East Grove Blues

So monday night is typically movie night for me. Tonight’s showing was No Impact Man. It was a really well done and informal movie about a family trying to leave as little as possible for an entire year. You can read about it yourself and I would recommend the movie.

I have a lot of thoughts on it at the moment. I think the biggest thing for me is to shop as locally as you can, eat seasonally and responsibly.  Those are terribly broad statements and just saying them doesn’t change anything about anyone. They make a really good point in the movie though, if you can change yourself than perhaps others will follow your example. Just be sure that your being a good example. Which I am not seemingly more times than not. I am learning that slowly at the moment. I get on my rants, but who is to say that I am right. I think I am, but I am often not and as frustrating as that is for me, it must be even more so for my friends and family. Who wants to listen to some kid talk about health and make them feel horrible about themselves. It’s better just to do and let others make up their own minds. I know I learned that in the Peace Corps, but here I am relearning it again. I am not sure why I don’t learn these lessons better, or why I have to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. One of these days I will get it right.

I think in the end of the movie they really learned to balance their lives between modernity and green living. I honestly believe that to move forward as people we need to find that balance like they did. If we can then there is hope yet and I choose to believe in that hope.

The food looked so good. I miss cheese and I would love a loaf of bread right now. I’ve been having mixed results on my current experiment. Some days I feel really good and some days I feel awful. Like most people I want results right away, but I know it can takes months for real change to occur. I have to remember to be patient. The hardest thing for me right now is the quality of food that I can get. Food in Japan is amazing, and while I am fairly sure it is grown close by, I am not sure what they put on it. I know where the fish is coming from, but I don’t know where any other meat is, or what they are feeding it. That is frustrating. I could be switching my diet around to eat better, only to find out that I am eating worse things because of what they put in/on it. They also wrap everything in plastic. I hate plastics, it’s such a huge waste. What ever happened to clothe bags?

I am looking forward to getting home and being able to grow my own food and to talk to the other farmers about how they raise their crops/animals. I am just looking forward to coming home.

I will end on something I rarely will ever mention. Wisdom from the TV. Yes I said the TV.  A long time ago when I spent hours in front of the idiot box I saw an episode of King of the Hill where Hank, the main character, had some trouble with passing his food. He went to the doctor and they tried all sorts of different diets and medications and nothing worked. Eventually he got fed up and went back to his normal eating habits and everything went back to normal. He didn’t have any more problems. I feel like Hank at the moment. I keep trying different things to make myself better, but perhaps I am just causing more problems.

I’ll just have to see how it goes.