hot water makes it all better

i need to just take a moment here to savor the fact the right now...this very moment...i have plumbing complete with hot water.
a handy neighbor came and fixed it all good.
i've had 3 baths in the last 24 hours.

its a drug makes everything better....i just soak the pain/stress away.
suddenly being here aint so bad
suddenly i'm centered and calm enough to spin yarn, sit still and look around.
suddenly i don't know if the sheep should go.
and where i should go don't matter so much when i'm in the bathtub.

a drug . a first world luxury at my finger tips.

at least for now.

ok...brace yourselves

I'm considering finding a home for my sheep.
blasphemous i know i know...but it seems an important step in figuring out what in hell i'm gonna do with my strange little life.
having them, as fantastic as they are, seriously reduces my options. in all reality i'm too poor to keep them. They are the main reason i came to live here on this farm, where their feed is paid for, since it was proving near impossible to find anything i could afford that could also accomodate them.
and lets not forget that the struggle to feed them through winter was a large part of why i had to sell chacon...while stubbornly holding on to my sheep.
and on a purely economic level its much more affordable and way less work to simply buy fleeces every spring than to actually raise the animals myself.
oh, but i loooooooooove them.
seriously.

so, in a moment of clarity and self-determination, i posted some ads online thinking...ok i've got all the time in the world, esp. since i'm not actually moving anywhere yet...i'm gonna just start the search for THE perfect home for them...be super picky...its mellow...no hurry.

so ofcourse the very first reply i get, like the next day, is from a woman that has what sounds to be pretty damn near THE perfect situation.

fuck.

First off, she titled the email to me "your incredible sheep".

ugh.

Secondly, she grew up on a sheep farm in pennsylvania and now lives on a small farm near taos w/ her partner, 8 acres, chickens, a goat and a columbian ram named "puff"
she wants a small flock in order to learn her grandmothers craft of handspinning.

oh sigh.

so now everything in me is screaming no! no! no!...not yet! its waaaay too quick. what will i do w/ out them? without their greasy wooly yumminess to sink my fingers into. W/out the sense of purpose they give to my ridiculous level of isolation. w/out their knowing eyes and steady presence that i rely on when i'm weeping and lonley. w/ out their gorgeous fleeces that keep me blissfully busy at my spinning wheel all year?

but then i look around...remember that this is not my place, my struggle with that, my dependency on living here to even be able to keep them, my lack of options and dwindling resources, that i need to be able to move when the time comes.

oh but it hurts....i want them with me wherever i go.

another return

split into too many desperate desires
like a star exploding momentarily brilliant into blackest space
scattered pieces lost others might shine bright
always moving in and out of light



told a close friend that all i want is to belong somewhere
attached bound to unquestionable presence and purpose
belong
home



radiate out from some gravitational center
pulling me back in perpetual revolve
round an axis
call it love



all i want is to belong somewhere
rise and set
in an unquestionable pattern
of light

return

having finally slept after god knows how long, i can finally say i'm back...but can't quite get myself to say i'm home.
my tongue goes stiff with the word
but i'm back where my animals reside. all the fur and wool and feathers.

the time in new york was mostly occupied with looking at properties with my mom and sisters...so a lot of driving driving driving.but somewhere in all that we stopped at other locals as well. One place we went was the rochester folk art guild in italy, and for whatver reason i totally spaced on the taking of photos, which is too bad because its kind of an amazing place.Not only do they have facilities for every kind of craft you can think of, they also grow a ton of food. I wouldn't mind being in residence at a place like that.
here, as above, i'm standing in keuka lake with my sister echo.and this little store is one of many in the finger lakes, this is in watkins glen...i marvel at it only because we don't have these little stores here...whole foods has eaten them up. Luckily there is no whole foods in western new york.and this is the devils bathtub in mendon ponds where i grew up...just a series of ponds and swamps and forest...mmmmmmm.
and i also got a new tattoo from my life long friend sue. and when i say life long i'm not jokin' around, we've know eachother since we were 7 years old
our real estate search was fruitless for the most part, although it was super informative. I've all sorts of thought to sort out as far as what to do with my life...where to go with it....much motivated by being back here on the farm for less than a day only to have the questionable plumbing in my little oven of a hallway house blow a fantastic leak so now i have no water at all. what the fuck is it with me and running fucking water????

poeta joven

goin' to the homeland...

in a couple of days i leave for ny...and no, not ny city.... the finger lakes area with a stint in good ol' rochester. I'm nervous as hell about flying since its an EI/crip nightmare and also just a general nightmare anymore these days from the sound of it.

its a significant journey since i haven't been home...or anywhere but northern new mexico...for something like 6 years. and part of the goal of this trip is to look at properties to buy with my mother and to ascertain if i even want to live in new york. Its a different planet from new mexico and i've been here a looooong time now. i worry i've a bit of the "grass is greener" thing going on. For years now memories of home, the swamps, lakes, gorges and forests have been my safe calming space to go in my brain when things are stressfull...i fear i've made everything bigger and more beautiful than real life can possibly keep up with.

economically it sure would be nice if i'm into the new york idea since the money we have won't buy shit here in new mexico...whereas back home, in the keuka/seneca lake area, one can get a real house...big, old, lovely...with a barn and a bit of land. so we'll see...
i'm especially smitten with the fact that if you get between watkins glen and ithaca theres a goddam bus line to catch to ithaca...yay for rural public transit!

i'll take tons of pictures and post them for sure!

in other news, i was skirting fleeces in the workshop the other day and was just stunned at how gorgeous they are. this one is diosas...a good 13 pounds of wooly lanolin soaked goodness...

midsummer nights dream-a-thon

i can't seem to stop sleeping.
this from someone that has had trouble sleeping almost my whole life. but these past few days its all i can do to stay awake...even sitting up. 5 hour naps in the daytime, 10 hours in the night, little 20 minute cat naps.
when i drag myself over to my weaving studio to work i end up lying down on the couch in there and passing out.
yesterday i called a friend and in the time it took the phone to ring, the voicemail to pick up and the leave a message beep to beep...i had dozed off and started dreaming. lots of dreaming. This morning having just woken from another 10 hour stint in dreamland, i can recall my very gay dream boyfriend deciding i wasn't queer enough and choosing this super high femme over me.
i was wearing a short sleeved plaid button down shirt and neatly pressed dickies.
so while he was locked away in a bedroom making out with his new flame i stumbled around the apt. trying to gather my endless belongings.

but anyway...what is this sleep addiction? when i'm up and about i feel like i'm made of lead, or moving through water.

maybe its all the rain and the grey sky and the humidity.
maybe its that i've finally moved and its over for now and if i want to sleep...goddamit i can sleep.
maybe i'm depressed.
maybe i'm just getting some down time before the next stressfull event begins...watever that is.

i think i'm ready to snap out of it now...snap snap snap.

jesse helms finally croaks, the chicks are here and imagine $35 a gallon...

Even though it seems that for whatever reason all those neo-con bigots try and live forever...good ol' death eventually whisks them away to some impotent netherworld....yay for mortality!

and the little chicklings have arrived....they are 5 weeks old. the barred rocks are shockingly docile and friendly. the littlest one runs towards me and wants to sit on my arm, foot, leg, shoulder...whatever is available. funny little buggers.

and a tidbit of sobering info and a huge, living in the empire reality check comes from Laila El-Haddad s' blog "raising yousuf and noor, diary of a palestinian mother" ...her dad, who is in gaza, tells her there is no gas there...the streets are empty....the only gas one might get is on the black market for 35 freakin dollars a gallon. holy shit people...i start to think about who exactly will be the last to have gasoline...since it is a finite resource and all. I suspect the military industrial complex, thats who....
but it also makes me think about what life would look like here in this dirt poor farming village in the middle of the high desert w/ no gasoline...or even gasoline at 15...20 dollars a gallon. Right now the closest gas station is a good 30 miles in any direction.
food for thought.

and lastly a shot of my zapatista corn...a bit tattered from the grasshoppers but putting up a good fight!