~

I’m going to write a new story. A short story, an essay, a novel, a poem, or maybe a definition, an etymology, or a map or itinerary, a history, a geography. I don’t know yet. I have some inklings. It will be “American”  in that it will be concerned with situating me – someone – in a landscape. “Situating” is perhaps not the word: letting her be, get lost, find her way. And it will be “American” as in “natural”, nature-bound: about the freedom and potential and the rule of nature, and mourning it. No matter what will be the point of writing it, I need write it, on pen and paper, scratch it as much as write it: ETCH it and so it is alive.

Even if you despair about the future, you still need to take care of the present. It is in the present that your urge, you life, soul, animus exists, lives. It may aim towards and work for tomorrow, next year, “retirement”, but it aims and works now.

~

They’re connected: writing, the story and the now. I’m still doing that, four years later, asserting a story (my imagination, my freedom), in the present (the way things are), to be able to face an uncertain future.  I guess that’s  my way of coping, living.

In the meantime my neighbor’s pine tree has interposed itself between the sun and my office window and I can feel its shadow on my back. In Winter in an unheated house one is so close to the edge, the margin between warm enough and cold is so narrow a tree makes all the difference.

I’m reading the newly arrived Life in the Soil. Actually, I’m devouring it. And it’s not even that particularly well or passionately written.

I started wondering about this as I marveled over acellular slime molds and trichomycetes and realized that I often take refuge in books about soil and geology when I am down about the state of the world. In the first days of my “awakening” to climate change, peak oil and what have you, I fed on McPhee’s Annals of the Former World, like Henry, swallowing all 712 pages whole in the matter of a week.

Why?

Glaciers, archaebacteria: they are the kind of Earth without us. The kind of Earth that, given enough geological time, will be there after we are gone. Maybe what I am looking for in these books is perspective. I mourn so deeply what we might lose, and it seems such a shame. But these books tell me that, in another scheme of things, it doesn’t matter so much. From the perspective of the glacier, of the lichen, we don’t matter that much…

Does it work? I lose myself in the text, in the imagining of these things so utterly un-human. That’s something at least. When I read about art, about philosophy, it’s all so thoroughly human. Even a medieval religious icon or a 17th century piece of music are tainted with my sense of loss, of futility. So, losing myself in this Earth-without-us helps take my mind off things.

But then there is always the moment when I come out of the text to be reminded that it was written by a human. The science was done by humans. That knowledge and imagination, once we’re gone, will be gone as well – all that work, all that passion – for nothing! True, the real thing will still be there, the lichen, the glacier, geological time. But here I am, just holding a book, and sighing too much.

Aren’t you glad this wasn’t another “tutorial” (remember “Calcium in the Soil,” in 8 parts)?

“The door is closing,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA), told the Guardian. “I am very worried – if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever.”

There you have it from a usually very conservative source.

Note also that they want levels to “be held to no more than 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere).” That’s still 100 ppm MORE than what many other scientists and activists (including Bill McKibben) say is safe.

Today is just one of those days…

Today I wanted to write about salvaging. Yesterday I had to go into an Office Depot to have two big posters printed – we started “deep recycling” at the school I represent for the Green Team. I never go into those places. I can’t bear to look at the $1 packets of 100 pencils or ball points, the $2 t-shirts, the Save On This and That. The disparity between the advertised cost and the real cost of all this junk is too jarring for me.

But anyway, there I was, looking at all this stuff. And I realized why I never go to these places, or rather, why I never have to go. I salvage.

I get all my paper in the mail and through Amie’s school projects. I only write on scrap paper anymore.  Companies and my town send me envelopes with perfectly good envelopes in them. When we get take-out and the pita bread comes in tin foil, I wipe it and keep it. Same with plastic baggies. I even save the elastic bands that my grocery store puts around egg cartons and bunches of veggies for me. Haven’t had to buy a single elastic band in years now.

There must be many more examples that I can’t think of at the moment. I just do it subconsciously: I see something that is not “used up” and to me it says “reuse!”

I love to read apocalyptic novels and very recently tore through  The Old Man and the Wasteland by Nick Cole (kindle version, 99 cents). Like in The Old Man and the Sea, the old man  leaves his community to find something. Not a big fish, but salvage. They are a community living a hard life in the dessert, decades after the bombs, on salvaged stuff. I loved the insights into the salvaging mind – it’s all about following the story. It’s a great adventure and I was sad to get to the end, not just because it was the end, but because the man finds a whole city (Tuscon), intact, preserved and defended against The Horde.

He calls it salvage, but to me it was the end of salvage. And - tadaa – the epilogue indicates it was the beginning of the new “civilization”. Earlier in the book, the Old Man thought about how depressed everyone was right after the bombs, having lost everything. To survive that you had to accept that you lost everything (and many couldn’t). But now here it is: everything he thought was lost, for him and his community, given back again. What a shock that must be, but there isn’t much about his feelings – it’s too short and racy a novel for that.

Strange, my conflicted feelings about this ending. The curve of humanity swings upward and the Old Man, the author and the readers sing in praise. But this reader closed the book and stepped out into a warm day in November that was supposed to be cold.

]]> http://blog.bolandbol.com/2011/11/09/salvaging/feed/ 2 http://blog.bolandbol.com/2011/10/26/bill-mckibben-at-occupy-boston/ http://blog.bolandbol.com/2011/10/26/bill-mckibben-at-occupy-boston/#comments Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:45:40 +0000 brooklinemama http://blog.bolandbol.com/?p=6182 Last week Thursday a group of us from Transition Wayland carpooled and took the train into Boston to add our numbers to the 99% at Dewey Square.  The special occasion was Bill McKibben’s visit. He was there to let the 99% know that the 1% is ruining it for the 100% for the sake of quick profit. He had some choice words about and for President Obama, especially about the XL Pipeline and the exploitation of the Alberta Tar Sands, which, according the NASA climate specialist Jim Hansen, would mean “GAME OVER FOR THE CLIMATE”.

Here’s the video I shot:

In other news, we burned our first fire in the wood stove. The perfect thing to redeem a  wet and chilly, gloomy day!

On the Walk to Walden, 7 humans and 1 horse. As we walked in the humid, mosquito-filled 80F weather, through Wayland, Lincoln and Concord, more joined. By the time we reached there were about 20 of us, and at Walden Pond we met up with about 20 more for our “Thoreau moment” with 2 speakers. Read all about this part of the day in the  Wayland Patch.

Then we high-tailed it to the Concord train station, where we just about caught the train into Boston for Moving Planet – New England. How many were there? Hard to tell. One radio station said 1000, but I’d say more, 1500 perhaps. We could count the heads on the mass picture they took at some point.

We had a great time, sauntering, chatting, listening to our speakers, dashing for the train, relaxing and networking during the train ride, marching through Boston chanting and laughing, meeting old and new friends, listening to the funny and moving speakers at the event.  I came home exhausted, limping, voice as good as gone. It was wonderful, we had been part of an event that took place in my own town and all over the world.

The day after, someone who had not gone to any of the events told to me “how disappointing it was” that not more people had showed up. Several things struck me about this statement.

First, the speaker didn’t say she was disappointed. She wasn’t, she was just making conversation. She meant that I must be disappointed. She wasn’t interested enough to have a feeling of her own about it.

Second, I thought I was disappointed but the more I think about it, I realize I’m not. I even have a hard time actually figuring out why I should be. I saw many people from my town there, some I had invited, some came as a surprise. True, I missed some friends who had done their best and couldn’t make it, but I wasn’t disappointed that they weren’t there: they had helped and were there in spirit. They cared. And then there were those who were there: all of us understanding and supporting each other. Tens, thousands of us!

Third, what does it mean when someone who doesn’t care, says that “it was disappointing”?  Is she really saying, “Only a 1000, it couldn’t have been that important, so it was okay for me not to be there”? Or even “this movement isn’t big enough for me to care about yet”?

Now there’s an interesting conundrum!

It’s akin to the situation of so many waiting to invest in solar technology because they’re waiting for better technology to come on the market – thus actually holding back that the emergence of the better technology they’re waiting for!

People!

We are the people we are waiting for!

The moment is now.

I’m struggling with all this.

I look forward to reading Frances Moore-Lappe’s new book Ecomind with  Transition Wayland. Its subtitle is Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want.

Solutions to global crises are within reach… Our challenge is to free ourselves from self-defeating thought traps so we can bring these solutions to life.

I hope it delivers! I need some answers, soon!

So that flaming ball of churning energy is probably heading for us, driving wind, heavy rain and the threat of tornadoes ahead of it. We hardly felt the weather that spawned the tornadoes that destroyed Springfield and Monson, not too far from here, in western Massachusetts, in June. But that doesn’t mean it will spare us again.

As I wedge heavy rocks between the garden beds and the long plank that holds down the cover of the hoop house, set a rock on the beehive and  bring the potted trees inside, as well as anything else that I can imagine flying off, I think of McKibben’s line, about Eaarth,  where “the wind blows harder; more rain falls; the sea rises.” Yes, that’s here.

So check out  the people getting arrested in front of the White House because they’re speaking out against the Tar Sands Pipeline, putting their freedom on the line for a planet that is teetering on the edge. Be with them, if only in your thoughts. Eaarth is bad.  But if can get a lot worse if we don’t do something.

You can follow our solar harvest online, second by second.

Check it out!

~

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

~

Has anyone put this to song yet?

While participating in the Training for Transition I came to a profound realization. One of the most powerful exercises in Transition is the positive visioning. People sit in two circles, one inside the other, facing each other so everyone is paired up. The people on the outside are the elders of the future, who have  lived through Transition (the time of change). The people on the inside are young people, who did not live through it, and they ask three questions of their Elder, and listen. At the end, the pairs exchange seats and the circles rotate.

One of the questions is: what is your role in this (Transitioned) world?

Many people see themselves working with food. That’s only to be expected: besides air, water and shelter, what is more important than healthy, nutritious food? So people talk about how they tend the fields, teach others how to grow, scout out places to grow more crops, etc. People talk lovingly about being post-carbon farmers (farmers without oil), about farming together, and the more leisurely pace of life, with many conversations with neighbors, and kids roaming free, and nothing but the blue sky above and the dirt in their hands.

Wonderful visions.

This exercise invites only positive visioning, and some have trouble with this. That’s why we do the exercise. We need to practice hoping. Especially for those who seek Transition, those who have studied up and faced the truth, it’s hard. And thus, powerful.

So here it was my turn as the Elder to answer that question.

“I grow medicine. In the post-carbon world there are no pharmaceuticals, or if there are, there is no easy, quick and affordable way to get the medicine to where it is needed. There are no stockpiles of antibiotics or analgesics. Medicine is homemade.  I am someone who grows this medicine. I found the best spots in the town for growing marshmallow, or motherwort, or even ginger. I grow it, and teach and supervise the growing of it by others. I keep the inventory of the living plants. I harvest them at their appropriate times and with appropriate thanks for their abundance. I then bring them home and dry them and make them into medicine. I keep the apothecary. I don’t diagnose, I don’t heal. I don’t feel ready for that yet. I hope someone else can do that. If not, I’ll help, but humbly.”

I was silent for a second, surprised by my vision. Usually I am a farmer of unspecified crops. Usually I feed people. And beyond my surprise there was more to be said. So I said it:

“It’s hard in this world because we Elders remember the old medicine and health care. It wasn’t all good – the side effects, the addiction, the arrogance and entitlement. But diseases were cured, or held at bay, and lives were lengthened. Now we don’t have it so easy anymore. An infection that would have been treated with a shot can now kill.  We need to be vigilant all the time, grow whole, resilient bodies. Life is no longer prolonged – or rather, death is no longer postponed. We die at our appointed times. It is sad, sometimes, to think that an old drug could have postponed it. But, on the other hand, people now die at home, surrounded by their loved ones and communities. That’s better. That’s better.”

So there we are, that is what I want to do in the future, when I grow up, when the world grows up.

This is the marc of the echinacea root I tinctured and pressed yesterday.

It is what is left of the plant when it has given all it has to give.

Thank you.

~

I’ve added  a page called the Apothecary Inventory