Francesca G. Varela's Blog, page 16

Tangible Stars

In some ways the trees are as unknowable as the stars. Here they are, tangible secrets, immense suns and mountains that are somehow alive before us. Let us feel their comfort and their power, and call them small deities, for here the stars have fallen at our feet, and look how mindlessly we stomp over them.

Tagged: Culture, Environment, Life, Lifestyle, Musings, Nature, Paganism, Philosophy, photography, Poetry, Prose, Prose-poetry, Stars, Thoughts, Trees, Writing

The Hazelnut Tree

The hazelnut tree, the old Corylus cornuta, is yellow rain beyond my window.

The warm glow of dripping candles, the fringed hair of some ever living willow.

It is the aftermist of an ocean wave, and riverbank leaves decaying in water.

As I look at the hazelnut I forget about winter,

because with those delicate catkins come the first quiet preparations for spring.

Tagged: Hazelnut Trees, Life, Musings, Nature, photography, Poems, Poetry, Prose, Prose-poetry, Random, Thoughts, Trees, Winter to Spring, Writing

The First Falling of Snow

Low winter light

buried by snow,

all sounds threaded

in gracile knots,

while the trees drip,

while we tingle with silence,

we breath again,

as though we have come up for air

in a world that was once underwater.

 

Tagged: Life, Musings, Nature, Philosophy, photography, Poems, Poetry, Random, snow, Thoughts, Winter, Writing

The Death of the Coyote’s Song

I remember the night we heard the coyotes. It was summer, or almost summer, and I was still a teenager. Although long past sunset, the sky wasn’t yet at its darkest, and the air through my open window smelled like dusk.

As I tried to sleep I listened to the outside. Car brakes. Fountain. Creek water in the forested backyard.  I breathed in cottonwood pollen and honeysuckle, wishing for some distant silver wilderness far from noisy highways.

And then, a sound I’d never heard. Throat-heavy cries. I ran downstairs to the window facing the forest. My family, awakened by the noise, joined me, and we all stood there as the night breeze blew through the screen. I was so happy to hear the coyotes chant. I knew very well where they were gathered; the vacant lot on the other side of the creek. Such a small piece of land, full of dandelions, and mice hiding in blackberry brambles, and a small oak tree that had died but not fallen over. Deer came through there sometimes, as did raccoons, opossums, and my beloved owls.

That was before they tore it apart. They’re going to build houses on it, they say. For now the soil has been mounded up and covered with plastic. I try not to look that way. I try not to hear their machines crunch the last branches of that oak tree. I try not to notice that the robins have moved their nests, that the owls no longer visit, that the deer and coyotes are gone.

Instead I think back to when the vacant lot was still a meadow; that coyote night, when I realized that city animals and city forests can be just as beautiful as those in the wilderness. It seemed to me, as I lingered next to the window, that, maybe, wilderness was actually intangible. It seemed to me that you could find it anywhere, maybe even right there in that meadow.

Tagged: Coyote, Coyotes, Culture, Environment, Environmentalism, Life, Musings, Nature, Personal, Philosophy, Prose, Random, Thoughts, Wilderness, Wildlife, Writing

Listen

I wrote this book when I was living in a college dorm-room. That was my sophomore year, so I guess I was 19 and 20? I finished it by summer break, then set it aside to prepare for the release of my first novel, Call of the Sun Child, which came out in March 2014.

And now, nearly three years after I wrote it, I know Listen‘s official release date: March 15th, 2016. Even better, the book is already available for pre-order!

When I started writing Listen, I wasn’t quite sure whether I wanted it to be for adults or young-adults. The story moves through the protagonist’s college years and a little beyond. That’s an age-range that could go either way. I mean, adults can relate with their former college-age selves, and teenagers can dream about their future college-age selves.

What made me decide to market it as a young-adult novel was the coming-of-age theme. This is a story about beliefs. Like Call of the Sun Child, this includes wondering about our place in the natural world and pondering our relationship with the earth.

Listen will be the first book released by Homebound Publication’s newest imprint, Owl House Books, “specializing in literature that can be appreciated by all ages” with a focus on environmental consciousness and on returning to the deep, true heart of storytelling.

Here’s the book description:

May is a piano-genius college freshman who dreams of becoming a brilliant composer. In her school’s practice rooms she meets Conner, an undeniably unattractive junior, and she is immediately captivated by his raw musicality on the piano. As May tries to navigate college life and fulfill her music dreams, Conner pulls her toward the natural world, toward her own wildness, and, ultimately, toward the wildness within her music as well.

Tagged: Author, Books, Eco Literature, Environment, Fiction, Life, Listen, Literature, Nature, Novels, Personal, Prose, Publishing, Thoughts, Writing

As All Fields Are Vulnerable

What I want to know is, when will it be enough?

When will the fields be safe?

The sun caught in the grasses,

and the deer, silent in the dry fall wind,

following shadows to the yellow oak tree,

everything still mysterious at mid-afternoon,

And the throat-soaked crow songs,

like every moment is heavy with the abruptness of dawn,

all the flowers dead except maybe the last blink of goldenrod,

or a cattail tuft along a distant streambank,

And nothing is quite over, as it’s always unwinding,

with the ground ferns dead,

and the tree ferns just returning to life?

When will I pass these places and know,

that they will not someday be driveways, and fences, and

when will I know that all of eternity will not be broken up into

the tightly packed confines of houses?

Tagged: Culture, Environment, Life, Musings, Nature, Philosophy, Poetry, Random, Thoughts, Wildlife, Writing

Osprey – A Short Story, Part 3 (Finale)

The next day Alexis told her parents.

“It’s an osprey, I think,” she said at breakfast. “I looked it up online. They’re the only predatory bird that only eats fish.”

She led them upstairs, out on the balcony, where they all stood hip-to-hip.

“Look at that,” her mother said. The babies were alone again. “Aren’t they cute.”

“Good thing we found them early,” her father said. He was still holding his coffee mug—the one with Morgan Radley Real Estate written on it. “It’ll be easier to move them.”

“Move them?”

“Look, there’s already poop on the roof,” her mother said. “And we don’t want them eating into it.”

“The roof?”

“Roof repairs are expensive, Alexis,” her father said.

“They’re not going to eat into the roof. They eat fish.”

“But if their claws rub up against it,” her mother said.

“I’ve been doing research. I think the mate died. Usually there’s two together, and one gets to watch the chicks while the other goes hunting. But there’s only one here.”

“They’ll be better off somewhere else.”

“I can watch the chicks when the mother’s gone.”

“You’re not going to sit here all day and watch birds,” her father said.

“Or—at least they’ll be safer up on our house. It’s less likely something bad will happen to them.”

“Are you going to clean the poop off the roof?” her mother placed her hands on her hips, which she always did when she was ready to walk away, leave the conversation, move on.

“I’ll call in tomorrow,” her father said. He sipped his coffee. Both parents drifted inside. Alexis leaned against the railing, her forehead folded onto her arms.

“Oh, I almost forgot.”

Alexis twitched up from her slump. Her mother was in the doorway.

“Mary-Anne sent me a text-message. She’s going to ask about the interview. Probably Friday, she says.”

“Thanks, Mom. I guess—yeah. I guess I’ll do it.”

“Start practicing. Think of what you’re going to say.”

Alexis nodded.

“You’re good at that.” Her mother smiled. “This will be a good start for you.”

“Yeah. We’ll see,” Alexis said. She returned to her slump as her mother went back inside.

The rest of the day she sat on the balcony. She spread out a beach towel and leaned a pillow against the rail. She ate lunch, read for a little while. It was overcast but not cold. Alexis didn’t want to name the birds—she knew it would be too painful—but she’d started thinking of the chicks as The Big One and The Small One, which soon became Big and Small. She thought of their parent as a mother, even though she could well be their father. Either way, Alexis thought of her simply as Osprey.

Her father announced that the pest control people would be there on Friday. Same day as her interview at the bank. That meant Alexis would have two days with them.

Osprey had chosen this spot because it was the best for her chicks. If she was knocked out, bagged, and moved to some other location—what if the new place wasn’t a good spot for her? They were vulnerable enough already. And, worst of all, this nest was probably all she had left of her mate. At first Alexis thought the mate might show up, but it had been long enough that she suspected he’d died. Maybe accidental electrocution. Maybe pesticides. Maybe a bizarre car crash or a rare bird-illness.

At one point the mated ospreys had shared this nest. They’d most likely built it together, stick by stick, gathering fallen branches after early spring storms. They’d both seen the eggs lain. Waited for them to hatch. They’d expected to follow the long, slow migration when winter came, enjoy the warmth, and fly again to this very same nest next spring when the sun was once again higher in the sky. Osprey usually mated for life. Alexis wondered if birds could feel sadness. She’d taken a class on the philosophy of animals; their rights, their similarities to humans, their varying levels of sentience. Osprey should have rights. It was more important for a living creature to raise its young in peace than for their roof not to have poop or scratches on it.

Alexis tried talking to her father again, but he didn’t understand. He saw Osprey as one would from a distance—sharp, glinting, mean. Talons and fish and soulless reptilian eyes. She asked him to come back to the balcony, look again.

“No. I’ve seen them already,” he said at dinner. “They look like birds.”

“They are cute though,” her mother said.

“What time are they coming tomorrow, Dad?”

“Sometime in the morning. I’m going in late so I’ll be here.”

“I guess I’ll say good-bye to them before I go.”

But the next morning she lingered on the balcony in jeans and a sweatshirt. Light clouds draped over the highest part of the sky, the rest, a substanceless, untouchable blue. Big and Small already seemed older. After only four days their necks seemed more stable, and their feathers looked thicker. Alexis burrowed onto her stomach again. She breathed in the hay-and-sour-wildflower-pollen scent of the nest. It suddenly occurred to her that it hadn’t rained this whole week. Not since the mist during her walk. What would Osprey do in the rain? Out in the open, with no cover? It probably didn’t make her feel young and free. Osprey flew free in the open all the time. She didn’t need rain for that. No—rain was just an accepted part of the world. Water that was sometimes there and sometimes not. A piece of the sky.

Her father and a man in a khaki uniform pushed out onto the balcony.

“Alexis? I thought you left for the interview?”

“I’m not going.” She’d had her words planned, but now they felt stiff. “I wanted to ask, one more time—”

“You skipped your interview because of these birds?”

“Dad, I’m going to fight for them. They have as much right to be here as you do. And they’ll only be here until early fall. That’s it.”

Her father shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said to the man. “She’s on a kick.”

The man leaned over the railing. “Where’s the mother?”

“Out hunting,” Alexis said. She pointed. The horizon of the Swamp Barrens.

“Not the father?”

“He’s dead,” she said. “I’m pretty sure. They’re already at a disadvantage. If you move them—”

“Alexis,” her father said in a low tone that meant enough.

“She’s right,” the man said to Alexis’s father. “It’s happened a few times. We move the single parent nests and they don’t typically recover.”

“Essentially, you’d be killing them,” Alexis said.

“Now, I wouldn’t say that. But there’s a low end-season survival rate.” He tucked his hands in his pockets. “Up to you, sir.”

“There she is,” Alexis said, and Osprey perched on the edge of the nest. She busily slopped a fish into the middle. One yellow eye tilted toward the balcony and then away. “Dad, she just looked at you.”

Her father raised his eyebrows at Alexis, then he stared at the nest.

“This is a nice set-up they have here. Great place for an osprey, with the wetland down there.”

“I guess they can stay then, Alexis,” her father said. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “And you don’t think they’ll do any damage to the roof?” he asked the man.

“No, sir. They’re fairly low impact,” the man said as he followed her father back inside.

She knelt again. Osprey fed a frayed, feathery fish to Big and then Small. Carefully, one at a time. Alexis knew her mother would be disappointed about the bank job. But she was beginning to realize that, maybe, all the greatness and smallness of the world resided here in the Swamp Barrens; the sunrise, the sunset, the fish, the osprey; everything she’d grown with and had known; everything that she’d loved. This was where her questions came from, where she would soon migrate from. All her perceptions had arisen from this place. This was her beginning. This was her Life World.

Tagged: Author, Birds, Environment, Life, Nature, Osprey, Philosophy, Prose, Random, Short Stories, Short Story, Thoughts, Writing

Osprey – A Short Story, Part 2

Behind their house was a sprawling wetland. In the winter its green water came up to Alexis’s knees, but in the summer she walked through it in shorts and rubber boots and only got her ankles wet. Sometimes in her head she called it The Swamp Barrens, but that was only because her freshman roommate had made her read Tom Brown Jr., and he was always talking about the Pine Barrens in his books. That was Tom Brown Jr.’s childhood wilderness, and Alexis’s childhood wilderness was completely different. A rural New Jersey forest versus a freshwater marsh in Washington State. Hers was an open wetland without trees; just grasses, cattails, and slimy, dainty sheets of growing things that she used to slop through when she was a kid. There was no good reason to call it the Swamp Barrens. It wasn’t even barren; fish glinted below the water in curled lines of silver. Nina used to call them swamp-fish.

When Alexis’s father came home, the three of them sat together at the long dining table. Her father untucked his white button-up before sitting down. “Alexis, how was your day?” he asked, still chewing a bite of pasta. “Did you apply for any jobs?”

Alexis swallowed her own bite. “Not today.” She wished she could somehow be transported to Nina’s apartment in California. She was probably still making dinner; something fancy and homemade, like quiche or spring-vegetable-salad-with-lime-vinaigrette.

“Mary-Ann said the bank is hiring,” her mother said.

Alexis stabbed a shiny, olive-oil glazed pasta bowtie. Her mother had told her about that bank job twice already. “I didn’t get my philosophy degree so I could work at the bank, Mom.”

“Philosophy is a transferrable skill. Everyone wants to hire a thinker,” her father said.

“And you’d be hard-pressed to find someone whose job goes with their major. That degree is to get you a good-paying job. Like this.”

“Exactly,” her father said. He pointed his fork at Alexis. “It doesn’t matter that much what you majored in as long as you have the degree.”

“But I want to do something with philosophy. I want to work somewhere—somewhere good.”

“Somewhere good,” her mother repeated.

What she really wanted was to write books about philosophy. Really accessible books that would make people wonder and question. She once told her mother about this dream, and her response had been: “That’s not a job, Alexis.”

Alexis crossed then un-crossed her legs. “I want to work somewhere that’s—I don’t know. Good for the world. Good for me.”

Her parents said nothing, but she could tell that they were thinking, Working’s not always going to be fun, Alexis. You need to start making money, Alexis. Suck it up and get a job like everyone else, Alexis. Like everyone else. Like her parents, receptionist for an insurance company and real-estate agent. Maybe she’d chosen philosophy because it was the major most unlike their lifeless professions.

“The bank’s good for the world,” her mother said. “They help people get loans. Get their affairs in order.” A pause. “Mary-Anne can probably get you an interview.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Her mother glanced across the table at her father. We’re getting through to her, they were probably thinking.

She’d only been out of school for a month. They were only being pushy because she didn’t have a name for what she wanted to do. She didn’t have a clear goal. If she couldn’t be a writer, what did she want to do?

Alexis retreated to her room. This had always been her room, right on the top floor, where the windows overlooked the Swamp Barrens in their glistening entirety. She hadn’t gone out on the balcony for a while, so she opened the door. In the open air she saw the diffused blues and purples of watery early-evening; the silhouette of a blue heron, its legs like stilts; a fluttering herd of white songbirds that reminded her of butterflies, mirroring fish as their wingtips painted streaks upon the water. Air like crisp grass and rotten logs. It was usually pretty quiet on the balcony, but today she heard some sort of tapping sound. She crossed her arms against the wind. There it was again. Tap-tap. Kind of hollow. Alexis glanced straight down over the rail. There, on the flat part of the roof, just under her feet, was a nest. Two little birds, nestled in an enormous circle of branches. Those sticks looked too sharp and rough for them, with their wobbly necks and fuzzy white throats and stripes of black along their eyes. Then she noticed the nest was lined with soft fibers of frayed bark. She sank to her knees and peeked out underneath the balcony rail so she could see better. It was all delicate strips of dried grasses and floating cotton from trees or dandelions, everything yellowing, browning, not rotting but crisping and melding into the inner walls of the nest. The chicks looked out toward the water. They moved constantly in a quavering, vibrating dance. Like they were unable to keep still.

Then there were wings. Great, giant, amazing wings. White and curved, a W shape bent at the elbows. Those wings fell from white to black to gray in ombre feathers. Speckled. Not flapping, just out. The bird landed on the edge of the nest. A delicate, pointed beak, and a small head. Alexis thought first of an eagle. The bird glanced at her. There was that same stripe along the eye. For some reason she imagined it lunging at her, claws outspread into daggers as it attacked her eyes. She felt a distant sort of fear, an edginess. Don’t get too close to my babies, she knew the bird must be thinking. If birds could think.

But Alexis didn’t want to leave. The babies screeched in ugly, raspy, pleading voices. Maybe they were hungry. What did eagles eat?

The bird took off. Down, she swooped; like a kite over the Swamp Barrens. Water splashed up as the bird sliced the surface with her talons. She hovered over the nest—her wings blowing the lightest whisper of air against Alexis’s face—dropped a lithe, brown fish in the nest, grasped it with one foot, and tore off pieces with her beak. The chicks gurgled, still quivering. Their mother eased red fish chunks down their throats.

Alexis settled more closely onto the dusty balcony, down on her stomach. She watched the babies’ orange eyes blink sleepily as they swallowed. She watched the mother strip apart the fish until there was just one long spinal bone left on the bottom of the nest. Part of her felt like she shouldn’t be watching them. This was an ancient, intimate ritual. It was for carnivores. It was for birds. It was for those who were non-human. Surely the bird should’ve chased her away by now. Instead she’d simply been forgotten. The mother settled in to the nest, and all three birds faced the dying sun. It had been years, it seemed, since Alexis had been so completely absorbed in something that she’d lost track of time. Sure, sometimes she forced herself not to look at her watch every five minutes, but she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d really, truly not cared what time it was.

Red and pink robbed the water of its blueness. The clouds soaked up all that color, condensing it into pale light. A breeze—just one short gust—clipped the wind chimes downstairs. It smelled inexplicably like summer; some blend of tree and warmth and just the right amount of distant ocean sadness.

Alexis felt like one of the ancient people she’d studied—phenomenologists without even knowing it—trapped in a world of light and darkness beyond human control. They probably watched the sunset every night, and let the sun guide their days. But evidently they didn’t like this deference to the elements, because they’d created religion to give them control. And as religion was dying out, technology was taking its place. Why was everyone so afraid to just—go along with it? Why, when these birds looked so content, all three still blinking and ruffling into tight balls of sleep in the last, gray moments of dusk?

Check back next week for the finale, Part 3!

Tagged: Author, Environment, Fiction, Life, Nature, Osprey, Philosophy, Prose, Random, Short Stories, Short Story, Thoughts, Writing

Osprey – A Short Story, Part 1

She didn’t like going for walks when it looked like it was going to rain. The rain itself didn’t bother her—Alexis kind of liked the cool droplets pinging against her forehead; maybe because being out in the rain made her feel like a little kid, or like a straight-laced intellectual led to freedom by some mysterious, creative force. One minute reading at a desk in some dark, Victorian study, the next, running through the open air, letting the rain absorb into skin and hair and tongue.

Yes, the rain was fine; it was the pre-rain air that she found annoying. The murky heaviness, the taste of water in the air, the wind suddenly directionless and choppy like ocean waves.

Ahead, just above the yellow house at the end of the street, the pale outline of the sun shuddered through a purple cloud. Another cloud piled on top of it. Then there were three clouds, burying any transparentness and any evidence of sunlight. It was the kind of sky that would not stop moving. Each cloud sailed across small glimpses of blue. When Alexis looked up for long enough, it felt like the sky was steady and, instead, it was the earth that sailed. Of course that was true, tectonically, but not as part of the immediate human experience. The life world.

As Alexis turned down the bark-chip path through the park, she thought back to her philosophy thesis. Two-hundred pages on the history of phenomenology. Most of it focused on Husserl’s Lebenswelt—a theory validating the unique, fluid experiences of all conscious beings, claiming that one’s reality and truth were based entirely on their experiences in the world. She was initially drawn to it, back in her freshman year, because she liked the way it sounded. Life world. Like each person’s life was special enough to create a new world. To phenomenologists, it was the body, too, that counted, not just the mind. For most of human history the sun had risen and fallen. Sunrise, sunset, not Earth-turning-in-relation-to-the-static-sun. That was her favorite part of phenomenology. If the sun appeared to move, then that was your personal reality, your way of knowing the world, your sense of place as a body on the rotating Earth. And it was no worse or better than any other; just, simply, your own way.

She’d completely immersed herself in her thesis. At first Alexis had felt like her place there, in college, was tentative. In some vague way she’d worried she would be fired, like she was among those creaky brick and cement buildings for only a trial period, and at any moment Professor Simmons, her advisor, might send her a solemn e-mail asking her to meet during the last ten minutes of his office hours so he could terminate her. He had a kind-but-creased old man face that she could easily imagine grimacing at her like some cartoon demon.

Every time she actually did visit his office in those first few weeks of class, Alexis secretly worried that he would tell her she hadn’t done enough, hadn’t been enough, and that her scholarship had been revoked. Of course this didn’t happen. Her SAT scores were top notch, her high school GPA was 3.98, and she’d taken four AP classes her senior year. She’d deserved that scholarship. And she’d made good use of it. Four years later she had completed her thesis and earned a BA in Philosophy. She could always get her masters, but she was satisfied with her education. She was ready to get started on real life. Ready to get it over with.

But now Alexis was living with her parents, again. To save money. The scholarship had only covered part of her tuition. Her student loans were simple, easy, such a low amount that she would be independent again in six months, tops—if she could only find a job.

She paused at the thin, mossy tree with the weird hump on its side, and she turned around. That was one mile. Two miles round-trip would be good enough. Light exercise. Something to get her out of the house.

Even in spring, the forest still smelled like dead, fallen leaves. It held the warmth of buried things. She thought she could even smell smoke from winter fireplaces, absorbed long ago into satchels of leaves and peeled bark, as the porous breath of the woods drank in everything.

The pavement told her it was raining. She felt nothing on her face or arms, and the mist was invisible except for the spotted evidence on the road. This was just another form of pre-rain. What she wanted was a full-out rainstorm.

By the time she made it home, the mist had ceased its shimmering, and the sun danced hesitantly between clouds. There was her mother’s red van in the driveway. It had belonged, at certain points, to both Alexis and her older sister, Nina, before they left for college. Well, in hindsight, it had never really belonged to either one of the girls. They were just stewards; renters; borrowers. Back when Alexis drove it to school and volleyball practice, she’d ordained it with a cinnamon-scented clip-on air freshener and a fuzzy purple blanket lining the back seats. But they were gone now.

Recently she’d realized that nothing in her parent’s house was hers. Not really. Most things in her room were vestiges of childhood. Parent-bought, parent-stored. The few things she’d bought herself in college were all she had. A few posters. The rug that once lined her dorm room.

Alexis called hello from the entryway and followed her mother’s voice into the kitchen. Her mother leaned over the sink, washing out her tupperware from lunch.

“Oh, Alexis. This humidity is unforgivable.” She turned off the faucet.

“It’s not that bad.”

“I feel like I’m swimming through mud.”

“How many times have you actually done that?”

“When you girls were little.”

“The swamp doesn’t count.” Alexis laughed through her nose. “Wading through water is different from swimming.”

Check back next week for Part 2!

Tagged: Author, Birds, Eco Literature, Environment, Fiction, Life, Nature, Osprey, Philosophy, Prose, Random, Short Stories, Short Story, Thoughts, Wetlands, Writing

Femininity and Consumerism

Shoe obsessions. Purse collections. Homes carefully decorated with curated furniture. Counter-tops strewn with make-up, nail polish, hair products, and lotions. Perfume-soaked magazines plump with clothes to buy and styles to emulate. In America, we equate femininity with consumerism. It’s well known that advertisers build upon our insecurities–and oftentimes invent new ones for us–and then offer products proclaiming to fix them. They promise to mold us into the womanly ideal; photo-shopped, airbrushed, and unattainable. When their products don’t produce the desired results (because no one actually looks like that), we blame ourselves, feel even worse, and buy more products, and the cycle continues. Many people are well aware of this marketing process, and, yet, even with that knowledge, it’s incredibly difficult to escape.

On top of marketers telling us we aren’t good enough, the generally accepted definition of femininity is simply stifling. Of course there are many women who defy this 1950’s-bred standard, but, for the most part, to be considered feminine, one must place high importance on appearance. Women who do so usually develop consumerist tendencies to pursue the ideal. Although we are all consumers, there is a delicate threshold between buying products that satisfy real needs (including, yes, even aesthetic desires) and purchasing goods in excess. This line is not always clear. Perhaps we should buy what makes us happy rather than what marketers tell us we should want. Even then, sometimes marketers convince us that certain things will make us happy when they really won’t. In that case, we need to reconnect with–well, with ourselves. That way, we we’ll avoid the environmental (and emotional) destruction of overindulgence, and we’ll free the feminine ideal from its current consumerist oppression. Just remember: women were once associated with the sacred, fertile energy of the Earth, the regeneration of the seasons, and the breath of life, rather than with shoes, clothes, and make-up.

Tagged: Consumerism, Environmentalism, Feminisim, Life, Lifestyle, Minimalism, Nature, Philosophy, Random, Society, Thoughts, Writing