moving through my 30s

But things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our
bodies taut with power.
We shall laugh, and
institutions will curl up
like burnt paper. D.H. Lawrence

i am now 32. it happened on thursday the 24th. i turned it. the thing that makes it ultimately strange is the fact that i was actually 13 years old when my mama turned 32. I was a teenager and totally remember my ma being a young mother while simultaneously getting worried each year that she turned older cause i thought she was getting so old. yeah, right, 32 is so not old, but as a teen i thought it something different.

Now, i am pushing gently forward into my thirties and loving these years more than any others that i have lived.

the things that make me love this time in life:
1. kk and i are rooted in our community; we have become good friends with our neighbors and i love this sense of knowing the people who live in houses just a few feet from us.

2. kk and i are involved in a spontaneously generated community collective that makes my heart race with anticipation and joy. Bike Ypsi is this group a bunch of us started and good things have come from it and we are determined to continue to make our community a more bicycle friendly and sustainable place. I give a loud flipping off to all the motorized vehicle drivers who shout for cyclist to to get on the sidewalk or off the "fucking road"; soon oh very soon these lazy assed people are going to have to open up their car doors and foot it or bike it cause gas is going to be out of reach. in the meantime, don't mess with me cause i might just kick your car as you zoom pass and yell profanities--i'm sick of your misplaced vehemence.



3. i get paid to do meaningful work. while it is stressful and at times it makes me feel hopeless and zapped, the highlights of goodness overshadow the futility of working with systems that seem unshakable.

4. i have a roof over my head and good food at my fingertips.

5. i have many people in my life who i am fortunate enough to love and who love me.

6. i can grow things in the earth and eat of the bounty.

7. i can muse on the mysteries unfurling around me.

8. i can write and think and paint and believe.

9. i can grow each day knowing that i am still willing and wanting to work for the greatest good--to define it with others, to define it with the natural history and living world around me, and then to lift voice and rock and limb to make the good we collectively define happen.

these things are guiding my footsteps through the long, slow strides of this decade of my life.

no more something is wrong with my body

I have been a bad blogger these last few weeks. Mostly, I have been too busy to think. Also, when these words came out of my kk's mouth, i got furious with this whole process, "N, I used to think my body was good and worked right and well, and I hate that this is making me think that something is wrong with my body. I hate thinking that my body is not working right. If we were not trying this, then I would not think these thoughts."

All because her temperature is all over the place.

I've come to hate that little purple thermometer. I think it is a joke.


My kk's body is just fucking fine. And to all of you out there trying, your bodies are fine too.

While I want to create a kid with my girl and I want it real bad, I do not want to get hung up in this thinking that something is wrong with kk's body.
Now, if she had breast cancer or ovarian cancer or some kind of growth in her kidney then something would be amiss and potentially life-threatening and we would work to make it not so amiss.

But, because we have decided to participate in the over-population of the american human landscape does not then make my baby's body all fucked up cause it is not happening asap. Her inability to get pregnant right now is not life-threatening. it is not an illness.

K an i are lucky to even have the time to mull over such decisions and find people who are willing to give up time in their lives to provide us with the jiz that we need to potentially make this happen. I am happy that we cannot just fuck and procreate. I think all people everywhere should have to ponder and plan before bringing a life into this world. I want to focus on the healthiness of our bodies. If we were not trying this pregnancy thing,k would never have jumped to thinking her reproductive system was unhealthy or fucked up or what ever. So, no more of this something is wrong...
I simply will not have it.

mad-fucking-rabbits

I could go on and on about how this spring time is full of life and all that jazz and then some more about all the green things peeking up from the dark thick soil that is still probably shaking off the cold from the fierce winter we endured in these parts and how that life energy could potentially be transferring itself into the reproductive arena of kk’s organs, but I will save such words for the poets.

We have been trying this time around like mad-fucking-rabbits, and by mad-fucking rabbits, I do literally mean rabbits that are fucking to reproduce. Not that we have been fucking like mad in the process. But we have been having our potential kid’s bio-dad whack and wiz the jiz and then we have been shooting it all up inside kk like it is some kind of healing liquid—like the rest of our living depends on the liquid moving into something else—becoming a living organism.

I would not call it getting my hopes up. It is just that I’ve been thinking maybe this time around something different than what has been happening (which is absolutely nothing) will happen. Maybe something new will happen cause it is the first time we’ve tried 8 or so days in a row; it is the first time I actually missed an insemination and it is spring, after all. The miss was really hard for me, but maybe the absence of my dirty finger-nailed hands plunging the syringe deep into the fleshy parts of my kk was a good change of scenery for the spermage and kk’s parts. And now she has so many little sperms up in her who knows if the one that ends up sticking was injected with or without my presence.

As for hoping, I will leave it to the wind this time around. I do not want to climb into that place of pitter-patter, heart-sputtering excitement. I do not want to create little schemes in my own head about the future. I want to be here in the present, in the now, enjoying this weather and the growing of things and the life that is all around me—the life that is here now—not the life that may eventually join us.

regarding the new haircut

i would really call it more of a butcher job. k shaved my sides and i went a bit wild with the scissors on my front curl which left it kind of like a strange brush cut, mullet.

here are some pics--reminder i put lots of gunk in it to make it so i do not have to wear a hat every time i leave the house.

for those who asked for these:

banjos and blood

andru the banjo player

more banjo madness

Our weekend was marked by banjos and blood.

Yes, blood.

It came on Sunday with a blunt, sharp pouring out into kk’s panties.
I was not expecting anything else; I’ve stopped expecting it to be different. I’ve stopped thinking that this will work without intervention of the western scientific sort (which bothers me). But, now we are going on our tenth try, and, well, something is not quite working.

Yes, banjos.
On Saturday, we went to a fundraiser, the fullfreight banjo overload, for the Ypsilanti Freight House. It was held at the Corner Brewery and we had a delightful time. A bunch of different bands played music centering around the banjo (at least partly). Really, it was foot stomping fun. This young fellow,Andru Bemishttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif, played and he can really pick his banjo like there is no tomorrow. I dug his sound and energy a whole lot.

kk is hot. she had fun watching banjo playing

We also saw Anna Ash

She has a real sweet voice—like a bird, powerful and tantalizing.

And then the evening was capped off with Black Jake and the Carnies. Some more footstomping fun--real hyper and full of fun energy.

watching banjo playing and drinking beer while sporting my new self done hair cut

My own miracle

Waiting to see if any of the sperms decided to linger on and meet up with an egg, is like an old dry habit now. I think the dryness of the habit could actually translate into my own personal hopelessness about the possibility of this baby-making ever really happening at all. My waiting period has been consumed by a sort of dark void. I really just have not been thinking about it much.

Mostly, I’ve been glum and disenchanted. I like to slink back into this rubbery shell that is not very protective and moan in my own head about the futility of all of this stuff we do called living.

And then I get gentle, life affirming bumps out of it. Yes,Dr. Kingdid fight hard for something better; he even was killed for his revolutionary ideas and yes those ideas got more and more revolutionary as he got older…and that is something to hold on to hope about, cause so many people seem to fizzle on their revolutionary thinking as they get older and more ingrained into this messy system of profit and production over everything meaningful and right and life-giving.

And I also get bumped out of the glum by little, mundane miracles. Yesterday, I had a hell of a ride to work. My back tire blew on Wednesday (I, sans tool kit, was left walking all over ann arbor for a tire and tube and wrench). Thursday morning after much fussing with my new tire, I still could not get it to stop rubbing my fenders so I took it up the road to the bike shop and a nice fellow raised my fenders and trued some of my spokes and made it spin without rubbing. Then I took off for work on my trusty, freshly tired vehicle only to have my front tire blow half way through the Park. I, sans tool kit, was left walking through the park on a beautiful, sunny day towards another bicycle shop tire in hand when I heard my friend tc yell out my name. He was riding through the park and happened upon me and he was with tool kit, tube, and hand pump (he even had an air kiss).

TC’s timely appearance was my own private miracle for the day (for the week, for the year). We fixed up the front tire; pumped it full of air and rode together the rest of the way to my work.

Reflection on the sun’s heat falling on my face, sailing through the spring air on my bicycle, the appearance of a friend in a time of need, and the day of remembering a great fighter for justice all work like sweet healing balms on the glumness that I like to let crust over my skin and heart.