Ar Livre
appreciate simplicity - enjoy purity - be conscious
simple appreciation - pure enjoyment - conscious being
NederlandsAr Livre - a plea for consciousness
The Ar Livre website has been on-line for quite some time now. Until now only in Dutch. To be able to reach a bigger audience we decided to translate the site in English. So for all the visitors that don't understand Dutch but do understand English, a possibility to discover something new and interesting we hope.
To get an impression of what this site is all about we advise you to read About us, what is Ar Livre
and the article we have put In the Spotlight this time: The Gardens of Simplicity.
At the moment the number of translated articles is limited. We hope that you will find enough interesting stuff to come back later for more. So don't get frustrated when you stumble on some Dutch gibberish, we're working on it!
Thank you for your visit and enjoy! caTo
Design and content: 
Last update on 28. august 2008
Contact Ar Livre:
( arlivre at cato-projects.org )
See and sign our Guestbook!
Ar Livre literally means "free air" and is the Portuguese expression for outdoors, in the open air. Our emigration from the Netherlands to Portugal gave us the opportunity to be live a life where there is more room for the essential and fundamental needs of life. It has learned us even more that our well-being and the quality of our lives is our own responsibility. We carry a wider responsibility for our everyday life and this provokes us to be more versatile and independent. Our knowledge extends.
a plea for versatility
On our site you'll find information, stories, articles, pictures and thoughts on a broad range of subjects. Many of these subjects have to do with our current living situation and could have been placed under the denominator ecology or alternative technology or something as autarkic life. But our life is more than just a collection of technical solutions for everyday problems and tasks. Health, spirituality, sex and our position in modern society plays a role as well. Hence our plea for versatility.
We made a main division in 4 categories that you find above.
Modern life is filled with things that keep us away from things that really matter. Maybe we should simplify our life and spend more time on friendship, solidarity and creativity.
Duane Elgin is an American writer who promotes a lifestyle in which there is more attention for the things that are essential in our lives. We found his website and articles very interesting, so in cooperation with him we translated his introductory article in Dutch and put both original and translation on our website. The article is called "The Gardens of Simplicity" in which he gives ten possible approaches for simplicity in our lives.
Read the "The Gardens of Simplicity" here
Living a self-sufficient or autarkic life is almost impossible for our modern westerners, whether you live in the Netherlands or Portugal, that hardly makes any difference. Unless you're willing to throw away the bulk of modern achievements, your life will probably be stuffed with technologies and things that you can not make or grow yourself, such as cars, computers, telephone, health care, insurance and much, much more.
Still, here in Portugal, there's a relatively large number of (older) people who have no car, sometimes even no electricity at home, let alone a computer. They work their land, seeding, harvesting and thereby providing for a large part of their diet. They bake their own bread from grain they have grown themselves and that is milled in small hydro-powered mills. They keep some chickens, goats and a pig for eggs, dairy and meat. They cook and heat on wood, use twigs and branches for many purposes and so on and so forth. Speaking about versatility! In short, they live in, and with the beautiful surrounding nature. It are these people, the poor rural population, these crofters, that are a major source of inspiration for us. Their life is surely physically demanding and in many respects not enviable, but still; it's filled with things that give a direct sense of purpose and satisfaction in life.
That is what we value.
At the same time, this authentic lifestyle has a minimal impact on our environment. There is maximum use of local resources, raw materials, building materials, plants and animals. In addition there is hardly any travel involved, they live and work on one place.
Nowadays we say "these people have a small ecological footprint". The Ecological Footprint is a tool that gives insight into the amount of land and water that people use to produce their food and other supplies and to process their waste.
Many people are concerned about our environment and the depletion of natural resources, so are we. The pursuit of a small ecological footprint is a way for us to live in better harmony with Mother Earth.
But here we run across a number of contradictions. Our decision to move to Portugal has cost many trips back and forth. Not to mention the fact that we now do our shoppings usually by car because we live isolated in the countryside instead of in town. And if that's not bad enough, we encourage a lot of people to visit us. A visit for which they have to travel no less than 4000 km, a trip that's done by airplane most of the time!
So now we have a vegetable garden, we cook and heat with wood and take care of our own water resources, but we do not live an autarkic life. However, our ecological footprint has become smaller (about 2 ha.), But does it outweigh those other aspects? Do you know how big your ecological footprint is? Look here for links to various tests. It is very interesting to learn how big the impact of certain aspects in your life is.
