Ephemerisle

Posted on July 23, 2018 by admin

I came to Ephemerisle as part of a process healing my relationship with humanity. Yes that complex system of 8 billion humans I feel such resistance being part of. Based on my early life data collection and some historical knowledge there is a strong bias in my brain “humans propagate pain. They hurt others to get what they need.”

As I learned about the brain and it’s 86 billion neurons and layers of agency I came to understand the brain has two modes of operation. When it is in scarcity mode, not getting enough of what it needs, survival mode kicks in. The higher layer of the cortex get shut down and the base instincts of fight, flight or freeze takes over. Many times this sense of scarcity is based on those early life conditions. A baby that didn’t get enough physical affection from it’s parents grows up to propagate that pain maybe even becoming an attention seeking, power hungry president but mostly just sending the pain into the people closest to them. This toxic feedback loop plagues humanity and has probably gotten a lot worse since wheat started domesticating us into farmers and even worse since monotheism became a thing creating false scarcity in our beliefs systems.

Every thing you need for a society on the water, porta potties and transportation

I am no different, when I perceive pain either directly or even just hearing about what’s going on in the world, a large part of my brain starts going into fight mode, wanting to crush and hurts and destroy everything including my self. Not fun or rational or productive. In order to try to remodel this pattern in me and insert some beliefs that humanity can learn to overcome its false scarcity mode I took myself to a week on the water where basic resources like space are actually scarce but the mentality is around creating abundance, collaborating and sharing an adventure. Where a group of people most of which barley know each other try to build islands on a river to live, create and party for a week.
Building was hard work in the sun and not very efficient management but it was also filled with so much more patience than what I grew up with.
The group was very diverse age wise and it was very interesting to have some inter generational conversations. Any visitor wanting to visit the main island gets a lecture about consent culture and it was very heartwarming to hear how these memes were being passed on to both older and younger men (and other genders).
I’m not sure about the numbers but it felt like there were less women there than other festivals. In the naked swim competition commemorating a very strange story in the history of Ephemerisle I was the the only vagina holder participating but my nudity wasn’t commented on even once. Me practicing peeing standing up into the Delta, which was what penis havers were doing all the time, occasionally got some unwanted attention from men but was worth the support I got from women and inserting the memes that this is a biological possibility at least for some vagina’s.

Pimped my kyak so I could recognize it which came in handy when the rope got cut when the island platforms were shifted. Boating around I recognized it. Someone had seen it drifting and jumped in to paddle it to the closest island.

I had many deep conversations with people throughout the week, sharing our childhood traumas, pain from past relationships and more. I wasn’t the only person coming to facilitate their healing.
When science started replacing dogmatic religion it didn’t bring with it the sense of community our social brains need, these type of gatherings allow also the rationalist atheist to connect to something bigger then themselves. A unique aspect of Ephemerisle which has no central org and no tickets is the community assistance. I saw people swimming waving boats down to give them a ride to the other island. Everyone carries a whistle in case we see someone drown so we can alert others and get help and finally due to the very limited space you find yourself climbing onto other people’s boats and living spaces, while it is recommended to ask even the fanciest boats around were very welcoming to guest. Another unique aspect is that things keep changing, as weather conditions effect the location of the Islands along with boats and barges constantly being changed and moved to accommodate the community. I especially enjoyed looking out into the distance most of the day without requiring my brain to model any close topography it seemed to allow my thoughts to gain more distance and space too.

I came to Ephemerisle with a large part of my extended polyamerous family. Polyamory is the radical philosophy that considers humans to be different than things. Especially when it comes to women who in many parts of the world are still considered property, being bought, sold, mutilated, hidden, their own needs ignored and stumped on, poly is a massive revolution and where I personally find some hope for humanity. Poly is focused on practicing those theory of mind networks your brain has, allowing you to model that different people have different needs and that it’s ok for them to fulfill these needs with other consenting people. Very rarely is it actually sustainable for a coupled unite to fulfill all of each others’ intimate needs. Physical affection or sex is probably the first need that comes to mind, but in reality the need for acceptance, connection, support, freedom and play are all extremely important for humans and poly lifestyle doesn’t create a false scarcity around them by putting arbitrary limitations on what you can do with yourself or with others. Poly allows me a higher level of collaboration, if I’m better at something than someone I can practice being a kind teacher and if someone is better than me I have the opportunity to learn even with things as intimate as coping mechanisms or blow jobs. While festival poly always has its challenges, it was extremely healing and amazing to see men who love and have sex with the same partner connect and deconstruct these social norms of possessives. It was a true gift to receive support and affection from these men and it was so touching to be seen and heard by my metamore and friend. Women supporting each other instead of competing for the support of men is another way to disintegrate the scarcity in human connections. It was her words that resonated with me most deeply this week. When I talked about how I’m trying to change this automatic anger/violent reflex I recorded as a kid her recommendation regarding her practice was:
“I just keep practicing loving and sharing and reminding myself that we can do that, that humans can do that”. Her advice resonated deeply because it might indeed be much easier for brains to grow new patterns that will compete with the hate and anger than to erase old ones.

I’d like to end with a thought experiment:
Imagine you are on your deathbed what is the best version of humanity you can imagine? Now work your way backwards. What part of that did you contribute your time and computational power? Which of the memes you collected and morphed joined other memes to bring about this reality?

“Don’t Move At Your Own Risk” – Shira Yaziv @Movement Exploration Retreat, Costa Rica

Posted on May 1, 2018 by admin

Its been a while since I dedicated some serious time and effort to my movement training. A nice tax return (thanks Dad!) and a last minute opportunity led me to join a week long movement retreat in Costa Rica facilitated by Shira Yaziv. What the hell led me to wake up at 5:30 a.m every morning? Read on for more.

Andrey’s balls!
Photo by Shira Yaziv

The first time I interacted with Shira was at Erratic Dance, an open dance party in Oakland. I vaguely knew her name and that she too was originally from Israel. When I saw her on the dance floor I was filled with a deep craving to play fight with her. Her, smooth movements, speed and strength were evident. It took me some time to gather the nerve and initiate this type of contact but it was well worth it. Within a few minutes of some dancing we were going wild on the dance floor and she surprised me with an amazing leg swipe that totally floored me. It was great!

I have never taken a class from her but I was curious, here was a dancer/mover who is just as tiny as me and could also kick my ass. More please!

Shira (left) Andrey (right) and Cha chi (back) in a typcal pose.

After a week I can say Shira embodies the best qualities not only of an instructor but of a teacher. She has such humility, there is no Shira Yaziv “method”, and no flashy branding name of what she is giving, just practical titles for her workshops. She doesn’t endlessly drag on and on with lectures like many instructors I encounter who seem to enjoy their sound of their voice more than anything.

In fact she is a person of few words and when she talked it was always from such an authentic, honest and even vulnerable place.

My Karate instructor always warned us of the guru effect, “Don’t turn me into a guru” he would say, “That’s when I will stop growing”. In Shira’s classes it is very evident that she is trying to learn from her students and grow with them and not become their guru even as it is obvious that some of the students want to put her in that role. She was incredibly attuned to what was going on in the group and kept improvising and saying “yes and” to any suggestion. For instance when she noticed I was craving some more violence and high energies she initiated some hand release games. As she explained it, she teaches improvised movement and takes what she learns out into real life. In fact, that’s probably what I enjoyed most in her classed, I don’t really care about dance or performance but it felt like we were training in general human to human communication skills. How to listen to each other and support each other’s freedom and creativity.

On the technical side she teaches using great visualization techniques and games with little goals (turn your hands into your feet, or air climbing an imaginary tree) which according my research thesis are likely to be a lot more natural for the brain than movement instructions such as move your hand to a 90 degree angle.

Practicing my handstands with her I felt like a 12 year old kid again in front of my karate teacher, excited and nervous and wanting her to be happy with my progress. She was extremely perceptive of my unique body and limitations and I came back with a set of exercises to practice that will improve not only my handstands but my general posture which is something I’ve been trying to improve for many years. In one week my shoulders opened up as well as my chest and I finally am starting to understand this “round back” my karate teacher kept talking about. A big part of what I have to work on is updating my brain that my left hand is strong enough and healed from an old injury and can be used as a support structure for this body.

Cha Chi (who is running her own retreat in the dominican republic) and Andre the other two instructors where extremely unique and proficient, these are people that live and love what they do. Cha Chi is one of the strongest women I’ve ever met and I don’t mean that only in a physical way and her imagery of zipping up the body before starting a hand stand was magic for my clueless brain. Andre was just poring with creativity and strange fun innovation. He introduced us to these crazy bouncing balls that would be extremely useful to train for a mission to mars or some other low gravity situation.

The group was very mixed in level, some very experienced in various backgrounds and some total newbs. It was very impressive to watch the newbs progress and openness to try thing.

Just a body in motion (photo by Shira Yaziv)

One of the most rewarding things for me to notice was how throughout the week the men’s movements and interactions with each other turned from awkward to extremely playful and even vulnerable as they slowly shed the social stigma’s around men touching each other. Speaking of gender issues, in the first morning session with about 110% humidity, men started to take their shirt’s off and obviously I wanted the same freedom. So I asked the class if they would be ok if I and maybe other humans with breast take our shirts off too. There was no objection and I was very grateful for the freedom to just be a moving body.

Easier to wake up at 5 when sunrise looks like this!

Our schedule was pretty packed with training from 5:30 – 7:00 then 9:00-11:00 and 3:00-5:00. In between there were other lessons some of which were no less valuable, Jen, a with a degree in movement science and an experienced personal trainer gave a class on breathing and separating the movement of the lungs from the muscle structure around it. Try putting your hands on your ribs, breathing in and then breathing out with out letting your rib cage collapse. I discovered a bunch of new muscles that day. There was also a surprise class by Marlo, a professional pole dancer and a truly amazonian women on hip mobility. We all agreed the class should be mandatory in sex education. I discovered my butt that day and just about managed to twerk by the end of her class.

I found it relatively ok to wake up in that hour possibly because we were in this jungle cabin with only nets watching the beautiful sun rise over the ocean.

Created an app to help Winny compare the mobility of her injured hand with the healthy one.

I also came with the goal of being a productive programmer and working on my virtual reality apps. I’m happy to report that was indeed the case. When you wake up at 5:30 even with 6-8 hours of training a day I usually got 4-5 hours of extremely focused programming and came up with some ideas based on the material we practicing in class. I was really happy when Shira and the other’s tried my demo’s and enjoyed them.

Making chocolate the traditional way

We had a break day on Wednesday which I used to visit an awesome organic chocolate farm, the small family farm was meant to educate people on the origins of traditional chocolate making including making your own chocolate. The owner’s 10 year old son joined us to practice his English and was showing us lots of edible leaves in the jungle.

Least evil bugs, these tree eating ants

From all this you might think jungle life is paradise but there were definitely some hardships. The weather included crazy storms and I heard the loudest bang of my life when lightning struck just a few meters from my cabin. We had 3 earth quacks throughout the week but the real enemy were the bugs. Between the mosquito’s and sand flies I might have lost half a pound of blood, I seemed to have been their favorite. One of the locals told me it was worse because of the full moon and told me to use vinegar to calm the bites. The harsh environment probably helped us integrate and band together, nothing like a common enemy.

In conclusion, whether you are a mover looking for new tools to improve your usual practice or a totally newb craving a better connection with your body and the body of others, or even if you are just looking for an adventure holiday I’d highly recommend you join this. This isn’t just a movement workshop it is a social experiment that installed in me some hope for humanity 🙂 Prices are not cheap but after some minor calculation most of the money is going to cover the 5 star jungle accommodation and probably the supporting teachers. If you want to get a test of Shira’s work there is a mini workshop coming up in Santa Cruz and a mobility jam she is leading

Non Violent Communication Meets Park Security

Posted on March 27, 2018 by admin

For the last year I’ve been doing most of my training in Presidio park which hosts the Lucas Film offices. Specifically I spend lots of time in this tree that has branches low enough to the ground for me explore my movement boundaries safely. This week private security guards started interfering with my training. This is the story so far…

Still in the tree! (photo taken Feb 18 by Myrte Hamburg)

I was doing some stretches on the tree Friday when some security guard passed by “No hanging” he said and kept walking. The interaction was brief and surprising and left me filled with anger because I didn’t have time to react the way I would like to. I continued to train just as I would but ran a simulation of what to say if the guard returns.

I used everything I have been practicing in nonviolent communication. First put on my giraffe ears to try and hear what the person is really needing? You see, without my giraffe ears, all I could think about was crushing this guy’s skull. I do not react well to authority figures trying to take things away from me. Years of religious schooling cause me to be triggered that way.

With my giraffe ears on I could start seeing that this wasn’t about me, this person was not out to specifically harm me. I noticed how when my brain went into lizard mode I couldn’t calculate “theory of mind models” any more. With my giraffe ears I considered if the guard was just looking for respect from his pear/friend because he was walking together with another person.
(Vid from 14th of april 2017)

I went climbing on the tree on Saturday, this time with no altercation, but on Sunday a different guard came up with a similar request “not to climb on the trees”.

This time I was prepared with my giraffe ears and politely asked for clarification. “Those are the park rules.”

“Oh really? Can I see those rules somewhere? Who decides on these rules?” I asked while explaining I’ve been doing this for over a year and telling the guard I don’t want to make his job harder in anyway. “It’s on the park sign, want to come with me and see?”

“Sure” I told the guard and as we walked to the entrance explained my perspective on the danger of people following rules blindly trying to insert some NVC memes when he was apologizing that he “doesn’t have a choice”.

“You always have a choice, and its ok to choose your job, it’s seems like pretty fun job walking around the park, but it is your choice”.

Anyway to make a long story short there were no rules against tree climbing on any sign and the guard went to consult his manager who referred him to a federal regulation regarding “harming natural resources in the park”.

I asked the guard based on what does he think my training is harming the tree and assured him that I would never do anything to harm my beloved tree.

I could feel the guard getting increasingly frustrated so I stated clearly what I wanted.

“I want someone I can negotiate with about what it means to harm natural resources in the park.”

The guard left and the security team manager showed up a few minutes later.

Some legal advice about climbing trees.

The few times I’ve successfully used NVC there has been a very specific turning point in the conversation, a moment in which both sides suddenly make that human connection and see each others needs. With the head of security it happened when I allowed myself to be vulnerable and communicated how this tree was specifically important to my training. At that point I think the he realized I wasn’t being stubborn for no reason or trying to rebel against his authority. He stopped trying to convince me that there were other more specific rules and regulations that he had that were not written down anywhere and stopped threatening to call park police and started a real negotiation. He didn’t want the tree harmed and wanted to be able to tell his bosses he was taking care of the park and I didn’t want the tree harmed and would like him to have an easy time at his job so the negotiation was easy and we agreed that I wouldn’t climb high into the thin branches of the tree that might break. This is something I never did anyway so I just asked him to communicate this to the rest of the guards because I will be back training again.

Despite the success I was pretty drained by the interaction. Being vulnerable to unknown authority figures is not something that comes easy to me. So I did what recharges me most and hung upside down on the tree for a while.

Tooth Fairy In Mexico

Posted on March 7, 2018 by admin

This story starts with a part of this brain being brave enough to go to the dentist… I mean actually get control over these legs, which shiver and whimper when they think of those beings with white lab coats and their machines that drill in the mouth. Is anyone free of childhood trauma and fear of dentists and if so how did that happen?

Times square of the dentist world. (copyright to dawn 😉

Anyway the suggested price of the treatment plan the receptionist provided was enough to induce a more mature economical fear. For me these are still first world problems, meaning I can use my relative status in this world and get out of the fucked up U.S health system. Some googling on dental tourism and I came up with Los Algodones, a Mexican town on the border with Arizona known for its dental tourism. After more googling I chose one of the big names, SANI group.

Some emails, phone calls and flight tickets later and I get picked up from Yuma airport in Arizona and share a ride over the border with two elderly African Americans, the man is getting treated for something that sounded a lot worse than dental problems. Except for hundreds of dentists you can also find a bunch of optometrists, pharmacies and some other medical facilities including stem cell therapy.

Drugs and alcohol known to go well together!

What does a town focused on dental tourism look like? Well for one it has restaurants with “soft dish” options in the menu.

Instead street solicitors offering you drugs solicitors are trying to get you into pharmacies. Yeah, small difference I know.

This is all mixed in with the “normal” tourist markets selling trinkets, poncho’s and jewelry.

There seem to be only 3 hotels in this town. Most tourists seem to come for day trips, get a treatment and go back leading to massive lines at the border in the evening. But I needed crowns which take a few days to make and fit so instead of crossing the border again and again I decided it would be more interesting to stay for 5 days and get to know this town a bit.

The dentist office I chose was factory and we were the cattle being moved from room to room from Dr to specialist but I was treated well, with honesty and courtesy and patience even if not with the most efficiency. Although part of the efficiency problem was miss communications regarding what time zone the town operated on. I was happy to discover their root canal specialist was a young women with tiny hands. The procedure was a lot less terrible than previous ones. One of the crowns, the original diagnostic dentist thought wouldn’t need to have a root canal started exhibiting pain after the treatment. The specialist explained the root had gotten inflamed due to the trauma of treatment and there was no telling if it would get better or worse at that point. Since I only had one day left I opted for another root canal. Oh what joy.
The treatments did offer opportunities to deal with fear and trauma in some creative ways. Like every perception, pain is a combination of top down predictions with incoming bottom up sensory data. Specifically the prediction of danger seems to be highly associated with perceived pain. In moments where the brave part of this brain was able to correctly predict that I was safe, that the people digging through my mouth were not out to hurt me or cause damage but instead where there to heal me and help, much of the pain subsided. A specific neat trick was to actually imagine the dentist hands were “mine” activating my mirror system in this way shifted the whole perspective of my worldview and I saw the scene from the outside. “I” was the dentists performing the treatment. “I” was in control. Other nice tricks involved imagining people I love and also playing with this imagined body size, imagining it bigger and stronger. Body scanning techniques also helped, focusing on breathing or relaxing the very strained neck muscles.

Border patrol behind this v2 bouldering problem.

Between treatments I explored my surrounding. I walked along the u.s. border fence, I could almost but not quite fit my head through the bars. Many of the people in this town were born here and never crossed the border into the u.s. A waitress told me that once when she was 10 they managed to get the papers and she had a day in san diego zoo. I wish there were something more intelligent or helpful I could say about this except expressing sadness.

Not a postmodern art piece 🙁

From Yuma, Arizona. People were super nice!

The town felt very safe despite obvious economical issues. Some houses where no more than dirt shack while others had fancy gardens and expensive cars. Local’s were very nice and chatty and seemed mostly a bit board. Well with a church and a fitness gym being the only attractions in town can you blame them? Only one tourist place stayed open beyond 5 p.m so I ate there often, getting to know the staff. Prices for food were on the low end of u.s. prices. 5-15$ depending if you go for the tachos or the steak.
Only the main roads are paved in town… the outskirts are just dirt roads that lead out into sand dunes where people bring their jeeps and dirt bikes for some joy rides. I went out there searching for some nature but under every tree there were endless broken beer bottles and a pile of garbage.
Only after I got back into arizona I headed to the other side of the colorado river to a beautiful nature park and fulfilled my craving. While waiting for my couchsurfing host to get home I wandered around the city and got offered food by 2 different people. I must have looked very homeless and miserable after the morning’s root canal but I do wander if statistically you are more likely to get offered help in small towns?

The Best Show And Tell On Earth

Posted on May 29, 2017 by admin

Last week I joined a group from a hackerspace called Noisebridge to show some of my VR demos at an event proclaiming to be the best show and tell on earth. Read on, for some impressions about Maker Faire.

Will you be my friend?

Maker Faire is a strange combo, many individual creative makers come together to show their stuff and connect with others but also some more established businesses and companies are there with their pretty standers sale pitches.

I was there with a group of people from Noisebridge we had a VR booth with demos we created. Some of the group created a virtual Noisebridge with a 3d scanner and also a a 3d model you could switch between. I was showing my MindMoVR experience and also a demo with a leapmotion camera where you could use your own hands in VR and interact with actual objects. A pillow became a giant teddy bear and the HTC Vive controller became a buzzing butterfly you could catch.

There was also another group from the space showing this crazy contraption they made, a type of printer that was just holding a sharpie pen and moving it on a page to create a very unique style of drawings based on photos you could take at the booth.

Besides us there were hundreds if not thousands of other booths. Here are some trends I notices.

Robot mayham

Robots – lots and lots of robots made from anything imaginable including cardboard. One of the biggest highlights was the giant MegaBot unavailing. This Robot is supposed to fight a Japanese Robot sometime soon. The robot was swinging its giant arms and crashing into a car but the transfer of momentum was more of a pushing then punching.

Drones – there was a drone race track as well as a drone fighting. Mostly these sports seem to be about picking up the fallen drones and fixing them. But I guess letting out human aggression this way is pretty harmless unless these drones or robots actually get sentience.

Blinky

Blinky – a whole room filled with blinky LED stuff. Not much new for anyone who’d been to burning man, but still pretty.

Personalisation – on the more commercial front there was a little trend of personlising daily objects by using scanners and 3d printers. Print your own perfectly fitting shoes or glasses for instance.

Personalize your shoe

Tools – laser cutters, 3d printers and lots of other tools that are the maker’s version of crack. There was even an automatic knitting machine.

Some nostalgia – among all this futuristic stuff there was also a bunch of steam engine machines and an old style photo booth with one of those box cameras and film!

Even for an “old cynic” like me there was enough novelty and interactivity to make the event worth it. And seeing strangers play with the stuff I made was pretty amazing. I’ll be showing MindMoVR at Figment interactive art festival on june 10th in Oakland. Come say hi.

The Nipple

Posted on March 14, 2017 by admin

It’s not every day that you get a bunch of strangers to touch lots of different nipples, well ok, copies of nipples. Keep reading for some experiences from the breast themed art exhibition I participated in.

The Nipple, a touchable DNA helix of all gendered Nipples.

Massive amounts of visitors flocked this art exhibition that was only open for one night. There was a wide variety of beautiful pieces, from photos, to oil paintings, sculptures, and live performers but I think my work was one of the only touchable pieces people could actually interact with.

Great focus on consent

Large signs everywhere focusing on consent and not touching or photographing art or models without asking first definitely helped make the space very safe but I had to improvise a little “touch me!” note to facilitate people touching the piece. Even then many people seemed very skeptical and even somewhat intimidated to touch the nipples but once they did most their faces turned into delightful smiles and some even produced little squeals of surprise. Made out of body safe silicon using casts of real peoples’ nipples produced a pretty realistic sensation. A lot of people asked if the nipples were male or female and it was great to be able to tell them that they were nipples from people from all across the gender spectrum and point them to my contributor list which included preferred pronouns and to the little black book which held photos, names and pronouns of the contributors.

Thank you message from Lambda legal. click image to donate too!

I also managed to raise a few bucks for Lambda legal, an NGO fighting for legal rights of transgenders by selling individual nipples and even gluing them onto various body parts. The most meaningful moment for me in those interactions was encountering a woman who went through a double vasectomy and didn’t have any Nipples. She chose two purple nipples that glow in uv light and it felt like she was injecting some joy and playfulness into painful memories. I wasn’t the only one using art to try to raise awareness to important issues; there was an exhibition that was raising money for cancer research by selling unique pillows.

A pasty shaped like my nipple

The instructions for the event included a reminder that “all breast-wielding mammals” were to cover their nipples according to some law regarding places that sell alcoholic beverages. This is exactly the type of ridiculous laws that motivated me to create this art piece. I followed this law by sticking a yellow glowing pasty of my own nipple onto my real nipple. My attempts to glue Shlomo’s tiny nipple onto mine and create a totally flat chest didn’t work out as well and the left side of my body looked as if I had fallen into an acid vat. It was quite chilly anyway so I wore a jacket letting my glowing right nipple make an occasional appearances.

what do you think of the price?

Interacting with some of the other artists around me was really fun and there was a very good vibe both from the artists and the crowd. I got a lot of compliments about the originality of the piece and a lot of technical questions about how it was made. The prices for most of the original art work seems very high to me but I really don’t know anything about the art world. Shlomo suggested the unique price tag I asked for and it definitely got a bunch of giggles. Finally the ride home, using a ride share app, was extremely entertaining as I explained the art work to the driver and exposed him to gender issues he hadn’t thought of before in a fun interactive way and even left him a nipple he stuck on to his dash board. I hope some of the viewers in the show had the same experience and I hope this type of exhibition can help change some of the conservative memes about breasts and gender.

Myanmar tidbits

Posted on February 22, 2017 by admin

It’s been a while since I had the opportunity to visit a a contry that I haven’t been in and taste a little of a different culture. A short visit to Myanmar offered just that. Bordered by 5 different countries, Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand and made out of more than 100 ethnic group Myanmar is a hot pot of cultures which unfortunately still bubble together in violent outbursts at certain location.

So many temples

The relative recent downfall of the military dictatorship and opening to the west seem to have brought about some strange phenomenon.

In 1970 all traffic was moved to the right however there are is a lot of import of cars from Japan that are made to drive on the left side. Even some busses have Japanese stickers in them.

worship those LED

The electric sockets seem to have the same split personality and cover a variety of different inputs. Tourism is also a relatively new income and the powers at play are trying to make the most out of it. Many different areas require a tourist permit to just be in the area. For instance in Bagan we payed around 20 $ landing in the airport. Some travelers were telling us it wasn’t too hard to avoid these checkpoints if you use busses and taxis to get around. Also turned out the myth about only excepting new $ bills with absolutely no folding signs is at least partially right. Some places were OK with my folded bills while others offered a worse exchange rate for them and others totally rejected them. I tried to track down the source of this behaviour, some blame Taiwanese banks which were the main exchange at some point in the history, others claim it’s a psychological effect stemming from seeing the foreign bills as an actual resource like gold. If anyone has a better explanation let me know. Another outdated meme was that locals reacted to the fact I came from America as “best contry Obama”.

Building by all genders

The two main things I did in my short trip was visit temples and eat local food. The temple in Yangon had a ticket for foreigners and the main surprise was the LED decorated Buddhas. In Bagan the main attraction was motobike g around the thousands of temples that date from around 800 years ago when the areas was a center in a local kingdom. building temples and releasing captured birds are a way to get good Karma points. I wish education children and studying science would be considered as giving people good karma. Alas, religious memes rarely benefit society as a whole.

As for the food it was way better than I expected. The tea leaf salad, shan nuddles and curries where all great and I have been missing sugar cane juice ever since my time in Vietnam.

On the gender front I enjoyed seeing men wearing skirts but it turns out the type of skirts and how you tie them are gender based. Both men and women were working performing hard labor in the building industry and I saw some Burmese transgender women walking down the street, unfortunately getting a lot if stares and whispers from the men around but in this one un-representing case there were no loud calls or harassment.

Consent Angel

Posted on November 15, 2016 by admin

When the dutch burning man organisation asked for volunteers to help make the decomp party a safer space by advocating consent, I sent them an email with suggestions saying I would be happy to volunteer. I got a generic thank you message claiming they would contact me with more details. They never did. Despite that I still decided to do what little I could in face of massive sexual harassment this party suffered from. Read on for some tales including self defense and intervention tips which I would love to get more feedback on.

———This might be triggering for some. ———————-

Every self made sheriff needs a badge

The Playa Provides
At the very beginning of the party as I was putting my costume on someone offered me a gift. ‘We made badges of all the 10 principles of burning man, well actually 11. This year we also have a consent badge, do you want to be an angel of one of these principles?’ He asked. Guess which one I chose? And so, the playa provided me with a very useful tool, my makeshift little badge.

During the night I realized the people violating consent could be fit in broad categories on a ranging scale. Despite wanting to punch all of them I kept violence mostly to the bare necessity preferring to educate and get people to realize their behavior was hurtful.

The “nice yet insensitive” – these people model others as they model themselves. All of us have been guilty of this at some time. It is a natural statistical mistake. For some men if something doesn’t bother them it’s hard for them to Imagine it will bother women. These people are quick to apologize once called out and open for deeper discussion on these topics.

Are you a safe person?

Example 1: I facilitated a consensual massage circle with 2 others when some guy sat by me and touched me on the shoulder.
“Ask before touching,” I told him in a neutral tone.
“Oh, right sorry, I thought touching you on the shoulder would be ok. But I should ask, you are right. Can I touch you?”
“What type of touch?” (Negotiating specifics is a good thing especially if you don’t know each other)
“Just join the massage circle, I’ve never seen this in a party”.
“Sure, this is burning man and for me it’s part of the culture to be able to gift physical fun as long as its consensual,” I explained and we continued to discuss this.

Example 2: There was a nude woman volunteering to be a live art piece others can draw on. She was being ‘pimped out’ by some guy. “Can I ask her if she gives consent for me to draw on her?” I ask.
“You don’t need to she’s a living art piece,” he said. I cringed, this is a very similar idea for an art project I suggested to the burning man organisation. Just imagine how awesome it would be to get people to practice asking for consent in this fun interactive way instead of silencing this woman’s voice and telling people to do what ever they want.
“She is alive so I’m going to ask.” She thanks me for asking and I draw on her shoulder. I see a friends of mine is using his spit and finger to fix some of his drawing. “You know you should probably ask if she’s ok with that. Being ok with people drawing on you with brushes isn’t the same as people using some of their saliva on your skin.”
“Hmm, I’d be ok with it but you are right I should ask,” he said and proceeded to ask the model. Do not be afraid to call out on your friends too. If they are the good guys they will be happy to remodel and make sure they are not hurting someone.

“The over privileged” – These are people who’s parent’s never taught them to ask for permission before taking other’s toys. The walk around believing the world was made for their enjoyment. They don’t want to hurt anyone but their enjoyment comes first.

Example 1: Before I left the living sculpture, I saw a woman take some black tape and without asking tape the model’s mouth shut. Both me and the model seemed shocked by that. “You know, you should probably ask before doing that, maybe she doesn’t want that?” The model nodded and took the tape off. To my shock the woman laughed, and took the tape off the model’s hands and taped her mouth shut again. The model took the tape off again and said it’s not comfortable. She didn’t need me to help her but I was still deeply disturbed by this woman’s actions. “You know by taping her mouth you are really changing this art piece from something very beautiful and special to just another image objectifying and silencing women which is also very triggering for some. “Oh yeah I didn’t think about that,” she admitted.

The most consensual hug the whole evening

Example 2: A woman was on a couch, lying on top of her chosen partner for the night and making out with him, her back was towards the room. A guy passed by and reached out to her with a long slow creepy “caress”.

“Do you know her?” I asked in a friendly voice.

“No,” he answered.

“Do you think maybe you should ask her before touching her?”

I can see his red alarm go off and he begins to get very defensive. “I didn’t touch her butt, just her back. I didn’t mean it that way…”

I engage with the female, presumably friend, he is with. “A lot of women really don’t like to be touched by strangers, right?” I ask her.

She nods “yeah, you should ask,” she says cautiously.

With his friend now siding with me he retreats and apologizes (although it’s not me he needs to apologize to) and says he will make sure to ask next time.

example 3: A guy took a close up picture of me while dancing. “you know you should ask me if i’m ok with you taking my picture.” I pointed out.

“oh yeah, I saw the signs”, he says dismissively.

“And?” I persisted and he goes on the defense.

“you can’t see your face in the pictures.”

“I don’t know that and for some people it might make them feel unsafe.”

“This is a public space,”his aggression started getting higher.

I engage with another man standing besides me “No, this isn’t. It’s burning man and we are trying to build a community that is safe for everyone. People come here to take off the masks they have to put on in public spaces right?” The guy beside me answers with a nod.

The selfish photographer’s social brain starts rewriting itself “oh, I guess I should reconsider.” he says slowly somethings sinking in. But is it enough?

For me burning man has always been an opportunity to explore gender fluidity.

Example 4: While standing on line for the party a guy decided to try to bully me because of my non binary gender appearance.

He laughed out load pointed figures and started asking me if I’m a guy or a girl.

“Does it matter?” I smiled.

“What the fuck?” he kept pointing and shouting loudly. Like all bullies he wanted attention so I do the opposite. I engage with others, not sure if they are his friends or not but they were very tense and silent. “I’m a complicated creature. Not everyone can be normal,” I tell them smiling. All of us except him have a good laugh and they start speaking up for me. “Yeah, we should all just do what’s good for us.” one says. The bully is still trying to get attention “But why? why do that?” he asks. One of the people started to intervene on my behalf. “It’s ok, I can tell him”. I looked at him, some parts of my brain actually managed to muster up some compassion for this fearful attention seeking creature, he really was afraid of me. I came close and while holding his gaze openly I whispered into his ear “Because life is too short to be just one person”.

His behavior totally changed. “I’m sorry, case closed” he said and went quite muttering to himself “I get it now, I get it”. Honestly I don’t think it really mattered what I told him it was more about me totally lowering my defenses, somehow projecting this notion that he has nothing to fear from me, despite my difference I would be kind and friendly if he did the same.

The hungry rapist creeps – These are people that are starving for some semblance of power, cowards at heart looking to take by force that which should only be given freely.

Example 1: I was dancing in the corner when I see a man approached a woman dancing near me. He stepped into her space uninvited. She stepped back into the wall cowering, putting up her hands defensively. He tried to kiss her and she moved her head sideways trying to push him off her.I jumped in between them stationing myself so I can still see him but providing her with some space. “Do you know this guy?” I asked her.

“Yes, he’s my friend.” she answered.

“Do you want him to touch you in this way?”

“No, I just want to dance,” she said.

I turn to the guy. “You should ask before you touch people.”

“She’s my friend”, he tried to move past me towards her but i’m faster then him and I blocked his way.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I pumped up the aggression and used my crazy eyes. He mirrored my actions and pumped up his chest. I break the formation and changed my body position moving faster and stranger then he’s probably ever seen. My hands were still in front of me if I needed to use them but they are hanging as if I was a strange puppet on strings. “She doesn’t want to kiss you.” I say with my head tilted side ways and a crooked smile.

His chest deflates he he isn’t sure how to react. “you are giving me bad vibes, let me talk to my friend”, he tries to reach around and grab her.

I fake on the most overly flirtations and sexually aggressive smile and put my hand around him. “Oh really? I didn’t mean to give you bad vibes.” I shoved my bearded side of the face towards him as if trying to kiss him.

“Don’t touch me!” he retreated freaking out.

I took a step back too. “Oh you are right. I’m so sorry I should have asked before I touched you,” I smiled his brain goes into freeze mode again and I can see this recalculation, him starting to understand he like the creep I was to him.

I talked to the woman again, showed her my make shift badge and told her she can ask me for help if she needs it. I made sure she wasnt’ dependent on this creep to get home and told her to be careful because if he doesn’t respect her boundaries here he will not respect her boundaries in other places. She thanked me and said she will talk to him. They sit down and talk I continue to dance while watching them. I also talk to another person beside me, explain the situation and tell him that if that creep harasses her again I might need his help to get security so we can kick this guy out. Honestly this was probably the hardest thing for me to do that night. My big feminist ego doesn’t want to ask for help but it is 100% the right move, so do not be ashamed to use it. The creep moved away. I talked to the woman again, gift her a blinky finger LED and did some shadow boxing example of what I would like to do to creep guys. She laughed and told me that he is a friend that just wants more from her and she explained to him she isn’t interested. I urged her to be careful and told her if i’m not around she can ask anyone else for help because there are a lot of good people in this party.

But this isn’t the end of creep guy. Later that night someone caressed my arm while I was moving on the dance floor. When I realized it was him I jumped forward and pressed a blinky toy forcefully into the corner of his eye. He let out a yelp of pain and I could see real fear on his face. “You do not touch me” I said keeping pressure on his eye doing everything I could to hold back from doing actual damage. I gave him a little shove and moved back looking at him like the despicable pathetic animal that his is. He puffed up his chest trying to save his bruised ego. But I’ve learnt that once they are really afraid of you they might keep barking but they will stay away from your bite. (Unless they are there with friends in which case get the fuck out of the place because trouble is coming).

None of my actions were perfect, nor would I advise anyone to necessarily take these specific courses of action. Self Defense is based on what characters you feel safe and able to bring out of yourself. I do hope the men and (woman) I interacted with will have some changes in their behavior, become better allies, more considerate of others or in the case of the creep I hope a small part of his brain starts predicting a woman being able to cause him massive physical damage. Despite the fact that most the harassment I encountered (although not all!) were by men and the women I personally danced with or even cuddled/made out with all asked for my consent, a male friend of mine fell asleep and was woken up by a woman laying down on him and touching him. He was rightfully angry but he did not feel physically threatened. I asked him what would have happened if he had drank too much and couldn’t physically stand up to her. “that would have been bad,” he said a tiny glimpse of the fear so many woman carry around with them flashed on to his face.

What ever course of action you do choose to take I strongly suggest you keep your eyes open and do not let these types of behaviors go unnoticed. If you are intervening on behalf of others don’t presume you know what is going on and ask. I personally regret not asking the women how she would like me to help her before taking control of the situation and I should have intervened by asking her if she can show me were there toilets where or something that would get her away without me needing to resort to more drastic measures. If you do not feel you are able to intervene ask someone else or go get help. Don’t be a silent bystander.

And to the dutch burning man organisation I have this to say. You have utterly failed in making the decompression a safe space. As I have written to you before, putting signs up in the bathroom and entrance isn’t enough! You have paid some private outside security company (the head of security wouldn’t give me the name of the company just said it was his private company!). This company did not manage to deal with the queues and people were almost getting squashed and a woman with claustrophobia collapsed! To my knowledge this security company didn’t do anything to make this a safe space. I talked to another security guy and he said he didn’t deal with any men behaving badly, which mostly means he didn’t look for any. What I describe here is only part of the of the violations of consent I saw or experienced myself so I can only be fearful in estimating the amount of people that felt violated. Dear organizers I know you are working your asses off and I know you mean well but this should be your number 1 priority. No matter how amazing the art, how good the music, if people are getting harassed on your watch at this scale (this is actually a lot worse than the usual parties I go to!!!) you are doing something very wrong. Talk to me I have ideas.

In the meantime here are 3 tips that I’ve compiled based on my studies of brain and behaviour for the past 2 years, training in Martial Arts and self defense for over 20 and previously being part of the Israeli police forensics, investigating violent crimes.

Break the prediction break the brain
To cut things short, the brain is a prediction machine, if you break the prediction you break the brain.
Sexual predictors or bullies predictions are simple, they are usually not the most creative or intelligent specimens of humanity. They are mostly predicting fear and obedience when they harass. They almost always start with checking your borders, either by a “vague” inappropriate touch or verbally. When someone stands up to them they are predicting the regular “who has a bigger dick” behavior pattern, puffing up their chest, slowly pumping up their adrenaline and meager amount of bravery to get ready for a fight.
To break these predictions create the most unpredictable batshit crazy character. Allow yourself to be anything, from overly nice to overly scary, overly stupid, overly violent, overly sexual or even animalistic or speak gibberish. If you do not respond in the predicted way a momentarily freeze response will occur in your attackers brain. For a brief moment their brain is susceptible to your influence. Which you can use to deescalate, get away or cause serious physical damage if necessary. The moment an attacker begins to take control switch again and do something totally unpredictable.
Use Your Social Brain
Humans have social brains, massive parts of our self identity are what others see in us. Once conflict arises, get the attentions of others as soon as possible. Engage them in the story you are creating, a story in which your perpetrator isn’t someone to be feared. The situation isn’t about just you and the perpetrator there is an active crowd now, and you can use their attention to divert the story in many ways. See the crowd as good Samaritans and not silent bystanders. The perpetrator must take notice of what’s happening and this destabilized the very simplistic social hierarchy pattern he is used to modeling. If the bystanders are friendlies don’t be ashamed to ask them for help, direct them as you would actors. If the others are the perpetrator’s friends that can still play to your advantage. Give all your attention to one of the friends, if you can tell who is the second ranking in their social hierarchy even better, pay him a compliment “what did this guy do to deserve such a cute friend like you?” Make indirect fun of the perpetrator while speaking to his friends “Are you like the spice girls and he is scary spice?” These type of social hierarchies are just waiting to start ripping each other apart. If you tell a story in which this “second in command” is actually the most powerful and an ally you might just get them to turn on each other. Remember you are smarter than these ass holes they only know how to play one game and it’s a game that is quite easy to play if you really have to.
Play the Game
For most of us, especially women violence is a language not well understood, and a brain that doesn’t know how to predict violence will freeze when facing it. That’s why I do advocate some real hands on self defense but even without that our imagination is our greatest tool. If you don’t feel you could crush this guy just imagine someone who would decimate this idiot and enjoy it too. Look them square in the eye and see them being crushed. See their nose getting squashed by a fist, an elbow splitting their jaw sending splinterd teeth all over the room, a knee exploding their balls. Whatever gory blood thirsty images your brain can muster, bring them out, and imagine somebody (if not you), enjoying these images. Imagine that someone smile and let your mouth follow that imagination. There is nothing scarier than an unpredictable crazy person who enjoys ripping people’s eyes out. Vocalize your threats if you need to. I once screamed at a guy “I am going to rip your balls out and stuff them down your throat”. Since most men haven’t encountered a woman that can kick their ass it’s not part of their prediction. They do not believe they can come to any harm if they harass women. You don’t have to be able to hurt them just to induce the belief that maybe you can. These are cowards not looking for a fair fight. A friend of mine once got a group of fanatics looking to attack us to run away just by shouting “Dan, Mark, John, let’s kill these fuckers” while running towards them…” there were no Dan Mark or John, just me watching and learning. That same friend got out of a bunch of trouble once by speaking into his jacket lapel and shouting “Detective carter requesting immediate assistance at…”.

Remember even if your lies are found out you can always go back to playing nice, dumb or what ever. A woman in a wheel chair saved her self by relentlessly barking like a dog. You could also play the frightened cooperating person but make sure you have a joker up your sleeve. The earlier you can break the story your attacker is predicting the more able you will be to make a different ending. My recommendation is whatever happens do everything you can to not be moved to another location.

Playing glimpses of this violence loving character while giving the perpetrator a way out that maintains his delicate bruised ego (for instance by suddenly playing nice again or totally making light of the matter by laughing) should be enough to control the situation. If it isn’t and all else fails and you have no where to run, let this bloodthirsty character out to fight and shout and keep shouting! Viciously shred anyone that dares to try to harm you. Go for the neck or eyes, throw what ever you can and try to get to safety. You are so much stronger then you know!

The Feminist Viking?

Posted on September 29, 2016 by admin

24 hours after my first “Historical European Martial Art” class I found myself jogging in the forest and improvising an axe from two sticks and some vines. Read on for some thoughts about how playing with violence is good for the brain.
~Warning this post contains nudity~

That shield was sooo heavy!

The moment I entered the sports center I notice some statistical variations. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room with so many men with long hair. Not surprisingly beards were also in fashion.

Improvised axe

After completing some rigorous repeated exercises for the warm up, I was taken to the side with 2 other new people to get basic instruction. Most importantly we were taught how not to hurt any players including myself. “Keep the shield below chin level and never deflect a sword attack upwards,” I was told. In western countries, when you play with real steal weapons safety needs to be taken seriously. With all these lawsuits and over protective governments, one death might be enough to make this fun activity illegal.

My instructor was impressed with my zeal yet recommended that I don’t rush into attacking. “Stay more defensive and wait,” he said. But where is the fun in that? My body has learnt the fear of getting punched in the head or kicked in the gut but is seemed to have not yet learnt the fear of rushing into pointy objects so all too many spares and swords kept encountering my body. It wasn’t very pleasant but didn’t leave any marks. It has been a long time since I enjoyed playing with violence so much. This is the only style I know of that practices fighting in a “group vs group setting”, side by side, protecting each other, becoming a larger organism. This brought about a very primal sense of belonging to a bigger group. All team sports might be a sublimation of this.

Let’s talk about brains for a bit

How many wins does your personal slot machine have?

I would like you to imagine them as slot machines. Brains always predict the future and the future they predict is basically a type of statistical gamble choosing from these possible options, like the rotating wheel of a slot machine. Just as the 3 bars of a slot machine are categorized as either a win or a loss, each future the brain predicts probably comes with some type of ‘cost’ function labeling how good or bad that future is for us.

A newborn baby resembles a slot machine with only a few different images. Let’s say just the 777 and the cherry, no diamonds or bells or cash. As we grow our slot machine gets more and more images, by interacting with the environment. Every time the future we predict isn’t exactly what happens new images will be created to allow for better prediction. We also seem to copy many images from other slot machines around us. But will these new images turn into a win or a loss? At the very beginning that only depends on the context and timing from the environment. For instance an image followed by food will be categorized as a win while an image followed by an electric shock will be a loss. This is obviously an over simplifications but it’s a useful analogy. The more images the slot machine categorizes as wins the more likely it is to land on wins. The more good experiences we have the more likely we are to be ‘optimistic’ and predict a good future.

That’s why the notion of play is so important as I explained previously. Playing allows kids to experiment and increases the chances for categorizing things as wins. Not necessary wins over others, it doesn’t have to be a 0 sum game where if someone wins the other loses. It just has to be a good learning experience, where we are allowed to make mistakes and the brains predictions don’t have to narrow down too much.

The Feminist Battles.

The workshop ended early because neighbors complained 🙁

For whatever reasons, in most cultures being born with a vagina usually meant not being allowed to play with violence. Vikings are thought to be a type of exception. It’s hard to know exactly how many warriors had vaginas but the fact is that their stories and myths along with the artwork and burial sites indicate that it was part of their society. I too am a sort of exception of this age, one of the privileged few in these modern times who did get to play with violence in a safe and empowering setting and honestly it’s probably the main thing that has kept me relatively sane and functional.

It’s just some skin! Photo by SimplyWeb Photography

On the previous weekend I went to the F-Word, a feminist festival. I arrived early and volunteered to help with the setup including helping an amazonian blacksmith create an inspiring mobile metal workshop. However, not everything sat so well with me, especially at the party at night where I felt a strange sextual opression in the air. It was really hot and all I was wearing was a warm jumper. In festivals like Burning Man I wouldn’t have had to think twice about taking my shirt off and being topless, but here It felt like my boobs represented all these bigger issues. Feminism has always been a complex label for me and I don’t like labels in general. I do understand that in big battles soldiers have to fight under a banner that allows them to unite and not accidently kill each other on the battlefield. And this is how I view feminism. A banner needed in order to identify waring factors. But when it comes to ideas about sex I often find myself standing on the minority side battling against most feminists for the freedom to do whatever I want with my vagina.

I think that for so many, sexuality has been tainted with pain and abuse that anything that has to do with sex might be categorized as a potential ‘loss’. I will do my best not to judge those that have been hurt but I won’t let their fear take away my freedom. All I can do is offer a different possibility, as given by my slot machine that was built by playing with violence, a glimpse at my brain that is able to predict ‘wins’ even under very extreme cases and a look at my very privileged vagina for which sex is just another simple fun activity, untainted by patriarchy or fear. Yes, I am very aware of my privileges but I would much rather share them instead of give them up and isn’t that what a healthy community should be about?

Burn Babies Burn

Posted on September 10, 2016 by admin

This was my third time at burning man but my first time to stay all the way to the end and have a personal encounter with the ‘fire god’ at the burning of the temple on the last day. Read on for more.

Temple burn (photo by Liz Altmiller)

Despite my cynicism and eversion from religion, already at my first burn it was obvious this was a place for me. Black rock city is one of the few places I don’t have to inhibit my “strangeness”, a place where I can push my boundaries and explore without scaring others or getting arrested.

upgraded mood badges, thanks Ashley Newton for the idea of adding an interactive dial.

This year I brought practice swords and challenged people to dual. I experimented with latex body parts asking people to explore their sense of touch. Played truth or dare with strangers using my modified mood badges. I even took my first totally naked bike ride (after padding the bike seat).
No other place has so many opportunities for learning new stuff and practicing problem solving. As I explained last year, no other place is so inducing of improvisation and play.

As part of the build crew in my camp I learnt to drill in wood, tie knots, build shade structures and more. Exploring the workshops in the city I increased my jumping distance in a parkour lesson, practiced clenching each butt cheek separately in a twearking class, learnt some poi tricks, did some metal work, as well as gave a mini lecture on my psychedelic work, learnt about the possible future of genetic engineering from industry leaders and so much more.

I made this.

Revisiting Past Vs. Present
Returning to the same place with some of the same people allowed me to get glimpses of my progress in some domains. Each year I have gone to the roller disco and stumbled around. This year was no different until my eye caught a women who knew what she was doing. The past year I have been learning a lot about the motor system and have been practicing letting my mirror system take over. I looked at this roller disco women and ‘became her’. Suddenly there was stability in my movement. What had changed? I noticed how my head had moved forward over my toes, allowing the toes and feet to connect to the ground and control the movement. My ankles were not strong enough to maintain this posture for more than a few minutes at a time but I was so greatful and amazed at my body’s ability to learn.

Hammock forest with climbable two stories of hammocks. Structurally sound with no knots! (photo by Liz Altmiller)

Since this was my 3rd year with the couch burning camp which tends to have many virgin burners I could contribute much more to camp then previous years. We were a very small and hardworking group of builders that set up almost everything within two days. We were one of the first camps to have an open bar, music, chill space (and showers for members) even before official doors opened. The efficiency of the small crew was total bliss for me until the third day when we doubled our workforce which resulted in the productivity halving. A strange variant of the bystander effects seemed to be taking place.

On my first burn, the visit to the temple, a place that naturally emerged in burn culture to allow for morning and letting go of loved ones did nothing to me. I was too emotionally blocked to feel anything. Last year I collapsed. Thanks to my connection with Shlomo parts of my limbic emotional system had been reconnected but they had the maturity of an undeveloped baby and were overwhelmed by sensing everyone’s pain and sadness. I collapsed to the ground shaking and crying like a little baby and could barely crawl out of there. This year I entered more prepared. If this brain can mirror physical states it can mirror emotional states too. I asked Shlomo to walk in the temple with me holding my hand and he agreed to be my emotional container. It wasn’t easy. Tears started streaming down and I could feel the shaking start to take over but I held on to his haמd tightly, sucking his calmness though my skin. I reminded myself that even when hurt this system isn’t a baby. It can walk, it can talk and it can breath deeply. Once breathing was stabilised things were easier. My grandmother had died this past year but I couldn’t bring myself to write her name in the temple. It was too much of a religious act, like writing a note in the wailing wall. Instead, when we left the temple I told shlomo about her. How she was the strongest female role model in my life and how it hurt me to see her stubbornness and belief in religion stand in her way of growth and happiness.
Despite the success of the temple visit later that night these baby networks awoke with wave after wave of perceived pain. I’m not sure I’ll ever know what is the reason for the pain these networks recorded because whatever the reason is, it is long gone but live echos of the original pain remain unchanged by the flow of time. I felt the temple burn might be my last chance to try to get these networks to update their model before I head home and I really didn’t want to head home with all this pain.

Burnt temple. (Photo by Liz Altmiller)

So there I was sitting in a mostly silent crowd of thousands of people waiting for the torch to be lit. Unlike the mayam of the man burn when all the art cars are blasting contradicting music and stinking the area with gasoline fumes, the temple burn is sober and calm. Suddenly the temple was lit up in massive flames, a wave of heat flowing over the crowd. I was in an almost hypnotic state staring at the largest fire I have ever come close to. Fire is the release of stored solar energy, as Feynman explains and this fire could release the painful stored information in my brain as well, this was the time to burn the babies. ‘Death brings new life’ something deep in this brain was chanting. ‘We can be like fire, flowing, changing and powerful’. Another part of my brain was doing statistical calculation, understanding that the painful sample recorded early on was still just a sample, not the entire reality. Many babies might never feel this type of pain, and even if it ever had any adaptive survival value it doesn’t have that anymore.

Aftermath
Two weeks in such harsh dry conditions with constant lack of sleep and massive amounts of novelty and emotional upheaval leave some long lasting effects. I’m still tired, my pores overcompensating for dryness are now giving me pimples and swollen tingling finger tips, parts of my dusty hair might need to be chopped off. On the emotional side I’m carefully optimistic. These baby networks are still babies, they haven’t been fully integrated into the rest of the brain and babies are oversensitive and confused and cry sometimes but at least it seems that they aren’t automatically biased to predict and experience massive amounts of pain and now it’s up to my grownup parts together with the incredible support I have from my loved ones to help them grow up healthy.

Still In The Trees

anthropological experiences from the fringe frontier