"...if everything were to decompose at the same speed, the end product would not be so valuable."
-- Stu Campbell, Let It Rot!
It's just a nice simple 70's book on composting. But for some reason, the metaphorical implications - the personal or the interpersonal implications, perhaps - of this one sentence have fascinated me more than anything I've read in the last week.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
joining
One of those very basic paradoxes that comes along...so basic that it goes unnoticed, and finds a dim corner, and settles in...and you know how paradoxes, unrecognized (only seen in the rushed halflight of everyday barelyconsciousness) can drain the soul's energies...but how, acknowledged, they can catalyze, energize, help to real-ize....or do you know? And do I know? I can't actually explain this, in so many words, but I think I know it...
Anyway, my (current) paradox seems to be this: that in pursuit of the earnest goal of avoiding conflict, I frequently find myself generating more. In its unrecognized form, simple: the avoidance, and the fact that avoidance is often impossible, creates constant conflict. By definition. A definition that yes, many already know. But the paradox, once acknowledged: joining the battle, as it were, I join Life as well. Life being never either static or stagnant. Life being never avoidant (also, perhaps, by definition). Life being at times a battle, in a manner of seeing. Between free wills. Among mutually exclusive possibilities. Between diverse lives, all seeking to continue. Among near-infinite complexities of systems, populations, ecologies.
Joining: I wanted to find it, first, possible to stop fighting. Anything. Altogether. But this I didn't find. Only a turning, a whirling actually, an about-face. Instead of turning my back to the chaos, turning my energies into it. Standing ground instead of running, in small part. Engaging conflict (of whatever kind, on whatever level) instead of fleeing it, more. Reversing the flow, I hope, eventually. Or only my little current in the flow. Joining the battle and finding how many of us, in how many moments of shattering illusions, are in fact fighting on the same side. Arriving at a point of confluence, convergence that negates any concept of conflict. Simply because currents unite as we fight for, and for nothing less than, our lives...
I'm not saying I know anything here. Not, at least, anything new. Just trying to see a little more clearly. See my way to joining.
Anyway, my (current) paradox seems to be this: that in pursuit of the earnest goal of avoiding conflict, I frequently find myself generating more. In its unrecognized form, simple: the avoidance, and the fact that avoidance is often impossible, creates constant conflict. By definition. A definition that yes, many already know. But the paradox, once acknowledged: joining the battle, as it were, I join Life as well. Life being never either static or stagnant. Life being never avoidant (also, perhaps, by definition). Life being at times a battle, in a manner of seeing. Between free wills. Among mutually exclusive possibilities. Between diverse lives, all seeking to continue. Among near-infinite complexities of systems, populations, ecologies.
Joining: I wanted to find it, first, possible to stop fighting. Anything. Altogether. But this I didn't find. Only a turning, a whirling actually, an about-face. Instead of turning my back to the chaos, turning my energies into it. Standing ground instead of running, in small part. Engaging conflict (of whatever kind, on whatever level) instead of fleeing it, more. Reversing the flow, I hope, eventually. Or only my little current in the flow. Joining the battle and finding how many of us, in how many moments of shattering illusions, are in fact fighting on the same side. Arriving at a point of confluence, convergence that negates any concept of conflict. Simply because currents unite as we fight for, and for nothing less than, our lives...
I'm not saying I know anything here. Not, at least, anything new. Just trying to see a little more clearly. See my way to joining.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
rot
Todo tiene que morir
para al fin
vivir
-- Charanga Cakewalk, "Vida Magica"
"Yes, rot is the word. Rot means death, and without death and rot there can be no new life... Nature never loses anything: she preserves and protects herself. It is only a fool man who squanders his substance and makes himself poor, and everybody around him, and the land he lives on too."
-- anonymous letter, quoted by Wendell Berry in The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture
One of permaculture's first principles, as I understand it, is this: don't do any work yourself that the earth is willing to do for you. In a practice concerned with the conservation of energies of all kinds, this makes perfect sense. Permaculture sites reflect this ideal in home-centric planting designs, landform-conscious erosion controls, and gravity-supported water recycling. To give just a few examples.
To stretch this principle only a bit, there are at any moment in this heedless headlong society many people who can do some of the work for us, too. And we the ones who can utilize the momentum of their less-than-conscious actions. All the food that gets made and then trashed -- or, now and then, donated -- there for those of us willing to collect and redistribute it instead of purchasing. All the designer clothes worn twice and then left for us at Goodwill. All of the earth's original and extravagant gifts to us, labelled "waste". Then treated as such, after any other understanding gets forgotten. Wealth on every side, worked for and then discarded, disregarded.
In the past couple of weeks, I've found entertainment and a small sense of purpose in stealing the bagged leaves of the citizens of Albuquerque. I suppose, if I had wanted to gather organic matter honestly, I could've started my own landscaping service and gone door-to-door asking to rake people's yards in trade for the takings. But they're already hiring somebody else to do the work. And then discarding the wealth of potential that's collected from their own backyards. And although I recently learned that a city composting facility exists, and although our municipal website (cabq.gov) assures its readers that collected 'green waste' is used in local parks, I'm skeptical. Due to the degree of manicuring that I see in almost all of this city's parks (where it does not seem very likely that composted organic material would fit with those mowed expanses of grass, which should not even exist in New Mexico). And due to the astonishing numbers of garbage bags that I've been seeing all over town, on my daily delivery routes. I'm skeptical that this is a city ready to recycle on such a level. Some "single family dwellings" have been supporting black-bag populations of over 20 by my count, thanks to the fantastic efficiency of hired leaf-blowers and the level of disconnect that requires every fallen object to be removed from the "landscape". Without any realization that it's part of that landscape for a reason. Part of a system created to recycle itself beautifully every fall, by means of the natural elements which people have renamed "waste". These homes, in fact, are in some of the city's most prosperous neighborhoods. But this kind of occupation of a space -- depriving one's homeground of the very materials that sustain its wellbeing -- is in my view (and Wendell Berry's) a poverty of the most essential kind.
So at this point, 20-30 large bags of "waste" have found a new home in my garden, which is about a quarter of an acre. The goal is to sheet-mulch as much of the area as possible, before the ground freezes and before the bags are all taken away from the curbs. (The next best thing for the land, I'm hoping, since I moved into the place too late in the year to think about cover crops.) Opening each plastic package, once on site, has been just a little Christmas-like. Many of the bags were filled with clean, dry cottonwood leaves that sang with a lovely raspy rustle as they sifted out. Three or four from the first house held the remains of somebody's-last-year's garden: mummified chile and tomato plants, which perhaps will tell their sun-stories to the bare ground as it waits for its own turn to support new life. One bag spilled out a cascade of elm seeds: our favorite garden plague around here. That one went right back to the trash. Another bag turned out to be filled with fresh green English ivy cuttings. Since the property where I live is surrounded by bare chainlink fences that could use some cover, I filled a 5-gallon bucket with some of the vines to see if they'll root and be transplantable later.
The next step in the mulching process was going to be an unimaginable number of trips with a heavy bucket, to water it down and give the decomposition process a jump-start. Since at present my only garden hose would be better used as a drip-irrigation system, so cracked and full of holes it is. And since in New Mexico we don't normally count on precipitation to help these processes along. But, happily, this morning proved me wrong in that regard. It's raining today: a precious, light, silvery fall that I think is what the Navajos call "female rain". The kind that brings no pressure or destructive force -- only quiet nurture. I was on the way out the door to work, but when I saw the rain I ran outside in my work clothes, and ripped open another dozen of the still-bagged leaves. Scattered them on the beds that were uncovered, and left the rain (with much gratitude) to do the rest of the work for me. Let the decomposition commence. Let the rot begin. Let death have its original, rightful place after the season of life and growth. Let Creation's gifts have their respect again, reclaimed from the denial of this consumptive, disposable, and (saddest of all) forgetful society. And let the giving earth offer the renewing work that it's here -- if we let it -- to do for us.
para al fin
vivir
-- Charanga Cakewalk, "Vida Magica"
"Yes, rot is the word. Rot means death, and without death and rot there can be no new life... Nature never loses anything: she preserves and protects herself. It is only a fool man who squanders his substance and makes himself poor, and everybody around him, and the land he lives on too."
-- anonymous letter, quoted by Wendell Berry in The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture
One of permaculture's first principles, as I understand it, is this: don't do any work yourself that the earth is willing to do for you. In a practice concerned with the conservation of energies of all kinds, this makes perfect sense. Permaculture sites reflect this ideal in home-centric planting designs, landform-conscious erosion controls, and gravity-supported water recycling. To give just a few examples.
To stretch this principle only a bit, there are at any moment in this heedless headlong society many people who can do some of the work for us, too. And we the ones who can utilize the momentum of their less-than-conscious actions. All the food that gets made and then trashed -- or, now and then, donated -- there for those of us willing to collect and redistribute it instead of purchasing. All the designer clothes worn twice and then left for us at Goodwill. All of the earth's original and extravagant gifts to us, labelled "waste". Then treated as such, after any other understanding gets forgotten. Wealth on every side, worked for and then discarded, disregarded.
In the past couple of weeks, I've found entertainment and a small sense of purpose in stealing the bagged leaves of the citizens of Albuquerque. I suppose, if I had wanted to gather organic matter honestly, I could've started my own landscaping service and gone door-to-door asking to rake people's yards in trade for the takings. But they're already hiring somebody else to do the work. And then discarding the wealth of potential that's collected from their own backyards. And although I recently learned that a city composting facility exists, and although our municipal website (cabq.gov) assures its readers that collected 'green waste' is used in local parks, I'm skeptical. Due to the degree of manicuring that I see in almost all of this city's parks (where it does not seem very likely that composted organic material would fit with those mowed expanses of grass, which should not even exist in New Mexico). And due to the astonishing numbers of garbage bags that I've been seeing all over town, on my daily delivery routes. I'm skeptical that this is a city ready to recycle on such a level. Some "single family dwellings" have been supporting black-bag populations of over 20 by my count, thanks to the fantastic efficiency of hired leaf-blowers and the level of disconnect that requires every fallen object to be removed from the "landscape". Without any realization that it's part of that landscape for a reason. Part of a system created to recycle itself beautifully every fall, by means of the natural elements which people have renamed "waste". These homes, in fact, are in some of the city's most prosperous neighborhoods. But this kind of occupation of a space -- depriving one's homeground of the very materials that sustain its wellbeing -- is in my view (and Wendell Berry's) a poverty of the most essential kind.
So at this point, 20-30 large bags of "waste" have found a new home in my garden, which is about a quarter of an acre. The goal is to sheet-mulch as much of the area as possible, before the ground freezes and before the bags are all taken away from the curbs. (The next best thing for the land, I'm hoping, since I moved into the place too late in the year to think about cover crops.) Opening each plastic package, once on site, has been just a little Christmas-like. Many of the bags were filled with clean, dry cottonwood leaves that sang with a lovely raspy rustle as they sifted out. Three or four from the first house held the remains of somebody's-last-year's garden: mummified chile and tomato plants, which perhaps will tell their sun-stories to the bare ground as it waits for its own turn to support new life. One bag spilled out a cascade of elm seeds: our favorite garden plague around here. That one went right back to the trash. Another bag turned out to be filled with fresh green English ivy cuttings. Since the property where I live is surrounded by bare chainlink fences that could use some cover, I filled a 5-gallon bucket with some of the vines to see if they'll root and be transplantable later.
The next step in the mulching process was going to be an unimaginable number of trips with a heavy bucket, to water it down and give the decomposition process a jump-start. Since at present my only garden hose would be better used as a drip-irrigation system, so cracked and full of holes it is. And since in New Mexico we don't normally count on precipitation to help these processes along. But, happily, this morning proved me wrong in that regard. It's raining today: a precious, light, silvery fall that I think is what the Navajos call "female rain". The kind that brings no pressure or destructive force -- only quiet nurture. I was on the way out the door to work, but when I saw the rain I ran outside in my work clothes, and ripped open another dozen of the still-bagged leaves. Scattered them on the beds that were uncovered, and left the rain (with much gratitude) to do the rest of the work for me. Let the decomposition commence. Let the rot begin. Let death have its original, rightful place after the season of life and growth. Let Creation's gifts have their respect again, reclaimed from the denial of this consumptive, disposable, and (saddest of all) forgetful society. And let the giving earth offer the renewing work that it's here -- if we let it -- to do for us.
Friday, December 10, 2010
survival
survival mode:
you work so hard that you have no energy left to enjoy the results of your work
you get so tired that you can't sleep anymore
the paycheck is already spent before it arrives
the day overwhelms before it begins
the present feels not like a gift but another obstacle to be avoided
the energy is spent negating, refusing, or avoiding and there's none left for affirming, imagining, or advancing
every thought of give/share/cooperate/create is eclipsed by the list of unmet basic needs
future appears not as possibility but as more disaster recovery
reaction time to hurts, real or perceived, diminishes to one painful, imperceptible instantaneity
dreams and plans go overboard like deadweight on a sinking ship
a partner looks like an adversary, and their kindness looks like judgment, pity or anything else but kindness
breath forgets how to be prayer, or even nurture, or even maintenance, and becomes the sound of the heart retreating
all the answers all the blessings all the love that are still here, every moment, can barely make themselves heard over the small self's voice begging *please* for just an answer, just one blessing, just a little love...
you work so hard that you have no energy left to enjoy the results of your work
you get so tired that you can't sleep anymore
the paycheck is already spent before it arrives
the day overwhelms before it begins
the present feels not like a gift but another obstacle to be avoided
the energy is spent negating, refusing, or avoiding and there's none left for affirming, imagining, or advancing
every thought of give/share/cooperate/create is eclipsed by the list of unmet basic needs
future appears not as possibility but as more disaster recovery
reaction time to hurts, real or perceived, diminishes to one painful, imperceptible instantaneity
dreams and plans go overboard like deadweight on a sinking ship
a partner looks like an adversary, and their kindness looks like judgment, pity or anything else but kindness
breath forgets how to be prayer, or even nurture, or even maintenance, and becomes the sound of the heart retreating
all the answers all the blessings all the love that are still here, every moment, can barely make themselves heard over the small self's voice begging *please* for just an answer, just one blessing, just a little love...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
