Greenstorm's Journal

Put this on repeat if you like.

I don't have anything to write except a mood. I'll start as always with the story, but it isn't much of a story, and I can't remember how to begin my life neatly for it: the weekend was lovely, my temples of flesh and green are all being returned to me and I am a creature of worship. I love things again, less gray, less numb. My fingers are not bound by skin, not appendages to be used, but rather windows with which to explore the world. That indefinable space in my chest and especially in the back of my head and in my throat reaches out towards others.

My class has begun to cohere. We went for beers the other afternoon, I suppose it was Saturday after class, and there were a bunch of us. We exchanged numbers finally and plotted to get the kids to come with us-- how do you include people too young to drink, or who need to drive home to PoCo afterwards? I got to chat with people I didn't know much, and I like everyone I talked to. The restraints or professionalism are giving way to tentative friendship, or, at least, buddyship.

Last night was firefighting class, which is being taught by a guy the year ahead of us in the program, but who's been fighting fires for seven years. The person who normally teaches it is out for surgery, but it's fun to have this guy there, fun to watch him teach for the first time. He imitates BCIT teacher structure well, and he's knowledgeable, and the curriculum is really nailed down by the ministry anyhow. I'm daydreaming of running away for the summer to firefight and making money thereby. Maybe I'll do it the year following school, and accumulate some loan debt. It would be so nice to take the weight off-- I feel this especially now, while spring is rushing and rattling from the earth to the sky and back again right through my bones and shaking me around like a ragdoll. It's a powerful spring, this one. It's my spring, the beginning of the first year in which I am really awakening to my own agency.

The plants at work got fertilized last week and the week before, depending on where they were in the rotation, and they are happy to see me when I go in. They've stopped dropping leaves, and I only lost one this winter. That's really good. It's spring pruning time and I can't tell you why or how-- it's just the right time to get out the pruners. Some things, mahoganies, I cut back by 50%. It's so good to prune a plant properly-- half jigsaw puzzle, half life-saving surgery.

I took a boot camp fitness class for an hour on Monday before class. It will continue till April. A classmate I particularly wanted to get to know better is in it. My body is the good kind of sore from it.

And then there's tonight, a final for climatology. I didn't do well on it, mostly because I spent a total of fifteen minutes reading and reviewing half the material, and the other half I hadn't seen for over a week. I'm fine with that, and in fact chose it because I prioritized looking up my ecology prof and talking with him about the hands-on exam. I'm doing well in climatology, I can absorb a hit to the grade on that one test if it means doing better on the soils practical. But-- a final means off early.

And so I was off early, and here I am at home, and here's the thing.

It's spring. I'm awakening to my body as I have not for awhile. I'm awakening to the world as I haven't for awhile. I can see during the daytime, it gets fully light out! I am beginning to be aware of myself as a creature in the present, rather than just racing from one task to the next. It is a joy, perhaps, but I'm also returning to volatility. I thought keeping myself this busy would mean I had no energy for that. I've taken up a latin course online as well as everything else, just to edge further into the ridiculous, you know.

And maybe it works, but when I'm on safe ground I explore the edges, I look back into my shadows, I look over things and analyse and try to disentangle things which is always a two-steps-forward-one-step-back process.

And so here are the tangles:

I love Angus particularly much lately. He's a little more emotionally erratic than is comfortable, and has just initiated a real job search effort finally. It swings me around some. Change is happening in his life and I don't know where that will leave us when this is done. He needs support right now and I can give him some of that but I worry, is this enabling? How long can I do this? When someone does anything you ask, what do you say?

Michael has been especially sweet to me lately. We've settled into basically a once-per-week routine, mostly overnights, and I do love routine. It settles me. This hadn't worked well when I was with Juggler but Michael is not Juggler. It took me some time to figure that out-- also that he's not Kynnin. Ha. And so I love him, as I do, and I hold this space where it is. I push a little, when it's important, and he's accepting of that, and the rest of the time I hold myself self-contained. And it's good. It's very, very good. But sometimes I daydream about going firefighting for the summer and coming back in the fall and going up the stairs, dropping onto his couch and staying for a week of relaxed breakfasts and livingroom-picnic lunches and just... I don't know. Just existing unscheduled and unwalled.

I saw Kynnin the other day. He'd been through a breakup, possibly a temporary one. He and Mouse seem to still be doing poly the way they were when I chiseled away from the quad and I am so glad at the changes in my life since then. You know, Michael reminds me of Kynnin sometimes-- less often now-- but Kynnin does not remind me of Michael. It's the fifteen-year-old, the nineteen-year-old, I'm reminded of. I could try to pin down what's changed-- I will someday --but the biggest change is in our history. Leaving someone is betraying them in a very particular way that, after the first time, can never be undone. It can be wrapped around with stronger things, re-storied, scarred; it can be embroidered or enshrined but it's a change in every relationship and you can't go back to before it happened. I am not in a relationship with Kynnin in that sense. I don't-- you know, I can't even type this without crying, let alone say it --I don't even love him anymore (how is this possible? Remember this? We were, and oh the irony in this word now, inseparable. How do you stop loving someone?) but I care for him so very much. He was hurting. And, you know, I have that magnet in me, that opposite pole that orients me towards pain and pulls me into it. And so I hugged him, and I meant it, because willpower and flesh can sometimes magically heal a soul just a little. And there was no bitterness, not a touch, just so much caring-- but oh, was I aware that he had never been there for one of my oh so many endings with someone I loved. Was I ever aware of it.

And so boys have always been my trouble. I look out rather than in. Here's my mess, my tangle, but the worst of it is that it's Valentine's Day on the fourteenth and I don't care, I haven't cared since the first Valentine's day I spent with Kynnin where he got me a teddy bear holding a heart. It draws my thoughts towards that awful societal ideal that my life does not meet, though. I deliberately don't meet that ideal. To do so I would have to give up Michael, stop loving him or coerce him into something more conventional? Become bitter because he doesn't love me? Be terrified about Angus, take myself out of school and care for him for the rest of my life? Devote my paycheques to that rather than this? Make a choice between an uncomfortable home and a relationship with a person who I get along with so well in so many respects and pretend there was no third option?

And you know, all I wanted tonight was someone I care about to put my arms around, to curl up and read or watch TV with, to be with someone I trusted and be human. And I felt so open and alive. But there was no one there; people were busy, Angus is in a mood and recommended I not come home but-- it's my home, and here I am, writing and writing and writing. My back is a wall that separates me from the rest of the house. I am practically not here, removed once again to some coil inside my own mind, divorced from my body.

I don't know. There's not much more to say, I suppose. Or there's plenty, but I don't care. When I've written enough it all blurs together, I am removed from life, I am in that dissociative state which no one can break into without my permission.

Be well. I will also be well.

And this

...and I think I've made the right choice. It's gonna be rough; I won't have free time ever again, I think, just time to apply to the absolute top-priority stuff in my life that's been whittled as small as I can make it. If spent class yesterday, though, with a prof who went on tangents about multi-use bigleaf maple woodlots and how to tap the local maple for syrup and how agro-forestry was a funny name because silvi-pasturing and so many other names converged on the same spot at all-- which isn't a design spot, after all, but a cluster of philosophies for developing widely diverse land uses.

I am making "friends"-- I use the term advisedly because a friend is only a friend if, after the program, we keep in touch, and I'm certainly not to that point with anyone yet.

The busy is restructuring my brain. I'm going back to an always-on state. When I'm awake things bubble up, everything I've forgotten to do and need to, toughts about things in general. I hope this will settle out a bit; when I get overloaded I can't relax, my mind just blanks and won't do anything. It's the kind of state where you put the cereal in the fridge and the milk in the cupboard constantly-- I guess my functionality has shifted.

I''ll need to put in some homework time, but not too much. I'm finally gonna get off my ass and make an herbarium-- I have to - and I'm getting ambitious about it. I've been supposed to be doing this for years-- I used to press and collect plants when I was six to ten, but then I stopped. Time to start again. I have yet to experience the information systems classes, but look forward to them.

Besides work and school, there is no time for anything to happen. I will be pretty boring for awhile-- oh, wait.

Someone wrote the definitive urban sustainability article for food consumers and it makes me incredibly happy. Finally! (Note: we are all food consumers)

Not too long ago I posted this to which kindelingboy responded with this which is really quite wonderful and may be the most easily consumed Kipling in the world.

In the same vein--

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

by Oriah

Here I am, home again. I know I've posted since I got back, but not a real post. This will be a real post.

First of all, I survived the trip. The show was actually really nice, between the people who were there and the fact that I didn't bring rats so was able to do things like eat and judge. I also love love love that road-- the I5 from Seattle to Portland and then the road over to Boise was really spectacular. It's amazing watching terrain change through the window, and awesome as well to see so many wind farms.

There was definitely some over-peopledness and some tension about getting back, but in the end it all worked out.

That's not really what I wanted to write about, though.

I did the piercing photoshoot with my friend-- well, with a bunch of friends the other day, Estry and Travis did the piercing, Cabbit did the photography, the Writer did handholding and general assistance. It was absolutely amazingly wonderful. The first picture is up here and is really lovely; there are tons of other nice ones which he is messing with and will put up as he finishes that. Not only do I look incredibly beautiful in these pictures, but we had an absolute blast doing the play-- as you will no doubt see in some of the pictures. I loved that and want to do it again. I had forgotten how much fun a group kink session can be. I was having so much fun I didn't even feel sad when the needles came out.

So I went on the trip with some needle bruising on my face-- it looked like oddly symmetrical acne with weirdly geometric bruising, but it wasn't excessive.

I got back very very late on Sunday night-- originally we'd been planning to sleep a couple of hours in either Tacoma or Everett, but I was really getting antsy to get home and Lizzy was willing to go for it, so we did. The US customs guys had forgotten to give us our passports in all the excitement about rats coming up, so we had to park, walk in to US customs, pick up our passports, and walk out before driving through the Canadian part of the border. Let me tell you, 1am's a creepy time to be wandering around the border on foot.

Made it back and into an improbably welcoming and wonderful place to sleep off my quarantine and most of Monday besides, then meandered towards work for a couple of hours of the most necessary watering before I hit movie night. Since Monday morning I've been wandering around feeling like I've just woken up, you know that feeling when you come up out of a deep sleep? Though I'm still very tired; the last week was one long series of four- and five-hour nights.

As a result I worked a padded-out ten hour day today and will do the same tomorrow, but Canada Day on Thursday gives me a day off that-- then another long day Friday and the week will be done. So too will my tuition pay period, and then I can relax a little.

I've found a new writing outlet in my life, which is really what I came here to confess, but it's been an hour and a half since I started this post, a time period full of interruptions by food and rats, and so I've lost the inspiration to speak of it. Perhaps next time.

You know, I came home from work today and didn't even stop in the house first, I went straight to the garden, and it was awesome. There's so much mint that needs harvesting, there's so much stuff exploding awake in there-- though the tomatoes and okra need more heat or they won't do anything this year. Then I came in and got a hug and stuck my hands in rat cages for awhile while trying to whip my laptop into shape, and here I am.

Life is good.

I may be more coherent when I'm less tired. I should do something about sleep soon.

First, the music.  Put it on, ignore the video part, and keep reading.  That's how it works:


Then there is the poem.  It's not a technically perfect poem, there are definitely weaknesses, but I love it nevertheless.  It's been waiting till I had time to post it over from Greatpoets:

Science Fiction Story

I will meet you again in the future. It will be 100 years from now. We will be evolved. We will be larger. We will be gentle with each other. When I try to touch your hand, my hand will feel like water. Your hand will feel like a fish. We will be evolved in different directions. We will be so gentle and evolved we won’t even be able to lift our glasses to our mouths. We will just sit in a bar, looking at the glasses, and being incredibly gentle with each other. You will gently slap my face. I will gently say something cruel. We will gently torture each other, not saying any of the things we’ve been thinking for the last 100 years.

We will not say, ‘I’ve missed you,’ or, ‘You look good,’ or, ‘I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.’

We will be too futuristic to say those things.

There will be mobile phones made of water and seeds, 1 millimetre in diameter.

There will be children that look like shrivelled dogs.

Every thing ever will have a slot to put money in, and when you put money in the slot the thing will vibrate.

There will be tinfoil, inflatable shoes, and holographic statues of the cast of Friends.

Everything will be okay.

The sun will be burnt out – it will be like a black floating acorn – and it will be dark in the bar, and I won’t be able to see if you are crying.

- Chris Killen

Regardless, I am happy. It is sunny. There will be a bit of work and a picnic in my future.

All else aside, it seems that my personal darkness is going to be left in the dark for now. That weekend that I was interrupted writing about when my housewarming began (now there's an awkward sentence; how would you phrase it?) once again would like to be tabled in favour of writing about dark_sphere and Brendan and permaculture and how it makes me feel.

I do want to get it down for the record, though, that I went to Andrew's place to finish drinking, threw up a bunch, cried some, had my hair held occasionally by the Writer, didn't get hung over the next day and felt cheated by that, didn't die, and wanted the world to end.

Now on to business: permaculture (which may well be what set the whole bad thing off anyhow).

First off let's get the emo song lyrics out of the way. Let the music run: ( Read more... )

So here's the deal. I really, honest to every God there is or isn't, believe that the world is gone to hell in a handbasket. Like any ending, this is also some sort of a beginning, but I don't know what it's the beginning of. No one does for sure.

I went to the SOUL chickens meeting (Society for Organic Urban Landcare, the group which created the organic standard for Vancouver & area, in this case they hosted an info night on urban chickens) with a friend who's just moved here from Ireland. Whether it's that things are different there or whether it's just who he is or whether it's a mixture of both, we share some sensibilities and sensitivities towards the environment and the world. We chatted a bunch, and I felt once again just how nice it is to talk about these things with someone who gives a damn. The people I've been hanging out with are a welcome distraction because when you're clueless or deliberately obtuse you cannot also be properly cynical about something, but this worldview is where I live and it doesn't enter into that space. This was a bit of a return to that, and a reaffirmation of what I want to do, like doing, and am good at: creating good living systems to sustain people, especially food systems. Problem is, the way the world works now and maybe always, those things have no value. Furthermore, the current system is so deeply flawed that all one can really do is help people learn to grow tomatoes and other nickel-and-dime solutions so small and far-removed from any solution that they're more little pieces of toilet paper like you stick on a razor nick than they are even band-aids.

And meanwhile our body is dropping limbs.

I ran into Brendan today on the skytrain. I ran into him at the Paulocaust too, and it was welcome. For awhile he was the person who acted like a jerk in the social circle I knew through Bob (you know how someone always takes that role?) and I didn't like him (because, again, it's not something I value) but after awhile it turned out that he was in urban planning and knows his stuff. Now he's working for a design company planning towns and we have some stuff we can talk about, and a lot of knowledge to impart to each other. There's a tentative plan to go walking or biking around the Olympic Village and discuss their landscaping choices, for instance, and he's going to get back to me on who designed Burrard Station.

At one point in our conversation on the skytrain he said, "I don't need to pretend I'm not cynical [about these towns I'm designing] with *you*" We were talking about how the towns are supposed to be agrarian communities and(!) 'active retirement homes' but that somehow putting a bunch of farmland in the hands of seniors seemed less ideal than putting it in the hands of people who, you know, need food, are able-bodied, and have no money. We had just agreed that wasn't the North American Way.

And the more time goes on the more these things become very important to me. I'm not doing anything here; schooling will help, but I'll still be tweaking the current system only. I used to think that we could fall softly into something new, but I'm not sure we can anymore, and I'm not sure I want to be a part of it if we can.

I have nothing else to say, I guess, and I need to eat something.

Care.

A friend of mine says he'll take some pictures of me sometime. He's taken what I consider to be some, well, many amazing pictures of people I know and love (! ! !) (That took awhile to cobble together, bleh) He asked me a bunch of questions about what I liked, many of which I didn't understand, but it made me think about the pictures I liked of myself. Here's a quick round-up of the big ones taken in the last ten years, and a couple of also-likes. There's nudity, etc. It turns out they're easily classifiable into why I like them, as are the ones above: either they feel like they express an aspect of my personality well, they show bits of my body that I like, or they're fun (note I don't seem to include 'fun' as a bit of my personality).

( Read more... )

Here's some very beautiful mellow Jack Johnson for your morning. May it be beautiful.

Better Together:


No Other Way: