Insight Into the Born Again Green Mind

Just a moment. I grabbed it, quick, before it slipped away. Halfway between the kitchen and my office. Empty space. Vertigo. I could go shopping, get some action in. Quick remedy for transient un-ease. No. It doesn’t work any more. A vision of sisters moving amidst racks of clothes. And my heart sinks. The absence of substance is not that bad. After all.

Do you have such moments?

Read Full Post »

This Is How I Feel About Global Warming

A blank piece of paper, and a pencil. That’s all it took for the truth to come out.

My head, connected to the big bubble.

My heart, my guts, my hands, and my feet,  in another space altogether.

I’m split.

Read Full Post »

Today’s a Dark Day

The darkness, outside, draws me into a future scenario of doom. What if we never saw day again? Would we have to watch old movies to re-experience the joy of light? How would we cope? Maybe make love and get lost when light does not matter? I drive home. Turn on the radio. ‘Today is the darkest day of the year’. Winter Solstice.

Read Full Post »

Green Memory Bank

In my green memory bank, today I retrieved a moment long ago, with my parents, walking up a  path, in the French Alps. The image is fuzzy, there are pine trees towering over us, and forming an imaginary kingdom. The damp earth is soft under my feet, and I take in the smell of possibility of mushrooms. Drunk from the mountain air, I feel happy, totally.

What is in your green memory bank? How many  moments, stored away, and still potent with the intensity of childhood, can you go back to?  And access the  love you felt in the midst of nature.

Read Full Post »

Birds Moment

Out to get the Sunday papers, I am welcomed by the sound of birds singing high up in the bare trees across the street. Soon I hear a symphony, of birds far and near, competing for my attention. And the thought, what would happen if, one day, all the birds vanished?

Read Full Post »

Dis-connect-ed

Foot step, foot step, foot step, . . . all I can hear is the sound of my foot steps. The soles of my shoes, hitting the pavement. Feet, shoes, cement. And the earth, underneath. Two levels removed. Foot step, foot step, foot step, . . .

Read Full Post »

A Moment

Mind filled with worries, I am inside. Until I remember to look up, and notice the trees, and down, boring earth, shriveled leaves, in between cement. The smell of nature, mixed in with man made elements. Baily, pulling me. She thinks we are going right. No, today we will turn around. I am in a hurry to go home.

Read Full Post »

Categories and Tags

It is one thing to deliver content, and another to organize it in a way that is consumable by readers. I had been so busy writing, that I had lost track of the most important person, you, the reader of this blog. Something had to be done. I just went through my entire blog, reassigning tags and categories, to better help sort through all the information. The main challenge was deciding on which categories and how many? Looking at other green blogs, people are all over the place. Some are using tags as categories. Some have short lists, others super long ones. Some category names make sense, others don’t. I decided to do my own thing, and think first of the main topics I like to cover in this blog.

1. Blogging: I did not plan on writing on my experience as a blogger, but it is turning out to be an important part of my life as a Green Girl Wannabe
2. Ecopsychology: The main focus and raison d’ etre for the La Marguerite blog. A little talked about part of the solution to the climate crisis. Basically, the study of how personal psychology affects human behavior towards the environment. Including strategies to induce positive behavioral changes.
3. French life: Because I am French, and references to my French experiences permeate this blog. I find it interesting to compare the two cultures, French and American. And of course, I am a bit biased . . . the French always end up looking good!
4. Green domesticity: Mostly my interactions with Green Guru, my husband, and in residence green conscience. A narrative has been developing, at times funny, and always a source of insights into the dynamics of families, and how these impact environmental choices.
5. Green solutions: An emerging category, and one I want to spend more time on in the future. Separately from this blog, I am working on a locally based green initiative. I will keep you posted.
6. Internet: Living in Silicon Valley, I cannot ignore this most incredible tool, without which this blog would not exist in the first place. Things I love: social networks, wikis, blogs, green Internet solutions, anything new under the cybersun.
7. Thoughts on society: The place for deeper articles on the macro problems, global solutions, comparisons between cultures, modern thinkers. An opportunity to cross-pollinate and tap into my multidisciplinary background as an engineer, marketer, advertiser, shrink, and artist.
8. Zen moments: To capture all those times when I become zen, and go down, down, to that still place, where things just are.

That’s eight categories total. A good, manageable number. For other bloggers, interested in going through this same exercise, I would like to share a resource I just found through Daily Blog Tips, an article from Engtech, “Climbing out of Category Hell”. I wish I had read it earlier. There are a number of things I did not do, did not know to do, and should have done, to minimize fallouts from my ambitious reorganization. I will only mention one, ‘to turn trackbacks off before you start reorganizing your categories or you’re going to spam the crap out of yourself as you resave all of your posts’. Ouch . . . I ask all to forgive me. This may explain the mysterious fall in Technorati ranking from the last few days.

Read Full Post »

Finding My Voice

Back in April, I started this blog on a whim. I was getting annoyed by all the self righteousness in the green media. And I wanted to offer a counterpoint. My reality as a less than perfect Green Girl Wannabe, who just couldn’t get her act together. There is nothing like political correctness to bring out my rebellious streak. I went a bit overboard at first, and chose to focus solely on the bad stuff, all the things I did not, should have done in the name of a greener planet. What happened next, were some twists and turns, stories, topics, people that I had not anticipated, and turned out to be a lot more interesting than my original scheme. Interesting to me, at least!

 

There is Green Guru, of course. Green Guru started as Prad, my husband. Very quickly, it became obvious that the name Prad alone did not suffice to capture his authoritative green essence. I can’t even remember when he reached Green Guru status, but from then on, our roles became clear. He is Green Guru, and I am Green Girl Wannabe. Scenes from our domestic life pervades my blog, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

 

Another twist has been the gradual opening of my views to include, not just self-deprecating moments, but also, pretty much any daily events that permeate my life, still using the green lens. I used to refer to this blog, as ‘The Daily Sins of a Green Girl Wannabe’. I just renamed it, ‘The Hours of a Green Girl Wannabe’. To make room for all the small acts, the encounters, the random thoughts, the myriad of feelings, the ahah moments, the discoveries, that fill up my busy bee days. La Marguerite is becoming a zen, feminist, philosophical, practical, humble green blog. The place to share all of my reality, as a Green Girl Wannabe.

 

What’s coming next, is a better blog hopefully. One where my voice can be heard more clearly. One where readers can find more things to take back with them. Like anything worthwhile, it’s going to take a lot of work. I have already started. What motivates me, is the desire to make a difference, and to become a more active node in the world wide green web.

Read Full Post »

Lookout

‘In the Clouds, Sitting Watch Over Paradise‘, the front page article in yesterday’s New York Times, introduced me to the fascinating world of Mike Gates, one of the remaining 800 lookouts in the United States. Mr. Gates lives high up in a shack atop the mountain. His job is to spend most of his waking hours, scanning the Lake Tahoe landscape for possible fire smoke. Like him, I have been spending a lot of my time lately, scanning the landscape, and looking out for evidence. The only difference is, I am looking inside, trying to stay mindful of all the thoughts, feelings, that keep me in a state of Green Girl Wannabe.

Read Full Post »