the pace of a camel

I liked this article I read from the BBC awhile back. It imagines a world without planes, in the future. It starts off rather silly, but progresses to something lovely.

Whatever the advantages of plentiful and convenient air travel, we may curse it for being too easy, too unnoticeable – and thereby for subverting our sincere attempts at changing ourselves through our journeys.

Indeed. I constantly use this convenient air travel to get in a couple of hours somewhere it would take a day to drive and many days by foot. It’s a bit unsettling. I can fall asleep briefly and wake up in different weather.

It’s still pretty exciting to go new places, though. New places that start with planes, continue in cars and end on foot are the best. A gradual progression from here to liminal airplane space to there.

love for the fishes

I love fishes a lot as a tasty dinner object. But could I love fishes more as another organism and aspect of life?

Maybe.

The last paragraph of Tsem Tulku Rinpoche’s blog post kinda poked me in this next step towards vegetarianism: Please go vegetarian. So much food is available without slaughter of animals for meat. Bring your spiritualism to another level by not eating animals but loving them please.

I’m inclined to see how many days I can practice vegetarianism (fish and shellfish being the last meats I eat). It might be easier than I imagine.

toothpaste

I have a possibly somewhat weird recommendation: dry toothpaste. Which I guess isn’t a paste at all. I’ve tried a couple of DIY toothpastes and hated them, but then settled on an even-more-simple version of my friend’s simple salty toothpaste recipe.

Basically, I left out all the liquids, mushed up some anise seed & used that instead of minty oil to flavor the stuff. It’s like brushing your teeth with Indian dessert mixed with ocean (I think that’s pretty awesome, but it may be an acquired taste), and it leaves them squeaky clean. For home, I may try tossing some peroxide into this recipe, thereby restoring the whole paste concept, but I like the solid for travel.

travel broadens the mind

I am awake at 3am local time, which is a little annoying. If I could, I might poke my internal clock in the eye.

This is the thought I woke up with: when did I stop using plastic baggies? My home airport keeps an enormous box of them just outside the security line, and I picked up the second plastic baggie I’ve acquired in a year as I left on this trip. I think at some point I decided that, whatever I was doing with regard to plastics, at least I wouldn’t willfully buy small plastic bags to transfer things out of larger plastic containers. As for the small plastic containers used to transport toiletries in carryon luggage… well, those are pretty easy to reuse, at least. Except for toothpaste. [Well, people have suggestions, but how many pairs of scissors does one household have?] Yet another argument for finding a toothpaste recipe that doesn’t taste awful, or like dessert.

There are other ways traveling shows – and perhaps creates; cause and effect are pretty subtle sometimes – the changes I’ve wanted for myself over the past mumble mumble years. I packed – as I’ve been telling everyone – one large carryon bag & a laptop (in a bag that will also be my purse and walking bag) for a week. This is going to be my new standard for work travel, so it may as well be my standard everywhere. One Bag is right, though: if you’re doing a single bag, wheels are a bit stupid – they’re heavier, and a bit unwieldy even in airports. Noted.

Bag logistics aside: I forget sometimes that I was once given to impressive meltdowns when forced to travel. The first time I went to Hawai’i, I cried at a Starbucks in LAX – before we even got there. And possibly again at a rental car counter in Honolulu? My poor travel companion! I finally left the US for a bit this year, in part because I gained a sense of humor and let go of that overwhelming need to have things happen according to plan. Nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. Which is great! That’s where the real fun starts.

Partly, also, I think I used to be afraid of… well, anything that wasn’t familiar or comfortable. Forcing myself to deal with new degrees of discomfort helped get me over that. In fact, as I try to list examples, none of the things that should sound uncomfortable actually are – I mean, sure I’ve camped in 100 degree heat, but there was a shower and a swimming hole; or there were those there-and-back-in-a-day job interview flights, but the tacos were fantastic; getting up to the tip of that mountain was hard, but it was amazing and only took like an hour and a half anyhow. The more I think about it, the more I feel like I need to do scarier stuff. My stuff just isn’t that scary. But. It sure would’ve seemed that way to the version of myself who melted down at LAX that one time.

And the tacos really were fantastic.

no (or, well – less) impact

In another… hrm, six weeks… I’ll be starting a job that means I’ll travel constantly. That’s an impact on the environment I’m not used to having – though I do drive a 20 mile commute to and from work most days now, so it’s not like my business travel is zero impact to begin with. Anyhow. Air travel is generally considered supremely lousy for the environment, in case you haven’t heard.

I suppose I could buy carbon offsets, but do those actually work? I have no idea. Their main selling point seems to be education, and I already know that flying around isn’t great for the environment. And of course, I’ve ruled out the things that are unreasonable for me (that is, not taking the job or selling my house and moving to each place I work).

So. I’ve been reading about ways to reduce my footprint further (beyond the small things I’ve talked about here before). The No Impact Project has some interesting ideas. And some major liberal guilt. It’s pretty cool, though, to see people suggesting – and then going and enacting – changes that sound pretty extreme to me. I like shampoo, okay! Hair washing is awesome. Let’s do it all the time. [Sidenote: I continue to debate with myself whether it's better to have shampoo in bar form shipped to me or to buy it in plastic bottles closer to home. Currently the shipping solution is winning, because the volume of plastic in my life disturbs me.]

My thought here is that, in exchange for the travel, I need to step it up from what I do now (which, honestly, is what all caring people with money should be doing – none of my habits inconvenience me). Use my shampoo thing as an example: make bars of the stuff myself. I’ll try some of this stuff out and see what sticks. I figure the concern at least is a step in the right direction.

things that are hard

Not eating meat at Thanksgiving dinner is surprisingly weirder and more difficult than not smoking at almost all other times.

My family made that much easier, though, by making a bunch of salmon for me (a sort of sacrifice, since mom hates even the smell of fish). Yes, fish is really a form of meat if meat = dead animal flesh, but I haven’t yet put that habit aside. Eating salmon next to the parents’ turkey is still weird. Like smoking, eating turkey is a thing I enjoy. And don’t even get me started on bacon – hey, I know people who are vegan except for bacon – and there’s no moral, health or other exemption you can plausibly talk yourself into for eating industrially farmed diner bacon. I’ve taken to calling bacon a gateway drug.

I haven’t talked much about quitting smoking. It’s just a thing I did, and continue on because I’m ornery and irritated at the tobacco industry (which, come to think of it, is close to the reason I quit eating land animals). Opting out of these things transforms that “irritation” or righteous anger into a small act of peace, in the lighter footprint I leave, even if it does nothing to help those two industries behave more gently.

If I mention the smoking thing out in public, though, I’m afraid self-righteous non-smokers will start congratulating me in ways that make me more irritated in their direction than at Big Tobacco. I’m not sure how to transform that – maybe there’s some constructive way I could help quit-smoking campaigns be more positive and less patronizing. Their intentions are good. And their tactics do work some of the time.

at least they’re trying

On a lighter note: big box stores are not quite ready for the bring-your-own-bag phenomenon. At least not in Virginia. Target, for instance, sells reusable shopping bags, but the cashiers eye me suspiciously when I bag my stuff without their plastic.

Plus, there seems to be a rote physical behavior of scan, then stick in plastic bag. It’s becoming a game: can I interrupt the routine without getting the person flustered? Harder than it looks.

i made dirt.

This weekend I tried to make a semi-secluded corner in the yard by putting up trellissy stuff and planting mandevilla (it’s the first step of many, I imagine) and a couple of zinnias. The soil back in that corner looked like it had been in some sort of war zone, so the approach that usually works in this yard – dig a hole, put something in it, wait for that something to grow into a monstrosity – seemed a bad idea. [As a side note: one of the added features of a house that stays uncared for over a few years is that the dirt gets amazing, full of dead stuff and nutrients. I think this is why everything grows huge and ungainly here. It's like growth hormone for plants.]

I have, however, been quietly and lazily composting yard and ungross kitchen waste since this winter. I dug into my compost pile, and? I? HAVE MADE DIRT. The bottom of the pile is dark, rich, you-can’t-buy-this soil, complete with helpful creatures.

That is awesome. I have made some art that really moved me. I have done work that felt like it mattered. And now? I have made dirt, the most fundamental thing you can make outside yourself.

Yay.

resistance?

I put out a bag for recycling at the beach house my family rented for vacation last week. We ended up filling 3 bags! People can make so much trash; it’s amazing.

My parents started regularly recycling well before I did, but they aren’t attentive to it now when it’s not convenient. I never figured out where to take recyclables when I lived in apartments. At the house, I just had to call and ask for a bin; now I recycle or reuse more than I trash. My practice may be better now, but I understand not doing this small service to the earth when it’s inconvenient.

And when I set out a bag to collect the stuff, we all immediately started using it. [Side note: is there a way to recycle plastic bags in Richmond? I try to just never get them, as they're specifically called out as not acceptable in my curbside service. Wonder if there's a way to do something with them other than reuse.]

Another surprising thing that’s encountering no resistance from others, or really myself anymore: fishytarianism. I’ve figured out how to eat at normal places, and no one even comments on it. I remember it being so hard to be vegetarian when I was younger. The world has changed, though. And the people around me are way more chill. I would struggle with veganism, or even real vegetarianism, but conscientious seafood and dairy is pretty easy. Cheap, too – I had a cafeteria lunch today that cost me $4.

Neither of these practices is that far from normal (they’re more the norm that otherwise in some contexts), so I’m not sure why I expected resistance. It’s good to not get what I expect here.

the ants have a point

I’ve been having a debate about personal property with a colony of ants for the past several weeks. The ants, communists that they are, contend that I am perfectly able to provide them with cat food, popsicle wrappers and leftover bits of fruit; these, they argue, are all things they need – so they’ll come into the house to get them. My counterargument – that they’re ants and naturally live outside, which by the way is full of equally tasty things for them to eat – falls on deaf… whatever organ it is that ants use to communicate.

I admit. I tried putting out traps to kill them. This failed miserably, but did get them to lay off the cat food. I’m a little glad it didn’t work. It felt wrong trying to off them just for being inconveniently located. Killing mosquitos is self-defense (it’s fight-flight-flee: I’m in their food chain), but killing ants is a little like the dude at the Baskin Robins who shot a robber repeatedly. It’s not a justifiable response to property crime.

Aside from keeping the house clean and devoid of accessible ant-tasty foods, it would be nice to find a solution that would keep them at least on the porch and out of the kitchen, though.