march 28 between raging and drizzling

spring is here
swollen rivers run
the rains come
hair tangles unbrushed for days
we are singing, dancing,
packaging maple buds in a little pouch
for the travelling times to come

still undrawn, the scars of surviving
carried through the winter
tattooed starry stomps
burning through sheets of mist

audrey
works at the general store
she is 23 or 24, or maybe 25 like me
big with her imminent baby
her husband was stabbed
in a bar in grants pass
in a fight
they got married this summer
he worked at the general store too

mud in the tracks of boots
our people are coming and coming

throw the rotten eggs in the fire
dance close until they break on your skin
releasing the death and decay that sat under your collarbones
the composting corpses between your toes
the slime unwiped behind your heart
(all these things aren't real until they are, and maybe you fake it till you make it and then it is really gone, really)

out with the story that
the things i see, the work to be done, that i will always be the one
doing and then receiving the accolades,
going to all the things, weaving all the knowing,

out with the story that
i can do it all right, that mistakes are failures,
that the paralysis of indecision would
ever be preferable
to the sulphurous splatter
the tear-stained peeling of the onion
breathing-into-the-stomach expansion of what i thought was possible

ready for new stories,
new-old stories,
old-new ways,
where they will come from i do not know
(we are enough)

they are coming and coming and
they are dancing, they are always dancing

oh i made this!

REMAKING COMMUNAL LIFE, 

REVIVING THE JOY OF LIVING, 

DECOLONIZING THE WORLD

it's a zine. have a look. i made it!
copy print distro freely.
maybe take some to quimby's?
or any/everywhere that needs some decolonizin (um like most places)

let's see, otherwise,
today i dove into a pile of blackberry brush
lopped chopped whacked
scratched fell over jumped up and down.
thick thick foamy stems.
willows lying along the ground like creepers.
wild roses suffocating.
(which is a good general question--how do you tell which ones are thriving and which suffering?
um, invasives? real, xenophobic, historically in/accurate, relative, all of the above?
which are the legacy trees? how do we release them?
how to clear the doug firs, how to thin, how to remove the blackberries
holding the general love of all creatures
sustenance for all
the land
including us)

well, it's a rainy day of the wolf creek queer forestry camp
gray and.
i surprise myself continually with my strength and with my exhaustion, when it's too much and when i can take/do so much more.
i think i can walk for a very long time.
anyway,
people are scattered in little crews, clearing out around big trees in the beltane meadow, growing the meadow. the meadows here have shrunk even in the past few years, have missed the burning that used to be their tending. other folks working on blackberries by the garden house, others tending the hearth and recovering from poison oak, others felling trees and wielding chainsaws and gathering firewood.

it was a quick jump back into this world from being up at goatland this past week. slow, timeful-timeless days that flew by--i remembered the good of having one thing to do in a day, like fixing the waterline or playing with baby goats or a tattoo. reading a book. things feel good as day-long projects. and it's good, maybe lots of things like this in my life, that fixing the waterline means drinking a glass of water. fixing the chicken coop means roosters from the neighbor and then chicken for dinner. building a cold frame means planting seeds means greens for breakfast in a few weeks. making saurkraut today means eating it in a little while. the milk crate in the creek means keeping food colder longer, milk that lasts an extra day for coffee. when i dig that big hole i can poop in it.
i like this, this immediacy that's also learning and figuring out and trying and getting frustrated and playing and singing songs and hiking in the woods, using power tools, work drag, work that's for me.

what's the news?
two of our roosters escaped, gone feral, may be recovered.
the spirit is strong and it's all happening and it's just starting too and maybe everything in the world will collapse before i'm real comfortable with a chainsaw and we're off the grid or maybe not, right?

it's real it's real if it's real to you

[it is not a mess]

or, it's not a mess

it is tufts of hair and

my dandruff under your fingernails

balls of inch-long threads saved for the tiniest project

dead skin that used to be bread you made me

floss used by our best friends--

isn't it good that we have friends.

even when it's

smeared whiteface waterfall stories

we pass around pain

with promises that we will not offer only trauma as sacrifice to love

(why did we all pull the devil card?)

[and then lift up your head]

spring's coming! equinox on monday--whatcha up to! whatcha planning! spring cleaning? jumping around? planting seeds? tending toward? leaving behind? taking up again? renewing a connection with? calling out? with?

i have had so much paralysis around time and scheduling and being organized recently. it has made it tough to reach out to my buddies brothers faraway family. that's real. and between global warming and travelling east south west north winter has been a skewed kind of simmering quiet; not as much soup as expected; but i am oh yes oh yes ready for the energy these longer days are bringing in. shit's blooming up here in the northwest. doors and flowers and hearts opening and closing like doors and flowers and hearts. my body's been bubbling with tension anger energy enthusiasm desire--today i accidentally threw it all energetically at someone in a coffeeshop and watched him skitter--it's real it's real. i think i'm running trailing rhizomes--

[oh fuck yes]

tender forever, i liked dancing with you

[and the wreck du jour]

oatmeal + miso + olive oil + hot root or a ferment of your choice

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.