aw oh

well i am i feel at a crossroads, and it could be a very boring crossoad
or it could be so much?
right now
today
tonight
the family,
that had been a-brewing winter plans
well
what happened?
they didnt materialize
fact
&this is ok! this is ok!

but i think i should let go!
when all our wills are truly aligned
they will align
and we will all feel good bringing our whole selves
but i dont want to compromise
and i dont think we should

i am young
i am fucking young
and i am fucking alive
and i fucking love you

read the whole thing here

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.

"different enough to make a difference?"

or, "notes from the land of goat cheese."

today i woke up in my trailer and fell promptly back to sleep.
when i reawoke, the blue lace-edged curtains and the billion bandannas were swaying and my toes were cold and the world smelled different than yesterday's world.

it's been awhile--four squids on a trip across eight states in a car smelling of bodies and tea tree oil and endless toast and warmth, camping in the rain, dreaming of burritos and kitchens, marmot humor, building a compost toilet, looking at each other in mirrors and reflections and eyeballs again and again. things becoming beautiful and every day entering someone else's little world for a little while and leaving a small trace (a wine bottle? a whiff of body? artificial toeprints?)

traveling through so many worlds, remembering the feeling of explaining myself and being alone in a new place, pulling in and reminding myself to stay open and not to hoard my memories and histories...it's been hard to write honestly for me, hard to parse out the emotional-intuitive-rush from the practical-factual-blurs. so now i find myself in a new kitchen, a new heart, and i'm a little lost without my handsaw and flogger but excited. and i feel far away but not so different.

this morning i held a day-old chick...there are a couple of them trying to break out of their eggs, and some don't make it--still eggs with a couple cracks. there are also guineas and peahens and quails i think, and a couple goats and sheep and two cats and 10 humans and a small garden with a big sign that says "rhubarb." my first job here was to make bread; then walt pulled me aside and told me the focus of my internship here will be bread-making...experimenting, researching, compiling a log for future windward breadmakers of how to make really good bread with the soft white wheat and other stuff growing locally. apparently a working person needs about a million calories a year to survive and people can eat about 4 pounds a day (which is why you couldn't survive on asparagus); 200 pounds of apples a year, he said. i think apples and bread sounds better than apples alone.

this is a funny place, a mix of old and young and influences ranging from philosophy degrees to years of polyamory to something about the military (seems like a community fetish) and something about the Six Nations and something realistic. their up-front intellectualism has kept it pretty much white. it's really research-oriented, as opposed to primarily producing for farmers' markets or being a leisure sideproject...it's an investment for the people who live here in surviving past a collapse and an opensource project in creating not only an environmentally sustainable homestead but a sustainable community structure. the care and love is scattered over a half-mile of little trailers and projects, fences and gardens, greenhouses and ramshackle somethings-that-once-were.

there's a little music; not much art around; i am the only tranny with a handsaw (though i haven't held a handsaw here yet.) but the people seem good (this kid andrew is into wildcrafting and medicinal forest-gardening/agroforesting and sarah & lindsey are thinning the forest...opalyn is working on gasification and they've got some wormies trying hard to compost...lots of building stuff and slow projects taking form) and i'm sure i'll learn a lot.

and there's so much goat milk-cheese-yogurt! more insight and maybe a picture promised with my next post; my heart is still weighing and swaying in my chest.

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.

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

a lil bit of something else

so to avoid the onslaught of the wheezing robots, i changed the blog to "readable by authors/invited readers only." hope that's okay with you. if you want to open a fellowsquid-squirrel-fox's mind to something adventurous,
- click "customize" at the top of this page (or navigate to the "dashboard")
- click the "settings" tab
- click "permissions" (the last tab)
- scroll to the bottom and add your buddy's email address to the waiting-wanting "invited readers" box
they'll get an email with the address and so long as they are not a robot, are welcome here.
[update: after talking to some squids, i switched this back so you 1) don't have to sign in and 2) anyone can read the blog. as a little sidenote to myself&all, since this is an open page and we sometimes direct our friends here, use yr Sense and don't post any super private info--address, phone #, full name, etc. and since the robots are here, email addresses are rife for spam so keep em to yrself.]

in other news,
capitalism is so boring.

for instance,

this weekend i went to madison with z, the isthmus of bikes-goodfood-tall leaning trees-lakes-co-ops-“ethnic”food-bourgeoisdelight and for the rest of us it’s a prime site for liberatory politics and homes that heal after a long day of the same-the same-the same, this time in wisconsin. the capitol building is better when the farmer’s market rings around it and after we make the rounds (cheese curds, kale, wallawallawallawontcha onions, conversation, little leaf samples, toothpicks for free, hot pickles, endless preserves) we go at it again with coffee-as-handwarmer just to see if there’s something we missed. for instance, a pastry. for instance, strawberry rhubarb something. for instance,

we toured some co-ops, not quite tourists more like “membershipper&waywardperson,” dwelling in the in-between between living and desiring, asking and choosing. reading house journals, asking about conflict, in this gap between rhetoric and reality finding cleavages of spirit and quietude. for instance, how much is dirt a part of your house practice? do you do the dishes because you have to or because you love to? when you say something objectionably real, do others agree? and are you friends? were you friends first? for instance, who shows up? who lives here? for instance, in this huge space, yard-public-rooms-niches-shed-kitchen, where in here do you live? for instance,

cigarettes on a porch, punching kimchi until it sweats, introducing legs to hills and mounds to muscles, homebuilt saunas full of steam and newly-met naked bodies, greywater toilets, filling up space with talk, local beef and indian honey, filing cabinets rocking back and forth with the weight of zines that could change the world if they landed in the right hands,

for instance, our hands found each other.

for instance, getting this funny feeling between my hand, heart, stomach, junk, bellybutton that maybe what i want (permaculture, farming, living, learning, thriving, flourishing, creating, loving) might not be as far away as the west coast, that there are places where life is easier to live well, a funny feeling of jealousy and impatience and through stories and reconstructions and resonance,

coming to love my now/here/present all the more, as ephemeral as it may sometimes seem.

something like,

dear madison,

you are one hot isthmus. thanks for the sunset. i think i’ll be back to go bikeriding with you soon. meet you by the ramps at the farmer’s market?

with communal warmth, cool breezes, and flying hair&pages,
eliot

creme corporel de la resistance

My best friend from high school MAX has reached the degree of fame where overweight middle schoolers post self-made youtube covers of his songs.

The above statement contains:

a. Irony

b. Critique

c. Bullshit

d. Hope

or

e. Cyborgs

Inhale, arms up, exhale, bend over, inhale, halfway up, exhale, jump your feet back, inhale exhale inhale exhale inhale exhale

A maelstrom of yellow reflections (don't flush):

Chicano buddhism, can one be new age ironically? can one be authentic ironically? maybe i'll go on the internet and find someone to piss on me, my chakras are dislocated today, try googling 'is philosophy useless', observe the tribe, one end of the scale is enthusiasm the other precision, why don't I feel like I'm learning anymore?

Let's go skinny-dipping! Who's down? let's freeze let's feel for real forever whatever together it's better this fetter together together