www.kifinas.net

——->  http://www.kifinas.net/ <——-

κάτι κάτι

κάτι κάτι περιμένουν όλοι,

αυτοί που στοιχίζονται πίσω από μια λέξη,

από μια φράση, από μια πρόταση γάμου,

είναι μια μεταφορά από τα μάτια στο χρώμα ,

από το χρώμα σ΄ένα όνομα.

Ας μυρίσει το πτώμα , αλλλά ν’ άνοίξει το πώμα .

να το θέσω ως εξής , προτιμώ τις γυναίκες που μεταφέρονται

απόι τις τηλέκατευθυνόμενες

θεωρία αριθμών -9

Μου έδωσε κάτι πολύτιμο, το κλειδί του σπιτιού της . Μου το ζήτησε πίσω με την πρώτη ευκαιρία, την άφησα να το πάρει. Τα πράγματα τα πολύτιμα ή βρίσκουν το στόχο τους η ξαναγυρνούν πίσω .

ότι πολύτιμο είναι μπούμερανκ. πρέπει να ξέρεις να το πετάς.

it takes a genius to be simple

When I was a kid and imagined my life as an adult, I dreamt of living on a farm, surrounded by nature and animals, and having a classical mansion for my house. It seemed the perfect compromise between my love of the natural world and my desire for material comfort. As I’ve grown older, the dream has remained remarkably constant, with only one significant change: the mansion has been razed and replaced with a more modest dwelling, ideally one that I have built myself.

I call this dream a pursuit of self-sufficiency—an idea that is constantly being formed and reformed by my understanding of what sustains me, my family, my community, the planet. It’s an idea that Satish has spent his life exploring, and about which he has much to say.

“Self-sufficiency begins with self-satisfaction and contentment within, rather than looking for contentment from outside stimulation and gratification. So self-sufficiency is, first of all, to be contented within oneself.

“The second part [of self-sufficiency] is to be satisfied with what you have already. We are always looking for something new, something different, something more, and do not value what is already there.
“The third part of self-sufficiency is to be able to use one’s own skills and one’s own resources to make things—being able to cook your own food, rather than always depending on somebody else to cook for you or going out to restaurants. The basic skills of living are very important.

“When we are talking about food, it’s not only cooking, but also a little bit of growing, a little garden where food, vegetable and herbs and that sort of thing can be grown. Then you are appreciating what is around you, have a sense of place and have some connection with the natural world. That way you are using and developing your own skills, your own hands, and you are also not being dependent on your entertainment, your knowledge, your ideas on faraway things, but appreciating what is local. So local is important for a simple self-sufficient life.

“And then [self-sufficiency means] finding ways of living that have means of good health—for example, yoga and meditation and going for a walk in your area. If your health is good, you are not dependent on medicine and hospitals and doctors and other sorts of treatments. So these are the basic elements of self-sufficiency that support and enhance and nourish your simple life.”

Many people I have talked to have the idea that self-sufficiency requires being completely independent from everyone else, perhaps living in a cabin in a forest, gathering roots and berries and hunting animals. This vision is not only extreme, it misses one of the basic points of self-sufficiency: to live in sustainable harmony with the Earth, the community and oneself. Strong human relationships and physical work are the basis of self-sufficiency.

“First of all,” says Satish, “you need to develop a relationship with your own being. Sometimes we don’t appreciate ourselves, and we don’t know who we are, so we are dissatisfied within ourselves and are always looking for outside [approval]. Once you are able to relate to yourself, then you start relating through your skills with your surrounding. You relate with your land, you relate with trees, you relate with flowers, you relate with the stream at the bottom of your garden, you relate to the natural world. And then you are able to relate to your community. No human being is an island by himself or herself. We exist in a web of relationships, not in isolation.

“The idea of Descartes was that I think, therefore I am, which means I am just an isolated individual and not connected. Whereas my thinking is that self-sufficiency exists within community, within relationship. It’s not I think, therefore I am, but you are, therefore I am; trees are, therefore I am; the community is, therefore I am. Simplicity and self-sufficiency are embedded in relationship.”

****

Satish is one of the foremost advocates of the ideas of E.F. Schumacher, the ecological economist most widely known for his 1973 book, Small is Beautiful. Schumacher’s ideas hinge on the principles of appropriate technologies and human-scale economies. In his lifetime, Schumacher wrote numerous articles for Resurgence, practised his ideas through small-scale living, by which he grew his own food and used technology only as a way to enhance his own work, rather than to make his labour obsolete. His example was pivotal in focussing Satish’s lifelong activism on the furthering of ecological and spiritual values through education and lifestyle choice; their meeting was, as Satish writes in his autobiography Path Without Destination, “instantly a meeting of minds, and the beginning of a friendship that was to last beyond his death.”

Satish first met Schumacher in 1968, shortly after the economist published an essay entitled “Buddhist Economics.” Schumacher had put these two seemingly disparate systems of thought together while in Burma on assignment for the British government. Not only did he see that the Burmese had an economic system that harmonized their cultural beliefs with their material needs, but that traditional economics could in fact learn significant lessons from Buddhist principles. “The Buddhist point of view,” Schumacher writes, “takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.”

Throughout Small is Beautiful, Schumacher links the increasing social atmosphere of depression, disempowerment and disability to the decrease in imaginative and physical work. “The type of work that modern technology is most successful in reducing or even eliminating,” he writes, “is skillful, productive work of human hands, in touch with real materials of one kind or another. In an advanced industrial society, such work has become exceedingly rare, and to make a decent living by doing such work has become virtually impossible. A great part of the modern neurosis may be due to this very fact; for the human being, defined by Thomas Aquinas as a being with brains and hands, enjoys nothing more than to be creatively, usefully, productively engaged with both his hand and his brains.”

These words resonate with particular power for me. Recently I quit my job and moved away from Toronto, where I had worked for a year in offices, doing nothing much at all. In the rare occasions I was given the chance to use my mind and creativity I jumped at it, but those moments could not counteract the increasing resentment I felt and the growing sense that my intelligence was draining away. When Satish says over the phone, “If you don’t work, then your imagination is not nurtured; and when you don’t do anything, then your imagination goes dry, gets hungry and goes under,” I know exactly what he is talking about. There were times when I felt as if I was drowning.

“The thing about self-sufficiency and simplicity,” says Satish, “is that both these ideas are only possible when we begin to appreciate the sacred quality and fulfilling quality of work. A human body is naturally in need of work, so if we stop doing productive work, creative work, then we begin to do unnecessary and unproductive and uncreative work. So working on the garden and making things by hand and seeing it as sacred work is vital—not as work just to earn money or just to keep your body and soul together, but work that is an expression of beauty, an expression of service, an expression of gift.

“When you are a craftsperson and take a lump of clay, you discover that that lump of clay has a pot in it. Or you take a piece of wood and uncover a beautiful chair in it. Or you take a lump of stone and you uncover a beautiful image, a statue in it. So only through work you can uncover and discover and unfold the beauty and the sacred. You make something which is beautiful, which is useful, which is dutiful, which is a gift and which is something that can last.”

“But how do we start to uncover the sacred,” I ask, “if we are already caught up in the material, modern, technological world?”

“You begin small. If you are living in the city, then you begin with having a few plants in your window, on your balcony and on your rooftop. That way you are connecting with the natural world. Then you begin to use what you have grown—a few herbs, a few vegetables—and you cook them. And when you are cooking you are starting to work. Then you say, can I, even in the city, can I do some tapestry, can I do some weaving, can I do some knitting? Can I do something that expresses my deep core of feelings and imagination?”

Beauty is a quality neither Schumacher nor Satish underestimates. Bring art, poetry and imagination into your home, Satish says. It is inhuman to simply go to work, spend long hours commuting, and then sit in front of the television. “That is not the idea of simple life, which has self-sufficiency and creativity and sacred enshrined in it.”

“We planted a couple of hundred trees of all kinds. Some trees for wood, some trees for herbs, some trees for fruit, some trees for furniture—all kinds of trees, like ash and oak and willows and apple and pear and so on. Also we have a garden, so we can live and work and garden from our home.”

Fr

“Small is beautiful is the first idea that I encountered, and E.F. Schumacher started that. It is still not yet quite popular enough, although the book has been read and ‘small is beautiful’ has become part of our language, but still people are hell-bent on growing growing growing. Big hospitals, big schools, big government, big buildings, high-rise, big companies, multinationals, transnationals, globalization—all that is a trend towards bigness. Whereas the most pertinent and most exciting and revolutionary idea is small is beautiful.

“Then the idea that Gregory Bateson and various other people developed that everything is a system. We are all part of systems. We are all connected. Systems thinking to me was a very important idea in which everything is connected, everything is mutually dependent on each other. When you look at something, you have to see it in relationship with everything else. We are dependent on the earth; we are dependent on the air, water, fire.

“And from systems thinking emerges the Gaia Theory, which is James Lovelock’s idea, in which the whole Earth is one living organism and we are part of the web of life and human beings are not superior.

“That leads to Deep Ecology—accepting the intrinsic value of all life. The trees have intrinsic value. Animals have intrinsic value. The forests have intrinsic value. The Earth as a living system comes from Gaia, and then the intrinsic value of all life comes from Deep Ecology.

“And that leads of course to the idea of permaculture. How every way we live, our energy system, our food system, our work system should all be such that it’s dutiful, permanent and sustainable. So from systems thinking to Gaia to Deep Ecology to permaculture to sustainability—these are some of the seminal ideas that have inspired me and Resurgence.”

When I lived in Toronto, I had to take a step back from my convictions as an environmentalist, otherwise it was too frustrating living in a city where pollution hangs so thickly in the air I can taste it, where cars are noisy, indispensable ornaments that make biking a health hazard, where each day the garbage piles up on the curb and city council thinks it’s a good idea to ship the garbage to a defunct mine in a small northern community. As a city dweller, I depended on the outlying agricultural areas to provide my food, faraway hydroelectric projects to provide my energy, and a vast governmental infrastructure to maintain my roads, water, social services and economy. Giant billboard ads for the downtown shopping centre read: “People say Torontonians think they are the centre of the universe. They are!”

“I think,” says Satish, “that there is at the moment in the world a battle going on between those who are pursuing materialistic paths—globalizers of economic growth and those hell-bent on this ‘big is better’ idea—on the one hand, and on the other hand those who are dedicated to spiritual renewal, more small-scale development, more human scale, more sustainability, more crafts and arts. Where human beings are not just sold to companies and money and those kinds of things. Where human beings have a sacred path.

“These two forces are in a way like the battlefield in the Bhagavad-Gita, where Arjuna and Krishna were fighting the Kauravas. This battlefield is still with us, it’s in every generation, in every situation that is going on, but at this moment it is the materialism on the one hand and the spiritual values and more ecological lifestyle on the other. At the moment, media, money, advertising and governments are all behind the materialistic globalization, but the people are not feeling very happy. There’s a kind of a depression going on, and people are unhealthy, and people are realizing it’s stressful, this treadmill, this strenuous lifestyle, and we are being forced to earn earn earn and not live and enjoy and celebrate life. So people are standing up like in the Seattle and Washington protests against the World Bank and IMF [International Monetary Fund] and WTO [World Trade Organization], and the Prague demonstration and protest, and the protest against the world debt system. This battle is almost a worldwide civil war and in the next 10 years I think the forces of more spiritual and ecological and sustainable and small- scale and simple and self-sufficient lifestyle should get a bit stronger. That I can say with more hope than I can predict anything, I don’t know what is going to happen. But I am dedicating my life to support that alternative.”

****

The snow is still falling outside the window, but I am smiling at the speakerphone, out of which Satish’s voice rises. His words are energizing, gentle, wise. He is not an angry man, despite the Goliath forces we are up against.

“What do you hope for?” I ask.

“I hope that the human spirit will rise. I hope that human beings are not going to allow themselves to be swallowed by the forces of economic growth and the materialistic paradigm, because the human life is much more than high-rise buildings and motorcars and highways and airports and cyberspace. Human life needs relationships, love, compassion, caring friendships, generosity, time to read, time to study, time to meditate, time to go for walks, explore mountains and forests and rivers—to be rather than have and do. The human spirit needs to be fed as much as the human body needs to be fed. So my hope is the tide will turn and darkness will be extinguished by lighting many many candles around the world. That is my hope.”

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πεσσιμισμός

σαν το κρασί που πίνω ,

είμαι υπόλογος κι εγώ , όπως η ετικέτα στο γυαλί,

παν μέτρο άριστον άνθρωπος.

καποιοι το χουν βάλει στόχο να ταριχέυσουν τα ονειρά τους

και να τα αναρτήσουν πάνω στο τζάκι, ή σε κάποιο μελλοντικό σαλονι με καθαρές κουρτίνες.

έυκολο θήραμα ,

σαν να κόβεις λεμόνι από σουπερμάρκετ.

τι να πει κι η καθημεινή ξυνίλα , στις θεματικές κουβέντες που ανταλάσσουμε

όταν το πλαστικό γυρ τριγυρω είναι το κυρίαρχο υλικό.

αυτός είναι κι ένας λόγος που η ποίηση αφορά το χαρτί , τα ιστολόγια τη έκλαμψη της θερινής μας νυχτός που χαζέυει το νότισμα των γεννεσιουργών μας υγρών καθώς χαζεύει την πορεία μας από το ένα μέρος στο άλλο ,και καταλήγει στο ίδιο και αυτό σημείο. το ανικαποιήτο του να σε σερβίρουν ενός παντελώς άνοστου καφέ στη μέση μιας πόλης και στις προτεραιότητας μιας ατζέντας όπου σημασία δεν έχει η ημερονηνία αλλά οι υπαγορεύσεις.

ταξείδι

σήμερα γνώρισα ένα ζευγάρι από διαφορετική χώρα η μία κι αυτός από άλλη. κουβέντα στην κουβέντα , μου έλεγαν για το ταξίδι τους, αυτοί μένουν τ’ωρα στις Φιλιπίννες,, και άλλαξαν 7 χώρες τους τελευταίους μήνες.

Ο Μάρκο τα τα έπειρνε , διότι η Γ. του λέγε πως δεν ταξιδευουν πολύ .

-καλά ξέρεις πόσα φράγκα σκάμε σε αεροπορικά εισητήρια?

Κίνα, Μαλαισία , Ταυλάνδη , Δανία, Κρήτη. Μιλάνο,Φιλιπίννες.

τελικά σκοπός δεν είναι να πάς αλλά να μην ξαναγυρίσεις.

δια την ώση του δικτύου

η μαγεία αυτής της νύχτας δε χτίζει μόνο τα μπουντρούμια των ονείρων μου,

ουτέ καν ξεπερνά τα γεωγραφικά μήκη και πλάτη της καλής μου σπονδυλικής στήλης ,

Στον προταθέν χρόνο αλλαλάζουν σπουργίτια και κορκόδειλοειδή
Υπό το νεύμα μιας ανταπόκρισης ,

επιφέροντας με την λαιμαργία τους ,

την αναγκη της μεταμόρφωσης ,

στην πέτρα του σκανδάλου.

Φυσικά ,
η ηττοπάθεια κυβερνά τη στάχτη μας ,
Ορμητικά, δίχως διάρκεια, το δίχως άλλο.

Ευτυχώς φύσηξε και απο εδώ η μελώδια
και έπαψα να αμφιβάλλω ..
Άλλη μια βουτιά ,

-ποιος θα αρνηθεί ό,τι τα στρατιωτικά παραγγελματα ανέκαθεν
ήταν η παιδική μας αρρώστια-

θάλασσα , φοβόμαστε χωρίς τους αστερίες στους καταγγέλοντες βυθούς σου.

σαν κάκτοι αποτιστοι από ξένα χέρια τακιμιάσαμε,πλατσουρίσαμε,

ώσπου το ονομά μας χάθηκε στην άμμο σαν εξαίρεση μιας διαλεκτικής που αρνηθήκαμε να κουβαλήσουμε πίσω στο σπίτι.
και το επιρρημα έγινε κι εκείνο

άγγελος , όπως και τα ουσιαστικά που κρύβονται μέσα στις σπηλιές της καθημερινής μας ώρας…

αdιέξοδο

ελέω , η γυμνότητα μάς συναρπάζει σαν εξαίρεση ,
ο ποταπός μας πλανήτης μόνο τρώει και πίνει,
ρουφώντας τις συνέπειες μιας ακόμα ανεξάρτητης αίρεσης.
Τι είναι η αγάπη :
Αίρεση φυσικά.τι άλλο;

πως να νοσταλγήσεις ένα σωμά , εκτός έστω και του ακούσιου σώματος;

μια ακόμα αδιαθεσία .

η γέυση της λήθης,

ένα ολόκληρο μπουκάλι, επαναστατούν τα μικρά σου κύταρρα ,
τα ωριόμενα έλατα , η φυσική σου συνέπεια

ταρακουνημένοι αμμόλοφοι,
τόσο παρόμοιοι όσο και η επόμενη φορά ,

από τη ρωμαική σου πισίνα στην κατακλείδα της ερήμου,

θα σκουπίσω την καταιγίδα μου σε ένα φαράσι
ή και θα δακρύσω κολύμπώντας ανάμεσα στα γονατά σου .