I remember a moment in the fall of 1998 very well. I was running through the foothills of the San Bernardino mountains, running alone that afternoon. The sun was setting, and its golden glow bathed the chaparral and me in its slow warmth, welcome after another fast and hot day in the Inland Empire. I followed the trail towards a ridge line passing from south to north, blood surging in my veins and endorphins spreading in my brain, the smell of sage and dust filling my lungs. As I reached the ridge line, I slowed to notice the sun resting on the horizon to my left- a puddle of gold and blood pooling just before disappearing- then caught a glimpse of the full moon peaking up over the horizon to my right. I stopped and took some moments to absorb the view in both directions. I thought about my unique position between the gravitational fields of the moon and the sun, the pull strongest when they are in opposition at the full moon, surely affecting our bodies as the pull is affecting the tides and the water tables on earth. I wondered how many people across the planet would be thinking the same things that day, when witnessing the same view. Four? Four thousand? How many people think about these things? The wind picked up and whipped the stray hairs that had managed to free themselves from my ponytail, pushed them into my face.

Three years later, I relived this moment. I was reading The Sheltering Sky while studying in Fes, Morocco. I lay in the cool shade of my small room in the student villa, the baking sunlight entering my shuttered window, heating lines down my back as I lay on my bed with the book. The story floated along, barely keeping my attention, when I came across the following passage:

“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

I stopped to re-read the passage once or twice more, then stopped reading entirely and remembered that afternoon in the foothills of the San Bernardino mountains. I have plenty of abstract memories, but that one specific memory was reinvigorated by the passage. Paul Bowles’ words managed to turn an abstract memory of a run in the hills and the sun setting and the moon rising into one of those specific memories, complete with the smell, the feel, the sounds of the place and time. So many other memories will be just as the passage describes- remembered once or twice, perhaps not with much specificity. And even other memories will fade, perhaps never again be recalled.

I wonder if some day I’ll be a ninety one year old grandmother with not much else happening in my cranium but the replaying of a short loop of two or three memories that I recount, repeatedly, to my loved ones when they come to see me. My dear grandmother who passed away this summer was one such grandmother. In her last years of life, our dialogues narrowed from simple discussion down to monologues in which she would tell me the same stories, one after the other. There was the time, about ten years prior, in which she had told her pastor at church that she thanked the lord that she still had good eyesight, that some of her marbles were still working. Her pastor said to her, “Mary, all of your marbles are working.”  This amused her immensely.  Her memory of this particular story and the eventual incessant recounting of it had the sad irony of a homeless man in a tattered business suit.

Then, there was the time when she was in a beauty contest when she was eight years old. She and another girl were finalists, and they both won half the award . . . or something like that. The girl had beautiful blonde hair, my grandmother had beautiful hazel eyes. I wonder sometimes if this memory was actually a dream she had when she was a child which, as her senility set in, became a memory for her. I also wonder what else may have happened in her conversation with her pastor besides the two-sentence exchange. I wonder if they really spoke of “working marbles” or, more likely, of “having marbles.”

By the time she was telling these stories, it was too late to ask her about the facts. Perhaps this is one compelling reason to write now: the stories and memories will be more completely told, will speak for me if the day arrives when all I have left to say are the same few sentences describing an afternoon on a forgotten trail in forgotten mountains with the sun and the moon and the wind.

We wend through the mountains, skirting ponderosa pines and lichen-covered, hollowed-bowl-weathered boulders. We inhale deeply of the vanilla forest and try to imagine the conditions that brought us all- animate or not- here. Cataclysmic explosions and glacial grindings. Deafening sounds, to be sure, preceded this humming silence. Pine cones inserted by prior walkers peek out of rock face basins, framed artifacts of a tree’s attempt at reproduction reminding us of our squirrel nature.

We are supplied by about 1.5 liters of water between the two of us, but we are not far from a seasonal spring that, according to internet water reports, was flowing “well” two weeks ago. It is at this spring that we plan to each load up with several liters more of water to make today’s 20-mile trek of about 7,000 feet of elevation drop as we circumnavigate Mount San Jacinto and descend into the San Gorgonio pass, leaving the pine forest and ending in a kind of post-biomic, pre-apocalyptic über-desert through which flows much wind, no water, and the 10 freeway.

We pass over a few narrow, verdant bends in the trail that must accommodate snowmelt in the late winter and early spring, or, during years more moist than this record-breaking dry year, might even flow with water into the summer months. Today, they are shady, dry, yet grinning with green. The air during the few moments of stepping over these places brings a comforting wash over my face and up my nostrils that transports me to the small valleys that serve as cold air sinks on my favorite Griffith park hikes when I am heading out after sunset, a view of the city grid and all the little veins of white and red lights, humans trapped in metal boxes trying to become free. It is at these moments that I am grateful to be in the hills and not in a cage somewhere. This air transports me to evening springtime runs in my suburban childhood neighborhood, passing that sunken bend on the main road where some teenager a half-decade or so prior had killed himself while driving drunk and where there was still a potted plant leaning against the implicated telephone pole, which his mother still maintained. I often ran there- grateful then in that thick, cool air- to be uncaged. This air also transports me to my own bathroom, wet laundry hanging from the shower rod and the half-light of the day outside making its way down the airshaft and into the white and green tiled coolness, a retreat within a retreat. As the evaporated water lingers in the perpetual twilight, I am reminded that we are always caged.

At one such lovely spot on the trail, M.B. stops, checks his map, and declares this dry and unproviding- if climatically comforting- stream bed to be the stream that flowed two weeks ago. Without seeming too concerned, he proposes heading back the ten miles that we have already covered yesterday evening and so far this morning to get water from the nearest reliable source. In a quick moment my brain situates me somewhere in the mountains, dry granite beneath my feet and increasingly sunny, blue skies above my head, surrounded on all sides by forest and no water. Caged by my reliance on water. I’m already thirsty. Glancing at the ¼ liter of water through the blue plastic of my bottle, and in spite of my thirst, the idea of retreating is rather disagreeable to me. Regret for not having filled my water containers to capacity earlier mixes with an intense desire to transcend any seeping panic. I reject panic and remind myself that I am a runner who has spent much time losing water through perspiration, while engaging in physically strenuous activities. I only ever need water at the end of those activities. This is no different.

I look at M. and say, “I think we should go on. People can survive for up to three days without water. We’re doing a descent, which is easier than it could be. I think we can nurse the water that we have right now. I know I can nurse the water in this bottle for a long time. The human body is capable of amazing things.” This last fact a direct quote, only days old, from D.S., though the context’s dramatic difference served to give me a doubly-wry internal chuckle. Such preservation of perverse humor is necessary in difficult times, even if the humor is lost on our comrades. M. responds with a skeptical glance and agrees to at least continue to see if we might not have reached the right stream bed yet. We turn to continue on, having not cleaned ourselves as we had hoped nor eaten breakfast as we had planned nor obtained the life-giving water we had needed. Solemn, but not defeated, we walk forward, entering a dry 20 miles of mountain trail and aware that it will not be an easy 20 miles, if we ever had that expectation.

I wonder aloud if my disinterest in turning back is a masculine trait that I might be better served to leave at home and a discussion of traveling behavior and masculinity wades along with us as we ascend and descend small hills and wind through the shaded west-facing slope whose contours we are roughly following. I note to myself that we are lucky to be shaded at this time, helping us to preserve water, and a moment later I note that I seem to be breathing rather fast for this mild incline we are climbing- perhaps my body is panicking in spite of my efforts at positive reminders and optimistic expectations? Perhaps I will dehydrate into a state of delirium because I am exhaling all of this water by hyperventilation? I wonder if I have entered a state from which I can’t rescue myself- perhaps the mental panic is the easy part to prevent, but the physical panic is what kills people? Perhaps this was the unfortunate end of C., my once-housemate who perished five years ago due to hypothermia on a hiking trip? What an unfortunate time and place to be exploring survival.

We restate some affirmatives as we walk: it is a descent. It is the north face of the wilderness that we will descend, which is typically the shadier side in this hemisphere. The conditions couldn’t be better for 20 dry miles. If we become desperate, we simply jettison our packs and go and get our water and then return for the packs, well-hydrated. My mind continues to explore levels of desperation, ending in the stories you hear in the news about narrow escapes in the wild or in the rubble after an earthquake where the survivors have been reduced to drinking their own urine to survive and I wonder exactly how we would do that, if we had to. Do we drink our own? Each other’s? This could be a unique introduction to water sports, worthy of causing a keenly precise fetish . . . or vomiting.

We have only traveled about a mile, maybe two, from the dry stream and I am in the forward position as we turn a bend onto one of the most narrow switchbacks we will encounter. At that bend, I catch glimpse of a grouping of red-handled tools- picks, axes, plant-clippers and such. Like Dorothy on her way to Oz, I stop and motion to my friend in surprise. In unison, we continue to walk as our gaze follows the trail down and we both catch site of a grouping of humans now, a few switchbacks down, wearing orange hardhats. Synchronously, our gaze continues on and we both see the grouping of one gallon water jugs on a rock not far from the trail workers. Relief descends upon us as we verbally acknowledge our opportunity to ask for a bit to help us on our way. The goddess Anahita has responded, naturally. We walk towards them, unaware of just how lucky we are.

We talk to the men, “Trail Gorillas” with the Pacific Crest Trail Association, volunteer workers maintaining the trail. They invite us to their water, or, even better, to the water and food and other beverages at their pack-animal supplied spike camp only a mile away AND to all of those things at their motorized-vehicle supplied base camp four miles away. As we haven’t had breakfast yet, we opt for a long stop at the spike camp and eat breakfast with Carol, gladly drinking her orange juice and both of us gratefully taking about three liters of water. We still have at least 18 miles to go, but it is still shaded and cool in the forest and 3 liters is more than none.

Three miles later, we meet up with Hattie and Al at the base camp and the friendly older couple quickly make us sandwiches filled with veggies and no meat (kids, these days!) and offer us melon and cookies and soda. We snack and hear more about becoming PCTA volunteers and then head out. Not even a half-mile away, we are clearly entering the descent as the terrain begins to change into dry grasses and sparse foliage. The sun is intense as a glimmering Caprisun appears on the trail. M. picks it up and sticks it in his pack. I already only have 2 liters of water left, but, again, 2 is more than none.

We see numerous brown-grass and rock bluffs filling our field of view as we gaze down and see, very far below us, the valley floor leading straight north from Mount San Jacinto, towards the 10 freeway, which we cannot see yet because of the bluffs. It is a path along that valley floor that we will eventually follow out of this wilderness in order to enter the San Gorgonio wilderness. Between us and the floor, we realize, are many miles of trail. What we don’t realize is how circuitous those miles of trail will be. Feeling slightly dehydrated already, I am already convinced that things may have gotten very bad had we not found those PCTA volunteers.

A few hours later, we seem to be no closer to the valley floor. We have walked a number of miles in unrelenting sunshine and heat- the only shade to be had is by sidling up to a large, heat-emitting boulder, if it is casting a shadow near the trail. My water is already running low and yet I feel like we’ve walked 20 miles since the dry stream. The valley floor almost seems further than when we first saw it. We are on the contour of a new bluff, but we seem to be hiking along at one elevation, skirting these minor peaks, even sometimes increasing our elevation. Both of my feet and both shoulders are aching, and every parched lip-lick seems followed, on cue, by a swing UPhill. Like the pack animals we saw at the spike camp, I’m beginning to feel broken. I am the trail’s bitch. I’m lucky to be alive, as what is now severe discomfort due to lack of water would have been dangerous and utterly debilitating delirium. In my current state, I am at least present enough to realize the need to continue, regardless of how slowly or painfully. There is a spigot of water, our source list tells us, in that never-nearing valley.

At one point, I see a bright blue insect, either a dragonfly or a damselfly, flying across the trail. Surely it is well out of range of the still water in which it was spawned- or else it was a hallucination. It disappears behind some boulders. Not much later, M. and I both see a blue mylar star of David balloon enter our view from the far left, bouncing and floating up the valley, heading straight for the trail in front of us. We joke about catching it and tying it to our packs to get some helium-assist with the pack weight when, shockingly, it gets stuck on the trail. The wind knocks it around as we continue walking until it finally continues on its path, when we are not even fifty meters away from where it had been. It heads up the valley, towards the hills that spat us onto our current coordinates. As there is little chance of anyone being in the valley below, the origin of this balloon is impossible to guess.

I don’t know how many hours after meeting with the base camp we finally reach the valley floor, but we arrive at sunset. Perhaps it was 7 hours, in total, of descent. We quickly set to filtering, drinking, bathing, and eating. We share the Caprisun. Having avoided sharing with M. my many broken thoughts from the last few hours, I now share two of them with him: First, this trail must be named the Seventh Circle of Hell. I should join the PCTA and donate money for the appropriate signage OR creating a better route. He agrees that is was the most brutal section so far. I hope it will be the most brutal he encounters, because it is hard to imagine worse. Second, I can’t continue. Another day of such hot and dry conditions sounds like a sure recipe for collapse. I don’t want to slow him down, so I should bail now, when the bailing is easy. We are only five miles or so from the 10 freeway and my phone is in my pack. A dry, still and hot night, punctuated by blazing meteorites, ensues.

We wake at first light, pack up and begin the trudge through the loose sand desert at sunrise. We are soon hearing, along with seeing, the 10 freeway. Next come freeway debris like an old television set and then, under the train and freeway bridges, a make-shift living room, complete with two couches and various household items laying around. We continue to walk, then stop and have breakfast in the non-shade of the tallest bush we can see, after which we part ways. M.’s colorful prayer flags on his pack bob up into sight now and then as he walks off into the barren landscape, heading for the sloping hills leading to the mountains that are home to the tallest peak in southern California. I continue on the road in the forsaken town off of the freeway, called West Palm Springs Village. On a broken asphalt road I head towards an intersection through which a car passes every few minutes. What is here is a mystery to me, but I find one answer at some sort of automotive shop where I sit on my pack in the box of shade defined on the sand by the complex’s cinderblock and wrought-iron fence. It is there that I wait for my good friend W. and fend off offers of water or soft drinks or snacks or rides. If the trail was a taste of hell, the generosity of the people turns out to be anything but. May we all show such kindness and receive such when we are in need.

Many well-wishes to my friend M. on his journey! To Canada!

Lately my attention, ever so protected from distraction so that I may create beauty and life in spite of the ugliness and death that one may see so often in the news, in other people, in the air . . . has been drawn into the ugliness. My attention has been taken, despite myself, as I increasingly cannot ignore the fact that my tax dollars and my nation of citizenry are being used to destroy those values that I hold dear and reinforce those patterns that destroy life.

It is easy, in this patriarchal, homophobic, philosophically intolerant, over-consumptive time and place where intellectualism is vilified and war is waged to dismiss someone like me and my views. I am a young queer woman who chooses humility- to ride a bicycle and eat low on the food “chain,” to aspire to follow the eightfold path of Buddhist teachings- rather than accept the dominant culture of immediate gratification interwoven with Death with a capital “D.” I am a Feminist with a capital “F,” militant without being violent. That is to say, I believe all men and all women should be free to be who they dream to be, regardless of whether a man will be able to support a family being that person or a woman will be conventionally beautiful as that person. We should all have the freedom of realizing self-actualization. That is feminism.

I am also a scientist that doesn’t take myself too seriously, and a teacher that desires to share a healthy and peaceful planet with my students rather than just knowledge. For all of these reasons, it is clear that I don’t support George W. Bush or his regime and I never have- I did not vote for him in 2000 and, when in his first few months in office he reneged on the Kyoto protocol, I had already had enough. Now that affront to the rest of the planet is forgotten in a slew of affronts and outright war crimes and human rights crimes perpetrated by the Bush administration. But I’m just an angry feminist queer, right?

Think Again.

I grew up in a highly conservative household. I was raised on evangelical Christianity, Republicanism, and Focus On the Family readings. I was a “Young Republican” in early high school, later a self-defined “Libertarian” (thank you, Ayn Rand.) I’m a Daughter of the American Revolution. I’ve heard all of the arguments about all of the controversial issues a conservative can make. I’m not categorically in opposition to all of them. But I AM categorically in opposition to leadership the likes of Bush and all of the politicians in D.C. that are supporting him. And I will be in the streets, along with thousands in LA and as yet untold numbers in over 175 places throughout the United States on October 5^th, protesting Bush and the course he has taken this nation.

I remember the time when my father signed me up with the Daughters of the American Revolution. He had spent parts of his free time for the last decade or so doing intense genealogical research on his (and my mother’s) family, eventually discovering that someone in our ancestry fought in the American Revolution. This is the only criterion for becoming a member of the Sons or Daughters of the American Revolution. So he sent the evidence in and suddenly he and I were members of the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution (but my mother wasn’t, because it wasn’t her ancestor that fought.) I was in college. I quickly heard from friends that the Daughters of the American Revolution have an unfortunate history of racism and nationalism.

As part of my joining the Daughters of the American revolution, my father sent the Daughters my email address, so I would get periodic Southern California Daughters of the American Revolution email updates about gatherings and whatnot. Well, one of those emails had a homophobic, nationalist and militaristic joke in it, which implied that French soldiers are all gay because they aren’t as interested in war-mongering as American soldiers apparently are. I was so disgusted by the email that I deleted it. And then I immediately deleted it from my trash box. And then I kicked myself because I had just lost my chance to write a scathing reply to the violent homophobe that had sent it and everyone else on the list. Soon after that, I was graduated from college and I lost that email address. I no longer receive emails from the Daughters of the American Revolution that insult other people and my intelligence. Good riddance.

I am, however- still and forever, because I can’t change my ancestry- a Daughter of the American Revolution. As such, and as an American citizen generally, I will demonstrate on October 5^th as part of the World Can’t Wait- Drive Out the Bush Regime! demonstration. I will demonstrate against the Bush regime for taking the nation that my ancestor fought to liberate from empire and that subsequent ancestors worked their entire lives- in factories, in offices, in fields, in homes, and even in the military- to create. They created the wealth of this country and upheld the early ideals of this country and served this country in whatever ways they knew how. My father’s ancestors have served this country since its inception and my mother’s ancestors have served this country since the early 20^th century. I will demonstrate on October 5^th in all of their names.

I understand that this country’s wealth has been created first on the backs of slaves from Africa and forever on the backs of those with the least monetary wealth and more recently on the backs of people in developing countries, but I also recognize that many Americans today and many Americans in the past didn’t realize these scaled power structures, repeated from international dynamics to class dynamics and race dynamics, etc. It is in the idealized America that my ancestors placed their faith, and it is the Bush Regime’s erasure of that America and worldwide endangerment of America and Americans that I will protest.

On October 5^th, with respect for the ideals with which this nation was conceived, such as democratic representation and division of powers and the agency of the people that are governed to demand justice and a government that reflects their best interests, I will demonstrate. The zeitgeist producing this nation and its founding ideals are clearly described in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I recognize that every government is established by idealists, truly believing that their form of government will lead to a peaceful and prosperous existence. I also recognize that, while the founders of the United States of America had very clear ideals, shaped by the fire of tyrannical rule by a foreign king, they were also racist and engaged in a genocide of the indigenous peoples on this continent. Our history is a shameful one. I am proud of the ideals, and not proud of the hatred and killing that came alongside those ideals. Even at the beginning of this nation, those that called themselves citizens of the United States did not see the blatant connection between the imperialism they were escaping by declaring their independence and the imperialism they were perpetuating by claiming a land and murdering its people.

The clauses of the Declaration of Independence following the one above are a litany of the abuses suffered by residents of the British colonies under the thumb of the king of Britain. These are the abuses shaping the “absolute despotism” that motivated the colonists to “throw off” the king’s rule and declare themselves an independent nation.

Most of the abuses directly describe the tactics taken up by the Bush regime. More importantly, the arrogant, imperialistic, militaristic and self-interested attitude defining all of them equally describe the Bush regime’s actions. The founders of this nation declared this type of ruler a despot. They used the lessons from the oppression and suffering endured under the king to create a nation where such abuses would not happen again. And yet, before our very eyes, the Bush regime is bucking all of those protective devices against intolerance and despotism- the right to one’s own religion, the separation of powers, the right to privacy and fair trial . . . the list doesn’t end. It is time to throw off this government. This government that not only doesn’t represent most U.S. citizens’ best interests, but doesn’t represent the United States, as a nation’s, best interest as it perpetuates our “addiction to oil” and our military-industrial complex that, while it fattens the pockets of Bush’s CEO friends, places our nation at the top of every list of most despised peoples. We are despised for allowing our government to get so out of hand that the health of the global ecosystem and the life of people all over the planet are ominously at risk, both indirectly through our refusal to take responsibility for the planet’s health or directly, as the targets of our weapons.

As a Daughter of the American Revolution and as an American citizen, both labels conferred upon me not through any particular virtue of my own but by happenstance of my birth, I declare this government despotic and demand that the Bush regime step down and take its program with it. Please join me on October 5^th, in the town or city that you live in, to demand the same. It is our patriotic duty.

The World Can’t Wait- Drive Out the Bush Regime!

I returned to the intentional community that I live in (the Los Angeles Eco-Village) this week, after two weeks in Colorado. Curious to see how the most recent building committee meeting had gone, I navigated to our online listserve and read the meeting notes. Discussion topic number two was documented thus:

2. Short stay for 2 people from New Mexico August 26 through September 1. APPROVED. Also, 2 traveling teachers sometime in June. APPROVED. Are they angry vegans?

I’m certainly relieved that my community is asking tough questions about people that will be sharing our space. I know I don’t want any “angry vegans” in this building. What I don’t understand is why this question, with no answer, found its way into the meeting notes? Usually we document knowns and decisions, and if there is an unknown, someone’s name is usually ascribed to the unknown, because that person has agreed to follow up on the weighty question and report back to the community about their findings. Perhaps the point person on this question was erroneously left out of the meeting notes. If so, I would appreciate someone letting me know who the point person is. This is because I have some of my own concerns about these traveling teachers.

I want our point person to call up these teachers and ensure that they are not: terrorist Arabs, poor vehicle-maneuvering Asians, greedy Jews, irrational Women, criminal Blacks, promiscuous Queers, lazy Hispanics, stupid Poor people, unrealistic Liberals, or dirty Hippies. I don’t think we should invite anyone into this community who exhibits these characteristics. I know some of the Eco-Villagers might take a more lenient stand than I am, and claim that laziness or irrationality really aren’t that bad, but I’m willing to block any conversation on this matter at the next meeting because I have seen the kinds of problems that ensue when you begin associating with these Hispanics and Women, etc. All you have to do is turn on the television to see what I’m talking about. The evidence is everywhere. The Arabs, the Asians, the Jews, the Women, the Blacks, the Queers, the Hispanics, the Poor, the Liberals and the Hippies are nothing but trouble. The Vegans, however, I’m not so sure about. I haven’t seen as much evidence of the problems that they cause as the others that I have mentioned.

Clearly, we don’t want angry people in our community just as we don’t want criminals or greedy people. However, aside from the adjective “angry,” the noun “Vegan” indicates something that we DO want at the Los Angeles Eco-Village. Vegans are actively choosing an eating pattern that is the most sustainable eating pattern possible in this urban environment. Nearly three times as many resources are needed to produce a human’s omnivorous diet compared to an entirely plant-based diet. So . . . I’m willing to argue that we, in fact, don’t worry about angry veganism because we have the Conflict Resolution Committee to deal with anger from Vegans, but that we still look closely at the possible Black, Asian, Queer, etc. status of these teachers because being Black, Asian Queer, etc. does not redeem their criminality, poor driving, or promiscuity by our Eco-standards. We’re also not prepared to deal with people with these negative characteristics the way that we are prepared to deal with anger.

I would like to communicate with our point person to express my reservation regarding selecting out Vegans from the community while still allowing the Liberals, Jews, etc. to move in. Frankly, I think this reasoning is a little bit backwards, considering we are the Los Angeles Eco-Village. Yes to Vegans. They are “eco.” No to people of color, women, etc. They are not.

For more ironic negotiated readings of hegemonic messages propagated by residents of the Los Angeles Eco-Village, continue to support and not put in check the straight white males and the women that rely on patriarchy for a sense of worth in the community. These people have every interest in keeping the status quo of the greater society mirrored in our own community, and will, so long as the rest of us are complicit.

Last night I joined up with the central LA critical mass ride. There were about 60 of us, including the always-fabulous sound system that turns our rolling conversation into a rolling saddle-dance party. After some tug-of-war at the front of the ride, we veered towards South Central, to visit the South Central Farm [or] and show support for the struggle happening there. [In (very) short, the Farm is the largest contiguous urban farm in the entire country. It has been producing for 13 years, and it supports 350 families of very low income, mostly recent immigrants. It is an irreplaceable resource for the 350 families, South Central, the city of Los Angeles . . . for the planet.]

For the last 3 years, the families and organizers have been applying themselves full-time to staving off eviction by the city after the city decided to sell the land out from under the farmers. Myriad paths have been traveled in an attempt to save the farm. As of a few days ago, what appeared to be the final path had ended up short and now the farmers are awaiting, in a hypervigilant state, the sirens of the police as they arrive to forcefully remove the farmers and allow the bulldozers onto the land to tear up their livelihoods/community/culture and replace it all with a large concrete warehouse.

Our ride through South Central residential streets was met with confusion, mostly, but also the cheering and clapping and reciprocated “peace” signs that we get from pedestrians and some motorists when we go the usual north or west direction from our starting point. In reality, the “confusion” I just ascribed to most who witnessed our passing last night was something more than that. Most people don’t know what critical mass is, so there is some confusion for people who see a very motley group of people NOT in racing clothes (for the most part), on bicycles and trailing a large sound system. We aren’t carrying signs or passing out xerocracy, lately, so there’s really no indication what we are riding for. In fact, that is our most commonly received question: “What are you all riding for??” My usual response: “Fun!”

While everyone has some confusion about us, the majority of folks we saw last night in South Central met us with suspicion. Like the farmers, the whole of the low-income people of color in this city (this nation) have reason to be suspect of unusual people entering their community. In short, their own hypervigilance begs, “are these people here to exploit us?” So the joy of sharing a different vision of a Friday night with the children who were running on the sidewalk, cheering at us, was sharply counterweighed by the squinted eyes and crossed arms of the weathered men in front of their humble homes and the momentary stress our large group with no obvious purpose caused them.

And so our mass birthed out of 41^st street heading east, crossed the blue line tracks and took a sharp turn north on Long Beach Ave., past the main entrance to the farm as a whole line of activists were walking around the perimeter of the farm, holding candles and cheering at the vision of us flooding into the street and past them. We did a loop around the entire farm in the opposite direction of the marchers, and on the far side of the farm the people on watch with walkie-talkies took notice and quickly picked up their radios to report / get feedback on what all the people on bikes with a sound system was about. Hypervigilance.

As we rounded the bend back towards the main entrance, our cacophonous and blinking mass of cyborgs was in distinct juxtaposition to the tranquility of the quiet vegetables and the palpitating candlelight at the farm. Then, out of our group, came a loud “beeeoooooop!” police-car-imitating yelp originally meant to get the attention of motorists who might otherwise crush us, as cyclists, if they weren’t forced into attentiveness by the threat of a cop car in the vicinity. Most people have no idea about this sound, so any non-cyclist who witnesses it has nothing to conclude except that there is a cop car behind the mass of cyclists . . . or, in the case of THIS situation, if someone saw that it was, in fact, a cyclist’s mouth that made the sound, that the farmers’ hypervigilant state was being mocked. It’s like entering a sweatshop in downtown LA and yelling “La migra!” Insensitive, idiotic, or both. As the cop car imitation is now a greeting in the cycling community, another cyclist shot a loud “beeeeeooooooooop!!” back. I did what I could to quickly shut those people up, and I think no hard feelings were experienced by the farmers guarding the front gate, as they allowed us in. We all stayed for some amount of time, hearing the speakers, eating some food, touring the farm, enjoying the music, checking to see how Julia Butterfly Hill, up in the oldest tree at the farm and on her 11^th day of a hunger strike, was doing.

The night was not ruined, but the issue arose: as a subculture in this city, we have a responsibility to be sensitive to other subcultures. We, of all people, should be able to identify with the vulnerability and concomitant hypervigilance that being in a subculture can cause. While a large group of our cyborg beings of flesh and bicycle steel might be considered threatening in some places, we’re usually roaming the city by ourselves, and, as such, we are vulnerable to the much larger and sometimes much faster-moving cyborgs known as people in cars. Whether we dwell on it or not, we are aware of our vulnerability. If someone behind us honks, we jump because we are in, even if we don’t know it, a hypervigilant state. If we hear a skidding car somewhere behind us, we think “oh SHIT . . .” because the car could be heading straight for us. It is ironic and appropriate that from this vulnerability was spawned the cop-car-imitation as a weapon against those that could harm us.

We are imitating a (multi-leveled) oppressor in order to manipulate another oppressor. And so our weapon was inadvertently turned last night, for a moment, against a sister subculture in this city: some recent immigrants of low income that are finding sustainable, culturally appropriate ways to exist.

It’s easy to be caught up in one’s own experience, regardless of who you are. This is a call to each of us, as members of some cultures and some subcultures and as over-privileged in some regards and under-privileged in others, to THINK . . . about those around us and their positionality and to be sensitive to such, particularly when they are inhabiting a more oppressed subculture than we can claim.

[This post cross-posted with Biciblog and published on CICLE.]