Acadia · La · Gitana

i spent the summer feeling lonely for everywhere except where i was then i traveled all winter, and grew through pain and pleasure and a re-acquaintance with the real world.
today i was talking to my partner on the phone telling how i misses him and he said, you have a home waiting here for you
and its true
i can't remember the last time i really felt that was true
i have a home
what am i doing still wondering about
i have a list of projects for the summer (which are all small steps to taking over the world of course) that i am itching to get to
i have a home
a real home where i belong
maybe the storytellers are right and a quest is the surest way home

i may no longer be a gypsy
i am turning into a farmer

wish me luck

every time i post i am embarassed by what i wrote last time, maybe that is why i don't keep a real journal anymore
well i left New York a while ago and had a sweet trip to the midwest visiting a lot rad and inspiring people, I love meeting old radicals who are still fighting, their projects tend to be much more long sighted and thought out, which is the kind of thing i am into, anyway now i am helping out my family in midwest for a while but i will soon be going south. I am looking at bus tickets? i don't know what has happened to me but i think i have grown more timid, its like the more i build good stuff in my life the less i am willing to take risks, i am trying to keep myself from going overboard with this but i have people and plans to live for like i never did before.

I have gotten a lot of rain recently and my first little seedlings are popping up, it is like a little miracle i have been holding my breath since i put the seeds in the ground. As for my compost... it is so hot!!!

i just listened to a podcast This American Life, Turncoats, (if i knew how to put it here i would)
the main portion of it was about Brandon Darby, and FBI informant who put 2 radicals behind bars in relation to the RNC. I got to see him in trial and i think i got a lot more info in this radio program than either lawyer got out of him, but i still think he is a sleaze who deserves to loose his spleen (the spleen is a vital part of the lymph system which filters out toxins and nasties) . Its not a black and white thing radical or sellout, our movement will only progress if people stay involved and communicate openly, and if we listen to each other, a revolution is a work in progress, our society is a work in progress, spying for the FBI that doesn't help anybody progress except the systems of deceit which first turned him to the left.

open dialog on all sides everyday would get this country a lot further than just letting your voice be herd once every four years and working through lies, lobbies and bribes (by those who can) every other time

speeking of communication, I am really bad at this screen tech. thing so post comments, don't send messages

or if you really want to be on my good side call or write a letter.

Mother's Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their
sons. Here is the original Mother's Day Proclamation from 1870

......................................

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking
with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be
taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach
them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another
country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From
the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance
of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons
of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a
great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women,
to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the
means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each
bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a
general congress of women without limit of nationality may be
appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at
the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the
alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement
of international questions, the great and general interests of
peace.

Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870

we can all do something to encourage peace, its not just about marching, and speaking out when you see injustice, it is about creating communities of understanding and mutual aid. There are a million ways to act, lets brainstorm and come together to do what we feel most appropriate for our situations, feel free to call or write me, i too need to think of how to spread more peace in this world. (trust me i need to not hide here in the woods, tempting as it may be)

Human Rights are the rights and freedoms which extend to all humanity so when they are violated it is degrading and injurious to all of humanity (even you and me) Furthermore if I allow these systems of inequality to use power for inflicting atrocities on some so that others may bathe in privilege than i too become a perpetrator; basking in a privilege tainted with the suffering of others, degrading and disrespecting myself as i passively degrade and disrespect others. However if i live consciously seeking to understand the worlds interconnections and work towards justice (speaking out for someone being harassed, helping those in need in the way they want to be helped, sharing knowledge freely, supporting my community in the strive for sustainability, exercising my freedom of speech without fear, fighting neoliberal colonization etc.) than i become a healer and creator, and what are mothers but creators, healers and protectors. So let us be good mothers unto each other. Let us destroy the false constructs of power which have not but; created disparities of wealth and rights, war and human degradation. Let us create communities of respect and allow others to do the same the world over. What do you need how can i help you? Let us talk, share, understand, and act together. We must act, for what other purpus do we have hands.

I love you mom, and i thank you for supporting me and not controlling me, i can't tell you how much that means to me.
for all the other women who gave me mothering kindness you can't know how it has helped me along my way.

o i haven't touched the computer in several weeks maybe even months, i have finally had an experience worthy of telling you all

background: i am starting a huge garden (695 ft for veggies maybe 40 for the herb bed) all by myself, ok ok so spike comes up on the weekends when he can afford it.
anyway I am in a valley in the Catskills, oh what i wouldn't give for some wisconsin dirt, the first bed i dug was nothing but rocks, rocks, foundation pillars, glass, rust, and clay, oh and rocks.

Spike came up last weekend and scoffed at the pillars i had unearthed and brought out the sledge hammer. When i left this work up to him, explaining that i could barely lift a sledge hammer, he accused me of gendering myself (limiting my actions based on my gender role) and handed it over with good instructions and encouragement, working tag team style we dispatched of the three pillars I had almost written off as objects to work around, we worked well all weekend and made some progress but i still let him do most of the heavy lifting (he has twice my muscle mass after all).

he went back to the city and i am again working alone, and today i came across two enormous rocks lodged in that zone almost deep enough to ignore, except when i think of beets with their roots that just go down and down feeding that delicious orb near the surface, anyway i couldn't just let them be. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon picking and digging around them, totally unable to get a good pull on either, i was starting to feel defeated when the 6 o'clock siren went off (you know your in the country when their is a lunch and dinner siren so the farmers don't need watches) so i went in and ate wolfishly (i had been up and working for 7 hours all ready if you don't count house work, soil tests, and other little errands). finally i push back my chair, put on my boots and head back to the field, there is no way i am ending this day with those rocks still in the ground.

like magic within 20 minutes i have the pic ax under one and soon the pry bar and it is coming, coming, ohh and it will come no further, the earth is sliding in all around the base so i still have not seen the other end of the thick ellipse. i get down in the hole and push, not even a budge, i go back to the pic ax, the pry bar, no use. "well" i say to the earth "you may be all powerful, but i still have tools"
i grabbed the sledge hammer
bang bang bang crack
bang bang bang crack
bang bang bang crack
till i carted away the rubble leaving a crater that would soon be filled with nutriment for my precious beets. then i saw the other rock which had thwarted me that afternoon, and as the sun set their was no stopping me.

may every women hold a sledge hammer some day,
because i feel ready to smash the balls of every scum bag who ever
took a tool away from my in amusement or impatience
or dared to be aroused by my "weakness" and "cute inexperience".

If you have a story of total empowerment or gender bending (acting outside your assigned gender role, boy or girl) i would love to hear it, please post it here.

i have been having a lovely time traveling the west coast. from old friends with backyard farms in berkeley to protest in oakland and finally i am cooling my heals in a beautiful community farm near a redwood forest in northern california, as i sit in the kitchen eating breakfast that came from farm produce and dumpstered goods listening to birds and public radio, and the prairie home companion of the day is from Appleton WI
Appleton, i thought i had left you behind, as i tell people the back story of what is coming to us over the airwaves i am filled with a kind of pretentious attitude about the liberals and the intellectuals but as i move to the front porch to sit in the sun and really think about appleton i realize what a good place it would be for a small radical community: bike co-ops, community gardens, free schools, squatting, gray water systems, public outreach, and i know there are a few great dumpsters, it would be amazing maybe we could get the liberals to take the next step in their consciousness, take action on all the things they payed thousands of dollars to learn. it could be beautiful, but i have a farm to start so it won't be done by me, and isn't that the real problem we all export our energy instead of focusing and changing the communities we know best.

don't worry your all welcome to visit my farm i'll be stating out east,
cuz i aint commin' back

I am sitting here in St. Paul in an appartment filled with strangers or rather the ghosts of strangers as they are all working or sleeping or participating in other normal activities and i am reading Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, page 151. i just keep thinking of an experience i had a few years ago at ocean beach in san francisco. It was the middle of the night sitting with friends around a campfire and the mist was coming in but the tide was going out leaving shallow pools as far as we could see into the fog, the only indication of the ocean was the ghost sound of a barefoot nature poet*. We began our march to the see and discussed the magical combination of water, soil, and sun which tends to create little green things that transform "death" into life and thus feed the world. As we walk into the sea, we stop and stare out into the foggy darkness, waiting for the dawn. clutching eachother hopping, for life to begin again.
when we meet again let us walk to the waters together.


*Sonnet
The sea is
an old nature poet
who dies of a
heart attack in a
public latrine.
His ghost still
haunts the urinals.
At night he can
be heard walking
around barefooted
in the dark.
Somebody stole
his shoes.

Richard Brautigan of course