Transformation

Internal transformation is, by its very nature, a lonely process. No one can go down your path with you. We can have people there to encourage, guide, love, and cheer us on the way, and life would be a much more dismal place without those people, but no one can step inside your life, your mind and heart, and hold you while you turn into something different than you were. We all go through this process at least once when we go through puberty. Many women go through it three times: puberty, motherhood, and menopause. (Of course, a physical change doesn't necessarily lead to a mental or spiritual change, but they do often seem to show up right around the same time.) Anyway, with any luck we go through these transformations many times in our lives. I say "with any luck" because without change we are stagnant and in danger of any of a number of mental, physical, emotional and spiritual problems. 

Obviously, or maybe not so obviously, I'm going through this process right now. I am currently undergoing a dynamic, fundamental change at the core of me that is a response to not only my first year as a mother, but also that mother's response to the beauty and danger of the world, and my animal body's perceptions of the world around me. It is more than that though, and it is oh-so-difficult to verbalize. I can't really explain it to you, partially because of that inability of words to express some things, and partially because I don't know exactly what is happening. Or, I know what is happening right now inside of me, but what that will lead to in the next moment, and what the final result will be, I'm not exactly sure. I can tell you it is about how I know, view and perceive myself, how I understand my relationship with beings that are not me, how I engage with beings that are not me, and the right way to live in the world as a being OF the world.

I know that one philosophical view that is closely related is deep ecology, but I find that the concept fails as a description of the process. It is a noun, and transformations are verbs. Plus, I adhered (for lack of a better word) to the deep ecology paradigm before this started happening. Maybe this is just a deepening of it?

I think that this blog exists solely as an outlet for this, even though I don't necessarily post about every little change or "aha!" that happens. This is one way of trying to push through the loneliness and connect with something larger. My close face to face friends and some of my family get to hear about it in person, but often I am not able to make the connection that I am looking for. I wish I could tell someone some of these thoughts, these happenings, and I would see the happy glow of recognition in his or her face.

Anyway, I leave you with some pictures I took the other day.

 

The Ocean

Whenever I feel that life is getting too hectic my favorite thing to do is find a body of water. Luckily, Pinellas county is a tiny peninsula within the larger peninsula of Florida, so getting to the water is really, really easy. The other day we all went; it was beautiful.

Food! And other things. But mostly, FOOD!

So, lots of changes lately. Decisions made, and new questions to consider. Some updates:

First! Our porch is now the lucky home of several new plants. Edible ones. I figure if I can't have a garden in the ground, I'll have a garden in containers! We have three different lettuces, two strawberry plants (from which we ate our first home-grown strawberry today), mint, rosemary, arugula, yellow bell pepper, cucumber, and cherry tomato. My porch is a very, very happy place now.

Some sad, neglected house plants, and the new edible plants prior to their transplant into bigger terra-cotta pots.

Better pictures to come, I promise. I might even load pictures from my actual camera, rather than my poor quality phone camera.

Second! While the new lovely edibles are busy photosynthesizing, growing, cellularly respiring, etc., we have found  some new sources for fresh, ethical, more local, real food. This really awesome place is our new favorite place for produce! So hard to find a decent farm in the middle of sprawling Pinellas county, but here one is! And look at what we got!

That's right, fresh, hand-picked broccoli, zucchini, yellow squash, collard greens, strawberries and a tomato!

Third! We've decided to rid our home and lives of as much plastic as possible. Mainly this is because there are hundreds of thousands of chemicals that make the plastic that is so pervasive, and we only know about a very small handful of them. And those one we do know about are pretty much horrible. Plus, plastic goes hand-in-hand with this disposable culture, and since we're trying to get away from all that nasty consumption and garbage, it's only logical to start phasing out plastic.

Fourth! I'm 90% sure at this point that I am going to sell my car. I'm really tired of driving around a planet-killing zombie machine. I'd much rather ride a bicycle. I'm in the process of researching bikes and such, and trying to figure out the right timing (and that whole money thing) to do it.

I would post beautiful pictures of us at Indian Rocks Beach the other day, but the camera is completely dead. I need to charge it, and then I'll post pictures.

Love to you.