- Tonya at Plain and Joyful Living has a post up today entitled Vision. She relates how her family's decision to live simply in rural Vermont has meant coming to terms with the fact that not everything on the homestead is beautiful. Money to landscape nicely, haul away rubble from building projects, or repair the barn is not usually available, so they live with visions of future beauty among the not-so-beautiful parts, relying on the work of their hands and Providence. This passage exemplifies her can-do spirit, I think:
I didn't want to look at those big ugly concrete blocks, however, so I am in the process of building a branch fence to put right in front of them. I will plant sweet peas in front of the fence and I can envision the beautiful flowers and green vines climbing over the fence this summer. I piled up rocks around the well head as a worked in the garden. There was trash to remove. I found some flat rocks to add to our entryway walkway. (The chickens enjoyed finding insects and worms while we were cleaning up!)
After reading (and admiring) her post, I found my thoughts taking a tangent on the role of consumerism in our conception of beauty and ugliness. Beauty -- that is, the orderly, manufactured beauty that requires purchasing things -- is lifted up in our culture as a key to a happy, meaningful life. This is a marketing ploy, of course, but it's wielded not only by mainstream corporate interests (which I am fairly successful at ignoring), but also by interests which are much more alluring to me. I'm invited to furnish my home with beautiful organic products, to purchase aesthetically-pleasing, artisan-made toys, tools and clothing that support local, independent manufacturers and merchants. (I almost feel guilty NOT buying them.) I could landscape my yard with native vegetation and pave my ugly mud driveway with permeable concrete -- as beautiful as it is environmentally friendly! My home really should have bamboo or cork floors (gorgeous!) instead of the dirty, undoubtedly toxic carpet we live with, shouldn't it? Even at my co-operatively owned grocery, special products for beautiful sustainable living abound, strangly tempting even when I don't really need them. Hand-thrown pottery with eco-friendly glaze, or my grandmother's hand-me-down 1970's Corelle? Hmmm... (Actually, that one's a no-brainer with kids, and we could never afford the pottery anyway, but you get the idea.)
Frankly, waging this constant internal battle to resist these messages can be exhausting. Marketers -- even ones who pay their office cleaning crew a living wage -- are clever, clever, clever. They can make me forget what is truly beautiful in my life, and that's a shame on me, as much as them.
On my best days, I feel good about how we are resisting consumerism in favor of other, more meaningful life experiences. I can catch Tonya's vision and see that we are working toward a different kind of beauty in our lives, a kind of unkempt, wild beauty of gardens and fruit trees, of family togetherness and honey bees. On my worst days, I feel like I'm not even doing a good job with the meaningful life experiences part, and I really just want some matching furniture.
Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Woman
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I received my membership card from the Philadelphia Museum of Art today.
The front of it has an excerpt from a painting by Wassily Kandinsky, Circles
in ...
2 years ago
4 comments:
Thank you for such a thoughtful post. You put into words what I might not have been able to convey so clearly.
You are so right. Whether we are working, working to spend, spend, it really doesn't make it that much better if we are still spending on organic, or eco friendly items. Many of them now are owned by huge corporations, etc.... Also, more stuff is simply terrible for the environment. Changing our expectations can help, though. And this leaves us more time for family and community.
I think supporting local people/businesses is truly the best model possible and we also found that more possible where we now live.
Again, many thanks!
(I am also a Quaker - new, though).
Warm wishes.
Stephanie,
I really liked Both yours and Tonya's post. I had been thinking about her for a few days and then I saw your post.
Your wrote "Beauty -- that is, the orderly, manufactured beauty that requires purchasing things -- is lifted up in our culture as a key to a happy, meaningful life." is beautifully said. It reminds me of a chapter called Junk Cars and Buffalo Carcasses from Kent Nerburn's Book "Neither Wolf nor Dog". It is a book I reread every year.
In this chapter an elder is responding to the paradox of junk cars in the front yards of Native Americans and a claim to revere the land. This is the elder's response:
"Owning things is what white people's lives are about. I watch TV, and every ad I see tells me something is new. That means I should get it because what I have is old and this is new. That's no reason to get something, just because it is new. Your way teaches people to want, want, want. What you have is no good. What you don't have is new and better.....
Now things don't go back to the earth. Our kids leave pop cans around. We leave old cars around. In the old days these would be bones spoons or horn cups, and the old cars would be skeletons on horses or buffalo. We could burn them or leave them and they would go back to the earth. Now we can't.
We are living the same way, but we are living with different things. We will learn your way, but, you see, your really don't understand any better. All you really care about is keeping things clean. You don't care how they really are, just so long as they are clean. You see a dirt path with a pop can next to it and you think that is worse than a big paved highway that is kept clean. You get madder at a forest with a trash bag in it than at a big shopping center that is all clean and swept.
It all comes back to possessions. You want to have everything and you think that is fine as long as it is put in piles or in rooms or in boxes with labels. We don't have very much and we leave it when we don't want it or need it."
Although I consider myself to be conscientious, I really have no concept of how much I throw away in a year. I bet if I could let it accumulate in a pile in my front yard for a year, I would be appalled. Because in our culture, all of dirty business is carried off to landfills and such, it is out of sight and out of mind for most folks. It becomes easy to not care about how things really are when there are no visual reminders.
BTW, when I get discouraged over the mismatching furniture, I fantasize about getting rid of all of it and just having a big empty space with lots and lots of cushions. I haven't actually done it yet, but one day...
Kimberly
Thank you so much for the comments ladies. I sometimes get in a bit of a funk over life in these United States, and I was kind of there when I wrote this post. I really like the selection of the book you quoted from, Kimberly. Cushions on the floor: we don't have *only* cushions, but we did get rid of an old second-hand sofa that had cushions for the back. We kept the cushions as floor pillows and it's been great for the kids. (They were usually on the floor anyway, even when we had the sofa!)
Tonya, I didn't know that you are a Quaker! Thanks for sharing that. :o)
Good thoughts Stephanie. As much as I simplify here, the material possessions seemingly have a way to slip in, whether it is due to the relatives giving to the children or us adding more. It's a constant battle to keep it down to a minimum and only have what we need. Your last line made me smile. I solve that by proclaiming we are "eclectic", but when I see the eco furniture that is so neutral, it's a battle not to desire it.....
needs vs. wants at times. Thanks for sharing.
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