can't sleep with the man who dims my shine

so last saturday justin and i left port angeles to begin a 6-day adventure into and around olympic national park
and while i was there, and after i've come back, i've wondered how to write about it here
because as certainly as i am a cephalopod,
this was an adventure.

here is a map and some lists. they suffice to tell the story.

purple star is where i live, red is bus, yellow is hitchhiked, blue is hiked

things i saw (copied from my notebook-- i made these lists every night except the first and last):
sun 30 aug at the beach in lapush
-mushrooms: alcohol inky caps, mycena amicta, wine-colored agaricus
-bald eagle atop a rocky outcropping with a seagull diving at it
-a living, washed up shark, about 3 feet in length
-wily chipmunks
-surfers
-grizzled gulls
-my breath
-pelican party
-the town of forks, taken over by twilight-readers/watchers
-trees and rocks that look like caspar david friedrich paintings, only west coast so no oaks-- spruces instead

mon 31 aug in the hoh river valley (948 ft elev)
-lots of mushrooms! including chicken of the woods and baby oysters, pleated pluteus, tawny almond waxy cap, yellow pholiotus
-a skeletal mountainside, graves of trees, white from a fire 30 years ago
-my broken camera
-the hoh river, bluey grey with rock and trees, classic pacific northwest image
-big big tree with a whole ecosystem at its base so tall and thick
-moss on phone booth roof at visitor center

tues 1 sept at hoh lake, (4500 ft elev)
-mushrooms! orange, purple, red, brown, white, scaly vase chanterelle
-the clouds from above (and in them, and below them)
-BIG BIG BIG cedars, spruce, fir
-a composting toilet with spectacular mountain views
-right now, these ridiculous trees covered in moss.dripping from everywhere, a light, sickly green, like something dr seuss or meghan would draw
-the meadows which smelled like delicious baking
-a doe and her 2 fawns
-a black bear bumbling on the hillside opposite our camp
-these mountains mountains snow and glaciers (mount olympus and all its peaks)
-tadpole parade
-submerged logs in hoh lake, slumber slumber
-trout babes and jumping fish

2 sept at appleton pass (5000 feet elev)
-that black bear, but close up
-an owl at bogachiel peak
-ravens at heart lake
-a goat outside our tent, nibbling and sniffing and terrifying
-blueberries blueberries blueberries staining my fingers and lips
-two small scummy nasty ponds

and there's no more written in my journal for the trip anymore, though the next day we went to the hot springs on our way out of the park so i got all this sludgey slime on me and smelled like eggs and nakedly asked strangers for directions. and saw a beautiful forest along boulder creek... the descent from appleton pass, though it was rainy, may have been my favourite part of the trip (???)

my mental soundtrack (songs that got stuck in my head on those long silent days of walking):
'leaving today!' christina aguilera
'i like it rough' lady gaga
'i am a wizard' harry and the potters
'genius next door' regina spektor
'man, i feel like a woman' (who sings this??)
'be our guest' beauty and the beast
'felix felicis' harry and the potters
'can you feel the love tonight' lion king (the parts where timon and pumbaa are talking)
'welcome' christina
'paparazzi' gaga
'elbow room' schoolhouse rock

and i can't remember anymore! i tried hard to remember my mind's playlist.

in other news i am trying to remember hindi and it is really sad. and to do reading for my civ class which starts in 3 weeks BLECH

also blech that this farm is boring and i can't imagine being here until the 19th... i have arranged a rideshare out of seattle on the 20th. there's really nothing to do here; i think all i do is weed and harvest. by the time i leave i will have accomplished nothing! weeds grow back and so do veggies. maybe i'll run away somewhere earlier or something. suggestions?
gee this blog has gotten active and i like it. hello good work i like your brains
.zee

Homecoming: Monday the 14th

I just spent the loveliest evening with the Silverleaf clan, gorging, being gorged upon (by Connecticut mosquitoes), and flying high in chairs on chains and ferris wheels. Also dodging old acquaintances (not mine) and dwelling on where we come from. Lots of vocalisations of how good it's all gonna be soon, and my whimsical friend I find less whimsical, maybe a bit more mischief showing. Did you all know that Tamara now has the power to part crowds with her bad-assery? Perhaps it's just CT crowds...

Work is staring at a screen and trying to push pixels in the right direction to make a pretty picture. Fun has been ridiculous sex, long walks and talks, museums, well-written television, and Settlers of Catan. Days are full, but not vigorous, which I miss. It's like I can feel the pulse of Chicago, and it's only getting stronger. I was happy to get away, get a break, but I don't belong in streets where everyone is either in high school or their wealthy middle-age.

I'll be back in about a week to join in the frenzied rituals of 5491. We talked much tonight about how great each of our buddies is, and I cannot wait to see them again.

(re)sitions and trans(turns)

I, Leli the Konquerer, have swept back into Hyde (that's H as in Helvetica, Y as in Ygddrasl, D as in Degradation, and E as in Ephalent) Park.
hmmph.
There are things to do and themes for the future. These include
vegan food
harnessing collective power
decorating things
ritual (as in, adding more DIY ritual to life)
1 poetry zine (entitled: "Welcome to Address Book Poetry")
1 folk album (entitled: "Indisquidual Resistance")
and fixing my poor, poor speakers.

In this coming year I hope to be as honest as possible and consequently never feel the need to feel guilt. Does that work?
In the coming year my thoughts will be as abstract and nonsensical as possible, especially in the squidiverse, so I offer you this post as a rare and special coherent conversation, and also as proof that I didn't completely lose my mind this summer.
Expect stories and poems from my journeys in the coming weeks.
Leli

the marked hen

this is not a story for the faint of heart

here on west wind farm there live about 25 mature hens who lay about 25 eggs every single day. in a separate coop there reside about the same number of 3-month old chicks (who are black and blue and slightly brown and haven't grown their red gobble gobbles on their heads), who will replace the others when they become too old (they're near the end of their lives).
russell, the 22 year old from seattle who came to these lands 4 months ago and has decided he will never leave, is the master of the hens. he feeds them, collects their eggs, and spends good time with the chicks, allowing them to become accustomed to the human touch.
about two weeks ago, russell began noticing queer occurences in the coop. at least one, if not as many as 3, eggs were broken each dusk as he went in to collect them. who was the culprit? the mystery continued...
until last week, russell walked into the coop and saw a hen run out of the wall of nests, with a shell and bit of yolk on her beak. she was caught red handed.

quickly she was moved out of the mature hens coop and into the pen with the younger hens where she could not eat any more eggs. but she kept getting back into her old coop, the wily one. she was then splattered in blue paint, for us to more easily identify the disrupter of order on the farm. since then she has remained with the younger ones.

and there are still more gruesome facts... it seems she is teaching the young chicks of her ways; by laying eggs and pecking at them. the young chicks have never seen eggs before and now, it is feared, all they know is to peck at them until they break.

something must be done about the marked hen. it is russell's mission (a directive from peter, master of the lands) to get rid of her. most likely by outsourcing her death to a neighbor who will find some unsavory use for her tough body.

she will be remembered by the few as a boundary-breaking, devil-may-care, rebel with an unknown cause who was murdered for her beliefs.

rest in peace, marked hen.


----
edit at 3:07pm:
russell dutifully placed the hen in a dog crate and about 10 minutes ago coleman (the neighbor) came by with his dogs in the bed of his truck, placed the hen in with them, and rode away. her body will be too tough to eat plain-- she will have to be boiled or put in a stew in order to be tasty. i told peter i hoped i wouldn't get carted away if i started drinking my menstrual blood and he said if people found out, i just might. but then again no one harvests my blood to sell at saturday markets for $4/dozen. this is so fucked up... she is being killed for eating her own eggs (she laid and ate another one today). apparently with chickens these days it's actually bred out of them to fuck. there is a rooster here who lives with 25 hens and only rarely does one of them actually guard her egg and take care of it (it's called brooding) because she knows it's fertilized.
maybe we will have a little ceremony tonight for her by the fire.

remarks on being in the world

i just discovered that our dishwasher got fixed 2 months ago and we never noticed. yeah!

tequila and rum are different, i realized. after genderqueerchicago meeting last night, i came south with a crew and went to sav's to celebrate/take my pants off/send love with sav to d.c. i started taking dirty girl scouts (there were at least five scattered through my evening) and then moved to rum and coke which was actually, deceptively, tequila and coke. those are different things.

i am nibbling through my cocoon at istria; my wings are covered with grounds and mucus but i am very nearly a fullfledged Barist(a). a wondrous new world of people two minutes from the haus. yes.

Slip Sliding Away

To do to prepare for going home:

• forget about cigarettes
• have back-up, secret place to smoke them just in case
• debate merits of bringing your laptop
• think of questions to ask your parents (dig inside your self for a lack of awkward)
• think of answers to questions your parents will ask you
  
• plan to excavate your basement (since it's in the jaws of the tag sale these days) for favorite scraps
• frantically try to clear away any administrative tasks to have a "relaxing vacation"
• reminisce about the times when your backpack was bigger than you and you wore a uniform and your dad drove you to school on his way to the train station and you had to shake the headmistress' hand after an older girl helped you out of the car
• try to pick a book, fail
• second guess your decision to buy a plane ticket
• pack the grubbiest, second-handiest clothes you own
• leave room for bringing back costume pieces
• get bored, jump around to Man Man for a while
• switch to Crystal Castles
• finish stuffing things in the bag, leaving folding in the past
• alert the one friend you actually want to see as to your whereabouts/travel plans
• steel yourself! hold on to what you've built!
  

The perils of wage labor

Fatigued heavy-bodied and fetal, too often croissant orders worm their greasy fingers into my brain as I drift towards REM.

My inscrutable brain lingers on memories of croissant orders rather than

dance partners

Dutch landscapes

attractive strangers

blues queens

(moments that populate my significant existence)

HA HA HA HA HA