Money

I’m totally over the paradigm of money.  I’m over feeling like I need to have more of it, and telling people about my plans for it.  Of the things I do to get it, then the things I do and don’t do when I’ve got it, and the justifications I can create to absorb every purchase.  I’ve been trying to flog my gear for years, from tarot readings to handmade wands, from crocheting wearable art to writing…..and I’ve always got to this point. Where I’m sad, that for every beautiful thing I make or write, my first thought is about how to sell it.  Where I’m exhausted about the things I could, should, or would do, to make money from me doing what I love.  And disconcerted at the places I’m willing to go to raise a buck.  The faces I’m willing to wear.  The thoughts I’m prepared to swallow.  I don’t like what it stands for, the system it supports, and all the compromises I’ve made to get and keep it.  And maybe more to the point, I’m at a stage in my life where I feel like I can finally embrace my lack of it.  

I want money to be a gentle drizzle that rains on me, from who knows where, that generally greases the cogs of my life without having to chase it, along with all the other gifts of time, love, or physical trade that rain on us all, to drive us in the life we need to live.  I want to surrender to my destiny and my passions, and most importantly my quest for true freedom and authenticity.  I want to just live in the eternal moment of chasing inspiration and deep thought, catching it sometimes or not at others, and being happy for where the chase leads me. 

I don’t want to make custom items to fit particular desires.  I don’t want to make something just because it’s a good idea, and ‘it will sell’.  I don’t want to tie my creativity to any particular mooring, where I’ll feel an allegiance to a group, or a course, or a concept, or a client or anything at all except for endless curiosity.  I don’t want to have to be nice to you because you might give me money.  I don’t want you to wonder if I’m doing just that.  I don’t want to feel like I have a reputation to uphold.  Or a façade to support.  I don’t want to censor myself because I’m worried someone wont agree with me.  I don’t really want to teach anybody anything either.  I’m still far too much a seeker myself, to want to have that kind of responsibility.  I don’t want to set sail on the wild and random seas of the internet with the aim of increasing my network.  I don’t want to feel like every thought and entity I create has a price tag.  After all, it comes to me for free……

I don’t like what we collectively do when we’ve ‘bought’ something with money.  How do you really own idea’s and concepts?  How can you truly own a bit of soil that’s gone through billions of years of evolution, weather and experiences to lay under your feet?  How do you own the trees and the plants that have lived on that bit of soil for decades, that you uproot and disregard when they’re not the right sort, or in the right place, or giving you exactly what you want when you ‘own’ it?  How do you own a house and the memories and lifetimes and intense experiences that have happened within it over it’s lifespan?  And from before even, when it was in it’s raw forms on it’s way to being sculpted into a house?  And how do you own an animal, just because you’ve given someone pieces of paper that we collectively agree is money to them?  I’ll never forget one day driving near where I was living, and I saw a beautiful chestnut mare looking out from her paddock at me.  I had to stop and pat her, (not a common urge), and we KNEW each other.  I don’t know how or why or even how to describe it, but we just did.  I knew where to scratch her, and she hung her head against me and we snuggled.  I went back another day, to meet the man that ‘owned’ her, and asked him if I could buy his horse.  And while we were standing in his paddock on his land, his horse had her head over my shoulder, and nestled next to my cheek as she stood behind me, taking a moment now and then to nudge my hand for a pat, and he was telling me with a thunderous and confused look on his face about how much he loved her, trying desperately to make her come and stand with him, and telling me how connected they were, and how he was studying Pirelli with her and he really couldn’t sell her to me.  And me and her had nowhere to go with it, cause he ‘owned’ her.  I dunno.  Just seems weird you know?  She passed away a few months later………

And here’s where I’ll inject the disclaimer, cause I’m not saying that all these things are bad, and that the people who love wealth and abundance are corrupt, or that money shouldn’t be sought in return for skills, or anything at all about anything but me, and my life, and what I’m learning on this particular path I’m on.  All hail and glory be to all of our ways, and our tracings and searchings and the glimmering lights that are bringing us all home to the same place ultimately – the place of authentic, diverse, and multitudinously irrepressibly innumerable ways, in which we can all express our particular spark of the universe to our cores that are one. 

I want to chase the numbers and ideas and inspirations that come into my head.  I want to make things regardless of whether they’re practical or not.  I want to like people that I like, and for them to know that it’s genuine.  I want to help people that feel drawn to ask me, as well as those that need it, and not have any transaction hanging over our heads.  I want you to know that regardless of what you see around you and the rumours you hear, I’m going to keep trying to be who I am.  I want to make the most of who and where I am now.  Making my own mistakes and learning my own lessons from them and prepared to be honest about all the aspects of it. 

I want to make like a busker on the internet, and if you want to toss coins in my virtual hat, just do it.   I want to sell my books to you, with you knowing that the money will cover costs and with a bit straight to me, not diverted by marketing and editing and networking and managers and all the other bits in between.  And I want you to feel you can offer me a trade as well, commensurate to what my work is worth to you.  I also want to be able to give you stuff if I feel like it, and not have you feel like you owe me something.  And for us to have conversations about all the possible ways that this thing here next to me, can make it all the way next to you, with both of us feeling like we got an awesome exchange for our desires, as well as acknowledging that the ‘thing’ itself has a life and a destiny.  I want to keep feeling like I’m a conduit for creativity, and merely have to find the perfect match or matches for the things I write, and the yarns I spin, and the art that I make to be wearable.  And find that match based on how it feels, rather than who has money. 

Because at the very best times of this journey without money and wanting to be discovered….I’ve realised that I’m actually there afterall.  With my most essential needs met.  And with not an army of people for to buy or appreciate my wares, but a small, ecclectic and comfortable covey of kindred spirits.  Who get what I write or what I do completely.  And love me for it.  And I know a lot of them, and have stories with them, and we keep in contact.  And they don’t agree with all of it, or they want to tell me added bits and I love that too.  The stretch and pull of attracting energies that can forge new relationships and ways of being. 

I want to push off into a river of trust, surrender and destiny, knowing that what comes was always going to come, whether I chased it or not.  And accepting the lessons that have repeated themselves to me, at a whisper and a scream so often, I’ve lost count.  That the only truth is that there is no truth.  That the only thing that will never change, is that change will always happen.   And that to be consistently inconsistent is the only way for me to stay fully present in the moment, not being tugged at by past hurts or future worries.  And as a sneaky aside, no matter how much I try to avoid making mistakes, try to increase my knowledge to avert disaster, or worry about potential or historic trauma………the things that actually happen, the big whammo’s, have never ever been predictable, avoidable, or able to be scryed in a glass of the future.  I can only ever expect the unexpected.  And I’ve also learnt that whenever I say something like “How could they do that?” or “I’d never do that..”, I’m almost bound to experience something that will show me exactly how. 

I want to be the one I’ve been waiting for. 

For years now I’ve been waiting for someone to discover me, or want to manage me, or edit me, or tell me how to do it, or buy everything up, or offer me a contract, or buy me a home………and I’m over it.  Like waiting for a lover who never shows up.  Always existing in a state of what if’s, and when I’s, dreaming up the big wish list for all the things that we’d get and then get bored with, and that we probably don’t even need.  Cause in my experience, no matter how incredibly wonderful a thing may be, it’s never any comparison for the interactions, moments, stories and serendipities that can happen with red blooded people and life and entities. 

When we’re chasing adventure, everything can seem like a warm magic touch of the divine.  I want to claim my lessons and life experience, and keep sculpting life like a creation, out of what I have and do right here and now.  I want to keep pondering the big ones of life, and investigating people, and our world, and our universe, and the myriad lives we lead, and cruising happily with my whole tribe of a family, as we keep exploring all the things that attract our attention.  And do my very best to be authentic to me.   While encouraging you to be authentic to you.

Money has been running along the side of my story for my whole life, and I feel like I’m only just starting to really value the threads that are interwoven with it, that are rich in colours and textures.  The threads of all the times that I’ve done something beautiful just because I wanted to.  That I’ve traded with someone and got far more than I thought it was worth.  That we’ve had no money and a friend has turned up and taken us all out for lunch.  And how lush that feels.  The times I’ve given something away and it felt amazing, and the times I’ve sold things and been miserable.  The byways that we’ve driven cause we’re not cashed up, and the people and stories that have come out of it.  The trading we’ve done that has created great stories.  The generosity of dear friends and complete strangers who gift us with all sorts of treasures. 

The way we can pull up in Alice Springs and have a bunch of black fella’s coming up to ask us for two dollars or a cigarette, get distracted by our belly dancing coin draped bus, with kids tumbling round in it, and our handmade treasures that we travel with, and hear how we’ve just landed in town on a wing and a prayer, and then turn around to the others walking towards us and say, “Leave these fella’s alone, this mob are like us!”, and then talk about the places to go in town and where to get a feed.  Wouldn’t have met them or have that story if we’d pulled up in a spanking new four wheel drive looking swish.

 Wealth can preclude you from certain life experiences. 

The gypsy’s and the vagrants and the itchy footed folk can see shadows of themselves in our eyes, and we talk and swap tales and give each other resources for sailing through sedentary townships   Going to a homeless shelter for a soup kitchen feed when we’re strapped for cash.  Sitting with the folk we collectively place on the trash heap.  The ‘failed’ people.  Hearing their stories, and watching my baby be hugged by an alcoholic indigenous woman, who misses her grandkids.  Having a woman bring fruit and custard to the kids, and slip them some cordial, with a delighted smile on her toothless face as she witnessed the gusto and gratitude of our kids.  The activists who see kin in the outer plumage of us who aren’t mainstream, and share their stories and passions. 

Turning up at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, with our beaten up old Ford covered in peace messages, and money donated to us for petrol but nowhere to stay.  We’d come at night, and after meeting us, they welcomed us in with open arms, and Currawong was told “Women and kids first bro”.   They offered us tents and blankets, and when we told them we were sorted, they gave us a box of food, and found us somewhere to camp.  Later that night as we walked between the kitchen tent and our tent, we saw smoky spirits, dancing clear as a bell around the sacred fire that they always keep lit.  They were there but not there, and we watched them by the fire’s glow well into the night.   Pinching each other and affirming to each other that we were really seeing what we were.  When we told them the next morning, there was a sideways smile to us, as it was acknowledged that the ancestors often came to dance.

Starting a growers market on the dole, with no sponsorship or council collaboration, no business grants or paid wage, was a perfect way to be completely humble and honest with all our stallholders and market lovers.  We weren’t the proper ‘bosses’ or organisers that people expected, which meant they were happy to come along for the ride with no-one taking hierarchical control, being told what to do, or having rules to apply to.  We were all as important as each other.  And what a magical road of self acceptance that market became. 

Not having lots of money has let us slip in unobserved, into so many lifestyles and groups and people’s homes.  Allowed us to witness the honour codes, camaraderie, and nobility often present in those that don’t have much more than their integrity, word, and heart to trade with.  And the incredible generosity shown by those that don’t have much.  Granny Crack cleaning the house that we ‘bought’ in Peterborough, and leaving us pumpkin soup for our first night there.  Being able to give a couple with kids their first house in Australia – our tent – as they were caught in the loop of not being able to get bits  of paper, cause they’d just immigrated, and not being able to get any money or jobs, cause they didn’t have the bits of paper.   Rocking up to  the oldest manmade structure on the  entire planet – the fish traps in Brewarrina – and having the women on one side of the gate talk to me, after a giggly admonishment about my dirty kids, welcome me to their land and the  fish traps, and invite me to go and have a look.  While Currawong was talking to the men on the other side of the gate, who did the same thing.  Getting invited to stay at a complete strangers house for the night, as it was getting cold and she didn’t want us to have to sleep in our van.  Pulling up drenched after an unsuccessful sleepover in town, van packed to the ceilings so there was no room to sleep, and being welcomed into the bus of the couple who were mentoring us with van travel.  “Don’t worry, you’re home now”, as they handed us a spliff, a hot cup of soup, and a game of chess while we dried.  Receiving a love letter, wrapped as a Christmas parcel from a beautiful midwife over the seas who wanted us to know that people ‘out there’ cared about us.  Getting books sent to me by fellow travellers cause I needed them.  Being the proud giftee of a splendid purple moo moo, in which to mooch around our home.   

The incredible feeling I got when birthing Zarrathustra earlier than expected, and having the women of Nimbin do a whip around to dress him.  Living in the beautiful house that we do, and that we can’t afford, because the owners of it liked us, and let us do an energy exchange for the bit we can’t afford.  And the relationship that has ensued from them thinking with their hearts, and us appreciating it, and how inappropriate the term ‘landlords’ seem to this sweet couple who effortlessly and trustingly let us into their lives because we needed them, and that was more important to them than money (which they could have used).  Every time they sprinkle love on us when we meet, and swamp us with hugs, I think of all this, and am greatful to be reminded of the unexpected ways we can be loved and looked after.  And hopefully give back to the people who give to us.  Our new found beautiful friend who organised a welcome party for us by the pool, asking people to bring the stuff that they didn’t need anymore to help us furnish our house and clothe our kids.  The people we met, and the generosity and immensity of spirit shown, is so much more valuable to me than what the experience would have been like, if we could have paid for everything we wanted and needed.

Things like, we all walk into a café in Norwood one evening, and looking like the bedraggled fairies we can often come across as, the Greek ladies behind the food warmer instantly fell for us, and our charming brood.  While Balthazar was tossing hats with bemused tourists, and Spiral-Moon was talking fashion with the clubbers, the owner met Max and Merlin and the rest of us, and kindly gave us all drinks.  But unbeknownst to him, his working ladies had snavelled all the leftovers, and made us chips, and after ordering two fellafel rolls, we walked out with drinks and two stuffed bags full of food, and I was slipped a bag of hot chips with a wink as we headed out the door.  Enough lasagne for two days.

When I was birthing Max and Merlin, and Merlin wasn’t coming, the beautiful and sought out Russell and Alison came and saved our bacon with Ayurvedic massage.  It was part of a deep felt commitment they have to people and their healing and how glad they are to share it.  And we really needed them.  So they came.  Money didn’t even enter the room. 

Many of these things wouldn’t have happened if we were walking around well heeled, looking like everyone else, and having the money to buy the goods and spaces that we thought we needed and wanted.  We’ve never been destitute, never starved, never gone without, never had nowhere to sleep, never been without ample delicacies and comforts for our spirits and bodies, and when there was a dearth of them, we learned valuable lessons.  And appreciated them all the more afterwards. 

And there’s nowhere left to fall.  The fear that keeps many people in jobs they hate, relationships that diminish them, and occupations that compromise their spirit and passion, is the fear of having nothing.  Of the unknown.  Of not being able to pay the bills and meet outside requirements.  Well guess what…… we’ve been there.  And it’s really not all that bad!  Angels in human form have always been there to catch us.  It’s nice to know that it’s doable.  Not just that, but the resourcefulness, trickiness, quick thinking, loop hole searching and nimbleness, required to keep floating through freedom and gratitude in trying situations, is pure gold.   

We can also mucky muck with the rich and cultured, who usually manage to politely not notice our eccentric clothing and tattered garments.  There was this story I heard bout a black man in America who was the editor of a rich, white, luxury cigar magazine.  He was asked how the hell he could be a black man and the editor of such a tome, considering who he was.  And he rather kindly explained that he was eminently qualified, because as a ‘slave’ in the white man’s culture, he had to know his master intimately.  How to gauge his moods, how to sidestep his anger, how to stay unnoticed, how to read the signs.  Whereas the master doesn’t need to know anything about his slave.  He comes when he’s called, does what he’s told, and that is that.  This story was applied to women and men with the men as masters and women as slaves when I heard it.  But I think it could equally be applied to those that are masters, and have all the money in our culture with money as god, and those that are slaves in the search for money, and the willingness to adapt to get it.  Us slaves who are searching for ways to get money in the land of money gods, have to know about the getting of it intimately.  Or be prepared to push off from the shore of needing it.   

In the absence of money, and all the toys and gadgets on our kids wish list, they play with an empty pink storage container, and they’re all horses except for Griffyn who’s the vet, and he feeds them puffed corn and rice as medicine, and puts garlic poultices on their wounds.  They draw and talk and make up games and make swords out of sticks, and make them into guns with gaffa tape, and play in the far ranging playgrounds of imagination.   When we don’t have money we take the kids to the Hari Krishna’s for a free feast.  We take them on drives and stop at random parks.  They get hours of amusement from getting trucks to honk at them, as they drive onto a ferry while we picnic by the river.  They meet the most incredible people with stories to tell them from all walks of life, and all different age groups (Balthazar’s favourite creatures at the moment are teenage girls….)  We read them lots of books and make up stories when we’ve read them all.  We devour museums and art galleries and libraries and free and public events.  We hang out at the free pool in Nimbin and swap stories with colourful folk.  We visit others homes and lifestyles and learn from what we see.  We make a town and sea cove out of sticks and bark and leaves and grasses.  We paint the water tank with charcoal and mud.  We’ve worked out how to replace experience for money.

And we have empathy from experience, that so many people who have been immune to the greater indignities of lacking money, can skip.  Being in other peoples spaces with other peoples rules.  Having money or lack of it making choices for us that we wouldn’t choose out of mutual freedom.  Feeling like outcastes and fringedwellers.  Going against the mainstream.  Walking down the street with people watching us suspiciously.  So many more things we can understand in ourselves and other people, as we’ve been there. 

And when we strike it rich and the dollars drift like butterflies from the heavens, man oh man do we know how to live it up!  It’s all the sweeter for it’s rarity.  We indulge ourselves like children, which most of us are, and savour our treats.   It means so much more as a rare event than it would if it was an affordable luxury. 

I remember once reading someone’s philosophy of having ‘just enough’.  And how it kept a freedom of the spirit, and a lack of clutter.  An honest heart with compassionate tendancies.  Not enough to hoard, squander, or feel superior about, so a constant cycle of give and take instead. 

On the streets of Nimbin, I see people carving unique relationships with money and their lives, and what they can do in order to work with it.  There’s a fella who paints amazing artworks around potholes as a metaphysical, spiritual, and practical duty to fellow travellers.  He wants to simply show people where the potholes are, so they can choose to go through them or not.  And he leaves little canisters with love hearts on them all round the area, letting people know what he’s doing, so they can choose to donate him money and support him.  He doesn’t want to know who, and he doesn’t want to know why, he’s just wrapped that enough money ends up in those canisters for him to make a living from what he loves.  There’s another rather dashing and smiley fella, who cleans the streets of Nimbin with his big tongs and bucket, as an honourable exchange of energy that he decided on himself, in return for being generously supported by the Government in the form of payments.    And they’re just the tip of the iceberg, for the creative relationships folk have contracted with money around here. 

And all this outburst was spurred by reading my mate Richard's facebook discussion about money.  And how much he’d like to see it replaced by a gift economy, where between all of us giving each other stuff, we all get what we need.  And in honour of his decision to pursue this aim, he’s given away the photographing of two weddings as a gift.  I love that.  He wrote…. 

“Anyway, it takes a lot to talk about it all, but the essence of the change is a world where we give to each other, instead of one where we trade or try and make a profit. It's an entirely and radically different system that takes a whole new mindset in order to be able to work. Some people talk about trade as a new system, but it isnt really a new system because trade is essentially what we already do, it's just that we do with an abstract element inbetween that we call money. Furthermore the new system isn't really a system anyway, because it is not a state of mind that can be implemented by enforcement. The desire to give can only come internally and can only be done alone. In an attempt to try and start living this way I have given away two weddings so far this year, but that's only a very tentative start by myself. The essence of the idea is: In a world where we all give to each other, there is no want, except that of helping others. We wouldn't have to worry about ourselves, because the rest of the world would be doing that for us. It's pretty much the opposite system to what we have now, where all of us look out for ourselves and try to ensure our own welfare and those closest to us as our main priority. In a world of giving, instead of life being based on a basic fear of not being able to survive and have the things we want, our reason for working is to ensure the welfare of others. There is no room for the idea of 'profit' in this way of being, except the profit of being happy and living in a world of peace.”

I’d like to see money back in it’s box, as one of many possible ways of trading and exchanging goods and services.    As one of many options that a seeker can pursue to create the life they want.  And after saying all this, I believe I’ve also made peace, and come to terms with my relationship to money, and my place on the sliding scale of having it.  If a whole bag of it was to fall in my lap, it wouldn’t go to my head.  I know some places where it would be most welcome.  And it will most likely occur in a totally random way that I never would have dreamed of, if the time is ripe for me to learn some different lessons.    

I feel like in writing this, I’ve actually written a hate letter to money that became a love letter afterall.  I’m gonna claim my money baggage.  And I love it.  I love that it’s kept itself in the wings all these years (and I haven’t even started with the stories, let me tell you) so I learnt so many juicy knowings and warm memories and stories.  And I love that it appears when I really need it.  And I love the creative ways in which it can come about.  I also love the absence of it, and the thought that we’re moving with a snowball into an evolving consciousness, that see’s the beauty in absolutely everything.  I love what the lack of it teaches me.  And I’m willing to let it call it’s own shots, like I’m trying really intensely to let everything do……and come and go as it will.  Cause I know now that wherever I find myself on the sliding scale of money, I’ve got the tools to deal with it, and the faith to trust that I’ll never get dropped. 

And I guess that ultimately, I’ve been describing what a flowmad is.  And I can, because afterall I made the word up myself.   To flow in a nomadic way throughout having, and not having, believing and not believing, and whatever destiny the fates throw at me, knowing that there’s always a way to endear it, and respect it, and accept it, and learn from it, if I just keep travelling in my thoughts and my heart and my life for a respectful way to do it…..whatever it may be.