a long time gone

well it’s been over four months since i’ve posted anything on this blog. in those months, i found myself spending more time deleting spam comment than actually contemplating what i would write about. i dropped off the map - the radar went dead. in a way, i was happy - the blog was a link to something that i’ve been growing increasingly more tired of: technology.

this tiredness is only due to the essence of technology itself. perhaps equally to blame is the fact that i exist in a partially computer dependent workplace.  this is especially so as we move into the colder and wetter winter months when the garden and farm are sleeping.  so i spend my time in my office doing random bits - typically on the computer.  so when i lock the door behind me, i rarely want to sit down and express myself via keyboard.

however, what is more is that i am content doing other things that push writing a post to the bottom of the free time to-do list.  i’ve been jumping head first into reading my permaculture design manual, spending time with ashley, making cakes, working on my truck, scheming a pottery wheel, designing a home climbing wall, actually securing a home (so now you can all come visit), planning a chicken coop, applying for the mendocino master gardener program, making necklaces from found natural objects, planning the gardens, spending time with my most lovely interns, and generally living a personal life that incorporates more “doing” and less “describing.”  i know that a balance is possible - but at the moment i prefer to lean more toward the former than the latter.

so this is my  apology for being less available in any major sense - blog-wise, phone-wise, e-mail-wise, and letter-wise.  i’m making a new effort with the final weeks of the new year.  this will be easy with all my free time that i’ll have in the next two weeks.  i’m at home in noblesville until the 30th, so don’t be a stranger.

until next time (hopefully not another four months)….

motorcycle

well it has been a while since i’ve done something really stupid.  not stupid as in locking keys in the car or putting my foot in my mouth - those are considered regular occurances.  nope, i needed something that my brain couldn’t rationalize at all.  today it learning to ride a motorcycle. 

my friend christina is around to help with some natural building and she rode her motorcycle/dirt bike/whatever it is.  i immediately wanted to ride despite being taught that motorcyles are very, very dangerous and promising that i would never get one one.  i can definatively say that the first statement is true and that i broke the second statement.

the first ride around was simple enough - it was just like a 4-wheeler.  so i rode and felt pretty bad ass.  but then i decided to keep going and immediately went down.  nothing major - some scrapes and bruises for both myself and the bike.  also my left ankle is pretty sore but i can walk so i think it’s fine - maybe a little sprained.  but it was fun.  i got right back on the bike (well christina told me to get back on) and rode around with a good deal more respect for the machine that was between my legs.  i think it was good because i now know that i have very little interest in riding a motorcyle all the time.  they are cool and all, but i think that the pros don’t outweigh the cons.  namely, the cons are that you can easily die at any given time and i have known people who have died in freak accidents that weren’t that serious.  so lesson learned - and i have a cool set of cuts to tell people about!

so here’s something strange…

it seems like everyone that i have been romantically involved with in the past, save one or two people, is married or in the process of getting married.  just this last two weeks, i have found out that two past partners are getting hitched.  i haven’t had that many romances [around six over the last nine years], but of those that i have had four are either engaged or married.  i’m not bummed out or anything like that - they are all amazing women and the fellas they are marrying are certainly just as amazing.  it’s just one of those “getting older” things - people are at that age where getting married make sense.

and i suppose that it’s strange because of where i am right now - namely, being very, very far away from anything close to marriage.  it has been about three and a half years since my last long-long term relationship - one that approached the topic of serious long-term commitment.  a relationship is so foreign to me right now that i can’t truly appreciate someone getting married.  i’ve been focused on my happiness for so long that i have to work at thinking about someone else being part of it for the rest of my life.  not that i’m pessimistic, it’s just very foreign.  i’m definitely at a point where a relationship would be awesome and i feel like i’ve been out riding fences for too long.

it’s funny to think about the people that you love intensely for a time in your life and then lose touch with.  i was doing the dishes several days ago and i thought about all those moments when i was with someone - lying in bed and thinking about how long i would know this person in this context.  it always seemed like it would last forever.  love and romance is really amazing.

letting heart strings grow long

today i found myself doing the backstroke in the pond.  i closed my eyes, felt my body float in the top, warm layer of the water, and watched the light of the setting sun fill my world with light.  i thought about my life.

in a little over a month, i’ll be 25 - a quarter of a century - and, now that i think about it, i’m excited for the next year.  i guess that i’m excited about what all will happen in my life.  there was a time that i didn’t have a whole lot of faith that i was getting to where i needed to be - there are times that i still feel that way.  but mostly, my life has move in the direction of damn-near overwhelming for everything that is to come.  i think about the moment in american beauty (sorry, another movie quote - deal with it) where ricky is talking about the plastic bag video:

“it was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. and this bag was, like, dancing with me. like a little kid begging me to play with it. for fifteen minutes. and that’s the day i knew there was this entire life behind things, and… this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. video’s a poor excuse, i know. but it helps me remember… and i need to remember… sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world i feel like i can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.”

that’s how i feel - like there is so much and my body can barely contain it.  there is so much out there and i can relax about wanting it all right now - it will all come right when it’s suppose to.  this 24th year has been very interesting.  i’ve mostly come to appreciate the randomness and the perfection in life.  i thought about the beginning of my relationships and where they are presently while i felt my toes dip below the thermocline of the pond.  i had no idea that the people  i love (if you’re reading this, most likely this includes you) would be what they are today when i first met them.  there are those that i loved, lost, and learned to love again.  there are those that i’ve always loved.  there are those that i’ve let to learn to love.  then i thought about where it would go from here and smiled as the flowers from the trees along the ponds blew in to the water and floated quietly past me.

blackberries, burning man, south pole frustrations, and sadness

blackberries

yesterday i did something that i haven’t done for a long time.  i walked the railroad tracks.  with each step i remembered how much i love abandoned rail lines and thought about building a handcar again - if only the plans weren’t $75.  besides the presence of beautiful flowers that are slowly breaking down the construction of man and the dry creek bed filled with amazing rocks, the tracks are lined with some of the most thick patches of blackberries.  and they are perfect this time of year.  so as i walked to the pub to read my book, i took about 15 minutes to sit quietly and eat berries until my hands were stained purple and my legs were bleeding from the thorns.  each time i thought i’d found the best berry, i’d see one just a bit further back.  as i felt the thorns cut my leg, i had to weigh how delicious i thought that berry would be versus how much pain i was willing to tolerate.  like i said, my hands were stained purple.

burning man

well, i think i’m going (august 24th/my birthday - september 2nd) for work.  so i get paid but don’t have to do that much.  i’m kind of excited to celebrate my quarter century birthday in the desert with a bunch of strange friends and friendly strangers.  you should come too - it’ll be fun. 

south pole frustrations

so with each day, i’m feeling less interested in going to antarctica.  this is mostly because i really like where i am now.  it truly is a once in a lifetime experience to have this job and live where i live.  antartica (despite the hangups that i’ve mentioned in previous posts) will be hiring the same number of people next year and i’ll be more qualified to do something that i actually enjoy doing/helps me learn.  but my growing disinterest is related to all the bullshit that they make you do in order to go.  peeing in cups, filling out lots of forms, taking online courses on information security, having to drive two hours round trip to do medical check-ups, and just putting up with pushy people.  right now i’m at about 85% sure i’m not going.  i’ll probably end up jumping through hoops so that i can still have the option to leave here when october comes.  but my life is really great right now - i’m very, very happy.  i guess it’s hard to understand if you’re not here. 

sadness

i had a feeling that it was inevitable - tonight i got a call that one of my guys that lived on my floor when i was an r.a. had died.  i’ve been thinking about it a lot.  another guy from the floor called as i was walking the train tracks again tonight (more berries and more reading at the pub) and told me.  we talked for awhile about all the good things we could remember (listening to boys 2 men, the same ratty t-shirt mike wore all the time, etc.) and i thought about people dying.  i realized that it’s only going to become more frequent as we get older - people die and that’s how it is.  i was sad - i still am.  but i realized that not only does the passing of time mean the passing of people, but it also means that you lose all the bad memories that you have of a person.  all i can remember are good things about mike and i hope that i can hang onto that for the rest of my life.  i suppose that is being successful - finding your happiness while leaving positive memories behind.  i thought about the part in waking ned divine where they are having the funeral for ned/michael.  most of it doesn’t apply to the michael i knew - we only knew each other for a couple semesters, but i think it’s still a great part. 

“michael o’sullivan was my great friend. but i don’t ever remember telling him that. the words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead.  what a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral. to sit at the front and hear what was said, maybe say a few things yourself. michael and i grew old together. but at times, when we laughed, we grew young. if he was here now, if he could hear what i say, i’d congratulate him on being a great man, and thank him for being a friend.”

i’m a dangerous driver

this morning i realized that i always want to fall asleep while driving.  it gets quiet in the car, the music is humming quietly, and the lines on the road pass in measured rhythm.  often it’s a struggle to keep from nodding off.  i also think that it’s because i so rarely drive these days and the whole process is about as boring as any process could be to me.  i could be jumping out of the willow tree into the pond or building a soap mold.  but nah, i’m in a car and i’m completely zoned out.  usually i have people that i can talk with about whatever there is to talk about.  but this morning, after waking up all my car mates from our cuddle puddle in the backyard of my friend’s house, everyone was stone silent or sleeping on the ride home.  i had to consciously tell myself not to fall asleep.  we were in sebastopol for a bocce tournament and a all-round evening of merry-making.  i suck at bocce.  we lost in our first tournament game 9-0.  luckily i wasn’t bothered due to some delicious sangria that doron provided. 

so what are my options?  not drive - drink coffee/red bull - drive a bit and then take a nap.  i’ve tried them all.  but maybe the answer is just preparing myself for it to be really boring to drive for several hours.  i dunno, cars are stupid anyway.

wine bottles and my stars

everyday i think of a few things that i try to remember for these increasingly infrequent postings.  like i’ve already said, i don’t hang out with technology a lot these days.  so if i’ve been bad about e-mailing or calling or anything that involves me using something with buttons, i apologize.  here are a few things that i have remembered to write about.

since almost a year ago, i’ve been wanting to have my star charts read.  i can’t really say why - i suppose the best answer is that have good people in my life that have suggested it.  so when i norcal, do as the norcal do.  i had my “reading” done by a friend of a friend - an amazing woman named mary.  first of all, it was super informal.  no dark room with candles and silk curtains draped in dramatic ways.  mary and i just talked on the phone.  i have to say, it was awesome.  we talked about the connection between when and where i was born in relation to the celestial bodies and how that connects with my personality and experiences.  i don’t really want to type it out here - partially because it’s late and partially because i don’t want to dilute it’s meaning.  i suppose i want to say that my expectations were blown out of the water and i would recommend it to everyone.  i suppose that the moon controls the tides of the ocean and the cycles of women, why shouldn’t it and the other planets have profound effect on my trends and personality.  i tried to come into it in search of perspective, rather than in search of something to lean on.  i think that it’s dangerous to take what someone like mary says and run with it as truth.  it just sheds light on what you already knew.

i think the other great highlight recently was bottling wine.  for the last three months, my friend erik has been threating to have us up to his friend’s vineyard to help with some bottling.  i have been stoked since the beginning to do this and yesterday night was the night.  we helped for four hours at Le Vin Organic Mountaintop Vineyard.  last night was the bottling of a 2002 merlot (which means almost nothing to me - it all tastes like alcohol).  but it was a riot.  we jumped right in and all of us took a station.  some put nitrogen into the bottles, others filled the bottles with wine, others (me) put corks in, other applied labels and the foil cap, and finally others packed and loaded finished cases.  there was great music and amazing views from the vineyard.  everything was done by hand and each person had a small job that was critical.  i just thought it was cool that we each touched the bottle along the way and tried to stay focused (i was pretending i was a bootlegger the whole time since we were doing the bottling at night and in a barn way out in the country).  the owners made us really good food and filled our arms with wine as payment.  word on the street is that there is a pinot noir that needs bottling soon and we might be paid in more wine, olive oil, or money.  norcal is pretty fun.

there is heaps more, but i have sleep to catch.  tomorrow is a class all about wind power and i can’t wait!  love you all - i promise i’ll be in touch soon.

technology and i

since i’ve been in california, i’ve really started to lose touch with anything tech.  i hardly ever use my computer.  my camera is packed up more often than not.  i watch no t.v.  i lost my ipod on the train out here and never really cared that it was gone.  i think its because there is so much else that i do on a daily basis and because there are so many people doing so many different things around me.  to sit down and write a post or even an e-mail has become incredibly boring.  this is good in that i could probably get rid of most of my technology tomorrow and be alright.  i’ve been turning my cell phone off for days at a time and not missing it.  it’s bad in a way because i’m more out of touch with the world beyond hopland than ever before.  must achieve balance!

but on the up and up, i finally figured out the problem in communication between my camera and flickr.  for the longest time, i would shoot photos in high resolution but would lose quality when i uploaded them to flickr.  through controlled experiments, i’ve found that iphoto is the problem.  if i put the photos on flickr right off my camera, there are no troubles.  but when i upload to iphoto and then to flickr, it gets all small.  so the plus is that i can address the problem from here and get back to shooting photos.  the downside is that most of my old photos are only on iphoto and can’t be restored to their original bigness.  but i guess i don’t really need big photos for everything.

now it’s off to oakland for the permaculture convergence!  yah whoo!

luna moth

i’m back in indiana for my brother’s wedding.  i’ve been here since tuesday morning and i’ll be here until july 3rd.  so far, it’s been strange.  good - but strange.

i’ve found that i recently have had moments of profound disorientation.  normally i wouldn’t notice these, but i also have recently had moments of profound inspiration and clarity.  it’s hard to know what sparks the former.  sometimes it’s just thinking about it all too much - how much has changed is such a short amount of time - the people that i’ve lost and/or met along the way - the sense of having so much out there but not knowing where any one path will lead.  i suppose life and it’s purpose isn’t meant to be fully grasped by a mind.  it’s somewhat like thinking about the universe - how there is no edge, yet there is also no center.  it is always expanding while deepening it’s connections to itself.  to try to understand these connections and make patterns of them would be futile and maddening.  hence the mantra of living in the moment and seeking happiness in being present.  i’m working on this, but it’s hard.

as for the latter, those sparks are easy to identify  - the way that the mendocino hills look at sunset (with the golden grass holding the sunlight like prisms on the coastal ranges) - the smell of an indiana summer night after a day of rain - the incredible opportunities that i experience each day - the humble appreciation for the simple things, like becoming really good at making my niece laugh hard and for teaching her to say my name - the luna moth that floated like a ghost around the work light tonight as i helped kevin upholster a seat for the wedding.

i’m assuming that these opposite experiences of connection and disconnection are normal.  but it’s certainly hard to have the latter these days of so much change - it makes you question a lot.  but i suppose the benefit is appreciating that we really don’t know anything about the world, about all which it contains, and about our role within it.  this is all most likely dreadfully boring - it was on my mind because i was feeling that disconnect.  but now it’s time for tea and bed.

bees, broken computers, and the south pole

well i got an alternate position in to work at the south pole.  i guess that’s the ideal setup for me right now because i’m not sure what i want to do come october.  a few nights ago, we watched a movie called “why we fight” about war and the development of the military industrial complex.  raytheon - the company that does the south pole jobs - was mentioned specifically as one of the major armament industries behind the wars that we fight.  sure, they make burgers at the south pole, but they also make bombs and are major supporters of the current wars in iraq and afganistan.  they should be - they make money off of them.  so here’s the crux:  i could use raytheon as a means to get down to the south pole and to new zealand.  but they would be using me equally so to do a shitty job for four months and i would be putting energy into a company that thrives to a large part on the destruction of life, violence, and the active perpetuation of war.  my conscious and my ethics say that i should bail on the antarctica things all together.  the other thought is a conversation that i had with my friend benjamin the other day.  we were talking about the state of the world (peak oil, the crash, etc.) and how it throws good people in to a ethical dilema.  in a way, i am opposed to flying these days - or even excessive travel - in that it consumes a massive amount of fuel.  flying to antarctica and the the countries following it would be contributing to a problem that i am working to solve.  on the other hand is the fact that i want to do this travelling and adventure-making, even more so now because i might not have the option for international travel in a post-petroleum world.  so here we are:  selfless or selfish.  on one side i can be part of the solution by not participating and stick around here to learn more about how i can do more to be a force for change, but i have to give up on that adventure.  on the other hand, i can just put my ethics on hold for a bit and travel while i can, even if it pushes that much deeper down the hole of societal crash - not to mention putting off my education for post-crash education a year or two.  right now i’m torn, but i’m leaning for the decline.  i don’t know though.

 and my laptop died.  about a week and two days ago, the harddrive tanked completely.  i took it to the mac guys in santa rosa and they are in the process of putting a bigger hard drive (100GB) and recovering all my non-backed up data.  it’s going to be a pricey fix, but i thought about two things right before i green lighted it.  1.) i don’t know anyone that is here or that i’ll be seeing soon that would be able to salvage all my photos, music, documents, etc.; 2.) i wanted to save my machine if possible because i read an website about what happens to trashed computers.  i could have said fuck it and saved for a newer and cooler macbook pro (esp. since i have a fancy new job and no rent to pay - or anything to pay for that matter).  but i thought that i’d keep one less computer out of a hazardous waste dump.  but i’m paying for it.  hopefully it’ll be worth it.

this post is somewhat of a bummer.  here’s a good thing.  i took a bee keeping class last weekend and it was awesome.  we have a hive here at the center and i’ve been learning to take care of the bees.  i don’t really care about getting honey out of the deal - i just like the process of beekeeping.  and i’ve been trying to plant the garden and farm accordingly.  one of the interns is really into bees as well and we’ve planted buckwheat, which the bees love.  its pretty awesome and important since bee populations have been crashing.  given that nearly all of our fruit and vegetable food is dependent upon bee pollination for existance, i’ve been talking up keeping bees.  you don’t have to eat their honey - you can if you’d like - but it’s more like providing habitat for an endangered species of animal.  with all the shit that we put into the environment - pesticides, herbicides, pollution, etc. - it’s the least we can do to take care for the buggers now and again.