Dirt!, the Movie

(Just to let ya'll know I have been trying to watch some movies to help with my motion sickness & seizure problem before I have to move to my new house... I don't know if it's working.)

So this movie arrived in my mailbox called DIRT! and even though after watching Into The Wild the other night and swearing off all drama, documentaries, tear jerkers etc --- I was tempted to go ahead and watch what I thought would not make me cry. I was wrong.

Let me just say this movie goes through 3 cycle plot points, and here is my summary of what they are:

#1. Ya' find out what dirt really is and all the cool awesome things it does (like filtering all water on earth, feeding us, being pieces of fallen stars...) - by the end of this first cycle you are so crushed on dirt you want to marry it. (One guy in the movie feels the same way, cause he licks it.)

#2. Ya' find out modern man has no respect for dirt, or understanding that without dirt we die. Period. And hence the violent, tragic visuals explode across the screen. (This is where the movie took my breathe away, turned my stomach, I stifled crying, and got abdominal cramps from the stress of reality.) ---(FYI: some of my reaction might be related to PMS though.)

#3. Redemption on a small scale. In fact, as awesome as the last cycle of the movie is of showing ways to make positive changes, ways that work, stories to inspire (cool programs in jails where inmates garden)... my abdominal cramps didn't go away though because the destruction was bigger, more massive, faster and more jarring THEN what we are doing to fix things. Still, this part of DIRT! is uplifting and ends on a good note.

WHAT THIS MOVIE MADE ME THINK:::
That I need to get solar panels right away and stop using electricity. I wish so bad I had enough money. So what really needs to happen is solar & other alternative energies need to be affordable, and all mass scale farming needs to be changed over to a method that won't eventually lead to starvation. ~~~~

This will sound dorky but is entirely true - when I was growing up in suburban New Orleans (Harahan HAwks Baby!) I was a bit obsessed with dirt. More then a normal child because my mom has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder which mostly manifested itself in cleaning. Not just regular cleaning, I am talking you could eat off the floors, do surgery on the kitchen counter, lick the bottom of the tub, and drink the water in the toilet sort of "clean". Think museum meets open heart surgery. Back then she thought dirt was the cause of everything that could ail a human being and we were scarcely allowed to touch it, play in it, or mention it(wonda' why i have auto immune?) - it was the evil thing that kept my mom dust mopping and vacuuming 10 times a day.

But I loved dirt. I could not help myself and everyday I would sneak over to the side of our house where dirt still existed in the shade of a neighbor's pecan tree, and i would dig holes. Diggin' holes was my favorite thing to do because I wanted to see when I would hit water or China, and which one I would hit first. One time I even stopped my school principle in the hallway with a dire important question I had been waiting to ask her (the smartest lady eva' of course cause she was even bossing teachers around), I got a hold of her arm and asked with urgancy "how far do i have to dig before i hit water?" and she said "6 feet"... and I believed her.

This is when bad things began happening to my parents cable and electric lines, because I began digging those wires up to get them out of the way of my digging till I hit water project. When i failed to ever hit 6 feet with my hand shovel, I just said F' it, I am filling these holes up with hose water.
Hence my dad banging the cable box and screaming at the TV.

BTW- I even ate dirt once when i was a kid cause i thought, Why Not??? I got worms and had to take some sick pink medicine from the doctor.

OK- did I digress?

PS_ I am going to donate this movie to the madison county (NC) library... hopefully it doesn't give other peeps stress cramps too.

xoxo

Movie Review: Into The Wild

"I love not man the less, but Nature more." - Lord Byron

After many suggestions from commenters and friends and even strangers I finally got a hold of Into The Wild... only not in the book form but in the well done hollywood movie version. I know, people who have read the book say the movie is not as good but here goes my opinion....

This movie reduced me to raw emotion, tears, and gripped my attention right from the beginning - while I expected just to be watching a simple survivalist movie, I had no idea how much of Christopher Mccandless's family life was going to be included --- these modern family dilemmas and the parents living the suburban dream, plus using school and material wealth as their love language to encourage Chris for success were things that hit so close to home for me, I actually felt myself squirming uncomfortably right from the start. I was so drawn in, and am so close to his generation, concerns and struggles that I was his personal cheerleader from the beginning of the movie...
I understood the contrasts he saw, the acceptance he learned, the hardships, the fun, the realities of society, and I even understood why he would want to go out into the wilderness and be at peace. But I did not understand why he chose to go to Alaska (maybe the book explains this more?) - why he chose to show up in such harsh terrain with little to no training in survival? Surviving on the streets, dessert, farms, rural areas with other humans around is so different from the remote wilderness - nature does not choose favorites, nature is kind and harsh equally.
I had to really think about myself at 23 years old again, and how we feel, how we think we won't die, how we think we have all the details under control, how the greater risks are increased just by being the adult, and we choose greater adventures that we are drawn to cause finally no one can stop us.
I found his love to be penniless, his kindness to all people, and his willingness to try things he feared to be inspirational and poetically lived. Being penniless was not about being poor, but rather about freedom - he came from good money and had felt trapped, sometimes it takes sacrificing all that is at your fingertips in order to realize what you have never did control you in the first place - rich or poor, there are things to accept and appreciate.
He spends nearly the whole movie living out the realization of freedom (not realizing running away also is a type of trap) , and finally the end of this movie was redeeming, full circle ... but jesus christ it was so sad I could hardly sleep last night after watching it.

I would like to point out part of a quote Christopher had written (as his hitchhiking alter ego Alexander Supertramp) when he first arrived in the alaskan wilderness :
"No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild."
These words from him stuck out to me, because I relate and I see irony- poison is in nature too, and he finds that out. It seems at times nature is the kind one and man is cruel - but man is another piece of nature.
Where ever you are, it is how you live it, it is how you respect it, it is how you treat others... and 'others' are not just humans but every spec of life on earth. That is what this movie (this person's life) seemed to be about in the end.

PS--- here below are pictures of the Christopher McCandless (not the actor from the movie but the real person) on his adventures. There is no doubt in my mind I would have just loved this guy had I met him - just like everyone else did.
XoXo

No Impact Man, The Movie

Has anyone got a chance to watch this movie on the big screen, it looks awesome! It amazes me that someone who lives in the high consumption city of New York would be brave enough to take on such an earthy, natural living project - even if he might have just started it as hype. I would consider New York to be a hostile environment for sustainable living, the difficulty and temptation to slide would be tremendous. It made me compare my own sustainable environment to his- I am living in the opposite lifestyle, completely rural with every opportunity to be as "no impact" as he is (except with health challenges it makes it harder). He does have some advantages that rural living doesn't present, like easy to walk to farmers market & more money. But I have soil and land to grow and raise my own food.
Watch the trailer and tell me what ya'll think about it!?!!

XoXOooo