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...

smell of tomatoes on the vine, in the sun, can you stand it?

Swimming naked in lakes... watching sunsets fade slowly over cornfields... music festivals filling my head with what will be deep fond memories... running along the river, racing it to sea but losing each time that I have to turn back home.

I rediscovered some of my own soul, listening to the sweet sound of gospel knock on the door of my own ideas about what I like and don't like, then kicking it down like a blast of cool wind and rain that just tore across a desert. Guitars and drums thumping, compelling beyond strumming and inviting the gently rowdy crowd to their feet. I clap and sway, the old man with the beard wailing on the mandolin, the deep voice ringing cosmically true from the black man in small black glasses, the country girl on guitar closed her eyes so she can't rightly open them but she sways with something, you can see the hand of someone moving inside them, fingers wiggling behind the eyes and pushing lightly on their backs in time with the unstoppable maple sap they just tapped...

I got to drive a tractor across some farm fields. A big one, hard to shift but with surprisingly responsive steering. So much fun! Then I ground some spelt (similar to wheat, but with less gluten so wheat-sensitive people can more often eat it) berries into flour by hand which was great. Planning to bake with it soon. Banana bread...

I made some pottery on a wheel with a great teacher who let me screw up only a bit but left me feeling like I did it all myself. That was divine, feeling the soft clay turn in my hands, feeling the centrifugal and centripetal forces, getting in touch with the rotation that makes up all of us down to our atoms and apples, watching evolution unfold as my stationary fingers meet the smooth rotating surface to etch new possibilities and ancient patters to old to be trite. Creating useful things...hmmm... that's certainly part of my calling... tangible objects crafted with only patience and an unimagined future that will last as long as people love well-made things.

Loving the place, loving the people, working on loving myself and learning to wait...

so that's where I left it...

With much regret I must announce that after spending two weeks in the wilderness of mid-northern Ontario, I was neither transformed into Henry David Thoreau (as I had previously hoped I might be) nor did I fully let go of existence and discover my true Buddha nature (which would have been a decent showing on my part, I think, as well). I did however get to stand about 30 feet from a truly wild moose and her calf, watching them watch me while they nibbled on some tender lily stalks in a marshy offshoot of a lake. We shared a moment together, accompanied by the occasional slap of a beaver tail in the smooth dark water nearby. It was a lovely few minutes before dinner, as the sun was setting behind the mountains and water dribbled off both their long, stringy beards into the lake.

I came to the lakes to hear myself and the sounds of nature. Perhaps I came to live deliberately, to taste the marrow of life and see if I know it already.

I heard much silence, and I saw much beauty. I saw patience, and felt the cradling of water. I heard myself slowly letting go of some attachment. I heard the loons' hollow, serene and haunting cries in the evening. I saw sunsets that couldn't be anything but beautiful. I felt a world that is fine without people, and mildly tolerant of us during our species' sojourn searching for meaning.

Again I feel a common thread that runs through us and our ecosystems, the air we breathe and the living water we drink, the views we cherish out our windows and the homeless sleeping on tired, dirty pavement, chainsaws and beavers' teeth, love and frenetic action, wood and plastic, electric lights and teakettles on cast-iron stoves. The thread is elusive yet perceptible, fleeting if we stare too hard and too long but always tangible at the periphery while we smile on sunny afternoons with friends. It's feng shui de-mystified and Freud when he wasn't neurotic. It's so much that of course we can't grok it all at once, but it's always there in the brushstrokes that make up our memories.

What can we do to cultivate it, shelter it, draw on it, grow it, spread it? Get out, love life - go to Fairmount Park, Prospect Park, Central Park, Golden Gate Park, People's Park, Hanover Park, Exhibition Park, The Mall, Peers Park, or even better the park of your choice. Walk barefoot in the grass, offer a stranger some home-made food, hold hands with friends, do whatever... The whole universe probably started with a giant, homogeneous explosion, is now divided up into usable elements that make up us, and will likely eventually cool to about 4 degrees Kelvin and slowly pull itself back together in a giant, shrinking disk of energy. Remember where we came from in this tiny slice of cosmic time - we evolved over tens and hundreds of thousands of years of just us and the forests, rivers, lakes, and plains. If we feel down in the earth to explore our roots, there are useful things there to remember, if only vague impressions of a time gone by that we may want to feel again sometime in the future.

Have I gone totally granola hippie-dippie? For a little while :-) but I recommend it every now and then - I always feel like I'm onto something bigger than myself...

wilderness reflection from the lakeshore

far from highways
sweet chunks of granite and quartz
split sheer along hillsides and jagged ridges,
cluttering the forest with loose interglacial sparkling love,
beautiful in the patience
of nature.

thundercloud mist
rolls mountaintops savvy,
grays broad-leaf maples
lush raindrops collect

wind bending treetops
birds arise in sudden silent
flock turning in the dark
afternoon wind
the smells of deep pine crowded lakes
are so foreign to city pavement smog,
incomprehensible while
I'm adrift in this golden twilight
burning towards purple.

We must save this, wild
part of ourselves with
ancient roots,
the memory of bone tools
in our rough hands,
the crackle of firewood
and patience of a rhythm
so slow we can hurry nothing.
How can we reverse trends
curve straight lines
let the freeze and thaw
and sensual spring work
on our ossified, cancerous
ideas of controlling
the universe?

How can we return to simple lives,
the patterns that
never went silent but
were drowned by steel mills, internal combustion, photons from screens,
mass-produced drugs, the silencing effect of
lipstick, the hum of chest
freezers?

Paddle me to shore,
steer me in the rich sounds of a bustling lake,
for we're tired and full of love
in our hearts-
some simple food and
emerging stars will tide
me 'til tomorrow
when we both wake
to create our world.

crossroading

Reporting from the country with universal healthcare, a state-protected dairy industry, and lots of thoughtful, kind people...

I'm off to Killarney Provincial Park in about an hour, to canoe with an old friend for two weeks in something resembling wilderness (occasional other campers, hopefully lots of bear and moose, and definitely some silence). I'll be out of touch and out of tech completely until July 24th, so look for more white-knuckle blogging action soon thereafter.

To all those who I hoped to talk with in person before leaving, know that I'm thinking of you, palms together and face raised to the sky in thanks. Life is so good, and you have all been good to me. I'm just working to let it all in, flowing through me while I try to create a good life.

Peace from the east...

home on the range

So I sit and ponder life, munching on some free-range buffalo summer sausage that a wonderful couple down the valley gave us when we stopped by this afternoon. Their ranch is small, about 330 acres, and straddles the river/creek that flows with a ribbon of green down both banks in between desert rock bluffs. It's a sweet little spot amidst high winds and snowy peaks, a little haven for meat and love in the high country.

I'm off on the train tonight, watchin' the wheels all the way to Buffalo NY, from where I will head on two wheels to Guelph, Ontario for my next adventure in the wilderness above the Great Lakes. It's been great here in Jefferson, Colorado, building with friends and learning new things. I will miss it. Some peopel have mentioned the lack of pictures, so I promise to post some as soon as I can.

Life is so good, full of options and produce and hope and green grass and more. If you're following, I'll try to write once more on Friday or Saturday before heading out of contact for two weeks. Until we meet again, on this screen or in person, may you find peace, contentment, and all that you're looking for.

starlight through a working dawn

Small keystrokes softly fill my
dark room,
screen below and spread of
Milky Way above
bending thick and pale across
deepening black sky -
satellites wander to fill it,
beaming our lives full of
distant radio waves
echoing our needs and
wants

But tonight it's windy silence,
sweeping through aspen
silver leaves,
new and delightful like
snow in alpine fields
of green.

Sleepy morning sunrise,
red against distant rainclouds
so close as our mountains
scrape the sky,
I smile rumbling over
dirt roads down to
our house in progress.

Dust clouds float up,
our faithful dog jumps
out of the car,
I slip on my sunglasses
and stretch tired shoulders,
deltoids twitching in
cold bright dawn.

I don't plan to die with a hammer in my hand,
but I know a bit about what John Henry was trying to say.

Sometimes the world is so beautiful it just wells up inside me, and I am overwhelmed by it all. Those days are nice, a counterpoint to the darker ones filled with more doubt and confusion. We can make our lives so good, and create so much satisfaction for ourselves.

don't just peel the onion, get a new cookbook

It was a beautiful day in Jefferson, Colorado today. We arrived down in the valley to continue working on the strawbale house at about 7:15 am, about our usual time. The sun was up and warming the cold night air, and eventually it was warm enough to take off my outer-layer sweatshirt and just work away in my brown, familiar wool sweater. By noon some clouds had filled the sky, and a large black one eventually came to hang over our worksite. The wind picked up, but it never rained fully on us. Beautiful layers of storm clouds passed just south, and we could see them blow across the open plains and over the Continental Divide, dumping rain and obscuring the snow-topped peaks in a steely mist. Lightning bolts sporadically came down on the horizon, cutting cool white lines against the gray and leaving no audible thunder behind. It was a great day to stand on the edge of the roof and look out at intense, dynamic nature and wonder what my place is in the world. It got cold again, so I wrapped up in my sweatshirt and kept on swinging my hammer.

These past few weeks I've really felt like I'm beginning to let layers of my "self" or identity fall away slowly. It's fun to let go of aspects of ourselves that we so strongly identify with - a career, a routine, a habit, an addiction, a worldview, whatever. In doing so, we can listen to ourselves better and hear more in the world around us. We can move beyond thinking that we know, or that we have it all figured out, and approach life with more questions and an open mind.

I think of my stepmother who left a long and developed career as a surgeon to develop a new life performing music, first just on flute and now on a variety of instruments. How scary it must have been to leave an established path (even ones which we don't like) and strike out in a new direction! It is tough to give up a feeling of security that comes with routine, and try brave new things.

This is the same as when we let go of old ideas about who we are. What if we are not an athlete, funny, pleasing, easy-going, or a know-it-all? It's scary to think that we might be ignorant about much of the world around us, or that we really do care about our ecosystem enough to make our footprint on the world lighter. What if we're musically talented and like performing? What if we don't like our job but love teaching? What if our passion is to open an alpaca ranch and apiary in rural Montana? That's some scary stuff :-)

It's fun and terrifying to roll with what emerges in ourselves. I'm trying to roll with not knowing about the future, with not knowing what continues to cause pain in my knee, with really wanting to learn to play guitar, with seriously considering becoming a tai chi teacher, with wondering if I want to live in Palo Alto, or anywhere in the Bay Area, or in California at all. I'm trying to smile as often as I can, and let go of taking myself and my life so seriously.

What are you going to explore today? What do you really want to do before you die, or before you go to bed? Sign up for the pottery class, dig out the sketchbook, dust off the chess set, stay home on a Friday night to read, tell the barrista at your local independent coffee shop that she's cute, cook something you've never tried, give up refined sugar for a week, buy a bike. Tell that person you love them, go ahead... now that's scary, but so good.

Futures in big meadows

Walked the Continental Divide this morning, wrapped in the cold flowing clouds that blew in from the eastern side. Damp, white, and swirling, they obscured the peak we were aspiring to climb, so we rambled up and down the trail at 11,500 feet instead, crossing rocky meadows and playing in the snow. Small flowers like forget-me-nots, Indian paintbrush, and miniature daisies are sprinkled among the scruffy pines. We had our Labrador retriever with us for companionship, and breathed the thin air with delight at being alive.

These days I'm hearing the laughter of children - specifically the sounds of Tan, the son of my friend Peggy, and Kai, Peggy's nephew. Full of robust, knockabout energy, they tumble through life bouncing off things and living large, laughing and crying easily. It's nice to be around them, thinking about where they are and where they're headed. What can we do to make the world a better place for them when they are our age? How can we take care of ourselves and our world so that it is a cleaner, safer, more accessible, more reliable, and more sound place than it is now? How can we take more positive action in our lives and rely less on our own rationalizations for why we do the things we do now?

Right now I'm enjoying the clean air and sunshine, honest work and honest play. Looking forward to more living and learning with friends as my journey continues eastward. Thinking about how to settle down, how to be more patient with myself, what to focus on, what to let go of... Looking forward to seeing you soon.

"I won't be asked to do my share when I'm gone, so I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here..." Ani DiFranco

hearing the wheels

Sat under a large umbrella along an outdoor pedestrian mall in Boulder today, sipping a smoothie and watching life go by. It was relaxing and sweet to see the dark clouds slowly come over the Front Range of the Rockies, rain for perhaps twenty minutes, and then yield to the sun and leave the fresh rain scent behind. Heard the raindrops, the playful chatter of idle teenagers on summer vacation, the sound of cars nearby, bits of conversations, soft thunder, and running water smoothing over the brick. Humid and familiar...

Had a thought last night that perhaps there is no best purpose or use of my life. Perhaps I can just follow what feels good, keep good intentions at heart, and let go of some of my arbitrary standards that I use to judge my life and the lives of others. Judgement is a tough thing to work on for me. We make small judgements and discriminations all the time in our basic preferences of existence, but then we don't want to be judgemental with other people. It's a fun, long learning process of letting go for me. I once dated a girl, who informed me months after we were no longer dating that I was a much better fit for her than past boyfriends except that I was much more judgemental. Whoa! I've been chewing on that one ever since...

I'm off to hear what is offered to me by the world, as suggested by a few friends. May you be having a good day, and doing a thing or two that challenges your usual routines and comfort zones.

swiftly flowing dream of water

Sometimes it's hard to be patient. I'm waiting and listening, listening as hard as I know how to the world around me. I'm listening for answers to all my questions, but mostly what I hear is the wind in the aspen trees whispering in a language I can't understand in words. I want to know so many things - how much is enough, where to take a stand in my life, what work is worth doing. I like the idea of doing what I love, but I love so many simple things that I can rarely piece it together into a complete life in my mind.

I listen to the crunch of packed gravel trails under my feet - I ruminate as I walk the uneven brick sidewalks in Philadelphia - I try to clear my mind as I hit the hot pavement in New York Augusts - I try to open my mind biking through the old, tired black neighborhoods of north Oakland. Can you strain the muscles in your ears? It's hard when you don't know what you are listening for. I keep telling myself I'll know it when I hear it. Is it the laughter of the children I miss in Palo Alto? Is it the touch of a lover's hand on my face? Is the scent of trees as I ride through early morning cool air? The patterns are there, repeated in endless ways and in countless themes. I know some things that feel good. Where is my internal compass so that I can navigate all these wonderful things in life and arrive somewhere?

I'm trying to be patient. I feel the rush of the currents around me, swirling over rocks and splashing over weirs and full of salmon hurrying the other way. I feel it when my friends get married, go to grad school, buy houses, and many other things. I love them all dearly - it's just hard when I have yet to feel sure enough about one path to take these steps.

tiny blue flowers
fill alpine meadows, bright clouds
roll over my thoughts.

silver dollar leaves
flutter dark before midnight,
blue sky sinking slow.

Dessicated but grateful

Our silver boxes slid across the landscape with little fanfare, chugging along through mountain passes and valleys from Oakland all the way to Denver. We followed the rivers inland from the sea, until we reached the mountains where the water switches sides and flows to the Atlantic Ocean instead. The train is very quiet inside, so the scenic views do resemble paintings on display in a museum with recycled air.

As we crossed Nevada, I enjoyed looking at the harsh landscape of high desert and mountains. The soil is often white with salt and cracked from the absence of moisture. The hills are covered with loose gravel, sand, and occasional boulders popping up out of the earth. There is almost no shade, as there are no trees either. Occasional remnants of towns lie close to the railroad, marked usually by abandoned piles of scrap metal, forgotten to everyone and viewed only by travelers who will never know their history.

I find Nevada beautiful because it resists us. With no water and no arable soil, we can take root there no better than the basin sage brush which barely holds to the sandy soil and eventually dries up and blows away. Perhaps every 50 miles or so there will be a creek or small river winding through the landscape, and along its banks there may stand a few alder or cottonwoods with pale green leaves looking tired in the sun. The greenery fades to some low grass as you move away from the banks, and within perhaps twenty yards there is only sand again. It gives a nice view to break the stark brown monotony, but there is no hope there under the Nevada sun.

During most of our time passing through Utah, I was pondering the inside of my eyelids. Not much to report there, for sure.

Now I’m in a high valley in Colorado, in a town called Jefferson. Jefferson is a small collection of buildings along a state highway, with thousands of acres of land spread around them. The land is divided into large parcels of 40 acres or more, divided by uninspiring barbed wire strung along small metal posts. Signs prohibit trespassing, but I’m surprised that anyone bothers to walk the fence to put them up. For those of you familiar with the high plains of the west, this is probably a sight you’ve seen before.

Jefferson is nestled right against the Continental Divide, so you can look up from the valley floor at 10,000 ft. and see the surrounding mountains with smears of remaining pure white snow at nearly 14,000 ft. The slopes are covered with aspen, various types of pine, or nothing at all. The sky is large and open (almost as big as Montana), and the clouds are in beautiful, intricate patterns as they blow over the Rockies from the west. The grass waves in the wind, and small creeks cut across the land with bright green reeds all around them. It seems to me a wild, hostile, and often beautiful place, high and dry and far away from the rest of the world.

I reflect on all this scenery as the wind makes another attempt to blow me off the wall I’m working on. I’m trying to attach big 10 inch rafters from the beam of the strawbale house I’m helping construct to the top of the outside wall. If you turn perpendicular to the wind holding one of these 14 foot boards, look out below ‘cause either you or the board is likely to go down. A small saving grace is that the wall is 18 inches wide, exactly the width of the strawbales which we will soon stuff into it. Walking along it is not so bad, and in fact when I’m not carrying something that functions as a sail to lift me off the house, I often pause and gaze out over the valley and mountains and smile out from under my hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses.

As I swing my hammer and help this house to materialize, I find some peace of mind and reflect on life. I’m really enjoying giving my life away in helping a friend to build a high-quality house. I’ve got a comfortable bed to sleep in at night, good food and conversation with some other friends who have come to build, and a dog named Gave that is the Platonic essence of warm canine companionship for all of us who are working. I’m glad that I am here, bundled up to fight the wind and the bright sun, chopping wood and occasionally carrying water. It’s honest work, and I feel honest at the end of the day.

How can we be more grateful more often? If you’re reading this, you’re probably a friend of mine or a friend of a friend (the same thing in my book). This probably means that you’ve gone to college, and perhaps are headed back for more. There’s a decent chance you eat organic food sometimes. You probably try with mixed success like me to get a good night’s sleep. You’ve probably got friends far and near who like to be with you. You live in places like Philadelphia, Berkeley, Austin, Portland, Washington DC, or other cities where the action is at. We all lead full lives, and certainly have plenty of opportunities to enrich them even more.

So what’s life all about? I don’t know at all, but I’m liking the idea of keeping it simple. I’m enjoying building things, helping people talk about difficult questions, volunteering, cooking for friends and new acquaintances, leaving places better than I found them, riding on trains, reading thoughtful books, and plenty of other stuff that I always seem to babble about in these writings (or worse yet when you let me ramble on in person :-). I’m grateful for you, my friends. I’m grateful that I’ve had a chance in life and that I’m trying to make the best of it. Money, security, career, marriage, what movie to rent on Friday night, these are all big questions that are coming, I know. But I’m always glad to be able to focus on the simple, the real, the tangible in front of me, and if it’s not going great today, then I want to make it better tomorrow.

Quote from R.E.M. – “We’re dug in deep, the price is steep, the auctioneer is such a creep…” You can feel that, can’t you? It’s in the world around us. But, we can be different and better. Let’s give our lives away and be loved for it.

Gathering for travels

I'm taking off on my journey tomorrow, eastward bound on the Amtrak train headed for Denver, then Buffalo, then to Guelph, Ontario by bike. I'm looking forward to listening - to the sound of the big diesel engine, the sound of silence in the wilderness above the Great Lakes, the sounds inside my mind as I sit in 10 days of meditation, the sound of the smile of an old friend. I'm not at all sure what I'm listening for, but I'm hoping that I'll know it when I hear it.

Sometimes I just need to take a step back, 'cause I'm too wrapped up in my own life to see straight. I get too invested in an idea, a vision, a visionary, my own worldview, or whatever. Sometimes I'm too ready to divide the world into black and white, all or none, the perfect or the fallen, the Right Path or some Other Path. This summer I'm looking to chill, and remember that it really is only life after all. I want to develop a clearer sense of what I want, and look at my life as a large selection of choices. They are all possibilities, all with infinitely different possible outcomes, all full of love and sadness and learning and failing and succeeding.

The world is a crazy place, rich and swirling and blending and dissolving with climate change, genocide, meditation retreats, fresh fruits in the summer, really fast computers, alienation, blind faith, innocent children, hopeful lovers, technofixes, silent snowy nights, self-help workshops, digital music, dancing, and everything else... What are we meant to do? I just want to be good to other people, good to myself, and good to the next generation of children growing up. How can we help each other?