A helpful post I came across on a farmers' blog

The Dirty Dozen
Try to buy these 12 fruits and vegetables grown organically. But also know that many small farms can’t sustain the paperwork and fees to be certified Organic, even though they practice organic methods. If you shop at a farmer’s market and want to buy products not listed as organic, ask the vendor anyway, there’s a good chance many of the products were grown without the use of pesticides.

1. Celery
2. Peaches
3. Strawberries
4. Apples
5. Domestic blueberries
6. Nectarines
7. Sweet bell peppers
8. Spinach, kale and collard greens
9. Cherries
10. Potatoes
11. Imported grapes
12. Lettuce







The Clean 15
Produce with a strong outer layer seems to have defense against pesticide contamination. Although buying only organic is the first choice, if you are unable to do so, EWG recommends these non-organic fruits and vegetables which contain little to no pesticides, number 1 being the cleanest:

1. Onions
2. Avocados
3. Sweet corn
4. Pineapples
5. Mango
6. Sweet peas
7. Asparagus
8. Kiwi fruit
9. Cabbage
10. Eggplant
11. Cantaloupe
12. Watermelon
13. Grapefruit
14. Sweet potatoes
15. Sweet onions


If you are unable to buy organic produce, avoid the “Dirty Dozen” and instead opt for the “Clean 15.” If you can buy limited organic, purchase organically-grown items from the Dirty Dozen, and continue buying non-organic selections from the Clean 15. Of course, in a perfect world we wouldn’t be contending with pesticides at all–but in this imperfect world at least we have some tools to help navigate around the n-methyl carbamates and organophosphate pesticides.

wine and whitman

i like the idea of everything my lover

this coy curtain, that charming chair

everything a thing ready to receive pleasure;

ready to commence a beautiful relationship

looking to catch my eye and wink back

every encounter a chance to make love

your body and my body

i touch you with care

every inch a discovery

your delight becomes mine

i start dancin after about 9 minutes, 30 seconds

SASLI 2010 Intermediate Hindi Student Film Project from punnu j on Vimeo.

so my visible role is small, and you dont hear me speak once. but! i wrote the algae script, and typed all the subtitles. and im the anonymous pair of hands. yup!

feeling awake vs. being awake

silence so loud: so this is the life of the infinite? i is alive, i is awake?
why so much wondering pursuing my life if i am indeed alive.
am i to go through it
ever propping up the illusion that i am awake? it´s a fine thing so far. after all, the illusion has given me dancing, good food, gardens, forests, bikes, funny haircuts, costumes, great sex, electric ideas so much! is this the climax? maybe illusion is not the right word: it suggests regret, disingenuity, failure. not what i am going for! never!
but no matter how many ideas i go through i am not safe; i am safe when i do, when i act, when i am .

i notice when i want to feel alive i reach for the typical things: hiking, traveling, newness, hitching, gardening, camping, la-la, fucking, beautiful company etc
all greats things, especially when shared
but there still is a lingering something that suggests more
for a wild grove of youth.
knowing what we may know
what we feel,
are times urgent?
is there something going on?
something going down?
haven´t we been talking like something is?
is there something we should be doing together?
we this beautiful pile of imagination, youth, will, creativity, bodies, wonder kids
are we waiting for something?
have we waited too long?
not taken our connections and experiences together as faith in something promising and important?
are we just going to float on?
is there something to be realized before georgraphy and memory have their way with us?
is place our fate? what about something nomadic?

fear love stability home loneliness will have something to say about this, i bet they will.

these are all real questions and not just round about ways of stating stuff

lately i do not fall asleep at night
i put myself down on things to try
but what happens is something like
my self opening up like a strange flower.
crumbling away into dream, trust, excitement
i am brimming with something terrible and wonderful
i see your faces, and your light.
our voices, talking
we´re moving somewhere
the world is watching
because it is interested in love, courage, possibilities of the young.

i dont write this to be romantic. i cannot sleep. i dont know what
to do. that´s probably the important part.
at least, i have it down somewhere accessible to all of you.
not locked in my notebook.

in germany beyond it

a little bird
falling asleep on life´s branch
also forgets to sing.
stay awake little bird.
don´t you know how i listen and look for you
somebody is always listening and looking for you,
you affect the quality of the days.

summer beats down hard on a little river in germany.
the river and the hills detest this city heap.
i need to leave because the river told me it is going
to rise to the height of man
which is all will take to swallow it gone.

what does it take?
to protect my aliveness.
normative europe, though it be cobbled and castled, is a tomb.
must i go put my thumb on the road
in flight for new faces and hope?
what does adventure look like?
i know it aint a present out there waiting to be unwrapped

i fold myself differently each day anew
my dance is a bit slower and doughy
but i still dance,
friends in heart and mind.

i have a fever in my skin

a festering sore on my chest

a hole in my heart, it hurts

even the sky is bored

but dammit

i will run in this rain

and i will remember that we are just some moody monsters

with sudden aches and groans

scowls and caprice

who push and pull and forget what we want but know we want it bad

until we can feel silly about our sickness

let go our fists

look at our half-comprised lives

and know we love them

a funny moment on the uchicago campus

while smoking, i saw a wandering fellow with a very nice camera looking rather lost and asked if he was indeed lost.

"yes, i'm looking for foster hall."

"oh, it's right there. are you taking pictures?"

"yes, i wish i could give you my card."

"it's okay, i wouldn't have much use for it."

"oh well, i figured you might be an aspiring photographer. i've been working for national geographic for ten years and i won two pulitzers. isn't that funny?"

"yeah, that's funny. what are you taking pictures for?"

"oh, i'm not sure."

(he pulls out a very pretty picture of obama.)

"i took this one. isn't that funny?"

"yes, that's funny. what's your name?"

"dan dry. i'm pretty famous."

"oh. i'm eliot."

"not to be confused with eliot spitzer."

"no."

"are you an undergraduate here?"

"yes, i just finished--"

"okay, i'm going to go. have a good day."

how funny.

i did my second day of poetry camp today and it was fabulous,

i'm sprouting poems just a bit faster than my calf muscles are growing hard.

tasty samples to come soon.

xray-ed jalapeno compliments of dan dry.

In contact improv, falling is a proposition. (It's also a skill.)

You begin a fall, and perhaps some one will amble by and offer their support (an elbow, a back, a fingertip), or perhaps your fall is uninterrupted and your support turns out to be the ground. Gravity is reliable, so is the earth (The floor is your friend).

Or one can propose by touching heads (lying down on our backs, crown to crown; eventually of half our bodies will float up together while the other half sinks down towards our friend, the ground. Rolling, floating, sinking).

Any touch is a proposition.

(Say no to a proposition. Become a statue. Retract from touch. Go get water.)

(but today: "For here or to go?" "To go. Though if you'll have a drink with me, it'll be for here." It was more awkward to avoid that proposition. Shifty eyes, halfway grimace, deflected small talk. )

And how HOW much more awkward it is to MAKE propositions in everyday life than in contact jamming! Touch is too great of a proposition (just a handshake, a hug held a moment too long). We advance invitations, questions (tell me a story, a joke, tell me about the weather, your weekend. Make me laugh), we try to create spaces of safety and positivity, try to open channels of reciprocity through aesthetics/politics/vegetable-adoration/mutual appreciation/insults/compliments. If the conversation continues, we're already halfway there. But somehow it stops. at. half. way.

Or it keeps going! the propositions flow freely, careen in from both directions; the pressure to go down on one's knees lies with no one in particular; it's liquid, it's a dance, dance of lifeandpossibilityand and suddenly we're really fucking deep inside.

Buuuuurp.

And you'd think it would be easier to propose the second time, but it keeps getting harder.

edit: and what kind of proposition is this? does pity or joy work more efficiently to create a space of reciprocity? (and towards you, halfway-round-the-worlders, what is the equivalent of touch, how do I make a proposition?

hint: I smell like mint; it's a weed I've been pruning all day)

would it kill anyone to fucking laugh around here?

all these new entries what a f ea s t !

i can imagine the people i know writing these words

and for a moment it is something like talking, looking in eyes

the voices

i am finally moving onto another farm:

Farm

a. farm

• farm

- farm

b. farm

though it´s only been a week here: arguments! about farming! fever! screaming balls and kids! yucky butt! tender!

gahh the farms are all seeming such the sames

fences, fields, roofs, dreams, family, trying, will, doing, hard, love

no fire, no electric souls, running dancing

people want to use my body and its youth

i heard a song that said:

"do not forget the power and beauty of your youth, and

take care of your knees"

who do i think i am?

im weary folks and shifty eyed, so like the slippery old kid of bygone

reimagining myself moment by moment

(the audience rolls their eyes, i roll mine, we all roll them together and sigh

then get up and boogie)

j´s on the run again

soon but not so soon

moments are what i deal with here. they are

what i triumph, dance around, numb myself to. i try i try and sometimes fail at the moment

i can fail horribly, but i am getting better.

when i first got here i battled with

the smoke, the eating, the drinkies

on and on

intimidated by the moments, and i thought

i was safe.

had i not learned from childhood and pride how to be alone?

still the cities offer so much subtle stimulation

emanating swirling or the easy walking out of the door to a lovely face

so much so much.

peace, silence, aloneness in the city feel like warm campfires id love to come sit around

peace, silence, and aloneness here, in this isolation they bite and shiver cant figure em out

yet

in norway the mountains and sea rule all else.

everything bows to them, (i look around, should i bow too?)

and trees and animals and such seem an afterthought.

but still the little forests and rivers nourish somehow even the most homesick heart but

when i walk away from them though no chance!

the spell wears off

got to find a troll to follow me around with one

im growing bored and wrathful toward norwegians .

there are so many things i could say and want to say to friendly eyes

but it would feel like dumping.

i think it would feel like rain, dark grey rain

not bright sun, not like summer

ill just say: would it kill anyone to fucking laugh around here?

the second song off the ratatat album LP4 is stuck in my head. I listened to it driving back from Growing Home, car windows rolled down,

doing headstands, I listened to it this afternoon with my yoga mat rolled down

listened to in my head as my bike wheels went round and round just now, coming back from Fred Burkhart's coffee house. (voila le principles of my life (farms, headstands, biking, artfarting) rolled into one)

something is blooming. is it my face?

How do we parse intimacy in relation to ephemera? Does intimacy require a degree of stability, of 'really getting to know' a person's quirks/faults/small delights? If love at first sight is possible, how about love only at first sight? Maybe perhaps at second. And only until Tuesday.

The beginning of a thought to be completed. To do: construct a more stable intimacy with this blog.

welcome! and oh what a state we find ourselves in

welcome, bex and caro, to this spongy visceral mess--
(or darkened quaker-esque meeting hall)
i like to think of it as the dank fold between the femur and the ephemera.

write freely, free lovely: your words-thoughts-poems-freeassociation-sketches-pictures-stories-songs-breaths-learnings-mindflips-lessons-confessions are welcome. conventional grammar not enforced. i love hearing what you're up to.

oh and don't mind the friendly chinese 'botpuppies. they don't bite, but they comment vociferously.

with the approach of the total solar eclipse on sunday, i'm glad to think we are loosely webbed across oceans and words as the moon's shadowy finger is drawing its tip across the pacific. celebrate somehow if you like! these are magickin days, or so they say.

and a sidenote: t.rex and i just folded another 100 copies of the game zine! free(&wh)eeeeeeeeeeeeee! get a lil stack from the bäo or if yr faraways i'll send you one. good ol family fun.

anfreundend

The past few days have been a whirlwind of tears and euphoria, German dictionaries and massive communication failures, bodies everywhere and buckets o' sweat. By the end of each day, I was exhausted and overwhelmed and ready to crawl into my hostel bed. I wanted space, I wanted friends, I wanted to speak German. I wanted to feel like I was making some kind of home, getting to know the city, making it friendlier.

I had been on an apartment hunt for weeks it felt, visiting expensive designer apartments in Prenzlauer Berg, home to only pregnant women, new mothers, and babies. I visited an apartment in Schoneberg that took me two hours on the train. No one emailed me back, no one was willing to work through my broken German, no one even had a fucking minute to speak a bit more slowly. Thursday, I showed up to the last apartment visit I had scheduled, 45 minutes late after debating whether or not to come. I ended up staying for three hours, eating strawberries and yogurt and talking about anti-semitism in leftist politics, how to make the ö sound, and all the hot queers in Berlin. Today, I moved in to this gorgeous apartment with skylights and big open spaces. It's already starting to feel like home. I've got a little room with a loft bed, a huge communal kitchen full of fresh cheap food, and 6 roommates who speak with me in Deunglisch. It's nice.

mugged by the muggy

it's been awhile--

my skin's a little browner, my tummy a little emptier, my room a little messier, a couple projects finished, a new couple projects in utero, my thoughts tumbling around like damp clothes in this broken-dryer-wet heat,

in the mornings, i stumble out of my bed (sort of like sheets left on the floor of a sauna) and put on the minimals and walk to the lake. so the first apprehension of my day is engineered, clear--i count to ten before i can dunk myself into the icy water. then i take a deep breath and count to ten again. and then i breathe for a little while. and then i dive--

this morning i sat on the porch swing with my coffee

and noticed a tiny spider hanging on a web
between the ropes of the swing

she must have built that home last night
while i dreamed of clay bodies

while no one was watching, she began to wait

and i watched her crawl around and didn't want to ruin the intimacy

(the promise of my silence, our tacit agreement that our shared story would turn out a particular way, that is,

enduring)

i didn't want to break our moment
by being the one to point out that

her home couldn't stay there,
that her home would be folded in upon itself

within the hour.
(and then that i might be the one to do it, to undercut
the optimistic fantasy that drove her to create a home.)

the man who supports the weight of his white crippled dog as they walk through the ally walked through the ally with his dog. the biker who lives in the house with the garden rolled his bike out, strapped on his helmet, and squinted at his watch. a car-driver in a car drove by. things went as they do, the listeners listening and the coffee-drinkers drinking their coffee and the bikers biking and the wakers waking and the sleepers sleeping.

LB wrote, "'i didn't think it would turn out this way' is the secret epitaph of intimacy."

(and i wonder, how do i change my living to avoid that--

not to say cynically, authoritatively "i knew it would turn out like this,"

but to think that in our intimacy, nothing is sure or promised or forever,

and this is okay and good and beautiful because it is)--

and to the spider, what i might have wished i could say was:
"i'm sorry i cannot be seduced by your web
but my aesthetics of attachment are not careful enough
for us to flourish together. it doesn't have to make sense."
but the quietude was tempting and i intimated with my breath
...it doesn't have to make sense.

last week my brother was here, what a quiet charming fresh young mind,

we adventured around and i felt my spirit of adventure returning,

to the MCA to live on metal mobile islands, biking, bäoing, sitting by the lake,

a sip of a beer is an illicit transgressive simple delight,

the world is not so hard, it is good, and the days flow by filled with ideas that are sometimes followed through till completion and sometimes the sketches are left behind.

and these days have been days of making and unmaking,

tinctures pickles lentils paintings drawings beginnings plans truths quietudes stories bread zines

promises obligations burdens annoyances aspirations falseness messes stresses desires pressures expectations stories bread zines

i'm finding great satisfaction in these small projects which have become daily rituals, and though sometimes the process is painful the reward is always great. i am content being alone and together, quiet in groups, fermenting and bubbling in my desires and allowing them to slowly unwind as i bike up, down, back, forth, through the prairie and the froth and the broken-dryer-air.

for now, that's all. i'm thriving on air and memories and presents and futures and glasses of water and icy mornings and the sparest of intimacies and the occasional loaf of hot hot bread.

at the madison infoshop

so geez i guess ive been in madison for three-and-a-half weeks now and haven't written anything on this here blog.
in the begnning i collected little sentences/snippets in my mind to share with you all: "i live in a home without keys" "both of the toilet flushers are sticky" "i have a carpet in my bedroom" "i don't want to assume that i can just absorb clint's friendships by association" "i have a door i have a door i have a door what do i do with this thing"

anyway but now that sort of amazement of the difference of mundanities is fading. except for every time clint says "bag" i still can't believe the wisconsin accent exists. (you should have heard my reaction to "snaggletooth"! he seriously said "snaeggle tooth" wow so cool!). my muscles have grown accustomed to the 3-block long hill i climb every day to get to school. I'm used to how still and beautiful my house looks with the white day light streaming through the red curtains and the hundreds of hankies hanging from the ceiling. the garden keeps on growing. flowers turn to squash turn to dinner. this house is so beautiful you guys. i can't wait for some of you to see it. (whoever comes, that is)

so my madison legs are growing you see. i dont feel as rootless, as vulnerable. the people i meet/have met are interesting/ed, friendly, supportive.

z:"guys, i really don't know about this kichadi, i think i fucked up. i think it's gonna be boring."
c:"you're doin it, you're doin it. at least you fucked up authoritatively and with confidence."
clint's comment made me realize i would never have done that until recently (past 2 months or so..."since india" i guess.) I am appreciated for what I bring to the home... no-knead bread, sweet oatmeal, banana bread, silly cartoons, the butt game (& "up your butt"), an appreciation of sphincters in general, dancing and singing, and a desire to live in the public communal space.
the roost enriches and supports the faux op, and i know when i return to chicago the faux op will nourish me there. i've introduced many roostisms: certain faces (maybe you know the one in particular to which i refer-- teeth out, nom nom), certain reports (fake chastising and self-deprecation). oh and BAO!
baos here at the faux op sound slightly different-- a little more like a dog's song. more at the front of the mouth. i find myself baoing much more here than in hyde park, though it's been less and less this past week. my first weeks here i couldn't stop. it was a home-noise. it made me feel comfortable & expressive when riding my bike, walking into and around the house...
===================
hours later, at home, i'm trying to finish up this post. i had so much more to write about, where did it all go? i am rolling and smoking cigarettes here, so that's a newish thing.

oh yes yes, the rain is coming, i hear it coming down. i live on a busy street, i hear the cars rolling by. i hear the folky acousticy music noah is playing downstairs in the lab where he grows mushrooms. oh rain.
i have been sleeping in the front room here. I don't like walking into my room at night and lying on my big empty mattress and closing the door (well, the door stays open). i dont like the sanctioning of space as mine. most of the time. it makes masturbating a lot easier than in the roost (wow. that was complicated, or at least obnoxious.)
though i have decorated the walls with little pieces of nice paper, reminding me of people and places. it all seems too quaint, too discreet.

so i sleep in the front room on a futon, usually after staying up too late talking and reading watership down with clint. a detrimental habit for both of us, as we wake up around 7:30 and make oatmeal and coffee and talk some more.
and then i go to hindi class. hours of sitting down in a grey room in a grey building with tiny 1-foot wide windows, talking about india. weird. but i have made some buddies there and like the social atmosphere very much.
it's time for me to write 10 sentences using the past-participle-adjectival construction ("the came-from-school boys"), and then drink some tea/tinctures and fall asleep.
I look forward to welcoming those of you who are in chicago into my home soon. july 16th to be exact. if you are hesitant to take a break from chicago, or feel busy... just give madison a chance. we can go biking to an old-growth campsite and look at STARS (so many stars) and stencil, garden, make food, bike around, go swimming, go to a local microbrew's beer tasting (every friday 4 to 7 at star liquors), etc etc. lots of fun lovely people await just 150 miles north!
love
-zee

today i watched a honeybee

fight the wind

and make love to flowers

how many sighs need one expel

before she can lay herself over the world like the moon

tucking in the light and lambs,

the liar and lover

or kiss their brows

like a single swift raindrop

or the butterfly that revisits after several years

swoosh

i know the time has passed

and you fear me a different force

a strange spirit with stranger skin

but look at my wings

they still like to fly

look at my stance

i beckon to bow

pull me in and let me stay a while

let me learn

let me worship again

let me live and make love to flowers