The Moneyless Man

by Boyle, Mark

  I want to share some of Daniel’s thoughts with you, to give you a flavor of his views. They aren’t necessarily my views; although I agree with much of what he says, I don’t by any means concur with it all. I thought it would be helpful to give you another perspective on why people like Daniel, Heidemarie, and I see living without debt, credit and little bits of paper as crucial to our ability to survive and thrive on our planet.

  Suelo on ‘ownership and possession’

  A moneyless existence ... is not a matter of giving up possessions, because there is nothing to give up, really. Nobody owns anything, so it is simply a matter of realizing that you already own nothing. Then, when you lose something and you realize you never owned it in the first place, there is no sense of loss. And when somebody asks you for something, you freely give it to them because it really isn’t yours to give anyway. Then have faith that everything comes as you need it in the moment.

  Suelo on ‘living without money’

  To say that I live without money isn’t saying anything, really. That’s like saying I live without belief in Santa Claus. Now, if we lived in a world where everybody believed in Santa Claus, you might think I’m stepping out on a limb to live without Santa Claus.

  Suelo, asked ‘Do you think money is evil?’

  No. Money is illusion. Illusion is neither good nor evil. Imagine if you had eyes that saw reality rather than your own belief. Imagine if you saw a $100 bill as a piece of paper with a pretty work of art on it and nothing else ... One time I found a $20 bill and decided to play with it in this way. I cut it up and made a collage out of it.

  The $20 bill incident brought down a lot of negative comment. There was great debate about whether it would have been better to give it to someone who needed it or better to stop assigning it an illusory value and to take it out of circulation. But, by giving it away, would he have been guilty of reinforcing a system that gave rise to the inevitability of some desperate person really needing it?

  On the same day that I first heard about Daniel Suelo, I came across a Sioux Indian, John Lame Deer. He summarized how he felt about being made to use money – and hence become ‘civilized’ – by white men:

  Before our white brothers came to civilize us we had no jails. Therefore we had no criminals. You can’t have criminals without a jail. We had no locks or keys and so we had no thieves. If a man was so poor that he had no horse, teepee or blanket, someone gave him these things. We were too uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings. We wanted to have things only in order to give them away. We had no money and therefore a man’s worth couldn’t be measured by it. We had no written law, no attorney or politicians, therefore we couldn’t cheat. We were in a really bad way before the white man came and I don’t know how we managed to get along without the basic things which, we are told, are absolutely necessary to make a civilized society.

  Daniel Suelo, Heidemaire, and I have slightly different core reasons for wanting to live without money. I prefer not to focus on minor differences, but rather to see that which we share. A common thread links the three of us: our desires to see friendships grow between local people through the simple act of sharing, and to see the spirits of kindness and giving reign over greed.

  There was an irony in my life. Spending so much time speaking and writing about creating friendships through sharing, and the importance of rebuilding the communities we live in, left very little time for my own life! In the middle of May, to remedy this, I decided to start having a lot more fun with my friends. I hoped the imminent return of summer would mean a lot more playtime.

  In the first few months of spring, I found I was still counting down the days to the end of my year, viewing it as something to get through, instead of a challenge to embrace. But by May, I found days on end were passing in which I didn’t even think about the ‘m’ word. Only when someone asked did it enter my consciousness. I loved living off the land, but spring was a time when all I seemed to do was work, as everything later in the year depended on how much sweat I spilled then. It was hard to think that the fruits of my labor were still far from ripening. But the time had come to start reaping what I had sowed.

  12

  SUMMER

  Living without money in winter can seem really unappealing, but you’d have to be bonkers not to try it in the summer. Long evenings walking in the woods, camping by the beach at the weekend, cooking food that you’ve grown and picked yourself, cycling, listening to acoustic music by a camp fire, wandering in the wild foraging berries, apples and nuts, skinny-dipping in the lake, and sleeping under the stars. If you are tempted to try this way of life for just one season, summer is the perfect time.

  The clocks had gone forward. It was officially British Summer Time and I was enjoying the longer evenings. This pleasure is, obviously, not specific to moneyless people. Everyone I know hates to see the clocks go back and I often wonder how we’ve agreed to something that none of us seem to want. When you cook, wash, work, and play outside, cycle everywhere and live off the land, you’re even more delighted to see the sun stay in the sky a bit longer each day. In the winter and spring there’d definitely been times when I felt the effect of not having money: the moment I’d heard my mates were going to see our favorite band play a concert; the time they went to a movie I’d really liked to have seen. Now that summer was here, I forgot I was living without money. I simply lived.

  Not only did I suddenly have a range of entertainment opportunities – things like camping, which had seemed so much less appealing in the colder months – but life was getting easier in all sorts of ways.

  ON MY BIKE

  As much as I love cycling, doing more than eighty miles a week in the winter and early spring months was not always fun. Without the right gear, I often got soaked right through. Even if I didn’t wear waterproofs, I usually sweated so much that the result was no different. In a change that I loved, because it meant that my lifestyle was becoming normal for them, my friends kept telling me to get a waterproof, breathable jacket. ‘With what?’, I’d reply; such a thing had proved impossible to find on Freecycle during the wetter seasons.

  When it rained heavily, the lights on my bike went on and off randomly. It took me the whole of March to realize this was down to some faulty wiring in my dynamo, which I immediately fixed. This had made cycling pretty stressful, as I’d suddenly and inexplicably find myself invisible to speeding motorists driving along country lanes barely wide enough for one car. When I heard an engine scream behind me, I’d either have to stand in the ditch until it passed or risk joining the dead badgers and foxes that dotted the side of the road.

  But as the summer breezes began drifting through the valley, cycling became not just easier, but something I really wanted to do. Mountain biking is one of my favorite hobbies, so I often went adventuring with friends around Bristol, in places like Leigh Woods. We’d career down the little streams and muddy paths on the steep hills of this huge estate. Off-road cycling is quite similar to life in some respects: if you want to enjoy it, it’s essential not to fear falling on your ass.

  This pastime was pretty stupid and slightly irresponsible; mountain biking can be a fairly dangerous hobby. Normally, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but my moneyless status meant I couldn’t afford to break either my leg or my bike, because I couldn’t have paid to get either fixed. But life’s too short and too precious to be smart all the time. I decided long ago that I would rather live for fifty years than exist for ninety, and that if I lived my life exactly the way I wanted to at every moment, my time would be called whenever it was meant to be.

  However, it wasn’t all mountain biking. Cycling is a fantastic way of getting to know the local area and reaching places completely inaccessible to motorists. In June, I started going for rides in the countryside, sometimes with friends who needed a break from the city and sometimes with the volunteer workers from the farm. There is something very wonderful about feeling the elements and sensing on your skin the ch
ange in temperature as the sun falls and rises that makes cycling feel so much more real than traveling by car or public transportation. We’d often go cycling at night, which I much prefer to cycling in the day, as you can go for an hour without meeting a single car. As the evenings got longer in the summer, we explored further. We’d shove three things in our packs – tent, sleeping bags, and a saddlebag of food – in case we decided to sleep wherever the road took us. Sometimes we’d camp overnight in woodland, or on the banks of a nearby lake, and make our way back in the morning. Or if we got tired and wanted to lie back and look at the stars, we’d just stop, find a dry spot, and sleep until the sun woke us up.

  FREE BOOZE!

  These days, if I want a tipple I make my own. The internet has hundreds of recipes for all sorts of alcoholic drinks. Or you could try my recipe for cider, easy to make, using windfall apples and nothing else.

  HOW TO MAKE REAL CIDER

  Pick your apples, a mixture of cider and crab varieties, discarding any rotten ones.

  Pulp them or chop them up really small.

  Press them, ideally using an efficient apple press, until you have as much juice as you can get.

  Pour the juice into a sterilized keg, making sure the keg is full. Release the bung on the top of the keg to let natural yeast spores in.

  Allow it to ferment for a month or so. Either pour the cider into clean bottles and leave for another few months or put the bung back in and leave in the keg for eight months. This will give you a strong, sweet and cloudy cider.

  Enjoy the cider with friends!

  Many people have apple trees and don’t use them; why not ask if you can harvest their apples and share the cider with them?

  Good beer is also easy to make, especially if you grow your own hops. You can flavor it using almost anything – Andy Hamilton once made me some pine needle beer, which was … interesting!

  THE MONEYLESS SUMMER DIET

  One of the many reasons I love summer is the food. While the south west of England doesn’t quite have a Mediterranean climate, in a decent summer you can grow a wide variety of crops and around August, wild food is plentiful. I eat all kinds of different things in the summer. Not all of them every day of course – or I’d have put on even more than two stone over the year! This list doesn’t include the stuff I find randomly in trash cans.

  Breakfast

  Nettle and cleaver tea

  Foraged

  or Mint tea

  Grown

  Oatmeal

  Bartered

  Blackberries

  Foraged

  Raspberries

  Foraged

  Cobnuts

  Foraged

  Plantain hayfever remedy

  Foraged

  Brunch

  Apples

  Grown

  Banana smoothie

  Dumpster

  Grapes

  Grown

  Lemon verbena tea

  Grown

  or Dandelion root coffee

  Foraged

  Lunch

  Wholegrain rye bread

  Bartered grain, ground using hand crank mill, then cob oven baked

  or Wholewheat bread

  Dumpster

  Plum jelly

  Plums foraged and then homemade using grown & pressed apple juice

  Margarine

  Dumpster

  Sprouts

  Grains & pulses bartered, and then self-sprouted

  Arugula

  Grown and foraged

  Lettuce

  Grown and eaten raw

  Tomatoes

  Grown and eaten raw

  Oil (preferably from olives)

  Dumpster

  Beet leaves

  Grown and eaten raw

  Grated carrots

  Grown and eaten raw

  Grated beets

  Grown and eaten raw

  Damsons

  Foraged

  Mustard leaves

  Grown and eaten raw

  Wild garlic root

  Grown and eaten raw

  Chard

  Grown and eaten raw

  French beans

  Grown and eaten raw

  Pea pods

  Grown and eaten raw

  Onion

  Grown and eaten raw

  Purple sprouting broccoli

  Grown and steamed

  Green onions

  Grown and eaten raw

  Peppers

  Grown and eaten raw

  Cucumbers

  Grown and eaten raw

  Dinner

  Potatoes

  Grown and boiled on rocket stove

  Corn (on the cob)

  Grown and boiled in skin

  Zucchini

  Grown and steamed

  Rye grain

  Bartered, then boiled like rice

  Tofu

  Dumpster and stir-fried

  Leeks

  Grown and steamed

  Lentils

  Dumpster

  Broad beans

  Grown and steamed

  Leaf curd

  Foraged and homemade

  Broccoli

  Grown and steamed

  Garlic

  Grown and stir-fried

  Carrots

  Grown and steamed

  Beets

  Grown and steamed

  Pearl barley

  Bartered, then boiled like rice

  Parsnips

  Grown and steamed

  Rosemary

  Foraged

  Parsley

  Grown and steamed

  Dessert

  Vegan chocolate cake

  Leftovers from local café

  Drinks

  Cider

  Grown and homemade

  Elderflower champagne

  Foraged and dumpster ingredients

  Elderflower cordial

  Foraged and dumpster ingredients

  Apple juice

  Grown and juiced

  Peppermint tea

  Grown

  Beer

  Foraged and dumpster ingredients

  Waste food made up less than 5% of my diet in the summer but I didn’t stop dumpster diving. I started doing it more and more, partly because I loved the adventure of it, and partly because I wanted good food to go into bellies instead of trash cans.

  NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH?

  There is such a thing as a free lunch. And free breakfast and dinner for that matter. Foraging wild food is its truest form, as it comes straight from the earth. However, Great Britain has been tamed; its wilds are retreating rapidly. Where there were once woods, biodiversity and abundance, are now concrete-clad supermarkets, parking lots and their dumpsters. Urban sprawl has changed the nature of ‘foraging’. Rather than walking through midday fields picking food, the modern day urban forager operates at night, searching through the massive dumpsters that have replaced the bushes.

  Dumpster diving for food sounds sordid and illegal; I understand this apprehension. But a lot of the time the only reason food has to be thrown out is because of a date stamped on it on an assembly line in a far away factory. The food may still be fine to eat, but the company has to operate within the law. In a small greengrocery, the grocer can judge the state of their produce by its smell, feel, taste and look, and send vegetables for composting only when they’re no longer fit to eat. In a large supermarket, layers of packaging mean the assistants cannot use such discretion and judgment. Regardless of how the produce looks and feels within its plastic wrapping, if its date is yesterday’s, it’s in the garbage.

  I find dumpster-diving a lot of fun, especially if you do it with a few friends. We often come away with so much food that our biggest job is distributing it to those who can use it. It’s even easier in the summer, because it is much warmer and drier, two important factors in a night-time activity. And although you have to wait longer for it to get dark, there also seems to be much more waste foo
d around. This is likely to be due to demand being much more unpredictable in the holiday period; sales of many products, like salads and chilled goods, depend on the sun coming out, which doesn’t always happen in England.