these are great, good words taken from Joel Salatin, a revolutionary farmer and speaker who travels all over the world advocating for a more self-sustaining and historically normal approach to our food and our planet.
they are also taken from the book my father and i have elected to read, he and i, two members of the world's smallest book club. each week we slog thru a chapter or two, then meet over the phone to discuss this week's gleanings.
And Salatin does this great thing... especially for egg-heads like me and my pa, who would be just as content to debate the hell out of a thing, and then let it glisten forever in the abstract, unmarred by any stain of pragmatism or slovenly implementation. ... He gives you homework.
Whether he's talking about proper use of land or livestock, water usage, herbivores, urban farming.. what have you.. at the end of each well-written and thoroughly researched (and embodied!!!) chapter, tools for the trade. so, you too, gentle reader, may begin to take those first faltering steps down the path to normalcy,, self-sufficiency, all that....
it's great.
and it rings a bell somewhere in my brain.
as someone who operates with a head full of lofty ideas and grand imaginings, it is oftentimes exceedingly difficult for me to put one foot in front of the other, as it were. In my head, rings bells, trumpets, a symphony!!! and in my hands i bang a tiny, tinny tambourine... looking at my ill-shaped instrument, i bemoan... how does one make music with such a thing?
by doing it. start banging that drum, damn it. it may not sound like the footfall of angels you've got going in your head, nor the cacophony of beauty that's looping round and round on instant replay (but only just for you.. unheard, unsung, unknown by the ever-waking world...)
Begin it.
Begin it.
so many things to occupy a life, and indeed this world, in the fashion in which we dream... so many systems in place, of government, media, big business, blech.... conspiring to keep us ever-marching to the beat of a zombie, meat-head drummer from some awful '80s hairband... beating off with a drumstick in his hand...
the song played so loud, the soundtrack looping for so long, we forget.... we helped to write these notes... we began to hum this tainted melody once upon a time... before the tune got permanently lodged in our brains... to exclusion of all other music... and sound...
we can write the notes anew. even if we don't yet know the tune.... i've got a hankering for a great opening line... i bet you could help me with the refrain.... the bridge we'll build when we get there...
i get overwhelmed by the brokenness of the world.. indeed the brokenness of myself as well. how many grand, wonderful amazing things i would like to do... pull a ghandi and "be the change i want to see in the world".....
and i can't do it all today. no one of us can. and there's the trick. and there's the beauty of the thing..
without an orchestra assembled in our basements, we simply begin by doing what we can... a sprinkle of change here, a snippet of revolution there.... it sounds like rain and it sounds like footfalls and humming...
i grab my drum. you take your ill-strung fiddle out of storage and let's start to play. maybe invite the kids from down the way with a cow bell or two... my neighbor's got some spoons, a harp and a cuppa' sugar to boot. let's roll. ...
what is the sound of the many, hundreds of thousands.. maybe more... of someones doing something... something vital. something real. something precious and amazing and compassionate, brave, ingenious and grand.
of us all, minute little someones, conspiring each day to do the something - the burning beauty waiting to be born into the world... and us their patient, humble midwives.... conspiring to create an Anthem... drown out the dirge....
start humming. let's make up the words as we go along. i have a feeling.... the sounds of a million someones... therein lies the Song.....
