Natural resources.

Still thinking about that food forest (Google “food forest Seattle” for original project) and how to implement it.  NPO, definitely.  Many thoughts, unsure how to implement any of them. 

After my post some days ago on needing to meditate and being the one who makes the yarn rather than a knitter, a friend sent me a spindle and roving; she’s a spinner like I’m a knitter.  It turns out that I took to it like a duck to water, and it is indeed meditative.

I wonder if some of the stress we have these days is because of labor-saving devices?  We no longer have to do things by hand; we have machines to card, spin, weave, wash, and dry things.  (I’m restricting to clothes here, but it can apply across the spectrum.)  Yes, it was backbreaking work in many cases; using a washboard is no easy thing.  But I wonder if we didn’t lose the chance to turn off our minds in pursuit of purely physical labor?  To set the body to automatic while our minds shut down and process deeper things. 

These days we primarily do that in sleep or computer games, and I wonder if it’s part of why we see some of the troubles these days that we do?  Even sleep is often broken by lights, sounds, distractions…

So I, for one, choose to find things to lose myself in, to try to get back that peace and deep processing.  I will spin, and use a washboard for stains, and hang laundry in the sun when I can.  I will read, and I will tend a garden.  Maybe I will find myself less stressed, less ill, less harmed.  In future perhaps we will find things that give us that chance again, and we might start to recover as a whole. 

 

Not making any sense, I think, but I’ve had to do too many things this morning and my coffee keeps getting cold.  To say that I am cross is an understatement.