http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarissa_Pinkola_Est%C3%A9s

Luke needs a new battery for his computer. He’s a computer programmer by trade so it is an essential item. Luke’s jumped on board the ‘buy nothing new for 2012′ project so he’s been looking for a second hand computer battery and he’s finding it really tough to source. Products are not made to be fixed, they are made to be replaced and the result is seen in the images below.

This is a pile of circuit boards next to a river where circuit boards were first treated with acid to remove metals (the acids flowing into the river) and burned openly. Massive amounts of dumping of imported computer waste takes place along the riverways. Guiyu, China. December 2001. ©2006 Basel Action Network (BAN) Source: http://www.electronicstakeback.com/global-e-waste-dumping/

There is a built-in obsolescence to electronic goods, but e-waste contains hazardous materials. (ABC: Karen Barlow) Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/05/2919217.htm?site=sydney

Source: http://www.e-warriors.byethost31.com/current.html

Source: http://www.stock-point.com/recycling_services.html

Source: http://www.thegadgetsblog.com/recycling-electronic-equipment

It’s gutting and shameful! This project will bring up a lot of realities about waste, being wasteful and how this impacts the environment.

The boat is called ‘friendship’ and it is sailing past trees that I love as declared in the text: ‘My friend Ilka is making sure that tree isn’t the last one, she also has excellent eyebrows’. Love it!! Love Chloe!!

So one of the projects I’m practicing this year is ‘Buy Nothing New For A Year’. Which I didn’t think would be too hard as I’m not a shopper I’m a wanderer. My rules are basically no new products can be bought unless:

• they are a perishable food/sanitary item
• they are needed to improve my health (eg medicine)
• I can verify the item has a sustainable closed loop life cycle

My purpose for doing this project is to reduce waste – not only my own – but also in the idealistic belief that my effort might reduce the production of unsustainable, wasteful, landfill products by negligent producers.

Yesterday, without thinking, I bought a new wordpress template. Afterwards I realised I had made the purchase without any thought – now I wonder if a non-physical item (such as a computer program downloaded online) is a product – well of course it is – and I think the same rule should apply because it still requires energy to be made and distributed.  So that was my first slip and it was only January 2nd – oops!

Today Luke went looking for a second hand bike. The bike shop guy warned us that second hand doesn’t mean bargain – that often you have to spend more money fixing it up. Later I considered this is the way it should be – more money spent on service, supporting people in their skill/work/labour who fix our stuff and less money spent on the stuff we can’t fix so it’s thrown to landfill.

Here’s a riddle for you. A man walks into a shop to buy a replacement ink cartridge for his printer. He spots the cartridge he needs on the top shelf – it’s $80. On the next shelf down he sees a new printer (with ink) for sale for $40. Which one does he buy?

Do we love science because of it’s predictability?

Open and deep,

Broken and charmed,

Mistaken for ideal

Stepping stones.

This big bowl of dirt

Staining cloth

And skin,

Breaking glass primed eyes

With wet fear.

Stabbing chests,

Pounding fists,

Voiceless screams,

Untouchable

Mess.

Untouchable mess.

Hair clinging

To sunken song

Coming from hopeless mouth

Curled

Womb like.

Rocking,

Rocking,

Rocking.

I like being a Warrior in place of a worrier!

I get a thrill from the expression of people who are standing in their skin – you can sense it – oh those moments of relived breath.

I’ve been circling the deep ecology ‘despair & empowerment’ concept again. Recently noticed (paddling out of one of those torrents) that the escalating noise is a result of a persons deep need to be heard. I saw the progression like a movie sequence: how the volume increases and sometimes rolls in to violence, getting louder and louder, seeking more attention, attendance.  I bet in most cases, you can track it back, to a ‘wound’ that was ignored. This pool of thoughts further articulated the great dualism of entropy and evolution – life & death – grieving in order to be able to live. F@$K this world needs some big grieving sessions!

I can see a similar pattern in the way us humans ‘ignore’ the voices of Earth – be it creatures, trees, whatever (there’s a lot to choose from). Wow I laughed out loud watching ‘The Cove’ last night when Acoustical engineer/audiologists made the basic observation that ‘dolphins don’t have hands’ and thus it seemed quite arcane for dolphin ‘trainers’ to be communicating with these incredible creatures using sign language…..instead of sonic methods. I could feel the anthropomorphic veil slipping – big breath.

So coming back from the tangents – control & chaos – I like to think of the moments I abandoned fear, when death as a reality did not control my day, I just walked out into the world brave like a Warrior and lived it, heard a different frequency (not the thick sinew of pain), I was in a shared world, a non-anthropocentric world, one of chaos not control – and wow its the best I’ve ever felt.

After sending a call far and wide to join my project of folding 1001 paper cranes for the Japanese tsunami victims – I received an overwhelming response from people saying they would love to participate…..but then nothing.

I grew quite disillusioned (again) about lot’s of talking and very minimal walking in this western world.

But then some months later…and the cranes are finally landing.

It’s fantastic. My original intention for the project was to create space that slowed time so we could sit and make something for someone else. It was intended as a non-monetary act of kindness, a deeper moment of grief & peace. A connection point.

What makes me most happy is that this is exactly what has transpired (even when I had erred on giving up hope). The crane folding created all sorts of connection points: birthday gatherings, tea parties and even mid-air entertainment (it’s true – see Natalija’s Cranes on a Plane! – http://natalija.squarespace.com/journal/2011/8/23/cranes-on-a-plane.html)

So a huge thanks to everyone who has sent Cranes and most of all thanks for enjoying the process. I’ll let keep you updated about their journey to Japan.

This morning Luke reiterated the term ‘violence’ to describe the force inherent in chaos.

Earlier, I’d taken a walk down a crisp morning beach, amidst a shoreline still balancing light and salt spray for the day ahead. I decided to visit my stick circle, have a look if anything had been added. When I got to the sculpture, I saw that my circle had been desecrated. Sticks were broken and thrown from where they’d laid – big sticks and small. The magic was gone, the space no longer held the intention I’d been practicing their over the past months, it felt empty.

I stood for a while, taking in the scene, noticing, observing, speculating. What a different sight to my previous visit – when the circle had been glistening in calm and a clean set of Bush Turkey tracks sliced through sand, perfectly dissecting my circle (it was such a joy to see). I looked for new tracks to decipher who this latest visitor was – the sand was too confusing for me.

The destruction of this site didn’t surprise me and I only had a fleeting moment of sadness.

The last stick I stuck in the sand a few days back, measured at least 2 meters in height. Previous to this all the sticks were under 30cm. It seemed to me that most people didn’t realise the circle was there – they overlooked it. Now with a glaringly obvious flagpole of a stick, I wondered if by drawing attention to the circle, things would change? At the time I felt I needed to make a statement, I wanted to play with scale, volume, restlessness.

As I left the broken circle this morning I considered fate and chaos. Then I considered decay. I have been thinking recently about infusing decay in to design. Here I was experiencing my idea in practice – its just I had no control over it. A good lesson. So why did it feel unsettling? We know all things come to an end (even though western society tends to achieve mass-denial on this truth).

When I got home I told Luke about the circle being broken and the ideas I’d had around it. We discussed that it would have been different if the tide had washed the sticks away rather than someone consciously damaging the circle. This reopened thoughts on fate and chaos – the possibility that a sequence of events are predestined but how these events come about can vary (parallel realities). I wondered about cause and effect. I put this to Luke – how does this violent act change my next set of actions. He replied – how does it change the perpetrator’s? DING – a light turned on.