and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

i wandered online tonight thinking that maybe i'd read a blog or two and then call it quits, hit the sack, and make an early night out of it. yet somehow, i can't even find the *oomph* to do that and i've been around on this earth long enough to know that probably means i need to drag ass, get something going, motivate, or stagnate with the rest of 'em.. so here i am

Motivating.

you got me, i'm just giving it a try. so sue me.

i think part of the groan this evening came from my foray into the city this afternoon for freeze-dried hiking food and some quinoa (quina is a natural hippy grain i was turned onto this year by a pal which, once i discovered it's far more difficult to screw up then rice, i've made the switch to [i realize that was a less than stellar grammatical foray and i apologize for it |i just noticed i used foray twice now {we are talking about natural foods, gimma a break}|]). luckily all of this foraging was taking place in the same parking lot - an area right off the highway covered in cement for far enough around to make you feel like you're actually in a city. i stepped into the Whole Grocer, Maine's largest independently owned health food store, and got to the bulk foods aisle. it's your typical scene with bins and bins of everything from cashews to, well.. quinoa, but i like it. i like it because it's a little dirty. just the slightest. there is grain on the floor like people are actually buying it and the produce doesn't shine like plastic marienettes in a stir fry play.. rather it just sits there, like vegetables should sit there. like they were grown outside and maybe, just maybe, without a bunch of things sprayed on top of them that end in suffixes like "-trate" and "-oxide".

right across the parking lot is Wild Oats. people love it, i guess.. based on the traffic i see going in and out of there. it went in about two years ago - yes, right next to Maine's largest independently owned health food store. i imagine, in my naiviest of hearts, that it was nothing but a coincidence. meanwhile, Whole Foods, the nation's largest natural foods supermarket, is planning on moving in almost right next door. wonderful indeed.

the most wonderful part of it all, of course, is watching the shoppers - fresh young hippies in their shiny dreads, driving their shiny new subaru outbacks (you know, the environmentally superior ones with 6-cylinder engines that get less than 20 miles to the gallon)..

organic food sales in the u.s. is apparently a 13 billion dollar industry. tuesday i listened to maine public radio during my roadtrip. they broadcast a talk from the commonwealth club of california by the director of the earth institute at columbia university jeffrey sachs. i'd link the talk because it was good but it's not on the web yet. it was basically economic in nature and the main thrust was about african development aid and how little we, as a nation, devote towards that effort. about 2 billion dollars which, standing next to the 500 billion dollar military budget well.. you be the judge. it's hard because i, as a white (red blooded) male living in the u.s. of goddamned a. well you better fucking believe i cherish my rights to do whatever the hell i want to do with my money and if that means war that means war.. but we're not talking about much money. you can read a speech of his here which touches on some of this topic, my favourite excerpt being:

September 11, which has dominated the world’s agenda for more than two years, claimed 3,000 lives. Every day 20,000 people are dying of their poverty from AIDS, TB and malaria. Every single day.

And yet, where are we? This year the world will spend 900 billion dollars on armaments, 50 billion dollars on development assistance and perhaps 1 billion dollars on AIDS. My own country, the United States, will spend 450 billion dollars on the military and 10 billion dollars on development assistance. A ratio of 45 to 1.

10 billion dollars.. that's less than a fat country full of mcdonalds consumers spends on organic food in a year. nevermind how that 10 billion is misused, misappropriated, or just never even gets to where it needs to go.

i am, as anyone who knows me will attest, no flaming hippy. i am, however, a true believer of capitalism, economics, evolution, and inevitability. it's no secret that overpopulation comes from these poverty stricken areas of the world. it's no question that an area with infant mortality rates in the double-digits and life expectancy hovering barely above 30 is not going to help the world in it's current state. as the rest of the world globalizes it's economy africa and other third-world areas will be left to play catchup unless we help to jump start modern development there.