running to be slow

“I wonder how it is that people's philosophies have come to spin faster than the changing seasons.”
― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

It is the first time since long I woke up with the uneasy feeling. I tried to escape it by staying in the state between sleeping and being awake but something was nibbling on my guts. A presentation tomorrow and an exhibition on Saturday. Only two weeks left in Barcelona and then on the road to do projects and attend meetings in 12 countries in the next 5 months. There is a shipload of planning to do. Trains and planes and walks. What to bring. What to store where. Meditations about skipping travelling fast through air which involves even more complicated planning. Where to be when. What to do and why.

When you don’t know the best thing is to sit still. So I sat on my balcony and erased all the thinking. One thing came back in my mind. Masanobu Fukuoka’s words. “The best planning is no planning”.

I almost forgot about the One Straw Revolution, about “the Fukuoka Method”, a natural way of farming based on the recognition of the complexity of living organisms that shape an ecosystem. Fukuoka saw farming not just as a means of producing food but as an aesthetic and spiritual approach to life, the ultimate goal of which was "the cultivation and perfection of human beings". To grow people by growing crops. To achieve the most by doing the least. By listening and observing.

I want to grow things.

I forgot to be slow by being slow. I am running around to plan opportunities to be slow.

I could plan being really slow from October on but who knows if I am still alive by then? On the other hand: if I am not it doesn’t matter what I did the five months before. As long as I enjoyed them.

Let’s see. First today. Then tomorrow. 

                                         (snail running)