Josh

Written: 2008-01-04-1022, posted 2008-01-31-0223

Again. Begin.

I've been gone doing manual labor on a permaculture-style landscaping project in Jamul.

I'm restraining several urges:

- to eat lots of peanuts

- to go to the front and get on internet and check sdfnl email list

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Well opera feed reader had downloaded part of that-- so I see I'm not missing anything huge. I do not have the cfn or sdpg (carfree_network, San Diego Permaculture Guild) as a feed though.

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So, for many days now, what to do with myself has been taken care of--I go to work, and be directed. There were some times where what to do required figuring out or patience.

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Now what?

I do work tomorrow.

I sort of wanted to bike across the highway to the decent food store and get the stuff to make a decent calorie restriction- type meal--See page 220 in _Beyond the 120 year diet_ (on amazon or google books).

To see if I can shift to some better eating habits.

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I'm not eating now, and haven't been for a while. This is a good thing.

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Things to think about.

Well. There's no free internet back here any more.

I still spend time checking on the old node I used to use.

I could get internet for $10/mo. But would be a hassle. . . and I don't love it.

I can still go to the front of the house and get on a node there, but that is grandma's space.

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So it's just us--

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I was working with Josh of eden on earth ecological landscaping (he has a website).

He is motivated and motivating. Younger than I, established in a business, having a house, teaching permaculture--


He's doing good things.


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On my own, I tend to default to nothing. To a type of maintenance.

--I could start some sort of ecological landscaping business here.


With a car or without.

But why work--

--
I can look into attitude.

My friend Rebecca called--

I haven't seen my neighborhood friend for a while.

It is so easy not to see her.

But I'll probably be walking by her place later today.

So mind shuts down, and blanks on possibilities that


--

I work tomorrow. Challenge course stuff.

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I agree planting trees is what needs to happen-- the five [seven] f's of plant uses: food, fiber, forage, ?, ?[, ?, ?]


But I'm not.

I read about the great things going on, in _Communities Magazine_

communities forming-- elsewhere now,


but they'll be happening here too--

--

and-- I feel like rolling over and dying?

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ah-- here's some from emerson:


--2007-12-03-1747
http://www.emersoncentral.com/transcendentalist.htm

It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation. They hold themselves aloof: they feel the disproportion between their faculties and the work offered them, and they prefer to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to the degradation of such charities and such ambitions as the city can propose to them. They are striking work, and crying out for somewhat worthy to do! What they do, is done only because they are overpowered by the humanities that speak on all sides; and they consent to such labor as is open to them, though to their lofty dream the writing of Iliads or Hamlets, or the building of cities or empires seems drudgery.

--

A great man will be content to have indicated in any the slightest manner his perception of the reigning Idea of his time, and will leave to those who like it the multiplication of examples. When he has hit the white, the rest may shatter the target.

--

New, we confess, and by no means happy, is our condition: if you want the aid of our labor, we ourselves stand in greater want of the labor. We are miserable with inaction. We perish of rest and rust: but we do not like your work.

--

When shall I die, and be relieved of the responsibility of seeing an Universe which I do not use?

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"When shall I die, and be relieved of the responsibility of seeing an Universe which i do not use?"

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It's not that I do not use it.

But all around, everyone's being used by it.

And I do not believe.

Something like that.

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I believed in what Josh was doing enough to accept Marc's offer of a ride out there.

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That's promising.

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The course of action as I see it now:

Return to pure maintenance-- my exercising, my sitting, my stillness.

I have the added advantage now of no internet access. Or less.

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The only work I was doing in that previous period of stillness was internet work--the sdtjdph blog.

Intending to help the San Diego groups network, organize themselves, map out where they are, what they know about.

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I may get back to that.

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But will have to go to campus or to a cafe or to the front room,

and work there.


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Challenge course work will come up.


Permaculture stuff will come along.

And that will be it.


--

When I see all the goodness and energy of other paths-- say Josh's. Say Quail Springs. . .

Say--almost anything.

It shakes me up a bit. Maybe I could be doing that.


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Maybe I could go somewhere where I did not fear or dislike transporting myself around the landscape.

Europe?-- [to help Rebecca in Boston?]

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So, then I return to the status.

The violence of the rushing cars ---

I seek to avoid this.

I've just been around more of it than usual--riding in cars, biking from Jamul twice, to Jamul once.


--

So I do not even want to cross the highway for the better food.


I can make myself do it. And will be glad to be across. Coming back is not so hard.

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Serenity, though, may come from not going there.

There is some hard effect. Some reaction to the repression of the in-your-face awareness of the violence. The ugly brutality.

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If I did not seek escape by eating---

eating and reading.

Lacking other joy, that is where I go.

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The full realm of possibility is too vast to begin to consider,

I am nearly incapable of directing myself.

--

So, Josh, encouraging and as good a model as you are,

I am not yet, and may never be the one to bring the degree of good leadership you represent to this place.


--

I'll muddle along-- in a quirky way

with the internet project--

talking to myself half of the time--

to others on occasion.

I can help the community gardens get mapped.

--what becomes of the rest, I do not know.



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I may still eat to escape, for a self-destructive pleasure--

"I want to die"-- repeating in my mind as I do what is mindlessly not helpful--


--

I'm here now though. A peaceful, more or less aware state.

Not driven to self-destruction.

Just aware,

aimless.

--

Mind continuing its perception of self-existince,
by continuing flow of thought.

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Sit, and be still, and some degree of action will come from that.

Some degree.

Not on the scale of Mollison, Thich Nhat Hanh, Geoff Lawton, Warren Brush, Ellee, Josh Robinson, etc., etc.,

But a fraction of that degree of creation--

--

Possibly a channel could begin to be hollowed out,

Leading later to a greater flow.

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Talking here won't figure out my day. Tomorrow is already taken care of.

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Peace,
and Love--

Colin

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