Design in Time

 It can be frustrating having all the tools for design, application and execution of permaculture, along with experience of growing food and getting it to where it needs to go, and seeing the waste of our food system and our culture of consumption. It is especially frustrating when you are a dreamer and ideas man as i am... mostly unpaid, living with no car, and dreaming of a piece of land/institute/artist hermitage to cultivate and create a space that will forever teach, sustain and provide to the possible and mostly distant next of kin, friends, family, and most of all strangers.

                      DON'T STOP, LIVE GENUINELY.

Through the RDNA year, a lot moved as an artist/gardener with very little drawing/drafting experience and a whole lot of dreams and ideas. the best way i found to cull the somewhat haunting dreams and ideas that flood my mind on a constant and hourly level, was in drawing out what i saw in my mind for designs. of course this is a good idea- any designer will tell you that. but i reached a second terrible space in looking at these finished drawings- damn i like that, and i want it to happen more then ever... 

I am 28 years old. I have no medical insurance. i have not much in savings. no college degree. I am unmarried, and mostly volunteering and unemployed, socially against most of the cultural norm in this country, and don't often relate to my own generation let alone the lower or above.
 I am a statistic that, in my mind, the US and most of western civilization sees as a drain on its resources (even though in reality i use very little), especially since i am technically not contributing to the GDP- the very heart of our destructive culture that puts value on the exploitation of people, resources, and creates all living things (and often non) into statistical commodities.

thus disconnecting everything from its natural relationship to everything else. we then devalue, and then revalue into false markets and ledger sheets. this locks our self and other into the new human drama- the seperation from what Humans are inextricably a part of- Nature and its natural order.
   
"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are."- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, opening from The Social Contract.


 i am a lackluster citizen NOT contributing to the consortium of american consumer culture. i am a Bum, lost soul, and all at once free... sort of.

                                       AND I AM ABSOLUTELY AT PEACE WITH IT.

These two drawings reflect some of those ideals that a growing number (thankfully) of like minded people are moving towards in terms of a self reliance against a hyper-consumer based culture of individualist. we are so driven, and blinded, that we are literally  killing our selves and working even harder to try and counter the very thing that is killing us...  (albeit slowly ill admit and mostly of the usual top 10 diseases related to the very problem i am referring to). 

Between house designs under 1000 square feet, gray water systems, ponds, food forests, passive solar design to heat the buildings, animal husbandry,  medicinal botany, native plant nursery, i have come to realize i have nothing but time on my side...

although most of my plans include succession plantings of some fine plants and animals, many of these reach maturity in 20 years... meaning all the hard labor and work i must accomplish with my own two hands is ticking down a little more every day. 

BUT as i have had in twisting conversations with fellow peers about time- time is a creation of our own existence and consciousness based on our own short life spans and past history (which on the great timeline of time is very very short compared to the rest of the species on this little blue dot).

                                                                           Time. 

Time used to be based on when the sun came up, the seasons changed, the ground could be worked, and the moon was in cycle; not a 9-5 day doing something you most likely don't even love.

 i see time a little differently, finally, in terms of the emphasis we put on how much has been accomplished by a certain age or time, and the expectations that come with it.

we have a life time to do, and not a whole lot of time to spend on thinking about how. application is the best way to spend this said "time". and don't forget to put some time  aside to learn, be in wonder, and share in the curiosity that flows with us in our NATURAL lives.

Where does this leave all of this in the rambling words of this post?

It leaves the fact of the matter that time is always on our side, that accomplishment and success is based on ones own happiness and not that of the status-quo of our toxic culture. its about what YOU want to accomplish, what your dreams are, and designs for a life you are hopefully wanting to be better, and leave behind something others can forever appreciate and wonder at. expectations should be and are only rooted with the self. and DON'T PANIC. living with as little as you need can put into perspective what some of the dreams are that you may want to ultimately leave behind after the short time we all spend on this little blue planet. If you dream and design for a better future, or a future in general, then you may have accomplished more then all the nay sayers of tradition. Permaculture is, after all, about healing what neglect and abuse has been done to both the human, the earth the human relies on indefinitely, and the community in which both (should) exist.  Happy dreaming.

in the year 2023

It seems that we think about the future at every point of our lives.

The moment we start talking about climate change, our economy, even a life crisis, we harp on the inevitable but mostly unpredicted future of tomorrow. We think about "the saving of the planet," and how we need to act now for that future, the future for a living planet, and to make sure we protect those rain forests "for our children's, children's, children's, children".

too much of this would burn me out, and growing up with a lot of it, has.

i mentioned before about not being an eco warrior, and how i might have mentioned, a little harshly, against the general liking of the environmental movement.

For the past 25 years of my life, and almost another 20 before that, we were becoming self aware of our environment and what kind of effect/affect modern, industrialized civilization, has had on both us and the planet.

in less then half a century, our planet became less a far off world, and all at once a very small home to a creature with very big aspirations (Humans).

our oceans started to feel the strain of too much harvest, forests turn to pasture::small towns::paved communities::and cities. our air quality and environmental quality

have quickly depleted. the resources that have fed all of this, are doing the same.

so we know all this. its very sad. in fact, its entirely the best of dooms day any literature, film (even radio show) has yet had to offer.

the small forces (and sometimes very large organizations) working to save it, i think, tend to go about it all wrong: we have tried to address this horrible out look on the future with an approach, business like, on all its levels. we have tried to use the same method of organization and capital that has caused the exact dooms day scenario we are looking at.

when we try and predict and draw an outline to this dooms day-

10 years 5 degrees warmer? 20 years there is not enough food? peak oil now, or in 50 years?

we forget about the exact meaning of "now." the most important part of all this, is living in the now, and starting on a path to living as a being. as being one. as being self reliable. as being part of other beings. community, human power, and the ability to come together and figure it out piece by piece.

build water tanks to collect water.

grow food in any space possible.

share a car, tools, stories, skills, even a fork and knife.

DIY: classes, books, and volunteering.

build a chicken coop and rescue birds from industries.

forage for food, and etc.

so live now. by approaching everything you need as being, you can tackle even the biggest problems you think is entirely out of your control.

think of the roots, and imagine the branches in which they lead-

everything starts with you.

you are the sole consumer/creator of [your] life.

the greatest resource we have of all: our bodies, our minds, and most of all our hands.

everything after that does not matter, because it all comes back to us. we.

if its change we need and want, then the roots will have to be unbound and allowed to grow into the proper space. without the room to grow and change, we will wither away within our own soil, with no room to be human. it seems to me we need a good transplant, and something better then a concrete pot....

Bolinas and the PDC

As of Friday, i will be up in Bolinas CA for a two week permaculture intensive, to be certified as a permaculturalist.

what is permaculture?

In the mid 1970's Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, in response to the horrid destruction of top soil due to industrialized agriculture and the poisoning of biodiversity, water and land in Australia-

had coined from earlier definitions of permanent agriculture or forest culture at the turn of the 1900s, "permanent culture" or permaculture, defining both land and people in the practice of a more permanent sustainability of resources and biome.

at right, ( a quick and poor drawing)is just a quick visual of the 3 key principals of permaculture:

earth care-

this is recognizing that earth is first. we are a part of it, not apart from it, and it takes input of energy just as much as we take from it.. in fact we should be putting more energy back into it.

people care-

we live with each other, so that we live within our means and the earth's means. we prioritize earth care so that it becomes own by default. care of our environment for us, not for the sake of saving the earth; we seem to forget that this planet lived on quite nicely without us for millennia.

we are only destroying it for our selves, and no one else. that is a BIG DEAL PEOPLE! (i do not consider my self some eco warrior- go hug a tree, i couldn't care less- people need to realize that there will be plenty of life long after we go extinct... it is entirely in our control whether we live on and have a human friendly planet. remember the T-rex and friends lived in a much hotter, more CO2 rich atmosphere/planet then we did- they went extinct because that atmosphere lost its heat that sustained their cold blooded life style, and it happened over millions of years. im sure if they could have helped it, they would have. this is just one example of a cycle that our planet naturally is a part of, and we have altered our environment on every level since our brains have allowed us to. why our smart and very self conscience brains have not recognized the inevitable finite nature of resources is going to be the punch line of our tool using, and amazing evolution.)

fair share-

by recognizing the limits of resources and consumption, and maximizing their outputs, we can put more back into those resources and energies then we take out of both the earth and for our selves.

these three principles are key, all cycling back into one another, and creating a balance and organization that allows the abundance that is needed for all three- earth, human, and fair share.

if we do not share or work together within this cycle, then we create a isolated, closed system.

imagine a fish tank: we want to keep water and oxygen flowing through the filter and pump, populate it with some plants, invertebrates, and add only a few larger fish that can add to that cycle. every once and a while we must tend to it, clean it, and make sure everything has what it needs and is kept in balance.

permaculture is our solution to our own fish tank (earth) and if we don't start treating it as such, we will all be floating belly up like that gold fish we once had long and ago. might as well flush us down the toilet....