This chapter is closing,
another one is opening,
it's all happening,
it's all right Now.
It's alright, Now.
I won't likely be blogging here any more.
Tumblr is has fun blue backgrounds--hurray!
I'll be sharing words and what not at weneverwait.tumblr.com

thanks for playing, kids!

2013 edit: try tinyhomemaker.tumblr.com instead.

Think of me, think of me fondly when we've said goooooooodbye

I leave in the morning.
I leave. In the morning.

...

Nope, doesn't seem any more real by saying it differently. I almost backspaced back towards the top of the page because I couldn't figure out what to say after that. I'm exhausted. Naturally, I procrastinated till tonight to pack. And weed out junk I don't need. And re-pack. Seriously, how can a few skirts, shirts and necessities take up so much room?

I bought at top-loading hiking backpack from our local surplus store, and it's loaded to the brim with goodies to see me through various climates till summer.

I'm heading to San Diego first, then joining my mom in Puerto Rico for a few weeks, then hopefully on to Virginia till May or June. I've acquired a traveling companion who will adventure with me on the first bit of the trip. I wish my fingers could type the story of this acquisition as my body slept. I've decided to leave my computer at my parents' house, which means I won't likely get to tell the story any time soon. But I'm okay with that. Originally (and by that, I mean up until a few hours ago while I was packing), I was planning to go bloggo crazy on my adventures. I even made a new blog that I was all excited about (http://weneverwait.tumblr.com/). But space constraints of my bag made me stop and question how necessary it was to tell people what I was doing while I was doing it. Everyone knows I can't multitask--and I'd much rather be fully engaged in every experience than hole up somewhere with a glowing screen.

That's right glowing screen, I'm dumping you. When I come back from working on organic farms, maybe we can reevaluate our relationship. I'm hoping in the end, we'll stop goin so steady (I know, I haven't blogged in forever. But facebook and hulu have still been sucking my soul a little bit too much lately).

I doplan on staying in touch with people. Maybe I'll even learn to start answering my phone! Besides, hand-written letters are so much more exciting to get than an electronic comment on an electronic wall. Or maybe they're just more exciting for me. Meh.

Okay, I'm going to sleep now. And I'm darned excited.

P.S. my new favorite jam:

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." (Albert Einstein)

Just found this and don't feel like pulling out my commonbook to write it down. Tomorrow, tomorrow--and possibly an update on things somewhat new.

I appreciate home and train

Life is a whirlwind that incessantly howls, oh so lowly, in my ear. I exist during the quiet hours, sprawled in my bed (yes, I'm sleeping on a bed again). I trace the rolling quiet during cigarette breaks--now coloring breaks complete with crayons and underwater critters. But it's much too cold in Wisconsin to slip outside for a concentration on color. My bed is five hundred miles away, and no bed--or space reserved for sleeping--gives me peace like the one I am accustomed to. I get claustrophobic with too many people (or even just one) focused on me, and I need that rescue of clarity and solitude.

It's been a long time--well, since spring--since I've really blogged, and naturally a lot has happened since then. I wouldn't know where to start, and frankly don't have a mind to.  I've been so homesick since early summer. I fell in love with Leise--we were going to have babies together one day, we said--and the homesickness was dulled. But it did not fully disappear, and, when things ended between us, it snuck back around to nudge me at the most unexpected moments. Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and, though nothing about its foundation makes me thankful, and so thankful to be sitting where I am.

A fire softly flickers to my left. My parents expanded their (new) house with a dining room made of cedar walls and ceiling, skylights bringing in the outdoors during sun-filled hours. The pool room has been finished, with a cement floor that heats the pool. My favorite part is the hot tub, looking out the many windows into the (near)neighborless expanse. That room has cedar walls and ceiling too. It looks like something out of a dream or magazine. And the kitchen with fridge full of food makes me itching to play.

It's not just the place though. The safety of the country--and with parents sleeping nearby--is folded over me like the warmest, lightest blanket. When I go to sleep, I don't worry if someone will try to break in. Not that those worries normally take up all my time, but when Terra isn't home when I climb in to bed--well, I pay attention to the noises outside our door till I remember how to fall asleep. Sometimes, I forget.

It's 11:11. Did you make a wish? I'm making wishes. Home is lovely, but I can't come live in this tiny town. Work beckons me back, and so do my last semseter of classes (for now. more about that later). It's tempting though, to shake it all and stay where the fridge is always bursting with organic fruit and vegetables. Where I am sought out. Where I have a history. A family. Close connections.

I have many random friends--lovely friends with lovely dreams--in Lincoln, but not many core connections. No real best friends. And I thrive with best friends. Or at least I feel like I'll thrive with the ability to meet new ones--new faces, stories, and ways of interacting. Lincoln feels more tiny and hollow as I get to know it, but I don't know understand how that can happen simultaneously. What I'm looking for--the community of people I'm looking for--I think will be found in other places. Or I need to go to other places to find more pieces of myself, really. Then maybe I'll discover those people have been, and always will be, all around me--in the every day life.

 I'm thinking of Madison after my lease ends in October. Or maybe finding a farm over the winter that I can wwoof on that provides a stipend (pesky student loans), then Madison in the spring when more places will be hiring and apartments opening up. I'd certainly like to live with roommates, but don't really know anyone in Madison anymore. Plus, we've all changed so much that even if they still lived there we'd be play the part of strangers. I actually love strangers--like the boy on the bus who studies art in Chicago and is leaving for Indonesia soon to help with a friend’s art school--but right now I'm yearning for the kind of strangers that see the world similarly to how I do. Or at least hold similar desires in how to interact with it. Symphony of Science's We Are All Connected and Matisayhu's One Day pretty much sums it up. And many Rebelution songs.

You know, all the corny "all you need is love" crap. Except it's not crap. It's legit, and seriously missing from society today. What ever happened to community? It's pretty much my new quest--to find, to build, understand, to reclaim.

So I'm starting with stolen moments to get my thoughts in order. It's only in the quiet that I can think, that I fully exist. And I want to learn to make my everyday filled with the peace and clarity of these moments. I want to be Present in my life, and not just get swept in the whirlwind (oh society, and all the evils that we have made you). I want to Live. And really, deep down, who isn't earning for the same?

rocky mountain dreams

You will NEVER be merely pretty.

When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother
“What will I be? Will I be pretty? ”
Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?
What comes next? Oh right, will I be rich
which is almost pretty depending on where you shop.

And the pretty question infects from conception passing blood and breath into cells. The word hangs from our mothers’ hearts in a shrill of fluorescent floodlight of worry.
“Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty?"
But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dryad:
teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose,
face donkey-long, and pox-marked where the hormones
went finger-painting my poor mother.
“How could this happen? You’ll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist.” “You sucked your thumb. That’s why your teeth look like that! ” “You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were six, otherwise your nose would have been fine! ”

Don’t worry; we will get it all fixed she would say,
grasping my face, twisting it this way and that as if it were a cabbage
she might buy.
But, this is not about her.
Not her fault she, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset
she could bestow upon her awkward little girl
was a marketable appearance.
By sixteen I was pickled by ointments, medications, peroxides.
Teeth corralled into steel prongs, laying in a hospital bed.
Face packed with gauze, cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved.
Belly gorged on two pints of my own blood I had swallowed under anesthesia,
and every convulsive twist,
like my body screaming at me from the inside out
“What did you let them do to you? ”
All the while, this never ending chorus groaning on and on
like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my blood.
“Will I be pretty?”

Will I be pretty like my mother,
unwrapping the gift wrap to reveal
the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her?
Pretty? Pretty.

And now I have not seen my own face in ten years.
I have not seen my own face in ten years, but this is not about me!
This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in.
About women who will prowl thirty stores in six malls
to find the right cocktail dress, but haven’t a clue
where to find fulfillment or how to wear joy,
wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, b
eneath those two pretty syllables.

This, this is about my own some-day daughter.
When you approach me, already stung-stayed with insecurity,
begging, “Mom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?,”
I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer no.

The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be,
and no child of mine will be contained in five letters.
You will be pretty intelligent,
pretty creative,
pretty amazing,
but you will never be merely “pretty.”

Scratch and Dent Dreams

Come on in, I’ve got a sale
on scratch and dent dreams,
whole cases of imperfect ambitions
stuff the idealists couldn't sell.
Yeah, I know none of its got price tags,
you decide how much its worth.
And none of its got glossy colored packaging
but it all works just fine.
I’ve got rainy day swing sets
good night kisses and stationary stars
still flying at the speed of light.
And over there out back
if you dig down through those
alabaster stoplights and those old 45’s
you’ll find a whole crate of second hand hope.
Yeah right there, that’s no chrome,
you just gotta work, polish it up a little bit.
Most folks give up too easy,
trade it in for some injection mold
and here and now.

And over there across the freeway,
you see that purple awning flappin’ in the breeze?
Well that’s Momma Genuine’s shop.
She’s older than all of us put together
but she still laughs like a house.
Now, she only sells tools but not like ya know,
she’s got saws that put back together,
drills that make whole. Mommas a cool legend to know,
and she sells duct tape too.

And down there at the end of the block
are two kids, crew cut and pig tailed
sittin’ behind abindle top table
selling peanut-butter ice-cream out of a galvanized pale,
and there’s no metaphor there its just good ice-cream.
So here’s what ya do, take a look around
pick out what reminds you of places you wanted to be
but gave up on going and jam it all in this big box called “now”.
Then go across the street to Momma Genuine’s,
ask her how she’s been , show her what I gave ya,
she’ll know exactly what you need
and then go back in the center of that freeway
and get to work making it all fit.
You wont have any directions or factory number tabs but don’t panic,
there’s a hundred ways to do it right
and none to do it wrong cause your startin’ out
with what’s already been given up upon,
you cant do any worse.
Use the tools momma gave ya,
hum a little while ya work.
Then you find yourself sproutin’ extra thumbs

Take a break.

Go around the block,
get yourself an ice cream.
Smile when they hand it to you,
tip em if you can
and when you get back it’s all gonna make sense.
You’ll see where it’s gonna fit perfect
and where the duct tape has to go.
And when you get finished,
take whatever spare parts you got at the bottom of “now”
and make yourself a little sign that says “tomorrow”,
and hang it on your masterpiece.
Then you go back down the block
to where those two kids are packing up
their peanut butter enterprise
cause somebody told them they’d fail
and I want you to hand them tomorrow.
Make sure they know how important it is.
After they’ve run off with it all elbows and smiles
y’all can come back here, we’ll do it all over again.

Now im not telling you this to make a profit,
that’s how so many good ideas go wrong.
I’m just tired of seeing every day people
screaming through these doors convinced
they’re gonna hock even their littlest hopes and dreams to fund their 401Ks.
I’m tired of seeing this whole world bet on going big
or giving up. Only handing out glory to newspaper headlines
and story book endings, ‘cause the truth is
I think we need those swing sets most on the rainy days.
I’m happy going to sleep after just a goodnight kiss,
and I believe that beauty can be as simple as two kids,
crew cut and pig tales, handing me a scoop of peanut butter ice cream
that’s so good, you’d think it was a dream.

I've fallen in love, happy as houses.

Home is Where the Heart Is
The Sounds

There was a place in my hometown where I use to wander
Above the trees I saw a big black cloud of thunder
Summer rain in my face like snowflakes falling from space
It was so beautiful, and then I passed the mountains
I went coast to coast, and from star to star
That's how you learn, just who you are

[Chorus]
Home is where your heart is
Find where you belong, start to take control, show a little soul
Then you feel who you are
Home is where your heart is
Find where you belong, start to take control, show a little soul
Then you feel who you are

There was a time I couldn't see myself growing older
But then I went for a walk when I came back I was so much taller
Maybe try to find something that I could be part of
But I decided to leave, and then I crossed the river
I went coast to coast, and from star to star
But that's how you learn, who you really are

[Chorus:]
But I leave you with a kiss, there's so much more than this
When you know who you are

Oh, what you know, stop to think
Start to feel, and then you'll heal
You got to rise to the occasion, you got to read between the lines
Then maybe you'll find, who you are inside
When I look into your eyes, I feel what you feel
Come take my hand, let's go for a swim

[Chorus:]
But I leave you with a kiss, there's so much more than this
When you know who you are

don't let me forget

give me your words, Saul Williams. give me your words for a new world.

I read the most amazing poembook of my life: , said the shotgun to the head by Saul Williams. I wish the world would read it. Here are my favorite quotes from it:

"Citizens
where is your allegiance?
why do you pledge
with a covered heart
when it needs to be opened?"
-p. 171

"intelligence is intuitive
you needn't learn to love
unless you've been taught
to fear and hate."
-p. 121

"only through my words
might new worlds
be called
into order."
-p. 96

"from now on
cities
will be built
on one side
of the street
so that soothsayers
will have wilderness to wander
and lovers
space enough
to contemplate
a kiss."
-p. 30

"she kissed
as if she, alone,
could forge
the signature
of the sun."
-p. 31

"rivers
like oceans
oceans
like answers
questions
in cloud forms
raindrops
in stanzas."
-p. 42

what happens when you get a hammock, hold the ham?

Sew What Hammock!

"Wilderness" chair.

Pallet chair.

Now if only someone would want to adventuremake these with me.

Way down deep inside we all just stay the same

This is super rad. Thanks to Mariela for finding it :-)

Lucy in the sky with feelings

From CNN:

When she was only two days old, Lucy, a chimpanzee, was purchased by the University of Oklahoma and sent to live with Dr. Maurice Temerlin, a noted psychologist, who, along with his wife, raised the little chimp as if she were their own human child.

Lucy was taught how to eat normal meals at the table using silverware. She could dress herself, often choosing to wear skirts just like her "mother" did. She could even make tea for her "parents" and the team of researchers who trained and cared for her.

Dr. Robert Fouts, one of the groundbreaking psychologists who taught American Sign Language (ASL) to Washoe the chimp in 1967, helped Lucy learn to communicate using around 250 ASL signs. Lucy could not only give the signs for objects like airplane, ball, and food, but she could also express her emotions with her hands, often "saying" when she was hungry, happy, or sad.

Lucy had become so close to human in most every way that she only found human men, not male chimpanzees, sexually attractive. It was pretty clear that, in her mind anyway, she was the same as her parents.

It's a sad fact that once a captive chimp has reached about four or five years old, their immense strength can become a danger to their human caretakers. Often they need to be placed in a zoo, a lab, or some other facility better equipped to handle primates. In this case, the Temerlins raised Lucy as their daughter until 1977, when she was almost 12 years old, before they finally felt like they had to find her a new home.

After much deliberation, they decided upon a nature preserve in Gambia on the west coast of Africa. They, along with research assistant Janis Carter, flew with Lucy to her new home to help ease the chimp into the wild. However, it was not going to be as simple as they'd hoped.

At the preserve, Lucy was put in a cage at night to protect her from predators. She had only ever slept in a bed inside a nice, quiet, suburban home, so the jungle was a completely new and frightening environment for her.

She was also scared of the other chimps, strange creatures she had only encountered a few times before in her life, preferring to stay close to her parents and Janis whenever she could.

She wasn't eating because her food had always been delivered to her on a plate; she didn't even understand the concept of foraging.

When her parents suddenly became distant and weren't providing her with the life she had always known, Lucy became confused and sad. She would often use the sign for "hurt." And she lost much of her hair due to the stress of her new situation.

Realizing that Lucy would never move on if they stayed, her parents left her behind after three weeks. Janis agreed to stay for a few weeks longer, but it was soon clear that Lucy couldn't change who she was. And so, Janis never left.

Janis helped found a chimpanzee sanctuary on an abandoned island in the middle of the Gambia River. She took Lucy and other chimps that had been raised in captivity and lived with them on the island, teaching them skills they would need in the wild, like finding food and climbing trees.

For most, the new lifestyle quickly became second nature. But for nearly eight years, Lucy refused to give up her human ways. She wanted human food, human interaction, and to be loved by, what she considered, one of her own kind. It wasn't until Janis stopped living on the island that Lucy was finally able to accept her new life and joined a troupe of chimps.

Whenever Janis visited the island, Lucy was still affectionate, still used sign language, but thankfully, she always went back with the chimps into the forest.

Sadly, Lucy's decomposed body was discovered in 1987. Her exact cause of death is unknown, though some believe she was killed by poachers. Others say it was probably something less spectacular, like an attack by a dominant male or an illness.

There's one thing that no one who knew her wonders about, though, and that's the fact that Lucy never really believed she was anything less than human.

And people wonder why I choose a diet that doesn't require animals to be murdered or exploited simply to please my taste buds. 

Awesome.

Epic. Especially with the addition of a record player also run by peddling. Adventures!

ta>"Life ain't what  it's meant to be.

We were meant to see

A new horizon 

every day.     - Steven Hutchison

Why did the farmer bury all his money? -- to make his soil rich

My day has just been made. Check out these awesome awful jokes. You know you want to. 

A human can be healthy without killing animals for food. Therefore if he eats meat he
participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. -- Leo Tolstoy.
 
Whenever we cause suffering or death to any other being, we cause suffering to the Great Life Force. -- Shik Po Chih. 

"I would not eat if no one kills the animal," said the meat eater. "I would not kill if no one eats the animal," said the butcher. ["I would not breed these animals for consumption if no one orders them," said the big business executive.]

http://www.vegecyber.com/others/about_vegetarianism.shtml

In two and a half hours I'll be 21. That sort of weirds me out.

Someone wished me ftxozäri aylrrtok ngaru. Can I just say this is the coolest birthday greeting ever? Better even than Klingon. Yeah, I just said it. Na'vi, I love you! It means "smiles to you on you celebration" (happy holidays, happy birthday, etc.)

Wanted: Graffiti artist to transfer their mad powers into my mind

Broken Fingaz -Graffiti Stop Motion from Broken Fingaz on Vimeo.

I will have a child like this some day:



Well, maybe not. But if I don't get around to it, it's good to see someone else did. That kid rocks!