miserable asshole

wow i really hate being in school!
the actual toll it takes on my life-- incredible!
very taxing stuff.
always biking around
never eating properly.
seeing friends,
always having to go
do some crap for some oaf
with whom i will never make a meal
who will never laugh with me on the floor at 2am
who will never try my kombucha

who is this all for?
who is benefitting?
poopoo


eta:
but in other news, in certain classes i am stating a preference for gender-neutral pronouns. (it's a little nerve-wracking, a little heart-racing). in gender101 because there are 21 female-bodied students and 3 male-bodied ones and i don't want there to be "women" and "men." in my modern dance class because my primary voice is my body. it's not necessary in my agriculture or music class because there's like, 50 of us. i'm eliza with 'they' and zee with 'she'. ha! i'm not confused.

dog-eared memories and waxy dreams

i have been full of dirt and cider,
memories and clean air,
rustling oak trees and adjusting to new folks.
i have been quieter than i know myself to usually be...strange. i miss playing and shouting. but it will come.
this place is beautiful
and i realized quickly that the grass is always greener somewhere else,
some waxier dream,
i am confused by having free time, no deadlines, self-managed tasks,
by having no projects i am heading up,
no zines underway,
only holes to dig, apples to cut, fences to fix, bunnies to pet;
i find myself missing theatre, graffitied walls, (structure?), good friends,
find myself struggling to feel joyful to be alive in a new way, without comfort or easy laughter or touching souls or everything shared,
aching sometimes, breathing deep sometimes,
opening myself to be affected by the people around me deeply, to cut away the shame that it is so easy to walk in with
without knowing i bore it.
remembering how to start.
remembering how to surface.
remembering to speak what i have come to assume...
i meditate everyday and feel glad to be alive and have a working body.
and as i begin to see how things developed here, i am not so ashamed of not being an expert,
not so stressed about soaking up everything--this place grows slowly, i am growing slowly here,
rhizomes tenatively crawling out, leaves not too withered and
i meet friendly soil. there are baos and games
there is curiosity and suddening into large questions,
there are parched awkward moments but there is plenty of food and roof and blankets to go around.
things do not stop in me, they start--
love does not stop, it starts--
a place can not be everything, but it is a home for now.

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.

Sitting in the shed at the front of the property, looking out over the orchard (figs, bloody peaches, apples) with the eucalyptus trees, hills, and spotless blue sky in the background. It's funny how ingrained in city life most of us are (most of my life was) that such a simple description of where I'm living now can sound all bucolic and charming.

Yesterday my alarm woke me at 5:30. Half of my dome is transparent so I'm always conscious of the light outside, and it was definitely still completely dark. Courageously rolled out from under my down comforter, did a headstand to get the blood rushing, and stumbled out of my dome to check the water tanks down the hill. My dome is the Far Dome, named informatively for being way the fuck out there in the middle of the woods, next to the spring which supplies the property with most of its water. After guessing the water level based on the sound the rock makes as I hit it against the side of the tank, I guessed my way along the steep up-and-down path to the yurt, losing my way in the dark on deceptive racoon or deer paths and sliding back among the fallen leaves to scope out the right way. Twenty minutes later I've made it to the yurt and the sky is more blue than black. Make myself some almond-butter raspberry oatmeal, brush my teeth, and go out to the garden for the morning's instructions. Yesterday was the first harvest (fall equinox, full moon), and so we stood under the greenhouse for hours de-leafing , our fingers numb in the morning cold. Finally the sun comes up and we move to yellow-leafing, sticking our faces into the fragrant plants, trying not to get our fingers too sticky.

After the lunch break we helped clean up the house and collect flowers for the harvest party. We're overwhelmed with an abundance of zuchinni, so I made zuchinni bread and zuchinni baba ghanoush for the party while the boys and Felicia harvested ducks. Various friends of Adrian and Felicia's came up from around mendocino county and nevada city, and we enjoyed good wine and food from the land.

I feel blessed to have found this spot-- my little white dome was already stocked with firewood when I showed up, so I'll be warm all winter. I can farm, breathe in eucalyptus, work with plants, and get paid for it. I successfully chopped my first piece of firewood the other day; and though there were no repeated successes, I'm confident that I'll keep learning. There's a funny mix of folks here: Adrian and Felicia who own the land, have a big house with buffalo skins and tribal carpets at the top of the hill, and are both incredibly knowledgeable about farming; Shane, our sweet carpenter, Dave, a really hard worker who shows his good heart by teasing incessantly (oh, azya, I heard you're gonna be making us all french toast every morning), Tim and Kayla, both quiet and productive, who went to liberal arts-y schools and then turned farmers, and Kate--- silly dancer masseuse and fierce firewood chopper. She showed me the form for girls (or smaller people) to chop wood-- sweep the axe up and around and bend your knees while bringing it down on the log.

I'm trying to figure out a rhythm here where I can have the energy to do yoga, read, and write while also doing heavy physical labor and keeping myself nourished (and walking home at night!) It's also an abrupt shift to be in a different social environment. Last night everyone talked about farming, past experiences, mutual friends--- and of course I'm out of the loop. I got used to feeling so comfortable in social situations in Chicago and at burning man, and now I'm reminded of my shy, introspective self. But parties are rare here. I want to focus on the land, learning about the plants, becoming observant to pests and animal tracks, harvesting wild herbs.

More thoughts on the culture of mendocino county to come. For now

1. Eating local is a passion.

2. Ruffles are in style.

Live and learn.

A little piece of Az/rolipolioli/AnastasiaB, circa 2008

Anthropophagy friends, enemies, fiends, and anemones is the lecture I embalm upon thee this Thursday (a word deriving from the day of Thunor or Thor) evening as cold descends in its evil coat riding on its supple goat yet again. You may well know of Hannibal and Silent Lambs but you do not know the actual term for what explodes your moral insides--- our subject here, anthropophagy, i.e the act of humans eating fellow humans i.e. yum yum Johnny Rocket or yum yum Johnny’s Rocket. Anthropophagy, from the ancient Greek, is first seen mentioned in 1632 as condemned by John Featley. Previous

“I wish I could set teeth in the middle of his liver and eat it.”

records however show a different view. Anthropophagy was cited as Universal before Orpheus, who condemned meat-eating: chicken, worm, turkey, cow, and human equally

highly because all animals have souls and may be reincarnations of former human beings, i.e. the chicken sandwich you gobble in one gulp contains the now chemically processed soul of one of your ancestors. So much for that.

Now I wish to be etymologically clear with the terms in question. Anthropophagy is made up of meaningful morphemes…“anthro” meaning, does anyone know?, yes human or man and “anothropo”, anyone?, man-eating. The more vulgar and popularized term you must be familiar with, “cannibalism,” is a product of the gullibility of one of the beloved heroes we are reminded of once a year when we take the day off. It derives from a corruption of the word “Carib;” a peoples from the Caribbean islands who were falsely pigeonholed as man-eaters in some rival-driven gossipery between Colombus and one of the Carib’s neighboring

“I want to rip his lice in half with my teeth”

tribes. Keep in mind he was also told he would soon encounter one-eyed ogres and man-eating men with dog muzzles.

“suck his eyeballs like live gum drops”

Stay aware, boys and girls, such creatures may lurk in the dusky caves of Mesoamerica. Thus, we should abandon this word “cannibal” and its fictitious roots and hold up the torch of truth, beauty,

“before sunset your flesh shall be my roast meat”

and scientific inquiry to light our way as we unfold those remnants of Plato whose power we crumble against, the dark shadows obscuring knowledge. When the Japanese invaded Britain in the 5^th century CE they were horrified by the conditions they found; men roasting each other’s limbs on spittoons while wearing purple nylons for preservation of moisture. The industrial revolution

“The savory veal-like taste of the muscles”

was put off at least 14 centuries by this practice which decimated the ranks of the social superstructure. The end of the world would have undoubtedly come

“peeling the belly skin to reveal oily fat beneath”

in the 8^th century due to the ferocious child of industry,

“then dicing it into half-inch cubes with half a teaspoon of salt sprinkled over the bunch”

global warming had not cannibalism propogated what you, my friends, term continuous

barbarism. Comrades, boys and girls, cannibalism, or some force that is equally good-tasting, is our only hope! Rather than eat Mother Earth let us turn to our human brothers for sustenance!

"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.

you can break my face but you won't change

listened to this song while walking Ozball today and thought of z. I know you guys were taking more of a generally east-west route, but try not to get confused and kill a horse/nun.