June 2016 – Djaning

You get struck with the blues at times. We all do. However, it’s not the run of the mill, ‘Oh, my boss is a douche bag’ blues, or the ‘I had to work the late shift’ blues, it’s something more like the ‘is any of this really worth it?’ blues. Though even this brand of blues anyone with a half decent thinking mind gets from time to time. So perhaps it’s more like, ‘We’ve changed everything in an attempt to lead a better life, a life which we and our children’s children can be proud of, a life stepping toward a more realistic pattern of consumption, voluntary frugality, which we can and are doing and are generally very happy with, but in the scheme of things does it really matter?’ blues.

This thought, these blues, can be debilitating. Playing apocalyptic scenarios over in your head, and hearing an angry voice mumbling and at times shouting, “We’re all living as if there’s three planet Earths and most of us know this! Is there anyone willing to try and change?! Or is it all just going to be put in the Too Hard Basket?!” (or something to that effect). As though our lives are just another spectacle being played out on a big screen. A spectacle for others to watch but not participate in, one which they can change the channel on at anytime when they get bored.

black-friday2 — “…a critique that grasps the spectacle’s essential character reveals it to be a visible negation of life…” – Debord

Then you reluctantly accept the fact that everyone has their own idea of what’s going wrong and how they can change it. You also realise a lot of people just want to bury their head in the sand, look after themselves and are unwilling to come together and say “we can fix this!” You’ve probably met small pockets of people who are coming together, though we all know many who aren’t. And sadly, most likely, never will. And in this place we can get stuck.

Then you take a breath and you see your daughter running around outside in your newly planted garden shreiking with delight at the sight of new plants, and asking you, “Mummy, Daddy, can I water the plants? They’re little babies, and they’re so cute!” You load up the watering can and off she runs. Then a magpie lands on the newly and painstakingly built trellis with a grub from the garden in it’s mouth, the dappled light shines through the nearby trees, and your life partner grabs a hold of your hand.

“Let’s take each day as it comes.”

It’s 6am and it’s 2 degrees inside our caravan. The frost has killed off what was looking like some promising Cucumbers and Zucchinis, along with about 30 Pigeon Pea saplings and a bunch of other stuff. We’re wearing multiple layers, under the covers, drinking some not-too-bad Chai, and laughing. Guttural laughing. It started as laughter due to our 2 year old friend and companion doing something hilarious, it then gradually built as we began making fun of ourselves and the situation we’ve not only find ourselves in, but knowingly, willingly put ourselves in. Then comes the question (or is it a statement?) “This is permaculture right?!”

For all our pondering, we guess it is. Well, sort of. As we’ve heard on more than one occasion “It depends”. This is our brand of permaculture. The one where you drop more or less everything and begin to reinvent yourself literally from the ground up. Now we suppose that if we were horticulturalists, engineers, or any brilliant combination of anything that may serve our new found direction well, this whole process would, or could possibly be a whole lot easier, or just different. But we’re not. We’re artists, and educators, and learners and lovers, with a few healthy streaks of farm and woodland through us.

One of the key tactics we’re learning is to drop our egos and ask questions. We always hear, “There’s no such thing as a dumb question”, but when you’re in ‘The Bolt Barn’ asking “Where do I put the bolt?” or in the local plumbing shop asking “Where does the water go?” you tend to feel you’re stretching the limit of that saying. But we’re learning. Every time we do ask an ‘interesting’ question we’re one more question away from complete ignorance and a little closer to implementing our permaculture dream.

Month: June 2016

“Let’s take each day as it comes.”

This is Permaculture, right?