Heading to Boston...

On Friday I leave for Boston, to visit Ty and hang out with various cool people. :-) I'm excited! I will have internet access there, and I'll try and update a couple of times, but I won't really be posting much until the 11th of May when I get back home. I just got a brand new 8 gig memory card for my camera, so I'm sure I'll be taking lots of pictures! :-D

Peace,
Idzie

Poetry blog

My poetry blog now has a brand new layout! I also decided to change my criteria for what I post on it. This message is now on the side of my poetry blog:

"When I first started this blog, I only posted poems I considered to be finished. But lately, I've been writing less, and also being much more critical of my work, and always feeling like my poems need a lot more fixing and fiddling with. So in the interest of actually posting more on this blog, I am deciding to forget about what's polished or not polished. What I'll be posting from now on may be entirely unpolished, may need work, may be unfinished. I'll post bits of poems, lines I may one day turn into a full poem, but I also may not. Basically, anything poetic I write."

I'm hoping I'll actually add posts there regularly now! :-P

Peace,
Idzie

Bright Spring days, and long Summer nights...

Today was the first day that I could wear Summer cloths outside and still be comfortable. It was wonderful, bright, sunny, warm... I sat on the front steps, soaking up the sun, then walked down to the park and swung. I love swinging. It's one of the things I miss most in the Winter time, swinging. Then I took a walk with friends. Not long after I got home, the sun set. I watched it's light fade with sadness... But now, I'm glad it's night time, although the temperature is considerably colder now. And I'm feeling a deep longing in my heart for Summer nights. Sitting around with a bunch of friends at past eleven at night, talking and laughing. Truth or Dare games in the dark, that quiet down with loud hushing and smothered giggles as soon as a parent comes near... Walking around the streets at past midnight, walking through pools of light cast off by streetlamps, talking about deep, profound things... Lying around in people piles on the lawn, staring at the stars... Sitting on top of the car in the middle of the night listening to the wind, and feelings the spirits pass through the trees... I can't put into words how much I love Summer nights. And I know they're coming soon. Spring awakens such joy in me, such love for life. I love seeing all the new life, feeling it all. And I love that Summer comes next, with long, hot days spent in the sunlight or the shade, watching the sun set from the front steps, which give off stored heat from the day long after the sun is gone, followed by long nights, friends, laughter, stars... The house still smells of outdoors now, even though the windows have been closed against colder temperatures. I love Spring. I love Summer. I love life. And I just felt a need to put some of my joy into words, or at least attempt to. I hope everyone else is loving Springtime as much as I am, and I can't help but wish that those wonderful Summer nights are coming very soon!

Peace,
Idzie

Earth Day

Oh, in my last post I said I didn't have anything of my own to say, but that was because I forgot that today was Earth Day. Now, I am most certainly not a fan of Earth Day. One day, out of all the year, to think about conservation, and to honor the Earth, our one and only home, which just happens to be dying. One day? Really? Yeah, that's going to do a lot of good. The only plus I see is that shows, articles, and similar things on environmentalism have been all over the place lately. They're all from a very mainstream perspective, of course, but even mainstream scientists are realizing just how dire our predicament is, and I can't help but hope that maybe, just maybe, all this stuff could cause at least a few people to look into things themselves, and perhaps make them decide to do something about it, something a bit more substantial than buying "green" paper towels... I could write more about environmentalism, but it seems I've already done that in the past, and until I think of something new to add (which I'm sure I will in due time), I don't really want to return to the same subjects. I will, however, leave you with links to a couple of my old posts on environmentalism, green anarchy, etc.

Anti-Civilizationism

Environmental Quotes

On the Interconnectedness of Life

The Problem With "Green"

An Elaboration on the Problem With "Green"

Anyway, just thought I'd add that. :-)

Peace,
Idzie

Cool articles and posts 2nd addition

Unschooling food. A lovely post on why you shouldn't limit food.

Hunter Gatherers and the Golden Age of Man is a very positive article on hunter gatherer societies, and all the ways that their lives were, and are where they still survive, better than our "civilized" lives.

Freedom in an Hour is a lovely post on how wonderful it feels to collect your own food.

Breastfeeding is Priceless: There is no Substitute for Human Milk. Basically, a list of a bunch of reasons why breastfeeding is good! It boggles my mind how many people don't breastfeed. It seems to me that breastfeeding is such an obviously good choice, on so many levels...

On the Importance of Whole Soul Safety or the Real Reason to Rise-Out of School. A quite wonderful take on why it's so important to not be in school.

It hasn't even been a whole week since my last list of links, but since I can't think of anything to write myself at the moment, I figured I'd share these instead!

Peace,
Idzie

Dreams of long Summer nights, new places, interesting people...

A while ago Ty brought up the possibility of going on a road trip this Summer, and initially I dismissed the idea. It would need money I didn't have, and a month long road trip is a pretty big thing! But lately, when the idea was brought up again, I actually thought about it, and realized that all I usually do is dream about things but never put them into action. I really want to travel. This is an opportunity to do just that. Why on earth should I pass that opportunity up? So I've decided that I really do want to make this work. We'll try and get together four to six of us, including me and Ty, find a vehicle we can borrow, and take off wherever the mood takes us. Now I finally have a compelling reason to get a job! Which means I'm going to go to the job finding place tomorrow or the next day, and start asking around... I've got tons of ideas bouncing around in my head right now for how to make things work... Thinking of where/with whom we could stay, where we could go, what we could see, and how much money I need to make. As you can quite probably tell, I'm excited about this. I like having goals to work towards. They make working at all tolerable! :-P

Peace,
Idzie

Some interesting articles and posts...

Home Births 'as safe as hospital' I can't help but think DUH! But it's nice to see an article supporting home births in the BBC, where many of their readers are most likely not supporters of home births...

You Are Being Lied to About Pirates is this a surprise, considering how much mainstream media twists things? I liked seeing a different take on the Somalian pirates.

Amazon.com is homophobic. Seriously. I don't think I'm going to be buying from them anymore...

Secretive U.S. Prison facilities house Muslim, Animal Rights and Environmental Activists. The Green Scare at it's best(worst)...

I'm curious if anyone is interested in this becoming a regular thing? Say, every week I could write a post with a list of the most interesting articles and blog posts I've read over the week? I'd love some feedback on this! Thanks. :-)

Peace,
Idzie

Life is good

Life really feels good today.

I actually feel like I have a social life now (*gasp* ;-)), which feels rather odd. :-P I've been talking to friends every day, hanging out with more people... I'm an introvert who has a phobia of trying new things, and is a bit of a homebody, so in the past I've made myself a bit of a hermit at times. Not now! Maybe Spring has something to do with it... Either way, this makes me very happy. :-) Now I just need to actually meet/see my friends who happen to live far away!

It's bright and sunny, still cold, but purple crocuses are blooming on the lawn. Robin's peck around for worms, and the grass is starting to grow. Spring is here in full force! While Ty was here, my focus moved away from more political things, and afterwards for a bit, things stayed that way. But I finally started reading Ishmael, and once again I feel impassioned by my political beliefs. Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, could best be described as a critique of civilization, told in the form of a gorilla teaching a man to see what those of us in this society so rarely do. I love how Quinn looks at things from such a different angle than Jensen does, yet has just as wonderful insights and thought provoking things to say. There are a multitude of great quotes in Ishmael, one of which is this:

"The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation. This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just the way Hitler’s mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe. But in the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying. The Takers are a profoundly lonely people. The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness.”

I highly reccommend this book! Also, a while ago I started talking online to an anti-civilizationist who lived in Montreal, and finally arranged to meet him and his friend, who is also a green anarchist, along with my sister (who, although she doesn't call herself one, also holds the beliefs of a green anarchist) yesterday. We had a lovely afternoon just sitting in the sun and talking, and some of the conversations continue to be turned around in my head... For instance, although I follow some feminist blogs and such, I haven't really looked into feminism, or thought about it much at all, which seems strange considering that I'm a woman with very strong views. But one of the people I met yesterday is a feminsit, and what she had to say really got me thinking... I think I'll have to write a post about gender roles in our society very soon, since tht's something I find very interesting...

Also, in reading, and talking to people, and living, it seems to me that we, as a culture, are really on the cusp of something. More and more people are realizing just how serious our situation as a species is, and more and more people are realizing that changing a few things will come no where near solving the entire problem. Far more drastic changes must happen. And so the green anarchist movement grows... I don't know what's in the future, but every time I find someone else who sees the reality of our situatuation, I feel energized, hopeful, and more willing and able to take on whatever the future may bring.

It's Spring. A time of birth, of beginnings. May this Springtime herald wonderful things, meaningful change, love, happiness. I love Spring.

Peace,
Idzie