Hi Looby, I'm really happy you're on permies.com, and that your work reminds us that
permaculture is not only a matter of soil fertility but even mind fertility. I have so many things to share and ask, excuse me if I'll be long, a bit jumpy, so many questions and considerations are growing.
I've received your fisrt book people and
permaculture and, wow, it is great, I haven't read it but I like the idea of creating a manual that guides the reader through the principles of
permaculture transitioning their power to our interior world. I love the idea of the activities, and want to do them. I've been flipping through the pages and I've seen so many nice parts.
Reading your blog and site I wonder if seven ways to think differently can be seen as a sort of personal path you covered after writing people and
permaculture, your theory in action. Of course you had already started a personal work in that way writing the first book, but can we see this second work as a more personal, intimate, view?
I like to think that you passed to us a vision of your emotions and not only theories in your first work, and that we'll have some more.
I'm trying to put up in my comunity a network of people that help each other, mutual aid, we are quite a few that practice permaculture or just have the vision of a different relation with our ecosystem. the network exists in other regions of Italy, and funcitons in different ways.
in my idea here in Toscana, but specifically in my province I would like to think of a network that brings together people that need help in practical work, we have different problems that may setback our goals in our personal designs or houses, or gardens, and my idea is that we help each other. There is a
local group, a mailinglist, but they really don't write much or see each other. I have an idea but don't know how it will work out.
What I think is important is that we don't focus only on those who have a
pdc, but on anyone that has a different vision, otherwise we risk to become sectarian, and close ourselves in our niche.
I'm scared to start all this and sometimes have doubts on what I'll manage to achieve. it's difficult to pass from theory to action, and the builidng of relations sometimes scares me. I mean I'm not a solitary person, and I'm a talker, the problem is that permaculture has set me thinking I see many people that have so much knowledge and sometimes I feel inadequate.
the fact is I would love to stop writing I and start using WE, pass from MY to OUR, i'd love to see the group getting started.
That's why I'm so interested in your work, I hope I'll find some
energy, and a path to start with. I hope I'll build my capacity in creating realtions based on new foundations.
The aspect I guess we have to learn first in permaculture is that we can't apply rules and theories others have written, but
should never forget that permaculture is primarily a method that we have to make ours, find our solutions, our answers. I don't want to give the responsability of my decisions to the author of a book, so if something doesn't work out it's her fault, but take my responsability in my decisions. it's difficult to explain but sometimes I feel many of us in the movement use the methos as a rule and think they have to stick to it in an orthodox way. Once a guy worte to me you can't do thins Mollison in introduction to permaculture severely forbids this. I wasn't speaking of cementing a public garden, but using grazing animals in a different way having shared an article I had read on the subject on a permaculture blog. now the important lesson I got from that
answer was hell how can someone say he's applying permaculture and not see that he's just following dogmatically some rules he thinks he has to. I mean then just follow the bible, with all respect to how believes in it, and it's the same.
I think Mollison in a designers manual explained the prinicples of permaculture, not for the sake of giving or imposing rules, but to show the theory in action, explain it, give a method. that doesen't mean I have to follow all he has written.
sometimes we forget that if it is true that our design of an ecosystem, be it our garden, a farm, etc. ( I'll need to read your
books I always speak of external structural desings
), always evolves and never really is a static drawing, but an adjusting one, this is beacuse permaculture is an evolving method in it's application. It moves, we have to use the principles of the method to design our ecosystem that is always changing.
Sorry maybe what I'm writing isn't so clear, it's difficult to express all these ideas in English, I'm an italian speaker and have lost my capaity to think in english and express well my thoughts. anyway.
Maddy Harland a few day's ago wrote on FB: "Yes it is more and more evident that we cannot hide away in permaculture and not be politically engaged"
this is a good point that I think is right. permaculture has to evolve, or maybe I have to, and take responsability.
I've been working with a workers union for ten years now, doing
volunteer work on my workplace and other companies, and actually have been in political stuff since I was thirteen, permaculture was a nice discovery beacuse it sort of made refocus on my commitment in a new way, I'm not running away I just need to have the possibility to see my achievements, starting small, local.
Ok I've gone verywhere with this
thread.
Hope you find a path here
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