Injection Reflections

from pent-up aching rivers, from that of myself without which I were nothing

2012-01-28T20:24:00.001-08:00

yes that is a line from Whitman, above. A good line for the sentiments expressed below and the physical place where we are this weekend.

We are visiting good friends in Brooklyn. And, oh, how good it is to be away from the regular, routine days of our time at home. Willa is having a blast with her friends V and R as she explores our friends' big, open apartment. And, oh, how good it is to be away from the same routines of our everyday lives in ypsi.

I have come to such a stale place on some fronts of my life. I feel worse than dry toast. Ragged and tired of the chaos of work (and all worn out from 9 years of being a witness to the heinous actions of humankind). And on top of that hugeness, I am just about over the complications that arise from living in too small of a town.

Don't get me wrong, I love my family and I love all of these new adventures we are experiencing with this growing, beautiful being, willa. However, there is this place I am coming to, and it is like a stutter in the almost middle of my life.

K and I are both hankering for change. And this is coming from me, someone who thought she would die in the quaint, old house we live in at the almost top of a hill in a small town in an area that used to be wetlands and forest and now suffers from the aftermath of industrialization.

There are those times when my heart gets beyond restless and difference seems like the resolution to that constant urge that itches and tickles the lining of my chest. I am in one of those phases right now. But, it is the most intense one I've ever expereinced and maybe really it is my mid-life crisis. Maybe my earth sign is being shaken to the core and my roots are getting exposed.

And, maybe just maybe, I 'll build up enough courage to do something differently. To change the patterns that make my heart heavy. Maybe a scenery change will come soon. Maybe, not.

In these interim places, while time pulses by and my baby's face changes every morning into something new and something more beautiful, I'll hold fast to the pent-up aching river of my longing for change. Perhaps I'll take real steps to change my circumstances. Maybe that will involve physically shifting where we spend most of the hours of our days, or maybe it will involve shifting my soul...

Here's to New York for getting me to think more deeply about doing that which I dwell on. Here's to holding change close and loving the fact that yearning has my stomach all a flutter with hope in that which is different and new.

A year gone by

2012-01-04T18:20:00.001-08:00

I know I have disappeared under some kind of stone.

The stone is called no time.

But, I miss writing.

I miss reflecting on all of the ins and outs of the decision to have a kid, the parenting that comes with aforementioned kid, and the struggles for justice, goodness, and a life of joy that k and I work toward on a daily basis.

No doubt, it has become increasingly difficult to carve out time to get words down, or art drawn, or books read (though I have been able to really delve into some escapist and not so escapist fiction and non-fiction in the last four months: Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Geralidine Brook's The Year of Wonders and March, Wes Jackson's Nature as Measure, George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, Dorothy Day's Diaries: The Duty of Delight, and Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow). But, what I would not give to really be able to have some time to reflect on most of the books I listed back there in writing.

It really has not been the dawning of parenthood that has kept me from writing and making art. If anything, parenting willa with k makes me want to reflect and jot down ideas even more. It has been my personal tendency to live on the edge of working too much, always, that has left my down hours to being solely devoted to my family and nothing more (except devouring books when getting ready for bed or when insomnia strikes or when I am flying on a plane somewhere for work). Otherwise, I would not be able to really experience my child all that much.

However, I've made a commitment to myself to not put in hundreds of extra hours in 2012 (hours that I never use the comp up on). I simply cannot afford to let my life and all of the beauty in it pass me by. I am, by nature, a recorder of events and stories. I love to etch in ink, pencil, paint, photographs, and typography the passing of time and the interactions of people, animals, stones, waterways, trees, honeybees, and all living things within that passing of time.

When I fail to write or make art, a part of me sits hollow. And, depression leaks in. Not to mention, this winter in MI has been gray, wet and only semi cold--the kind of cold wet that gets under your bones and causes an ache for warmth and sun. In addition, I need to write in order to better analyze the world and the happenings around me. Not doing so over the last few months, has let some things seep into my heart in awkward and overwhelming ways.

With all that being said, let's see if this new blogsy app helps me get some more writing up on this blog.

Will turned 1 on November 30, 2011.

She is awesome.

yep

2011-11-06T19:30:00.000-08:00

i wrote this long thing. spent two days on it. all of the words disappeared. a fluke of of technology. a reminder that it all WILL fall apart. it was a nice piece--significantly balanced with sentimentality and the daily stuff of being alive.

in the meantime while those words float in some kind of cyberworld purgatory, i will simply load a fairly recent picture of my daughter to this page. please understand i have been reading jonathan franzen's the corrections, which is cynical, realistic, and hopeful all at once. it is the worst kind of reading for someone engaged in the heavy stuff of suffering that i witness day in and day out. but nevertheless, my life is more than full right now.

with goodness and sadness and angst and heartache and love.

i have not too many words to put up here.

i love my kid a lot.

so what.

and in the interim we hurt one another and make one another laugh.

sorry to be heavy handed and hearted--but fuck.

to her scent i will go...

2011-09-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

Today I had this semi-sacred experience regarding the new soul who inhabits my waking and sleeping hours.

I was at work and work has been hard. The grief and stress and violence of other people's lives constantly surrounds me. In our work we are witnesses to suffering and salvaging and sometimes small victories. On top of that, I also have to deal with piles of administrative bullshit, truly wonderful volunteers (something like 12 this semester), planning for meetings, and working in coalitions...

That, there shit above, is the backdrop. I sat at my desk almost paralyzed by the amount of stuff I had to do, when this scent came barreling into my nose. The smell of my darling daughter's skin fell over my face. She, of course, was at her home day care, not there with me in my garage of an office.

The gentle scent of her little head--the place where infant sweat, the scatterings of sweet food and breast milk leftovers, soft, downy hair oils, and her baby bath soap mingle--came over me as if she were sitting on my lap. I paused what I was doing. My eyes glassed over with tears; tears bordering on the edge of the divine and sentimentality, and I inhaled with devout attention for a breath.

Then it all became a divine moment.

It was some kind of miracle. A reminder of this sacred bond I have with another human being. A reminder that legal rights (while I will fight for them until the day I die or until I get them) mean nothing in the face of the daily miracles and sufferings kk and I go through as we engage and love this small child.

If only I could bottle this scent and experience and sell it to the conservative right. The people who think I have no business raising a kid. The people who do everything in their power to disconnect me via intrusive laws (or non-existent ones) from willa's existence...oh ya, folks, if I have not mentioned it here before, I cannot adopt willa in MI--there is no second parent adoption. So, I feed her, bathe her, dance with her, love her with all of me, but, in the end, someone who does not love her as I do or who does not love kk as i do could essentially do legal battle to get her from me and essentially kk's next-of-kin have more rights to her than me. Blah de blah blah fucking blah dee da.

But that ghost-like tendril of traveling smell, it reminded me of the oppressive nature of "man"-made laws. It reminded me of the lasting longing of the deepest sacred parts of humanity. It carried me to a new and better place. The connection embodied in this real, yet profoundly strange, moment surpasses that which the political sphere, the sphere of marginalization and bigotry, and the sphere of civil and human rights can never tap into. I have both animal and spiritual connection to my child beyond the imaginings of the human mind.

So, to her scent I will go. To the smell of her hands that now feed her own self--peaches and dirt, summer and minerals. To the smell of her cheeks when we enter the house from a walk in the sun. To the smell of her shit that invades the whole house with intestines discovering the nuances of various human foods for the first time. To the smell of her tears, like water on dry stones. To the smell of her breath, like an indescribable sweetness doused in the gentle sour of buttermilk. To this small being who I love with the deepest parts of me. To her scent I will go.

the injectors draft revisions to a 1970s sex ed book for kids

2011-07-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

I've had these pictures of this old book that k's parents used to explain sexual intercourse and offspring creation to her back in the seventies. It happily reinforces heterosexual romance, sex and hetero reproduction.

about 8 months ago we were putting the finishing touches on willa's room (which she only uses on occasion, but will use more as she gets older). Some of the finishing touches included making her a kid's library. Her shelf of books is full up of books from both her pack-rat, hoarder mamas (yes, numerous books from our own childhoods) and gracious gifts from friends. She is well-stocked to say the least, but our special gifts of 1970s and 1980s kids' books knowledge is an excellent addition. It puts her collection over-the-top.

some of her many books piled on the floor...

I mean who can brag about having the following how to talk to your children about sex book in their own personal kids library.

Of course, I will have to guerrilla plant the queer version of things into this text before my daughter ever gets her hands (or eyes for that matter) on the book. Here are some feeble editing attempts thus far:

a singlet--with hair

2011-07-02T19:21:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a very informative dialogue on swim wear with a focus on butches over at Effing Dykes, I went and ordered myself the sweet singlet seen above in an aggressive stance picture of me.

There was a time I had a swimsuit, actual full on old school swimsuit, with tight legs and a binding kind of restrictive top, etc. I wore it so much it got all thin and useless. So, I'd been searching to no avail for something like it. Then the aforementioned discussion took place in the comments section of offing dykes (every time I write effing dykes on this ipad it auto corrects it to offing dykes, hee hee) and someone suggested wrestling singlets. Then I found this great black with royal gold trim and I ordered it. The damn thing took an eternity to come in the mail. One of Will's caretakers actually said, "you sounded like a little kid every day asking--'did my singlet come in the mail yet.'"

Then it arrived. It fits great, but my tits kind of slide out the sides, so I will have to wear an additional garment underneath if I plan on not offending the public with glimpses of too much flesh.

This is all a very long introduction to the the real question of this post. How many of you gender benders out there-- you passers for dudes, you mostly masculine types--shave your legs even though you are as butch as can be? Tell the truth.

I've played sports with plenty of super butch ladies and every single fucking one of them but me, shaved their legs. I know sporty dykes are a different breed, but many of these ladies were full on passers for dudes, gender benders, etc. When it came to their legs, well, they were silky smooth.

This all has been resurfacing for me, because I think my kk wants me to shave my legs. I think she is embarrassed of my extra hairy shins.
We went to a pool party the other day (it was a very strange crowd; friends of and the children of friends of kk's deceased mama--all pretty damn gender normative to say the least). I did not sport my singlet that day. It was warm and beautiful, but I stayed in my rolled pants and let my hairy sandaled feet and ankles make their presence known without letting the big sisters on my shins and calves be seen.

K had been hesitant about me getting into my swim gear, so I take this to mean she wants them smooth. Though, the one time I shaved, in the past, when we had been together maybe a year point five, she ended up thinking the smoothness was fucked up in relation to the rest of me.

My armpits will always remain hairy.

But, kk says one day, "maybe you should shave." and the next, "no don't; it will look too strange."

I'm mostly of the mind to always keep them hairy and let all of the onlookers with their frowns and befuddled looks keep their twisted, distorted and more painful to carry faces for themselves. Sure, every once in a while, I become very uncomfortable when I think that people are judging me because I have lady breasts and booty and also a thick weave of hair on my legs. It confounds the dumb. It enrages the already mean spirited homophobes. But, shaving is a pure pain in the ass. It does not reflect who I am.

While it may sometimes feel like I have a thousand boogers hanging from my nose (I mean legs), from the stares I get at the public pool, I say fuck em. Next time, I am at a high falootin pool party, my hairy legs might just end up clogging the filter.

I'm going to make myself sit and contemplate shit (and other delicious substances) via the written word

2011-06-23T20:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks for your kind words and good thoughts...Really, it is great to have such dedicated and thoughtful readers out there.

And. I decided not to stop blogging. Mostly, because I had this interaction a few days back that made me think a lot. Then I started reminiscing in my head about how, in the past, I would make myself sit down and write about the thoughts that surfaced after an interaction like the aforementioned. And that is what I am going to do. I'm going to make myself sit and contemplate shit via the written word. It is, after all, how I make sense of the world. It may be infrequent, but you all can live with that, right? And, I can at least make sense of the world around me through writing it all out when I have a few minutes. The tension for me about keeping this blog was that sometimes all I want to do is write for me, but work and life muddy the time I would spend on such an endeavor. So I have to clear the waters and make time for me.

The interaction that made me think was all about being a queer parent. The person I was chatting with ( who happens to be a white, straight man in a heteronormative state-sanctioned marriage) really thinks that after queers win comprehensive rights and discrimination hides its ugly head for always, we will be able to display the dysfunction that is in queer families. He thinks that right now studies--the few out there--demonstrate queers as having more stable families cause people are on ultra good behavior. Also, it would hurt "the movement" (though I still do not quite know what that is) if any dysfunction surfaced in the media.

While I think, for sure, there are plenty of fucked up queer families among us--similar in their messiness to hetero family dysfunction--I tend to think that many queer folks had to contemplate the notion of parenting much more thoroughly than straight people. Same gender loving people have to roll the idea of expanding family around in their heads for a lot longer than the thought of two teenage or young adult heteros who achieve off- spring creation spontaneously in the back seat of a dusty dodge. Because there is so much thought and footwork that has to go in to acquiring a child for queer folks, the children of queer couples/people (cause coupledom is not the way all households are configured; there are single, double, triple, quadruple parenting households, etc) have a leg up in that they are often, at least, wanted.

I work with many people who were unwanted as children. People who came from hetero-normative families and who, in the midst of all of that "normalcy" ended up deeply damaged by the misogyny and violence so wed to straight, heterosexist coupledom and family. Out of the patriarchy so came the disheveled tentacles of oppression.

Please know I am friends with many great straight folks; I have blogged about these friendships profusely here. I am not slamming those folks, or so many other people who are straight and/or participate in the reality of straightness. You know: state sanctioned marriage, the social benefits and ease of movement associated with being involved with a person of the opposite gender (i.e. all the dudes at a meeting with political leaders shooting the shit about the wives and kids; if I speak about my beloved and kid, well then I have to provide clean up services for any backlash, fall out, befuddlement, or bumbling foolishness associated with trying to make me feel okay about being queer).

Any which way, I love my daughter immensely. K and I waited 11 years to have her. Of course, had we had our way we would have had her after being together 8 years, but even 8 years is still a lot of time and contemplation. The suck-ass world of infertility gave us even more time to think about the really huge thing we were doing. You know the commitment for the rest of our lives to this dear child? Come hell or high water, she is ours and we belong to her.

So, ya, I think many queer families are different from many hetero-normative families. And, ya, I'll keep on thinking about all of this and sharing it through writing here. Let me know what you think about queer families, too. Maybe start with a definition: the anatomy of a queer family; the anatomy of your queer family. I get there are nuances and I am totally generalizing above...Okay, I'll shut up my fingertips now and go sleep on the edge of my not-big-enough-queer-family-bed.

maybe it is time to say goodbye

2011-06-14T18:24:00.000-07:00

I am thinking of abandoning this blog endeavor. It has been a good run. But, damn, I barely have time to think let alone string sentences together or post funny pictures about our life.

I am thinking on it...

You know all day long at work I write and write and talk to people on the phone and write some more and talk to more people and read letters from people in prison and talk to more people and then read some more and so on and so on.

By the time I get home, the letters that make up whole words look like trucks veering off the freeway directly into my eyes.

While I decide what to do about this blog, here's a picture of Willa sitting on a bench at the Postal Museum in DC.

I love her so much...

inside out

2011-05-24T18:37:00.000-07:00

KK and her mama
It’s raw. All of me. My innards are exposed, layers of skin and fat and bone have folded inside out and there on the surface rests all of my organs.

Maybe she cut me open with her arrival? Maybe her brightness—the shiny remnant of stardust lingering on her soft humanness—is razor sharp?

All I do know, is that for the last many months I have been experiencing a kind of vulnerability that I have never known. I feel exposed; I feel heavy; I feel love like I never have before, but it is a thicker love. It is both burdensome and rich.

It weighs on me—literally, my whole body feels heavier. My head might as well be a cannon ball; my chest a freighter; my feet rocks from Lake Superior.

And then those pesky dead ones, they are hovering. Their presences are hanging over us like the thick fog on a cool spring morning that desires to be hot. All of them, our grandmothers, k’s mother, our grandfathers, our uncles. All of them. They are so close.

The bridal’s veil is in full bloom. The lilacs are erupting in sickly sweet aroma and my grandmother’s hands write languid visions of her skin on my eyelids.

KK’s mama is sending messages from the netherworld. Her beautiful smile cascades teeth and gums over our bed in the morning when the three of us wake from deep sleep held together by the certainty of one another’s bodies.

This vulnerability, this exposure, this hovering of the dead. It is all okay. It’s different and hard and beautiful. I think it is some new kind of falling in love with the living we are doing day in and out; the weaving together of our lives in tight strands of illuminated rope. Indeed, I loved my daughter from the moment I knew she was alive inside of k. But, always reservedly—just in case she splashed out of her mother’s womb before term without life, just in case the blood that trickled between k’s legs for the whole first trimester ended up being the beginning of the end.

Since Willa met us on this side of living, away from the dark and marvelous world of k’s womb, I have been falling in love with her day in and day out. And it is this loving of Willa that makes me more susceptible to the dead ones who are pestering me with memories (my lived ones and the ones I have been told) and pounding even louder on the rickety cage of ribs that is stacked in a dull pink white glow below my chin and neck.

In the shower in the morning my tears run with the hot water as I think of k’s mama and how she will never know Willa or see k as a mother. Her life was too short and my heart aches for kk. I think of my gram and I feel her soft, wrinkled hands on my face, my shoulder—I miss her, really miss her.

This loving is powerful stuff. It is sharp. Everyday my heart sinks a little deeper into the air outside my chest; my bones clatter in a kind of agony at the turned-inside-out-cold on nighttime and morning, my insides tremble in their new home, unprotected by epidermis, muscle, and fat. Exposed, opened, unfolded—more alive than I have ever been in this new and persistent loving.

hankering for willa;)

2011-05-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

My little, constipated darling is nestled against my chest sleeping hard. She is experiencing her first bout of real constipation and I hurt for her little abdomen. I thought you might be hankering for some willa shots so find a quick photo narrative of the last many weeks. Oh, by the way, the willster is sitting on her own now. Yes, at 5.5 months her little abs are strong and she can hold herself up. She is a bit wobbly, but nonetheless, I am impressed.

For my b-day weekend at the end of April we went on a little trip. This is my sweet one and me all pooped out on a hotel bed. The wrench was a gift from an interwebs' awesome person.

Willa at the Growing Hope Plant Sale! Me all squinty in the back...

The chickens really, really want to make a snack out of will's toes. We have to chase them off when willa is in the yard.

Our first mother's day. I have so many reflections to share on what this all means or does not mean to me, but I won't. Though, I will, soon and very soon, reflect on how heterosexism has become so much more visible and real to me since becoming a parent to this amazing little chunk of star.

Willa's first Bike Ypsi Spring Ride and Festival. She is being held up by our really tall friend in a florescent wbreaker.

Besides working too much, gardening as much as I can, riding my bike as much as I can, and spending quality time with will and k, kk decided that we should dig up the back yard and replace the sewer fittings that come out of the house and about 8 feet out to the old clay pipe. So, I've been supervising and working on that project too. My co-worker and neighbor dug this daddy out in a few hours and then our friend t helped glue all the parts together and fit it up nicely. All of this was guided along by this really great water engineer ypsi guy (for free). We are lucky. So, this has also been taking up my time. I have worked on backfilling the hole. This means throwing heavy dirt/clay back down in a gaping 6 by 8 by 6ish feet deep hole in intervals and stomping the hell out of it.

Pic of us staring down...

tired, sad, and tired

2011-04-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

I should be working. But, I am too sad to work. I've been missing in action over here at injection reflections because I have been working too much and trying to be a good parent and good partner. But today it is gray and beautiful and my heart is breaking for so many reasons.

I am tired of the meanness. I am tired of the ruling, white elite.
I am tired of the rich. I am tired of the haves and have nots. I'm tired of violence. I'm tired of humans killing the planet. I'm tired of the disconnection.

I am tired from witnessing the problem of prison:
the abuse within prisons;
the social factors that lead to the use of prison;
the inequities in sentencing;
the cycles of violence that lead to death and harm and insanity in poor communities;
The homophobia and transphobia that lead to the incarceration and then further abuse of queer people once they are incarcerated;
the general public's ignorance of what really happens in prison and the ability of their ignorance to shape policy (tough on crime measures and then restrictive, punitive, retributive practices once people are in prison)
the racism that fuels the expansion of the use of prison...

I am simply tired of fighting.
But, I will keep on keeping on. Only because of the individuals who we are able to help.

I started writing up the case of someone I've been working with for so many years...it hurts to think how long she has been suffering, but then I decided I'd just lay it out this way. Imagine being a nearly fully transitioned M to F and being forced to live in an all male prison. Imagine having serious difficulty getting appropriate health care to deal with a complication with your top surgery--silicone leakage (I'm talking five years of pain and suffering). Imagine the daily harassment from other prisoners and staff alike. Imagine being called mister, sir and he just to turn the knife in those soft parts connected to your gender identity when all your life you simply wanted to be recognized as the girl you are. Imagine living amidst the constant threat of sexual abuse and sexual harassment. Imagine getting a major misconduct ticket for impersonating a female when you are a woman. Imagine the refusal of the prison system to acknowledge the trans/homophobia of the system. *note: I was able to help get her moved to a unit with a less-abusive climate.

But I want more.

I want this woman and other woman and men like her to be able to shape policy directives to include their perspectives on how they will be able to live more safely and wholly while having to live in prison. For years the woman above has been asking to be moved to a different prison and to be able to choose another gender variant identified bunkie at a more easy going, well-run prison than the one she lives at now. When I first met her she was in a level V prison cause she needed a single bunk. Eventually, we were able to get her moved to a lower level single bunk. Then, recently, she was moved to a prison notorious for being called the glad.iator school (a prison for younger--often more violent--prisoners). Why? Why?

Imagine being a prisoner rights activist and some days just feeling utterly hopeless and tired with the almost impenetrable system.

I'm done now.
But just for now.

to be butch with a baby at a mall

2011-03-28T10:25:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting here streaming college basketball and loving the delicious sound of swish.
The moon is in super mode; my two loves are relaxing in the living room, and I am living this full life with tired eyes, a heavy, happy heart and a mind that reels madly through the thickness of too much to think about and analyze and then act upon.

In all of this calm and turbulence, I needed to make sure to sit down and write about my day at the mall. I walked as tall as possible through the stares and dirty looks and all together strangeness that my non-conformity to gender norms conjures in the worlds of people so steeped in their own hetero-normalcy and non-fluid/dualistic/binary gender roles that they can barely breathe without making sure to make the people whom they otherize feel their disapproval.

Today (well a week ago now as time slips away due to being overly busy), I walked my daughter around twelve oaks mall in her stroller. K had a facial with her good friend at the salon in Macy’s. And, since Willa is in deny-the-bottle-with-all-of-her-might-mode, we went with her to the mall. I then proceeded to walk with willa in her hot blue stroller all through the mall.

I know I live in a bubble within our state. Ypsi/ann arbor is full up of queers and working class folks (well ypsi is) and genuine difference and good weirdness.

Whereas, Novi (the place where the mall is located) is surrounded by wealth which sometimes takes any racial or cultural differences and coats the masses in sameness. I know this is not a very deep analyses of race, class, gender, etc. But, I just want to get to the point of my day: I felt like a fish out of water, times ten, walking my child through the mall today. Had k been by my side, it might have been better, but she was not.

The main characters: will and me.

The costumes: willa, purple pants, dinosaur onsie, white bambi hoodie, and bald ness. me, gray khaki pants, black t-shirt, red and black flannel, some hot red wing boots, and short hair with small hawkish mullet in back (got barbered last saturday; hair is currently very short on sides; short but thick on top, and the bit of mulletish stuff on neck).

The prop: will’s super fly (but exceedingly yuppie) uppa stroller with carriage mount ( it was the thing we asked money for our shower/gifts).

The setting: scary as hell. malls scare me to begin with, but the parking lot should have been warning enough for me to stay in the car because we had to park a mile away it was so packed. The economy must not be too fucked, since people were out in hordes buying lots of stuff. 600 dollars worth of pool table stuff, 2500 dollar riding mowers, etc...make-up, and fancy clothes (you catch my drift).

The plot: There really was none. I was just planning to blow an hour walking willa through the mall. I did this, but I really did not foresee the climax.

The climax: The stares, dirty looks, and befuddled looks of mostly woman as I walked through the mall with my daughter. And, Ultimately, an escape to the hardware/fitness/outdoor equipment of sears.

I consider myself a pretty subtle person. I am not soft-spoken. Nor am I loud in appearance or demeanor. I wear men’s underwear and try to keep my breasts from standing out. I keep short hair and do not wear a stitch of make-up except lip balm (clear) in order to keep my lips from cracking off my face. I drift. I get loud when injustice surfaces in my sphere, but I always get loud with strategy behind my voice and actions.

However, on this day, I felt like a rhino on the loose amidst florescent lights and too much stuff. I really did get scowls and disapproving stares.

I escaped to sears. We walked in circles looking at tools and weight benches. And, finally, I ventured to the men’s clothing dept. of sears and found some underwear on hardcore sale.

I walked back to the hardware check-out and purchased a precision screw driver set for kk and the pack of briefs for me. And, then Will and I set out to find her mama-ma in order to escape the oppressive climate of commodities and stares galore.

The security that k brings to my butch step is profound. she helps me feel invincible to the judgment of others. She makes me sure-footed and strong. She heals the scowls with some kind of salve that creates gentleness on the eyes. She is a good deal of my strength.

So, we left the chaos of striving for sameness and entered the calm of the chilly sun-filled afternoon. Our queer little family; comfortable and in love with one another.

she is now four months old...

growing

2011-03-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

Um, ya. All I have time for right now is cuteness. See below.

deeper sleep

2011-03-03T18:29:00.000-08:00

I have been relegated to the bed in the downstairs back room. A cough has found my chest and will not let up. It has a stronghold on the area below my neck at the top of my rib cage and it shakes fierce and wild in the night hours.

So, I’ve been banished from the family bed.

Obviously, this banishment has occurred for good reason.

I can’t keep the other members of my household up with my deep, hollow, non-productive coughing.

But I miss my dear ones.

And their absence during my dark hours makes me think a lot about how we came to this place of sharing our bed with our wee one. Before Willa came to us, I really did not read much about what to do after she was really here with us. Then she was born. This little, little being cast down to us from some star that finally decided to give up a small piece of the glitter, light, and energy that makes it a star. And, when she fell from her mama’s womb onto our dingy sheets, I knew she could be only there with us, on us, between us in our bed when we slept.

Of course, at that point, I had to consult some books and our midwife and our doula to make sure we were sleeping with her safely. But having her with us in bed and then having her with us in a sling or in our arms as we work and go about our living, well, it all seems so right and perfect.

I did not consult tons of books. The ones I did kind of made me pissy. i.e. dr. sear.s heterosexist extraordinaire. While I think he has a lot to share about a lot of things, I am not some big barreled daddy with a low voice who will accidentally roll on my daughter due to lack of hormonal connection (dr. s says for co-sleeping heterosexuals to put off having the male part of the relationship sleep closely to the infant cause he might smoosh the baby since birth-mothers have all of this hormonal and regular intuition they should be the ones to have the wee ones close by). I could accidentally roll on her, but so could k and we have set up perimeters to keep that from happening.

Willa’s been sleeping in the crook of my arm since she was 8 hours old.
Not every night. But many.

The point of this post is to say, thus far, I am very fond of our family bed. I love it. I love my daughter being close to us. I love the fact that k can side lie nurse and get better (if not still vague) sleep through the night. I love reaching out to feel my sweet willa near by. I love learning her idiosyncrasies. My child is a fidget. She squirms and twists and flails like a worm over flame.

She is also incredibly particular. There have been nights when she wants to just be flat on her back on my chest. I’ll put her next to me on the bed and she will fuss. Cause, see, she knows what she wants. Other nights we hold her tight and close and she calms her fidgeting and falls fast to sleep.

The family bed brings this kind of intense insight into our own selves and to our little one. We know more about each other as animals, as creatures, as our vulnerable selves. I know it will not last forever. It may not even last for many more months. But, this time so far has been precious and enlightening and I would not trade it for anything, not even deeper sleep.

11 years

2011-02-21T19:52:00.001-08:00

February 11, 2011 marked our 11 year anniversary. I took the day off work and kk, willa and I had a yummy breakfast at zingerman’s roadhouse. Then we bought some new diaper covers at one of the kids slash baby stuff galore stores in town, then we browsed some books at a local shop and drank tea. But by 2:00 p.m. I was dying of tiredness and we headed home. I crashed out in the most hardcore nap I have taken in years (maybe since adolescence). I slept dead to the world from 3:00 to 7:00.

out to eat with the wilbur

I woke to darkness, floundering around like a nearly dead fish, looking for my kk and my willa—thinking, “where are they? oh my god, where are they?”

Of course, they were downstairs hanging out quietly and letting me sleep and sleep and sleep.

For our anniversary night, we stayed in with our newness and ate vegetables, fruit and cheese and some saucy stuff with bread and drank a glass of wine. We looked into the eyes of the other and mouthed wows and I love yous.

the tray of food

It really is a big wow, to be deeply in love with your best friend after so many years and amidst so much change and difference and beautiful disruption. Which is what our sweet willa is—the beautiful disruption to our solidly without children life. For nearly 11 years, we lived and loved how, when, and where we desired at our personal whims.

kk flying our beautiful disruption on our anniversary night

And now, that free-to-do-as-we-please-when-we-please is no more. Of course, we have always been very committed people and obligated our time, energy, hearts and minds to causes and projects and art that we believe in. So, we were not simple couch loafers dedicated to watching copious amounts of 30 Rock. Rather, we have always worked hard for the greatest good. But having a kid is different than having community meetings to organize or teach-ins to plan. Having a kid means being on always.

There is no off button.

Except, when my darling beloved knows I need hours and hours of catch up sleep, but she needs to be there for that to happen and we both work full-time, so that is not always the case.

It is different now. And, I love every moment. Even though, I do miss my beloved’s body and the time to get frisky when we feel it. Adjusting and adapting to the grand, beautiful disruption of our sweet daughter is a gift. After all that time of just being us together we are now more us and she adds a certain value to our days that makes this living even more invaluable.

Some days I stare at her, into those eyes I saw for the very first time as she made her grand entrance into this world from the warmth of her mama’s womb to the arms of a woman on a bed—a bed where her parents have loved and slept and talked and been sick and dreamed and held one another—Some days those eyes make me yearn for the memory of her first glance to always be with me. And, when my time comes to leave this world, I pray that her eyes, my dear sweet willa’s eyes, will be there looking into my heart as she does day after new day and she will see me through to the place beyond this place.

So, 11 years and now this gift to carry us through to other places full of new knowing and more loving.

when they were young

2011-02-12T08:26:00.000-08:00

i have so many reflections buzzing through my mind and so little time to capture them with letters.

work, play with the new love of our lives and taking care of the new love of our lives, and sleep seem all to be the center of the universe to us.

Some days, I look at pictures of my parents when they are young, and I am amazed at their tenacity in the face of the newness of being parents. After all, my mama was 19 and my dad was 22. K is 36 and I am 34 and we are so green, but easing into this with clarity and open hearts.

me and daddio

me and willa

our elders next to our bed

my sweetheart, again...

she likes my hair and she is spunky

2011-01-26T07:42:00.000-08:00

Shit. our baby girl is already 2 months old. I have been back to work since January 10 and feeling more tired than I have ever felt. She is amazing and growing.

And, she likes to stare at my hair.

Evidence:

And she is a little revolutionary already:

cold, colder, coldest

2011-01-17T18:05:00.001-08:00

It is January. It is past the middle of January. Everything is cold in Michigan. There are a few inches of snow covering the grass, gravel, and all things that grow and then sleep.

We have a 47 day old child living in our 107 (nearly 108) year old house with us. She is mighty and beautiful.

She is sitting with her mama in her mama's mama's rocker nursing. The rocker is resting in the same place where her mama's mama's mama died one and a half years ago.

Did I mention it is cold outside and that I have been reading Aldo Leopold (every winter I read A Sand County Almanac)? It is especially wonderful to start at the beginning of the book when it is still January. I reread January Thaw the other day with deep reverence for the cycles Leopold writes about--the cycles of seasons and living charging in dynamic force all around us all of the time. I marveled, again, at his subtle glorification of simplicity and the sacred readings he captured in the quick, quiet, momentary voyage of a skunk still heady from hibernation.

I suggest giving him a read if you never have and a reread if you have and liked it.

His call to observe our moments alive with the rest of our community (the land community/animal,animal community/animal, human community) is a a good one.

This winter many of my days have bled into streams of light upon my nights and my nights have rode dark waves on my mornings and afternoons. Time is strange in the world of baby human. But still there is the difference in temperature of a day versus a night--the chicken's water demonstrates the patterns of change in concrete (or icy) ways.

Even though we have been mesmerized by sleep deprivation and sleeping differently all together, I think my senses have been heightened to the subtle shifts of temperature throughout a January day, evening, and night. The cold of a crisp 11:00pm as I feed and water the chickens (yet again) before bed pierces a different, more alive, kind of frigid over my cheeks than the wetter cold of morning.

And my senses pay attention to all around me as I walk or ride in a more expansive way than I have felt before. This little animal being that has filled our house with her cries, poop, urine, and vomit, and soft face and hands and thighs--she has added another layer of sensitivity to my existing need to observe and witness and then act.

Leopold articulates:
"The months of the year, from January up to June, are a geometric progression in the abundance of distractions. In January one may follow a skunk track, or search for bands on the chickadees, or see what young pines the deer have browsed, or what muskrat houses the mink have dug, with only an occasional and mild digression into other doings. January observation can be almost as simple and peaceful as snow, and almost continuous as cold. There is time not only to see who has done what, but to speculate why."

She has added one more stripe of peace to my observations. She makes me speculate more than ever. She makes me pay more attention to the cycles of living, surviving, and dying, and re-birthing all around us. And, then she makes me want to work harder to make sure that we build a stronger land ethic in our community. She drives me out to the cold January mornings and nights and causes me to savor the expanse of sky peeking out to us from behind the light pollution in the darkness. She makes me glad to know the seasons, to witness them, to have them etched into my skin. (seriously, riding and footing it regularly in 15-25 degree weather--colder with windchill--is doing some mighty fine skin "damage" characterizing to my face). Of course, I cared about all of this before her, but there are no words to describe the deeper animal she has brought out in me. I like the cold (and yearn for the spring) even more than I did before.

she is like spring in winter

2011-01-02T13:12:00.000-08:00

Sorry to have dropped off the face of the planet, but I've had a head full of everything but the desire to write.

We have been through so many life changing, life affirming, life-as-we-knew-it disturbances over the last many weeks--I should have plenty to ruminate about. But my mind has simply sunk into a hibernation mode when it comes to the ability to fruitfully process the change and mystery unfolding all around us.

I have this gorgeous little being all tied to my chest right now and my heart is more breakable than it has ever been before.

She is like spring in winter. She is wide-eye captivating, fragile, wiry strong and dainty: Her heart like thunder in a small, ribs-like-swift-to-crack-sticks cavity ricocheting aliveness all around us. She reminds me of the green to come and the wakening of trees and garlic shoots. She tells stories in her silence and expresses stillness in her wakefulness. She is reiterating the song of learning how to just be. She is grounding. Her presence fastens the animal in me closer to my skin. sleeping, eating, peeing, shitting, sleeping, eating again. Her scent and her softness plenty to swallow amidst the coming return to the chaos of our working lives. She is pure wild. She has us by our hearts--clenching my alive parts with her scaly fingernails, scratching my vital organs and lifting many veils from around my eyes.
She will now be my best teacher. She is thawing the frozen ground beneath our feet. She is like spring in winter.

and then we were three--my version of willa's birth, in a little too much detail but minus her head coming out between k's legs pics

2010-12-10T20:52:00.000-08:00

Oh, what a day (actually more than a day) it was.

On, Monday, November 29, kk woke at 3:56 a.m. calmly announcing that her water was breaking. She gushed and gushed some more. We texted our midwife and doula just to let them know it had begun.

We laid down layers of towels on the bed to catch the waterfall seepage of amniotic fluid and tried our best to sleep while k mildly contracted. At 7:00 a.m. I got up and watched the sun rise. Pink slashes on the sky. Orange lines rising over the downtown cityscape of Ypsilanti.

I took a shower and put on some cords and a t-shirt. Good thing I wore a toughly built belt (it came into play later). Then around 7:30 k got up with her contractions increasing all along and coming every 5 minutes. She showered and put on some leg warmers, one of her grandmother’s slips and a sweater. I gave her some breakfast and her contractions got more painful.

The beginning

Around 10:30 our doula (also, good friend) [I’ll call her Steadfast doula for the duration of this story], arrived. And, shortly thereafter, kk experienced puke fest 2010 in our bedroom. She puked in a bag; she puked in a bowl; I emptied the bowl; she puked some more…Did I mention I have a huge aversion to vomit? But that deep inner-survival spirit went all hot and got activated; plus our doula stroked k’s back, stayed near her mouth and handed off the full bowl. Then, I emptied the bowl again and again and rinsed it, etc.

My mom came around the time that our doula arrived.

From then on out, kk’s contractions were wicked and coming every 3-6 minutes. From then on, means for hours and hours.

Around noon our midwife, SP of trillium birth services who I will dub Awesome One for the purposes of this telling, arrived (at least I think it was around noon, but time started getting flaky for me).

K ended up testing positive for strep group B, so Awesome One brought the hardcore cleaning fluid, and I sprayed it all over k's birthing parts every four hours.

My darling labored on her side in bed, she labored on the floor of the baby’s room with Steadfast in front of her and me behind, she labored on the toilet—where my thick belt proved to be an awesome handle/anchor, she labored on the ball, she labored with me in the shower, she labored and labored.

laboring in bed

laboring on the floor of baby's room. check out my belt it was a magnificent handle when cradle by my massive hips throughout the labor.

Later in the afternoon, S, Awesome One’s assistant arrived (I will call her Trigger Finger for this story cause she took photographs for us all night long with our new fancy camera, and I am ever thankful for her gift to us).

All of the laboring described thus far took place in the upstairs of our house. Please note we only have one bathroom and it is upstairs. During this afternoon and into the evening of my beloved contracted and tranced and breathed deeply and moaned and avoided the sound owwwww which was ever-present on her bone dry lips.

K was in this incredible tranced out place. Now I must digress from the major theme of this telling—the birth story of our daughter—to explain how K’s trance-like state so resembled the death trances of dying people. I have sat vigil with people in the process of leaving this world. And, from my perspective, there are direct parallels between the death vigils I have witnessed and this birth vigil.

Throughout the sunlit afternoon time of k’s labor, when I would gently cup K’s chin and ask her to open her eyes and look in to my eyes, there were times when that not-of-this-world edge was so present in her stare that my heart skipped beats and salt water welled in my eyes. My breath would get caught up in the distance that was enunciated in K’s stare. She was elsewhere—landed tightly on an otherworldly precipice; a place I could not touch. This place left my chest echoing with the hollowness of what it would mean if k were to fade from this time, from our life together. Of course, I quickly slapped my flushed face back from this chatter of loss and into the moments at hand—the hard work that was the birthing of our daughter. But these strange like-death moments will live for always on my heart. These coming and leaving edges are so close. I think they may blur at times.

Around 7:00 in the evening Steadfast decided K needed a change of scenery and also, on the dl to me, she confided that K really needed to know that she could do this and while we were all there to help her through it, in the end, she was going to have to do it alone with all of her strength. So…we made her walk down the stairs. The plan was to make her walk back up the stairs after making it to the foyer, but by this time Steadfast, Awesome One, and Trigger Finger had concocted a new plan.

getting ready to walk downstairs

K had not planned to use a birthing tub at all. Even though my darling is a water person through and through (the kind of carefree swimmer who will swim a mile out from the pontoon with no flotation devices leaving me perturbed at what I deem to be unsafe practices), she did not have a desire to birth in a pool. However, after 12 hours of laboring, Awesome One thought the pool seemed like a good idea. So, she drove home to collect a birthing pool. By a little after 8:00 in the evening, the pool was full and K was laboring hard in it.

Around 9:00 our good friend and chosen family member, Auntie A, arrived. Her resilience and strength proved invaluable through the next many hours. The pool time was the party part of the labor. K was still in pain and eventually started having the urge to push in the pool, but I played a mix I had made in consultation with K and we sang (even kk sang at times) and thumped around and A and I even drank a beer.

Below: A slew of birthing pool laboring pics

The mix was 4 hours and 22 minutes and then we killed the music and K labored in silence and when it was not silence she labored to our conversations, my crass jokes, and the ticking away of the minutes.

This is the mix (there is nothing like assisting your beloved in birth as she twitch dances while contracting to the Cramps and/or Bikini Kill):

Around 11ish k started having a serious urge to push. Awesome One performed her first check on k, at this time, and realized that k’s cervical lip was hanging out and that was causing no progress to occur. Also, Willa was turned all whack, so AO worked to turn Willa and overcome the cervical lip. We learned that as long as the damn lip persisted pushing would continue to amount to nill.

Through all of this our whole team stroked and held and talked with kk. My mom would hold k’s head and Auntie A poured countless pitchers of water over K’s back. Steadfast held her hands on k’s low back for what must have totaled hours and I bent over and kissed her and whispered to her and hoped for relief.

Little did we know relief was a long way off.

Eventually, our wise midwife and team decided it was time for a change of scenery and they also determined that k was dehydrated. Her contractions had been slowing. Around 2:00 a.m. we headed back upstairs and the hunkering down/rest and re-hydration period began. Awesome One administered some homeopathic to help Willa turn and everyone in the house went to rest. Auntie A and Steadfast pulled out the thermarests and sleeping bags and slumbered on the art room floor, my ma stuffed blankets around her body and slept upright in the chair in the nursery, Awesome One and Trigger Finger took naps on the couch and chair downstairs, and K and I tried to rest in our bed.

I pumped fluids into k every 8 minutes. And for about an hour K sucked inward instead of pushed through her contractions in order to try to help turn Willa. Toward the end of this period the urge to push returned with a vengeance and k pushed and pushed as we tried to get some shut eye. No sleep came to either of us. And, during this rest period, when it seemed as thought there was no end in sight, I wept heavily. K heard me and I apologized to her, but she said it was okay.

Around 3:30 in the morning, Awesome One checked K and decided the cervical lip had receded. We determined that K would move to the toilet and push for one half hour, if after that time there had been no progress we would begin to get things in order for transport to the hospital. Our midwife was concerned that if k pushed for two more hours at home with no progress, upon arrival at the hospital unwanted medical interventions would be more likely to happen due to k’s intense exhaustion. So, AO wanted her to limit her exhaustion (ha).

We moved to the toilet and k gripped my belt like a true champ. Her strength abounded from some primal depths that I have never accessed (and never plan to access unless I am stuck in a cold cavern trying to survive and waiting for the rescue party to arrive). Up until this time, the baby’s heart was beating normally and strong. During toilet pushing, her little heart rate plummeted a little (it went from the strong 130s to 110ish). AO assured us it was still okay and so k pushed and pushed.

AO kept asking K if she felt progress. The answer was no for the first many toilet minutes. A half hour slipped by quicker than flick of a light switch. Around 45 minutes into this pushing AO asked about progress again, and K said I think poop is coming out. AO said this was good, but really there was no poop.

About an hour into the toilet pushing, we decided to begin prep for transport to the hospital. K came off the toilet and went back to our bed to labor there. I knew K was dreading going to the hospital and so was I. While we live in a progressive bubble and the University of Michigan hospital has always been ultra-respectful of our relationship, I was having a hard time swallowing the idea of bright lights and over-zealous residents poking and prodding my beloved.

After being back in the bedroom for a few minutes, our midwife looked me in the eye and I recognized this otherworldly intuition in her stare. She said, “let’s do one more check for progress, before we leave for the hospital.” By this time K had been in labor for 24 hours, and any progress would have been like a cool rain on a steamy summer afternoon.

AO checked K on our bed through a push and she said, “there is progress; let’s stay here!”

We all agreed and new energy fell on our small camp of strong women.

Auntie A and Steadfast took on the job of human stirrups. My mom and I held k’s hands and I helped k curl through each push into a human C. A and Steadfast pushed k’s legs in a crazy pose back by her ears and Awesome One turned and checked and reported progress down on the home front. Trigger Finger took pictures throughout.

We are almost to the end of it--the final pushing time

We all yelled and screamed with K through this whole last part of pushing. The verbage flying around consisted of:
“dig in deep”
“get her out. Just get her out!”
“you can do it. You are doing it”
“She’s coming, she’s almost here, her head is peeking out.”
“reach down and feel her k; she really is there.”
“Dig in, dig in, dig in.”
“Deeper k; deeper; push deeper!”

Our faces together, through this part of Willa being born, tell a story of grand perseverance and strength. I am forever thankful to have been a part of a group of women with deep calm and entrenched fierceness who beckoned the birth of our daughter through physical and verbal encouragement for my beloved.

After a couple of hours on the bed (at least I think it was a couple of hours), our daughter’s sweet, cone head came busting through what for those moments in time was the most beautiful place on earth—the soft, swollen, stretched and fleshy parts between the legs of my beloved. A place full of the power of giving life.

And then her shoulders. And then her body. Awesome One placed her directly on k’s chest. She had muscle tone and open eyes, but she had not taken her first breath; she was not breathing. AO called for the life-starter kit (oxygen pumper thing) and after a couple of doses of that, she went right to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. This is the only time, during this long, hard labor, that I lost it. I jumped from the bed beside k and paced and fidgeted. Trigger finger calmed me by placing her hands on me and telling me this had happened to her two girls also and that it was normal and that many infants need a jumpstart. All of this took place over a few seconds, but it seemed long and endless. AO flicked Willa’s feet and then she took a breath.

Her little breathing body was still on kk and I laid hands on them both—my two great loves. My kk and my Willa.

The cord pulsed for a bit. K was still laboring out the placenta. AO had given her a shot of pitocin to help expel it because AO did not want my kk to push any more after such a long time of pushing.

I cut the cord.

And then we were three.

She is here - our Willa Sea

2010-12-02T08:01:00.000-08:00

There is so much to tell, but tiredness abounds.

Our daughter, Willa Sea, was born on November 30 at 7:09 am at home after 27 hours of labor (24 of which were active). I'll tell all about it soon.

According to me, she is beautiful beyond beautiful.

Her first name is for Willa Cather (one of my favorite novelists) and her middle name is for the first initial of K's last name and her mama's first name, Cheryl, but we made it into SEA for three of our grandmothers who have passed on in the last year: Grandma Sterling; Grandma Esta; Grandma Anna = SEA.

A few pics:

8000 miles into the many folds of my imagination

2010-11-18T06:54:00.000-08:00

I made this deal with myself that our baby could get born once I hit 8,000 miles on my bicycle. Well yesterday that happened, so k's vaginal gate is now allowed to loosen up and let it fly.

In all actuality, we have no idea when this will happen, but the aforementioned deal with myself is an example indicative of my strange thinking habits. I tend to have a grandiose imagination and the absurd ability to develop worst case scenarios in my mind.

For instance, part of our conversation with our midwife on Wednesday morning, Me: "So...S what is your back up plan in case you are experiencing violent vomiting and diarrhea when k hits active/active labor?"

Of course she has a solid back up plan so I have no worries, but I will envision all the crazy ass things that could go wrong (or right) about 1000 times before our bundle of joy comes rolling out of kk's nether region. It is just how I am.

some new age folks might think that this is negative thinking that will impact the way things turn out for us, and I sometimes end up thinking that the negative thinking will indeed make things roll out negatively, but then I think that that is simply part of my neurotic imaginative tendencies, and I get over myself and the self-implied power present in all of the power of thinking BS that circulates the new age airwaves like an overactive muscle spasm.

This is not to say that I think that what we think does not impact our overall demeanor and state of comfort or lack there of. I know how to work myself up over the things I imagine in my head and then I know how to talk myself out of the panic i drive myself to.

But I do not believe that if I imagine horrific things (which I do all of the time) then I will bring those things upon myself or my loved ones. If I did believe all that super-human nonsense, then I would have to be placed in a very cushy room to stop the tragedies that cross my mind from befalling the universe. I am not a supernatural superhero or antihero; I am simply a getting closer to middle age over-imaginator.

And please understand that the shit that flutters through my mind is not all death and destruction or vile images of fluids exploding out of both human ends; I also think lovely thoughts. There are even times when I think nothing at all and simply ride in a state of marvel through the changing colors with a dark liquid snake of a river rushing next to me. While eight species of birds dart and swoop and flutter all around the fecund, layered decay beneath sumac and dried mullein and evening primrose and touch-me-not that has fallen to brown remnants for winter. And I laugh at the lone blue jay standing amidst the Canada geese calling out screeches of derision to the ever-growing colder autumn morning and my mind settles softly to the place where there is no thing but the calls of earth catching me breathless in anticipation for the most amazing coming experience of our lives...

a bath and her lovely belly with a bounty that is beyond, beyond

2010-11-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

Trying times are met with brilliant moments.

We have been through death and sorrow (my gram went on, my too young uncle, also) in the last month. Work is full and good. Preparation for our dear one is in full swing as K is 35 weeks into this mystery. We are gathering supplies, writing down notes for our desires, and moving toward giving birth at home.

These walls have held the years of others' living like dark stories caught in sunlight. These walls are thick with horse hair plaster and layers of paint and old wall paper glue. These walls are witness to the stretched vocal chord sound of song, fury, love, heartache, winter frost, summer dew, the scent of sex, the idleness of waiting, the quiet of stillness, the hectic murmur of insomnia, the bewildered moments before knowing, the aches, the pitter patter of small animals and children (animals too), the last breaths of loved ones. So much has happened in these rooms in the last 107 years; so much we do not know; so much we do know.

And soon we will be adding to the memories of these walls and the ceilings and the floors. Soon, K will be wailing the cries of child birth; notes that have long vowels and crazy consonants carrying out the ends of her mouth. Soon, she will walk over worn wood in rhythms we are yet to understand. Soon, this thing we know so little about and have tried to learn too much about, will devour us with its mystery and we will make invisible etchings of experience all around us.

On Saturday, we took ourselves out for a fancy date (the last one till our world is turned upside down by the introduction of this new being into our lives). Beforehand, K bathed in our old, deep clawfoot tub. Dusk was on the fringe; gray cascaded through the windows in autumn clad slices, and I took pictures of this graceful beauty unfolding within and throughout this woman i love with every ounce of all of me. Below are a few:

belly ball in bath

angel

amazing

shimmer in the tub

gorgeous beyond, beyond

love won ou.t--NOT

2010-10-15T05:59:00.000-07:00

Back in 2003 or 2004 K and I "infiltrated" a love won out conference (you know the movement founded by focus on the families james dobson? you know that movement that says we are sinful, psychologically damaged, ill-equipped to raise children humans? You know what I am talking about right? the whole ex-gay movement? and while it may be laughable to many of us, it is a truly damaging, hate-filled, movement) held at a church in south eastern michigan. We went as non-violent observers (slash if we could get a conversation in with a struggling parent, good).

with all of the backlash against queers lately and the recent suicides of young folks who were forced to struggle due to who they were or perceived to be and the reemergence of a scarier christian right (ya, i think it is scarier), i thought i would post my reflections from way back then. My good friend was in town recently and he reminded me that these reflections even existed. Some day soon when more time becomes my friend again, I'll reflect more on this reflection.
Here it is:

We woke up tired and groggy—not so ready to face the difficult day before us. I turned over and kissed the sweet skin of my bird; her shoulders and face shone yellow gray in the morning glow. I stepped into the driving hot water of the shower and scoured the sleep from my eyes. Clear-headed. I needed to be as clear minded as possible for the day’s events. As the water woke me from the garbled moments of rising, the burden of the future hours filled my chest.

We took no breakfast. Our stomachs were in knots.

I went with so many expectations. I went with the desire to talk to people—to share with people that being a lesbian was not bad and sinful but a beautiful gift. I wanted to express that the love and care I hold for my partner is deep and rooted. K and I have searched into the blankest parts of one another and foraged for meaning and truth. We have discovered the bounties of loving in what we had only perceived as absences. We have found abundance amidst the famine of previous loneliness and struggle.

Not to say that the struggle is over, but we have joined together in our own community of partnership to press on and to work for justice. We have developed a stronger sense of what it means to love in this world through the love we share. I have grown to understand, in part, the meaning of loving so much as to be able to lay down your life for another person.

I have held my love in my arms as she wept over her dying mother. A mother she loved and shared life with. A mother not separated and distant, not cold and dominant, but a mother who was carefree and caring—a mother who called up beauty on canvas and paper and in the lives of her children.

I have held my love and wept as I pondered the thoughts of what the lump in her breast might be. I have wondered at life in the possible absence of her being, and I have felt devastation at the thought of losing her. This fear of being without is not because I am co-dependent or overly “enmeshed” with my partner—this fear of being without is connected to my own fear of dying (an all too culturally constructed fear) and my fear of one day not having my inspiration and companion by my side to walk with, and talk with, and work with, and eat with, and sleep with, and strive for justice and peace with.

I wanted that love to seep from the surface of our skin, as we walked through the day at love won out, but all that we want does not always appear.

Sometimes the air is too thick with lies and disgust—hate and fear.

I do want to believe that the parents and friends and families attending this love won out conference were filled with good intent and love, but after hearing the mean-spirited and unfounded claims of the presenters and after hearing the “bravos” and applause from the crowd, I can only think that many of the people in attendance were either naïve and willing to be lead by wolves in sheep’s clothing--people who were taught to think through the minds of others--or people of no-good-will. The claims made by the speakers, who were organized by Dr. James Dobson’s focus on the family, were scantily clad and narrowly organized drivel.

The rhetoric of the right is so bathed in their perceived understanding of Jesus’ blood that their arguments flounder and drown before the ears of anyone that does not believe in the saving grace of Christ (or anyone who has a different understanding of the saving grace of Christ).

And it is here that I must interject my critique of evangelical Christianity. While I desire deeply to get along with all people and to participate in the growing of community that is founded on love and respect, I cannot embrace or remain silent about the aspects of Christianity that put forth the notion that their god is the only way—and that the redeeming blood of Christ will set one free, and if you choose not to believe this then you will surely perish. There are many “queer” Christians that hold these very tenants to be true and I cannot help but think they are participating in the very perpetuation of their own oppression.

I think it is essential that we get to the roots of the colonizing traits of the proselytizing characteristics of many forms/sects/denominations of Christianity. The very nature of colonization is steeped in the message and the act of conquering. To many anti-gay Christians, they are taking part in the grand battle of good and evil here on earth—they are working to conquer the enemy, the evil one. And that is the same message that has been propagated throughout the planet, since the dawn of Christendom. It is the same message that contributed to the annihilation of the Native American peoples in the “new world” and it is a form of interacting and relating that needs to be very carefully dismantled and critiqued. Gay Christians must be cautious when handling their faith.

BACK TO THE CONFERENCE

As Janelle H___ spoke on the causes of lesbianism, I found myself angered and laughing at the absurdity of her claims. She proposed that lesbians have missing foundational pieces in their psychological make-up. She blamed the “condition” of lesbianism on absent mothers or mothers who were cold and distant from their baby girls. She so carelessly placed the blame on mothers that many women were weeping in the audience.

First the mothers were blamed and then they were charged with the mission to go out and try to bring a healing love to their lost and mislead daughters. I found these assertions to be padded with the saccharine sweet syrup of the cover over reality church. A church that is basically homogenous in appearance and attitude—a church that shrinks at the idea of diversity and bellows at the existence of difference. A church that aims to blend all beings into a straight edged box—white and dominated by men with women carrying on the production of off spring and the maintenance of the house. A church that cannot give any sort of multi-faceted definition for man or woman (except in the narrowest of terms), and is still so wed to the idea of creating automated creatures--sterile and one-dimensional humans that laugh and weep on command. People who are told how to think and act and respond—people who are never given the tools or opportunities to think for themselves—because they have been so put in their places. But the problem is that the forced energy and brainwashed mind set that the automans bring to the universe is filled with hate and destructive power.

Not that queer affirming people and people who are embracing of all faiths and paths are perfect beings that do no harm; there is always a destructive force behind the skulls of controlled minds.

The warning that I believe needs to be shouted out after attending this conference is one of preparation. We, those who believe in diverse and healthy communities, must be prepared to counter the very loud and dangerous message of the Christian right. I realized before attending this conference that there were deep-rooted ideologies permeating all facets of society, both secular and religious, when it came to queer people. But after attending this conference, I now realize that their message is more stifling and hate-filled than I ever imagined and that many, many, many people are seeking answers from their supposed expertise.

We must be prepared to offer up examples of love—not just words of love, but true and tried examples. We must be prepared to be visible in all dimensions of our lives and to share the realities of the love that seeps through our lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and gay relationships.

I went into this conference thinking that I would share my feelings with many people that I encountered throughout the day, but when it came down to it I only had the courage and the strength to speak with one woman.

I had stepped outside to finally breathe. The florescent lights and new carpet smell had just about done me in—not to forget that I had just been bombarded with assaultive words that had left me bleeding. I had stepped outside needing air and space away from so much sameness and so much hate. [beware if you have children and you are just coming out—the “experts” at the conference recommended that grandparents may need to contact a lawyer to battle for custody of the children—if the straight, and very Christian grandparents think their lesbian daughter may be a “danger” to the children.]
I sat on a bench; I chose a sunny spot so that the heat of the sunshine would counter the brisk, chilly wind that pushed through the air.

After a few minutes of just sitting stunned and drained, a woman in a bright orange vest approached me and asked if it was all right for her to sit next to me. I nodded and she sat. My nerves felt shot, but I scoured up the gumption to ask how she was and if she was enjoying the day.

She told me that she was learning a lot. She had come for answers to some questions she had and she was finding answers. Her eyes were red-lined—tear stained. She was shaken to the bone.

I asked her what had brought her here, and she shared that her daughter—her youngest daughter of three girls—had recently come out to her. She did not understand how her daughter could be a lesbian. The orange-vested woman—let’s call her C—had gone to her Assembly of God minister for advice and he had told her about the conference; he had also told her to Love the sinner but hate the sin. She expressed that she had divorced her husband when her youngest daughter, the lesbian, was four years old. From that time on she had to work full time to support her family. Her husband had been an alcoholic and she needed more than anything to get her daughters away from him and into a safe space. She told me this point with a veracity of exclamation—she was trying to rationalize her decision to leave her husband and therefore, according to the focus on the family rhetoric abandon her youngest, and currently lesbian, daughter to day care and leave her with an absence of proper foundational love.

She had drawn the conclusion that her lesbian daughter may have very well turned gay because she had left to go into the workplace when her daughter was so young. She had left her daughter with a void, and C had been hearing all morning that young girls left with a void will later in life try to fill it with a mother figure, a lesbian lover. According to the “experts” that we had been subjected to, a lesbian relationship is based on an infant’s need to be held by a mother that they never had.

I approached her curiosity and confusion about the whole subject with a calmness that I did not know resided within me. I affirmed that her decision to leave a violent and abusive husband was good and that I was sure she had been the best mother possible. I told her that I detected a genuine love for her children—a deep and profound love. I also came out to her directly. I connected with her by sharing that I too came from a family of three daughters. I shared with her that I believed it was entirely possible for two women to love one another purely and wholly, and I suggested that she might be experiencing so much confusion, because she just did not know any gay people before her daughter came out to her.

It felt so good to express my love for my partner to this searching stranger. It was honest and right to tell her that there are other ways of loving than the straight-boxed definition of love and relationship.

She told me over and over again that she loved her daughter, that she actually felt the closest to her, and that she did not want to lose her relationship with her. I suggested that she might want to see her daughter’s love for another woman as something beautiful and that this may lead to her relationship with her daughter remaining solid and intact. I could only see my own love as such… Beautiful and right.

not like you care, but i am too busy to write...so a food clip

2010-10-11T19:59:00.000-07:00

women, women, women

2010-10-06T18:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, I have "girl" parts including some devout ass and boobs that do not hide easily. I did not ask for the ass and boobs, but they both make their presences known to most seeing people.

My ass is so well-developed that I have started referring to it as the PAG. PAG stands for Perpetual Ass Growth. This PAG phenomenon is the result of thousands of miles of pedaling my bicycle and probably, also, beer consumption and the sinister pharmaceutical known as zo.loft (which I have more or less successfully removed myself from).

Any-which-way, over the last year my naturally (without bicycling copious amounts, without drinking thick delicious, small craft microbrews, without the introduction of a pharmaceutical poison into my body) well-rounded rump, has spread and bulged and is very, very "womanly".

a glance at part of my ass; it practically takes up the doorway

Conflict of interest and identity expression alert: I do not prefer my big ass on me, I might like big butt on some folks, but remember, other parts of me (the parts besides my boobs and ass) are very boyish. And that is how i like it. I am comfortable in my boy skin.

With all that being said, it is almost impossible not to see my butt and titties. My boobs, thank something, have not been subject to perpetual breast growth (or pbg), they are their regular old size somewhere on the brink of a C cup, which is damn large for my boyish self. My darling kk loves them and so they are hers, and I do not bitch much about them.

But the whole point of this story is to express this kind of fucked up altercation I had in a women's restroom this weekend.

Even though my rear and front are plentiful and make it pretty hard for me to pass as a dude, strangers still call me sir, son, and mister in passing; it does not bother me. I actually like it. I like messing around with these two carefully constructed ideas of gender expression (you know the whole spiel--man/woman binary bullshit). I like walking the real spectrum and fooling folks who believe in the binary constructs. It is who I am.

But, i do not like meanness.

On our way up north this weekend for our fall getaway. K and I stopped at this coney island and k bought the hugest milkshake known to humans. I was holding the door for k and a trio of older, true-blooded american white folks. The old man in the mix said sweetly, "thank you very much sir." And I responded, "you are very welcome." and that was all good. No corrections needed cause I am who I am.

The next day, once we were up north, I had another gender fuck experience, but this one irked me and made the heat rise to my already wind whipped cheeks. My friend M and I rode our bikes from Carp Lake over to Cross Vill.age for lunch with K and M's family--distance about 19 miles. K, etc. met us there by driving cars.

Le.gs Inn is an up north restaurant where many different folks stop by for polish food in the middle of nowhere (or in the middle of everywhere if water and trees and non-humans are your thing; they are all my thing).

I was wearing a pair of bulky, cargo shorts, a green t-shirt and a shell-vest unzipped, with knee socks and my cycling cleats. I emphasize the unzipped vest, cause my jugs were more apparent due to the unzippedness.

When we arrived at legs, i really had to piss. I was sweaty and my hair was unwieldy and sticking up like a surly, flattop mohawk.

I rushed into the ladies room and started to open the stall door, when an old, white woman wearing a vomit green pastel sweatshirt looked me in the eye and said in a hostile voice, "Are we in the right restroom?" to the woman behind her, but really she was saying it to me and then she said it all snottily again after I had sad in a pee induced hostile voice back, "excuse me?"

Her woman friend said, "Of course we are in the right restroom." And i simply mumbled some fuckity, fuck, fuck words under my breath and took a long pee while squatting (not standing but nearly).

You are probably like, "so what? she was maybe really confused or something or it does not sound like that big a deal." But I want you to know the body language of this woman was poised for a stand off. She was not gentle or truly confused, she was making her snarky point with inflection and raised eyebrows and a briskness that could have frozen my line of piss. She was asserting that me and my boyness should not be there. Maybe I did not belong in the men's room either, but I for sure did not belong in the Women’s room, because I guess my butchy/queer self must simply emanate some kind of threat.

All I really wanted to do was unload my full bladder and frankly I never care where that takes place as long as it is not on my own self.

They ended up seating us near the bathroom door. As I was swallowing a potato and cheese peroigi, I noticed the women’s room had three different signs on the door all announcing the restroom as WOMEN’s. I had to chuckle. Here’s some footage of the door:

To top off this story and the weekend up north: On Sunday evening, I had to eat a fancy dinner at a fancy restaurant in ann ar.bor due to a thingy I spoke at on Monday. So I had this dinner with all these high-up academic people from the university of mic.higan. I was wearing a pair of cords, a stinky long john, under shirt (due to coming directly from up north and having sat in front of fire all weekend), and a light blue-collar shirt with a jean jacket. K had wetted my hair down with my water bottle water while I was driving the long drive home, so it was tame. I had dinner sans jean jacket and drank some wine, but guzzled lots of water due to excessive nervousness, due to being with all those intellectual/academic types.

So, at the end of the meal, I had to empty my too full bladder before hopping on my bicycle and riding home (I dropped myself off at restaurant and pulled bike off rack in order to ride home late in the evening). Anyhow, a line ensued for the ladies room.

Yours truly really had to take a leak, so when the woman in line before me went into the single-cell toilet room, I wiggled my way into the dudes’ john, relieved myself over a lifted lidded toilet, and, after scrubbing my hands, sauntered on out to the innocuous stares of ultra rich ann arbor.ites.

dude/girl smooches

in a whisper, "chickens"

2010-09-21T09:03:00.000-07:00

ya. we bought a flip for the coming infant.
ya. she is coming soon and life is chaotic.
therefore, i am becoming a very bad blogger which i hope to remedy soon.
so. enjoy this fun snippet of my red boots and some of our chickens.

kid at heart

2010-09-02T16:35:00.000-07:00

I rode home in humidity that seems to be breaking toward fall--My chin dripping, my arms coated in a nice sheen of wet, my pants splotted with sweat. I walked in the door to find my lovely lady in her panties and bra on the floor doing pregnancy pilates.

She is 7 months and 1 week pregnant and her belly is bulging--beautiful, round, and bountiful.

I can't believe she is growing us a baby, but that is what she is up to.

So, I walked in the screen door (totally unlocked) rolled my bicycle by my nearly naked lover and stood over her to drip some summer sweat onto her big belly.

I'm pretty geeked to be a parent and also nervous. I think we will be fun and ultra attentive. I mean I like being a goof and I do not even have a kid yet. See below for goofiness:

Yes, I dressed in a bee outfit and rode my bicycle in a parade. I love riding my bicycle in parades. It's even better in a bee costume; you should see how excited the kids watching on the sidelines get when a giant adult human bee comes peddling by.

And I love to hang out and watch animals.
See below:

a gold finch eating in the sunshine

my bees coasting home and coasting out to forage

lazing,sunning chicken lady

So, all in all, I got some pro-kid interests going on:) Some more things that make me a kid-at-heart:
drawing and making art
talking about bodily functions
watching interesting movies
listening to interesting music
riding my bike--a lot
riding my bike in parades
dripping sweat onto other people
swimming in lakes
digging holes in my backyard
swinging on swing sets (even though it makes me feel like i might puke)
laughing
chewing inappropriately (only in front of the right people)
walking in the woods
sticking my hands in my compost on a daily basis to test the heat levels
watching all of the various life-forms in the compost heap for hours and hours
splitting wood
chasing chickens
playing fetch with my dog
reading young adult novels and kid books (little house-series, anne of green gables--series, and bunnicula, just to name a few)
and much more...
see a kid just fits naturally into this little world of ours.

a smoking hot 25 weeks and 2 days (okay I think she took the pic at 24 weeks, but still)

2010-08-25T05:15:00.000-07:00

100 days left till our little bundle of joy parades her beautiful bloody head between k's legs:)

Do you really want a belly shot? Okay, you can have one, cause I do not mind sharing my ultra hot soon-to-be-mama with some of the world.

Yes, ultra-hot. I'll tell you what: I cannot seem to keep my hands of kk while pregnant. I mean my hands love her lots while not pregnant, but she is smoking right now. Her body, her face all of her just gleams with this scrumptious air of sweetness.

Sweetness that I want to gobble up.

She loves being pregnant. Even her posture, seeps with this love.

and here she is all yellow and blurry:

the pictures do not do her total justice, but please believe me she is beyond lovely to look at and her heart, well, it sings with happiness.

speaking of hearts, we heard her little 145 beats per minute heart roaring along the other day and she kicks like a soccer player. she is an active little bugger and her little body flinging around makes me smile.

inhale/exhale

2010-08-17T13:22:00.000-07:00

Have you ever read Walt Whitman's Specimen Days? I've been visiting those words lately and feel compelled to share about this experience that coalesced with the reading (of a particular part of Specimen Days), the doing (a particular thing was done), and the dying (a particular person has died).

A few weeks back Waddles, my once favorite chicken, had to be killed. She was heavy with vent gleet which is an incredibly nasty chicken yeast infection. She had flies laying eggs in her behind and I tried to cure her but with no success. We were getting ready to leave for our mini vacay and kk was gone to pick up our friend M from the airport. I was home tidying up the "farm" with our friend R. I went to change the bedding in Waddle's isolation pen-I had separated her out from the rest of the flock cause she was so ill-and she fell over when I pulled her out. Her comb was turning purple; her eyes were not opening all the way; she was simply suffering and I could not leave her with my intern and her girlfriend for the weekend cause that would have been mean for all involved.

I dug a hole under the great oak in our yard. R said she would hold Waddles for me and I could hatchet her neck, but I said no I cannot put you through it when you don't even believe in eating animals, really. So, we waited for kk and M to arrive. K was going to hold Waddles and I was going to hatchet her, but M said she wanted to do it and so she had jumped off a plane from Brooklyn made her way to Ypsi by car and now stood in our backyard ready to help in this mercy killing.

M held Waddles, R burned sage, K readied the newspaper lined bucket, I readied my sharp hatchet. In the end I could not cut her neck. I tried and tried, but M graciously offered to switch spots with me and our vegetarian friend walloped Waddles on her main vein and ended her suffering. I placed her in the bucket and dumped her in the deep hole I had dug. And then I covered her and this peace filled my whole, physical body. It was this almost other-worldly experience; I felt a calm that I can only dream of replicating.

And what does this have to do with Specimen Days. Well, I was reading a section shortly thereafter where Whitman describes the deaths of three young men he had witnessed some years before his writing of them (and actually one of the deaths was witnessed by a dear friend of Whitman and then the friend relayed the dying to Whitman cause the friend thought Whitman would appreciate the death of the man who had died). The piece is called Three Young Men's Deaths--surprise, surprise. And these deaths were immortalized in Whitman's text. The details of each man's gentle parting are simple yet plentiful. They had left and in their leaving also left behind a significant hunk of life due to the remembering of this wise poet transcribed onto the page. Whitman's comfortableness with the transitioning from this world to something different is so full of value and lessons. His words ring true for this present moment and they ring true for tomorrow and the day after that. He witnessed the deaths and sufferings of many young men and some women in the civil war hospitals and the dying/battle fields. He captured the inhumanity of war and also the peace that came too early to so many who had been blown apart by the violence. Specimen Days is spattered with the tattered lives of people long gone. People most likely turned all the way into dust and earth, maybe some chunks of bones here and there.

Anyhow, it seemed timely for me to read about these three particular deaths represented in Specimen Days. I had this sort of great affinity for the simple emotion that he captured through the very act of writing a small snippet about each man's character and likes and then a small snippet about his demise--that one man thought enough of each to capture the essence of the last breath; the fact of it--the inhale where there seems to be no exhale or maybe the exhale looks remarkably like an eternal inhale, the struggle, the no-struggle, the eyes forever open to nothing or closed forever to all.

"He was one of these persons that while his associates never thought of attributing any particular talent or grace to him, yet all insensibly, really, liked Billy Alcott. I, too, loved him. At last, after being with him for quite a food deal--after hours and days of panting for breath, much of the time unconscious, (for the consumption that had been lurking in his system, once thoroughly started, made rapid progress, there was still vitality in him, and indeed for four or five days he lay dying, before the close,) late on Wednesday night, Nov. 4th, where we surrounded his bed in silence, there came a lull--a longer drawn breath, a pause, a faint sigh--another--a weaker breath, another sigh--a pause again and just a tremble--and the face of the poor wasted young man (he was just 26), fell gently over, in death, on my hand, on the pillow" (Whitman, Specimen Days 836).

And then I cried for these long dead men and then I cried for the peace that surrounded me when I put Waddles in the ground and then I cried for the knowledge of kk's grandma c on her own deathbed awaiting that final inhale/exhale. And grandma c did die. She passed on Thursday. KK was able to make it up north on her own intuition she dropped everything and drove up on Wednesday morning. Her father and hospice had been saying she was ready to die at any moment for 6 days. But, like the young man above, her vitality was immense and she kept on keeping on for days and days. And then she drew her last breath a little more than half way through her 89th year after kk came once more to say goodbye.

So, it has been a dying time here in this August month. Last year in this same but very different month and season, kk's grandma s took her last breath and unfolded her limbs and skin toward becoming dust. We are now down to two grandmas between the two of us--both of mine are still inhaling and exhaling fully.

Back to Specimen Days and what any of this means. K and I have been gifted to be in the presence of midwifing some of our loved ones out of this world or perhaps deeper into this very world. Though it may be the most difficult of all human emotions, there is something deeply peaceful about witnessing the end of suffering. And while it is impossible to compare a chicken's death to a human's death, the peace that seeped through my ribs after laying Waddles to rest in the tangle of roots and worms and fungi and leaves and decay was profound enough to translate to the following observation about myself and my own coming demise: Through all of this I came to the grim and lovely conclusion that being buried in a box or gauze/ or basket makes perfectly good sense for me.

A strange place to leave it all, but I am working on my exhale.

lakes, legs, and love

2010-08-03T06:28:00.001-07:00

lake michigan after a day of rain

k and i just returned from a lovely mini-vacay. i went on her "girls weekend" this year, because only two of the "girls" could go on it, and we had to cancel our regular vacation due to k saving up all her vacation days in order to take a 3 month maternity leave. she gets paid leave only in using up her vacay and sick days and then it becomes unpaid.

K's legs my fingers

it was really good to go up north and be near so many of michigan's wonderful lakes and all of the rivers that flow out from them. of course, we have lakes and rivers downstate too, but up north the inland lakes are large and deep and then lake michigan or lake huron are always near-by (or nearer by). we stayed up the hill from crystal lake in a cottage. we could not see the lake cause a huge condo-complex got built sometime in the late 80s/early 90s and now blocks the view, but we were not far from the lake and we could smell it on the air and know it under our feet.

whipping and skipping rocks on lake michigan

whipping and skipping rocks on crystal lake at sunset

there is this thing in the longevity of loving another person like i love k that is so subtle and simultaneously deeply spread, like the roots of a black walnut. as the days go by, our love seems to sink longer into the folds of this planet. And with that love comes this greater understanding of one another. obviously, our rhythms are sometimes different, our views diverge, our moods cross and rough one another up, but, all in all, we get along splendidly and enjoy each other, day after day after day.

On our little vacay, our friend M spotted this big-ass tree and she decided that K was going to get up i t with her semi-big pregnant belly and M was going to do a photo shoot of my kk up in this tree. Now the crook of the tree where M wanted to shoot K was a good 12-15 feet up off the ground. Mhm, you heard me right. My stomach was a little queasy as K climbed the ladder that M and R had set up in the tree. And then she was on this lovely limb with her solid, rock hard sexy legs hanging out from under her skirt. And, my stomach was still a little queasy, cause I am one overly cautious person, but K up in that tree, well, she was (and is) just gorgeous.

M shooting K in tree from top of the car

and another shot of the shoot

Time to come down!

Down she comes; hot legs

brief and scattered

2010-07-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

damn. time is flying. k is something near 22 weeks along. we saw it in an ultra sound. we did find out the sex last week because I want to name the little thing a very gendered name while it is still up inside her mama and so she has been named.

in other news, k is moving toward planning a home birth. we have a midwife and everything!

and approximately three weeks or so ago k, a, and i had to kill another chicken due to what i have home-diagnosed as vent gleet. this nasty ailment is basically a chicken yeast infection. it causes the chicken's ass to become a pasty mess and the chicken suffers from nasty shits.

one of our other-still-living-older chickens now seems to have it also. She has been isolated from the rest of the flock, and we are treating her with minimal amounts of apple cider vinegar and yogurt. but i fear another killing is in the near future.

we also have acquired two young, five month old hens. they are speedy demons.
The gardens are bumping along. Below are some pics to brighten your day.

New hive and experimental squash garden

comfrey and new gardens

bee hives, squash gardens under black walnut, straw layering new clover seed

buffy; she is not a sick chicken; waddles is sick and is now named raggedy ass number III

My grandmother's kitchen--a sedative

2010-07-16T11:05:00.000-07:00

The last five months I have been battling chronic insomnia. I've said it before; I'll say it again: I've suffered from insomnia since I was in the fifth grade, but it usually comes in waves and does not hang on week after week for five months at a time.

A few weeks back when I was wide awake at 2 something in the morning, I started going over the contents and layout of my grandma h's kitchen in my head and then after awhile I found it worked in putting me to sleep.

From the fourth grade on, I grew up three doors down from my gram. We were tight. I saw her almost everyday of my life. I would walk in her backdoor (which she always kept unlocked during the day whether she was home or not) and pour myself a glass of her sweet tea and guzzle it and then set about on the rest of my afternoon. If she was home, we would sit and talk in her kitchen or hang on her porch and talk and people watch.

My grandmother is from southeastern Kentucky and she is (was) ultra hilarious. She has been afflicted with Alzheimer's for the last 9-10 years and if there is one thing I regret in my life it is my personal inability to deal with her mind's demise. I can deal with a lot. I can deal with dying loved ones; I can deal with conflict and upheaval and hurt, but I cannot handle the shutting down of a person's, who I knew so well, reasoning and personality capacities. When I do see her now, I spend time with her and stroke her head and every once in a while I witness a scant glimmer of the person who she was, but I rarely see her. I do not visit much. I actually mostly avoid her because of my own inability to cope (please understand if she was my mother or did not have proper caretakers I would be there all the time).

But that is not what this post is about. This post is about my grandma's kitchen and how remembering it--the smells, the organization, the late afternoon light slanting in the back screen door and window, the coolness of tea and lemonade and mountain berry kool-aid (which my mother never ever let us drink at home), the canning jars cascading over her small kitchen table and dining room table, the blow of the fan in the heat of the summer whipping around heavy humid air thick with the smells of cooking (always cooking)--help rock my adult insomniac-self to sleep.

I wish I could count the hours I spent in her tiny kitchen. Let me be clear her entire house is miniature. She raised 7 kids (she had 9 in total, but one died at age 4 and the oldest was out of the house by the time they all moved downriver) in an 800 square foot home with one bathroom and an unfinished Michigan basement. Her kitchen can sort-of-comfortably fit three people around the table. Usually two of us would sit at the table and then we would pull chairs around the doorway to the dining room and block the fridgadaire (that's what she called it) in.

My grandmother canned and cooked constantly. She instilled in me a love for cooking from scratch. My family ate at her house often; she was widowed before I was born and lived, alone, so we were her constant company in close proximity. She would fry potatoes in a cast iron skillet, whip up some skillet corn bread, cook down soup beans with lard and bacon all day, and fry salmon patties. Our clothes would stink of fish and grease long after we left gram's, but the food was to die for. Another favorite meal was biscuits and tomato gravy for supper. The gravy was thick and peppery spicy and her biscuits flaked off in our mouths. It was made with lard and homemade canned tomatoes.

As I got older, my Uncle Junior, my grandmother's bachelor brother, moved in with my grandma and I would often sit at the kitchen table with the two of them and talk about the mundane which in reality was really the sacred and today to me means more than I can say with words. It means a peace that passeth understanding when I remember and reflect on those times in the warmth of my gram's kitchen.

These reflections of the mundane hours spent with my grandmother cast a lullaby shadow over my restless mind in the night hours when I toss and turn. My gram scrubbing dishes so fast I thought she was a superhero dish washer, my gram chatting about tomatoes and beans with Uncle Junior, my gram's deeply wrinkled, agile hands wiping down her always table clothed kitchen table, my gram slicing watermelon and gently salting it (I can see her fingertips wrapping around her well-worn white plastic salt shaker), my gram commenting on how she, "wouldn't have another man if he had a golden asshole; if he had a golden dick." My gram always being on her porch; the reliability of seeing her there in the evenings and knowing there was more home to all my home.

These memories are like a sedative: sleeping over at grams and watching her get ready for bed then cozying up next to her night-gowned self and falling deeply to sleep in her steady bosom. Gram rising much earlier than me or my sisters and brewing herself coffee. Then us rising and finding her in the early dawn drinking her cup of coffee and eating a piece of toast with butter and jelly. Gram finishing up her food and making us a fancy breakfast of palachikas or pancakes or eggs (whatever we wanted). Sitting next to gram in her tiny living room and watching the grand ol' opry and the ralph stanley show. These snippets of memories--common and everyday, but sacred and substantial all the more--the beginnings of who I am today are forever (unless I inherit her brain-mush disease) fortified up in me.

But again her kitchen, the first feeling of fry grease splattering about that I ever did feel happened there. I watched her pressure cook beans, and chop pears, peaches, strawberries for canning. I mowed her lawn and hung up clothes on the line with her.

I husked corn with her on her front porch and snapped bean after bean. I helped her water her yearly garden. I listened to her stories of her childhood on the farm with her single mother. Her father died when she was eleven and her mother continued to farm without him. She told of hog killings, chicken neck wringing, dressmaking, and canning.

In her back yard I gutted my first fish with my Uncle Junior and brought it in the house and fired it in her cast iron skillet and ate it right there in that kitchen that has become my night salve--that healing comfrey balm for my mind.

The gifts that continue to bring me a calm and a smile are the minutes, hours, and years of time spent with my gram. Those regular everyday moments. Those foundational pieces of time that make me so in love with the earth and growing my family's food and building clothes lines and fishing and cooking and food preservation.

Last night, as I struggled wide awake from 2:00am on, my sweetheart said, "think of your grandma's kitchen; remember count on her kitchen."

So, the scent of her kitchen in summer came breezing across my nose and my eyes shut tight. The worn brown-stained sharp edges of her handleless cupboards drifted over my eyelids and fingertips; the rag rugs by her stove and sink wove their way under my small bare feet; my ears perked up to her twangy, southern voice, "Nat, I love that short hair of your's, Nat. Sis, you want some mustard on that ham sandwich; how about some potato salad?"

And, I drifted into other dreams.

ultra update, art fair, butt balm

2010-07-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

we saw bones and a bouncing baby. However, the little creature was sitting in a kind of floating lotus position so the tech and doc could not see the bottom of the spine or the genitalia.

we go back in two weeks cause i guess it is important to see the skin on the bottom of the spine. hopefully, our stubborn and active soon-to-be-child will be moving into a different comfortable position by then.

speaking of comfy positions, k's over at the shadow art fair right now sitting over the bike ypsi booth. we made a bunch of stuff to sell for donations for our sweet little bicycle group. HOLE stencils (for DIY marking of shabby, dangerous roads), butt balm, stickers, a kids, jankily thrown together coloring book and then a.c. put together more of his super fine pamphlets: ride in the winter, how to shop by bike, and riding legally in ypsi along with some great reflective decals. Plus we have t-shirts and some informational stuff.

Below please see my new drawing that adorns my homemade butt balm; the drawing for the balm says butt balm not what this one says, but i thought you'd all prefer this to "butt balm":

she's hot

2010-07-08T17:31:00.000-07:00

yep, literally and figuratively.

and she's mine.

she's wearing the fun outfit in these pictures right now, next to me, on the couch. she's got it on to keep her cool, cause damn it has been hot. and since she came down stairs sporting her belly and her bountiful bosoms, I just had to take a picture and share with all of you her tube top and yellow shorts.

kk is going for the big ultrasound tomorrow afternoon. we will check the sex and make sure he/she is alive and all that. We will also check on the hemorrhage to see what she's been up to. hopefully, she dug a hole out and has permanently left my beloved's body.

we will be checking to see what hangs or does not hang between the little thing's legs. these queers--that's us--are checking the sex cause we have two very gendered names picked for the kid and so one of those names will indeed be assigned to the kid based on the sex. we still live in a very gendered world and still happen to prefer two very gendered names...lifted, of course, from two dead people who left remarkable bits of stardust and wisdom all over the pages of books and in the halls of libraries and the bedside reading tables of many, many people.

back to sweating by my sizzling mama to be.

displaced, but ok

2010-07-01T07:01:00.001-07:00

my darling is 5 months and 1 day pregnant today. and, lately, i've been submerged in the in between space of that which is to come. of course, i am thrilled beyond measure about the insanely huge change that is looming like an enormous convergence of clouds on the heavy set fields of some horizon, but I am also feeling a little displaced.

everything as we know it is going to change.
all of you out there with kids know this and tell this to us and we shake our heads and say, "we know, we know."

But really, I do not know shit.

K and I have been together nearly eleven years. We have forged through the good times and hard times like two pieces of granite or two stalks of corn. We love our time together: alone and with others. But we are so use to being alone, just the two of us.

And so this is where displacement starts to come in. Soon and very soon, we will never (or rarely) be alone.

And the other piece of the displacement is connected to the idea of what each of us will be like as a parent. This is all new territory. We are talking about it and soon will be writing down our ideas about how to parent together with our very different backgrounds when it comes to involvement with infants, kids, and teens.

I desire to fall even more deeply in love with k as we both take on this new cloak of parenting.

I grew up heavily involved in church life--in the evangelic.al pres..byterian church to be exact. two of the best things about this otherwise mostly repressive church was the community of caring people and the responsibility for child care that was taught to young folks growing up in the church.

As a preteen and teen, I worked in the nursery with infants, the toddler room with little ones, and the preschoolers. I know how to change diapers very well and keep rambunctious wee ones occupied. As a young adult (age 19- to almost 21), I worked with junior high girls at a sister church in detroit and then with the high schoolers and also with the kindergarten kids. Quite a few of the kids i worked with in detroit had not had much parenting at all and some of them had witnessed atrocious stuff. A 10 year old named S had seen her mama shot in the head when she was five, ya, she was a handful with a good heart buried beneath her steely, complicated exterior.

But, I learned how important boundary setting was for these kids and I learned a bit how to set those boundaries and how to enforce the boundaries in gentleness. Example: 5 year old throwing fit, striking other kids, lashing out swearing; me holding kid as he thrashes about until finally he calms down and then is just held in my arms--quieted, calmed and well-loved.

K on the other hand has very little experience with kids and babies. I think her most involved interactions with kids have been with my sister's three children over the last ten years. and she has enjoyed it.

Here i am an anarchist politically and at heart, but who on a whole believes in the legitimacy of boundaries for children, teens, and adults, alike. KK is much more laid back than me about all kinds of things. I do not intend to be a fascist parent. I do intend to develop rules (not necessarily etched in stone or chalk or anything else) and parameters together for all of us to follow.

K is so calm and stable and i cannot wait to see this all unfold in our endeavor together as parents, but damn am I nervous.

Sometimes, I find myself standing in random places and a song or a slice of life around me will startle me to stillness and my throat will seize up with a tightness and my eyes well up with tears and all I can think about is the cataclysmic event hanging on the precipice of december. I am willing it to be wonderful but every now and again the wonderful also has a hint of doom shadowing the W and L of the word.

I guess this is where big change often leaves me, scurrying about wanting answers and plans when that is not the way of life and i know it. Sometimes i wish i could gut the calvinism (the theology of predeterminism) that is imprinted on the lining of my veins, even though i have rejected every bit of the theology of my youth in my mind, from under my skin.

in the meantime k and i will keep on loving as fiercely as we can and plan where plans need made and dream in the in-between places.

quick letter to you

2010-06-25T05:26:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,
I've been really swamped. I've been to Kalamazoo, Lansing, Chicago, and Detroit (numerous times--Detroit) that is in the last 3 weeks.

The US Social Forum is in full swing and we've (as in AFSC-MI) have been participating. Did a workshop on prisoner advocacy on Wed, participated, but only half of it, in the prison justice PMA yesterday. And, today--well today is our big Retur.ning Cit.izens Family Reunion picnic down at the USSF on the Detroit river. We've been organizing it with a bunch of other organizations. It should be beautiful.

With all of this happening, my kk is still with child. She is getting to near half-way through. I cannot believe that soon and very soon we will be parenting a new little life. After the 20 week mark, I will have more detailed updates on what we are planning and doing regarding the preparation for birth.

And I have been gardening like mad.

Yesterday I got home from work around 6:45 and then worked compost and my gardens until 9:00. I cannot even begin to explain the joy that I feel in the physical exhaustion that accompanies laboring in the earth. And for those of you have not figured it out yet, I am really, really into all of this mass compost creation. So much so that I hand picked 3 large bags of clover and other greens from my yard to layer a new active compost pile the other day. Can you imagine having the opposite dilemma of the most common city compost problem which is not enough access to brown material? I have more than enough access to the browns--I need me some greens:)

Well, readers, I am soon to leave for Detroit to hopefully help kick off a super delightful picnic with the people.

Pics later and I do have another little comic to upload, just need to have the 10 minutes to scan it and post.

Be well,
the injector

refueled smiles

2010-06-10T19:54:00.000-07:00

Wow. What a week. I am on a train on my way home from Chicago--arrival time estimated at 11:30 EST. P and I headed there on Tuesday to mingle with our colleagues and talk about our work and learn and live a little. It was good.

Our Chicago office had a fundraiser last night that went really well and was inspirational because it was all about honoring young people working for social justice within AFSC--young high schoolers, young college kids, and young in-betweeners--between college or previous work and the rest of their lives.

Anyhow, our regional director is incredibly inspirational and he is so focused on the organizing work that we all do on the ground and the educational pieces of our work built into the fabric of our organizing; this focus really plays well off of our local work with people in prison in MI.

We work with so many young interns and volunteers. We rely on these full-of-energy, yet-to-be-jaded people to help us get through the thousands of letters and other correspondences that we receive each year from people in prison and their loved ones. I am so proud of these kids. Yes, I call them "kids" cause in some ways they are like our real kids. We've developed strong relationships with them and we learn so much about living from them, and they also learn so much about advocacy, and activism, and organizing.

For all of the stress that my work holds within the very nature of its reality; for all of the heartache that crosses our paths; for all of the abuse and harm that we are witness to on a daily basis; knowing that these young people are getting turned on to justice issues and knowing that they will carry what pieces of hope might still be cracking in dust balls from the sky into fertile somethings that will grow a different future--a future dedicated to compassion for all living things and for generations to come, well, all that knowing makes me smile and refuels me for the days ahead.

And, we happened to be in downtown chicago when the blackhawks won last night. kind of neat and surreal.

And, P, got to see the big city for the first time. Also, really neat.

So, to hope, I raise my invisible glass and to the next many weeks of work, I turn to the vapors of energy rising from the minds of those young ones in my life who will and are making a difference in the lives of countless others.

curly headed baby

2010-05-31T18:36:00.000-07:00

i have started making a little comic about random thoughts related to wee critter living in my kk's belly. here is the first installment. it is a bit on the choppy side, but stick with me...

oh. and you should click on the pic in order to read my cursive!

swollen

2010-05-30T08:18:00.001-07:00

Well, I guess I've been served up a super fancy dose of sitting time. I had planned to work in the gardens all weekend, but yesterday's work will have to suffice. For the first time in 1.7 years, my knee has ballooned up into its swollen irritated self.

Instead of garden work, I will consume copious amounts of ibuprofen and heat, ice, heat, ice, heat, ice. It seems like my knee always has a beef with me after a strenuous work event.

I guess my body responds in ways that I listen. It is saying sit the fuck down. And now, I am forced to.

It gives me time to think and write and perhaps read things I feel like catching up on.

Now, on to nursing my gelatinous appendage.

party for penelope and pregnacy still hopping

2010-05-26T16:36:00.000-07:00

okay. Sorry to flit away. But my life is out of control busy. I feel totally overwhelmed to the point of acting slap happy most days. Tomorrow we throw a big ass party for penelope. penelope was the director of where i work for over 23 years. she retired back in march and tomorrow is this big fundraiser/retirement party to honor her 23 years of prisoner rights work.

i ended up being responsible for most of the organizing even though i am so far from an event planner i smell extra strange when aiming to plan an event.

i think what starts happening is my mind drafts a story of how the evening should go--please understand the stories in my mind are not all that normal. so how the evening should go gets all goofy, and, in the end, i hope that goofiness turns to interesting.

simply put there is a party mix containing multiple covers of john denver's rocky mountain high; shitloads of desserts (provided in large part by my always pulling for me friends);a presentation that i've been working on for days; and dancing (international folk dancing and regular dancing).

in baby world, k had an ultra sound on monday and she saw the critter jumping around "like a monkey." those are her words. i was not there, cause i was working; busy life made flesh.

the doc could not see the hemorrhage and the bleeding has mostly stopped.

In another news, it is fucking hot for may. we are talking nearing 90 and the gardens are thriving and i have so many more plants to get into the ground, but they will have to wait until the weekend.

i also have another amazing bee hive experience to share, but that too must wait.

till then. happy hopping baby and parties celebrating a person who gave (and gives) a damn about those who are often considered the most unlovable.

we got the beat, we got the beat, we got the beat--yeah

2010-05-19T07:01:00.000-07:00

kk had a doppler this morning and we heard the little heart a thumping. so it is still in there all alive and everything. k is also still dripping dots and skids of blood, so the midwife ordered an ultra sound and then we see her again on june 2 to go over it all.

maybe, k will have one of those strange pregnancies that consists of bleeding throughout. i'm hoping not, but if we get a kid out of it all in the end, well we will take whatever the planet has in store for us.

we decided to take the day off today and work in the yard. we have a new beehive to paint, 3 new garden beds to finish off (i still have to haul some more compost into them), chicken coop/run to muck, new bee frames to string with delightful wild comb in order to go as foundationless as possible, and other urban farmesque things to do.

i'm sticking with the go-gos soundtrack today. yes, we got the beat.

hilarity, horribleness, and absurdity.

2010-05-13T19:25:00.000-07:00

Well. K is still wiping pink tinged stuff and sometimes spotting, but we are trying to chalk it up to the hemorrhage and not the beginnings of a miscarriage.

I also am chalking it up to the fact that last month, at this same time, is when her spotting was happening before, and last month, at this same time, it was also when yours truly was PMSing and having her period. I have a new hypothesis. My alpha hormones are pulling at kk's uterus and making her drop the remnants of the pool of blood that is hanging out in her womb.

Of course, this is totally my non-scientific conjecture, based on the leanings of my ass, but it helps me get a laugh in every once in a while.

With all that being said, kk is standing up in her dear friend's wedding this weekend and we will be staying down in the D Friday and Saturday night at the Ren Cen. So we are getting a little vacay and simultaneously keeping our fingers crossed that kk is not having a miscarriage that accidentally bleeds out all over the light green dress she is wearing in the wedding.

Believe it or not this morbid thought also brings us a little chuckle. Cause wouldn't that be just fucking perfect. You have to laugh at the horrendous shit every once in a while or how can you deal with it?

Really?

Even at work, day after day, we are bombarded with stories of abuse and isolation and desperation that would just break all of our hearts in thirds if we did not draw out a hee hee every now and again at the absurdity of it all. Undiagnosed c.olon cancer is no joke, but a dude collecting pair after pair of bloodied underwear, storing them up in his cell, and taking them with him over to pr.ison health to show the people who are entrusted with his life that he is not lying about blood seeping from his ass, well I have to smile at the smarts and audacity of the dude.

And sometimes when fellows send us blood samples in the mail and poop smears and sem.en samples, cause they think we have a full-on CSI style lab in our little garage of an office, well it makes me laugh my ass off and then wish that I always had latex gloves on when I opened up the mail:)

and did I ever tell you all about the guy who wrote the most detailed story of how he rose from the dead in the morgue of the local hospital with IVs hanging out of his arm. He, of course, was explaining how he had been killed by officers over a period of days. The story itself was so batty I had to smile, but the fact that the man believed this had actually happened--tears came a welling up over the edge of the smile. Cause something really bad must have happened to him sometime in his life--whether in the life of reality or the life inside of his brain that was as vivid as the realest of moments.

So, ya. I can try to make light of the nastiness that surrounds me. I can try to get through with chuckles and laughs. I can open my heart up to the absurd and think about how all of it is just that.

That's where I am at for a while. Riding on a pink tinged wave of hilarity, horribleness, and absurdity. Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts and the traces of things likes prayers that help us conjure up laughter and love in the midst of struggle.

nothing left to say

2010-05-11T19:31:00.000-07:00

since saturday, my dear k has been consistently bleeding.

it blows.

how many times have i said it here on this blog? those words, that is? or something like them? it blows. it sucks. fuck it. damn. hard times. suck. etc. etc. etc.

i am trying to be all in the present about it and all that lovely bullshit, but guess what, at this point in time, i'm over it. plain and simple over scavenging for remnants of dreams that are yet to manifest into concrete flesh and blood before my eyes. the day when i feel the little being's scrawny paws upon the tender, yet sharp, curve of my collar bone--when the soft little animal unfolds in ringlets of new skin before me--until then, i will curse the wind and the rain and yell out profanities to the stars and then reel myself back into the present, this moment and take it for what it is.

and what it is is this:

people, we are so fragile and fleeting. at anytime it all could stop for you. at anytime we could be the 25 year old pga pro golf player found dead in her home on a sunday. or we could be the one to be sideswiped by an 83 year old woman who should have had her license taken away 8 years back. (and hell no I am not an ageist; i am a fucking realist).

often, i want to really be okay with all of this passing on that happens before our eyes. i want to know that we leave some kind of imprint--for good; for bad; for always. we do, and still, we do not. we are flashing. we are leaves. we are strong and green and flapping in the strongest of winds and then we fall heavily to the ground and dry up and break down into something else. hopefully, always something life-giving.

but, how do i capture that moment of waiting to know if what is (or was living inside of kk) is still alive? how can patience fortify itself in a heart that desires more than anything to know. to know what is real. to know what is next, and still to understand that we can never know what is next.

i can remember being in the 5th or 6th grade. my parents were gone out for the night and, of all things, I sat on the toilet and started to cry uncontrollably cause i realized my mama could die and not come home. i realized one day the person i cared about the most in the world could and would be gone. i cried and cried and my chest heaved with sadness.

today, that person has shifted to my kk. and now it has shifted to the two lives before my eyes. the life of my lover--the upper quadrant of my heart and this other life trying to forge a path to our world through her womb. and so when the blood is made visible and this threat of new death dangles on the edge of her being, i am paralyzed and devastated.

and now, i have nothing left to say...

it will be okay and maybe even better

2010-05-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

I have things to do. Work—lots of it. This work includes my paid work and my house work, but then it also includes the work of my own head and heart.

I need to work through some themes that keep surfacing. Since k had all the bleeding spells, she has not been riding to work with me (though she did ride both ways yesterday for the first time in three weeks). It leaves a void, but also this time to contemplate the things of the world.

Spring is such an active time. Everything is bustling with energy and newness. It makes total sense that my mind is doing the same thing. It is shrill with desire. The desire to know; the desire to understand; the desire to love; the desire to make love; the desire for something bigger than human to help.

Help with what?

To make sense out of human motivations, love, desires, actions, hatred. I do not need definitions or total explanations. I need a bigger peace.

I need to know that when I witness the heinous actions of humans against humans that amidst the knowledge of those actions I can survive and so can those that I know and love and do not know and love. And the survival I am writing of is not just getting by, getting through it; rather, it is knowing that the little efforts toward something better do indeed matter and that these little efforts translate and carry over to generations to come.

And when I speak of generations to come, I do not simply mean human generations, but I mean the vitality and security and well-being of all living things and the rocks, soil, water, and air with which they all exist.

All of this gets me waxing spiritual. Whitman comes to mind a gruff booming in my ear. The rhythm of his voice a fixture in my head though I have never really heard him (except on the gravely, “36-second wax cylinder recording of what is thought to be Whitman's voice reading four lines from the poem ‘America.’”) But rather the rhythm bounces over my memories because I have been reading him religiously since 11th grade American literature when I fell in love with his words and the rapture they induced in my belly.

And, so when I ride my bike down by the river and I think about this woman I met last weekend—the daughter of a man who probably sexually abused hundreds of young woman—I move to Whitman and the words that he wrote; the words that invoke the turn toward something akin to perceptiveness and peace.

I think of our fallibility and our ability to harm. I think of our holiness and our ability to heal. I think of how this woman who expressed that she had done all that she could to keep her father from acting out again and again should never have had to endure that endeavor alone. I think about the messed up world we live in that isolates and abandons people leaving them to their own devices rather than welcoming, developing community, and holding one another accountable over and over again for all of our actions and in-actions.

I think how I want it to be different. I pray that it will. I hum praises to the birds that bring me peace and spin smiles and gestures to the water lapping over rocks and ridges of river.

I listen to this old man, long dead; the cadence of his writing like a comfrey balm. It seeps liquidy over the bristled edges of my heart into those cut places where pus and angst rise up and where I yearn for something more to cradle my face and whisper in any form that comes--it will be okay and maybe even better.

From Walt Whitman's Song of Myself
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and
vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the pass-
ing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies
of the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs
wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from
bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd
the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin
of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

compost and other updates on urban farm and kk

2010-05-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

me and some of our compost (not all of the compost I've been shoveling is from our batch, but some of it is including this)

long week.
long, long week.

busy at work.
busy at home.

just so you all know, k has not bled for about 5 days. I hate to put it out there; it is like needing to knock on an all wooden ship from 1776, but here's to hoping the bright red liquid has eased off for good.

I took a half day thursday and a full day yesterday in order to get the garden beds a little more prepared. I rearranged my compost heap for maximum heat and space utilization. It was some back breaking work, but well worth it. I am attempting this eliot coleman, straw bale style compost. The back bin is for brown (on the left) and green (on the right) and the front right is my active pile. The front left is where I will layer the new pile. I am hoping the front right will be ready by July. It is tarped and I keep it nice and moist and turn it when I feel inclined. This pile contains a whole micro-world of goodness. I cannot express how much i love compost!

We adopted another chicken yesterday. Her name is Buffy (she is a Buff Orpington). Her sisters (10 of them) were all killed by a mink on the farm she lived at, so now she is trying to adapt to our flock of bitches. picture of buffy to come.

Yes, our chickens are mean little buggers. they have been pecking the hell out of buffy. Alas, yesterday night, we kept her separate in the mobile run i made last summer.

Hopefully, she will acclimate. She is beautiful and bigger than the bitches.

I dug up two new side beds where we took down three trees this spring in order for more sun to shine on our very shady space. I am loading them with compost.

34

2010-04-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

i turned 34 this weekend.

i worked all day on saturday--the day of my birthday.

we went for beer at founders after working all day; it was yummy and we visited with good friends. we were in grand rapids.

k is still bleeding on and off. she is feeling sicker and sicker; i guess this is a good sign.

i have been reading like mad. i have been working so much that i turn off quickly when i come home by ducking my eyes and therefore my brain into a good book. I've read three kate delafield mysteries and one jane lawless mystery in the last week and a half and yesterday i read hood. yes, i am still on my "lesbian" fiction kick. I went through all the young adult lesbian novels at the whitaker branch library and now i have to get the other 4 i intend to read from the other branch. but in the meantime, i've been reading any other lesbianesque novel i can get my hands on. I go through these phases once in a while. these times when i cannot handle anymore straightness since it circulates around us like dandelions and grass and wind, essentially it is everywhere.

anyhow, it s just nice to read about two women finding peace and pleasure in one another. i like that. it helps take me away from the chaos of my working life and the stress of this living that is trying to happen in kk.

now, i am older--one year more notched out of the wooden trim lining the front door. now, i am hoping for longevity and limberness as this embryo unfolds into a child inside kk. i need strength. i need some bigger peace. i'll write about that more some other day.

my bleeding lover

2010-04-22T17:37:00.000-07:00

This morning kk had another ultra sound at the repro clinic. The wee little embryo is still alive.

The heart was thumping--strong.

The doctor was just fantastic and I wish she could be my regular obgyn. Anyhow, we saw what's been causing the bleeding; it's a Subchorionic Hemorrhage. The doc explained that the gestational sack is like a cancer and it is burrowing deep into the womb and it disrupted a vessel which then pulled up blood and came out kk's vagina.

So, now she may bleed a bit more here and there. It will take some time to heal. Anyhow, it is toward the front of the sack and not very much of it is touching the thick wall surrounding the embryo.

Hopefully, there will be no more disruption and the wee thing will keep growing and a healthy pregnancy will ensue.

It is still a waiting game. A worry game. As the doctor said today, when the baby gets born and is out of the womb it is still all about wearing your heart inside out.

Very right.

In the meantime, I am trying to relax in the middle of a whirlwind of emotion...

i lied and at least there were baby bees

2010-04-21T17:42:00.000-07:00

k is bleeding now. now she is bleeding. it is bright red blood. it sucks. no cramping, but bleeding.

I am so fucking over all of this I can barely handle it.

What really sucks is today after work I had one of the most amazing experiences of my whole life, and k was there and she video taped it all and then we came home and had friends and neighbors on the porch and then k went to the bathroom and blood--bright red blood was all over the mini pad and a clot hung heavy on the top of the toilet water.

and i got mad and kind of turned my back.

and i am still mad.

but today, today after work we--that is my friends t and l plus me--we collected the most beautiful and enormous wild bee hive from an outbuilding one half block away from my house. It was such good work.

K taped us in action (hopefully, video cuts will one day be up on this blog).

The three of us worked so efficiently and well together. T cut the comb with wire from the eaves of the house one luscious piece at a time. L and I carried it to a tarp and cut the excess off into empty frames and then made sure the comb was held in place with rubber bands. The forefront of the wild hive was empty comb. The center of the hive was brood with edges of honey. Unfortunately we had to slice through larvae in order to cut the comb to frame size; it was a creamy white, pollen infested massacre.

But, but. oh my god, but...
We saw baby bees being born.

It was really the most amazing thing I've ever witnessed. The sweet wiggling heads of these finely formed insects busted with precision and grace out of their individual hexagonal larvae comb right before our eyes.

I witnessed three new lives surface from the mysterious depths of one of the most fascinating substances on earth--bee comb.

Their small bodies were pale yellow. Their legs were weak and clumsy--like new born goats trying to find footing.

We placed brood comb into the frames and then brushed hundreds of bees off of piece after piece of the large, undulating comb into the hive we were creating for them in place of their wild hive. There are more pictures to come, but later.

Did you know that a wild hive looks a bit like human female genita.lia?

It is lush and sensual and so full of life.

After the whole collection process, we came home and some of us drank beer and pizza was eaten. Then we went back to the hive spot and saw that the ladies were festering over the place where their other home had been so (without our strange, white, alienesque bee suits) t held a bucket up and scooped the remainder and I pulled the top off the super and he dumped them in and I closed the lid. We did this twice. We think the queen is in the new hive.

There are so many bees and the colony is so strong that even if we crushed her or she did not make it in, they would feed and build another...

At least there are bees being born amidst the bloody mess of stuff that keeps coming out of kk into our toilet.
at least.

staying alive

2010-04-20T17:18:00.000-07:00

K has not bled in two days. Before those two days, it was mostly just pinkish brown spots.

I have this thing called caution tied around my neck; it is like a steel weight--a jacob marley style chain necklace tearing at my muscles turning sinew to rock. I am cautiously happy.

I keep seeing that wee spot--the flickering heart, the thud, thud, thud. It is something we've wanted so bad, but the path to this place where we are now has been littered with obstacles and heartache and the unknowing. All in all, we've had too much room, due to circumstances beyond our control and so totally in our control, to think about every move we've made before we've made it. We've pondered the ways to try to make it happen until pondering pounced all the life out of our own life-making ways.

My thought life around pregnancy and potential parenting has been too thick, too full, too vivid, too real. And now we just have to ride this wave of doubt and unknowing for a little longer. Except in reality we will always never know anything for sure. Well, I guess we do know that one day it's all going to end for each of us. One day that small beating heart inside kk's abdomen will no longer pump. Just like one day the strong, able heart of kk will cease and mine and yours will stop. We really just don't know when. I am hoping that all of our hearts keep that lush constant rhythmic quality for years and years to come. This of course includes that lovely little thistle seed heart rushing in the watery world of my beloved's womb.

Caution keep me close, weight of worry stop strangling my esophagus, hearts of the beloved community keep thumping to the pulse of the planet, day keep dawning, night keep falling, kid keep growing...stay alive, stay alive, stay alive...

the potential

2010-04-17T04:44:00.000-07:00

Spring teaches us lessons. Lessons in watchfulness. Lessons in living now. Lessons in the fast fading of beautiful moments. Lessons in rebirth. Lessons in possibility. Lessons in the powerful potential for new life.

The potential.

It is hard for me to write about this. It is harder for me to think on it. I am trying to stay in the moment. I am striving for hope where I was not hopeful.

On Thursday, K felt a gush between her legs while she was at work. It was blood. It happened around 3:30.

I had been in Lansing all morning for a House hearing with AFSC's new staff (it was his very first day of work). The hearing had gone well. The day was hot, too hot for the season in Michigan. P, the new staff, and I drove back. I got home around 2:30ish. Grabbed food, grabbed my bicycle and put it on the car and drove down to the park and rode into work. I planned to park the car at the park so k and I could ride back to it around 9:00pm from a panel I was supposed to speak on in Ann Arbor.

I was sweaty when I got to work. Dripping cause it was 82 degrees on april 15 in Michigan. I planned to train P for about an hour and a half and then go to the event I was going to be speaking at when the phone rang and K said I'm having a miscarriage.

And then my heart sank. But it did not sink too much cause I had built foam and other soft substances around it. I know that a large percentage of pregnancies end in miscarriage. I know that this struggle we have been going through is bigger than I am able to wrap my head around and I know it is a struggle. I do not take it as anything else.

Kk had called the repro clinic and they scheduled an ultra sound pronto for 9:00 am friday.

Back at my office where I had been standing dripping with sweat with a partially sinking heart, P instantly dropped everything and took me in his car over to K at her work. Where her boss and colleague had been there for her, supporting her, loving her amidst her tears.

We scooped K up and P took us to our car down in the park.

I drove quickly to the post office to purchase stamps I needed for work the next day, and then I took K home. Our dear friend R brought K a chocolate chip blizzard and some maxi pads. And then, our dear friend and no longer roommate but now neighbor, A, came to walk the pook with me. Later that night she also brought us yummy dahl for dinner.

We walked through an alley I had never discovered before in Ypsi. It is old and dirt and gravel and it feels right beneath human feet. It feels as though it has been tread on for 150 years. We stopped at P's to hand off the stamps I had purchased for the mailing that I would or would not be at work for the next day depending on what happened with K's ultra sound.

I stayed at P's place and A walked pook back home. I drank a cold beer with him in his new apartment, talked, and listened to dylan. He had moved in the day before. We found it together on Monday after a day of apartment hunting. It is a great pad. A good sized efficiency in a very old house with ultra high ceilings and access to two great porches.

It was calming to be sitting there and tuning out a little. But then I knew I had to get back to KK.

I walked home with a small buzz that comes from drinking a cold beer in hot weather as though it were a glass of water. I kicked dirt in the alley. I took in the magnificent green that beats through even the milkiest dusk. Because the green that accompanies the rousing of sleeping vegetation in spring, is different--more vivid, more elaborate than any other green. It glows with the pulse of life. it busts open with that which wants nothing more than to be alive.

When I got back to our house, our good friend G was there with K. She just happened to be in from florida to be with her ailing papa in windsor and was able to slip over the border to visit us and some other ypsi friends. It was perfect timing. Then our good friend N came over and we sat around catching up and three of us drank beers.

They left.

We went to bed.

In the morning, we drank coffee and drove on over to the repro clinic.

Some mother of some straight girl waiting in the waiting room gave us not too kind looks too many times as we sat there. So, I held K's hand tighter as we waited. I held her hand and rubbed her neck and displayed vigorous affection.

We waited and waited.

Then we were taken back to an exam room.

The boy doctor finally came in. Remember, my hope was not high. It was cushioned safely in the cottony confines of my chest.

He wanded K and then instantly said there it is with a strong beating heart. And, then my sweaty hand squeezed K's hand so tight and ghostly little fingers with a mind of their own seemed to rip out the foam and cotton and soft stuff that had been surrounding my own heart, and it became all bare and vulnerable and open.

That is what hope is like. It leaves you open for let down and pure disappointment. So, the 6 week 4 day old fetus has a strong heart beat. We heard it. We saw it. It was alive. Yesterday, it was alive. The blood indicates a threatened miscarriage.
So, k's taking it easy. They tell us the blood could have been from anything. There is still some blood. We can do nothing but wait.

Now, I have this raw heart. This open heart. This heart that saw the beating heart of a little seed.

It is spring. There are many lessons in all the potential bounty. There are reminders of the cycles of life all around us. There are the trees coming back to life and the compost breaking down what once was alive into stuff that will be full of goodness and the potential for even more newness. There are two of us waiting intently for a heartbeat to stay strong. We are counting on spring.

I am learning about hope.

prayers working...for realz...

2010-04-02T08:18:00.001-07:00

to those of you who know us in person, please do not take offense to the fact that you may have not heard this directly from us first. this is blog world and a large part of the reason i ever started this blog was to blabber incessantly about this trying to get pregnant that has consumed portions of our lives for the last three years.

i've laid off on the posting about trying, cause it was all starting to drive me a bit mad. i was getting brittle.

and brutal to my own heart. putting effort into something without any results, well, it can get old and tiresome after a bit.

Anyhow, k has been taking femara the last two cycles. it is an estrogen blocker and it makes her eggs develop in a more identifiable way or some shit like that. so the first month did not work.

it just made k strange and emotional.

this month she went in for the ultra sound to detect eggs on day 10 of her cycle instead of day 14. she was almost ready, so then on day 12 she went back and there were some eggs about ready to fall. so she had the trigger shot and we opted out of an iui this month and did a home injection the next evening.

anyhow, then last thursday she peed on a stick and it said, not pregnant. and we were like we knew it...

...it just is not ever gonna happen. the doctor at the clinic acted like it was a for sure thing because of the super positive response to the femara. and we were like ha, she does not know this journey we've been on.

Anyhow, on tuesday k was spotting; on wednesday she called the repro clinic to ask if she should start the femara when she started full on flowing at day three or when she count day three from the spotting day. and then k was like maybe i should check a pregnancy test again just in case and the nurse was like ya do so.

so, k did. and it said pregnant and we were both like no fu.cking way.
we were in total disbelief. then the repro clinic said go for a blood draw, so she did and later that afternoon it said she was pregnant, too.

And so my kk is pregnant. for the very first time in her life, she is pregnant.

I am keeping hope in check cause we know the whole fiasco with me and my pregnancy. she is ultra early on. and she could easily miscarry, so hope is in my back pocket. it gets sat on daily and ground into my ass. simultaneously, i am trying to stay optimistic and send the little spot that is growing inside her lots of good energy.

cause really i am not sure i can go through the whole losing it again thing...argh.
pins and needles, pins and needles, pins and needles for another 8 weeks.

argh.

and good.

last month when the femara did not work, I prayed so hard for my kk to get pregnant. I prayed to that which i do not know, i prayed to that which i think i know, i prayed to the tops of the branches of trees and the sun in the cool spring air; i prayed with cawing of the crows and the soft rush of river water. i prayed that she, my love--my sweet beloved--could have this one thing she wanted so deeply.

and maybe this prayer was heard in the rambling of the rest of our days. maybe it was heard on the tight teeny molecular structure of wind and rain. maybe just maybe, we will be parents 9 months from now.

praying for stickage and all good things.

a weekend of bones and beer and books

2010-03-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

Today, a rainy afternoon.

Last night too much beer.
Little sleep.
Too much beer in my blood makes my natural insomnia deeper. Heavy haze in my eyes and face but still no falling into those dark places where things right or wrong themselves more easily.

Last afternoon, i started dare, truth, or promise (a young adult le.sbian novel).Before falling asleep, finished it.

in the middle of the night woke hot and flustered from the previously mentioned too much beer, started the novel Patience and Sarah.
Finished it in the steel gray of coming morning.

Finally slept.

Drank coffee.
lazed around.

devoured the soft skin of the love of my life.
held her close in our new bed. Yes, she built me a bed yesterday. And now we are like real adults--no more mattress on the floor.

We loved for hours this lazy, chilled, early spring afternoon.

I found her softness incredible.
The beating of her heart wishing me to never stray from the bone scaffold of her.
It is like that. this love. it is like rushing and slowing and falling over and over again. it is like never knowing and knowing everything.

we try too hard to make too many decisions. we try too hard to think about the future and what she holds for us. all the jumbled mess of desiring or not desiring children. all the complications that fall heavy like lead bullets scraping past our earlobes and leaving drips of nothing on the tiny lines of cartilage that amplify the sounds we want to hear: the voice of direction; the clarity of a prophet; the knowing that we will be alright no matter what.

Leaving that behind in the sweet and sharp bite of beer and novels about "forbidden" love and women forging ahead amidst the struggle of pure adversity and no clear path, well that is what this weekend held. Better than any other; not so different than all the rest.

And in the end our bodies found comfort today--bone to bone, hip to hip, breast to breast.

we will go on along. each day we will build our bed and love stronger and tighter. we will weave our hands together until the traces of each of our fingertips are left always on the fingerprints of her and of me. it is no more spiritual than this; it is no more fantastical or real than everyday breathing in the dusty air of our house and then the crisp air of outside, once we depart to the world around us.

it is this loving of her that makes sense; it is more than religion; it is everything.

another quickie in photographs

2010-03-07T15:14:00.000-08:00

Here are some more pictures from our unwedding. We had a sweet, young man do these photos. You can view more of them and a little video at http://matthew.pro/Other/KristenNatalie/11398069_mfUZk#801142002_nb9z8

a strange and lovely barber shop experience

2010-02-27T15:06:00.000-08:00

today, i went to a real barber at a barber shop for the first time. All my adult life I've had my sister cut my hair or have sheered it myself or with the help of friends. But today, well today was damn different.

my strange hawk-mullet had begun to feel cumbersome and tangled.

we were out scoring some chicken feed and pine shavings at the feed store in chelsea (a small town in michigan and the home of all things jiffy-that's the blue boxed instant/add and egg or some milk products) and then we happened upon a barber shop that was open and we went on in.

k happened to know one of the men--the one who ended up cutting my hair--from high school. His uncle owns the place, and we got to take advantage of the family business they had going on.

I cannot express how much i enjoyed the crass, political and down-to-earth conversation we all had--that's me, k, the old classmate of k's, and the old classmate's uncle. Cuss words carried from our lips; we were totally out and even congratulated about our recent unnuptials; I was encouraged by the uncle that I would look just splendid with all of my curly locks trimmed down to a nice side-swiped do; and we tlked long and hard about mi craft beers. Most interesting of all, we got into an in-depth conversation about the problem of prison growth in Michigan and the problems that happen inside. the uncle was outright outraged that we cage human beings up in prison and even pointed out very articulately how only a small, small number of people really need to be kept away from the rest of society and how the remainder of the people are often folks on the fringe who live in the gray area and are marginalized and demonized and then locked away cause of the fringe place they inhabit either by force or by choice.

I gave him my work email and told him to drop me a line so we could talk about it all some more. It felt good to walk into a place that is mostly frequented by all kinds of men, from all walks of life and instead of having a conversation that is surfacey or totally on the brink of inappropriate, we talked about real social problems and human rights issues and i met a stranger--a person from the public--a tax-payer--who believes something is deeply, deeply wrong with the criminal justice system and we need to do something now to stop more people from going to prison.

Now my hair is bristly short and it feels light and amazing and my heart feels a little fuller today, because every once in while you stumble upon good hearted people who let it all hang out.

a quickie

2010-02-25T19:12:00.001-08:00

life is so full--a balloon with lovely, dense, and weightier than weightless air filling it up. almost to bursting. almost too much.

we got unmarried, not in the pray eat drink (or whatever it is called) oprah ordained book of the month club way. we had an unwedding ceremony as in the 364 days of us loving and needing and supporting and caring and longing and then singling out one of those many unwedding days (the 365th) and having a party day.

We made up a beautiful ritual and we stood in the cold for a long time and people who love both of us stood there in the cold with us and recognized our love and cried with us and sang with us and got all mooshy good feelinged with us.

It was altogether stunning.

it was a testament to love and to loving people through differences and finding connection and support at the end of the struggle. it was all about the legacy of healing that can bubble up from the residue of hurt (i say this about family of origin struggle and tension that has come a long way to real acceptance--no tolerance here buddies--real acceptance saturated our surroundings the day of our unwedding).

the simple death of raggedty ass

2010-02-05T08:08:00.000-08:00

The unwedding keeps getting planned.
I keep being swamped at work.
my mind is so full that I am almost paralyzed. I can't think too straight. Of course, I never really think straight, but you know what I mean...

This week marked our bloody, but not too bloody, baptism into urban farming. We slaughtered raggedty ass on Monday night. I called her raggedty (with a t for the teeee)

A, K and me are a great team.

We set up a log with a relatively flat surface in the back yard. K pulled my hatchet out from our camping supplies. We turned on the mag light, pulled on some warm clothes poured shots of buillet, took sips off those shots, and headed out to the coop.

It was around 8:30 in the evening so the ladies were getting ready for bed. A scooped up raggedty and brought her to the chopping log. She pinned her down with her hands and I grabbed her neck and then I swung.

One chop.
She fluttered.
Regripping of the wings and her neck.
Swing two.
Fluttering subsiding.
Chop three.
It is finished.

We placed her in the a bucket lined with a trash bag and she twitched and twitched some more.

K checked her to make sure she was no longer breathing, cause I could not have handled a prolonged death due to my poor chopping skills.

Raggedty was still.

A and K made it clear that I was not allowed to save her corpse for burial or burning. I've been saving our other dead chicken (Number 6. she fell over dead in early winter, but the ground was already frozen and I could not dig her a grave.) for burial. But, instead, I will soon burn her along with many pieces of paper containing private information of all of the candidates for the new hire at work.

So, poor raggedty ass went out in the trash...

Raggedty had been plenty ill--her ass had frozen chunks of shit and soft egg and dirt and snow hanging from it and her thirst was unquenchable. The rest of the flock ostracized her. She had to be killed and because we did not know what was ailing her we could not eat her...

We came in from the slaughter, and I lit sage and said a blessing for the dear chicken who may or may not have been giving us eggs. We finished the bourbon and went on with our business.

Any which way, she is dead now. I killed her with my own two hands and the help of A's. It went smoothly and I felt so much better knowing she was no longer suffering from enormous ice ass.

unwedding

2010-01-27T17:40:00.000-08:00

I know, I've been a blogging slacker. I swear I will have some things to rant and rave about soon. But, I am in the process of a search for a new employee at work (well the person will be the only other employee besides me in our office) and it seems to take up all of my time.

In the meantime, I just wanted to let you all in on a not-so-little-secret. K and I are having an UNWEDDING.

After 10 long years we decided it was time to make a public display of our love and possibly our affection (ya, a little ass grabbing and booby brushing might take place).

Below are the words in our invite:

We decided 10 years (that is 3,650 days) was a long time. A longer time than many folks stay in relationships at all and a way longer time than what most people, who are able to get married (in the legal sense of the word), wait before tying the knot. Every one of those thousands of days has passed without a day of formal or public recognition—every day has been our unwedding.

We thought it was time to demonstrate in a public kind of way our love, our commitment, and our gratitude for the last ten years we have spent together.

We think that love and commitment is much more than vows and convention. We actually believe in many of the points raised in the Beyond Marriage (www.beyondmarriage.org) statement that was originally released in 2006. Some of the points from the executive summary are listed below:

Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others. A majority of people – whatever their sexual and gender identities – do not live in traditional nuclear families. They stand to gain from alternative forms of household recognition beyond one-size-fits-all marriage. For example:

· Single parent households
· Senior citizens living together and serving as each other’s caregivers (think Golden Girls)
· Blended and extended families
· Children being raised in multiple households or by unmarried parents
· Adult children living with and caring for their parents
· Senior citizens who are the primary caregivers to their grandchildren or other relatives
· Close friends or siblings living in non-conjugal relationships and serving as each other’s primary support and caregivers
· Care-giving relationships that provide support to those living with extended illness such as HIV/AIDS.

With all of that being said, we love to throw a good party and after ten strong, lovely, hard, and amazing years, we woke up one morning, not too many days ago, and thought we should throw a big she-bang. A big, fat UNWEDDING.

Cause still while we can rant on about how things should be, in reality things are still messed up, and we cannot jointly adopt and if one of us ended up hurt and incapable of making decisions for herself in some ass-backwards conservative county in Michigan or Florida, the unhurt one could be kept from the bedside (perhaps the deathbed) of the hurt one. And when one of us dies all that we have paid into social security our whole working lives will not be able to be designated to the other.

So, a party with a purpose. Before all of you we would like to state that the other is our life-long companion, beloved, mate, best friend—we desire to be together always and when one of us is having trouble walking the other will be there to carry her.

Legally or not.

cold fingers; cold toes; cold ass

2010-01-21T05:22:00.000-08:00

there is something to waking up to a cold house and then layering your clothes to get ready for a cold bicycle ride and then venturing out the door in the morning to a brisk wind and the chill that it brings and then being in that cold for a good 50 minutes.

a cup of tea, and then another and another and another and another--maybe ten in total throughout the day--once at work--helps to warm the ass and fingers and toes. Because those are the extremities that get cold. Your core, this is your chest and upper and lower abdomen stay hot and toasty and even sweaty while riding in the winter in michigan. This is, of course, dependent on proper layering. Which I am quite a pro at now.

Anyhow, our boiler busted last Friday. It up and quit on us; the old thing had no life left in it. It had rusted through so badly on the bottom grate that burn marks had started to develop up the sides of the metal box inside. All in all, it is a good thing it died, cause we didn't burn up in our ancient wooden house.

See one time this wrinkled, old man who drove a beat up mini van with George Bush Senior Stickers coating the rear of it--like 25 identical stickers--came to our house to give us some advice on how we might convert our coal burner (no longer functioning) to a wood stove and also how much it would cost to re-line the chimney. His estimate was way high--like $3,000, but he did offer us a warning. He said, "you girls should have safety ladders in the bedrooms upstairs cause if your house ever catches on fire you will not escape using the stairway. the flames will draw up the stairs and you will be trapped up there."

I stood wide jawed and thanked him for his advice. I already have a chain linked ladder in our bedroom, but damn that was some scary advice.

Thus far, we have avoided death by boiler fire and have frozen our fannies off for a total of 6 days. After forking over $3,850, we will soon have heat via a new boiler system. I can no longer type this post cause my fingers are too cold...

My meditation

2010-01-12T09:21:00.000-08:00

Taking care of our chickens is my daily (or every other day) meditation time.

The meditation goes like this:
While still inside in the semi-warmth of our kitchen, fill three or two containers with warmish water.
Set outside on back porch.
Dress in large winter jacket and warm hat (usually forget to wear gloves, because I like my hands to be nimble not clumsy)
Make sure my feet have socks on them.
If I am missing socks, go put a pair of socks on cold feet. (kk constantly gets on me about going barefoot in the middle of winter. I’ve lost count of how many times she has placed a pair of slippers in front of me and given me the finger wag and look).

Slip into boots (usually k’s green mucks are perfectly placed on the back porch).

Walk down treacherous steps and through backyard to coop/run.
Greet our ladies with a, “hi lovely girls. How are you this morning?”

Pull snow tarp back and open door.
If we will be home, keep door ajar
If we will be gone, shut myself into the run with the hens

Monitor feed bucket
If feed refill is needed, unclip feed bucket
If no feed is needed, leave feed bucket in place
unclip rubber, water bucket from chain

exit run
with bucket/s in hand

Beat on rubber bucket until ice water releases
Depending on the temperature, sometimes must run hot water over bucket then kick it/ throw it until ice releases

Take bucket/s on back porch.
Fill emptied water bucket with warmish water
Fill feed bucket with feed and oyster shell mix

Walk back down treacherous steps and through backyard to coop
Re-enter run
Hang up the water and feed

exit run

If we have special scraps, retrieve them from porch or kitchen

Back to run.
Feed the ladies the scraps.

Check hen house for extra amounts of chicken shit.
Remove with small rake and throw into compost heap.
On some days, refill pine and straw in hen house.

Check for eggs in nesting box.
Lately, only 1 or 2 are there.

Collect eggs.

Walk back to house.
Slip out of boots.
Go inside the house.
Put away eggs.
Wash hands with warm water and soap.

Meditation ends.
20-30 minutes of good chicken work and quiet, cold emptying of mind and preparing for another day

open adoption

2010-01-10T17:35:00.000-08:00

thinking about open adoption. just thinking about it. at least i am...

we will see.

costs more than we have.

thinking, thinking, thinking.

our year in pictures--part 1

2010-01-03T16:51:00.000-08:00

not that a year can belong to any human, but here are some of the things we did and loved while doing it...

I did not write about it here, but after the miscarriage, etc. k and i held a special ritual to say goodbye to that which could have been and the pain of trying to conceive for so long then having it happen so quickly then losing it all at once. our friend drew our blood and then we froze it and then we mixed it with soil from our yard and lavender from my garden and we burned flames and read poems and threw it all in the river that i love--huron.

herb and corn garden with bees--sweet lovely creatures that create life giving liquid. ever thankful is my heart for their existence.

and then we had chickens.

the front of the house where we make our lives. someday, i hope to build a bike rack with a thyme bed beneath it, so that when we lock our bicycles the deep green scent of thyme comes alive.

the community garden that i am steward of--we had a lot of gardeners.

that's my mama with me. we rode to the top of a hill in northern michigan. me and k whipped my ma into agonizing leg pain. but she loved it. and so did we.

at k's dad's place up north with my wee boy nephews and girl niece. my sis and her husband and ma and dad all came on vacay with us and we had a lovely time! I am so proud of my little sister; she is a very, very good mama (and her man a very good daddy) and their children become more amazing human beings every single day.

discovering karaoke with dear friends at this strange joint and the house dog a poodle with pink and purple dyed fur.

a mantis in northern michigan. how i love this part of the planet and all the creatures that roam here.

we dug a swale during my permaculture course with mid.west permaculture. it was sweaty and delightful.

our baby, bike ypsi, kept on cyling along. we held another spring ride and another fall ride and hosted all kinds of fun rides and participated in advocacy efforts. how i love to bicycle and how i love the community cycling creates.

a thatch roof we saw during my permaculture course field trip.

threw a big thanksgiving with k and a and had all our families over!

my love; my darling; my lifemate; my best friend in the whole damn world with the big lake behind her--the lake we both love the lake that feels ancient and cold and bigger than this little living we are doing here beneath the stars.

dirty hands in 2010

2010-01-01T15:13:00.000-08:00

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.

the Ebenezer season

2009-12-26T08:15:00.000-08:00

winter tiredness has hit me hard. it is dragging my eyelids through slushy pot holes--liquid ice and mud and street salt pools that burn real bad.

my heart is heavier than the gravestone in my back yard and the frozen dead chicken still resting soundly in the garage. it is heavy cause blood family can be so complicated. and when 39 year old relationships can no longer withstand the daily test of love and being together, it can roughen the heart of even the most optimistic of people. not that i am an optimist--far from it.

and so let me start over. let me tell you that i can be sentimental. i like to hold onto objects that have passed over the hands, mouths, faces, teeth, breasts, butts, and other fleshy parts of long dead humans. i like old agricultural and woodworking tools--the kinds with worn handles--smooth and slippery from sweaty, oily palms of men who have died due to various diseases and accidents. a slip on an icy patch of concrete and a divot to the temple--dead like that. a long agonizing death treated only with drips of liquid morphine as the jaw bone fell apart from the ravages of mouth cancer in the year 1940. a quick unexpected death from a heart attack--a grasp of the chest a turning up of the blue lips in a quick flash of pain only to last as long as it takes to stop the beating of the human heart.

i think about these things. these made up deaths in my head. haunting me. keeping me company. a story to go along with the handle of a 100 year old ax.

but, i am having difficulty appreciating the many words left by humans about what all this living is supposed to mean or about how we are supposed to do this living or about how we are supposed to love while living or about how we are supposed to die well or about simply being.

some of these words come in the form of inspirational, contemplative bullshit that circulates in a whirling deluge through the interwebs and books and "news" sources and audio recordings and dvds and etc; all that inspirational gunk floating throughout space; all that shit is driving me mad. up a wall.

who cares? really? do the words make it easier here on this planet? maybe for a brief moment. but really? and i am reflecting on all of this after giving my uncle who is battling the unbeatable pan.creatic cancer a bo.ok of blessings to try to help him get through a few minutes of the day.

yes, maybe a few minutes.

in the end though, we will succumb and no longer draw air into our bodies and we will do it either lightly or heavily or quickly or lingeringly or maybe all of those together. we will end up burned into dust or placed in the ground wrapped in gauze or bomb proof caskets with silky linings for our dead skin to feel not or a pine box or some other simple contraption or maybe we will be left out for carnivorous birds to tear at the sinewy strings of our muscles or maybe we will be thrown--flesh and bones and blood and hair--into the midst of a hot compost and break down into a perfect kind of soil additive. we will come to death and hopefully some of us will have myths and meanings wrapped up around this event that is bound to happen to all of us. and hopefully these myths and meanings will be deeper than the wordiness of this post or of the hundreds of thousands of rants of words that fill the human airwaves.

all in all, i sometimes think that all the inspirational bullshit hovering around is some kind of balm to keep us in denial about the impending end and the crusty parts of living that are like a big, snotty nose that has been sick with a sinus infection for days on end. you know the kind when your skin is rubbed raw down to the layer right before bloody. touch that raw place. touch it and press it and plant a seat upon it for a few hours. maybe the meaningful words written by too smart for their own good people or too spiritual to be drawn back down to the rocky soil we are treading on esoteric type of folks would get lost among the pus and pain. maybe every once in a while we just have to stare the suffering in the face and say you suck suffering--you suck real bad. and you suck hate--you suck worse than suffering today. irreconcilable differences you suck.

not eloquent or soft and fluffy, but at least this thinking keeps me rooted; at least it keeps me grounded. the sentiment above is what keeps me from ever becoming an addict (drugs, alcohol, etc); i like to feel what is happening before my eyes or what is unfolding somewhere beyond me, but has been conveyed to me by letters or phone calls. i do not want to be numb. i do not want to smile or think that was oh so very deep and profound and now it all makes sense because of something i read. i want the real to unfold around me and to grab hold of it, even if it is a razor blade and squeeze it until my hand is gutted and my heart aches. okay maybe not that dramatic...

oh and maybe the inspirational fodder adds some drama to the day. to this day. and writing is a god thing after all. it makes for fun times.

and now this crotchety soul will move on to another glass of beer and try with all of her might to ignore the trembling, shaky leg syndrome person in the booth behind her. but that might be the festering raw sore i was talking about sitting in...it is for me tonight.

to a longer day--to not knowing what tomorrow has in store

2009-12-21T18:36:00.000-08:00

time ticks away. the days fall flat or robust or somewhere in between like a deflating sausage casing. night is long. and now it is getting brighter. or at least the seasons teach us and promise us that after today the days will get longer and light will be our helpmate, our sustenance, our teacher, our guide.

This time has been heavy for k and me. Always it is. Always the months of October, November, and December hold the traces of people who have passed on from us. k's mom was born in october she faded through november; she became vapor like in december; she vanished in January. all of this happened years ago, but still her fingerprints leave smudges over the lead glass windows of our house and the liquid surfaces of our eyeballs.

I could go on and on about the dead ones and the dead almost ones (like what happened last year at this time to my body and then came out all bloody and lifeless in the toilet) but i'll spare us all the memory traveling and reexamining of emotions and emptiness left on the concave ridge of kk's collarbone and i will tune in to where we are now.

we are waiting for the days to get longer. we are learning that chickens do not appreciate the wet piles of snow accumulating all over the yard. we are thankful to still have this deep love, like a tunnel to the other side of the world that seems to go on and on forever, between us. we are happy with one another's softness--the soft parts of our skins, the pillow world of cheek and the bone hard security of shoulder.

we spend time together as though time might soon slip away from us and fall out of line with the tale that seasons have told for so many winters and summers and springs and autumns. like it might just end, be gone, flit away in the particles of dust shining in the sun shards coming through the window of a dark, deep basement.

we wonder what it will be like to be old and childless. we wonder what it will be like to be old and parents. we wonder if we will even make it to old, or if cement or bumper or disease will have its way with us before the silver and white coat our skulls. we wonder a lot about the future and work. and we think about where we want to be in this world and how we want to be in it. we think too much.

on this solstice--this night that is long in the veil of dark, navy sky creased by the shy light of a sliver of moon--we tried again to make something of a life in kk. who knows what tomorrow holds, but for now we will cheer the promise of a longer day and taste the star shaped snowflakes of december on our tongues.

dead chicken/enormous hair

2009-12-09T18:47:00.001-08:00

Winter wind has met us--cold and breaking the dusk and night sky with the knotted knuckle hand of a fierce whip cracker.

In the bust of cold that has draped itself over this fair Midwest state, one of our chickens took her last breath. K found her dead in the corner of the run yesterday evening. She picked up the lifeless hen and placed her in a plastic bag. Now, I need to dig a hole and bury her.

The ground is semi frozen—not deeply frozen yet, but for sure tougher to work than earth in August or September or October. I need some daylight hours to crack the shovel into a tuft of grass and turn it and lay the wee dead bird down in the soil.

In Savage Beauty—a bio of Edna St. Vincent Millay—the author tells the story of when Edna’s mother passed away in the depths of a frigid winter and they had to blast the side of the hill open with dynamite to get her body into the earth.

If only I had some dynamite to blow a hole in the backyard under the sleeping red bud and then rest our feathered friend in the December dirt.

However, I always arrive home from work when the light is fast fading from the sky, and I leave when the light has just arrived. So for now the chicken is in a bag in the red wheel barrel in the garage.

And, I am still up to similar shenanigans. Riding my bicycle, working, cooking, traveling around the usa when my toes get the tickle.

I’ve also been sporting some enormous hair lately. And while I know that the big hair has nothing to do with the dead chicken or how I pass time on a daily basis, it has something to do with hilarity. Hilarity is that dose of jolliness that I need sometimes to make it through these dark, winter days. How perfect that I simply have to look in the mirror at my own curly mess of hair to ignite that tin can echo laughter in the flabby parts of my belly.

I’m not really sad about the dead chicken; she lived a good, good life. We will go through less feed, now. I’m just a little nervous that she may have had some disease that will spread through the rest of the flock. I think this is not the case, but I have this tendency to make everything into something more convoluted than it really is.

But then I turn to my own head of hair and it shakes me back to a place with steady ground and more realness than those imagination disasters in the gray parts under my skull. Night scatters cold wind through the decaying leaves and frozen ground and a dead chicken stays put in the shelter of the garage and my heart leaps at the thought that tomorrow the sun will soar behind cloudy skies and I will trace the pattern of the days with the tips of my fingers and the prints of my hands will leave solid sections of stars across this time, this now. Each winter day will teach that lesson of patience to be, just be, and sour lipped laughter will abound at the reflection in the mirror.

yearning without devotion

2009-11-29T15:13:00.000-08:00

lately, ambivalence has struck a chord in the sinewy parts of my muscles. it is that in between place--the not too deep in the dark but not quite above water place.

michigan winter always casts a fervent deep blue over my days. sometimes the blue appears gray and other times it is trying for azure and little specks of sunlight on the horizon shift over the silhouettes of barren trees and dried stalks of sunflowers.

i'm not apathetic. i'm just yearning without devotion. without devotion to act on the yearning that has singled itself out on the deep red threads of my heart. and i do act in small ways, but i do not jump into my dreams with fierce confidence.

when it comes to that which i am not ambivalent about, i become animated with delight and willing to sweat and sweat and work and work on the little projects around my small homestead. cause it is the keeping of bees and the raising and tending to of chickens and the planting of trees and the preservation of food and the cooking of things we have grown or that have been grown close to where we make our home, these things make my throat tense up with a tightness close to joy.

i do not necessarily think it is bad or wrong to not act right away on making the big changes in my life--the changes that would lead to eradicating the ambivalence.

the small steps i have taken lately to move closer to working with the land and the creatures who live around my family are outlined below in some pictures with words. also, i will be attending the young farmer's conference this week in new york and i am not ambivalent about that at all. i am super happy about it.

did i tell you that i am in love with honeybees. they are miraculous and beautiful beings that rush forth sweetness from their bodies and create such useful and intricate comb.

the above picture is me going into the hive for a late fall harvest. i did it on my own and things went very well. the girls are so mild and mostly just not interested in humans unless of course i stay in their space a little too long.

more bees

comb and honey in a bucket. i cut the comb into the bucket and used a paint scraper knife on the end of a long pole and crushed and crushed the comb and honey. i crushed it till it was a liquid mess that i could drag the knife through more easily. then i strained it through painters' sieve cloth and let the weight of it press out the liquid honey in two batches for 24 hours each.

then i jarred it.

and i also made labels. someday, i'll show them to you.

And, I love my chickens very much. They are so funny. Kk says she cannot help but smile when she watches them run around the yard and i agree. They are like our little, Pomeranian dog friend, Lilo, she always makes me smile and so do my chickens. Except the chickens' tongues have never entered my ear with wet, slobbery, stanky kisses and they never will.

and someday sooner than later i want to get some goats. The picture above is me milking a goat at the ann arbor reskilling festival. i would probably get Nigerian Dwarf goats (not pictured above--Nubian above). But k says no for now.

oh, and I also like to cook stew over fire.

and walk through the old cemetery in this town i love...

i'm not ambivalent about those things.

wee critters killed

2009-11-21T07:34:00.000-08:00

Often while riding my bike I run across the dead remains of animals--once living things smeared to the road in horrific positions. I call them unnatural conditions because their death encounters with automobiles seem so very far from what their deaths would have been had humans not infringed on their habitats with roads and fast, zooming vehicles.

On Wednesday while riding, I saw the jaw of an opossum cracked in wet shards to the pavement. Her face was pasted to the ground in a long stretch of flesh, fur, blood, bones. That small twinge of sadness that bubbles up under my diaphragm came visiting, and I rode on thinking about how I disdain cars. And, thinking about how death is supposed to be a natural and everyday occurrence; the thing that all living beings will one day greet and sit down for tea with and how our human drive for power and shimmering energy beyond our control has set us on a path of destruction that creates gruesome deaths.

The smeared bodies of animals all over roads should help us to pause and think about our own coming demise. How do you want to die? Not that we can determine how it will happen, but I would rather move on from this world untouched by the violent scythe of modern technology and human ignorance (the misuse of uranium, the death trigger of a handgun, the crashing impact of a high speed multi ton vehicle into the fine, thin line of my exposed spinal column while riding my bicycle).

And maybe all of this road carnage is natural. But really I see it more as being bound to happen cause there are so many more of us in our sprawling suburban homes and steel, framed motorized coffin bubbles driving through the once more densely treed landscapes and winding river expanses that held the homes of squirrels, foxes, turtles, frogs, mice, opossums, woodpeckers, blue herons, swans, green herons, bluebirds, red wing blackbirds, minks, moles, muskrats, otters, beavers, raccoons, fox and garter snakes, and so on.

The look on the face of a wee critter who has been struck by a car is often one of terror and distortion. I see these lifeless shells up close and personal every damn day that I ride my bicycle. And maybe I am, through my own human definitions, applying those words terrified to the emotional landscape of my fellow dead being? But, maybe, I am not.

again, maybe try

2009-11-12T16:57:00.000-08:00

slurred words bouncing down the chilly November sidewalk. drunk or high, who knows this time. someone out there in the autumn air is loopy and full of something that makes the person not quite of this world. and here I sit thinking about the pain in my gum and whether or not we should shoot sperm into k after her period this month.

yep, same old question.

my mind feels soggy -- limp, stale, wet bread waiting to make its way to the chickens’ run.

speaking of the chickens, I miss being with them throughout the day. i make it home sweaty and almost breathless as dark is settling in and the chickens are locked up in their nice little run and it is too dark to let them graze the yard.

we have two escape artists and one has already spent the night in those sinister urban woods behind our house. so, I am missing them and pook, our dear little whippet. the bees have gone to bed for the winter. or at least they have slowed their furious wings to a fanning ball to keep themselves warm up inside their hive.

but I miss them too.

bones are busting through my back gum. this is shard number three; I’ve been to the oral surgeon twice. once to be told that the bone had already erupted; next to have a small bone plucked from my gum. now, bone number three is shimmying its way to freedom and I am in dull, achy pain.

and so that old question about whether or not to try to get pregnant again is back. on November 25th it will have been one year since k put some jiz inside me and I got pregnant, miraculously, instantly (the first time that bleachy, catalpa liquid ever touched the deep red of my female parts and probably the last time).

so, k has had a one year break. and maybe, just maybe, we will give it another whirl. and maybe, just maybe, we won’t.

in the meantime I intend, via copious amounts of wine or painkillers, to join the land of the loopy, slurring street strangers and cover the pain of this erupting bone.

good bye sabbatical

2009-11-09T17:53:00.001-08:00

I've been back to work for one week.
It was hard diving in. I cried. Well, I wept hard.

I was scared that all my compassion had dried up and that stumbling back into the madness of direct connection to a justice system so full of injustice and ache and madness (not insightful madness, but the angry, heart wrenching madness of a system rusty at the root and too heavy with the bones of too many souls to turn in any degree of right direction) would be too difficult to stomach.

When the days were long and the flowers were blooming and life was pulsating in the perfect patterns of aliveness all around me this summer and early fall, I felt contentment. I also felt that deep satisfying exhaustion due to all of the hard physical labor I did around the yard (our little urban farm on the edge of some woods; the kind of wooded area in cities where dead, human bodies turn up--eerie woods I would not walk alone in at night).

Anyhow, I was so fortunate to have these many months off and explore the pieces of myself that have often been pushed asunder because so much of my time is spent working away from my homestead. When I list what I accomplished over the last 3.5 months it is quite amazing:
Scraped and painted front porch and railings
Got chickens
got bees
learned about beekeeping from my beekeeper mentor and some books
harvested over 2 gallons of honey two weeks ago by myself--well kk was my helper--but I did it without my mentor
rendered beeswax
made lip balm
built from scratch with no plans mobile chicken run for chickens
put together pre made coop and permanent chicken run
took a permaculture course and got a certificate
dug a four by four by four root cellar in the back yard
filled it with a shit load of michigan squash, onions, and soon some sweet potatoes
planted and tended gardens at home/gardens at community garden
made a lot of pies
went raspberry picking
went blueberry picking
made blueberry freezer jam
dehydrated a hell of a lot of roma tomatoes
taught myself to cook lamb shank
cooked a lot of good food from local farms and my own backyard
read some books
tended to kk's dying grandma
ushered in her death in our living room
eulogized grandma s at memorial service
spent a vacation up north with my sister,eo, her husband, the 3 wee ones, my ma and dad, k's dad, and grandma c and got along swimmingly
threw a great dinner party for my baby sister's,ea, pre-wedding celebration
stood up in aforementioned sister's wedding with kk and other sister
road my bicycle a lot
planted three american black currants, two precocious hazelnuts, one american hybrid chestnut, two beach plums, four regent serviceberries.
pulled out bushes in front yard including stumps, by hand, in order to plant the serviceberries
ran a chicken wire fence behind where the tall bushes once lived
went to reskilling festival and milked a goat
wrote
drew a little
loved a lot
enjoyed my friends
enjoyed sleeping
drank good beer
rested
got my hands dirty
hit 5,000 miles on my portland
loved some more
realized how much i love animal husbandry and how one day i want to keep goats too and homestead as full time as possible

so, I am back to work and I still have an ever-flowing chest of available compassion which I am thankful for. And I have the understanding hearts of people around me, at work, who are insisting that I not jump full force into the nitty gritty and that I be good to myself.

Good bye dear sabbatical; you were so good to me and my heart is better for having known you.

their small fingers dipped into the dripping honeycomb

2009-11-07T13:38:00.000-08:00

the confused longing pounced on my heart like a stealth cat on the prowl for a helpless rodent. it came fast and furious--the ache. not quite empty; not quite loss--just a sadness fused with a smile for the memory of the moment that brought the longing.

their small hands--hands that are learning everyday more and more to draw and write and maneuver hockey sticks with grace and finesse--dipped excitedly into the oozing honeycomb. they scooped up wax and dripping, sticky amber liquid and chomped down on it with fierce laughter at the newness of the experience. and i smiled.

cause only at our house--this home k and i are creating everyday--could these young boys have this experience. the experience of tasting honeycomb in their aunts' kitchen. honey that was harvested only days before by me, a novice beekeeper, and my beloved, my kk.

and the longing hit, because the excitement of sharing this gift from the beautiful bees that live behind my garage and forage the neighborhood's gardens and sparsely wooded areas with our nephews brought up all kinds of dreamed desire for building our lives together with the honest yearning of our own children.

and then the longing retreated to a silent place in the long cavities behind my blood filled organs. and i remembered my thankfulness for all this life that has surrounded me these last many months. the lives of these bees and the chickens and walnuts, zinnias, turnips, beets, black raspberries,autumn-orange-brown oak leaves, and all that shines deep red orange in the morning sun and even deeper purple orange in the setting sun makes my heart full and lessens the ache to a dull thud that only surfaces in tiny moments.

tiny moments when small fingers fall into the sticky life of a honeycomb and small mouths turn up in amused smiles of wonderment and astonishment. smiles that adults do not know how to conjure up to our faces. smiles that we may be missing out on for ourselves...

the story of k's 35th birthday and my last hurrah before returning to work--Part 1

2009-10-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

the week of the 13th of october I headed out by my lonesome on a little adventure to kind of say goodbye to all of this time off. Two days were spent alone and then my love and many of my pals met me up north at all season's to help celebrate my lovely kk's 35th birthday.

On my alone adventure, I went to a bed and breakfast in bellaire, mi for one night and visited short's brewery. Short's makes delicious beer and sipping on two different lovely, hoppy beers off draft made me happy. I wandered down the brisk autumn michigan streets of a small northern, but not totally north town, back to my cozy b and b and took a warm bath in a deep, clawfoot tub. Then I slept and awoke to a yummy gourmet breakfast of mushroom oil infused spinach, feta eggs; brioche with orange sauce and cranberries; fresh berries with orange cream yogurt and fake sausage. I drank seven cups of coffee cause I was nervous which, of course, made me more than nervouse. All of the other guests were in their late 60s or early 70s and then there was little boy/girl me from ypsilanti.

treating myself to a b and b

then I headed out for a scenic drive to all season's (k's dad's rustic resort up in Carp Lake). I stopped at King Orchards and Friske Orchards and bought apples, honey, dried michigan cherries sweetened with apple juice, and apple butter. I slowly made my way to Carp Lake. I went on an 18 mile bike ride (which included a bit of the Mackinac to Petoskey rails to trails cause I put some cyclocross tires on my sweet, burly Portland) I cooked a small dinner for myself in K's dad's cabin and then sat with grandma C. We watched wheel of fortune and jeopardy.

Carp Lake Rails to Trails. On this trail I met a little old man with a rifle. He was very kind and hunting partridge, but really he was going for his second nature filled walk of the day.

Then I headed over to my cozy, little cabin (cabin number 1) and watched the American Masters' documentary on Joan Baez.

Then I slept and slept and slept. I fell to sleep at midnight and did not get out of bed till almost 11:00. It was a crazy deep sleep. The kind where you almost could adult wet the bed cause you are too passed out to wake and dreams of peeing start to filter through your mind...

Anyhow, the next day I took myself on a car tour through the tunnel of trees (M119) from Cross Village to Harbor Springs. I was going to ride my bike (lots of bicycley mags/articles touted the tunnel of trees as a great bicycling route). I am thankful I did not venture on the many miled trip cause it is a freaky road to drive in a car on let alone try to wind and wind and climb hills and wind and wind on a bicycle. It was gorgeous.

a view of the big lake from the tunnel of trees

I stopped at Pond Hill Farm and bought some awesome michigan apricot (the jar was consumed in something like four days by me) jam and some turnips and carrots for the stew that I made for k's b-day celebration.

Then I drove back to Carp Lake and wrapped k's b-day gifts and continued to draw pictures on the paper bag wrapping.

I read and relaxed and waited for my love to arrive. Finally, she drove in with the triple As (yes, three dear friends with names that start with A, and they all stayed in cabin number 3 together). We stayed up way to late talking and talking and laughing.

The next day some of the folks (all ladies) who had arrived on Thursday night and/or Friday morning went on a glorious hike along the wooded dunes of Lake Michigan. It poured on us. But it took two hours and was invigorating.

Ladies on the Lake Michigan's shore while hiking

After that big hike, I decided to ride my bike with T motion to Legs Inn where a bunch of us met for dinner on Friday night. It was freezing out; probably in the high 30s which is colder than usual around that time of year in Northern Michigan. T and I had a fun ride; we avoided most of the hills, and we made the 18 miles pretty quickly. We all gorged ourselves on lots of polish food and beer and then T and I (and our bicycles) both hitched rides home. I also got to try out my new bicycle helmet, head lamp that T had ordered for me and K a while back. His has been a hit around ypsi and now we have some to go with his!

Hockey at legs

Then we headed back to the cabins and drank bourbon and beer and played euchre and spoons in one cabin and then in another folks played apples to apples. The euchre cabin, where I was, was the X rated cabin; the apples to apples cabin, where K was for most of the night, was the PG cabin. We vividly and unabashedly discussed taint in the X rated cabin if that gives you any clue about the dirtiness.

The next day was Saturday, October 17th, K's 35th birthday. She is getting older and her eggs are drying up (which may or may not matter to us), but we had a glorious day. While the day was cold (in the 40s) the sun shone like mad. a bunch of us went on a good 24 mile bicycle ride around the shore of lake michigan into Mackinaw City and back to the resort. We took our time and marveled at the water and the wind and the sun and all the things that make me glad to be alive.

the birthday bike ride. all of us lookign up at birds that were almost black dots on the blue sky; they flew so high.

the rest of the 35th birthday weekend to be continued...sooner

a question for all of you

2009-10-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

A question for all of you, my kind readers--from where does your spring and supply of compassion originate and continue? What keeps it flowing? What do you do if it runs dry? What do you do when hope becomes a wrinkled, burnt raisin on the vine? tell me please how do YOU maintain compassion.

soil

2009-10-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

I've been digging a hole in my backyard. It is an experiment. A root cellar experiment. I will be sinking a rubbermaid tub full up of sand and apples, carrots, and squashes down in my deep, deep hole. I will seal it up tight and add rocks to the top to keep out unwanted critters. It may work. The hole will end up being approximately 4 X 4 X 4.

Grave like.

I love the soil. I love digging in it and pulling my hands through it. I've found quite a few bones in this area of the yard. I've also had to lacerate tree roots, and I marvel at the water that pours from their sad underground limbs--so much like blood, so full of life.

The theme of this week; maybe the theme of my whole sabbatical is soil--earth--that living body of death, decay, life and energy below us. I am reading the Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan right now and re-reading the Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry and simultaneously digging a hole in my backyard and watching my chickens shit and scratch and cultivate and create beautiful, fertile compost.

It is all too amazing for words. And still my eyes well up with tears as I read and dig and watch because, dammit, I desire something different for my life. I desire this closeness to the earth that I have been able to foster over the last few months away from my paid work.

The Worst Hard Time is about the dust bowl--the killing off of the buffalo; the massacre of the soil the destruction of the earth in the name of profit and the constructed american dream that trampled down the Comanche and other indigenous people in the name of profit for the "civilized" and the mad vengeance that befell the people who were still there when the dust came ripping. I'm not done with the text yet, but the first 90 pages are a fantastic historical account of the tragedy that human beings can create by fucking up the planet.

In the Unsettlng of America there is a great chapter called The Use of Energy. It is all about soil and agriculture and the destruction that we have waged on the planet through the god of big agribusiness and our disconnection from the land, animals, and plants.

Soil.
on my mind.

I'll end with this great passage by Mr. Berry, "The Soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life."

some pictures instead of some moaning

2009-09-28T18:17:00.000-07:00

I wrote this whole big thing about a lot of the complex internal shit going on in my head and heart and then I thought, "not now."

So, instead, below are some pictures from the last couple of weeks.

enjoy.

they love to be near us:

a lot:

my new paint job on the old porch and my kk's mums:

bicycle tires outside ypsi cycle:

the new adobe oven at the growing hope center:

driving along with my darling in a borrowed truck:

one wall to the mobile chicken run i've been building:

the gift of eggs from our lovely hens:

a break during the 62 mile ride of the tour de troit:

disrespect

2009-09-23T11:08:00.000-07:00

I think the zoloft is wearing off. Or maybe it is just that autumn has arrived (sort of it is still high 70s and humid, but) and my general winter malaise is setting in. Or maybe it is that I get really pissed about the asshole strangers that roam the streets of ypsi and create havoc through thieving, exploiting, pimping, shooting and threatening.

I'm having trouble mustering up my usual compassion for the human race. Actually, I am pretty much over most people. My therapist says it is normal to feel uneasy during these trying times that the world is facing, but I think I am more than uneasy. I am downright hostile. People make me furious. I give the most evil looks to drivers who pass me and then turn right in front of me and cut me off. If my eye sockets had the capability to shoot out metal, bullets would probably go flying during these rage times.

The other evening we came home to a really nasty note left on our car that was parked in front of our house. It said, "Nice job parking u stupid motherfucker next time it won't be just a note."

K and I both felt threatened by the nastiness and incredibly ill at ease. Right then, I envisioned harming the person who left the note--this is not like me--I am usually a peace loving person, but I am tired of animosity and violence and I am not quite sure that sitting back and doing nothing or even calling out the nastiness for what it is or offering up kindness in place of the nastiness is going to make one bit of difference.

Then today I was at a place when a wallet theft was discovered. I won't draw attention to the place where it happened, but just because a door in an office building is left unlocked for a couple of hours does not mean it is okay for some asshole to come in off the street and rip off someone's wallet and then start spending on the person's credit cards. The office was left open by accident... and just for a bit. So, I suspect that aforementioned asshole or multiple assholes consistently scope out the offices in this place and take willy nilly whatever he/she/they want to.

Also, in the last three weeks, I have heard gunshots at night in my neighborhood multiple times.

I'm constantly cautious in my own house and yard. Most of the time, I lock my bike to itself when I am running in the house for something; I lock my front door whenever I am in the backyard or basement; I keep our bicycles inside our house not in our garage cause my neighbors have had their garages broken into multiple times. I clean up streams of wrappers and liquor bottles--swiss rolls, slim jims, mini vodkas, cheese curls, condoms--from my front yard frequently.

This might seem like petty shit going on in my neighborhood and town, but really it is completely indicative of this larger culture of people just straight up disrespecting one another. Frankly, I do not think there is a cure for disrespect. Can we teach respect? maybe not. Can we model respect in our interactions with one another?? maybe; maybe not. What I do know is that if we cannot create respect between people and respect for this planet then nothing is ever going to change for the better.

Here I sit a prisoner rights activist; a prison abolition dreamer, and I feel so cynical that I can no longer come up with creative ideas for how we might create "safer" communities. You can only give so much...

In the Iceman Cometh, by Eugene O'Neill, Larry Slade states in response to why he has left the anarchist movement, "You ask me why I quit the movement I had a lot of good reasons. One was myself, and another was my comrades, and the last was the breed of swine called man in general."

I think I'll explore his 3 reasons in more detail over the next few days here on this blog. Why, because at least I can write about the ferocity of the lack of respect hovering around me and the rage that is boiling up under my skin and turning to cynicism instead of action.

filling the locket with bones

2009-09-18T19:28:00.000-07:00

delicate.
candles lit.
the transferring of burnt bones and skin and blood
to a locket.

tonight, we sat together and burned bees wax and sweet grass.
we filled an old, gold locket from 1874 with the smallest amount of k's mama's ashes.

for over seven years, her ashes have been locked in an urn on k's dad's fireplace. Finally, on Sunday he fumbled with a screwdriver and opened the urn. Amidst the scattered mail on the dining room table, he scooped with a worn, aluminum teaspoon the deep gray of his beloved's remains into zip lock bags. Then I cracked open the cheap, black, plastic container that held the recently cremated body of grandma s and k undid the twist tied plastic bag inside and then k's dad scooped the dust of grandma s's daughter into the bag. The two--one dead at 56; the other at 96--blended together.

He trembled. And kept saying that this day has been hanging over him for years.

He was so stirred that he could not screw the bottom of the urn back on, right then.

Then we drove to the graveyard and participated in the memorial for grandma s. I wrote and read the eulogy--to do so was an honor. It was her passing that finally compelled k's dad to open up his beloved's urn because she had wanted some of her ashes mixed with her mother's. For k, the opening and spreading about of her mother's ashes has been something she has wished to do for the last many years, but her father was not ready until now.

Tonight we stopped into our favorite antique store in downtown Ypsilanti. A few weeks back we had asked the owner to keep his eyes open for a locket for k to hold a picture of her mama and a bit of her ashes in. He had found a beautiful piece from 1874. He was so happy to have found it and we were so very thankful.

Upon returning home, k burned a candle and called on her ancestors to be near us. I popped the locket sides open and we picked through the dust of her mother. the bigger pieces of ash--the bony and caskety chunks--we pulled out and made a thin layer of gray particles across one side of the locket. Then k cut out a lovely picture of her mama, and I placed it in the other side.

It is so grounding to sieve through the dustiness of someone who once lived and walked and loved and talked and dreamed and gave birth and laughed here on this planet. It is like waking up while I am already wide awake. The sureness of my own mortality and the mortality of loved ones is held up raw in my face. It is heavy--thicker than cream, lighter than rock, more noisy than radio static. The brushing of ground bones across my pants to clean the tips of my fingers from the task that was at hand is like liquid thunder hovering over the edge of a cliff.

At the same time, it is so very usual and mundane and still so sure and sound.

Tonight the supple skin of k's cheek beneath my lips will matter all the more. Her hot breath around my face and pillow will hold me fixed with desire and true with longing for the now to be forever and the dust to keep its sights fixed somewhere else for longer than forty years. for longer than can really ever be.

for something different

2009-09-14T06:39:00.000-07:00

have you ever woken at dawn and felt as though it is dusk--that dusk feeling--you know the one like the sadness of the day is falling into night but still hovering over your chest, following you to bed? but today it was morning and the dusk still settled softly over my bones and my dreams still teased me with vivid images; images not so lovely and not so terrible.

my perception of time is all mixed up, yet my affinity for the cycles of life taking place all around me is thriving.

the hens in the backyard know it is dawn. they do not get confused. they are walking and bouncing on specific patterns of time.

I am trying to sync with the goings on in my backyard and garden. I am trying to line my life up with these miraculous cycles. I am trying to eradicate this blurriness between dusk and dawn.

I think that is what I am here to do--to close the gap that has been created between humans and the living things all around us. that gap is responsible for the violence and harm we wage on one another as human beings, and more succinctly and profoundly the violence we wage on this beautiful earth.

If i could have my dream--if i could live more for that which is just, i would be working here at my home to raise my food and share it with my family and community. i would be involved in detaching more and more from the bullshit of desire for useless things. all in all, it is this desire for stuff that helps to create systems of perceived needs (which are really wants).

Of all of the people I have crossed paths with who are locked behind bars, none of them have been locked up there for stealing the basic necessities needed to live--stealing food, or clothes (well maybe retail fraud, but that is above and beyond stealing the clothes needed for warmth and protection from the elements), or squatting to keep a roof overhead.

But the ravages of isolation, addiction, desire for a constructed idea of comfort and belonging based on the accumulation of more objects, distrust, heartache, and violence (connected to our ultimate separation from one another and the other living creatures on this planet)--these are the culprits that lead to destruction and then in turn to our complicated system of punishment.

I really do not think any of it can be "fixed" within our current reality. Do you know how futile it makes me feel about my paid work--this work I have been doing for nearly 7 years for justice/for change/for something different? Not that anyone out there reading this really gives a flying fuck about these constant conflicts in my head and heart, but I had to vent and I had to introduce you to our new chickens--some days I wish I was a chicken or a bee then my dawn and dusk would be marked with no edges of confusion.

coop, insects, photos

2009-09-07T19:08:00.000-07:00

soon chickens will be living in here

Right now my body is hurting with some deep muscle pain from hours of scraping and prepping our front porch for a new coat of paint, priming the clothesline poles and the porch rail, and helping to carry an enormous chicken coop over our fence and then screwing it together (at one point k and I almost literally appeared to be screwing the chicken ramp cause it landed between our legs while drilling up under the house).

Besides house improvements and mini-urban farming, I've also been riding plenty of mileage on my bicycle. I am up to 4,400 miles.

Lately, I have this obsession with insects and eugene o'neill. Below are some pictures I took on one of my bike rides down by the river i love.

ladybug

many at work

grapes

alone at work

sumac

flying time

2009-08-25T12:34:00.000-07:00

Up north sunset--lake michigan

I know people say it all the time--you know those words about time--about time flying so fast. well, it is a common (overly common) expression for a reason; it is true. really, very hard-hitting, actually ever so true.

My sabbatical is wizzing by me. I've been doing lots. I went away for a week to a permaculture course. It was a blast. I camped at Tibbits Nature Sanctuary Tibbits Nature Sanctuary and lived through an intense night of rolling, strobe lightning thunderstorms. My tent rained in on me, and I tossed and turned even though earplugs were in my ears cause earplugs do not keep out the deep booms of thunder nor do they act as an eye patch for the lightning that beams pulses of blue and white through the thin sheen of tent fabric. You can read more about the LSC at : Qani's (the summer caretaker's) blog

I met great people at the course and really got a general overview of so much connected to permaculture--observation of the land, observation of patterns and plants and wind and sun, becoming more self sufficient and community sufficient while living in our own houses and on our own land (however big or small it may be), and on and on.

I also had the privilege to poop in a humanure all week. A humanure (well this one) was a bucket. We, 25 strangers or so, pooped on top of one another's poop and each time a person expelled feces into the bucket the person covered it with sawdust. As the bucket got full, it was dumped in a compost pit a bit beyond the lovely little house where the bucket lives and it was all covered with thick brush. It will have to compost for two years and then it will be used around trees not vegetables.

humanure outhouse

After the permaculture training, I came home and did homesteady and community things for a week. I made blueberry freezer jam from the 14 pounds of blueberries we picked a while back. I dried a bunch of romas from my garden, i made butter and then i made ghee with that butter; i made some corn chowder with the buttermilk from the butter-making run off. And one afternoon rode around with A from growing hope to plan out the GH Tour De Fresh coming up in september.

blueberry jam

golden ghee

romas

I extracted some honey from one of my frames I harvested a while back; this turned out to be quite a fiasco. I harvested the frames a few weeks ago and, little did I know, I should have frozen them for 48 hours to kill all the wax moth larvae. I did not; so when I opened the tub--yes wax moths and eggs and worms galore. My friend, R, was there with me when I took off the lid and I am so thankful she was. While I love bugs, worms that are not earthworms can make me squirm.

R shaved the sides of my hair out in the driveway cause my hair is growing bushy,bushy, bushy. The top is still all huge but the sides are down a bit now.

And then we packed for vacation and now I sit here typing from the great up north. We are here at all seasons resort-k's dad's place with my mom and dad and sister and brother-in-law and 2 nephews and niece, plus K's dad lives here and her grandma too. And family friends from way back are vacationing here right now also. So, it is a big group and we are having fun together. The kids make me laugh a hell of a lot. and time is flying by too fast but i am not holding my breath and taking it all in.

winning ayla a stuffed patriotic donkey on the claw machine at leggs inn

to die in our house

2009-08-16T08:59:00.000-07:00

I'm back; kind of.

The last few weeks have been full up of life-changing experiences and incredible volumes of prismatic glimpses into the cycles of living and dying and living some more going on all around us.

After my last post, k's grandma got really sick. She had been starving herself for quite a few weeks and then her small, 83 pound body started to crash out. On July 28 she was rushed to the hospital from the skank-ass nursing home she was living (if you can call it that) in. She had suffered multiple heart-attacks (ya, those heart attacks somehow slipped past the nursing home staff) and was not able to talk very well any longer.

The short of it is that we brought her home on Friday, July 31 to die at our house. And her final hours in our living room were a gift that will linger long on our hearts. Hospice is an amazing organization. They got a bed delivered to our house asap and oxygen and then grandma sterling was brought via ambulance. When they took her off fluids at the hospital her blood pressure dropped to almost nil and R (an amazing friend of the family who waited with grandma at the hospital while we went home to prepare a dying space in the house for her) did not think she would make the ambulance ride. But she did.

And then we moved her into our front window and the late afternoon light shone over her dwindling body. Her skin was so translucent we could see her bones and her beautiful blue veins--straight skeleton lines and undulating blue rivers trapped beneath her soon to go back to the earth flesh.

R came over to our house to be with us and grandma until other people could be there. I cannot express the gratitude that surfaces in my heart when I think about R and her kindness. 7 years ago when K's mama was dying, R was there by her side and by K's family's side. She is a bulwark--she brings strength and compassion in her shining shadow--she is good and sets for me the example of ideal friendship and loyalty.

We knew at this time that grandma did not have many hours left, so we rallied K's dad to come down from up north, where he runs the resort in the summer and is busy beyond belief, to say his goodbye. He had planned to come on sunday, but we knew she would be gone by then, so he jumped in the car and started driving on Friday evening.

All of this is still so fresh with me. It is hard for me to write about it. I've tried getting it out on paper, but without real results. So bare with me.

We stared at grandma as she lay dying in our living room. It all felt so right and okay. Her life had been long and full. I could not help thinking how the miscarriage happened for a reason. Instead of carrying a new life into this world in the month of August, we were able to help shepherd this old life out of this world. If I had been pregnant, this would not have happened. I would have been about to burst with child. In contrast, we were able to open our home and hearts to a woman who had been the catalyst for the life k and I live together. Without grandma sterling there would never have been a KK.

I watched as the sun dappled brightness over grandma's gaunt and wrinkled yet smooth and beautiful all at once cheeks. I thought about the last of the vitamin D that she soaked into her still moving and living cells. I thought about how one day I will no longer see or soak up the sun. I marveled at the kindness of friends. A cooked for us and sat with us and stayed by our sides. T and R came over and kept vigil for a time. T sang the loveliest of songs to our dear grandma and grandma raised her eyebrows to let us know she heard the melodies and the words of love and assurance.

K's dad arrived at midnight and he watched over grandma with us throughout the night. The mother of his dear, loving, and no-longer-with-us wife now lay before him passing from this world and I could not help but think about all of the sadness that must have crept gently into his gut as he rocked in the rocking chair of his brother who also had left this world while still so young.

We stayed up through the night, sleeping an hour here and then there. We waited for grandma to take her last breath. Her breathing was so inconsistent and shallow; we wondered when it might cease and if we would notice.

Around 9 in the morning K's dad left to go get rest and K and I stayed beside grandma. K had a powerful and lovely morning with her grandma. She called on her ancestors who we could feel hovering in the room. I burned sweet grass around the outside of the house (we did not want to blow up the oxygen tanks so I stayed outside). The tender smell of the grass lifted with the gentle breeze through the windows. Around noon K's aunt came back to the house. And then around 1:00 grandma took her last breath.

We stayed with her body for two more hours. The hospice nurse came to pronounce her dead and get everything wrapped up (like disposal of morphine into cat litter, etc) She told us that we could roll a towel and push it under grandma's chin to keep her mouth closed, so I did this. We did not wash her body and I regret this, but I do not think K's aunt could have handled it. And then the cremation men came in a big, blue, unmarked van. The one man was tall and wide with a white, bushy handlebar mustache. He was gentle and his sidekick was a nondescript man with a small smile and kind hands. Their short-sleeved collar shirts were worn thin and I wondered what their armpits might smell like. K and I stood side by side--K's aunt went into the backyard and they lifted grandma from the bed onto the removal gurney. They covered her face with a sheet and then with the maroon, terrycloth-like gurney cover (the same color was used when a different set of collar shirted men took K's mom's body from the house). And then they took her 96 year old body from the house and set her in the back of the van.

K wept then. We stood on the porch and I held her and she wept. And I held her more.
And then we went inside and K asked me to get the empty bed out of the window. But I could only move the mattress and pillows, so I did.

The last two weeks I have been processing all of this and dreaming of grandma sterling often. There is so much more, but for now I will close.

a soundtrack to one story

2009-07-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

The soundtrack to this story is throw silver by mecca normal (the song is used without permission and produced by K records). For, many years now, this song has brought up so many feelings in my gut. It makes me long for something and at the same time it makes me feel buried in the beauty of the present that is made by all of the pieces of the past.

The soundtrack reverberates with the theme of generations—coming and then passing subtly and ever-so-real from this world into the place of dust and stone. There are practical things in my life that are making these thoughts so present and persistent, but also there is this propensity within me to care about that which has happened before I lived and to think and care deeply about that which is to come after I pass from the living.

Two months ago, K’s 96 year old grandmother was moved from her apartment to a nursing home. We have been going through her things and hauling old pictures, and letters, and keepsakes, and pottery, and the belongings of a woman who held onto objects as if they were oxygen to our house, so we too can hold onto these things as our own oxygen.

All of these brittle belongings are lifted and looked at and cared for by us and then I move to my gardens and weed and mulch and fork the soil. I am so much more at peace with my hands in the earth, but I also love to hold onto the remnants of human laughter caught in a photograph or an old note.

And maybe in this time—this very specific time of dying, cause, yes K’s 96 year old grandmother is beginning to pass (she is starving herself)—I am drawn even more to the land and the birds and blueberries.

These words from Bill McKibben’s essay entitled Enoughness (he wrote a whole book entitled Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age) fit in nicely to the throw silver soundtrack busting through my head and this post, "Nature schools us in sufficiency—its aesthetic and its economy demonstrate ‘enoughness’ at every turn. Time moves circularly through the natural world—next spring there will be wild flowers again…The testimony of the rest of creation is that there’s something to be said for fitting in. And because of that, the natural world offers us a way think about dying, the chief craziness for the only species that can anticipate its own demise. If one is a small part of something large, if that something goes on forever, and if it is full of beauty and meaning, then dying seems less shocking.”

In the gardens and the woods I see that all will continue. In the eyes of a granddaughter looking at her grandmother’s past in objects, I see that generations will go on. It is a story; an okay story—set to the sparse guitar and creaky voice of a two person band I have loved for too many years to count (this particular song is slower than much of their other rather loud and irritating-but in a good way-music).

Below is a little quicktime slideshow with photos of the community garden, K’s grandma and some of her old pictures, pics of food and backyardness and my art, and flowers, and lake Michigan, and some of k’s grandma’s furniture from the 1930s all with Mecca Normal’s Throw Silver in the background.

lethargy amidst the crap--and how i cannot get the keeper up inside me

2009-07-15T15:55:00.000-07:00

Right around now I would have been 8 months pregnant. When I think about it, I freak out a little bit. Mostly, the idea of me being pregnant or visibly pregnant--all plump with a busting bigger than a bowling ball protrusion extending from my abdomen--makes me cringe and cry.

Actually, i have not mustered up any tears for that which is not: not being pregnant;not having kids; not really wanting kids anymore, but I have thought a lot about it all lately.

I've thought about where we've been--me and my k and where we are going. I've thought about how maybe the miscarriage was really my fortune. Because this morning I was trying to use the keeper (I'm really striving to transition to no waste during my period; k's been using her cup for years, but when I've tried before well) and I kept fiddling around down in the wetness and coming up empty handed with blood all on my fingers and in my nails. I squeezed the damn thing and pushed, but I am tight. My hole is all bound up with muscle and years of being a mostly non-entrance top.

And I thought to myself, as I pushed and shoved and couldn't get it in, how in the hell would an infant human ever come out of this hole? How would I have been able to give birth when I cannot even get a silicone, smooshy, bendable, small cup up inside me?

And then I started thinking about how it would have been 8 months and then I got not sad but lethargic about it all.

Now as k's grandma s is fading from this earth minute by minute and I think about family and growing old and reproduction and hetero-normative bullshit and us(me and my k and our love and tenacity in the face of adversity after adversity), I really feel kind of numb. Like how can I think about this all anymore. How can I make decisions or even desire anything much more than what is just now here before me.

Without sounding all Buddhist, cause I am so far from being a Buddhist, I can only take the minutes as they unfold before me right now. Not that life will always be like this, sometimes anticipation is my greatest friend, and dreaming is my lifeblood, but lately just being able to make it through the day and take whatever news about all of the shit with work, or the march toward death unfolding before us, or the family conflict that comes with that march, or the conversation about children and the future, or the fact that I am taking a drug that makes me shit my brains out on a mostly daily basis,or the fact that k's dad wants some ill-equipped people to care for her other grandmother (the one not quite dying at least not yet, but almost died last year). I'm trying with all of my might to steady myself for the three months I have have off from work (this starts after 5:00 on Friday) and just let the shit roll and me slide side car through it all--with a grin on my face when capable of it.

life is so full

2009-07-11T06:58:00.000-07:00

life is so full.

goodness, green, stress, sweat, muscle pain, fatigue, happiness, heartache, sore hands, hard dreams, escape dreams, chewing and swallowing, speaking to one another, crying, smiles forming everlasting creases on the surfaces of human skin, not knowing, knowing too much, wishing for more, yearning for less, wondering, being mean, being kind, patterns, persistence, the calm before the wind comes blowing hard and fast, the calm after the rain leaves dents in the soil, burning in the gut, watching the birds, learning to love always, listening to the sadness, vegetables, animals, bees flying dances of fertility all around the yard, berries, drying the clothes that keep us sheltered from the elements of wind, rain, and fire, calf muscles pulsing as pedals push, enjoying friendship and family, food and drink, dancing on the porch, laughter.

knowing our ever empty wombs are right and that in spite of no children our lives are full and good and sad and lovely and all of it.

below are pictures from the last many weeks.
life is so full.

blackberries--many bushes live and give in our yard

my new beehive in the back of our perennial garden

pie made by A from the blackberries and mulberries in our yard

K hanging clothes on the new clothesline that A and me (and my pops did help with drilling the eye screws) built and put in while k was in scandanavia

a beautiful turnip from one of my vegetable gardens

the turnips cooked in butter in salad with feta and walnuts

garden flowers

trey and me after the ypsilanti fourth of july parade that we rode our bikes in

work, the body, the soul (June 25)

2009-06-26T06:31:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here loving a respite from the humid heat that’s been hanging like a milk soaked sponge over our heads for the last day and a half. A late afternoon thunderstorm emerged out of the humidity and pressure; dousing the 93 degree 97% humidity day with nickel size raindrops and ripping cracks of thunder that boomed lead heavy into my ribcage as I pedaled with all my might up the hill that emerges from the Huron river valley.

The rain was hot on my shoulders, but the wind chilled the wetness and sent the gladness of cool over my sweaty skin. The temperature reminded me of how present I am in the always recognizing the physicality of my own body.

Lately, I’ve really been contemplating work. The action of moving our bodies as human beings and gaining something in return—that which must be done to stay alive—work is in essence all about our survival. I am not talking about paid work. I am not talking about our jobs as the tool for survival. I think paid work (and this is stating it simply—but the idea that we make money in order to buy the things we need to survive is what the root really is) is one of the roots to all of our current woes—violence, addiction, “economic hardship”, starvation, lack of community, homelessness, individualism, the existence of the nuclear family sand the extended family, to name a few.

I’m a big Wendell Berry fan. I like his frankness and willingness to call things as he sees them even if sometimes some of his ideas might be twinged with a dose of didactic, white heterosexual man syndrome that makes me cough. I think overall he is a reasonable and very important thinker.

So, I was reading The Body and the Earth from the Unsettling of America a while back and I wept over a couple of paragraphs. I mean really cried. Of course, I had just had my wisdom teeth out. But I was numbed in the mouth, and so my tears came because of the substance behind the text. There is this whole section of the chapter where Berry is arguing that working with the earth has been conceptually turned into drudgery through the disconnection of body and soul imposed upon us by modern urban-industrial society (of course this is my simplistic weaving together of many of his much more complicated points).

The paragraphs talk about the evolution of the “hatred of bodily labor.” Berry states, “ Perhaps the trouble began when we started using animals disrespectfully: as ‘beasts’—that is, as if they had no more feeling than a machine. Perhaps the destructiveness of our use of machines was prepared in our willingness to abuse animals. That it was never necessary to abuse animals in order to use them is suggested by a passage in The Horse and the Furrow, by George Ewart Evans. He is speaking of how the medieval ox teams were worked by the plow: ‘…the ploughman at the handles, the team of oxen—yoked in pairs or four abreast—and the driver who walked alongside with his goad.” And then he says, ‘It is also worth noting that in the Welsh organization…the counterpart of the driver was termed y geilwad or the caller. He walked backwards in front of the oxen singing to them as they worked. Songs were especially composed to suit the rhythm of the oxen’s work…’”

And then I cried. Because this kind of respect and connection and interdependence in the ways we live on this planet, in the U.S. in particular, is so missing. Some of my finest days are the days full of what some might call drudgery. When K and I work in our yard and grow things together and create and build a life and cook and eat and smile into one another’s eyes and sweat deep puddles of salt, these are the days that sink into my heart and fix themselves like nails of golden memory to my brains.

While I am fortunate enough to have meaningful paid work, it still is not the work of creating a household or a community that I will come home to and build my days with. I think in this striving for constructed leisure that now rules the waking hours of so many people’s existences, we have blemished the goodness that can come from hard, physical labor that is interwoven with our very survival and our seeking of that which is beautiful, creative, and beyond our own understanding.

There is a great documentary out there called Ancient Futures: Learning from the Ladakh that is based on a book “by Helena Norberg-Hodge, has become an international grassroots best seller. Part anthropology, part uncompromising critique, it raises fundamental questions about the whole notion of progress, and serves as a source of inspiration for our own future.”

The documentary gives insight into the traditional Ladakhi people and the ways in which body and soul are still connected in their everyday lives--in their work which is their living and survival. It also demonstrates how the body/ soul dichotomy ideology of the west and the ever growing push, that comes with western ideology, toward automation, individualism, monetary wealth and “leisure” has begun to infiltrate and destroy their culture. Anyhow, I suggest checking it out.

So, what I want is to work with my hands and legs and arms and continue to help build this household and community that I am a part of and to do this well and to have the love and beauty that is grown from the people and the other creatures of this region carried on to the next generation and the next.

As Berry succinctly wraps it up, “It is possible then to believe that there is a kind of work that does not require abuse or misuse, that does not use anything for a substitute for anything else. We are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of the plants, animals and materials, and other people we are working with. Such work is unifying, healing. It brings us home from pride and despair, and places us responsibly within the human estate. It defines us as we are: not too good to work with our bodies, but too good to work poorly or joylessly or selfishly or alone.”

garden dinner

2009-06-22T18:31:00.000-07:00

It sucks that my girl is in Scandinavia, and I am left camera-less because now you can't see my veggie garden thriving nicely next to my driveway or my new beehive quaintly tucked in the perennial bed in the back yard, or my tomato bed at the community garden that is bursting up ever taller and thicker with life.

But I can tell you what A and I had for supper which ended up being just divine. Oh, and byt he way K and I have a new roommate. A moved in with us nearly two weeks ago. A is one of our best friends. We redid our back downstairs room and now she's all set up with a robin egg blue space and gray carpet that K and I laid ourselves one long night.

A is a great roommate and we are so happy she is here with us. We worked hard in the yard this afternoon on something I cannot tell you about, and then I weeded and watered all of the garden beds--home and community--and then I picked four young turnips and four pea pods and a bunch of kale and stir fried all of it with the turnip greens in olive oil, salt, pepper, honey and sharp cheddar cheese. It was really quite tasty--sweet and sharp with a bit of spicy zest and served over whole wheat noodles.

One other big note in my life right now. In approximately 3.5 weeks I will begin a two week unpaid furlough from work and then when that is over I will begin a 3 month sabbatical from work. I cannot wait--I need a breather; a big, deep break.

On August 8, I will begin the Midwest Permaculture course in Columbiaville, MI
I'm using some of my tax return to pay for the sort of very expensive course, but I will be certified in Permaculture design when done!

Tomorrow for dinner I will munch a bunch of lettuce from the garden and wait patiently for Sunday to arrive so I can see my kk again and have my camera back.

Lonesome

2009-06-16T19:16:00.000-07:00

Sleepy. should be my middle name. I am sleepy.

My baby kk is in Sweden with her aunt (it was supposed to be her 30th birthday present from her aunt but life-or trying to make a new life-and death-the death of k's uncle) got in the way, and so it took 4 and a half years past her 30th birthday for it to happen.

I am in the upper peninsula of michigan in a comfort inn after giving 4 workshops in 3 different prisons up here. We have 5 more workshops to go and 3 other prisons to hit over the next 2 days. Did I forget to mention that prisons are one of the major forms of employment up here in the Yoop?

So I have lonesomeness imprinting itself on the fabric of my moods these last few days. I am lonesome for my kk; I am lonesome for my house and my gardens; I feel lonesome for the men I am seeing in these prisons who have been removed from their communities and brought to a land that is so white and so foreign and so hard for so many of them.

Every time I leave a prison a little bit of emptiness hollows out a corner for itself in the soft, fleshy parts of my heart. Being behind those caged fences and thick doored walls brings up all kinds of feelings for me about our nasty american history and the ways in which we hurt one another and fail so miserably at taking care of one another.

However, I did see two sandhill cranes on the way to the prison and their strong brown necks brought me a moment of treasured contentment.

All of this lonesomeness, makes me yearn to create even more community and to really think about what i want to do with the rest of my life. I want to grow things and build my household. i want to work for justice by making the world around me more livable and healthy and compassionate. i'm not sure i can stare the raw suffering of so many people in the face for much longer.

with that said, i am looking forward to going home and visiting with my new bees. yes, i have a hive. my neighborhood friend gave me one. it is full up with live, humming, little pollinators. i think that bees are probably never really all that lonely.