dirty hands in 2010

every day slips by a little faster. the sun falling and then rising and the moon cracking white lines over blue black sky so many nights. then all darkness--sometimes. pink lines bend through the eastern horizon in mornings when the sun peeks out to reach us.

and by noon the ball of fire beams sends volts of light beyond measure into the trees and soil and over the tails of animals.

and we just keep going around and around on this ball of life and decay.

last year at this time i was sick with a life inside of me. this year at this time i look back on that time and think it was only a minute ago or it was so long ago or did that really happen at all?

it is like a vivid blur. too real to be hazy for always; too surreal to be entirely clear.

my body for 10 weeks was held captive by a brief curious sort of experience. many cells congregated in my womb and grew all liquidy and blood-filled and then the growing stopped and the cells busted through that supple place between my legs. i was flabbergasted throughout the life growing, then dying, then birthing the death, then bleeding a lot to eradicate the fleshy parts that had built up in my womb, and then this grieving surrounded by a cloud of panic and depression and questions.

and through all of it what i have learned is that the calling i have felt since i was fifteen needs to be gradually more realized in my life. while i do farm on my little urban plot, one day i want nothing more than to grow vegetables, nuts, fruits, animals, and bees and to do it well and do it surrounded by good community--good created family--good friends.

2009 started off with a miscarriage. it was a swooping bang of a wake up call; a kind of startling alarm orchestra blazing like a string section on speed. it told me that my body is very female. it is also very fertile and very connected to the rhythms of the moon and tides; the pulses of the seasons. I knew this already, but it raised it to a new level of realness in my heart. it made me ready to return to the soil and the roots and rhizomes that weave through her darkness. it made me more aware of the cycle of life and the deepness of decay and death connected to that life.

My desire to always be grounded to place and to establish deep roots seems to have multiplied tenfold since the miscarriage. Now, the question is where should these roots be put down. for so long i thought it would be here in ypsi. but now i keep questioning where we should be and k does too. we want to grow things together and growing on an urban lot in a city where people all too readily toss bloody bandages and burger k.ing cups and fry containers and homemade crack pipes and used condoms on the ground is a bit tougher than leasing or buying land somewhere more open and not as touched by the grimy, ill-intentioned/ignorant hands of humans.

cities need green spaces too and we have been doing it well here. chickens, bees, vegetables, trees, bicycling groups, friends--we've been growing it--many questions. few answers. we will see what 2010 brings.

i know i want my hands in the soil more hours of the day than not.

i know i want dirty hands in 2010.