"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.

Two Saturdays ago, I woke up in a Nebraska gorge, found a sun-kissed spot for morning salutes, ate subsistence PB&J, and then drove out of the cornfields and into the mountains.

Last Saturday began with a sunrise set at the hookah dome, bare feet kicking the dust and then a cuddle-for-warmth walk to the temple. Therapeutic flying on the walk home, naps in the hammock, steam bath, bananas foster miniature burn to prepare for the big one, the man, manic tornadoes rising up a dust storm, bike ride-hopping from dance party to dance party to soft flesh in a deep playa movie theater, hours from the city, huddling for warmth until the next sailboat sunrise.

This saturday I woke up in my old room, ate oatmeal and echinacea and lingered around my parent's roofless skeletal home. opened the laptop: researching the movement scene and hot springs to explore around LA. I hear jalapeno/cayenne/garlic/onion/ginger/vodka/vinegar concoctions are good for colds.

mindblown. meeting travelers makes me never want to stop traveling.

well, after burning man I drove lindsey (acro-yogi and beauty extroardinare) and andrew (fruit-picker/tree-planter/perfect partner if he weren't off seeking warmth in australia) to san francisco where we decompressed a bit. found some ginseng in chinatown and kissed andrew goodbye to drive across the golden gate bridge and up to hopstown, once producer of 80% of the nation's hops. mendocino county is a nexus for beer, pot, and wine.... jason described its population as rich hippies, rich off their herby intoxicating victuals. maybe, maybe, but what I saw was a lot of hard workers. precise scientific compost recipes, firewood collection for what's gonna be a cold winter, garden-tending, duck-hunting. 7 am to sundown getting er dunn.

in LA for a week now to heal my body from burning man's psychedelic spin, see the family and Flora, and gather some warm clothes. October will be a festive and busy time on the farm. I'm nervous but open. switching gears from partying to digging holes. I like that everyone is really invested in getting along with each other since it's such a small group of people and we have to work together to get things done. yeah, what fulfillment. what yummy grapes.

missin all you squids scattered around farms and cities. especially missing chicago. love