from Dawn's Curriculum: Mercury in America a journey…for you, for me, for us together. unplug. perceive. connect. To write the book that teaches you how to wake to the dream, you must become a wanderer. Slow and deliberate, your life must become the story that is the truth within the myth. There are no words on a page here but a book holding the logos of your Life. - Dawn "Mystery is gone to the certainty of technological principles. So the real terror, the real aggression against life comes in the form of the pursuit of our technological happiness… It's not that we use technology, we live technology…Technology is not neutral." - Godfrey Reggio
Plunging in to the depths of America, our Mercury bus -- Hermes, the winged messenger -- departs Olympia, Washington on August 29, 2009. We are on that bus, and we are down the road waiting to be discovered. Within and beyond the trucks, cities, commuters and small town laundromats, the being that is America awaits us. How shall we penetrate its semblance – its McDonald’s, Costcos, and Home Depots – to our common humanity hiding behind the faces of the underpaid workers behind counters? How can we live the technology that sustains us, without becoming it? We will travel through the nation's Southwest Dreamtime, Breadbasket, Self of the North in order to awaken to the dream, EARTH, WATER, AIR and FIRE. The four directions and the Self that writes the book that is the truth within the myth. Read on for more of the tale. For you, for me, for us together… 1. What is it? (the journey) Southwest Dreamtime… We wend into SOUTHWEST dreamtime, where land and past and future converge. Lake Tahoe, California. A sweat lodge purifies us in WATER on hot stones as elders send their prayers skyward and earthward, then Black Rock City, Nevada, home of the Burning Man Arts Festival, where the reality of technology meets FIRE and we work towards transforming it through art and community. The journey’s pulse urges us on to the Four Corners as if we are being drawn toward an answer to a question yet to be asked. Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico. Storytellers tell tales not just of the past but of the present being driven toward the future - its politics, wars, intrigues, passions, lies and quest for truth. These are the tales of America in its densest, most EARTH sense, here in the ancient land of Aztec, Los Alamos and the technology spawned by what the Atomic Bomb released. The Breadbasket… Thus fortified by what lives in WEST and SOUTH, the Mercury bus turns North to the bread basket of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to search the soil and those who till it for the nourishment of insight. Land. Elements. This is how we stand on the EARTH, our hands in the dirt pulling weeds, pumping diesel, pitching tents, hauling wood, doing the dishes. We play, laugh, hurt and love, as we learn to be on the EARTH within ourselves, for each other… Here in the middle of North America’s vast expanse, where gardener and farmer tend fruits of the EARTH for the soul while the heart continues to beat, we stay awake to the experience so as to truly perceive the orange of the sunset, the quality of laughter, the feel of wind against our fat apple cheeks – all of the sensations that make us truly human. The Self in the North (of the body)... We are caterpillars ready to fly up into butterflies as the Mercury transports us EAST to the scientist and the Self That Thinks awaiting us in New York. Thinking is truly the element of AIR: what has been drunk in through bones and imagination needs thinking in order to fasten the consciousness that will help the future unfold.
The Mercury has guided us along a grand epic - the tale we will tell, teaching us along the way THE ART OF SOCIAL SCULPTURE. At the end of our odyssey, we present what we ourselves have created at an Art and Science exhibition in New York, thus returning what we have received and transformed, so that like Joseph Beuys, we can say, "America loves me. I love America." 2. Why? (Our mission statement.) unplug. perceive. connect. Burning questions like the ones we have chosen take on great significance in this age of the increasingly mediated experiences of YouTube, iphones, personal websites, and corporate-sponsored news. How can we discern the truth from the lie and learn to think freely about reality? How do journeys through the inner and outer life mirror one another and act as transformative catalysts? How does conscious navigation of this process effect change in the self and the world? During this journey, we strive to consciously observe the difference between mediated accounts of the world and our own personal, unmediated experience of America. The Self becomes an inner tool for discerning the truth, not just of the personal inner world, but of the outer world as well. We become conscious travelers rather than sleeping passengers, active participants rather than passive consumers.
Thoughts like these propel the Mercury toward true human freedom. |
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