Hands Dirty, Heart Half-Full

From yesterday’s (8th April, 2024 1) journal entry:

Glass half-empty, glass half-full. Bags and boxes half-empty, bags and boxes half-full.

I have been a glass half-empty person with bags and boxes half-full for most of my life. Now, I’m a reforming glass half-empty person with a geodesic-dome-on-18-acres-full of half-empty bags and boxes; in the process of unpacking, not packing up. Ready to stay, not ready to leave (for once).

It’s an abrupt shift, and a weird feeling.

My shrewd therapist, whom I have been working with for a few months (2023 proved to be a push too far over my edge), suggested that being packed and ready to leave at a moment’s notice reflects a state of hypervigilance, amassing little and and keeping possessions meagre to make the leaving/uprooting/grieving/reviewing process easier. (She did not say that last bit, though that is what I am adding to it.)

Part of grounding and stepping more into my earth element — as we have been discussing would be healthy for me to do — is closing cycles, tying up loose ends, and reviewing; a process I have historically shortchanged myself on doing a little a lot. Doing so means letting go and acknowledging something is not working anymore, is potentially dying — which I have often taken as a personal failing.

I didn’t achieve, I didn’t finish what I started, I couldn’t white-knuckle through it all with my lone wit and intellect, I wasn’t tough or smart or resilient enough to see it through, I lost control of the situation…yadda yadda.

Bags and boxes tightly packed resemble a fist tightly clenched; unyielding, unwilling to let go or surrender. Through moving into a geodesic dome on 18 acres in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, I am actively practising sitting in the mess, not-knowing and not-controlling, surrounded by vessels and things half-unpacked, fists relaxed and fingers splayed open...

...and letting it all be there.

Nothing bad happening. Safety — steady, true safety rising from within and from the land that holds me, not manufactured through my external life situation — seeping in with every breath exhaled, every minute ticking by with no action taken to control or manipulate it, every ounce of vulnerability gathering in open spaces, in the emptiness.

Here. Now. Not going anywhere. Staying, not leaving. Full, not empty — one of life’s beautiful and perplexing paradoxes. Shame-less, not shame-full.

Slowly belonging to my internal spaciousness, with not much going on, at a most earthly, un-manmade and un-capitalist pace; belonging to the land that has welcomed me with a gracious, dewy, and leafy embrace. Unfamiliar and familiar simultaneously; a return to what has been forgotten.

The past week here on Moonshine Farm has made me wonder why I was ever afraid of the spaciousness to begin with. It’s kind of nice; in this particular unpacked box of a moment, there is a rooster crowing (well past dawn) and a humid breeze blowing and a digger carving out room for a market garden to be cultivated behind us (somehow less annoying than its city construction counterpart).

There is spontaneous medicinal flute song carrying down the hill from one of the gardeners infusing a hint of ceremony and audial decorativeness to this practical affair. There is lively discussion about this collaboration with the land and surrounding community in which my partner and I have inexplicably landed; of the bounty to be brought forth from all this hard, honest work that we, as citizens of the land and nature, were always meant to be doing and are blessed to be able to return to.

Blessed to be able to hold in our hands the fruits that nature always intended for us to receive, for no hidden incentive other than love of her and those of her children we get to share with in this moment.

To be able to sink into the space of all things unpacking, unfolding, and becoming, with the other whole, half-full beings beings like me spreading their roots and re-finding their homes filled with half-empty bags and boxes.

Finally at peace and not giving much of a fuck about the impossible load of things we’re supposed to care and fret about as modern Anthropocene adults. For the first time in a long time.

Any of you who have followed my writing for a while know I have struggled to commit to a consistent posting practice. I am blessed with many ideas, though too small of a bowl to hold some of them, which means I get overwhelmed by shame of potential failure and putting myself out there (as a non-expert at anything 2) and pull back.

Much of what I hear, see, experience, think, feel, and believe never sees the light of day, any pairs of eyes and ears besides my own — despite the fact that I have, objectively, lived a pretty dang interesting and inspiring life that others could learn from.

This newsletter reprisal is my attempt to change that.

I have landed in (yet another) extraordinary life and living situation; as mentioned above, a bonafide hippie dome on a large, leafy permaculture farm. I wake to the sounds of roosters and kookaburras, feed banana leaves to cuddly goats, shower and cook outside while dodging cane toads and spiders. I am adjusting to a completely different pace to that of capitalist city life, and will eventually (hopefully) be learning the skills of off-grid living on the land.

Our first disorientating, muggy, wet week on the property culminated in a ceremony to bless the land on which the surrounding community (a good 50 or so members) is preparing a market garden; we hauled wheelbarrows and humanure, meditated, sweated, sung and shared food, said prayers to the soil and watched the sun go down together.

The whole experience has really been quite raw, challenging, and beautiful so far.

I truly believe this — kinship with the land and one another, sharing more, taking accountability for the quality of food we are putting in our bodies, pulsing in and out of honest-to-God meaningful work and undistracted rest and connection, adopting self-reliance that will buffer us against the rising tide of corporate greed and wealth inequality, and so on — is the kind of direction many of us are heading.

It is where the impoverished and exhausted, the disillusioned and disempowered, the morally and spiritually spent, the seeking and dreaming of us must go to redefine our perspectives and tolerance for discomfort and insecurity — comparative to the cushy conveniences and taken-for-granted privileges of modern life we’ve grown up with — should we lead autonomous and abundant lives in the future. (You only need but glance at the news or social media to learn how dire and hopeless the alternatives could get.)

We cannot always rely on the systems and powers that be to protect us 3. Disparities and imbalances with health, wealth, and more are at an all-time high, and so we owe it to ourselves and our loved ones to take more creative, innovative, and self-sufficient actions to restore balance.

This is what I have been asking for over the past couple of years; “manifesting” — if you want to call it that — with the Universe, desperate to understand my place within nature’s embroidery and step into a role of stewardship with her, and of better service to those woven in around me.

And, well...I got it — ant infestations, composting toilet cane toads and all. At least, I got a really big shove off a cliff to start down a new path I hope will lead to a more meaningful, less soul-destroying future (and wisdom to share from the road less travelled over the past couple hundred years).

My place here (both on the property and in, you know, the everything) is yet unknown. Though as I wrote above, I feel more welcome than I have in a long time, and like I actually belong — despite my state of half-unpackedness and dazed not-knowing. I rarely feel like I belong anywhere, so this is a pretty massive shift.

I still have no freaking clue what this all means and how I got here...though would like to do a better job this time of documenting what unfolds, whatever the outcome.

Leaning in and speaking up, as opposed to pulling back and staying quiet.

Pulsing in and out of action and rest, responding to urgency by slowing down, conserving the contents of my inner proverbial cup, and being more intentional with where I put my energy and time.

Shifting gears into nature’s pace; not the corporate-constructed, content-creating, ruthlessly scorching shitscape that is modern capitalist/neoliberalist society.

I believe things are becoming, and can be ever better; that we are worthy of so much more than what we are being forced to fight over.

I wish to offer you words, pictures, videos, ideas, and other resources that might help inject a little peace, balance, and magic into your daily grind — and to offer richer, truer, more beautiful alternatives to what we are being presented by our governments, corporations, and mass media.

Because that’s not all there is — not by a long shot.

There is so much more to you, the people you know, and to life than credit scores, bills and taxes, war, famines, financial hardship, the grind, the hustle, the corruption, the hopeless churn and burn of to-do lists that never get shorter, the onslaught of cheap entertainment and faux connection that keeps us all exhausted and distracted from what really matters, the apathy, the despair, and the daily fight against total collapse — ours and the planet’s.

Thank you for reading, and I hope to connect more deeply with you through this new creative outlet on a weekly or fortnightly basis. I’m going to do it (she said, through gritted teeth); at least, I promise to try.

There is too much at stake to continue staying silent.

Links and things that helped me live better this week:

1. I am obsessed with positive climate news feeds lately; they are touching on little (and not-so-little!) wins that don’t always make the mass media headlines. Here are some that warm my heart on a weekly basis: It’s the Garbage Queen; Sam Bentley, Sustainable Living; and Earthly Education.
2. ...only a little more than I am obsessed with nifty, thrifty, sustainable living hacks using resources we probably already have around our houses. Creative Explained is my favourite, though your algorithm will explode with many more should this be a rabbit hole you join me down. These are fantastic for integrating more budget, low-tox, less wasteful, and self-sufficient solutions into our lives.
3. I am fricken over paying hundreds of dollars on hair products. I just don’t want to do it anymore, and anyway my scalp has developed a tendency to itch whenever I use them. (Like with so many things I used to use and do on the regular, my body seems to be rejecting anything that is not as natural or wholesome as it could be.) So, I am experimenting with — gasp — not washing my hair. At least, not in the cosmetic industry-ordained way.Instead, I am researching different ways to cleanse and moisturise my hair with everyday food products...and so far, it seems to be working pretty well. (As in, my hair stays clean for weeks and does not resemble an oily deli mop). My go-to PH-balancing, de-itching hair mask is that of equal parts water and apple cider vinegar, a few drops of tea tree oil, and a tablespoon of honey.(My point is this: if something in your life is pissing you off, there is probably a cheaper/less complicated/less damaging etc. solution out there someone has already thought of — find it.)
4. A book I am enamoured with: this one wild and precious life by Sarah Wilson. A radically refreshing and hardcore/hopeful way forward when looking (despondently) at life’s many issues, written by a bipolar, hiking and bike-riding renegade journo who owns three pairs of knickers and is so much more than (confession) “just the Masterchef host” I used to write her off as. (Sorry, Sarah!)
5. A quote that reignited my inner fire (and seems fitting to finish off this long first newsletter):

“To be at peace with a troubled world: this is not a reasonable aim. If you don’t fit in, if you feel at odds with the world, if your identity is troubled and frayed, if you feel lost and ashamed it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.”

— George Monbiot, British writer and activist, in an op-ed for The Guardian newspaper, brought to my attention in the book I mentioned above.

What did you think of this new edition? I know it’s a little different to what you might be used to reading and seeing from me...I am a work in progress. Please feel free to send through questions or comments, or forward this newsletter to fellow consciously-minded humans. Let’s change the world together 💚