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.

towards season's end

How delicious to see these blog posts and recipes!

Wrist exercises have become routine; as has chair-sitting, dreaming, bewilderingly enthusiastic twenty questions games riled up on caffeine to spice up the monotony, the arguments about music (often Israeli now, with the introduction of Amir into our community-- but punctuated by Deep Forest and Freedom and reggae) reggae reggae

ohhhh my goddess! pumpkin coconut soup. Hadas did it again.

Can I get some more bud buddies, Felicia?

When I was sitting on the shitter this morning....

some new music for the new generation!

snatches, repeated. we are growing closer and learning more about each other as we sit. I admire how Shane picks up after everybody, collects the eggs, quietly. I try to do the same.

Can't wait until we're working outside again! Push through, should be less than a week now.

(Brown rice, chopped almonds, raisins, and caramelized onions)

(Dates, corn flakes, sunflower seeds, flax)

(Breathlessly uphill)

moments from the first eight days

tonight i am weary...spend hours picking dusty-shiny red apples (and ate too many)
so for now here are some pictures of my world from the past few days.
i am finding a rhythm, drawing and yoga-ing and making bread,
working on digging this big square hole and gardening and feeding the bunnies.
there is much silence here, and some storytelling. things are slowly busy.
we have in abundance: carrots, soft white wheat flour, apples, pears, goat milk/cheese/yogurt, cucumbers, kale, chicken eggs, buckets, giant plastic containers that smell like chocolate hydrowhey or mint syrup.
my body is glad to be here, glad to be working and moving and lifting,
to be strong,


my new friends are in a constant cuddle pile.


my other new friends!


my new human friends slaughtering chickens...i degutted one. strange, beautiful, fragile, strong, confusing, wearying.


my househome, named "opus"...decorated within with bandannas and the smell of lemongrass and a pile of mango chili lollipops.


bread! i just discovered vital wheat gluten which, since we mill all our flour here (from soft white winter wheat and hard red winter wheat), is all whole wheat...and all whole wheat flour makes a dense (delicious) bread. more experiments with refrigerated dough (an alternative to kneading...i'm reading this breadbook by hertzberg & francois) in the works.

sarah proposed putting up a dreamwall-piece-of-paper.
ethan prefers nonverbal communication and is thinking about making pine needle soup.
we talk about when we were stoners and "sustainability" and derrick jensen.
still,
there are half cigarettes and
lots of toast
and lots of hellos and goodbyes
and talking about dreams in the morning.

Situation Normal All Fucked Up

Today is dreaming in my stockings, too hungover to do much more brain work than absorbing so fuck thinking and producing, cold cold cold, quiet up in the bell tower, clanging ringing of my shoes on the floor, feeling like the Hologram Museum lady opening doors with my oversized key, and food tasting like it's maybe a joke that's being played on me by the world.

It's been a weird fucking week. Two weeks ago, I thought I had scrabbled together the foundations of some personal aphorisms, but the past five days or so have proved me wrong. I can feel how unsettled everyone and everything feels. Like right now, my nerves are dampened by the dull sheen of an affected brain but still I can feel the the blood drawing away from my fingertips and my toes, receding ever backwards to my heart. It makes me want to set up a nest of blankets and tossed aside scarves wherever I go, so I can keep warm and retreat whenever I need to. Almost as if, I have in some instinctive way decided to be a nomad now that the times have sprung upon me.

That sounds maudlin. I don't mean it to be. Things are changing, which is fine, just a little sooner than I had hoped or expected. Maybe I have to work on not worrying about permanence. For so many years of my life, everything was always the same. I think sometimes I want to hang on to that, as repulsive as it often was to me. It might be time to let go of that need. I wonder what that would do.

Do you have a sense of permanence in your life? Or an attitude towards transience and temporariness?

P.S. The Renaissance Society kitchen is a wonder to behold. There are so many bottles of Pellegrino water.