the flu, west nile, or what?

So I got to spend my weekend sick. blach!! i got home from my garden on saturday afternoon around 5 and found myself completley exahuasted, couldn't move tired, and so decided that i better go to bed. I woke up that night with a fever, body aches and a headache. The next three days i saw more of teh same , cold sweats at night and over 100 degree fevers at night.
it never developed any respiratory symptoms, cough, sore throat, etc etc....so i thought, perhaps west nile, since i'd had a bug bite earlier that week, and the symptom picture matched up. But maybe my heavy use of elderberry syrup and fire cider vinegar kept the worst of it at bay.

As i lay around on my comfortable futon in my warm house, i wondered if i would fare as well in a chilly van under blankets, or even, in a natural shelter. As bad as i felt, i suddenly wondered how mjuch worse would i be if i didn't live in this nice pretty expensive heated/electric abode. Would it be any worse?

I guess I am still very much entrenched in society's ways and means...and wonder if i could hack it out there if i wasn't healthy, strong and tough. Would returning to the earth weed out the people who are generally "weak", unhealthy, lazy? Nature really has no mercy, and you must do what you must do to survive, and if you aren't willing, or physically able....then you become dinner for the beasts or the bacteria.

Or would people learn to adapt? We tend to be a very adaptable species....but I wonder....

I'm glad i'm mostly well again, tho traces of warmth(fever) and abit of a headache remain. I'm going to bed early.

and more elderberry for me!!

Blast from the Past

Strange happenings, as I'm drawing a chapter of my life to a close, all the unresolved stuff that needs dealing with pops up.

i got a phone call from an ex in colombia, who was frankly, completely out of line emotionally/verbally abusive with me. he just wanted to say hi and see how i was.

he used to call me a dirty hippie because i liked to go camping. hah...if he only knew what a stinky hippie i am now....i've come so far from those days. i knew i wasn't like anyone else, and i knew i wouldn't be anything like he wanted ( he couldn't stand anything about me frankly- he was in love with love)...

frankly it disturbed me quite a bit. at first he wasn't very forthcoming, and then he called back again and was much more talkative. i dont think he's in the U.S. and stalkinhg me. yet.

Thirty Theses

Here are the thirty theses from Anthropik. I tend to agree with most of these to some degree or another.
http://anthropik.com/thirty

1. Diversity is the primary good.
2. Evolution is the result of diversity.
3. Humans are products of evolution.
4. Human population is a function of food supply.
5. Humans are neither good nor evil.
6. Humans are still Pleistocene animals.
7. Humans are best adapted to band life.
8. Human societies are defined by their food.
9. Agriculture is difficult, dangerous and unhealthy.
10. Emergent elites led the Agricultural Revolution.
11. Hierarchy is an unnecessary evil.
12. Civilization must always grow.
13. Civilization always pursues complexity.
14. Complexity is subject to diminishing returns.
15. We have passed the point of diminishing returns.
16. Technology cannot stop collapse.
17. Environmental problems may lead to collapse.
18. Peak Oil may lead to collapse.
19. Complexity ensures collapse.
20. Collapse is an economizing process.
21. Civilization makes us sick.
22. Civilization has no monopoly on medicine.
23. Civilization has no monopoly on knowledge.
24. Civilization has no monopoly on art.
25. Civilization reduces quality of life.
26. Collapse is inevitable.
27. Collapse increases quality of life.
28. Humanity will almost certainly survive.
29. It will be impossible to rebuild civilization.
30. The future will be what we make of it.

Retiring from civilization

It's been a while since I've been here. I've been busy spending the last 8 months working too much as an assistant manager in a health food store supplement department ( Not something I'd done before, and was fine as far as work goes. I got a lot of free stuff ( that i certainly didn't NEED) and worked too many hours and on my feet all day. ) But work is work, and work sucks. (Bob Black does a great job of explaining WHY.)
I also spent the last 8 months falling in love with someone amazing...someone like me, who challenges me, and holds me, and loves me and understands me...and wants the same things...including retiring from civilization.

I've always known I was a misfit, an outcast, a curlyque peg in a square hole. Even at 12 I longed for a world that doesn't exisit anymore, pre-industrial rev, pre- agriculture, pre-civilization. At 18 I knew it again when I arrived at college. I realized, I didn't want the American dream ( betterwise known as the american sham.. yup folks, they've pulled the wool over our eyes, and good.)

Lately I've begun to wonder who "the man" is. I spend a lot of time complaining about being a cog in the wheel and a slave to the man....one could say "the man" is the government, but I dont think so. The people in governement are just as much slave as the rest of us...locked into this imprisioned, sick, insane and disconnected from reality society.
There is no "Man." Yet we are all slaves to a system set in motion some 10-15000 years ago with the advent of agriculture...
My journey in life...to figure out how to free myself, and my loved ones from slavery. Give myself and others who care the gift of wildness, of freedom, of reality and the sanity of true living.

No more sham for us thank you very much.

Yet I know, I see, I am still caged, the door is wide open, yet I am still huddling inside the cage afraid of "the man" coming to find me and trap me again. Here forthwith is the chronicle of getting out of the cage..and dancing free once again.

It starts now. I've quit my job, and given notice on my apartment. My fiancee and I are moving to a new city...and from there stepping OUT of the cage, retiring from the rat race so to speak.
My legs are tired on spinning this wheel....

Steven Buhner has some words of wisdom...from "the Secret Teachings of Plants"

"Civilized comes from the latin, civilis, meaning "under law, orderly". civilis itself comes from an older latin word, civis, meaning someone who lives in a city, a citizen. Those who go into wilderness, into Nature that has not been tamed, are no longer under (arbitrary) human law, but under the all encompassing, inevitable law of Nature. They go out from under human law. They are no longer citizens, they are NOT orderly, they are NOT civilized- they are outlaws. When you go into wilderness something happens, something that civilization does not like. ( That is why they cut it down , you know.)
Ordered regularity disappears in the wilderness, and people who live too long in wilderness also lose their regularity, their orderedness ( their willingness to be ORDERED).
The discomfort with disordered non linearity, the fearful desire to be so regular and clean shaven, has an antidote: the green living intelligence of plants ( or NATURE.)"

So let me be an outlaw, a disordered, uncivilized herbalist outlaw- wild and free.

http://www.whywork.org/index.php
http://freerangeorganichuman.blogspot.com/

Banjo Man

I once loved a banjo man
oh how i loved his banjo hands
there were no lies in his eyes
I never knew a love like his
he said he'd always be true.

Bridge:
Love so natural
wild as the wind
free like a bird
oh how i loved my banjo man

Chorus:
Now I'm lonely and blue, crying at the moon
my banjo man, he's left me now
where did he run away to?
How could you do me so wrong?
Oh my banjo man.

What happened to the plans we had
and the promises you made
All i've left are the dreams we shared
and heartache like i've never known

Chorus

oH where are you now, my banjo playin man
can you hear me callin you, the whole night thru
I wonder if you think of me,
like you used to do

Bridge
Chorus

The songs you sang to me, wont let me be free
I just dont know how to get over you
Oh my banjo man.

The love you gave to me , still sings in my heart
I'll always be true, tho you've left me lonely and all torn apart.

Chorus
Bridge x 2

Oh how i love you my banjo man.

Gathering Angels by Suebee