of it's being the highest, most prestigious and powerful office, the US presidency needs to be the lowest, most embarrassing thing a person could have forced on them. The way it is now, just the fact that somebody wants it, makes them suspect. There should be no pay what-so-ever. The poor thing stuck with this hideous job should have to live under a bridge somewhere. But they could choose their own bridge. They could have food stamps, but that's it. They'd have to do their own shopping, and do their cooking under the bridge.

This would be good. They wouldn't be able to contribute to genocide, make mandates, pass or veto legislation...they'd be too busy pan-handling and picking lice out of their hair. They would have to do a few hours of paper work a day...assuming they weren't drunk, and could be located, which wouldn't be easy.

The method for choosing the victims would be a lottery. One native born or naturalized citizen a year. Like jury duty, people would desperately try to figure out ways of getting their names out of the pool. Citizenship would be a worrisome thing. Because once a year, a new loser would be picked by the wisdom of randomness. Everybody else would be wiping their brows in exaggerated relief, grateful to be guaranteed one more year of freedom, while the loser was dragged away kicking and screaming. They would probably pretend to be smug and say things like, “Well it's only a year. I don't know what they're so upset about,” and, “It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it,” knowing, full well, they'd feel exactly the same way.

Getting picked for this job would be worse than contracting leprosy. There could be no going back to their former lives, when it's over. Oh, sure, there would be the occasional rare genius who managed something like that, but mostly they would be martyrs for freedom. People would speak abstractly of their nobility and sacrifice, around their dinner tables, but shun the actual people. But it wouldn't be only the presidents who suffered this fate. For it to work, all the officials would have to suffer the same predicament. They would probably form communities like the Hoovervilles of old and figure out how to make a living by collecting cans and selling discarded pallets. They would discover the pleasures of fifty-five gallon drums and the nice warm fires they contain.

This would work. This would be good. Without shepherds, the sheep would be left to their own devices. They would learn how to run their own lives, how to think for themselves. They'd revert back into Mountain Goats and become intelligent, brave, nimble-footed and free. With everybody focused on the possibility of losing their freedom and standard of living...there are a lot of officials and a lot of potential to be the loser...people wouldn't care about laws. There would be no need to either make or enforce laws. The need for people to enjoy what they have, because next year it might be gone, would dominate absolutely everything.

But of course...

People being the connivers they are, strange sorts of black markets would develop, loop holes would be found and the ones who ended up having to be president, senator, governor, mayor, school board trustee...etc...would be the illegal Mexicans. But they'd probably do a fabulous job...




Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com

Love is a Many Slendored Thing

This One-Man-One-Woman crap is really annoying. Religious fanatics spew it incessantly, they think, to prove their point about gayness being wrong. But it's so lame. Even putting aside the gay thing, it's lame.

Why should anybody be stuck, for the rest of their life, til death do them part, with the same person, regardless of anything? Because some archaic tradition has ossified into an institution? Because One-Man-One-Woman + however many offspring is the basic unit of society and to go against something so basic is to go against God and Country?

Pa-leeze!

The divorce rate needn't be lamented. Oh no! The disintegration of our so-called values! What're we gonna do now?! We should be proud of the divorce rate. It reflects the state of our hearts...hearts we are finally starting to follow. And, in matters of love, it's our hearts we need to follow, not society's rule book. Love is not an institution.

It is a raging river, a tiny seedling reaching for the sun, a super nova, the mystery of birth, a wolf hunting a caribou. It cannot be tamed. Sometimes love comes crashing into our lives like a bull in a china shop, smashing everything gloriously to bits. Or it sneaks up on us slowly, only becoming visible in the tiniest of increments, until one day, it surprises us with its fortitude. Other times it's a snowflake landing on our cheek, its cold-wet-melting piercing our hearts with poignancy, before disappearing forever. It takes whatever form it pleases, and stays as long...or as briefly...as it likes. There is no controlling it, it is like the wind...on a high and windy hill.

What if I'm a woman and I love two men...and they love each other? Or what if I love a woman? What if I love a lot of people over the course of my life? Why should I worry about trying to find a way to make my love(s) fit into one ill-designed box? Why is it even assumed it has to be a couple? If love between only two people genuinely lasts a lifetime, that's wonderful. But its beginning...or ending...needn't be a legal activity.

Same-sex love is no different. Why would anybody want to be that straight, conforming to the outlines of the religious fanatics' master-slave mentality? That's what marriage began as...a system of church and state sanctified male possession of women. Something with hideous roots like that cannot be the model for love, or legitimacy. If people really need to express the love in their hearts through something as absurd as legislation, why not level the playing field? Instead making same-sex marriage legal, let's make opposite-sex marriage illegal.




Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com

Bio...NOT for publication!

It's not easy being an artist!

I tried so hard not to be. But the Demon Art pursued. It finally grabbed me by the collar, threw me up against the wall and said, “Listen, bitch!” An overwrought, operatic, and melodramatic artistic crisis at the age of 23, showed me...quite clearly...the political, philosophical novel I was meant to write. Oh no! Not that! Anything but that! (I'd been reading a lot of Blake and Dostoevsky!) I sobbed and wailed but admitted defeat. I would do it. I quickly realized, however, I was too young and dumb to write it, so I turned to something easier. Painting. I knew it would be one, among many stepping stones back to my book.

I hung out with Jazz musicians and studied the classics of literature, music and art, using all to inform my painting. I studied anatomy, using clay to sculpt every single bone in the human body, first individually, then articulated on an armature...to understand three dimensionality and physics. I kept all my journals in mirror-writing to strengthen the non-dominant side of my brain. I filled stacks of sketch pads with nothing but ambidextrous drawings of my hands, and other stacks with life drawings. I moved through “periods” in my painting ridiculously fast.

I learned to be a piano tuner. The fine discernment of learning to hear harmonics opened my mind's ear, but when the excitement devolved into a mere job? Couldn't do it. Too finite for an eternal beginner. It was the learning I needed, not the life-style.

Working in the sex industry was a painfully visceral education in the profound misogyny of this society...as was being an activist in the Home Birth and Anti-Circumcision Movements. Although the latter two enabled the resolution of and recovery from the deep pain of the former. A willingness to actively engage with suffering creates an understanding of the very nature of evil. More learning.

Reading stuff like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle while driving a cab in Chicago...along with the futility of trying to organize this exploited foreign work force...further crystallized my views of social injustice. Getting kind of sick of learning!

Being the single mother of a slightly autistic, very literal child who was obsessed with maps and who refused to believe anything existed outside Chicago...because we'd never been anywhere else his whole life...I decided to create a win-win situation. I bought an old school bus, converted it into an RV so we could travel. We spent three years exploring both geography and alternative life-styles, visiting many communes, collectives and organic farms. This not only broadened his horizons, breaking him out of autistic ruts, but helped me with my book. Since this kind of travel was part of my protagonist's story, I had to live it, too. We had a lot of adventures, some wonderful, some not-so-wonderful, some downright scary.

I am incapable of going quietly!

At the age of 35, I felt I knew enough to begin writing. I had the definite sense of my previous life experiences coming together...that they weren't as scattered and disparate as they seemed at the time. But it still took ten years to sort it out. My voice was at last emerging, but there was Oh-so-much blather to get past! I was constantly honing, re-visioning and re-working, constantly adding and subtracting...endlessly, it seemed. Then it became mostly subtracting. I had created an enormous boulder of words. All that was left was carving out everything that wasn't the fabulous sculpture hidden inside! And now it's finished. Whew! I finally found my way back to my original vision!

This column is, of course, the natural result of that work. But I cannot tell a lie. As much as these short pieces are easy and enjoyable to write...they practically write themselves...they are part of a larger plan. It's a brazen campaign to get the right agent/publisher for my book to come to me! Obviously, that's gonna take a while! I'm gonna have to really saturate the market-place! But I'm happy that, after putting myself through my self-inflicted paces, I can finally settle down to what I always wanted: Writing.


PS-Considering that, at this writing, I've only had my own computer for about a month, and have to hitch hike into town with it, to get on-line, I've gotten a lot done! Got my whole book typed, many agents researched & written to, an e-bay store opened, and this column started. I'm very motivated. This column has been part of my plan for several years...also gonna break into doing book reviews down the road a ways.