progress report

when i write this i feel like i am writing a progress report. and if i am not progressing, i feel i have nothing to say. after all, if you have nothing good to say, say nothing. but there is so much to think about in this crazy mixed up world. my main issue is my feeling of powerlessness. i was hoping that this message in a bottle was going to hit some shores and i was going to hear from others trying to achieve a zero garbage lifestyle, or a more naturally oriented one. and the truth is that my focus has helped me find others that are as passionate about living closer to nature and less consumer oriented. let’s just leave it at that...

so, progress report:

my failures: buying meat, cheese, and crackers. and going to the movies. at the movie last night, i tried to be environmentally conscious, making a fool out of myself telling my daughter she could drink from the fountain, repeatedly, apparently to her utter disbelief. so then, after we sit down, my sister goes back to the counter and gets no less than 3 Styrofoam cups for convenient water consumption. which of course, we never even use... so then i finally went to the car and finally got out my aluminum water bottle (man i can be slowww...). a fiasco for sure. then i thought i had left it there... but at least that wasn’t true. i just forgot to refill it and return it to its rightful place, my car. really, my failure list extends, far, but i will hide the rest for now...

my successes: my dairy department is developing. i have now made ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, yogurt, butter, chocolate pudding, quiche, and my own milk... well i have been doing that for years now... but it never made anything other than more content people... i have a cheese book and am seriously contemplating getting a cheese press. though i might share one with my friend first. next, my goat is going to try to get pregnant... and then i really will be “producing” my own milk, at least the kind i can cook with and not just calm an overtired boy with.

my thoughts have been leading thusly: i am driving. i drive to prevent waste so that i can buy this or that in bulk. i drive to the bridge and take a magnificent walk across the hudson. my daughter has a birthday and wants candy. my son wins tickets at the arcade and wins plastic wrapped candy. certainly i should say no to some of those things? i look around and even in my own family, our consumption, though slightly slowing, is not really diminishing. i want to do natural dyeing. i need to buy mordants. nice exotic natural dyes come nicely packaged in plastic. my cheese book came in plastic bubble wrap. a new laptop? birthday presents? to live these days means to make waste, often of the indelible plastic poison type. to achieve zero waste means to completely change our lifestyle, our society.

i would love to see the sea of change that has to be happening, the move to alternative fuels, the move to zero garbage. but the changes are so incremental, i fear that real drastic economic collapse is the only way people are going to change. we aren’t going to change unless forced to. i know that even for my efforts, i am only slowly inching towards getting in tighter with mother nature and reducing waste. otherwise i am still caught up in a society that is going to condemn me if i don’t get these goodies for my kids (not to mention my kids themselves...). if i were a fundamentalist, i would have to limit my own exploration in my science, art, and culinary worlds. not to mention my kids joy and our own mobility. (or maybe that is the problem?)

i perceive that i am blocking truly changing my world view. real change will begin with a change of perception, values, and orientation towards things.

i guess it is two inches forward and one back. conscious, aware, trying.... just a beginning