19 ~ Trees in the City, Garbage in the Forest.

Sharalee and I were together immediately.

Addendum:
I left our apartment the moment I wrote that sentence.  You see, in moments, I am still obsessed with her.  I couldn’t wait to see her.  I walked 12 blocks under the super moon, making sure to pass beneath the mulberry tree, toward midtown.  She smiled the most genuine, the most welcoming, the most sincere smile to greet me, as she always does.  I placed the handful of berries into her palm, kissed her cheek, turned and walked the 12 blocks home.

To be loved.  To think I’d thought I’d met love before.
To love in return.  To remember those my body could not respond to.

She’s had an impossible schedule, I’ve had a growing agitation with life.  I have to be inspired.  I have to be working on something I find meaningful.  And perhaps everyone is like that but God forgive me I can’t see how in the world anyone could find what I do for a living (at the moment) meaningful.  Shara has been rightly consumed with her own inspirations, and absent from home more, nearing graduation from Paul Mitchell.  I sketch and read and write and paint and garden and research and try to compose songs but the truth of the matter is I am getting lazy, because the only thing I can think about is my work, getting to the work I want to be doing, that and getting out of Oklahoma.  And I am lazy because I am paused.  And somehow that seems to be the story of my life and I wonder when and where I will decide enough is enough.  Is all of this planning and responsible sensibility going to pay off or should I have been more spontaneous with my life?

I took this job because I had plans to utilize certain aspects of it for the favor of my family.  None of those things I had planned worked out.  All of the glittering lights I saw were simply abstractions in a sky so vast with twinkly lights there’s a little something for everyone.  I could have done as much without taking the job.  There are always alternatives!  Always.

What’s interesting is I don’t at all feel negatively about any of it. I’ve simply accepted that living under the oligarchy is a fact of life. You either fit into the system, willfully, or you do not, willfully.
However, I’ve found, even if you choose not to, our economic and political systems are organized in such a way that it is practically impossible to avoid being implicated as a card carrying member of everything you’re against.
Say I wanted to make sure I wasn’t financing the brutal torture and slaughter of animals, so I stop eating meat, or at least, I make sure to purchase the meat I do consume at our farmer’s market, which I have…
health products are still tested on animals. animal products exist in the films I watch, in the photographs Sharalee prints, in the vinyl records I listen to… etc. I know for a fact the manufacturers of said products are not purchasing their beef from local farmers. Revolution…. it’s such a whimsical concept, almost entirely a hypothetical concept.
This earth itself has become a human construct. To fight it is to fight from within it, it swallows us, it feeds us its nutritionally void food-stuff and we swallow it up because that is all that’s left to consume.

And so do I disconnect?  Is it even possible to disconnect?
If I never bought anything, if I were a radical freegan, surviving on theft and transgression alone, would I not be stealing from the residual waste of the same system?
If I were a recluse, living out in the sticks, off of the land, would I not be drinking from a stream filled with the toxins of our pollutants?
If I were to end my life to lessen the obese populace breeding our way to extinction, would I not be pumped full of contaminants and then buried in the soil?

Asking that I be free from hypocrisy is like Jesus asking the Gentiles to be free from sin. It isn’t possible.

And so I’ve resolved to create my own guidelines. Not another rigid system I’m not permitted to reevaluate from time to time, but guidelines for my own life. Not another system of dogmatic, ideological rules and regulations, but guidelines that make me comfortable in my own skin.  I must surround myself with people who have adopted similar guidelines, and damn it, build a fucking fence around the lot of us.

I am the first to say that privatization, beginning with the concept of private property is what started this whole fucking mess of a country in the first place, but dammit, I’ll hire a title lawyer and own the fucking mineral rights where I live, because I don’t want a pack of suits coming and taking my work away from me, for oil, or timber, or water, or whatever else they claim as theirs.  I’ll claim it as my own, and honor it with every breath I draw.

And I honor her that way as well, my partner, Sharalee, for we were born of this earth and shall return to it one day.  In life and in death I cherish and honor you.  May I die and be reborn with you, again and again, in new forms each time  for all of the seasons of eternity. Thank you for the best year of my life.

A few images from April/May:

The items we loved most at our downtown arts festival
Our plot in April, community garden
 And in May:

 

20 ~ Oklahoma City (all photos taken 4/19/2012)

Today is April 19th, 2012, the 17th anniversary of the OKC Bombing.  Whether you are Anti-American, ardent patriot, or zealous conspiracy theorist, April 19th, 1995 is a day you’re probably familiar with.  Whoever was responsible for that tragedy, the victims deserve our solemnity and our respect.  To have your life taken from you in such a way is absolutely unimaginable.  Perhaps such events would merit some worth if they actually taught the rest of us to value life more, but statistically, history has taught us nothing.

I’m not an Oklahoman, but I have resided here more permanently than anywhere else in my life, and so I’ve come to know the place.  I live a short bike-ride away from the bombing memorial.  I have a piece of the Murrah Federal Building on a window ledge in my common room.  Shara’s father, an OKC firefighter, worked the disaster relief and salvaged the artifact for remembrance sake.

I was 11 years old on that day.  I can’t recall where I lived or with which guardian.  I was oblivious to anything outside of the “community” that contained me, as are all of my kin.  There were no books in our home.  No magazines either.  We didn’t read newspapers.  We didn’t even watch news broadcasts.  My public school teachers weren’t exactly the awe-inspiring type either.  In fact, it wasn’t until University that I learned of the Murrah Federal Building.  Not surprisingly, I was the first person in my family to attend college, let alone graduate from a degree program.  I was the first person in my family to graduate from high school for that matter.

I can’t undo any of that, but it is because of the circumstances of my life that I can say with certainty that it is solely ignorance that causes such hatred, and hatred that causes such brutality, cyclically and universally, again and again, generationally.  I want nothing to do with such ignorance, with mainstream society, with the religions of this world, with politics, with anything at all that pits human beings against one another, a species at odds.  Are we not meant to live in harmony, in cooperation?  Can you not take your cue from nature, from the “beasts” of the fields?  Are you so far gone?

~
“Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns it calls me on and on across the universe.”
J.L.

21~ Spring!!!!

This was the mildest winter of my Oklahoman existence.
Shara spent it sprouting seeds on the ledge of single pane glass windows.  The seeds grew large and strong.  She grew large and strong.  I grew large and strong.

The Japanese maple’s spider mites could not be tamed.  The little tree was barely hanging on.  We took it to Shara’s mother’s house in suburbia, where at least its roots can spread out and hopefully heal.  In it’s place, I intend to build a hydroponics system for at least three plants.  The materials have been lying in wait.  I was afraid to build it until the tree was gone, fearing the mites would jump ship and find a new home on my water babies.  Now that it’s gone I can finally construct the window garden.  I’ll use some of the babies we grew in our windows, Swiss chard and basil I think.  The beets and tomatoes and remaining chard, we can transplant to our community garden.

As much resentment as I feel toward this waiting process, something about the timing is perfect.  I was looking at the job requirements for the types of jobs I intend to apply for in Washington State.  On top of the education requirement, which I meet, they require 18 months of on the job experience.  For reasons related to my family and my transition, I am waiting until June to apply for those jobs here in Oklahoma, where I am already qualified for them.  If I get hired right away, that will give me exactly 18 months of experience before we were scheduled to leave.  Sometimes I find myself in step with the Universe, those vibrations reach every cell.  Other things have gone exactly that way as well, many, and so I remind myself to be still and intentional.  If we can’t get jobs lined out, we will go anyway.  It’s simple to get to Washington state with our intended goals, the organic farms are everywhere up there and WWOOFing would suite me just fine.  Juuuuuuust Fine.

Still, in a few months I’ll start looking for employment more suited to my talents and ambitions while I still have to be here in Oklahoma.  I’ll be happy to stop working for the bullshit employer I work for now.  Each month I grow more and more intolerant to the environment, the people and the atmosphere.  I cannot believe how seriously people take their entirely feigned existences.  I take calls from the irate customers of a wireless communications company, it is my job to troubleshoot their wireless devices when something goes wrong.  You’d think their world was ending when their GPS  stops navigating, or Facebook won’t allow them to upload photos, or their texts messages are being delayed.  Forgive me; I can be a bit of a misanthrope.  I should have been born a whale, or a worm.  Anyway, once my transition is complete, I can pursue work related to human services, land and food systems, or public health.  Either way, I am anxious.  Always eager and anxious and micro focused to the point where everything else falls by the wayside, my friends, my social life, my writing and musicianship, all of it be damned.  I never want to see another metropolis so long as I live.  For now, I am learning how to GROW, how to live an alternative off-grid lifestyle, how to harvest, how to plant, how to conserve, how to recycle, how to reuse, how to get by on nothing.
The long-term goal of course being to incorporate all of those things into a sustainable career and life, to have my family, our garden, and our home securely nestled beside the forest and the sea, far away from mediocrity, whale songs in the distance.  I can’t wait to watch my dogs digging holes in the earth, my partner cliff diving, my neighbors eating the food I grew, my children learning songs from the natives.
We have much to consider.  Do we use some of our savings to travel a bit first?  Should I save every dime to secure a land purchase once we arrive in Washington?  Do we have the baby?  When do we have the baby?  How much is enough to go on?  Will we be able to earn it in time?  Will we have gained enough know how?  Can we find work in the wilderness?  Can we afford this?  Can we leave our community and make our own way out?  Can we do this?  Can we do this?
Here are some shots of our Urban Farm, Common Wealth:

here I am digging beds

My mentor, Elia, doing something…

Kale

carrots, on a raised bed.  only you can’t tell it’s a raised bed because the weeds are kicking our ass.spinach, and the neighbor’s house.

beets, keeping warm

onions and yugoslavian red butterhead lettuce, and more unplanted beds in the distance

our carbon pile.  EVERYTHING has a use.

And now, our little window farm, at home:
swiss rainbow chard

beets, they’re a shy little root plant.
our tomatoes, practicing their wind bends from the safety of a windowsill

It’s almost time to transplant our little babies so I spent this afternoon turning a bed at our community garden from this

into this

They’ll have a nice little home to grow in, conveniently located a short longboard trip away from our apartment.  Take one very tiny person and one very tiny hand tool and you’ve got the better part of a day trying to tear out all the top crop, then eliminate the root systems, henbit and crabgrass.  ugh.  UGH.  Alan, (Elia’s spouse) showed up eventually with a broad fork which made working the compost in much faster.  I was able to make it home before sundown.

This morning, I spent at delivery day, the Oklahoma Food Cooperative‘s biggest volunteer day.  The growers and producers (farmers) drop off their products (whatever was ordered from people all over this state) to the Coop, where it gets sorted and organized, then loaded into trucks and driven to the different drop off sites around Oklahoma.   Know your farmer, folks!!  Know your produce and know your meat.  The conventional food system is a public health nightmare, a breeding ground of disease and chemicals and pesticides and antibiotics and pollutants and waste and filth and cannibalism and disgust.  I’ll stop before I get going.

In other news:
Just campaigning for reproductive rights at the capital.  If you come to Oklahoma, be sure to set your clocks back 50 years.

Best Meal of the Month:
slow broiled, then flash seared salmon seasoned with red pepper, black pepper, salt, parsley and dill.  The pasta is my homemade sriracha cream sauce, snow pea, broccoli, and cherry tomatoes tossed in a bow-tie noodle.
Downhills through the neighborhood, with my side-kick, the photographer.

I’m a tired boy, peace y’all.

22 ~ something else speak

I never meant to cause you pain
My burden is the weight of a feather
I never meant to lead you on
I only meant to please me, however

And then you tell me “Boy, we can do much more together.”

I’m nothing but a selfish man
I’m nothing but a privileged peddler
And did you think I’d stay the night
And did you think I’d love you forever

And then you tell me “Boy, we can do much more together.”
I gotta tell you “Girl, I want nothing less than pleasure.”
I gotta tell you “Boy, we made such a mess together.”

biding time.

23 ~ “call it something else”

Soup Sunday.  BYOB (bowl)

(prometheus found @ our urban garden.  blooming, as if in spring.)

(pickup bed liner sink restoration)

(100% reused)

(hydroponics)

(never judge a book by its cover)

(solar.  power.)

(‘neath the shade of juniper)

(gather the rain.  waste not.)

(polyurethane foam insulation)

(radiant tubing runs through these floors, solar heated water to keep the concrete warm)

(the man with the plan.  our host.  our friend.)

(meet Clem.  He humanures, composts and gardens.  He speaks more articulately than 75% of the adults I encounter daily.  And he could play circles around half of you….  I can’t even tune a mandolin… Oh, his siblings are as equally bad ass.)

23 ~ Decreation

Dear 2011,

You sure knew how to undo.

On this day last year, I sat parked in an SUV watching a cigarette shop burn to the ground.  The hour turned, embered rain falling down all around us, I felt plenty, but could not yet share myself.  I felt newborn and secret, not yet crying out to the cold.
I was busy, busy, busy, with finishing up my final undergraduate semester.  With working at the wine bar every night until two a.m.

with planning for Africa, with the overall expansion I felt.  I’ll tell you, people need an early start with love, and a consistent exposure to environments of trust and mutuality, encouragement and kindness, integrity and openness, lest they end up like the motherless twit I’d become.

I wanted to love again.  My very first go at loving failed.  What a dog fight that was.  I knew nothing of taking, she knew nothing of receiving.  At the end of it, she moved out and I went crazy.  Naked drunken loneliness bare walls and eight hour bathtub crazy.  Tears that came from nowhere but would not stop coming crazy.  Black out curtains and sweat sheets crazy.  That happened in January too.  Only now it’s so far from me I can not even remember what year it was.  2007, I think.  It may have been ’08.  Anyway, the point is, I think a person’s first experience with love ought to come much earlier than twenty-something.  I think people ought to have a foundation poured early in life, something sturdy they can build upon later.

You’d think if a person hadn’t experienced love until well into their twenties they’d already know their weight in suffering.  It’s funny though, pain is awfully easy to endure while love is lacking.  All of my life, everything I’d been through, no one had gotten to me.  It took actually loving someone before I felt hurt, loss, despair, grief.

I used so many people climbing out of that mess.  Each of them initially a dim light in the distance, drawing me farther out of myself, slowly, steadily, but inevitably their want felt to me like interrogation and eventually I got sick enough with myself I kept totally away from other people, romantically anyway.  A deep distrust of the hunger in others, I kept them all at bay, and subdued my own appetite too, for it had only led me off course.  It was the best thing I could have done for myself, for only then did I begin to heal.

Sometimes, in order to have a look around, we must totally disappear, for we can not go towards anything, nor anyone, without bringing ourselves along, and I was not yet anyone I would want to bring along.
Simone Weil said, in Gravity and Grace, “If only I could see a landscape as it is when I am not there.  But when I am in any place I disturb the silence of heaven by the beating of my heart.”  I took the whole of 2009 and ’10 to disappear.  
(alone on the water)

(alone on walks I would take)

(alone at my favorite restaurants)

(alone making music in my apartment)

(alone on the floor)

(alone with Pu-erh and poetry)

(alone with friends on summer nights)

And then you came to me, early one morning, dropping both embers and snowflakes onto my tongue.  My heart was so full.  I could feel the vitality pumping through my veins, free from poison, free from negativity, free from hopelessness.  I could feel my self, present in the moments around me.  For the first time I was conscious of metaphysical spaces, for the first time I could place myself into and pull myself out of the present.  It was glorious.

Pascal said that all of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.  That’s what 2011 was for me, surrendering to feeling.  I no longer felt the need to reason away the desire to be social, to be open, to be loving, to be visible.  I no longer needed to.  There was no one thing I was ready for, I was just ready.  READY!  Open and alive and in love with being so.  I was undone by you, 2011.  I had a few false starts, but I think I needed those.  If I hurt anyone in the process, it is my hope that they too have healed themselves.
For I am a new being.  Fresh and fragile, I handed myself over to you, we spent this entire year dismantling what was no good, undoing the creature in me.  I am at last undone.  Goodbye 2011.  You served me so so well.  I greet the new year with open arms.

~Rae

24 ~ “Incoming” powpowpow….boomboomBOOOOOOOOOM

I turned in a mountain of paperwork today, documents meant to support the claim that Shara and I are domestic partners.  My employer is auditing me.  Yes, they’ve offered my queer family the same luxuries as those who lead hetero-normative lifestyles, but they’ve made us jump through hoops to gain those rights.  Additionally, I’ve noticed my take home pay to be much lower than that of my co-workers.  After some digging, I’ve discovered its all tax related.  Not how many allowances I claim, because the issue didn’t lie there.  I found the issue to be pre-tax vs. post-tax deductions.  In layman terms, pre-tax premiums reduce your taxable income, meaning that the amount of income in your pay that is used to calculate your taxes is reduced because your premiums have already been deducted.  This reduces your federal and state income tax liability.  You bring home more money this way.  It is the exact opposite for post-tax deductions.  Regular Joe families get the pre-tax.  We get the post-tax.  They tax the lot, and then they make the premium deductions.  Which translates to…. I lose anywhere from 50-75 dollars per week.

I will not get married until everyone everywhere has the right to get married.  My alternative is domestic partnership, and my government fucks me for slighting their authority by choosing that alternative.  This is the part where most people cave, sell out, and opt for convenience and ease, the part where most would choose to remain willfully ignorant, what-have-you.  Not this guy.  I’ll bend over and take it up the ass because I believe with my whole being that I will be rewarded ten-fold.  In this life or the next.
Society makes me feel suicidal.  It truly does.  I am so thankful I have found sanctuary within my self, nature, and my partner.

On a better note, I am still my ecstatic self.  I’m in the process of updating software on my laptop so that I can start editing and sharing these videos I’ve been creating.  The creative process is still a little sluggish, no…. I’m going to keep it real, my creative process has been super sluggish.    My banjo broke.  Thankfully I still have the guitar and the keyboard.  I think the cause of my loss of interest is in fact my day job, being so plugged into the system, etc.  Thankfully, I inherited my father’s work ethic so I am forcing myself to play an instrument for at least one hour every night.  My problem is time management.  I need to work on my self, study, practice music, create, work on my activism projects and my non-profit, pay attention to shara, etc., and the majority of my time goes to this J.O.B.  I could allow that to be depressing.  Instead, I remind myself every day what all of this is for.  I also know that I must not constantly struggle to get what I want, but that I must instead modify my wanting.  It is my purpose to serve this earth as she serves me.

(local sourdough)

(Blue Valley Farmer)… do yourself a huge favor.

(abandoned dinette table we rescued from the basement of our apartment building.  In other words… no more eating on the floor.)

(cottonwood centerpiece decorating aforementioned table)

On life’s journey faith is nourishment,
Virtuous deeds are a shelter,
Wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night.
If a man lives a pure life nothing can destroy him;
If he has conquered greed nothing can limit his freedom.
~Buddha