I've discovered Mars. And that I am, in fact, Martian.
My "Mars" is a movement called the Transition Town Initiatives. The movement is a grassroots effort to combat the affects of climate change, by making a difference one individual at a time. The movement has its roots in principals of permaculture (a gardening technique turned into a way of life - see http://patternliteracy.com/). Emphasis is placed on intentionality - a thoughtful and educated decision making process. It is so very zen and cool. My new friend Floyd, which is a spokesperson for Transition East Bay, told me yesterday that the permaculture guild meetings are like the meetings of the Jedi Counsel. I told him that I want to attend a meeting, just so that I can finally meet Yoda. Floyd said that he knows of three Yodas at the Guild - and that they are spiritual gardening Masters. In my head, I silently had a fantasy that they would perhaps wear judo uniforms and talk funny. Overjoyed, I was.
The Transition Movement is apparently a movement that started in England, and has made its way to the U.S. http://www.transitionus.org/ Transition Berkeley is just starting. There is no website yet, but the Ecology Center hosted the first Transition Berkeley Introductory Meeting the other night. The room was swarming with energy and interest. It felt like the beginning of a grassroots revolution grounded in NVC ("non-violent communication" - see http://www.baynvc.org/) principals. The excitement for the arrival of the movement to Berkeley was palpable. (There was also an article about the meeting in the local newspaper.) Finally, there is light where there was darkness. Finally, there is community where there was void.
Albany, which is one town north of Berkeley, has a wonderful chapter: There is a woman named Catherine that is a huge proponent of Transition Albany, and I have heard her say that when she discovered the movement, she felt that she had found her life purpose. I knew she was a kindred spirit when I heard her say that.
I found out about the Transition Movement in a happenstance way. It's actually a long story.
My housemate Stacy and I went to a local vegetarian restaurant called Herbivore three weeks ago. By the way, Herbivore is my new go-to restaurant when I am feeling both hungry and lazy (I have to cut corners somewhere in my life to have time for other things). I can have a delicious and nourishing vegetarian feast for under $12, including tip. My favorite is the curry-coconut udon noodles w/ tofu. This reminds me of how the Oracle and I used to go to a noodle restaurant near his house. It was our local go-to restaurant. I used to have the "Grilled Niman Ranch Beef Udon in a Coconut Lime Curry Broth" every time. It's poetry that now, I am having basically the same dish, except my new restaurant is vegetarian, walking distance from my house, less expensive, and just as delicious. The dish is also creative (they put some really yummy mushrooms in it that make the dish exotic and delightful). The shift in my restaurant choice symbolizes so much about the transition that I am experiencing in life at large, on so many levels. And the coconut udon dish can get me excited about life every time. What can I say, I still very much look to food as a source of happiness. For now, I believe that this is a healthy and normal relationship with food. I know that I am no Francis of Assisi, though I admire the man.
There are now many vegan / vegetarian restaurants within walking distance from my house. I never really even think about eating meat when I go out to eat anymore, as long as I get to choose the restaurant. Saturn Cafe, Gather, Flacos, and Herbivore are just several of the many stylish choices in fine Vegetarian cuisine around town. I love them all. I am especially addicted to the Flacos Fried Tempe Taquitos with avocado salsa, and their pozole or tamale are to die for too. Yum. But I've digressed - let's go back to Herbivore.
When Stacy and I were getting ready to be seated at Herbivore, we ran into Ann from the Bee House. Stacy had stayed at the Bee House for several months when she first moved back to the United States (after leaving Chile). The Bee House is a cooperative-living collective here in Berkeley, which has been in existence for twenty-six years. There are many of these "coops" in Berkeley, which is what I've modeled my current living situation from. Before moving to my current house, I had picked up experience living in a Berkeley cooperative. Of all the different living arrangements I've tried, I have found that living cooperatively with other mature adults provides me with the best growth opportunities that life can afford me. It's not for everyone, but it is one of the main ways in which I can keep learning about other people and the World around me while maintaining a busy life. Living this way forces me to understand others at a deeper level. It stirs the assumptions in life that I didn't know I had, and brings them into the realm of awareness.
The Berkeley cooperatives are very different from New York City's version of "coops." In NYC, coops are a group of people who get together, form a company, and then buy a building together and run it like a condominium. In Berkeley, cooperatives have their roots in U.C. Berkeley's student-run cooperative housing situations. But because Berkeleyites are "creative" social entrepreneurs, the legal construct of these Berkeley cooperatives are all over the place. Sometimes functional, sometimes not.
Because I had heard about the Bee house from Stacy, I went to town asking questions about the Bee House when Ann joined us for dinner. I wanted to know what kind of wisdom would be accrued the residents of a cooperative, after twenty-six years of living in an intentional community. Also, as it so happened, Ann and I were both Gleeks (people who love the hit musical T.V. show "Glee" on FOX on Tuesdays), and we were in no shortage of things to talk about. At the end of dinner, Ann invited us over to a party at the Bee House the following weekend.
When the day for the party came, I didn't feel very social. I have discovered recently that I am both comfortably introverted and extroverted. When I'm in I'm in. When I'm out I'm out. Whatever I'm doing, I usually want more of. So I had had an introverted day and the idea of going out seemed like a lot of work. But Stacy said that she was going to go anyways without me, so then I changed my mind and went to the party at the Bee House.
Stacy and I walked to the Bee House, which was a mile away. It was cold outside but I felt community with my environment and the night sky and the stars and the moon. I used to stare at the Milky Way in awe. I've started to do that again because I walk everywhere. The Buddhists have a spiritual practice called Kinhin. Walking teaches us to slow down and be in thoughtfulness. Walking is a practice that was built into our lives for a reason, and we should not forsake it. It helps me slow down and look around, for once, at the World I live in as if I were an audience.
Stacy and I got to the front of the Bee House, and heard chattering from inside. It was a well-kept Victorian building with white trims. It was right by the hospital where I had seen Perro in one of his last bursts of energy. In the oxygen tank, Perro had done a little happy dance when he saw me coming. Stacy and I knew we were at the right house, and I knocked, but no one answered the door, but the door was open. We opened the door and walked in, and Ann was standing right there, and greeted Stacy and I at the door. Ann was talking to a girl named Jen. We briefly introduced ourselves but Stacy had walked further down into the living room, so I swiftly followed. I was introduced to several other people and chatted some more, but when I found out that there was an outdoor fireplace, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to stare at the burning logs and smell the smoke-filled air and be, once again, in meditative silence.
There is something very deeply spiritual about sensing burning wood in all the different ways that I can. My friend who calls herself the Wonderful Me gave me a CD set of brainwave-enhancing "clinically proven audio programs based on 25 years of research." http://www.neuroacoustic.com/compactdisks.html The CDs have taught me that sounds found in nature (like the sound of falling rain, crickets and the wind) hold a scientifically-proven resonance with our brainwaves and thus these sounds automatically soothes us. Science has proven what we have known intuitively all along. Now I believe that things in nature, like burning wood, automatically possess a resonance with our brainwaves - not just as sound, but by the way it looks, smells, and feels. It's ALL good juju. It's like I've been a part of the Earth's grand design, and the very fabric of my genetic code responds to the natural world as if they belonged to each other. I selfishly think that maybe God made Fire, in part, to help us heal ourselves when we feel lost or broken.
So I went outside and seated myself in front of the fire. There were three other people conversing around the fire. I quickly joined the conversation and had an interesting discussion with an ex-city planner from Florida about the vision that Walt Disney had had later in his life about a "Community of Tomorrow." Disney's vision encapsulated an attitude of an industrialized nation towards its environment. During that time in our history, humanity had taken the Earth for granted. Now we know better (I hope). But Disney was still ahead of his time because he emphasized the importance of a community, and the magic of walking down Main Street. He was absolutely onto something there.
At the party, I stepped away from the conversation about Florida to go get a glass of water. When I returned to my bench in front of the fireplace, the city planner from Florida was engrossed in conversation with someone else. I turned to the other direction, and met Jen and Catherine, who had just seated themselves there. I had met Jen at the doorway, and Catherine was Jen's housemate who had started Transition Albany. Jen had recently made choices to slow down her life. She had been re-trained professionally as a Baker (she formerly worked in fundraising & development for a non-profit). Catherine invited me to a Transition Albany event the next day at the Albany Main Library. They were having a movie screening for a movie about Permaculture the next day. I was excited. I went to the meeting, and met Floyd, who was (and still is) starting Transition Berkeley and Transition East Bay. Floyd is himself an accomplished writer of twenty or so books, one of them being about Climate Change. True to his convictions, he bikes everywhere and has his own war stories about his transition. It's fun to compare notes with him and see how universal some of our personal experiences have been.
The Circle is growing. I now regularly have conversations about my transition, and other people's life stories relating to their transition as well. We are all gathering, talking, exchanging ideas, practicing, learning, growing, evolving - having a lot of fun while at it. There is a Japanese phrase that says, "It's not scary when you're not alone." It's very true.
On another note - In general, I am feeling a shifting of energies in the Universe all around me. Many of us are making the choice to change, right now. The decision to try to change is one small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind.
And we are not alone.
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