Dreamed all night about Nina's buying club ... which yesterday hit a snag with the city's by-law officers. I was afraid this might happen, since anything to do with both food and business seems to grab the attention of authorities. But I'm struck by the absurdity of the situation: living in a city and buying local food, as directly from the farmers as possible, though without actually driving to each farm individually, is suddenly a subversive act. Travelling in a third world country, you'll see a great mixture of urban and agriculture; chickens and pigs in back courtyards, for example. But we got so sophisticated in our cities that apparently we no longer wished to have any connection to the food we eat, so we legislated such practices out of existence. How bizarre. If the mass-market system of food production collapses, or at the very least is strained ... what then? There are very few things we actually need for survival, and food is at the top of the list.
There's a meeting tonight at Nina's, and perhaps some creative ideas will be forthcoming. I just want to keep eating the food she's making available to our family! It's hard to imagine going back to the same old, same old.
And now: writing day. Our babysitter has a cold, but hopefully will come anyway. We all have colds too. Baby CJ is now crawling!!!! Yes, moving himself forward across the floor, usually in hot pursuit of a toy or book. He loves books. Yesterday I discovered him gnawing a library book (no, I can't and don't keep my eye on him every second!), but snatched it away before he'd dissolved the cover. Watching him so impressively motivated to Move, I think there's an inborn human restlessness, a desire to be getting somewhere else, reaching a little further, something that compels us toward our futures, and toward accomplishment. It's a kind of optimism, too, that something better awaits, just out of reach. But there's a flipside to that urgency to move; and that's our great difficulty appreciating the present moment, chewing on that toy contentedly, even for a second or two. I know I've visited those moments of inner stillness when I realize later that I wasn't thinking about something else. Those moments exist because I inhabit them wholly, and in an odd way, they exist because I'm not marking their existence.
Sometimes, I get those moments on writing day. Sometimes hanging laundry. Sometimes playing piano with the kids. Sometimes walking outdoors with them too. I am always grateful for them, even while I recognize and celebrate the necessity of that other impulse--to plan, and to Move. Yay for baby CJ!
Labels: kids, local food, Nina's buying club, writing day