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.

tingle tangle...pull one string and the others feel it

I've been thinking about the worlds we build together. The vortex you force into being with just you and a few other people. Last week I was thinking about time travel and after talking to Lelz about memory and shaping of the past through thought and interpretation, I've been thinking about the tangles of reality-bending groupdom that exist beyond time and space (though they are infintely bounded to us) that we have forged in the fires of our hearts. Wormholes, of the non-physics variety. Gravitational pulls of the charismatic type. I'm talking about radiance.

Edward said to Jane, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, - you'd forget me."

And I believe that. It is the thing I have believed the longest. It is as close to a Bible verse or a benediction as you will get with me.


Do you know what it means to be a Sagittarius? I apparently can't believe in string. Knots should be beyond me. I couldn't tie my shoes if I tried. I should be warding off potential strings with a pair of trusty silver shears at all times. So what's the deal here? I am breathtakingly befuddled.

Where does all this come from anyway? Existence itself is an incomprehensible squall of accident and pure chance. A stew of unplanned happening, right? What then is the desire to frantically attach a web of strings to various creatures and persons and objects? And further to arrange the strings, to move and jockey and position one's self, to arrange those strings into a clean, pleasing, BEAUTIFUL in that it's meaningful way? Into a web, like a spider.

And the tangle of our veins. Here is a system I love: the cardio-vascular system. Perfectly positioned. But put one thing out of place and it all goes wrong. We build webs to match our veins, delicate as all get out. But we are capable of abstraction. We are capable of existing beyond what is natural, to rise above our nature. What kind of statement is that? Rising above our baser nature, is that not seeping reek of Christianity? But I think we could be more abstract. In love, I mean. In loving one another, we could be more abstract, don't you think?

And the second self? What if there is a third self? And a fourth self? More than one equal and more than one likeness? Or even, if there is no second self at all, no loss of you-ness because you never existed. What then would love or friendship or acquaintance-hood look like? No desire for completion, fulfillment, no unending search, no more Hugh Grant movies. Only contact. And really then, really, really, really, what would selfhood be? Could it be radiant, unshackled? Could we make defunct the phrase, "Defining myself by..."

I'm trying to say - I don't know if this is about me, or about you, or about us. I don't know if the horizon is getting blurry or if my eyes are getting worse. I looked to the internet (a new thing we are trying) and it said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: ... Post this address all over the Internet and curious people will click to a ... Dear Leticia, This morning, I looked up at the beautiful blue sky, ... Thank you sharing in this wonderful year with us! ... Love & Gratitude, ..." and also "It also makes me wonder if we can't administer oxytocin to ameliorate some behavioral problems. .... the jackpots of treats would soon come to outweigh the fear of the trim. ... I assuaged my grief and need for fur contact by knitting up all the yarn ... when suddenly I am hanging on to their leashes for dear life"

Well. So, yes, I'll be knitting up all the yarn. And kissing. And hanging on for dear life.

if you give a brain some ice cream, and then take it away

yes i will second rolly in describing saturday night's rave as a lake. i swam as a dance-filled genderconfused body through all the high school girls and the shirtless bros. everything was seeping with sex and straight at that but i forgot being uncomfortable and danced and danced. and then oh! the wonders of hyde park that i had not seen before. we do live in a [sometimes] beautiful place.

in other wise,
when so many of my days seem the same, i'm trying to gather little pieces that are maybe something other than chemically influenced moments.

inspired by the garden at 55 & woodlawn, which is full of tomatoes and cucumbers, jalapenos and marigolds (sometimes people on the street stop and wonder at the garden and once i gave some people some tomatoes and they were so confused and surprised, as if the lack of a cash register in proximity to vegetables was a syllogism or a logical gap)...tmo and i cut down a path through the weeds in a lot next to our house and i dug up the earth and it's going to be a garden. so far, only mint, but we're sprouting tiny seeds on the top of the fridge and there will be leafy greens and life. we're also starting a compost pile, hopefully. my interest in gardening is confusing to my mother.

also, i got a job at istra-under-the-train-tracks making coffee and putting gelato in little little plastic bowls. i haven't started yet, not till the 24th or so. at my "interview" he asked me to describe the flavors of the coffee and i said "bark" and he said "vegetal" so i got the job.

and at the character party on friday night, rolly and i went as a sibling-pair of runaways, trevor (8) and daisy (6) with stuffed animal friends (trevor and alfonso) and swedish fish. i remembered that parties are boring for kids even though everything is potentially interesting. we were on a hunt for monsters who eat children, but no one seemed to know where they were, or offered us roundabout ways to fix the problem--a unicorn, joining Jews for Allah, voting for a particular serbian candidate. in the end a woman from the future won the staged election; revolution was a close second.

and maybe that's it, for now.

update:
oh, also, tmo and i decided to get married so i can work in the EU and also to validate our sacred religious commitment to each other and so we can become a social unit of reproductive machinery. the first part is true.