I suspect much more of the world experiences traumatic-brain-injuries than is recognized. I also suspect that if the world itself has a brain, it too is damaged in some form. Certainly traumatized; the mother has endured much in the embodiment of our earth.

Trauma inevitably compounds brain damage, especially when one is attempting to build healthy new connections where old ones are collapsing. The collective social brain is deeply rooted in traumas today, and many old connections and expectations are collapsing along with anything resembling a resilient, much less robust, social safety net.

My recent journey into brain damage was largely inspired by working as a healthcare provider whose healthcare was only indirectly cared for. The fact that the state stopped managing the system directly and handed it over to a private corporation, making accountability significantly more convoluted, and enacting ill-defined roadblocks towards on-boarding new care-aides, reeks of fascism and deliberate sabotage. This isn’t the result of MAGA-ism, this is pure neo-liberal decay brought to you by Jay Insleigh’s regime. They’re all fascists. Or I’m crazy.

My boundaries and capacities became blurrier and blurrier. I began injuring myself far too much. I had doubled back on never taking on more than 2 clients at a time, because I had to. My old main-man was in a home now. I sacrificed my job for his welfare. I have no regrets, except I wish I’d carved out time to visit him more the last year of his life. He had a good visit back to Vashon for the festival though, thank goodness.

Fortunately, despite having definite needs, none of my clients were currently in places where they couldn’t survive without me. After 3 significant injuries and a feeling of mental collapse coming on, I finally said sorry y’all, I gotta bail. I could feel a void between my hemispheres. I was scared. I had to dance.

I realized the only hope was leading my heart with my intuition. I had to find a way, through emotional expression, to rebuild those hemispheric connections. It was a chance to collapse the net of patriarchal assumptions my childhood had been built on. I realized I’d been fighting a sense of dysphoria that had been feeding into a suicidal ideation, where I decided I would swim out into the cold waters of the Puget Sound until I had no chances. It was a sobering conclusion to come to. A week or so later I found myself so triggered by anti-trans rhetoric and legislation being advanced that I decided and declared myself gender-queer. It’s not as if I hadn’t thought so before, but it was always ill-defined and hidden from my family. Now I just didn’t care any more. My life was on the line.

Something happened. Things began connecting again. Even things I’d long ago rejected I found myself reclaiming, a progressive kind of faith, a spirituality rooted in the balance of forces, rather than in their competition. Not only was my brain healing, but so was my spirit.

There was a book called “The Turning Point” that was inspired by an I-Ching reading. The line goes “After the time of decay comes the turning point.” The premise was something about old ways of thinking collapsing while we turned the corner on a new horizon. Once I when I younger I was frying on mushrooms and the message that came through was “embrace the decay.” I can’t help but think the two ideas are entwined. There is no way for the turning point to arrive without the preceding decay. Perhaps it even appears more pronounced than ever; the state of decay is deepening. But the compost can be harvested if we embrace that decay and treat it right. A little rotation is required.

 

 

Was it the brain damage that lead me to the liminal realm? Or was it inevitable? Both/and by both/and? The inevitability of brain damage? The deep-baked dissociation from self that drive the consumptive engine of society? A dedication to graduation from the school of hard knocks?

Needless to say, the breakthrough that finally came in my thesis of life was as ill-defined as the void itself. A sea of darkness, seemingly endless and all encompassing. I was in the middle of a black hole, with unifying logic somewhere on the other side. The only way out was through. “it’s so far out, the way out is in,” George Harrison sang, “and if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” Ancient truths delivered with plenty of guitar, just as the good lord intended.

So I continued inward and onward into the liminal void. At some point a group of ghost clowns helped me examine and rewire the frayed ends of sanity through explorations of roots to ancient Egypt and attempts at finding a comfortable pose that could convey the essence of itself, struggling to break from the confines of style in the search for freedom…

The ghostly realm perhaps had always been my roots towards liminal reflection. One of my earliest memories is falling into that realm unexpectedly. I often imagined spirits of different orders making their presence known to me. I wish I had been raised in a tradition that honored those experiences more, but alas… I needed that indoctrination to ignore the spirit world in order to fuel the later collapse of “reality” that allowed me to fully re-enter those realms.

Something about the early apocalyptic saga of Covid began leading me back towards an exploration of the ghost world, the psychic echoes that exist everywhere that holds space for liminality. As I began to rebuild and re-root myself after breaking free from the entwinement of a messy relationship, I began resonating more with ghostly connections. I started trying to find and honor the Native American roots that were buried deep in my genealogy, finding no direct proof of the one line spoken of in my maternal grandmother’s family tree, but finding definitive proof of my paternal grandmother’s First Nations lineage back in the 1600’s, a common ancestor shared with Angelina Jolie of all people. There is a saga there that has been told by others, someday I hope to retrace it for myself. Needless to say, my attempts at spiritual decolonization involved a lot of reaching out to different ancestral lines, as well as ghosts of the lands I traveled through, hoping perhaps for a sense of cooperation within that liminal realm.

On October 7th 2023 I was flying back from Poland, on a rescheduled flight that forced me to leave the Eurozone and fly into post-Brexit London to make my journey back to the states. A lot of things were happening in the world that I wasn’t even aware of yet, simply trying to keep up with the stressful mess of this reshuffling of plans . The one thing that pulled it all together for my psyche was hearing Hania Rani’s “Ghosts” album in its freshly-dropped entirety. I’d discovered her instrumental work searching for soundtrack music for my travel videos, but it was this new album that had slowly been revealing itself through early singles that had really captured my attention. Hearing the entire work for the first time felt like seeing the big picture, with every piece riding in on the hypnotic waves of what came before. The sense of liminal transition present throughout, of echoing spaces suggesting both vast emptiness and an even vaster connection, felt like a re-affirmation of the spiritual journey I’d embarked upon the year prior.

October 7th was of course a much more pivotal day in world events than just my journey. The state of delirium and even illness that I found myself in upon returning made it hard to catch-up and absorb what was happening in Israel and Palestine yet. Suddenly the reality of death, of oppression, of ghosts dominating a realm, became the weight which would dominate the world for the foreseeable future. A spirit of war seemed determined to rule the world, and ghosts of war began to rapidly multiply. Once again the word from our leadership was “The time for diplomacy is over.” The time for the war machine to roll had arrived. Victory, Inc, must have a game of domination to play…

I had to find my way to bring a spirit of peace to the ghost realm. I would have to become a ghost myself, recognizing that I already dwelt on the line between the realms. I would seek atonement in this time of war. I would become a peace ghost…

The lesson I learned was unexpected, especially when I finally left the island and took the Peace Ghost northward. I found what seemed to be the most optimal spot to make my vigil, a place where traffic converged on all levels of reality. I planted my peace ghost pose on bench next to a bus stop, a completely unidentifiable being, holding an illuminated peace sign. It was a desperate act of absurdity, an attempt to unnerve my “audience”, to force them to reflect on peace as if it were a force that would haunt humanity.

The shock to me occurred when I realized that my attempt to be seen as a ghost had opened my eyes to *seeing* as a ghost. Suddenly the social displacement of the modern urban landscape revealed a scene not just of destitution, but of resilience. At the most basic level you could see anarchy in action between individuals whose whole existence was in liminal opposition to the foundations of modern society. At some point a lightbulb went off… the strength of a resilient society would never be built in opposition to its most liminal elements, but would rather be a cooperative union built within those cracks. The spirit of true cooperation, of absolute equity rooted in unconditional love, was the Holy Ghost itself. The “Kingdom of Heaven” would be built by the children of the void…. the truth of Christ is found in the resistance and resilience of those persecuted by the Empire.

Forgive me for getting too spiritual in my reverie, but yet… these are my roots I must honor. The empire has always twisted religion into some for of control, but a real spiritual society would be rooted in voluntary cooperation. It would also be built with the ghosts, rather than against them. I don’t know what the future of Peace Ghost is, but I’d love to live in a society under-girded by a spirit of peace. If haunting the powers that be is the way, I’m still down.

 

 

Motel 6 seemed the perfect space to coordinate from, a home base on the borderline of transience. Around the corner stood a row of gutted phonebooths, now transformed into a repository for your story to be shared.

The peace ghost experience had inevitably fed back. The perspective was now focused squarely on those still living being treated as if they were decaying trash. The liminality of the borderline of social enfranchisement had crossed them, off and out. Treated like ghosts, regarded like vermin. Living and dying in a permanent state of impermanence.

It’s been just over 2 decades since ICE and the GEO Group established their detention and deportation center in Tacoma. From my motel room, while eating a pint of sorbet, I became aware of an event highlighting the history and continuity of the struggle against its abusive, human-rights violating operation. An awareness was expanding, now that threats to the under-class were overt, but the struggle had long been on-going. It’s important to recognize that these detainment systems have been developed by both sides of the political coin.

I’d become thoroughly disillusioned with the divide, an absurd binary built on degrees of exploitation and guarantees of nothing without endless battle. It felt as if those advocating for the left refused to reckon with its support of that battle. The whole thing felt regressive unto death.

But now there was a human element more clearly emerging. A resistance rooted in commonality and communion, with empathy and nourishment creating an expanded capacity, a strength of resilience that humbly but definitively demands dignity.

Peace ghost was a mirror. A reflection of peace. The sanctity of life echoes across the great divide. That was the only message ever intended in the effort. Reckon with a spirit of war now, reconcile with a ghost of peace eternally. If a statement of peace delivered by a ghost seems to reflect a statement on war, that is something that should bring unnerving reflections. The echoes of ghosts are inherently unnerving; an embodiment of an echo should reverberate…

The question becomes something like: can a disruption rooted in revolution be grounded in a spirit of peace? This seems to be the eternal struggle of struggle. Peace itself is rather a blank concept, an absence of conflict, but what is the sustenance of a spirit of peace? It can’t just remain a haunting presence on the sidelines. Perhaps joy is what gives peace power, what sustains hope, what rewards resistance. The vital movements such as La Resistencia recognize that resilience is the root of community, and that communion is the foundation of resilience. Organizing in ways which sustain and nourish the spirit of resistance is essential in these times. This is a lesson that holds true in so many contexts of dispossession and adaptation, seeing networks of cooperation built within disenfranchisement.

Connecting with movements building strength in equity is a process where stronger, wider safety nets can continue to be woven, continue to expand. This process is more exigent than ever, as the social safety net which has undergirded our modern society is at risk of being completely undermined by corporatist entities. The corruption of the state has reached an overt and absurd stage of collapse, after covertly imploding in many ways through the phases and stages of the pandemic. Now, as we accelerate into a void of any guarantees of assistance as citizens, we find we’re all forced into this liminal element of dispossession.

Will we be haunted by the challenges that face us, or will we reach towards resilience? When we find community in struggle, we find joy in community. We find resilience for the resistance in acts of love, in exchanges of culture. We find revolution in cooperative connection. After so many years of corporate corruption, we have to reclaim and decolonize hope itself. To shift our hopes away from “great men”, and put them towards great webs of connection. Navigating through the virtual challenges and the disconnections to cultivate a greater capacity for what is real.

The history of revolution is a continually unfolding process. My friend Amanda Kaos sings “life is a revolution”, and at first I wasn’t sure what to make of that. I struggled to see beyond the struggle that revolution represented. The birth of America was a violent revolutionary struggle. That violence continues to echo through our unfolding history, threatening to obscure the true revolution of our democracy towards a more just, equitable society. This violent spirit cannot be vanquished by violent acts, that’s something I’ve come to firmly believe.

Violent transitions can be made, hopefully away from oppression, but the struggle to contain the reverberations of violence is almost always a losing battle. They may become dormant, but even silent echoes have a way of festering. Like a scream that is refused expression, the horror persists in the refusal to acknowledge its existence. When it finally erupts to the surface, it is often the demand for acknowledgement that is demonized, while the horror itself continues to be denied. A society of “law and order” where both concepts are rooted in oppression and exploitation at various levels of enfranchisement ultimately represents neither of those values, and must be reckoned with accordingly.

Now, as I witness movements of resistance coming into greater power, I see how revolution is a dynamic process, a context for navigating apocalyptic times. Revolution and revelation go hand in hand, with peace as the revolution and joy as the revelation. Hope is to embrace a vulnerable self, faith is to trust that love is the ultimate truth. As individuals it is our challenge to hold the context of hope as our crux.