why the title, i wonder
and the paintings chosen for the cover
though the hell inside is not so simple as Moreau
why did i allow a used bookstore to sell it to me for $21
in front of my mother
when it was already warped at the corner
like someone dipped in the tub
when it traveled across the ocean
sold to the same someone for 20 pounds
at gatwick or heathrow

(but that's modern loving, isn't it?
reading the same book, months apart
in different cities, on similarly piss stained trains
ice and salt drawing mandelbrots on our boots
that's what left to us)

in the smell at the bottom of the washing machine
cold basement stone and wet sand and mold
in underwear hardened with blood
i know there's a religion amongst those pages
if you were so inclined
(who else but a prophet can know that much about so many people?)
a calendar for doom, a new gravity of suffering
support documents for the work of Carlton Pearson
the long ream of research for the thesis of Melancholia
and it's in my hands to help me get right with god

but more truthfully,
it's that our lives glance off each other here too
if only we could see the whole a little better
maybe we sense that there could be sense
that there's a brain in every department
or at least a set of lungs
but kick in the shins, kick in the teeth, kick in the nuts
it's no good to think
we've done anything more than create a new Nature
and god bless you, but you don't find faces behind storms

topsoil is my prophet

"Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said, Speak to us of Eating and Drinking.
And he said:
Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by the light.
But since you must kill to eat, and rob the newly born of its mother's milk to quench your thirst, let it then be an act of worship,
And let your board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of the forest and plain are sacrificed for that which is purer and still more innocent in man.

When you kill a beast say to him in your heart,
"By the same power that slays you, I too am slain; and I too shall be consumed.
For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand.
Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven."

And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart,
"Your seeds shall live in my body,
And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart,
And your fragrance shall be my breath,
And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons."

And in the autumn, when you gather the grapes of your vineyard for the winepress, say in your heart,
"I too am a vineyard, and my fruit shall be gathered for the winepress,
And like new wine I shall be kept in eternal vessels."
And in winter, when you draw the wine, let there be in your heart a song for each cup;
And let there be in the song a remembrance for the autumn days, and for the vineyard, and for the winepress."

from "the prophet"


i love to hear your voices from afar! what pleasure, what warm reminders of our shared and overlapping and distantly tied worlds.

i am settling into the simple pleasures here--a jar full of warm goat milk, feeding the bunnies corn husks before i sit down to my oatmeal, farmer's cheese with bee balm flowers, cold cold hands while i strain the sprouted wheat for the chickens, tucking the beans and tomatoes in at night, wandering into the woods to find baby trees to water and talk to. my relationships with each person spiralling and growing in richness and depth as we skip from bare facts of our lives to the architecture of our dreams and desire,
small consensual touches and warmths, testaments to our humanness,
always pandora in the background (now sponsored by starbucks...?)
and golden sunrises and sunsets,
i am learning always to ask for help (opalyn, i'm not ready to twist off the head of a chicken yet...but i skinned a chicken yesterday, undressed this beautiful hermaphroditic silent bird without seduction but with solemnity and love and a thankfulness for my own fragile skin, contained blood, moments to live in the world.)
i am reminding myself always of how my body and mind are interwoven...
fighting anxiety with sun salutes,
finding peace in stacking firewood, wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of poop-straw (the most valuable of the ignoble resources), chopping, plucking, clipping,
khalil says "you work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
for to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission toward the infinite.
...to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.
...and what is it to work with love?
it is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
it is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
it is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
it is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
and to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
...work is love made visible."

we are redefining work!
as i move away from jobs, embrace the in-betweens of alleys, dumpsters, travelling, excess, closed loop systems, living from my labor,
i am finding my sanity and peace here in living in the service of life, flourishing in parallel to flourishing.

i have been here for a month! (today is windward's 33rd anniversary.) halfway through my time, stronger arms and heart, my body used to tiny pleasures and tears and small pains and love and missing--these things that never run out.

my favorite part of spring is jumping.

snippets of the bäohaus now available on the interwebz! share with friends, family, and remember the state of our house from faraway.

in other news,
today was my first day of school. (sounds of my life)
it was dumb and also interesting--"global warming" and "environmental history of the earth."
in the semcoop today i stood at the counter talking to dana and seeing hannah and someone said, do you have any books to buy?
i put down the book i'd accidentally picked up
and replied, "no, i have a lot of books. probably if i could take all the words they contain and scramble them up enough, i'd have all the books here. so i don't think i need any more."

this past weekorso has been like crawling through a brightly-lit tunnel,
keeping my peripheral vision open and my blinders put away,
this refrain of not-getting-back-to-something-old, i'm doing-this-a-new-way,
and neonomads and buddies and
sometimes searching searching for lost objects in a house that is an organized, sparkling disaster zone.
(i mean disaster in a good way, like "catastrophes" like ice dams opening up and creating the channeled scablands. like close calls that make you realize how much you stand to lose. like catastrophic departures that put enough distance between you&you that the missing starts to hurt and then watching your love grow as independence flourishes and autonomy learns to coexist with codependence like gabe and vlad asleep with their paws wrapped around each others' disastrously furry bodies.)

today this happened to me:
i was walking by the sem co-op, on the phone with z, and boarded over the curb and almost went sprawling. dana was walking by and paused-laughed and i yelled "oh shit." ten feet later, i heard,
"you just cursed in front of a church!"
me: uh...(looking around for a church and all i see is the sem co-op but okay)...oops.
he: want to be friends?
me: sure. what's your name?
he: here. (offers me the piece of paper he's holding) do you have an email address?
me: yes...but can we be friends without email?
he: just read it. all my info is there.
me: okay. what's your name?
he: just read it.
me: i'm eliot.
he: bye!

friendship is complicated these days,
complicated like the scablands and globalization and kissing,
a crumpled-typed note addressed to "nice ones,"
pink soup.
complicated like dreams i'm not sure i want to share in case they come true
photographs that i'm not in because i remember the feeling of a body behind a camera
and check-ins and sometimes honesty that hurts
like face wash that stings and you know it's doing something
(unless it turns out it's bleach and acne is not as bad as corroded flesh)
and anyway, what is that makes one shiny?
in the end, no one wants to be alone but we're so good at being lonely.
as soon as i say, "i don't know you," we are something to each other and
i have been taking pleasure in the weaving and woving and wivening of threads and stories,
delighting in the doing-being-becoming-brilliance of my buddies
because if i am enlightening myself, it is because i am surrounded by sources of light.
and in these days which are waxing and waning by the hour,
my hunger for artifacts is checked by a growing taste for kombucha
or if those things aren't causal,
they're correlated by event C, the walls and floors and bruises and glittery eyebrows and earfuls of facepaint and long breakfasts and cowboy coffee
and these bits of being here and also not-here. mostly here.

my bike is sad today, but i am not.

oh and,
skillshare/potluck/d.i.y.seder at the bäo tonight! if you weren't invited and are on this blog, you're invited
now.

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