coming

maybe some of you have places that are the most home you've ever been.  i have such a place.  i'm going there very soon and i will say hello to the part of my heart that never leaves.  

i wish i were a tree

the time is soon here where everything will change. again.
it has been pouring thunder and lightning and lots of water.  my water comes from the sky. 
rain makes me remember fall and fall makes me remember that things move in circles--they go away and look like they might not come back around, but mostly they will. mostly.
sometimes we miss something--a chance, a gift, a wisdom, a love--and it never comes back around. that is the loneliest thought.

how hard do trees have to work to be trees, and do some work harder than others to be really good trees?  i have to work hard to be me.  i don't usually know what it takes to be really good me, but i try to listen.  i try to follow the cues: bud now, leaf now, roots now, blossom now. wait now. 

i keep struggling to get my season right.

meantime, sky, keep it coming.

do you know where your water comes from?

i don't really know where mine comes from either, but ever since INHUT, I'm committed to learning more about local water. 

which leads to this:

who will come with me?

join a campaign to reinstate the word 'boss'

ps tonight i fell for that old trick where the child can't fall asleep so the adult says, okay, i'll lie down with you...next thing adult knows, she's wiping the drool of her face and wondering why kids don't get how awesome it is to sleep for 12 hours a night.  going to sleep when it's still light out? totally boss.

pps boss song.

ppps my face is sunburned and hurts real bad.  jane, don't be mad.  it actually looks pretty boss because i guess i was cracking up all day or i just kept my eyes really squinty so there was a tie-dye effect. (i have lots of eye wrinkles. ("from my mother's side of the family.") inside my eye wrinkles is like the white part of the tie-dyed tee-shirt--unwrinkle and whabam.) 

pppps sometimes serious can be boss too.  i saw a sign while driving home today that said: AIR QUALITY ALERT. LIMIT DRIVING.  this sign gave me major pause because i think/read a lot about how to treat earth, but i'm pretty pathetic when it comes to putting beliefs in action.  so here i am, having just driven my SUV (ok, even worse: SUBURBAN!) for three hours and planning on driving another hour today and two tomorrow to make things possible that are delightful but not necessary, and i pause.  i could actually change my plans.  i could give something up, be "inconvenienced," heed the warning, do my part to improve air quality despite knowing that many others won't (remember the tragedy of the commons, the categorical imperative?), adjust to fit natural constraints instead of manipulate nature to avoid adjusting, etc.

we're all friends here, so i'll tell you i caved.  i made the choice that resulted in more driving that beast of burden back and forth across my home valley.  i am gald, though, to have paused.  i hope i will be stronger in the future.  i hope you will support me when i am weak.

the struggle in that pause matters because air quality matters, but there's more to it, symptomatic of what wendell berry describes as the credo of limitlessness (read essay here).  i don't agree with everything he says (what do you think?), but i see myself in some of his critique. like here, when he describes our "dogged belief that what we call the American Way of Life will prove somehow indestructible.  We will keep consuming, spending, wasting, and driving as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves.... In keeping with our unrestrained consumptiveness, the commonly accepted basis of our economy is the supposed possibility of limitless growth, limitless wants, limitless wealth, limitless natural resources, limitless energy, and limitless debt.  The idea of a limitless economy implies and requires a doctrine of general human limitlessness: all are entitled to pursue without limit whatever they conceive as desirable--a license that classifies the most exalted Christian capitalist with the lowliest pornographer."

we live in spheres of connection and we cannot see the ties that bind us.  but we are bound, whether we see it or not. let me pause then, at least, to trace a few of the strings looped around my fingers to where they lead, let me work to understand my role in the problems and the solutions, let me confront my limits and respect them.

being a hippie, if hippie means acting responsibly/with accountability towards the earth, is totally boss. plus, i have a tie-dyed face.

last words from wendell berry:
"We must learn again to ask how we can make the most of what we are, what we have, what we have been given. If we always have a theoretically better substitute available from somebody else or someplace else, we will never make the most of anything.  It is hard to make the most of one life."

some pictures i've been wanting to send you

lovely days at weber

i'm trying to resign myself to growing up.  doesn't that sound familiar, like maybe i've been working on this for years and years and years?  for the first summer in a long time, i spend more time inside than out.  bummer, but so adult.  these pictures may lead you to believe otherwise, but i just don't take pictures of me sitting in front of my computer.

i am posting right now because i love reading other people's blogs so much, i feel like contributing is good karma.  but i don't have very much to say. 

fishing with the king

tetons with the bird

bowling league

the thesis is coming along like a four-year-old in a puddle of mud.  fun, but so so slow.  (and a four-year-old's fun always runs out.)










that's all. 

my work ethic

i know that i normally post about death or nature or politics or any other serious topic that is taboo in polite conversation, but today is not that day (though i can't promise an appropriate post.)  i had a thought today that i've never had before, so why not commemorate it on the blog-o?  i'm always having thoughts i've never had before, but this thought was so simple, so built into my routine, that my oversight was shocking.

it came to me in the shower.  (kind of like that one time ben fell in the shower and hit his head on the faucet and japanese came to him, fluently.)  i was shaving my legs and doing the typically poor job on my knees, and i realized: some people spend time on this!  weird.

i guess that up to today, i had been content with less than perfectly shaved knees because i thought it was impossible.  i just figured those girls with perfectly shaved knees didn't have hair on their knees or something. with a little more thought, i recognized that there are many things i've written off as impossible because they take longer than four seconds, and i might have to reconsider some of them.  who doesn't want perfectly smooth knees?

tonight i actually tried giving my knees an honest effort, and i saw immediate results.  do you see how revolutionary this is?

"therefore am I still a lover of the meadows and the woods, and mountains"

i've been away, getting to know better my home (defined broadly). and now i'm back inside and trying to figure out where to put the loveliness and lessons i've been collecting the past month. isn't this always the trick: to wear our education on our souls, to be changed by the faces stories smells ideas love we encounter, to walk away from our past more enlightened, more enabled, more engaged?

here's what's working to rub my insides round: God loves all his creations. all of them. he loves them in their diversity, in their context, and along the spectrum of their potential.

i'm trying to expand my use of "beautiful" to include biting gnats and warthogs, but in the meantime, these i can't deny:

near vernon.

steven's arch.

coyote gulch.

encore.

encore.

zebra.

calf creek.

antelope island.

encore.

encore.

woods creek.

little mountain.

great salt lake.

spiral jetty.

yurt, uintah mountains.

from charles lamb, master of essay, in "new years eve:"

"I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets.
I would set up my tabernacle here."

go outside! fill your hands with rocks and dirt! let's meet there, under the sky!