dreams dreams

dreamt that I got my hawk redone. quick, someone come shave my head!

the sun rises at a different angle

not that i can see the sun.. i can see bicycles and palm trees and a cement building with bars on its windows from my window. also a pile of gravel/dark rocks. also a beautiful sleeping hannah manshel. she and i are roommates, by happy happenstance.
thoughts i have been thinking are...
i dont like being waited upon, but i live in a hotel so i will have to figure out a way to make it tolerable/have real human interactions with these guys.
also i miss the farm, and the way time functions there. here i am either in my room being an asocial dope, or "out" socializing, talking mostly about nothing (dont worry i'm not being too judgmental right off the bat-- except some of these kids i swear are toolstoolstools (in a generic sense)) so i miss the days of not having to talk unless i want to, and living with people where all of us had some sort of higher purpose than just being together, we were working on something, and being togehter was a nice plus. i like the kind of conversations that happen when picking beans, or planting garlic, or harvesting carrots, or walking out to the potatoes. but oh well. i'll wait 10 weeks here in pune and then go off again.

i have been relying bahut on faith in humankind ... it has been most rewarding. my ride from seattle to san francisco was great... we went down the coast, saw the redwoods, stayed at her son's house and ate the most deliciousest food, we went to hot springs and slept under stars...
actually my first night, last night i guess, sleeping at the ywca in mumbai i woke up in the middle of the night and thought i was sleeping on a hill in northern california. that the fans were the chilly night breeze, that the ceiling was an overcast sky, that the light on the tv screen was a star...oh wait, stars arent green, oh wait, this is a bed, oh wait, i am in mumbai,
spinned my mental globe around and zoomed in to the west side of this subcontinent.

anyway. maybe sometime i will write about airtravel and how fucked up it makes me feel. not just because my share was 10,434 pounds of carbon (and it only costs $65 to erase that from my conscience), but because of anonymity and proximity, privacy in public, how much it costs for planes to fly over iran. seeing the stars at eye-level. actually i think that's all i have to say.
have a good first day at school kids

group of 8000

hi kids,
after an exhausting, exhilarating, and downright fucking sweet two days of protesting and naughtiness, i'm back in the burbs with my folks (that is, far from the action but part of the problem; but speaking personally, safe and mostly sound).

tmo's last post on fear was really fascinating for me to read in light of my experience in the past few days as well as this summer, playing around with so many scenes and headspaces and new experiences. after my last trip, i decided (to leli in the back o the station wagon) to eliminate fear from my life. to me, this meant shedding my fear of social repercussions for my actions--following through on my desires without fearing the law (or the dark.) but last night i dreamt of cops and woke up sweating. when i close my eyes i see riot cops. i can't shake off the feeling of running, not knowing when my clothes and actions will make me criminal since the rules don't really matter. in the past two days, i have become aware of more cop/military surveillance and experienced more fear of surveillance than ever in my life...and then there was the incredible polarization of pittsburgh, a rhetorical accomplishment by the state, police, and media that made "normal pittsburghers" cast their eyes aside as i walked down the sidewalk. that made ME an object of fear in college dorms and lunchrooms, and not for legit reasons. in contrast to the intense solidarity of protesters, fear had boarded up windows, shut down classes, and many students and business owners seemed rallied against these destructive outsider crazy whacko anarchists (what does that even mean). i heard they pee on people, hide in tunnels to slash tires, etc. etc.

i'm excited to come back and talk to you all and tell you about some crazy shit that went down. dunno if you've been following the news. many people were arrested and i am free, trying to construct a rationale for why things happened as they did. i'll see you all (or most) on sunday night.

with queeranarcholove and solidarity,
winknight

Debrief in the situation room

Alright, an admission. For the past few months, my intestines have felt like they've been redirected. My stomach keeps vibrating at a rate I don't recognize and there's this bubble that sits in the back of my throat as if it's going burst upwards and tumble out of my lips. I sometimes feel like my legs will simply melt away. There are times when I feel so awake, I think I've probably sped past the barrier of humanness and into a place where I don't need to sleep. Which is to say, I am terrified. In some part of my brain, a little piece of me is going, "Gear up, motherfucker, shit's about to get real." And my adrenal gland rolls out the big guns. This is not your run of the mill, niggling, dull anxiety. It's not even the restlessness that grabbed me in my last year of high school that prompted aimless wandering through the cul-de-sacs of southern Connecticut. No, I am fully switched on. Like I am constantly prepared to stand up for my own measly existence.

Trouble is, I don't know what I am so frightened of. After all, there's a whole slew of things that it could be. Heck, it could be all of them! Sometimes I joke that I'm scared of everything. Unfortunately, it's less a joke than I like to think. In truth, I find most everything ridiculously bewildering and endlessly disturbing. And that fear is constantly kicking the fixer/tackler/compartmentalizer bit of my brain in the teeth. Recently, the fear bought a pair of steel-toed boots. Funnily enough, I think I like it. Almost like, when the scared part of me escalated its game so did the brave part of me. Hell, I bought my own pair of kicking boots and some armor for my face. I've learned a lot of new words to defend myself and cooked up some ideas to keep myself occupied. Those are my answers to the guns pointed my way.

So despite an instinct to line my insides with impenetrable metals, I think I should get used to this feeling. Maybe, it's not so bad.

when history cas voms it moves on without a pause

a truly delightful description of the baohaus abode from the mac website.

"On a quiet street just steps from 57th Street Beach and dotted with classic early 20th-century architecture, 5487 [that is, 5491]’s deep, red brick blends with its surroundings, yet its facade stands out: Stately, white Romanesque columns support balustrade-lined balconies, providing a sense of arrival and contrasting with the softly molded corner sunrooms anchoring both sides of the building."

to summarize: quiet, classic, early 20th-century, deep, red, stately, white, Romanesque, balustrade-lined, softly molded.
ha
to me the baohaus is not virginal or quiet but full, winding, loud, and seductively decrepit. mmm. but perhaps you have better words.

ink-spitters never run out of ink

as i swam through my hair amidst the rhythmic chirp of crickets, i felt my tentacles stirring. two emerged from the tips of my pelvic bones and i felt two burst from the middle of my back, rubbing pleasantly against my vertebrae. a fifth itch in my ankle became a squirming mess of suckers on the bathroom floor and a sixth slimy arm slithered soundlessly out of my belly button. from each palm explodes more than a handful of angry writhing seaflesh that triples my armspan. donning a pink bandanna and with a mouthful of ink, i am a bomb, borne from hard dirt and soft grass and speckled assholes.

the smoke of my cigarette hangs in the air and curls into a dragon, diving toward the light as i watch. i have three buttholes distributed around the back yard but i put it out under a rock and then, after spitting on the end, throw it into a large reedy bush.

Come over for dinner!

Whilst consuming our delicious waffles of the aftermorn looking at the view from our back porch, Tawawa and I composed a crooning love ballad together. It goes something like this:

I just want some sweetness
I just want you in my life
Gonna lick your face, baby
Gonna make you my lovely wife.

I wanna suck on your eyeballs
I wanna hold 'em in my mouth (keep 'em warm!)
I'll hold them safe there for you
Cuz that's what friendship's all about!

I'll cut your feet off, baby
So you can't run away
I'll keep them by my bedside
So we can look at them every day!

I'll munch on your flesh, baby
I'll masticate your bones
Cause this is what I call true love, baby
So why don't you call me on the phone?

I wanna suck on your eyeballs
I wanna hold 'em in my mouth (keep 'em warm!)
I'll hold them safe there for you
Cuz that's what friendship's all about!

You're like the buffalo, baby
I'm not gonna waste a speck
What I can't fit in my stomach
I'll hang around my neck.

I wanna be with you forever
I want to cuddle with your meat.
And when your nutrients hit my bloodstream
I feel so complete.

I wanna suck on your eyeballs
I wanna hold 'em in my mouth (keep 'em warm!)
I'll hold them safe there for you
Cuz that's what friendship's all about!

path to knowledge

recently i am reading "the teachings of don juan: a yaqui way of knowledge." it is intriguing. more on that later because i am low on juices.

today i am in pittsburgh
this morning i was at oberlin college in oberlin, ohio, which alex tried to convince me was about 10 blocks by 10 blocks but i insisted was more like 12x15. probably more like 11x9 depending on how you count them.

last night presented 3 serendipitous events in close proximity (10 minutes):
1. on my way to a questionably compelling party "above the coffeeshop," i saw a familiar face and pointed and said "i know you!" he stared and started and it turned out to be theo, my ex-girlfriend's ex-roommate's boyfriend. too complicated. but a kid i met several times when i hung out at the shoreland 2nd year. possibly a little worse for the wear, but lovely once he overcame his shock.
2. someone found my lost bali shag tobacco pouch (nearly brand new) and returned it to me! of course i rolled em a spliff in return.
3. i met nikeel's (sp?) sister while smoking outside this too-full party. she did not deliver a philosophical manifesto. she was also lovely.

actually i realized that i visited oberlin exactly a year ago this weekend. upon my last visit, i wrote a love letter/thank you note (are they so dissimilar?) to oberlin (here if you's curious). what a strange regularity--when my plants grow in spurts and my period comes as often as now and laters to quik snax or rare as laundry day (that is, not often)...it is funny that such cycles would reveal themselves.

i took deep breaths and watched people work and live. i smoked too much and watched a college scene from the outside. it made me want to go back to school and also never go back to living in academia.
i also thought about how many young lives thrive in close proximity and how easy it is to not wear a helmet and accidentally get run over by an 18 wheeler. i think i'll start wearing a helmet. i advise you to consider it (if you haven't already).

all for now
love to the baohaus&others

a fragment, half-smoked

recently i have been wincing more upon recollection of recently laid-out misspeaks
also, i have been stuck in a cycle something like this: yeah, i do feel like a woman/ali; then not.
flirting with ideas of gender revolution, of harmonica beatboxing and how my voice saves and betrays me.

(then i lifted a lighter to my lips and flicked it, and upon realizing that i did not have anything in my mouth to smoke, slowly lowered the lighter)
(how did i get ash all over my lips?)
(my eye stings as i inhale and my tired throat gets a little flatter, losing a tiny bit of air)
(the butttray is about 1/2 Cigarettes and 1/2 rollies, an interesting mark of something.)

if a bit less than correct

the other day I was walking the pup, aka Oswald Guillen Alexander T. Raptor, aka the Fiend in Canine Shape, aka jerkface/poobutt/fartbox/shitballs, when I came across this encouraging message from the universe:

h and all.

Bite me.

If you can find me to catch me to bite me, you'll find that I taste sweet. All the hitting the ceilings and bumping into walls and shouldering doors swollen in their jambs - all that has a tenderizing effect on a body. I'm a delicacy in any of the places you could think of where they eat strange things. A little raspberry chipotle marinade and a few hours over a roasting pit, dug by your dad, and I'm the tastiest dish on this side of Lake Michigan.

It' all cool! Everybody's got a little cannibal in them.

And you don't have to worry about me telling. Discretion runs in the family after all. For years people have been biting my relatives, predecessors, antecedents and cousins. And none of us has ever breathed a word. Once, in the early 20th century, a Silverleaf boychild pondered going to the authorities, but that's as far is it's ever gotten. Zipped lips with a little hot glue to ensure extra hold. That's our promise to you.

So, get out your knife and fork, sweetness, and maybe your finest silver spoon. I got a recipe you can't miss out on.

The Future

According to this article, 2009 is the year of telepathy. Don't miss the end of the piece, where we learn how group minds will emerge from implanted telepathy chips made of nano-scale materials.

more robot theorizing

what is robot?
robot is
anti-individual
un-aesthetic
spiteful
(how do robots feel spite, you may ask. I save this as an exercise to the reader)
predictable
boring
and, most of all
robots follow the code.
which code? any code they're given. but they must follow it.

When you need to cross a busy street, do you wait for the walk sign or for the lull in traffic? why?

I don't hate all robots. there is value in code and protocol. however, I find myself aligned against them in the interest of freaks and shamans and mutants everywhere, because the robot code is capitalism's code and I stand for a DIY ethic that is quickly losing its place in our society. Thus, I must take a stand for individual weirdness, against the robots. Let it be known that I do this mainly for my own (metaphysical) amusement. My anger may have arisen out of sexual frustration, but by now it's become something much more valid and serious.

robot paranoia

I'm more and more
worried
amused
concerned
hmm, scratch concerned it sounds just like worried
annoyed
angry
galvanized to |unholy| ACTION!
against these godamn robots.

Let this be a call to arms,
godamit let it be a warning
that the robots are already here
already among us

maybe mostly on the internet
but you never know:
that weird guy on the bus stop bench at 7 in the morning?
the one woman in the bank who sits in the back and never really helps anybody?
the doctor at the student care center with just a little _too_ much twinkle in his eye?

I'm telling you, be careful. Because not only do they have an agenda, but it's decidedly unhuman. Here's what one of them said to me only the other day:

Hey you! I'm just taking a peek at the ads here at Craigslst then viewed your posting and I was intrigued too find out a bit more information! Anyhow I am for the most part outgoing,love to party, and I am got to release my sexual frustration! Want pix Ive got awesome ones at luvtimer423.adultmyspace.org it will take you right 2 my profile pictures. It also has my interest's,some other things about me. So email me back if ya wanna meet. So well make plans and rendezvous! TTYL

grrrrr it makes my blood curdle. godamn robots can't even punctuate.

to start the revolution, I'll be playing anti-robot propaganda folk songs from my front porch at the baohaus every morning. This way the commuters who take the 6 will know what's up. Don't succumb so quick my fellow squids - join the insurgency!

Merde

Hoooo boy.

Hey my fellow squids in friendship.

Wow, I kind of don't know how to start this entry as things have gone a bit pear-shaped around here. Don't panic, don't panic. I didn't have a huge bust up with my parents, such that I am now posting this blog from the relative safety of squidlette Ev's ancestral abode. What happened is this: last night my grandparents disembarked from their plane and were immediately taken to the hospital - my grandad had what British Airways reps called a cardiac event and almost the minute he arrived at Jamaica Queens Hospital he had a massive heart attack. Dad and I went to pick them up at the airport but pretty quickly found ourselves at the hospital. It was pretty grim for a little while. At some point, a doctor/nurse/?hospital attendant handed my grandmother a pocket Torah and my inner vibe sensor went pretty negative. However, however, however my grandad is nothing if not a tough old goat and after an emergency angioplasty he seems to "be headed in the right direction" as the doctors put it. He was amazingly lucky - what with there being a doctor on the plane, who insisted the airline aspirin wasn't strong enough and prescribed some of my grandma's, the BA people being all over the situation and getting emergency services to the airport to meet them, the police man who drove the ambulance so that all the EMTs could look after my grandad, and the brusque but capable doctor. The next few days are pretty critical, but things might be okay. I am cautiously optimistic. After a weird/unnerving night in the OR, I think the worst may be over.

Well, I know that we ain't a bunch of believers up in this joint. But we do have a lot of love in our aquatic hearts and you know, if you could spare a minute in your day and send a little love my grandad's way, I would appreciate it. Who knows if it will do anything, but your support has helped me so much that maybe, just maybe it will help.

Other than that things have been going swimmingly here in nutmeg country (seriously that's what it's called). I blew in with the attitude that I would talk to my parents and my brother like I talk to my buddies and so far it's worked. There's an ease that has crept back in the house that had been missing for a while. My dad said he was getting used to me keeping pretty much to myself and that he was glad to see the giggly, explosive kid I used to be come back.

I told my dad about the ole huff puff and he told me about his weed cookies. He also told me about his six person flat at university and we talked about my plans for the future. I talked to him about squatting and collectives and he told me about my cousin Anne who apparently "has some similar proclivities, so it must be in the genes." I talked to my mom about my distaste for capitalism as we know it and told her about the ritual. She told me about how she felt that the American dream has been quietly crumbling and promised to take me to synagogue on Friday because it sounded like the ritual shared some the congregations common themes. (See here http://www.romemu.org/about/index.html) We all went on a hike in the Mianus river gorge! (See here for jokes about said gorge http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fytp3c5jEA)

I find my brother to be incredibly tall, fantastically perceptive, as always warm, and pretty normal. It looks like he's heading in a fairly different direction than I was at his age. He's gonna have a pretty standard high school experience and is likely gonna be pretty much a dude - but he's still got Silberblatt genes, so I'm not worried. It's kind of great to be so different and so similar to him and I have to say, when need be we make a pretty good team. We're scheming about getting him out to Chi sometime in the near future.

Wow, that's a lot. I want to write about my relationship to the woods here, but I think that's for another time. I miss you guys and I'll be glad to see your faces in a few days.

P.S. I found some noise makers in the basement that I'll be bringing back with me.

finding roaches in the pot

leli's new idea for weed edibles:
make weed butter, put it in a frying pan, and then throw in some eggplant. ("it'll soak it all up like sqqqqqrch.")

three squidlings have been rooting and unrooting themselves from this couch, making cranberry oatmeal chocolate green-cookies (i'll let you know how they turn out) buoyed by russian mumblings and excellent books.

recently i've been reading: bitch magazines from 2001, "the invisible man" (ralph ellison), and a book of perry bible fellowship comics which are kind of funny and kind of lame. also this article on prosecuting mass rape as genocide and tying it doctrinally to ideas of shame, stigma...some international court of justice framing it as "a fate worse than death." so, as leli illuminated to me, talking about talking about talking about rape (meta 3x).

hmmmm and i just received a sobering call. life is strange and fabulous.

today

may just be the first time i have woken up alone in years.

hear hear for intimacy and communication, love, growing up, and separate ways.

Michigan Dreams

I'm sitting on a rock out at the point. I've got my knees drawn up to my shoulders with my arms around them and my elbows pointing out, one towards the lake and one towards the shore. I sit for longer than it takes to let my mind clear a little, and slowly the sky gets brighter. The clouds' bellies turn yellow, then pink, then red, but then a new layer of clouds settles in, delaying sunrise just a little. I hear a noise to my left.
There you are, hopping down the rocks like a mountain goat. On each footfall one of your black boots makes a clap on the stone. Then you're beside me. Our eyes meet, yours framed by the brightening sky behind. From what I can see your eyes are a little wet, a little tired, longish black lashes around a tile mosaic of white, green, brown, yellow, black.
I do not yet know you, but I have high hopes for our future.
"This seat taken?"
How absurd. Like you've read my mind, you ask the one question that I'd imagined someone would ask if they were to meet me right here, right now.
"Was saving it for you."
You sit down. There then stretches out a long silence, almost as if you have to catch up to me in the meditation of this place. I dare not utter a word. You don't wait longer than it takes for your mind to clear just a little, but you wait long enough. Then the sun emerges from behind the first layer of clouds.
During this interim I am calmer, much calmer, than I think possible. I am the pressure on my joints, I am the rock, the lake, I am you, but I am not me. When I find my hand suddenly curved around your far shoulder, I don't consider what I've done, because lakes don't consider. You fit your arm and hand on my left leg and knee.
If a certain cinematic feeling persists I don't notice, and if my heart beats a little faster I don't notice. And that's how we are when you first kiss me, there having been not more than a few words between us. Will the lake ever see you again? Most likely, but only time will tell, and the winter draws nearer.

giving birth to a vacuum

I am fundamentally against the smashing of guitars, and all other varieties of instrument destruction. Don't throw a tuba down the stairs. Don't stab a drum head with a stiletto. Don't siphon off the beans from a maraca. Don't bury each piece of a clarinet in a separate location. Don't open the emergency hatch so your Vulcan lute gets blown into the vastness of space. Just give them to me if you really want them to stop talking to you.

can't sleep with the man who dims my shine

so last saturday justin and i left port angeles to begin a 6-day adventure into and around olympic national park
and while i was there, and after i've come back, i've wondered how to write about it here
because as certainly as i am a cephalopod,
this was an adventure.

here is a map and some lists. they suffice to tell the story.

purple star is where i live, red is bus, yellow is hitchhiked, blue is hiked

things i saw (copied from my notebook-- i made these lists every night except the first and last):
sun 30 aug at the beach in lapush
-mushrooms: alcohol inky caps, mycena amicta, wine-colored agaricus
-bald eagle atop a rocky outcropping with a seagull diving at it
-a living, washed up shark, about 3 feet in length
-wily chipmunks
-surfers
-grizzled gulls
-my breath
-pelican party
-the town of forks, taken over by twilight-readers/watchers
-trees and rocks that look like caspar david friedrich paintings, only west coast so no oaks-- spruces instead

mon 31 aug in the hoh river valley (948 ft elev)
-lots of mushrooms! including chicken of the woods and baby oysters, pleated pluteus, tawny almond waxy cap, yellow pholiotus
-a skeletal mountainside, graves of trees, white from a fire 30 years ago
-my broken camera
-the hoh river, bluey grey with rock and trees, classic pacific northwest image
-big big tree with a whole ecosystem at its base so tall and thick
-moss on phone booth roof at visitor center

tues 1 sept at hoh lake, (4500 ft elev)
-mushrooms! orange, purple, red, brown, white, scaly vase chanterelle
-the clouds from above (and in them, and below them)
-BIG BIG BIG cedars, spruce, fir
-a composting toilet with spectacular mountain views
-right now, these ridiculous trees covered in moss.dripping from everywhere, a light, sickly green, like something dr seuss or meghan would draw
-the meadows which smelled like delicious baking
-a doe and her 2 fawns
-a black bear bumbling on the hillside opposite our camp
-these mountains mountains snow and glaciers (mount olympus and all its peaks)
-tadpole parade
-submerged logs in hoh lake, slumber slumber
-trout babes and jumping fish

2 sept at appleton pass (5000 feet elev)
-that black bear, but close up
-an owl at bogachiel peak
-ravens at heart lake
-a goat outside our tent, nibbling and sniffing and terrifying
-blueberries blueberries blueberries staining my fingers and lips
-two small scummy nasty ponds

and there's no more written in my journal for the trip anymore, though the next day we went to the hot springs on our way out of the park so i got all this sludgey slime on me and smelled like eggs and nakedly asked strangers for directions. and saw a beautiful forest along boulder creek... the descent from appleton pass, though it was rainy, may have been my favourite part of the trip (???)

my mental soundtrack (songs that got stuck in my head on those long silent days of walking):
'leaving today!' christina aguilera
'i like it rough' lady gaga
'i am a wizard' harry and the potters
'genius next door' regina spektor
'man, i feel like a woman' (who sings this??)
'be our guest' beauty and the beast
'felix felicis' harry and the potters
'can you feel the love tonight' lion king (the parts where timon and pumbaa are talking)
'welcome' christina
'paparazzi' gaga
'elbow room' schoolhouse rock

and i can't remember anymore! i tried hard to remember my mind's playlist.

in other news i am trying to remember hindi and it is really sad. and to do reading for my civ class which starts in 3 weeks BLECH

also blech that this farm is boring and i can't imagine being here until the 19th... i have arranged a rideshare out of seattle on the 20th. there's really nothing to do here; i think all i do is weed and harvest. by the time i leave i will have accomplished nothing! weeds grow back and so do veggies. maybe i'll run away somewhere earlier or something. suggestions?
gee this blog has gotten active and i like it. hello good work i like your brains
.zee

Homecoming: Monday the 14th

I just spent the loveliest evening with the Silverleaf clan, gorging, being gorged upon (by Connecticut mosquitoes), and flying high in chairs on chains and ferris wheels. Also dodging old acquaintances (not mine) and dwelling on where we come from. Lots of vocalisations of how good it's all gonna be soon, and my whimsical friend I find less whimsical, maybe a bit more mischief showing. Did you all know that Tamara now has the power to part crowds with her bad-assery? Perhaps it's just CT crowds...

Work is staring at a screen and trying to push pixels in the right direction to make a pretty picture. Fun has been ridiculous sex, long walks and talks, museums, well-written television, and Settlers of Catan. Days are full, but not vigorous, which I miss. It's like I can feel the pulse of Chicago, and it's only getting stronger. I was happy to get away, get a break, but I don't belong in streets where everyone is either in high school or their wealthy middle-age.

I'll be back in about a week to join in the frenzied rituals of 5491. We talked much tonight about how great each of our buddies is, and I cannot wait to see them again.

(re)sitions and trans(turns)

I, Leli the Konquerer, have swept back into Hyde (that's H as in Helvetica, Y as in Ygddrasl, D as in Degradation, and E as in Ephalent) Park.
hmmph.
There are things to do and themes for the future. These include
vegan food
harnessing collective power
decorating things
ritual (as in, adding more DIY ritual to life)
1 poetry zine (entitled: "Welcome to Address Book Poetry")
1 folk album (entitled: "Indisquidual Resistance")
and fixing my poor, poor speakers.

In this coming year I hope to be as honest as possible and consequently never feel the need to feel guilt. Does that work?
In the coming year my thoughts will be as abstract and nonsensical as possible, especially in the squidiverse, so I offer you this post as a rare and special coherent conversation, and also as proof that I didn't completely lose my mind this summer.
Expect stories and poems from my journeys in the coming weeks.
Leli

the marked hen

this is not a story for the faint of heart

here on west wind farm there live about 25 mature hens who lay about 25 eggs every single day. in a separate coop there reside about the same number of 3-month old chicks (who are black and blue and slightly brown and haven't grown their red gobble gobbles on their heads), who will replace the others when they become too old (they're near the end of their lives).
russell, the 22 year old from seattle who came to these lands 4 months ago and has decided he will never leave, is the master of the hens. he feeds them, collects their eggs, and spends good time with the chicks, allowing them to become accustomed to the human touch.
about two weeks ago, russell began noticing queer occurences in the coop. at least one, if not as many as 3, eggs were broken each dusk as he went in to collect them. who was the culprit? the mystery continued...
until last week, russell walked into the coop and saw a hen run out of the wall of nests, with a shell and bit of yolk on her beak. she was caught red handed.

quickly she was moved out of the mature hens coop and into the pen with the younger hens where she could not eat any more eggs. but she kept getting back into her old coop, the wily one. she was then splattered in blue paint, for us to more easily identify the disrupter of order on the farm. since then she has remained with the younger ones.

and there are still more gruesome facts... it seems she is teaching the young chicks of her ways; by laying eggs and pecking at them. the young chicks have never seen eggs before and now, it is feared, all they know is to peck at them until they break.

something must be done about the marked hen. it is russell's mission (a directive from peter, master of the lands) to get rid of her. most likely by outsourcing her death to a neighbor who will find some unsavory use for her tough body.

she will be remembered by the few as a boundary-breaking, devil-may-care, rebel with an unknown cause who was murdered for her beliefs.

rest in peace, marked hen.


----
edit at 3:07pm:
russell dutifully placed the hen in a dog crate and about 10 minutes ago coleman (the neighbor) came by with his dogs in the bed of his truck, placed the hen in with them, and rode away. her body will be too tough to eat plain-- she will have to be boiled or put in a stew in order to be tasty. i told peter i hoped i wouldn't get carted away if i started drinking my menstrual blood and he said if people found out, i just might. but then again no one harvests my blood to sell at saturday markets for $4/dozen. this is so fucked up... she is being killed for eating her own eggs (she laid and ate another one today). apparently with chickens these days it's actually bred out of them to fuck. there is a rooster here who lives with 25 hens and only rarely does one of them actually guard her egg and take care of it (it's called brooding) because she knows it's fertilized.
maybe we will have a little ceremony tonight for her by the fire.

remarks on being in the world

i just discovered that our dishwasher got fixed 2 months ago and we never noticed. yeah!

tequila and rum are different, i realized. after genderqueerchicago meeting last night, i came south with a crew and went to sav's to celebrate/take my pants off/send love with sav to d.c. i started taking dirty girl scouts (there were at least five scattered through my evening) and then moved to rum and coke which was actually, deceptively, tequila and coke. those are different things.

i am nibbling through my cocoon at istria; my wings are covered with grounds and mucus but i am very nearly a fullfledged Barist(a). a wondrous new world of people two minutes from the haus. yes.

Slip Sliding Away

To do to prepare for going home:

• forget about cigarettes
• have back-up, secret place to smoke them just in case
• debate merits of bringing your laptop
• think of questions to ask your parents (dig inside your self for a lack of awkward)
• think of answers to questions your parents will ask you
  
• plan to excavate your basement (since it's in the jaws of the tag sale these days) for favorite scraps
• frantically try to clear away any administrative tasks to have a "relaxing vacation"
• reminisce about the times when your backpack was bigger than you and you wore a uniform and your dad drove you to school on his way to the train station and you had to shake the headmistress' hand after an older girl helped you out of the car
• try to pick a book, fail
• second guess your decision to buy a plane ticket
• pack the grubbiest, second-handiest clothes you own
• leave room for bringing back costume pieces
• get bored, jump around to Man Man for a while
• switch to Crystal Castles
• finish stuffing things in the bag, leaving folding in the past
• alert the one friend you actually want to see as to your whereabouts/travel plans
• steel yourself! hold on to what you've built!
  

The perils of wage labor

Fatigued heavy-bodied and fetal, too often croissant orders worm their greasy fingers into my brain as I drift towards REM.

My inscrutable brain lingers on memories of croissant orders rather than

dance partners

Dutch landscapes

attractive strangers

blues queens

(moments that populate my significant existence)

HA HA HA HA HA