Poem: Universal Ghosts

Eyes closed

I float through your shadows

the ghostly reflections from your celestial cities guiding my way

I touch your frosty stars with the tips of my fingers

giving a spark of eternal light

I dream of you often

so much so, you have become my reality

but you are reachable only in my dreams

where things are beautiful

things are possible

with every step you reveal yourself to me

lit by the light of 1,000 moons

I tip-toe through the dusty paths of your mountain tops

the center of you is ominous and lovely

your breezes lifting me up, floating me to-and-fro, dancing along through your magenta fields

the grains of your pastures extending high into the infinite cosmos

twinkling like rays of sun as they dance in the sweet stellar air of night

feeling your presence beneath my feet but never touching down

I feel calm

what a gift to spend an eternity staring into your nothingness

to live in your pillars of creation

and feel the massiveness of your being in my minuscule veins

I will rest my weary head on your billowy clouds

and drift away on a black starry night

open my eyes to your eternal display of celestial wonder

as I drift down the water of your milky riverbeds

young stars sculpt the shores of your outer-banks

your colorful landscape ever-changing

eyelids shut

your light continues to echo

composing a symphony of colors

I take them in

for you am I and I am you

and you will flow through me for all eternity

The Green Festival, San Francisco 2013!

Living in one of the coolest and most environmentally conscious (kind of) cities in the world, San Francisco has a constant variety of "green" events and activities that take place pretty much on a daily basis. I never thought that a city could ever live up to its expectations before I moved here (I guess NYC aint so bad either.) Before moving to the foggy city I had always heard about how amazing and modern and casual and laid-back and simply how freaking awesome San Fran is. And every glowing recomendation of this glorious city was always followed by the same confirmation: "Jewels, you would LOVE it there." They were right. San Fran truly is one of the most unique cities on the planet. I just moved here 4 months ago, but I have seen enough to know that my heart can feel at home in a place like this.

I was pretty pumped about going to this Green Festival. I am obsessed with health; Mental health, Physical health, Spiritual Health, I love it all. But I am a verrrry lazy healthy person, if that makes any sense? So I didnt really do too much research on what was going to be going on there, but I knew that I wanted to go. There was a swarm of people at the entrance and we were greeted with 2 samples of acai berry sorbet (yum!) which gave a very good first impression. However on getting inside, it was... OK. I guess if I honestly ask myself why I wanted to go there in the first place, the truth is, all I wanted were free samples. Sigh. I know how it sounds. But its true. Poor David. The guy has never tried a fermented beverage in his life and here we are downing Kimchee and Cayenne Kombucha. He truly sucked it up for me this time. At least he got to get some play time in!

That's David in the blue plaid. 

Yoga! The people here were so awesome.


As we were walking around, I noticed that there were recycling stations pretty much at every turn. There were people attending the bins, guiding and teaching others the difference between composting, recycling, and trashing certain items. It was kind of a huge thing there. There were maybe 60 staff members there just for this reason, which I thought was wonderful. San Francisco is becoming a very waste conscious city. I have seen recycling stations at various concerts and events all around the Bay Area and its just GREAT! The more (recycling stations) the merrier I always say! Here is a photo of a recycling station at another event I went to recently, The Folk Music Festival back in October.  We made camp in the hillside surrounding the stages and relaxed the day away under the Redwood trees :)

As you can see.... heavenly.

All in all, The Green Fetival was nice. I feel like it was more for owners and wholesalers to check out new products, which is cool. I enjoyed the taste testing and David enjoyed the Lego building. Not sure I will be going back again next yeat, but until then...

(Not my car!)

Julianne xo

The Plastic Bag Dilemma

If there is one thing that I have abused over and over again, its the plastic bag. Most of the plastic I use comes from plastic grocery bags and sandwich bags. Up until now, It has been second nature for me to use a plastic bag once and then toss it, because after all, thats what its there for. They are one time use items. Most plastic bags are used for no more than a few hours, sometimes even a few minutes, and then just thrown out. And sadly enough almost all plastic bags go straight to landfill, are almost never recycled, and extremely wasteful! Like I had mention in a previous post, most members of modern society have a house full of plastic with the majority of plastic coming from food items that will soon be disposed of within the week, only to be replaced by even more plastic. This is a biiig no-no. I know that I dont want to continue being wasteful and need to take my plastic usage seriously. 

As I have been continuing on my journey to become plastic free, I have found many amazingly easy alternatives to our everyday plastic usage. Yay! They are really sooo simple, anyone can make these changes... So I would like to share with you just a few small, but vital tips on going Plastic- Bag-Free!

 VS

Plastic Problem: Disposable Plastic Bags. Not-eco friendly, non-biodegradable, super wasteful. (nearly 1 trillion a day are thrown out worldwide)
Alternative: Canvas Bags. They are cheap, and can be really nice-looking, too.
Where to buy: Here or at most Health food stores.

 VS




Plastic Problem: Plastic Sandwich Bags. Just like their big brother, they are non-biodegradable and hazard to the environment. These bags are also filled with nasty chemicals that can get into your food.
Alternative: Cheap, reusable, PVC-, BPA-, phthalate-, latex- and lead-free sandwich bags, which means healthy for you and healthy for the planet. High five!
Where to Buy: Here or Here

VS 



Plastic Problem: Food Containers; full of chemicals that leach into food. If the container has any grease or food particles at all, it can damage the material meant to be recycled and contaminate the entire batch of recyclables (meaning not only does the container not get recycled, but everything in the bag is considered useless garbage!)
Alternative: Stainless Steel Air tight containers; leak proof, recyclable, BPA free.
Where to buy: Here

If you have anything that you would like to see an alternative for, leave me a comment and I'll make a special blog post about it!


-Julianne xo

The Story of Bottled Water

Bottled Water cost more than 2,000 X more than tap water! Can you imagine paying 2,000 X more for anything? How about a $10,000 sandwich? Americans buy more than HALF A BILLION BOTTLES OF WATER EVERY WEEK! I love tap water and I don't see anything wrong with its quality or taste. Coincidentally, experts agree with me. And most likely that bottle of water wasn't produced in that picturesque local of rivers and forests printed on the front. (Oh, and did you know that the bottle is recyclable, but the cap in NOT?) Imagine what a difference just giving up plastic bottles could make on our carbon footprint. It's enough to make a girl giddy.

My House is Infested with Plastic! (and yours probably is, too.)

As we walk around our houses on a daily basis, we don't really notice just how many plastic products we have. A toothbrush here, a bottle of OJ there, a stick of deodorant. etc. When its spread around like that it doesn't look like a whole lot. So today I decided I wanted to see in bulk just how many products that contained plastic I truly own. So for your viewing pleasure, I give you 'My Plastic House'!

This is my fridge, and this is what it looks like when I have 'no food.' It is still COMPLETELY full of plastic! Normally I would have even more food with more plastic bags/containers to keep everything fresh. I eat tons of fruits and veggies and so every time I go to the farmer's market or grocery store I come home with anywhere between 10-30 plastic bags. The most distressing part is that pretty soon Im going to have to go shopping again, and probably %90 of what you see here will be tossed by the end of the week... Sad face.

Ok so these are all the plastic items I had lying around my house. These are most of them, but not all. I have all kinds of things like garbage bags, shampoo bottles, tupperware, a toaster, food containers, a dust pan, cleaning supplies, even my juicer is plactic. I personally don't think that I 'consume' a whole lot of 'stuff.' Hell, what other girl do you know that only has ONE shower item? Head&Shoulders baby, lather, rinse and repeat. And I can count the amout of toileties I own on 2 hands, which I have to believe is a lot less than the average person. Even so, just like with my plastic food bags, %80 of this stuff will be thrown away in the next month or less to go sit in some garbage dump or end up floating around the ocean for the rest of eternity, all to just so I can go out shopping again and buy even more plastic products to replace the old ones. YAY! I just love consumerism.

And here is my pantry. Im starting to see a trend that one of the main reasons for my plastic consumption is due to food. Again, more plastic that will soon be tossed away. Unless you have a bulk section at the grocery store, its going to be pretty hard to stay away from plastic all together. But there are small and easy steps that can be taken to dramatically reduce our plastic use when it comes to shopping. And lets not forget one more crucial point, ALL OF OUR ELECTRONICS ARE FROM PLASTIC, TOO!

Seeing all this plastic really helped me understand a few things:

1 - I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, TOO! Not just environmental organizations that are supposed to clean up after all my messes. They can't handle 7 billion messy people all by themselves. 
2 - I used to consider myself to be pretty evironmentally friendly, but in reality, there are a LOT of things that I need to do to reduce my carbon footprint. 
3 - I need to be more conscious of the waste that I am producing and the things that I buy. Because ultimately, what I choose will play a major role in the fate of our beautiful planet. 
4 - I cant expect anyone else to clean up my mess. If I want change and if I want a brighter, cleaner future, its going to have to start with me, not matter how impossible of a task it may see. 

As Nelson Mandela famously said, "It always seems impossible until its done."



-Julianne xo

What's the big f*cking deal?

I live in a household of 2, and we are throwing out an entire bad of garbage a day. That's a lot of garbage! That's also a whole lot of plastic that isn't being recycled. After paying attention to the massive amount of garbage produced by only 2 people, it makes me think about all plastic being tossed by families of 3, 4, 5, or more. No wonder that the earth is literally covered in micro-plastic.

Every year, humans produce nearly 280 million tons of plastic. 280 MILLION TONS!! Its an impossible number for me to wrap my head around. But why stop using plastic you use ask? Well, its not just a question of waste apparently. I did a little research because I had to know just what the risks were. After combing the internet here's what I found...

• Chemicals added to plastics are absorbed by human bodies and have been found to alter hormones or have other potential human health effects.
         • These plastics have also been linked to infertility, diabetes, and even cancer!
• Only 1 to 2% of plastic bags in the USA end up getting recycled, leaving a whollllle lot of plastic free to float around the planet.
• Plastic buried deep in landfills can leach harmful chemicals that spread into groundwater. 
• The average American uses about 500 plastic grocery bags per year.
• Plastic bags are often mistakenly ingested by animals, clogging their intestines which results in death by starvation. Thousands of marine animals and more than 1 million birds die each year as a result of plastic pollution.

These were only a few of the laundry list of reasons why to give plastic the big FU! I highly recommend watching the award-winning film Trashed to really understand the dangers of our high plastic, high waste society.

About Me

Welcome to Living With Soul! My name is Julianne Bonasera and I want to invite you to join me in figuring out this crazy, beautiful thing we call life!

My Sister and I (right).

My life a few years ago looked good on paper, but inside, I was hiding a big secret; I was suffering from a severe depression that had been going on for years. Although I had traveled all over the world, married the man of my dreams, and had friends and family who loved me, I was a person that was empty inside. I felt alone, confused, sad, and constantly found myself questioning the meaning of my life and of life in general. I wanted out. Life was a burden too big to bare. Just when I had lost all hope and was ready to accept my misery, I read a book called "The Power of Now". The experiences that immediately followed opened my eyes to a world I had never known existed. This was a world where worry didn't exist, stress was nothing but a 6-letter word, and love was boundless and present at all times. Everything had meaning again, and I was living a life of happiness that every single person on this planet deserves. Life was finally good :) The  most amazing realization was that life had always been good! I just chose not to believe it.

After my spiritual experience, I continued to dig deeper to see what other tools and information I could find to help myself and others. There was so much more to life than I had allowed myself to see. I understood that I was the one ultimately in charge of my happiness, not the external world. I had become so comfortable with blaming everyone and everything else that I failed to see the true culprit.

I feel a compulsion to share what I have learned with anyone and everyone that will. So many of us walk around in a daze, asking ourselves, "Is this all there is"? From experience I can say that there is so much more to life than we can ever dream! Life is meant to be lived with soul, are you ready to start living?


Julianne xo