Then the pigs got bigger, and it turns out that they can bite.

Then the wallow got nasty, because while some people claim that pigs are smart enough not to piss or shit in their wallow, they turned out to be really wrong about that. Or maybe my pigs were just particularly yucky. Either way, it got harder and harder to keep the wallow sanitary, and there was no way I was getting in there.

I may try it next year, remembering to get my rolling around with the pigs in while they are still cute little animals with a clean wallow.

Either way, here’s a comic I found from Sinfest that sums me up pretty well.

While I used to get the urge now and then, I’ve finally completely given up on buying makeup, “dress clothes”, and the like. While I’m not a pig (I’m quite sure I’ve never shit in my bath water!), I am definitely a dirty hippie, and it makes the most sense to just be me.  :-)

I’ve taken a lot of steps to reduce my usage of disposable products, such as switching to the Diva Cup, washcloths in the kitchen, and bathroom cloth. I like reducing my plastic use, too, and I have glass storage containers for the refrigerator instead of plastic Tupperware, and we freeze a lot of items like chili and salsa in glass jars.

There’s one thing that’s been bugging me, though, and that’s my usage of Ziploc bags and aluminum foil, which I use mainly for freezer storage. Some examples:

• Freezing the breakfast burritos I make in big batches. I wrap these in foil or cling wrap and then put a bunch in a gallon ziploc bag.

• Freezing loaves of bread. I love to have bread on hand, but it can be tough to buy or make it on the spot. Joshua will make a few loaves or I will buy some, and then we’ll freeze them. These go into aluminum foil.

Freezing is an excellent way for me to shop less often and make homemade items in bulk for future use. (The freezer is especially useful to me since I just filled it with a whole pig!) The glass jars store a lot of things really well, but there are also a lot of things that can’t fit into a glass jar. These still need to be stored in an airtight manner, though.

I do my best to save foil for future use and wash and save Ziplocs, but I’d still love to move towards eliminating them entirely.

Do any of you have ideas on how I could do this with non-disposable items or another way I could look at the situation?

Photo by AFlickion

I’m not headed to Black Rock City this year, but I’m enjoying hearing about others preparing. In lieu of Burning Man experiences to share this year, I thought I’d make a packing list post. The first year I went I looked at all sorts of packing lists and survival guides online and meshed all the info together. When I actually pack, my personal gear changes a bit each year, but I always start with a huge list and work my way down to what I actually end up taking. While there are some constants (water!), everyone’s packing will be different. Here are some of the things I think about when I pack for Burning Man (and wow, did this post get LONG!).

BRC Must Haves

If you’ve been camping before, a lot of things on this list are pretty basic. There are some things you need that are more specific to BRC, though. Like glow and/or blinkies. If you are going to be out at night (and you are) you need to be lit up. Just having a headlamp on your head won’t cut it. You need to be LIT UP. There are art cars and people on bikes and you do not want to be run over. Invest in some glow sticks, LED lights, or EL wire.

A regular backpack or fanny pack can work for your carrying around gear, but I think a hydration backpack is worth the money. A regular backpack is too big, a fanny pack is too small, and neither carries your water as efficiently as a hydration backpack. I recommend spending the money on a Camelbak. You don’t want a bladder that leaks. (A spare bladder isn’t a bad idea, either.)

Goggles! I recommend two or more pairs. I have sunglasses goggles and clear ones for nighttime.These things are a lifesaver when the dust is going crazy. I wouldn’t be without them.

You may need some kind of face mask. This can be anything from a fancy respirator to a simple bandana tied across your mouth and nose. You might not need it at all. But if there’s a dust storm and you need to get from here to there, you’ll probabaly want to be able to breathe along the way.

A bicycle is often listed as a BRC essential. I go back and forth about bicycles. My first year I went without one and loved it. My second year I went with it and realized what I’d been missing. My third year I took one and then hardly ever used it. I probably won’t take one next time. A bicycle on the playa can be incredibly useful when you’ve got places to go and people to see, but it also brings some irritations like how to transport it out there and locking and unlocking it all the time while you’re there.

Food and Water

The first year I went, I took someone’s recommendation of 2.5 gallons of water per person per day. For me, that was 20 gallons. I never use that much, though. I don’t use a lot of water for cooking, and I don’t really bathe. Now I take closer to 1.5 gallons a day.

Food is highly personal, so no one can tell you what to bring. In my experience, no one eats as much as they think they will while camping, and Burning Man is no exception. On the other hand, food is important on the playa. You need food that you like, that fills you up quickly, and that gives you the nutrients you need. My first year on the playa, I camped with a theme camp that did large-scale meals, a lot of which was too rich for me. Fettucini alfredo? Not appetizing on the playa. The second year I went, my theme camp was all vegan. I thought the food would bore me, but a pile of rice and veggies in a mild sauce turned out to be wonderful playa fuel.

My third year, I did all thermos meals, and that’s probably what I’ll do next time. They were so easy, quick to make, just the right amount, and plenty delicious. The idea behind thermos meals is that you pre-prepare little kits with all shelf stable foods – pasta, herbs, rice, bouillion, dehydrated veggies, parmesean cheese, couscous, bacon bits, instant potatoes, powdered cheese, packaged chicken or tuna, salsa, etc. Whenever you want a meal, you put the contents of the kit in a thermos, add a boiling cup of water, wait ten minutes, and then eat. I liked the idea of being able to throw the thermos in my backpack and take off, eating whenever. I didn’t actually ever do this, but I liked having the option. LINK TO CAMP MEALS If you have no interest in making your own meal kits, an even simpler option is to buy microwave meal kits. I supplemented my meals last year with some microwavable Thai kits. Anything that you normally add water to and then microwave will work okay by adding boiling water and then letting it sit. If you’re interested in this kind of meal, I got all my ideas from Trail Cooking, and it looks like they’ve added a lot more recipes.

Besides whatever you do for your meals, don’t forget about snacking. You will need to eat more often than you will feel like having a whole meal. Cookies, crackers, snack bars, dried fruit, nuts, chips, etc, will come in handy. I have a small container to keep in my Camelbak for keeping a little snack on hand all the time.

Remember to leave at home as much packaging from your food stuffs as possible.

If you bring canned good, don’t forget a can opener!

Photo by Smoobs

Don’t forget coffee or sodas if you’re used to drinking them regularly the rest of the time. I know that they say you should limit your caffeine consumption on the playa, but it would be much worse to go without if you’re used to a daily dose.

Since I cook and eat light on the playa, I usually only take a scrub brush for cleaning and just clean my dishes with a bit of water. If you’re a little more sanitary than me, some biodegradable soap might do you well.

Tools and Equipment

I take a full kit of batteries, even if I don’t think I’ll need them. Batteries are a really nice gift to someone in need. So I take several of every kind from AAA to D.

A compass is recommended in case you end up in a white out on the open playa and need to get back to the city. You probably won’t need it, but if you own a compass, it can be a nice thing to take along. Be sure to know what direction Center Camp is before the need comes up!

You’ll need a hammer or mallet for tent stakes and rebar.

I love to take along several carabiners of different sizes. They come in handy for all kinds of things, especially hanging things off your backpack or belt and hanging things up in your tent.

I always bring rope and twine for who-knows-what. You might not need it for anything, but there are all kinds of things that could come up that a little rope or twine will fix. Also bungie cords.

Rubber bands and safety pins are little items that don’t take up much room but could really come in handy.

Gloves may be essential, especially if you’re going to be working with rebar.

Take a full collection of spare bags – Ziplocs of different sizes, grocery bags, trash bags, etc.

I like to take a 5 gallon bucket to use as a trash can. If you’re going to compost some trash, a mesh bag like oranges come in are nice to put the trash in to lay out for drying. Use paper bags for burnable trash that you can add to the burn platforms at the end of the week.

I’ve previously taken a small dust brush and pan along before, but I never end up using it. My playa philosophy involves becoming one with the dust, but your mileage may vary.

You can never have too many flashlights, I think. All of my flashlights are headlamps. Worn on my head, carried in my hand, attached to my bike, hanging from the top of the tent, etc. They come in very, very handy.

I always bring some battery powered lanterns, too. These are very nice hung around the tent for soft lighting.

Consider your first aid supplies. Don’t buy a pre-made first aid kit. It’s likely to be heavy on bandaids and light on other useful stuff. Plus, there may be things in there you don’t know how to use or be missing items you consider essential. Get a box of some sort and fill it with things you want and know how to use.

Some items to consider for first aid:

• Pain relief – Think headaches, muscle cramps, menstrual cramps, etc, and bring the variety you need. I keep aspirin in a first aid kit for its blood thinning properties.
• Bandaids, gauze and tape
• Thermometer
• Blood pressure cuff (this is just me. I have wonky blood pressure and pulse sometimes, and I like to be able to monitor that.)
• Super glue for cuts (I could write a whole post on how useful super glue is for first aid).
• Alcohol swabs.
• Antihistamine – since there aren’t any bugs on the playa or poison ivy and I don’t have allergies, this isn’t very useful in BRC, but it’s part of my usual first aid kit
• Aloe – for sunburn. Seriously. If you get a bad sunburn, regular application of lots of alow will help cool your skin, reduce recovery time, and reduce peeling
• Cough drops.
• Tweezers, nail clippers, a razor – for digging out splinters or glass in your skin
• First aid instructions. I have a little book – link – with first aid basics. This isn’t going to help you in a real crisis moment, but it can really help with basic info like how to treat a burn, so that you don’t have to remember every detail in the moment.

Clothes

I pack all my clothes individually in ziploc baggies. I get used to the dust pretty quickly, but it’s still nice to be able to start with clean clothes every day. Be sure to label the bags, especially if you’re like me and most of your clothes are the same color.

Put this on the list of things to do before you go: Break in your shoes. Spend some time walking around your house in any new clothes or costumes. If it doesn’t work in your living room, it might not work on the playa. Also, consider bringing along extra shoelaces. The playa environment is so dry, things that you don’t normally think of as breakable are known to break. I’ve had bootlaces get brittle and just snap off, so I take along extras.

Everyone advises you to take a hat. I hate wearing hats, but my first year, the advice was so strong that I took a hat. I never wore it. It’s good to read up and be prepared for the ways in which the environment is different, but you’re still you.

Don’t forget warm clothes. Yes, it’s the desert, but it can get VERY cold at night. Long underwear, jackets, pants, arm/leg warmers, playa coat – whatever your cold-weather clothing style, be sure to bring it or you’ll spend some nights walking around in your sleeping bag.

Camp Basics

You’ll probably want a tent. Check it out at home, even if it’s brand new. Make sure all the parts are there and you know how to put it up.

I’ve used rebar for tent stakes and also the 18 inch stakes from Wal-Mart. You get to make the call on whether you need rebar or not. For most tent situations, heavy duty stakes will work just fine. Chances are, if stakes won’t cut it, your tent isn’t going to hold up anyway. If you’re staking down anything bigger than a regular car-camping tent, though, you’re going to need rebar.

You’ll want something to mark and cover your tent stakes and guy lines. Use plastic bottles, tennis balls, whatever, to cover the tops of your stakes. Mark the guy lines with bright tape, ribbons, rope, or whatever. This isn’t just for random drunk people. You’re at risk for tripping over your own stuff, too!

For bedding, there’s the air mattress, pump, batteries, and patch kit. The patch kits really work, so they’re an awesome thing to have on hand if you camp a lot. Sleeping bag with compression straps. Blankets. Pillows. I take bedding to cover both hot and cold conditions. I have a sleeping bag good to 20 degrees, plus I take a couple of light sheets.

Don’t forget your camp chairs. Even if you’re going to be spending a lot of time socializing elsewhere, it’s nice to have a place to plop down in your own camp.

You have to have something for shade that’s not inside your tent. If you’re camping with a theme camp that provides shade, great. Otherwise, you should at least take a pop-up with you. You could always get your daytime shade from public places like Center Camp or the temple, but you’re almost guaranteed to have some times where you’ll want to be “home” rather than in public and your tent will be too hot during the day.

Personal Care

The potties are usually pretty well stocked, but it’s nice to have your own toilet paper to be 100% sure. Here’s what I do for toilet paper for burns: At home, when you get near the end of a toilet paper roll, save it. Smash it flat, and it will fit in a snack size ziploc bag. I stick a few of these in my Camelbak. They make great little gifts for other people when the potties are out, and it’s awesome to never be without yourself. Of course, this only works if you use one-ply at home, because only one-ply goes in port-o-potties!

For comfort in the heat, a misting bottle and small fan go a long way. I don’t always need these, but when I do I really, really do. The first year I went, I had one day where I had a slight fever and spent the day trying to rest in my tent. The spray bottle and fan were a lifesaver.

Don’t forget sunscreen! And don’t forget to put it on! A lot! I’ve found that after about Wednesday, I don’t really need sunscreen. I get such a layer of dust on my skin that it works as a sunscreen. I don’t bathe, though, remember, and I don’t burn that easily to begin with. Don’t gamble with this. Bring lots of sunscreen! I take several pairs of sunglasses, too.

Personal moisture items are high on my list of Burning Man essentials: lip balm, eye drops, lotion, nasal spray.

Even if your period isn’t due, bring stuff for that. Since I use a cup, it’s no trouble to pack it, but whatever you use, have some with you. You don’t want to be trying to hunt down pads on the playa.

I spend a lot of time barefoot on the playa. If you like going barefoot, the playa is the perfect place for it. It’s flat and there are no rocks and the temperature of the surface is foot-friendly. I’ve heard about the dreaded playa foot, though, so I always prepare to take care of my feet. At least a couple of times a week, I take 20 minutes to sit down, wash my feet, soak them in vinegar, and then give myself a foot rub with lotion. This helps keep playa foot away and is a nice decadent break.

Don’t forget condoms and lube, if you’re into that sort of thing. I like the little individual packets of lube so they’re easy to take along.

Whatever your usual medications are, bring them and bring extras. Consider storing them in more than one place so that if one stash of medicine gets lost or ruined you aren’t completely fucked. Another reason for extras is the ability to help out others. I’ve heard more than one story of someone’s shitty trip being saved by someone else’s inhaler or leftover prescription cough medicine.

I like to take a book. I almost never end up reading while on playa, but if you are laid up in your tent for a day or just need a mental breather, disappearing into a book for a couple of hours can be a real treat.

Consider bringing a notebook and pens. Take notes. Write down the names and numbers of new friends. Record your dreams. Whatever. I always have paper and pen in my backpack just in case.

I consider the loud, chaotic, constant background music one of the highlights of living in Black Rock City and it helps lull me to sleep at night. If that doesn’t describe you, you need to take earplugs.

Photo by Focal Intent

And the first commandment of camping personal care: Baby wipes, baby wipes, baby wipes.

Segmented Packing

To some extent, I pack by throwing everything in bins. It’s going to get messed up and scattered when I get there anyway, so I don’t pay too much attention to organization. There are three exceptions, though.

The Do Not Touch Kit – This is a bag that I do not touch until I’m off the playa again. This includes a spare ID and would include a spare key if I were driving. Also, whether you’re flying or driving, you’ll appreciate having clean clothes for the trip home. Pack these in an airtight bag and don’t touch it until you’re off the playa and have had a shower. If I’m taking my laptop for Reno downtime after Burning Man, this goes into the bag, sealed in plastic. Cell phone, too.

Travel Bag – However you’re travelling, have your ticket on your person. Don’t put it in a container that’s just in the car somewhere or buried on the trailer. Don’t put it in checked luggage. On Your Person. Other things in the travel bag: ID, credit card, cash, insurance info, etc.

Camelbak – I am serious about how I pack my Camelbak. When I’m in Black Rock City, I want to be able to go anywhere at any time and not worry about when I get back to home base. This means that at all times, I have in my Camelbak toilet paper, a snack, paper and pen, meds, condoms/lube, arm warmers or a thin long sleeve shirt, extra socks, lip balm, lotion, spare sunglasses, goggles, bandanna, spare lighter, etc. When I’m flying, this is my carry on bag (at least the stuff that’s allowed), so that even if all my gear was lost, I’d have the bare minimum of stuff with me. This came in handy last year when my stuff arrived on-playa 12 hours after I did.

What about you?

Any odd items on your Burning Man packing list? Any questions you have about what to pack for living in Black Rock City?

Morning Pages – I did the morning pages 6 of the 7 days. This morning was the one time I didn’t do them. I had a different morning routine seeing Joshua off on a business trip, and I never came back to do the morning pages. I find it pretty tough to get through three pages. The longhand writing annoys me. I can have a thought pop into my head, fully formed, and it’s so irritating to then have to wait several minutes to get it out on paper. I feel like I only get through one real thought each morning, where if I was typing, I could get down so much more. I know it’s always an option to write more than three pages, but I doubt I’ll ever do that.

Artist’s Date – I blocked out time for the artist’s date a couple of nights ago. I just picked a fun, silly, vaguely creativity-related activity with no real goal. I realized while I was doing it that I’m kind of uncomfortable doing something on purpose that has no objective. I don’t mind “wasting time” on the internet, with video games, or with a book – things I do that are just for the purpose of passing time. But when I’m doing something for fun that doesn’t produce a result then I feel like I “should” be doing something else. Something to ponder.

Assignments – Some of the assignments were related to mining the past for people who have helped or hindered my creativity. Trying to find people from my childhood who encouraged me was a depressing venture. I mostly just came up with one person, which was my band director. I had no trouble coming up with people who criticized me or pushed me down in some way. The only hard part was remembering to think of more people than just my mother!

I remembered one incident with my mom that isn’t tied directly to artistic  expression but that really stands out in my mind. We were clothes shopping for back-to-school for my freshman year. I came out of the dressing room in a bright yellow fitted skirt and a bright matching colorful button-down shirt. I was super bouncy excited because I’d found the perfect outfit to wear on the first day of school. My mom proclaimed that the outfit looked slutty and I couldn’t buy it. Three things come to mind about this:

One, what a strange fucking thing to say to a child. I was 14 years old. I had just recently had my first kiss and it would be another three years until I had sex, and my mom basically said to me, “You look like you fuck too many people.” What the hell. Two, while there’s more in the mix than this one incident, I find it interesting that I never wear bright colors. All of my clothes are black, brown, dark blue, etc. It’s just in the last couple of years that being a burner has encouraged me to wear more colors. Three, I have no idea what I ended up wearing on the first day of school that year. I remember every detail of that yellow outfit, though, and how much it hurt to have my choice insulted and to not be able to have it.

Synchronicity – I’ve had two phone call conversations with people from the past this week. One was an old friend from high school who I’ve been talking to some online. I loved our conversation. It was awesome to drop right back into chatty mode with someone I haven’t talked to for 15 years. She’s someone I was really close to in high school, and I like the person she is now, too. The other phone call was with a member of my extended first family. She emailed me out of the blue, and I gave her a call. She’s glad to know I’m alive and well, but the conversation was kind of awkward for me. My feelings about my first family have to be categorized as really fucking messy, but I’m doing the best I can with them. I was seriously stressed out the whole day before and after our phone call.

Next Week – Next week is called Recovering a Sense of Identity. That sounds fun. It’s always interesting to me when people tell me how confident and sure of myself I am, because a lot of times I don’t feel that way at all. Frank, a commenter on my Gateway Drugs post, said he liked my “belligerent acceptance” of myself. I love that phrasing. It seems to describe me well. I’ve been almost angrily myself lately, because I’ve spent so much of my life denying myself to the extent that I barely know me. A TAW chapter on identity sounds like it could turn up some fun, useful stuff.

Photo by Criss!

I know that some people think that by definition one can’t be a hippie today, and they think I’m some sort of neo-copycat-wannabe.

Some people think that some trappings of hippie-ism, like dreadlocks, long flowy skirts, beaded jewelry, etc. are a fake, dishonorable copy of other cultures.

Others might think I’m not much of a hippie because I own a gun or don’t like pot or enjoy top 40 music too much or wear too much black.

These things don’t bother me. In my mind, I’m a hippie. Sometimes my values fit into other boxes as well, like feminist or burner or new ager. But my truth is that I…

…have dreadlocks, go braless, go barefoot, don’t wear makeup, don’t shave my legs or my armpits, rail against The Man, think about world peace, explore the chemical makeup of my mind, think a lot about my feelings and the feelings of others, write sappy songs about nature, give stuff away for free, don’t wear perfume, say you can tell how happy I am by how dirty my feet are, play in the rain, wear gauzy cotton skirts, play in the dirt, gave myself a name with a spiritual meaning, don’t look at weather predictions because whatever happens happens and I’m ready and I’ll love it, love waterfalls, love camping and hiking, compost everything I can, make my peace with “pest animals” instead of trying to kill them, reject the words “have to” and “should”, worry about who’s allowed to get married and who isn’t, don’t bathe all that often, didn’t finish college, think about gender roles, clean the house with baking soda, question whether it really matters if I vote or not, make beaded crafts, blow bubbles, meditate, swim naked, don’t use A/C in my home, scoff at the economy, am polyamorous, don’t own much clothing, like boyish long-haired guitar-playing men, love animals, don’t go to zoos, am not squeamish about icky things, play with spiders, use cloth instead of toilet paper/paper towels/napkins, use a menstrual cup, love laying in a hammock looking at the trees overhead, stop to watch butterflies every single time, sometimes think nothing in the world matters and sometimes think it’s all intimately, preciously, existentially crucial…

…because I’m a hippie. These things are little, and they’re huge, and they matter, and they’re me.

And sometimes it’s all completely superficial, too, and I’m really just thinking, “Who wouldn’t want to be these people?!”

You can see more of LIFE’s Woodstock photos here, then come back and tell me what you love about being a hippie or what you love about hippies.

I posted two weeks ago about wanting to start The Artist’s Way, perhaps with other bloggers as well. I wasn’t able to start last week, and I realized that coordinating with other people was more than I wanted to handle right now. In any case, here I am this week, all ready to get started.

The Artist’s Way is a 12 week roadmap to uncovering and unblocking your creativity. It’s a spiritual program and a practical program, both of which interest me right now. The practical aspect especially appeals to me. There are exercises and specific activities to follow along with, and I’m committed to trying them, even if they seem silly at the time.

Author Julia Cameron mentions early on in the book that as you work through it, you’ll begin to notice synchronicity, or the universe coming into line with the changes in yourself. I don’t have trouble believing this – I understand selective attention. I agree wholeheartedly in the phrase she uses to describe this – “Leap, and the net will appear.” I get that entirely. One way of leaping is just to take another person’s word for it. In this case, I’m going to leap into the assignments in The Artist’s Way (TAW) and not worry about making sense of anything in particular.

The two major tools in TAW are the morning pages and the artist date. The morning pages are three long-hand written pages every single morning. They don’t have to be about anything, it’s just brain-dump. I have done them before, briefly, and their usefulness is immediately apparent. It’s valuable to have a private place to dump out your inner thoughts. Even only doing them a week or so before, I ran into a fascinating little thing: after three days of writing about the same thing bugging me, I found myself wanting to stop writing in the morning rather than do anything about the thing bugging me. It’s interesting to look at yourself every morning. This time I’m committing to keeping them up, even if it’s uncomfortable.

The artist date is a one or two hour date with yourself every week where you just do something that nurtures your creativity. I don’t know what I’ll focus on for these. Part of the point of doing TAW is to recapture a lost connection to my creativity, so figuring out how to nurture that creativity right off the bat is tough. Cameron encourages silliness and not thinking too hard about it, though, so I’m sure things will come to mind.

Starting Week One: Recovering a Sense of Safety

Even the title is kind of scary to me. Inner safety is something that I don’t really feel. The critical thoughts in my head make my brain an uncomfortable place to be a lot of the time. Over the last two years, I have taken many steps to address my depression, and I’ve been pretty successful. It’s much nicer to be me than it ever has before. Still, I read the word in the title of this chapter – “Safety” – and thought, “I don’t have any of that.” So it sounds like TAW and I are off to a good start!’

TAW talks about “core negative beliefs”, which keep us from being creative or adventurous or more ourselves. It won’t be hard for me to identify some of my negative core beliefs, since I hear them so loudly in my mind. Cameron suggests doing positive affirmations, instead. I’ve always balked at the idea of positive affirmations. First, they often aren’t true – they’re wishful thinking or outright lies. And they just sound hokey. This book helped me realize something important, though. Those negative things I say to myself aren’t true, either, and they’re often just as hokey. Yet I say them to myself over and over again. Why is it such a big deal to say some positive ones over and over again? Indeed.

Cameron suggests some common negative beliefs that could fill in the statement: “I can’t be a successful, prolific, creative artist because:” and when I read that, one immediately popped into my mind, which was, “You can’t call yourself an artist!” So I’m really starting at the very beginning here. I wouldn’t say that I approached TAW specifically because I want to be an artist. I was interested in exploring creativity and personal freedom and playfulness (and I’ve just heard good things about the book). But in reality, there’s probably a reason I feel drawn to this book instead of the gazillion other self-help books that come across my radar. I have considered myself an artist in the past – considered myself a writer – and I’d love to again.

This week’s assignments are the first step. I’ll be doing a weekly check-in, so I’ll let you know next week how it’s going.

While at the library, I happened upon the book The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler. It’s subtitle is, “Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century”. It seemed like an important book to dive into and a great random library find, so I snatched it up. I didn’t recognize Kunstler’s name at first, but now that I’ve noticed it on this book, I’ve see that his name pops up now and then in other writings I encounter, so appreciate having this book under my belt to fill out the other things that I read.

The Long Emergency starts out with a quote:

“The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.”

That’s from G.K. Chesterton, whose quotes I’ve always loved, and this one starts the book off right. We’ve got this idea called “progress” in our culture, and it has obscured quite a lot of things. In the coming decades we (we humans, not necessarily we who are alive right now) will get to find out whether progress has obscured our ability to continue as a species.

When the access to cheap oil runs dry and global warming inches higher, Kunstler foresees a time of political and economic disorder that he calls The Long Emergency. Kunstler positions himself as an optimist, when compared to the collapse crowd – he thinks civilization will continue  (although in a much different form) and that new energy options may be discovered/invented, but that stability will be a long way off. In the meantime, during The Long Emergency, we’re in for a world of hurt. Even when trying to be optimistic, Kunstler concedes that oil may have been a one-time deal for the excesses it allowed.

One thing that the abundance of oil has facilitated is our ever-swelling population. Kunstler mentions that the green revolution was “mostly about dumping massive amounts of fertilizers and pesticides made out of fossil fuels onto crops, as well as employing irrigation at a fantastic scale made possible by abundant oil and gas.” Our population went up, up, up, and running out of oil will have enormous impacts because, “The people are already here.”

So how much of what we think of as “normal life” is tied up in this oil thing? The Long Emergency doesn’t have to stretch very hard to come up with lists of things tied to oil, because there are simply so very many. In some ways, nearly everything you can think of ties back to the availability of cheap fossil fuels. There are some very big ideas like our national defense, airplanes, the construction and maintenance of nuclear power plants, the ability to truck and fly food anywhere, and suburbia. Then there are the everyday things we don’t think of as extraordinary like central heating, air conditioning, cars, having electricity in our homes, cheap clothes, recorded music and movies. Then there’s the never-ending list of just stuff that’s made from oil: balloons, yarn, ballpoint pens, band-aids, toothpaste, umbrellas, cameras, shoes, carpet, hair coloring, shampoo.

The problem with our reliance on oil is what is often described as “peak oil”, which is the point at which half of all the oil has been extracted. While it may seem like the peak means middle and that there’s 100 more years to go, the half that’s extracted prior to peak is the easy half – it’s easy to get to, easy to extract, and easy to use. What remains is in harder to reach places, is more difficult to extract, and is in a form that’s harder to utilize. At some point, long before the planet is out of oil, we will be out of oil, because the energy costs to get it will exceed what we get in return. And when will this peak happen? That depends entirely on who you read, and won’t be known for sure until hindsight. The Long Emergency was published in 2005, and Kunstler states that peak will likely occur or did occur between 2000 and 2008. Based on other people that I read, I think he’s right, and global peak oil has already happened.

Chapter Three, Geopolitics and The Global Oil Peak, is a quick and dirty march through history, pointing out the various ways in which oil has impacted the politics and economies of the world since it flowed onto the scene in 1859. Kunstler outlines ways in which oil affected the course of World War I, factors into the Arab-Israeli conflict, has played into China’s growth, and is increasingly focusing world attention on the Middle East. In reading this chapter, I learned that Afghanistan shares a tiny bit of border with China. Kunstler suggests, and I agree, that the availability of oil in the Middle East, China’s proximity to the region, and China’s oil needs that rival the US’s go a long way to explain our continued military presence in Afghanistan.

Chapter Four is called Beyond Oil: Why Alternative Fuels Won’t Rescue Us, and begins like this:

“Based on everything we know right now, no combination of so-called alternative fuels or energy procedures will allow us to maintain daily life in the United States the way we have been accustomed to running it under the regime of oil. No combination of alternative fuels will even permit us to operate a substantial fraction of the systems we currently run – in everything from food production and manufacturing to electric power generation, to skyscraper cities, to the ordinary business of running a household by making multiple car trips per day, to the operation of giant centralized schools with their fleets of yellow buses. We are in trouble.”

Kunstler points out that all of the non-fossil fuel energy sources actually require fossil fuels to happen, such as for metal manufacturing or making batteries. He then proceeds to march through the alternative fuel ideas we have and shoot them down as viable saviors. Natural gas, coal and tar sands, shale oils, ethanol, nuclear fission, solar, wind, water, tidal power, and methane hydrates? Not going to work. He positions nuclear power as the only remaining option to help pad the fall from our current lifestyles, though ramping up nuclear energy will cause great political strife. Nuclear energy won’t divert us from The Long Emergency, though – it won’t run the cars. Massive changes in where we live, how and where we grow our food, and drastic social changes are still coming, regardless. But, Kunstler says that nuclear power is the answer to the question of whether these changes will “happen with the lights on or the lights off.”

After tackling the largest looming problem of energy, Kunstler devotes the next couple of chapters to various other interrelated issues like climate change, epidemic disease, water scarcity, habitat destruction, the economy, and the concept of globalism. His outlook is not-too-rosy on any of these topics, either, outlining the ways in which various forces and patterns are coalescing to kick start The Long Emergency.

One of the reasons I was excited to pick up this book was the subtitle: “Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century”. That word “surviving” indicated to me that the book would address some ways to prepare, get by, get through, or make do with the coming difficulties. I was disappointed, though. Unfortunately, the book is long on gloom-and-doom and low on strategies or advice of any kind.

The final chapter, “Living in the Long Emergency” actually turned me off entirely, and I didn’t finish it. Kunstler looks at various areas of the US and talks about aspects of The Long Emergency particular to the location. There is some potentially useful information there, like the reality that the southwest doesn’t have the water for its population. However, a lot of the storytelling in this chapter was downright offensive, like the strangely prejudicial descriptions of Southerers, where his logic seemed to boil down to, “The South will suck so much during the crisis because they like NASCAR too much.” I found it strange and unreadable.

Overall, I would recommend this book. I found the historical information extremely readable. My eyes usually glaze over at history, but this book did a great job of placing historical events and trends in a context that made a lot of sense and remained exciting to read. If you’re new to the idea of peak oil, Kunstler’s outline of the issues is written in accessible language. If you’re long familiar with peak oil, the book does a great job of weaving other factors into the whole picture.

Have you read The Long Emergency? What did you think?

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron is a book that leads you on a 12 week program aimed at recovering and releasing your creative self. Through reading the inspiring book, committing to writing exercises and participating in activities on various themes, the book seeks to help you overcome self-limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, negative messages from the past, guilt, and other blocks to your creativity. Cameron presents this journey as a spiritual path, linking creativity and spirituality and helping you connect with the creative forces of the universe.

I have flirted with starting this program before, and I really like the tone that Cameron sets for exploring the idea of releasing the creative energy in every person. I’d like to dive into it again, committing to the full 12 week program. It makes sense to me to blog about the process as I go, allowing for accountability and feedback along the way.

I’d love to coordinate with some other people who are interested in starting this program, too, and blogging about it. The course is laid out in weekly segments, and I imagine a weekly post about our progress, where we can each link to each other’s posts, as well, enabling ourselves and our readers to follow along with and learn from the journey of several different people.

Are you interested in participating? Comment here or contact me at erosissa@gmail.com and let’s talk about the format and when we’ll get started. I’m excited about starting The Artist’s Way, and I’d love to join with others for a group effort! All you need to get started is a copy of the book. Let me know if you’re interested!

This one is from February 10th, 2009 and is printed here in a slightly altered form. This post is after I was living with Joshua, and I had sold my van and decided to bicycle everywhere rather than drive.

Marijuana is sometimes called “the gateway drug”. The idea is that once you try marijuana, soon you’ll be trying harder drugs, too, so if you never try marijuana, you’ll never end up further along the drug spectrum. Maybe you can’t imagine yourself doing crack but the myth says that if you try marijuana, two years down the road you’ll be a crack-head.

s-t-r-a-n-g-e / CC BY 2.0

A friend of mine said the other day that she could never see herself giving up her car for a bike. I realized that two years ago, I couldn’t either. If someone had suggested the idea, I would have claimed that I was too lazy, too out of shape, I liked my car too much, it was so much more convenient, and I just generally wouldn’t have been able to picture myself trying it. I realized that there was a small string of decisions that led me to do it, and it all started with my natural gas being shut off.

Here’s what happened:

I am really bad at managing money and paperwork. I hate paying bills, with an irrational passion. Anytime I could, when renting a home, I would get my utilities rolled into the rent, so I just had one bill to pay. Heck, when I’ve rented out rooms in my home, I roll the utilities into the rent, so I just have one payment to receive. I forget to pay my car insurance. I forget to re-new my registration. I lose my driver’s license. All those little money-and-paperwork things that have to be organized and tracked, I suck at that.

One day, a couple of years ago, my natural gas service got turned off for non-payment. It wasn’t that I couldn’t afford it; I easily could. I was on my way down to the office, with the completed necessary form and a money order already filled out, and I was talking to Joshua on the phone. I was bitching about bills and how much I hated paying them and how much of a hassle it was to turn this one back on and how it was just going to be late again later…. One of us asked the question, “What if I just didn’t turn it back on?” Hmm. Indeed. If I hate this system so much, why don’t I just opt out? I didn’t go to the office that day to get my gas turned back on.

My natural gas provided hot water and heat. It was the summer, so I didn’t need heat yet. Hot water I decided I could just do without. The idea was perfect for me, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner. The idea started to grow on me. Within the month, I also shut off my electricity. I couldn’t turn off my water, but that didn’t concern me since it wasn’t a bill I had to pay. In an effort to embrace a lack of utilities, though, I got several large water containers and used the water out of those instead, to moderate my usage.

I purchased a propane camping shower, because I decided I did want to have hot showers available. I got a propane stove for cooking. I used a cooler for cold foods and purchased ice to cool it. I got battery powered lights. I bought a hand-powered counter top washing machine. For the winter, I bought two propane space heaters. Buying propane or batteries is completely different to me than paying bills. It’s not something you have to keep track of. If you’re out of propane or batteries, you just go buy some more. And overall, it was much, much cheaper. For my laptop and cell phone, I charged them off of my car driving to and from work or occasionally ran them off an inverter in my car. I was in no-bill heaven.

While batteries and propane gas are probably a less efficient use of energy, I’ll bet this was all still better for the environment overall. Even though I used many replacement technologies, my lifestyle also changed. I used very little water. I rarely lit up the house, preferring to alter my sleep schedule in time with the sunlight. I didn’t cook very often, preferring mostly bread and fresh produce that didn’t need cooking or cooling. Financially, it was perfect. Even in the winter, when I ran my two space heaters like crazy, my propane “bill” never came anywhere near a regular gas bill.

I lived without utilities for about 3 seasons. Eventually, Joshua started spending more time at my house, and we had the utilities turned back on for his comfort and so he could do his job from my house. I never plugged my big appliances back in, though. I kept using the cooler and the little stove. I got a counter top spin dryer (82 watts) to go with my little washer.

This was a gateway drug, a gateway experience for me. It was a very stark look at the trade-offs I make between annoyance and convenience. I was able to question a given – you have to pay bills – and decide if it was really all worth it for me. For utilities, if I am the one in charge of the bills, it is definitely not worth it. Living with no utilities turned out to be quite enjoyable.

It was a gateway, because it made other things possible. A few months after my lack-of-utilities experiment came to an end, I bought a van, just to have for camping and hauling couches and stuff. Somewhere the idea came to me that I could just live in the van. I even already had some of the helpful toys – a camp shower, camp stove, battery lights, an inverter, etc. I could live without utilities AND without the rest of the house, too! That trade-off made sense to me, too. If I’d never lived without utilities, I probably never would have considered moving into the van. As it was, living in the van was a natural next step.

I now live in a house with utilities, but I’m not in charge of the bills that go along with that, so it doesn’t stress me out. It’s not that I don’t like those things, I just don’t like keeping up with them. I do still have a vehicle to keep up with. Gasoline. Insurance. Registration. Speed limits. Over the summer, I also wrecked Joshua’s car, which led somewhat indirectly to the injury of a friend of mine. I don’t like it. I’m not sure if the value of having a car balances out with the annoyance and the possible tragedy. Not to mention the financial burden.

So I decided to stop. I’m now a full-time bicycle rider. Honestly, at this point, it seems like an easy decision. Two years ago, I would never have imagined myself as a bike-rider. There’s an independence factor there that I wouldn’t have seen myself possessing. But after sleeping in parking lots, I feel more capable of making the odd choice. There’s the weather factor. But I spent the winter in a home where it never got over 48 degrees inside. There’s the time factor, the loss of convenience. But that doesn’t even register as an issue to me now.

If I’d never decided to go without utilities, I probably would not have moved into a van. If I’d never lived in my van, I probably wouldn’t have traded my van for a bicycle. Who knows where I’ll be two years from now? I joked with my friend that I’ll probably end up hitchhiking around the country with just a backpack. Who knows?

The “gateway” concept with drugs never perfect sense to me. It’s been 13 years since I first tried marijuana and I still haven’t tried crack. On the other hand, some people probably think NOT owning a car is right up there with crack-usage, so maybe they’re on to something after all!

Word Watch is an ongoing series where I look into ways the words we use transmit cultural ideas that we may not agree with. What we say matters. Say what you mean and mean what you say!

This installment of Word Watch is also a Rewind. You may have seen this post previously at my now defunct blog Right to Bleed. If so, skip on by or enjoy reading it again.

Have To

How often do you say that you “have to” do something? You have to go to work. You have to pay the bills. You have to call your mother. You have to clean the house. We use this little phrase constantly. It’s such a tiny phrase, but it has great, big implications!

The message behind “have to” is that you don’t have a choice. The choice has already been made for you, and your actions are inevitable. What a sad dismissal of our ability to choose the direction of our own lives!

For each of our actions, we make choices about what we want and what we think will benefit us. You don’t have to clean the house. You may want to clean the house, so that the house will look the way you like. You choose to clean the house, in order to get what you want. Shifting our thoughts from have to into want to and choose to, can turn a previously cumbersome action into one of satisfaction. On one hand might be the drudgery of having to pay the bills. But a tiny shift in the language brings about the delight of choosing to have electricity. It’s a little thing, but the way we talk to ourselves matters in the way we think about ourselves and our situations.

Of course the other issue is just that “have to” usually isn’t true. You don’t have to pay your bills, live in a house, or own a car. You don’t have to pay taxes. You don’t have to clean your house. You don’t even have to call your mother, which I can attest to, since I haven’t spoken to mine in 7 years or so.

Now, you may want to call your mother, of course, but if so, then say that!

Marshall Rosenberg talks about “have to” in Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (NVC). He tells a couple of stories that spotlight the issues rather well.

In one, a woman tells Rosenberg that there are certain things you just have to do. When he asks for an example, she mentions cooking dinner for her family. While she hates doing it, she says she has to, and has been faithfully doing it for years. After digesting Rosenburg’s lessons on language, she goes home and declares to her family that she will no longer be cooking dinner. Rosenberg later has a chance to ask her sons what they think of this new development. They were delighted that their mother would no longer be bitching and complaining through every meal!

In another story, a teacher says she hates giving grades because she doesn’t think they’re helpful to the students, but has to do it because it’s her school policy. Rosenberg encourages her to phrase it in the NVC way: “I choose to give grades because I want…” She replies that she chooses to give grades because she wants to keep her job. She says, “But I don’t like saying it that way. It makes me feel so responsible for what I’m doing.”

Ah yes. I personally think it’s sad to give up our autonomy with this little phrase, but that’s exactly what can be so alluring about it. We don’t have to take responsibility for our actions if we can use a “have to” to push the responsibility off on someone or something else.

We don’t do ourselves any favors with this, though. It simply obscures the other actions we could take to alleviate our troubles. I spent years thinking I had to pay my bills, which kept me from finding other solutions I turned out to be wonderfully happy with. And we don’t do others any favors with it, either. Like the cooking-hating mother, the other people in our life would probably be more happy with us if we were happy with our choices.

As you start to notice the “have to’s” in your life, some of them will give you a light bulb moment: I’m never doing that again, and this is what I’ll do instead! Some of them will give you a shift in how you feel about the action: I don’t have to do it, but I want to, and here’s why. Either way, you’ll find yourself a lot happier without all those little have to’s.