“So, friends,” says Wendell Berry in The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, “every day do something / that won’t compute.”
The politicos and the war-mongers and the marketing gurus and the ad execs and the creators of glitzy trash and junk, they all think they’ve got us figured out. They think they know what we want. We’re the consumers, and they’re going to give us something to consume, whether it be a genetically engineered piece of sweet junk filled with high fructose corn syrup, a mindless screen diversion or a satisfying show of martial power. And if we’re the consumers in the equation, they’re the ones who are raking in the dough. At an ever-increasing, alarming rate of speed.
Every day, let’s choose to do something that doesn’t fit that model. Let’s be the Makers, the Creators, the Designers of our own health, happiness, well-being. The Crafters of our own delicious world. Let’s make our own entertainment, be responsible for our own health, learn to love the taste of real unprocessed food, design our own lives according to our own stories.
“As soon as the generals and the politicos / can predict the motions of your mind,” says Wendell Berry, “lose it. Leave it as a sign / to mark the false trail, the way / you didn’t go. Be like the fox / who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction. / Practice resurrection.”
Gratitude List:
1. A little sun and blue sky yesterday. A day without rain.
2. The bright and earnest energy of the activists at the anti-GMO rally.
3. Natasha’s spot-on speech from the rally: Kill the Beast
4. Stuffed shells
5. Snuggles
May we walk in Beauty.
