fuzzies!

guerrilla poetry

every day is earth day

in honor of earth day, and to offset some of the vitriol i spewed last night, here are some of my favorite passages from terry tempest williams’ “the open space of democracy”:

Our insistence on democracy is based on our resistance to complacency. To be engaged. To participate. To create alternatives together. We may be wrong. We will make mistakes. But we can engage in spirited conversation and listen to one another with respect and open minds as we speak and explore our differences, cherishing the vitality of the struggle (11).

The Arctic is balancing on an immense mirror. The water table is visible. Pools of light gather: lakes, ponds, wetlands. The tundra is shimmering. One squints perpetually (28).

Drinking from the river—I am drinking from the river—this tincture of glaciers, this press of ice warmed by the sun. If water can pool in one’s heart, then my heart is full. My arid heart has been waiting for decades, maybe three, for the return of the childhood pleasure of drinking directly from the source (31).

Experience opens us, creates a chasm in our heart, an expansion in our lungs, allowing us to pull in fresh air to all that was stagnant. We breathe deeply and remember fear for what it is—a resistance to the unknown (32).

What will we make of the life before us? How do we translate the gifts of solitary beauty into the action required for true participatory citizenship? (42)

The open space of democracy provides justice for all living things—plants, animals, rocks, and rivers, as well as human beings (51).

Here is my question: what might a different kind of power look like, feel like? And can power be distributed equitably among ourselves, even beyond our own species? (58)

The power of nature is the power of a life in association. Nothing stands alone. On my haunches, I see a sunburst lichen attached to limestone; algae and fungi are working together to break down rock into soil. I cannot help but recognize a radical form of democracy at play. Each organism is rooted in its own biological niche, drawing its power from its relationship to other organisms. An equality of being contributes to an ecological state of health and succession (58).

We have made the mistake of confusing democracy with capitalism and have mistaken political engagement with a political machinery we all understand to be corrupt. It is time to resist the simplistic, utilitarian view that what is good for business is good for humanity in all its complex web of relationships. A spiritual democracy is inspired by our own sense of what we can accomplish together, honoring an integrated society where the social, intellectual, physical, and economic well-being of all is considered, not just the wealth and health of the corporate few (86/87).

making nonsense

Spoon 1: Understand the following is Science:

Fork is the mom,
Spoon is the daughter,
Spork is the niece;
Spoon and Spork are cousins,
Spork is a scientist,
Spork is Science,
Magic is Science’s gay cousin,
Spoon is gay,
Therefore, Spoon is Magic.
It is Science.

Spoon 2: It is Gynecology.

Spoon 1: Gynecology is Science.

Spoon 2: Gynecology is the best Science.

It is clearly Gynecology!

Spoon 1: Science!

Spoon 2: I know now where I lost my knee brace!

I was on the hill by the gas station,
eating a raspberry shave ice.
It is on the hill in the grass by the gas station,
where I was eating my raspberry shave ice.

Spoon 1: That is neither here nor there.

Spoon 2: But it is Gynecology.

Spoon 1: I concede to your superior power of logics.

new season's resolutions

i’m working on a list of goals for this spring and summer. let’s see how many of these things i can do:

· start composting
· experiment more with camera settings
· do more sewing—canvas bags especially, so i can give them away to people who want to stop using plastic
· eat more locally grown/organic produce
· try new recipes
· get a birdfeeder, and a hummingbird feeder, and remember to keep them full
· start painting again
· spend more time reading outdoors
· print a lot of new t-shirts

that’s all i can think of for now. i took a walk earlier and did lots of playing around with camera settings; mixed results, but i learned a ton. the sky was such a rich blue today, and there are so many things in bloom…i could’ve gone for less wind and higher temperatures, though. headwinds have been murdering me on my bike lately.

i have a new obsession: vegan blogs. i came across one randomly, and it had links to a gazillion other ones, and they all had links to a gazillion other ones, and so on. most of them were amazing. i’m going to start a little list of links that will probably grow later. i’m not putting this one on the list, because it’s much too fancy, but behold how magnificently insane: http://veganyumyum.com/2007/06/knit-night-cupcakes/

maybe i’ll start taking pictures of things i cook, and posting recipes and such. perhaps that should be part of my “try new recipes” resolution, because normally i’m a very lazy vegan…most of the stuff i cook is just thrown together, and not yummy looking (but always yummy tasting). i rarely follow recipes, and i rarely spend more than half an hour on a meal. my idea of gourmet is slathering some oat bread with hummus, mixing up a fantastic foods nature burger and topping it with sliced black olives and alfalfa sprouts. comfort food to the max. speaking of fantastic foods, they brought back tofu scrambler! praise seitan! now we just need to resurrect tuno and unturkey, and all will be right with the world.

giving hope to adult children everywhere (but not adult babies...they can fend for themselves)

this weekend has been amazing. on saturday, nikki and i got coffee and then went to baggley park and acted like 7-year-olds. i rode my cruiser and she rode the kickbike…


and we flew a kite...

(the wind wasn't much but we gave it our damnedest)

and blew scented bubbles...

and shot pew pew laser cats bubbles...

and climbed trees…

then gorged ourselves on zeppole kalamata olive bread, and sluggishly pedaled/kicked back to my house where we played with water guns for a while. we ran so much, i’m actually sore today…my mind might have thought i was 7 but my body is confirming that i am, indeed, an old old woman. i also got a sunburn, which i’m actually enjoying, because it’s nice to be a color other than elmer’s glue.

we came up with a pretty important concept while we were at moxie. nikki was talking about how she needs to do laundry—she was wearing mismatched socks, and said she was almost out of underwear. i commented that i have a near-unlimited supply of underwear, but there’s a certain underwear hierarchy…and she got really excited and said that her underwear drawer is hierarchical as well. so we decided that we should advertise the concept, for a reason i can no longer remember…perhaps because we thought this could be a great unifier, something to really bring people together. i identify with the underwear hierarchy!

it was plenty gorgeous out yesterday, but today it got up to 76 degrees! even now it’s in the upper 60’s, and i still have the windows open, with a lovely breeze blowing through. it feels so exotic and tropical…if i close my eyes i can almost imagine i’m on kauai, relaxing after a day of body surfing and exploring tide pools, sipping pineapple juice on the beach, surrounded by palm trees and tiki torches… so relaxing. i spent pretty much all day outside again, neglecting my homework, helping my mom plant a vegetable and herb garden. my dad made an above-ground garden bench thing out of an old display table from moon’s kitchen, he drilled holes in it and built up the sides then we filled it with potting soil. we also have a few other little gardens scattered around the yard. so far we have parsley, coriander, lavender, oregano, savory, dill, basil, chives, rosemary, cilantro, lettuce, tomatoes, and strawberries. we planted seeds for carrots, bush peas, cucumbers, cabbage, bell peppers, and more lettuce and parsley, most of those in individual pots, except for the carrots and some peas. and we also put in a bunch of pretty flowers—mostly natives, i think, which is nice.

baroness ingrid von bogdanoff

"we've come a long way...maybe"

i’ve had a super crazy day today. crazy for me, anyway…most of the time i try not to be a busy person, so having a day where i’m constantly on the move kinda kicks my ass. i got to sleep at 3 then woke up at 8 to the sound of my dogs singing to each other—andy does this howling sort of thing, only it’s not exactly howling, more like a deep, mournful baying. i thought he was dying the first time i heard it. he only does it when he thinks no one is around to hear him, and then only rarely. i’m not sure what sets him off. today lucifer joined in for the first time, and her voice had a dramatically higher pitch…the combination was haunting.

i had a job interview first thing, at a little publishing company that puts out a few local magazines. i won’t mention the name of the business, for lots of reasons…but it’s an adorable house in hyde park, the people are incredibly warm and friendly and they hired me on the spot. they have a live-in dog named karma, a big old lumbering black lab, who i totally fell in love with right away. i start in may, right after finals week, and i’m super excited about it. i’ve never had a really real job before. i’m also doing my internship there next semester, so it’s perfect.

after that i drove home and grabbed my bike (i think i'll ride my bike to work most days, but i haven’t timed how long it takes me to get to hyde park yet…probably a while). then i went to all my classes, then pedaled home and ate dinner and felt sorry for my exhausted self, then went to a poetry reading. i came home and worked on this fabulous lyrical essay i’ve got going—it’s a segmented essay, and each segment is like a little prose poem. it’s about nature and connectedness… influenced by a lot of the stuff i’ve been reading lately, especially robinson jeffers and ed abbey. and it’s basically the pinnacle of all the nature writing i’ve ever done. i think. i might hate it tomorrow, you never know.

my friend be started a blog today! exciting. she and i began working at joann’s on the same day (almost 2.5 years ago…wow), we went through training together and discovered that we were both vegan, and had a million other things in common, and we bonded instantly. she and her husband taught me how to knit, so…i can both blame and thank them for that. they moved away a while ago and it’s been difficult keeping in touch, but blogging will help remedy that, i hope.

now i’m going to go work on craft projects, if i can keep myself awake any longer. it’s been a long time since i screenprinted any new tshirts. i’ve outgrown a number of my old ones, philosophically or horizontally or both. a book i’m reading inspired me (“sisterhood, interrupted: from radical women to grrls gone wild”—it’s about the history of feminism and feminist philosophy. my idea of pleasure reading, because i’m demented). there’s a lot of talk in that book about the importance of the statement “the personal is political.” so that’s the one i’m printing tonight. a couple days ago i copied this one from proletarian threads: http://www.proletarianthreads.com/tshirts/t110.html god they have excellent tshirts. i wish i had the skills to make the “save water, share a shower” one. i could just use the slogan, but it wouldn’t be the same without the graphic.

in abstractia

mackerel sky, mackerel sky. never long wet, never long dry.

i just found a blog post with some amazing beautiful cloud pictures, and fascinating info. check out mammatus--breast clouds are the best clouds.