I feel at home here, where the mountains touch the sea.

Bjork often wails sweetly in my mind, "emotional landscapes. They puzzle me."

One of my favorite things in school was writing essays and book reports. I loved to compare and contrast. Some times I feel that my life is one long essay: my journals are mostly collections of passages I read in books that strike my inner chord. I squirrel away words to refer to later in time of love or crisis. I have done this for years. I write down passages, draw comparisons, I weave themes.

(Who is my audience? Do I expect someone to find these journals when I'm dead, and feel that inner hum of struck chord? Is it my inner chorus I write for, hoping they will all agree? My jury is hung.)

This morning on the porch I copied passages from The Hours. I think of a passage I read in a Murikami novel years ago that has become part of me. I think of Joseph Campbell and Bjork. It is as if I am in open water, and to orient myself, I drop buoys. (why? to find my way back? sorry, self; it's a one way trip.) I set out passages and insights - paragraphs and lyrics floating in the water; all together, they create a path, or the illusion of a path. Stay to the right of that one, the left of that, and I'll find my way back, if I need to. But looking forward into open sea scares the shit out of me. Then again, following an other's buoyed path bores me. Perhaps I'll direct my eyes to the sky instead...

- - -

Yesterday I walked on the beach, and I thought, it is essential for me to live near the sea. I can breathe at the beach; the salty wind draws my own air out and I feel revived. Perhaps I love the ocean so much because of its endless metaphors. But that's also why I love mountains and canyons too. I have found a literal landscape that overlays my emotional landscape perfectly (I think of my grandfather, a navigator, with compass and trace paper on a ship). The sea is at once steady and tumultuous. The juxtaposition of the unfaltering horizon and the shifting shore soothes my soul. And the mountains - the creeping crevices of shady creeks. The bushwhacked paths and ancient trees which make me feel small.

- - -

Some of my favorite sea themed quotes:

"She is taken by a wave of feeling, a sea-swell, that rises from under her breast and buoys her, floats her gently, as if she were a sea creature thrown back from the sand where it had beached itself - as if she had been returned from a realm of crushing gravity to her true medium, the suck and swell of salt water, that weightless brilliance." The Hours, Michael Cunningham

"Once when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. " Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World, Haruki Murakami

I live by the ocean
And during the night
I dive into it
Down to the bottom
Underneath all currents
And drop my anchor
This is where I´m staying
This is my home
-- Bjork, "Anchor Song"

Follow the YES!

I LOVE convergences! I was just talking to two important women in my life this evening, about weeding out that which is not needed or wanted, and about saying YES! to that which inspires. One of these women is getting married soon and lives in LA. She was telling me about a great store she heard about that we have to go to to find a dress for me to look and feel fabulous in for her wedding. She said "search online for 'no boys allowed, vintage, chalk board'." Um, OK. THEN I was speaking with another member of my tribe, my heart family - I know that sounds SO Santa Cruz, but you know what I'm talking about - those people in your life so valued and true and on the same wavelength that they fill you with gratitude and inspiration and you both end up laughing a lot and saying "I love you!" and "thank you!" and nice things like "I'm so honored to know you!" You know, THOSE relationships - your tribe. Anyway I was talking to another sista in my tribe about my current state of becoming aware of what is needing to change, and about not knowing exactly how or what the change will look like, but the raw potency of that unknowing, of the openness, of the tingling awareness that the Yes! is coming. AND that one true gift of realizing something needs to change or end is the acute gratitude that can come with its impermanence. This friend is most definitely following the Yes! right now. The Yes! is bringing her love and health and feelings of being exactly in the right place at the right time, and I love it and her and the Yes! I told her about this here vintage dress shop in LA, and sent her the link to the dress shop's blog. Then I read this blog posting, which just seems so apt that it makes me want to type a lot of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Times like these are times that offer the possibility of great change. Trying times force the surrender
of ego and inspire unity, and therefore expansion. If your days appear to be uncertain, keep your mind open,
say yes to all new opportunities, show up and help, take an interest in that which is around you, do anything
happily to help others, and always be paid even if the pay is low. You are always a professional.
5 years ago I was babysitting, walking dogs, walking women, cleaning houses, garages, and organizing closets.
One day I said yes to helping someone at a flea market on a hot day in June for 15 dollars. The rest is history.
Say yes, stay open, show up with love and let go of all pre conceptions. GO.

Yes! So next weekend, my sista and another new friend will go on a day trip to an amazing bakery and garden north of San Francisco in a magical valley, following the Yes! and celebrating the tribe. GO.

be ignited or be gone

I'm eating chocolate cake in bed and reading poems. Her are some of my current favorites:

"To Be of Use"
- Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

"Lead"
- Mary Oliver

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

"What I Have Learned So Far"
- Mary Oliver

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of -- indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

Trouble in life & death

It's not all wine and roses here on the left coast. It's not all apple blossoms and sick swells, though the waves have been killer... It's been a rough coupla days, a rough coupla months even. I am reeling from love lost, love misdirected. Today we buried a goat, Trouble, who died a painful death from bloat. It was a hard thing to witness, to say the least.

I've been having a hard time staying present, which is not unusual for me. I have this tendency to pendulum between worry about the future and romantic daydream about the future. Call it my nature, or a bad habit, or a result of a very nonlinear life as an orphan kid, but the unknown is generally terrifying for me, and also a familiar escape from the present moment.

I also have this habit of dishing out compassion to those who don't always ask for it, appreciate it, or need it as much as I would benefit from spoon-feeding myself. I was reminded today that usually when I'm being really judgmental and impatient with myself, it's mirrored by a similar attitude towards those around me. I'm sorry, folks. I forget sometimes I have an affect on the outside world - I get too wrapped up in my own drama and heartache and self-loathing. You think it's tough being under my scrutiny? You should hear it in here, in my head. The other day I was doing some therapeutic visioning and EFT with a friend, and I was literally beating up my inner child. I saw this hungry sad eyed Sailor Moon-esqe orphan girl in rags, and I had no patience for her neediness, and I kicked her. I have a bit of an abusive relationship with myself. I'm calling on my inner Warrior Princess, my inner Beyonce, to help take the helm, but my inner anxiety-prone abuser is really not happy about giving up control. Oye vey.

Trouble was trouble from the beginning. As a kid she got herself tangled in an electric fence. I had to cut her out. She was OK but became strangely immune to electric fences - we couldn't keep that goat in.

When she kidded 3 weeks ago, her first baby was all turned around and we had to go in and pull it out. It was intense, traumatic, and in the end, it was a big success with pointy bunny ears we call Beyonce. But despite motherhood, Trouble still wandered outside fences recently, and it eventually did her in. She got in to the grain bag yesterday and ate so much that her gut filled up with grain, which expanded in her stomach, fermented, changed her natural pH, produced a ton of gas which eventually filled her up so much that it crushed her lungs and heart. It was horrible. We tried all the usual remedies - feeding her beer, milk of magnesia, and Tide water to stimulate burping, massaging her sides, but she couldn't recover. I spent some of last night/early morning holding her listless head in my lap as she moaned in pain, sometimes crying out, her breathing shallow, her heartbeat erratic. It was awful. I cried for her suffering, for my suffering, for the suffering of so many creatures all over the globe. This, I thought, is what brings us together. This pain is universal. This is devastating.

This morning we had to decide if and how to end her life. We decided that while dying on her own terms at her own pace would be the most natural - how it would happen in the "wild" - letting her suffer was not the humane option. None of us felt confident we could find her carotid artery to bleed her out, so we opted for the shotgun. The blast was bone shakingly loud and she died instantly.

Now I am tired from sleepless nights of goat care, tears, and a host of emotions. Now I sleep. Tomorrow is a new day, and I will need to focus on getting some milk into Trouble's orphan kids, breathing the tension out of my shoulders, and harvesting berries for pies.

Rest in peace, Trouble. I'm sorry your life and death was sometimes difficult. I promise to take care of your kids as best I can.

spring jumps on long legs

Jolene's water broke. I'm enjoying a quick breakfast of french toast and vegetarian sausages (don't tell Bacon) and coffee before I go check on her progress. She's the last of our does to kid, and I'll be kind of sad at the end of kidding season. I like being a goat midwife. Luckily, the kids are SO cute, and I really enjoy their company. Here, some pics.

The Life of Pie: The Mud & Blood of the Every Day

Oh, Life. Today spanned a wide range of farm life activities, from killing to nurturing. This morning, as all mornings, I had coffee with Lauren in our farmhouse kitchen and threw the Tarot. Dede went for a run on the beach (she's so good; I swore I'd go after work, but then hot dogs and bonfire and s'mores won out...). To kick off the work day, we cleaned up the outdoor kitchen in preparation for a group of students who are here for three days; they are from California College of the Arts and might build us a cob oven.

We slaughtered two hens this morning before the art students arrived. These hens had been caught the previous day breaking and eating eggs. Their cannibalistic ways were their death sentence. Once some of them start, all the others follow, and that just won't do in any sort of production situation. Feed and labor are just too expensive to be raising chickens that eat their own eggs. So we decided to slaughter them. It was the first time I actually did the killing - last time I just helped eviscerate the roosters we killed. It was harder than it looked to cut the bird's jugular. I need to get better at that.

I could go on about how I feel about killing animals, and how I think, as a meat eater, I should do that at least once - "Know your food" means meat too. But I'm tired. I will say that it was so amazing to see eggs in various stages of production come out of these hens. Seeing inside of a recently alive animal is so amazing - bodies are amazing.

We cleaned the birds and the area up. The art students arrived. Dede, Lauren, Nancy and I spent the afternoon in the apple orchard where we pruned the young trees. I love pruning. Winter pruning is invigorating, whereas summer pruning is devigorating. In winter, I'm learning, we make cuts to stimulate growth. There are so many metaphors inherent in pruning fruit trees. It's important, for instance, to step back and get a broad view of the tree, and to envision your long term goal before you start cutting. But then you have to get in there and make decisions based on a mix of knowledge and intuition, and really, there is no one right way; everyone will do it differently.

I like the idea of cutting back to make room and energy for new growth. I guess I'm doing that a bit in my own life. I'm realizing more and more, as I get older, what I have time and energy for, and what I need to cut out. I want to devigorate negative habits and encourage positivity and abundance. I am cutting back sabotaging negative thoughts and stimulating flexibility and openness and authenticity. I dance between the overarching view - analyzing my choices along my path - and the mud and blood of the every day. Sometimes I kill things, sometimes I help them grow. Oh, Life.

Yeah, but what do you do?

Today, 15 high schoolers came down from San Francisco to visit Pie Ranch, most for the 1st time. They are all part of a new gardening group; they've started a few raised beds in their school in the Mission District of SF. David has been to Pie Ranch before and participated in the Rooted in Communities conference last summer, but most of the other youth had never been to the ranch, or any farm at all. We played an ice breaker, walked to the upper slice, and broke into tour groups. I led the "crops" tour and explained what we grow, what's up with pie, what's a cane berry, what's cover crop, and why the strawberry beds are covered in plastic. It was cool that these kids had a point of reference from their participation in the gardening group; one girl guessed correctly that the plastic traps in heat and another guessed that it suppresses weeds. Many kids who come here have never eaten a fresh strawberry, let alone know how they are grown.

My friend Casey asked me the other day, "What is Pie Ranch, really? What do you do?" I had a hard time answering, partly because I had just come down off hours of meetings in the city and my brain was fried; partly because I have a hard time articulating all that we do in a few sentences. We do so much. We teach kids about where food comes from. We teach them about why they should care about that. We let them explore nature, to sit by a pond and look at bugs, to feed a chicken and see who is more nervous - the chicken or them. We create circumstances where cooperation works better than competition, like baking 4 pies or planting 200 bed feet of seeds, or making a meal for 30, or moving a 50 lb. bag of grain. We play games and share meals and give high fives. We play. We work. We try to seek balance between activity and reflection.

Today I baked pies with 3 students and a visiting teen from Philly. I asked for one volunteer to be the recipe keeper, and he did math on converting a recipe for 1 pie to a recipe for 4. One girl was the time keeper and the other were the mixers and dough makers. We busted out crust made with wheat grown at Pie Ranch, and they mixed pumpkins (grown here) with eggs (laid here) and sugar and milk and spices. One girl asked me if it mattered which color egg she used, because some are brown and some are blue and some are white. I explained they are all the same on the inside, they just looked different.

Tonight I met Casey and a few other local farmers for a drink at our local tavern - it's been owned and run by the same family since the late 1800's. The bartender knows our names and what we drink. John and I talked about cultivating tractors, and Airielle and I discussed how the garlic is coming up. Casey shared news of his basketball team (he's the high school team coach), and I made a mental note of the date of the next home game so I can support the boys. I invited them to Sunday dinner, a chosen-family tradition. John will bring desert. Casey the chocolate and wine. Airielle's good for veggies, and I will come up with something, maybe squash soup. I encouraged them all to come to tomorrow's barn dance, and hugged them goodby. It feels good to be sinking my roots into this coastal soil and around these people. I'm feeling good.