I been careless.

White limo, old old old, on the corner of Kenmore and Thorndale, painted in red on the sides and back, "Stop the killing, be kind to each other." I am surrounded by white people who find the "war" between the "Wilson" and "Thorndale" gangs an amusing urban anecdote, a place to claim faux ownership over our neighborhood, joking, "We'll come out on top, of course." We will, because it won't touch us. Oh, you mean the gang you've claimed as yours! The gangs filled with faces of kids you've never met with problems you don't understand.

Well, shit. Whence the moral superiority, T'mo? You been just as careless, stamping across the landscape with feet just as light and unburdened as these false claimants. Been careless with your money, time, dreams, friendships, drinking, smoking, possessions, food, breathing, sleeping, electricity, windows and doors, locks, keys, tobacco, communication, plans, dates, words. Think yourself into a tizzy. Dream of the devil retiring to an old mansion, the pale blue paper house that appears over and over, burning it to a crisp brown and dressing up your friends as ghouls. Think yourself in circles, go ahead. But that's it, no more.

What money?

Dear David Casner, VP, UChicago Alumni Board of Govenors,

I don't have a penny to spare to donate to your fund. Not for your university, not for pumping up prestige, not for helping to create unquantifiable numbers to go in brochures, not show other people how much your institution is loooooved by its young alums, not to support a place that shuffles along and pokes and prods the kids who don't want to learn your way, not to put extra shine on the windows of your new arts center, not to attach my name ever more to place that does not represent who I am in totality.

In short, I am other things before I am a UofC graduate. Sometimes I have a hard time figuring out what those things are, but this week I am a reader of Nabokov (Transparent Things, Lolita, whatever's in the house) and swimmer without goggles because I like the sting of chlorine in my eyes. This week I am busy shaking of a creepy cab driver on a drenched Saturday night who insists that I sit up front with him, have a cigarette with him before I head home, who grabs my hand and makes me employ not my social graces but my ability to tell someone to fuck off. I am busy shaking off bullshit and buying curtains.

So, it's awful presumptuous of you to ask me for money. If you think you know where my loyalties lie because you gave me an embossed piece of paper in maroon envelope, you, sir, are sorely mistaken.

T'mo

moments from the first eight days

tonight i am weary...spend hours picking dusty-shiny red apples (and ate too many)
so for now here are some pictures of my world from the past few days.
i am finding a rhythm, drawing and yoga-ing and making bread,
working on digging this big square hole and gardening and feeding the bunnies.
there is much silence here, and some storytelling. things are slowly busy.
we have in abundance: carrots, soft white wheat flour, apples, pears, goat milk/cheese/yogurt, cucumbers, kale, chicken eggs, buckets, giant plastic containers that smell like chocolate hydrowhey or mint syrup.
my body is glad to be here, glad to be working and moving and lifting,
to be strong,


my new friends are in a constant cuddle pile.


my other new friends!


my new human friends slaughtering chickens...i degutted one. strange, beautiful, fragile, strong, confusing, wearying.


my househome, named "opus"...decorated within with bandannas and the smell of lemongrass and a pile of mango chili lollipops.


bread! i just discovered vital wheat gluten which, since we mill all our flour here (from soft white winter wheat and hard red winter wheat), is all whole wheat...and all whole wheat flour makes a dense (delicious) bread. more experiments with refrigerated dough (an alternative to kneading...i'm reading this breadbook by hertzberg & francois) in the works.

sarah proposed putting up a dreamwall-piece-of-paper.
ethan prefers nonverbal communication and is thinking about making pine needle soup.
we talk about when we were stoners and "sustainability" and derrick jensen.
still,
there are half cigarettes and
lots of toast
and lots of hellos and goodbyes
and talking about dreams in the morning.