So, I've been offline a week or two. It's now xmas eve and not what I'd like to have happening. Instead, it's loud and chaotic, last minute shopping and wrapping, hectic house cleaning (hopefully yet to come)...
...I wish it were a commercial free holiday. Lots of family reminiscing over something significant, something like a Rockwellian holiday, seen through a filter that blurs the edges, candle-lit charm, xmas music in the background, sipping cider...but it will be nothing of the sort all through the holiday.
Yesterday, for a brief interlude, I was in a store I loved, a health food store that was connected to an independent bookstore via a non-Starbucks coffee shop. It was just the kind of place consistent with my true core values and beliefs. It was what I really saw my life being like, going to poetry readings, writing short stories, rapping with peers over weighty subjects. I always wanted to buy things from developing nations, like from 10,0000 villages, the store. I figured I'd have cultivated friendships globally, perhaps served a term or two abroad myself, known hundreds of kindred spirits through Volunteers through Peace, Peace Corps, etc.
I guess, rather than getting sad over it, I should instead realize life takes turns, and that somehow this must be the turn for the best. It reminds me of "It's a Wonderful Life," and more recently, "Click" or "The Family Man" (or whatever it is, with Nicholas Cage). Their lives went west of center, not south, and they had come not to value what they had. It was not what they intended, and thus, it was deemed mediocre. They learned through the movie, what was truly of value.
I know that my family and what we're working on here is truly of value and consistent with my lifelong goals. It has very little semblance to what I visualized it being, but I guess that's okay. In essence, this is it, even if it's in disguise.
Curious.
I hope in the next year to really get into my Mother Earth News and start gardening and building with gusto. I want to cultivate comfortably w/n my means and values, from crops to friends. I want to begin into livestock, but I'm still wondering about living more conscientiously with the animal world (becoming vegetarian?), and I don't like thinking of what it would be like to raise a calf or pig to just slaughter. It's not that I don't acknowledge that it happens daily on my behalf for shoes, belts, and tons of meat right now, but at least I'm not doing it, directly. Maybe being that involved in what we eat will make us more appreciative of it (see slow food movement and related posts). I hope to find my niche in my head that embraces who I wanted to be more comfortably with who I am (it seems) left to be now. I want to see how I can make it all work out together. I am likely to have to work more and more this next year, especially if we are to ever build on or build outbuildings--all these things take money. Then again, more work is not consistent with more family, friends, farming, etc...but I'll work it out.
I hope everyone has a happy holiday and gets to reflect over the year, plan ahead for 2009. I may not get too worked up about these next three years until I see what happens to 2012, the next year prognosticated as the End of the World. After that, well, then maybe I'll start saving money. :)
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1 comment:
Try raising chickens for protein - the eggs are relatively guilt free!
We've tried chickens and rabbit for meat, but we've finally realized that we prefer to buy locally produced meats as our compromise. Here in Wichita we've found grass-fed beef (Turkey Foot Ranch), chicken, and bison. I'm sure there are other options, too, but those are our compromises.
Grass fed beef and bison are also healthier, as they have the "good fats" (omega 3s) rather than the "bad fats" (omega 6s) that come from beef fed on grain (corn, etc.).
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