This weekend was the last installment of the Permaculture Design Course in Hancock. Five of the original ten graduated and I’ve become very fond of these people. We gave presentations of our design projects on Saturday, held the “talent show” after dinner and ended up Sunday talking about invisible structures like legal, money systems, cultural and social processes. Saturday we’d had a visit from a local organic farmer who, after 20 years of struggle, is now facing the Hobson’s choice of selling out to natural gas drilling interests (like Haliburton ferinstance) or continuing to work endlessly treading water in a system where the full weight of the economy falls on the family farmer. This tied in, in a very real, visceral way, with the discussion of these invisible structures.

What I come away with is the concept of Withdrawal. First, I’m feeling the end of this transition, and it was in many ways life-changing for me. After other such initiations there is the need always for an integration period. It leaves me feeling like I’m coming back to a culture that is in no way plugged into the things we were talking about all winter and spring. I feel depressed. Like I’m withdrawing.

There’s the obvious addiction connotation here, as is often tossed about with terms like “addiction to foreign oil.” Like, as if, it’s no big thing to overcome an addiction! Anyway, that’s a little how I feel- on a very small scale- and I anticipate there is more pain ahead as I start to really look at how I’m living. One of my next steps is to “take inventory” but then maybe there’s a real 12-Step progression to this recovery and I should start with powerlessness. The organic farmer is right there: despair.

Looking at the Haliburtons and Blackwaters and World Banks running around screwing everyone, it’s hard not to despair. But there’s another kernel of hope in the word Withdrawal. As in withdrawing from participation in, cooperation with, cooptation by, apologizing for, rationalizing for, and investing in this s***storm we’ve created. Backing away slowly. And with each tiny, seemingly inconsequential action taken (like pulling the paper coffee cup out of the garbage and taking it home to use as a transplant pot for a cauliflower) I will say, “I’m making a withdrawal.” Each withdrawal goes into another account that accumulates over time. One day, one action, one withdrawal at a time. They add up.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Sustainability, Economics, Permaculture, Food System. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.