the zero space
time is y(ours)
Let’s get organized in each geography and each person with their own calendar, because “No one is us,” — Words of the EZLN 30 years since their uprising1
i’m a time devotee. i am always contemplating, studying, enjoying time in some way. i learn to understand time in many ways, whether that be through eʋe cosmology’s lesson that our destiny is us as a time (and all things we perceive as having form are twinned with time—a tree, the ocean, atoms, space, far-off galaxies, etc) or through an attentiveness to the seasons and how they affect me. i believe that time is reality itself, that it is the warp and weft we are all woven into and that we all weave into.
i was watching this video on third places and felt inspired to riff on that concept and mix it with all of my contemplations on time. seeing so many people publcily celebrate the gregorian new year this year reminded me how imperative it is to see the reclamation of our relationship with time as part of the process of liberation2.
i’ve been imagining the power of more people divesting from the gregorian new year and the american holiday calendar in general as it revs people up at a time that naturally asks (those of us in locales that experience winter in the u.s.) to slow down. on top of how this period is a cash-cow for the u.s. economy. for many of us, our relationship with time has been corrupted and manipulated since european colonization. ((our relationship with gifting and gift economics as well)). i’ve been thinking about how our relationship with time deepens our connection with our own humanity, how it helps us hear our own needs better. i’ve been thinking about how it helps us practice subversive attitudes3 and reconnect with the earth through attentiveness to seasonality and cycles.
how we relate to time begets how we relate to each other and how we understand our needs. that relation determines what needs we have and when. grasping this and organizing around it has the immense power to both support or subvert the imperialist-american economy (aka the economy that prioritizes meeting the need to subjugate others, including the earth, through various forms of extreme violence).
the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. especially not the master’s calendar.
and, as grace lee boggs’ final text notes: these are the times to grow our souls.4
𓆟࿐ೃ˙𖦹 ⋆꙳ ໑ ᮫࣭ ꩜ ｡⋆༄
“Pretending time is without difference is one more way to alienate people from the earth. It's one more excuse to demand mechanical consistency of each other.” — Maeg Keane5
i see time as the 0 place/space where all expressions of time are interconnected. if we know that our liberation goes beyond what it can do for humans—it is a liberation of other species from human excess, a liberation of the land—then it matters to recognize that we have the 0 space as a key space for creating social change and one that is available to us for immediate play and subversion of the status quo. in seeing time as the 0 space, we can acknowledge, respect, and have proper reverence for the fact that there are more than just human collaborators in this process.
time & our relationship with time is the 0 space itself. it is marked by the depth of our relationship with our environment (and “environment,” here, can be broken down into: 1) the external world made up of the wild and the human-refined & the social 2) the internal world of our emotions-intuitions & appetite & heart 3) the unseen worlds, notably the ancestral quality of all environments) and by the rituals and practices we develop in response to our experience of our environment.
“Thousands of years ago, our ancient African ancestors constructed highly advanced civilizations in synchronicity with solar cycles. The way we experienced time back then was very different. We began a new day at noon rather than midnight, and we began a new year in spring rather than winter.
This meant that we associated beginnings with greater sunlight and the regeneration of the ecosystem. On the current Gregorian calendar, we associate beginnings with the depth of winter, nighttime and darkness. We are conditioned to continue moving, even though nature is calling us to slow down and rest. This causes our circadian rhythm to be thrown off balance and has a harmful effect on our collective health and self identity…
However, true time is more similar to our concept of space — there’s an endless amount of time that expands beyond horizons. In reality, we define time through our decisions. What we do as we move through time is what truly matters. This modality of experiencing time is inherent for ancient indigenous people.” —Alexis Williams6
“Seasons control everything in the world”
— Grandfather of an elementary student in the Learning in Places project, sharing a Cantonese proverb
i’m currently studying all the different ways humans have related to time throughout the world, especially before pre-western european and modern american hegemony. the throughline between every human relationship with time, given that there are hundreds of different calendars depending on locale and culture, is that there is a close relationship with the environment/the wild. the human ability to refine is used to emulate and complement what we now call “nature” rather than to subjugate and exploit it.
the other determiners of how we relate to time are social and survival needs. like Maeg notes in her post, the what is formed in relationship with the when. when are the market days when we can share resources with one another to sustain ourselves/communities? when are the moments that are auspicious for us to cleanse? when are the days that are auspicious for us to honor our ancestors in ceremony? when do we feast and what kind of feasts do we have? when do we rest? when do we work? our study of our environment & our ongoing relationship with our environment lets us know when it is time to do what. this requires a deeply intimate relationship with time and our environment.
in my personal philosophy, we are all creations of time and we are all active participants in expressing and shaping the creativity of time. that intimacy with time is also a deepened intimacy with myself, with the unseen, with other humans, with other species and life forms on earth, with beings beyond earth, with the mystery—these are all expressions of time.
no human has yet to stop the flow of time. it is the force that we are all bound to, no matter how we relate to it. however, it is in our best interest as humans with feelings and limits to be intentional in how we relate to it.
this is where a philosophy, an upright method comes in. it is up to you to discern what method is upright to you. i have chosen a combination of many methods in response to what my environment teaches me. for example, i believe in the philosophy of love as described by Diana Rose Harper. i believe in internal alchemy as described Zhang Boudan—that the spirit must be directed by intentions that reflect the heart.
“Love, as i’ve said before, is a philosophy.
Love is a life purpose, a foundation, a religion, an orientation, a goal, an embodiment, a reason, a vital nutrient, a guiding star, a support, a propellant, an overwhelm, an ethic, a shield, a bowl, a knife slicing away everything that prevents its expression.
Love, with a capital L, is the most worthwhile thing in existence. it’s the most important cultivation. it’s the most crucial pursuit.
everything else is distraction.
if you read this and you cringe, a few things to keep in mind:
the Love i talk about is not bypassing.
it is not lightwashing.
it is not about romance or romantic attachment between humans (though of course, Love can show up here, too).
the Love i mean here?
it’s about being alive.” —Diana Rose Harper7
i am also a layperson who studies astrology. astrology helps us (to riff of Maeg again) understand the different flavors, colors, shapes—the multilayered and many-faced cycles that make up the polyrhythm of time. it reminds us that time is a sloshing8, that it is both the small and everyday experiences of being alive while also being this grand and strange mystery. astrology is humbling. so many humans have studied it over time and any beginner may find the amount of data points on how time expresses to be overwhelming! that is how strange and grand time really is. time is very very creative and always eluding our conceptual grasp.9 my belief is that there is always an element that is meant to elude our conceptual grasp. that point reminds me of something Katie Miller shared with me about not sowing to the edges of a plot of land and always leaving a part that is wild. there is always an aspect of our existence that is always left wild and a mystery, beyond our conceptual grasp.
reclaiming the 0 space grows our sensitivities to time’s true nature. this grows our souls. in part, because it supports the human need to actualize.
𓆟࿐ೃ˙𖦹 ⋆꙳ ໑ ᮫࣭ ꩜ ｡⋆༄
in my personal practice, i’ve been refining my definition of what being a “good designer” means for about a year now.
a good designer designs for our humanity and cares about what is essential to humans
we’ll die without water
we’ll die without food
we’ll die without socializing
we’ll die without love
we’ll die without land
we’ll die without air / oxygen
we’ll die without beauty
we’ll die without tension
we’ll die without mystery
we’ll die without magicand “die” here means to become zombified, to no longer have light in our heart. rather than the divine dying that transforms us again and again (that dying is also called “living”)
what does it mean to design for humans? to me it means to give form to intuitions (in the words of Naoto Fukasawa), intuitions that respond to the essentials and respond to the question “how we can help each other live (and by “live” i always mean enjoy life together)?”
whatever relationship with time we design, it must help us live!
𓆟࿐ೃ˙𖦹 ⋆꙳ ໑ ᮫࣭ ꩜ ｡⋆༄
if you read my other newsletters, you’ll know that when i talk about social change, i am most often speaking to other american citizens10. we have a unique responsibility to reclaim the 0 space. americans’ total disconnection from the natural flow of things is quite literally destroying the world. people say that they want land back, people say that they want to re-indigenize. i don’t see how we do that without changing our relationship with time and practicing other ways of relating. intimacy with our environments and with time shapes our subversive attitudes that align us with an indigenous mode of relating shared by so so so many people & cultures on this planet. the 0 space is where we reconnect.
“until we recognize our power to actively create and shape our physical environments we will continue to suffer the paucity of our current social urban life” — from the Andrewism video on third places
until we recognize our power to actively create and shape our relationship with time, which requires us to have an active and ongoing relationship with our environment, we will continue to suffer physically, emotionally, spiritually, and collectively.
so, recognize your power to shape your relationship with time and to do so with the intention to subvert imperialist subjugation so that you may resensitize, resenualize, and rehumanize. so that you may resist and survive11. organize with your own calendar. the ills of consumerism, colonization, and imperialism are greatly empowered by the american way of framing time.
𓆟࿐ೃ˙𖦹 ⋆꙳ ໑ ᮫࣭ ꩜ ｡⋆༄
My poetry understands rhythm and rhyme as the reinvocation of the same moment over and over again but with an incremental difference that means everything. Holding the ethical imperative that Lucille Clifton taught her poetry students, the possibility of “saying the right thing, at the right time, to the right person.”
— Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Survival Radio” pg. 25, inside Poetry as Spellcasting: Poems, Essays and Prompts for Manifesting Liberation and Reclaiming Power (2023) by Tamiko Beyer, Destiny Hemphill & Lisabeth White with others.12
“The purpose of poetry is to return that which is familiar to its original strangeness.” —Charles Simic
࿐ೃ˙𖦹࿐ೃ˙𖦹
avèk tout kè m [with all my heart]
sienna
"it is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. the latter, as an oppressive class, can free neither others nor themselves. it is therefore essential that the oppressed wage the struggle to resolve the contradiction in which they are caught; and the contradiction will be resolved by the appearance of a new man: neither oppressor nor oppressed, but man in the process of liberation. if the goal of the oppressed is to become fully human. they will not achieve their goal by merely reversing the terms of the contradiction, by simply changing the poles."
"freedom to create and to construct, to wonder and to venture. such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine...it is not enough that men are not slaves; if social conditions further the existence of automatons, the result will be not a love of life, but love of death." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
your attitude is subversive because it begets your practice and dictates what you practice. and you are what you practice.
“Reality, fundamentally, is very, very creative. It’s always going to elude your conceptual grasp” https://www.lionsroar.com/groundbreaking-scholar-timothy-morton-wants-philosophers-to-face-their-buddhaphobia/?sscid=11k8_8p63n
and to get even more specific, i am speaking to other american citizens who live in cities. i was born and raised in a city and i currently live in one so i cannot speak to any other american experience. you can read more of my explorations on the specifics of my position here: https://ti-grande-dame.blogspot.com/2023/12/pondering-positions-world-isnt.html
i’ve been thinking about how much of the american imperialist project destroys our relationship with time through fatigue, through overwork—through making you sell your time & your ability to work just to survive. then you survive and you’re not even living, you’re just stuck in this loop. i just want to note that this is included in the context of this piece. though i have not said it explicitly.
and still, i remember enslaved folks who were muslim in the usa still practicing magic and making talismans. or still being in tune with the natural world (harriet tubman, nat turner!) as part of their resistance.
i’m thinking of something dani wrote on their instagram today: “ ** i think of this animated film, origin: spirits of the past (have you seen it?) future humans create a lab on the moon where they conduct genetic experiments on plants. the first scene is of a vine with the head of a dragon that explodes out of the lab and hurtles towards Earth, twisting over and over itself, much like bittersweet. they crash into Earth, leave the moon shattered, destroy life as it was, and proliferate into a forest protected by a powerful spirit. two things happen with people then: those with money, power, and access to technology freeze themselves in time. those without are left to survive and adapt to this new world, and some end up fusing their bodies with the spirit of the forest, accessing powers that help their communities rebuild. there's more, but my hands are tired and my painting is calling.” https://www.instagram.com/p/C18KDNytaEH/?igsh=c2l5d3UybWdncjhq
i am proposing that a reclamation of the 0 space is that act of fusing our bodies with the forest, for example, and accessing powers that help us rebuild. that it matters to align ourselves with the natural rebirth of the environment rather than a politically derived “new year” and a holiday season that pushes us to be totally out of whack. many of us are in the underclass yet have deep attachments to a calendar that i feel, at this point, only benefits the elite. the cultural and emotional and psychological ties are not easy to overcome. yet attitude begets everything!!
so, the process will naturally include the need for us to “grow our souls” as grace lee boggs notes, and undergo the “tremendous spiritual and philosophical transformation” that must be sustainably practiced for at least a few more generations! i think more than a few!