In my yard I have a diverse array of food growing: apple, peach, cherry, black locust, hazelnut, pomegranate, bamboo, grapevine, black berry, raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, corn, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, gourds, all manner of cucurbit, peas, beans, herbs, chickens, and others. Diversity is my main tactic. There's also swales, hugelkulture, key hole gardens, cob, and vernal pools. I've done the best job I can designing and installing permaculture into this yard. I don't even like calling it a yard any longer because that word doesn't honor the sweat, blood, thought, emotion, and intentionality I've put into the food forest that is my "yard." A yard is something that is terrorized by mechanical tyranny and synthetic chemicals every other week. The goal of this anti-culture way of thinking is to somehow control nature, to keep it in straight lines and caged in a delusion of the collective human mind. We have dominion over a collapsing way of life contained in a biosphere that is becoming hostile to life. I'm not going to now launch into a list of all the problems our world is facing right now. This would be a good point in the essay to do so, but there are plenty of blogs in the doomosphere that can supply that list for you. The list of food growing in my "yard" is the only list you'll find in this particular rant.
The great irony of my life is that when I'm not permaculturing in my
yard I'm riding a lawn mower and operating a weed eather, and yes I
even spray round up from time to time. Nobody wants to pay me for my
permaculture knowledge in this anti-culture, but they will gladly pay
me to keep nature in line in their yards. All of that food growing
in my yard and I still shop at costco. Regardless of my hyperactive
distaste of hypocrisy it seems I'm unable to help myself from
participating in it. Why do I buy and spray Monsanto round up and
shop at Costco? Because I live in an anti-culture. I get paid to
spray round up, not plant fruit trees (or god forbid, bamboo), and I
shop at Costco because it's the cheapest way to feed two young boys.
I'm not operating under the fantasy that paying 30% more for
"organic" food is going to make my boys much healthier or
save anything from my species. The air we breath is toxic and there
are over 200 synthetic chemicals in the human body, and I'm supposed
to believe that shopping at the local organic box store is going to
keep me and my family more healthy!
I go to work and sweat...a lot. It's very hot and humid in the
American South. After each job I'll take my T-shirt off and wring
out a couple hundred cc's of sweat. I'll drink over a gallon of
water in a day and I might pee once. I work very hard for the money
I make, and so decisions like shop at costco and save a lot of money,
or shop at Organic Box Store and piss my money away like I do all
that water I drink, aren't really decisions at all...just common
sense. I've got more food growing in my yard than probably 99% of
the average home owner and yet I'm still dependent on Costco to
supply the bulk of my families calories. Permaculture doesn't work
without real community, and it damn sure doesn't work in an American
anti-culture. It requires whole communities of people to all be
concerned with food, medicine, and material cultivation. My neighbor
tills his "garden spot" and then applies petrochemicals to
it, and down the road there are 1000's of peach trees all in a line
that get sprayed copiously all of the time. Without those
petrochemicals my neighbor, and that atrocity of a "peach
orchard" down the road, would all learn the hard way what
petroleum dependency has done to our anti-culture.
I'm being forced to make up a culture. I've had no initiation into
adulthood, unless you count bombing Afghanistan from the bowels of an
aircraft carrier for control of the worlds heroine and petroleum as
an initiation. I have no elders to look up to. My father has
forsaken me and my family on account of arrogant pride. My mother
does the best that she can, but she's got no idea either
really...well she's got Jesus at least. I have no grandparents left.
My wife is even worse off. Her daddy put a 30 aught 6 in his mouth
a year before I met her, and her mother is an out of control
narcissists that does more harm than good wherever she goes. She has
no surviving grandparents either, and what did the whole lot teach us
about our world and how we should make our way in it? Our way of
life is to consume for profit sake while terrorizing resource rich
countries with weapons of mass destruction, and that pretty much
sums up America and it's grand ordeals about inalienable rights and
freedom. I suppose we have a culture of "lawn care." If
you're reading this during the daytime and you listen hard enough I'm
sure you can hear a small engine attempting to control nature
somewhere (and this privilage American's kill brown people of culture
with drones for). Could there be a better way to vent our
collective frustration then to grow just grass that has got to be
mowed every other week...and fueled by petroleum I might add. Henry
Ford and his ilk knew what they were doing with the invention of
carcentric suburbia. They were being industrious, which is the
highest good as long as it supports profit.
What am I to tell my two young boys about the world and their place
in it? The future has no place for them. If they're lucky there
will at least be some good human supporting biospheres left when it's
their turn to start making babies, that is if the nuclear industry
hasn't finished the job of making us all sterile. That industry is
definitely doing their level best to destroy all ocean life. For a
long time I used permaculture as a blank screen on which to project
my hopium. I resigned from a low paying career as a medic after a
short stent on fukitol didn't resolve my cognizant dissonance.
Dissonance which was resonating from existence in an anti-culture. I
went on a permaculture crusade of hope. Three years later my
permaculture business partner realizes that hugelkulture isn't going
to save the world and threw in the towel. Not that I blame him. Our
anti-culture requires us to make money, not to dream up ways to fix
this mess.
I'm supposed to remain optimistic in the face of all of this bad
news. I'm supposed to somehow realize that our anti-culture is
collapsing around us in all the ways that count, but yet there's
reason to rejoice! There is a large for profit prison industry in
this country for cryin' out loud. What the fuck! People are
literally making millions of dollars on non-violent drug addicts
turned industrial prison complex for profit slaves. They were only
drug addicts in the first place because there was no place for them
in our anti-culture. Who can blame them? Yet now they make our
military uniforms. I suppose at least we're using our own domestic
slaves now rather than the rest of the worlds. There is even a very
entertaining show about it on Netflix called "Orange is the New
Black." My wife and I have watched all three seasons. In the
last season the women of the prison make panties for a lingerie
company. Most Americans watching probably have no idea that the show
is depicting reality. At any rate we watch it to escape from
reality. One of the most important prescriptions for life in an
American anti-culture is the remedy of sitting on our fattening asses
while eating food chemicals anesthetized on a television screen,
beer, and fukitol. I'm supposed to be optimistic. I have a tendency
to forget that.
There is one small silver lining in the fight for optimism and
hopium. The SUN foundation, a 501c3 non-profit of which I'm the CFO
(chief financial officer), has a chance at receiving one million
dollars to design a "Sunstead." You can read all about
what that is by going to sun4living.com and reading our prospectus.
If anything can give me hope it's SUN. As you have no doubt deduced
at this point I need some hopium. We all do, at least those of us
with our eyes wide open. I hope that SUN can shine and help to
create at least one answer to this mess we are in. Now I'm off with
my truck and trailer full of nature tyranny dispensation so that I
can make some money to buy some Costco food to feed my family. At
least I did provide them some home grown Irish cobler taters and
zucinni for dinner last night. I'll take the small victories. I
suppose I'm more prepared for the future than 99% of the rest of the
non-1% Americans. On another optimistic note...my state finally took
the confederate flag off of the state capitol building today. I
guess my state's no longer stuck in the mid 1800's intellectually any
longer?