I had no idea for the last thirteen years I've been wearing a sex cult ring!
Growing up, my Mom had a little jewelry box she always kept on her dresser. Once in awhile she'd let my sift through it. It was shaped like a cabin you might find in a Bob Ross painting. With umber, mustard yellow and pea green embellishments. I loved it! The roof lifted up to reveal treasures all tangled by a mass of pearls strewn about and woven throughout everything on a broken wiry thread. The tiny wooden house had a porch too. I remember my delight when I discovered the two hidden drawers on both sides of the front stairs. Cluttered and stuffed with pretty shiny and tarnished things and a burnt five dollar bill.
(The jewelry box was something like this, but way more awesome. Via Google image search.)
I took the spoon ring out and started wearing it daily when I was about fifteen. It was years before my Mom ever noticed it on my hand. By that point, I'd had it for so long she just let me keep it. I love this ring! It has history!
A history I wasn't completely aware of until today. I took off my favorite adornment just to look at it, ya know, because I love it. To my surprise, I noticed some words embossed into the metal that were very hard to make out due to me wearing it every day and the three other people I know of who wore it before me as well. With a lot of squinting, aha! Oneida Community.
So I got to researching. I knew this at one point had been an engagement ring. (A tradition that started in the 1600's by servants that couldn’t afford fancy jewelry and stole from their house owners.) I always found that charming. What's next is something entirely different. It's hippie 70's revival is starting to make sense now.
Oneida Ldt. is one of the world’s largest markets of stainless steel silverware/ flatware today, but a couple hundred years ago, not the case. It all started out as a utopian commune. There were about three hundred members and they grew and canned vegetables, produced silk thread, and manufactured animal traps and you guessed it, silverware. They also had a lot of sex with each other. They believed that every man was married to every woman and to prevent any exclusive relationships from forming they were kept in constant circulation. They had a lot of other beliefs that I also found disturbing. Old men were sleeping with young girls and postmenopausal woman with teenage boys. Their sexuality and spirituality were closely linked, and this was some sort of guiding religious act. Ascending fellowship is how they put it. Their breeding methods were also fucked up.
This creepy blissful cult all came to a sharp end when their leadership changed hands, or penises, however you want to put it. Statutory rape charges were filed, fleeing to Canada happened. Some of the member actually went on to traditionally marry each other, raise and bond with their own kids, which wasn't allowed to them before. Other members reorganized as a joint stock company that made the spoon that was cut in half to form the ring that I wear on the middle finger of my left hand.
I know this ring comes from way back when, because Oneida Community dissolved entirely by 1878, and dropped the Community part on labels after that.
I was sitting on my messenger bag, because the ground was sort of muddy. My knees pulled up to my chest, and my back leaning against a tree trunk. The day was gray. The snow, the exposed earth, the buildings, my coat and my boots, everything was some shade of gray. Note-worthy, because I always dream in color.
I was also feeling gray. My tights were charcoal in a houndstooth pattern; reflecting whatever light was there. It was the only gray I liked in all of this. I was staring at my knees.
Traditionally, houndstooth is composed of alternating bands of four dark and for light threads in both warp (threads that go over) and weft (threads that go under) woven in a simple 2:2 twill. Two over, then two under the warp, advancing one thread each pass.
It's not unlike me in my waking life to stare at something and think about how it's made, but while sleeping not likely. In my dream my tights were a solid color, or not, depending on how you feel about gray. The warp and the weft must have been different fibers to create the noticeable pattern of contemplation. I was feeling awful for an unknown reason, but the houndstooth was full of reason and I was appreciating it.
I sat there under the tree for what seemed like a really long time. I picked up a Y-shaped twig. A miniature dowsing rod I thought, and it must be sort of working. Aside from everything being gray, everything was damp or still frozen. I used the dowser to sketch into the dirt around me. It started to rain. The precipitation filling up the swirls of dual lines I just forced into the earth.
I loved it so much I set it as the wallpaper on my computer.
I made the mistake of not attaching the artists name to it.
After months of searching for: art that looks like textile fibers but is actually not strategically placed threads, I finally found the creator of this wonderful piece!!!
After spending an hour looking at all his works, I'm sure that I'm inspired to drape on Ruby (my dress form) that I have been sort of neglecting since the New Year began.
I think our website idea could work if it was more like this. People would definitely pay the $12.00 membership rate.
10 hours ago •UnlikeLike • Comment • View Feedback (18)Hide Feedback (18) • Share • See Friendship
o
o You, Adam and Mike like this.
o
Mike:
even though it is not available on mobile, i dig the band, so ive liked it by default.
does it contain copious amounts of glaze and a stuffed animal reading a book w/o turning the pages?
10 hours ago via Facebook Mobile • LikeUnlike
Kimber:
Yes and no, but there are party pillows, a babnana, sensual beach shots, bubbles, and a guy licks a lamp. Also, cash money is said more than once.
10 hours ago • LikeUnlike • 1 person likes this.
Kimber:
Whoops. I spelled banana wrong up there. What he does with it is wrong anyway though.
10 hours ago • LikeUnlike
Mike:
babnana, i love it. that and unnecessary hand licking.
i will be buying the domain name, server space and additional stuffed animals this week.
10 hours ago via Facebook Mobile • LikeUnlike
Kimber:
I just checked into it, our domain name is available. I'm surprised no one has thought of it yet. We're genusi! I totally think the pillows shaped as letters that spell party are necessary. I'll ask Lunch $$$ to steal them frrm this video for us.
9 hours ago • LikeUnlike • 1 person likes this.
Mike:
let's get on this.
the site will simply feature a stuffed bear reading an encyclopedia until we get the operation completely underway.
the party pillows would be a nice touch. especially if we positioned a seductive looking stuffed elephant next to the 'r.'
and yes, we are quite the tandem of genusi. my favorite pair of genusi i have ever been privy to.
ask lunch $$$ if we can borrow his jar. we will say it is merely to use as a prop, but it's contents will actually help minimize the initial impact of our start up costs.
about an hour ago • UnlikeLike • 1 person likes this.
Kimber:
I don't know if he will just let us "borrow" his jar. I will watch him intensely on thurs. to pick up his tricks, in turn stealing his jar. Then we can afford to purchase you this...
about an hour ago • LikeUnlike • 1 person likes this.
Mike:
it will do an exceptional job at hiding the glaze.
about an hour ago • LikeUnlike
Kimber:
That is exactly what I thought!
about an hour ago • LikeUnlike
Mike:
hahaha. i will create and subsequently perfect the dickie jabot commando hoodie combo platter.
it's a fashion revolution baby brought to you by genusi.
about an hour ago • UnlikeLike • 1 person likes this.
Mike:
on a side note, i find it especially fitting we are stealing a 12 year old's bully jar to fund me a glaze hider.
about an hour ago • LikeUnlike
Kimber:
Agreed, and as much as I like the fake velvet featured in this video along with the lace chest enhancement, we'd never get the glaze out of it. The hoodie is a must, as well as it is your trademark.
Imagine the merchandise we will sell!!!
about an hour ago • LikeUnlike
Mike:
we're going to need a lot more bully jars for all that paper we be stackin.
about an hour ago • LikeUnlike
Kimber:
Hmm... I wonder what I would think if I just randomly came across this link and all our comments... I may copy and paste this as my next blog post.
I was 18. I had just come back from my first California experience and was having coffee and dessert with my best friend the day of my return at the newly opened Loring Pasta Bar, and she asked me to go to a young adult church camp with her a few days following this meeting. I remember thinking how odd it was of her to ask me that while we were surrounded by what I felt to be a page out of some psychedelically illustrated Alice in Wonderland book, but nothing about Nikki is not odd, and she knew like her intuitive self does, that I needed that weekend in some course.
Well, I have never been the one to follow religion, but she was (and still is/does) my bff and I like spending time with her and encouraging her to expand her interests. Also the idea of forest immersion always gets me and I was already missing a panoramic landscape of redwoods and the way sea salt wasn’t going to be affecting the tread of my favorite pumas for some time, so I said yes I will attend this weekend event in the North Woods of Minnesota.
Who knew going to church camp would change my entire perspective on spirituality, friendship, life and The Universe.
Sure, there was some praise Jesus songs sung around the campfire I didn’t know the words to and probably wouldn’t have join in the tunes had I known the words anyway, and some group Bible discussions where I asked questions no one could logically or scientifically answer all the while attempting to draw the texture of birch bark. As well as some confusing ways to play games in the activity center, and the most uncomfortable bunk bed I had ever sort of slept on.
We did find a disposable camera in between a bunk and a wall with half the pictures already taken that we ended up taking the rest of later during our stay, and even later developing the already taken photos and the photos we took of things that were so hilarious that we laughed about many more times than once ever since.
The Enlightenment as I used to call it, but now think of as essential awareness happened on the second day. It was quiet independent worship time in the early afternoon and we were supposed to grab our good books (my sketch book right) and find a place to spend with God and work on our relationship with him. Any sort of god or Universal bliss that could possibly exist revealed its wonderfulness to us that day, and later on for me that night.
I had cigarettes. We wanted to smoke them. We needed to wander pretty far off as not to get caught. Even though we were all adults, it was still not allowed. We did wander off, passed all the cabins, passed some trees, passed a little clearing of picnic tables, and into the woods. When the coast was clear, or to be more accurate I’ll say when we were clear out of sight, nicotine happened and we got little buzzes from it as it had been a couple days since either of us had inhaled it.
We were chatty, we were happy; we were making our way back, when out of nowhere, when out of everywhere, when out of the Earth we were surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands of monarch butterflies!!! We were in complete awe… Lepidopteron Paradise!!! We stood there quietly for quite some time. My memory of the time is more vivid than most so as far as I’m concerned we stood there for what seemed like forever. Forever in paradise.
This moment in time, this forever brilliant moment absolutely encapsulated our friendship and the essence of how we both live our lives in the different ways we live our lives but yet are always aligned and encompassed by beautiful spectrums of color, graceful flight, and extraordinary encounters. I truly love. I love this Earth. It is my home, it is your home too, and it is filled with glorious.
So after the incredible daze that lasted throughout the rest of the day, we decided to go for another smoke after nightfall. Remember the clearing of picnic tables I mentioned, yeah, we did too and thought that was far enough away without risking bears or other nocturnal creatures we’d have trouble identifying through the darkness. The picnic tables were not dark. They were lit by limitless starlight. It was the brightest sparkly sky I had ever seen in my whole life!
We sat on the table, rebels of the night. I started pointing out constellations. I was seasoned, I was knowledgeable about the astronomical and mythologies associated, so I was connecting the dots as I lied back on the weathered wood and recited the stories of our cosmos to Nikki. In that moment I realized what a dot was and that I was one, and I felt so small considering the Universe, and I said fuck the Greeks and the Romans and began verbalizing my thoughts, considering the Universe and the vastness, and possibly infinite beyond that, feeling small transformed into feelings of boundless beauty and another tour of magnificent awe…
Now I’m going to link a video that I know some of you may have seen before, but I’m placing this link here because it explains more eloquently than I ever have what I found that night in the sky at church camp almost ten years ago. It’s fifteen minutes long, but if you have any interest in me and want to continue our relationship, whether it be as friend or reader I’d appreciate you taking the time to watch this, as the sort of things you will find in it I bring up in some way in most all my conversations, and well, in just the way I live my life.
Since I believe in the entire Universe as fact and growing fact, I am not too worried about my dearest friend being terribly ill today. Yes of course the thought of her ever not being so physically present in my life totally freaks me out, but I’m not worried for her. She is amazing. Everything she has ever done and will do is amazing, and she has always been and always and forever will be amazing energy, life, and a star, and the greatest love of my life so far.
