Impending Chrysalis

I've been spending a lot of time on Facebook.

I can have my phone uploads pics after I take them. I'm able to notice something and handle sharing it immediately. The sharing is nearly opinion free, too; I can simply place what's "now" into the interwebs.

My blog gets shunted aside a little bit. The role of keeping the outside world up-to-date and connected with a cohousing permaculture project is taken up, somewhat, with short twitter-like posts. In this newest incarnation of our massively multiplexed social structure, what's the blog for?

I don't really know.

Is it for me? So I can look back, easily, and read my thoughts from an earlier time? I certainly use it this way (and boy oh boy, does it wear me out, to re-read the journey so far. What courage I have had. Such Faith. I have changed and grown so much). Is it to provide raw material for someone researching practical application and integration of permaculture to the problems caused by urbanization? Yes, that too. Is it my own little bully pulpit? I sure hope not.

The sustainability project is in a sort of quiet phase. It's as though it's a chrysalis. I've made amazing friends in various spiritual communities, in social justice communities, in relocalization and resource diversion/integration communities... but I strongly feel that I've yet to really find my stride, to stretch my wings and be the strong force for positive change that I feel is within me to be.

Next Thursday my neigbor is hosting a "Take up the street" brainstorm session. The idea is that we've dedicated too much land to the automobile; what if we created something different? Off-street parking, and single lane emergency access thoroughfares? Community gardens and common spaces? Water catchment, goatherding, urban farming, pocket playparks? Do we have to submit to the regimented grid layout, or can we re-shape urban areas inot something more friendly?

A recent article about social surplus really caught my attention. Of the trillions of hours spent watching TV, and feeling a psuedo-connection with the characters on the flickering blue screen, just a small change creates a surplus of time for people to visit with neighbors, to plant a row of corn, to push a child on a swing, to help harvest some honey.

Maybe this blog really is in a small state of abeyance while the next big effort comes along.