I am not really sure if anyone but Tai and I and Nekole Shapiro know this, but Living Love Revolution was supposed to have an October newsletter to you by October 1st. When that did not happen, due in small part to the trip we took to CA ( Sept 23-29th), and in large part to my failure to write an essay like the one you are reading now, we created a new deadline and recommitted to getting the newsletter out by October 10th. Then I promptly made arrangements to return to CA and Tai started grad school and became involved in the Occupy Seattle actions. What’s going on here? Well let’s see… I am not feeling inspired about teaching right now because of the dismal attendance we had in August & September. You see, I don’t want to keep doing my work in Seattle for almost free in the face of the lack of financial emotional and spiritual support I receive here. I want a Living Love Revolution like the one I am seeing on the self reported media coverage of Occupy Wall Street actions. A real revolution based on self love, loving others and having excellent healing sex.

I just reposted an essay on facebook called Turn The Shame Around. In the spirit of that essay I am going to share with you the truth about my financial situation and my current exploration of a potential move to Geyserville, CA (I want to live at Isis Oasis Sanctuary, more about Isis Oasis here) .

I actually do NOT know what is going to happen. I will be meeting with the people who currently live there tomorrow and the next day to ask them if they think I would fit in well with their community. I DO know that since Tai and I visited there on Sept 26th I have felt a strong, embodied, and urgent desire to move there. This desire was made more palpable as I returned there last Friday and attended the Fellowship of Isis yearly convocation that occurs at the Temple of Isis in Geyserville. Here is a poster for the events I just experienced (click). Before I get deeper into the media stream of sharing what I experienced this weekend and why I think it is important I am going to return to the content of the “Turn The Shame Around” essay.

The author of “Turn The Shame Around” believes that a lot of what is keeping people who are members of “the 99%” ;(the 99% is everyone who makes less than $350,000 a year, Americans whose financial well being has suffered because of the current global economic crisis) from joining the Occupy Wall Street actions and similar “Ocuppy” actions around the country is shame. Shame about money and shame about not being financially successful. Admitting that you are not “making it” and that you are in fact frightened about how you are “going to make it” in the future. The idea here is that if we tell the truth about our financial situations and share the stories we have we may be able to see that it is not our fault. Fault as in blame as in shame as in “I can’t make it because I am bad and there is something wrong with me”. In a Living Love Revolution we can tell the truth about money and our finances and love ourselves for that truth.

I am not “making it” and I am afraid of the certainty of financial destitution that looms large in my old age. I have failed to procure a traditional hetero-normative dyadic pairing with a financially successful man that might have provided me with a secure material foundation (might have if, that is, I was able to provide enough femininity and passivity and submission to ensure his ego is not threatened). I have failed to secure work in the mainstream job market in a manner that allowed me to keep a job that would provide me with healthcare and other benefits. My mystical tendencies and refusal to submit my will to others or be dominated by mainstream values and beliefs has kept me from seriously seeking employment from others. I cleverly created my own work by teaching others to love themselves in spite of or because of the ways in which they are different from the uber culture.

What I am doing to make money (sessions, classes, salons, workshops and event organizing) is not providing me with enough money to pay my rent ($800 a month). I moved from Greenlake last April and cut my monthly rental expenses in 1/2 but still have not recovered from the series of financial losses that have not let up this year. In January someone broke into the house and stole my ritual jewelry and my sex toys (weird huh? really weird!). In April the Sharma Center closed because the person with the building lease had defaulted on the rent and not told Sharma Center Directors that that was the case. I taught exclusively at that venue and had a good number of clients who came to me after attending a workshop or class there. My car began needing monthly repairs that were expensive until first week of Sept when the transmission died and needed a repair in excess of 2k. I let it go. Lots of other small blah blah blah things like getting a tooth pulled cause it was rotten and I did not have any medical insurance, needing a new c-pap machine but duct tapping the breathing tube, going to food bank weekly and getting dumpster dived food from good friends instead of going to grocery store. etc…

Well I will continue this story next week as i am going to send out stuff weekly now. My point for the moment is to have everyone start sharing the truth about their financial situations and then also to start participating on “Occupy” actions. Look we do need to be responsible for providing our own basic needs. And the truth is for myself, I would rather create an intimate network of liberated people who are sharing stuff and trading their skills (skills like dumpster diving, social change activism, group facilitation, trash repurposing and creating our own media) than go to work doing something I do not believe in or creating products I think are unhealthy or making poorer people conform to harsh living situations and take psychiatric medications because they have a mental health diagnosis, or policing younger poorer people in order to reward them with the bare necessities of food clothing and shelter. This is the dilemma. And now let’s hear from Tai about the Occupy Seattle actions…

Tai here, I have been participating with the Occupy Seattle movement daily since the 1st of October, helping mostly with their online and social media. In case you don’t know what is going on, we are occupying Westlake Park in downtown Seattle. There are amazing people occupying 24 hours a day 7 days a week and we began our occupation on the 1st of October. Currently the Mayor’s office has said we can occupy Westlake during the day but cannot camp there at night, he has made City Hall Plaza open to us to camp, but there are many of us who worry about the visibility there. We have been told by the police that if we do not move tonight when the park closes we will be arrested.

I’m not sure what is going to happen tonight, to be honest. There will be a Genaral Assembly at 6:30pm tonight, as there will be every night unless the GA votes to change the time for some reason (usually accommodating the schedule for the day in one way or another), and we will decide what to do. Many people want to stay at Westlake only, some are proposing dual occupation, some are saying we should move to City Hall Plaza and give up Westlake.

Current location issue aside, one of the things I have found so wonderful about Occupy Seattle is that it goes along so well with Living Love Revolution. We are all coming together and creating connection. We are not nameless faceless others anymore, we are people working together for a common goal: change. We are working to create a calm and connect environment, a peaceful protest, rather than living our lives in fight or flight, and for the most part it is working. Granted, there are some people at Westlake who do not completely understand the concept of peaceful protest, but they are few and far between.

I’m not sure what else to say, other than we need your support, especially tonight. You do not have to come and sleep at Westlake–I have yet to do so myself–but if you come down for an hour or two or more, bodies are appreciated, if you come down and bring supplies that we need that is extremely helpful as well! You can get the latest info on the following sites:

Occupy Seattle.org
@OccupySeattle on Twitter
Occupy Seattle on Tumblr