122I was wondering why something like this didn't exist.
Sarah Laskow for GOOD Environment
Bike Thief
Le sigh. :) Makes me wonder if I should even bother to lock mine up!
Plantscrapers? Yes, please.
via GOOD
This is more or less awesome. Dedicated urban greenhouses that can provide a significant quantity of food for a city? I may need to move to Sweden.
Don't Reduce Uganda To A Meme
Patrick Kigongo writing for GOOD
A reminder to myself as much as anyone else. I saw the Kony 2012 video sometime on the evening as it was blowing up, and was rather heartened by it, and thought it was a wonderful idea in some ways. I was curious, but their website was getting so hammered I couldn’t even get any more information. I shared it, because I thought it sounded like a very unique sort of positive moral experiment.
The next day the yelling began, and the knives, flames, and cannons came out.
I’m not really sure what to make of the whole thing at this point, and I’m reserving judgment on Invisible Children, but one thing is certainly true: while heightened awareness and outrage over human rights abuses isn’t a bad thing, it’s also not helpful to simply reduce your involvement in a complex, terrible situation to a reblog and a few clicks. Again, the awareness itself is not bad; but how easily it compartmentalizes the situation in our brains into a meme that we just need to pass along is not so great.
I think the idea was incredibly novel, and I hope that it does some good. I just find myself wondering now, how to harness reblogs and general “viral video”-ness (ugh, I hate that term) into actual positive change.
Anyway. This is a note to myself to pay attention.
When the form remains unfixed, however, the poets become stuck at the level of form. Paradoxically, by rejecting it, they become its captive.
Seeds From A Birch Tree, by Clark Strand
On (Un)sadness
There’s this really fucked up thing that happens sometimes.
I don’t use the word “fuck” lightly, because this is probably fairly messed up, or at least seems that way. Sometimes the sadness of being single makes me happy. Sometimes the solitude of my life, sitting here in bed at one in the morning, without a soul in the world who cares for me as I’d otherwise like, puts a smile on my face.
I don’t know what this is. But sometimes I’m alright when I should otherwise be kind of melancholy. But it is melancholy - a beautiful melancholy.
I don’t know what to call that. It springs to mind, so I’ll say it: Conor Oberst once put it in a song, brilliant lyricist and purveyor of the nuance of sadness all things pensive that he is, and wrote “and when I press the keys, it all gets reversed, the sound of loneliness makes me happier.”
Kinda a crazy sentiment. At first, second, and maybe third blush, totally emo-kid. But… it really happens sometimes. I’ll just tell you, cause I’m here staring out of it, it’s not really emo-bullshit when it comes down to it.
I think it’s the feeling of looking at your own life, and what it is, and its faults, and its good parts, and the things in it you’d like to change, and the things that make you sad, and the things that make you happy, and finding the whole, gorgeous arrangement to be a beautiful, whirring machine that you can find it in your heart to love.
I think this feeling is acceptance and balance. There’s not a lot of room in that for depression. Sometimes I wish I could bottle that up and hand it around, cause I’m either batshit crazy, or… I dunno. I feel like I’m in a good place in life most of the time; issues, problems, sadnesses and all.
I don’t really know where I’m going; I can’t predict if I’ll ever have another meaningful relationship in my whole life, but I frequently see the beauty in where I am. In the details of it, even when there are parts of it I’d like to change.
Sleep tight.
