I have been pretty overwhelmed lately. Definitely not together enough to tie anything I'm doing or feeling into permaculture, thus the long silence. I went through the supposed last stage of my initiation this past weekend. Initiation into what, I kept thinking? This question is what kept me from feeling inititiated I think. In the past, we had actual tribes to be initiated into. Now we have the feeling of the tribe,which is much harder to understand. I'll admit, I couldn't feel it in myself. What I was supposed to be feeling, according to my teacher, was a feeling of unity. A realization that everythign I have experienced so far, and that everything we have created no earth has been an illusion--what she called "playing in the backyard." The end of the initiation process was supposed to bring me "home," where all the concerns and games we play in the material world drop away. I couldn't get over my anger at the material world. I couldn't let go of my personal frustration at being a poet in a culture that doesn't care about or value poetry. I couldn't let go of my anger at the rape of the earth. What I have realized, is that I need to feel these emotions first, or again rather, I have felt them before, but somewhere along the way they became intellectual concepts before I had released them fully. So now I've been crying a lot and trying not to gorge myself on nachos when I'm depressed. I found out an interesting thing this weekend. My teacher was talking about why we crave sweet foods, saying it is because we feel a need to be nurtured. I asked her why one would crave salty food, since this is what I crave. She said that eating a lot of salt is a way to avoid feeling emotions--think of the way salt dries up water, what a cracked piece of land looks like after days of drought. So I am accepting that I need to feel some ugly things before I can feel at "home." And I encourage you to do the same, and to realize that something we see as ugly is also beautiful if it enables us to become fully present and whole.