The important things in life are beyong our control

Diary entry: March 27, 2010
Spring will come when Spring will come

After the unseasonable warmth of an early spring

Temperatures plummeted last night

Creating mosaics of new ice in the vernal pools.

The chill causing blue herons to hunker down, nest left undone.

And mayflower blooms arrested in the bud...

Gentle reminders that the important things in life are beyond our control.

Reality Hunger

A quote to think about:

"Anything processed by memory is fiction." *

An image to think about:

• Is this an example of biomimicry?

• An artful representation of the human brain?

• Or just a photograph of fungi growing on a stump of a tree chewed down by beavers? 

* quote from "Reality Hunger" by David Shields, p. 57. To read a review, click here

Do we have a plan for the revolution? Sustainability.

"Do we have a plan, people?"...

"We have thousands of them being carried out quite spectacularly over the past few decades, for gardens and childcare co-ops and bicycle lanes and farmers' markets and countless ways of doing things differently and better. The underlying vision is neither state socialist nor corporate capitalist, but something human, local and accountable–anarchist, basically, as in direct democracy. The revolution exists in little bits everywhere...and is succeeding in bits and pieces. Enlarged and clarified, it could answer a lot of urgent needs the depression brings."

Click here to read the rest of Rebecca Solnit's article in The Nation 3/23/09.

Cure for attention deficits and hyperactivity

"Might 'genius' be a potential we all share––each of us with our own unique capacity for creativity, requiring only the power of sustained attention to unlock it? (p.3)" 

From a Buddhist perspective, the untrained mind is dysfunctional in the sense of being afflicted with attention deficits and hyperactivity.

"Like a wild elephant, the untamed mind can inflict enormous damage on ourselves and those around us. In addition to oscillating between an attention deficit (when we're passive) and hyperactivity (when we're active), the normal, untrained mind  compulsively disgorges a toxis stream of wandering thoughts, then latches on to them obsessively, carried away by one story after another. Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders and obsessive/compulsive  disorders are not confined to those who are diagnosed as mentally ill; the normal mind is prone to such imbalances, and that's why normal people experience so much mental distress! (p. 14)"

Quotes by Alan Wallace, Ph.D. See his book, The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind.

Hooked on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume

In terms of psychology, many social thinkers and ethicists have demonstrated convincingly how "the drive to consume" in modern America has displaced the psychic space once filled by religion, family, and community.

For details see Hooked! Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume, Edited by Stephanie Kaza

Farming is more than growing food to eat

Photograph taken at Wagon Wheel Farm, Durham, NH

"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings." --Masanobu Fokuoka. 

For more on this visionary,  click here on the Fokuoka Website.

Or check out his book on Amazon: One Straw Revolution

Myths and Mermaids and the Idea of Progress

I first found her outside a gift shop near Ogunquit Maine

held against her will, just another item for sale:

Turned to stone by the sleight-of-hand of market forces

acting on orders from the patriarchal gods of progress. 

I was able to rescue her, summoning the power of Photoshop:

Capturing her with my magic wand and

gently moving her back home to Her rightful throne

upon an enchanted cliff overlooking the sparkling sea.

Liberated, she now ponders anew the primacy 

of Myth and the true Mystery of the Universe

as the oceans inexorably rise around her

 –a final gift from the the gods of progress– 

drowning human conceits and artifacts,

along with Humankind itself.