Written by Danielle Lanyard | 30 January 2010

I recently walked past an antique bookstore steps from Union Square with a sign that read "end of of an era going out of business sale." It was a pity, for it was a bookstore I had walked past all my life and cherished from afar, hoping to one day be able to walk in and purchase a classic, original work perhaps signed by one of my literary heroes. Today tells a very different tale, where entities pull from every corner of the ecosystem and few places on the planet remain in balance. From one corner to the next, clashes between antiquity, modernity and the future 3.0 sprout like devil's weed the world over in every one of our backyards.

Any ecologist would ascribe this to the natural order of any organism, one that continuously uses its semi-permeable membrane to filter out the crap, and let in that which nourishes and sustains.  Some call this evolution, others call it deliverance - both acknowledge that the crap doesn't make it through to the next stage, the pearly gates. In layman's terms, we are witnessing the extinction of species large and small, while the predominant species, humans, flocks to urban ecosystems and now resides there in what is considered the largest migration in human history. Be you ecologist, christianist, agnostic or saint, one can only deduce that survival has something to do with it. Yet where are the thriving the ecosystems? The thriving human communities?

The New Urban Ecological Paradigm

So we've got human beings on planet earth in 2010 as miserable as they've ever been, with many other species in peril and many of the lifebloods of the global ecosystem under the greatest pressure ever witnessed by humanity. But never in such great numbers, and never with so many of us living in urban centers. On January 12th, a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of time, but a liftetime ago in the 24-news cycle, that pressure reached such a crescendo that the earth quaked (insert wikipedia entry) and an entire nation bore the brutal and devastating brunt of mother earth's true nature. With most of the nation's population living in the urban center, the world watched as global citizens perished for no godly reason, while millions more fight for survival as I type these words ~  18 days later.

In these 18 days, an even more dramatic shift quaked through this planet, one of compassion (insert carel padre's the world is one happy family tweet), awareness, transparency and collective action (insert Haiti.com link). (insert global map of aid) And, like in any healthy ecosystem, a load of crap. (insert link to human trafficking w/ amanpour and people donating stupid shit). Were we to embrace this new urban ecological paradigm, we can make good use of this crap and employ it as the rich compost that it appears to be here for. And were we not to fill 'old wine in new bottles', we have the chance to evolve anew into something that resembles a planet of joy.  

As the first self proclaimed new urban ecological paradigmist, I'm going to begin my evolution of the species within and commit to one simple truth, from which everything else will ripple outward. This human being will not create crap, live in a state of crap, or discard the very crap that has made me into the curious creature that I am. I'm going to begin with transforming this blog into the green animated comic series it was always intended to be, and shiftng all my musings over to my posterous site, where you'll find a trailmap to my life in 2010. I may not totally know what living looks like when I am acting as my own semi permeable membrane, but I'm going to give it a go. There's got to be something after the opposable thumb and the iPad (insert Pee-wee's funny or die video.).

If there's one thing I've learned, it is that it takes a village. It takes all villages, big and small, Manhattanish and Marrakounderish, and all the inhabitants in it. I've just decided to leap without a parachute, and am shocked by the profound beauty of humanity. If I could pay it forward, please contact me and I'd be happy to help put you and your dream in a cannon and shoot it out into the world.