[2] Villaging with Kylie Tseng
I got a special treat for you all today. Today I am celebrating. Abundant Future's very first interview episode. Hee hee.
I had the pleasure and the delight of interviewing my dear beloved Kylie. I will introduce her to you all shortly. But for now, I want you to know that Kylie is someone who really inspires me in so many ways. We could talk for hours. In fact, we do talk for hours, not recorded. So this will certainly be the first of many conversations to come in today's conversation, we talk about the ancestral practice of living in community, and particularly the question of what does it mean to live as a villager? What does it mean to village as a verb? What if a village was in action? What would that look like? So there's a lot to be said here. May this conversation inspire you and touch you in some way that maybe you couldn't even imagine in this moment? Enjoy.
Welcome to the Abundant Futures Podcast, where we aid the collective transition from scarcity to abundance by divesting from imperialist relationship norms. I'm your host Forest queer witch certified relationship coach and disciple of love.
May you be filled with hope by expanding your awareness and understanding the actionable steps you can take to day for a better tomorrow.
May you feel inspired by the real world examples of what's possible outside of capitalism, imperialism.
May this be in service of collective liberation. And so it is.
F: All right, let's see. And I feel a little shy.
Uh,
how should I introduce you?
K: Maybe you could tell story by friendship.
F: Oh, that's sweet.
Hmm. Okay,
F: so today I am in Berkeley, California, with my dear beloved Kylie, who I met a few years ago. Now, I think at this point when you were hosting, what's it called? The entire Valentine's Day.
K: The Reclaim Valentine's Day.
F: Reclaim Valentine's Day. With love. All about love. Yet inspired by bell hooks, which it was all about. Like, how do we celebrate love? Maybe in like, well, in my words, in a non-hierarchical way, how do we make it centered around community love? And maybe not so much like a couple centric love. It was a really beautiful gathering where everybody just offered whatever they wanted to, and I hosted a kink workshop that was really fun.
Anything you can add to that?
K: So we've done three years now of the Reclaim Valentine's Day series and it continues to evolve, and we keep exploring different aspects of love when seen beyond the paradigms of just between two people. Because sometimes we have noticed that in a partnership, in a dynamic duo of people who are formulating their togetherness through these paradigms of nuclear family, security based thinking, we're not able to embrace other forms of love. So the last all About Love we'll reclaim be the event we did was about wild love. So it was about like the wildness of our love, especially specifically toward the world around us, towards the natural body that surrounds us.
F: Beautiful, beautiful thanks. So we met each other like a few months before I left the Bay Area. I lived here for four years and then I moved to Arizona and we kind of started to kindling this friendship. And in my mind I thought, Oh, well, it's too bad I'm leaving because I would really like to deepen with this person. And then to my surprise, we ended up deepening long distance, not in like a sexual romantic way, but just like a sweet emotional intimacy, I would say. So, yeah, I feel like it just brings my heart lots of joy to embody my values in that way. Like, what does it look like to ease to sexual romance and to be able to cultivate a long distance relationship that feels meaningful and special enough to where I can come over here in like, say, a week at your house and record a podcast with you. It's really sweet.
So how about would you like to introduce yourself? Any like identities that feel important to you that you want people to know? And then really just however you want to introduce yourself
K: Thanks Forest. Yeah, it's been such a awesome journey. To become friends with four is I think. I think so much of my development and my evolution in thinking through a relational forms of intimacy, like really breaking that down. What does that mean? And being able to practice weave practice forms of financial intimacy, which has been like such a deep opening for me,
really helping me move past a lot of my own feelings about money with Forest. So I just wanted to name that because I think that that has been one of the most radical ways that our relationship has shaped us. Um, as well as supporting each other in ways that like voice is going to coach me today, I'm just like, thank God because I really need some help with my pride prioritization. And so if I were to describe myself, I could first just name that I come from. I come from a lineage of
peoples who I guess could call their home home places in China, specifically Hunan, Zhang Shi, Guangdong, and even in saying that, even in saying three of my Lao job, my ancestral homes is kind of different in if you go to China, people will tell you that your lodge, your ancestral home is just from your father's side. But I make I make a point to also speak my mother's side. My mother's lineage as well, because that is part of who I am. I am
somebody who is doing ancestral work right now within my Chinese wisdom traditions. But I'm also seeing the ways in which I want to shape and transform it through integrating what feels like
the stories that are perhaps not told, but are definitely part of the whole. So I think of myself as an experimenter, experimenter of sorts of trying to find ways to transmute and outcomes. Some of our deepest traditional ways that can serve the present, that can serve this moment in time where we're seeing so many young people come out and have very different gender expressions. And there are asking, how do we do this thing in a different way in which we can live together and love together and creates
family building, village building. So a lot of my work is around community and expressing that through art,
expressing that through music and the other. But also I'm just a mystery to myself sometimes too. So describing myself seems a little hard.
The things that I feel that I'm sharing to the world might be a good place to start. That pretty much coalesces in several, I guess, like structural frameworks for thinking and that I feel are not necessarily my full truths, but are avenues in which I try and see truth or try to understand the truth. So much of what I've been reading about from Joseph Campbell about myths, for example, are like their structures. For us to understand deeper realities or deeper truth telling that not necessarily like if we take it too seriously, we don't take it as a metaphor. We then get into like a religious stagnation in which we have to follow by like a robotic sense of like this is right in wrong, or versus kind of taking it as a myth or an archetype or just taking it as a metaphor. So the different metaphors that I'm engaged with are relationship ecology, slow building,
and different ways in which my Chinese wisdom traditions shape my philosophy around change. I've been really in this orientation and thinking and writing about the DAO in conflict, and I also am really interested in Vivid Jing, the concept of Village Jing as an action in action in place rather than something that we necessarily go out in the world and create a village someplace in like a future plane in which everything is can be perfect.
Mm hmm.
Thanks for that. Just for folks who don't know you, I want to clarify too like, when you say slow building, you mean like, literal building? Not. I mean maybe also relationship building. But
I want to say your profession. But that doesn't feel accurate because that feels like too narrow and capitalistic. But somehow something that I perceive you feel passionate about is like building physical structures, particularly to facilitate community.
K: It's true. It's true. I get my hands dirty.
F: uh. Let's see, I feel a little bit weird about, like, repeating things that we already talked about. But I guess we have to.
K: I think it's. It's fun to just name that we're, we tried this format because right now we have one mike right now. So we tried this format in which we were like, taking turns.
Just speaking into the mic. But by doing so, we kind of look at each other and just the way in which that shaped the conversation I feel like is like a really good signifier for so much of what we talk about often and I about how our structures create the content.
F: Yea, omg haha
K: right?
Were very much like creating this structure in which we were actually in connection in.
Dialogue with each other. Yeah.
And how about, like impacted.
What was being spoken
F: Yeah,
I'm laughing because I was just talking about like, oh yeah, capitalist imperialism is all about individualism. And the way that we structured this microphone set up, we're like sitting side by side, no eye contact and just taking turns individually leaning into the mic. It's like really funny, but then there is like no flow to the conversation. And I was asking like massive questions that were just like, you just got lost
K: hahaha yea, I just got totally paralyzed.
So I'm glad that we're now facing each other and maybe we're giving up some of the sound quality, but I think that the content is going to be much more juicy.
F: Hmm. Poetic. Yeah. This really feels like a microcosm of, like, the larger things that we're practicing, particularly around perfectionism. Like, it doesn't need to sound perfect. We just need to get the message out there.
Oh, goodness. Okay, so round two, here we are. This feels a lot better. Um,
I'm excited to talk to you more about just like themes of community
because like I was saying earlier, and take one like individualism really is at the core of this capitalist imperialist paradigm. As long as we're divided and conquered, the paradigm lives on. So in my mind, these themes around food and housing, like if we as a community can food are in house ourselves
autonomously outside of these imperial structures. I mean, that's really at the core of liberation. And can we liberate ourself from those extractive power dynamics where we betray ourselves and our boundaries for our survival needs? Like it's just these conditions of scarcity that are created are totally not necessary and we totally can change them. I'm not saying it's gonna be like easy or something, but it's like very possible to not live this way. So I'm very inspired by your hands on work, particularly in this modern economy, where people are like searching for these high paying jobs or trying to get into the tech industry, trying to just make a lot of money and your priorities just seem so down to earth. They seem so deeply heartfelt, where it's not about accumulation, it's about, you know, I mean, it's just funny
to imagine like just how not prestigious the work of like building houses is and how deeply invested you are into this. I have a lot of respect for that. And it's like really powerful.
K: Thank you Forest.
F: So on this theme of community. Let's maybe let's just start with like what does community actually mean to you? Because I think if you ask like ten different people, they probably give you ten different answers. So in your experience and through your perspective, how do you relate to community?
K: Well, I think that's actually that's part of it, is that we get to choose what community means to us, and it is in our choosing of what community means to us in which our community gets to be shaped. So I don't necessarily have a overarching perspective of what community means, but they have for myself, and this has been developed through the process of in some ways being deeply heartbroken by forms of community and needing to figure out what does it actually mean to me, because at least for myself, community is at the heart of the work, of a liberatory future, of a future that I'd like my children to grow up in. And so that's not necessarily the orientation that everybody holds. And maybe they do say that they hold it, but perhaps holding it in a different manifestation. And so I guess where I stand now is that community. To me, there are various layers to community we can find community anywhere. If we walk outside, I think that we can look to the trees, to the sun, to the moon, to the sky and say, this is these are our relations, this is our community, this this is us. And we can have this very broad level understanding of the interdependence of the community that we situate ourself in as nature as we are nature. The world around us welcomes us in every day. And then there's also these kinds of communities of practice that I feel are crucial in order to build relationships in which we can then have communities in which we are doing the work of family. So that's that's a little bit of my orientation of community.
F: Beautiful. My heart just melted when I heard you talking about the trees. I was like in the sun. It really is a matter of perspective. It's easy to get caught in the I hate to say this like the victim narrative. I feel mixed feelings about talking about the victim narrative because I feel like in the past, when I was going through my coach training, they were really not acknowledging systems of oppression and they were like, Oh, it's just the victim narrative, But it's like, Nah, dude, the systems are creating this, but what I mean to say is like, you know, so much of our reality is created in our minds. And if we choose to commit to that victim narrative, then our vision starts to become very narrow and we start to hyper focus on, Oh, these systems keep us so isolated. I don't have community or communities aren't accessible, and maybe in a material sense there are truths in that within the system. And with just a shift in perspective, you know, it's like, what evidence are you looking for when you're feeling connected to the sun, to the trees, as a sense of community? It can create a softening in the heart and really a softening in the body. And, you know, I mean, for me, the power of the mind and where we direct our focus, that is a form of resilience. It is a practice of resiliency, because if we're stuck in the scarcity that the conditions around us are creating to keep us exploited and oppressed, then we're just going to be spinning our wheels in that state perpetually. So I know that maybe it's like a small, fleeting detail, but it's like so profound to me that you mentioned nature. You know, even in an urban environment, you know, if there like at least a few trees along the street, it's relating to them as community can actually be deeply revolutionary. It can source our hearts for the resiliency that these systems require of us.
K: Yeah, one of my deep like brothers in this work, he talks about how everything always returns to belonging. And I think that in some ways that feels very true, especially in this work of village being in relationship ecology and slow building even I think so much about belonging. And there's a lot of stories that tell us that we find belonging in like our home or our security or our safety. And even I oftentimes hear that the point of community is to meet our needs. And I think that the community can meet our needs. But because of the ways in which we're brought into this world, so much of our expectations of of receiving things is through this like this kind of like
almost
expectation for
receiving the gifts of life, of like, we need this thing, This is ours to have or to everybody needs to have this. And I think that that is true to an extent. Like, I really do believe that everybody is deserving of housing, everybody is deserving of clean water, everyone is deserving of of a home. And I, I also lean on this framework of, um, that come from my, from my, my culture that in order to be able to, I guess, understand that you have a belonging or to feel belonging, you also need to have experience of feeling exile in order for us to be able to feel home. We also have to know what it feels like to not have home. There's these like
parallels, lives that need to be expressed in order for us to feel this wholeness of everything. That there's always the yin and the yang. There's always the dark in the light, that there there can't just be a community that meets the needs. There also has to be a community that makes us feel a feeling of belonging. And so my story has also been a story of exile, has been a story of feeling deep and belonging, and that that's okay. That's part of the process.
F: Ooh. Whew.
yeah. You're really— my heart is feeling tickled right now. You're like, really speaking. Like, I feel like I'm nerding out a little bit on this conversation in real time, just like I'm 33. Tell me about the contrast.
Yeah, Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. So beautiful. Just eating this a
Yeah, I mean, I would love to deepen if you feel comfortable about that contrast, because maybe in this current moment you are feeling that sense of belonging in community by. And I would love for the listeners to understand what kind of first of all that like perfection is a real thing. Like you and I often talk about how so much of learning is experiential, like you can read in a book or whatever, and like get the concepts, but you don't embody the teaching until you experience it. And a lot of that happens through trial and error and sometimes some pain and some suffering. Um, so I would love just to kind of humanize you and maybe not put you on a pedestal. It's like, Oh, I'm living in this belonging, that community and you know, there's like really inspiring parts. And I would also just love for the listeners to hear about maybe some of the rockier parts that have led you to where you're at right now.
K: Yeah, I mean, I remember I recently went to go hear Bayo Akomolafe speak live and he was speaking on the importance of failure. And in that moment I just and like just the importance of the mass. And I remember like just melting in almost like after that. Talk with bioaccumulation. ALAFIA I went on the streets and just was like screaming my head off because he had talked about like, yeah, like, what does it mean to just be with that mass, to be with the failure to accept that as part of the flow, part of the importance and part of the rigor and like life giving nature of this path bigger the walk in this lifetime.
And I yeah have I have failed a lot. I continue to fail. I am in the process of failing right now and it feels good to say it's like this like big just like sigh of relief where I can just be in my process of becoming. And I think that that's been a big lesson for me in community, is that I have been in different formations within community in which my failure, my process, my, um, just reaction. All states have not been
seen as like
they haven't been seen necessarily as
I don't really know what the story has been for folks, but it, it has created rupture that cannot allow for reconciliation. And part of what I've learned in this time is that we can create a mess. But as long as we are like they're accountable and ready to clean up the mess, I think everybody is redeemable and I kind of joke that the community I'm in is with a bunch of people who have been exiled and who know what it feels like to be completely rejected and have now created this like community of misfits, because it feels really true to an extent. A lot of us have been told that we are not, we are unredeemable. And so in some ways I see ourselves as a community that believes in everybody's redeem ability. And by doing so, we're very committed to conflict and the practice of restorative justice. And at the core of it, that just means to me a continuation of showing up, of the small progress, of just sitting and listening to each other's stories and and that was something that
unfortunately never came to resolve. And my past experience with the cooperative that I started with a friend but feels so important to me now is like, what happens when we just have the capacity to show up for each other’s stories?
F: Mmmmm.
ahhhhhhh.
Hearing, hearing you talk about this, what it brings up for me is maybe like on a superficial level, like a surface level, going through the motions, quote unquote of community. Like, okay, we have a chore wheel and we cook meals together and we have like weekly house meetings or whatever the structure is. But if there's not that sense of
transformative justice or that sense of redeemable D, then maybe it's more of a performance, maybe it's more structural than like a deeply,
how do I say, like a fabric of connection that kind of like interweaves people together. Like if people are just unredeemable as a philosophy, then it's so easy for the community to crumble takes more than just the structure. It takes heart to like without that relational aspect. I mean, at least for me, that's what's coming up when I'm hearing you. I think of community is not just a structural thing, but also can we relate to each other on a heart level? Can we allow ourselves to be hurt or misunderstood through misalignments that might not be personal or something and like to not demonize somebody for those things, but to use that as a way, maybe even to, like, deepen trust, like a form of emotional intimacy?
K: Well, I think different people have
different ways in which they they want to create their home space and I think that was part of the misalignment that had happened in the cooperative. I think that
there is one of the things as part of like a core tenement to my community now is that we have chosen a life to live amongst difference. We have chosen that a diversity of age, a diversity of race, class backgrounds, stories of what people are interested in is extremely important to us because we see that by creating a collection of people who hold different stories and different roles in life, that by choosing to actively live together, we're living into a possibility that we all believe in and that necessarily that isn't necessarily what everybody wants in their home space. And so what people's intentions are, what their what they're like feeling called towards, I think is really valid. And I don't expect everybody to want that kind of
community lifestyle because it has its own challenges. It has a pacing that requires a level of what I consider sacrifice in in the way in which sacrifice comes from this root etymology of the sacred to to make something sacred. And to make something sacred also means that we have to let certain things go. For a sanctuary. To truly be a sanctuary, it has to know its capacity. It can't actually hold every single person in it.
And so knowing what we are focusing on, what we are sanctuary for is really important. And I've chosen in this life to move more towards wanting to create an experimentation space for difference, for difference of ideas and opinions of languages, because that feels like a deeper reflection of of the mixing in which we're seeing in the world. But that doesn't necessarily feel like other communities and other forms of coalition aren't very valid too. It's just a different way.
F: Mmm It's not that one way is better than another way or there's like a right or a wrong way. Though I do see the practice that you're engaged in. It's like really deeply radical, and I have a lot of respect for it because it does require a skill, like a lot of skill. I would consider compassion a skill and a practice within this current a context of capitalist imperialism like we just the skills don't get conditioned into us, so we kind of have to learn them. So I would say it's not for the faint hearted,
K: definitely not.
You've got to have a heart that is just down.
You just got to be down. So I feel like.
It's sometimes like there's just so many moments in which I'm like, I don't know, but I'm down.
F: Yeah,
yeah. Uh, I keep replaying in my head this conversation I have with an elder about abortion, and we just had, like, completely different views and just the patience and, like, compassion to practice in that conversation. Like, okay, I don't need to prove you wrong. You don't need to prove me right or whatever. Right or wrong. There's no winner or loser that can we just hear each other? And I mean, to me that is like a practice of peace on earth, because I think it's unrealistic for what is there like 8 billion, 9 billion people on the planet at this point? I'm like, where, you know, it's our nature to be diverse. So we're not all just going to be like a monolith. So how do we hold the diversity and the nuances without needing to commodify it or to make it all one same thing? That to me is like, that's peace. You know, like, can we learn to live in the difference and not need to force our way or our ideas onto other people?
K: Yeah, I think it really ultimately comes down to what kind of role you want to play. And at this moment in time, like I've definitely, like grown into my radicalism through youth movements, like many of us, many of us have many of my friends have come up through different climate justice organizations that were geared towards young people because young people have that fire, they have that energy, they have that righteous justice anger that is so like enriching and in many ways super sexy and the like that like fierce ferocity and like, you know, there's something so beautiful about that. And where I'm at in my life is like, I don't actually want to make decisions that don't integrate my elders, that don't go into council with the different people who I really love and trust in my relational web. And that's a very different perspective and, you know, than like some of the activist spaces that I inhabited in which just like by default, by being an elder, you were automatically on the wrong side of history. And
unless you were a certain kind of elder. But even that, I, I think that I want to at this point, I feel called to challenge anything that doesn't necessarily have this like
orientation around
taking. I mean, this is kind of a Chinese concept, but taking the middle way and the middle way doesn't necessarily mean that it's like what is in between
the most polarized in perspectives. But I think that the middle way to me really signifies the third way, the way in which it doesn't have to be all or nothing. It kind of allows us to kind of meet and gather at the center.
F: Hehe, I have this cute little analogy of like, what is it that three bears and Goldilocks, The porridge is like too hot, too cold, and then just right. That's funny. The middle way.
K: the middle way is elusive to me. So it's it's a concept that I read about in the daodejing and it still feels so elusive. But I sometimes I get whiffs of it and I'm like, okay.
F: Yeah,
yeah. I love how non-binary it is too, because for me, any sort of binary, it just feels like part of that, like capitalist imperialist social construct. So the less binary we can think, the more we can break out of this paradigm and into an abundance paradigm.
K: Yeah. It also it really one of the things that has been a deep learning for me in this process of building village and building family building community is
the way in which we can really attach ourselves to an orientation or a goal or that feels like the most radical in a lot of and this is something I've been reflecting on a lot.
If you're if you're part of, I don't know, an activist space, maybe you'll hear of the theory of change. And oftentimes that theory of change is based upon, okay, there's this dominant perspective and that dominant perspective, like, can we need to shift that? We need to shift it to a different perspective. And that's the theory of change. But now that I've been studying the teaching and studying, but in setting up zoning, um, which is five elements or five phases, I'm learning that there's actually a theory of change itself, like really thinking about what change is in itself. And in this process of learning through village, I've been in different projects of like, let's, let's create community, you know, and it's a very common thing within the international community space where you come together with a group of friends, you ask where we want to live, we start looking at land and we go on that whole arc in that whole journey together to create community. But in that process, I really learned that it wasn't really like that goal isn't necessarily the goal itself. Like it became really clear to me that we couldn't actually know what it was that was in alignment with who we were. We couldn't actually know what community really meant to us because we hadn't lived into it. We haven't been in the practice of it. And so rather than creating that theory of change by like sitting here and pulling up the Google doc and writing whether our values are, whether our goals, whether we moving towards, whether the steps, let's move backwards and like create a whole like schedule for how we're going to make this happen for ourselves. I've been much more interested in how do I just like become change itself, How do I move with the rhythms of change? And that has become my theory of change, which I would love to talk to somebody about this who still doing that organizing work than they used to do.
F: Mmm Oh, I want to like, just spend another moment here because you and I were talking about this earlier, so I feel like I'm like really understanding it and I'm not sure how familiar or unfamiliar this feels to people listening in. So I kind of want to like, break it down a little bit because what you're speaking about is like poetic and profound. So maybe I'll just say my understanding and I kind of think visually. So when you're talking about the theory of change within the context of an activist space, to me the impression I get is that maybe it's more rigid, it's more linear, it's like, okay, this is the path to change. It looks like X, Y, Z, you do this and then this, and then it leads to this. Does that feel accurate?
K: Well, I've just been really interested lately about how certain theories of change have these, like goals or expectations that they need to feel like their movement was successful.
However, how do we define that success? How do we know? How do we we we predict that that is actually the direction in which the world needs to shift to. Mm hmm. I often think about how the deeper I go into work around
multiple lives. Generational change, ancestry. I see that change can happen in one lifetime, but the expectation for all of these things to shift within one lifetime and for that to be seen as a success is a perspective. It's not necessarily something that is meant to serve the collective as a whole, because we can't necessarily know that. And part of that is that there is a lack of trust in a universal thread that is moving us towards a collective formation.
F: Mmm That's so beautiful.
Okay, so what's standing out to me is maybe like an attachment to the outcome or even just maybe narrowly narrowing in to specifically on like this is the outcome we're moving towards, which of course is rooted in beautiful intentions, but maybe it's actually counterproductive to to the mission, at least in my experience, when I'm like narrowing in where I'm moving too much, I start to feel trapped by it. And then it's really easy to feel that sense of failure because is going to move us wherever it does. The divine forces that are so much bigger than any of us can comprehend are already like moving on us in the direction that we need to anyways. So in a way, having that rigidity or that narrowness of perspective like this is where we're going and this is how it can almost like the structure can become a little bit trapping like it's a little bit too claustrophobic in a way. Mm hmm. And when did you want to say something?
K: No, go ahead.
F: In contrast, when I'm hearing you say uh— I don’t know if you said be the change, but something about trusting the process, surrendering to the flow of change, and just trusting that that will lead you to the outcome that's necessary, even if you can't necessarily in this moment understand where it's going to take you. But trusting that that will be in service of the greater good for the collective
K: right.
I think it's the idea that the theory of change is around changing. Others. Like a lot of political activists, work is around going out there and asking to change the minds in the hearts of those who are who are around us. But within that is a subtle T in which we are in this framework that the way in which we are thinking is the right way, is the way in which other people must think as well. And so the theory of change is then actually rooted in something that is concrete concretize concrete ideas in a framework and ideology versus actually the theory of change being directed towards like how do we become change? How do we respond to change, How are we formations of change? And this is why one of the work, the pieces of my work is really deepening with the teaching, which is one of the like considered the Bible of China. It's
translated to the book of Changes and it creates this framework for being able to see and respond to
the timing of the world. Where are we right now?
F: I have to share this imagery that's coming up. When you talking about it, of course, with water, it's like such a Daoist metaphor anyway. Is water
each one of us being one water molecule and feeling a sense of oneness within the ocean, like we're both individual and a whole at the same time. And when you're talking about being the change and maybe being open to the flow of change, I get the image of that, that fluidity of you have a sense of self and a sense of belonging and the waves are just ebbing and flowing and you're just kind of finding yourself in the flow as long as you can relax into it versus maybe with this like more activist paradigm, maybe it's more rigid like ice. And then when people congregate, they're like one big block of ice and they're like, how do we get other people to form our ice bucket? Like getting people into this very fixed way of seeing or being.
K: Definitely. And part of it is when we're in the work of trying to change others, we not don't necessarily allow or permit them to change us as well, which I actually think that's like a beautiful Octavia Butler is like whatever you touch, you change with, you change changes you and it's true. It's like this is why so much of what I've been moving towards as my work has been moving towards conflict and writing and talking about and participating in formations of deepening into our practice of conflict, because conflict at its core is like being moved by somebody, being affected by somebody, allowing somebody to affect you.
And when we're able to allow that to wash over us, allow that to like be the movement of the waves versus like something that is so scary, we can start to practice the theory of change in which I believe the teaching calls causes into is responding to each passing moment.
F: Ahhhhh, I’m just breathing that in that's so resonant and profound and beautiful. I love talking with you about these things.
I would love to pivot a little bit into what we were kind of talking this morning about how
how you're entering a new era of your life, how maybe like the what was it, the Odyssey, the experimentation or like the networking, the searching, the searching phase is dwindling down because you're reaching a place of you are pretty well rooted into community. From my perspective, you have the connections that are aligned and that are facilitating what I would say, spiritual growth
and you're having clarity on your next steps as far as like, what are you contributing to the collective? I would love for you to share with the listeners
oh,
maybe a little bit about your experience with plastering and where that is taking you into the future.
K: Oh, man okay, so for those of you who probably— most of you guys are unaware of what plastering is.
But it's essentially the practice of smearing mud onto the walls, that's the most basic, I guess,
historical perspective of plastering. Pretty much every culture that has ever existed has had a form of plastering, which is a form of wall building, a form of creating home and shelter, or for ourselves using the earth in which is already our home and our shelter. So that, I would say, is very much what plastering means to me. Like the heart of plastering is like taking the ground and creating like a cave, creating a home for ourselves. Of course, plastering in its formation right now is something that, from my experience, is
something mostly people with wealth can afford. It's a kind of wall finish that can be very versatile. It can be. I've seen people apply it with spoons before. I've seen people apply it with their hands. I've seen people applied them with very expensive Japanese trowels. So there's a range in which it exists and I kind of fell into the work of plastering because they wanted to do building. And there is something so meditative about working with what essentially is earth, clay, sand and, and then also water and also with wood, which is from a Chinese perspective, wood is like all the plants and the trees. And so we're using straw, which oftentimes comes from rice. We would use rice straw. So plastering really means for me, using my hands to work with the elements. Oftentimes, no plaster. I call it a prayer. I call it the time in which I'm able to to be with
these elements and to listen to them and to ask them how they want to move and to move with them. Very often when I first started out with pastoring, there's this desire to apply it quite hard, hard. But as you loosen your body and you get more comfortable with the material, there's a way that you can apply it that feels like a dance, that feels like a softness, a gentleness and the gentler you are. But also with like this pushing energy, you can move the material very far and so my work with plastering is developing into a general interest in the building arts, and I call it the building arts very purposely
building building is something that from one level we can we can look around us and see these like, you know, very quick structures going up that are becoming high end condominiums in the downtown area. And then we can also really think about building as shelter as the the building blocks of home, a place where we can invite community into. And so my interest in buildings has really started to develop into another Chinese concept around the spirit of the home and we really believe that there is a spirit that is on land that is part of a home, and that spirits is something that we're meant to respond to, is one that is meant to move us into creation of temple space, of gathering space. And so that's a little of where my building journey is moving towards. I know that's really vague, but,
um, yeah, we're kind of in the world of ideas right now.
F: I'm honestly really enjoying hearing you talk about your process of plastering because I've heard you. I mean, it's such a big part of your life. I've heard you talk about it a lot, plastering in general, but I don't know if I've ever heard you talk about your process in this way. And it feels just like so on theme with these Daoist concepts and with the middle way,
like not pushing too hard, but like a gentle firmness. It's just, Oh, I feel like I'm being taken away. Just like you talk about it. I feel like a softening in my body and it feels really soothing. I can really picture my mind. You and your process.
K: One of the things that has been really helpful for me in stepping out of the framework of specialization, which I think is a formation of the broader system that we're in, in which we're asked to hyper specialize. And so that so that we can
carve out more space for ourselves within the marketplace and be able to make enough to survive. The antithesis of that is being a villager. And they often think about how one of my greatest aspirations in life is to be a villager,
somebody who knows how to build, somebody who knows how to teach, somebody who knows how to do child care and cook, somebody who knows how to plant beings to farm, to make music, to do ceremony. And there is a self-consciousness to that because in some ways, I'm I feel like I'm a failure in the eyes of capitalism.
But then when I see a village and when I understand living that life, when I'm in a community, I feel also a sense of purpose. And what has helped me deepen with this
formation of how I live my life as a villager and how I aspire to be a villager has been the way in which Chinese masters have both talked to me about. And what I've read is that to be a master, you must have skills in mastery in all these different
ways of understanding things because you can't fight understand everything through words. There has to be in them body sense as well. So when I'm talking about plastering, it's true. So much of my philosophy is informed by this
practice that I engage in.
F: Mm hmm. There's such richness in this whole conversation. I keep going back and forth in my head about, Oh, I want to deepen here, but also, like, I don't want to get to, like, lost in the details because I feel excited to talk about what's ahead for you.
But maybe briefly, I'll just say
it really stands out to me that when you're talking about your process of clustering and also your aspiration to be a villager and to have like a diverse skill set, but maybe even apart from skills, just the ways that you use your lifeforce energy. It's not just all fixated onto one thing and maybe that more capitalist idea of what does it mean to be a master where you're like an expert or like a data analyst or whatever. You're like, it's very narrow, it's specific
that feels as revolutionary as the the outcome itself. You know, like the more you can embody the thing that you're working towards, the more that you're actually just bringing it to life. I find that inspiring too.
K: Yeah, everything is connected. So our earlier conversation about the linear process of like working backwards from a goal I think is really relevant here because sometimes my music inspires the way that I move through conflict, right? Or the, the plants that I am working with like inspire something that I then make into a comic, It's it's really hard to tell what's going to grow us. And in some ways, by trying to grow ourselves through one modality, we are not necessarily stepping into the the ways in which we as humans are deeply sensory and have so many qualities to us. And part of the like villager aspect is like honoring all of the parts of ourselves. And when we specialize and specify, that's when we get the question of like, Oh, so what do you do? And that becomes everything that you are.
F: I'm like cringing at hearing that question,
even though there's nothing to do with like the what we're talking about. But even just the what do you do just irks me. I really despise that question. It just feels so limiting in there. And I'm just like, Oh, I have way more interesting things to talk about. You know, what's standing out to me about this. Part of our conversation is that as we're moving towards a liberated future rooted in abundance, perhaps that does not require suffering the way that the empire would convince us. It seems to me like the mainstream imperialist narrative is that
success requires martyrdom it requires some sort of shooting yourself in the foot to benefit others, something like that. And that there's even a sense of like morality assigned to suffering like no pain, no gain, kind of a vibe. And what I'm really feeling and what you're saying is that you don't have to narrow yourself into like one category or even into one focus.
Life can be this is full and joyful and connecting just connecting through music, connecting through planting, really connecting in a more than just human way, but like human with earth being or like with plant beings that we don't have to suffer in order to move towards a liberated future. It can all just kind of flow peacefully and maybe your music can inform the way you navigate conflict. And it's just a sense of like integration and ease where things are competing against each other, but they're all moving you in the direction that you need to.
K: Mmm Yeah, I think that this specialization comes is like very rooted. This competition mindset is like because we have limited capacity as, as beings here to be able to perform the best we can is in some ways to specialize. But what if we were in a competition place? What if we were able to find our right belonging within a network, within a village? And and one of the concepts that me and my friend Oona, who we've been developing this blog and this idea of relationship ecology, very inspired by
one of the deep medicines concepts within relationship ecology, the idea of coal learning that there is never a moment in which there's somebody who is taking on, who has more information and the other person. There are times, I think, in which we are receiving a conduit of
ideas or learnings or experience from somebody, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that person is the only one who is teaching. There's so many ways in which we're in exchange of learning together knowledge and information is just one piece of learning. There's so much that we are gaining just by being in that dynamic of learning with somebody else. And part of this specialization hierarchy is that it takes away the sacredness of just being just being okay with the place that you're in. We're always moving towards this goal, this ultimate landing place in which everything will resolve. But there is a potency to where we are right now, a baby who has in some ways like from some perspective, can be seen as having not achieved anything, has not been productive yet, gives so much life to a village. I see it with the babies in our community. They're their life bringers. They're their wells of love and in inspiration are.
F: Yeah, that feels so deeply resonant. Now. I'm just replaying the the memory from the week and singing Happy birthday to the one month existence of a little baby in the community and just how much joy and love that brought like you can really feel it in the air. It's just like it's good medicine heart medicine.
Ha So we'll start wrapping up soon. But before we say goodbye, I would love to touch on this topic of building communal spaces.
You keep talking about this on Earth, and I find that really inspiring because on the surface you're like, Oh, it's on it, It maybe it doesn't sound that deep, but the way you relate to it, it's so much bigger than just like a hot structure. Can you just share with people like how does that connect on a maybe larger scale? Like what does it mean to build spaces like those?
K: Yeah, I at this point in my solidarity, I'm really just learning. So one thing that I'm doing first is like learning about the cultural significance of silence. And so I haven't learned as much as I want to now. But I do know and like Finland and Sweden, there has been a deep practice of these communal spaces in which in in the darkest of nights and the depth of winter, there can be a place of warmth. And I really believe that the spaces that we create on the outside are very representative of how we as a culture relate internally. And so part of my desire to build a sauna and to create like somewhat of a bathhouse is to bring that community aspect into a relationship to the elements, to the fire, to the water, to the wood,
and how that allows us to move through the different phases that are also elemental within ourselves.
F: Mmm
I really enjoyed what you were speaking to, not on the podcast per like just earlier in the week about
the intergenerational community that does hot spaces can facilitate, We can edit this out if you want to, but we were talking about how radical it would be just to normalize like nudity, intergenerationally, just seeing elders with with children, with everything in between, just like peacefully existing nude and like basking in the heat. I picture like a lizard on a rock. Everyone just like, you know, it's like a place for connection. And in my mind, I think of is like a place for peace.
K: Mm. Yeah. I mean, so much of my work has to do with moving away from this mindset of there are peaks and pinnacles to a continuum.
It brings me a lot of grief to see elders in my life, especially the woman elders in my life, who feel a sense of like
purposelessness or not having a role anymore because they've lost their prime state of beauty or whatever, whatnot.
And but but having a judgment on the different phases of life takes away from the perspective of the continuum of life, that there needs to be that experience of perhaps having that beauty so that you can step fully into your motherhood and that wisdom that that brings. And so,
yeah, so, so maybe speaking a little bit to that in terms of this honor, I'm not sure if it's going to allow for that intergenerational nudity. I think that part of that culture that I'm experience that I would like to experience and hopefully this trip to Japan soon
is in what ways is that like very rooted in that culture and in maybe need to translate it a little bit differently in this one, but it is so deeply like nourishing to me in the ways in which we can care for each other, in which we can scrub each other down, we can warm our bodies together.
F: Mm
So I am totally not keeping track of time anymore. And there's still topics that we haven't touched on that I'm like, I want to and I just feel like maybe it is time to start winding down. Where are you feeling? Like capacity wise?
K: I wanted to actually mention something to kind of wrap up this idea of theory of change,
which with the little baby that was mentioned and the field of change that this baby has created. So by having this baby in the community, there has been a whole orientation towards care for the family. There has been a unionization like this bringing together of families of people who would not have shared a room together, would not have sat down together, would not have decided to live next to each other for a period of time. And that is a form of change itself as a form of moving people, of affecting people towards change. And so
but there's an emergency to that sort of change that is different than going out and predicting and deciding what the change is going to be.
And so I if there is anything I could leave everybody with would be this curiosity towards the ways in which we are creating change, the ways in which we are inspiring change. It may not look exactly like the final destination, but to question that final destination a little bit and to ask ourselves, are we wanting this final destination because we want to feel a sense of completion for ourselves? Or are we tuning in to the ways in which the world wants to change and moving with that flow and just trusting that by orienting ourselves towards the change that is already happening we're, we're trusting that we're part of this belonging, this, this global belonging towards balance.
F: Mm.
I need to just breathe that in. There was so I felt like you just checked my ego. I was like, well let me actually just sit with that.
Like, am I feeding my ego in the way that I'm engaging in change, making and creating a better world? Or am I brave enough to actually actually relinquish control like on a spectrum? I'm not maybe 100%, but enough. So to actually allow myself to become the wave and the ocean to move towards the thing that maybe even feels more useful and maybe even more fruitful. Like if I'm willing to just surrender even just a little bit and see where the flow takes me.
whew hahaha
K: It definitely doesn't feel
useful in the face of the really real reality that there are so much atrocities happening right now. And I do recognize the privilege in being able to take on what I consider the long arc of time, which is that I'm able to actually hold the perspective of the long arc of time, because I don't have really, like urgent needs that are not being met right now because of
bombing or because there there is like a blockade towards my my food or my shelter.
And I think that there's a contradiction. There's an inherent contradiction in everything. And that's something that my teacher has helped me continue to see and sit within that. Within the contradiction, there are no answers, and it's just about sitting in the questions and allowing those questions to lead us. So yes, to the like desire to change and also yes to the like consideration that it might not be that might not result in the changes that we're requesting of it.
F: Yeah, oooof.
ahhhhh.
well, there's just one missing piece for me to feel complete with this conversation. Do you have space for one more thing? Yeah. And it's kind of circling back, tying up a loose end. And this speaks to the conversation we were having on the porch earlier where I was like, You just blew my mind in the best of ways. But also I feel some like maybe like resistance or like some tension in my body just sitting with this truth. And it's what you spoke to a little bit earlier about.
Well, maybe we didn't mention all of this in the podcast, but earlier we were saying like, like literally every queer person I know is like having this shared vision of, Oh, let's just get some land and we'll like create a community. And we all share a similar vision, or perhaps it's like a similar desire for belonging and just to live in reciprocity with each other and with Earth. And it seems like the particular way that manifests in our dreams is like, Oh, if we could just get a piece of land and then we can just start anew. And what you spoke to earlier that blew my mind was how that actually in a way could exist within that paradigm of colonization. This idea of like looking outwards and starting new
and what you proposed, that brought up a lot of tension for me, but it also felt so true, is that like, how do we actually just work with the existing structures we have? How do we create this community not maybe from the ground up, but from working with what already is? Can you speak a little bit more to that?
K: Definitely. And I think that part of that urge is that we want to live into that future right away. We want that abundant future you're speaking to right now. And again, it's like what has really helped center me has been the work that I've been doing around thinking about karma and thinking about lives, reincarnations and and not expecting necessarily in this lifetime. I'm going to be able to experience that like feeling of what it feels like to be on land and have a deep relationship with land that only really exists in my imagination at this point. So who knows what the potency of that? And so I was like, Well, maybe we can hold that vision in our hearts and our minds or her mind
and do what we can in this moment. And
what I did speak to was the possibility of us shifting our frameworks within ourselves
to invite that village into our own homes or own spaces in this moment in time, which does require a kind of relational dynamic that integrates cross-class relationships, cross-cultural relationships, and that's going to bring up a lot of conflict. And what I was showing with force earlier, because for us was you were saying, you know, that seems like really challenging to just do with my neighbors right now. And in many ways I did actually engage in this process with sharing my own home with people I didn't know very well. And
I guess we don't have to again, with this whole idea of like going out onto land that that doesn't have to be the next step. And what was speaking to is this idea of creating these access points for some people, an access point like I was referring to in in Harry Potter, you can have these like, like a shoe. It's like a magical shoe you like. Not everyone's going to see that shoe as an access point. So people are going to just see it as a shoe. But when people are ready to move into this portal, they're going to be able to use that shoe to to to come in to the next formation of the pathway towards maybe privileging our own like actual ecosystem right now, like removing the concrete. But that's
it's, it's just as valid to for somebody to find that and for that to be a portal than it is for us to go on to land and to be at that stage.
F: Whewww.
yeah. Honestly, I find that really relieving because you know, after being in the Bay Area for like four years, then moving to Arizona, where abortion is now illegal, it's just such a change of environment. And I do feel a sense of guarded ness around my neighbors. Like I don't feel this sense of freedom that I felt here, at least just to exist in a public space and not be fearing that I'm going to be called like a homophobic slur on the street or something like that. Just the simplicity of existing. So within that context, I was just like, Yeah, I mean, this idea's great. And also like, I don't know if I trust my neighbors, honestly. So but I feel relief in what you're saying. Like That is such a realistic approach. And it goes back to we're not going to just have everything we want right now. It's a process and can we just create these access points and trust that little by little,
you know, I think of being a back to water analogy, just like drop by drop. Can we create something bigger than ourselves and just trust in the process, Maybe drop by drop? If you observe it, it feels really slow, but if you zoom out after some time, you have a big pool of water.
K: and in the deeper truth, I think, is that the access point isn't necessarily for those that you're offering it to. The access point is where other people who are like minded to you will find you. And together you guys will create that access point together. And that is the village that it becomes. The beginning of the village is the people who you're able to collaborate with relationally and build that trust over time.
F: Whew.
this feels like a good place to close. I feel inspired. I'm just like, okay, let's let's create those small access points and just trust in the process of where that will lead us. And in many ways, that does feel ironically, like more accessible than like, okay, who's got the land? Let's go build the thing. Because the common conversation that I've had a million times within queer community is we are the same dream, if only if only we had the resources. But maybe of focusing on how powerless we feel within that dream. Maybe the way we pursue it is not what we imagine it would look like, but perhaps we can arrive to a similar feeling, you know, like the similar qualities that we're seeking without it needing to look one particular way. And maybe we'll be delightfully surprised in the process. So that is something I'm definitely taking with me. I feel really inspired by that.
K: Yayyyy
F: thanks again for being willing to have this conversation. I also just love that we didn't like schedule out of time. We were just like flowing and were like, Hey, you want to record this?
And that feels really aligned with like the concepts we're speaking to today. So really enjoying the flow.
K: Thanks so much, Forest.
F: That's all for today. Thanks for being here. If you have any questions about today's episode, you can reach out to abundantfutures888@gmail.com. You can also check out my website AbundantFutures.net to see my other offerings. I do provide one on one guidance. I facilitate workshops and I also write a blog. And if you want to spread the seed of change and hope and inspiration, consider sharing this with a friend. Peace be with you.
