The sound of love - Somewhere Over The Rainbow - Israel Kamakawiwo

I have to tell you one interesting fact: I have not seen any rainbows for years and years here, but on my recent trip to Kauai, I saw tons of them, and even double rainbows! This island has something really special! And this next incredible thing also happened, which made my jaw dropping and my mind blowing:

During our main day of planting, a really good rain fell on Zero One, but we simply continued to plant, with a big smile plastered on our face. One of us suddenly exclaimed: "A rainbow on Zero One!" What? Yes! A very bright rainbow was ending right there on the land! -Have you ever saw the end of a rainbow? Not me, until that unique day!- The one and only thought that came to me was that the land of Zero One had just been blessed, that an energy was trying to tell us: "Your work is important and it will bear fruits. Thank you!"

And now that I am thinking about this, it makes me think about this beautiful and really appropriate song.

It also reminds me my childhood, dreaming of banging my heels and find myself traveling automatically, as in The Wizard of Oz. Oh, how I'd love to bang my heels and return in Kauai right now! ;)

HAVE A WONDERFUL AND COLORFUL DAY, EVERYONE!

P.S. See how this man have been -and still is, in a way- loved! Funerals should always be as beautiful as this one. A celebration.
PEACE

Zero One : A taste of paradise.

I’m just coming back from a too short and so sweet adventure! For twelve days, I’ve been experiencing gardening on a just-getting-started permaculture land in Kauai. This land is called Zero One. At this very moment, three lovely people are living there in permanence: Jackson, Agustin and Mea, who have been such good hosts, and became good friends!

I said I’ve been experiencing gardening, but it has been so much more! It’s even more about pure and simple friendship and abundance. Abundance of food and of beauties from Mother Nature, and abundance of love and joyful moments, from such a giver community. Everyday has brought its lot of awe moments. I've simply fallen in love. With the island, with the people, with the way I was living it.

Permaculture is a type of agriculture that reproduces the relationship patterns occurring in natural ecologies. Its approach maximizes the results and minimizes the efforts of work, while providing for a human settlement's needs. See my previous post concerning permaculture HERE!

Permaculture takes an observation time equaling the working time and the enjoying time. It is one third of each, and oh, how we love that! It takes observing time to identify the natural resources given by the earth, and the needs of the land and of its inhabitants. But when comes the time to work and once the system is launched, things change so quickly, and the main word is “abundance”! And how we love this too! It is a give and take relationship with Mother Nature. She gives us a good soil, we plant it, she waters it, we harvest its results and feed her back with the yummy wastes, and it all start again. Full circle. Permaculture usually makes babies: it most of the time becomes a similar relationship of give and take with the neighborhood as well. What goes around comes around! Live in peace and harmony with every kinds of beings surrounding you, give them love without any expectations for returns, and watch out how you’ll be fulfilled with happiness!

Mama Felicia, from the home school garden Akamai Backyard, teaching us how to prepare and replant the Taro, a native plant, from which we can cook the root.

The team, leaving Akamai Backyard with all the Felicia's gifts to Zero One's gardens. Thank you Felicia!

Thus, Zero One is just popping out right now. It has had its first observation time, and I’ve been arriving there right into the real big “action time”! While I’ve been there, in just a couple of days, we created so much! Take a look to Jackson’s post RIGHT HERE: I promise you’ll be amazed! One day, we received a truck load of 30 cubic yards of compost and mulch, which we transformed, almost by magic, into two big and three medium gardens, plus into a couple more of smallest ones all around some trees. And how all this happened? In only five days or so, while connecting with some other friends and neighbors who came by to give a hand, on their way to the beach with their surfboards, and by using no machinery nor electric tools!! Isn’t it wonderful?! Just using our hands, our heart, shovels, forks, a wheel barrel and a "oo bar", which is a tool (like a heavy metal rod) used by the natives to dig and plant. It felt so good to have done all that in listening to the birds singing, to the wind blowing and sometimes the thin rain falling. Aaaaah! We could hear the enjoyment of each of us by the sound of our deep breath intakes or singings/whistlings. Nobody has been rushing, we all had so much fun in doing it and we shared a lot. Each day, we even had time to go to the beach, to practice our balance on the "slack-line", to go in town for some special needs, or to go for a walk of harvests (everywhere we were going, fruits trees were surrounding us: mangos, papayas, litchis, passion fruits, bananas. What have I said before? ABUNDANCE!! Yes!).

The Chalice garden (at its first step) is the first and biggest garden I've been working on. 

The first step to make your new garden: a few layers of cardboard (best if chickens have been previously pooping on it!). Give it a good shower, then cover it with green wastes and/or dried palm leaves. Cover it with a layer of compost, then with a layer of mulch. Ideally, repeat these two last layers if you are planting veggies that need a deep rooting. Finish it all by emphazing the outlines with nice logs or rocks. There is your new garden, as quick as to snap fingers, without any digging! Wow, that feels good, man! :D

The WiFi garden

I feel so much recharged and healthy! And I am so confident into a much better future! My role is not only to keep doing my best to do my part in this universe, but also to convince you about how much we would all gain in starting permaculture lands everywhere around us, across the world! How we would all gain in producing no pollution, and even working on reducing the one made by others. How we would all gain in generating NO WASTE (yeah, this is one more amazing fact on Zero One: the production of waste is ZERO! Damn, it feels so good!), and in producing compost. Gain in buying and eating locally and organic. Gain in making wise choices for our purchases, to recycle or compost every single little thing. How many wins are in this situation, tell me? I assure you that it doesn’t take more time and energy, and it even makes you feel so fulfilled! It improves our world, it improves relationships, it reduces our life cost, and it even gives us the time to enjoy life! What more can we ask for?

Do not wait! It only belongs to each of us to use those great powers! Let’s change things and make a better world. Each of us! With our own two hands… and our heart!

PEACE. LOVE. HAPPINESS.
MAY WE ALL LIVE IN THE ABUNDANCE!

Forever grateful to Jesse, Jackson, Mea and Justin to have given me the opportunity to live and share this experience! Thank you Felicia to have shared all your knowledge!
Other thank yous go to you, Tiana and Amanda, for your friendship and your contagious joyfulness! JP, Riki, Stephanie, Indi (who else in "i" am I missing?!): you all are special and lovely people!
I love you all! You all have been such givers! Aloha and Mahalo! ♥

Quebec's National Day

Heyo! I'm coming back in Quebec just in time to celebrate our national day, the Saint-Jean-Baptiste! And what a great day this will be! I'm so in! Completely fresh from my super amazing trip to Zero One, a wonderful land of permaculture in Hawaii. I'll let you know more about my trip in a next post, I promise it's coming up! But today, let's celebrate the Quebec! Yaayy!!

Saint-Jean-Baptiste is love sharing at a wide scale for the people here. I would love my province to feel like this on every single day! I'm working this way, but I'm just a little grain... but still one! Trying to sand off the kinda stiffy side of my fellows, and make smile to be contagious.

For the occasion, let's share this video of a local group:

I'm out now (wearing my blue shirt, of course!), for so much fun, smiles and love spreading!

MUCH LOVE TO YOU ALL!

The sound of love - Say Hey (I Love You) - Michael Franti & Spearhead

Hey there! Let's post one more song before I fly, for what promises to be the greatest trip of my life! No pressure Jackson: it's most because I've almost never traveled! ;)

The sound of love is a series of posts, sharing videos that spread the love, so here it goes again...

Awweee! High-five to Michael Franti for having created this marvellous song and video! A big thank also goes to Tyler and SuperForester Mathew, both from The Sun Shines On, where I first watched it!

Sing and dance this "sticky" song the whole day long, my dear friends!
P.S: I'll tell you more about this trip when I'll be back!
LOVE

Read this!

Two or three months ago, I've sent this to many close friends, and I even shared it on Facebook, but I don't know why I never though about sharing this here on my blog? So here it is! If you have one thing to read today, for a first or the umpteenth time (we always need some reminds), it is this one:

The SuperForest Humanifesto

The SuperForest Humanifesto

What is going to save the human race?

Please.
Thank you.

Three words that will totally change this planet.
More than solar power. More than recycling. More than wind energy.

Why?

Because if we all started treating the people and things that we interact with every day with respect and compassion, the effects would ripple through every aspect of our lives, transforming society.

Our parents taught us the manners “rule-sets” that we use every day, and as a result, we feel that we have (through years of introspection) begun walking the path towards enlightenment. Our manners dictate the way we treat the external world, the Environment. We feel that it is primarily our manners that dictate our success as humans.

Folks talk about wanting to save the “Environment”, and that conjures up images of bubbling brooks and unspoiled forests. But “the Environment” isn’t just greenery and pretty scenery. It’s our slums, our airports, our houses, our supermarkets.
The Environment is everything that disappears when you close your eyes.

If you want to improve it, you must begin with what you see and encounter every single day of your life.

Before we can set about elevating our present society from a carbon-based one to a solar-electric one, knowing full well that solar-electric decentralized power means a higher quality of life for all, we must first pause and ask ourselves: Why? What is worth saving?

Human Consciousness.

Our gift and curse as humans is our incredible consciousness. We are aware, and that is the greatest and worst thing we’ve got going for us. Because we can clearly see how well we could be living, how politely we could be treating one another, how incredible life could be; we feel it is our duty to delight and inform our fellow humans in the hopes of creating a better world.

There is no reason every human on Earth could not have access to:
Clean Water
Nutritious Un-modified Food
Shelter
Education
Open Source Communication
Freedom from Oppression and Fascism

But, as is painfully obvious, most humans don’t have those things.
Most humans don’t have two of the six!

They could, but they don’t.

Why?

Bad Manners.

Nearly every religion this planet has yet produced has as one of its tenets the idea that to be happy, you must treat others as you yourself would hope to be treated.
A failure in this respect is simply bad form.

When a company decides to dump its waste into a river that others downstream use for drinking water, that is bad manners.

When a society chooses to isolate its citizenry in prisons and not offer any chance at rehabilitation, that is bad manners.

When a person decides to walk into a school and open fire on their classmates, that is extremely bad manners.

That is why we MUST START NOW.

All new generations must be schooled in the art of good manners if we are to survive, let alone flourish, as a species.

Try your hardest to treat others as you hope they would treat you, and actively look for ways to help the people around you. Do this from a pure place within you and watch the effects ripple outward!

Why?

Because so few are doing it.

Good manners make you stand out like a struck match in a dark room.

Three Essentials:

Make eye contact with anyone you interact with. Smiling is optional but highly encouraged.
Use the words “Please” and “Thank You” as often as you can.
Seek out ways to improve the lives of others. This can be as small as carrying someones bag up a flight of stairs, or holding a door open.

Do these three things and your life will change immeasurably. And you will begin to change the lives of those who come into contact with you in a measurable and positive way.

We are filled with optimism and hope.

Thank you for reading this.

Team SuperForest

* * *

I told you! Right? Now that you have read this, don't you feel like fulfilled with optimism? That you would like to go out on the street and smile wide at everybody you're passing by? Well, please do! You are loved, and you are love itself: give a part of it! :)
And, of course, the next thing to do is to share this with everybody that you think they could be interested in!

For this wonderful texte in any other language (translated by some kindful superforesters - they are all kindful! - from all around the world), click on the link below:
http://teamsuperforest.org/superforest/2008/04/23/the-superforest-humanifesto-2/

MUCH LOVE TO EVERYONE OF YOU!

The suburb

Last weekend, I have been invited by one of my roommate's friends to spend time with five of them in his place. We all had a great time. I’ve been doing many things for the first time of the year, and I even did the first train trip of my whole life!

On satrurday, we went to the park and played frisbee, soccer and football. Then we had a BBQ, a few beers and great talks. Unfortunately, I have had to renounce to do camping, ‘cause the night was too chilly, so we all did "indoor camping".

The next day, all six went for a bycicle ride. And what a long and nice ride! Before we know it, we had more than 10km to the odometer, so we decided to continue and go have a lunch to the beach.

My roommate and I at the beach in Oka.

I’m taking you with me for a part of the ride with this short video (excuse the french speaking on it). This is the moment that we all stopped and stood on the side of the bike path to stare at a couple of Canada geeses and their little babies, a rare occasion!

Once back to our friend’s place, many hours and 34km later, we just sat down, chitchatted, and look at books of pictures, exhausted by the ride. Another BBQ, and hop! It’s time to catch the train!

Thank you Alexis for this memorable weekend! We all have appreciated your hospitality, and it also have been so great to leave the big and noisy city of Montreal for these two days! I’ll find a way soon to share the other videos with the five of you!

I hope you all also spent an amazing weekend, dear readers! Now, let's (myself) grow and eat tons of sprouts to help my body to forget all this meat that I have, once more, fed him with, and let's (all of us) start this new week with a wide smile and lightheartedness!
LOVE!