Thread by @homemadeguitars

We are at home in the little house. Nobody here but us.
Donkeys got their supper, with full attention.
Human attention is a priceless resource that we piss away on drivel.

2. There's an old saying: The eye of the farmer fattens the cow.
That's not how we do it anymore, we use antibiotics. I can't express what a shitty plan this is.
The eye of the human fattens the land. That's how we get out of climate change - we pay attention.
To reality.

3. All that crap people are promising "for the climate," that's not reality. That's science fiction. Most of the machines haven't been invented. It's madness. The reductions are in the out years and they always will be.
The problem with "degrowth" is that it's an idea, not action

4. We can hold symposia about degrowth until we get emphatically degrowed by reality, but how do you degrow?
Slow down.
If the average speed of surface transportation in the United States went down 2% there would be a concomitant reduction in economic activity broadly.
Recession.

5. I had to go over to Gloria's house four or five trips to bring home my coffee pot, stash box, coffee cup, hot plate...
This would be *a lot* harder if I lived over there.
I have lived over there for about three weeks. And I have given nearly 100% of my human attention to her.

6. Tweeting about her - writing about her - this is how I think. By writing. So all the tweets and threads you read were outgrowths of my attention on her.
Her, and then on another whole order of magnitude less, anything else.

7. If Chica didn't keep up with me I'd blow through a door and close it behind me on my way to Gloria and shut Chica out in the yard. This has never happened before. She had to stop dogdling (a derivative of dawdling) if she wanted to get in the big house. Jeffie was moving.

8. I drove into Excelsior to the legal pot store. I'd blown through my Indica and was short on gummies. And tomorrow is (looks around and notices local planet) Christmas Eve.
Getting my eyes to focus out away, in the distance, on the road, was hard. It's a good thing we live

9. On a gravel road, because for the first half a mile it was hard for me to keep straight with the road.
By the time we reached blacktop I had it down. That said, I observed my attention, and I focused it on driving, and being safe and sensible.
At 50 mph.
On a 55 mph road.

10. I don't just talk about slowing down.
I slow down.
Those unfortunate enough to be on the same road with me in the same time slice also slow down.
We reduce our energy throughput rated in joules per second. Or horsepower. Or kilowatts per hour. Whatever measure you like,

11. And - I'm a walking storyteller. I guarantee the young lady who waited on me at the pot store sees the entire universe differently tonight than she did this morning.
I glorify in the life I just watched come to completion.
But I don't live in the house she lived in.

12. Where I'm sitting right now, she was never here. She probably came in here and sat on the orange chair on average about twice a year.
She was always somewhere near, but not right here.
She still is.
Her house feels lonely. Mine not so much.

13. I was looking to see if my friend Roger was along the road. He farms there, and has property on both sides, so I might see him going either way. But Roger is often out on his land. He is my special friend, the one among the professional farmers who understands my reasoning.

14. Roger is a bachelor a few years younger than me. His brother is six months older than me. But - we just get along. I draw comfort from his presence.
And on the way home I saw his truck by one of his buildings. Turn signal...

15. About a year plus ago Roger's 95 year old mother died. He had been her caregiver for her last decade or more, but she was in good shape, although power chair bound, for most of it.
Wonderful lady.
Good people raise good people.
I knew both his parents.

16. Gloria chose who to tell, in what order, and in what words. The only exception was Roger. Roger is extra low tech. He has a cell phone but he rarely turns it on.
So I went there and told him.
Then I told her I had.
She said, "Good."
So today I wanted to tell him. And could.

17. And we had a wide ranging conversation about chestnuts and native nuts and farming them, and I talked about the kids, and having a future. About my place not going under the bulldozer now.
He understood.
Roger was out in the yard working on his 4 wheeler. He always walked,

18. But his knees are terrible. It's the damn DNA again, just like Gloria's cancer. I knew Roger's dad. His knees bent sideways too.
I told him he needs a donkey and a flatbed cart.
"Prob'ly," he said.
Roger raises cattle and sheep. He goes out into his pasture every day, with

19. A bucket of feed, and he wanders around and his animals come up to see what he's got, and he looks everyone over.
The eye of the farmer fattens the cow.
But his knees finally got to sore so he got this confounded machine.
I need to take my work cart over there.

20. You can walk along beside a work cart for three or four steps, then hook the cheek of your ass on it and pick up your feet, ride - it'd work way better with his tame cows and sheep. Not so noisy.
And with his temperament, they'd be doing it all verbally in 90 days. No touch.

21. Like, Roger's out in his yard laying down by this infernal machine, and about two feet away a fluffy lamb is watching him.
I walk over and start talking, and idly pick up the lamb and pet its fuzzy head and belly, and play with its feet, and set it down...
Like that.

22. I am, of course, filled with a swirl of emotions, feel them through my nervous system as sensations in my stomach - I'm not saying this is fun.
I'm saying, the most important thing in human life is human community.

23. My friends aren't great in numbers, but they are great in spirit. They have carried me on their shoulders throughout this entire period.
And I'm back in my house, alone but never alone. Tomorrow I'm going to hitch up the team.