Pink

There as so many kinds of pink! You get some kind of pink when you add light to red, rose, red-orange, magenta, and even some purples. The amount of light you add to these colors also greatly affects the type of pink you get and the feeling it invokes. 

There is little girl toy pink, a bright intense pink with lots of magenta and purple in it. 

Not that far away, there is the lurid hot pink one sees plastered all over adult sex product stores. 

Perhaps there is a connection. Pink is the first favorite color of most children, who are genetically programmed to seek mommy, and sex stores try to commercialize a primal connection to the universal mommy.  

Pastel pink is associated with baby girls, but a century ago it was a little boy color. 

Women wear this color to soften their appearance, to appear more “feminine,” even to appear less threatening to men. It is a favorite spring apparel color.

When men wear this color, it is a statement: “I am confident enough in my sexuality that I can wear pink.”

Some people claim that painting walls of a room pink causes men to be less violent, or even that the presence of pink actually reduces the physical strength of men. Whether this is true, or just a stereotype does not really matter, we are talking about our culture. 

“Pink gives me love that would even make red blush.” -Anthony T. Hincks

So far all this is about gender and sex! Pink just keeps proliferating, expanding into more and more colors. 

While other colors stay who they are when lightened, pink becomes an entity unto itself. There is yellow, for example, and light yellow. Blue becomes light blue, or baby blue. But red with white mixed in is not red. While technically just a category of some other color with light added, pink becomes a color in its own right. That is why it has an indispensable spot in the crayon box.

Pink is approachable and disarming. When I wear bright pink, I not only get noticed, but people I have never met speak to me as if they are friends.

If you have any doubt that each tiny variation of pink is distinct and important, just cruise the makeup aisle of your local drugstore!

Flowers are the wise ones of color, and flowers do pink in every form.

Pick pink to be playful. 

Pink is for healthy.

Pink is for fresh. 

Pink is for young love. 

Pink is vulnerable, tender, and sweet.

I wonder if we could somehow use pink to bring more love into the world...

The High Price of Cheap Crap

When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.” 
― Herophilus

I can choose what I eat, in this modern world full of convenience stores, supermarkets, restaurants, farmers markets, and natural food stores. One way to think of my daily food needs is by how much money each meal costs: If I fill up my stomach on a particular thing, it costs x amount of cash. But it’s not so simple.

If I pick up the fastest most convenient meal, say at the corner bodega, my tummy is full, but chances are, my choices are limited to factory made junk food, full of chemicals, and over packaged with plastic so it is a single serving, ready to eat. The dollar cost is small, but the real cost is high. Why? 

Because the real price is delayed, passed on to me later in life perhaps, as health issues, and to the whole earth and other people and animals as pollution in the form of health issues for them, including the cost of making the plastic wrapper, the chemicals to grow, prepare, and preserve the food, and disposing of the trash from the single use item. Our screwed up money system still fails to reflect the full cost of that meal in the price tag on it, allowing the seller to trash the planet at no immediate expense to themselves.

If I make it myself at home, from scratch, that is a way to know what goes into it. If I buy it at a farmer’s market, I know it is local, so the pollution cost of transportation to market and to my house are known factors. I will know who and even maybe how it is grown, and so whether it has contributed to the amount of poison in my environment. Maybe it will come with no packaging at all, transported in their basket directly to mine. Making the meal myself at home, I will know how much energy I use. I will use the same dishes over and over. My food is of course fresher than something in a package, so it won’t require chemicals to preserve it and it will taste better too! 

Some people might say, I don’t have time to do that. To those, I say you don’t have time not to. It is like sleep. If you get enough sleep and take care of your precious human body, you will live longer and make up the difference. If you skimp on sleep, saying you don’t have time, you will pay for it by losing your health and peace of mind. I say, take your time. If you do not, you will sure lose it.

I don't think I'll ever grow old and say, "What was I thinking eating all those fruits and vegetables?” 
― Nancy S. Mure

If you are planning to have children, consider that the emerging field of epigenetics suggests that your lifestyle, food choices and toxic exposures will directly affect not only your own health, but also your children’s, even that of your grandchildren and perhaps beyond. I benefited from descending from grandparents who ate all organic, by default. There simply was not widespread chemical farming then. Future generations can’t assume that. We will be dealing with the consequences of our present toxic methods for a generations, even if we stop now. I have no doubt that many of the epidemic chronic diseases of modernity are related to these short sighted practices.

When God created the Garden of Eden, 
She didn’t use synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and GMO apples.” 
― Khang Kijarro Nguyen

I can gladly pay extra for the farmer to use organic methods because I have saved my health and the environment. The same thing goes for my clothing. The rain of plastic on earth has commenced; scientists are finding the tiny colorful bits in raindrops in even the most remote corners of the world, from the arctic to the highest mountains. We breathe drink, and eat it. It is time for the reign of plastic to wind down, now, obviously.

How does it get everywhere? A lot of plastic gets into the water from the clothes we wash. Natural fiber clothes are more comfortable which is why I have always chosen them. But also, they will not degrade into tiny plastic fibers and float around in the air and water, raining down on the world for a very, very long time.

Modern high tech artificial fiber clothes can do nifty things, and are cheap to produce, but I hope we can see the traditional beauty of fibers like wool. Wool is naturally fire resistant. Wool can get quite wet and still keep you warm. And when I’m done with my natural fiber clothes, they compost beautifully and turn into next years’ tomatoes. I spin and knit with wool beginning with fresh raw fleeces straight from the farm. I’m  always trying to know as much as possible about the way the humans who sell it to me got it. I want to know the same things as with my food. Are they local? Do they have sheep who are happy, well cared for, and not killed for meat? Shearing the sheep does no harm. I observe my animal friends, dogs and angora goats alike, jump for joy to be free of those hot winter overcoats.

It is time to realize the value of organic fiber clothing as well as our food. Cotton is one of the most heavily poison sprayed crops. Organically grown cotton costs more in money only because the full cost to the planet and our health is not factored in. You can feel good physically and ethically buying organic, plus you are truly getting the best deal for your money.

I wonder how long it will take for us to realize we need to switch over to non toxic and renewable systems...

Switching to all organic food production is the single most critical (and most doable) action we can take right now to stop our climate crisis.” 
― Maria Rodale

The Stop

“Listen to silence. It has so much to say.” -Rumi 

One summer day you will notice a wonder: the wind has stopped, but it is not needed, for the air is neither hot nor cold, but just right. The lazy clouds are soft and round, light and fluffy, and meander along so slowly in their sky path, that they barely seem to move at all. It is maybe still morning or perhaps early afternoon. The only sound is the distant drone of an old prop plane and the cicadas down by the creek, which has itself come to a standstill. The fruit of the apple tree is bright red now, and almost ready to pick. Nothing more needs to be done. The cat is asleep on the porch swing, and the moment is absolute. 

Perfection. 

Completion.

“The pause is as important as the note” -Truman Fisher

I wish I could put it in a bottle, to be cracked out on some cold windy drizzling November day, when the worried world is rushing by, splashing mud in my face. I’d scoop out a bowl of it and gently feed it, spoonful by spoonful, to my nervous and sleep deprived pimply faced twelve year old self, hopelessly stuck in a blinking fluorescent lit windowless room, as I hunch over those long awful test papers where you fill in the little multiple choice dots for endless hours. 

I’d hand out bottles of it to the scarred and scruffy red faced veteran on the hot corner in an oppressive cloud of car exhaust, with a sign about how anything helps, but what he actually has in mind is a cold beer. To the jealous tight mouthed woman at the market who obviously knows all the things I am doing wrong today. And a bottle to that angry fellow on the radio who feels he needs a small arsenal to feel safe from the contradictions of his own mind.

A small branch on the apple tree quivers, as if stirred by a secret bit of breeze known only to itself. The cat begins to lick its underarm. 

The moment passes.

“If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat” -Lily Tomlin