I finished my second semester of graduate school, completed an editorial internship with a travel company, founded a publishing company, and spent almost two weeks traveling throughout Vietnam.

The summer stretches out before me now, three months of no responsibility to anyone but my dogs and occasionally my husband (he might get upset if I, say, disappeared or something), the first summer I’ve had free in just about a decade. I’ve worked or done some kind of school work (or both) every summer since I was 16, and I’m 25 now.

All this empty space and time scares the shit out of me. It’s paralyzing. I haven’t done a goddamned thing since I’ve gotten home from Vietnam, and it’s been too long now to blame the jet lag anymore. I’ve been trying to do what I always do when I don’t know what else to do: Make a list. But I haven’t succeeded at that, either.

In the fall, I’ll be taking two classes instead of three, and I already have all of my textbooks on order. But I can see the last weeks of August, the panic, the stacks of unopened novels and writing manuals on my home office floor, and that scares me too.

You could argue this summer isn’t really free. I’ve got all those books to read. I’ve got lessons to plan for the creative writing course I’ll be teaching to inmates at the Allegheny County Jail this fall. I’m running two publishing projects at Wild Age Press. I have a thesis to write. I hope to do some freelance writing on projects I’m truly passionate about (hence the name change of my blog–I also imported posts from the previous iteration of this blog since there’s no more theme, FYI). But I don’t have anywhere to be at a given time. I don’t have a time card to punch or assignments to hand in (yet).

I have to learn how to be flexible. To use the time, and not let it run away from me. To not fill it with meaningless distractions and procrastinations. It’s always a matter of balance. I’m always learning how to balance. I always will be.

Male northern cardinal, 1/29/12

On my way out the door around 12:30 p.m. to sit on what I’ve now dubbed “Heaven’s Hillside” because of all the trees of heaven in the backyard of my North Side house, I realized I’d forgotten my camera. As I ran back upstairs to get it, I froze in the kitchen when I saw a flash of red outside the window. A male northern cardinal pecked about the carpet of decaying leaves, searching for his preferred lunch of seeds. Two little song sparrows hopped after him, presumably looking for anything he might have missed.

Up close, I could see that the cardinal wasn’t all red. I’d seen his black face mask before, but now I noticed the black highlights in his wing and tail feathers and he hopped around. His crest stood up and he moved his head around, showing off his bright orange beak.

When he flew out of sight of the kitchen window, I went upstairs and found him outside my office window, still searching for seeds by the fence on the right-hand side of my yard. I cracked the window and snapped a quick photo before he continued his journey into the yard of the vacant house next to mine.

Since Mr. Cardinal was more or less out of range of my camera lens, I went outside and climbed the stairs to my yard. An echoing “hello” gave me pause, and I looked around, trying to find the source. It came again, and I saw my neighbor J., from two houses down to the right.

“What are you doing up there?” she yelled at me from her back patio.

“I’m doing a nature blog, so I’m taking some pictures!” I held up my camera.

“Do you live up there?” She pointed to the row of houses on the street above us. She obviously didn’t recognize me in my bomber hat and puffy coat.

“No, I live right there.” I pointed to my house. Once J. realized who I was, she relaxed and when back inside. Ever suspicious of neighborhood kids breaking things, getting into things, ruining things, or going anywhere near her house or our street, she had thought I was one of them.

Tree of Heaven, 1/29/12

When I turned back around, I caught sight of the cardinal, perched in a bush, watching me. My shouting match with J. hadn’t disturbed him, and he seemed to be waiting for me to leave so he could continue rummaging for food. I laughed to myself and stared back at him.

After several minutes I took a few exploratory steps further into the yard. The warm sun had dried the top layer of leaf carpet and tree of heaven twigs, so my feet crunched before compacting the springy, wet under-layer of composting tree and plant cast-off. At that distance, the cardinal looked almost exactly like a red leaf in the bush. He didn’t move, so I walked the four or so yards to the copse of trees of heaven I like to lean against. When I looked back, he was gone, but an actual red leaf blowing in the wind kept tricking my eyes into thinking he still sat there.

This is the third day in a row I’ve seen the cardinal around noon. Yesterday my husband and I saw both Mr. and Mrs. around 11:30 a.m. at the bottom of the yard. Mrs. Cardinal is mostly brown, but has hints of red on her wings and tail, though not her crest. Friday was the first day I’ve seen a male this year, but I believe I spotted the female last weekend by the retaining wall at the top of the yard. On Friday I saw the male sitting by the retaining wall, looking around, before he flew to the other side of the yard and disappeared behind a privacy fence. I’ve seen cardinals out back the past two winters we’ve lived here, too.

The sun felt good against my face, even if the breeze felt chilly. Wind chimes sang over the constant hum of cars speeding past on I-279, located about half a block down the street. I settled in, and soft bird song emerged beneath the louder chimes and cars.

My attempt to sketch a hairy woodpecker.

Since reading Marcia Bonta’s Appalachian Winter, the cardinals aren’t the only birds I’ve noticed. Monday, from my office window, I saw a black and white bird with a red patch on the back of his head drumming at the tree closest to me. Based on his actions, I guessed woodpecker. I watched as he banged at the tree, paused, banged some more, moved, banged, paused, moved, banged, flew to another tree and repeated his motions. He hit almost every tree in my yard before flying out of sight.

I don’t agree with everything Marcia Bonta thinks, but she makes a good point when she says: If we remove all the invasive species, where will the birds live, and what will they eat?

I checked the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s online Bird Guide and pegged the bird as a downy woodpecker. But later, when I spoke with my mom, she informed me that downy and hairy woodpeckers look exactly alike, but hairy woodpeckers are larger, about 7 inches long with beaks about the same size as their heads, whereas downies are only about 5 1/2 inches long with smaller beak-to-head ratios.

I went back to the Bird Guide and changed my identification to hairy woodpecker. I realized that I know absolutely nothing about birding, but decided to start a bird list like the ones Katie Fallon included in Cerulean Blues anyway, even if it has mistakes or is incomplete:

Bird List: January 23-29, 2012

• Song sparrows
• Male northern cardinal
• Female northern cardinal
• Hairy woodpecker
• Unidentified sparrow- or finch- sized grey, red and white birds

My nature writing class at Chatham has to keep a weekly nature blog. Each of us must pick a place and spend thirty minutes in that place each week, and then write a blog post about it. I encourage you to check out what my classmates are doing, too! I’m going to cross-post my entries here, but a few weeks behind. Entries may be slightly revised, and photographs may vary. I’ll tag each one “natureblog2012″.

Frozen Fungus, 1/15/12

I lean against one of the six or so trees of heaven that have claimed this part of the North Side for their own. Sun-softened snow covers a layer of ivy and decaying leaves, and my feet slide on the ground at the base of the slope of my backyard. The trunk feels solid against my back, but its smooth, gray bark offers no resistance when I shift position.

The hill curves up into a retaining wall, stones crumbling. In front of the wall, a massive trunk, five or six feet in diameter, rises from a tangle of its own fallen branches and chopped-up pieces of fence that have been pushed against the hillside. A brick staircase from the yard’s lower, flat surface leads directly to this wall of impenetrable plant debris. I imagine it used to lead to a terraced garden.

Decorative ivy, gone wild from that garden, falls like a curtain over the lower half of the tangle. Its leaves change from black-green at their center to forest-green at their edges. A yellow fungus forms shelves on sections of log that were thrown up here when part of the massive tree fell and took the neighbor’s fence with it, but now it looks frozen and as dead as the wood it clings to.

Behind me and to the right,  on the flat part of the yard, the spines of a dozen more tree of heaven saplings stand branchless, like support poles for a house that was never built. Dried, stalky weeds, probably the remnants of stinging nettle and goldenrod, hold out their seed pods, waiting for someone like me to brush by and knock them to the ground where they can wait for spring.

Seed Pod Galaxies, 1/29/12

I, too, can see the beauty in winter, the beauty of multitudes of five-pointed seed pod stars clustered in small galaxies, light brown specks against the whiteness of snow. But I do not believe that nature, as Emerson wrote, is a channel by which we can connect to some higher being. Nature is that higher being. Emerson felt alone when he looked at the stars, but I feel connected to everything, and everyone.

Somewhere to my right, a bird starts singing, and that surprises me, though I’ve seen plenty of birds out here before. A man who lives on the street above interrupts his bush trimming to take a phone call. The bird changes tone, but continues. Through the thicket I see a flash of white and brown, but nothing more. I want him to be some rare or exotic bird, but I have to accept the likelihood that he’s a song sparrow since I’ve seen them around before. I never realized how beautiful they sound. A few crows interject loud caws into the sparrow’s refrain, but I don’t see them, either.

Tiny Waterfall, 1/15/12

When the sparrow stops singing, I lean forward to examine the ground in front of me and find a miniature frozen waterfall. The man has stopped talking on his cell phone and presumably gone back inside, leaving me with silence. The sun slips behind gray clouds and that, more than the lack of sounds, makes me feel alone. The sound of my camera lens opening and closing makes me jump and almost lose my footing, but the tree of heaven holds me steady. Honeysuckle vines, still clinging to some rapidly fading green leaves, twist around the fence that marks the end of this yard and the beginning of the next, and I wonder how long that fence will stand.

This nature is not, as Emerson wanted to believe, bending to man’s dominion “as meekly as the ass on which the Savior rode.”  It is slowly eating everything here. The trees of heaven, a widely invasive species that love disturbed urban spaces, have no doubt sunk their roots deep and spread them wide. Even if you leave a small piece of one in the ground, it will sprout up again.

I turn to retrace my steps through the stalks and saplings, and see how heavily I’ve trampled the ground. Blackish ivy and wet brown leaves peek up through the woman-sized boot prints in the disturbed snow. At the bottom of the yard, I grab a tree trunk to steady myself and look over the sheer retaining wall that holds the hillside away from my patio. The roots of two more trees of heaven push on the rough-hewn rocks. The wall will break, eventually, and the trees will take the whole hillside.

—-

Bird identification help by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Plant identification help by the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture

The Bean on July 28, 2008. Photo by Kelly Lynn Thomas.

The Bean looks nothing like the tall, straight buildings made of brick and stone that stand around it. The Bean perches in Millennium Park, almost like it floats on the concrete, like it is made of mercury and will change shape and move at any second.

My friend E. and I walk beneath it, laughing at how silly it looks, platinum and shiny in the July sun. When I look up to see my contorted reflection in its surface, I can’t pick my face out of the streaks and swirls of color rushing in all directions. E. and I look back down at each other. I feel a little sick, like the world turned upside down and I wasn’t ready — not like a roller coaster where you feel the track beneath you, pulling you through the loops.

E. and I look back up, and this time we are ready for the world to flip. We see ourselves, sunglasses, short black hair, pale skin, both of us. The Bean pinches our faces, our bodies puddles of black and white shirts and skirts around our skinny chins and foreheads.

The Bean is more properly called the Cloud Gate, but no one calls it that. E., from a nearby Chicago suburb, tells me her whole family made fun of it when they finished it two years ago in 2006. Now, she still giggles at it but calls it “Da Bean” the same way she says “Da Bears” in her exaggerated Chicago accent that’s usually not noticeable. I imitate her, and I think I do a pretty good job.

The outside of the Bean reflects the whole city. Something about it makes me dizzy in a way that looking out the window of the women’s room on the top floor of the John Hancock Center didn’t. From up high, everything looks flat. Inside the Bean, everything bends, but never looks like it’s going to break. I get the feeling things could bend and twist and change forever inside the Bean, and maybe become something new, but never break.

Streams of people in shorts and bright T-shirts walk under and around the Bean. Some are tourists, some are passing through, and some are on their way to cool off in Crown Fountain, the centerpiece of which is a giant rectangle from which water streams and onto which ever-changing images of Chicago natives are projected.

I find the more I look up at The Bean’s center, which disappears into a conical hole in the middle, the less vertigo I feel. The shape reminds me of a singularity. Black holes capture light, and their immense gravity forces it to bend and fold.

When we do leave Millennium Park to catch a train, I look back and see the city bending within the silver of its arch, buildings curving inward, reaching toward a point we can’t see.

Organic vegetables by WordRidden

My first month as a member of the Pittsburgh-area Kretschmann Organic Farm CSA brought me bunches and bunches of kale, butternut squash, potatoes, beets, red radishes, a daikon radish, carrots, nappa cabbage, red cabbage, three varieties of lettuce, raddichios, onions, lots of apples, rosemary, parsley, thyme, sage, garlic and even some homemade sauerkraut.

Although I realized at some point last year that I can cook whatever I want whenever I want (previously my brain seemed to think certain dishes could only be eaten in certain places or at certain times, like when my mother made them), I had never actually ever bought or cooked kale, radishes of any kind, raddichios, these fancy lettuce varieties, or beets.

Instead of panicking, I did some quick Googling and discovered there are all sorts of unexpected things you can do with lettuce aside from make salads, like put it in soup or even braise it. I also learned that kale makes a nice potato chip substitute and have now become rather addicted to kale chips, and that beets take about a million years to cook all the way.

Since I tend to decide what I want to eat right before I cook it and because I don’t really like following directions anyway, I look at five or so recipes for something and combine them all into one that sounds good to me, making substitutions as necessary. I thought I’d share a few of my adventures that came out particularly well, since if I don’t write them down I’ll probably forget them anyway. I also don’t really measure anything, and I never use salt. Butter is rare.

New Year’s Day Pork and Pierogies

• Pork chops
• Pierogies
• 1 medium onion
• Approx. 1-2 c. chopped nappa cabbage
• Approx 1-2 c. chopped red cabbage
• Dash or two or three of caraway seeds
• Delicious Kretschmann Farm sauerkraut

Melt some butter or oil in a large pan. Saute onion, cabbages, caraway and pierogies together until cooked. In a separate pan, cook pork chops. When chops are mostly cooked, add sauerkraut to heat.

Beet Salad with Rosemary Pesto Mashed Potatoes

• Lettuce of your favorite variety (just not iceberg, ever)
• Beets
• Chopped parsley
• Approx 1/2 c. feta cheese
• Red potatoes, skin on
• 1/2 c. rosemary
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tablespoon walnuts
• Approx. 1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil

Wash beets, trim ends, roast at 375 degrees F until tender (about an hour). While beets roast chop lettuce and parsley for the salad. Then chop potatoes, boil them with the skin on, drain, add a bit of milk and mash. Do not add butter. For pesto, blend rosemary, garlic, walnuts and 1/4 c. feta cheese in blender or food processor, then stir in olive oil. Mix as much pesto into the potatoes as you want. When beets are roasted, the skins should peel off. Chop them up, add them to the salad, and top with feta cheese (or goat cheese, if you like). I use a bit of balsamic vinegar for dressing. Serve with the potatoes.

Carrots and Radishes On the Side

• Carrots
• Radishes
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Garlic
• Chives

Saute carrots and radishes with garlic and chives in eevo until tender. Serve as a side dish.

Slow Vegetable Stew

• 8 c. veggie broth
• Kale, chopped
• Carrots, chopped
• Potatoes, chopped
• Onions, chopped
• Roasted spaghetti squash, stringed
• 3 or 4 apples, sliced
• Rosemary to taste

Put everything in crock pot, cook on low 6-8 hours.

Braised Lettuce Open-Faced Sandwich

• 1 piece whole grain toast
• 1 oz. goat cheese
• Some sun dried tomato halves
• Braised lettuce halve
• Garlic
• EEVO

Spread the goat cheese on the bread and then top with the sun dried tomatoes. To braise the lettuce, place an entire head of lettuce in a pan with eevo and garlic for 3 minutes, then flip and cook for about another three minutes. Repeat until lettuce is nice and wilty. Alternately, you can boil it for a minute before cooking it in the oil, but I think that makes it too wilty. After braising, cut the head of lettuce in half and put half on your open faced sandwich(es).

I have always had a deep affection for that steel mill, and not simply because it made up a large part of the visual landscape of my childhood. Lukens Steel is the oldest continuously operating steel mill in the United States, and the first with a female owner and leader. Rebecca Lukens took over the mill in 1825 when her husband Dr. Charles Lukens passed away and brought it from the brink of bankruptcy to prosperity. The company itself dates back to the 18th century.

Whenever I visit Coatesville now, so much has changed that I feel a sense of unease wherever I go, except when I drive by Lukens. The name is different now (it’s changed many times since Bethlehem Steel bought it in 1997, but to us Coatesville natives it will always be Lukens), and they’ve painted some of the buildings a beige color, but otherwise it looks the same. The barn-shaped buildings, spread out all over the southern and western ends of the city, stand tall against the sky, train tracks spreading out from within them.

So how can I feel so comfortable surrounded by Lukens and the noise of steel plates falling together like thunder, and yet feel isolated, lonely, and depressed in a different area that is essentially just like Coatesville, only a little further West?

I used to tell people I felt so comfortable in Pittsburgh because I grew up in a steel town–Coatesville used to be known as “Pittsburgh of the East,” in fact–but Pittsburgh isn’t a steel town anymore. Pittsburgh, named one of the top 20 destinations in the world by National Geographic Traveler Magazine this year, has rebuilt its image on medicine and technology and sustainability.

I think I’m actually comfortable here because Pittsburgh used to be a steel town. Lukens, to me, represents my childhood and a host of things I will never feel again or have again. To come up against steel, to come up against industry, for me, is to come up against all of those things that I’ve idealized about my past, all of those things that I store in a safe place and only bring out once or twice a year when I drive by Lukens and remember watching Fourth of July fireworks in the park next to the mill with my family while patriotic music blasted from speakers set up all around. In Pittsburgh, I can keep all of that under the surface, at a safe distance.

Nothing overtly tragic or traumatic has happened in my life, but the Kelly who lives in Pittsburgh is not the Kelly who lived in Coatesville. That Kelly believed in Jesus and went to church on Sunday and thought abortion was like the holocaust. This Kelly believes in a goddess and goes to full moon rituals once a month and thinks comparing anything to the holocaust is crass, at best. This Kelly is not very comfortable with that Kelly, who lived across the street from a steel mill, and fell asleep to the sound of metal grinding against metal.

In Northeastern Pennsylvania, I cannot keep any of those things at a safe distance. In Ambridge, I cannot, either.

Here, too, is the importance of local travel. You carry the places you’ve been with you when you go. And those places have power over you. You have power over them, too, but only if you understand where you’re coming from, where you’ve been. Travel them well.

A steel mill in Blawnox, Pa. by takomabibelot

This past November, I drove up to Old Economy Village in Ambridge, which is about thirty minutes outside of Pittsburgh. I got lost. Very, very lost. First, I missed my turn off of the main highway, so I had to drive along another few miles of industrial parks, freight rail lines and factories. Being lost and late for a meeting with friends, I had an intense reaction to the area: This place sucks! I hate it! I knew I was being petulant, but I didn’t care because Google Maps was malfunctioning on my phone and I wanted to get to coffee and friends.

When I pulled over at a gas station to locate myself and waited for Google to figure out exactly where the hell I was, I thought how much the area reminded me of my husband’s hometown in Northeastern Pennsylvania. If not in building density, then in mood and character. Although I love my husband’s family very much and enjoy spending time with them, something about driving into coal-cracker country always makes me feel a bit gloomy. I think it might be the houses in town that appear to sag inward a little, with their tar-paper siding peeling off at the edges. (Because my mother-in-law might be offended at the implication, her house is not one of these.)

For trips to his parents’ house I always pack a cooler with Twining’s tea in bags, organic plain yogurt, and fruit (my “survival kit”) and grumble about the lack of decent coffee anywhere in the vicinity. Of course, there is nothing in the vicinity of his parents’ house except a few other houses and a cornfield. These are people who have their own snow plows and change their own oil and tires.

Ambridge seems to be much more inhabited than my husband’s corner of Northeastern Pa, but if you drive a while you will come to Ambridge-like industrial parks and factories. These days, that’s where most of the population works, since there isn’t as much coal mining work as there used to be.

Eventually, after much driving up and down the Ohio River Boulevard and much cursing, I did get to that coffee and friends. On the way out of Old Economy Village, I saw a mural on the side of the water processing plant that depicted a large white bird and a water spout, and, I begrudgingly admitted, it was kind of beautiful. Driving back to Pittsburgh, I intentionally kept pace with one of those freight trains to see how fast it went (55 miles per hour), and I realized something.

It’s cliche to think about blue collar workers and the back bone of America, but here, spread out along the Ohio River, was a freight train carrying something that was going somewhere so that it could be turned into something else and sold to people like me, and it was hard not to think of the train like an artery. An artery delivering goods to people like me, who apparently forget who they are and start to think rather highly of themselves.

Suddenly, those industrial parks seemed beautiful, like that mural on the water processing plant. Suddenly, the sagging houses in Northeastern Pennsylvania seemed beautiful, too.

Too often we go through our daily lives and routines in the places we live and we don’t see them. We miss the petunia that’s grown in a crack between the street and the curb, or the great musical playing downtown, or the new restaurant that opened three neighborhoods over. Or the beauty that’s right in front of our eyes.

It’s hard to think that driving thirty minutes outside of town counts as “traveling,” but it does–and it should. Traveling locally teaches us how to travel globally. It shows us how to open our eyes, how to navigate new experiences, how to make the best of plans gone awry (and go awry they will). It gives us permission to fall in love.

"The Milky Way" by andyspictures

The first time I touched the universe, I stood outside the Paparoa Marae near the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand, surrounded by dozens of people I barely knew. I was thirteen and almost ten thousand miles from home on a three-week trip with People to People Student Ambassadors. After our traditional Maori dinner of meats and vegetables slow-cooked by heated river rocks in the ground, I looked up at the sky.

The milky way, clear as the sun during the day, spread out in gentle waves above me, and I am sure that every single star visible to the naked human eye from the Southern Hemisphere burned its mark on my soul. I felt like I must be looking at a photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope, because I couldn’t believe something so beautiful, so expansive, so true, surrounded me.

My world stood on the edge of change. In a few days, I would experience my first kiss under those same stars. In three weeks, I would return to the United States and start high school. In two months, the World Trade Center would fall and my country would launch a war that would, in many ways, define my adolescence.

Left alone, I would have been happy to sit outside in the cool winter air, staring up at those points of light. The longer I looked, the more individual stars became clear, each one a gift from the night. In return, I gave something to the night that I still cannot put into words, something beyond words.

I didn’t understand the significance of that exchange right then, but from that moment on I tried to get back to that feeling of complete connection with the universe. I wanted to feel like I was a part of something, like I mattered, like my words mattered.

I mostly failed for the next seven years. Things seemed to disconnect all around me: in domestic politics, environmental degradation, an ongoing war that echoed Vietnam, the angst and endless existential crises of teenagehood, a failing belief in the religion I’d grown up with. It took another trip across an ocean for me to find that feeling again in its purest state.

On that second trip I finally understood the gift, the wisdom the stars meant to give me: You do not need to travel across an ocean to touch the universe. You simply have to be open, and it is easier to be open when you have crossed an ocean, don’t know anyone, and are worn down and ragged from travel and jet lag. But if you know your walls are there, you can choose to take them down, and the stars will reveal themselves to you wherever you stand.

"Candles" by Jupiter Firelyte

Happy Yule!

My resolutions for the new year all involve small changes that I hope will add up to a large change over the course of my lifetime. Slowly but surely, I am replacing products and ways of doing things with more sustainable and eco-friendly versions of the same. This is one of the most important aspects–if not THE most important aspect–of my spiritual practice. Honoring the Earth and our gods and goddesses with words, candles, and incense is all well and good, but actions speak louder than words, as they say.

This year, specifically, I want to:

1. Buy local produce and other food whenever possible
2. Switch to all-natural body and hygiene products
3. Replace harsh chemical cleaners with more environmentally friendly ones
4. Minimize use of big box retailers, especially for food

If I stop and think too long about how my life–all our lives–impacts the planet, the weight of destruction makes it hard for me to want to do anything. I start to feel that even by turning on a light I’m killing habitats and animals and ecosystems that we’ll never get back. I start to follow the path of human destruction to the very end, where we’ve poisoned the planet so thoroughly we have to start eating dead human corpses alá Soylent Green, or worse, we can’t live on it all.

I don’t want to live in that world. I don’t want to eat genetically engineered crops. I don’t want to put poison into my body through pesticides and dioxins used to bleach my feminine hygiene products. (Dioxin, by the way, being the same thing used in Agent Orange in Vietnam.) I do not want to breathe in smog and drink heavy metals.

So I am changing.

"Human Intervention" by Kelly Lynn Thomas

This process began in earnest in March when I needed to lose weight. After some research, I came to the conclusion that following an organic diet full of vegetables, fruit and healthy proteins and whole grains was the best and easiest way to accomplish my goals. Three months later and 25 pounds lighter, I knew I’d been right. In addition to losing the weight, I also felt amazing. My body was functioning at a level of efficiency I’d never experienced before. I had more energy and felt better than I ever had. Even my daily migraines (yes, daily) had diminished to once a week. Their severity was such that I barely noticed them.

I started paying attention. Everything I’ve learned would fill several books, but the crux of my knowledge is this: to survive, we need biodiversity in all things.

As a Pagan, I take my cues from the “natural” world. (I almost hate to call it this, because that word has been co-opted and is used in marketing campaigns for things that aren’t even remotely natural–also, things like oil are natural, but that doesn’t mean I want them in my body products or in my food!) The Earth got along swimmingly before humans evolved, and I trust that she’s thought of most everything already. Rather than re-invent the wheel or try to control anything, I look to the, let’s call it more-than-human world, for guidance. A healthy forest has many different kinds of trees; a healthy community, therefore, should also have many different kinds of people.

I’ve already made a lot of great progress on many of these resolutions. Earlier this month, we joined a local CSA. I’ve already bought a new bottle of natural shampoo. We replaced our dish and laundry detergent with vegetable-based ones over the summer. But there are many more changes we want to make. I hope to discuss them and the brands and stores we use here, under the category “The Sustainable Life” throughout the year. I’ll tag each post with “sustainablelife2012″, too.

Hemingway was kind of a jerk, and I don't really want to be like him.

Sometimes I think I’m becoming a hipster. Is this a bad thing? Does it matter? Do I like obscure enough things?

The answer to all three questions is no, but. Hipsters get a lot of flak. They can be pretty obnoxious. But so can goth kids, emo kids, scene kids, snobby kids, preppy kids, jocks… you get my point. I know some pretty cool hipsters, but I’m not sure I actively want to define myself as a hipster. But let’s see if they’d take me if I wanted them to.

I do some hipster-like things. I:

• Wear skinny jeans (but not exclusively);
• Take pretentious black and white photos of myself for use on the internet (apparently–that avatar didn’t seem so obnoxious when I took it originally);
• Hang out at coffee shops and look morose (not on purpose, I swear);
• Love, love, love Moleskines (the paper is so smooth! ink doesn’t bleed at all! Moleskine planners are perfect for my planning needs and come with STICKERS! they look so classy!);
• Have a lip piercing, gauged ears and tattoos;
• Really like plaid (in high school I owned like 5 pairs of plaid pants, and loved every second of them, don’t judge me).

But alas, there are many hipster criteria I do not meet. I do not:

• Listen to indie bands;
• Watch indie movies;
• Wear ironic t-shirts (I have enough Star Wars t-shirts to last me at least two weeks and I defeinitly do not wear them with irony in mind);
• Think that every one else is a poseur;
• Read obscure novels-in-translation from European countries (don’t get me wrong, I love novels-in-translation, but I don’t go out of my way to find obscure ones, and I probably read more Latin American authors than European);
• Complain when a band/movie/book/whatever gets popular–I think it’s awesome they are getting the recognition they deserve!;
• Wear non-prescription glasses;
• Drink PBR (GROSS! Give me a Sam Adams or Founding Fathers, please);
• Think that I am somehow anything other than a middle class white girl (I am proud of my family’s working class history but I’m sorry, if you have a college education and can afford to shop at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, you are not blue collar so stop pretending).*

Looks like the hipsters wouldn’t want me. They probably think The Killers suck because they’re popular and I can’t live without The Killers.

Normally we think about who we are and what social groups we fit into based on what we are, what we choose to wear, who we associate with, etc. But it’s even more interesting to think about how the things we aren’t define us just as much. The things in that first list might define me as a hipster, if not for the things in that second list. What I am not defines me more than what I am, at least in this case.

Often we get asked who our heroes are, to whom do we look up? Rarely are we asked who our villains are. I’m going to talk about the writers I don’t want to be like (I don’t know any of them personally so I’m not going to say I don’t like them, just that I don’t like their writing), but I think the same holds true for any profession. Who we try avoid, the people we distance ourselves from, define us as much as the people we emulate.

For example, I strive to write like Cervantes, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. LeGuin, Paulo Coelho and to a lesser extent, Neil Gaiman.  I actively distance myself from Flannery O’Connor**, Stephanie Meyer, J.K. Rowling***, Hemingway and most commercial writers.

I don’t want to be like them, so I don’t write things similar to their work, and stylistically I avoid stark, minimalist, depressing prose as well as florid, gushing, ridiculous prose in favor of something more beautiful and exacting ala Margaret Atwood (at least I hope so, anyway).

I think it’s worth it to make a list of people you don’t want to be like, and why. You might find it more illuminating than a similar list of people you do want to be like.

*I really don’t like or feel that I fit into white collar/office culture, but nor do I feel I fit in with blue collar culture, even though to a certain extent I was raised with glimpses into both worlds. I am definitely most comfortable in the arts culture, which hipsters seem to abhor. I don’t like hoity toity pretentious crap, but I do believe in the value of art and its impact on every day life.

**O’Connor is generally considered the be all end all of the short story, but I think she’s mean and critical and there’s no joy or happiness to be found in her work. She gives her characters impossible situations with no hope for redemption.

***I love Harry Potter. But I don’t necessarily think Rowling is a good writer. Her supporting cast is flat and her world is inherently classist, although she works against that to a certain extent.