Rocky Winter

It's been a challenging winter. I've done some good writing and enjoyed reading at a local open mic night. Initially, I read at the Beatnik Cafe but didn't find that a good venue for poetry. There's no getting around the fact that poetry is an acquired taste, but I love reading in public because I can see in people's faces which images really work and which fall flat. I switched over to the Water Canyon Cafe which was really excellent. Wonderful people: warm, friendly, very supportive.

Financially, it's been disastrous. Yes, I know that was predictable but I'm a stubborn fool at times. I exhausted my savings and couldn't find even a low paying part-time job to supplement my income. I knew the area was economically depressed but I really didn't expect to be unable to find any kind of work. Unfortunately, being way too educated seems to work against employment in those situations. And it's just absolute foolishness on my part, I have plenty of skills and abilities that could potentially earn me a good income, but I really struggle with issues around success. However, the economic decline and the reality of the area where I've chosen to settle may force the issue. I'll probably be harping on that a lot this summer.

The most heartbreaking thing for me this summer involved my garden. Gardening in the Mojave desert is a significant challenge. This year I finished my rabbit fence and started planting. I had native American species of squash and watermelon, edible pod peas, onions, tomatoes, basil and lavender growing when I herniated a disc in my back (I move a lot of dirt around out there). I guess it was a pretty bad rupture, six weeks later I'm just able to hobble around the house a bit. Being unable to lift, or walk more than a few feet, I could no longer haul water or do the many crazy things I do living off-grid in the middle of the desert (personally, I find this very amusing and think I must be nuts to love it as much as I do). But the garden was my labor of love, being a botanist I'm really attached to plants and when my mountain friends came down to rescue me, the hardest thing to walk away from was the garden, knowing those brave, tough little plants would be dead within a week or two.

I suppose the last thing to report is my efforts at building community, like so many other things this winter it felt like one step forward, two steps back. Community is tough, we(myself especially!) are all little bundles of ego driven hopes and fears that make collective action difficult. But more about that another time.

I suppose all this sounds negative but I don't feel that way at all. One of the hardest lessons I've learned in my life is that often the very things we most need to do are extremely difficult, can even seem impossible while we are in the midst of them, but the struggle is a part of the journey. I've given up the idea that any of this, that working for culture change should be easy. Sometimes, I get these blissful moments where it seems possible...but most of the time I just doggedly persist.

I'm glad to be back online, I didn't have internet access at the cabin this year because it was interfering with my writing. I did write more but I really missed the connection, the hope I feel listening to people who are as passionate about change as I am, being reminded there are so many intelligent, compassionate people in the world.

Water to the Roots

Water to the Roots

I walked in a land without water
I snapped dry branches between my fingers
Nothing lives without the dream of water
And I have seen this place look like death
Empty cabin dreams buried in refuse
Hopes the wind alone heard and remembered
Creosote pale gray and nearly leafless
Blackbrush bare and the feeling of being barren

Like a country mired in money without heart
Every sweet beauty starved into ugly profit
Driven by a demon dubbed necessity
But manufactured needs can be unmade

Not like this dry desert needing rain
Waiting, a quiet pulse beating like a
muffled drum deep beneath the sandy soil
Waiting, like a lost breath when the heart jumps

But near the end even waiting feels dead
And still the desert waits for its erratic
Lover, its impetuous unpredictable
Partner in this gray green dance of life
And when the rain comes, often in the night
Soft like a lovers hand, or in the heat,
Wild, frenzied, an outpour of passion
Like a desperate need to be loved,
to be loveable, to remember love,
driving floods, overflowing gullies,
digging sand whirlpools where washes cross
irreverently and water, water,
seeps into sand, seeps down to the roots
of all things, heals the ache of dryness, springs
life back into awareness

And then, our desert is a new woman,
a woman wild in love with everything
a woman who can’t keep her hands still for loving
for touching for caressing that green life pulse
trembling everywhere with ecstasy.

People before Profit

I’ve had some bumper stickers printed up: “People before Profit” . They are 1 ½” x 8 ½ “, black background and white lettering. If you would like one please send $1.00 to cover printing and postage to:

From A Wild Place
PO Box 130
Twentynine Palms Ca 92277

Please pass this information along to anyone who might be interested. All profits go towards supporting the writing workshops I teach at domestic violence shelters so feel free to send more than $1.00 if you are so inclined.

;-)

Here’s for a saner future for humanity!

At home in the Mojave

A warm hug and embrace for all of you. (Are there many of us left here?) I don't have internet access in the desert this year and I am finding it a wise decision. The world rarely intrudes on my happy oasis. A recent rainfall has covered my little homestead with wildflowers, a real treasure. I'm becoming very involved in the desert community and enjoying it tremendously. I find myself happy here as I have not been since I lost my home in a forest fire four years ago.

In this sense, I am a true moon child...I need those deep ties to the earth, to place, to community, and the community here is whimsical and eccentric. It seems everyone is an artist, writer or musician. I don't think I've ever found a place I've felt more comfortable in. My particular blend of scientist and artist and just plain wierdo is completely "normal" here. It's even normal to be broke and to consider art more important than financial security.

Even though I'm spending less time on tribe, I hope I can continue to build the friendships I've found here.

Be well.

With BIG love,

Lori

Talking about roofs -- technical stuff

The cabin is 20' x 20' square with a 6'x5' bathroom in the NW corner. All these walls (including the bathroom) are cinderblock wall reinforced with rebar. Along the top of each of the N/S running walls are 2 2" x 6" boards. The joists are also 2" x 6" boards, and they are anchored at each end by joist hangers. The boards are 16" from center to center.

So, the two mistakes (that I know of so far) are that the boards that cross the entire 20' may be too far apart and rather than using joist hangers I should have used 2' x 6' boards between each joist. Which would have been quite a bit easier. :-(

I can just fit boards between the joists now, but do I really need to? They seem pretty well-anchored. If the 2" x 6" boards are too far apart for a 20' expanse, can I put up a support beam from the S wall of the bathroom to the S wall of the cabin, or will I have to squeeze in more joists instead?

Defending against love

I am so grateful to this forum and to all of you who responded to my last blog and have been so supportive. I hoped it would jog something loose and it definitely has. A really neat man (friends only) popped into my life recently and today is his birthday. He lives two hours away and I was supposed to drive down and join his friends to celebrate but I really didn't want to go. The last few times we've talked on the phone I've been argumentative and it became very clear this morning what was going on.

[What is it about mornings?]

I am really very afraid to love again --

a person
or a place
or even my own work.

I'm pushing him away, pushing away my own creativity which is the greatest joy in my life, afraid to give myself fully to anything, which is what used to drive me.

It's not unusual for people to feel this way. I know that's true, most people go through periods like this after they've been deeply hurt and there's no doubt I was deeply hurt. For those who are new friends a few years ago, I went through one of those trials by fire (literally) where I lost everything in the space of a year (house--forest fire, assault, friends who couldn't deal, position in a PhD program, job, etc. etc.)

And now I'm holding back, afraid to love again, afraid of being hurt again, but miserable because love is what it's all about, love in the sense of being fully present. What is life without love?

How does this relate to the homestead? I'm a woman with my feet in the earth, I love places very deeply, feel myself a part of them and though I love my little desert homestead, I'm holding back, looking for the courage to love again, to love in spite of the flaws, imperfections and risks. I think what I've been looking for (in the eyes of others) is permission and courage to love again but I haven't found it there. I am finding it here. Thank you.

Handy tips on how to behave at the death of the world

Handy tips on how to behave at the death of the world
Anne Herbert

Sometimes it comes in a dream, and sometimes in one more newspaper headline. And then you know. With your cells and past and future you know. It's over. We are killing it all and soon it all will be dead. We are here at the death of the world - killers, witnesses, and those who will die. How then shall we live?

PROBABLY GOOD TO TELL TRUTH as much as possible. Truth generally appreciated by terminal patients and we all are.

Good to avoid shoddy activities. You are doing some of last things done by beings on this planet. Generosity and beauty and basicness might be good ways to go. Avoid that which is selfserving in a small way. Keep in mind standing in for ancestors including people who lived ten thousand years ago and also fishes. Might be best to do activities that would make some ancestors feel honored to be part of bringing you here. Silent statement to predecessors: Well, yeah, we blew the big thing by killing ourselves. I tried to honor you as much as I could in that context by doing the following:

TRANSFORM YOUR OWN POWER-OVER BEHAVIOR to whatever extent possible. Life system of world being efficiently killed by human habit of going for power over. Tasteful to try to profoundly correct that to extent that you can even though it's too late. E.g. Men profoundly understand and change around relations with women. White people profoundly change in relations to people of color. Humans profoundly change in relationship to other beings on planet. This constitutes thank you note and note of apology to the whole history of the planet. I mean it has been rather great, sunsets, oceans, some art, some moments between beings, smells of fresh mornings. As we kill it all by dominance habits too huge to stop, we can thank it for the good times and say sorry by changing our own participation in the dominance stuff in some profound way. Doing this kind of change will involve confusion, embarrassment and awareness of activities and attitudes you have not been conscious of. Doing this kind of change will involve increased aliveness for you personally, a fine thing to bring to a dying planet. Be in radical alignment with particular forms of aliveness being smashed. Particular species, human cultures, styles of living are being obliterated brutally now. In as much as we all going to die fairly soon, the stylish thing to do is to align with one of the lifeforms and help it be itself as long and strong as possible.

Eschew blandness. Eschew causing other's pain. We are all the target so wear bright colors and dance with those you love. Falling in love has always been a bit too much to apply to one person. Falling in love is appropriate for now, to love all these things which are about to leave. The rocks are watching, and the squirrels and the stars and the tired people in the street. If you love them, let them know, with grace and non-invasive extravagance. Care about the beings you care about in gorgeous and surprising ways. Color outside the lines. Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. This is your last chance.

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