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Art and story can reach people where pure facts don’t.

The film Don’t Look Up was trending #1 on Netflix for quite some time after its release in December 2021. Its plot can be interpreted as a comic-tragic allegory of climate denialism; modern human inertia and unwillingness to sacrifice, endure discomfort. (An asteriod is threatening to destroy all life on Earth in six months; astronomers try to warn people and suggest a possible remedy; humans in the end don’t take the needed action; humans die out in the end.)

Last week, a novel called Zoo landed in my Little Free Library. (James Patterson is wildly popular among my library’s patrons.) The book’s plot can be interpreted as a comic-tragic allegory of climate denialism; modern human inertia and unwillingness to sacrifice, endure discomfort. (Animals all over the world, both wild and domestic, suddenly start forming huge roving packs that attack and devour humans; the cause is found to be pheromones produced by the world’s massive use of gasoline, cellphones, and electricity; humans quit using those things for a couple of weeks and the animals go back to normal; but in the end, humans go back to their consumerist business-as-usual, the animals go pack-savage again, and humans ostensibly in the end go extinct.) Very readable. And: This was published back in 2012. Back before topics related to human-induced alteration of the biosphere were much in the mainstream news. Kudos to a blockbuster author like Patterson for taking on this theme.

Earlier this week I read another TEOTWAWKI-themed book, Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. (This one I checked out from my county public library’s online app. The lazy, book-devouring introvert’s friend, open 365-24-7!) Published in 1959, it spins a classic Cold War nuclear-war scenario. The added attraction for me was its recognizable Florida setting. Humans nuke each other to smithereens, mostly die except for a few lucky pockets including a fortuitously-situated town in central Florida, whose inhabitants end up piecing together a caring and self-reliant community, where some characters who’d been just going through the motions of life suddenly find a sense of purpose.

Stories of the TEOTWAWKI/Zombie Apocalypse/TSHTF genre will probably always be popular. And who knows, if we read enough of them, something might click.

“We really did have it all, didn’t we,” says a character at the end of Don’t Look Up, as they’re all sitting around the dinner table and the asteriod hits earth and a deep rumbling sound begins.

The story’s not over til it’s over. What other stories can human civilization write for itself?

I finally got around to making a Facebook post and a Tiktok slideshow showing Before & After pics of my yard.

• Go here to see the Facebook post (typically I put such posts on my DEEP GREEN book page but this one I put on my Art & Design page to switch things up a little)

• Go here to see the photos as a TikTok slideshow

This has been an incremental process over the past four years since I bought my house, but the big gains started early on, so don’t be discouraged thinking it has to take forever to turn a shadeless flat yard (or church grounds, or local pocket park, or whatever other space you’re trying to transform) into a cool green oasis.

Also, there was a learning curve. If I were forced to start over in another place I could do similar in much less time.

Some of the key functions and qualities I’ve set out to serve in my yard:

shade
heat mitigation
drought/flood buffer; stormwater mitigation
pollinator support
wildlife habitat
beauty
community-building
3-d business card for my landscaping business
food & medicine for humans
emotional/spiritual oasis, recharge
privacy

This came to me awhile back when I was stuck in one of my periodic bouts of negative self-talk. “You are the only YOU the world’s got.” And: “You are the only YOU you’ve got.”

The first part of that wasn’t very persuasive at first. After all, the negative self-talk voice had been telling me I was a waste of oxygen who was just taking up space in the world. So in that case, logically, what would it matter if I’m the only “me” the world’s got?

But somehow the second part of that really grabbed me. It was like, “OK, you might think your efforts are pathetic and not enough, and you might lament the fact that you’ve got so many character flaws, mental deficiencies, etc., that make you not an ideal whatever (activist, citizen, artist, writer, friend, etc.) — but the fact is that in this moment, all you have to work with is what you’ve got in this moment!”

In some weird way that sunk in. Because, like, I’m here on the planet and I’m not planning on going anywhere else til it’s my time, so what option do I have other than to be me?

This made me feel better, and the volume of negative self-talk dropped to a dull background murmur and then went away, as I continued whatever task I was working on.

Since it made me feel better, I’m posting it here in case it helps someone else.

Ideally, no one would ever talk badly to themselves. (Do as I say, not as I do!) But given that I sometimes do, it’s good to know I can get something useful out of it! In permaculture design we call this “obtaining a yield” or “turning problems into assets.”

Another yield I’ve obtained from the periodic assaults of the negative self-talk voice is a bit of healthy stubbornness. I now talk back to that thing a lot, or I just endure its rantings which eventually die out or get repetitive, and meanwhile I keep plugging away with whatever I’m doing. And by gosh it gets done, be it a blog post or a jury-rigged curtain rod or a tedious errand or what have you.

Lately I notice the mean voice is losing its power. It’s all bark and no bite. And meanwhile I’m still here — the only me I’ve got. And here to offer love and support to YOU!

P.S. If this post struck a chord in you, you might also find my recent post “Building Frustration-Tolerance” helpful.

Recently in my city, the demolition of a long-vacant oceanfront highrise building began. The first strikes of the wrecking ball (actually not a ball — but a giant metal mouth perched on a multi-storey-long neck; it actually looked like a dinosaur) were attended by great fanfare: A tent with a microphone had been set up, where city and county leaders made rhapsodic speeches about what a great moment this was. Cheerful volunteers handed out cookies and (plastic) flutes of champagne. At least a couple hundred citizens were there, beaming and talking amongst themselves excitedly.

I may have been the only one there who didn’t share the exuberant mood. How was it, I wondered, that people could come together with so much excitement to watch a building get demolished? Why hadn’t anyone, during the last decade or so of the towering building’s vacancy, gotten excited enough to do something with the building instead of letting it rot?

It used to be a resort inn, and a few of the dignitaries and citizens shared nostalgic memories of honeymoons, family vacations back when the building was in its heyday.

The economics of real estate will probably always baffle me. But the fact is, there are and probably always will be property owners who are rich enough to let huge high-rise buildings on prime oceanfront land just sit until the only thing left to do is tear them down.

And, there may just be something in human nature (or maybe just USA human nature?) that’s irresistibly drawn to the spectacle of large mechanized equipment reducing a building to a heap of rubble.

I’ve heard people express just as much glee over the demolition of much smaller buildings too. The common theme, regardless of building size, is “Oh I’m so glad that eyesore is gone!”

But what gets built in its place? All too often, nothing. You get a longterm empty lot with an Ozymandias vibe: “… the lone and level sands stretched far away” [cue forlorn sound of whistling wind].

When I try to put myself in the mindset of people drawn to demolition, I guess I can understand. It’s a huge, powerful thing to watch. Maybe it makes humans feel vicariously mighty. Maybe, too, the big “fall down go boom” helps people discharge the little daily frustrations that pile up.

And this: Maybe demolition is attractive because it’s easier to tear something down than to create something. The creative process (at least for me — maybe for others too?) often comes with tension and anxiety and vulnerability. It can be easier to just point out eyesores and nuisances, and cheer at the wrecking ball, than put oneself out there and make something new.

I like to imagine that at least some of the materials will be able to be recycled. Also, on my walk home up the A1A, I noticed that a longstanding Mom & Pop hotel had put a sign up, urging people to help them save their cute little hotel from being condemned. If I hadn’t attended the demolition, I wouldn’t have seen the sign offering the public an opportunity to actually save a building. I joined their Facebook page and will do what I can to support them.

And, after all, destruction is part of nature too. We can’t just create stuff all the time; there wouldn’t be space or the demand for it.

That said, I took the day as a reminder to be sure and spend time creating things that I feel will be beneficial, rather than just opposing things I see as negative. As an environmentalist, I sometimes find myself getting stuck in “oppose” mode.

And, serendipitously, my email inbox and social-media feed suddenly served me up a bunch of tidbits related to creativity.

Further Exploration:

• “Creating What We Don’t Want” (DailyOM.com). “All thoughts are subtle creative energy. Some thoughts are more focused or repeated more often, gathering strength. Some are written down or spoken, giving them even greater power. Every thought we have is part of a process whereby we co-create our experience and our reality with the universe. When we use our creative energy unconsciously, we create what is commonly known as self-fulfilling prophecy. In essence, when we worry, we are repeatedly praying and lending our energy to the creation of something we don’t want.”

• “Meet the TikTok stars using viral videos to save the planet” (Rosie Frost; euronews.com). “The idea for EcoTok emerged in July last year. … Since then it has expanded into a content creation ‘hype house’ with an ever evolving roster of around 20 different diverse contributors. … With more than 80 thousand followers and 1.2 million likes on the platform, EcoTok’s contributors have included the likes of marine biologist Carissa Cabrera, environmental justice advocate Isaias Hernandez and SciAll founder Mile Gil. They say that among their ranks you’ll find everything from scientists to students to activists and civil servants.”

• “The Movement for Youth-Led Placemaking Is Growing Up” (Riva Kapoor; Project for Public Spaces — pps.org). “For five weeks, 30 teenagers worked hard to imagine how outdoor public spaces would change if developers, designers, planners, and city agencies valued youth as stakeholders. With this in mind, participants visited DC parks and neighbourhoods and considered what makes a public space inclusive, accessible, and welcoming. … We also examined how young people can be discouraged from gathering in public spaces through unintended or intended design choices, such as metal work that prevents skate boarding, or posted signage banning loud music and loitering. We explored how feeling confident in a public space first requires feeling included.”

• Check out one of my new projects: I have transformed a corner of my yard into a cozy little nook with a couple of concrete benches where anyone can sit and rest.

Here are some “liner notes” from my TikTok video “Easy Peasy Rainwater Collection.” (If you can’t access TikTok, you can see a photo on my DEEP GREEN Facebook page.)

Tips:

• Scooping water into watering can is great exercise! I used to spend so much time & money “working out” at the gym
• “Peace Corps shower” using an old veggie can dipped into a pot of rainwater is a great way to cool off and wash off dirt from feet & whole body
• Roof of 1000 sf house can collect up to 623 gal of beautiful free cloud-juice for every inch of rainfall! (Homeschool math exercise potential abounds!)
• Tubs can serve as mini outdoor pools, fun for kids of all ages including you and me!
• Discourage mosquitoes breeding, and keep insects, frogs, etc from drowning in the tub by keeping the tub covered with screen, and/or using the water promptly
• As great as rainwater collection in tubs is, the REAL rainwater collection powerhouse is turning your yard into a “sponge” of plants and healthy soil, decaying logs etc. You can transform your yard into a rich cool oasis that requires no irrigation other than what falls from the sky!

Not long ago, in my online meanderings, I ran across a phrase: “low frustration-tolerance.” Even though I’d never heard this phrase before, I knew right away what it meant. And, that it described me.

The other day was a prime example. I needed to repair the rooftop garden box on my Little Free Library; the box (a discarded desk drawer) had come apart at the corners, and if I didn’t fix it, soil and plants would be falling out in short order. Well, nothing was going right. My fingers felt as nimble as lead baseball bats; the scrap wood was super hard to saw and drill holes in; the nails and screws were rusty and/or just too soft for the wood. I was furious with myself and the physical universe in turns.

Over the course of my life, and particularly in recent years, I have been amazed to find out that certain qualities I had always thought were indelible character defects, obnoxious personality attributes, or moral failings on my part, were actually just a lack of certain skills in the emotional realm. Skills that could be learned and practiced. Skills such as … learning to tolerate frustration.

I actually think our modern consumerist society, collectively, suffers from low frustration-tolerance. It sort of goes with the whole “instant gratification” thing. So it’s no surprise that this phrase would have come into the lexicon of popular psychology in recent years.

Anyway, in case some of you might have experienced this too, here are some things that have helped me build up a bit of frustration-tolerance:

• Notice that this is what’s going on. And saying to myself, “You’re not stupid or inept; you’re just experiencing low frustration-tolerance.” Surprisingly, this by itself often helps.

• Also, responding to negative self-talk with matter-of-fact reminders about the physical universe. For example, if I chide myself for being weak or feeble for taking so long to saw a board or breaking a drill bit in the board, I’ll respond, “You knew this batch of old fence wood is super hard, maybe it just wasn’t the right choice for this project.” Or if I call myself a dumbass who can’t even hammer nails in straight, I might respond, “Next time we’re at the hardware store, we could ask for a recommendation of nails and screws that are good for super hard wood, and buy a few of those to have on hand.” And so on.

• Also: allowing myself to take breaks when I get really overwhelmed with frustration. Taking breaks, as opposed to quitting. For me, a break could be taking a walk, or eating something (hey! I forgot to eat lunch! maybe that’s part of why I got so frazzled!). Another break for me is engaging in some totally easy but useful task. (The other day when I got frazzled by the library repair, I took about a half hour breather by cleaning my art paintbrushes, straightening out my paint containers, and tidying up my landscaping tool bucket. It was very soothing and restorative.)

In the end, my library’s rooftop garden box ended up repaired, though not as squarely and tightly as I might have liked. And let’s just say some baling wire and old bicycle-tire innertubes were involved (two of my favorite fastening materials when nothing else is working)! Part of building frustration-tolerance, for me, is being able to leave a task at an OK stopping point when it really feels like I’ve done all I can for that day — and knowing that I can go back in later on another day when my mind and hands are fresh.

Further Exploration:

• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance; book by Angela Duckworth. I read this book a couple of years ago and loved it! Also check out her gem of a 6-minute TED Talk by the same title.

• “Not Always Easy” (DailyOM.com). “Some of our goals and dreams come to fruition so easily that it is as if an unseen hand has done much of the work for us. When this happens, we say it must have been meant to be. On the other hand, when dreams and goals require a tremendous amount of effort, we may interpret this to mean that our dream is not meant to be. However, difficulty is not necessarily a sign that our hopes and plans are ill-fated. … There is a unique satisfaction that comes to us when we succeed at something that has been a challenge. Our sense of self-reliance expands, and our ability to endure and keep the faith is stronger for having been tested. We learn that we are capable of confronting and overcoming the obstacles in our path, and this empowers us to dream still bigger dreams, knowing that we will not be daunted by the challenges inherent in birthing them.”

• “Dr. Becky Doesn’t Think the Goal of Parenting Is to Make Your Kid Happy” (David Marchese; nytimes.com). (Often I have found parenting articles useful in my ongoing work to understand my own mind and retrain it as needed): “Is happiness the goal of parenting? No. Anybody who had a childhood in which happiness was the goal would be predestined for a lifetime of anxiety — life is full of distress! What’s something that’s distressing as a kid? It could be, ‘My tower fell down.’ If happiness were the goal then my behavior would be, ‘Look, we fixed your tower, it’s fine.’ What would I be wiring into my child by doing that? The more we focus on becoming happy, the less tolerance we have for distress and the more we search to feel any other way than how we’re feeling — which is the experience of anxiety. So what’s an alternative response to ‘My tower fell down’? It wouldn’t be me saying, ‘Tough, things happen.’ It’s the accumulation of feeling alone in our feelings as kids that gives us adult struggles. So how would I not do aloneness? Through presence. My kid’s tower falls down? I would try to say: ‘I’m not going to rebuild it. I’m going to stay here with you’; and maybe it’s [sings] ‘Towers fall down and that really stinks.’… [P]arents almost have to think, Where is frustration built into my kid’s life? So that when those frustrating moments come, the kid’s body says, ‘Oh, this is part of living; I know how to do this’ instead of, ‘This should not be happening; I have no skills to deal with it.’ Which is actually very sad.”

• Low frustration tolerance (Wikipedia article). “Low frustration tolerance (LFT), or ‘short-term hedonism,’ is a concept utilized to describe the inability to tolerate unpleasant feelings or stressful situations. It stems from the feeling that reality should be as wished, and that any frustration should be resolved quickly and easily. People with low frustration tolerance experience emotional disturbance when frustrations are not quickly resolved. … Behaviors are then directed towards avoiding frustrating events which, paradoxically, leads to increased frustration and even greater mental stress. … Ellis said the path to tolerance consisted of many roads, including unconditional self-acceptance, unconditional other-acceptance and unconditional life-acceptance.”

I’ve often heard people say, “A ‘weed’ is just a word for a plant that’s growing where you don’t want it.”

But that isn’t really true, is it! Think about it: If someone gets a volunteer rosebush or fruit tree springing up on their property (lucky person!), while they might not want it in the place where it happened to spring up, they would still be unlikely to refer to that rosebush or fruit tree as a “weed.”

What a so-called “weed” actually is, is a wild plant whose name and attributes we have not yet learned. “We” being so-called “sophisticated, modern” humans — because for sure whatever that plant is, it has been long named and known by people indigenous to the place where the plant came from.

There’s no shame in not knowing a plant’s name and attributes. Even the real plant experts probably don’t know them all. Where the shame lies is in disparaging and demonizing plants that we have not bothered to learn about. It’s the same disrespectful, throwaway attitude that underlies the whole consumer-industrialist-colonizer culture.

In permaculture design, one of the ethics is “care of people and all other species.” It includes the idea that every species has value and serves its role in the ecosystem.

Does this mean we have to allow every plant that springs up in our space to stay there? No — but I will say the more I learn about the various wild plants I meet, the less inclined I am to want to get rid of any plant that appears in my yard. Of course this doesn’t mean you’re obligated to (for example) allow a plant with huge thorns or stinging hairs to stay right next to your child’s swingset, your dog’s potty area, or whatever.

Want to help decolonize the dominant culture? Learn the names and attributes of plants that grow wild in your area. The ones most people write off as “weeds.” You’ll discover all sorts of free food and medicine, and you’ll start to see beauty everywhere.

Suggested places to start: Look up permaculture guilds, bioregional groups, native-plant societies, wildflower associations, foragers’ groups in your region. You can also try doing a search on “weed walk” plus the name of your city/county/region. If you can’t find such organizations right in your local area, check at the state level.

Speaking of so-called “weeds,” you might enjoy this micro meadow I planted on the roof of my new addition to my Little Free Library. The plants I planted in the little box include blanket flower, spiderwort, wild plantain, and Florida peppergrass. (I dug them up from an empty lot that I knew was probably about to get mowed because it was starting to look soft, meadowy, flowery, and uneven in length. All great sins to the turfgrass industry!) It gives me great joy to showcase the beauty of wildflowers and other wild plants in this way.