Going all Natural

For many years I have had the same thought: If I was able to move into a cabin tomorrow, in the middle of no where, I do not think I would have one problem getting technology out of my life. I believe it would be very easy for me to live, especially if I had some dogs and 2 other people with me, (plus the occasional visitors) without any technology in my life at all.

Well, hold on a second, I shouldn't say *any* technology should I? Maybe not, because I can already sort of feel the urge to let a "few pieces" of tech slip in. I would want to have at least a record player, right? So I could still listen to music. That seems like a natural enough desire. I would want that , wouln't I? What would I do without the ability to listen to music.....? I think I might be lost then. But by agreeing to let the music in my "cabin in the hills", that means I also have to automatically let electricity in, and then whats going to happen next? Then I might just think I want lights, and a TV, "to occasionally watch films", and I suppose a phone too, in the case of some emergency. And now of course I'm already beginning to sound like someone whose not anti-technology at all! So you know what? Fuck it. We will scratch even the vinyl records, and we will use another little sneaky plan: I will get some device like an Ipod and I will only charge it every few months at some other location that has electricity. When I go to town, for example. Then I'll head back to my non-electrified cabin and use the device sparingly. I'll purposely get the device that advertises the longest lasting battery, of course.

With that out of the way, then, am I pretty much in the clear? Some people might not believe me--they'll doubt my efforts--but in a very real way, I think so, and I'll tell you why I honestly believe I would make it with just that: I've simply had enough of electric/digital technology. Which means to say: I think I've eaten enough of it, over the first decades of my life now, to actually last the rest of my life, even if I were to live for a very long time, hardly using it. I am a completely modernized person. I have eaten my fair share of the great modern diet. I've eaten more than enough of it to now, presumably, subsist for a very long time, and never feel totally disconnected from the "world as she is" in my own time.

See, I'm not declaring that I think everyone ought not use technology, and I am especially not declaring that children (like those poor Amish kids, who I pity deeply) should not use technology. I'm all for everyone using technology, if they want to, and I definitely think that people coming up ought to be using technology. I think it's very important that children use technology, actually, because I find what has happened to people like the Amish very bizarre, and frightening. Those people are actually unable to understand the modern devices and probably have a very hard time learning things, since they only get introduced when they're older. For me this is not a problem. I, you see, and probably you... we are digital natives. So , at this point, heading into a non-technological world like that cabin in the woods would be to head into a foreign world. And foreign worlds are pretty fun, at least in my opinion. I am obsessed with going back to live in Italy, precisely because it's now foreign and far from me now. Same with the natural world, more or less. The two desires are very connected.  

I've passed so much of my life solely in this weird tech world, gorging on it, that  I now would be able to pass my time gorging on the "au natural" world, for quite awhile, until I was hungry for tech again. To put it simply, I have mostly lost interest in technology. I'm bored now. I've been at the carnival for awhile and I'm bored now. I find myself often yearning to get out. I just don't know how to do it. It seems impossible......

 But how do I know I am bored, one might ask, if I am still always using tech, day in and day out? It is simple, in my opnion: I don't really properly follow any new tech.  For myself, tech really has a rather limited role: I use it to read novels, to talk with a few, scattered friends, and to write stuff like this .That's the majority of my tech use. Everything else I do with it, like watch the news, use Twitter, watch porn, etcetc, all just tends to give me a headache and make me feel like I'm eating junk food. I could easily do without all that stuff, especially if I had a wifey out there in the woods with me.

 The problem, of course, is that, due to my poverty, I can't comfortably disconnect without also losing the stuff I like.I wouldn't be able to even hear of new novels coming out, if it were not for my connection to tech!  So I put up with the stuff I do not like in order to make that exchange. If I was somehow able to still get all my novels, still be able to write comfortably, and still be able to occasionally talk with friends, what's the problem? I just don't think there would be one. At this point, I really think I would actually be happier. I would love that feeling of absolute disconnect from everything, and in truth I think it's that feeling of "disconnect' that I have been longing for this whole time. Some people seem to find that feeling disconcerting. For me, perhaps because I am a writer, it is not disconcerting at all. In fact, I often feel like I'm struggling a great deal to write of certain things, because I am unable to disconnect.

For example, the reader might think that my dream to go out to the cabin in the woods means I would also want to sit there and write of natural topics, constantly. As though I would scribble about watching squirrels and birds, and how I go fishing, and how I take hikes in the woods every day with my dogs, etcetc. Would I perhaps occasionally write of that stuff? Yes. In my diaries, I suppose. At the same time as that, however, I think I would also write a great deal about the modern world itself, once I was out in that situation, because like I'm saying : I would still be a wholly modern writer, considering my upbringing. Hence. I think I would inevitably slip into a series of reminiscences about my life "back here" in the modern tech world, and a lot of those reminiscences would probably turn into short stories or even novels...I don't know. I mean, the reader has to keep in mind that, even though I am talking about living in isolation in a cabin in the deep woods, I am not necessarily talking about a complete societal disconnect. I would still occasionally go into town (once a month), I would still pick up some newspapers and see what was up, and of course I would still get the new books as they were being released. I wouldn't just be cut out entirely here. It's just that I would cut out, you know, 75% of my technological intake. I would spend most of my time engaged with the natural world as the good God created it. 

It's almost as though I think people make far too big of a deal out of the new tech world and the old natural world being "oh so different". They see them as being these totally separate things, and in many ways they are, but in many ways they also are not. There are, after all, only about 15 waking hours in a day, for most folks, and those 15 hours are pretty easy to pass, so far as I see it. They're especially easy to pass,  if you are out in the deep woods in a cabin stocked up with books and dogs and things. In this theoretical "cabin in the woods" situation, I would probably pass my mornings just as I do now, writing for 4-5 hours or so, and then I would head out to hike, to fish, to hunt,gather wood,  and perhaps also to check on a small bit of crops I would try to grow.  All of this would take a considerable amount of time, not to mention all the actual cooking I would now have to do,    since I would not have my microwave with me or ability to get food delivered anymore. A lot of my time would perhaps be passed cooking, actually, in a situation like this. And of course I say all of this just to try and stress how not boring it would be. Anyone who thinks it would be boring is not thinking of this all logically, in my opinion. Boring is when there is nothin to do. In a cabin in the woods that has no electricity, there is plenty to do. If anything, there is almost too much to do. It's the modern day that starts to look boring, you see, in comparison to the "au natural" life,  which was filled with necessary chores that machines now handle in our own time. Or of course other people you pay...

 The problem with the entire cabin in the woods fantasy, of course, is that, as simple as it all sounds, it ironically costs a shit load of dough to get going, or at least it seems that way. For starters you have to have the money to buy the cabin and presumably the bit of land the cabin is on, then you have to have some money to furnish it, and you also have to have money to get all the supplies you'll need out there (like guns to hunt with, and so on). I'm also not entirely sure that there is anywhere left in the world (I might be mistaken about this) where a man and a woman would legitimately be able to subsist solely on things they hunted . I think a lot of other food would still have to be regularly bought, and this is a big problem when you are talking about a situation where you have no income, since you're out in the middle of no where in the woods. Therefore, you would have to have some other source of income coming to you from the outside world. So, theoretically, if I could somehow make it as an author in the modern world, perhaps I would be able to thus make the jump into the natural world, and vanish like I dream of doing, whilst writing books that people in the outside world kept reading and buying, at least occasionally. Sounds far fetched of course, doesn't it? Could make me cry!

Oh well. The modern world just ...perhaps...has no need for another Thoreau sort....