Getting Back To Gaia!

I think if I mention the word Gaia one more time, everyone around will scream at me, but I don't care because, for the first time in my life, just about everyone actually knows what I mean by the word and no one's laughing and eye-rolling anymore.

I've been banging on about Gaia for decades, even before I knew it was an existing hypothesis with a proper intellectual status and all that other stuff that counts for a lot more than it should; back when folks would still roll their eyes when I raised the subject and tell me to stop being "so idiosyncratic".

It was one of my mother's big things: the belief that the earth is a living being, an Earth Mother that provides everything an individual needs and that, beyond the acquisition of knowledge, a person didn't need to go far beyond what the world offered freely. And she walked the talk too because she and Ifarami, our gardener/local witchdoctor, put together a fantastic produce garden that provided everything we needed AND it also looked wonderful too.  A veritable Garden of Eden!

And everything we couldn't grow ourselves, she'd get from local farmers and fishermen who she'd support as a matter of principle.

But mum also believed that the Earth Mother was ruthless, and even used to say "We lost the right to live on this planet when we took our waste products out of the cycle of life and turned them into a problem." And my dad, who was very scientifically minded, always agreed with her on this point.

Dad, however, used to add "The earth will toss us off before it lets itself be destroyed."

I think that's he's proving himself right there. I believe this is what is starting to happen but I hope, I think, I dream, that we're not too late!  That we can put things right before they go even more wrong!

And we have to change.  Sincerely, we really do have to change!  It is no longer an option! 

However, I also believe we're getting there!  I suspect everything vile happening around us and those constant questions "why is this happening?" means that we are ready for the change.

People are inching towards a different vision.  At least I hope they are!  No, I have to believe they are!

And there are signs we all are finally starting to get it right. Like, my dear friend Robert's book "Me'a Kai" coming from nowhere to win BEST COOKBOOK IN THE WORLD, knocking out some brutal and impressive competition. As Edouard Cointreau, the global Godfather of food books, explained: Me'a Kai won because it had a vision that the future should be about sustainable food and eating for health.

It is really about letting ourselves get back into the cycle of life!

Robert knows that! Robert believes that!  Robert thinks that we should be working more closely with the earth. Be more simple! Get our own hands dirty!  Be more basic! Do away with food dissonance by knowing the folks who produce what we eat! AND, most importantly, he knows that food can still be delicious - even moreso delicious - when we do this!

And the world has rewarded him for it. Yayyy!

However, I want him to go even further!  I bullied him, yesterday, the poor honey, into buying Reader's Digest "Foods that Harm: Foods that Heal." and then he had to lug the big heavy book around with him for the rest of the day, and I've been banging on to him about Kitchen Witching: knowing the chemical properties of food and preparing dishes that feed directly into curing people of their ailments - something I want to do when I'm an old lady - and also telling him about people like Marianne, who are cooking up old witchdoctor remedies and having them tested by scientists and discovering they are packed full of disease-fighting ingredients.

And women like Alba's good friend Dr Barbara Wong, a biochemist up there in Nan Sha, in Mainland China, who, for the past 14 years,  has been working on developing healthy and natural alternatives to today's killer food additives.

Darling Robert has been very polite about my constant rabbiting on about my "so idiosyncratic" passions, but he's probably secretly ready to strangle me!  Besides, he's already planning to take his future in a totally different direction; working with farmers in various Pacific Islands and putting them into direct contact and communication with tourist resorts, where he also wants to work with their kitchens to develop dishes that make our Pacific Cuisine palatable for foreigners, thereby finally making our beloved Islands, hopefully, self-sustaining and locals kinda rich-ish.

But we're not really so different here since we're both on the same page about getting back into the cycle of life ... and that's what I hope for in the future, in all our futures:  I would like to see us all stop this abuse of Gaia, our Earth Mother, and for us all to really stop and think about how we're using Her resources, and to start finally trying to get it right!

And how can we NOT, since more and more it's proving that our very lives and futures depend on it.