Illegitimi non carborundum

Posted on January 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

Dear Ms. Shires,
The Asheville Police Department hopes that you have recovered from your unfortunate experience as a victim of crime.

Of all the form letters I’ve ever received, this has got to be the weirdest. I feel for the person who first composed it–it is well-written and concise, so I have to assume they were an intelligent sort, and, as such, the larger implications of the work didn’t escape their consideration. What a tricky thing, to communicate empathy in a medium that is by its very nature impersonal. Not a job I’d care to do.

Many of you already know the story: somehow (we will likely never know how), some person (we will likely never know who) obtained my Visa check card number and went on a bit of a shopping spree at a major online electronics retailer. They didn’t show restraint, and it will be a long process to fully recover our losses, despite the professed hopes of that form letter.

Money’s a strange thing. It’s insubstantial–your entire monetary wealth can be nothing more than numbers on a computer screen, accessed via another string of numbers embossed in plastic–but it’s also utterly vital to the way we live our lives. Everything depends on this abstraction that has no inherent or inviolable value of its own. We participate in a fantasy every time we pay the light bill, but this fantasy can easily render us homeless, hungry, destitute if we land on its bad side.

I’ve experienced property crime before. I know the violation of having my house broken into, my private space rifled through like the bargain bins at the outlet mall. It’s not pleasant, and it makes it difficult to feel anything but contempt for one’s fellow human beings.

It’s easy to mouth New Age-y, vaguely Buddhist platitudes, to try on nonattachment like a dress you leave the tags on. It’s easy to say it’s only money–until you lose yours.

When you grow up poor, money can feel like Ariadne’s thread: a slender filament, so easily lost or snapped, that is the only thing preventing you from perishing in darkness. In our currency-based society, anything that threatens your money is a direct threat to your personal security, in the most primal sense: imagine trying to feed, clothe, and house yourself (or your family) without it. This touches the red button of fear deep inside each one of us, in a way that poor folks understand better than anyone else.

I’m not so poor anymore, and we were already on track to get off the currency-based hamster wheel, but that red button never leaves you, once you’ve experienced life with it chronically exposed. And this is what bothers me most about what has happened: we will recover, in time. Not without stress, and not without losing just a little more faith in the human race–but we will recover. But there are many, many people in the world who wouldn’t. A theft like this could render a family homeless. And this person–this thief–was willing to trade that for stuff. Electronics. A big teevee or a computer or a gaming system (actually, likely all three, given the dollar amount involved).

The charges to my bank account weren’t made to the Children’s Cancer Hospital or a grocery store, after all. This erstwhile human being found it okay to trade someone else’s security for toys.

It’s hard not to rage. It’s hard not to flirt with hate when faced with such disregard. It’s hard not to long for something more swift and definitive than karmic justice. It’s hard to figure out precisely what one is supposed to do, stuck in the middle of an abstraction gone wrong.

The rage and the hate and the stress we’ll work on in our own ways. Those things won’t touch our friend with the new teevee, but they will surely corrode us from the inside out, and so there is no good reason to hang on to them. The rest of it–our plans to hike and to stop working for other people and to devote more time and energy to things that really matter–it all remains on track. Because what else can you do? You pick yourself up, you dust yourself off, and you know the rest.

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Posted in Dispatches From the Front

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Getting it up

Posted on January 13, 2012 | 1 Comment

I was half upside-down (the most disorienting position to be in, I find) when it occurred to me that I can’t remember when I last gave a shit about whatever belly may or may not be flabbing over my waistband. Fully upside-down (say, hanging from the monkey bars or doing a handstand), everybody’s belly looks nice. Fully upright and engaged in a strong posture, ditto. But this half business, when you’re breathing like a bellows–a mindful one, but a bellows nonetheless–even unflabby bellies do things that make photo editors reach for their magic wands.

In my last yoga class, we were preparing for pincha mayurasana, which looks like this–>

(I know!)

It’s a pose that demands a lot of the upper back, which is precisely the part of my body that most frequently doubles as a stress repository, so the work needed to flex and support and engage in all the right places was, shall we say, bracing.

If you’re not a yoga practitioner, let me attempt to describe the scene: Imagine kneeling, facing very close to a wall. You place your elbows right in the angle where wall and floor meet, and your forearms rest on the wall, your fingers pointing at the ceiling. Between your hands you hold a rectangular block. You straighten your legs, bringing your body into an inverted V shape. The block becomes a touchstone, resting in the place between your shoulder blades where all those weak-but-getting-stronger muscles lie, focusing your attention on activating their power. It’s no joke, and you’re not even in the “real” pose yet!

The pose ultimately calls for your gaze to be toward the floor, but at the moment you are looking between your feet at the students across the room, who are looking right back. The distorted, red, upside-down faces are all–despite the hard work, despite the good kind of discomfort that comes when your body is testing its limits, despite being an hour into a pretty grueling class–smiling like crazy.

Belly flab? What belly flab? I’m busy remembering to breathe through this exquisite torture.

Here’s why yoga is important to me: it refocuses and refines my attention in a way that creates nothing but good. I’ve long been the sort of person who becomes first frustrated and then (pretty quickly, I’m afraid) angry when I can’t do something perfectly. The yoga mat is the first place where that mindset started to crumble and fall away. It’s the first place I began to uncouple the difficulty of a thing from my own sense of self-worth. Exploring the far boundaries of what is hard to do can be an astonishingly joyful undertaking, but you have to be willing to play with those boundaries without reaching for your instruments of self-flagellation (and don’t we all have a veritable arsenal of those by this point in our lives?).

I have no idea when that idea finally took hold inside me. But, one day, I fell over instead of balancing, and I smiled, just like all those upside-down faces were smiling last night.

We all made it up into pincha mayurasana, with varying levels of assistance. I held it with only my partner’s fist between my knees, a helpful reminder to hug the midline. Because here’s a fun thing: to get up, you don’t think up. You don’t send the energy up; you don’t focus on up. To get up, you send your energy, your effort, your breath, your smile, your all to the middle, which engages deeper musculature. The pose originates from your core, physiologically and energetically speaking, and is far more stable and powerful and dynamic than it would be if you used brute force to fling your legs skyward.

Sounds like a metaphor, no?

That’s another valuable lesson that yoga has taught me: what you think needs to happen isn’t always so. Frequently, the key that opens up a pose for me is an adjustment in the way I’m engaging (or not engaging) my pelvis or my feet or the deep muscles of my abdomen. These changes usually make the whole shebang even harder, yes, but they bring a richness and a correctness and an energy to the exercise that I find incredibly nourishing.

It’s this subtle work that made me fall in love with yoga, Anusara in particular. I may one day get into the crazy pretzel poses; I may not. The point isn’t so much what I can do, but how I do it.

The point is this: in a preparatory half-pose that doesn’t even have a name, with protesting hamstrings and shoulder girdle, with wild hair and a flushed face and, yes, a little bit of belly flapping, I couldn’t stop grinning.

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Posted in The Good Life

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The power of one dollar

Posted on January 12, 2012 | 1 Comment

We are twenty percent tippers. More, if you’re fabulous or one of our regular bartenders or servers.

We are also tipped employees. One of us has made a long career in food service. Restaurant jobs aren’t just for teenagers and those not smart enough or hard-working enough to get a “real” job. Americans are generally pretty uncomfortable being served–what with that curious bootstrap fetish we’ve got and all–and seem to pretty consistently overlook the fact that waiting tables takes more intelligence and physical effort than your average “real” cubicle job.

There’s a lot to be said (and quite a lot that has already been said) on that topic, and I’m not going to get into it here. Blogs don’t change minds–particularly when the topic has so many emotional hot buttons (money, our conceptions of work and worth)–and the converted don’t need more preaching.

But I will say this: when it comes time to tip your server, you have the opportunity to work a little magic. It’s very simple, and it won’t even hurt the first time. Once you get used to it, it will actually start to feel good. Here’s how:

Get your bill. Do the math. Decide what you believe the tip should be (twenty percent, fifteen percent), to the penny. Then round up, not down.

That’s it. One more dollar than you might otherwise have left. Your wallet probably won’t even notice. (Side note: If your wallet does notice–and there have been times in my life when every single dollar counted–you probably shouldn’t be in a restaurant in the first place.)

Your one dollar buys more than you ever thought a buck could get. Your server who–let’s give the benefit of the doubt–takes pride in his work and was doing his damnedest to make sure your meal was a great one, won’t take the bump from, say, 18 to 22 percent lightly.

Imagine that you received a performance review a dozen times a day, and that your boss adjusted your salary based on not only your job performance but also on the quality of the entire department’s work. That’s what waiting tables is like.

Sure, your buck could go to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Maybe your meal turned out alright because someone else was paying attention when your food was up, or caught the mistake when your order was put in wrong, or tidied up after the kids at the next table so you didn’t slip on the cheerios all over the floor. Maybe your server was hiding in the office texting while all this happened, and shouldn’t get that dollar.

It’s a risk that’s worth taking, because the joy you spread is far more important than “losing” a point in the grand game of Who Gets To Be Judgy-McJudgster and Be More (Self)Right(eous).

I hate that game.

And it’s not overstating the case to bring Joy into it. My fella is the sort who takes an enormous sense of satisfaction from doing a job–any job–well, and receiving appropriate feedback. A smaller tip doesn’t just bum him out; it makes him question everything about his own performance (questions which are usually totally unwarranted). A larger one (and, remember, we’re talking one lousy dollar), is an affirmation that he appreciates more deeply than you might think–and, by extension, makes the next table’s experience just that much better. Your dollar buys a smile, puts lightness into steps, and brings relief in a world where there’s precious little of that to be found.

What a bargain.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Necessary things

Posted on January 1, 2012 | 3 Comments

I’ve never really believed in New Year’s resolutions, but I suppose that the Jan 1 transition is as good a time as any for a person to take a new direction or follow a dream. Ours has been in earnest motion now for some months, but this day–keeping with tradition, sort of–seems a good one to lay it all out.

As you may have gathered, we’re taking the long walk this year. This is something I’d planned to do solo about seven years ago, but then life did its thing and I found myself with a career in EMS and staying in a city I never expected to like as much as I did. Time passed, various lightning bolts struck, and here I am these years later with the good fortune to have a partner who embraced this dream wholeheartedly. So now we are two–twice the planning, but twice the hands working on putting it all together.

It’s gonna be good. But, more importantly, this is the opening act of a totally new chapter in our lives–bigger than moving across the country, bigger than changing jobs, bigger than anything either of us has ever done before.

2011 was a year of more self-examination than usual. A year in which what I’d always found not quite right turned into downright unsettling. A year in which I did a lot of work explicitly clarifying my values and deciding how to make my life more closely match them.

We spent a great deal of time thinking and talking about what’s necessary and what’s not, in the smallest and largest senses. About how we’d apportion our waking time if half of it weren’t already automatically beholden to an employer. About what satisfies us, in a deep way. And how to make that happen.

What ultimately killed our restaurant plan was the realization of what it would mean to finance the project. Nevermind the enormous commitment of time and effort the place itself would entail (sweet labor though that might be, to folks like us). Owing a bank such a huge amount of money would dictate how we’d be able to live for all the years before we could pay it back. That’s an awful lot of control to willingly surrender.

It began to look like a trigger we weren’t meant to pull.

We still had our finger on it the day I broached the thru-hike subject. We talked about what it would take to make this happen–paying off the last of our debt, saving money, shedding possessions, reconfiguring our budget, making do with less–and then it dawned on us that this was the exact same plan for making our wildest of wild dreams happen: this was the way to hike the AT, yes, but it was also the way to get off the hamster wheel of work/paycheck/stuff for good.

I think angels sounded a high, clear note, and the sun got a little brighter.

This was possible. And we were going to make it happen. And the key wasn’t–as I’d long been taught, as we’ve all long been told–getting a better job and making more money. Our yearning for more has been misplaced–we don’t need more money, more things, more degrees, more titles, more on our resume; we need more time that actually belongs to us. We need more real meaning from our labor. And, unless you’re independently wealthy, getting this kind of more means having less.

If you’re okay with that, the math works in your favor. Me, I’d rather have fewer nice clothes and more time to write. A smaller house and a bigger garden. Fewer nights out on the town and more long days in with a chore list of my own making.

It’s a funny thing, though, shedding all those years of conditioning. Even when you know, down to your core, that this is the right thing to do, you find yourself resisting in unexpected ways. Relinquishing my professional identity and the status that comes with it was an important step, and it’s made some of the other de-attaching go more smoothly. But we still run up against the cool tee shirt problem: when discussing exactly how much of our considerable book collection to offload, I had the realization that I was attached to more than just the books themselves: I liked what stuffed bookshelves said about me. Even though the only people who are likely to see the inside of my home already know that I read, that I’m intelligent, that I have diverse interests, I was still clinging to that physical symbol of these attributes.


The Man Friend has a great expression: these things that we hang onto, that we use like bumperstickers to advertise about ourselves are identity bangles. Like the bracelets, they rattle around saying look at me! Look at how [smart/cultured/fit/well-connected/pious/rebellious/whatever] I am! They’re cultural shorthand, a substitute for the hard work of actually getting to know each other.

I can’t get rid of all the books–I love me some library action, but there’s something to be said for being able to pull a well-loved tome off the shelf any time you like, to re-read in its entirety, or just to sample a few choice passages. I find it extremely comforting. But there are plenty volumes on those shelves that really are just filler–books I’ve read once and won’t read again, books I read and didn’t even like, books that I own because I think–as an English major and a “serious” reader–I should own them. That’s the very definition of superfluous.

So I suppose what we’re really doing is working out our own definition of what is necessary. Time? Yes. Food? Yes. Shelter? Yes. Creative efforts? Yes. Most of our stuff? Not so much. Money? Not as much as we think. And, maybe most destructive and unnecessary is the stress that comes with all that we’re working to purge. For, after all, being invested in a job you aren’t in charge of is simply borrowing someone else’s stress. For people like we two, who are inclined to become invested in any job we have just because we like to see work done well, whatever it is, it’s impossible to work for bad managers and not get upset about it. And a paycheck just isn’t sufficient compensation for that kind of irritation, not anymore. Money may indeed make the world go ’round, but there are other forces that can take its place, once you’re able to wean yourself off that dollar-sign teat.

Our position statements:

  • Monetary income is a poor measure of the quality and meaning of one’s work.
  • Paychecks are meant to be spent, usually on shit we don’t really need, supporting a global system of consumerism that is, on balance, not a great thing.
  • The more toys you have, the more you want–and the more of your time you sacrifice to work for more of that almighty paycheck.
  • Have less, want less, buy less = have less reason to work for someone else. This frees up an enormous amount of time to do things that have real value for us–whether concretely, as in growing our own food, or more abstractly, as in more time to create and write and meditate and pay attention to what we can do to help our neighbors.
  • We want that.

Kicking all this off with a six-month exercise in living a life stripped to its bare essentials seems right. Even if we don’t finish the trail this time–very few do, though I think we’re more prepared (in all ways) than most–it’s come to be about more than just a simple thru-hike. And there is gold waiting at the end, however short or long the rainbow itself may prove.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Teach your children

Posted on December 31, 2011 | 2 Comments

For a rural kid, the first day of kindergarten is something of a momentous occasion. It’s the beginning of one’s existence in a larger world, populated by people who aren’t related to you. It’s also one’s first lesson in what it’s like to navigate the rock tumbler of social life, your sharp edges bumping up against everyone else’s and getting polished down into something new.

I have few memories that I can be sure are from the pre-K days, and most of them don’t involve any people at all. A major presence in these memories are the woods that enveloped our house, and the host of tiny adventures hidden in their shade. Those woods put a permanent canopy over my soul, and ruined me for open country.

I also recall a pony named (I’m not making this up) Clem Kadiddlehopper, and docile, alien-eyed milk goats Naomi and Leah.

Photos from this time remind me I wore things like plaid pants and Hee Haw overalls without any obvious sense of irony (I was a poor excuse for a hipster, even then).

I remember the feeling of being pleasantly swallowed by snow during an especially bad winter, and the endless fascination of the water bugs that skated across the still places in our little spring, doing what my grandmother had said only Jesus could do.

The grit between my teeth when I ate carrots pilfered from our garden was half the fun of pulling them in the first place.

Not much I remember didn’t happen outside, in little vignettes populated more by critters than people. When people come into these retained scraps of my earliest years, they’re my immediate family. If I knew other people before I started school, I’ve forgotten them.

On the first day of Kindergarten, a girl named Kay cried when her mother tried to leave her there. I was baffled, and a little embarrassed for her.

My first crush was on a boy in my Kindergarten class named Chris, who loved Ewoks and ran with his hands held flat open, scissoring the air with each stride.

Both Kay and Chris moved somewhere else after that year, but almost all of my other classmates would remain as we all worked our way up McCleary Elementary’s one long hall to where it culminated at seventh grade.

Kindergarten, perched in two classrooms at the young end of the building, had its own little playground, its own novelties, and its own rules. I saw my first Sesame Street here, and Mr. Rogers. I don’t recall being impressed by either. For naptime, we unfolded cushy vinyl mats. They squeaked when you moved, and stuck to any exposed skin in a way that made even the most stoic kindergartener long for her blankie. We were tested on our ability to tie our shoes and remember our home phone number and address, in addition to the expected A-B-C, 1-2-3 drills. Our report cards had two columns–one for academic grades and one for behavioral evaluation. I was an all-A student later; in the singular world of kindergarten I was all E’s (for Excellent).

All that Excellence aside, I committed my first crime in the elementary school multi-purpose room. At midday, the folding lunch tables came out, and that room–also the site of assemblies, phys ed, school plays, and graduation–hosted what became my least favorite part of the day.

Mrs. Horn had a rule for her K students: everyone had to eat at least two items off his or her lunch tray. In these days, there was only one lunch–entree, two sides, and milk–and everyone got the same thing. Salad bars, pizza buffets, and snack machines were unheard of. Some days I could stand: pizza, even at its greasy, fake cheese, doughy crust worst is, after all, still pizza. Some days I could skate by on a technicality, eating the applesauce and carrot curls off my tray’s margins, leaving the sad main course wilting in the middle. But some days there was no escape.

I wasn’t a very picky kid. I grew up on homegrown vegetables, pinto beans, and hot biscuits. Aside from a brief period in which I developed a strange aversion to the crunch of al dente onions in omelets, I’d eat pretty much anything. And I’d had my share of cheap meat–cube steak, salmon cakes, and bologna were perennial childhood favorites. It wasn’t a nascent tendency toward gastro-snobbery that led me down the crooked path. It was shitty, shitty food.

The burnt-orange grease soaking through the sloppy joe’s paper-white bun made the mushy canned peas look even more like something a very sick dog might barf onto the carpet. My wee palate couldn’t take it, and E-for-Excellent lunchtime behavior be damned, I wasn’t eating that crap.

I threw the sloppy joe on the floor under our table, where I hoped it would remain unnoticed like the other, smaller culinary offenses I’d similarly banished at lunchtime throughout the year.

But this time, I got caught.

Interestingly, I don’t remember what my punishment was. I’m sure I probably had to clean up the mess I’d made (rightly so). Maybe I had to eat a “fresh” (sic) sloppy joe. Maybe my mom got a note from the teacher. I don’t recall. The shame of public chastisement was enough to make me eat my horrible food like a good girl, at least for a while.

Jamie Oliver, you’ve got your work cut out for you. We’ve been feeding our children dreck for decades.

Flash forward to just last month, when my Man Friend and I went on a reconnaissance mission of sorts. We’re planning a long trip, and we’re prepping and dehydrating most of our food. (Even if I were able to eat wheat, six months of ramen doesn’t sound like a great idea.) For the next five months, we’re more than doubling our grocery bill, as we’ll be buying our usual provisions, plus enough for the roughly six months we’ll be on the trail. Any place promising huge savings starts to look pretty alluring.

We don’t have a Costco around here, which is “better”, according to People I Know. But we do have a Sam’s Club just up the road. (I’m not linking to either of these. You can find them, if you must.)

I had reservations. Since I gave up on “normal” grocery stores (except for the occasional beer or toilet paper run), and I avoid WalMart like the plague that it is, I had certain preconceived notions about what I would find behind those smiling greeter/bouncers posted at every Sam’s front door. Specifically, I imagined hordes of boneless scooter pilots, a la Wall-E, glassy-eyed, perusing acres of individually wrapped corn syrup delivery systems and molded plastic things. Unfair? Maybe. But not wholly unfounded in reality.

Does the unflattering image I’ve presented make me an elitist? Anti-American? A Communist? A dirty hippy? Or just your garden-variety smug pain in the ass?

You can decide for yourself on that one. For my part, I think the “boon” of cheap shit available to all at any store whose name involves “Mart” or “Dollar” (and many that don’t) has been a grand Trojan Horse scheme that ultimately doesn’t bring any good to anyone. So I keep my participation to the utmost minimum.

And yet, there we were, strolling the aisles and taking notes about how much a person might save by buying beans twenty pounds at a time.

The experience was both sobering and enlightening.

For one, it served to remind me how far outside the mainstream we live–and we’re still pretty darn normal when it comes down to it, 4WD gas guzzler in the driveway, on-grid electric lights and heat, two cell phones, two computers, two bathrooms and all. I can pass in normal company, so long as I don’t start talking about composting toilets. But I was struck by the dearth of real food available in this mighty temple of retail, and by the gall of food marketing in general. Words like natural and fresh long ago lost any real meaning; words that ought to have a very specific, clear, and obvious meaning are quickly being co-opted as well. Organic and artisanal are next. The only way to really know what’s in your food is to have direct knowledge of what went into it, by making it yourself or knowing the people who did.

For the last nine months or so, I’ve been buying my vegetables, fruit, meat, cheese, and eggs directly from the people who grew or raised or made them. I know their names. I know some of their kids. I’ve met the goat who produces my milk (her name is Luna, and she makes me miss Naomi and Leah). I find this profoundly satisfying and comforting–and it’s something I’d love the average Sam’s shopper to share. I don’t know that I personally am better than anyone else simply for the consumer choices I make, but I do believe that those choices themselves are better for everyone. There’s a difference.

I really do believe in working out one’s own salvation with fear and trembling. I am keenly aware of the privilege inherent in even having a conversation about choosing organic or fair trade when lots of folks barely have access to food of any kind at all. I do indeed have an agenda–in the sense that I deeply believe that “normal” is on the wrong path and I’m doing what I can to take it off course a little–but I don’t stand over the Thanksgiving potluck table lambasting the person who brought the Tyson turkey or the dozens who are enjoying eating it.

Is it really any surprise that the little girl who was revolted by a commercially produced sloppy joe has become the woman who gets a stomachache in the grocery section at Sam’s?

Aside from my moral revulsion (and I do believe that how we produce our food is a moral issue), the Sam’s trip was a dose of reality: while I adamantly believe that even the poorest folks–especially in this country, where “poor” doesn’t mean what it means other places–can still feed their families wholesome, healthy food, I understand a little better now why people will argue the opposite position so voraciously.

It all comes down to $1.98 a pound beef.

That’s the line in the sand. The people on the other side won’t cross it until and unless they agree that a low, low price isn’t worth the cost of filthy CAFOs, drug-resistant bacteria, artificial hormones, poor nutrition, environmental impact, and the money taken out of the local farmers‘ pockets. Nevermind that corporate meat and conventional produce just doesn’t taste good. Even the most diehard WalMart shopper I’ve talked to will agree that his grandma would say that food just doesn’t taste like it used to.

The day after the Sam’s trip, I ran some numbers and was almost swayed to join.

The day after that, I realized I’m not comfortable with the trade off. It’s not worth a few hundred dollars–just a couple extra shifts at work, to put that into perspective–to participate in a corporate system that’s fundamentally at odds with my values. It’s not worth diverting money away from local farmers, from organic producers, from sustainable practices just to save me a little extra work.

The sticker shock from the quarter-wheel of cheese I bought yesterday had me briefly rethinking that strategy, but only sort of. (Side note: want to garner some funny looks in the grocery store? Buy cheese eight pounds at a time.) At the end of the day, I’d rather turn down my thermostat (set at 60 right now) and buy good cheese. My money is going toward nourishment for my body, and so much more. My money–a citizen’s prime expression of power in a capitalist world–is supporting my own health as well as the health of farm workers, my neighbors, livestock, wildlife, and the soil, without which we’d have none of the former.

The little girl with a mouthful of her mother’s garden dirt knew this truth. And she still remembers it.

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Posted in Food Production and Politics, Green and Growing

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Magic, apples

Posted on November 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

Peeling, slicing, and dehydrating a bushel of apples is no small task. It’s actually a pretty hefty (and tedious, and sticky, and sweet-smelling) task. That—and sundry other projects and experiments—is how I’ve been spending my erstwhile writing time. It’s not a bad trade—I’ve always had more fingers in more pies than I have time—but there’s one thing: as it turns out, cutting off the outlet for the words doesn’t mean they stop coming. When I spend too much time with a paring knife in my hand instead of a pen, my desk gets drifted in under a patchwork of hastily scrawled notes—first lines; rhetorical questions; rhetorical answers; swaggering grown-up ideas and barely-formed idea-lettes; cryptic messages I can’t decipher later; weeks-old reminders to write this now, like, this week, really, or else!—and the state of my mind starts to remind me of the view through the dryer door, colors swirling and tumbling, fuzz accumulating in the lint trap, a sock-yet-to-be-determined destined to be lost before the cycle is done.

This doesn’t worry me, but it does preoccupy me. (The Man Friend keeps telling me there’s no difference between those two. I maintain otherwise, but I’m biased in my own defense.)

How do you prioritize your time when you love (or are fascinated by or get paid to do) everything you do? I can do narrowed focus, but only in short bursts. Then my hedonist, too-big brain acts up again: More! More! Mooooooooorrrrre!

I finally got a library card. Me turned loose amongst books I can take home for free is exhilarating and possibly a little frightening, and it might just be counter-productive. I have four books about knitting sitting on my desk right now, but I don’t even own knitting needles. One of them contains nothing but sock patterns. Sock. Patterns.

I’m embarrassingly excited by that book.

But we were talking time management. I’m not convinced it’s the unmitigated virtue that Human Resources professionals the world over would have you believe. Okay, I will take on the intellectual task of ranking my interests-du-jour, but taking on intellectual tasks also happens to be simply another interest du jour. Really, I’m not about to decide if I want to devote more time to the knitting I don’t yet do, or to the garden I’m lazily cultivating on property I don’t own, or to playing the guitar that’s sitting in our guest bedroom, unstrummed for months now. For the indefinite future, I’d rather keep doing it all, scattershot but with feeling.

Difference is, I’m gonna make more time to do it. I’m going to conjure more ours in my day—a thing that, in this culture especially, seems a bit like pure magic.

How? Well, the key word in that declaration is my. More time in my day. More time in the day that is mine, and mine alone. Not an employer’s—and, by extension, not the credit card company’s, not the power company’s, not the supermarket’s.

I’ve talked about this before. If I sound like a broken record, it’s because something like this will occupy a considerable amount of one’s thought, for a considerable amount of time, especially when it’s still more concept than reality. I have a dream, and I can’t help but talk about it.

And it’s interesting to see some similar themes being played out in society at large. We personally aren’t Occupying anything in particular, but we’re spending less money in general, and a bigger piece of that we’re putting directly into the hands of the actual people who made or grew or created what we need. We’re paying off those last lingering credit card balances and won’t be using the things again. We bank credit union locally. I learned how to darn (and decided that there’s a reason that word doubles as a mild expletive) and decided (and keep re-deciding) that I don’t actually need any more clothes (not ever, but at least for now). We keep shrinking the grocery budget, but somehow keep eating well. We go out less, and enjoy it a little more for that. We’re purging some of the indoctrination of industrialized peoples, taking on DIY projects that I used to think couldn’t (or shouldn’t) be DIY-ed. I’m learning to appreciate beautiful things without needing to own them. But most of all, we’re working up to a place where we won’t have to work for someone else—not much, at first; then, with luck, at all.

Who doesn’t have time to write now?

Unless, of course, I take up willow basketry, from cultivation to construction. Or the fiddle. Or building a house. Or a new fascination I haven’t even thought of yet.

But what a problem to have.

In my more addled moments, I want to slip on those comfy, broken-in old habits and get all worked up about not Doing It All. But today was one of those gorgeous fall days when the soft grey sky makes the last leaves shine like copper and the air won’t quite let you take your jacket off, and who wants to get fraught on such a day?

To-do lists are fine. I love to-do lists. When wielded with compassion (most of all for myself), they’re incredible tools for inspiration and motivation. Just don’t try to turn them into I-didn’t lists, or I-should-have lists. They’re fans for flames, fuel for fires, seeds for starting, not whips for self-flagellation.

Peel apples if apples are on your list. Enjoy the time spent and the work done for what it is, not what it isn’t. The other stuff on your list… well, it’s still on the list. Enjoy that, too.

And hey—poof! just like that, you get an extra hour this weekend! How’s that for magic?

(Sidebar: I rolled in to the farmer’s market expecting to buy a bushel basket of apples. Was a little taken aback to find them in cardboard boxes. Can’t say why exactly… but when I think bushel, I think basket. And this song. Do with that information what you will.) /digression

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Posted in Writing about not writing

Josh Ritter

Posted on October 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

I had the enormous good fortune to see Josh Ritter give a reading tonight from his debut novel, Bright’s Passage. The book itself sounds wonderful–the passages he read were full of humor and depth and the sharp detail I know from his songwriting. During the Q&A portion of the event, he said something I need to chew on for a while, which was this:

Maybe what makes us human is our ability to be confused.

Animals, he argued, don’t appear to experience moral quandary–and that’s part of what both draws us to them and keeps us from truly understanding their experience.

It’s part of what Mark Twain got right–this paradox of loving a country, a place, its people, while being utterly confounded by them–and what makes his work so wise and so rich.

Gotta think on this one for a bit.

Now, enjoy some music:

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Posted in Wise Words

Tagged

Gonna get myself a rocking chair

Posted on October 2, 2011 | 3 Comments

There is snow on the mountains at the Tennessee border today, still on the ground into the afternoon. I spent the afternoon in a quiet house, reading while the dogs napped and the wind blew leaves onto the porch outside.

Taking a few hours to do something simple, just for pleasure, is a rare gift these days–and, I must admit, it took a good hour for me just to give in to its magic. My mind kept returning to the ever-present mental to-do list, reassuring myself that every item on it could wait until later. I’d read a few pages, then take a moment to consciously relax my shoulders, easing tension out of my neck and jaw.

When you’re too wound up about your life to enjoy time in a rocking chair, you know something’s gotta change.

That change has begun–and, like most things (and contrary to our wishes), it ain’t a quick process. It started with… well, I’m not entirely sure where or when it started, because who can identify the first grains that start the landslide? Following our instincts and leaving a city that (despite dearly beloved friends and a heart-stopping landscape) didn’t quite fit was part of the perceptible beginning, when solid ground started to move. But there were many steps that brought us to here, and it would be impossible (and, ultimately, irrelevant) to trace each of them.

We’re here, and that slide is only gaining momentum.

My mother came to visit this weekend, and the time was more celebratory than usual. It’s hard, when the story you’re telling involves so much of someone else’s, to know how much is okay to say. But some stories are worth sharing, because they inspire the rest of us to reach for the extraordinary.

Simply put, my mother bought her freedom. It’s a thing that most people die without accomplishing–and, I dare say, a thing many probably fear. The price was decades in the paying, and she’s still learning to give herself credit for what she’s done (I’m doing what I can to help on that front!). It bears trumpeting from rooftops: she sold her house, quit her job, and is on her way to living on her own terms, in the way she wants to live.

The chief measures of success these days seem to be excessive material wealth, personal notoriety, and time for leisure and indolence. By these measures, my mother is an abject failure.

I hope, one day soon, to fail just as spectacularly.

Her success means she has ahead of her much labor and sweat, but in such sweet toil. While she was here, we talked a lot about where she’ll embark on this new life (I’m rooting for somewhere just up the road from me, for purely selfish reasons). We talked about raising and preserving food; about energy independence, old houses, how cooperation and independence intersect. About the simple pleasure of good soil and clean sweat.

We talked about reclaiming the definition of work to mean something like: that labor which produces only those things we require to sustain and make secure and nurture. We talked about variety and diversification, and how nature abhors an assembly line. How a couple acres can produce more than most of us need, and the peace that comes with being beholden to no one for paycheck or shelter or food or affirmation.

Lofty stuff. But suddenly feeling quite within reach.

So, while the Man Friend and I were already headed in this direction on our own, bearing witness to such an accomplishment still begs the question:

What are you putting off?

And why?

Is it because of your job, and the paycheck or respect or access it brings? Is it your too-big house, your too-expensive car, your cool tee shirts? Do you secretly fear being truly independent, the way some of us fear heights or public speaking, for the vulnerabilities they uncover? Remember the Dalai Lama. Remember what you wanted to be, as a kid or as a new graduate, or as yourself now, in your most unguarded moments. Remember my mom, and anyone you may know who is like her, learning to live by their own definitions, setting their own priorities.

Our first task in putting back on that which we have put off is to sort the stuff that matters from the stuff that doesn’t–a thing that probably sounds fairly straightforward, until you start thinking about it. I’m still learning myself, but I’ll give you one bit of advice: if the sorting doesn’t make you uncomfortable, you’re probably not doing it right. Delve deeper–the digging is worth it.

We’re digging over here, sorting and culling and trimming fat. It’s uncovered old, done patterns, and revealed the fallacy of taking anything for granted. It hurts sometimes, but in that good way, like when strong hands knead those knots out of my shoulders, or when my legs ache from carrying my weight up and over mountains. Good hurt. The hurt of change, of growth.

The means are still in the works, but the end could be described simply as this: a life that doesn’t put knots in my shoulders; a me who can rock in a rocking chair, untroubled, for a few short hours one cold, sunny, still afternoon.

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Posted in The Good Life

Limen

Posted on September 22, 2011 | 1 Comment

Beginnings have names.

The calendar declares
tomorrow
the start of fall
with the same authority
it sets aside
Christmas
Mother’s Day
and
Bank Holiday (CAN).

There is no word for today,
only a
blank
white
square.

Even so
summer’s last
declares itself,
paperless
and
on its own schedule.

I felt it last week
in jacket-cool mornings.
Felt it in the click
of window latches thrown
for the first time
since spring.
Felt it in slow acorn rain
tapping out code
on our shingles.

Felt it coming
the way music pushes
your feet and
without looking
you know your
next dance partner
stands at your elbow,
arms open.

Let the echo of summer’s
hot touch hang
in that moment,
its phantom handprint
already invisible
but still warm on your skin.

Fall’s first reaches out,
even-handed.

Reach back from
today
the last day the
scales still tip
with the weight of light.

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Posted in My Poetry

Cool tee shirts

Posted on September 13, 2011 | 4 Comments

What with all the job-shifting and related identity adjustments going on over here, I’ve been thinking a lot about–well, about what amounts to the entire table of contents of just about any book you could pull off the Self-Examination for the Intellectual and Vaguely Buddhist, but, you know, Not In the Annoying Way That All Those Other People Are Doing It shelf down at your local crunchy-granola book collective. (What, your town doesn’t have one of those?)

My loyal readers (all three of you) might have noticed that I finally settled on a name for this here blog (and it only took 2 years!), and it’s characteristically obtuse, self-congratulatory in its cleverness, obscurely (arguably) humorous, and probably more complicated than it has to be. (But, hey–if you ask The Google, you’ll see that I’m not the first to think of it.) But I digress. The point is this: I come here to write for the sake of working things out in my own head. That a few of you take the time to read my ramblings is gratifying. It’s a very personal (self-indulgent?) endeavor, and I’m not going to try to make it something else that it’s not. There is already a wealth of useful information out there about anything I’d be inclined to write about–bikes, gardening, food politics, cooking, “green” living (and its unfortunate companion, greenwashing), yoga, music, books–and I don’t think I’ve got much new to add to that pool. And, anyway, trying to impose order here (sticking to a narrow theme or purpose) means constant work to contain and direct the energy of these words. To stay on message, as it were. This, in turn, leads to a minor crisis about what is and is not “important” enough to sprout a blog post.

Being overly self-conscious about the possible reception of any given post is tetanus for your writing muscles.

I’m swearing it off–all the internal drama about what’s worth publishing, all the internal criticism about whether or not the blog is boring. My site stats tell me that you keep coming back, even if by accident. For that, I say thank you. You are welcome anytime. Come back as you will, and I’ll do the same.

But I was talking about navel-gazing. One thing that’s been on my (our) mind(s) is how much of our behavior is dictated to us, frequently by people or entities we don’t like or don’t agree with. This happens both with and without our notice–though I’m taking note more often these days. Comes with all that pondering, I suppose.

Waylon over at elephant journal has posted a link to a novel Australian TV show that pits advertising companies against each other in a bid to “sell the unsellable.” Apparently, this has been quite the successful concept, and they seem to have had enthusiastic participation–until they asked for ads about banning all religion.

What intrigues me about this show is not that it attempts to distill incendiary ideas down into thirty-second TV spots, but rather how it not-so-subtly highlights the role marketing plays in our everyday lives. None of us are all that surprised to see commercials for ideas–even strange or unpopular ones. Campaign spots, PSAs, satire, and all those videos your friends share on facebook have taken care of that. What, then, makes this show’s concept compelling? Jarring, even?

I think it has, in some small way, removed the veneer of polite distance from the very act of advertising itself. Advertising is unobtrusive to the average person because it’s familiar. It’s selling you things you already are accustomed to see being sold (toothpaste, cars, toilet paper, popular music), and so it doesn’t feel challenging or confrontational. (I’m not talking about specific commercials–I’m sure most folk could agree that some are amusing while others are annoying. I’m talking about the very existence of advertising at all, which, I suspect, most people don’t question.) You might disagree with an ad’s assertion that toothpaste X will whiten and brighten and freshen better than toothpaste Y, but that’s cool. You and that guy Ad can nod when you pass in the hall and acknowledge each other; you will smile internally at how you’re too independent to fall for Ad’s game, while Ad is smugly confident knowing that his work is far more effective than you will ever know.

We’ve accepted that with our cherished freedom to choose comes a little friendly prodding about what choice to make. Hey, it’s just a little capitalism–nothing to be frightened of. That chewing gum commercial doesn’t feel strange because the product in question is ultimately trivial–your choice of chewing gum may indeed express a host of things about your personality and desirability and popularity, but it’s a harmless exercise. Who cares if someone else wants to try to convince you the other guy’s gum is better? And, anyway, every time you see the ad for your preferred brand, with its sexy models or funny punchlines or cute talking animals, your self image gets a tiny boost. You chose that brand, the brand of pretty, laughing people–ergo, you yourself must be (or have much in common with) an attractive and happy person.

But when a commercial tries to sell you an idea that you either A) aren’t accustomed to seeing sold at all or B) directly challenges a foundational belief, suddenly the arrangement doesn’t seem so congenial. This ad, apart from the particulars of its content, has drawn attention to the fact that someone is trying to tell you what to think. We’re comfortable with this when it comes to brand choice, because we’ve managed to accept the idea that products are personal–as expressions of our wealth and taste–but, you know, not that personal–you’re no ad man’s slave, you know. But if some marketeer tries to tinker with our moral fiber (nevermind that this is precisely what they do, day after day), then hoo boy… watch out. We’ll get mighty uncomfortable. And possibly vocal about it, for a brief time. Might even tweet about our discomfort before we settle back into our fluffy recliners and switch on the Everybody Loves Raymond reruns.

And that’s it, really. It’s far simpler to indulge momentary, fruitless outrage than it is to really examine what can and cannot be commodified, and what implications that has for the particulars of one’s own life.

Because, once you realize that we’ve successfully commodified all of it, what do you do with that information?

What person of my generation didn’t have their very own Lloyd Dobler moment?

And didn’t it sound great at the time?

But haven’t you grown quite accustomed to your house and your car and your teevee and your stuff?

Here’s something I keep running up against: my ideals remain, well, just that. On paper, lovingkindness sounds fantastic. In reality, people can be awful (myself included). In the abstract, justice is a fine thing, fearlessness is admirable, and the human capacity for greatness is limitless.

Seems rather different when one picks up a newspaper, doesn’t it?

Another one, that I’ve nodded my head to in agreement for years and years: stuff is just stuff. In the scheme of self-improvement and enlightened living, this is an obvious place to start. Attachment to things seems like the low-hanging fruit. Easy, really. I’ve read some shit. I’ve watched Fight Club. My stuff doesn’t define me.

Or does it?

It’s one thing to nod along in enthusiastic agreement when someone like the venerated Thoreau writes, “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” And this: “Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable…but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” And when no less an elevated soul than the Dalai Lama says, when asked what surprises him most, said:

Easy to read this on a sunny afternoon, feet up, netbook open on your lap, hot coffee at hand. Easy to express wholehearted concurrence. Easy.

But it ain’t.

When the conditions are right, though, you can open that door. On a lazy afternoon not so long ago, a few pints in the shade by the river did just that. The Man Friend and I were talking about a big change that’s coming up for us (I’ll tell you all about it soon, I promise… I’m still working through the embarrassment at how scattered it makes me look after a summer of other, now-on-hold “big changes” announced on these pages), a change that butts right up against all these precious ideals I’ve emptily clung to for all these years–in particular, the true nature of our attachment to stuff.

At the prospect of getting rid of most of our possessions–coldly weighing questions of sentimental value versus market value and storage unit costs–the way should be clear for a virtuous, unattached thinker like myself, no?

A thought occurred to me, and made me laugh out loud.

“What?” he asked.

I had to get a few last, mildly hysterical giggles out before the words could form: “I was just thinking, But I have such cool tee shirts.”

He (as he does) instantly saw the problem.

“Yeah,” he agreed, with a rueful look, “I have cool tee shirts, too.”

In silence, we both took a long sip, watched the golden light play on the undulating surface of the French Broad, and considered our lives without the cachet of cool tee shirts.

Then we both laughed some more.

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Posted in Thinking too much

Tagged ,