Spotlight on Denman Island Artists

• Matsuki Masutani (poetry) (page D1)
• Jane Masutani (country life -- with an edge) (page D3)

RawForLife Raw & Sustainable Living Ezine

• Rawganique.com Blogs -- you can recommend new hemp products here
• Edible Flowers (page 1)
• Michael McCarthy: En Route to Portland (page 2)
• Rawganique Convergence (page 3)
• Random Ruminations (page 4)
• On Hybrids and Such (page 5)
• Steve Scharmer's 36-day Fast (page 6)
• The Simple Life IS the Good Life (page 7)
• Raw Veganism and the Protein Myth? (page 8)
• Rawganique Diet (page 9)
• September 11, 2001 (page 10)
• No-till Vegan Organic Gardening (page 11)
• Rawganique.com's Story
• Humanure (book review)
• Hemp Facts & Info
• Hemp & Raw Food Books (30% off)
• Free Gourmet Living Foods Recipes

All opinions expressed herein, excellent though they may be, are those of their authors and do not in anyway imply agreement from us or our staff. We publish them here solely in the spirit of sharing and in the hope that they may be of service to others who are also seeking a simpler, more sustainable, and healthier way of life. We do not give recommendations or advice and cannot be held responsible for them. Please seek advice from professionals if you need help. There are also many excellent books out there by qualified professionals to help you on your path to health. May your journey be a gentle, loving, happy, safe, and fulfilling one.

Rawganique Convergence & Hemp Economy
Touch Jamikorn

I have traveled halfway across the world, done a lot of sundry things, and lived through a lot of heartaches and dashed hopes only to find that the good life I had been looking for can only be found within and that I had had the capacity to live it all along, if I had but taken a moment to look inside myself.

I was 14 when I left Thailand behind, vowing never to return and promising myself a better future ahead in the US, which to my impressionable mind was synonymous with grandeur and the good life. I was going to live the American Dream in all its glory. What I ended up living instead was a life of tremendous stress, aggravated by asthma, a childhood condition that propitiously returned soon after I took up the Standard American Diet that was high in dairy and meat products, and more pimples, migraines, and excess weight than I knew what to do with. I was also totally burnt out by the time I was 19. Luckily, I came across a Natural Hygienist who convinced me to become a raw foodist, an act which changed my life for the better in every possible way; it was the very best thing that ever happened to me at that time.

It's been ten years since that historic moment and 15 since I struck out on my own, and I'm glad to say I've finally found the Good Life, one that, however bears little resemblance to the "good life" I had been American-Dreaming of as a child.

I live now in the middle of a temperate rainforest, surrounded by all manners of evergreens and whatever is left of the wild that thrives in this wet and moderate micro-climate known as the Pacific Northwest. I eat from my own vegan organic garden. I answer the call of Nature in a bucket, the contents of which I throw in with veggie scraps and spoiled hay in my huge outdoor no-work compost pile.

I walk around barefoot whenever and wherever I can. For that matter, I walk around naked whenever and wherever I can. My little homestead on a south-facing hill is completely isolated from any prying eyes. I grow subtropicals and even some tropicals, right here in coastal BC. Perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part, but the way I see it is, I've got nothing to lose and so much delectables such as paws paws, loquats, jujubes, among others, to gain. My love of fruits borders on the obsessive, but what does one expect from a guy born to such abundance that Thailand is blessed it! Durians, mangosteens, FlowerNectar mangoes, Sapodillas, you name it, Thailand has it all. What a sweet obsession to have, yum!

I shower on the porch from a portable solar unit, which is not much more than a black bag that on sunny days heats up my shower water in a few hours and which allows for an amazing exercise in relaxation. Ah! the warmth of the sun and the cool of the ocean breeze on the naked skin; if there's a more pleasurable experience, I don't know of it. On a not-so-sunny day, however, I would either skip the shower altogether (I'm from the tropics after all), or--if I absolutely feel the need to shower--grudgingly but very quickly scrub myself under the lukewarm-to-cold spray that dribbles languidly from the shower's obliging plastic head. My homestead has no hot water system and no heat source except for a wood stove and a little heat panel that doesn't do so much as heave a lukewarm sigh from time to time. Coming from overheated apartments in big cities, I was anxious at first but soon pleasantly surprised to find that you could actually get used to the brisk indoor air, even grow to crave it; now I feel almost asthmatic whenever I enter a home that's ill-ventilated; fresh air is invigorating, stale air is lethargizing. On extremely cold days, however, I do use a small portable heater to warm just myself--but not the whole house--up.

Just as I went raw overnight after spending all day talking to Wayne Johahn, the Natural Hygienist who looked so youthful and energetic he couldn't possibly be in his forties, and staying up all night reading Raw Foodist Propaganda, a book I had accidentally come across in a tiny health food store in Bennington, Vermont, so I had the septic system in my homestead disconnected after staying up all night--wide-eyed and feverishly inspired--to finish in one go Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure, which I had ordered from the library on a whim, thinking to have a good laugh over a "comic" book. After finishing the book, however, my decision to disconnect my septic system could hardly be called whimsical; the facts laid out by Joseph Jenkins were compelling and spoke directly to my heart. Jenkins himself has been composting his own human manure and that of his family and guests for 20 odd years! Now that's what I call enlightened and ahead-of-the-times. This book made so much sense to me I had to start practicing humanure composting right away, in the same way that raw veganism made so much sense to me that I had to convert right away to raw veganism after learning about it. When you come across something fundamental like these two concepts, you've just got to act on it right away. There's no sense in persisting in something that you know is detrimental to you and to the environment.

I can now no longer bear to defecate and urinate in drinking water (for that is what flush water is) and send it down a tube that will somehow find its way into our precious groundwater, contaminating it and the great big dump that our oceans have become. We spend tons of money chemicalizing our water so that they're fit to be consumed and then we turn around and soil it with our own wastes. What a waste of a precious and irreplaceable resource!

The issue is not cleanliness, for my humanure toilet is extremely clean; rather, it's about fear of the unknown, fear of the unconventional, and, when it comes down to it, fear of feces: fecophobia. Until I read The Humanure Handbook, I never gave so much as a thought to what I was doing defecating in drinking water. Now that I know, I put the sacrilegious act of defecating and urinating in water up there with butchering a cow and eating its corpse. Perhaps that's why I don't much travel anymore: humanure toilets are rather harder to find than raw vegan restaurants, which have thankfully mushroomed everywhere like nettles in BC.

I choose to live the way I do not because I'm forced to but because I want to. I have never been this happy in my entire life, not even when I first discovered that I could understand the words of Shakespeare as he wrote them or Homer's as he sang them, nor when I switched overnight to raw veganism and began after some weeks to feel the wonder of that mysterious thing called life pulsating through me. All these are wonderful things that did change my life for the better in countless little ways, making me a better person in the process, but none of them came even close to being the life-changing experience that homesteading in the raw and living the total raw-organic-unique lifestyle has been for me.

Being happy is my only goal in life now; my motto now is: if I'm not happy each and every moment of my existence, then I only have myself to blame. Despite all the madness in the world, there's still so much to be thankful for and happy about. Whereas the good life to me used to mean big cars and high-paying jobs and recognition from people who supposedly mattered, it now means communing with the eternal spirit of the forest and the warmth and comfort of the soil. The good life you can feel good about isn't hard to achieve at all. It's in fact quite simple and within reach of anyone who's tired of life as it's being lived by millions in the world today, anyone who is sick of all the gibberish and commotion and hatred and terrorism that are out there passing for normal, and anyone who's angry and upset and disheartened by all the willful degeneration and violence that the human mind has succumbed to and who thinks there must be something better than this incessant, never-ending grind of modern life. Well, folks, all you've got to do is take a deep breath and plunge sight unseen into the mysterious river of life on trust.

If you're not happy then you must change; don't hold on to something just because you've had it since you could remember. The price you pay for doodling in your unhappiness is never worth the temporary and deceptive comfort it affords because the price is always too high. If you're a raw vegan but still stressed out and unhappy with any aspect of your life, whether it be your job, your surroundings, your building, your friends, etc... then it's time to change. Wasn't it Einstein who said that if you keep trying the same thing over and over, you'll always end up with the same result? Well, duh! If you want a different result, then try something different! If you're knocking your head bloody against the wall, then it's time you do something about it. The good news is that change is much easier than you might think; life is change and to achieve the good life, you've got to make good changes to your life. 'Unless you change course, it is quite likely that you will end up where you are headed.'

Take me for instance. I lived for years in downtown Manhattan, and if you had asked me then what I thought of packing everything I owned and moving to a little island where it rains constantly for 6 months out of the year, where I'd be car-less and 10 kilometers away from the nearest store by way of rough and pebbly roads, then I would have said you were crazy for even asking me such a silly question. Of course I wouldn't leave New York for the world. I was feeling useful in New York. I was getting somewhere, achieving something. I didn't want to miss out on things and all great things happen only in a place like New York. That's why I took in seven to eight shows, concerts, operas, and whatnot a week, literally, and read self-help and self-improvement books galore just to keep up the illusion that I was squeezing every ounce of usefulness out of my hectic life. My days blurred into my nights and I was caught right in the middle of it all. I could not conceive of the idea of slowing down and taking a moment to examine who I was or where I was headed. I was groping around in the dark and still thought I was doing all right. Now I see that that was all madness. As I said, I walk barefoot now on grassy earth, eat from my garden, and do my business in a bucket, so things are quite different with me than they used to be.

But I haven't mentioned that, of all the fibers in the whole wide world, only hemp graces my body and home. Where 100% hemp is not available, I resort to organic cotton and flax. I want only the best for the environment and the best for me and hemp is by far the very best! You can go to our Hemp Products Page and click on Hemp Info to read all about hemp and why it's such an amazing plant.

Which brings me to Rawganique.com, of which RawForLife ezine is an essential part. Rawganique.com stands for raw-organic-unique; Klaus, Nok, Chao, and I, raw vegans all, have created it to promote "the two most powerful concepts on earth today", as my friend Michael McCarthy put it: Hemp and Raw Veganism. At Rawganique.com, you can shop eco-friendly hemp & organic cotton and organic raw food products that are light on the planet and light on the pocket. If you haven't already, you must check out our Store! It's full of useful, stylish, and eco-friendly hemp & organic cotton clothing, bed, and bath products for men and women (and for children too, soon) as well as hemp paper products and delicious raw organic hemp foods and other delectables as raw organic almond butter and tahini. We've got non wood hemp printer paper, non wood hemp journals, hemp rugs, hemp T-shirts, hemp denim and twill jeans, hemp scarves, hemp gloves, hemp socks, hemp shoes, hemp sandals, hemp clothing for men, hemp clothing for women, hemp durian mitts (honest!), hemp hats, hemp special bundles for extra savings, and much more (don't forget hemp gifts and gift certificates), all of which are beautiful, cozy, comfy, strong, and eco-friendly, for hemp is a fast-growing, temperate, and versatile annual plant which requires no pesticide or fertilizer for its growth.

We've also got the purest whole raw Maca products available; Maca is an ancient super-root that dates back at least to the time of the Incans; to find out more about Maca and why such physicians and healers as Dr. Gabriel Cousens use and recommend Maca to their clients, click here. On the raw knowledge and equipment front, we've got such amazing books as Rhio's Hooked on Raw, Paul Nison's The Raw Life, Solomae Sonanda's Raw Kids, and of course the immutable Humanure Handbook & Loving and Leaving the Good Life, and such essential raw cuisine equipment as The Spiral Slicer, HP3 blenders, and GreenLife Juicers.

Can you tell I'm very committed and excited about what we do at Rawganique.com? I hope so! And it's all because I'm so happy and honored to be helping these products find their way to the mainstream. You can access all our products via the menu bar on top of this and every other page at Rawganique.com or browse our full online catalogue by category at the Store. We've got the highest quality (we've been using these very products ourselves for years) coupled with the very best prices. If you don't see what you're looking for, then contact us! If it's an eco-friendly product, then we'll get it for you. We've got secure online ordering as well as toll-free ordering by phone at 1.877.Raw.Hemp (1.877.729.4367).

The equation here at Rawganique.com is simple and logical: Hemp + Raw Veganism = Simple Life = Good Life = Love, peace, and a better, brighter future for our children and ourselves, a future we can actually look forward to and be proud of. We've made quite a mess of the world we live in and we've only got this one world in which to live!

It stands to reason that the time is ripe for a change, and it's up to us to do it, and that's ultimately what Rawganique.com is about: a proactive concept website that takes no prisoners and holds no bars. Our aim is to create good and clean Karma all around. We can all do what we can and begin at least by refusing to buy bleached and dyed cotton products as well as synthetic fibers now! Conventional cotton products require more than 25% of all worldwide pesticide use to grow, process, and manufacture! Think of that. Imagine the world with 25% less pesticide and tons and tons less of toxic chemicals that are the byproducts of the clothing industry! Support vegan organic farming by buying only vegan organically grown foods or growing your own, and the percentage of chemical use, all toxic to us and the environment, goes down even more! We can sure live without such disasters-in-the-making as top soil erosion, contaminated waterways, acid rain, animal cruelty, and other unsustainable practices.

Women, stop using conventional disposable menstrual pads! Many of them contain toxic chemicals, and all of them fill landfills with non-biodegradable junk. Alternatives exist: use Lunapads or similar washable organic cotton menstrual pads. Men, wear your hemp boxers and show your true fibers! If you own clothing and furniture that are made of questionable materials, then use them up until their utility value is gone--as it's also important to reuse and recycle--but by all means support the hemp industry if you're buying something new! Let's do our part in rushing the solution forward rather than adding to the problem at hand, for we don't have much time. We really don't. At the rate we're going, we'll be on Disaster Lane before we know it. And doesn't it say something about the modern economy that a major jeans manufacturer discontinued its line of hemp jeans only shortly after it was introduced? The reason for this, so I've heard, was that hemp jeans are too durable and last too long. What manufacturers want is for people to replace their bleached, dyed, & pesticided cotton jeans often, the more often the better. But that's not what I want! I want something that's strong, beautiful and, above all, mindful. So let us build a new economy, one that is based on respect, love, trust, and health for all. Hemp can bring about all that, and so much more. It's not only fiber for all our clothing needs, it's also delicious and nutritious food that karma-free.

Another source of inspiration that ties it all together for me is the Nearings' pioneering work in the good life concept. Their Good Life and Loving and Leaving the Good Life are my homesteading bibles. One of the Nearings' influences was McFadden, who preached the gospel of raw food at the beginning of the century and because of McFadden, the Nearings kept to an abstemious fare of mostly raw vegetarian foods in season all their lives; Scott lived to be over a hundred years old and died in peace without pain. Helen and Scott were intellectuals who worked as much with their hands as with their minds. They built their own dwelling (that's my next dream) and tilled the soil for their gardens themselves (tilling is one of the very few things that they did that I don't do, but that's a topic for another time, same place) and still found time to travel the world giving lectures and to write books on sustainable living that jump started a few back-to-the-land movements; their books are still as powerful, compelling, valid, and relevant today as they were to our fathers and grandfathers 60 years ago.

Now if only all these great minds and great concepts I've outlined in this article can come together! Just imagine what effect the resulting convergence would have on the world of today, which is ambling along in hopeless confusion and despair! Raw veganism, humanure composting, hemp culture, work, exercise, worthwhile intellectual endeavors, sustainable and humble living, sunshine on naked skin, ahimsa awareness, fresh air, pure water, rich soil that's teeming with zillions of hardworking organisms, positive thoughts and of course mindfulness are powerful concepts in and of themselves; brought together, they are truly dynamite and have the potential to effect a true and lasting transformation of the magnitude that we don't even have words for. As part of a total, holistic concept, they can and will forever bias the world towards the side of light, dispelling forever the darkness that's been hovering over humanity for far too long.

Now, that's what I call inspiration! So get inspired, do what you can, take it to the limit, so that together we can propel this arthritic world of ours forward. Let there be light. Let there be love, peace, and happiness, for it's all one: one love, one peace, one happiness. Ours is a fragile planet, let's tread it with care.

Yours in peace, sustainability, mindfulness--
Touch

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