how now free-range cows

Not the greatest picture of me, I know - I'm just trying to get a bit more visual with my blog every once in a while. If it looks like I'm trying to take a picture of myself while squinting into the sun at the highest point east of the Mississippi (6650-ish feet, in the Blue Ridge Mountains in western N. Carolina) after just running two miles up the steep trail to get there, well, there's a reason for that.

It's beautiful there, full of lush, green forests with lots of moisture in the air and on the ground in the form of countless springs and creeks running every which way. To the east the Blue Ridge mountains roll down into the piedmont area of N. Carlina, and to the west is the Tennessee border, with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park stradding both sides of that border. Life is old here, older than the trees...

I came to North Carolina to visit Earthaven - an ecovillage with about 50 members situated perhaps 40 miles east of Asheville (Asheville being the westernmost center of civilization in the state -Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, and all the others are central and eastern). I spent a three day weekend there, talking with the good folks who are tending the earth and their lives on the 325 acre sight. That site is arranged into small neighborhoods with names like the Hut Hamlet and Village Terrace, where clusters of houses share things such as composting toilets, electrical infrastructure, and water sources.

They focus their lives and work on the principle that they and many others refer to as sustainability - living with an aim to keep our demands on the ecosystems low in terms of energy and resource. Their manifestations of this work include keeping the whole ecovillage off the grid for power. They produce their own electricity from photovoltaic solar panels and a small hydrolectric turbine that is spring fed and produces about 1 kilowatt consistently, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. They are just beginning to clear some small areas for farmland so that they can grow more of their food and be more self-reliant than they are now.

So that's the physical description of the place. What is the feel of it? Really bright, technologically capable hippies tinkering with everything from experimental building to wood gas engines. When I first arrived I was greeted by two naked children heading to the sauna and then the bath, who politely informed of the location where I could find someone to help me register as a guest. The houses are stuck right in amongst trees and gardens. I bathed all three days sans soap in the creek there (so cold, butt pastoral nonetheless...). On a given evening some folks might gather to watch movies about the Dalai Llama or media coverage of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They require that all new houses built there are very energy efficient with passive solar situating. There is a natural medicine/herb business that is just beginning to flourish on site. They have composting toilets. I think you get the picture. It's a great place, worth a visit and certainly some thought. If you're nearby, call ahead and then check it out. www.earthaven.org

I took the train home from North Carolina up to Philadelhia on Tuesday. I spent that evening at my friend Sam's house, recovering from the long trip up from Durham where I sat next to the skinniest woman I have seen in a long time, from Long Island (don't forget to pronounce the 'g'), who was a very nice grandmother complete with a large ziploc full of sugar-free candies left over from her visit with the grandkids. She was peddling them like a pusher in the ghetto, forcing them on me as I glanced peripherally a the Indian gentleman in a suit who was visibly tense, apparently from being seated amongst mostly black folks headed north on the train. In case you're missing it in life, Amtrak always keeps it real... anyhow, back to the journey.

I decided to bike up from Philly to my hometown of Bethlehem, and it was a fine day for it. I cruised along through a mix of farm country, tract homes, and giant corporate parks housing drug companies and defense contractors. The weather was sweet - after a hot, humid time in Durham, the high was less than 80 degrees with overcast skies. A cool mist would fall from the sky every twenty minutes for so, keeping me just damp enough that I swear I felt an autumn chill in the air. Next thing I know, I've landed in meat-packing land somehow. It's not gritty urban industrial, but rather large slaughterhouses and packing mills placed right along the rural roads among the green fields. On one stretch of road, I'm suddenly right next to a beef packing plant. I mean I can reach out and touch the hedges which abut the pens where the animals are kept while they're still pets, not yet patties. There are juniper bushes to block drivers from being able to see in, but you can see the top of the screens above them and hear the cows mooing and shuffling around. And the smell - I can't tell you exactly what it was like, but it was bizarre and thick in the morning air. It was something probably like a paving crew working next to a McDonalds while someone fixed a gas leak across the street. To boot, there are these three Mexican guys trimming the hedge to keep it neat and boxed, working slowly down the building. The look at me like I just stepped off the train or something, as I'm decked out in spandex, all wet with the misty rain, and straining my neck a bit out of morbid curiosity to look into the animal pens for a glimpse of the action. I smiled, they gaped, the juniper bushes gave off a delightful scent that battled with the mystery meat, and I rode off into the gathering clouds. I felt like a stranger in a strange land, full of factory farmed meat, people making weapons of mass destruction, little bottles of soma, migrants thousands of miles from their home, and lots of other crazy things. But it faded in the back of my mind as I headed onwards, thinking of lunch and friends and getting the wet spandex off me as soon as possible.

Take some time this week, especially on the east coast, and take a walk in the rain, help out a local recently arrived immigrant, and consider vegetarianism. Share all these with a loved one, live a little more lightly on the earth together. I could hear the cows telling me across the hedge that these were their last requests...

Deep South trance

I finally made it to the South, more specifically to eastern North Carolina, town of Durham. It's a beautiful place, full of the feeling of the South as well as Duke University. Went to a minor league baseball game, featuring the Durham Bulls, and had a great time eating french fries and shouting encouragement to some players who looked like they were trying hard even though few people in the crowd knew their names or anything about them. I felt very at peace, caught up in the slower pace of life here and enjoying a hometown sport as a Yankee visitor.

I wandered around the Duke University campus while my host did a few tasks at her new graduate student office. It's a nice place, with big stone buildings built from old tobacco money in the 1930's. They have a huge collection of gardens, very manicured and expansive by my standards. I wandered past magnolias, pines, hyacinths, beech trees, some pin oaks, and flowers whose name I'll never know.

I moseyed into the "Asiatic Aboretum" which was an odd and pretty mix of Asian trees and shrubs as well as some palm trees and native North Carolinian plants. The feel of Asia was greatly enhanced by the simple gates with the Chinese style roofs that you pass under as you enter. I thought it was a nice gesture that they have this corner of the gardens. But I found a moment of true serenity when I came across a secluded peace garden, with a small Japanese style hut at the edge of a pond with a bamboo-edged bridge crossing it. I sat on the minimalist wooden benches and took it all in - the pale green water, the soft gray gravel path, the sparse bushes along the banks, the delicate fingers of a few Japanese maples.

The plaque there said that it was a Garden for Peace, so that the world may find peace through the beauty of such places. I certainly found peace - the serenity of this place in the middle of my summer journeys touched me deeply. I felt the possibility for peace if people can come together in beautiful places and share quiet moments together, where we cease some of endless chatter (like blogging :-) and rationalizations about our lives, where we can reflect in the stillness, where we don't have to fear the abyss that Nietzsche said would stare back, where we can ponder our possible situation in the universe, where we can be grateful to be together with friends and loved ones, where we can hold hands and appreciate the simple beauty of each other. Keeping it simple, keeping it simple...

that old journey of a thousand miles

Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong time, or the wrong place, or some combination of those two. I just feel out of sync with the culture I see around me. Why do I think that?

I feel like in our modern American culture, we rarely value leading life at a slower, less frenetic pace in order to reflect on what we really want in life. Sometimes I think I'm crazy because I like the idea of a 34 hour work week like in Italy or Norway, with 4 or more weeks of vacation every year. If you read The Economist each week (don't worry, I just browse it every once in a while so I can throw stones), you'd think that any group of people or culture that isn't willing to work more hours at more unpleasant tasks to outcompete others is going straight to hell in a handbasket. What would we do without constant competition? We'd lose innovation and efficiency, and some other than the fittest will survive. Can you believe it? I think I'll be okay with a little less innovation and efficiency if we also don't make poor people work more jobs and more hours while they get fewer real dollars, increasingly inadequate healthcare, and a huge debt burden facilitated by a consumer-driven culture and extractive (predatory) lending. Whew! Had to get that off my chest - it seems to bubble to the surface in me every few months, and I don't like the anger any more than you do. So...

I'm looking to create a life where I value time, a relaxed pace, plenty of activity that allows me to reflect, loving freely (different than free love :-), inner peace, and significant amounts of built-in free time in my life ('cause you all know that it fills up even if you create it, and if you don't you end up really behind). If you a lot of these things in your neighborhood, let me know and I'll come buy property there with you. If not, how can we create them? I know that they exist in all of us, and I know that we are all trying. I'm less interested in bashing the world than I am in saying that I've been watching more TV and print media in the past week, and honestly it's freaking me out a bit :-) I think I need to cut back.

I'll offer up a secret dream of mine - to be a reference librarian in a small town somewhere in quiet state or province. Who knows what the reality will be, but I imagine it to be very satisfying - really set hours (no overtime self-sacrifice), helping people find information they want, quiet work environment, I could read whenever work was slow, and probably keep my blood pressure down my whole life. In reality it might be dull, but maybe some day I'll give it a try. Oh, and I really want pleasant coworkers for lively, intelligent conversation throughout the day.

I don't know what to do with this desire for a quiet, slow-paced life. Where can I find it? Who else wants it? Sometimes I'm afraid that I'll never get it, or I'll get it at the cost of being close to friends who are leading more fast-paced, very full lives. Perhaps I should stop yakking about it and try it out. That seems to work well for most things that I sit around being neurotic about - so if I can muster up the courage, it'll be a great experiment of my life.

Signing off on a cloudy day, warm and humid and full of possibilities. Thinking of you all...

"All actual life is encounter." - Martin Buber

finally a picture

So what's it all about? Steel? Wood? Glass? Stone? Screws or nails? These are the big questions. This is me and my steel house in early June. Loved it!

robust august loosened and tousled

The Blue Dress for Weddings

feel me crumble
disheveled, poised to reinvent
just like yesterday,
can you forgive my previous
failed attempts?

I'll always keep coming back
to you
and all the swirling overload,
I'll plow in spite of rocks
and plant in spite of drought
laugh in spite of pain
and dance in spite
of silence -
eventually if we
(that's you and I)
press forward
but remembering to
sometimes not press,

well then
we'll get back to harmony.
It'll be nice
to discover it in our lives

rather than expire
this present form
without a sense
and then return to it anyway
like we always will

Build us of strong brick
laid by thoughtful hands,

spice us with blind
loving, dextrous
kitchen goddesses

slake us with hurricanes
humid mornings
and the first raindrops
in a hot afternoon garden

move our spirits
like a feverish dervish
and a child playing
by the river
singing to herself as she
perches
on the rocks

illuminate our paths
like sparkling all-knowing satellites
and divining rods
and tattered salty familiar maps
and tea leaves,
thoughtfully read before
dumped on the ancient garden

bass and treble
comingle and fade,
no more yin and yang
as the child has smoothed the
colors
with his tiny finger
and created
something bigger than us

pulling the curtains
wide, sunset pours in as I
rub your tired, warm feet

love's recovery

I saw it in bits and pieces, felt it in the breeze on a surprisingly cool August evening, saw it in the stars that came out to speckle the rural sky, tasted it in the sweet bites of mild chocolate cookies, heard it in the creak of the stairs in a loved and lived-in old house, felt it in the spaces in-between. I felt moments of faith, uncritical and unfiltered, allowing my own senses to quiet and to get gently washed away like rocks etched and loved by the surf. I felt faith in everyone around me doing the best that we can - I felt love between two dear friends getting married in the sunshine of a sweet grassy field and garden, I could almost taste the connection with the earth in the farms of the countryside, I felt the warmth of a life spent caring for each other as I danced with a great love in the fading evening.

So often I see something happening in the world around me, and my mind fills right away with too much criticism. I see a wedding and think of the statistics of failed marriages. I see a homestead out in the country and I think of all the resources it takes to live out there. I see city blocks aglow in the charge of an impending thunderstorm, but think of the ecological footprint of the city. It's been nice to let go of those immediate reactions and instead embrace the moment first, let myself be carried away. Listening to the ferries clanging on the Hudson river as I walk the Manhattan shoreline, smelling the pesto and sizzling cayenne on fresh vegetables at the sidewalk cafe, savoring the ice cream from a tiny parlor at a crossroads town, wrestling with a friend 'til we collapse in laughter and sweat and crumbled angst washed away in the draft from the window. The judgement is still there if I want it, right behind the door waiting to come in. And it is still quite useful in discerning many things about myself and this crazy world. But it feels so good to let it go a bit...

Sometimes this summer I've felt like I'm meeting life again in a new way, changing my filters and shaking up my own prejudices, judgements, and defenses. It feels beautiful! I haven't yet discovered a strong sense of direction from these experiences, but they are sweet and lull me to sleep through the August nights as we roll on towards autumn.


"And did you get what
you wanted from this life even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth."

- Raymond Carver



Whoever is reading this, I miss you and wish you well.

Old Mrs. Worthington in the red brick house

I see lists on posters and bookmarks in the houses of some of my more sweet, granola friends up here in Toronto: How to Create Community. The lists are long and full of good things-

Turn off the T.V.
Go outside
Volunteer at the local library
Throw a block party
Vote
Listen to your elders
Ride your bike
Take back the night
Barter for your food
Start a compost pile

I like all these things and many more. What are we trying to get at? There are so many things that seem to go hand-in-hand with a vibrant, local community. Small stores run by people we know, access to local foods, bakeries that we like to sit in while sharing coffee with friends, bike paths that get us all around town, not needing to lock our doors at night, spending less money to meet our needs...

What do we feel less good about? What is slowly or quickly moving across America and the world and replacing these things? Divided highways that our children can't cross safely, Wal-mart, homogenized big-box stores, fast food from far away places, drug addiction on the streets and in our homes, car-dependent lifestyles, more noise and fewer quiet nights with crickets, subdivisions without sidewalks...

I'm sitting in a small-town library, full of books and wam indirect lighting. There is a bank of computers with high-speed internet access, but there is a pleasant librarian who seems to know many of the patrons by name. There is a wooden floor that creaks a bit. There is a quilt on the wall made locally. There are flyers for the big Ontario fiddling festival in town next weekend. There are plaques that give credit to Shelburne Rotary Club or the Royal Canadian Legion for their sponsorship of renovations. There is a feeling of integration.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but I like these feelings of local communities. I want to create them in my own life and share them with everyone else. I want to sit on the porch when I'm 87, sipping lemonade and smiling at the families headed down to the park. I want to take care of others and be taken of, too. I want to fish in the creek and maybe even drink the water. I want to be able to compare this year's string bean crop with last year's, and the year before that, and the year before that, and...

Somedays I'm just dreaming, not knowing where I'm going but glad for the hundreds of hands and hearts of my friends who keep me from going too far astray. I carry a collection of pictures in mind of the place I'm headed, even though I've never been there before. They vanish as I approach, too, but I can grind up the clay and make new pots, or sew new clothes from the remnants of old cloth. It's enough to keep me going. Where is your future headed? Your life is a beautiful painting (mine happens to be an impressionist, pointalist view of the river like a 19th century French countryside). What will you paint next?

keeping the peace

Hot, humid weather broke this morning. I woke up to a sweet breeze coming in the windows of the cabin and the sound of the rushing, cold creek at the back edge of the property. The rain fell solidly for an hour, keeping the heat from being able to get a hold on today. Ate a fresh, local peach from Ontario for breakfast, thinking about sweet summer foods and feeling connected to the land. Sweet corn, peaches, lettuce, wild blueberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchinis of unusual size. Later on they'll be apples and pears and pumpkins, too. It's a nice feeling to be close to the fruits of the earth.

Yesterday I had a great day, remembering that I am only 28 years old. So young, and so priveleged to have done so many things with my life already. I sat with my feet in the water and listened to the sounds of rich life all around me. I've got good friends, good experiences, a loving family, and I finally got a compass (for $4.99 before heading out to the wilderness in a canoe). It's a good start - I hope I will remember this feeling of calm in the years and decades ahead...