Oh that Rococo Life: Sustainable Living and Economics

What is sustainability?

That is my topic here, not only for this post, but for the entire blog.    At first glance, it doesn’t seem like it.  I’m a lousy marketer.  What leads to quick success in business, at least in the early stages, is finding a small niche in the population and then religiously feeding that group’s addiction.  One of the secrets of blog success is focus.  People want one-stop shopping.  No, people want one-click shopping. 

Sustainability isn’t so simple.  We are not so simple. 

Last night while cleaning, I found an old box of writing from a period in my life after I’d cut myself off somewhat from my faith, family and community.   Although there were a few good poems in the pile, what became quickly clear is how miserable I once was.  Of course, I knew that.  But, I had forgotten the pain.  The events remained in my memory, but the emotions had faded into a thin line on the horizon.  I may have known how to write then, but I clearly didn’t know how to live.   

Somewhere along the way, I decided life should be one’s greatest work of art.  For in the end, if we don’t enjoy life, what is the point?  One of my favorite scriptures is:  “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2: 25, The Book of Mormon)

 Sustainability, for me, is not simply a matter of conserving resources for the next generation—though, if we care about the lives of our children, that clearly is a major part of it too.  Rather, sustainability is about the dignity of the individual within the community.

That is the primary question of our times—how do I stand out and where do I fit in?  Modern and postmodern society has been brutal on the individual.

Economic injustice has always been a focus of my writing.  The injustice though is not strictly about the money.  In the U.S., even the working poor, which I was part of for so long, usually have a warm apartment, a hot shower, and a TV.  And though the cupboard may sometimes be empty, starvation is rarely an issue, if you’re speaking materially.  However, spiritually, creatively, intellectually speaking—American poverty is brutal.  The poor are our machines.  They exist without having the opportunity to exert I am in a meaningful way.  This has always angered me.  I’ve never met an unintelligent person and yet so few jobs allow us to exert our intelligence in meaningful ways.

Luckily, I found a rip in the fabric, a way out, not through worldly success necessarily, but by living on the edges of civilization since 1999—places where the social divide is not so strong and where your human worth isn’t determined by your job, and by teaching, which is always rewarding.  However, once in a while, I’m forced back through the worm hole and into America.  Below is a poem I wrote nine or ten years ago on such an occasion.  I wasn’t fully active in the church then, and so it contains images and language I probably would not use now.  But I like its anger.  There are things we shouldn’t tolerate in society.  Dehumanizing individuals is one of them.  I did edit the poem a little because I’ve decided who I want to be now.  The poem is not quite as strong as it was, but I think I’m okay with that.  My focus is living first, writing second.  Anyway, here's the poem: 

Oh that Rococo Life

Slowly breaking apart
a cranberry muffin,
sucking down the sweet morsels
with over-creamed coffee.

Palm trees sway beyond

the marble-floored lobby
and empty sunken bar
through great Venetian windows,
beyond a great red-tiled patio
and heavy white balustrade.

I read Pictures of the Gone World
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Says here, poem 25 (quote)
The world is a beautiful place
                                           To be born into
If you don’t mind happiness
                                           Not always being
                                                           So much fun.

 What the hell, I’ll try it.

The kids are with Grandma.
Marci is in class.
the room is paid for
with one week’s salary.

Nothing to do

but hang out at the pool
and read Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
look at beautiful
lotion-glowing bodies
from ages 5 to 70,
weighing between 30
and 250 pounds.

Yes, this world is a beautiful place

to be born into.

Though yesterday

when we got lost
in that neighborhood
of duplexes
and run-down apartment complexes
that didn’t quit qualify for a slum
but was part of the working poor world
that I knew for so long,

and I went in that 7-11

to find some way out
of the hell-mood
I’d sank into
and I saw myself behind the counter
in a stupid dehumanizing uniform
with a stupid name tag on it,
smiling back at myself
knowing I’d always be here,
behind some convenience store counter
working eight hours a day
to get nowhere,

I got to tell you

I thought again
the world
is nothing
but a great big turd ball
with all of us swarming over it,
pushing and shoving
for a chance
to bite right in.

 Today there are palms outside the window,

rich girls in bikinis,
rich daddy’s in loafers,

and it’s true—

                                The world is a beautiful place

To be born into
                                If you don’t mind happiness
Not always being
                                So much fun.

When I wrote this poem, Marci and I were making pretty good money at a school we loved.  I was the school improvement coordinator and she was a key member of the school improvement team.   As a school we had worked collectively to change the school climate and the data was beginning to demonstrate we finally were making a difference.  I’d decided we should splurge a bit one weekend to celebrate our having arrived professionally.  And yet, I couldn’t fully enjoy it, because I knew too well that it wasn’t real, that while my surroundings at the hotel were telling me I was of value, the city wrapped around my palm-lined cocoon dehumanized the individual daily on an incredibly massive scale.   Not simply because of income-gaps, though that is part of it, but because so many people have no connection to their jobs beyond a pay check.  Individuals are not integrated into the workplace in meaningful ways. 

Connection is a big part of the Sustainable Living movement.   How do I live simply, creatively, for myself and for future generations?   I don’t think the movement necessarily has those answers yet, but at least there is honest dialogue and creative attempts. 

Sustainability:  Expressing oneself in small, meaningful projects.
The Blue Door Bar--A shed we converted into a family hang-out
I painted the scene on the side on a recycled motel sign. 

This is the unifying message of every post on this blog: individual worth matters, and there must be a way to create a society that doesn’t demolish the dignity of the self.  If you sustain the soul, you sustain the man; if you sustain the man, you sustain the community; if you sustain the community, you sustain the world. 

 

Dry creek after 16 inches of snow.
Sustainable living:  Live local, live simply, live connected, live creatively.