simplicity

in an increasingly complex world, i feel an increasing longing for simplicity. there's so much information, so much strife, so much shouting (see the american elections or any american sitcom). so much people being hard on themselves and others. so much scheming, so much unnecessary bad energy. so much anger, so much arrogance. so much filling the calendar and planning and so many deadlines. it makes a person despair a little bit sometimes.

can't we just simplify things? laugh instead of shout? smile instead of frown? relax instead of being tense? go back to basics? nurture a tree in a windowsill. can some pears. pick raspberries in the rain. make some raspberry jam. stop by the bakery for some pastry on the way to the meeting. visit a friend out of the blue, unannounced. snuggle up with a cat.

do something small today. something simple. just imagine if we all did it? it just might help.

nobody without my stuff

i heard about a study today about consumerism and identity and how so much of who we are today is defined by what we buy. even if you decide you're not going to buy stuff, you're just building another identity and it's still about you as a (non)consumer. how can we get away from consuming and just be?

it's dizzying when you start to think about it. when i put organic milk in my basket or sew with organic fabric or drink fair trade coffee, i'm signaling my identity. our car, my bike, my camera, my computer (definitely), my phone - all send signals of who i am. it frightens me a little bit to think that i might not even know who i was without my stuff.

liberating beauty

on a friend's recommendation, i acquired a book called skønhedens befrielse - forslag til en økologisk æstetik (liberating beauty: towards an ecological aesthetic) by morten skriver. a book by a guy whose last name is actually "writer" has to be ok, right?

i felt the book started off well. it really spoke to me with its condemnation of the horrible conditions under which animals are mass-produced for our consumption and of the mind-numbing sameness of suburbia and mall culture. and the underlying message that we must return to a place where we see that everything is connected to everything else and the choices we make matter is a good one.

but. (you knew it was coming, didn't you?) but, then i began to notice that citation of sources was sorely lacking. i came across ideas and thoughts that i know i've read before other places (thomas friedman, al gore, denis dutton), but no credit was given. granted that these are not presented as quotations, but neither are they original thoughts on the part of mr. "writer." i think mr. writer might have needed to work with a guy named mr. editor, who should have flagged this fact.

a book like this is very thought-provoking, but it makes me want to read more. i want to know who he has read - i want footnotes and end notes and a bibliography. because i'm certain a lot of research went into this book and it totally spoils it for me that citation of sources is completely lacking.  does he really think ms. reader will believe he came up with all of this himself? no way.

and once these doubts about him crept into my mind, i began to see that many of his conclusions were rather wild as well. he lays out good examples of how our consumer society has pushed us very far from an aesthetic and ethical way of living but then he tacks wild, leaping conclusions onto them. he uses the example of the golf course and the uniformity and ubiquity of golf courses as an illustration for what's wrong and how far we are from nature. i think it's an interesting example, but i'm not sure it proves what he thinks it does. because i don't think that people golf to be somehow closer to nature - they golf for the sport and the competition, not necessarily to see grass, trees and sand traps. the notion is interesting, but his conclusions are all off.

but i keep reading, hoping i'll be able to see the sources between the lines, so i can go directly to them and read even more. because i think that this notion of a return to a more natural state is indeed a way of both liberating beauty and being liberated by beauty and i think it's related (tho' i don't yet know if i can explain how), to this renaissance of craft and handmade. we are looking to turn away from the soullessness of the mall and the giant supermarket and get back to something that feels more real and more beautiful - even if it's just rhubarb from our own garden or curtains we sewed ourselves. we are turning away from the mass produced and towards the unique and beautiful.

but, mr. skriver, shame on you for not citing your sources. you've done yourself (and your name) and us a disservice.

a simplify update

sometimes you have to buy something in order to not buy something.  buy it to not buy it, as it were. i recently wrote over on domestic sensualist about the dinner box that we order from the company that delivers our weekly friday box of organic veg. we've been subscribers to this veggie box for more years now than i can count and in the interest of being a locovore, i've been quite faithful to the "dogme" kasse - which features only danish-produced veg. i'll admit it's a bit hard to stay faithful to all that root veg here through the winter, so when årstiderne introduced these mealtime boxes, i switched.

the idea with the box is that you get three full meals (two of the meals stretch to leftovers and a second day, so it's not a 3-meal box, but more like a 5-meal box) - meat, veg, condiments, even bread, pasta, quinoa and the like. today is the fourth week we've had it. and it may sound rather expensive at 445 kroner per week ($82), but what i've figured out is that i'm spending FAR less on groceries overall. all i've bought this week at the store is milk, bread and cucumbers (the child goes through cucumbers like you wouldn't believe), nutella (ditto that on the child), some tea and a big tub of greek yogurt. in a normal week, i'd probably spend 100-150 ($20-35) kroner per day at the grocery store, just buying whatever struck me for dinner. now, the dinner ideas are already here at home and the daily grocery store total is under 50 ($10) kroner. and bear in mind everything in the box is organic, so i don't have to worry about chasing that down at the store (it can be hard to find certain items).

this week's box has a whole organic chicken, a package of cubed bacon and a package of ground beef. additionally, there is fresh full grain pasta, grated topping cheese, a jar of capers and a container of vegetable juice (bloody marys for friday evening anyone?). the veg includes carrots, potatoes (they are always there), one of those celery roots of which i'm not that fond, tho' they add good flavor to a soup, some greens, a head of very fresh lettuce, tomatoes, a lemon, 3 medium onions, a big handful of fresh lovely ginger, a zucchini, a cauliflower, and a red pepper. that's actually quite a lot of food for the money. as an extra i ordered danish-milled flour in durum and spelt so we can make bread this weekend. the box comes with three suggested recipes and they've totally gotten me out of what had been a cooking slump, inspiring me to spend and enjoy my time in the kitchen again. and if you factor in the value of your time and not spending as much of it standing in line at the grocery store, because they bring the box right to your door, the box is very good value for money.

other than that on the simplify front, i've been very good about not buying things. i've kept my fabric purchases to a minimum (i haven't given them up completely, after all, i am making birds for sale now, and i have a baby quilt order, so it's arguably a business expense). i've bought no electronics (so the iPad isn't out yet) and no clothes or shoes, despite everything being on sale. there was a panic last-minute lego buy for sabin's birthday, but the child needs birthday presents and lego is a good investment.

they made fun of me at blog camp, saying i'd decided not to buy stuff i already had and didn't really need and that i'm not imposing any really hard restrictions on myself. and to an extent that's true, but the exercise has made me more conscious of what we spend our money on and more concerned about buying quality and not crap. i think twice before grabbing those big fluffy towels that are on special because really, we don't need any more towels. and i've restrained from buying any new model iPods (tho' i'm certain my restraint will not extend to the iPad once it's released here), because one for every room of the house is enough.

it's also true that i've just not really been tempted at all to buy things, since it's been so snowy and i've mostly been at home. there is a whole world of shopping out there on the internet, but aside from the odd fabric purchase (hello fabricworm), i've exercised remarkable restraint - nothing at all from amazon (for me, i did order some of sabin's birthday prezzies there) and not a single sheet of pretty paper.  i do have my eye on a gorgeous crocheted blanket, but have thus far restrained (tho' i could easily talk myself into it in the interest of it having been made by a cooperative that's helping women in a cape town shantytown) because of the not buying it project.

i've also been doing a better job of looking around at what i already have when i'm going to make something...from the embellishments on my birds to fabric that could be made into a dress i keep dreaming about, to the japanese pattern books i have lying around, waiting for me to learn japanese. i think i'll have to make that dress today, to get it out of my system, making it in my dreams twice should actually make it sew up rather quickly. i'm off to do that and some more birds. i didn't get any up on etsy yesterday because i ran out of stuffing. but i should get some up this weekend. i'll put a note here when they're up.

resisting...

it seems that during the christmas season there are many pressures. a whirlwind of gifts and relatives and friends and food and cookies. and you either succumb to the pressures and dash around like a madwoman, trying to get that perfect last-minute present, the last ingredients for the perfect christmas dinner, the most beautiful centerpiece for your christmas table, or you resist all of that.

this year, i'm resisting. for the most part, we have what we need, so we're not going mad with presents (if you don't count the small fortune i spent on new clothes for sabin in noa noa). we've just had our weekend of julefrokosts, so the family and friends bit is mostly behind us. we've been baking for the past week, so we've got a supply of christmas cookies laid in. those lovely people who bring my weekly organic box also brought an organic duck and a big, beautiful pork roast (both essential ingredients in the danish christmas dinner), so we're set as far as the food is concerned. i bought some hyacinths and i'm making my own table centerpiece. so the resisting is going well so far. and in fact, i've even managed to resist  some other stuff:

~  christmas cards - i really don't do christmas cards. this isn't a new resistance, i've basically never done christmas cards. i always find those letters, outlining all of the achievements of the family over the past year and with overly sentimental and possibly hollow wishes for you to have a successful new year (so that your christmas letter next year can too be filled with glowing reports of little johnny's early acceptance to harvard and the like), to be...well...a bit braggy and ultimately empty. there, i said it. maybe i'm scrooge, but i don't want to send out such a letter and honestly, nor do i want to receive them. which isn't to say that i don't appreciate the sentiment behind the cards i receive (which are fewer and fewer each year, as people realize we don't send them back and put us in their grudge books), but i'm not willing able to reciprocate. i just don't have it in me. maybe i'm just bad at polite gestures. (and spud, bambi and bee, i'm not talking about you here...i love that you sent cards, i just didn't send one back.)

~  teacher gifts - i've seen a lot of references of late to people frantically getting their teacher gifts ready to go. and i have to say that we are very fortunate that that's not the norm here in denmark. so no pressure to give an elaborate gift to the teacher to keep her well-disposed to the child. since we didn't HAVE to do it, we did give sabin's teacher (who we love) one of our sweet little birds. and the riding teacher that was leaving also got one. but it felt much better for the fact that we weren't obligated to do it.

crappy picture taken from great distance in dark church at high ISO and then cropped within an inch of its life.

~  nativity chic - spud wrote not long ago about the nativity chic craze sweeping the UK. it sounded like utter madness - people spending up to 150£ on costumes for their child's appearance in the yearly nativity play. sabin was in a nativity play too and all it meant was that we had to roll out of bed rather early on sunday morning. sabin was one of the lesser-known characters - the christmas heart (julehjertet) - and all costumes were provided by the church. on this one, i'll admit i would like to have made an elaborate and much more fabulous costume for her myself, but i am grateful that the setup itself made it easy for me to resist this.

~ keeping up with the joneses hansens - we met a group of new people yesterday at a little christmas afternoon gathering at some friends of ours. there were three other couples there, all chatting and open and really nice (rather pleasantly undanish of them, actually, tho' all were danes). they were talking about trips taken and trips on the horizon. skiing in france just after christmas. a tour around thailand. visits to shanghai for mad shopping sprees. and it surprised me that i didn't feel any need at all to compete. i don't feel the least bit bad that we're going to be home this christmas, with our own crackling fire and the smells of duck roasting in the oven. i like to ski, but honestly, traipsing to france when the snow is beautiful here at home just doesn't appeal. and so i realized that all of that thinking about simplicity is working. i'll admit that maybe i've also reached a place where i'm comfortable in the knowledge of all the places i've traveled and don't feel any pressure to prove anything. and i realize that makes it much easier.

husband's older daughters were here this weekend and they had a lengthy conversation with their mother over what some or other cousin wanted for christmas. they couldn't remember and couldn't really think of anything original to get for the cousin. so they settled upon a gift card to a shop that has perfume and makeup, so that the cousin could buy what she wanted. and it really underlined for me how out of control the gift thing has become. we're giving gifts because we feel obligated to do so. and far too many people don't put any thought into it - they just ask for a list from the person and get them exactly what's on the list. we far too often just go buy the things we like and think we need, leaving there to be nothing we really wish for when christmas comes. and i think that takes the fun out of it for both giver and receiver. how much fun is it to open your gifts when you know what's in them? and it becomes more drudgery than fun to shop for gifts when you're just going down a pre-determined list.

i want to return to a place where gifts are meaningful. where i give because i found or made something that i know is perfect for that person. i'd rather gives less gifts that have more meaning and i definitely don't want to give some lame gift certificate because i can't be bothered to think of something proper to give. if you don't know the person well enough to be able to know what they'd like, then maybe you have no business giving them a gift in the first place? i really think we've come to a bad place in our evolution when gifts have become an obligation. the whole idea of gifts is lost if that's the case.

dismounts from soap box....

i hope that your christmas season is filled with love and laughter and good food and crackling fireplaces and time spent with people you love.

o christmas tree, o christmas tree...

the world is covered in a blanket of fresh, white, fluffy snow. and while that brings joy to my heart and makes everything seem fresh and new, it also keeps me indoors because it's pretty friggin' cold out there to go with it (-7C). it'll also make it a bit problematic for getting our christmas tree this weekend, because how do you shake all that snow off before you bring it in the house?

last year's tree

and i've been thinking about the christmas tree. for years (and i mean like 20 years), i've been collecting shiny purple ornaments, adding a few new ones every year. and there are many that are meaningful and which i love getting out year after year, but suddenly, this year i'm not sure purple feels right. and most of what i've got for the tree definitely isn't handmade (except for that nordic sun symbol that's on top) and i'm in this handmade mode and wondering how to reconcile that with my glitzy purple tree. especially since i haven't made any ornaments this year and it's getting a bit late if i should embark on that now.

when you think about how nature can decorate the trees, it seems rather pathetic to even try to trim the tree with all that fake glitz and spangle, even as much as i love shiny things.  maybe next year i'll felt a bunch of old sweaters into homey new ornaments, like trinsch did. maybe i'll go out to the blue room and make up a few of the spool birdies and it'll make me feel a bit better.

but i sound a bit more depressed than i mean to and than i really feel...i'm looking forward to christmas. sabin loves it so much and i've gotten her some really nice clothes and some games and lego and some fun stocking stuffers (think robots) that she will love. we'll have wonderful food with friends and family, starting already tomorrow. we've been baking up a storm while it stormed outside. so really it's all good. i think i'm just trying to reconcile my new thoughts on consumption with the old me and with tradition. it's a journey, what can i say?

changing priorities

as you know, i've been doing a lot of thinking about how to simplify our life. it's partially because i don't want a high-powered office-politics game-playing type job anymore and that means that we'll have less money to frivolously throw away every month. and it's partially because i no longer want to frivolously throw away money every month on crap that i don't really need and which has been produced in a way that doesn't respect our planet. and although i love collecting and stashing, i don't want so much clutter in my life (and my brain) anymore. but mostly, with all of the talk about climate change here in the lead-up to the COP15 meeting, i have realized that i want to live in a more sustainable way. i want to throw less away and waste less. i want to make the purchases i make in a more deliberate, less impulsive manner (good luck with that aries girl).

so over the past week, i've been trying to put myself into the simplicity mindset when i'm out and about. and what struck me is that it makes me feel poor. and i realized that i don't like that. but now i know that's the main notion and feeling that i need to work on. because while spending less money would be a nice side effect of this endeavor, it's not actually the main goal. the main goal is living a more deliberate, meaningful life that's better in balance and harmony with the world around me. because i want there to be a clean, healthy planet for sabin to inherit.

but i think i'm so conditioned to consume that not consuming makes me feel strange.

i want to do this, but i don't want to feel poor or like i'm withdrawing from society at large or living a hermetic existence, but i think it's a bit of a balancing act. because i want there to be shops and restaurants and bakeries and butchers and fishmongers in my community. which means i have to support them by being a customer. but how do i transition to being a more responsible customer? and if i end up having a shop of my own, how can i be a responsible shop owner?

i don't have all the answers, but these are the questions i'm struggling with as we get ready to embark on a year of mindful consumption.

* * *

p.s. i haven't forgotten about picking my favorite comment from the voice post, it's just a bit more difficult than i thought it would be because there were some very interesting thoughts. but a result is coming soon! maybe even later today...

simplify

i've been going on and on about simplifying my life for nearly two years now. clearing out the junk, paring down, eating locally-produced food, spending less on gadgets [gasp!], making do with what we have. long ago (before i realized how much i hate flash), i even bought a bunch of books on the simple life. i was so not ready to actually do it, that i felt i had to acquire something in order to even ponder it. and strangely, i never really read those books at the time (except for barbara kingsolver's animal, vegetable, miracle). but over the past week or so, i've begun reading them. i think i was ready at last.

i found that i did a pretty good job of selecting a good range from the theoretical side to the WAY out there living in a hut in the woods side to the incredibly annoyingly, preachily written to the practical, down-to-earth view. and i've realized a few things:

~ we're quite a lot farther along than i thought. in thinking and in action.

~ thinking is at least half the battle.

~ things change quickly: judith levine's reason for her year of not buying (2004) was the mad rhetoric of the bush administration which suggested that the best way to defeat the terrorists was to get out there and buy something. i think my main reason for wanting to do this, other than living more personally mindfully, is a desire to be kinder to the environment.

~ simplifying doesn't have to mean suffering. it's more about mindfulness than self-denial. which may be why i feel i'm a lot closer now than i was when i bought the books last year.

~ i think i'd rather think of it as living more consciously, that seems more palatable and somehow less like a cult or  a religion to me. i have a feeling that the notion of voluntary simplicity or radical simplicity has been fetishized a bit too much for my taste.

~ i realize my own dad, who has never set foot in a wal-mart, has been "not buying it" for years (of course mom and us girls more than made up for it over the years). sometimes it takes years to learn the lessons your parents try to teach you, but i think i'm catching on at last.

~ the simplicity project is much easier outside of the insane consumer culture that is the united states.

~ while there is cultural pressure to keep up with the hansens next door here, it's on a much more even keel and keeping up doesn't mean a two hummer garage.  (granted, i'm not sure it means that in the US anymore after more than a year of economic crisis - but these books are all pre-crisis.)

~ our ancient toyota is a great example of how we resist the cultural pressure to have a nice shiny new car. and i've long found that rather charming about us. :-)

~ i think i'm ready to commit to my own year of not buying in 2010 and am already thinking of the ways in which we should execute that as a family.

i'd love to hear what you all think. have you simplified over the past year out of economic necessity or environmental concerns or because you saw one of those awful programs about how the chickens are treated? what do you think it would take for you to spend a year not buying anything more than essentials? what would those essentials include?

the things you hold onto

there's no place like home

i've lived away from my country of birth during the whole monica lewinsky thing + the entire bush administration, that's now more than a decade. people always ask me what i miss. and aside from my family, which is a given, i usually say, just The Gap. and i do miss the gap. except when they forget that what they do is make great hooded sweatshirts, but i'm confident they'll remember soon.

but when i think about it, there are other things. like hot rollers. nobody does hot rollers where i live and i'd like to have the occasional curly hair day (that would make my mom happy as well, she always thinks that a look is never really complete if you have flat hair).

and there's the fact that clabber girl baking powder is the best kind. we, of course, have baking powder too, but it's just not the same. however, our yeast (blocks of the fresh kind) totally kicks those wussy dry packets. and mom sends me clabber girl when i need it.

and although ikea now has a form of zip-loc bag available, you can't get that really nice little snack size zip-locs that are ideal for sabin's lunches. so we still import those.

i would say that i let go of other things in stages. for the first couple of years, i imported mentadent toothpaste. i loved that stuff, but now i've gotten used to colgate (because it's available here too) and i no longer need to use up valuable luggage space on that. i'm not even sure they still make it. i think i liked that little push thingie it came in.

i also would lay in a large supply of dry idea deodorant whenever i was home, but now i can deal with whatever's available on the grocery store shelf--rexona or whatever. it really all works equally well. (except when you forget to pack it.)

i miss regular access to vanity fair and atlantic monthly and the new yorker, but perhaps enjoy them more because i only get them once in awhile when i pass through an airport or city that has them, so the pain is less than i would once have imagined.

same with movies. i used to have to see every movie in the theatre on the weekend it came out. now, pretty much the only time i see movies is on a long-haul flight. and i don't miss it, not even a little bit. perhaps my taste has improved or movies have not. but with something like a new james bond, we do still go on opening weekend. (perhaps i should take a lesson from this on the whole getting rid of the t.v. notion.)

some of these are surely products of growing older, but they're also about the adaptability of humans to their surroundings. i have my frustrations with what i at times perceive as the impoliteness of danes, but for the most part, i feel i'm home. it's here my best and favorite people are and our home is filled with memories of our life, even if we use different products than i was once used to.

i think it was B who said it not long ago, home is where your books are. your toothpaste and deodorant, those change. and as you can see, my books are most decidedly here...

let austerity april begin

i know that if you know me, which you no doubt feel you do if you come here regularly, you think i'm pulling a little april fool's joke. it cannot be that our little julochka is embarking on any kind of project that has the word "austerity" in it. but this is no joke. inspired by my friend B, for the month of april (and hopefully beyond), there will be no shoes, no crocheted stones, no fabulous fabric (sorry heather i'll have to wait 'til may), no pretty paper, no items of crap from the spotvarer at the grocery store, no books (i have enough to get me through the next month), no pretty notebooks or binders from bookbinders design, no new clothes (not that i'm that bad about clothes (thankfully i live far from a Gap), it's really only when i've let that moron pack my suitcase), no new perfume.

just groceries and train tickets and plane tickets and the organic box. oh, and the cleaning girl. i refuse to give her up.

amazing the things we consider the necessities of life.

i wonder if i can hide under some of the rocks i found last weekend for an entire month...

kabul safer than wal-mart

dang. for the second time in a week or so, i'm reading about deaths at wal-mart. i knew that wal-mart was evil, but this is getting ridiculous. employees, who are already not treated well by their employer, are trampled to death as they open the doors. and now there's talk of other employees who tackle poor shoplifters (who are probably desperate, sad people in the first place) and kill them.

when i was in college, i went to wal-mart. i liked that they were open 24 hours. you could go there at 1 a.m. to buy your cleaning products and avoid all the freaky crowds. tho' you didn't really avoid the freaks, since that's when they were there, wandering the aisles, muttering to themselves and gesturing wildly. still, that's when i chose to go. something about breathing in the chemical smell and the reassuring whirr of the floor polisher just had its appeal.

but, then somewhere along the way i read barbara ehrenreich's book nickle and dimed: on not getting by in america and i decided not to go to wal-mart anymore. and i haven't set foot in one since 2003. of course, it helps that where i live there aren't any, but even when i'm in the US i avoid them. and my dad, who just turned 75 yesterday, has NEVER set foot in one. i'm so proud of him for that. of course, it didn't help my resolve that i spent a number of years working for the world's largest container shipping company and that wal-mart was a major customer (they had a whole fleet of key account managers hanging out in arkansas). however, i had no direct association.

but this latest rash of madness and mayhem at wal-mart further reinforces it for me. i'll definitely not be setting foot in one again now, i don't care how bad this financial crisis gets. i'll just make do with less cleaning products. and i'm sure with the economic slowdown, it's only going to get worse for wal-mart workers--kept on part-time hours so the company can avoid paying benefits, paying only minimum wage, all so we can get the jumbo pack of paper towels for $1.99. and we can see how much they care about the safety of their customers. no thank you. i'd rather walk through downtown kabul. which is probably actually safer these days.

taking stock

it's that time of year for stocktaking. last year at this time, i realized that i was answering to my fourth boss in three and a half years and that i didn't have the energy for the starting all over that that promised. each one came in and wanted to undo everything the previous one had thought was ok in order to leave his mark, so it was an endless cycle of defending the projects one was already doing. and i realized it was no longer worth it to my sanity. and so i'm no longer there. and it has taken me nearly this entire year to recover psychologically, but i do feel that i have at last recovered and found my way back to myself, strong and whole and probably better and stronger and more sure of what makes me tick than i was before.

so that makes stocktaking feel like a good and worthy activity, so although i'm not really a big advocate of new year's resolutions, it seems worthwhile to think about what one wants going forward into the new year.

yesterday, i had a two hour brainstorming session with two very brilliant and wacky minds. these two people get more ideas every minute than you can imagine and i am always in awe when i'm around them. i feel that i am also a person who gets a lot of ideas, but i could tell that spending a couple of hours brainstorming with them yesterday was the most productive and energizing time i've spent in ages. and i realize that although working mostly from home over the past year has been a true luxury, it has been a bit isolating at times and isolation can be stifling to ideas. you need other people around who stimulate you creatively. your own ideas become better when you bounce them off of the ideas of others. so one of the things i resolve to do in 2009 is to regularly spend time with creative minds who push my thinking in new and exciting directions.

this morning, i sat with my newspapers and a cup of tea and read headline upon headline about the financial crisis and how it's starting to impact businesses and individuals. when i walk around on the pedestrian shopping zone in my little town, i see little evidence of any christmas slowdown. people appear to be hurrying around, shopping their little brains out, with that slightly panicked glazed-over look in their eyes, grabbing another and another and another gift. and i realize that i really don't want to do that anymore. it doesn't make us feel good, so why is it that we are driven to consume?

last night, i downloaded and read from cover to cover the latest issue of mankind mag. it's a free download from design for mankind and i thought it was so awesome that i went back and donated to it. completely in tune with the zeitgeist, it's the consumption issue. erin talks to artists all over the world about consumption. even before i opened it, i thought of an artist i'd seen on etsy who made daily drawings of the things she bought. and i was delighted to find that she was there in this issue--kate bingaman burt. and because i'd lost track of her after stumbling onto her on etsy months ago, i have now bookmarked her blog.

so i hereby resolve to document my purchases, on a daily basis, for at least the whole month of january. perhaps it will be so much fun (or so shocking) that i will continue. but i've been talking about off and on during 2008 that i want to be more conscious about my consumption and now it's time to do something about it.  i actually tried keeping a food journal at the beginning of the year, in order to be more conscious about what i was eating, but somehow it didn't catch on with me and it's lying mostly empty by my bedside.  the cover above features a drawing of purchases by UK artist gemma correll that's amazing and inspiring as well, so i think i'll be able to stick with this resolution this time around.

one other thing i've been thinking about in addition to spending my money more wisely is spending my time more wisely as well. some of the first blogs i discovered at the beginning of the year, when i began spending time in the blogosphere in earnest just don't fit me anymore. and it took me awhile to realize it. there are a couple in particular which have been daily reads for me, which i have come to realize are really quite empty and false and pretty much annoy the hell out of me. so i resolve, actually already now, as of this minute, to un-favorite them and not spend any more time there. some people, "rad" as they fancy themselves to be (seriously, who says that?), really aren't worth it. and besides they never reciprocated by reading me, so who cares? my time is too precious. (EDITED:  please note that i do not mean any of you guys who visit me regularly...these were people whose blogs i visited, but who never visited me!!!)

and, i'll leave you with erin's challenge from her editor's note in mankind mag--"every time you spend money, you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want." --anna lappe.  then erin asks, "have you checked your vote lately?" i for one will be checking my vote a lot more often.

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just stumbled onto an interesting blog entry and song demo by suzanne vega on the NYT website. check out her song, it's very timely (tho' completely unrelated to what i've written above, just had to share because it was cool).

on simplicity and the christmas season

i found the coolest shop in manila in the new greenbelt 5 (man, that mall just grows and grows!). it's called brat pack and is actually a super cool concept for a store. it's mostly funky backpacks and bags and clothing and shoes and some accessories (think lomo cameras and stuff like the fab team manila clock i bought there). the stuff is there on consignment from various vendors, but must have to conform to some certain style guidelines, because it's all quite harmonious. check out the shopping bag for a taste of how cool the shop is:

anyway, i bought the simplify shirt above at brat pack. (and yes, i appreciate the irony of me feeling that i have to BUY something in order to simplify!) it's from a label called good karma by life is good, and the label says it's "environmentally friendly clothing for environmentally friendly people." in any case, it's super soft cotton and i love the shirt. and i bought it to remind me that i've been talking a lot this year about simplifying and paring down our lifestyle, but i haven't been doing a whole lot about it.

husband and i just discussed on monday that we don't want to engage in that whole christmas madness this year. that awful panicked feeling that you don't have enough or the right presents, so you rush out and buy a few more things that you don't really need at the last minute. we don't want that feeling this year. we actually pretty much have what we need, so we have agreed not to get presents for one another this year.

then, this morning, i read tara's thoughtful posting on christmas madness and sustainable living at eyeblog. as she says, it's actually about living so that your life makes sense. we'd all love to give only presents that we have made by hand, but who really has the time for that? the reality is that we have to live our lives and make them work too and if we sat around knitting and sewing for everyone all the time, would dinner get made or the laundry get done? as it is, i am a little fearful of looking under the chairs for fear of being attacked by giant dust bunnies.

like tara, i also worry about where the things i buy are made (admittedly not sure it's a good thing that my new simplify shirt was made in pakistan). i would say that i've tried hardest on that front with food this past year...i have made a real effort to buy produce that is produced locally. i've been learning about cooking with nordic ingredients--did you know you could make hawthorne syrup? and we've been learning to enjoy things when they're season and not buy them otherwise--therefore, only 2 glorious weeks of strawberries and the tomato consumption has tapered off significantly. we're finding it makes us appreciate the goodness of the food more. it's true that we'll buy those clementines as they come into season, so we're not entirely faithful. we buy ones that are from spain, so that they've only come up through europe and not been shipped across an ocean on a container ship. somehow the small, easily-peeled juicy deliciousness of those clementines just means christmas, so we're not really prepared to do without.

i had already vowed to give presents i've made to those i need to exchange presents with this christmas (tho' sabin will no doubt get some legos and probably some littlest pet shop). but i'm thinking of nicely framing photos i've taken this year, or having some photo albums made on one of those sites online. i'll also make some cushion covers and perhaps a lap quilt or two. i'm still rubbish at knitting, so no knitting hats and mittens, even tho' i'd actually like to do that.

how can we live more simply and sustainably at christmas? i guess with worldwide economic crisis, it seems easier to imagine paring down and not indulging in complete christmas madness. the truth is that we don't actually need any more stuff here at our house (tho' i did kinda want a red retro espresso machine--but wants are different than needs, aren't they and we do enjoy going out for a latte). but i am looking forward to having a big, lovely christmas tree in our new addition. we won't skip that, nor will we skip making wonderful christmas food. we're just going to try to be sensible on the gift front. thanks again, tara, for prompting me put some thought into this one again.

the minimalist

just read this very interesting (if rather unexpectedly (given where it was published) badly written) piece on eating less meat in the NYTimes and thought i'd share (despite the hack writing..the thoughts are good).  i'm going to give it a whirl.  meat as a treat.  and more spinach.  can't go wrong there!

living consciously

in my quest for living in a more conscious way (i'll stop trying to say it's simple or frugal, because it's simply not that, at least not the moment), i've done the following (have i mentioned that i love lists?):

1. started a food journal--where i write about what i eat--recording recipes, experiments, fabulous meals in restaurants, just the everyday food on the table.
2. ordered an organic box of fruit and veggies to be delivered every friday. i make a concerted effort to USE UP what's in the box (i'll admit i don't always succeed, but i'm getting better).
3. buy økologisk/organic--whenever i possibly can, even if it means spending more (and unfortunately, it often does, tho' it's getting better).
4. thinking about the "food miles" it took for the food i put on my table to get to me and making choices not to buy things if i think the way it came to me is not environmentally sustainable.
5. never, ever buy the eggs from the chickens that were kept in those nasty cages.
6. take my bike and/or public transport as much as possible.
7. buying handmade on etsy when i need gifts for people.
8. wines made from organic grapes. (now if they' just come out with organic gin, i'd be in heaven.)
9. not shopping in wal-mart or other places where the employees aren't treated properly.
10. being observant about what's making me happy and what's making my family happy and acting in ways that promote that.
11. working in a place that makes me happy and in which i am both fulfilled and appreciated for my talents.
12. being kinder, more thoughtful and simply more observant towards my friends.
13. watching little or no t.v.
14. listening to public radio.
15. less chemicals/perfumes/hormones in my home (no overly-perfumed fabric softeners, environmentally-friendly cleaning products, natural-based soaps and detergents, less plastics).

of course there is much more i can do. and perhaps i'll learn a whole bunch of new things from my new books. because frankly, despite the angst of the earlier post, i ADORE them. new books totally rock. they actually SMELL good and they feel good. they're wonderful. they LOOK beautiful and i haven't even read the words yet. but i'm going to start now...

the right response?

so, i've been pondering ways of living a simpler life. i've put thought into what's important to me and to our family. i've made lists of those things. and yes, it ends up being things, doesn't it? because we are in a decidedly thing-oriented world. if we all stopped wanting all those things, the global economy would grind to a halt. all those ships wouldn't have anything to carry in all those containers. and since shipping is my industry, it does give me pause...would we actually HURT ourselves if we got off this consumer train? furthermore, is it even possible to do so?

my response to thinking about living more simply is to read about how other people are doing it. of course, one can do this online and that i have done. however, my impulse is to go to amazon.co.uk and starting nosing around. what i found there arrived on my doorstep today:

1. Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding Peace & Fulfillment in a Complex World, by Linda Breen Pierce
2. Timeless Simplicty: Creative living in a consumer society, by John Lane
3. Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping, by Judith Levine
4. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating, by Barbara Kingsolver
5. Radical Simplicty: Creating an Authentic Life, by Dan Price
6. The Spirit of Silence: Making space for creativity, by John Lane
7. A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity, by Wm. S. Coperthwaite

if you put these together with Oliver James' Affluenza, which i ordered a month or so ago, it is a total of 8 books on living more simply. (sigh) i'm behind before i even begin. i can't even THINK about living simply in a simple way or without buying something. i somehow think i need EIGHT books to help me do it--and i think this to the extent that i actually ORDER eight books. this is the depth of the problem we're facing here. and i don't think it's only me. it's a general cultural malaise.