Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
friday day five
so it’s friday – and day five of no sugar – wheeee!
i’m actually feeling pretty good today and despite my whacked out mood this week i’ve managed to accomplish quite a lot including:
- setting up a investment savings account to put my savings towards a house in
- writing a long letter to a friend in jail
- packing boxes
- visiting with a friend from out of town
- mailing off all the stuff i sold on ebay
- finishing off another section of the rug i am working on
- a whole bunch of random stuff at work including troubleshooting other people’s problems with a system i set up, and researching and ordering hardware to get my next project started
- following up on a lot of email
and i also have agreed to record on a friend’s album so next week i’m going to meet up with him and some others to see what we can lay down. i haven’t really been playing much fiddle lately (or singing for that matter), though i want to! so i think that working on someone else’s project will be useful to kicking me in the ass a little bit.
there have been a bunch of people viewing my apartment this week, including one woman who has been back twice with her realtor. she seems pretty keen and i’m hoping she will put an offer in on it so i can get on with scheduling the rest of my life. i am trying to figure out going to cali in october and the ffa has been invited to play a show in sf at the same time… so i hope that as a band we will be able to get it together to do a mini-tour and i can fold in visits to folks at the same time. we’ll see – the band has been a little dysfunctional as of late so i’m not too optimistic we will get enough members committing to the trip.
and on it goes….
more fiction on the collapse
by some strange happenstance, i ended up reading two pieces of collapse fiction in the past two weeks. after reading the day philosophy dies by casey maddox, i picked up a copy of margaret atwood’s oryx & crake to take with me on the weekend trip to washington.
i’m not going to do a compare and contrast here of the two novels except to say one is a lot more hopeful than the other – and what that really comes down to is how much of the natural world is left when civilization collapses entirely. a world still having some of its natural plant and animal species left (as well as a functioning ozone layer and some passable water source), has a much better chance of recovery than one in which everything left behind is a tainted and genetically-engineered mess.
the collapse of civilzation is topic that has quickly moved from the fringe of eco-politics to the fore in international policy debates on the coming oil crisis. as this month’s national geographic points out “humanity’s way of life is on a collision course with geology” when it comes to the peak of oil production vis a vis demand worldwide. dead zones in the world’s oceans (caused by nitrates from the run-off of industrial production), high rates of carcinogens in human tissue and mother’s milk, the draining of major underground aquifers and severe climate change warnings – all point to a siginficant fork in the road of western civilization in the very near future.
for three million years, human-like species have lived on this planet and in the last 5000 or so we have come very close to bringing about its total destruction (and most of that in the last 500 years). quite remarkable really – and visions such as atwood’s in oryx and crake (though somewhat overstated) are not entirely implausible. the main problem i have with this piece of fiction is it is set far into a future we will likely never see due to the ongoing collapse of global resources. although the book is overwhelmingly dark, atwood is a bit of an optimist on the timeline for the fall of civlization and the ultimate failure of humans as a species to survive.
all things considered, though – it’s a worthwhile read – another book i couldn’t put down, though i didn’t find much hope in the outcome – whereas i did in the day philolsophy dies. that purely being the result of the authors’ differences in purpose. as my friend bear commented on the phone last night about apocalyptic fiction in general – “these books serve as both a call to action and also a warning” – maddox’s book fills the former purpose, while atwood’s fits the latter.
read both in a row and your mind will spin.
something i wish i knew
for the past two or three months i’ve had really very strange blood sugar issues – not just being hungry, but crazy blood sugar drops leaving me lightheaded and sorta ill feeling…. which made me think that maybe i was becoming diabetic or lacking protein or something else in my diet.
anyhow – i was doing some poking around on the web this morning because since i’m on day four of quitting sugar, i have been having really intense cravings for nicotine… which i think are just general cravings that i translate into “i want a cigarette”….
and i discovered that when you quit smoking, blood sugar plummets in the initial phase and may take several months to adjust back to normal levels. since my blood sugar weirdness has coincided with quitting smoking (three months ago yesterday!), i suspect these things correlate which makes me feel an awful lot better (it’s not a serious health problem rearing it’s head, but the opposite)….
i also discovered that when quitting sugar, day four is supposed to be the hardest. i feel very spacey this morning… i suppose that is why.
restless
i’m having a restless day for some reason – which makes no sense since i walked downtown this morning which should have worked all the beans out of me.
i don’t have much to update on except that it’s day three of no flour, no sugar, no dairy – yikes…. really not too bad at all, i just have to be disciplined about cooking for myself. last night i had a piece of the spring salmon i was gifted with on monday – wow – i think it was the best piece of fish i have ever eaten in my whole life. i feel very blessed to have such lovely food bestowed upon me for my health and nourishment.
today i opened up a high-interest savings account to put money towards a house into. i have resolved (even though it’s not new years) to be disciplined about saving money for a down payment so i can realize my goal of owning a house at some point in the not so distant future. i am anxious about my ability to own a place i can’t be evicted from, even though it won’t happen right away, saving money and checking out the coast will give me time to think about what i really want. i do believe i will be in place to purchase my very own home within 8 months to a year in any case.
oh yeah, and about half the stuff i put on ebay sold last night, so that’s a little less junk to move.
it seems it’s taking a long time for them to sell my apartment. i’m hoping that they just get on with it as i would like to plan my fall vacation (was thinking of going to visit friends in cali in october), but not knowing when i will have to vacate is making that difficult. not to mention it is a hassle keeping the place clean all the time just so people can view it….. i may not be moving until october 1st in any case, if the place doesn’t sell by the end of this month.
back to work…..
suffering beings
i returned from victoria last night, got off the bus downtown and encountered one of the most distressed people i have come across in a long long time. he told me a story about coming to vancouver a few days before and being rolled after his first night at a bar. he was just a young guy, pretty beaten up and his foot was all bloody – his vibe was deeply upsetting to me because he just seemed so in need….
so i gave him some money from my wallet, quite a lot more than i normally give people, because all i had was one bill on me…. and he started to cry when i gave him the money and that made me feel worse because he was so upset – so i walked with him for a couple of blocks and made sure he was okay before i went to take my next bus home….
and then when i was waiting for the bus, i was angry with myself because a little voice in my head was saying – “maybe he tricked you, maybe he was just a really good actor” and so i started feeling worse about it because i had no reason to doubt this man’s story except that i live in a society that tells me not to trust anyone – especially not working and poor people. and so all the way home i was conflicted about it until i talked to my lover later on who said “even if what he told you wasn’t true, clearly he was in need of money for something, so it’s okay” and honestly, it was okay because it’s true that he (his name is robert) was extremely distressed for whatever reason.
when i got home, there was a message from an old friend of mine needing help with a letter of character reference from me in a child-custody case. and so i met him for coffee today and again, i encountered severe distress in a fellow human. i said i would write the letter and if the case goes to mediation instead of court, would act as his advocate if necessary. we hung out for most of the afternoon which was good – since i haven’t seen him for awhile and we had lots of catching up to do beyond the stress he is currently under.
i started a flour, dairy and sugar cleanse today that i expect to be on for the next month or so, no matter how difficult. i am feeling the need to purge my body of yuck while purging my home of posessions i am no longer in need of. my lover caught me a spring salmon (that’s a chinook) on the weekend, and so i plan to eat lots of brown rice, fish and greens over the next little while as it’s supposed to be very balancing food.
i haven’t quite readjusted to eating fish – i’m not sure i will be able to keep it up beyond the summer, but while i’m cleansing from all the other processed foods i’ve been pouring into my body, i’m going to try it and see whether it nourishes me in the necessary way.
back at work tomorrow which will at the very least bring respite from the heat.
Red Cedar 