tips for a daily practice

let it form in your mouth--

tongue massaging pressing the back of your front two teeth,

tip of it piqued at the intersection of tooth and gum,

sliding down down down your teeth to the cliff of your open mouth

nose mouth humming nasal nascent "n"

rounding, opening, tongue flapping into the slow smooth "o"

you will need this practice.

it is good to practice this by yourself, perhaps on your way to a first date with a cute kid from okcupid or perhaps as you pick up the phone to call a parent. perhaps as you're riding your bike, hood flapping, on your way to a job or volunteer interview, somewhere where things will be asked of you. certainly on your way to the play party you're nervous and excited about, it would be good to practice. for sure as you are entering a dumpster or banquet or grocery store or place where you will be offered many things. perhaps as you sit and wait for your housemates to assemble for the meeting. definitely as you prepare to sort through old beloved objects or to clean the corners of your room, it would be good to practice this. perhaps also practice before or during any experience of momentum.

press tongue - to teeth - sliding down - nostrils flared - dropping open - rounding hum - smooth finish. repeat. repeat.

you would do well to remember that

this practice will come most in handy in the closest, most intimate situations

(walk-in closets, for instance;

being forced to stand or sit side-by-side, as an example;

sustaining shared ambiguity, most likely;

converging with any of the many or few you love, undoubtedly)

where you can remember that your tongue, your teeth, your vocal cords know already

you know how to do this, you have done it before,

even as your fingers work to tease apart sticky storied strings...

your honesty and the voicing of your hesitation will gain the rounded weight of importance.

in closeness, you will learn to say no,

to hear no.

to practice and trust that others' tongues are practicing too.

that there is space made for the presstongue-toteeth-slidingdown-nostrilsflared-droppingopen-roundinghum- smoothfinish to be heard loud and clear.

this practice

added to your daily ritual--whether brushing teeth or talking to spirit--

this practice fits well with other practices

of re-opening doors, or continuing to listen.

perhaps you could practice opening and closing a door alongside this practice.

it is just an idea.

i say this to remind you that (almost) nothing is irreversible.

another idea is to practice with a friend.

i suggest this to remind you that you can say no and yet not be alone.

another idea is to practice while doing kegels,

(i.e. temporarily stopping your flow of urine.)

i make this recommendation to remind you that the interruption of momentum might ultimately increase your pleasure.

there's a pun to be had here about knowing

and no-ing

and how we are shooting through space and time and opening opening opening ourselves stomping flying screaming and also taking care, stepping lightly, allowing slowness, calming...breathing...standing at the center of a circle we have drawn around ourselves. breaking down walls and stepping back. unleashing dams and drawing boundaries. giving ourselves wholly and reclaiming parts of ourselves a capitalist economy and overmediated world have tried to own. smashing structures that do not serve as we build homes among the chambers and organs and muscles held in by our skins.

you and i are both full of contradictions, and the space between us is brimming;

and the rubbing-together makes sparks;

i would like to point out that as there exist ORDER and CHAOS

and DARK and LIGHT

and GIVE and RECEIVE

and POSITIVE and NEGATIVE

(don't take this two-game too far, we've learned;

the fetishistic production of opposites is deceptively easy)

but if you've borne with me this far, there is also YES and NO

and as a libra, i would like to point that out,

to ask, "how are these things balanced in your days?"

[[we are not sheep we are not wolves in sheeps' clothing

we are not boys in wolves' furs

we are also boys and sheep and wolves all at once--]]

let it form in your mouth

(do you want it in your mouth? do you want me to put it in your mouth?)

press tongue - to teeth - sliding down - nostrils flared - dropping open - rounding hum - smooth finish

(what does it taste like afterwards, what do you taste)

keep practicing

(you deserve it...it's raining again)

das licht der oeffentlichkeit verdunkelt alles

a thought

(finding light on rainy days)

"...even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given them on earth..." (p. ix)

(finding realness amid apocalyptic promisings, or feeling real anyway)

"'all passions, even the most unpleasant, are as passions pleasant' because 'they make us feel more real.' this sentence strikingly recalls the greek doctrine of passions, which counted anger, for example, among the pleasant emotions but reckoned hope along with fear among the evils...in hope, the soul overleaps reality, as in fear it shrinks back from it. but anger...reveals and exposes the world just as...laughter...seeks to bring about reconciliation with the world. such laughter helps one to find a place in the world, but ironically, which is to say, without selling one's soul to it. pleasure, which is fundamentally the intensified awareness of reality, springs from a passionate openness to the world and love of it. not even the knowledge that man may be destroyed by the world detracts from the 'tragic pleasures.'"

(p. 6 of "men in dark times" by hannah arendt)

#1 of 10 days of rain a-coming,

last night a woman dragged across the street screaming across from the haus

and what do we do! what do we do? what do we do!

radioactive tendrils

what do we do!

rainy days--

what do we do!

for now, dark dark dark petting cats shared showers thinking what we think we are

"something somewhere!" he cried out in his sleep

oh gee it's rainy in oakland

wet feet wet hems of pant legs dirty underwear gold candles

going through a matchbook to try and light a cigarette,

walking through a puddle to remember that my rainboots have opened their soles to rain

looking for a warm hole (bucket? pot of soup?) to dive into and curl up till

the rain stops,

thought i'd evaded winter but oh hello.

but when i think of it that way it's not so bad,

this time, this quiet, once i'm curled up to read-zine-reflect-ponder-talk to friends old and new-play bananagrams by candlelight

not what oakland's been so far

(does a home, a nest in some woods or a tree, ever promise to be warm and dry and stable all the time? are all and any things cold and wet "miserable?")

the cold air through the last few boarded-up windows and the dripping in the front hall

are boring

though

and other souls wandering through attracted like moths to our candles and

recent-found patched-up walls and stability,

quiet dreams of the wood-burning stove (not just a game we're playing, though that too)

bernard maybe leaving with their pile of zines and shame about their teeth and beautiful face in the morning, katrina maybe too to go be present in the northeast with some mending hearts and sighs of dying,

and more kids coming in

a reminder for me about how things change, slow and fast and always,

to see this house grow up in weeks like the bao did over years

like trees over decades

like rye grass roots in minutes (3 miles of root hairs a day! i read).

i am trying to keep myself happy for me and also for others

i find recently that being around loud people makes me quiet, stressful people very chill, perhaps being around sad people makes me rejoice in the small pleasures of oatmeal all the more:

raisins vila almonds cinnamon nutmeg real maple syrup flaxseed out the wazoo

i will sigh and return to pat califia, who has at this moment to say:

"at times like these, i remember the spanner case because it renews my faith in being out of the closet and fighting back. the american gay press ignored spanner, scared off by the thunderclap of spanking and the rattling of chains. but it should serve as a powerful inspiration and model for any group of people who would like to live in a sexually sane society.

it all started in 1987..."

(didn't we all)

& just gets better and better

Slowly, let it build, let it rise, up, bit by bit, mmm, woah woah, oh, waaahaa, ohhhhhhhh, waihoooooafhhhgahahahahaa.

Stop. Silence. shhh

I learned how to dance last weekend at a psystrance festival in the jungle of southern costa rica called "geo-paradise". I-- broke out of my bubble, let the energy build slowly, shared such sexy compassionate and aggressive dances with boys and girls. Sometimes we start with the root chakra and move towards the eyes. Sometimes its just in the eyes. Sometimes one person is moving frenetic energy and the other one is still, or we're grinding all three together, or we're contact dancing with our arms, one lift flowing into the next.
Falling exhausted onto the grass, limbs spread out with no energy to keep moving- but uh uh uh huh the music does its thing and effortlessly......

life is effortless. don't move, don't resist, don't desire, don't push. it will happen.

like this happened: "the divine playground": a free school half-hour uphill from a black sand costa rican beach, where artists are converging for a month and a half to teach each other-- fire spinning, yoga, shamanism, clowning, etc.
Wow! wow, wow, wow. I had hoped for a community in costa rica and it manifested itself.

Of course i make it sound like fairy land--perfect-full of light. It hasn't all been so easy, I've been wrestling with the tyrant of flow (Mateo), the tyrant of my own resistance, with being wet, with feeling lost. But overall, wow. I can't help but pray, have faith, express gratitude for my blessings.

evolution!

wonderbread and wonderboy go for a walk in the woods...

do you know the story of the lupin lady?

also, dwelling in history: http://alitheavenger.blogspot.com/2008/08/recount-decount.html
practicing radical inclusion of past selves....hmhhmmhm oh berlin, oh my heart. one of many.

wanting a cigarette and questioning that desire--replacing it with stretching, yogastic satisfaction

thinking of-
healing?
how have i changed in the past year?
did college make me articulate?
how do i act on my radical politics?
does something matter if i can't articulate it (that is, spread a revolutionary consciousness)?

also geez-o, it's raining like a mofo on this thin-tin roof
& i'm thinking of population decline
(http://www.windward.org/private/articles/population01.htm)
hm bleak--whaddya think?

preparing to leave safan tomorrow morning,
leaving a red-purple-gold palatial shit chamber in my wake
gold seat fit for pillow princes and size queens alike
like the swimming idea of green tomato pies
like boletes, browncapped children of the forest fairies who live in the galls,
like two goats dead in four days and we wonder and we wonder,
like business plans are deep conversations, like
if you weren't raised eating expensive air then you'll never understand the difference
like whatever---

i am not a fountain! i am a jungle-jumble-menagerie-wet-furry-paperback-wonder!

last night i dreamt that my father was elected president (everyone said, "even if he doesn't do anything, it's a great sign. he's the best president we've ever had, and he doesn't have to lift a finger.") and that i was wandering from house to house looking for someone to give me shooting lessons.

also last night, after a day of wine tasting and cheese tasting in sutter creek,
maggie and i constructed a ritual for ourselves--of celebration, gratitude, making-space, becoming-present. drew from the rituals i had done with you folks, under the full moon on the beach before the jammin, at the sky factory under a sacrificed pinata, the queer interfaith ritual at the point this spring quarter, also the masquerade and wedding parties, also more small things of ritual and symbolism...
it was really good. we ate olive-garlic-rosemary-sourdough warm bread and kombocha squash and beans and rice and mustard greens and red wine, danced in the mud under a cloudy sky and screamed and howled and sat and were quiet. i imagined my chest to be like an advent calendar, full of tiny little doors, each door opening onto a field of stars and dark matter and space. i imagined opening each of the doors. we folded pieces of paper in half and wrote-drew "things we are stuck on/that control us" and "things that bring us strength, make us present" and shared some things (our papers looked totally different)--we planned to burn the former one, but decided to hold onto it to keep it conscious, think healing instead of throwing out. ("radical inclusion of past selves" has been a theme in my thoughts since az mentioned it in willits...it's a process.) i made some small commitments to myself, small daily rituals. it left me exhausted and good-feeling last night and quiet today.

drip drop
drip drop
drip drop

and now you are and i am now

some time has passed indeed! i have been on the road, traveling mightily quick-n-slow-sometimes...i left ethan and steve (the other post-windward buddies) on an early cold morning in seattle and trekked out to federal way to pick up my first ride at a freeway ramp in federal way in the rain. [magical thing #1:] after a couple offers to take me like 10 miles a young pre-med student eager to flout her parents' authority by buying me a train ticket to portland; i got there in the pouring rain and talked to jbird on the phone and extended my ticket to eugene.

spent a couple days with alma and declan in their cozy eugenian world, town of co-ops and a sweet infoshop and freeschool and a volunteer-run foodbuying locallovefest called grower's market [magical thing #2 was being starving and wandering with alma in the rain trying to find the grower's market and stumbling upon some free incredible poppy seed onion things that led us to the market]...


eugene was wandering biking-in-the-rain, excited to make connections and follow up and find things to do, was a vegan cornbread stand and travelerpunk kids reading on the sidewalk,

[magical thing #3:] i visited the maitreya ecovillage (in eugene) and happened to run into a friend(sortof) from high school...while we weren't quite friends then, our paths converged now and wow dang what a good feeling, somehow; these days when people ask where i'm from there are so many layers of recency to pull back that i don't often get back to pittsburgh, to those days and that sphere and the people i knew then.

[magical thing #4] was shooting an email out to a rideshareperson just before leaving to hitch and hearing back from them immediately--jan jim june jed?--and then she picked me up and ended up driving me all the way to mount shasta, down through medford and mountains and trees and into a snowstorm. i rode on a mattress in the back trying not to put my smellysockfeet anywhere and listened to her and the other woman she picked up talk about amma, the hugging-guru-spiritual-leader they were both heading down to san ramon to visit.

[magical thing #5:] arriving in mount shasta, a solid foot of snow on the ground and i'm trudging through the snow with all of my stuff wrapped around me and snow peeking over the top of my rubber boots, trying to sneeze and roll a cigarette at the same time in some snowflake-free shadow of my body and someone stops a few feet away and says "hi." we end up standing in the snow for an hour talking about myths and lostness and where beauty is to be found and her name is amanda and i never see her again but she gives me her phone number and promises she'll try and find me a place to stay.


i sit outside the co-op for a couple hours with a sweet sign that reads "new travel buddy!" plus some other stuff and end up spending the night in the living room of david, this older white guy drummer who is thrilled to have someone to bounce his ideas about communism-capitalism-ascendantmasterdom-spiritualgrowth off of.

hitched down i5 to 299W across to the coast and then south on 101, thumb out
surrendering myself and hoping some friendly feelings of humanity would carry me to willits
and this process, of putting myself in a situation where i had no other way out of my situation except to rely on someone else
or some concept of a human family somehow,
(and through that discover a kind of interdependent independence--
a paradox that feels pretty alive.)

made it from shasta to willits in a day (magical things#6-10) and stayed with az (old friends! new goats! new songs! lukewarm baths and sprouted sunflower 'yogurt'! wheeee what delight...magical things abounded, probably at least up to #20) until thanksgiving we gave thanks and got in the car to go visit amma (the guru of hugging, saint of unconditional love--a rather cultish figure) down in san ramon--

san ramon to berkley to oakland (what a magical city sf/oakland/the bay is--
#21 free food in peoples' park
#22 wandering into the albany bulb artpark spectacular
#23 accidentally hitching
#24 meeting bernard from madison in berkeley
#25 unintentionally finding a place to live for a new friend
#26 happening to talk to someone kind of cool-looking who ended up becoming a fast friend and unlocking the infoshop for me
#27 glittercity and hilltops
#28-#35atleast more magic)

...to davis
and tomorrow to sacramento to fiddletown to safan ranch! i'm excited to be back in the dirt and among trees, a bit more quiet and i can unpack my stuff for the first time in a while. i dream in maps and trajectories.
doop-da-
maybe this is boring, sorry, full of small details,
moving fast singing on repeat, eschewing plans except where necessary,
making decisions from my heart and my stomach-gut region (somewhat difficult to understand sometimes).

i have been reading kirschenmann, this great farmer-philosopher-fellow
a moment where he says something like,
prayer is paying close attention to something, so closely attending that you forget yourself (your ego) for a while. not so different from coming to love, for instance, soil...really seeing all sides and processes inside & out, beyond and behind it, being in touch with the cycles of which it is a part, appreciating its past and future lives.
thinkin about that as i dig beds today and bumble around this quiet very white house...work that is a prayer, invisibly rewarding and transcendant of its mundanity. mmm.

love to all as
we are
and we are among mysteries that will never happen again,
miracles which has never happened before
and shining this our now must come to then

hokay lovebuddies...food to share, food to make, food of communities.

on the thought of hunger as a circuit which keeps us alive, life comes with death, fuck annual monocrops and the degradation of topsoil all over the world (it takes so long to rebuild itself) and i cannot deny my own addiction to grains, grains, grains. perhaps they are more deadly, more environmentally damaging than responsibly farmed meat. perhaps this is imminent, perhaps environmentalists should drop their vegetarian ethics and focus on eating from their bioregion and perennial polycultures and the animals that graze happily on pastures (and not federally subsidized corn that is making people jobless and hungry everywhere!)

amid those thoughts, and thoughts of community and love and food for souls and tables,
here are three recipes--two old one new--that have fed many a soul in many a living room.

peanut noodles, eliot-style.
things you really need (for a pot o noodles, say a 3-4 person serving): about 2 big spoonfuls peanut butter*, 1-2 T oil (in order of idealness: sesame, sunflower/something like that, canola, olive), 2-3 T soy sauce or Braggs, a small dollop of vinegar (i.o.o.i.: rice wine, apple cider, white, red/white wine; balsamic does not taste good), about 2 T something sweet (molasses, white or brown sugar or honey as you desire), something sour (lime juice or lemon juice; about 1 lime, half a lemon, or 1-2 T of juice), noodles or quinoa or rice or something else to put it on.

nice additions: basil, lemongrass, peanuts, carrot or cucumber pieces (add at the end, otherwise they get cooked and a little squishy), sesame seeds (the more the better!), crushed red chili peppers or hot sauce, coconut flakes/shreds.

* jiffy/skippy peanut butter tastes good (and then you don't usually need to add sugar) but yeah, it has corn syrup and is pretty nasty too. these days i prefer good peanut butter and then adding a little extra oil/sugar and mixing hard.

a note: it's actually easier to mix it all up in a bowl and then pour it on. if you're mixing it into the noodles or quinoa, it can be hard to mix. but that's fine too. if you like it saucy, add a little more water and liquids.


no-knead whole wheat bread
this is the master recipe from this bread book i've been working with by hertzberg & francois (zoe and jeff...we've gotten rather close.) it's a pretty good whole wheat, can be made into anything from pizza dough to rolls to baguettes to focaccia to sandwich (sanduiche!) loaves. it's pretty tasty. i don't have all purpose flour here so i've been using 4.5 c soft white winter wheat flour and 3 c. hard red winter wheat flour.

so the background chemistry-info is that usually you need to knead bread to get the gluten to develop and align into a protein-net that'll trap the gas bubbles produced by the yeast fermenting, producing the desirable Airy Crumb. but an alternative way, remniscent of how artesanal bread is made in bread shops and some larger-scale conditions, is to use a high-moisture dough and refrigerate it...if there's enough moisture, the gluten strands will go mobile and align by themselves! aw yeah. so this bread ends up rising ~3 times: once after you mix it all up, once when you take it out, and then when you stick it in the oven.

you Can use the dough after the initial rise, but i think it works better to refrigerate it for at least a day and then bake it. you can refrigerate it for up to 2 weeks and it develops some good complex sourdough-esque flavors after about a week.

here's the original recipe (makes 4 1-lb loaves)
1. in a container that you could refrigerate, mix together: 5.5 c whole wheat flour, 2 c all-purpose unbleached flour, 1.5 T yeast (2 packets), 1 T kosher/sea salt (i use a little less), 1/4 vital wheat gluten (i use 6 T). (also add any herbs, sliced olives, garlic, onions, dried fruit, nuts, etc. you want.) no need to proof the yeast (unless it's really old.)
2. mix with 4 c. water; don't knead, just mix until it's homo-geneous.
3. allow to rise for 2 hours covered by non-airtight lid or plastic wrap. after that, refrigerate and use it over the next 14 days. (after a week, it starts getting a nice sourdough-like flavor. and if you reuse the bowl you mixed it in for another loaf, the flavor gets better and better.)

when you want to bake it:
1. cornmeal/parchment paper/grease a pan. cut out 1/4 (1 lb) of the dough. dust it with flour and make it into a ball--don't squeeze it too much, you're trying to keep as much gas bubbliness in there as possible. form into a loaf, sprinkle with seeds or whatever, and let it rest for 90 minutes (40 minutes if you didn't refrigerate the dough).
2. preheat oven to 450. just before baking, sprinkle loaf with water or paint with egg white. slash with a serrated knife.
3. stick it in there for 30 minutes! when you put it in, also stick in a cup of water (in a metal bowl/broiler tray/cast iron pan). that makes the crust crunchy.

yum. so it takes about 15-20 min to mix up and then 15 or so minutes when you want to prep it to bake it. which is pretty sweet.

here's one more that's a staple in my life.
curry polenta
- sautee some garlic and onion with curry powder, turmeric, etc.
- add cornmeal. about 1/2-2/3 c is good for one person, 2 c is enough for 4-6 folks (ish).
- mix that up and let the cornmeal brown a bit (just for like a minute or two). then add water...enough to cover the cornmeal, usually about 2ce the amount of cornmeal you added.
- let it boil & shit until it's a texture you like...anywhere from creamy to pretty solid. add, if you like, cheese or nutritional yeast, some braggs, hot sauce, herbs, etc. traditionally if you let it get solid and cool a bit you could in theory slice it and bake, fry, do whatever you want with it. pour sauce on it. whatevs.


the rains are arriving here...it's grey and chilly and the bunnies are a little anxious to run around and get touched but i don't want to deal with muddy bunnies. i am dwelling in routines and trying to hang on to spontanaeity and emotional honesty, honor that in myself and others. keep things in the open, imaginable realm. yesterday we bottled the hard cider we made--it had probably surpassed beer-alcohol-level, in the 10-13% range. there's such a funny balance here of being wary of dependence and alcoholism and thinking of this hard cider as responsible caloric preservation, and then craving rituals and explosion and celebration too. probably the community leans toward the former rather than the latter. it's good for me, to distance myself from needing those lubrications and addictions to allow me to act.
and...today there's chili on the stove, yesterday i made baguettes, reading about monocrops and cannibalism,
standing close to people and wondering about how they work on the inside,
how much and how little i know about these folks.
silence is deceptive, when it suggests that all that could be said has been said,
sometimes it's comfortable and most of the time i find myself treading water, confused by silences,
the stimuli that keep this little community alive.
ruben playing the flute.
john lennon on the radio.
ethan napping.
gina clattering, tapping out her anger in pots and clattering spoons and bubbling pots.
a shelf full of good d.i.y. books and cookbooks, "how to live on wheat," "home cheese making"...
am i boring or bored? i'm not sure.