No, you did not drive me to drink. I read your reply moments before stepping out for a Spain walk with Rose that would end up with a beer downtown. Any long excursion on foot we call “Spain walk” because during the tail end of COVID, we got stranded in a small town in Spain and put 130 miles on our feet exploring the environs:)
I used to write poetry, and then I made picture poems (paintings with text). My first picture “poem” was a tree with purple, green and yellow leaves with the words “Pirate cook gots his lost daughter leaf”. It was a tree outside my hovel where my 4 year old daughter and I pretended.
Oh there is certainly truth. I just don’t think many people (including me) reach out to it, even when it’s in plain sight. I believe the essay was more about human hypocrisy and striving for newspaper and magazine lives without acknowledging our responsibility to our grandchildren, and all life on earth. People have evolved to be too complex in our own heads and on the factory floor, and now we have the Anthropocene. A typical American has 120 times the carbon footprint of the average Bangladeshi. We certainly have different opinions about how our futures should pan out. I was at a Father’s Day picnic in Iterlaken last week. Across the lake was an old coal firing plant turned into a Bitcoin mining fiasco that actually pumps more carbon into the atmosphere than the old powerplant did! Lots of opinions about that, but only one truth. People suck. We will destroy ourselves for an abstraction. However, all trees and millions of other species don’t get the option to be so greedy, needy and dangerously stupid. A Father’s Day picnic in Interlaken. 160 miles for potato salad! If I was a tree with opposable twigs and a sword, I’d cut that arrogance off at the knees.
I believe poverty is a path to truths that do not annihilate. On our “Spain walk” I told Rose that in one week she and I “recycle” more non-biodegradable trash than all of Europe throughout the 8th century. Yes, I know, the entire human world, over all centuries, until the invention of plastic for airplanes and Lunchables®.
Unfortunately, mass poverty (simple living) cannot return without a global human tragedy. So I just pretend with more opinions. I Spain walk to the local bar and drive all day on Sundays for potato salad and a good time.
I like your poem.
I don't know about that. There are many people where I live now, just southwest of you, who are doing that quite happily. Maybe not to your extreme, but they are growing and raising nearly all of their food, bartering for the rest and other services, and homeschooling gobs of children. More of us do this everyday, simply for the loveliness of that life.
Except for what I grow myself, I get most of my food from this community. I barter for other services. I need very little money - my largest expenses are for real estate taxes. I do make regular 120 mile drives to a lake shore property of mine though, but in my Honda Fit, which is fantastic on gas. I produce one small half a bag of garbage a week. I understand about the plastic, and try mightily to use as little of that stuff as I can. Not buying food in grocery stores is very good for that. When I look in others refrigerators, I wonder how there can possibly be room for food, for all the plastic that is in there. I wrote a story about that once upon a time.
I sound like I am singing my praises. Am I? Maybe. I like myself these days. It wasn't always so.
Yes, there are pockets of people and many individuals living the good life. Individuals are everywhere! And then there is 30 mile bumper to bumper traffic on the Massachusetts turnpike.
This “poverty” project of mine has really opened my eyes. For every aware person, there is an entire city of arrogant ignorance.
I’m glad you have a thriving community. I think I’m hanging with the wrong crowd round these parts:) Thanks for the link. I’ll go check it out.
And yes, sing your praises!