2012: Time for Change

Sherita and I had made plans to meet up during the week after she left the farm.  She was planning to go to Texas to help her mom out for a while, but knew that she wanted to spend a couple of weeks in NYC prior to leaving.  She sent me a text to see if I had any ideas/suggestions (of course I did!), but I wanted to see what she had in mind.  She suggested seeing this documentary, 2012 Time for Change, and I am very glad that she did.  She got the tickets and I told her I would treat her to a bite to eat beforehand.


We went to Pipa, one of my favorite restaurants in NYC.  Pipa is a tapas bar connected to ABC Home and is eclectically decorated with a number of chandeliers and mirrors.  I have celebrated my birthday there, gone there to celebrate the end of a Trend Seminar, spent many happy hours there eating and drinking with various friends.  Sherita is on a gluten-free diet (allergies), so I knew that they had plenty of options for her. I suggested their calamari as it is quite different from the calamari usually served at restaurants (it is coated in honey and is very spicy). Unfortunately, I forgot that it's breaded so Sherita could only have a few bites.  Besides the calamari, we ordered cheese, asparagus, skewered hangar steak (for Sherita) and a couple of glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon to wash it all down. Yum!  On to the movie.


Earlier in the day, I went on moviefone to see if there was anything about the movie.  Nothing more than where it was playing (only one place in the city?) and the showtimes.  Okay.  Then, I went on imdb to see if there was anything there.  Here's the description: "the film follows journalist Daniel Pinchbeck on a quest for a new paradigm that integrates the archaic wisdom of tribal cultures with the scientific method."  Hmm, that sounds a little pretentious!  On the postcards handed out at the movie, there's a description that is actually much better:  "we can redesign post-industrial society on ecological principles to make a world that works for all."  Now that makes sense!


The documentary is fairly ambitious and wide ranging for being only 89 minutes long.  The journalist being followed is Daniel Pinchbeck, author of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. I haven't read the book, but apparently it's not about the doomsday scenario that you can read about all over the Internet. It's more about the idea that 2012 is a time for a new era or a new beginning for humankind. Here's his bio from amazon:

I grew up in the New York counterculture of the 1970s and '80s. My father, Peter Pinchbeck, was an abstract painter, and my mother, Joyce Johnson, is a writer who participated in the Beat Generation. She was dating Jack Kerouac when On the Road hit the bestseller lists in 1957 (chronicled in her book, Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir). As a journalist, I have written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, etcetera. I am currently the editorial director of the Evolver Project (www.evolver.net).


The film starts out talking a bit about the use of psychedelics used to access a higher consciousness.  It almost makes me want to try mushrooms! Recent studies have shown that there seems to be something to the idea of a universal consciousness.  So, those of you that pooh pooh the claims of the book, The Secret, should maybe think twice about that.  Oprah has even participated in some experiments in this on her show.  If you google the term "universal consciousness," 608,000 entries come up.  Holy moly! Authors from Deepak Copra to Dan Brown have explored this subject and it's something that has interested me for a long time.  Well, if I end up trying mushrooms, you can bet that I will write about it on here.


The filmmakers interview several people about Buckminster Fuller, who I vaguely remember hearing about in the past.  He's the inventor of the geodesic dome (among many other things) and was a prolific writer as well. Wikipedia credits him with popularizing the term "spaceship Earth."  The film explores several of his inventions but the geodesic dome is the most important.  Many people think that the current environmental movement started in the late 60s, but maybe "Bucky," as he was known to friends, gave it a kick start when he invented the domes in the 50s.


I had just finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma a couple of days before the movie.  The last section of the book is about a meal that has been foraged by the author (almost completely), part of which is mushrooms.  I have always loved to eat mushrooms of every kind, but never really knew much about them.  The book was an eye-opener about how they grow and what they actually do for the environment.  So, it was interesting that the movie goes into mushrooms in depth too - and not just about making psychoactive teas from them either.  


Did you know that mushrooms, combined with hemp or hair mats can naturally process petrochemicals and other toxins to make them clean?  Heaven only knows why this process wasn't used during the gulf oil spill.


Another topic covered by the film is sewage treatment. Who knew?  I think that the film's Brazilian director, Joao Amorim, has a sewage treatment project  in Brazil.  In looking for information about Joao, I discovered that there was some kind of retreat in Brazil and if I had known about it in advance, I would have been there for sure!

Another idea I found interesting was bartering your time with others (the film delves into the world currency situation a bit).  Check out this site:  http://timeinterchange.wordpress.com/ 

If you're interested in more information, check out the following related links:


http://www.2012timeforchange.com/

http://www.evolver.net/

http://www.realitysandwich.com/
 

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