Occasionally I'll go on about how in a "functional" (aka "love-based") society instead of the quasi feral one in which we live, the storefronts below us here at The Beach in "Little New York" would vend human contact instead of stuff, attitude, and illusion. ...
This satirical vision of the future evolved one particularly funked out day in my life when I told my therapist I was so deprived of human contact that I wished there was a "cuddle parlor" somewhere so I could just go be held by loving arms, a reminder that I still exist, that there is still lava and life force moving somewhere beneath my malnourished epidermis. Side hugs, "take cares," and other perfunctory (or politically correct) gestures of affection were no longer working for me. Sure, it was a particularly tough time for me, but as a touchy-feely Californian, these half-life gestures of affection were more painful than the lack of the real thing. ...
I've written and prompted endlessly about the danger of our quick-fix I-Culture leading us to a future in the Matrix, evidenced by the insidious dearth of human connection/concern/affection/love in our modern world. Also I've written and prompted about what I mean by "feral" world and how as writers our job is to "write our truth" or else we are only contributing to the feralogy (feralpathy?) that is slowly eating up our limbic loving brain. Remember my thing about face-to-face (not face-to-facebook) human contact? Boy howdy, I've written all about it. ...
But not today. Why? ...
There is a benefit to a world calling out, begging, for satire: The more I envision this world of happy storefronts, the more I like it. The more I start to think, "hey, why not?" One day (and many since) I stole from Field of Dreams' by declaring mid-class magical that "if you write it it will come," and the more I do this work, the more certain I am of that truth. This weekend at the Wild Women Writing Retreat here at the Beach as the wild hours roared on, I realized, as I was writing, that maybe, just maybe, this sort of love-based storefront future is not too farfetched. Except maybe everything is free. Well... sure it is. ...
The Cuddle Parlor now has an entire block of likeminded neighboring storefronts here in Little New York of the future, including the "Boutique of Unconditional Love," the "Empty your cluttered Head Shop" (aka "lobotomy" shop) where all negative OLD self-talk and thoughts are emptied/cleaned out), the "House of Eye Contact", and many more. ...
At the Wild Woman Writing retreat this past weekend (thank you, again, deeply for your wild writing you most excellent divine singing, poeting, angelic women!!!), we hatched a few more, importantly remembering what happens when night falls over the city of love...
WHAT IS YOUR STOREFRONT OF THE FUTURE? You fiction folk will love this one. It's a great way to be the next Huxley or Orwell... Anyway, have fun with it and send it my way, blogway... perhaps we can build us a new city right here, right now...
With love, with hugs, Rox, who hopes to write with you in-person very very soooon.....
My storefront of the future would be MomDotCom, spelled out so as not to confuse it with a website. It would have polka dots on the windows, sidewalk, and doorway, and inside every polka dot would be a cheerful Mom. (And I am not limiting this to women, if men are engaged in leaving careers to raise healthy loving kids, hey I would put the man in a dot in a heartbeat.) Plus there would be zig-zag rick rack, and the kind little dangling ball rick rack sewed all over everything in the inside, like chairs and tables, and walls. There would be bright geraniums in tubs in front of the store.It is not that I want this storefront to look like a second hand store,full of kitsch and all, but I do want it to feel like I am in my Mom's kitchen,(even though she is no longer here) and that I am okay. Loved. I want to go to a place where I can hand in a resume with a 20 year blank spot where the career would otherwise be (because I raised kids and no one paid me money for it) and it would actually make me look competent and good to potential employers rather than a sad loser. Employers would look at my blank spot and say, "That was a really great challenge you took on there!" I would like to hand in that resume for once and not be told, "We are only hiring people who are already doing this job." Instead, they would look at me and my resume, and say, "Yeah, we need more people like YOU around here! When can you start?"
ReplyDeleteNamaste sister mama! Sounds like pure love to me! Thanks so much for writing with me!
DeleteAcoustic Soul Ampitheatre. No musical background is necessary because everything comes from a place that can't be accessed through years of bondage to a conservatory or societal ideals of beauty. Here the soul cries out, plinks out, strums, wails into the night, all that can't be said or heard but rather felt as cosmic vibrations. It's the kind of cacophony that raises gooseflesh, where you look at your neighbor hearing the same thing you are and though you don't know each other you know you've felt the same way and you're feeling the same way now, that we're all part of this unfathomably huge patchwork of humanity. Everyone is allowed in the Acoustic Soul, a body electric of musicians, poets, radicals, and everyday people. The price of admission is the pain and joy accumulated through the wisdom of the ages. There are no covers. Everything is original, everything is good, and everything is valid.
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