seeing things

I'm going to be blatantly honest and say that I had never heard about permaculture before I volunteered to help facilitate this course.

It took me all of 38 seconds to read an overview of the program and decide that I could commit myself and my July to these ideals.  

It felt like my urban studies program, but focused on agriculture instead of on cities.   

It felt like a month of what my mom has drilled into my head about holistic nutrition coupled with asset-based community development all wrapped around service to the oppressed. 

It just made sense.

I've been here for two weeks and it keeps making more and more sense.  Every day shows me something new in the world.  Something new in me.

The past few days I've been appreciating the diversity of vision.  

There is a certain vision that is required in permaculture.  It's a new way to see things.  It's a way that I haven't seen before.

It's the ability to look at an old door, cement blocks, and mattress...and see a bed.  

It's the gift of seeing the need for a shelf in the shower and then looking around to figure out how we can make one out of what we already have.

It's the foresight to understand that we don't throw things "away" because there is no "away." 

It's a different vision than an interior designer would have for a space.

It's a different vision than an investor would have for a space.

It's a different vision than an architect would have for a space.

It's a unique niche.  and it's not always pretty.

You won't find anyone selling a soup strainer taped to a broken stick the next time  you're looking to mix cement.  But guess what?  It worked perfectly when we made our cob oven today.

Sometimes I walk through the streets of New York and i can't imagine the detail it took to plan even one of those buildings.  Nor can I fathom the way the brain works for a musician.

And then you give me a piece of blank paper, a white wall, or a mound of clay...and I can transform it into the emotions that are wound within me.  

That's my vision.

Different than yours.  

Different than theirs.

All equally needed.

Sometimes I love that about humanity.  It lets me live in a world where I get to interact with systems that I are beyond my mind's capacity to comprehend.

It lets me sit around a table and make beautiful things with beautiful people that love the same things as I do.

Sometimes I hate that about humanity.  It means that even though you really annoy me, you might see things in a way that the world needs, that I need.

I don't want to need your vision, especially if I don't particularly like your personality or agree with your worldview.  

But I can't have the ideas, insight, or direction that you have.  So I do need you.

Opposite pieces of a complete circle.

One.

The doctor, the artist, the banker, the poet, the gardener, the mathematician.

All of us.

Different visions. Different brains.  Different functions.

One whole. 

One people.

One.