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Sustainability

  • Kombina.me

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    Once I had a VW Bus Kombi (my last “car”), a slightly magical, slightly cursed thing that carried me everywhere. I drove friends to lunch, traveled, slept inside it, and probably did a few other improper things I won’t mention here because my mom might find this blog one day.

    In 2014, when I decided to travel the world for a while (not by car, for once) I knew I didn’t want to just sell the Kombi like a normal human. I wanted it to keep living, doing something meaningful, something fun, something bigger than my questionable road-trip decisions.

    So I created Kombina.me, a platform (a WordPress adaptation) where anyone can “bid an offer” on the bus by proposing a price + an idea.

    Basically Craigslist with a dash of idealism.

    Wayback Machine screencast of the project

    I received so many wild proposals that I had to invent an actual decision matrix (a spreadsheet that tried to judge the “soul” of each idea, which is as ridiculous as it sounds).

    In the end, the Kombi went to Instituto Ambiente em Movimento (IAM), an organization that teaches kids about sustainability through theatrical performances. Perfect match. They turned the bus into a rolling stage, a colorful classroom, a creature of chaos and joy, exactly what it always wanted to be.

    The movement occupies schools and streets so that we can occupy ourselves. IAM bring surreal-pedagogy with the Kombi that once carried me to them.

    The bus kept doing what it did best, moving people. Sometimes letting go is just another way of keeping something alive.

    Well, it helped me with my goal, I met amazing people, and had so much fun. But I didn’t do a good job sticking with it to find more people interest in selling their stuff besides myself.

    More about the organization that won the kombi (English subtitles).

    More (in Portuguese):

  • The meat has been overcooked

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    It gives me chills
    to imagine a global
    and personal revolution
    starting so simply,
    so immediately,
    just by stopping
    the eating of dead animals.

    A tiny gesture
    with a giant impact.

    Fire the barbecue chef
    living inside you —
    the one who insists,
    the one who pretends not to hear.

    Because the meat,
    honestly,
    has been overcooked
    for a long time.

  • ❤️ Tomatinhos

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    In the daily harvest of tomatoes,
    little tomatoes,
    heart-shaped tomatoes.

    Na colheita diária
    de tomate tomatinho
    tomate coraçãozinho

    Little tomatoes that grew in my compost bed. Some in the shape of hearts. ❤️

  • When my digital net met the real world

    , ,
    My non-digital skills in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon.

    Where I was born, I learned to fish with a very special net.
    It was my digital net, cast into a virtual sea.
    Ten years learning, fishing, sometimes even teaching,
    enough stories to fill a small boat.

    Then I realized I had been living on an island.
    So I took my little boat and rowed far across that sea.
    I found a massive continent,
    analog and real, sometimes surreal.

    My boat made no sense in all that land.
    So I kept walking, looking for people
    to tell my stories to,
    but no one understood the way I fished.

    I walked until I found a river, ready to show them.
    But my digital net didn’t work there,
    no electricity in sight.

    I didn’t eat for a while.
    I got thinner.
    And I learned.

    I learned to eat fruit.

    And maybe that’s how I grew,
    switching nets, switching worlds,
    combing someone else’s hair on a rocky floor.

  • Zucchini Man

    Passing through your timeline today,
    the Zucchini Man
    grown with lots of love
    and watered by the fresh springs
    of the Low Valley of Ratones.

    Enjoy.