and the weather is sweet
Makes you wanna move
your dancing feet
To the rescue here I am
to the rescue here I stand
-Bob Marley
The sun is setting and the only comfortable spot I can seem to find is inside the greenhouse. It's a balmy 80 degrees in here so I can't complain. Aside from being in the spot where I spent about half of my days last week working, it's the spot to be. Eliot Coleman warns in his book, "New Organic Grower" to be careful about working too much; "You soon get stale and lose the sense of joy and pleasure that made farming seem so desirable in the first place" (49). I don't think I'm gonig to fool myself into thinking I'm working if I'm just merely here reading, writing, and absorbing the setting sun.
It has been a nice weekend with plenty of opportunities to reflect and relax. Though a little lonely the kids and Uma make this bearable until the rest of the interns arrive. It is a little sexually frustrating when the body only gets attention from the prudent scan for ticks, showers, and getting dressed. My dreams tend to save me from turning this frustration into something else, and a daily yoga practice does wonders for balancing the energy flow. I also got the chance to visit with a friend of the farm who taps maple syrup trees in his backyard. We hauled sap for an hour or so and then sat and watched a fire steam off gallons of moisture for the next couple of hours. It helped me work on my 'bullshitting', which I think is a necessary component of life, especially, I've read and experience somewhat, if I want to get into farming.
I have also found company with the voices of Audiobooks. Studs Terkel's "Coming of Age" has brought much wisdom and historical reflection while Zora Neal Hurston's "Every Tongue Got To Confess" colors the mental environment in profound folktale that is sometimes funny and always a tickle to the ear. With the internet, too, I have found smiles in reading, well catching up with all the Yehuda Moon's Kickstand Cyclery comics that I've missed since I started working with Sudan Farm. That commute really took a lot of time and I found it hard to read with any gumption since I was only biking here and there. Once the other interns arrive I may have to sneak off lest I be heard snickering and knitting along to the recorded voice. Perhaps we'll all have crafts that allow some story to be floating along in the background.
Well I haven't written in so long that it seems like you don't know where I'm at. Who cares, somewhere amidst the emerging spring sprouts and bird calls, the frosty mornings and blustery north wind bickering with the southern gale and calm standstill. Is it enough that I'm outside most of the time, happy to know I'm alive, eating real good food to survive? The skin on my face feels that good sunned warmth, my hands rough and dirty underneath the fingernails, breath healthy and in good working order. Eligh and I went with Sitka to Mill Pond and explored for an hour and saw a part of the creek we all haven't seen before. That does something to you, to your spirit, lets you go free, and would be an incredible image to dream. We hope to go camping there sometime and cook freshly caught fish over a fire. I'm at a place that is the farthest from between a rock and a hard place.
[the sound of a birdcall interrupts my focus]
It's incredible what a birdcall will make you do. I just stop and stare, but my ears play with each note and I imagine a part of me trying to imitate and remake each chortle, each tone, matching length with brevity. Here is where lost things come back to you, where the silence in the night will change your mood from the evening before without your permission, and your dreams will be magical, mythical, mystical...I have awoken from these after seeing my lover tell off another who threatened her claim, after seeing my lover abandon me to another while disappearing into the dark wearing loosely adorned flowing grey saaris printed with big black leaves all over. The images and symbolism are baffling, but they are the visuals of my day and I puzzle over their meaning inbetween work.
I take a walk at night and the landscape quivers in the stillness. If you look just right the lights of far off farmsteads look like stars in their distance and you can imagine yourself on the edge of the universe again. The wind blows across the road from the cornfield and all of a sudden I hear what Greg Brown may have been singing about in his song, "Hole in the Sky" The hole sound reaches up into my head as far as my brain will allow it to go. I look for it here and there, from where I think the sound is coming from and all I see is sky, but I know it's there. I hear it and imagine the wind spiraling off into the distance, sucking at the emptiness bordered by rustling corn stalks.
your dancing feet
To the rescue here I am
to the rescue here I stand
The sun is setting and the only comfortable spot I can seem to find is inside the greenhouse. It's a balmy 80 degrees in here so I can't complain. Aside from being in the spot where I spent about half of my days last week working, it's the spot to be. Eliot Coleman warns in his book, "New Organic Grower" to be careful about working too much; "You soon get stale and lose the sense of joy and pleasure that made farming seem so desirable in the first place" (49). I don't think I'm gonig to fool myself into thinking I'm working if I'm just merely here reading, writing, and absorbing the setting sun.
It has been a nice weekend with plenty of opportunities to reflect and relax. Though a little lonely the kids and Uma make this bearable until the rest of the interns arrive. It is a little sexually frustrating when the body only gets attention from the prudent scan for ticks, showers, and getting dressed. My dreams tend to save me from turning this frustration into something else, and a daily yoga practice does wonders for balancing the energy flow. I also got the chance to visit with a friend of the farm who taps maple syrup trees in his backyard. We hauled sap for an hour or so and then sat and watched a fire steam off gallons of moisture for the next couple of hours. It helped me work on my 'bullshitting', which I think is a necessary component of life, especially, I've read and experience somewhat, if I want to get into farming.
I have also found company with the voices of Audiobooks. Studs Terkel's "Coming of Age" has brought much wisdom and historical reflection while Zora Neal Hurston's "Every Tongue Got To Confess" colors the mental environment in profound folktale that is sometimes funny and always a tickle to the ear. With the internet, too, I have found smiles in reading, well catching up with all the Yehuda Moon's Kickstand Cyclery comics that I've missed since I started working with Sudan Farm. That commute really took a lot of time and I found it hard to read with any gumption since I was only biking here and there. Once the other interns arrive I may have to sneak off lest I be heard snickering and knitting along to the recorded voice. Perhaps we'll all have crafts that allow some story to be floating along in the background.
Well I haven't written in so long that it seems like you don't know where I'm at. Who cares, somewhere amidst the emerging spring sprouts and bird calls, the frosty mornings and blustery north wind bickering with the southern gale and calm standstill. Is it enough that I'm outside most of the time, happy to know I'm alive, eating real good food to survive? The skin on my face feels that good sunned warmth, my hands rough and dirty underneath the fingernails, breath healthy and in good working order. Eligh and I went with Sitka to Mill Pond and explored for an hour and saw a part of the creek we all haven't seen before. That does something to you, to your spirit, lets you go free, and would be an incredible image to dream. We hope to go camping there sometime and cook freshly caught fish over a fire. I'm at a place that is the farthest from between a rock and a hard place.
[the sound of a birdcall interrupts my focus]
It's incredible what a birdcall will make you do. I just stop and stare, but my ears play with each note and I imagine a part of me trying to imitate and remake each chortle, each tone, matching length with brevity. Here is where lost things come back to you, where the silence in the night will change your mood from the evening before without your permission, and your dreams will be magical, mythical, mystical...I have awoken from these after seeing my lover tell off another who threatened her claim, after seeing my lover abandon me to another while disappearing into the dark wearing loosely adorned flowing grey saaris printed with big black leaves all over. The images and symbolism are baffling, but they are the visuals of my day and I puzzle over their meaning inbetween work.
I take a walk at night and the landscape quivers in the stillness. If you look just right the lights of far off farmsteads look like stars in their distance and you can imagine yourself on the edge of the universe again. The wind blows across the road from the cornfield and all of a sudden I hear what Greg Brown may have been singing about in his song, "Hole in the Sky" The hole sound reaches up into my head as far as my brain will allow it to go. I look for it here and there, from where I think the sound is coming from and all I see is sky, but I know it's there. I hear it and imagine the wind spiraling off into the distance, sucking at the emptiness bordered by rustling corn stalks.
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