Wishes and Freedom

(picture, 1997-ish, age 20 -- Tunica Hills, LA.)

Do you ever feel trapped by the flow of your own life? Things are going just as planned, in fact you might even be getting some of the things you wished for... and of course when you get those, you wish for more things. Or say nothing is going as planned, it's a big mess and so you want to escape.

I have noticed that humans (myself for sure) tend to go from day to day building up a life, building brick upon brick, foundation, into walls, into personal castle. It seems as though we are building something great, it feels quite safe and accomplished to have something worked on for so long. It's your inner self, the castle... your beliefs, your lifestyle, all your choices, your personality and day to day reactions. And you are really invested in it, of course.

But I... don't know if my castle matters. My opinions are like the wind. I don't know if having the goal of being perfectly stable and predictable is healthy, worth it, or even fun. I don't know if once my castle is all built if i even care to decorate the inside or move in... maybe i just like to go from place to place building new castles, trying out new things, taking risks. Rather then get attached to what i built.

It's not that i don't like myself, or that i don't like my lifestyle. It's that something inside me, some soul-like substance is always driving me to new experiences and I can't really stop it. I have spent the last ten years working on living a sustainable life in the woods, and I have accomplished more then I ever thought I would. It started because I was sick with horrible health problems and then I fell in love with every blade of grass, every wildflower, every rock... i had slowed down enough to merge with nature. And nature taught me how to truly love. But now... i want something else -and i am not referring to city living, but more a coming out of the foggy patterns my health put me in. I want to merge with nature, people, reality, the world, my own health, my own potential - the full picture. I don't have to focus only on one wish, i want a bigger picture,

i want freedom to seek the picture and all it's contents.

XOxoxo

Cha Cha Cha Changes

Sometimes I want to change my life. It's possibly a habit I have developed over the years... made worse by changing seasons (which I did not experience growing up in the tropical south.)
But on this rainy PMS day, i have no clue what the change is i desire. Or no real way to plan it out.
When it is something simple like, 'i want to move' then i can look for a new house. When it is vague and lingering, almost nagging - it has no rules, it has no plans, it's only a strong desire that hasn't found a form.
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I want things, that I dont know if i can have. And if I can have them, I dont know how i will get from point A to point B... although usually the dominoes keep falling on their own knocking the next day into the next without any effort on my part.

Xoxoxox

Book Review: Rewild Or Die

"If the true meaning of sustainability involves giving back more than what you take from the land, then nothing that takes more from the land than it returns can define itself as sustainable. Less destructive does not mean more sustainable." - Rewild Or Die


Ya'll know how I love to read, and over the last year I had mostly immersed myself in fiction books - as a direct retaliation to reading years of health, self help and spiritual books.
But then I got this book called REWILD OR DIE sent to me in the mail - which can not really be put into any one category I can think of ...

• Nature?
• Survival?
• Philosophy?
• Ranting & Cursing?
• Culture Studies?
• Agriculture Bashin'?

Urban Scout's new book about getting back to nature is not a DIY guide that tells you how to live off the land, make primitive crafts, or hunt wild game --- it is a thought provoking book telling people WHY they need to learn these skills, why big agriculture is killing the planet, why most humans are depressed with their current situation, the main focus being on the hidden ways living in a "civilized" society makes us slaves to a life we don't really want to live.
Many chapters felt like someone had took my own thoughts and written them out in essay form - except that usually deeply philosophical shit makes me confused, overwhelmed and bored. Nearly every chapter kept me engaged, especially the ones discussing the function of money vs rewilding, and schools vs rewilding (i am someone who really hates the way money and school both currently function.) Especially schools! There were some chapters I could not relate to mainly because I am a recluse who has been out of normal society for 9 years now and didn't know about all the different types of 'groups' & 'diets' & 'styles' & 'movements' like the anarcho-primitivists? who follow certain genre of thought about how society should eat/ live/ function (or should i say dysfunction?) Chapters focusing on stuff like that I understood, but felt a little lost since I rarely make 'genre' distinctions when i meet people anymore. (Not cause I am a mini Buddha but cause i see/saw people so rarely that now i get so excited to see a human i don't give two shits to judge - i go right to talking their head off!)
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I have not been in the mainstream for a while, I never really knew about all these terms, like "rewilding" (returning to a more natural state, undoing domestication). I never knew that many of the things I have chosen to do, ways I live in accordance with nature were something many people are now discussing & learning to live by! (Way cool!) Not that I thought I was alone, but never knew I had intuitively moved along with a whole movement I never saw. It's cool to find out there are others who want to be close to nature, who want to keep the environment in a supported natural state, who don't wait for an Apocalypse/End of Oil with stock piled guns...... even if they live very far away.
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What is most refreshing is this book is not written in the traditional edited book style, it's personal, it's honest, it's defensive, aggressive, and sweet all at the same time - most likely because it is a series of essays taken from his personal blog (The Adventures Of Urban Scout, a hunter gatherer wanna be), making the style more modern and less bookish.

Xoxox