A Green End to a Green Life

Today we visited Fernwood Cemetery in Mill Valley, one of the country's handful of green cemeteries. Green burial is so simple - no embalming fluid, no concrete vault, no elaborate grounds. You're simply put in the earth, either in a shroud, a pine box or a wicker casket, on a hillside - no chemicals, no bulldozers. The graves are dug by hand - takes 5 guys a few hours. When the land is "full," it will be turned over to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, whose lands are adjacent to the cemetery, and put back into permanent parkland. For now, it's being restored, eucalyptus trees removed, native plants reintroduced.

I haven't independently confirmed these stats, but this is what we learned in the presentation before our tour of the grounds.

In one year, in the US, conventional burials result in the burying of:

- 30 million tons of hardwood
- 104 tons of steel
- 2,700 tons of copper/bronze
- 1.6 million tons of concrete
- 827,000 gallons of embalming fluid

This is every single year. The figures on cremation are equally disturbing. Again, I haven't doublechecked this on my own, but we heard that the energy required to burn up one body could power a car for 4,300 miles. If that's true, it's crazy!

For me, the only option I can consider for the disposition of my dead body is one that allows me to be returned to the earth, to be composted. For this reason, I'm very seriously considering buying a plot ahead of time - one I could share with Joe, in the shadow of Mt. Tam. There is a lot more to learn about this subject, but I was tremendously excited to think that I really could find a way to actually decompose, feed the earth, in a way consistent with my values and how I live my life.

For more info about green burial, go to: http://www.greenburials.org/
For more info on Fernwood Cemetery, http://foreverfernwood.com/index.html

Quittin' Time

Two messages in one hour -- a text from LT that he quit his miserable job and a voice mail from JA that he bailed out of a criterium -- have me thinking hard about quitting and all of the baggage attached to it.

In LT's case, thank goodness he quit that job. Even though he doesn't have anything lined up, I am all for it since I support him taking a stand for himself, being able to draw a line and walk away from a job and a boss that were actually taking him down. I'm sure he'll find something else, less aligned with his interests but also - chances are good -- less abusive and dysfunctional. Hurray for quitting! Out with the bad, in with the good...

In JA's case, my first reaction to his quitting was negative -- especially 'cause his voice mail said, "I am becoming a quitter!!" Ouch, a quitter. There's so much bad attached to quitter that I reacted to that, instead of listening all the way through. He was being dropped, he would've been cut, he wasn't feeling that great, and it was over 100 degrees. So hurray for this quitting, too: for recognizing when the situation is not working out and putting an end to the misery!

And then I was reminded that two women from my immersion quit their jobs not long after we completed the course and that, when I heard the news, I was completely elated for them. They'd liberated themselves, were now off traveling and having adventures, taking chances and enjoying life. Such an inspiration.

So really, all enculturation aside, quitting isn't bad. In fact, like everything else, quitting is good, an expression of clarity about the self and what it needs or doesn't need, wants or doesn't want. There is so much duty forced on all of us, so much that we continue to do even if we hate it because we don't want to be quitters -- how silly this is. We should do want we want to do, and not do what we don't. We are in control of our lives and should exercise our right to quit whenever it's right for us.

Hate your job? Quit it! Hate your life situation? Change it! We're completely in charge except when we forget that we are and hand that power over to someone else.

Quit!

Freedom and Sixpence

Forty-fourth birthday tattoo,
a present to myself to remind me always
that Freedom is what I care about most

I read W. Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence years ago, but re-read it over the weekend, as part of an overall devoration of his work this year (see 2008 Books at right) kicked off by reading The Painted Veil last year after seeing the movie version with Ed Norton, Jr. Somerset Maugham has a delightful way with words!

And with lead characters. In the case of Moon and Sixpence, I loved Strickland, his take on Gauguin, and how he crashes through life untouched by the opinions of others, locked in his own battle. Like a character in Ayn Rand, Strickland is a big man - brutal, remorseless, genius. And entirely free.

Which is why I love these books and characters so much.

In his introduction to the novel, Robert Calder writes,

Freedom, here seen as essential to creativity, was a fundamental concern of Maugham throughout his ninety-one years. 'The main thing I've always asked of life,' he said in old age, 'is freedom. Outer and inner freedom, both in my way of living and my way of writing.'

We should all take a memo. Not that we have to be quite so extremely bastardly as Strickland, but we should work tirelessly to free ourselves from false dichotomies that obscure the only real option -- to be 100% ourselves. Apparently the title of the novel derives from a critique of an earlier Somerset Maugham protagonist (Philip Carey, Of Human Bondage), that "like so many young men he was so busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet." With Strickland, it's not an either/or, damn it, but the moon and sixpence.

Amen!

Delicious Midnight Tears

While we were in Mexico, the absolutely gorgeous and fragrant Miltoniopsis Echo Bay 'Midnight Tears' opened. This is the first time we've seen these blooms, having bought the plant really small at the Orchid Society show at Fort Mason, San Francisco, in February of 2007.

Our patience and continuous care have certainly paid off. If only I could capture the fragrance and share it here - an intense, rose-like smell.

So after a year and three months of weekly watering, here are these lovely flowers for a few weeks. Orchids are incredible this way -- the pay-off is so enormous, the flowers just so extravagant, that it's worth waiting a year or so before seeing them again. Lovely!

Criminals with cold symptoms

I got to sign the pseudoephredine log book at Long's Drugs today, which was a small yet still annoying price to pay for the 10-pack of Aleve D they were holding behind the counter. I woke up this morning with such a head cold. The new-ish, "daytime formula" over-the-counter cold remedies make me crazy, so I had to queue up at the pharmacy, hand over my ID and sign the book, testifying that I am aware that nefarious uses of pseudoephredrine are punishable by law.

Since I've signed this book at other pharmacies, or done it electronically (Walgreen's, Montecito Shopping Center), I am familiar with this procedure. I have to talk myself down every time, that I'm not doing anything wrong, that I'm not going to get in trouble. It's really so lame that meth cookers have created a requirement that regular pill users like me have to write our names in the book.

I remember this creeping up on me, suddenly realizing when the OTC allergy pills I'd relied on for years were now making me jumpy, that something good had changed into something mediocre. Here's why:

Congress passed the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005, which classified all nonprescription pseudoephedrine (PSE), ephedrine (EPH), and phenylpropanolamantine (PPA) products as "scheduled listed chemical products." The law required a log entry for sales of more than 60 mg of PSE and required the customer to show a federal- or state-issued photo ID.

Yes, meth is an epidemic and definitely needs to be shut down. But I do wonder how successful this change is in reducing the meth-idemic. I have been seeing a lot of anti-meth messaging in English and Spanish just in the past few months, which would seem to indicate that since passage of the law in 05, things have perhaps not improved.

But they should be doing a better job on the log-book thing. It's amazing that during my entire transaction, as the monosyllabic pharmacist was ringing up my pills and vitamin water and pencil leads, the book was left open for my review. I read every line of the page I signed, all the names, addresses, signatures and drugs of choice of dozens of criminals with cold/allergy symptoms just looking for some relief. That lack of privacy just doesn't seem right. I mean, I don't care if the government knows I have a cold, but do my neighbors need to?