OPineJournal

You must let the juice drip down your chin at least once. It is quite therapeutic, I think. I find myself neatening up, frustrated when I drop a berry on the floor... 'argh, gotta wipe that up!', and when I am busy, that dust that builds up in so short a time and must be sucked up and away to keep a keen house is just another source of angst. Today, I was in the middle of a project, but hungry, and saw the nectarines on the counter watching me work. I reached over and grabbed the softer of them, and took a bite. I was doused with sweet juice, my beard now sticky and the window where it squirted eyeing me, waiting for my reaction. It was a learning experience, a life lesson, and I smiled to myself and to the walls and thought, 'hey baby, let the juice flow.' If you've read my 'other stuff', you are probably wondering what I am on about, but soon you'll nod and know. Last week I was out returning home from a midweek appointment and decided to t...

One bite at a time, I'm saving the planet. In a past blog, I noted some of the rather mundane things I do to save/conserve energy, most of which are just plain old energy saving common sense. Like hanging clothes out. When I can't, I dry them with air - it's the heating element that really soaks up the energy, so put it on low/off and dry with cool air. It works! This is me gearing up to hang clothes. I have a 50 gallon drum under one gutter downspout, and the other night, in a single night of combined storms and light rain, it filled that bucket to the brim and overflowed. Today, I dipped a bucket in and watered all my gardens with that water. Which brings me to my favorite environmental trick. Gardening - not necessarily for show, but for food. With pretty minimal purchases (some organic garden soil) I managed to raise enough lettuce and arugula to have fresh salad whenever I want, while also able to give some away. Cukes started coming two days ago, I've had...

It's upon us, the next series of blushes, nature ripening another round of fruits, flower, vegetable... The tomatoes are showing the first color, the wild blackberries are ripening one at a time, but there are thousands. Look closely, there are large diagonal raindrops in this picture. The peach lily is blooming as if aroused to a new height this year, perfect weather, rain, sun, balance. This is one of my favorite flowers of all time, and now, I wait each year for them to bloom. This year they are welcoming July again, right on time. The cucumbers are coming alive too, dozens of flowers, a few cukes ready for the weekend.

Today I dipped my toes in the Atlantic, at a favorite beach on the National Seashore, Assateague, where the (formerly) wild ponies roam. They're pretty tame, lollygagging around all day, with token jobs. It s a great beach, because you can go there, park, walk to the water's edge, then turn right and walk another 10 miles. About two miles on, there are few people, though they do drive on the sand there, and party and fish too. I was nearby, picking up a scooter I bought - a 1966 Honda CM91 - it's a fortunate find, as I've been watching Vespas, old Hondas and other brands for a while. Most are either basket-cases, titleless, or too expensive. This one came in with everything I need, except the motorcycle license, and it should get about 60mpg -we'll see. I'm considering converting it to electric... we'll see about that too. So, I drove the extra 15 minutes to see the ocean that I haven't seen in a while, and it was still there, still beautiful, sti...

I've been a vegetarian for about 20 years now, and the reasons are the unnatural conditions that meats are raised in, and because I was tired of scrubbing chicken grease off of pans. Food, Inc. was on my 'never watched, but should' list, and so I watched it last evening. Yes, I should have watched it by now - produced in 2007, it's old now. But the facts within, are way older. They extend back way before I became a vegetarian, and it seems the cheapening of our food sources has been progressing for decades with little challenge, but a lot of progress. I recently learned that many of the brands I handled as a food coop coordinator are now owned by the likes of Coca Cola and Kraft. I've heard theories that this is a good thing, that the behemoths want into the organic movement, but I disagree that it is good. This type of acquisition still lands control of our food in few hands and even fewer pockets. So far, many of the products don't appear to have been ...

Most people, once they get to know me, know I'm a little nuts about some pretty practical daily tasks. I realized that I have only written incidentally about my 'ways', and thought that they might be both thought provoking and informative for those bent on saving energy and, of course, the planet. I am guessing, outside of 'off the grid' homesteaders and the like, that I am perhaps the greenest person you know. But that doesn't mean I own all the trappings, it just means I think about all my actions and minimize my impact in plain, and yes, old fashioned ways. A few rules that I live by: Rule number one - Some things exist, and rather than exorcise the house of all the plastic demons and incorrect products, I simply use them over and over and over until they are quite unsightly and unusable, and then I recycle them. I have yogurt quarts from the 90's that are still holding nails that I salvaged from a box someone was throwing out. Rule number two - If I d...

It's like being in a fairy world, looking out on my back yard. The fireflies are a-bloom, just in time for the start of Summer. This actually used to be the middle of summer, but lopsided seasons irked the orderly, so we ended up with it being summer-like, but not official until the Summer Solstice, which is June 21 st this year and the 20 th next. Earlier, I had a moment to think about the incredible balance that we all live with - consciously or not - on a daily basis. What brought it to mind today were the three ticks I removed from my body as they made their way to juicier pastures to graze in. None of the three made it, but I found it disconcerting that they essentially make me want to hide indoors. Between the diseases and the sheer gruesomeness of their methods, they are pretty creepy, even for a guy like me who lets spiders crawl around my hands while I talk to them. Then, of course, I looked out just after dark and saw the aforementioned fairy world of fireflies t...

Today was the inaugural day of berry picking season - I have a patch of cultivated and organically grown berries (though not organic in origin) that were given me by a special friend. You know it's a special friend, when she gives you a 24 berry plants. I picked one a few days ago, and it was good. I picked one yesterday, and it was good. Today I picked eight, and they were luscious. It's their second year, and so they should bear nicely. Afternoon crept by today. It felt like Friday all day, and when it's Thursday, but feels like Friday, it's a slow day and week and it's time for it to end. The sky was blanketed lightly by deep clouds and rain has been imminent most of the day, while it also appeared that the sun would be let through intermittently. It was, but overall remained gray. The bus dropped me in the rain and I enjoyed the wet grass on my toes during the fifty-yard walk to the house. Rain was gurgling in the gutters and so I changed the buckets unde...

Platitudinous, yes, but global warming is a truth. It is a truth aside from politics, aside from persuasions, religion, academics. The earth has been proven to be warmer now than ever before in our discernible history, and so be it. It's troubling that while all the discussion is going on about whether humans caused it, and while we sit back with our feet up and a pint in hand having a great debate over it, while we waste valuable time, the earth is warming further, and the issues that cause warming are getting more pronounced and regulations are going away, and business is getting the upper hand again. I learned the other day that part of the reason that global warming is not as important a topic for US'ns is because it is not as frequently in the news. This really frightened me, because with all the effort people make to show themselves as independent thinkers -- you know, tattoos, piercings, fancy cars, symbols of success, expensive glasses, witticisms -- this would indi...

Flowers are coming and going like the Johns in a whore house, eager and alluring at first, bursting into fervor, all showy the next minute, then faded, dejected, deflated and gone until next year. These are the Crocus, Daffodils, Irises, Peonies, Liriope, Lilac... all early, fast bloomers. This year, they seemed especially quick and the biggest disappointment was the Lilac with one anemic blossom cluster for the entire season. I stepped out of the office building today and met the linden bloom head on - it's distinct, sweet, and when you look off in the distance at whatever tree or trees are causing it, you see the lighter green tongues hanging down. Beautiful, and they're good for tea. This season leads to the abundant bugs, skulking everywhere, under every upturned log, every paper bag, rock shovel... a bug skitters off when moved. I've seen my snake this year, and the purple finches are contentedly disturbed enough to have built 2 feet from my main entrance door. I...

Around some corners, there are edens, not of the bible, nor from lore of any kind. My little edens are reminders of the best I can live, and though part imaginary, part real, part future and part past, they are my most natural state of being. Walking beside me, silent, radiant, a thoughtful smile dimpling her cheeks, we experienced the most natural peace. We glided when together. I turned to her one evening, having rolled in the grass like children, delivered, and though I didn't know it at first, shared her first bottle of wine after crossing the age barrier, and I told her I was crazy about her. We had looked deep into each other's eyes, wary of a hint of trouble, a crack that didn't already belong, but there was no trouble, no crack. She stopped and looked at me with love, smiling, and explained that she was flattered, but also had been voted the class flirt in High School. I smiled, and we both walked on as before. This little eden is one of few in my life not taint...

The letter arrived at my office, the address several degrees off horizontal, written in careful, straight, but shaky, small block letters. It explained that the writer's husband had passed away recently, but had enjoyed receiving the publications we'd been sending him for years as an emeritus member of our organization. I wasn't sure anyone read the publications until this note arrived, which told me in the briefest terms, that her husband loved what he did, even after giving up his practice, continuing to keep up with the literature of his life. "He was 90" she wrote, and the letter I read told a much longer story. I recently watched the film Александра (Aleksandra), again, about age, wisdom - and the Russian conflict with Chechnya. Aleksandra visits her grandson at his barracks. He is a soldier on the Chechnyan border, and she has not seen him in seven years. He's being what he is, a soldier, and she a grandmother, freed from the bonds of her marriage, w...

I was walking in the woods a while ago, and found myself admiring the stout oaks in their second century, and wondering what it is about - age, size, greatness of any kind, that moves people, that moves me? I could philosophize, quote the greats, point to the brilliantly exposed paradoxes of others, but then, there I go again. Greatness, grandness. There is the myth of wisdom from antiquity, the idea that what we don't know is something more than what we do, that what once was, was more true than what is, when all it is, is suspicion, and the passing on of experience from a rock to a feather, the belief in common that the extrusion of both is the paradox of sameness and difference, that the contrast, the conundrum, the magic born of them is a higher wisdom, or a grain of sand. I think perhaps that is what draws me to trees - the idea that they have watched over the history of my time, silently. And they 'know' stuff, that no one of us does, and so I know not what color...

Dreams. Dreaming, longing, a first freedom to imagine the objects of my desire, and opulence, ostentations, outrageous objects at my finger tips. Lamborghinis, ski chalets, Barbie-like future wives, yachts, dream and glamor-jobs as a designer of clever boxes, even cleverer buildings, of a life in harmony with luxury. I knew nothing, which was everything, a desire dissonant against the reality of all the struggling people around me, who, likely had dreamt too, who, likely had come to a realization somewhere along the path that they had to bed down for the night, to stop pining for each mystery around each subsequent corner. He thought for a while, then declared, "I'll be a garbage man", for which he was teased incessantly for an age-appropriate amount of time. But what they failed to understand was that he knew that garbage men were paid well, union wages, that they rode around on the bumper of a truck all day, and got to see all of the trash, yes, but also the treasur...

I realized (for lack of a better word) today, that I spend a bit of time thinking so that I may 'realize', and thinking about that has brought me to the realization that i can spend too much time doing so. As I ponder purposes and the ability some have to live in a stark room and write, I also notice myself having stuff, whether projects or objects, and that keeps me anchored. I have heard people say that about their children, that children become your life, and that is interesting, because I've always thought if I had children that I'd feel them to be branches. I heard a writer speaking, and he said that after a rocky point in his relationship with his wife, he realized that if he didn't have children with her, that he would have nothing to say.

The moon again, hanging out on the way in, the way out of work. Not much to say that hasn't been said many many times, except that it's splendiferous. Some might ask why I would even think to mention the cliche'd moon, but that is the point. I don't think to mention it, I simply do. I've been traveling, working, dealing - finding that some people still believe in cruelty, in toughening up the kid with tough love and all that. It's not necessary, it's cruel, and adults are playing the game, and it's unseemly, tired. Reading a blog just a few minutes ago, reading, "baby steps", I realize again, how tough 'normal' life is for some, how scars are reminders, how a pursuit so many take for granted and in stride, might be difficult for others. There is always the 'general', but also always the individual. Thinking can be unhealthy, but it is also healthy. Some could think more, some less. When I think, sometimes I am thinking t...

People have been milling around me all week, while I tend table at an education fair. It's interesting stuff, technology that is truly amazing, more in materials than gadgets, but there are plenty of both. The sun is setting behind the Carson Range, the Toiyabe National Forest, and to the east is the Virginia Range. These mountains are beautiful in a stark, bare, but warm, toasted way. The Carson Range has some serious peaks - about 10,000 feet, most in the 6-8,000 range. It's different, stark, beautiful. This is the state of Death Valley too, but it's a ways away. Lake Tahoe is only about 20 miles, the largest alpine lake in the US. My tour is over, but I just wanted to mention the beauty here, to drop a picture, your view through my eyes. Enjoy.

It's a low budget, small but big casino hotel outside Reno, smoke and iceberg lettuce staples here. "The Nugget" is her name, complete with gold scales in the lobby, charming family run operation, and every minute confirms it's not for me. The non-smoking rooms have smoke coming in their bathroom vents, but curiously, the windows open. It's perfectly imperfect, and I guess fun for some, a real charmer as the painting (not a real painting) in the bath proves. It's screwed to the wall, exactly as you see it.

Are words important? I noted to a fellow bus rider today that, though we were at the end of a two hour journey that normally takes one, that we were, nevertheless, getting home. I had heard the complaints, grunts, curses from people claiming the metro people didn't care, the declarations that they didn't know what they were doing, the suggestions that the metro was always late. I told my fellow rider that it was sometimes difficult to not absorb some of the negativity around me, but that no matter the length of the trip, I do always get home. He nodded, seeming to be in agreement. We then talked about recycled building materials for our houses.

When the wind howls, its mournful, wild, willful and dramatic at the same time. When it whistles in the eves, I hear music, sprites, play. It rattles my metal roof some nights, and recently, I've noticed that it's comforting, like the clock ticking down stairs, the sun rising in the morning. I like reminders that I am not alone, and that I am not lone. The poems written around me, in the sand, soil, shimmering water, leaves, wind, rain, snow, summer haze, are more real than the words I might use to conjure my own. Wouldn't it be a good thing to keep balance, to stop pushing these so often gentle reminders of our coexistence to angrier and angrier expressions of stress? Snow is horizontal now, heavy, warm flakes falling fast, transforming again the already beautiful landscape, no inconvenience at all.

The same way a river flows, so to can love. A book I read many years ago is entitled, Don't Push the River (by Barry Stevens). I've forgotten how important that command is, and have been pushing the river now, for some time. Writing this is how I organize realizations - it's how I know, what I do not need to 'know'. Peace. AF.

II Shining sharp, bright, cold, the comfort of the moon, a constant cycle keeping me from being too much day to day, and reminding me how short the lifespan of such drama can be. I see her every 2 weeks, waxing, waning or hanging full 'above'. As my day started last Wednesday, the moon's was setting in this hemisphere. She accompanied me to work, giving me more than the day ahead, the people snoozing around me on the bus, and my own fatigue, to ponder. I've been pondering happiness, and how simple the pleasure of looking at the moon is. I found that one of the countries/regions in Asia claiming to be the inspiration behind Shangri-la, has been moving toward's happiness as a primary goal in governance. Bhutan's ruler was a monarch until a few years ago, and peacefully and willingly converted the country to a democracy. They are known to be the happiest people on the planet, and their happiness was planned. As I think about this, I find it terribly difficu...

The Book of the Living: I Crystal encasement, the dual beauty and hazard of ice, sheathing, magnifying, distorting, transporting everything to another place and time, a mummification of the beautiful bark and bud of our time. A look, perhaps a second look, out the door, window, and the landscape floods into me like the rush of fresh air taken when I've forgotten to breath. When I am open, it floods in, emotional and more real, perhaps, than the other drama, the conversations, the news, the tits and tats of moving through a day's routine, of schedules, of unmissables. And so, there are two dramas, the one defined in part by television, by necessity, by blind ambition, and there is this other one, the one that I must have presence enough to be absent enough to feel. Today, in a conversation, I spoke of the heirlooms that define us (we're family), and voiced the question, 'what of them?' Even if I had children, what is that object that my grandmother's mother to...