13
They ended up being some alright enough dudes, even if they only further stirred the muddy waters of raging celibacy. The work flew with the moon, fresh blood had rejuvenated the entire crew, there was a new vibe building on the hillside.
“That’s that nomad mojo,” remarked Levi. “Swirling around in the stagnation of settlement. But ya’ll already know all about that.”
“For sure,” agreed Annie. “The ebb and flow of traveling energy is what makes a community.”
“Or breaks it,” contested Spaz.
“More like shakes it,” she countered. “But if the core values of the group are unified, then it can handle a healthy dose of outside influence.”
“It’s critical, really,” insisted Paul. “Especially for the spread of knowledge. It’s like we’re each a little synapse of a living internet or something.”
“Our motherboard,” she mumbled.
Paul was a tech guy, who also happened to live up a tree in a hammock. He spent his downtime working on an app to calculate a person’s global footprint by analyzing their purchases. He mainly just wanted to know for himself, which was good, considering that those who need it the most, will be the least likely to download.
He was into intermittent dry-fasting, and the occasional four day stretch, it turns out that we simply don’t need to buy into the bloated guidelines of the profit driven USDA. Through his giving up of excess, he could differentiate between actual hunger and the conditioned response of habitual stress-eating, he discovered a way to nourish himself from a place much deeper than his stomach.
And he powered through the pangs with a handheld solar panel, sampling the various stone desks of his wide open office space, until the light faded and the nighttime gizmo got fed and transformed. It was called a BioLite, a tiny little camp stove that you feed twigs or paper trash into, and in turn, it charges a twelve volt, and it still makes heat and light, and has a cooktop. It was the perfect blend of multifunction for today’s developing off-grid app scene.
“Next I wanna make one that maps out nomad friendly communities.”
“Good one,” she affirmed. “That’ll really help connect folks living this way.”
“I think so. And as the network grows, it could help facilitate resource sharing among settlements. You could post what you have, or what you need, and travelers could be the connective tissue in-between.”
“The conduits of manifestation,” she cooed. “Sharing seeds and songs as they dance along the Earth.”
“And arms and backs,” added Miles.
“Exactly,” confirmed Paul. “We found this place through a Craigslist ad looking for help on a project that we felt compelled to be a part of, so just imagine if there was a dedicated directory of similar situations across the board.”
“What about resistance camps?” asked Spaz. “They’re generally pretty nomad friendly.”
“Yep,” agreed Paul. “And this could be a good way to keep afloat on what’s going on, and to keep resources flowing efficiently, almost should be it’s own thing though.”
“Encrypted maybe.”
“Maybe so, but I’ve just about given up on trying to hide from the hackerswans. Probably shouldn’t post sensitive information though.”
“No doubt,” echoed Spaz.
“Plus, we can handle a healthy dose of infiltrator influence too,” she said with a wink and a smile. Nonchalant references to government funded spies weren’t uncommon on the hill.
“Hey,” interjected Spaz. “Infiltrator or not, if they’re gonna help dig, then they’re invited, we can sort all the rest of that stuff out later.”
The crowd agreed with a chuckle as Levi reclaimed the thread. “So this nomad mojo is crucial for the fluid evolution of a healthy society, celebrated, yet in our dominant culture it’s villainized and shunned, as your only worth to society is calculated by your debt to society. If you don’t pay for a place to sleep, then you’re a piece of trash blowing in the wind, and the disposable lifestyle of gross consumerism has trained them all to ignore the refuse piling up at the foot of their crumbling tower.
I mean, you can’t even camp at a rest area, a government mandated place of rest for weary travelers, no tents allowed as you resign to the front seat. The world’s eaten up with private property, to the point that even the public sector has been privatized, and what should be a restful oasis of orchards and seasonal abundance caretended by the flow of free spirits, has been reduced to a parking lot of pamphlets explaining how the natives used to live with the land before we laid claim to their sacred tourist attractions. Now there’s an app for you,” he nodded towards Paul. “Rest Area Rewilding.”
“Ooh yeah,” Annie could see it. “We can start with clandestine guerrilla gardens, and the app can guide you to the harvest.”
“And there could be an updated checklist of gardening tasks for anyone wanting to contribute,” designed Paul.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s good,” she continued. “And eventually we move on to phase two, a web of full-on Occupy camps, as we resist the illegalization of motion and reclaim public lands for the people.”
“I like it,” professed Levi. “You sure know how to turn the heat up a few notches.”
Her gratuitous smile left Miles wanting for a cold front.
Levi went on, “And it’d be the perfect distribution of community strongholds, as our housing crisis spits out the next wave of foreclosure. The whole mortgage and rent system is fundamentally designed to tear apart the classes and indebt the people to a lifetime of menial labor, and as the banks funnel out progressively more privileged pockets, the entire pyramid is going to collapse on itself.
I’m ready for it, trying to usher it in actually. I’ve been pushing for a rent strike for years as we take back control of our own existence, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the streets are already filled with the victims of capital bank’s evictory lap.”
“You know that in America, there’s over four evictions a minute?” quizzed Paul. “Over two million a year, one every fifteen seconds, that’s thirty-six evictions per drug overdose. In the wealthiest country in the world, with way more houses than people, we’re supposed to be the most civilized nation, yet we ostracize millions of human beings as we sentence them to the dumpster.”
“Wasn’t it Ghandi...” Miles recalled, “he said something like, A nation’s greatness can be measured by how it treats its weakest.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Paul assessed. “And I’d say we’re failing pretty hard by that evaluation.”
“I’d say,” agreed Annie. “But we’re working on that one, now aren’t we? Constructing houses out of nothing, planting food forests for everyone, rebuilding community and rewilding society. You know, nourishing the world one bag at a time.”