“Ahem,” Tibor said, clearing his throat. “I don’t mean to derail this adorable train of thought, but can we get back to where we were?”
“You absolutely do,” Cassie laughed. “Hijacking conversations is your specialty.”
“True,” Tibor nodded. “So anyway, we were on this endof-the-world thing, to which I say, screw recycling. It’s a crap idea.”
“I thought recycling was good,” I said, a bit relieved the focus had shifted off me even if I caught Ruby rolling her eyes when Tibor spoke.
“Tibor’s a re-evolutionary,” Cassie explained. “He thinks we have to reconfigure society and values to create a better world. Zero waste and all that.”
“Definitely,” Vray agreed, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.
“Love people and use things,” Cassie said knowingly.
“Too bad most people have it backwards,” Ruby replied. “They love things and use people instead.”
“All our problems are because as a society, Western society, we don’t believe in reincarnation,” Hayley said softly. “If we did, we’d realize things could go on to other lives, too, instead of death in landfills.”
I didn’t know what to think. Everything that we had talked and argued and laughed about was all so powerful and insightful and hopeful and depressing at the same time.
Sort of, I guess, the way life could be. The way life should be when you finally woke up and got engaged in the world around you.
•••
In the flurry of our epic meal and conversation, we missed the last ferry back to the city, stranding us at the cottage. Ruby, Hayley, Tibor, Cassie and Steve were still deep in wine and words when Vray and I stole away to a tiny bedroom at the back of the house.
“What’s this?” Vray asked, as I sat on the antique bed and handed him a little brown paper bag tied with a bow.
“Just a little thing, for Christmas or Kwanzaa or Channukah, whatever it is you might celebrate,” I said.
“All and none,” he answered. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I know. I wanted to,” I smiled, secretly hoping without hoping that maybe he’d gotten me something, too.
Not that it mattered, since I really didn’t need any more things. I didn’t want to be one of those people we’d just talked about who loved things instead of people. Loving people should be all that mattered. Especially now.
“I got you something,” he said, as if he was reading my mind. “But it’s at home and more a New Year thing, anyway.”
“You didn’t have to,” I said, even though I was totally elated that he had.
“I know.” He tugged at the hemp string I’d tied around the paperbag wrapping to make it look festive without being wasteful or indulgent or unrecyclable. As he took out the pendant, a massive smile took over his face.
“It’s awesome.”
“I loved it when I saw it, I mean liked cause it seemed perfect for you and it’s a thing and you don’t love things, right?” I knew I was rambling, but I couldn’t help it since I knew deep, deep down that this was a very big moment and I wanted to keep it alive as long as I could.
“No, not things, just people.” And then he took my face in his hands and looked me in the eye. He was staring at me with a serious, unflinching stare. Staring me down almost like a challenge. “And,” he said with a big, long, breathy pause as he leaned in toward me, “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I sighed a second later as I came up for air. To breathe in his breath and his scent and his words and this the most incredible moment in my lifetime EVER!
But no matter how amazing it was, no matter how astonishing and uber and unprecedented, my brain was still buzzing from all the things we’d discussed that night. All the good, bad and ugly of people and the planet. It was something I somehow couldn’t shake.
“Do you really, truly think the world is ending?” I asked Vray a few minutes later as I crawled under the duvet.
“Not this minute,” he said, getting in beside me and spooning me against him.
“In our lifetimes?”
“Anything’s possible,” he said with a yawn.
“So then it could end? We could destroy it all?”
“Anything’s possible means we could also turn it around if we do the right things,” he mumbled into my neck.
“What things?” I asked turning to face him. “Sabine, I’m wrecked,” he sighed. “Can we pick this up tomorrow?”
I nodded in the dark, hugged his arm around my shoulder and closed my eyes.
•••
And it was in the sleepy depths of the night, in the soft warmth of the strange old bed, that I gave Vray my body. My natural, oatmeal-bar buffed, almost-vegetarian body. I have to say I was somewhat surprised given his still brokenness and the strangeness of where we were. Not so surprised that we didn’t play it safe and smart, but it was still sort of unexpected given the venue.
Even if it was the next logical step in my evolution as the earthgirl. As the earthWOMAN, I thought. I’d already given him my soul and devotion.
It was nice. Not mind-blowing like I’d expected, given all the hype. More awkward and goofy and giggly than movie romantic. The sex part anyway. Though that could have had something to do with my huge self-consciousness at being in someone else’s house and bed. Something that Vray didn’t seem to care about in the least! Boys.
And honestly, when it came down to it, not all that much better or more exciting or intense than the gropey and kissy stuff we’d already managed to do. In his bed, in his house. Then again, his still-limited mobility was probably a factor, too. Plus my own nervousness considering people were in the rooms next door!
One thing I did positively for sure know. I felt incredibly strong and powerful and motivated and loved. And for the first time in my life, I felt important.
Significant.
Like what I thought and said and felt and did could make a difference. Would make a difference. However small.
e a r t h g i r l
[ Dec. 31st | 03:33pm ]
[ mood | HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY ]
[ music | bif naked — that’s life ]
In the waiting room at my dad’s office, there’s a whack o’ crap magazines and oddly enuf a little book of ZEN sayings. one of his favorites is: “When you can do nothing, what can you do.” (Now imagine it in a bland dad tone of voice.)
It’s obviously supposed to mean relax and chill and dont worry. To take things as they come and blabity-blah-blah.
Well, I think it SUCKS!!!!!
I truly believe that we can always do SOMETHING, or at the very least TRY. However big or little. Actions make ripples that resonate around the world.
So instead of making silly old New Year’s resolutions that will end up in the toilet or the landfill or somewhere useless – make your ripple today!
“When you can do nothing, you really should be doing SOMETHING!”
link read 5 | post
www.earthonempty.com
onederful 01-01 10:12
Happy New You and may all your ripples makewaves!!!!
altalake 01-01 01:01
turns out feeding and handling a cow for one hamburger creates as much greenhouse gas as a 10 km car ride! The Union of Concerned Scientists say going veg is one of the top things you can do for the environment. So, I resolve, er, ripple to finally do it. Maybe then ripping, raw food vegan Bif Naked will go out with me.
Vague-a-bond 01-01 22:22
Queen Sabine, you are SOMETHING! Totally beautiful & an asset to the planet. I’m so glad to know you. Happiness and joy in the eclectic and ever surprising journey ahead.
sixteen_
So here it was, a brand, spanking new year. And with it a whole new perspective. An almost completely new and improved me! A new agenda. A new opportunity. To be and to make a difference. In my life. In my community. In my world. In the universe. In the omniverse.
Bye-bye to the timid Sabine Olivia Solomon ti
ptoeing around trying to get things done. Enduring the whiny critiques of my doubters and adversaries with a shrug and a sigh. The taunts and sniggers and back talk. Backing down when I should have been bucking up.
Whatever fate had in store, I was willing and able to face it head on and held high. Yep, somehow I’d actually become part of something bigger than my little idea of empowerment and conscious living. And while I knew it was due to my own initiative, my delicious now mended boyfriend had also made a profoundly profound contribution. In oh so many ways.
Item 1: His calm, determined, informed yet open personality.
Item 2: His circle of equally engaged and engaging comrades (even the mouthy obnoxious ones).
Item 3: His deep integrity and interest in the world...and in me and my deep integrity and interest in the world!
And finally Item 4: The most excellent and thoughtful gifties he presented to me in the form of two highly intellectual and stimulating books I’d have never known about before.
One was Rules for Radicals, a scruffy, doggy-eared paperback how-to-agitate guide written way back in 1971. Entire lifetimes ago. The other this ancient hardcover with the excellent title of The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller, some American writer in Paris in the thirties, famous for smutty books that were banned in the US.
This wasn’t one of those. It was a different kind of naughty.
“That book’s so crazy prescient,” Vray said as I opened the paper bag and pulled out the weathered book and contemplated what he actually meant by prescient which wasn’t a word in my current vocabulary but I presumed should be. “He wrote it during World War II when he visited the States cause his dad was dying and seriously, he could be talking about greed, selfishness, terrorism – all the stuff going on now.”
“How did you know about this?”
I asked. “It was on the bookshelf downstairs and air-conditioning bugs the crap out of me,” he said matter-of-factly. “Anyway check this, ‘What do we have to offer the world beside the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal idea that this insane idea actually represents progress and enlightenment?’ Or this, ‘The automobile stands out in my mind as the very symbol of falsity and illusion.’ It’s unbelievable. He could see the future back then.”
“Yeah,” I nodded, but mostly I was thinking how incredible Vray was. And hoping I could be amazing enough to keep up with him and his ideas. And live up to my own new expectations of myself.
When I flipped through the book later, I noticed that Vray (or someone) had highlighted the more profound passages. But even though it was punchy and insightful, it was also kind of whiney. Smartypants Henry Miller was Mr. Grumpypants. He was obviously clever, but what did he ever do besides complain?
Where was the action to back up the reaction when he wrote, ‘A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values’?
I guess that’s where the other book came in. It was even more intriguing, despite the somewhat contradictory title of Rules for Radicals. If you were a true radical then didn’t you say FU to rules and regulations?
Anyway, I was pretty flattered. I’d never considered myself exactly radical. Different, okay, but not in that extreme rebel way. Then again, the more I read, the more I realized that I was living totally outside the normal status-quo-suburban-box my family and former compadres lived in.
Every day proved this more and more. I was definitely not the least bit normal any more. And proud of it.
According to these “rules,” the organizer should seek out controversy and attack apathy. And clearly without even realizing it I was the organizer since it was my genius idea to put together Be Green Day and the anti-postering postering blitz. Not to mention my brilliant new soon-to-be-hatched plans.
Sadly, my recruitment sucked. So far I’d only been able to recruit an army of one (do boyfriends even count as recruits?). Two, if you counted me. Hardly the force needed to change the world on a grand scale. But you’ve got to start somewhere.
e a r t h g i r l
[ Jan. 8th | 09:49pm ]
[ mood | hopeful ]
[ music | bloody mother f#&%ing asshole — martha wainwright]
A NOT SHORT ENUF LIST OF OUTRAGES AND INJUSTICES:
1. TOO MUCH PACKAGING - Why does stuff come wrapped in 10x more plastic and paper than the actual thing? RESIST and INSIST ON LESS!
2. POP MACHINES IN SCHOOLS - Aren’t some of your classmates chunky and unhealthy enough without sucking back more sugar each day? FIGHT THE POWER.
3. THE LACK OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION AND AWARENESS TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS. Demand more.
4. GIANORMOUS SUPPOSED SPORTS UTILITY VEHICLES — Cuz everyone knows you need a truck-car for the treacherous paved city street to go play tennis or get supersoft toilet paper for your very special bum.
5. PEOPLE WHO DON’T RECYCLE. This should be a crime.
6. CELLPHONE MANIA. Enough already!
7. SELFISHNESS AND RUDENESS. Nuff said.
link read 7 | post
altalake 01-08 21:58
I eagerly anticipate the update on your exploits of exploitation.
Vague-a-bond 01-08 22:22
8 - People who wear stinky choke and gag inducing perfume and chemically yucky fragrance in movie theaters, on planes or to yoga class! Cough, cough, gag, gag.
Stryker1992 01-08 23:23
Who the hell are U people? And why don’t U shut THE FUCK up!?!!
Nostradamnus 93 1-9-10:10
You and your eco-pussy friends are a bunch of reactionary whiners.
Global warming is a CROCK. Remember, there was once something called an ice age brainiacs. The planet gets cold, the planet gets warm.
As for pollution — its a MYTH. Its simply the redistrubution of materials that already existed on this planet. Unless you know something about alien imports, you people and your green bullshit are dead wrong. Chillaxe fools.
Initially I was jarred by Stryker’s meanie posts. And Nostradamnus’s wacko prophecies with their almost logical idiocy. Plus I couldn’t help wondering if their messages came courtesy of Darren Mankowsky or Corey Crawford (or even, yikes, Carmen in an x-treme-bitch mood?). I wanted to counterpost something so clever and seething it tore the pathetic comments to shreds.
Then I realized that would just lower me to their level. A place I refused to even visit ever again.
I suppose everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, however misguided. And so far my brilliant blog had definitely attracted more supporters than detractors. There were bound to be a few cowardly bullies ready to lunge.
It was naive to think that this new way of living would be easy peasy. That converting closed-minded dum-dums would be a snap. Nothing that mattered ever was.
Curiously, school wasn’t as horrendous as before the break. Amped by the validation of Vray, Ruby and the gang of thinky, talky amazing people, I felt completely empowered. And not afraid to voice my resistance to things and situations I considered unjust or out-of-whack. Someone had to stand up and right the wrongs and that someone was definitely going to be me.
When I said we should lobby the school board to add classes on environmentalism, Mrs. Rubin did her best poker face and pretended she was interested. She even gave me a list of school board administrators so I could write letters.
“I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, Sabine,” she said with her precision principal voice. “It’s just that curriculum changes are a long and arduous process. By the time anything happens, you won’t even be a student here.”
“I’m not doing this for myself. It’s for the students after me.”
“That’s a wonderful position, but your immediate focus should be your grades and getting accepted into university.”
But I had plans and I was going to carry them out. Being a defender of the planet was too important to let a bit of resistance sway me.
And so what if Darren Mankowsky and his
lunkhead teammates destroyed my petition to abolish pop and snack machines in the school caf.
“Their sponsorship pays for our teams, idiot,” Darren roared as he pulverized the collection of two dozen signatures I’d convinced out of Alexis Shaw’s posse.
“The companies behind those machines engage in questionable labor practices, force unhealthy products on growing bodies, not to mention limit the choice in the global playing field,” I explained.
“Oh, shut the fuck up already. All you and your stupid ranting will do is make our money disappear!”
“There are ways to pay for school sports without selling out to corporate shills,” I said calmly as I gathered up the fragments of the petition. “It’s called fundraising.”
“You’re an idiot, Sabine.”
“Takes one to know one,” I said, unintentionally lowering myself to his very limited communication level. “I hear chocolate-covered almonds are popular.”
“That’s so funny, I forgot to laugh. And for your information, Carmen thinks you and your eco-crap is idiotic, too.” Then he and his no-neck gang tromped off, laughing.
So there I was considering a more stealth campaign to encourage healthier eating when I felt some faintly familiar fingers tap my shoulder.
Ella silently jerked her head toward the bathroom as she practically dragged me after her. She looked very nervous.
“He’s a first-class ass,” she said as she fired up a disgusting cigarette. “So how are you?”
“Fine.” I was starting to wonder if these random intrusions proved everyone around me had gone squirrelly.
Ella nodded and bobbed her head as smoke flared from her nostrils. Then suddenly she reached into this massive leather purse I’d never seen before and pulled out a small sparkly package.
“What’s this?” I asked as she thrust it toward me.
“Fancy pants. For your first-class ass.”
“I didn’t get you anything.” It felt weird taking it.
“That’s okay,” she shrugged. “Open it already!”
I untangled the ribbon from the tissue paper and tore into the little purple packet. Inside was a pair of leopard-spotted thongs with pink lace trim.
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