Saturday, June 3, 2017

Distillation: How little do you need?

The sky from this morning's bike ride


A front porch, some coffee, a little quiet, some birds - yep, I'm happily boring!

One of my favorite things to do lately is sit on the porch, drink coffee, and watch the birds.

It's been a stressful couple of years. I often find myself nervous.

But sitting on the porch with dove, grackles, starlings, sparrows, and a rotating cast of others, I don't feel nervous. Normally it's lightness and mirth - at least until a neighborhood cat starts stalking or I find the bottom of the coffee cup.

I don't spend that time fretting about bills and broken things and being needed. I spend that time in my favorite type of prayer - thanks.

Distillation, simplification, minimalism.

What do you have left when you remove the things that distract you?

Where does this all fit into Mesquite Huggerism? Well, there are two well-trodden paths to green - through technology or through simplification. And as much as I'd like a 3-d printed off-grid smart house, a self-driving 150mph silicon-valley speedster, and a fully automated greenhouse, I have to admit that I love time spent on a junky old bicycle and that nothing tastes better than the olla-watered tomatoes we've been growing on our front porch.

So, if you see more posts about the simpler approach, you'll know it came from front porches and sparrows.

May the wheels on your your bike go round and round, simply, quietly, and thankfully.

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