egotopica

hello, dear networking world,

in recent weeks i have been at a camp called ecotopia, it may happen again so mark the name.
i can start with a description of the workings in the camp. (it was a camp)

simply together people pay for having vegan cooking and heaps of incredibly nice and not extremely (apparently) expensive bio-cheese. this time, and it may be so the next, ecotopia was in germany and germans do like cheese. they do like lot's of things ofcourse, like heavy thick soups in the afternoon, well cheese they like as well.

i took some share of cheese there and i enjoyed. so for the beer, pilsner mostly. personally i find that at 4.8 percent the taste of barley is still to strong, 4.9, 5.0 and even 5.2 appear the more tasty solutions in that regard and it could well be natural, ecotopical beers manage 5% easily.
many of the rather commercial greater beers i drank had great quality, but the more regional brews prevailed. trust me i know, i tested at least 40.

the camp has compost closets. however clean and even fresh they were, in effectuating compost
there is still some fortunately somewhat distant room for improvement.
the douches were cold, but as long as the sun shone in the millenia old party place thatseemed a little earth on it's own(the hill has a shape like a slice of a great ball so evrywhere you'd look the horizon is deeper then usually, and the days lasted longer. as long as itshone the douches were great, and there was a backup in warm douches. the nearby 'bad' provided money with a paid opportunity in excess cleansing and sauna, and next to it was a , what i might erronously call victorian park. it really was a german thing with many continental influences (really almost grotesk how parks have been build in such a clichee manner even when driven by a desperate mind as the actual architects. he was a bit of a pathetic dreamer perhaps but certainly he enjoyed building the park. it's nice and to see even the touch of his hands on the whole thing.

i saw it a lot, it was the way to the beer experience.

there were heaps of remnant prehistoric tools, i better describe that in detail for all i disturbed.

(if you don't love stones in general and stone tools in specific, skip the next part.)

(begin stonetoolspart)-------------------------------------------------------------------------

the area is the north west european glacial sanddeposit, it stretches more or less from scheveningen to berlin and probably all the way to minsk. as a resultstone tools of any age can be found (my estimate 500k-now)
but besides that the 17k old hills themselves , and certainly also several of the deposits directly ancestrial to the eventual accumulation of sand, stones and silt (mostly sand) have been pioneer habitats for the people of that time. the concept of partying at a place where the sun lasts longer also seems to have been familiar.
stone tools can for several reasons easily be recognised, for one thing they are usually anatomically shaped, so by holding them in the ways they were once held you should with a relatively undamaged piece usually get at least a grasp of its means.

the second and most reknown and accepted way to recognise such tools is by identifying ripples in the areas where flakes had been taken off. especially for the tools older then (my estimate) 40k years old in the area, that is almost impossible through the naked eye, the typical material is flint (however i noticed several pieces that were not on another occasion, not many by any means.)
flint that is a silicat forming in what are usually hollows, holes in calcite formations (and thus most often of a waterbound sediment) comes in nearly every colour and purity, very pure pieces that are intact and (parts off) exposed pieces of primordial deposits (such as were scraped all but completely of evrything north of the area delineated by the sanddeposits thats general location i have described) are surprisingly rare, the flintstone may loose its calcite coating it usually has, when it has been exposed over time and such pieces are fascinating and beautifull.

however flaked flintstone has newer areas of once barren stone, and these weather out calcite at a certain rate.(20k still a patina but at some 50 k (est.) in a sanddeposit they weather enough to turn white and show little signs of human labouring in the curves. yet studying such , either obvious or suspect specimen certainly giver you a hang of it. certain shapes repeat, esthetically pleasing shapes are prevalent and not rarely attention is payed to fossils and other aspects (colours, inclusions natural shape) is payed. even older laboured stones, that may well have belonged to homo erectus species are also (over) represented. the flinstones themselves and certainly also the tools are hard pieces of stone of high purities commonly, and tend to be among the more persistent for that reason. however not much of that is on the surface.

one way to recognise weathered tools is that even a 200k years old stone tool has been as often as not (at least that certainly seems so) reworked at another much later date. with the eye such tools are distinguishable by the functional shapes , reflaking of the points of edges used, that however takes some study as those are usualy the points where the tool was deemed (again) unusefull when they got damaged. in effect you see 'natural damage' at edges and points that have been used as often as not in many pieces. the reuse aspect however is relevant, stones got reused 100k's of years after another, they were also often just made for using once, when stones where available, and i assume among those are many of the reworked pieces.

natural breaks in flintstone ( for example from cars passing over them and ice) are hard to distinguish when they are very old. still it is not so hard, the difference is mainly that even
very old natural damages will not turn into shelllike abbresions, for the very very old tools, you often see only one side of a stone is worked,(a (very) strong rolling pebble from a river or flow being the usual origin.

it is obvious that such finds are rarely of the best quality's they are nevertheless revealing as to how incredibly many stones have once or even more often been used by humans.

on top of all this there is the more recent deposit(s). in the park at some 500 m distance at a path remnants of an old flow surface, and with every rainfall more tools pop up. it appears a special place, many of the tools i saw there where tiny , little were very precise, but the assemblee was impressive, it appeared to include arrowheads, of rather specific kinds, (one model that i could not think of a more logical use then cuttinga rope (a kind of beaked arrowhead, that at least in a metal version has been produced for that specific target) it also included a heap of 'probably arrowheads' and random and less random sharp (pocket)knife like implements
most of it rather small. a lot of the stuff appeared made for or by woman, (usually males tools would fit ok- okish in my hand, female (and/or kids) tools tend to be 'somewhat to small-really small). there were also several small pieces i perceived as experiments or training materials of kids. (becus the more woman like pieces, that were usually quite beautifull, were of a good or at least very decent quality. in all i am now talking about some 150-300 stones most of the nice ones are collected. however few of the finds were spectacular let alone very spectacular.

yet there is at least one more story to tell about the tools of ecotopia, the ones around the camp were different from the ones at the former flow, where i could recognise tools made with similar skill in very similar manner, ie. made by the same individual, the flow appeared to represent a settlement or camp, for that reason, altho i assume many stories have passed there, because the nr of tools was far to great for some 15 m2 and a single camp. a large part however of the tools appeared rather typical in a similar state of erosion. the most spectacular thing i found, was several tools that can only be interpreted as tools for making cloths or even decorations.

i liked that very much,

---------------------------------------------------------------------------end stonetools part

there we were, with cold showers and hot days, singing (not quite good enough perhaps) and celebrating on the exact place people had done that from the moment it became possible, 17k years ago. i felt almost like decorating myself.

i still do actually.

what else can be said, the actual name of the camp was ecotopia, meditation was an important aspect, and i think you can say almost so was music. there were somewhat to little people, a pitty that, and i would have liked a somewhat big and visible project to spend the odd hour a day, probably for somewhat older people (then even me) a tad more luxury would do well. abodes for example, or a seatmaking workshop, a natural kind of longhouse even. that last however would have been to much work. germans tended to stay only a while. logical at it, we remained a rather international company all the way, keep in mind for me a german is an international phenomenon.

less then ever it became obvious luxury is in the ecological lifestyle already, and good to see is how that is also less then voluntairy.the love for ecological luxury as a contrast is also a wonderfull thing to see.

to a slight extend hypocrasy is trump, thorough through microscopic review of the garbage revealed not a few had set out on expeditions unlike me for beer and fish, but for wuerstchen even of the cheapest and saddest kind. without the footlights the lowbudget lowprofile addictions easily beat the profiled ones in hypocrasy as usual. how so smoking area;)

drugs were fortunately abundant, albeit in short supply, what else can you expect in a developed nation. any idea how ecological a good joint really is, can be?

nearly incalculable. i sleep better also.

the chill at nights however nearly killed me, at least i looked like i had been nearly killed most of the evenings, next time i am sure to arrange extra blankets and thick cloths in wich i don't look like an idiot. camous are fine but you kind of need sth. to hide them somewhat, at my warmest at best i looked like sth of a decorative cactus, i suppose, and at worst like a complete shim in the night (i usually try without the battery rubbish and pocketlights) with horseshoes.

i enjoyed greatly, breathed deeply, smoked happily, and talked with many nice people on diverse subjects. i quickly discovered i wasn't that bad of a shaman after all. perhaps i should even write about it. fortunately there usually were some traveller, rainbow people. these people are fine, they look like hippy's that are thrown out of a squatted appartment , that is now destute, falling apart and a cause for the next hypocredicy crises. 'rather sooner then later' sometimes they look like victims of an eviction that succesfully moved into a motorhome, in that case they usually are.

the company was rather constructive, i felt like i should try to contribute more, yet things went how they go, and i am not disappointed. an old injun turned up, he is a shaman.

he is also an ecologist in the real sense, someone who supported the more wordly ecological cause for a long time. he is a funny daring fascinating man, and when he first spoke to the circle, an eagle arrived to look over his head. he is very friendly and refered to me in person.

i was the only one who watched the sky, and didnt want to interrupt his story , Story is one of his names, his injun name is manitonkwat, i am not sure about the last t, and it's pronounced without it afaik. could be a german language thingy, kwat does not sound tasty in the least in german.
means nothing immediatly altho perhaps in a dialect, like "polnish" deutsch.

they have a lot of dialects and speak these well and exceptionally quickly, each of them has a different applied vocabulary, and they strive for completeness and originality. the negative thing is a collection of germans can be as hard to understand as a herd of dolphins the positive thing is u can make random sounds and usually end up saying something that means something else in one or another dialect. it's completely confusing however much priviliged i am as a dutch to have an applicable lexionairy of instinctive sounds that the exact to be expected nr of dialects in german default to specifically dutch words, they neither know or pronounce.

fortunately in such cases every german knows how to apply two different dialects to english and they do that all at once. give them a chance and they will practice their english untill you understand you shouldn't. it is a better idea to lead a morning circle if you want to give people such a lesson. english is the primary language in ecotopia.

it's called continental english, and in such morning circles the result is ok. their english at slow speed and intensity and one for one really is not bad.

morning circles are boring btw. it has been different for me, and perhaps i just know to well how such things roll and get organised, i am not very social besides, no matter how much i like socialising, lest i had it for me just not to speak as much as i am used to, well if i take a minute to decide on sth. it's much, when it takes me 3 i may consider the whole subject a waste of time, i tend to dislike plenums, and even people in plenums, more then i care to admit. i liked the daycircle.

people are at their best in the daycircle, usually it takes them only a second, but in other a day, sometimes two can make a lot of difference.
a lot of the people were quite exceptionally lovable and fascinating anyways. the good intends
so completely overrepresented at times the thought of a traumatical reaction arrived.

(smokes a joint)

manitonkwah did a lot to lift my moods, but he also made my problem more clearly,
bluntly put: wtf should i do about all the extra religious etc.('spiritual') luggage people have.

his solution is rather positive, take it on facevalue and try to work despite of it, mine has allways been a bit more evasive. i rather have none of that then st.h that can easily be misinterpreted and misrepresented, if even remotely correct once over and more.

otoh the myth is ok. all people are born equal, naked and lovely. if you don't see the light of the day in someones eyes, or if they are blind, hearts, just remember once it was a lovable baby. a small child. ok there is anguish but whose is that? the tribe's.

for that simple survivalist or darwinist reason we are one tribe, the hopi's have and allways had a name for that, "the rainbow tribe" , because of the spectral spacetravel ofcourse.

oh no, it's because kin comes in so many colours. chicken or egg. doesnt matter. it still suits, we are a worldwide tribe, tattoos are called tribals, and without a thick ring through your nose you are hardly allways candy.

none of that is the reason tho. the reason of that is spaceship, some call it mother, earth. or the sun perhaps, or who knows perhaps the kosmos, that is the most true ofcourse. at least at some point the kosmos i perceive as majesticall, why would a black hole generate such a mass of matter for example, ok its all them particles getting confused, but on a macroscopic level there is an element of surprise. why would for example a confused particle happen to end up as a part of a flower?

shit happens you will say, but still for shit it looks good, the incidental flower.
i love confused particles for one thing because they make that happen: flowers.
don't cut them, these flowers are having the time of their particles. it's bad karma to persecute confused particles. i am not exactly sure as to how bad, usually it depends the particles, who else will decide. however don't start worrying about the end of the world immediatly, there are so many confused particles, only in the visible part of the universe that you don't see on starmaps, it will take them ages to make a collective decission that would threaten house or hearth.

worry about ecology instead, i must admit that thanking the earth, the ecology, and even the ancestors and a lot more ofcourse, feels good and true, and even makes eagles spy (or it may have been the fbi)

it's the same as that animals like it when you think with them, absorb their communication for what you can and absolutely respect it, listen instead of that you talk to your human self.
that's with children that (cannot) yet talk also.

since talking with them implies thanking them, why not thanking them before talking rubbish to ourselves first?

i dunno what would happen. something i am quite sure.

that's a bit nasty then, i don't see any rational ground to thank the earth or the sun, where i see a rational ground to thank the ecology, since if you want to communicate (with) it. the least one could do is to feel thankfull and be thankfull for the daily massacre of plants and animals.

nevertheless i think it would work, nasty, i feel like a confused particle suddenly,

oops
there is one.....

ecology