Strawbale madness part 1

Well, it's been more then a month since my last post, and I apologize for that. I've been busy. Last night I went to a going-away party for my friend Krista (sustain-this.blogspot.com) who is is going to California to pursue her Masters degree, and that was fun. We drank tasty good homebrew that I participated in brewing. It had a whole pound of hops added. Very biscuity.

I would add photos to the following but I can't find the cord that connects the camera to the computer so you'll just have to take my word for it for the time being.

First of all, living with a group of strangers is odd. I've become somwhat acquainted to them, but you never really know who they are. I live with my boss who is 30ish lawyer/green builder woman, and the other interns Jesse, 30ish hippy Bahai cabinet-maker man, and Phyllis, 40ish insomniac builder/designer woman. We make a strange team, but we can actually get some things done sometimes. There was actually another intern but he gave up after a month. He was a carpenter for Habitat for Humanity, and he talked in a Clint Eastwood drawl and wore black work clothes. I called him the Carhart Ninja.

The house where we live is relatively large. It's on the market so it's pretty empty of furniture. The heat seems to be cranked to the max even though I've turned the thermostat in the basement to zero, and when every body gets bundled up for the days work in the morning, we all overheat and start to sweat. The boys are in the basement and the girls up in the normal part of the house. One day I was snooping around and I found a piano in the boiler room and then another room adjacent filled with pails full of staple every day items like corn and diapers. End -of-the-world room, I guess.

I don't have a a bed or any furniture, so I sleep on a futon and create back problems for myself.

I'll focus on the actual building of the strawbale house, and write entrys for side projects and other assorted topics later.

We started out with an empty space, just a big chunk of sand. Then a contractor came in and dug out a hole, about 45' by 25', long axis facing south, two thirds of the north side about 3 feet deep, the south side about 5 foot deep (where we were going to put the greenhouse). The contractor put in our septic system, then we spent a few days learning the ins and outs of a batter board type system, trying to get the foundation staked out and ready for construction. Let me tell you that staking out a house is no easy thing. Creating a perfect rectangle in sand with rebar stakes is like trying to eat with your mouth full. But on day we got it down, and we were ready to proceed.

I forgot to tell you that before all that we sat down with the boss and she said that we were going to get a giant 60'x100' tent that we were going to put over our work area adn that we had to build giant wooden skis for it and it might take a few weeks to put up. I felt like that was a waste of our time and said as much. To weigh down this giant structure we went out and cut the tops of 45 plastic totes with a Sawzall, got the Bobcat revved up and filled them up with sand so that they weighed a couple tons each. It was the weirdest task I have ever done. But I like learning how to use the Bobcat, it was as if I was in a Mechwarrior video game, and I had the ultimate power to crush and move and grade. Then we had to move them off the field because the contractors came in to put in the sewer and level the ground.

We also learned that we were going to be building with giant (8'x3'x3', 700 lbs) bales of flax straw, and that we were going to be putting a giant bale living roof on our structure. This sounded amazingly ambitious to me, considering we had to months and we had to construct a giant tent with cranes first. After debate and a couple weeks went past, the giant tent idea was discarded as well as the giant bale living roof system. We were now going to use SIPs panels for the roof, but of course no ordinary SIPs, which are usually a rigid insulation encased in two layers of OSB or plywood, we were using a SIPs that was a partial metal interior inside two layers of rigid insulation.

So in the final analysis, the house we are building consists of a tamped earth foundation with a treated 2x12 toe-ups filled with stone under the giant flax strawbales on the west, east, and north sides of the building. The south side consists of post and beam construction for the greenhouse which will have plastic glazing. The structure will be precompressed with plastic strapping material and the SIPs panels will be mounted on the walls for the roof. There will be solar water heating collected from the roof by refurbished solar panels and circulating throughout the pex laid out in the earth under the cob floor, and their will be a modified heat sink utilizing black drain-tile laid out 5 feet deep in the greenhouse floor. Ther will also be a rocket stove for back-up heating. The inside and outside walls will be cob. There will be a composting toilet. We have been using biodiesel for running a lot of the machines we use.

Now, each of these components could be discussed at length, and sometimes it's hard to focus on one thing at a time. My guess is that you don't know what cob is, because I barely did until I started this internship.It is just a mixture of clay, sand, and straw. It is a very natural and versatile material. The clay is the basic medium, the sand prevents shrinkage and provides strength, and the straw provides an interwoven matrix and structural reinforcement. It is like natural concrete. I have seen many things made out of it, including walls, floors, coat hangers, and dragons. As a structural component it provides mass, and it breathes well, which is important in strawbale construction because you don't want to trap moisture inside the walls and provide a breeding ground for molds.

I'm going to stop here and get back to you later. It's Sunday and I have to do chores and get a breakfast in me before heading back to the north woods. Any questions so far?

grocery list

Well, I managed to make it to today without any bumps and now tomorrow I am off to learn strawbale construction. This is my first "living by myself without female significant other" grocery list:

2 each five-grain organic tempeh
2 blocks RGBH-free cheese, one monterey jack, one sharp cheddar
3/4 loaf Great Harvest bread
1 head organic garlic
4 each organic onions
1 1/2 pound red lentils
1 1/2 pound brown basmati rice
1 bag organic potato chips, yogurt and green onion
1 jar of local honey
2 boxes organic green tea
1 box "sleepytime" tea
4 free-trade bananas
5 pounds local organic yellow potatoes
1 can organic refried black beans
1 can roasted garlic salsa
1 package 8" flour tortillas
2 thai rice noodle packages
1 box organic Kashi cereal
1 box organic soymilk
1 pound local butter
1 jar Hellmanns mayo
6 eggs
1 jar Spike seasoning
12 pack Leinies
12 pack Sierra Nevada


What do you think?

internship

So in a few days I am off to intern at Happy Dancing Turtle http://www.happydancingturtle.org for October and November. Happy Dancing Turtle is a partner with Hunt Utilities Group http://www.hugllc.com/ which is a family owned for-profit. It seems that HDT is housing me and HUG is supplying most of the tools, projects, and technical training. Check out the HUG site for pictures of the buildings and projects they are working on and to get a sense of what this is all about. I will be learning strawbale and cob construction, as well as refurbishing solar panels. So I should be done by Thanksgiving.

Thoughts on a rainy day #1

When an ideal is envisioned one must work toward the fruition of that idea. An ideal is something that one creates as a building block of one's moral and ethical reality. When we work toward an ideal, we work toward the idea of something better, which indicates the power of the idea, the power of imagination and thought, the mind. What is the mind? Is the mind the brain? Is the mind the electrical impulses in the brain? Is the mind the individual electrons that make up the impulses? When you deconstruct anything, it becomes nothing.

An ideal can be good or bad. We all have the idea that we are something more then the physical being that we seem to be. We call it spirit or soul or atman or ghost. Most of us don't feel the need to define it. Is it real or as it a collective hallucination?

Then faith emerges to prop up the ideal. Without faith the ideal becomes unreachable, unrealistic, and there is no impetus to reach the ideal. Without faith in the ideal it becomes nothing. So faith arises out of the individual spirit, the jiva in Sanskrit, out of our "minds" and our "hearts". Without the faith that the ideal can and will be realized there is no reason to work toward the ideal. It's an example of quantum physics in that we create what we we see by seeing it, we destroy what we don't see by not looking. In any case, the more you take it apart to look at its parts the more it resembles nothing.

The ultimate ideal is God. God can be described as everything, or within everything, or as a separate being. It is ridiculous to describe God as anything less then everything, as a God apart from everything makes everything look ridiculously like nothing. If God is everything, our jivas are God, as well as everything else. It's simple but important.

Why work toward something good? Why not? Why move or breathe or walk or sing at all? The reason is that you want to become happy, that you want others to be happy. And to be happy you want to know God, and God is nothing less then love, and love is joy. Essentially all existence is joy. At the essence of our enlightenment experience is comapassion and the realization that we are not seperated, that we are all utterly connected, and this brings joy to us.

a response to my organic farmer blog

Noah said...

All your points are silly. Let's take them one by one.

1. How is it better to support your local economy then the poor Chilean farmer? Is an American better somehow? Is someone who lives close to you better?

2. If the product is being made in Chile there is even less harm to the local watershed then if it is grown by a local organic farmer.

3. The vegetable is probably fresher, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is any more nutritious.

4. You will only save a small amount of petrolium products for your vegetable. Large ships use a lot of oil, but they also carry huge ammounts of produce.

5. Your local farmer care no more about you than the large corporation. They're both in it for the money. But the local organic farmer asks for more of your money.

Also, you say that food co-ops were started to help poor people. If that was the case, it is no longer. They are the gathering places of snobs.

Give me a big Safeway or Albertsons any day.

4:33 PM

Cosmic Monkey said...

Noah, why do you prefer a Safeway or Albertson's to a small co-op or grocery store? Is it because you like being the anonymous shopper, you like the giant buildings pulsing with wasted energy, the glib and unresponsive staff...You need to reevaluate why you prefer a giant box store before I can really debate you about local organic agriculture. You want to pay 5 cents for an apple from mexico? Go ahead and suck down those pesticides and herbicides, go ahead and feel happy about subjecting those farmers to these chemicals. Your points are not thought out:

1. It is better to support your local economy because that is where you live. Don't you want to support your neighbor, build a relationship with the farmer, recirculate your "hard-earned" cash in your town? this has nothing to do with being "better".

2. There is no harm to the local watershed when a product is farmed organically. None.

3. Fresher vegetables are better for you. There are more enzymes and vitamins. This is a scientific fact.

4. You don't honestly believe this? The farther away a vegetable comes from the more fuel is used in getting it to your plate.

5. The small local organic farm cares about the community and the earth. There is no other reason to get into organic farming. There is not alot of money in it. The farmer might as well work at UPS and get health insurance and a decent wage, rather then work their ass off every day for no money and no insurance.

I said in my blog that the co-ops were started to help the poor get bulk commodities, and now they have turned into rich peoples dietary centers. But I think it's important to support them anyway, the same reason I think it's important to support your community even if you think it's full of assholes. Only you can be the change.

1:05 PM

You can't understand anything until you have sprouted a seed

No you can't. Not until you've seen a small seed burst with infinite energy out into the universe, expanding forever outward toward the only thing that matters, sex. Whether you sprout a handful of lentils or a ten foot corn plant, seeing magic take place on the linear tightrope of time opens the mind up to the possibilities of the galaxy.

Isle Royale

Well we just got back from a six day trip to Isle Royale National Park in Michigan.

The weather was beautiful the whole time, no rain. Our first boat ride out last Tuesday was canceled because of the waves being too high, so we had to wait around for another day. The boat ride out was fun, buit 3 hours is a long time no matter what you're doing. When we got to the island, we and a few opther backpackers were instructed on the "leave no trace" principles, which was irratating.

The hiking was hard but rewarding. My partner got huge blisters on her toes the first day and we had apply bandages frequently, but she hiked through the pain with hardly a complaint.

Our favorite time was spending a full day on the beach, where we did yoga, meditated, and watched the waves. I also met a giant bull moose on the beach.

The last day was pretty hard. We hiked around 14 miles up and down ridges in the sun and we were tired and in pain overall. But we also agreed it was the most beautiful part of the hike.

I will blog more about it later, and perhaps add pictures.

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.