I read this article in the Times this morning (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/01/business/AP-US-Economy.html) and it struck me that Americans are losing jobs in record numbers and yet we continue to spend and spend and spend. There is something ornery in all this. What exactly are we buying and who is telling us that we even have the ability and the wherewithal to rack up extravagant numbers in credit and we are in one of the worst debacles in economic history and away we go into the stratosphere of absurdity again ad nauseum? What about living close to the bone, close to the earth? What about setting up the infrastructure to take care of our every need from what we garner from our immediate environment where we waste not and wont not? What about exploring the basic premises of Permaculture and like minded systems in order to reduce our stultifying footprint on this earth? When does the resource extraction and mass excessive consumerism and addiction end? How much more can this earth handle until its rocks split and swallow the whole dang thang? I often wonder at my own idiocy when it comes to the “I have to have it” syndrome. I have to ask myself constantly what is the real need here? How necessary? How much of it? Is this some old desire that won’t let me be? What enormous crevice or abyss am I trying to fill? What exactly do people really want? What are we looking for in this life on earth? Is growing a cucumber so difficult? I mean, all you do is put the little seed thing in the ground and wait a bit, nurse it a bit, watch it make baby cucumbers and then bigger cucumbers and you pick it and eat it, and you don’t have to drive your guzzler to the stupid market and buy cucumbers from Argentina and you are outside in the fresh air with your hands in the earth and you know where I am going with all this so why not make a small effort and try it?