Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I think I wrote earlier that this is the year of balance for me. An interesting outcome of my finding-center/finding balance orientation is the huge shifts that are coming out of it. First clarity, then ease, then a gentle rancorless flow into change. The change can be enormous and risky and yet feel completely natural, the next logical step in the progression...

I took a lot of heat last night from various parties (who shall remain nameless), about having become a complete and utter stereotype, with small exceptions. Here's my list of perceived faults:

- Prius driver
- compounded by the Obama sticker on the back
- practitioner of yoga
- eater of organic food
- inhabitant of Marin County

Apparently, I get some points for tattoos, but not enough to lift me out of the particularly shameful demographic I now represent. Another saving grace is my continued consumption of animal products. If I were vegan, I'd be completely f*ed.

Apparently, I have lost my edge.

Which means, strangely enough, that I have succeeded.

The edge was such a defining point for so long, and yet such a totally artificial and silly construct. And I fully recognize how absurd the combination of labels above can look, at the same time that I recognize how meaningless they are, given who I am inside, where I come from, how my mind works. Sure, dismiss me -- soft, Marin County do-gooder -- that's fine with me. All of what I'm doing feels absolutely natural to me, easy, rancorless.

I'm happier now than I've ever been. Think maybe it has something to do with losing the edge?

Caring isn't enough, be willing to change

These two things may not be related, but just 'cause it suits me I'm going to pretend they are. My parents got back yesterday morning from an Alaskan cruise. My mother told the story last night of a canoe paddle they took to a glacier, which has apparently receded tremendously in the past couple of years. She and my father were so impressed by the size of the glacier and yet shocked at how far it had receded. That damn global warming.

It seems like in the very next breath, we were talking about hybrid cars, how they're going to sell my father's car since he can no longer see well enough to drive, and trade my mother's car in for a hybrid. So of course I had to brag about my current gas mileage (49.3) and how I've gotten there.

Just repeating the lesson from the last post: the good gas mileage requires recalibrating your driving techniques, going slower, trading in Speed Racer for pokey, Sunday smell-the-flowers driver. To illustrate it to my parents last night, I said you had to be willing to drive in the right-most lane up Waldo Grade.

Oh no, my mother responded immediately, I can't possibly drive in the right lane up that hill. No way. I used to have to when we had that goddamn Volkswagen Camper, but no way, not anymore...

Which has made me reflect on something that of course I already knew, that we all already know, but bears remembering.

It just isn't enough to care about how shitty things are, to talk about global warming, or to buy stuff or a car that will have less impact. We need to go farther than that and be willing to change our personal habits. Buying and driving the hybrid car -- ok, that's great, it definitely reduces impact, but it's just the tip of the iceberg (so to speak). Why is it important to have an identity as a person who drives fast, who is zippy, has umph? I suffer from this too (check out my coffee addiction, and nostalgia for the brief period during which I was hyperthyroid).

We have to be willing to make what might seem like personal sacrifices -- give up the zippy frame of reference, quit buying so much crap, focus on what matters inside. Seriously, it's so much better for all of us, on the inside and the outside, right this minute and for the future, to make the more significant, personal change to slow down, slow down, slow down.

Sure, buy the car, then take that impact and expand it out bigger.

It's a crappy picture, but makes a point

I had to pull over to take this photo with my phone - which explains its crappiness. I was delighted by the symmetry: an average of 49.2 miles per gallon, and 492 miles to that particular tank-full of gas. By the time I filled up later that day, I had driven 500+ miles since my last visit to the gas station.

The good news, I suppose, is that
I have really improved my gas mileage in the Prius. I learned some tips from Rochelle and Steve on how to go farther on less -- essentially the tips boil down to: drive like a granny, be willing to be annoying. I am obsessed with the power meter, and coast wherever possible, give it only as much gas it required to run off the battery.

More good news is that compared to a "regular" car that gets something like 20 miles to the gallon, over the 500 miles I drove I emitted far less carbon dioxide. Thanks to the carbon footprint calculator on terrapass.com, I know that rather than 500 pounds of CO2, my driving released "only" 208 into the atmosphere.

But it's pretty hard to feel great about 208 pounds of CO2 or 500 miles in just a week and a half. :(

Clearly something needs to change!

5 Weekly Gallons of the Good Stuff

A cool little combination cafe-bike store opened up in our neighborhood recently (http://www.chinacampbikesandbeans.com/).* The owner is a local guy who also coaches the Terra Linda High mountain bike team. We went over there initially a few months ago just to check it out and were blown away by how cool the spot is. It's a funny little corner between the 7-11 and the laundromat that used to house a video rental store (VHS and Beta, way before DVDs), then a mail-order spice business. Bikes and Beans is our favorite use of the space by far.

The day we first checked the place out I asked if I could have the coffee grounds. So now we pick up a 5-gallon bucket a week of used espresso and drip. It's become a new ritual of our Sunday afternoons, and has had the very beneficial effect of driving us to yard-work for a couple of hours.

Here's how it works. I get home from yoga, Joe from his ride; we grab the dog, the clean bucket and our coffee cups and stroll to the corner. Justin brews us up some delicious coffee (from De La Paz Coffee in San Francisco, www. delapazcoffee.com, yum!) and we swap out the full bucket for the empty one, then make our way home. I sit on the stoop, drink coffee and get the used coffee ready for prime-time: with both hands, crushing the espresso pods, dumping out and shredding the paper filters. Meanwhile Joe's mowing the lawn or weeding or trimming. We flip the existing pile and layer in the coffee and new stuff, and generally marvel at the worms at the top of the pile, the heat at the center, and how much things have broken down since the last weekend. The apricots, for example, that we put in two weeks ago, are 100% gone. Love that!

There's so much about this activity that I love. There's the connection to the cafe, the elimination of the coffee from the waste stream and returning it to earth. There's the walking there with our coffee cups, and balancing everything + Jasper on our way back, and the meditative process of prepping the coffee for the pile. There's the amazing fragrance and heat of the pile as we turn it, the stages of decomposition we witness and the surprises like the baby praying mantis we pulled out of there today or the little alligator lizard hunting worms that we saw. It's such a simple little thing and so deeply, deeply satisfying.

And in a few months, we'll have gorgeous very coffee-looking soil to add back to our garden beds and feed the next season's crop of lettuce and flowers. When I asked for the coffee grounds, I only imagined it would be a great addition to our compost. What I ended up getting is a regular serving of peaceful simple pleasure every Sunday, a coffee high that I coast on for days.

Correction to the stats in green burial post

OK, maybe I should have checked first, but whatever - here's the corrected stats, courtesy of www.beatree.com. It's entirely possible that I wrote them down wrong. At any rate, they're still pretty mind-boggling:

What’s Buried Along with our Loved Ones in U.S. Cemeteries Every Year

• 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid
• 90,272 tons of steel (caskets)
• 2,700 tons of copper and bronze (caskets)
• 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete (vaults)
• 14,000 tons of steel (vaults)
• 30-plus million board feet of hardwoods (much tropical; caskets)

Source: Mary Woodsen, Greensprings Natural Cemetery FAQ, March, 2007; http://naturalburial.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemi