Irresistible

I couldn't help myself. And if you aren't familiar with this series, Get Your War On lives here online. And for other amusements, see My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable and the subtle links at the bottom of the page. You won't be sorry.

Likey

Last night someone told me that if I'm blogging about produce, I have too much time on my hands. I cheerfully agreed.

However, having a lot of time on my hands does not mean I'm going to discuss anything like the long overdue resignation of US Attorney BossMan (aka Posterboy for the double feature: 'Merican Dream/Gitmo Nightmare). I will, however, link you to a chimp site. Yee-haw.

Tonight's post is going to focus on Likey.

Likey. Verb. As in, I likey that S continually inspires and endears me.

I first heard the term years ago from S, with whom I share a 12+ year friendship, and it always makes me smile. So in addition to the example provided above for the usage of the term, here's my likey list for today:

1. I likey that my Authentic Audubon Society Singing Bird Clock sounds so realistic that it produces the same reaction in at least two badass cats. B's cat Smokey used to do it, and I just watched Kitty do it too. They get That Look. They open their mouth, squint their eyes, and breathe all lustily. Roar. Feline instinct.

2. I likey that I found out about this Peace-Making site.

3. I really likey that I am envisioning a way to use my JD for good and not for evil, enabling me to meet my own gaze in the mirror hanging above my kitchen sink.

4. I likey making intention boards with an intuitive 5-year-old, who helped me collage carefully chosen images and words in an ongoing project to manifest my reality. (Oh, and if you're rolling your eyes at the mention of manifesting reality, I do have a sense of humor about Da Seeeekret. And/but I also make intention boards.)

5. I likey having my Anticipator all revved up, looking forward to rendezvous and trips and visits in the next month.

6. I likey the varied correspondence TW and I share through psychic, written, technological, postal, auditory, and astral means.

6. I likey being in love. (Awww, she's in love!)

Feeding Myself~Feeling Good

Knowing where my food is grown is intensely satisfying. If I haven't grown it myself, I like to look at the person who did grow it and have a conversation. Though not always practical, I do engage in this behavior as much as possible.

Yesterday I went to my first Portland Farmer's Market. There are markets nearly every day, at various locations in the city, and I had missed a really good one Wednesday at People's Food Coop (which has a year-round farmer's market. Year-round!!!). So I got my ass out of Haven, the Stumptown-coffee-serving queer-friendly coffeeshop where I'd been working at my computer and headed over to 20th and Salmon. The market was mellow. It was friendly. Beautiful dready mamas telling me about the fingerling potatoes with a slight southern twang and easy smiles. A kindly old man telling me about the Red Bartlett pears, wagging his finger, telling me to "eat 'em up soon! They're ready!" I got the most beautiful berries, pears, peaches, beets, corn, fingerlings. Freezing the fruit, envisioning the sorbet and smoothies and fruit sauces I'll make all year, was a welcomed Farmer's Market Day chore last night.

As one who has been trying to minimize the plastic in my immediate world, especially in my kitchen, I'm wondering how to freeze or otherwise store my fruit without the use of plastics? Canning might be an option, but I try to minimize my sugar intake and all my experience with canning has required using sugar.

Here's a little video of my new apartment ...




And a tour of the yard outside my new place:



And here's my current reminder/intention board. You know, in case you thought I'd become a suit or something crazy like that:


Just for kicks I thought somebody out there might like a shot of my blackberried tongue. No? I'm wrong? Nobody wants to see my black tongue?

Mainstream Sex Stories

I don't often (or really ever) follow mainstream media. Shocking, I realize. However, I am on an email list from the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, through which I see many stories about sex(uality)-society-politics-law. And recently there were three articles in the mainstream press that caught my attention.

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1. The general absence of male-identified folks in articles about bisexuality impacted my impression of Young Women Defy Labels in Intimacy with Both Sexes, Bisexuals Take a 'Flexible' View and Don't Follow a 'Fixed Path,' Say Sexuality Experts. But xx bisexuals are so fantasy-worthy! How silly of me to be bothered by a one-sided focus! At least the article did mention trans folks and resistance to labels and tags to define one's fluid sexuality. I noted, however, that all the women went from relationships with women to relationships with men, and not mentioning heteroprivilege or socialization was a gaping hole. But what did I expect, really, from a piece that mentions Britn*y Spears, Anne H*che, and Ang*lina Jol*e in the opening paragraphs? Favorite quote: "In no way does she deny her history or say she has found her true sexuality. It was all her true sexuality."

2. Polyamory is making it to the mainstream? The Decade of Bad Fashion was invoked, swinging inextricably tied to poly in the headline (oooh, titillating), the piece was hetero/marriage-based, and the question of what constitutes "success" wasn't really explored, but in general I was pleased to see Are Open Marriages More Successful Than Traditional Couplings? A New Generation Tries Swinging, but Leaves the Leisure Suits in the Closet, especially given the source. Favorite quote: "They see it as a high road; it's not cheating, it's growing their relationship."

3. The heteronormative tone and assumptions implicit in Boys, don't be jealous of her toys — play along! How's a guy to compete with the wonders of electronics engineering? annoyed me. Are the phallus-bearers feeling insufficient, given the many choices in small bedroom appliances? How aching that must be for them. Favorite quote: “So much choreography goes into orgasmic sex that sometimes it is wisest to accept help wherever you can get it!”

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There's your mainstream media dose for today. Maybe for the month.

Noticing the Fear/Hope Connection

Though I generally reject dualisms, believing them oversimplifications of complex spectra, hope/fear dichotomies and impulses are on my mind, informed by recent events. My last post, about the miners trapped in a Utah mine, is still abuzz in my brain, though the volume has decreased slightly over the last two days. But hearing about the earthquake in Peru added to my tragedy anxiety. Is Uncle W, visiting Peru, safe? Are his friends and loved ones safe?

So I called my folks. After discussing my uncle's whereabouts and planned travel itinerary, my mom brought up the trapped miners, how they've been following the story closely and my dad has been trying to keep himself from watching the news continuously. This came as no surprise -- every cave-in takes him back to 1965. She talked about the families holding vigil and the incessant hopefulness that propel tight-knit mining communities. Stories of mind-boggling survival circulate, like trapped miners in southern China surviving 23 days, fueling with optimism the eleven-day-long search at the Huntington mine. Hope persists, even for those watching from afar, bearing witness. Praying.

After hanging up, I sat outside under three gigantic cedar trees in my backyard, listening to birds singing in the trees and chickens cooing at my feet. I thought about how fear and hope wove together these events in my psyche. Fear for W's safety and the safety of those he loves in Peru, as hundreds of bodies are found in rubble; fear for the families whose loved ones are trapped. Hope for W's well-being; hope that plucky earth-diggers will survive.

I recognized how much I've grown, because now I'm noticing the hope. I persisted in such a fear-based state for so very long that hardship seemed to loom at every turn. Now I often create a Gratitude List upon waking each morning, almost automatically, but consciously. I live a blessed life, and I am thankful.

Focusing on hope, in the face of frustration, is my mantra for today, and probably for tomorrow too. Larger events put my challenged job searching in perspective.

Update: Just heard a message from my uncle, who reports that the earthquake's devastation was in the area he had visited and that he returned to the US two days before. N, the love of his life, and her family, all escaped injury. Blessings abound.

Update2: Another cave-in at the mine leaves rescue workers dead and injured. Mournful, I breathe, quelling fear for hope.

Trapped in Earth-Tunnels

Along with my father, I have a tendency to pay close attention to mine accidents, those inevitable consequences of digging hundreds of feet into the earth and putting humans there to blast and gather and cut away stone. I generally ignored the news this week as I settled into PDX and studied for the exam I took yesterday. Last night on the BBC news service I read about two US mine accidents and my belly rolled over.

No one in my family works underground anymore. But my connection to mining persists; I cannot shake free from the prickling awareness of what happens in the heartstone of Gaia, where we've tunneled and taken. Don't misunderstand by my word usage that I am vehemently opposed to mining. What would be the point of such opposition? I am acutely aware of why people work in mining and logging and for defense contractors. The food that fueled my lengthening limbs, the house that sheltered me, the books that expanded my sharpening mind - these were all acquired by the modest salaries derived from work I find politically objectionable.

But politics and personal family dynamics are a realm requiring deliberate navigation. How do I hold these seemingly disparate parts of myself? Will I continually mourn for unknown miners, trapped by tons of rock and soil, oxygen running low? Is that mourning a reflection of the sadness I feel toward the limited opportunities available to my dad and granddad? Grandpa's back was broken in a uranium mining accident in 1965, a cave-in that also crushed my father's 15-year-old shoulder. Dad's neck was broken in 1978 in a copper mine accident, and after recovering he went back to the mines as foreman. After Anac*nda shut down its Utah operation in 1983, he sought whatever mining work was available. Hearing of workers dying in a mineshaft fire, he'd rush to the mine to apply, knowing there were now openings. After being unable to secure underground work, as new veins and cheaper labor were harvested in South America, he moved on to defense contractor jobs, at Dugw*y Pr*ving Ground and then at Thi*kol. And how was my mother impacted by her husband's profession? How many times did she wonder if she'd see him again when he left for a graveyard shift as she put her small children to bed? How often did she expect to be a young widow?

There are things I recognize on a cellular level. Through my mother's body I recognize Oregon, the land here, as well as the proud hearts and minds of old-school loggers, who eschewed clearcutting and defended their work as promoting forest health. Through my father's body I recognize redrock desert, uranium dust, the smell of greasy manual labor, and the terror of being trapped in tunnels.

I wrote the following about a year and a half ago:

Sentimentality for the natural world could have easily overwhelmed me; gratefully, it did not. I am deeply connected to the western landscape in which I was raised and protecting the earth from abuse is a cherished personal value I hold. But sentimentality could never fully take hold because early on I realized that issues relating to natural resource acquisition and preservation of wild spaces are complex and require creative methods to find common ground.

My maternal grandfather was born in an Oregon logging camp, the son of a crew foreman. Before he died, my family took him to the forest areas of his childhood; Grandpa was shocked by the clear-cutting we found when venturing off the main roads. He recounted stories of his father covertly bringing forestry students to his camp, against the wishes of the company bosses, to advise the crew on healthier logging techniques. I thought about that story a lot on the drive back to Utah, realizing that my great-grandfather, who made his living from the forest, had a fervent desire not to see it destroyed.

While my mother’s family subsisted on the logging of trees, my father’s family endured by tunneling through the earth. My father and maternal grandfather worked in uranium mines in southeastern Utah, their very livelihood reliant upon a nuclear industry with undisclosed health and ecological consequences. I understand all too well why and how economic survival takes precedence, even in the face of extreme risk and physical injury.

In my family, balancing idealism and pragmatism was a necessity, not a luxury. As a child, I witnessed and participated in a working-class struggle for survival. Education was my ticket out of that cycle of hardship. However, I did not anticipate that education would create such an intense disconnection from my family. As my education and life experience grew, so too did my perceived sense of alienation from my upbringing. My beliefs have deviated from my family's, which has provided me the unique opportunity to recognize the validity and importance of a variety of perspectives and eschew ineffective dogmatic approaches.

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I'll probably still continue to follow the progress in the mines. I can't seem to help myself. The simultaneous integration and untangling of emotion and worldview and cellular knowing is a lifetime journey; not something I expect will be quickly resolved. And for the families of those trapped, those praying for oxygen to reach their loved ones - I pray with you, eyes welling with tears. My body remembers.

Settling

Here's a picture of the first proper meal I made myself at my new home in Portland. Salad, pasta, wine, oh my! Add some Harry Potter and a beautiful location, and it was utterly pleasant, even though I used way too much rosemary in my sauce. Until last night, I was feeding myself antipasti, guacamole, Thai takeout, and PB sandwiches.

I've been in Portland a week now, and I am wondering if my housemate thinks I'm agoraphobic. I have left the house, but not much. Getting everything settled and unpacked and finding where stuff belongs has seemed important for my mental clarity. And it's amazing how much job-hunting and networking one can do in the backyard with a cell phone and a laptop. Plus, I'm studying for the exam on the professional rules governing lawyers, which I'll take day after tomorrow. Do I sound like I'm making excuses? Yeah. I am.

But tomorrow I'm going to study law at the anarchist cafe. Ironic, no?

Yes, friends, I am happy, I am settling in, and the wonder of actually living in Oregon is starting to not be the shock that it was at first. Moss belongs here. My body recognizes this place, and it feels like home.

SLC: Magical Organic Gardenspace

On our way out of town, the beautiful and multi-talented TW gave my parents a tour of Traces, the most breathtaking acre oasis in SLC. (TW describes the fact that she works at a place with her own name as another manifestation of the serendipity in her life.) Going there was the last stop I wanted to make as I set forth.

This spot is incredible. Farmer's market of organic produce every day! Edible flowers! Gorgeous floral arrangements! Lovely gifts and furnishings and organic gardening supplies in the shop! Heirloom vegetables, seeds, and information from those who tend the soil and care for the plants!

For those in or passing through SLC, you must - I emphasize must - visit this place, pick some fresh organic produce, directly pay the beautiful people who grow this blessed food with love, and know that we can feed ourselves from the earth beyond the sidewalk.

1432 S 1100 E. Summer hours Monday through Saturday 9:30 am - 6:00 pm. Sunday hours erratic.

I'm so relieved I didn't leave without learning about its existence; sharing the knowledge and love of this place will make me profoundly glad.

Farewell (Faring Well)

The choppy and disoriented tone of the last few posts may persist as I settle into the first Big Move of my life. Abrupt, jerky movements have manifested as nasty scrapes and bruises all over the lower half of my body from stumbles and lurches.

Remember to breathe, Moss.

The See-Ya-Later Party was beyond words. The love I felt, the bright eyes and tight heart-hugs, the laughter, the touching things people wrote in my self-proclaimed "SLC YearsBook." And tonight I just saw some incredibly beautiful and heartfelt writing by Chicory about moi and feeling our friendship in my core.

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Now I'm sitting amongst boxes, filled with the knowledge that stuff, in general, is just superfluous anyway. Although toothbrushes are nice.