Fear of unpunctuated silence, or emptiness sucks.

The Blogger posting screen is blank and white and taunting me. I've been procrastinating starting this post for the last two hours because I'm not sure what shape it should have or how to begin. So I'll just dive in and see where the words lead. Maybe by the time you read this, I'll have deleted these introductory sentences altogether. Or maybe not.

This week, I started letting go of some things. Monday, I uninstalled the Microsoft games from my computers. No more killing time playing Freecell or Spider Solitaire. No more distracting myself while waiting for files to upload or programs to backup. No more splitting my attention with reruns of "House" playing in one corner of my screen and a game of Freecell going in another. I'm letting in a little empty space, and it sucks.

Tuesday, I used up the very last of my fairtrade organic coffee from Peaberry's, washed out my new porcelain coffee cone as well as Organic Needle's organic cotton filter, and stored them on the top shelf of the cupboard. No more charging my battery chemically because I stayed up all night, once again, and have to find the energy to go to work. Don't worry. I'm not a masochist. I'm weening off the caffeine by switching to black tea for a few days and then maybe green, for the antioxidants, of course!

Also, on Tuesday, as I was emptying my backpack of non-essentials in preparation for a long nature walk, I decided to remove the case of prescription drugs I carry around every day for insurance. I'm referring to the big V's: Valium and its friend Vicodin. I've had ongoing prescriptions for these drugs for many years for valid medical reasons, although I lost my Vicodin Rx at the same time I lost my uterus, the painful reason for the prescription in the first place. Still, I had some saved up, and while I rarely felt the need to actually take these drugs, just having them with me made me feel calm and prepared. Like I couldn't be hurt, either emotionally or physically.

After putting the bottles in the kitchen cabinet, I sat at the table and wept.

I sobbed, actually, for about a half an hour. Even though all I'd done was put the bottles away (as opposed to discarding the contents altogether), I felt like I'd removed a limb. And a piece of identity I didn't even know I'd been carrying. Breakable. Fragile. Patient. The drugs didn't take up much room in my backpack, but the knowledge that they were there apparently filled a huge space in my psyche. Now I've created more emptiness and nothing to fill it with but tears.

Or alcohol.

Confession: I've been drinking my household cleaner for the last few months. That's because I like to clean with vodka instead of vinegar. I bought the cheapest stuff I could find in a glass bottle because I hadn't planned on consuming it. But that's what happens at 2am when I'm anxious and agitated and want to wind down. And you know the saying that the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over hoping for a different result each time? Alcohol NEVER puts me to sleep. It keeps me up. Yet every night, I expect it to do what it's never done before.

So okay, last night I finished the bottle of household cleaner. Tonight, I have no alcohol in the house and have mentally stored that crutch away in the cupboard along with the coffee and pills. Wow. I sound like a total fiend. I was about to qualify all this with a statement about how little I actually drink, but screw that. It's a problem. It's been blocking me from finding out how powerful I could actually be without it, so it has to go. More space. More emptiness. More silence.

I'm giving up these heavy, heavy crutches in preparation for a 24-hour fasting vision quest I'll be undertaking as part of the Integral Life Practice group I recently joined. And all these distractions are just weighing me down. Perhaps I feel such a connection to photos of dead birds full of plastic because I myself feel so heavy I can barely move.

But how can I take care of the planet when I am barely taking care of myself?

These are the thoughts I pondered during my 3-hour walk Tuesday, climbing the Berkeley hills, looking and listening for signs. I envisioned myself as both sculptor and clay, my job to cut out whatever is not me. And then I imagined a candle inside and light pouring through the openings I'd created. The spaces where I could shine a little, and maybe breathe.

The hill I climbed was steep (literally) and shadeless, and the weight on my back and in my brain, discouraging. Suddenly, I heard a familiar sound and looked up to catch sight of two hummingbirds, way up there in the hills, soar straight up into the sky and then dive bomb back down. Over and over they did this together, and once again that day I broke down and sobbed. "I want to fly," I cried out to the wind, "How come I can't fly? Why?"

I'm not making this up. I really did cry out in the "wilderness" of the Berkeley Hills. And of course, I knew the answer. I'm too heavy. All this extra stuff I carry. All the strategies I have for killing time, holding myself back, keeping myself in check. I want to find out who I'd be without those things. I'm really, really ready. And pretty terrified.

Yes, I go to meditation retreats twice a year and sit in silence and practice mindfulness. But the stillness is punctuated by the ring of the bell. The sessions structured and interspersed with meals and a waiting bed. I nap a lot. During my vision quest, I won't be eating food or taking naps or ringing bells. And there won't be anyone to tell me when to open my eyes. It'll just be me and the woods and my bottle of water.

In discussing how hard it is to give up coping mechanisms and routines that we've come to depend on, my wise friend Axelle had this to say:

I didn't answer your question about unpunctuated emptiness. Here it is: If I don't have the structure of seeking food, whether at home or out, and eating it, at regular times, I don't know what to do with the extra time. It's too much space, too much freedom. What I missed when I quit smoking was the structure it gave me, of having to do something (smoke) at certain times. When I no longer had to smoke at certain times, I couldn't handle the freedom, the space.

Why are some of us so afraid to be free? There's a question to ponder on Independence Day while many are compulsively shopping or eating or drinking, accumulating more and more stuff to plug up the emptiness in their lives. Sitting quietly should be the simplest thing in the world. So why's it so freakin' hard?
 

 

More online resources: Sustainlane, Alltop, Experience Project, oh my!

A big thanks to Sustainlane for their support of the Take Back The Filter campaign. Last night, they created a listing for the campaign and this morning, featured it in their weekly online newsletter.

If you don't know about it, Sustainlane is a great resource for finding environmentally-friendly products, services, and other resources. It's a completely user-driven site. Entries are created by users and then rated and reviewed by other users. So if you'd like to leave a comment in support of the Take Back The Filter campaign, please check out Sustainlane's new Take Back The Filter page, and while you're at it, browse and leave comments on other listings on the site. Reviews and comments can be positive or negative. Believe me, I've left my share of negative comments, as well as positive. See for yourself!

Sustainlane is also the producer of the Gorilla in the Greenhouse environmental site for kids. Several people emailed me months ago when the site first launched, and I procrastinated looking at it because 1) it was for kids and 2) I was just too dadgummed busy. (Well, whether or not I've actually been as busy as I think is one of the questions I've been pondering in preparation for my vision quest. More on that tomorrow. Regardless, I have felt extremely busy and bogged down (blogged down?), as you know.)

So it wasn't until today, reading Sustainlane's newsletter, that I realized the Green Gorilla and his friends were actually created by the folks at Sustainlane. Not only that, but the first episode is called, "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." Guess what it's about. And even more exciting to me was seeing my blogger friend, Anna Cummins, in the supplementary video called "About the Real Gyre." Now, the plastic in the gyre doesn't actually look like an island, the way it's portrayed in the cartoon. But then, green gorillas don't talk to kids and evil scientists don't have talking worms growing out the the tops of their skulls either, as far as I know. Watch and enjoy at your own risk!

Alltop describes itself as the "'digital magazine rack' of the Internet," and Alltop Green is a site that aggregates headlines from the most recent posts of nearly 150 green blogs (including Fake Plastic Fish) and news sites. It's a neat place to go to discover new green sites (for those who don't already have enough to read!) or just keep track of new postings from the sites that you do read on a regular basis. Alltop doesn't publish stories, but it leads you to them. Is there a site you feel should be there but isn't? Send an email to info@alltop.com and ask for it to be added.

And finally, The Experience Project is one site that could become completely addictive if you're not careful. Rather than being based on who you are publicly, it's a conglomeration of folks with shared experiences. Experiences range from big general categories like "I am trying to be more green" or "I love animals" to very specific experiences such as "I am not Mormon but my family is" or "I have a sibling with Down Syndrome" or my personal favorite (because I created it) "I pushed my brother down the stairs."

What makes The Experience Project different from other social networking sites is that users are supposed to be anonymous. Real names and identifying information is not shared. This is to encourage people to open up and share their life experiences without fear of judgment or other repercussions. I, on the other hand, am not exactly anonymous on the site. Fake Plastic Fish (which is also my user name without the spaces) has been included as one of the Related Blogs on the "I am trying to be more green" group. Feel free to visit my blog on The Experience Project and click the "Recommend This" button. You'll be glad you did!

Also check out another experience I created called "I want Clorox to recycle Brita water filters" that references the Take Back The Filter campaign. With a little creativity, you can get your message out to people who might not otherwise cross your path or visit your blog.

That's it for sharing the online love tonight. Tomorrow night's post will be more personal, if I can bring myself to write it without breaking down in tears and shorting out my keyboard. Okay, I'm being overly dramatic. But you are curious now, aren't you?
 

 

Blogher: Where the smart girls are.

Today is the last day to register. I'll be there. Will you?

On June 6, Clif commented, "After checking out the blogs of Crunchy, Chili, etc., I just realized what happened to all those girls who got A's in class and contributed all the poetry and stuff to the middle school yearbook while we boys were having fistfights and sneaking cigarettes...they grew up to start blogs!"

Well, many of those "girls" will get to meet up in person the weekend of July 18-20 in San Francisco, CA. I'm so excited that the Blogher conference for women bloggers will be hosted in my town this year. I've registered for all three days. But you don't have to sign up for the whole conference. If you can only make one day, I'd suggest Friday the 18th, since that's the day of the Blogging Birds of a Feather Meet-Up for Green/Social Change bloggers. It will be hosted by Britt Bravo of Have Fun * Do Good, whom I interviewed on Fake Plastic Fish back in May. I'm also looking forward to meeting Green LA Girl Siel Ju, as well as Green Bean (are you still planning to come?)

But today is the last day to sign up!

Of course, I couldn't register for the event without finding out about how green it would be. So I spoke with Kristy Sammis, Blogher's events & marketing manager, and here's what she told me about steps they are taking to make this conference as green as possible.

First, there will be no individual water bottles offered. Instead, there will be water stations, and each attendee will receive a reusable water bottle in their 100% organic cotton swag bag.

Don't need an extra water bottle because you're bringing your own (hint hint)? Blogher will have a special Swag Recycling room sponsored by Zwaggle where attendees can bring give-aways that they'd rather not take home. Have you ever gone to an event and been mesmerized by all the free stuff, only to get home and wonder why you felt you needed yet another key chain? At Blogher, you can return your regretted items before leaving the conference, and they'll be returned to the sponsors or donated or recycled.

And of course, Blogher is working with the hotel to have adequate recycling and composting facilities and as little disposable food packaging as possible. (Although Kristy did tell me that for practical purposes, they will be serving boxed lunches as opposed to sit down meals.) I plan to come prepared with my own lunch and reusable cutlery, and I hope other attendees will do the same.

The entire conference will take place at the Westin St. Francis hotel, and attendees staying at the hotel will be encouraged to request their towels and linens not be washed every day in order to save water and energy.

For those bloggers who don't live in the SF Bay Area, GM is sponsoring carpools and providing hybrid vehicles for 3 or more attendees coming together from Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York/Tri-State area, and Dallas. More information here.

So who's coming? One of my 2008 intentions was to "meet a few more Fake Plastic Fish readers and bloggers in person." What a great opportunity for us to see and hear the folks we've only imagined through blog reading. Remember, the voice you hear when you read a blog is really just your own. Come to the conference and hear how different we all are.

Sorry guys. You'll have to keep reading and imagining what we sound like.
 

 

Check out my brand spankin' new bike

Okay, it's not such a great photo of my new bike. But it's a fabulous pic of Arya praying to Ceiling Cat to please let this be the last time she's forced to look cute in Beth's new bike basket.


Here's me on my new Giant Suede DX W 21-speed women's bike with upright handlebars and nice wide padded seat. That's what I'm talkin' about. A bike I will actually ride.

Yes, I'm all about buying used. When my computer monitor died, I replaced it with a used one. When my hair dryer died, I learned how to fix it. When we've needed cat supplies or a kitchen door, we checked out Craigslist and Freecycle and Urban Ore. And I can't even remember the last time I bought clothes that someone else hadn't previously worn. But buying a bike was different.

Michael, a former bike messenger and owner of 5 or 6 bikes, has from time to time found used bikes for me and fixed them up. And they would collect dust. Oh, I did try to ride them at first. But I always felt like I was going to fall off. I was leaning too far forward. Or there was a bar in my way. Or I couldn't get the seat adjusted right. Or riding for half an hour left my butt sore for three days. For whatever reason, these bikes felt like they were made for someone else's body.

What's the use of having an environmentally correct used bike that never gets ridden? I decided that if I ever found the perfect bike for me, I'd buy it, whether it was new or used.

Well, the first time I test-rode the Suede, which was recommended by Michael's sister (Thanks!), I knew I'd found it. I experienced not a second of fear or awkwardness on this bike. In fact, I felt like I was 10-years old again riding my bike at my grandparent's house during summer vacation. (Except that back then, no one wore a helmet or worried much about a locks.) I'm not a racer or a mountain biker. I just want to get around town and ride places for which I might otherwise rent a Zip Car or take a cab.

After picking up the bike on Sunday, Michael and I rode to downtown Berkeley to see a movie. We got there in 15 minutes! And honestly, I didn't want to stop riding. I could have ridden all day, just like I used to do as a kid, for the sheer joy of feeling the wind on my face. I'm thrilled about this bike, and a little sad that I feel the need to bend over backwards justifying my decision to buy it new. On Friday, Crunchy Chicken wondered if going "no 'poo" wasn't hairshirt environmentalism. Not to me. But this agonizing over the nuances of even the decisions that feel right, that's what I'd call hairshirt environmentalism, and I think I'm going to stop engaging in it right now and go ride my bike.

Oh, and P.S. That metal basket, which I bought separately, easily detaches and has a handle so I can take it to the farmer's market or into the grocery store with me. Very cool, huh?
 

 

Year 2, Week 2 Results: 1.8 oz of plastic waste.

It was an interesting week. Attended a funeral. Ate a whole lot of chocolate. Bought a bike. And began a Vision Quest. Went through a bit of plastic, too. So here's the tally.

Plastic items used this week but purchased before the plastic project began:

• 1 Sicilia lemon juice bottle and cap. It took over a year for us to finish this, and we've got another one (expired) in the cupboard. We mostly use fresh limes and lemons now. I guess we should use up the bottled stuff before it gets moldy, if it hasn't already.


• 1 Sicilia lime juice bottle and cap. Same as above. And we've got another one of these in the cupboard too.

New plastic purchased since the plastic project began and used this week:

• 1 prescription bottle and cap. As I've mentioned before, these bottles cannot be refilled in California. It's against the law. Even our vet won't reuse them.


• 1 bit of plastic from a bunch of organic bananas. No, I haven't found any other brand of organic bananas in my area without the plastic, as another commenter suggested the last time.


• 1 fork from the after funeral luncheon. An amazing man died this month. He was one of the founders of the company I work for and the father of the current owner and her sister. He survived prostate cancer for over 15 years and rode his recumbent bike all the way down the West Coast of the United States. In his latter years, he became a vegan for health reasons but still liked to sneak the ocassional cigarette. He enjoyed hanging out in the accounting office with my co-worker and me, and we will miss his energy and humor. So yeah, I ended up with a plastic fork that day (and a plastic cup which I washed and replaced in the kitchen) but honestly I had other things on my mind.


• Plastic return envelope from Cell Phones For Soldiers which came with a book I express ordered from Amazon.com. Okay, where to start with this one? I don't normally order from Amazon.com, but I needed a book right away for a group I joined this month and couldn't wait to find it used. The group is run by Jonathan Gustin, the founder of Green Sangha, and as a member, I'll be partaking in a Vision Quest retreat later this month. Please don't ask me what a vision quest is. I'm still finding out. Suffice it to say, (or suffice to day, as some believe the saying goes) I didn't expect a plastic Cell Phones for Soldiers envelope and I just can't even start to analyze my ambivalence about that.

So there's the plastic waste I ended up with last week. But there was more plastic waste that I had a hand in generating. While my parents were in town a few weeks ago, they discovered a chocolate bar that they absolutely fell in love with. Divine Milk Chocolate. They loved the sweet, creamy taste. And while I much prefer dark chocolate, I loved that the bar is organic and fair trade. So for Father's Day, I ordered 20 bars to be shipped to Maryland.

Did I think about what it would entail to ship 20 bars to Maryland during a heat wave? Kind of. I did request no extra plastic packaging materials in my order. Alas, the message was not relayed. The chocolate arrived at their house in pristine condition, "And look what came with your delightful gift," my dad writes in his thank you email, "(the choc is in the small plastic bubble-wrapped box in front of the STYROFOAM cooler) plus a dry ice plastic bag, plus 4 plastic bags containing gel plus - YAY - a slew of paper packing --"





Look how cute my mom is.

"Are you going to count this on your web site for next month's tally?" my dad asks.

Well, no. It goes in your tally, Dad. But I did report it, just to keep us all honest. Please reuse the ice chest for your next picnic.

I'll have more plastic to report next week related to the bicycle I bought this Sunday, and a full report on the bike with photos tomorrow.