Making jam

"I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmelade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor." - D.H Lawrence

I came across this quote this morning which neatly sums up many of my morning shower musings. As an environmentalist and filmmaker I spent some years being angry at the world, then just frustrated, sometimes was defeatist and disillusioned with humanity, but most often I have stayed buoyant enough to believe I can help make positive change in the world. But how do you stay buoyant and self-motivated in the face of impossible difficulties and not burn out? Every activist has to ask this of themselves or else their activist days are short lived.

Starting this blog now has been partly inspired by reading "Julie and Julia" this weekend by Julie Powell. I had been thinking about blogging but often had the self defeatist thought "what is the point of adding my thoughts and words into the already overfull cup of the babble of humanity?" But Powell's book, based on her blog, gave me great relief with its humour and honesty. Women's voices are often lost in the din and it had been a while since I had read anything as authentic that had cut straight through to my heart. Powell reminded me that all voices are worth being heard, despite any self doubt or community discouragement.

Back to marmelade. Partly what I loved about what Powell was expressing about cooking was through it refinding the ability to feel like we can take control of our world and add beauty, love and creativity to it. At the time of the Julie and Julia project Powell was working opposite the gaping site of the Two Towers disaster. I am sure that every day she felt that the world was out of her control, in the same way anybody who cares about this planet and the way we humans have been treating it feel. But in cooking she could restore some little quarter of the type of world she wanted to live in.