Money vs. Ethics

I talk alot with friends and family about the benefits of small organic farms vs. large agribusiness and their commercial extensions, your local co-op and Rainbow foods. I wanted to make a few points clear here about my thoughts on thses subjects.

First of all, it is ethically better to purchase an organic vegetable from your local farmer at a Farmers Market or co-op then it is to purchase a conventional vegetable from Chile at your so-called "local" Rainbow Foods. Why? Because of these reasons:

1. You are supporting your local economy and your neighbor
2. You are being a steward of your local watershed and your local land
3. The vegetable will be healthier and therefore more nutritious for you
4. You will be saving a ton of petroleum products and other energy sources that are used to get the vegetable from Chile
5. You will not be supporting a large multinational corporation that does not care for you or your family or your neighborhood or your local watershed, but only wants your dollar bill

Simple. Obviously the first thing people say is, "Well, it costs too much." And my first reaction is to be angry because what is "too much" when we are talking about the future of our planet, the future health of our soil and our communities? When you have huge government subsidies for all the commodities that are out there, such as corn, rice, and wheat, but very little financial aid to small organic vegetable farmers, what do you think is going to happen? You can go down to a Superamerica or Cub Food and get pressurized Cheez Whiz in a can for a couple bucks as opposed to a juicy ripe organic tomato for a buck. Which do you think will be better for you? Why do you choose poison over health? Think about it.

What I can't deny is that a lot of co-ops and trendy food stores are starting to attract a more wealthy crowd. This doesn't matter to me. You have to look at the essential nature of what the co-ops were created for. They were created so that poor people could pool their resources to obtain cheaper bulk foods. And they grew into more and more elaborate organizations until what we have now is little different then your average Byerlys or whay have you. But their essential nature is different. Essentially their is democratic co-operative power involved in the governance of the business as opposed to a centralized dictatorial power. What we need to do is create our own modes of purchasing. We can get together with friends and purchase a CSA share and get our vegetables every week, we can go down to the Farmers Market and talk directly to the farmer. We can organize buyers groups and purchase directly from the big companies that supply the co-ops and grocery stores. We can by in bulk and split up shares. Basically we can and should recreate the food co-op that we used to know and love.

Small farmers are not making any money. They are basically out there tilling and harvesting because of their passion and dedication to creating a better world, a healthier reality. I think the least we can do is pay them a few extra bucks for their labor and spirit. Organic farmers are real live Bodhiisatvas on tractors.

Shadow boxing

There is definitely nothing worse in this world then pain. How can we avoid it? We can't, but we can take steps to minimize causing our own at least.

Today my step was to attend the Minnesota Zen Center for the first time. It is located on Lake Calhoun in a nice building. I decided that I have been essentially a Buddhist now for years so I may as well go see how they do things in their churches and so forth. It went well and I learned the basics of the zendo (the place where Zen Buddhists meditate). The only problem was that it was early in the morning and I had a late night last night, and I did have a number of liquid refreshments at the party that affected my stomach. Not to mention the coffee I gulped as I drove to the Center.

Everyone there was pleasant. I will try zazen (meditation) early tomorrow morning and see how that goes. Well it can't go too badly, I mean, what are a bunch of Bui\ddhists going to do to me? Kick my ass?

Tonight is movie night. I have a movie about the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and a movie made in Tibet by some famous Lama. Whatever.

Well, life never stops

Strangely, life never stops. I went to a friend's housewarming party last night and it was good. It was nice to be around good people.

Sometimes though you wonder, what am I going to do next?

My friend is in Peru and I think that would be awesome.

I don't know, any ideas?

Your cat will make you crazy

Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do
Research Shows That a Certain Cat Parasite Impacts Our Behavior and Mood
Cat

Researchers say a cat parasite could be responsible for all kinds of human behavior and qualities. (AP Photo )


Aug. 9, 2006 — Kevin Lafferty is a smart, cautious, thoughtful scientist who doesn't hate cats, but he has put forth a provocative theory that suggests that a clever cat parasite may alter human cultures on a massive scale.

His phone hasn't stopped ringing since he published one of the strangest research papers to come out of the mill in quite awhile.

The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, has been transmitted indirectly from cats to roughly half the people on the planet, and it has been shown to affect human personalities in different ways.

Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be more warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=2288095&page=1

The end of an era

Yesterday I quit my job. I feel great. You should too.

First a little background: I have been working there at the cafe since January of 2005. Almost every day my boss, Nathalie the Phsycologically Disturbed Progressive Democratic Nazi, would find something to complain about, somebody to ream. I felt that I would try to redirect her energies into more positive avenues, such as food. I don't even know why she has a restaurant, because to me it doesn't seem like she likes food. I love food. I love the farmer's market and the farmers, I love cooking for friends and family, I love the colors, textures, and flavors. I just dig edible stuff. So you'd think working at a small cafe right across from where I live would be a good thing, right? Wrong, man. Wrongo.

NPDPDN and her husband would constantly fight, even screaming at each other about ten feet away from paying eating customers. I honestly thought they were going to get a divorce, I don't even understand why they haven't gotten a divorce with all the pressure. Her husband doesn't even want to be there. He hates the customers.

And there was the heat and the filth and the grease and the mess and the mouse shit and the mice. Those were the physical things that bothered me, but that I thought could be fixed at some point. I also wanted to steer the food toward organic and vegetarian fare, and I didn't want to use bagged mashed potatoes and soup. What the hell is the point of convenience when the whole purpose of the business is to create good food? I wanted to cook, not dish up one more goddamn pot roast with fried potatoes for one more white-haired bitchy welfare sucking blue-brained sycophant debutante geezer. So I had my own problems.

The main mental strain came about because there were a few good things about the place, sort of. Pretty good wage. I had ample time off (not paid). Free food. That's about it, and I didn''t like the free food.

But NPDPDN would compliment me sometimes, make me feel she cared, then yell at me for some dumb thing that I messed up or wasn't even involved with. There were a number of times I came home ready to just quit. But I hung in there, because maybe things would get better.

NPDPDN: I was talking about how all my pets were tragically killed and she said, "You should not have pets. Wouldn't you get a clue after the first few were killed?" And she wasn't joking. That is probably the worst thing anybody has ever said to me. And she didn't apologize. And that same day I came home to find out that one of my best friends had killed herself. There is something about that connection that really stands out in my head.

She fed squirrels out the back door, and had names for them. She liked them more then her staff. I don't really like squirrels. In the city, they are fat indolent scavengers. She would alway tell me to come here so I could see one of them come into the building. I always smiled politely and tried to get back to work. I'm sick of being polite.

She would leave used paper towels everywhere. She would leave messes in my workspace. She and her husband and the staff ate soup and pot roast out of the container, dipping bread directly into the food. Not sanitary at all. They wouldn't clean the baskets for bread or fries ever, don't ask me why. Fish and meat were left out for hours. And so on. One man can only do so much to change the direction a ship is sailing. I tried, but it was like cleaning diaper, smelly and never ending.

The husband never yelled at me. He got mad and told her and she would yell at me or others. That was his way of staying uninvolved. He would storm around furiously for reasons I don't even know.

Every machine would break down every week. The new freezer broke down immediately. Coolers couldn't keep the food cool. And so forth. I could go on indefinitely but I will just tell you what happened at the end.

I went on break for fifteen minutes. I came back and they were both in the kitchen, facing away from me. I started to wash my hands and hear Nathalie say, "When that fucking dumbass comes back I'm going to give him a piece of my mind." I look at her and she turns around, somewhat startled to find me there, and she tells me I am in big trouble. And I say, "What?" I have no idea. The husband is sweeping and there is water on the floor, but the cooler had been doing that all summer so I thought nothing of it. And Nathalie says something like,"I can't believe you didn't notice the cooler was warm, I can't believe it, I just can't, never in my life, there is no excuse!" And I just don't even know what to say. She's picking up stuff and trying to make a point and I'm blanking out. In essence she's blaming me for a piece of eqiupment failure, at least for not noticing the failure of said piece of equipment. Fine. Maybe she has a point, maybe a should have noticed that a cooler was not working in a kitchen that is a hundred degrees without air conditioning, two loud fans on, and me being totally overworked every day, used like a mule. The temp guage is inside this custom made cooler, so I would have had to take out a drawer and peered into the depths of the machine to casually check the temp, even though I had no reason to and you can't tell what the temp reading is anyway becasue it's too far back inside. So I said, "Well..." and I was going to say something like this thing had happened and I will try to help fix it but all we can do is work to make it better. Basically there is no reason to go ballistic ever, really, in a business. I did not deserve such total disprespect after the hard work I have put in for them. She interrupted me and said, "No, don't say a word, I don't want to hear!" She said it in such a flagrantly condescending manner that that was it for me, I wasn't going to be called names behind my back and be discounted as a human being. Everybody has the right to be respected as a human. So I said, "Fuck you, fuck this place, and fuck it all!" And I chucked my apron down and left. And that was it for me. If they want to apologize then maybe I will work a little more for them. But I know them well enough to realize that they are complaining about me to all the other staff, calling me names, and they have moved on and this is just another bump in their Idot's Road to Hell.

So this is what I learned in the last 3 years:

You need to have a plan of where you want to be in three years.

I am a hard worker that can tolerate most anything, psychological or physical.

Your co-workers are the most important part of a job.

I am an artist, and I should behave like one.

Let that be a lesson to you. Don't allow anyone to treat you badly. They can treat themselves as badly as they want, but you are worthy of respect, just by being alive.

Industrial Anarchist Co-ops

THE SILENT REVOLUTION
By Marcello Balve

ONE MORNING IN JUNE 2002, a group of twenty unemployed factory workers gathered on a treeless sidewalk in downtown Avellaneda, an industrial suburb of Buenos Aires. They came loaded with poles, plastic sheeting, scrap lumber, and rope. In short order, they raised a tent before a nine-story brick factory known as the Cristalux Glassworks. The factory, recognizable by its billboard-sized bas-relief of a worker blowing glass, had once employed a workforce of twelve hundred. Now it stood abandoned and shuttered.

It was late fall in the Southern Hemisphere, and night temperatures dipped into the low forties. The wide, bleak avenue offered no shelter from wind, rain, or sun. The tent was just an orange tarp strung up between the factory’s main gate and a light post, the sides anchored to crates. But the workers were determined to keep the tent fastened to the gate until they could go back inside. More than one hundred ex-employees eventually joined the protest, either lending their bodies or bringing food.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/pages/om/06-4om/Ballve.html

What strikes me about this article and others I have read in the past few years is that certainly, at some point in the future, our society will look like this, will react like this, will have to cope like this. Surely you do not think that we wil be able to ride this wave of oil-induced affluence forever? At one point, when our oil is to costly for the average working class or middle class worker, we will need to revise our strategies and create sustainable worker-owned businesses.

Another post about my dead friend

I posted this at my Myspace account becasue that was where she blogged and where her blogger friends are:

Sunshine is dead I am going to post this here because this is where she let us all know what was going on in her head.

I've known Sunshine a long time. I of course fell in love with her immediately. She became a sort of anti-hero, a punk goddess, a beautiful raging siren in my soul. She was and is a huge important part of who I am. Now that she has gone away, I feel that she has left me a piece of herself to carry on.

When I first heard that she killed herself from Beth on a Myspace email, I was shocked into insanity. I wept, and I swear to god I thought it was a horrible prank being played on me. My heart was ripped into tiny pieces. They are still floating around my head now, and I look at them in wonder and fear. I don't think I want a complete heart again. I just want to stare vaguely out the window at the stars until my soul evaporates.

When she started this blog thing, I was glad because I could then keep up on the goings on in her patchwork life It was so fucking hard to get a hold of her, what with phone number and address changes. I tried at least once a week to get in touch with her.

Her last couple emails expressed things that will be dear to me for the rest of my life, and I will reflect on her words, her face, and her spirit on my deathbed. She also expressed hope about many things, including relationships, education, and the possibility of having children. She also commented on the fact that she felt like she was becoming way to conventional as a person.

I wish to fucking hell that I could talk to her one last time, been there with her one last time. How could this possibly be that that is impossible now? What is death that it is so final?

Her words on this website really express a lot of things and I believe we should all read and reread them to understand all that she was going through, try to grasp her essential sadness and her tough external shell. We need to realize that with this final and devestating action, she has given us a gift that could possibly be the most important gift we will ever receive in this lifetime, which is the crystal clear knowledge of death, the horrifying reality of this present moment, and the importance of living life fully while we can.

With her passing I look around at old friends and new, relatives and grocery store clerks, pretty much everyone, with a new and clear vision. These are the people that I share my time in this world with, these are the people that could be gone tomorrow. So I need to love them today, as a much as I can. And I know I could be gone tomorrow, so I want to give them whatever I can in this short time we walk on this planet.

I am not in charge anymore, I realized. I have many responsibilities.

But then of course there are all those painful thoughts and hazy memories that attack me every few minutes now. What was she going through that night? What was her last thought? Why wasn't I there to help her, to keep her from doing this? Remember that time we walked from Morris halfway to Hancock, remember that time we drank ourselves silly in the middle of the day, remember that time she gave me that crazy haircut? Hanging out at Karls Coffee. Drinking beer over the Flowershop. Walking around Morris.

Fuck it all. It's just impossible to put into words the ridiculous pain of this senseless act. I thought she was tougher, tough enough to handle anything at all. Forever. What an idiot I was. She was a fragile human being, not really a punk goddess. It's so hard to see the true nature of her real pain and fears. I just didn't think she would ever be overwhelmed.

I want to hug her, I want to kiss her, I want to have a smoke down by the water and a beer back by the fire and watch her play with her dogs and smile that smile we all knew and were addicted to. We would do, say, make a funny face, anything for that smile and laughter. It was like a gift from heaven, an ambrosia dripping from the cups of dragons.

And I look around and the world keeps on going, making computers, bombing Lebanon, eating sandwiches, and I want to scream out, "What is the point of all this?" A week has turned into a lifetime. A day has reversed the flow of time.

Choices, my friends, they are all important.

Namaste, Sunshine. I love you. Goodbye.

Sunrise

I woke up a little before 5 in the morning today. I went to the top of the barn and watched the sun rise. Constant change, ephemeral beauty. The cold coffee helped me become conscious again.

Yesterday I fished for the first time in more then a decade. I didn't catch anything.

The day before that I went to my friend's funeral. The pastor said something about Christ's blood shed on the cross as a symbol of peace, and I wanted to strangle him, but I laughed out loud instead. I suppose you could say my friend died for your sins. I suppose everyone dies for someone's sins. Why make the club exclusive is all I'm trying to say.

It's all going to change. That's what I've realized. I'm leaving it all behind. I'm going to start something new, something good. I'm going to grow vegetables. I'm going to make music. I'm going to create community. Life is not as long, nor is it as permanent as I imagined. There is no time to wait for tomorrow to come, there is no time to wait for joy to be given to you in a gift-wrapped box. There is nothing but now. There is nothing but you and me, alive right now.

If I can take advantage of some available resources I should. If I can stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before me I should. All I have is energy. All we have are the reflections of the jewels of this reality.

Right now I hear the loon call. I am reminded that the only thing that is permanent is impermanance.

I'm going to go make breakfast.

Death

One of my oldest and dearest friends killed herself on Sunday.

I found out yesterday. It seemed like some horrible cruel joke. But it is true, and her funeral is on Friday.

She lived in Smalltown, USA and lived a smalltown life, with all the drinking, gossip, and bullshit that entails. She never went to college, but one of the last things I heard from her was that she was planning on taking a course in carpentry at a community college in a nearby town. I was glad for her. I knew she could succeed if she truly wished to. Sometimes I wondered if anybody else ever encouraged her to succeed, to enjoy life. Somehow I doubt it.

She loved her pets more then she loved people, I think. She was always picking up strays, and babying them. I think she did that with people, too. I think she felt like a stray cat gone feral.

Her family is poor and troubled. Her younger brother committed suicide a few years ago. Her father tried to commit suicide while in jail, suceeding in permanently damaging himself for life. I knew she felt alone, abandoned by her family and older friends. I feel like I abandoned her, but I don't know what I could have done differently. She lived with us in Minneapolis for a few months, but she didn't really fit in, it seemed to me she was overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of big city life, but I am sure she would haev gotten used to it and maybe benefited from it. As it was, she moved back to Smalltown, USA, for I don't know what reason. Maybe to be with her then boyfriend.

Last time we exchanged emails, she had a new boyfriend, and was actually considering having children. Knowing her, you would realize this was a new and important development in her life. Her boyfriend sounded like a steady type of person, who had owned a house before and had a good blue collar job. I guess he wasn't enough to keep her from despair.

I can't understand it very well. Death is somewhat new to me. My grandmother died, and so did my girlfriend's, as well as all my pets in various horrific ways. But this is new. I grew up with this person, I remember her early sadness and despair. It must have evolved into a very serious and complex cage in which, finally, she just could not extricate herself from. I wish I could have at least talked to her one last time.

Her last message to me was on my answering service. It was a Friday and we were far from Minneapolis, and she was trying to call late at night, drunkenly. She said something like "I called, I try calling you all the time, but you never answer, you fucker." I tried calling her all the time, but she never answered.

I still love her. I don't think it matters that her body is dead, her spirit will be with me as long as I live, and my spirit will be with someone else as long as they live, and in that way we can keep each other alive, afloat in this sometimes sad world.

The world, this reality, is nothing but constant changes, and sorrow is merely a reaction to these sometimes abrupt and suprising changes. Love is the glue that binds us together and when we are ripped apart it hurts like hell.

I am going to miss you, Sunshine.

Winnipeg Folk Festival 2006, overview

Oh, the Folk Festival. It came and went again, in it's inevitable infinite and supersonic way.

This is my 5th one I think. Every year it is different, every year it opens up my mind to something new, and renews my commitment to dedicating my life to this amzing stuff we call music. Music is water for our souls.

We took our time going up, and camped at Grand Beach, Rushing River, and Someplace Else. We saw ancient petroforms, supposedly where the first Ojibweh peoples came down from heaven unto this earth. We saw endless rocky lakes, and picked fresh blueberries from misquito besotted woods. Our car was loyal and it continued until the very end.

Is there anything better then a beach? Is it because the beach is where our minds began to form, the meeting of water and earth?

We got to Bird's Hill on Wednesday, and all the good campsites by the trees were already taken. there is only the Festival Campground of course. We set up our ancent screen tent, the decrepit two room tent, and our two new dome tents, in preparation our five family members who where to arrive on Thursday night.

And beer was drunk.

It was so hot the whole time, we didn't want any food except for the Festival Food. Between all seven of us we probably ate 20 meals at The Good Indian Place. Yum.

The tents blew down once, but with so many people we got them up again relatively easily.

The highlights musically, in order of importance:

1. Hawksley Workman
This man has inspired me to find my true voice. He has inspired me to tell you my true thoughts. He has reassured me that people appreciate emotion, humor, thought, and sexiness. He is a revelation, and I am eagerly awaiting a call from the Electric Fetus so I can get my album.

2. Chad Vangaalen
This man also made me happy with his quirky freeness. He had the best made-up song about bugs, and I will try to get back to you with the lyrics. I bought his album, and it is good, but not as good as he was live.

3. K'naan
He is the best rapper I have ever heard. The dancing was fun, but the real treat was when we listened to his album on the way home and realized it was the best album ever. Get it, now.

4. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Salil Bhatt
Wonderful wonderful wonderful Indian music played on modified Hawaiian guitars.

5. Taqaq
The best inuit throat singing I have ever heard, with an awesome DJ that had me dancing like a fool in the beer tent. So happy, so sexy.

6. Mihirangi
She was an awesome looper with an incredible voice. the workshop she had with Taqaq was by far the best one at the Fest and I will never forget it. It was full of this incredible womanly energy, a fierce joy, and creative freedom.

7. Greg Macpherson
He sounded great.

8. That 1 Guy
How can you beat a guy who plays a giant instrument he made out of pipes and has smoke coming out of it at the end of the set? You can't, unless you're any of the above performers.

Son Volt, Afrodizz, and a number of the other Singer/Songwriters were awesome. I heard Crooked Still and Oh Susanna were good. The workshop with Vangaalen, Sparhaw (Low), Hawksley, Macpherson, and Vic Chestnutt was wonderful. There was just so much good things happening, musically, culinarily, and spiritually, it's hard to note all of them.

The weren't many highlights at the campground this year except for the glowing dragon.

The ride back was long. The border crossing took a long time, and finally the guard just asked me if I play the drum and I say not very well and we got through quickly. The life that had luster now lacks in love. The things everyone does constantly are stupid. I hate the way they look at me when I walk down the street. TV is the worst thing in the whole wide world. It is too easy to turn into a psycopath. It is too easy to get fat and order pizza. Fuck all this horrid DEATH that just parades around like it's nothing. Stop doing what you're doing and do something else.

So here I am. If you were at the Folk Fest and would like to chat about it, please do so with me. Leave a message. Awesome.

Potential

I understand that the most important thing to do right now, the most important work we can do as human beings is to to envision, create, construct, and harmonize our realities in accordance with the principles of permaculture and sustainability. That to me is our primary task; there is an intense need for our society to reconfigure, to rearrange this unusable mass of impotence, this garbage heap of useless infrastructure destined to fall fallow in the low tides of the inevitable onrushing lack of energy. The oil will run out, the coal will run out, the slate will run out, the gas will run out, it will all run out. All the alternatives rely on some form of natural capital, and without the concentrated efforts of all nations to create solutions immediately, now, there will be no salvation. We will all die or exist in servitude, except those who have control of everything.

Bleak? Yes. Hopeless? No.

When one realizes that there is no salvation, one becomes supremely free. When one realizes that, in the end, every one and every thing will turn to dust, to particles of sun and surf, to a whisper in the Milky Way, and ultimately to nothing, then one understands that the struggles we undertake to free ourselves and others are relatively meaningless in a cosmic sense, but so extremely important in personal sense as to be almost all-consuming. There is nothing more important then self-realization, to come to some semblance of wisdom, to comprehend enlightenment, because each thing is a universe unto itself, and each universe is a fragmented self, struggling in the infinite confines of time to be whole, to be free.

When one understands these truths inherently, with no need for fragile reasoning, one develops compassion for those who can't or won't or don't understand, or even those who don't feel the need to understand, to come to wisdom, to comprehend enlightenment. One realizes that the fundamental truth of the world is that it is made of energy, that we are all energy interracting with energy. That this is the primary mode of existence, and energy communicating with energy is the primary work of existence. When we eat or drink we take on energy from other energy. When we sleep we store up energy. When we walk or talk we spend energy. Just little balls of energy. Nothing too complex.

And then we find that the earth, a big ball of energy, is rapidly losing its energy, because we, the human conglomeration of energy, are rapidly taking on its energy to expand our masses, and we're suprised.

It all comes down to energy. Simple Zen physics. "Those not busy being born are busy dying."

All I want to do is find my potential and expand my spirit. All I want to do is exist and decrease my consumption. All I want to do is begin again today and tomorrow, be born again every moment of every day, remember myself every breath that I take. And one day I will become more or less a featureless particle of energy, or many, and I will not remember this day, or maybe I will. Maybe every particle in every chair, sofa, hotdog, or rose remembers every thing its ever been. Maybe I remember being a mushroom and a tree and a river and that's why I am attracted to those things. Energy communicating with energy. Like attracted to like.

I feel that the potential of communciation is essentially limitless and that it is so important to continually work on that aspect of our lives. And not just with other humans, but with plants and animals and objects, as well as ourselves. There is so much to learn from yourself. I mean, I'm a galaxy, for God's sake.

10

I have ten minutes. Ten minutes of my life to kill. Ten minutes before I get up and put my wallet in my pants, go outside and lock the door, get in the car and pick up my SO. Ten minutes in which I continue to live, to breathe, to think, to hear and smell and taste the environment. And so I sit here and write about how I have these ten minutes to use up, to waste, to commit to memory. And I continue thinking about the Folk Festival in Winnipeg and how annoying going across the border is, especially on the way back when we're exhausted and just want to get home. They almost always search our car, probably because we're from the Festival and are deemed Highly Suspicious by those in authority. I think about that and the weekend, and work and what we'll have for dinner and the DVDs we might watch tonight and the heat and then I have four minutes.

Four minutes to exist in, to lick like a lollipop of pure awareness.

I just had a shower and I feel refreshed.

And then it's over. My ten minutes are up. And I'm still not famous.

Mind seeds

I sit here on this dark day after reading that article on Zen and composting and I think of why it is that I am enamored with the natural processes that surround me every day. I wonder at the way the universe collides with itself to create a perfect harmony of enzymatic reactions and rainbows of fungal spores. I wonder how we as humans look at each other and speak our words and communicate somehow. I wonder how coffee can taste so good somedays, yet another example of natural perfection, fermented beans roasted and brewed with crystal pure water. Somedays it shines, somedays it seems so dull.

I think of what I have done this summer and what I will do and where I am going and what I really think I am doing on this earth, in this universe. Am I really here to figure out how to be comfortable or am I here to figure out how to communicate with you, with a crooked cucumber, with a maple tree, or with that otter? Trying to decipher the vibrations between what I perceive as myself and what I perceive as something else. Trying to be a cosmic musician, a wordly artist.

When the day tires me out it is so hard to feel like that matters, that anything so esoteric has any validity. But how does it not? How can we just go blindly through the motions to arrive at somewhere so comfortable only to eventually die? Death is the ultimate teacher to us. It reminds us that nothing we possibly can do has any permanance. That doesn't mean that there is no point to anything, only that the point exist only in the present. Nothing stays the same for long. Nothing has any reality based architecture. We live in dreams and rivers, rainbows of fungal spores and mind seeds sprouting in black earth. And someday we will go to seed and spread ourselves infinitely or become mulch. Either way, it has meaning.

Composting Yourself

This is an awesome article about zen and shit:


Growing Ground

Cultivating compost in the murky depths of a monastery toilet, Steve Krieger learns to break down his raw material, inner and outer.

View the print version of this article in PDF format

IT BEGAN AS A FINE PLAN: replace the primitive outdoor toilets at our rural, monastic-style Zen Center. The head monk at the time was an idealistic German, and he made the final call to install composting toilets. CTs are based on a beautiful principle. It’s a principle with great metaphorical as well as practical value. The way the toilets work is, you crap down a long, narrow chute, and it accumulates in a large, plastic box. Once a week you shovel a bag of wood chips into the box. Eventually heaps of rich, earthy soil appear. This manure, or “humanure,” makes primo fertilizer for your gardens. What you took from the earth in food, you return to it as food. Beautiful, right?

http://www.tricycle.com/issues/editors_pick/2458-1.html

The sun comes up and I wake up in a blur. My glasses are greasy and my house is warm. I try to focus on what is real, I try to focus on what is good in life. Life slides past me fastly like broken jelly.

I taste phlegm and brush my teeth. I don't even want to speak about the day time, when I earn my pay. When my hours are counted as something worthwhile. I struggle, I get through, nobody else seems to care.

I just want a shower. I snidely remark about something. The air is too hot. I make excuses. I want to leave or go to sleep. It's killing me, this world.

-blue, a pencil, Tangerines-

I take a breath of air, I inhale the cosmic surf, I smell the pine needles and grubby earth.

Goddamn the day is done.

She's off in the distance, a flying dakini. The choices I choose I chose quickly, with no weighing.

Too quickly, smelling of beef, tired and scared of the bare naked realness. Sleeping.

-night, the rushing of Aspens, zookeeper-

Fellow

Come play

Down in the soil

You remember the rhymes?

The taste of mineral salts?

The stagnant water hanging still in the marsh?

You remember the gravel road bridge over the dark sucker filled river?

Fellow

Come play

With us in the dark

Are you afraid?

flavor of the month

Today today today. What is it about today... Where can I go to play, what can I say?

The man took away the fun. The sun is done. Morning turns inside out and falls apart and kisses the sky. The farewell.

Dust in my eyes. In the cumulous clouds floating so high. I don't want to die.

The sun is undone. A great white bird is floating away. No one cares. No one cares.

Flavor of the month. Give me a lift. The asphalt is hard and smells of death.

terrible terrible terrible things
floating in spurts of black paint and screams

but the ocean does have a bottom!
She outputs.

I give in to my weakness and sleep. Terrible sleep. Waste of life. Morning is broken.

Tell me you stupid fucker do you have a purpose? He says to the mannequin.

Plastic handholds on steel limbs.

Give me a beer and a pizza anyday, he says, he has said, he does not know why he has said it.

Nothing I want to do makes money, he thinks, he has thunk, he doesn't know why he has thunk it.

flavors flavors flavors bittersweet
cooking with shards of glass and steam

No one can steal what he has hidden in his head. No one can replace what he has lost. There is nothing he hasn't lost. There is nothing to lose.

No One Thing

quick update

I always go to a friend's blog and find that it hasn't been updated in weeks and I go, " Come on, lazy!" but now its been a few weeks and I haven't updated my blog even though I have actually done things for a change. Well, suffice it to say that since my last entry I finished my novella, went backpacking for a week, and got to sleep on a sailboat. I am still alive, and I still want a new job, one where I get to travel around and drink beer.

My friend and his boyfriend moved back to town, and that is good. It is good to have real folk to talk to and do stuff with.

I don't want to write any more.

Good Article in the Orion Online

This is a really good article in Orion Online that talks about giving up hope, as a positive action. I really agree with most of it's premises. Please read it.

Beyond Hope
Derrick Jensen

THE MOST COMMON WORDS I hear spoken by any environmentalists anywhere are, We're fucked. Most of these environmentalists are fighting desperately, using whatever tools they have—or rather whatever legal tools they have, which means whatever tools those in power grant them the right to use, which means whatever tools will be ultimately ineffective—to try to protect some piece of ground, to try to stop the manufacture or release of poisons, to try to stop civilized humans from tormenting some group of plants or animals. Sometimes they're reduced to trying to protect just one tree.

http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/06-3om/Jensen.html

Update

I am at 23,000 word and 34 pages. This, I can assure you, is a lot of work.

Project Info

I am not going to write here for awhile, as I am channeling my writing into some more serious writing pursuits, specifically a possible novel or novella. I will be updating word count/page count and all that every now and then. Having already started a project I am awed at how much editing and reworking I am doing already, and I barely started. Wish me luck, and any encouragement would be helpful.

I am at about 7,000 word and 10 pages.