and it's just that: a damn shame! a damn shame that i spent so many days feeling so incomplete, so inhuman, so caught like a rabbit in a snare, choking on fear. i don't regret it -- how would i ever know how happy i am now, without feeling that pain and loneliness as i did? as close as lovers? my life is vastly different from what it was three years ago. nothing lasts forever! but i am so happy where i am, nigh blissful in my impermanence. my life is juniper trees and sage brush, snow-capped mountains and evergreen trees of all shapes, alpine lakes losing their frosty covers while, a thousand elevation feet down, there are bright shocks of green green grass popping up between lava rocks where i live. the sky is different every day.

Adams, Ansel Easton 1902-1984. Mount Shasta and Shasta Dam [photograph]. In : Adams, Ansel Easton 1902-1984 and Newhall, Nancy. The Pagent of History in Northern California. San Francisco, Calif.: American Trust Company, 1954. Photo No. 33. Contains the only known Ansel Adams photograph of Mount Shasta (photo number 33 of this unpaginated book). Actually, it appears that the main subject of this photo is the Shasta Dam, and that Mt. Shasta in the background is an essential though not primary feature. One can see Mount Shasta's 'Sun Bowl' and 'Powder Bowl.' Adams's technical note for this photograph states: " 8 x 10, 26 1/2 component of Cooke Series XV, Wratten A, Kodak portrait Pan, Ansco 27."

The American Trust Company commissioned the book in honor of its centenary. Contains fifty of Adams's photographs with accompanying poetic prose by Nancy Newhall. For the Mt. Shasta photo, the text reads : "Winter is rain; the hills turn emerald, blossom starts forth. To the north, snow gleams deeper on the majestic old volcano, Shasta; to the east, the Sierra glitters, a wave of snow peaks hundreds of miles long."

Rumi

A THIRSTY FISH

I don't get tired of you. Don't grow weary
of being compassionate toward me!

All this thirst equipment
must surely be tired of me,
the waterjar, the water carrier.

I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough
of what it's thirsty for!

Show me the way to the ocean!
Break these half-measures,
these small containers.

All this fantasy
and grief.

Let my house be drowned in the wave
that rose last night out of the courtyard
hidden in the center of my chest.

Joseph fell like the moon into my well.
The harvest I expected was washed away.
But no matter.

A fire has risen above my tombstone hat.
I don't want learning, or dignity,
or respectability.

I want this music and this dawn
and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

The grief-armies assemble,
but I'm not going with them.

This is how it always is
when I finish a poem.

A great silence overcomes me,
and I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.

our ability to adapt is quite a thing, isn't it?

i suppose i can thank the local brewery and the close-knit and welcoming and very friendly people here. you have the right friends and you feel at home. you start to know streets' names, when the best restaurants are open, all the details of the world's most oversharing gas station attendant's fucked up life. you start to feel at home.

i'd like to get my own place, though. and a job that doesn't make too many demands on me. i like to take it easy.

the garden is alive and beautiful, and winding down. i hope i can continue to keep a garden wherever i live in the future.

i may need to live in a bigger town, or closer to a bigger town, for a music scene's sake.

but we'll see.

oh yeah, i'm sick. sore throat and feverish and weak and headachy/ear-achy. achey? achy? well, you know. i ache.

happy, though.

today i co-taught a workshop on wild edibles and got paid for it. i'm really goddamn proud of myself. just wanted to make a quick note of it.

i'm happy, i'll say that. i'm drinking homemade kombucha, the doors are open and i'm listening to winged insects try to find their way out before night falls. i'm enjoying the feeling of warmth hovering over my sun-soaked and -burned skin while the air cools around me; it'll be another hour and a half before the sun completely sets, but it's found its way behind the trees now.

everything's in the ground and here's a rough list of the things i've planted, from seed and baby plants: lettuces, arugula, swiss chard, purple and buttercrunch and another green cabbage, kale kale kale, broccoli, cilantro, dill, parsley, green onions, red and yellow onions, beans, peas, zucchini, yellow squash, butternut squash, cucumbers, red and yellow and green bell peppers, tomatoes (stupices and german pinks, better boys and early girls, romas and pineapples), sweet basil, radishes, beets, baby and big carrots.

the tomatoes at the abbey are already showing little green baby bulbs. the radishes only take 22 days. i'll probably have to replant the squashes and beans, the seeds are large and have probably rotted from all the rain and lack of sun. which, hopefully, will be a problem no longer. it felt like summer today and you can almost hear the sighs of relief from everyone, everything. it's been a hard winter for this town, a short and wet spring, and they're ready to move on. ready for gardens so thick they look like jungles, ready for a reason to move slower and to rest in the shade, ready for longer days, open windows, bug sprays, sunscreen.

it's amazing how liberated i feel being so far from home and not having a deadline for a return. the biggest step, that one-way plane ride, has been taken and i can't wait for what's next. i can't believe how much i'm learning, the quality of food i'm eating, the company i'm keeping, the trees and meadows and mountains that surround me, the air i'm breathing. i am blown away by everything.

and fresh goat cheese every week from a goat named nelly that lives down the street.

and my best friend quit her job and is coming to join me in ten days, to share my room and food and work and HAPPINESS. i don't know how long she's staying and neither does she, she bought a one-way ticket.

summer summer summer.

i don't MEAN to not update, but that's what happens. i feel that i should be writing and writing and keeping track of everything, taking notes, because my memory fades. but i'm not.

suffice it to say that i'm doing incredible. that i'm learning a lot and feeling great, etc etc.

maybe i'll write more when i can think of what to say.

god i've had this blog forever. i suppose that's a good thing, right? consistency is key. AS IF i knew anything about consistency. other than, you know, consistently complaining about loneliness and smoking and drinking (gosh i want a whiskey!) and watching too much tv and thinking about fucking, which is all that this blog has to show for its two years in existence (i know because i just read it all). but i don't care. i'm attached to this thing. the entries are like post-it notes, convenient little reference points for me. FOR ME. thank christ this isn't a real blog, it wouldn't make any sense. that's what i get for writing for myself. a whole lotta crazy.

i'd rather write in my moleskine but because it was almost full and pretty heavy i locked it in a suitcase with journals from years past and now i think, i hope, it's safely under my sister's bed. she may or may not have purchased a new one and new pens for me and may or may not be sending them to me. i hope she does. i've got notes to take.

i've been here a week and i feel wonderful. getting into the habit of things. i am weak weak weak but i suppose eventually i'll get stronger. i have to, right?

i have pieces of hay in my pocket and i clean up horse shit like a pro. i've gotten hungry at the smell of cut dandelion leaves and tansy and miner's lettuce and sticky plant and clover that i've snipped one-by-one from a sunny meadow and between tree stumps. THE AIR is so pure; upon inhalation, my heart swells as good as any lung. swells swells swells. i could listen to the birds for hours. i want to lie in the meadows and breathe and i want to be swallowed up into the earth and spit out and i want to be held and whispered to, but i suppose the birds are enough.

i miss my cats.

god i hate flickr. but anyways, more here.

yesterday i was on three airplanes and today i'm in between three mountains. a lot of near misses (such a misnomer... i think mitch hedburg did a bit on this?) yesterday, with late flights and having to go through security an unexpected second time (so unexpected that i hadn't emptied my aluminum water bottle and THANK CHRIST the guy was nice and dumped my water out instead of making me go dump it myself and go back through security, i owe that guy my life) and stepping onto a tram just as the doors closed behind me in an effort to get across san francisco international and being one of the last to board a tiny plane to get to medford, or.

i'm staying in a room with multiple unicorn decorations (books, figurines, etc. there are more throughout the house, but not in a crazy unicorn person, aka me, way.). the horse that i'm taking care of is a gorgeous white lipizzaner, essentially a unicorn without the horn. the pajama pants i brought have unicorns and white pegasuses on them. i'd also like to state for the record that on my upper left arm proudly sits a goddamn unicorn tattoo. so, i dunno, you tell me.

it's the little things.

so anyways this place is incredible. i will post pictures soon, for my benefit and the benefit of, i dunno, two others.

snow's been falling all day today and yesterday, it's fucking gorgeous.

my life is fucking gorgeous. i can't believe i get to stay here for SIX MONTHS. it's only been a day and a half and i've already had my mind blown by the vegan raw food, the homemade kombucha, SHELVES UPON SHELVES of books! i am even excited to shovel horse shit.

heaven.