meet Roy.

so, you know the adage, "If you build it they will come?"

well, Michael got a wild hankering to start working on the chicken coop, and then someone he works with had too many...

roosters.

so, Roy came to join us but he's all alone in his new coop wondering "where my bitches at?"

we need some hens.

in lieu, we decided it would be kind of fun to see what would happen with a box of chicks. for fun, there are also two baby ducks in that box. We'll have to keep them in the house with us for the next month until they're big enough to start going outside.

oh, joy... actually, all that peeping is really rather cute. i even kind of like Roy's big mouth. he's only been at the house for an hour or two and he's already started announcing his territory.

oh poor sweet tribe...

do people still hang out here anymore or have we all started sending each other stupid requests for being girlfriends, sending plants and balloons and passing off drinks over on facebook?

i hate facebook, but at least it saves me a lot of time since i don't fart around on it nearly as much as i did here.

anyway - in case you're wondering where i've been and where i be, and somehow missed it - above this block is an RSS feed for my blog, Squeezing Time, and whenever i post a new entry there (www.squeezingtime.com) it will appear here. or you can just go there cuz i'm not really using my tribe blog anymore due to its lack of features...

i still love you.

a face pretty much anyone could love.

my new friend, Sicily, aka Sis, Sister, and whatever else... C'mere works just as well.

some photographs...

i've posted a bunch of new photographs (finally) in a photoset.

www.flickr.com/photos/gr0...0561191127/ - there are photos from Quartzite, Arivaca, Silver City, Mimbres, the Gila National Forest, and Truth or Consequences...

there's also one of me pretending to be a total badass now that i know how to use a plasma cutter. you at least have to go look at that one. ;-)

we're in.

michael and i decided to go for the rental - january first, we're moving in... our amazing "landlords" have given us free reign to experiment with solar things, gardening things, water things, whatever, just as long as we don't burn the house down.

if'n you're feeling like a vacation, it's a bit out of the way, but it IS warm and sunny here, at least in the daylight hours. we could use some help getting our green starts going.

lots of other news, of course, but right now i'm in the middle of a break from a welding class at Holy Scrap Hot Springs here in Truth or Consequences - imagine, if you will, what happens when you unleash a buncha new yorkers on a small new mexico town... booyah! this little gathering keeps getting more and more amazing as people show up - there are a total of 25 of us here from all over the country (not just new york), all either getting ready to or currently homesteading and most who are planning to do it in the land of enchantment (entrapment! - apparently we, so far, have been the most successful, lol - considering we just walked into that, i'd say it's more serendipity than success, but hey...) there's a couple here traveling across country via two welded-together recumbent bikes, shooting a movie about sustainable communities they visit. i'll have lots of URLs etc. at some other time.

suffice it to say, after quite a long time of "what the fuck am i going to do i need a passion" angst, here it is. god it feels good. i might have forgotten to mention that crystals shoot out the sides of mountains here, so add rock-hunting to your list of things to do when you come visit.

anyway, sorry if i haven't returned phone calls, as i've been severely rapped up in the present state and location. i promise to be a better friend once i get settled into my isolated country life.

today i've discovered this - i'm totally in love with the plasma cutter.

some pictures and an update

i'm starting to catch up on photographs - i've gotten as far as Donald's and my trip to Joshua Tree - check out some pics of Donald in action!

www.flickr.com/photos/gr00vy/

p.s. think we found a great rental down here - it has plenty of fertile soil and a huge garden area, a wood stove, a river (the Mimbres), a big deck, and a ridiculous view - bordering on nature conservancy land, so... no new neighbors either. we're going to stick around for a bit, because we can learn everything we want to learn down here and with fantastic people. i am going to get to do fun things like write, make art, sing harmonies in a band, grow food, chop wood and learn how to build things. also on the list for this year is mapping the constellations (um, there's quite a sky here, holy fuck), learning orienteering (with a compass, not a GPS) and taking a grant-writing class. it's all here, plus the isolation i need to get it all done.

sounds over the top? well, when i left new york i had a list like this, too - it involved learning how to shit in the woods and start a campfire, for example. check. nothing is impossible.

currently, too, we are without a back windshield due to a misplaced tree. we're looking around every scrap yard in the vicinity but it may be a couple of weeks... we kinda knew driving into this place we were going to get stuck here - so we took that windshield mishap as a sign. we're checking the scrap yards but now it's not so much a priority.

we're headed here this weekend for a gathering - blog.holyscraphotsprings.com/ - one of my fellow new york refugees and her partner are putting this together.

also - you can fly into albequerque and get a teeny plane to silver city, or you can fly to el paso and have us come get you. so, you know, come visit. we'll take you to an infinite amount of hot springs.

the eco-hippie tour

so it appears that we're going to be staying in the Mimbres, NM area for a little while - through the new year, at least. Mimbres is between Silver City and Truth or Consequences, NM. suffice it to say i fucking love new mexico. i've only been here three times, but every single time i get back here there's this giant sense of relief, this calm feeling of being somewhere i really am supposed to be. so, here it is. yeah friends, i'm moving to new mexico. at least, ya know, some of the time.


the chain of events has been pushed along by the dream michael and i have of buying some cheap mesa land and throwing up a shelter on it. i never wanted to own property before this, but the idea of having somewhere to get back to and sit down for a while, while still being able to maintain a moderately nomadic lifestyle, well, it makes a lot of sense.

so do earth bags here - www.networkearth.org/natural...gs.html.

so here we are in the midst of sustainable, eco-hippie heaven. we're being passed around a bit right now, happily, and in between passings-arounds we've been ducking to local sets of hot springs and camping. it's very, very cold up there in taos at the moment, as is usual for this time of year. so, we've decided it's a good idea to stay down here a bit longer where it's tolerable, and where nearly everyone we meet is willing to teach us something if we're willing to offer some sweat equity to their projects, too. since we decided that what we were going to do was go and build a house (yeah we're crazy, thank god there are two of us), the path has been thrown wide, wide open to do it. we're currently on an off-grid property where one of the men has offered his design and educational assistance once we get a patch of land (we're to come here and sweat in return). in a few days we'll be headed back to Truth or Consequences for four days of sustainable living and building education and daily yoga, and when that's done, we'll be returning to Mimbres to housesit over christmas. the house, by the way, is part of a old hippie commune built around, yeah, some hot springs.

friends, it's not warm here. it's beautiful, but it is not warm. unless we've been offered a bed (which we have, fairly regularly) we've been sleeping in the truck, mostly, getting up with the sun and going to sleep just after it sets (except for the other night when we wound up spending five hours in a hot pool with the moon overhead). in the Gila National Forest just outside of Silver City, 21 inches of snow happened the other night. we drove in the next night and camped in, oh, about seven inches of it.

it's cold, and lord knows i don't really like being cold but fuck, life doesn't suck.

no time right now...

all i really have the effort to say is that we are two angels being escorted by many more.

i've been waking up in all sorts of beautiful places and spaces and following one incredible synchronicity to the next.

i have been in some beautiful places, remote ones where thank god i have new tires and four wheel drive, and the ground is littered with geodes and military jets fly overhead looking for poor brown people trying to walk across the desert. i have been in the presence of an angel with no teeth telling crazy stories about being married to a prostitute for 14 years, with an 80 year old woman, a writer of children's books who lives in a fairy cottage miles out of town near the Mexican border and drives a 4x4 with a cattle dog in the passenger seat, and loans out some of her land to humanitarian aid organizations. i want to be her someday. she is a mirror of my endeavors. i have talked with young and old alike who walk the migrant trails leaving water and, here and there, picking up a child's shoe left in haste. so many stories, already, so much serendipity carrying us from one place to the next, that i have no time to tell it all at the moment. still in motion, from one national forest to the next set of hot springs and on to more amazing people (many of whom have turned out to be much older than i, and definitely older than the bro - mentors and teachers and inspirations, all - and most definitely angels, each and every one of them).

so, stay tuned. i have some real focus right now and a friend who shares the dream, so we're on our way to make it happen. or, rather, we're currently making it happen. and eventually, it will give me somewhere to sit down and tell the story like it should be told.

all that mysterious stuff the universe works with...

so... last night i did some research on Arivaca, the tiny little Arizona border town where i'm headed...

i found this photographer - www.livingontheborder.com - his photographs kinda slammed me a bit so i emailed him to let him know he'd done his job photographically. I didn't mention No More Deaths, just that his photographs of Black Hawks and Border Control did something to me I hadn't felt in a while. He wrote back something like this:

"here's our phone number, call us when you get here. we let the No More Deaths folks camp on our land as well as other travelers."

so, i guess i'm definitely supposed to go there. in just a few hours i will finally roll out of california and be on my way. To Quartzite tonight, to the flea market tomorrow, and then on to Tucson and Arivaca, where hopefully I'll finally be able to do something of use for the world.

Palm Springs and my upcoming itinerary...

Palm Springs is where gay men come to open galleries and old people come to die.

why am i here?

dropping my friend off at the airport tomorrow, picking up little bro, and then here's the itinerary, with maybe (probably) a few stops in between:

Quartzite, Arizona - i've always wanted to go here, for a few reasons - rockhounds abound, and i like rocks, and there's a big honkin' legendary flea market and i love sifting through junk. plus, it's on the way from here to the Taos area, where i'm supposedly going to end up. Also, a good place to stop for the day/night so we can drive the rest of Arizona during the day and hit up things like the Saguaro National Monument and stuff.

Tucson, Arizona - mostly i'm stopping here because i need a pair of new Chaco sandals and they were out of everything in my size here in Palm Springs. If you've got any friendly contacts in Tucson who could put two people up for an evening, that would be awesome. we will have plenty of smokey treats and dinner to cook for the favor.

Aravaca, Arizona - this town lies between Tucson and Nogales. I had some really lovely campmates in Joshua Tree who told me about this town (when the campsites in Joshua Tree get full, people often ask if they can share with you. We said yes, and got REALLY lucky). Aravaca is home to a group of workers from No Mas Muertos, aka No More Deaths - check them out here - www.nomoredeaths.org/ - this is an organization that offers humanitarian aid to migrants on the Mexico/US border, and those crossing through the Arizona desert. I'm especially touched by the work that this organization is doing.

Los Cruces, NM - because duh, dude, it's the lowrider capital of the United States. This I gotta see. Besides, if any of those vatos get too fresh with me I know how to curse 'em out in Spanish.

Silver City, NM - surrounded by nature, hippie communes and hot springs. Worth checking out since it's on the way.

Truth or Consequences, NM - I've got a friend here doing fantastic eco-work. I wanna say hi and see what she's up to. Plus, more hot springs and all that...

Santa Fe, NM - mostly to toss it out there that i've arrived; Santa Fe has a really great community of freakfolk and more opportunity for finding work than the Taos area.

Arroyo Seco, NM - my little spot outside of Taos where the beautiful, freaky people gather.

that is, at the moment, my little southwest tour, as by the time i get to northern new mexico it will probably be time to get a little hustle going to feed myself... also, i am putting it out there to the universe and who knows, perhaps some friends of friends - what I really need in my life right now is four walls to call my own for a while, at a rate of free or dirt cheap. Ideally this place would be close enough to my friends and an internet connection that I could deal with the world when necessary but not at home. In the MOST perfect situation, it would come with a friendly dog (a crazy res mutt or blue heeler, or a hound that howls at the moon) that I'd need to take care of for a while.

and that, my friends, is as far as i've gotten for now...