Monthly Archives: March 2016

When People Die

I’ve got an aunt who will likely be dying in the next couple of days. My mom’s sister. Death is an interesting thing because it’s the one fact that we all share, one of only a few certainties and yet, it is something so many resist. We create religions, in part, to help ourselves deal with our mortality. We create all sorts of elaborate beliefs to that end. My approach to death might be best summed up by one of my favorite songs, “Fact of Life” by Poi Dog Pondering:

“Relentlessly climbing and conquering and swallowing fresh pain
Melting reemerging and rising up clean in the pouring rain
Rise up clean in the pouring rain, only to drop down
and decay again
Muscle and sweat and blood and bones
feel good, feel strong!
Don’t ask why, it’s a fact you die”

We die and our bodies decay. The matter of our body, our molecules, are decomposed and released into the environment. Or, we may be cremated, the matter of our bodies released through a different process but still a process of transformation. Whatever the process, the atoms of our body are recycled. Frankly, I think it’s a fucking beautiful process and in fact, it’s happening during the course of life, every moment of every day. We shed our skin and other bodily cells all the time. We breathe in, absorbing the oxygen molecules released into the air by plants. We breathe out, releasing carbon dioxide which will be used by plants. A constant exchange, constant interaction We are of the Universe.

And it’s not just our bodies that we shed. In a very real way our minds, our identities are also in flux. The Denny that writes these words is not the same Denny of 10 years ago or the Denny of 20 years ago. Each day brings now opportunity to grow and to change if we’re open to it. Even if we’re not, it’s going to happen. There’s nothing static about the Universe. It’s all movement, all the time. From the subatomic scale where the elementary particles of atoms of are in constant motion and interaction, to the atoms that make up molecules, to the tiny microbial life living on our skin to the planet and solar system. We can zoom out and out and out and still we find change, birth, decay.

Another Poi Dog song, Bury Me Deep:

“A lifetime of accomplishments of which the dirt knows none,
Only in death can one truly return
Return the carrots, the apples and potatoes,
The chickens, the cows, the fish and tomatoes.

In one glorious swoop, let the deed be done
And bury me deep so that I can be one…
And all around my muscle and all around my bone,
Don’t incinerate me or seal me from
The dirt which bore me, the bed that which from
The rain falls upon and the fruit comes from
For the dirt is a blanket, no fiery tomb,
No punishment, reward, or pearly white room
And you who say that in death we will pay,
The dead they can’t hear a word that you say
Your words are not kind, sober or giving,
They only put fear in the hearts of the living
So put away your tongues and roll up your sleeves,
And pick up your shovel and bury me deep.”

Again, fucking fantastic. Yes. Yes.

And so, I think about my aunt and the other family members that have died in recent years, my grandfather, my granny, my other grandfather – and I smile. They all had long lives. Interesting lives. I’ve not shed a tear for any of them. Why would I? I think about my aunt who’s body is shutting down as I write. She will take her last breath very soon. Her body will grow cool. She will be gone. The consciousness that was hers will fade. Her family will remember her until they too die and fade away. I didn’t know it at the time but when I last saw her a month or so ago, that conversation was the last I will have had with her.

What can we do? We can go on. We can remember and we can do our best to live. I suppose, perhaps the best we can do for our dead is to relish and celebrate life with them before they die. And after they die go on celebrating life with the people they knew or with people they didn’t know. We all co-create this life together, we weave a rich tapestry that becomes vibrant and then weathers and fades and eventually disappears. These are our individual stories and fates just as one day all of humanity will fade. Even the stars transition from one state to another. Nothing in the Universe lasts for ever. Not planets or stars, not galaxies and the Universe itself may have some sort of end. We are in good company.

I think what I will do is celebrate. I will recognize that this pattern of energy known as Denny will not exist forever. I will try to use each day, to live each day in a way that recognizes that lifespan. I’m not sure where I heard it but there’s a quote that goes something like: “Live each day as if it were your first and each night as if it were your last.” Yeah. That.

Cloudy Day Time-lapse

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Just having a bit of fun with the iPhone time lapse feature and finding a bit of beauty in the process.

Vulnerability, change and growth

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Yes, yes, I know. I’ve brought up the recent ending/change of my recent relationship with Kaleesha a lot recently. It figures in. Much of what I’m thinking about at the moment is where I went with that relationship and what it means for me. In the spring of 2013 I hadn’t really been looking for a relationship. I mean, I was open to that sort of thing but I don’t recall it being a high priority at any point in the years since I left Memphis. I’d settled into something fairly comfortable for myself. And yet, here was a new friendship that seemed to be evolving into something more. As much as I was comfortable with my life I’m also someone that rolls with life. I kinda jumped in. I didn’t know there it would lead but I thought it would be worth the risk. She is a wonderful and lovely person as are her seven wee people.

Vulnerability. You see, when we decided I would move in, that we would have a go at a partnership, well, at that point it was no longer just about connecting and growing with Kaleesha, but also about connecting and growing with her seven children. Many years ago I’d made a decision to never have children.. My decision to not have children was not based on a dislike of kids or an aversion to the idea of being a parent. In fact, I’d always thought I would make a good dad, a good parent. My decision was based on my belief that the planet already had too many humans, many of which are living without much thought for the future. It’s a natural part of being a human animal to want to procreate but for me it was a sacrifice worth making. Having children didn’t seem fair or responsible to them or to the other species on the planet. In any case, it was a decision I stuck with but I always wondered about how it would have gone for me in that role. In the short time I lived at Make-it-Do Farm my thoughts about my ability and desire to parent were, for the most part, confirmed. Well, it really was fairly early in the process when it ended but it was going pretty well.

But of course, I wasn’t really prepared for it. My skin was too thin. I had (have) much to learn about loving unconditionally. I suspect that parents, biological parents, have an opportunity to grow into that relationship, into that kind of giving. That’s probably obvious. But for someone who’s never had kids, well, there is no slow evolution. It’s all a bit more abrupt. One does not move in with a woman with seven kids without a certain willingness, a certain commitment to stretching and growing, to being a responsible adult. As well as a certain willingness to being hurt.

But for me, in the context of my move into Kaleesha and the kids’ lives, vulnerability was not just about the process of parenting, not just about the process of learning to love children not my own, but ultimately also about loosing them. I could not be certain that Kaleesha and I would last though I thought we would. I wouldn’t have moved in if I had thought otherwise. But I knew I was putting myself in a position in which I might end up hurting. But that’s life. It’s a risky adventure sometimes.

There’s an openness that comes with connecting with the life around us. It often means pain, real pain because, frankly, we live in a world full of pain. Suffering is everywhere. Injustice is everywhere. I find it overwhelming at times and yet I keep breathing. We may well be in the middle of the 6th great extinction and yet, there is only so much I can do. Only so much any one of us can do. So, sometimes I’ll cry. Other times I’ll laugh. Mostly I’ll try to breath in and take it all one step at a time.

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Cloud Timelapse

By Denny Henke

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So I took a risk, I had an adventure and now I transition back into my old life. But it’s not my old life, it’s something new in the space I lived in before because I’m no longer the Denny that left his cabin and his garden in the spring of 2013. Just as I’m not the Denny of 2008 that built the cabin. Or the Denny that left Memphis over a decade ago. Life experience changes us. That’s obvious but I think sometimes we forget to pay attention to the process.

I find myself feeling a bit more confused than usual about what I want, about who I want to be. In particular, I feel an inclination to retreat for a while. To take some time from human company. And yet, there is a part of me that is inclined to reach out and connect. A part of what makes it confusing for me is the possibility that I might be acting, or, more to the point, reacting, to being on my own again. It’s a strange thing to not know your own mind, your own intentions. I suppose, for the moment, there’s not much to be done for it. I’m okay with not knowing. It’s interesting to wonder how much of who we are is our intent. I speak of my mind as though it is something to be discovered, as though I do not control it, and often it seems that way. Which leads me to ask, is the mind beyond our control? Just something we partially control. Or is any control just an illusion. Ha. Time to visit Wikipedia. This is something that’s been discussed and studied. And there are no clear answers. I suppose this falls within the “mind-body problem“. Fun fun. Maybe time to add neuroscience to my list of studies?

So, there are no easy answers. Guess for now I’ll keep getting up every day. I’ll drink my coffee, walk the dog, read, work, listen to the frogs and see how things go.

Of legends and fuck-ups

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The other day I had to write a difficult email. And then another. It was a part of a conversation that was, in large part, me processing the end of my recent relationship with Kaleesha. In the course of writing it occurred to me that there was much I had never shared with her. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to share it so much as I thought I’d have time. Why rush to share every detail of my life. I figured that in time I’d have occasion to share naturally as things came up. The truth is that she did much of the talking during our first year as she was processing her journey out of religion. And when she wasn’t talking she was crying. She even wrote a book about that journey. It as an intense and interesting time and I was happy to have been a part of the process. We talked a lot less in our second years as other people came into our lives. That’s another story for another time.

The point of this particular story is to begin a recounting of some of the memories that surfaced as I wrote her. Earlier today I was out walking my new canine companion Cosmo and I mulled over a particular paragraph in one of the above mentioned emails. In particular I was responding to something she’d written that hinted that I was settled down. That adventure and growth was no longer a priority for me but that it was for her. Well, it made me angry. Perhaps I’m sensitive because while I’m a bit older than her, at 46 I’m far from joining the Fuddy Duddy club. But the more I thought about it, not just who and where I am now but who I’ve been, my anger turned into a kind of amusement. I had a pretty good chuckle at myself. I’m a fucking legend. Well, my college advisor once told me that I was a legendary fuck-up. Does that count? Probably not.

I’ve decided it’s time to write down a few things that I’ve probably not shared with family or friends. I know for a fact that much of what I might write will be news to my family and at the very least I’d like them to know these things. Not that I’m anything special, but as much as I want to know my fellow humans it’s also nice to be known. It’s nice to share and I think I’ve lived an interesting life, or, at least an unconventional life. I might make this a series of posts over the next few weeks. Of course, I often contemplate such themed posts but never get around to it. But this is the first time in a long while that I’ve really felt the urge to write. Maybe it will stick. I think I’ll leave out the racy scenes for the moment. Not sure I should really get into that. Ha! Maybe I should. Any good story that purports to be about a legendary life should include a bit of the spicy stuff, no? I’ll contemplate that.

Perhaps this will serve as an overview and future posts might be an elaboration? Sure, that sounds doable. So, what kinds of activities and life choices might be examples of an unconventional life? Let me offer up this as a sampling:

I’ve been to jail for pirate radio broadcasting on a rooftop and I’ve had to kick beer guzzling pirate punk rockers out of my home. I’ve lived with beer guzzling pirate punk rockers. I once woke up to a flaming couch outside my door and then proceeded to drag said couch until my fingers blistered and bled to keep my house from burning down. It wasn’t just smoldering, it was in full on flames. I’ve been in sweat lodges and fed hundreds of homeless people. During my time doing work for political prisoner Leonard Peltier I camped outside a federal building for a week and quite literally told the FBI to go fuck itself. I’ve drummed and marched with thousands of people at multiple rallies in DC and helped kids in Memphis fix their flat tires. I’ve helped make two documentary films and been on the crew of various others. I once took a midnight tour of the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Eeeeeerie. They were closed but we were outside showing some traveling activist friends where Martin Luther King was assassinated and the guard came outside and invited us in. Maybe he did that all the time for anyone but we felt pretty special. I’ve literally faced down a screaming, hooded clansman and been teargassed by the police. I’ve interviewed rockstars on their tour bus (do Chumbawamba count as rockstars?) and helped teach illiterate adults how to read. I’ve helped put in at least 7 different community gardens. I’ve organized conferences and taken phone calls in the middle of the night from someone issuing threats through a voice altering device. I helped found a housing co-op that I lived in for 5 years during which time I lived with over 50 different housemates and hosted 240+ travelers and two different activist oriented conferences. I’ve raised a baby deer and seen it return to the wild to have it’s own babies. I’ve raised my own poultry and on a couple of occasions butchered them for food. I helped organize two indy film festivals. I helped found and run a micro-radio (pirate radio) station for 2 years. Said station ran out of our home and hosted 50+ volunteer DJs during it’s time on the air. I once misjudged the duration of an acid trip and ended up working my first night as a barista at a coffee shop at the peak. I pulled it off and went on to co-manage the shop a few months later.

Maybe I’m still hallucinating but I don’t think that’s a typical list of life activities. And it’s just a small sampling. I just wish I’d had an iPhone for that period of my life so I’d better remember more of it. And to emphasize, this isn’t so much as a self-congratulatory pat on the back or bragging about past deeds so much as my not wanting to forget them. And also as a way to be better known. Many might look at that list and see things to be ashamed of. It is what it is. For the most part I don’t regret my life choices. I’ve made more than my share of mistakes but a life without mistakes is probably not very well lived. I believe in the notion of admitting a bit of foolishness into our lives and, even more, celebrating it (hat tip to Steve Jobs).

To make sense of any accounting of deeds and misdeeds it often makes sense to order it as a chronology of sorts. It seems smart to start when things took a turn from the typical and that was, for me, college at Truman State University. Why don’t we start with that cranky advisor that I mentioned above. He thought I was goofing off far too much. He thought I could and should take academics far more seriously. Maybe he was right. I was working on my BA in anthropology from 1987 to 1992 and for much of that time I was more concerned with my budding identity as an activist. My upbringing was basically very similar to an episode of the Simpsons in that we lived in suburbia and my parents were not very political or religious. I could pick any number of other examples of suburban family life portrayed in popular culture but the point is that it was a pretty average life that emphasized the usual for suburban middle America. Within the context of this typical life I, as an individual, was pretty laid back and not all that adventurous. And totally unaware politically. I had little idea about the workings of government or the historical evolution of culture and politics in the U.S. or anywhere. I thought Ronald Reagan was a swell guy.

Antioch College students visited the deCleyre co-op two years in a row for
their environmental racism and justice summer course. 2001

In my time at university I took a big step away from the person I’d been growing up and not just in the usual ways that college kids do. I did the usual and then I kept going. By the third year of college I’d concluded that I didn’t care much about a good job or accumulating wealth. I’d wager this was a bit of a shock to my family as I think their initial and primary motivation in encouraging me to attend college was that I might have better “career” opportunities. For them it was about my earning potential and better employment. I’d guess that this is the norm for the parents of college kids and for most college kids. The focus is getting the degree so that a better paying career might be had. For me college was the beginning of life long learning, activism and poverty. Well, financial poverty but that was by choice.

It was chance, perhaps, that got me off on the left foot because I was randomly assigned a biography of Gandhi for freshman orientation for which I was suppose to give some sort of report at a session of said orientation. This was the story of an unconventional life and it stuck to me right off. That’s right, Gandhi was like a big wad of HubbaBubba bubblegum stuck to my shoe. Not that I tried to pry him off. I was content to have him stuck in. His story proved to be just the first seed in a series that would take root in my mind and begin to open my perspective up to a different kind of life. I was corrupted by an adorable little Indian guy that also happened to kick ass (in a very nonviolent sort of way of course).

Within that first year I’d begun attending meetings of the “World Peace Group” and Amnesty International. By the third year I’d discovered the Greens and the Green Party. I’d attended the only environmental club on campus that was focused on recycling and decided they were far too limited, too narrow in scope. I wanted something that addressed not just the “environment” but something more encompassing that went at the social root of ecological problems. I opted to start my own organization based on the larger green movement and simply called it the Northeast Missouri Greens. It was my first step into a process that would lead to a fundamental and radical shift on my understanding of what it meant to be a human being as well as what it meant to be a citizen. I’d never organized anything or spoken in front of a group of people. The room was overflowing at our first meeting and it probably goes without saying that I was a nervous wreck as I spoke to 40+ people, many of whom I’d never met. That was the beginning of my identity as a radical “organizer” and a personal evolution that continued for for over a decade and which continues in some ways today. I’m no longer involved with radical community organizing but as recently as 2010 was active in a local “mainstreet” revitalization organization in our local town. My hope then was to guide the group towards the “Transition Town” model of organization. Sadly the group disbanded after disagreements regarding how to address problems with the local police force. One of our last projects was the creation of a local space for art and culture which hosted poetry readings and art openings as well as discussion groups and even a dance party. Good times.

Since 2012 our little community (within the larger community) has evolved. Our activities, open to all, range from monthly community potlucks to star parties. For awhile I did a series of astronomy presentations at the local library but that’s been on a hiatus for over a year. The point though is that while my personal life is no longer one of a green-anarchist activist in a college town or city, it is still one of engagement. While I’m not opposed to participating in a protest or activities of a more radical nature my role of late has been to try to nurture the practice of creating community, specifically a community of people that tend towards skepticism, atheism and science. It seems like a good counter to the anti-rational and often anti-science culture of religious rural Missouri.

In a way that is a summary of it all with a bit of the beginning and a bit of the end or, more accurately, the present. I’m looking forward to sharing some of the details of the adventures that happened in the middle. The stuff of legend? I may have exaggerated but I will say that at the very least it has been an adventure.

Oh, and for the record, I’ve known people well into their “golden” years who have persisted in living full lives in every way they possibly are able. I intend to be one of those. Life is meant for living and if I’m going to take up space on this planet I’ll not waste it. So, as I do age, I’ll not be one that pretends otherwise. Aging is a part of the process. But I’ll also not be one that stops adventuring. Not unless I have to and as long as I have some mental clarity, well, I won’t have to.

Back at the Lake or Life is like a box of chocolates…

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A new video about rebuilding my garden now that I’ve returned to the lake as my residence. It’s been a long while since I felt the need or desire to really write. I think that drought may be over at least for awhile. Really feeling the need to explore and remember a bit about who I am and where I’ve been. No doubt related to what led to my move back to the lake and what my future might look like. More coming soon.