The Clearing – LeelaMaps

Cob

Cob

Art

Art

Let’s Cob! Noon 4/1

Tags Cob Proposal, event, Proposal Read the Note

Join us on April Fool’s Day, 2023, for a free cob workshop!

A safely located mudslide has liberated a lot of perfectly-gritty clay soil, ready for building a cob structure.

(Cob is a building style that uses soil, vegetation, and found materials.)

Here, you may cob bare-naked!

Available Materials

A ton of gritty mud
Woodchips
Freshly cut scotch broom, an invasive woody bush
Dry scotch broom
Buckets

Proposed Cob Structures

- A cave in the shape of an open-mouthed sun
- Something else that is beautiful and inhabitable

How to Participate

Arrive at Lupin Lodge sometime Saturday (4/1) morning or early afternoon, tell the front office that you’re here to visit Leela for cob at the Upper Meadow.

Lupin Lodge is a clothing-optional naturist resort. Bring an ID for a brief background check.

Coordination Contact

Hidden Village

Tags Ghost Town, Human Story, Off-Grid, travel Read the Note

Refills: Bare Market

Tags Drawdown, EcoResource, Refill Read the Note

🫙

Growing up with Shorinji Kempo

Tags Apology, memoir, Shorinji Kempo Read the Note

Starting at age 5 1/2, I practiced Shorinji Kempo, a Japanese physical defense practice and form of Zen Buddhism.

20 years later, after attaining the rank of san dan (3rd degree black belt) I ceased practicing.

I greatly admired the tales of the founder, Doshin So, who had a spirit of righteous rebellion that got lost in the waves of blithe Japanese hierarchy that overtook the Shorinji Kempo organization after his passing.

I left to discover my own righteous calling.

I’m sorry, Hagata-Sensei, for leaving abruptly. At the time I did not have the words to tell you directly.

EcoFriend: Leela

Tags EcoFriend, ecofriendly, Profile Read the Note

Hi, my name is Leela.

I am an EcoFriend!

Motivations for ecofriendliness:

Imagery of vast expanses of farms (occupying supposedly 40% of land), plastic waste cluttering our oceans, land disruption from mines, runoff, and the absurd toll of suffering & death of animals from all of this.

Ways I am ecofriendly:

vegan
- raw vegan / fruitarian
buy in bulk, from local growers where reasonable
forage when available
compost:
- fruit waste
- local vegetation
- my humanure (human + manure)
- found carcasses
- biochar
diminishing use of chemical products
nudist
- live primarily naked
guerrilla gardener

Ecofriendly-ish practices I used to perform:

cooked-food vegan
wearing exclusively sarongs, tubes (no/minimal fabric waste) and used clothes

transform used clothes into fabricrete planters

Step-By-Step Instructions for an ecofriendly practice I recommend:

Source mulch (➕) and charcoal (➕)
1. mulch provides pleasant aromas and fungal colonies that break down various forms of organic debris into soil
2. charcoal added to compost is called “biochar,” and is studied to remediate soil of diverse contaminants, improve plant growth, induce drought-tolerance, and increase compost temperatures
Source a lidded bucket
Toss in a handful of charcoal and mulch in the bucket
When the time comes, do your 💩 business in the bucket
After use, deposit any toilet paper used and add another handful of mulch + charcoal to the bucket
- composted human manure (AKA humanure) is nearly universally implemented to fertilize practically all crops, including edible ones, since the beginning of agriculture
  - the exceptions to this are practically all downstream of humanure products in the form of compost and fertilizers

When full, go to an environment with diverse plants and incorporate bucket contents into a large, managed compost pile (🗺️) or in a discrete location (🗺️)

Keep an eye out for safe places to directly commit your waste into soil! Like the animal you are~

Ecofriendly practices I would like to Try:

0 packaging
- eating all fruit only from the land
  - especially durian
resting in cob structures (earthen dwelling made of vegetation and soil)
coordinating a massive decentralized movement of guerrilla gardening, that proliferates edible plants and stabilizes the climate
live freely in an abundantly growing food forest, among the rest of humanity

Live nearby? Let’s coordinate:

bulk purchases
local harvests
places to grow plants
compost
seeds
dispersing compost and seeds
safe spaces to be naked and tech-free

Support my ecofriendly Progress:

Donate to the LeelaMaps project
Map land & resources for performing ecofriendly practices
Share LeelaMaps!

Motivated to help the planet?

Share your EcoFriend profile!

My Raw Journey: Leela

Tags memoir, My Raw Journey, Profile, Raw Vegan Read the Note

This is where I began my journey to raw veganism.

My Raw Journey

How I found out about raw vegan diets:

I remember my sister describing fruitarianism to me sometime when I was a young child. It sounded idyllic.

I was raised as a vegetarian, consuming dairy, eggs, grains, beans, veg, fruits, etc.

In November of 2020 at this location, what was once the Here There camp, I was an adult who had the freedom to choose my diet among an array of free options.

Having recently returned to a cooked vegan diet (around 4 years) after sampling a meat diet (a few months), I meditated on what was the most economical and environmentally-friendly diet I could have. My thoughts returned to fruitarianism, though I was not sure it was healthy.

Regardless, I centered my diet on fruits that I foraged, which included:

feijoa (AKA pineapple guava): similar to guava
kousa: creamy, cheesy
persimmons: sweet and crispy or gooey
silverberry: astringent sweet little berries
unedos: both creamy and gritty, mango-banana flavor
lilly pilly berries: crispy & watery, clover-flavored
passionfruit: tangy wet seedy
ginkgo: dry fiber astringent cheesy umami
orange
pomegranate
apple
fig
plum

Within a few days, I found myself more active and productive: sprinting around Berkeley, barefoot in a loincloth bikini, charting fruit trees, and centering on my mission of thriving on locally grown resources.

However, after a couple months of being publicly harassed and conflicted with an emergent drive to be naked, I returned to cooked food. My energy sunk and I delved back into my social media addiction- where I learned about raw vegan culture (e.g. Freelee, zoodles).

How I have transitioned:

It started with working on my own mind.

I had phases of eating mostly mushrooms, as well as“medicinal” “organic” “superfoods.” These fads ended for me when I realized that this marketing was effective because of my distrust in foods and fear of the effects of normal food on my body.

At other points, I considered that wheat could be a superfood because of how it is the diet staple of so many people functioning in society. However, the development of idiosyncratic characteristics of both humans and the animals we have domesticated with foods, with grains as a filler, suggests to me that wheat and other grains are mutagenic and have broad deleterious effects that are hard to pin to any specific system, potentially weakening our capacity to observe the cause and effects of our own decisions based on culturally-transmitted beliefs.

Childhood nightmares: As a child, I dreamed about being offered greasy cooked potatoes. I could vividly see the glisten of the oil, which appeared to be poison. However, I had no rationale for this intuition, so I was afraid of appearing foolish to others or trying to spread fear. I took one bite potatoes (“One.”) and the glisten of the oil dimmed and seemed less eerie. I then continued to take more bites (“Two, three, four…”) and my sight faded until I woke up.

Even as I pursued raw vegan and fruitarian diets as an adult, any shaming or fear that I held onto would later translate into craving for nostalgic cooked food to which I caved. These nostalgic foods connected to feelings of safety established in childhood, which were placating a sense of fear that I had in the very practices that I was performing. Witnessing this experience, I could better empathize with my own and others’ psychological discomfort and looping behavior.

From my experience and those shared by others in raw vegan groups: the longer one goes without cooked food, especially grains, the more physically punishing they are to ingest. As most people consume these things on a daily basis and are not familiar with what it’s like to go without, it appears that our food cultures persist the broad desensitization to foods that were likely developed in periods of scarcity.

Salads, initially seasoned with conventional cuisine spices & herbs, have played a role in replacing traditional meals. Occasionally after eating greens, I feel an acute, funky “bleh” experience which seems like a relatively small compromise.

Broadly speaking, the experience of fruit is positive even when going without for a long time. (It has been a long time since I have gone without fruit, though most varieties of fruit I have gone without for days and weeks at a time.)

I keep an array of fruit on hand to support intuitive grazing.

What I eat:

At the present time, I predominantly eat store-bought fruit, including savory “vegetable” fruits. I also eat baby & mature greens (mostly brassica and spinach; eaten on their own and in salads).

These fruits and leaves are eaten when desired, mostly in the morning then snacking throughout the day.

Example of what I eat in a day:

4 oranges
1 mango
5 medium avocados
2 handfuls of cherry tomatoes
a few handfuls of baby greens
a handful of dates
several pods of jackfruit

HOW I DESCRIBE MY DIET NOW:

I describe myself as a raw vegan (due to the consumption of leaves), though many consider me to be fruitarian (due to the lack of nuts)

Why I eat this way:

During prior diet styles (since-birth vegetarian, cooked vegan, brief dabbling omnivore) I had a pungent body odor, regular bursts of light acne and a deep unsettling feeling that consuming denatured biomatter was denaturing me in ways, such as:

malformed or asymmetric tissue development
premature aging
prolonged youthfulness
frayed hair (particularly cooked beans)
limiting capacity of thought (particularly salt)
mutating us like domesticated animals

I have had minor allergic reactions to various commercially available nuts (brain fog & acne), plus they are difficult to harvest manually in nature, so they are not part of my diet.

Fundamentally, I sense that my present form of raw vegan / fruitarian is a much safer diet style – and that the raw salads are the one remaining source of confusion. In the past I went several months without salads so I expect to leave them behind again, however they have settled my nervous reaction to crowds in confinement (such as the supermarket) and it feels like the leaves are helping scrub my gut.

I eat a lot of avocado, which feels like it’s rebuilding the fatty fluid (chyle) of my lymphatic system. On a fruit diet, avocado can induce a strong “disassociative” experience, much like ketamine, except it feels grounding in observing bodily processes. Specifically, I begin to be aware of the both sides of my body at the same time, in contrast to the regular isolated or scattered floating focus.

Durian, another fatty fruit, feels deeply nourishing and healing.

Recommended reading: Summary of The Durian Theory

How long I have been eating this way:

I have eaten a predominantly fruitarian diet for the last 1.5 years, though the transition I described started about 2.5 years ago. (At the time of this writing, I am 34.5.)

Challenges I faced in the transition:

1) This process has caused me to viscerally observe the insanity of modern civilization and my own indoctrination. This was a very difficult phase and was the justification for both numbing myself with cooked foods and giving it up.

2) Internalized voices of people echoing modern diet lore played upon the notion of motherly concern for my health choices (allied with advertised food culture of the 1950s) which was, also, an internalized voice.

3) My favorite fruit, durian, grows exclusively in tropical regions and is expensive to import. I have considered moving to a tropical durian-growing space, but my living conditions are specific (must be allowed to be naked in nature). Considering scalability of my ideal lifestyle, I find that it is important to develop a 🌱 growing movement that tropicalizes inhabited temperate zones to be suitable for 🗺️ growing durian.

People who influenced me:

Freelee “the banana girl” “the frugivore”

Michael Arnstein

Allen Manglona

Tina & Chippy “FitShortie”

Sebastian Baum

Lexi Tavares

Eli Martyr

Nikolaos Mourtogias

Jules “Juicing Jules”

Gillian Berry

Jeannette Donofrio “Ms.FitVegan”

Ways to support my raw journey:

Post forage guides (🗺️) for your property or region

Donate fresh durian or $

Post a place to stay where:

+ nudity in nature is allowed, in a warm, humid climate

+ me and my loved ones can enjoy foraged or affordable fresh durian

= share privately to leela at leelamaps dot com

Join me!

I am available to converse about transitioning to a raw vegan diet: contact me by leaving a comment below.

Transitioned or transitioning to a raw vegan diet? Share your Raw Journey!

Continue Reading…

My Map Memoir

Ecuador Durian

Tags durian, Unexpected Fruit Tree Read the Note

Durian grows in this region

China Grows Durian

Tags durian, Unexpected Fruit Tree Read the Note

My Childhood Home

Tags childhood, family, memoir Read the Note

This is where I grew up with my parents and my older sister.

Neighbors would come and go, but for about 18 years we stayed in this house during the weekday nights & mornings and long weekend days.

This house held our rituals:

Wednesday Top Ramen “noodle night,” Friday “pizza night,” Sunday bagel mornings with dad
Hindu ceremonies at the closet altar and at the backyard Shiva Lingam

In our front yard we had a small, non-fruiting pomegranate tree.

Our backyard was wild and grassy until my dad took it upon all of us to implement a regime of black landscaper fabric, pebbles, and a eucalyptus that overgrew its space.

We usually had two cats, a dog, sometimes an aquarium of fish, hamsters, and other assorted pets that did not linger for long.

My sister and I shared a messy room, which we were to have tidied before mealtime.

My parents shared a dark-themed room, with a portrait of a sexualized woman straddling a dragon in an ornate frame at the head of the bed.

A third bedroom was occupied by my mother’s baby grand piano, that she practiced on often.

We were a conflicted family, quick to cry and argue.

Yet, with dinner-time rituals we congregated on the couch to appreciate a fundamental family bond.

Former Site of Devi Mandir

Tags Devi Mandir, Shree Maa, Swami Satyananda Read the Note

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