Marshmallow

What I'm trying to learn is this: what will be will take time. What I cannot understand though, what fights the hardest against this current is this however: life is too fucking short to not eat the one marshmallow. You never know when you're going to die and cashing in early might not be the most terrible approach.

Away

Everyday feels like a goodbye.

I had moved to the Ohio boy house for the summer and danced in the festivals and the warehouse parties. Then Fall came and I found myself in a little home with Ryan and Whitney a block from Jackson's Corner with their terrible expensive salads and sweet cashiers.

And now, in less then a month, we will be gone to Europe.
Everyday feels like a goodbye.
Before he moved to Oregon from Ohio, Ryan told me in the last month everyday was a going-away party. He got on the train west with Arthur dizzy from the last night in Cincinnati.
"I kind of didn't want to leave. It was so fun."

I was eluding to never coming back. Now I keep eluding to July. I don't know what will happen. There is a lot of uncertainty and the best strategy is to give up as much as possible to prepare.

Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium. Who the hell knows. We are going. We are leaving for a spell. I just want to get away for awhile. Become uncomfortable in my own skin. Be scared and see with fresh eyes. I've been such a brat in the last few years, so comfortable and overly familiar. An old medicine, maybe.

(picture of birds)

The momentum picked me up. Last summer I got my waitressing job back and paid off a debt accrued out of living outside of my means and lack of creativity. Moved twice and moving again next week. Year of the Horse, such a strong steady rhythm.

You keep asking me if I'm excited. I've been tired of answering that question. I don't like to hear the same question more than once. I am excited to finish this zine. I am excited to hang the cardboard flags on the rafters and make the teepee for Gold Rust, Second Son and the Rural Demons to play under. I am excited for the Heat party next Saturday at the Circus Center.

Where I am going in unknown to me. Meeting a stranger for a first-date, I don't know if I'm excited. I wish you could ask me if I was ready to which I will respond, "no."

I'm going away and meeting all the people I need to meet before I go. The universe is overabundant in support.

I wish you would ask "Will you miss me?" to which I will respond, "yes."

Right now, I am here. In my sweet Bend, Oregon. My sweet little home with all my little friends. Today I ran into the Whistler, who congratulated me on winning the Hottest Teacher award in the Source. Last night at the show there were hands all over me, in my hair, on my back, around my shoulders. This town is an orgy of hands and names and familiarity. Today Joel and I warned people on the sidewalk to avoid the dogshit. Joel put up a notice in his accordion case (next to the sign requesting $ for a song) "$ for warning about dogshit."

When I am away I will see your face in Brussels and Oslo. No doubt I will find you in a pub in Reykjavik and a concert in Paris. No doubt, I will look for your face among strangers.

Goodbye for now. I will miss you so. Thank you for you kindness. I look forward to being again in your arms.

Nettle

March 2013

Jake took me to the nettle patch today.

My coat with only one button opened like cape as we rode our bikes along the river as fast as we could.

I can't tell you where the nettle is

I can tell you where the wolf berries are (in the alley near my old house). There should be enough again this summer for you and me if the bees are busy and the neighbors don't prune them away

But the nettle is Jake’s to share.

Riding, I tell Jake I figured something out. Gazing at Rinnah last night I got shy and looked away. I remembered when it was that when you kiss someone you stop looking away. When you admit your love, you feel like you're inside that person and they are inside of you.

Jake tells me I have women medicine and that I use my powers to help others.

He says the nettle is male and female and mate every. The root of the nettle feels masculine and warriors would consume the nettle to strengthen their blood

Along the Deschutes, we look around the brush. There is a styrofoam container, some crushed Olympia cans, a bottle of Old German which I put in my backpack.

Jake finds the nettle and we clear away a place in the thicket to crouch down. The nettle is going crazy in the valley but here in the high desert it is just one small plant.

I tell him every year I wish the winter to be so treacherous and miserable. I hope everything breaks and I cry every day because when the summer comes it feels like ecstasy

“When you touch the nettle it stings and leaves welts.

The Chinese use nettle in medicine. They lash the backs of elders with arthritis and it relieves their joints.” Jake says.

We touch the nettle to acupuncture points on our wrists

Within seconds the skin flares up and stings.

It's reminds us that pain is healing.

He picks a nettle for himself to put it in sushi for the family. He picks a nettle for me to make a warrior tea.  

Little Miami

"The sycamores have white bark only by the river," Ryan points out.

A jackpot of seeds I find burrowed in a fallen tree, he suggests might have been the hoard of hibernating squirrels. Filled my pockets with cold black wooded balls, slick pods, interesting bark, acorns, and walnuts. Brushing them on my pants before slipping them in my pocket.

Home, I lay them on the dinner table in a certain order, framing the seeds with the bark, spacing them carefully apart.

Donna, biologist, Ph.D, leans over and tells me the names. She tells me some are "pod seeds," the long shiny pod is from a black locust, the chipping bark in from a sycamore. What looks like a rotted lime is the casing of a walnut, the spiky seed is from a sweet gum, the rough moth wings are from a maple.

"The Kentucky coffee bean pod," she points out.

"A buckeye, or horse chestnut, bark from a birch tree, a sycamore fig."

One by one she introduces me to them.

Two questions spring up for everyone that is answered. The fundamental ones, back to the origins of everything, "how did these come to be?"

A question not asked enough, or not explored so thoroughly. It seems there is no questions one can ask that doesn't address the universe itself. And we are, the universe asking and responding.

Back to being five-years-old, on the lap of my cousin Summer who is drawing a face with me. Going over every feature we carefully and deliberately make the shapes. Eyes, squinting ovals, eye lids being a carefully drawn line above. Delicate strokes make up eye lashes, two black beads are pupils, the detail of black stripes within the color, the milky white surrounding, the pink softness in the corners. Features I don’t even have names for.

I think back to the old zine while back where I wrote about Natty and the mullein, how the moments when I'm open and curious are the greatest moments and the ones I wish to share in my writing. The moments that I need to flow through me. These are the small notions the universe answers that are beyond me. They belong to all of us.

"The seeds are black because they've been frozen," Donna tells me. We are unsure about the locket looking pod, maybe a milkweed.

"When a milkweed cracks open it releases little floating seeds like a dandelion."

Of the old lime she indicates, "That’s a walnut inside its casing. Don't try to peel it off or your hands will be dyed black. I had a friend who peeled them for a job one summer and his hands were completely black for a year." The mysteries of the plants revealed from the stories.

It reminds me of the afternoon with the nettle. 

Plants

Last year was about breaking cycles. I moved twice and realized the burden of the weight I carried with me.
Even now I feel the weight on the shoulders and the weight to come.
Ryan dreamt I sleep walked up a mountain towing a heavy cart. He followed me and when I woke up was unable to ask the question of why I was pulling the cart. Resting the cart down we continued up the mountain, quicker, I would imagine.
The days of unlimited strength are lessening - but nothing has changed, really.

This last year I wrote forty zines and sent them away without making copies to people I had put on a list. A person for everyday in September and October. At the end of it I threw a little party at the theater. Kolby came and even Scott, dizzy, cheerless and gaunt as he was in those days.

More Unity and Universe Blah-ty-blah

"The sycamores have white bark only by the river," Ryan points out.
A jackpot of seeds I find burrowed in a fallen tree, he suggests might have been the hoard of hibernating squirrels. Filled my pockets with cold black wooded balls, slick pods, interesting bark, acorns, walnuts. Brushing them on my pants before slipping them in my pocket.
Home I laid them out on the dinner table and put them in a certain order.  Framing the seeds with the bark. Placing them carefully spaced apart. Donna, biologist, Ph.D, leans over and tells me the names. She tells me some are "pod seeds," the long shiny pod is from a black locust, the chipping bark in from a sycamore, when looks like an rotted old lime is the shell of a walnut, the spiky seed is from a sweet gum, the rough moth wings are from a maple.
"The Kentucky coffee bean pod," she points out.
"A buckeye, or horse chestnut, bark from a birch tree, a sycamore fig."
One by one she introduces me to them.
Two questions spring up for everyone that is answered. The fundamental ones, back to the origins of everything, "how did these come to be?" A question not asked enough, or not explored so thoroughly. It seems there is no questions one can ask that doesn't address the universe itself. 
We are the universe answering the questions of the universe. 

"The universe pondering itself," Max had said (you remember?).

Back to being five-years-old, on the the lap of my cousin Summer who is drawing a face with me. Going over every feature we carefully and deliberately make the shapes. Eyes, squinting ovals, eye lids being a carefully drawn line above. Eye lashes, pupils, the black strips within the color, the soft circle around the color, the pink softness in the corners. We are asking, what makes a nose? What makes a chin?

"The seeds are black because they've been frozen," Donna tells me.
We are unsure about the locket looking pod, maybe a milkweed.

"A milkweed cracks open in the Spring, releasing little floating seeds."

Of the old lime she indicates, "that's a walnut inside its casing. Don't try to peel it off or your hands will be dyed black. I had a friend who peeled them for a job one summer and his hands were completely black for a year." The mysteries of the plants revealed from the stories. 

It reminds me of the afternoon with the nettle. 

Cincinnati

Puma's house was falling down the street. Ryan could only be in for a small amount of time before he got vertigo. We laid on our backs in the kitchen to see if our inner ears could detect the slope, if the blood in our head and limbs would be pulled the way it did when we'd lay on the slope of the earth. Placing an empty bottle on the floor we watched it roll without suggestion, towards the bathroom, towards Megan's room where Bailey the pitt bull peeked around the corner, nervous at new guests. 

From Puma's window, three and half flights up, out the window, I looked out at the drop. 

"One day the whole house is going to slide off its foundation into the street," Ryan told me. Puma's bed near the window on the top floor would be the first out. I told Puma to tether himself to the wall on the opposite side of the room in case it happened. 

I heard the other day of a failed suicide attempt from a three story building. Whoever it was, jumped, got back up, and jumped again. Glancing at Puma, the cornfed Ohio boy, with stronger tethers to family then he might a rope to a wall, would land gracefully on his mother's prayers alone. 

The buildings in Cincinnati are tall and thin, willowy like geriatric ballet dancers. Sometimes I think, so much of what is holding it all together is faith. I know this is silly. There are things in between, beams and balance 

In the Bill Nye, Ken Ham debate the sacredness of faith was utterly lost. Bill Nye on the science side, Ken Ham defending Creationism. It's silly to draw conclusions from absolute truth, but faith itself is not silly. If faith is not intended to grow it is a poison. 

Time has been moving softly and quickly ever since the solstice. Like Rip Van Winkle, I feel like I could wake up one morning and see myself a hundred years older in the bathroom mirror and wonder where the time went. Sleeping, waking, reading - I look up from my painting and see three hours has passed. How was it so? Little mysteries revealed in the time, not the shaking revelations that come with effort. They amount to the same satisfaction within myself. ]

Students

The boy with the ice-eyes is in class today. From across the room I catch him in the corral of bright colored balls.
He is so kind. We play a game. Putting the same colored balls in a basket. Red. Green. Blue. He calls Yellow, "Low." His favorite color is blue. He is two. He fits my need for order.

Been falling in love with my students lately. Spending all my days thinking of what to do with them and then throwing it all out the window and just listening to their stories. It has yet to come to anyone's attention how terribly under qualified I am to teach writing. I don't believe my employers know what I do.
This is my third year working at the Nature of Words and only now am I settling into it. It is because of the students.
Tristan, pixie-cut wandere who invented her own compass that points only to the heart when she is lost. She could probably point out the North star but follows the direction of Orion - spinning round and round, finding the stories most kids her age never find. This evening on the sidewalk she pulled a cigarette out of her mouth and hid it, slight of hand, while saying goodbye. Walking away with Erica who looks like Scarlet Johanson and starts her drawings with the eyes. Puppy haired Canon who confessed tonight they call him "Guac-Boy" at the Mexican restaurant he does dishes at and is sixteen years old. In the blanket fort, Canon played a spoken-word bit on the tinny iphone speaker, "We all have different abilities, thought processes, experiences and genes. So why is a class full of individuals tested by the same means?" Then we dismantled the blanket fort.
Jeremiah was helping me with blankets and bags when we all parted ways.
"Tristan hid her cigarette from me," I mused to him, "she doesn't want me to know she smokes."
"I smoke cigarettes. And I smoke pot. I'm a closet nothing."
Jeremiah is going back to Marshall High School, the alternative school. We applauded him earlier when he made that announcement.
Maybe I am qualified to work with these students. No degree, but a chest full of old notebooks since Middle school. I don't know if the students know what a scared kid I am. How I feel just like them. Judged and
Once at a weekend intensive in Sisters at Caldera I cowered back with my student assistant, Marlee, the germaphob graphic novelist. Admitted if I was a student I would hide in the back with my notebook rather than teach the class. Just a scared kid teaching other kids that are much louder and braver.
The first time I met Tristan I was terrified of her. It was years ago and I watched her put a then, fifteen-year-old Canon in a stunned silence. I told her to write something on my hand and she wrote "For those who favor fire," from the Robert Frost poem. She told me she might not stay. Might run out of the room crying and I told her to do what she needed to do. But she stayed through the entire class.
Last week we both accidentally brought each other presents. Mine, an old Pollyannas band t-shirt and hers, a tiny terrarium in a jar with a christmas light.

"We won't let exam results decided our fate."

Take time loving me

Med

She had just had her heart broken and was moping and you told her to smile.
And I told her, "don't you dare."
And I pulled you off to the side and told you, "don't you ever tell someone to fake it."

What do they say? It takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile.
It takes no muscles to make no facial expression at all.

Lying burns more calories than telling the truth. I made this up.

Smiling causes happiness. So it goes.

Cussing reduces physical pain. So it goes.

Don't fake it.

Pills like baby teeth
I break them apart
I am weaning.


There is something more than happiness that needs to be discovered in this life. 

"Sometimes people need to walk a dark path," Ryan tells me.

Another night

I can't do it
I tell Ryan
and he drops his bike, leans it against the truck
Walks towards me
and puts his hands on my shoulders
tells me
"Do what you want
I love will love you no matter what
I don't see you as a person on medication
Don't do anything you're not ready for"

So I'm breaking my pills in half.
Half of 20mg
Half of 10mg
5 mg a day.

I used to go without. Gave myself a month here or there.
Last winter, my eye twitched. My brain felt like it was floating in the sea.
And I had just forgotten to take them
And I slept in
My routine was distrupted.
I did it all wrong.

I start splitting my pills in half after Ryan and slept that night in the daisy field.

Last summer, Mom asked me if I still thought about suicide. 

When I had told her I was on medication she rolled her eyes. Disappointed. I didn't bother to tell my Dad because I knew it would be worse. I told my brother and sister over a fire a few months in. 
My brother told me, "How can I judge to for taking medication when I have no idea what it's like to be you."

I told Mom, " I didn't think about suicide." 

She told me she read an article about depression and that kids that stayed up really late when they were young tended towards suicidal thinking when they were older. 

"Remember when you would stay up late working on your projects?"

Way past when everyone else had gone to sleep. 

I poisoned myself. 

Dave and I called it our  "human pills." He had submitted an article to my compilation zine, Fighting With Demons, about being on medication and for years growing up in a fundamentalist church.
"I grew up believing that my anxiety and sadness were deficiencies in faith."

The patient is a 22-year-old female, 9-week into her pregnant. She does not want the doctor to turn the monitor to show her the ultra-sound. A volunteer has offered to be nearby during the termination procedure. When the procedure is over patient cries so the volunteer believes she is not a monster. Patient does not believe monsters should have children.

The patient is a 24-year-old female. She remembers feeling different when she was 5-years-old and stayed in from recess. She has chronic thoughts of suicide but has never acted on them. Patient is wracked by guilt over an abortion she went through years ago that she never told anyone. She doesn't know how to explain this to others. Patient works compulsively. When projects are complete patient does not feel a sense of accomplishment. Patient lacks empathy and when issues arise in relationships she abandons them. She feels if she is not beautiful and happy she will not be loved. Patient feels great anxiety when thinking about travel and while traveling. 

Patient does not like herself. Patient feels guilty for being sad. 

Patient is 25-years-old and coming off medication. She has the support of a friend who gives her space to talk about what she is going through. As the medication leaves her system, she stops being able to explain what she was going through. Patient resents her friend for not being able to fix her. Patient feels guilt for not being able to be ok. With a feelings of worthlessness and guilt, suicidal thoughts return. 


Patient is 27-year-old female who has been on medication for more that three years. She feels the spectrum of emotions that she imagines other people feel. Patient expresses anger, sadness and happiness. Patient works compulsively. Patient feels accomplished when completing a project. She does not have chronic thoughts of suicide.

Patient is a 27-year-old female who is taking herself off from medication. She is scared. The guilt she has felt for being on medication is exacerbated by the lack of medication in her system. She is beginning to feel raw, like the buffer between her and the harshness of the world is flaking off. 
She is afraid she will not be able to connect to others soon. She is afraid she will not want to be around children. She is afraid of having chronic thoughts of suicide. She is afraid she won't like herself anymore. Patient is starting to believe she is ugly and no one likes her. 

Francis the enigma

Alicia Renner interview
pigeon
Megan
Rinnah

Rusti Problems
Micah Peterson
Benjamin Rimedio
Ryan O Shaunessy
Drea
Matthew Carter

Jill

It is midnight, under the covers, and I'm thinking of Jill. My eyes are wide open but all I can see is black. I'm also thinking about what if wou

Hanna visits us in spirit. She checks in and sees what we are up to.

mosquito

Hanna would let a fly crawl in her mouth. it stireed up the n. Around you I feel my stomach full of wasps.
I am one of ever moving compulsions. Between one thing and the next. Be grateful if you were the last to speak to me, for it is your will I am bearing. If you were not I might have gone astray.

All big and small things are the same. A heartbreak. A mosquito bite.

Francis Ha

Poets. Stop prefacing your work with how bullshit you are. Your human self betrays your art.

I went to an electronic show weeks ago and danced my ass off. Eating otter pops and hanging off a chain-link fence like a prisoner or a lazy stripper. The djs felt the need to explain the songs and for 30 thousand people they would cut the beat to lay down an explanation. they would cut the beat to tell us to put our hands in the air. They kept cutting in on their own work, wrecking the rhythm of the music and halting the vibe of the crowd.

My advice, artists. STOP. You can't speak for your art. A child is life yearning for itself. 

Hanna's picture: too much control can destroy a work

Nothing is so intoxicating that you can stay drunk forever

Rien es

I'm not sure when it stopped being about happiness and comfort. When being liked was less of the priority when compared with living authenticly. 

Ohio

I moved into the Ohio Boy house to become lost. Rinnah said I would be like Wendy but that was not my intention. I wanted to be caught up in the gust that was blowing everyone around.

Steinbeck

Steinbeck's boat keeps sinking and they keep bringing it up. They say they are going to divide up the boat; bring parts to Salinas and put parts in a hotel somewhere near ...
They're holding on to much. It would be better to point at a body of water and say, "that is where Steinbeck's boat lies," and leave it at that. Then we can all come to it without needing to pay money for the museum or the hotel room.
VOnnegut wanted his body thrown in the ocean. They put it in a box and did a big ceremony and

The only one who almost got away with dying the right way was Gran Parsons. But ... got too drunk and didn't being enough gasoline into the desert to get the job done and They took away the body to be buried proper.

Mom and Dad are in the front seat telling me about church. The sermon was about Jesus giving his body and metaphorically using his death as a way to nourish the people. Giving his body to the people to eat. Man can not live on bread alone. And they are saying how beautiful it is, this sacrifice and I too, started to feel how beautiful it was for someone to offer themselves like that.

There are a package of chicken hearts in the food pantry at my work and I don't know whether to put them in a food box or bury them in the yard.

Hearts are something special.

Lying on my stomach in yoga class my ear and chest to the floor I hear the suck suck suck of my heart pulling in blood. The floor has created a perfect audio conduit for my ear and my heart. There's the tape I found in the free box at work that is sounds from the womb. It is made to play next to babies when they are sleeping to comfort them with sounds from the womb. The sounds of my heart beating into the floor sounds like this

...

There is sugar in everything. I spit a mouthful of cranberries into my hand as I read the ingrediants.
In fucking everything.
The balsamic dressing and all the sauces and the gluten free cereal and all the things.

Kaycee is so excited. She asked me to make a wish and I wished for a place Ryan and I could both live. The universe is vibrating! She said. We can feel it. We are so excited. All our wishes are coming true. It's ok.

More here coffee

There are mornings I wake up and ask you, how long has it been?
5 months, you told me last.

I have not been good at counting and remembering names. Worse than ever. Counting days or cups for the milk. A fantastic woman was in my kitchen and I could not remember her name. She was a doula and worke with children and had just finished a counceling program and I couldn't remember her name.
I told Jen, I love you so much. You are such a good friend to me, but one day, I will forget your name and it will embarrass me and make me feel so scared that you will feel our story means nothing to me, but you must know, it is not that. It is that I cannot remember names. I will always remember you.

When Eugene left France I said I would miss him and he told me I would forget him and I didn't say otherwise but I have never forgot him and still remember fondly him telling me stories of sleeping with prosituites all around the world as we sat by the fountain either very late in the night or very early in the morning. Prosituites in Europe have no heart. They charge by the hour and are constnatly looking at the clock. Prostuites in SOuth America can be bought by the day and are warm and affectionate like friends.

Offerings of Grace and Mischief

We are blowing about like magnificent seeds,
falling apart and drifting away maddengly in huffle puff gusts
It is not a path we are walking
It is a current
and we are flying on the bristles
our arms and legs

watermelon and almond butter
we are stripped away and we take flight

It's so funny
They are going to celebrate Banned book week by
writing controversial short stories
or something like that
I am going to write a story
about a young boy and his grandfather in a functioning monogamous relationship
without a hint of irony. It's going to be so fucking banned.

Let's play a game called
Find the Tooth

Racoons hold onto shiny objects
even at their peril
even to sacrifice their freedom

What is my shiny object?

Pills like baby teeth
I break them apart
I am weaning.

I can't do it
I tell Ryan
and he drops his bike, leans it against the truck
Walks towards me
and puts his hands on my shoulders
tells me
"Do what you want
I love will love you no matter what
I don't see you as a person on medication
Don't do anything you're not ready for"

So I'm breaking my pills in half.
Half of 20mg
Half of 10mg
5 mg a day.

I used to go without. Give myself a month.
Last winter, my eye twitched
and I swooned in headaches that felt like heat waves.
And I had just forogotten to take them
And I slept in
My routine was distrupted.
I did it all wrong.

we fall to save ourselves
we climb to save ourselves
we are always looking to be saved
Salvation

I start splitting my pills in half after Ryan and slept that night in the daisy field.
After we woke up in the hotsprings
After we woke up on the truck
After breakfast
After I dropped him in the forest by the creek
I collected mountain flowers
in a rusty tin can I found in a firepit
I find a dead pigeon by the side of the road and pick it up for Alicia Renner to pluck
The pigeons mate was nearby in mourning when I scooped it up
and I felt terrible as I drove away
I left Ryan in the woods and starting splitting my pills in half

I pick up a hitchhiker.
She's headed to the desert.
Born in Pheonix she was needing desert medicine. Living in Eugene she packed nothing, took the bus as far as she could to Rainbow and I picked her up next to the gas station.

There's another of us that's trying to be saved.
She's hanging out with a scuzzball who's doing heroin
Too frequently.
We are worried she is doing heroin.
Everyone is concerned.
But no one knows that facts
so we can't really do anything about it.
She just got out of a relatioship.
A long one, like 3 years.
The old one, the ex, is trying to save her
but he can't get close anymore
and he is confused
and worried
and feels powerless
and he is becoming beautiful
in a way no one ever saw coming.
And she is becoming sick.
And we want to save her
but
no one knows the facts
so we can't really do anything about it,

Kryon and I are talking about angels and demons
The boy who stabbed himself at the chest at the open mic at Strictly Organic was a friend of his
Kyrin explained he had been doing a lot of these hallucineginic drugs that had been coming through town
His friend would wake up from black outs having done ...
Demons we say
are the things that possess us
Take over out body
we let them in
even if it's a small acceptance we accept the invitation and they take seed
they come inside us
Angels
we agree
are the ones who do not come inside us
they watch
from a distance
they do not manipulate
they are observors
they cry
they do not judge
they walk with us along our path
later that night kyron calls Matt a hipster faggot. He calls Ryan a hipster faggot. He tells Rio she has no friends. He tells Matt Ozrelic a hipster faggot.
Kyron has demons.
I marveled at our connection by the fire
Tyler tries to punch Kyron in the head three times to knock him out so they can leave. Kyron won't leave. He is still calling eeryone hipster faggots.
The other Tylerblocks the punches. Demons abound

I didn't know I needed to be saved until I was.

Oh Lord please don't let me be misunderstoof

Mixtape to this?

I once was lost and now I was found

on the recorders

Micah
Rinnah

I won't stick around the people who ask too many questions.
Ryan was explaining to Nico why he had to go. Telling Nico he was going to see me and that he wanted to see me because he loved me. Ryan says something can't really make sense if you can't explain it to a child.

Angels

Facepicking (illustration?) Jack Black cigarette light Sasquatch

Shaman teacher

KDZ9WH2

Protest Mixtape

Derek Jensen was in the woods, Kasey tells me, he was staying some days out there.
This what wasn't in the documentary, a seperate tale. Maybe they cut it out. Occupied Cascadia. They were asking Jensen about his experience as an acitivst. Talking about the land in the Nortwest. Loving the land, loving the trees and the forest and the plans to protect it.
"Embrace me in your arms, as if for the last time." -Stephen Harrod Buhner

The woods were keeping their distance from him and Derek felt like a stranger. Days went by, sleeping under the boughs where he felt like an outsider, like he didn't belong. 

On the third day a man came and began tagging trees to be considered for removal. Logging. 

Derek flared up and yelled at him. Told him to get the fuck out. Made him stop marking the trees. Made himself big as a douglas fir and the man left. Then Derek felt the shift and the trees welcomed him. He suddenly felt at home. He had earned his keep in the forest. In the world. In the universe.

They say the trees in Port Angeles swallowed the machines that were cutting them down. The earth opened up and feasted on metal bits. They left that place and it's crazy trees. 

There have been fights lost. Few fights won. 

If They Come in the Night
Marge Piercy

Long ago on a night of danger and vigil
a friend said, why are you happy?
He explained (we lay together
on a cold hard floor) what prison
meant because he had done
time, and I talked of the death
of friends. Why are you happy
then, he asked, close to
angry.

I said, I like my life. If I
have to give it back, if they
take it from me, let me
not feel I wasted any, let me
not feel I forgot to love anyone
I meant to love, that I forgot
to give what I held in my hands,
that I forgot to do some little
piece of the work that wanted
to come through.

Sun and moonshine, starshine,
the muted light off the waters
of the bay at night, the white
light of the fog stealing in,
the first spears of morning
touching a face
I love. We all lose
everything. We lose
ourselves. We are lost.

Only what we manage to do
lasts, what love sculpts from us;
but what I count, my rubies, my
children, are those moments
wide open when I know clearly
who I am, who you are, what we
do, a marigold, an oakleaf, a meteor,
with all my senses hungry and filled
at once like a pitcher with light.

Kevin is on a drunk rant again, but this time it's different. 

On Friday's folks stand in front of the bank, on the busy intersection heading into downtown on Wall and Greenwood. They've been here since I've been in High School. Since 2003 when the war in Iraq started. I was involved then, making my mom drive me to peace walks. Lighting candles. Music being played. Redemption song. It was a small movement and has remained small, flaring up on occasion. There are usually the same folks, older. The diligent ones. The mainstays. The bedrocks. 

Kevin walked by them the other day and he told them what they were doing was useless. Protesting was useless. Standing there, wasting their time, he grumbles to me. 

I'm listening incredulously. It's hard to find the words to say. 

Of course. They are small. They are the small axe. They hold their signs,  "PEACE" "NO WAR"

Simple things

Make your voice loud. 

Do you remember the riots in Gothenburg
in the summer of two thousand and one
Boy, we sure had fun
I held your hand so proud
it was shaking from what I learned was doubt
in the warm summer sun

And I saw my face on a screen
they filmed us from a helicopter
The most frightened face I've seen
red in the face like a lobster

Do you remember the riots in Gothenburg
in the summer of two thousand and one
Boy, we sure had fun

Down the avenue
the black black crew
were throwing rocks at the cops stand
everyhing stopped
They started a bonfire
a couple of days prior
I wanted to do that too
burn down the avenue

And I saw my face on a screen
they filmed us from a helicopter
The most frightened face I've seen
red in the face like a lobster

And your hands slipped out of mine
I couldn't see no love in your eye
and I knew what I had to do
burn the avenue

And I'm not a political fighter
and I don't even have a cigarette lighter
But I wanna see that fire
I just wanna see that fire
I just wanted to see that fire
Burn down the avenue

Do you remember the riots in Gothenburg
in the summer of two thousand and one
Boy, we sure had fun

There was this rant a boy posted on his facebook about the apathy of his peers, this generation, our generation. "Who are your friends?" I asked. Who did young man surround himself with? Everyday my friends were coming out of the closet, organizing events, writing radical zines and cookbooks, growing gardens, going into the woods and learning the old ways and passing them on to each others children. 

pom

Jake took me to the nettle patch today.
My coat hold only one button, the one at the top
My coat flapped open
like cape
as we rode our bikes along the river
as fast as we could

I can't tell you where the nettle is
I can tell you where the wolf berries are
in the alley near my house
There should be enough again
this summer
for you and me
if the bees are busy
and the neighbors don't prune them away

But the nettle is for Jake to share.

Riding,
I tell Jake I figured something out
Gazing at Rinnah last night
I got shy and looked away
and remembered
when it was
that when you kiss someone
you stop looking away
you feel like you're inside that person
and they are inside of you
The pact.

Jake tells me I have women medicine
and that I use my powers to help others

He says the nettle is male and female and mate every year
He says the root of the nettle feels masculine
He says the warriors would consume the nettle to strengthen their blood

We look around the brush.
There is a styrofoam container
some crushed Olympia cans
a bottle of Old German
which I put in my backpack

Jake finds the nettle
and we clear away a place in the thicket
to crouch down.
The nettle is going crazy in the valley
Not here
So much.

The tulips are blooming in the valley
The daffodils in my yard would bloom
on the week of my birthday
First week of March

I tell him every year I wish the winter
to be so treacherous
and miserable
I hope everything breaks and I cry everyday
Because when the summer comes it feels like ecstasy

It is why I bear the loneliness
And hold onto it sometimes

Jake says, when you touch the nettle it stings
and leaves welts
He says the Chinese use nettle in medicine
They lash the backs of elders with arthritis
and it relieves their joints

We touch the nettle to acupuncture points on our wrists
Within seconds the skin flares up
and stings

Maybe it's to make us stronger
Maybe it's to remind ourselves that pain is healing.

He picks a nettle for himself
He is going to use it in the sushi tonight for the family
He picks a nettle for me
He says I can make it into a tea

Bike crash comic

Bike, car
bike crash on something "wipe-out"
Car pulls over
"Hey!"
Right when you fell I was listening to .... and it said, "wipe out"
No way bra!
Way!
Hahahahah
Want a ride to the hospital?
Yeah, that'd be great!

Look at that fucking bone..