Organic Life

October is full of excitement, or enticement if you will. I seem to have been sleeping for a very long time; then a sudden urge of isolating myself in a cellophane woke me up.

It has been a while now, we make our own herbal butter (Kräuterbutter), dips, cakes, bread, ice cream, bread spread ... a lot of things a couple of years ago that we would usually get from the supermarkets, come in with plastic wraps; we are at the point where we grow our parsley, basil, rosemary and other kind of plants. Homemade things taste better, maybe because they are from our hands, made with love (awwww...) and you know exactly what is in your food. I never gave it much of a thought, until a few days ago, my lip balm ran out.

Because of my erroneous genetic code, there has been very few kinds of lip balm or skin care I could use. I usually had 4 chap-sticks stocked up in the fridge, for simply I am absolutely compelled to use them more often than most of people, and I can not sleep without them (I kid you not). There are two brands I have found so far compatible to my lips -- one not sold in Germany, one is only sold in Drugstores in specific part of town (which I do not live close to). Leave out the fact that every ounce of them costs more than silver, but what to do when you wake up in the middle of the night and found out there isn't any friendly drop left in that white tube?

So I went and bought the raw ingredients the next day instead. I am going to make an entire pound of that stuff!

As we stood in front of a small stove and melting pure bee wax in a funky glass over water, I realized how dependant we are -- it is not about money, not about being able to stock up a thousand small tubes of lip balms in the refrigerator (that actually produce more plastic trash that the pleasure of using the product itself); it the fact that most of us have become so comfortable having everything in a "to go" form if we swing out our credit cards; we are losing the knowledge and the pleasure of making organic things from our hands forever but instead, in order to have a completely clean conscious, we put our bets in so-called organic food store, spend 5 euros an once for some cream including tongue-twisting chemical names. Independence is not solely financial.

I know, from a typical student side here, I am also in -- eating instant noodle and cakes (oh, about the cake, blame the cook!) in front of a computer screen. But I just wanted to say that there is a lot more joy in making one's own small things than one might think. The bright side is, I am getting used to having this new life style -- part of the society, and yet independent from anything in "ready to go" as much as possible, like in a cellophane, in which I get to decide (most of the time) what goes into my mouth, what goes on my lips and my skin.

Give it a shot. It might surprise you.

PS: My new lip balm ist Lavender / Ylang Ylang --- me happy!