end

beginning

triage

I found some words I wrote a few years ago that resonated with me.

Sleep like a baby
Dream like a boy
Live like a man

thunder and lightning

I woke up this morning, back in my comfy bed in Minneapolis, to crashing thunder and pouring rain that echoed my pounding heart in a chaotic swirl of elemental energies. When I was away, as I read a story about the North Wind zapping the Daughter of the Sun with lightning, a symbolic knife that cuts her into her elemental pieces, her most basic intrinsic beings, tornadoes whirled through Minneapolis without warning. Nobody was hurt, but the reminder is there: Nature, the life force, is always present and strong, and Chaotic Time is sometimes the instigator of change.

I did have a vision on my quest, but it wasn't necessarily about it me, it was about my place on this Tree of Life, my story in the big story. I have found a path that I will follow, but it is no big thing, it is just what we all must to do live our lives in love.

I did have realizations and insight into my own personal journey, and it was very helpful to have some time to understand these things, our lifelines, our story patterns. In a way, I feel like trying to relate these insights and thoughts right now will not be helpful to me, as if I am nurturing a seedling and I need to grow it to a certain height before I can begin to harden it off outside in the real weather of the world. Also, the written word is not as alive as the spoken, and I would like to explore my connection to the life of communication via the spoken word for awhile, which may mean that I post less on this blog.

Suffice it to say, right now, that I have the intention to follow the Ecstatic Heart on my journey, my storyline on the great tree of Life. From what I can tell, the Ecstatic Heart is the spirit of all that I believe, and has many other names, but is essential to the creation of love. In a few months, I may discard my ideas for new ones, as we all do, but that is fine as well, because underneath all of my ideas, concepts, and philosophies, there is the pulse of the ecstatic heart, my soul, my spirit. Everything I do comes out of that great well of life.

Even writing those last words illustrates the difficulty of relating my experiences. So I will stop now and wish you a beautiful day, full of good heart and tasty stories.

The thing that men don't understand is that women see things more clearly, more in tune with what is really happening, here, on earth. We want to believe that our reasoning can make sense out of all this madness.

Jingwakoki

Off in a week to seek the vision that will guide me through the rest of my life.

all one

Seeing the dharma is like seeing a river for the first time. Each drop of water holds in it the essential nature of the entire river, and each river is merely a collection of the ten thousand drops of water. And when one starts to see the dharma of the river, one can't help but see the dharma of the lakes and seas, the earth and sky, and so forth. And when one can see the dharma in oneself, then we have a buddha. When seen in someone else, we have sangha. In terms of interdependent origination, they are all one thing.

I am tired today, and it is going to be dark and rainy, which is fine.

Christoga

Holy fucking shit:

spineless

The moon is full. The tides pull us out to sea, that salty brine that gave birth to us vertebrates. It has been a cool week, a cool summer, and the leaves have grown long in the sun. Fruits hang perilously on branches.

I wake up and my spine is stiff. I sit and drink my dark coffee. My spine softens as the day unfolds. I haul heavy stones and move gravel and soil from place to place. My spine becomes weary. Soreness, an ache that leaves me breathless for relaxation. And I wonder, would I relax as much without the hurt?

I long for isolation. Words drop from my mouth that do not mean anything. I feel forced to explain my every word and action. I would rather sit and watch the loons dive into the chilly waters of a lake left by ancient glaciers, sit on a rock moved by crawling frozen water from one place to another, my spine straight.

cosmic moments

We have all had cosmic moments, indeed. In the last few years, I can attest to a handful that have left me breathless and mindful of what exists beyond my perceptions. I enjoy my senses, but I have a sense that there is a world of energy that exists beyond them, or perhaps only beyond what I have understood to be my own sensory limitations.

I have sat in my car on a busy street in St. Paul, Minnesota, and had the distinct pleasure of melting away from myself, and into all that surrounded me. What I was experiencing was ego death, perhaps, and an expansion of my boundaries. I felt as if I was everything around me, the people, trees, sidewalk, air, all of it. It was almost as if I had been holding myself back all of my lifetime, and finally had understood that I could let go. The ease of slipping into the cosmic moment. To feel deep compassion for the life force that surrounded me. To see myself in the eyes of others. I felt connected, my heart opening, pouring out as well as being poured into. Love is endless, the ultimate renewable energy source. I expanded outward, until I felt my boundaries reaching space, which is when I put on the psychic brakes and came rushing back into this body, this ego that has pushed me along my life path. This ego that I love, but that exists to feed itself, a snake eating it's tail, if you will. I felt constricted, comfortable once again.

I have been aware of time as the formation of crystalline moments, time as space unfolding like flower petals, every drop of liquid an essential life force, a consciousness, a player in this cosmic game of energy. I have become aware of my movements, the pumping of my heart, the expansion of my lungs, my eyes darting to and fro, the air moving against my skin; all of this illuminated by great gasping waves of time, time that doesn't exist as a parsed linearity, or a diced up mathematical goulash, but as the very essence, the endless Now of Zen, the last breath of our lives being spent so quickly and slowly, a glacial hummingbird sucking the nectar of life.

Once, my eyes opened in the morning, and I realized that I was still dreaming. This whole play of the dream we call reality. This play of reality we call a dream. We believe we have woken up, but only until we understand that we are dreaming are we really, truly awake.

I have seen places in between the pages of what we call reality and have wondered incessantly about these mysteries. My best guess: Life is the Art of Energy. Visionary, Mystic, Poet, Artist: all have been cracked opened, intentionally or not, and have experienced the dreamtime. They have attempted to bridge the gap. The calling of the endless openness drones on in the ears of those who have awoken to something more then themselves.

Consciousness is in everything, I have thought. The rocks and the hummingbird, even the TV and a spoon have spoken to me. I have decided to open my heart to this dream in order to understand and connect to the endless openness, rigpa. All I can do is live my life as well as I know how to, and open my heart to this beautiful dreamtime. My best effort is all I know.

It is raining and
our garden is
the most beautiful thing in the world

raindrop thoughts

I am reading a lot of books simultaneously these days, almost as if I am returning to a place I left a long time ago, a cast aside fragment of who I used to be; an avid reader. Reading is one of my most consistent pleasures, an activity I can look forward to with delight, especially if I have found an intriguing new book at the used bookstore or library, and have an entire afternoon free to sit around, munch on snacks, and just read. I love to read, and I am not sure where I got this tendency. I am sure that, down the DNA coil, an ancestor of mine was a writer, perhaps a spiritual scholar, somebody who understood that the written word, if nothing else, was an incredibly dynamic way to forge endless connections between all the thoughts in your head and feelings in your bones. I read to understand, I read to plant new seeds, I read to relax.

Now, the reading I have been doing lately has turned me on to some serious topics, such as the mystery of time, the mystical nature of space, and the magical reality of the Dreamtime. So many of the ideas, feelings, and words that have been born from the books I have read over the past few years have coalesced inside of me that I feel like I am entering a new stage of life, one in which I would like to erase all of my previous words, as well as all my previous foolish actions in life, and start all over, anew, fresh as talcum powder on a baby's bottom. I know this is a common feeling throughout the history of humanity, so I am not as troubled by it as I could be, but man oh man, wouldn't it be nice to really start over? I want to let the world know that I am a new man, but of course, the world doesn't believe it until it sees it. In any case, we are always becoming new, being reborn, every second, every day, every decade. The newness is the breath of life, the gift of time.

Sometimes we feel like we are stuck in the same old routine over and over again, and I have felt that way a lot in my life. But I am beginning to See that, it isn't life that is monotonous, it is us. But the blame doesn't lie solely on our souls, the monotonous and bizarre patterns of modern life are enforced upon us by the entire thrust of Western culture, especially in the wake of the Industrialization of human culture, utilizing the Gregorian calender and the atomic clock to squeeze individual life paths into convenient little boxes that can be utilized efficiently to milk the last bit of energy from the planet. This, of course, is not sustainable nor is it desirable to most of the people of the planet.

How many of us want to be able to sleep until we are rested, when we need to? Why is this solely the prerogative of the wealthy? Shouldn't rest be a human right? There have been a lot of improvements in the work week, due in large part to the courageous individuals who sought to improve the quality of workers lives, in opposition to the machines that ran them. Behind these ideas are thousands of words, many books by many people who have realized the essential fallacy of the workweek, the calendar, and even time as proscribed by the machine. We are not machines, so why are we run by them?

When we latch onto the paradigm presented to us by the established machines of power, I feel that we have already given up. Of course, we have to latch onto the machine somewhat in order to function well in this culture, but in our personal life paths, we don't need to at all. But it seems that we are cosmic monkeys of habit, and when we punch out at the end of the day, we punch in to our own schedules, schedules still prescribed by the power machine, the media machine being simply the screen through which we are taught what to do. What to do with our time, time as a linear sequence of events that end in death. And in allowing this idea of time to rule our every moment, we are pushing the natural, spiritual path of human fulfillment out of our way as we pursue material wealth.

We are human beings, and we are conscious, we think. We can feel love, we can feel energy of all sorts, and we can be agents of a permacultural way of life, instead of blind servants to a dying machine. We can work on our life as if it were a miraculous garden, and with this commonplace miracle understand that the entire cosmos is life itself, awareness itself, the ultimate manifestation of the dream. Or we can ignore this and pursue our own power over death, the ego's never-ending life, in the paradigm of the machine.

The machine interacts with us through the screen, telling us that it is real life, and in some ways, maybe most ways, we would be better of as living beings doing away with the screen between us and actual life. Of course, the irony is not lost on me as I sit here, typing my thoughts on a screen. We have developed our technologies to a degree that they seem indispensable to our modern ways of life. I do feel that the most interesting old cultures are the ones that can adapt most successfully to the technological realities of modern life, and yet still retain all the spirit of their ancient ways, and in that sense I believe that our technologies can be returned to the status of being tools as opposed to being the whole game, tools that better our lives. Essentially we are all cyborgs already, what with glasses, shoes, cars, houses, all the technologies that allow us to live. That is a subject to be explored, one that is too vast for this blog entry.

I dedicate this blog entry to the eradication of modern time, and the return of the myriad time spheres of the earth; hummingbird time, walrus time, redwood time, grass time, love time, star time, heart time, sleeping time, cooking time, eating time, building time, sex time, dance time, singing time, sipping time, snow time, wind time, magic time, sad time, pain time, fish time, raindrop time, wolf time, shitting time, anger time, kissing time, raven time, truck time, oil time, limestone time, death time, hunting time, meditation time, writing time, reading time, weaving time, buddha time, cat time, fire time, and of course, the Dreamtime, our life time.

erotic beer cans

On a similar note to my last post, fremenine and I went on a beautiful hike near the Mississippi River where prairie has been planted and the Culvers Root has come up. While there we saw discarded beer cans near seats of limestone, a drawing of a penis, and a sign that had an arrow with "To the Vagina" scrawled on it. Initially I felt disgust and horrified at the stupidity of man at these signs of the bottom of the barrel culture, but upon further thought processes and discussion with fremenine, one of the only really open minded people I know, I realized that, although the artists of these so-called profane works were perhaps rooted in a base sense of humor, they were also simply expressing that which our culture keeps hidden, and which maybe needs to be made open.

I mean, really, our obsession with the penis, scrotum, anus, vagina, nipples, and associated muscle formations border on the absurd. The most hidden of human artifacts, the most obsessed over. A coincidence? I think not.

Are the eyes, the hands, the skull, the toes, less erotic? This whole thing is erotic, folks. Remain calm, don't panic.

river of being

Some of us stop to smell the roses and some of us say, isn't god amazing, that he made roses that smell so good? I think there is such a huge, un-raftable rift between those who can appreciate that a rose with any other name is still a fuckin' rose, and those who think that a rose is a gift from god.

It is with great displeasure that I have to live in a world that seems like nothing less then a monotheistic orgy of self-induced pain and suffering, stemming from a compilation of books (ironically nicknamed "The good book") that induces a fairly pure neurotic inner horror. I am sometimes amazingly irritated at the fact that I have been born into this world, am actually traveling through my life, this bardo plane of pure natural beauty, and I have to contend with so many others out there like me, who are passing through this glistening pure bardo plane of unbelievable sensory delights, yet find some sort of grasping terror in their hearts at the thought of the nothing, the oblivion, as a friend put it recently, that sets us free, into the most amazing mystery of all. And in the terror they reach out and grasp this pure fiction, God the benevolent omnipotent micromanaging motherfucking anal retentive CEO of the galaxy. What a small way to live, is my opinion. And yes, I have my moments of terror as well, as I gaze into the darkness that is the resting place of our minds (egos?) after this path we follow has come to its inevitable deadend, down the yellow brick road, to find the fat little man behind the curtain. Inexplicably, it turns out he is us, we are him. None of your pastors, teachers, or political leaders talk about that much, or know what that means.

It seems that we who do not give up our ghosts and allow ourselves to be possessed by the holy spirit of the bible, who the gnostic christians rightly believed was satan himself, the dark side of this cosmic endeavor, a rutting Pan-like underlord who personifies the beastly yang concept, the oozing serpent of our dark soul, we who do not allow ourselves to be possessed by this beast, are struggling to find a way out of here, like a jilted joker or a thankful thief. We see the Destroyer as the Divider, a meaningful and important concept that has had enough sway in this world already, we've had enough. I believe what I am trying to say here is basically sacrilegious, no doubt a word coined by the religious, just as pro-life is coined by those who insist on the biological primacy of human birth, meanwhile not understanding what life means at all, in all likelihood. The cosmic understanding of life is deep deep deep. Is this rock I am holding alive? Is this daisy, this frog, these dust motes in the sun, is the love in my heart a living thing, are my thoughts a living part of nature? The pro-lifers idea of life is limited, the pro-choicer is trying to keep the options open, keep the Divider at bay while we desperately go through our lives looking for some meager happiness, clutching to the shreds of love left to us by the Destroyer culture, those hell bent on the pure destruction of everything biological, a form of life found lacking by monotheists.

What is lacking about life, lust, love, and lunacy? What is bad about this, good about that? Who decides? Mostly, we do, via consensus, and of course, this has its place and is a structure formulated by tribes to maintain a degree of safety and contentment with this amalgamation of skin, bone, thought, and feelings we call our lives. Here on earth, we are blessed with a beautiful green planet that is neverending in its wonder and beauty, pain and suffering. It is an example of the plethora of life, existence, samsara, maya, the great dream.

We dream each-other and communicate through our hearts. To be possessed by the holy spirit is, perhaps, a death sentence for our very souls, as we give them up to a maniacal power, a skulking and terrible death force. Maybe our basic endeavor is to give it all up, give up all of our ideas, our definitions, all the ties that bind, before we can see what really truly is, now, here, alive. Why do we need a religion, a career, a political affiliation, box of who we think we are? Don't all these limits, these ideas, these screens we see ourselves through, do nothing but bind us to them in a way that destroys our freedom to live as a spirit being, both matter and energy, light and dark; to evolve, to transcend, and become rooted in the universe?

The options seem obvious when one realizes the truth of our own personal drama. The Tarot, the I-ching, our DNA, the mytho-poetical quantum collective unconscious all show us the truth, the journey we all share on this circular planet, in this spiral galaxy. Yet, we try to pretend one thing or another is who we are, rather then becoming the river of being that we are.

bear dead

I would rather be eaten by a bear then be afraid of being eaten by a bear.

Synchronicity on guard

It seems that things happen together when things are happening together. Maybe the dream dreams us? We don't know, which is all for the better.

Fulfillment, that is the question. Following your own bliss is not so easy.

the rain falls

We think of the rain as some sort of thing, that falls and makes us wet.

The rain, although it is also collected condensation on particulate matter grown heavy in the clouds, is also a life giver. The rain takes from the earth and sea and regenerates the system, the river and lakes without end. The rain is falling outside my window right now, and I hear its splish splash.

The rain speaks many tongues, all familiar. It says, here is the life you need to survive, here is the metabolic juice your body stews in, here is the kiss of the earth, wet and juicy. The modern man is concerned with staying dry and comfortable. The gardener and farmer is delighted with the heavenly gift of rain, and may become soaking wet in his or her endeavors to communicate with it. The wetness is commonly understood as discomfort, but I think it has more to do with our human decision to wear clothes all the time.

I will do mostly indoor chores today, but may venture out into the rain to finish a stone wall. Working with stone in the rain is dangerous and destroys lawns, so we tend to not do so.

I love you Sunshine, my friend

Your path was one of hardship and pain

You live on in memory and spirit

We all meld at some point

We all flow back and forth

All things flow back and forth

We are all things

wife

"'She was someone who could not be rushed. This seems a small thing. But it is actually a very amazing quality, a very ancient one. She did everything at just the same pace as before, she could tell the time of day or night by the moisture in the atmosphere, and she went about her business as if she would live forever, and forever was very, very long. That is the kind of mujer my mama was. When you look at me you see her, but I have lost 'forever; therefore I sometimes hurry.'"

--- from The Temple of My Familiar, by Alice Walker

VERY MUCH THE ENDLESS TIDE

around we go across the dirty days made of wind and rain
the stars mostly hide behind the smog of exhaust and hairspray

I'm made of sand

glacial terror
night sweats
balance beam

tense eyelids
floater fencing

the world pissed off at me

ground champagne
density demons

make an effort make an effort

you, forever

You, forever, always

I see the truth in you

(deep inside the onion layers we go, each day, crying the tears that drop so easily
from our sunburned cheeks

we remake the day each time the sun rises

each time the sun falls we begin the endings again)

I wish I could help you as much as you have helped me, but I can't
I can't, I have no more resources, I have done as much as I can now, no more or less
I know I can do more

I see you beyond this, this trite modern moonshine
there has been effort on my part, I swear, more then you realize, maybe you realize that

In this ending the beginning looms near
The weaving of our trailing parts calls for so much talent and grace
The question in my head is a gong (ding, dong) going off every minute
where is the path I should take, where is the path I have followed so long?
Is it there in my dreams or have I labored forever for nothing for good or bad?

so much more then I could have ever imagined, this effortless painful cleaving in two and coming together to rewrite this poem that we began with hesitant phrases
the old words color the new

the vision that birthed this twilight tinged tune was of you
in the ocean, forever, always
your feet bare in the sand, by the lapping of the moonset waves
you, free, forever, always
and happy as the breeze

Failed again

Once again I failed at a following through with an idea/intention/activity, all the way to the end. It is the story of my life, and yes, that is a bitter statement.

Forget my food habits, forget my life, forget this blog. I am better at incoherence and non-linear reality.

Dawkins funds Summer Athiest Camp

Arch-atheist Richard Dawkins has helped launch a summer camp aimed at changing the way children think
By Rachel Helyer Donaldson
FIRST POSTED JUNE 29, 2009

Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion, has helped launch an atheist summer camp for children. Alongside the more traditional activities of tug-of-war, swimming and canoeing, children at the five-day camp in Somerset will learn about rational scepticism, moral philosophy, ethics and evolution.

More: Here

Monday and Tuesday

Monday was one of those get to work early, grab whatever is around to eat type days. For breaky I had an over-easy egg on toast. For lunch I had a Subway sandwich, ham and all the veggies. Yeah, I know, factory farmed ham is disgusting, but when you are working your ass off sometimes it feels like you need some extra protein. But I need to get rid of all "conventional" meat products in my diet. For dinner I had noodles and Four Cheese sauce by Newmans Own, with some mozzarella and romano on top, my fast lasagna type food for when I am starving. I also had some tortilla chips and salsa when I got home from work.

Today I had a pb&j for breakfast (what the hell, right?) Then I had some more of the noodles and sauce for lunch, and I am making butter poached Rockfish with baked potatoes and sauteed beet greens with red garlic. I think that will be a nice nutritious meal for the evening.

Tomorrow I have to use up some kidney beans so I am going to make red beans and rice, maybe casserole style. That's my plan anyway.

Sunday afternoon and evening

Wow, this feels like a job now.

The cinnamon rolls were great, we ate them with grapes and cherries and coffee. Later in the day I had a piece of an omelet with asparagus and red pepper and sharp cheddar. Then I ate a quick cheese sandwich and some nuts. We had a couple deviled eggs and crackers with cheese before we drove home. Basically, it was a lot of different little snacks.

Alright, well, enough of that. Also, I won't tell you that I ate a piece of cold pizza from Friday night a minute ago.

Sunday Morning

This morning I am making cinnamon rolls for the first time in my illustrious baking career. I made the dough last night and let it rise twice before punching it down and refrigerating it. The recipe is from the Fannie Farmer cookbook. I added walnuts and raisins and they are in the oven now. I will let you know how they taste.

Last night I did not have a late night snack, although this morning I felt like my body wanted more food yesterday. Well, in any case, I'm off to to the melon patch.

Rest of Saturday

So for the rest of the day today, I will report as follows. For lunch I had a very quick sandwich of aged cheddar and mayo. For dinner, we had a lovely meal of pasta with the aforementioned asparagus from the garden, crimini mushrooms, onion, garlic, and red pepper, and a salad of romaine lettuce with a blue cheese dressing, roasted beets, walnuts, and onion. I'm enjoying a summit beer right now as the sun sets over this lovely place, the Hilty Homestead, and the crescent moon is shining brightly above the fireflies blinking over the shadows of grass. Fremenine is playing piano and I am pondering a late night snack already, why is this??

We did have a long day, and the gardens are almost clear of weeds, the corn is beautiful, the sky was mercifully clear of pure sun most of the day. The rains came a tumbling down this morning supersaturating the soil.

The food I eat

This morning I had an idea. I am going to turn this blog into a food blog, and let you, the world, know all the food I eat in the day, for a a week. This will give me a rough idea of my diet. I don't understand my food habits very well, and documenting them might be helpful to me, and possibly interesting to you. And I won't start with last night because I ordered nasty nasty pizza, so let's just forget about that, shall we?

I will include beverages I have with meals.

This morning I made a fritatta with crimini mushroom, asparagus and arugula from the garden, red pepper, red onion, red garlic, scallion, mozzarella and monterey jack cheese. I used six organic free range eggs, Hope salted butter, sea salt, fresh pepper, and dried parsley from the garden.

I also had Peace coffee and Edenblend, a soy and rice beverage.

I had a peace of honey wheat Great Harvest toast along with the frittata. I don't usually put butter on my toast, I just eat it with the egg dish.

So far, yum.

The linkage of the soul to the elements to the wind and forever gone. The night stars seem cynical some times. The toilet flushes oddly, and voices reverberate in heads made of clay, ink, and tiredness.

God is a strawman argument. Our discussions are as pointless as daisies in the field, as poignant as the death of salamanders. My mind is as coagulated as the milk in a thousand year old churn.

Why not give me your heart, why not give me your soil. The sunset is heartbreaking heart-braking hearthshaking...I do I do...love you

Pure Ego

Maybe the secular world is the spiritual world, the separation between the mundane and sacred isn't real, and everything you've ever thought could be transmuted in an alchemical transition toward enlightenment. So what is the awakening? Why am I conscious? This is the road map toward illumination. Perhaps all religions and politics are nothing but naked pride preening on a throne of pure ego. Leggo your ego, homo erectus. Give the universe a chance, just once, before your mask allows you the comfort of illusionary stability.

Beautiful dreams of flying into island mountains, indigenous peoples, a magical dance out of a bag, trying to communicate with the magical artifacts, waking to birdsong and leaves shimmering.

funky frozen frogs

Talk about frozen Jesus syndrome...

synchronized bioluminescence

Ill with Change

Taking refuge in the buddha, dharma, sangha when the going gets rough...torrential downpour, the rain is what differentiates us from other planets...Driving to Outback to buy a red maple (acer rubrum) to replace one that died at a project in Woodbury. Up late, again again again, watching movies, moving pictures, action, violence, spells, sex. As a freeloader, freethinker, freedom fighter, free agent I am overwhelmed with choices, to do whatever, how do you balance it out? I have to get up, after all that beer and cheese, get up and figure it out, make the day work somehow.

Somehow, the day always works out, in a way. I guess when it doesn't is the last day, when I'm in the newspaper, when accidents happen. The terrible openess of a blog, of a social network. We open ourselves up constantly, why, no idea. Because we must, because we want to connect, because the connection is more important then the actual thing.

Almost done with the design. Still need lawn signs. Need to figure out dinner, already. Need to stop watching the clock. Breakfast is killing me. Too tired to shine. Too many eggs in one week, says my doctor.

Always adjusting to the new situation, always adjusting the skin of separation. The new day, new job, new friend, new food, new this, new that. The adjustments are what tires me out. Adjusting to my addictions, my failures, my heartsickness, my overwhelming joy. Ill with change.

Is it too much?

Is it too much to ask that you share your dreams with me?
Is it too much to ask you to keep them to yourself?
Is it too much to to try to ride this wave to the end, when the end never ends and beginnings are always beginning?
Is it too much to ask if I can sleep away the day?
Is it too much to ask you to be my friend even though you are already are?
Is it too much to try to make it make sense, when my senses are shattered by it.
Is it too much?

Chalky lime days

Working with limestone all day creates a cloud of alkalinity in your nose and eyes and ears. Your lungs are coated with calcium and your fingers and back are sore. Working with stone in general destroys clothing and weakens bone and muscle. The weather has been blessedly cool, and I am happy to work out in the life giving breeze all day. Perhaps one day I will be dying and I will remember these easy halcyon days of stonework and golden youth, as I do my early years as a Taoist poet teenager. The sun sets on my home and I go back to bed.

Bolad's Kitchen

-This is some of the most beautiful writing I have ever read, by an author I totally love, this is about his new school-


Bolad's Kitchen
Teaching forgotten things, endangered excellent knowledges, but above all a grand overview of human history as seen from a particular Martín Prechtel way in the search for a comprehension regarding the survival of unique and unsuspected manifestations of the Indigenous Soul in overlooked pockets of peaceful living during isolated times throughout the world as well as the worldwide historical displacement of indigenous people, plant and animal life-ways and the subsequent survival of core vestiges of these deep life and culture respecting understandings that still live in various everyday life styles among many of today’s mixed peoples and ecosystems. A way of hands-on village-style teaching in hopes of developing a language, consciousness and way of living that feeds and gives life to the Indigenous Soul of the Earth whereby scientific discovery working on behalf of a true spirituality of the Holy in Nature could give humans a real usefulness within the whole, instead of a fearful rationalist synthetic flight away from life into depression and extinction..




My experience has always been if you love something or someone passionately enough you will amplify your heart, eschew ancestral biases, open your mind, train your hands and go to any extent to learn the language of what you love, to comprehend and be comprehended, in order to converse with the Divine in the thing you love.

Since I was a child, it has been my own love of the Divine in Nature and my constant wanting, like a suckling child for the life-giving milk of her ever-changing conversation, that has led me to passionately learn as many of the intricacies of her vast and wild life-giving nature as I could, fearing otherwise to lose her relationship with my own undomesticated soul. Though she lives on inside the nature of every small magnificent thing, it is our attempted understanding of the way these intricacies are brilliantly and multi-dimensionally entangled, in which each containing a uniqueness of its own and an independent quality of her whole, are yet utterly interdependent and reliant on the other’s diverse natures and staggered existences in order to maintain their own and live on, that I call education.

A people who do not want this kind of education are a drifting ship of sleeping orphans, a culture numbed by a lack of stories. But orphans can wake up and those who do, hungry for this kind of education, could apply themselves to it and replant the world with life-giving culture. As a people we must learn this to continue as a people.

Love is always a matter of learning how to live in an unknown land. It is not just translation or about being secure in what one knows, but about learning how to give a true gift to what one loves by learning what it loves. Love is always about learning the Nature of things.

Learning should have a diligence that comes from love. That no matter how much pain one bears or to what lengths one has to go in the process of learning what one needs to know to speak and listen to one’s love, it will have all seemed as a simple minor event compared to the delicious inundation of one’s soul by the fascination of our heart’s desire.

Like an obstinate great hard green boulder of cultural assumptions and literalist intractability pounded down into a beach of jade sand by the persistent pulsing waves of one’s divine desire, once achieved, the hardship of what seems to anyone outside of love an awful toil, becomes to anyone in love a vague fulfilling memory inside the ecstatic swirling and swimming our hearts do finally have when the distance between what we love and what we have become in order to understand it, finally inextricably mix to form something more extravagant and beautiful than either of its parts.

Because the world is a boundless compendium of stories told in as many languages as there are things to know, the language of galaxies, of rocks, the languages of weathers, plants, and rivers, languages of animal and human cultures, I have never understood knowledge as a finite possession but more like a corral of wild language horses, with an ongoing responsibility to sustain and maintain them, upon whose unruly backs we must learn to ride; sometimes into the heart of twelve layers of holy stone, or into the heart of an old Jewish steel vendor in Armenia, or into the language of the tears of the Divine Female whose ever-birthing womb is a mouth that speaks this natural teeming earth and universe into tangibility at every present moment.

This is something of the kind of approach I am trying to plant here in New Mexico, to cultivate a "never-before-seen school" from my own ongoing learning, stemming from my search for the Divine conversations with my love of the Holy in the Natural and cultural earth of humans, animals, plant and the geological-astronomical.

From a dry objective point of view, this "never-before-seen school" of mine would probably be classed as a "school of spiritual ecology." But to me this sounds about as exciting as a rusty, dented, mud-clogged exhaust pipe spewing monoxide into the crisp desert air, while clanging off its brackets under the backend of a cold, over-sized reservation school bus dragging all the tense Pueblo kids through the winter’s rutted mud to the beating rooms and Anglocizing indoctrination pens on a slushy January day when we should have all been on adobe rooftops deftly cracking and spitting piñon nut shells, simultaneously chewing and swallowing the delicious meats while we were wrapped in smoky old Pendelton blankets watching a Buffalo Dance and thereby continuing our true education into the great conversation with the Holy in Nature.

As anyone can sense, the word "school" is something of a problem to me and applying any semblance of the word to this wonderful learning get-together we have been able to keep alive here in my native New Mexico leaves an evil aftertaste in my mouth. Therefore I did not call my new school a school, but by the more cryptically beautiful name of Bolad’s Kitchen. In keeping with the focused love of learning and spiritual way of thinking that I wanted to engender in the school, I left, in the beginning, the meaning behind the title of Bolad’s Kitchen as a riddle whose comprehension and discovery by the first person who then made the effort to correctly research the meaning and my reason for using it as the name was to be given free tuition to the first sessions. After several students in an excellent show of their love of the real beauty of language and human ancestry, every new yearly session of Bolad’s Kitchen ever since has begun with students applying themselves to a riddle of much deeper proportions.

Bolad’s Kitchen classes are a four year courses where people can continually pursue their interest in learning more in depth, with more time to do so, the connected overview of all the things I teach and believe, in a continuous way, picking up where we left off, without the limited geographical framework and time restraint of my annual workshops, conferences, etc. This of course includes a more in-depth participation and development of what I wish people to understand by reading my books, and the tangible learning of many indigenous and ritual life skills that I have always considered basic necessities for living on the earth, but which are rarely taught anymore.

Though I have a fairly clear and steady heading envisioned for Bolad’s Kitchen during the years to come, we shall have to adjust our rudder as often as we need to navigate the wreck-strewn waters of modern life and world situations in hopes that Bolad’s Kitchen continues as an ongoing event. My dream is that some of you who having attended as much as you can become such that I would claim you as valued villagers who understand and love this learning enough to be retained as paid teachers at Bolad’s Kitchen, continuing to inspire people in an understanding rooted in my own stuff but going out into the world with your own spiritual DNA and discovered abilities, thereby possibly causing a new knowledge and spiritual flowering beyond the present imaginings of any of us. If I do find teachers after a few years, then this would free things up for me so that I could really get to teaching even more delicious subjects to those interested hand-picked people who have attended the Bolad’s Kitchen. On the other hand the whole thing could fail magnificently, but it would never fail miserably, for in this scared industrial age failing magnificently in any attempt to feed the Holy and keep rare large thoughts alive, thereby creating culture in the process and maintaining the nobility of the natural soul, is a beautiful wild horse worth feeding and trying to ride, even if in the end he just runs off, thundering back to the untamed pastures of the Divine.

I intend to continue many of my annual, workshops, lectures and book events around the world, reviving the Behind the Eyes of Sleeping Bears Writing Retreat, along with a series of drawing and painting workshops in the New Hall. But all of these will be quite separate happenings with their own ways of going.

Blessings on all of you.
Martín Prechtel

Priorities

I think perhaps our nation's priorities are completely fucked up when we spend 2 billion dollars to make sure people can watch digital TV, yet thousands are unemployed, laid off, homeless, sick, hungry, etc... It really chaps my hide that TV is such a high priority for us Americans. Maybe we should get rid of the damn things.

life itself

We need a world in which people will be able to explore their gifts. As it is, we mainly strive to survive. This is a sin. The dominant cultures, the death cultures, work hard to maintain this status quo, so that you and yours must constantly strive to survive, instead of exploring what it means to be alive.

Permaculture in Cambodia

Last weekend of MAy

I can't believe it is already the last weekend of May. We are going to the St. Paul Farmers Market to pick up some plants, then to Landscape Alternatives to pick up some plants, then to the homestead to plant some plants. I guess it is plant time.

I just made a fresh aparagus, crimini, black olive, frittata with onions and sharp cheddar. Pretty good. I should go get dressed and packed and get my shit together.

Heaven on Earth

Words from my Permaculture teacher

Observation is the Key

By Wayne Weiseman

“When trying to determine whether crops can be grown without fertilizer, one cannot tell anything by examining only the crops. One must begin by taking a good look at nature.” - Masanobu Fukuoka

As gardeners and farmers we would all benefit by keen and persistent observation of natural processes, events and elements in connection with the ecosystems in which our land is situated.

Here in the Shawnee Hills of Southern Illinois, at Dayempur Farm, we are experiencing a warm February as light southerly breezes carry a whisper of spring across the sixty acres we call home. The Shawnee Hills, also known as the Illinois Ozarks, are primarily a sandstone/limestone escarpment that arises near Mt. Vernon, Illinois and falls off gradually toward the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. A meeting ground of several ecosystems, including the Eastern Woodlands, Ozark Plateau and the northern most boundary of the Gulf Coast, the Shawnee Hills contain some of the most spectacularly diverse plant and animal landscapes in the United States, including 225 species of trees and over 100 species of mammals. Situated on the Mississippi Flyway migration route, an abundance of water and vegetation attracts 325 species of birds annually.

As I stand on the ridge overlooking our farm, the last leaves of autumn cling mercifully to near bare branches: walnut, oak, maple, redbud, pecan, cherry, pear, peach, basswood, hazelnut, chaste tree, persimmon. A brisk late autumn rain recharges the ground and aquifers and echoes the renewal of the year next spring. The constant chopping and chipping of a pileated woodpecker makes sawdust and a meal of an old walnut branch. Two deer stop to listen. The cat chases a chicken around the yard. A great blue heron searches the pond from up on high. The turtles are already at home in the mud of winter. They will stir only when the sun rises higher in the sky at spring.

On a farm the change of seasons penetrates deep into the bones. Those of us that work the land spend most of our days out in the elements. Our bodies are like tuning forks tracking the heat, humidity, rain clouds, winds, the first frosts of autumn and the winter chill. When the snow quietly blankets the land we know intimately that the tracks imprinted on the pure white landscape will soon melt into spring and hasten the seed to its ultimate fruition.

A year on the farm is a year of constant change. The microcosm of the natural world is unpredictable. But we can always rely on the greater cycles of the seasons. We know that the sun will beat its path across an arc that is predictable. Though, what the weather will bring, we can only guess. We can attempt to read the signs, we can lay out our plans, and we can proceed with our work, but we must keep all of our senses open, our minds clear. We must stay present to the changes in air pressure, the shapes of the clouds, the levels of humidity, the movement of water and wind. To become efficient cultivators of the soil and caretakers of plants requires single-mindedness, focus and patience. We are part and parcel of the natural ebb and flow. What may appear chaotic in the natural world has an underlying logic all its own.

In the greater context this year is no more significant than any other year. It is simply that we, those that work the land, become more aware of the intimate metamorphosis through time and the more intimate metamorphosis of the way all life is in constant communication. Through observation we come to see the subtleties of the land and what we need to do in order to raise yields and the overall abundance that the land can provide. Abundance is not simply about raising crop yields. It is about reaping the infinite resources of our hearts, minds and bodies in sustainable and harmonious ways. It is about enjoying the fruits of our work with the larger community and aligning ourselves with an ethical basis for all we do. The land is a unity, everything working with everything else. There is no waste in the natural order of things. The economy of nature is such that life and death will always continue. Everything is food and sustenance for everything else, and we, as caretakers of the land, must consciously see to it that this ongoing process of death and renewal is not interfered with. We cannot “grow” anything. We can only nurse what is already there by consistently balancing all the elements and providing the platform for the Grace of Life to work its magic.

An astute Permaculture practitioner utilizes observation as the essential foundation of farming practice.

In essence, the guiding principle lies in the “connections”, or relationships, set up between all the elements in the landscape. Bill Mollison, the founder of Permaculture, has said: “Design is a connection between things. It’s not water, or a chicken, or the tree. It is how the water, the chicken and the tree are connected…as soon as you’ve got the connection you can feed the chicken from the tree”.

Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher, scientist and educator, introduced Biodynamic agriculture to a group of farmers in 1924. He often discusses the idea of a “farm organism”, a system of interlocking facets combining minerals and soil, plants, animals, humans and planetary forces. Form evolves through an integration of earthly and cosmic forces that give shape and meaning to the way we view and experience all the varied elements in our farm landscape.

John Jeavons, a student of Alan Chadwick and the Bio-intensive system, has spoken of his application of personal experience and observation garnered from native farming techniques from around the world (i.e. planting in raised beds, planting close together in a hexagonal pattern, thus creating a living mulch and higher yields per square foot than in conventional linear fashion).

Masanobu Fukuoka, a plant and soil biologist from Japan, and the author of “One Straw Revolution” and “The Natural Way of Farming”, came to an understanding of natural farming after inheriting his father’s orchards. He observed that the fruit trees were weak and diseased, after years of unnatural pruning practices and chemical applications, causing severe soil debilitation. He elected to allow the trees to run their natural course and die off, much to his neighbors’ chagrin and disbelief. After setting up a no-till, rice and legume rotation that he based on years of observing the natural world, his grain, bean, fruit and vegetable poly-culture produced exceptionally nutritious and healthy yields with some species reverting back to the form of their wild ancestors.

Observation in an on-going basis is tantamount for the novice square-foot gardener as well as the soybean farmer on ten thousand acres. Complete immersion with all of our senses in the natural world will teach us more than years of book study. With patience and persistence we become not only master gardeners and farmers, but masters of life as it is given in each and every moment.

The first steps toward sound observation on the farm obviate these questions: What is the lay of the land, the wind and weather patterns, mineral and soil constituents, the health of vegetation and its location in the landscape? Where is the insect and animal life taking place? What are the native plant guilds? How does the water move and flow? What are the natural cycles and how do they give shape to the land? What are the smells that waft up as we walk about? How does the soil feel when we rub it between our fingers? Do we notice temperature fluctuations in different areas of the farm or home? How does the ground feel under foot? Rock hard? Springy? Soft?

Rudolf Steiner always stressed viewing things with the eye of an artist. As we walk and examine the landscape we are constantly looking for significant and tell-tale shapes, colors, textures, edges, negative and positive spaces of figure and ground, relative layering of plants in vertical and horizontal dimensions. It’s as if the landscape were a giant canvas supported by an underlying design matrix that is constantly shifting with the seasons, weather and natural cycles that carve and sculpt the farm with an awesome dance of form and function.

In Permaculture, we are constantly on the lookout for general patterns that shape events, complexing, compaction and the loosening of components that are all working together in scintillating and diverse edges and boundaries. We consistently ask ourselves how things branch, flow, how things relate to one another, what eats and what provides food. We might ask: toward what goal does each process in this web of life and death move? Patterns emerge and shape our awareness. We begin to notice orders of magnitude from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic, the cause and affect relationships of each and every being in the inevitable cycles of birth, life and death. We notice how the white tail deer moves about in small herds from tree stand to tree stand. If we sit quietly and watch long enough, we witness other animals using the same trails, following the path of least resistance. We observe that some of these trails lead to the edges of our fields. We awake one morning to find that our five, one hundred foot rows of healthy Swiss chard have been decimated to level ground. The deer tracks circle around and exit the same way they arrive. Upon further inspection we see fresh deer scat. All the signs are there for the taking. As we look closer we notice worm castings that look like miniature deer pellets in long chains knit together in a variety of patterns. We see earth raised in sinuous mounds where moles have tunneled underground. Over here is the casing of a strange insect stuck to the fence post. Cicadas? The more we look the more we see, the more we begin to paint a picture of how things move and flow over and under the landscape of our farms and homes.

As we collect more and more information from our observations, and as we analyze and diagnose the plusses and minuses of our landscape, thoughts about how we design and manage our land-base, our sights turn more readily to processes and connections. We begin to notice that isolated events do not exist, that everything in the landscape is about relationship. What we deduce from our study of nature will guide us successfully in the way we set up farm and land management: our soils, composting techniques, mulching, tillage and cultivation, greenhouse design, construction and operation, rotations, seed and crop selection, irrigation, microclimates, hedgerows and shelter-belts, house placement, energy resources, building materials and ultimately, our lifestyle choices. How do our ideas coincide with nature’s pattern and flow? How can we fit in successfully so that the health of our farm or garden reflects the health of the surrounding habitat? Is it mutual give and take, or do our practices cause injury to the natural succession and growth in the local bioregion?

Zone and sector analysis, the two mainstays of Permaculture, provides us with circular models for observation and planning. Zone 0 is where our house stands, the area of most frequent activity. Zone I contains kitchen gardens, sitting areas, miniature fruit trees, the chicken house, any element in the landscape that will be visited at least once, and probably more times, on a daily basis. As we move concentrically from the center of the circle outwards, orchards, vegetable and grain fields, large animals, tree cultures and forests fit into zones based on the frequency of visits we make there for work, study and play.

Sector analysis gives us the opportunity to place seasonal movements of sun, wind and weather patterns onto a circular map that reveals subtle directional nuances of incoming and outgoing natural energies and events. If we extend the circle outward even more we end up in the planetary and starry realms. The movement of the planets and stars has a profound effect on the magnetic and etheric matrices of our land. Rudolf Steiner relates how the outer planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, stimulate underground (root zone growth forces), and the inner planets, Moon, Mercury, and Venus, affect the process of growth above ground. The Sun acts as mediator between the two.

The possibilities of making detailed observations are numerous. Through a synthesis of the information we gather, from ongoing awareness and focus, we detect patterns within which we proceed with our hands-on practice of gardening and farming. With perseverance we inevitably acquire the means and know-how to augment yields for personal pleasure or for market. The quality of our crops will demand a high price at the roadside stand, the farmer’s market, the local food co-op or the supermarket shelf.

“We need to learn everything we can about gardening- we need to become biologically literate” (John Jeavons). The way leading to “biological literacy” begins and ends with how we walk the earth, how we feel, sense, interpret, integrate what we take in with what is already there in our experience. And, observation is the key.

References

* Mollison, Bill. Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual, 1988. Tagari Publications. Tyalgum, Australia.
* Mollison, Bill. Introduction to Permaculture, 1991. Tagari Publications. Tyalgum, Australia.
* Fukuoka, Masanobu, The Natural Way of Farming, 1993. Bookventure. Madras, India.
* Fukuoka, A One Straw Revolution, 1978.Other Indian Press. Goa, India.
* Jeavons, John, How to Grow More Vegetables, 2002. Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, CA.
* Steiner, Rudolf, Agriculture, 1993. Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association, Inc. Kimberton, Pennsylvania.
* Storl, Wolf D, Culture and Horticulture, 1979. Bio-Dynamic Literature. Wyoming, Rhode Island.
* Shapiro, Howard-Yana and Harrison, John, Gardening for the Future of the Earth. 2000. Bantam Books, New York, New York.

Hanging out in central Wisconsin

I am in the middle of an intensive Permaculture Design Course by Midwest Permaculture www.midwestpermaculture.com and I am enjoying it. I didn't know exactly what to expect from such an expensive class, but it is at the very least feeding my head and allowing me to meet interesting likeminded people who are also passionate to varying degrees about creating and maintaining a sustainable lifestyle.

I really feel, at this point in my life, that permaculture and other sustainable systems of living are the key to human survival on this planet. I mean, sure we can go on living this way until we run out of oil & clean water and air, but are we really truly happy with our lives the way that they are? I don't think so, really, and I have been delving into the spirituality of of existence my whole life, trying to understand what it really all means. I don't know if there is any definite answer to life's ever present questions, but there are definite ways in which to live which emphasize the beauty, grace, and meaning of life, just as there are ways in which to create a sustainable lifestyle which create beauty, abundance, and meaning.

I will post later.

Permaculture Design Course

I'm waking up to 28 degree freezing ass weather in my car in Custer, WI, at the Midwest Renewable Energy Assoiation. After meticulously packing all my earthly items and checking them twice, I forgot my tent poles. I think that may have been blessing in disguise as it is freezing out. I will type more later.

Windy days

The wind is my mind, whipping through tree branches. I am going off to a Permaculture Design Course in Custer, WI on Saturday, for 8 or 9 days. I am excited to learn more about permaculture and what it has to offer as a methodology to improve life.

As we all are, I am trying to reorient myself to myself every day.

no big deal

RREAL

It is time

To try to figure out how to repair giant rust holes on my work truck, a 1995 F-250. I have a new angle grinder which is my new best friend, but I don't have experience with bondo, or welding. Anybody want to buy me a MIG welder?

The Cosmic Monkey Podcast 3

Cosmic Monkey Podcast 2

Cosmic Monkey Podcast beta

Why limit yourself?

My question today comes from Andrew 2:34, "Why, fellow chariot huggers, doth thou limit thyself one conceptual reality matrix as opposed to many? Art thou nothing but an ass baying loudly amongst the might roar of Satan's flatulence?"

As deep as these words appear to be, the underlying message is simply one of helpless confusion. Why do we approach life with a single cause celeb, why not embrace all of life in it's mad chaos as simply the "way things are"? What are we so afraid of? Especially, as I mentioned in an earlier post, as we all share the same fate.

This doesn't give us cause or license for madness and anarchy, no, I think even the opposite. Looking around the world, we see that we, as clever monkeys, are indeed imprinted with strong impressions to caretake, to be stewards, to design and build. Why is this so? Is it because we, unlike most animals, are beholden to a prehensile thumb and upright posture? Is it because we can push the branches out of the way with our miraculous hands and gaze out over the savannah for pleasure and hunt? Is it merely an extension of our hunting/gathering brain, a brain that sees a pattern and decides to attempt to replicate the natural world, to garden and grow structures.

To return to the path of singular delusion, we must increase our openess as a flower opens to all insects, we must evolve past mammalian and enter floral brain, or we will destroy ourselves and everything around us. I don't know why we seem to be so hellbent on self-destruction, but I must say it must have to do with the dominant male-centric religious, scientific, and political structures that would like to retain power over all beings as opposed to sharing the world and it's energies with all beings. Perhaps my gripe with the major organized religions and whatnot is more to do with their insistence that someone has to be in charge, usually male, usually violent. This is the meme we want to spread forevermore? I think not.

So to open ones mind and believe in many things at once, contradiction and confusions, nothing creating stress or tension. As it says in the book of John:

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

PostNatalDay Posting

Hello.

I did not send out my usual birthday day musing/posting this year because I forgot to. I was contemplating my imminent end as an evolved ape-man passing from a boy of 29 to a man of 30, and hoping that I could at least squeeze another 30x365x24x60 minutes out of the cosmic toothpaste tube we call life. But then, as the months passed, I realized that life continued to produce and lay a fore me as many monotonous swaths of the space/time continuum as ever. It is the boredom of those sentenced to death, the roster of which we all share space. Not a big deal, really, as deals come. But we all share, as evolved ape-persons on this globe floating in space that seems to jut out into the universe neverendingly (cosmic dust and ice/iron formations creating analogues of the very terra firma we call home) the main career goals of all the other life forms on this planet, namely thus:

1. Fill Time

2. Reproduce (In some fashion or another, i.e. making nanobots or websites or children or tapestries or magazines or cupcakes or magic acts or vegetables or that feeling we got in sixth grade after our first kiss, my god the ridiculously soft lip flesh touching lip flesh, a moment that can live in on in our energy fields for decades)

3. Eat (In this, even beyond arctic ursa we excel as men, as glorious women slicing through mango flesh and bacon, frying phallic zucchini marinated in soy sauce and garlic over open flames, neon pink salmon twitching on the grill as if alive)

4. Not Die (This, as far as we can all tell, is the prima donna of all directives, without this first and foremost of life commandments, most other so-called golden rules and stone tablets sit in the dust waiting for purpose...)

And so on. As an evolved ape-man (How do I get this through to you, you religious folk w/o a clue? YOU are an evolved CHIM-fucking-PANZEE. There is hardly any debate about this in the scientific community...you know, the community which evolved to create your television sets and eyeglasses and Iphones and Honda Civics. The community you think wants to lie to us all about everything in order so that they can take the bonuses they earned from the various atheist overlords that command them to lie, blah blah blah...Whatareyouthinkingcrazychristians? That is one word because it is so strongly felt by so many that care about their friends, family, and the world, and to see the christians and other religious zealots going around in their prim Ford Focus automobiles and handing out pamphlets about how abortion is MASS MURDER while secretly wishing our government would just bomb the shit out of the whole Middle East makes us shudder. Hey, hell, we can start all over over there, we can repopulate with good brainwashed christer childs that we've stuck in bible-school/camp/study/group for every free (FILL TIME) moment we could until their brains are reduced to mumbling incoherently about how "christ is risen" and a whole bunch of other gobbledy gook nonsense that sends them into fits of rapture induced giggles and terror. What a mess.)I cannot think of any reason to create pointless overcomplifications of matters that are relatively straightforward. In this, I recognize the prime creative impulse.

Instead, as an old, established slightly evolved Chimpanzee with no harem to call his own, nor much in the way of reproductive product, I call upon the world to see itself as it is, and relax. We are nothing, going nowhere, achieving almost no thing. You out there, thinking about what a nihilistic bunch of shit that is, are mislead into considering nothing as evil/sin/thebignasty. I don't really differentiate between nothing and something (everything?), yet I have been told that is a huge error in judgment by none other then my significant other. She could be spot on, and I think perhaps there is a serious difference in the way the female and male species thinks about life, or nothing, or everything, in every genus! And there, with my first exclamation point, I proclaim myself energized by my own synaptic meanderings.

It seems to me that your life, my life, is nothing more or less then a tangent. That life itself on this planet is nothing more or less then a tangent. That the universe is nothing more or less then a tangent. A tangent of what? An infinitude of tangents to the sine waves of primal energy. Where did it all come from, this energy, we as tangents, etc...? Where, why, how, when...Who will answer all these questions, and how? At this point, I don't know, and I'm not sure I care. What I do know is that life on this planet evolved over millions of years to create an Iphone, and now we don't know why the hell we did that. What's the point of an Iphone? We don't know, but it is really fun to use. Will it save my soul? What the hell is a soul, and why do we think we have one? I will answer in the next paragraph.

Our brains are wired to NEED the idea of a continuum in which to exist in order to fulfill directive number three. We need to believe it is all a part of a larger picture in order to survive. It is an actual biologic relic of our Hunter/Gatherer origins in our real everyday brains. Therefore, early in our evolution as APE-PEOPLE we became aware that if we created a fictional part of ourselves that never had to die, we would be happier and more productive. At least, that was the theory. The idea of a soul actually created more problems then it solved, I wouldn't hesitate to posit, but at the same time we have created a conundrum of spirituality, because deep deep down there is a part of us that never dies, that is always recycled, but to name it would be to fictionalize reality. And so therefore we fall back on the easy lingo of religion to soothe our souls and medicate our existential angst.

In any case, I am happy to have survived yesterday, and I am happy to continue my journey through the tangential flow universe, or perhaps it is better to call it the infinite interdependent metaverse. Or maybe universe is just fine. Peace.

green sprouts sticking up out of the ground, out of the earthen soil mass
the dead dry stuff littered here and there
when the morning, comes up out of
the soil we start to build things, a life
out of the most basic elements
we break hearts in order to order the world around
we go, in circles, crazysillysexy circles made of wrought iron and blown glass
we, when I mean us, when I mean you and I here and there
the eyes have us in sight, midnight snacks
love, oh love, how can you push such greenness out of the dark?

Dehisce

Kinetic Wave Sculputures

Shipping Container Homes

This looks interesting, haven't looked at it yet though...

Twelve amazing shipping container houses
By Brian Clark Howard
Posted Mon Mar 16, 2009 10:50am PDT

(Photo: Urban Space Management)

Invented more than five decades ago, the modern shipping container is the linchpin in our global distribution network of products. In the containers go toys from China, textiles from India, grain from America, and cars from Germany. In go electronics, chocolate, and cheese.

While a number of resourceful people have converted shipping containers into make-shift shelters at the margin of society for years, architects and green designers are also increasingly turning to the strong, cheap boxes as source building blocks.

Shipping containers can be readily modified with a range of creature comforts and can be connected and stacked to create modular, efficient spaces for a fraction of the cost, labor, and resources of more conventional materials.

Discover some of the exciting possibilities of shipping container architecture, from disaster relief shelters to luxury condos, vacation homes, and off-the-grid adventurers. See what makes them green as well as cutting edge.

http://green.yahoo.com/blog/daily_green_news/8/twelve-amazing-shipping-container-houses.html

The Essential Homo Faber

These are my top 10 things I need to be a cool and collected homo faber, always at the ready:

1. Leatherman multitool

2. Broadband internet

3. Shovel

4. Pull saw

5. Cordless Drill

6. Hammer

7. Station Wagon

8. Permaculture Designers Manual, by Bill Mollison

9. WD-40

10. Shop Vac

I will probably have to change this as I contemplate it. What are your top ten thing you need to be homo faber?

Dolphin Bubbles

compact disc playing device

So I was looking around our new car and realizing there were a bunch of small problems I had to fix. Then I looked into the spare wheel well to check the tire pressure and found that we have a CD changer in there. It holds 6 CDs and the stereo plays them and I was shocked to find a CD player in the spare wheel well. But hey, the bad was outweighed by the good today, and it was beautiful and sunny! Praise spring!

personal safety

This is a PDF pamphlet put out by the Organic Consumers Association that is a guide to safe Personal Care Products. Check it out, print out out, give it to your friends!

http://www.organicconsumers.org/bodycare/ShoppersSafetyGuide.pdf

elemental snakes

A lesson from the hummingbird

Why do we #2

Why do we have so many parts? And how do we reconcile all of them?

Why do we #1

Why do we feel the need to be part of a religion?

satisfaction

molten light

Chad VanGaalen - Molten Light - Celebrity bloopers here

space cloud

life

sick for days

Well, the sun is not shining today, and the forecast says rain, and maybe snow later in the evening, but I doubt it.

Since Saturday night I have been pretty sick. I think it is a sinus infection as most of the problems seem to exist in my sinuses, making it hard to hear and sort of trippy to be out and about in the city. But I seem to be getting healthier day by day. I totally crashed on Saturday, with chills and the inability to get up and move around. Luckily, the SO and I had some movies to watch and I felt pretty comfortable overall. I made the mistake of having a beer, though, which I think made me feel worse. I had a pretty high fever that left me drenched in the morning, and yesterday I went to put my sleeping t-shirt on and it was still drenched from the previous night. I think though, it cleared me out somehow.

I have been taking about 4000 mg of vitamin C and a high potency B, as the body is stressed by illness. I have also taken A, E, and D vitamins intermittently, as A is good for mucous membrane health, E is good for heart health, and D is good for everybody in these dark winter months. I have also taken aspirin for my headaches and pains. I started taking an extract that I should have been taking all along called Mycosoft Gold by Fungi Perfecti , which is a huge immune system supporter. It is a blend of polypore mushrooms (generally mushrooms that grow in trees that don't have gills) that have been scientifically proven to be very beneficial to health and long life. They also have anti-tumor properties. This is an extract that I highly recommend.

I have also been doing regular neti pots to cleanse my sinuses of mucous and bacteria. THis is probably the cheapest, most effective, and healthiest way to clear the sinuses, as it uses 1/4 teaspoon salt per cleanse, which must cost less then a penny. I have found that it gives relief immediately.

I feel that all these things together, including sleep and good food, provides a wholistic approach to becoming well for me. I am amazed to think that all the habits of my life and all the chances in the universe have come down to me becoming sick in this way with this illness. What a strange thing. If my immune system was healthier, I may have bypassed this illness altogether, but instead I have been eating pizza, chips, beer, and junk food, as well as not exercising as much as I could, etc...But of course I'm not beating myself up about it, I just think it is ridiculous how this culture considers Junk Living to be the acceptable norm, and then Medication to be the result. I can't believe how many people get a cold and take Nyquil or some other such disgusting garbage and consider that to be normal. The chemicals in these processed drugs are not wholistic in any stretch of the imagination. They are isolated compounds that have known effects on certain bodily processes, but so what? What about the whole body/mind/spirit organism? This is the problem with the reductionist, Cartesian subject/object dichotomy...it is flawed, completely.

Yes it does show us many wonderful thing, and it works toward the understanding of these wonderful things, and I have to admit, I love this method sometimes. But also I know that my body knows what is best for it. I believe there is an underlying consciousness in all of the universe which could be called Love or Energy. And it is experienced by all, but possessed by none.

the big melt down

Things are beginning to melt down here in the Twin Cities. I have been throwing pots, watching movies, working on a newsletter for Local Roots Landscapers and planning to build a small puppet theatre. Soon I will be working on a drafting table so that I can work on designs in comfort this year.

I am doing a Permaculture Design Course in Wisconsin in May. I am very excited about that. It is at the Midwest Renewable Energy Association, and is taught by a guy who has run a permaculture farm for years. It has an small farm, suburban, and educational focus. Check it out here: I am teaching a rain garden class in the spring as well. I would love to teach people more about the natural world we live in, how beautiful and amazing it is.

Last Sat of Jan

Going to go check out the SO's niece's first one-act play competition wherein she is the start! How exciting for her. We will be traveling to the St. Cloud area in our new station wagon which has trouble starting in the cold. Wish us luck. I feel like it will be fine.

February is tomorrow. That is good. We are perusing the seed catalogs and hatching garden plans. I have a feeling this year will be really full, including my business, my home garden, our vacation, and misc. I am taking a permaculture design course this year, adn hopefully that will move me toward designing permaculture gardens here in the city and out in the country. My end goal is to combine the practical and functional human centered focus of permaculture with the aesthetic and ecological nature-centered focus of habitat restoration and design gardens that restore connections to the planet. Is that a good goal? I think so. I also want to make a decent living.

Have a beautiful weekend! The sun is shining, the snow is still kind of clean. Take advantage.

Switch off

Snowly

It is snowing big chunky flat funky flakes outside right now. What a strange concept, outside. Outside and inside become a different experience when you camp, for instance, or work outside all day for your livelihood. Outside is more what is around you, and you have to adapt. When you're at home, outside is almost something to avoid, like the flu. Most people have inside jobs, and most people are narcissistic. Maybe there is an obvious corollary there?

I am confused by people. What are they doing? What are you doing?

Checking out a car today, and then skiing. Our muffler fell off yesterday after we checked out a pretty nice car I think we might buy, so I suppose that is a sign. Now the Olds is one loud puppy. Can't wait to get a new car.

Big chunky flat funky flakes. That is what is real. No need to psychoanalyze. Just fall.

Beautiful 97 Year Old Botanical Artist

97 Year Old Botanical Art Maestro

Botanical art is the name for professional drawings of plants. Originally, botanical artists used to team up with botanists to make drawings of medicinal herbs in order to create a record to help people identify different plants. Chikabo Kumada has made countless book illustrations and picture books with his botanical illustrations. He’s been drawing the insects, animals, and plants which live in his garden and neighboring woodlands for seventy-one years. He’s ninety-seven years old now! Mr. Kumada is known in Japan as a pioneer of botanical art, and he continues his busy career to this day. We spoke to him this week about his thoughts and experiences.

Interview by Takafumi Suzuki
Translation by Claire Tanaka

Mr. Kumada, when did you start drawing illustrations of plants and insects?

I started to do it for work when I was twenty-six. I quit the graphic design company I’d been working at and switched careers without talking to my wife about it first. At that time, all the books had been burned in the war, and bunches of shoddy picture books had started coming in from the Kansai area and I thought, “This won’t do! I’ve got to draw some good picture books.” I love children. That’s why I started doing it. That was where my years of impoverishment began. (laughs)

You were a graphic designer before you started your career as a professional illustrator?

Back then, we didn’t use the English word “designer;” we called what I did a “zuan-ka.” At that time (the 1930s) even the modern idea of “advertising” was new. The firm I worked at, Nihon Kobo, was a groundbreaking company in Japan’s graphic design world. Ayao Yamana, who I considered a mentor, was of course very famous, but there were a lot of other very skilled people who came from there. People like Ken Domon and Yusaku Kamekura started there after me. I was particularly good friends with Domon. We were so busy, we worked every day from morning until the last train at night. We made good money too. (laughs)

Read the whole interview Here

Purity

I question the concept of purity. What is pure in an infinitely complex organic reality? The concept of purity creates puritans. A puritan believes that the pure state is holy, and the impure states is damned. Perhaps instead of purity we should strive for balance.

I'm always thinking about food and water, because food and water is our direct link to the planet, and hence to the universe. When we eat many different foods, our bodies work hard to process all the different nutriments, but if we eat one or two simple things, our bodies have an easier time of it. It is not bad to eat many different things at the same time, it is just more difficult, and a complex situation for the body to handle. Most things seem to strive toward some sort of balance, and our bodies are no exception. Here in the developed world, we eat terribly unhealthy foods all the time and then develop diseases. And then we take drugs to alleviate the symptoms of our disease. We live in a state of complete unbalance all day long, and then we have trouble sleeping.

I think most people mistake purity for balance. For instance, when we fast, we let our bodies come into balance.

sound via suzuki

The holidays are upon us in full force. Snow is falling today. Our presents are wrapped but there is no tree to put them under. We don't wish to kill a tree.We don't wish to perpetuate this buying stuff madness, but it is almost inevitable. Next year perhaps a moratorium on buying stuff. Buying stuff, our economic power as a consumer, is perhaps the single largest act of consciousness we can participate in regularly. Mindfullness is key.

We called off the trip to the folks because of the weather. Maybe go skiing instead? Ice skating.

bird flight over rome

Tumbleweed Vortex

Our new president, body surfing

Rock on, my man

Wow

Lessons From Ladakh

This is a wonderful video that highlights, for me, the beautiful and spiritually fulfilling life of Tibetans.







This is basically how I want to live. Especially if I get to wear those hats...

My Gospel

Love Your Self

Love Everything as Your Self

Love the World, because the World is You

Love the Universe, because the Universe is You

The Universe Loves You

The World Loves You

Everything Loves You


Love binds the Universe Together, Love is the Universe

Love is the Truth

Suffering is Ignorance of the Truth

Suffering cannot be transformed by Suffering

Love Transforms Everything Always

Life flows out from Love


Everything Changes

Life Begins and Ends, Suffering Begins and Ends

Each Life is a Manifestation of Love, Each Death is a Manifestation of Life

The Universe flows out in Life and flows back in Death


The Manifestations of The Universe are Holographic

Time and Space are Relative

Truth is Mystical

TV Reincarnation

In February 2009 television will change. The lower frequency airwaves that were utilized by broadcast television will be taken over by various corporations bidding for the right to own something that should be free for all, like air, and to use this valuable resource in order to make a profit. I sent off for a coupon to buy a converter box so that I could also watch the new digital tv, but I put it off until I realized that I had went past it's validity date. So now I realize that I have to cough up some more dough for a converter box or a new TV or a cable service or what have you. By god, what an enormous hassle and idiocy.

I have decided that instead I will do without television, and I will only watch movies at home.

This is my sister

Don't ask...