Earth Proof

It's any wonder we can feel anything with the fancy clobber that we sport nowadays, any wonder that we are not so proofed up against the elements and each other, that we know who or where we are.

But of course, we don't know who we are, or where we are. Ask anyone. 

Start by asking them how to get to a local natural site, not by car, but on foot. Ask them to name half a dozen local plants or trees, or birds. Be prepared for some funny looks. You'll be amazed at how many people do not even know what lies at the end of their street. Then, ask them who they are, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred they will reply with the name they were given at birth.

This is what happens when you cover your self up, and allow it to be covered up by others. You become separate... cleaved... alone.

The great existential conspiracy starts with one's gradual removal from the local. This, in turn, encompasses the global (not the other way around) and the planetary, which in their turn, encompass the solar system and so on and so forth. When one is thus divested of the greater body that enables you, feeling (as compassion and empathy), and wide-angled thinking, are the first casualties. One's own body as well begins to suffer, for we have concreted it over.

In the bible (James 4:6), there is saying that 'God resisteth the proud but shows grace for the humble'.

Naturally translated, we can see that our chance for Grace (the beauty of form under the influence of freedom) is curtailed by our desire for clothing that sports the ego. I am well aware of the vanities and superfluities of unnatural apparel (most of your clothing is made from non-biodegradable materials which damage the earth when they are finally disposed of), having grown up in a system of living that seems to think appearances are more important than what lies beneath. Our superficial society positively seeks to cover us up more and more whether with information (that comes from the outside and which does not inform) or with 'stuff' that most young people nowadays toil for days on end in order to buy.

This is how one becomes 'Earth-Proof': by divesting your self of its vital energies, by covering it up and removing it from the breathings of the planet (the weather, the rain, the heat, the cold), by allowing your awareness to wane (the more you cover up your body the less opportunity it has of thinking), and by allowing machines to carry you.

'Man', not as Homo sapiens but simply as Homo, in his complacency and corpulence, almost constitutes a new species.

The trick then becomes one of un-proofing the self, of getting rid of your clothes, at the very least whittling them down to 2 basic 'uniforms', one for outside, and one for indoors. 'Always wear the same clothes,' the Dumbarton-born David Byrne says on the inlay sleeve of Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense. 'People will remember you better if you always wear the same outfit.' Feel the weather. Invest yourself not in clothes but in soil and air. Clothe yourself in the rain and the mist, feel that smirr gently penetrate your outer layers of skin. The weather adds something to you. It does not take away. One is seasoned by the unclothing of the self. One is ventilated and enlightened. 

As the Scottish apostle for simple living, Dugald Semple, once wrote: clothes are just another form of distancing from the sun. (Or, equally, from being enlightened).

All this you realise when you get the body moving. That the body itself thinks. That the body itself feels (not the brain). Cover it up and seal it off, and you cover up and seal off the wider possibilities of thought. No wonder people are so stupid. The stupor has facilitated the fashioning of the ego. And the ego in turn has decided that 'it' is the real entity. Which of course it's not.

All the while, we are becoming more and more earth-proofed (great news for capitalists). We care little of what happens to our planet (judging by the carbon footprint most westernized people have and their eagerness to abandon their own locomotive force). The war of capitalism has claimed our locomotion, our local, and now with an over-technologized society, our wits and werwithal and our powers of locating. This is the Trinity that leads you to 'God' - the locus of the local, the locating and the locomoting - and when the Trinity is corrupted, then you are without 'God': in other words, you have been cleaved apart from all that is, and in spite of the crowds of people you surround yourself with, you are entirely alone.

Here we have the paradox, that the solitary wanderer, at one with the earth, the elements, awareness, his own vital moving, is 'together' (gathered with everything else), and that the throngs who need each other are in truth so alone that they have to seek each other out. The godless are in truth the earth-less, the rain-less and the flower-less. They have, like the prophecies foretold, become like the inert machines that carry them: life-less.

So, tear off the duvets, rip off the colourful panels that decorate your quilted cell.... Let your skin and your brain breathe! The word 'brain' after all contains air and rain.

And if you have to cover up some bits, then do so like Tarzan, sparingly and athletically...

Taps aff!