I haven’t been writing lately. What’s more, it’s been a long time since I’ve written like this: opening the laptop and beginning to type, a process that takes place nearly as fast as I think.
While I was away for the past few weeks, I began to grow accustomed, once again, to paper and pen – though far more difficult than typing for me, as what comes out on paper is nearly poetry, or at the very least, a type of shorthand – words, condensed, so that hopefully if I ever revisit them I’ll know in six words the whole paragraph I intended.
Now I’m back in New Mexico – I suppose I could say the excitement of being home has worn off after a couple of days, and now I’m sitting on my deck, looking out over the foothills of the Black Range, feeling the breeze blow. I am relaxed and unoccupied, and slightly discontent because I’m trained to be “doing something” all the time. Surely there is something else I should be doing, something constructive, not sitting here on the deck with blackberry, knitting project and laptop at hand.
But here I am writing, mostly inspired by an article in the New York Times about “No Impact Man” – one of the many folks as of late who’ve attempted an “ecological stunt” and written a book about it.
The article references yet another ecological stuntman, James McKinnan, who claims “I am not deluded enough to feel that I’m ‘making a difference or being the change I want to see in the world’”.
In many ways, I can totally agree with his claim – yes, he tried to eat nothing but local food for a year, things grown within 100 miles. That’s a fabulous attempt – one that eventually just goes to show how tied in we are to a luxurious lifestyle of, say, buying salt at the store without ever knowing where it comes from, or how. And though I, too, am a writer who someday hopes to publish something, I also hold a bit of reservation against the process – book tours, flying everywhere, hotels, and, well, yeah, books are printed on paper. Lots of paper. Familiar, somewhat, with the publishing process I also know that many books languish before they are discarded. Where, tell me, is the ecological improvement in that?
So while I find all these ecological stunts, and their subsequent books about the process, entertaining, in the end it all seems to be a bunch of stuntwork – of the publicity sort, and nothing more.
Or perhaps I’m just bitter, like I was when Eat, Pray, Love was published. See, the author of that book was a paid journalist who went through a divorce and a bit of depression, then sat in Italy sipping espresso, visiting an ashram in India, and hanging out in sweet little casitas in Bali. I understand the book’s popularity – it appeals to folks who haven’t had that sort of experience. Elizabeth Gilbert is a good writer, with some good, basic truths she thankfully presented in an eloquent way. The thing is, however, in my world, I have plenty of friends (myself included) who’ve been all over the world and discovered truth and self and the cure for depression without the support of a regular paycheck from GQ or the luxury of guest houses.
And I guess that’s also where this bitterness toward these environmental stuntmen (and women) lie – sure, it’s a great thing to try and lower your impact, to “be green”, to read the labels and all that, but here I sit in the middle of a remote and loosely populated river valley in New Mexico, growing my own food, shooting and butchering my meat, and opting out of toilet paper in lieu of a large mullein leaf (of which there are plenty) and a hole in the ground, despite having a fully functioning bathroom in my home.
This is not to say I hate toilet paper – although I find it insulting to purchase and use anything but 100% recycled product (Charmin users, do consider that every time you wipe your ass with it, a tree died so you could do so), I liken my lifestyle to that of a shaman. Shamans, you see, operate with a foot in at least two worlds – the ones of spirit, and this illusory one of “reality”. I might choose to dig a hole in the back of my property and then wipe my butt with a soft, fuzzy mullein leaf, but I still drive to town a couple of times a week in a gas-guzzling SUV – a vehicle that serves its purpose on this little farm by hauling dogs, river rocks, firewood, produce, borrowed power tools and camping expeditions.
Yes, we are headed toward ecological catastrophe functioning the way our mainstream, modern society does. Like McKannan says, however, performing an environmental stunt isn’t really the way to go about being or creating that change. Most readers will eventually laugh off the self-induced hardships of an environmental stunt and thank the good Lord they’ve got electricity. To express a change in this world doesn’t mean shutting off the power or forcing your wife to go without tampons. A shaman visits the other side because most folks can’t or won’t , and then she comes back with a message that fits into our reality.
That reality means yes, consider those compact fluorescent bulbs. Turn the light off when you leave the room. Use a clothesline (I’ve discovered I actually enjoy hanging clothes up to dry, but I also live in the land of the sun – even in mid-winter, my clothes happily soak it up, but quite honestly, is there an alternative for folks living in the Pacific Northwest, where even the mere mention of more moisture brings on mold?). Yes, be green, but don’t expect everyone to shun their lives and go live off the land in a teepee. It really isn’t for everyone, and it would take years and years, or that major ecological catastrophe, to get the whole world to convert to it. Regardless, there is actually very little difficulty in cleaning up our act collectively.
My mother is coming to visit soon and before she arrives, we’ll buy a tank of propane so she can take normal showers and I can do a bit of the baking I haven’t been able to do as our outdoor adobe oven isn’t finished yet. She’ll be arriving via rental car, so we’ll have a gas-efficient vehicle to tour around in while she’s here. She’ll also get a touch of our lives as she eats fresh, organic produce that’s about as local as it gets, and free-range venison and chicken, all wild or raised happily, slaughtered humanely and butchered right here at home.
Here at our house, we rarely see cash and rarely find the need for it. We use the motorcycle when we don’t have to haul anything, and have a little diesel Volkswagon Rabbit that, after a bit of mechanical work, will be running on biodiesel (handmade down the road) at 45 miles to the gallon. But we made some huge choices to live like this – we chose to move to the middle of “nowhere”, we choose to live simply, and we choose to provide ourselves with food – and we still drive that gas guzzler, because it’s what we have to help us out – unlike many, we can’t afford to swap it out for something more efficient, as we can’t ever guarantee the ability to make a timely car payment and having a few thousand in cash lying around is, well, not quite a reality at this house. Yes, we work a lot harder at it than your average suburbanite could ever imagine, but this lifestyle gives us the time and space we need to do so. Still, it’s not for everyone – though as it turns out, so much of it is so easy, and so much of it makes life worth living. Simply eating an organic, vine-ripened tomato you grow yourself is being change, as it turns out.
So, my bitterness toward Elizabeth Gilbert and her bestselling Eat, Pray, Love stops here (except for a bit of, you know, remaining envy, because dammit, *I* need to write a bestseller – and perhaps the only thing that might discipline me enough to do so is the kinda regular paycheck she got to do it). Anyway, what Elizabeth did, even with a paycheck to help, these environmental stuntmen never could. Elizabeth found out what the other side was like and brought back a message your average American could understand and apply to her life (those of us prone to hopping off to India, or whatever, with a backpack and some chutzpah, well, hell – it’s still a good read, even so).
I’m pretty convinced that’s what i’m supposed to be doing in life, too – figuring out how to make real change-being easy and simple enough that your average American can actually grasp it. Thankfully, I know I’m not alone in this – there are plenty of folks out there who feel no need to jump out an ecological window – they’re being the change by living their lives simply, creatively and resourcefully, learning how to do it in this illusory world we created for ourselves that we call “reality.”
But someone’s gotta go first, and I guess it takes a raging impulsive like myself to do so. Now, could someone do a couple of things for me to help me get started? I need a paycheck, and someone else to set a deadline. Folks like me have a hard time with this thing called discipline.
