05 May 2008

Today it is a bit cloudy and cool, windy even. The house has been a bustle of activity in preparations for the wedding Saturday of the two people who live here. This is a 500+ year old stone house, with a tower room, that the couple marrying have worked on for the last 10 years cutting windows through the stone and reinforcing them with concrete, making tile floors and putting in plumbing, electricity, telephone, wood stove and fireplace; it’s a beautiful place but not opulent. It is simple and rustic. I know the woman because her mother has been a friend for a long time and I have been around as the bride was growing up, and we are friends. Now she is in her mid 30’s. I am only getting to know the man in the couple. He is from Genoa but moved to this village because of family connecions, bought this little castle, and has been fixing it up. Outside there are many kinds of fruit trees, grapes, terraces...it’s quite a wonderful place. The wedding will be here on saturday morning. I’m performing the ceremony.

Today we have been selecting music. It’s great to have a music library. It’s a very pleasureable task to select music for a lovely event celebrating love.

I have been reading the news and see things developing, food crisis, more disaster, riots, more and more blatant corruption and greed driven violence as the corporate government monster is also moving towards it’s demise; it struggles and will continue to do so ever more intensely as the crisis builds. This is going to get ugly. It fills me with a sense of dread to read what I just wrote. I am a pretty positive person and I take great joy in living and I am not blind or in denial. The avalanche is just starting and a lot of people are going to be burried before the mountain stops collapsing. Sadness doesn’t even begin to describe what I feel about what’s coming. Horror is more like it. I know that many wonderful things are and will continue to happen, and I am all for it, but I see what I see.

Now, notice that this is exactly what the news is designed to make me feel. The news that is covered and the way it is covered is designed to make me feel that I am about to go under, that all is despair and woe and that I have no power, that I am not free.

Horse hockey! It’s just time to plant food, grow soil, save seed, and share! The more people do that the easier it will be to transition away from the multinational global economics of food distribution and get back to people and Earth, which, by the way, used to work. It still does ina lot of places! If everyone would plant something, and also buy locally grown food, there would be a huge shift in the economic base away from the ruling elite and towards local people involved with local Earth.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your conclusion was just what I was thinking as I read along, only I would add that the "news" is fed the way that it is in order to help folks feel helpless and then go buy something...it is all designed to "function" the way that it does...and we are designed to function the way that we do....I'm gonna go tend my yard and garden, now...ta, Georgia

Syltegeek said...

That.

Planting tomatoes and basil today. And I just came home from a conference with hope that at least some politicians are working very hard not to be completely dependant on the market machine when the shit comes down.

Anonymous said...

I was also thinking about what's gonna happen and came to the same conclusion. I try to stay in awarness of all the wonderful things around me. Today is memorial day, but instead of grieving for all our young poeple who were killed in the many wars and terror attacks (including my father), I was looking at the sky, and feeling the joy in the wind and the birdsong. That is what I feel I should always remember, not the pain of loss. If we remember to feel joy, to feel connected, to have hope, we might as well survive all this..

The weather here is wonderful too (got better as soon as you left :))

love,

*
~O~
Shahar earth daughter

Unknown said...

and beyond the regular wonderfulness of sky and trees and birds and loved ones, so much work is being done on personal and societal transformation, unprecedented numbers of people questioning old beliefs and assumptions and moving into a space of loving, compassionate power.

I wish the news would report THAT. Because when I see it, when I catch that, the balance of possibilities begins to look like we just might have a running chance. and it also leaves me with very fulfilling work to do.

White Wolf said...

Another way is to learn more about the plants and herbs in one's environment. Some bulbs, leaves, roots and flowers can be eaten. Also mushrooms.
Whatever monkeys eat humans can eat, including various kinds of insects.
I would suggest that when the real chaos will start to get away from the cities to the wild. Near a natural source of water and start learning survival skills.