Do you remember
when you twisted the wax
from your ears
and shouted to me
“You finally speak!”
because now you
could finally hear?
–Wendy Rose
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It’s kinda like reality television. You, mythical regular reader, get to watch my horrible errors and poor aesthetic choices as I make them. That’s the beauty of not knowing what you are doing but owning a blog and editing it yourself. That fancy music player up in the left corner, the one that plays not just one song, no, but EVERY song I’ve ever posted to this pathetic “band” blog, in one nifty playlist, that’s the best thing that ever happened to this site since an eudaemonist created it. But it is too big, and I haven’t figured out how to make it smaller. I gotta program my own skin, I suppose. That’s what they say, anyway. And I don’t know how to do that. And some of the tracks are coming up as “error number something or other,” which I haven’t figured out yet. And I’ve been cheating on this blog, so it’s hard to stay motivated to figure stuff like that out. I spend good money on this thing, so it’s a use-it-or-lose-it kind of thing.
It hasn’t even been a year since the last post, so it was hardly even a proper sabbatical. Enjoy the latest from boolar, featuring Evan, 12, Alyssa, 9, and that “boom…. boom boom, chik!” beat. It’s a little sloppy, but don’t blame the kids. We flubbed more than they did. Be My Baby Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
yonderland disguise Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
I felt the need to add the italics. I also feel the need to say that the painter hired by the contractors hired by our neighbors inadvertently, but moronically, sprayed paint onto our garden. If you have ever been given a personal tour of our garden, or know us at all, you know how important these 5000 square feet of earth are to us, and how determined we are to protect them from the toxins of this world. Yet another lesson learned. We are powerless to stop the toxins. Better learn to live with them. It still broke my heart to rip pounds and pounds of what was very recently very healthy mustard, turnip, lettuce, burdock, and quinoa greens out of the now very unhealthy ground. They, unlike the majority of the products brought into or born out of our household, are fit only for the landfill now. In better news, our friend Eric made a cool video about a cool place and put our music in it. Fans of the Safari Club in Estacada will most certainly enjoy the Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab at the Rhode Island School of Design. Click the link or you are a fool.
Our livers and mouths were happy to welcome these freshly-picked goji berries into our lives. This year we will step up the planting of food-bearing perennials. Ariadne Garden is selling baby Gooseberry bushes for five clams, so we’ll be sure to have a couple of those. I was also hoping to have currants (though I can’t decide which varieties), blueberries, and, if I can find an edible barberry in this country, one or two of those.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. even robots get the blues
We now have a quart of the following herbs (some wild, some cultivated, but all grown in NE Portland and all collected by mine own two hands this morning) soaking in organic olive oil: St. John’s Wort flowering tops, calendula flowers, mullein leaves, chickweed, thyme flowers & leaves, lavender flowers, & plantain leaves. Six weeks from now, I’ll strain the plant matter out, melt some beeswax in, and rub the resulting salve all over my body, especially the itchy or damaged parts. I even put it in my ears sometimes! Here is the original version of what recently became the Official Tiga Rally Song:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. KOOMSEE! brand seaweed I think you ought to know what’s been going on. We’ve been eating a lot of seaweed. In everything. Even granola. And it’s the best damn granola either of us has ever had and you’d never know there was seaweed in it if we didn’t tell you. Minerals have been a top priority. It has changed our bodies for the better. We’ve been following a fairly strict schedule. We try to fit in all of our work, school, housework and homework on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. Thursday we do some kind of cardiovascular exercise–jogging around the park, shooting a game of horse, playing catch. Otherwise, Thursday is a free-day, but I usually end up going to acupuncture (if I didn’t go on my 17-hour workday, Wednesday) gardening or doing special projects around the house. Friday is Boolar day. Recording, mixing, writing on this website, taking photos, making videos, etc. Last week that meant recording the first track off of the Beach Boys’ Love you album, Let Us Go On This Way, and doing a final four-track mix of it. We plan on doing the whole record, each song in order. Look for it here soon. Saturday is gardening day. I usually end up doing household projects, too. Not chores. Projects. It is also estate sale day. And twice a month or so I get to close Tiga. Sunday is food day. Farmer’s market and prepare the week’s seaweed-infested meals: a rice cooker full of whole grains, lentils, and seaweeds; a large stoneware dish of kuku (persian egg & greens frittatta-like snack. I like to add barberries in addition to the fresh greens and herbs from our gardens and sometimes morel or shitake mushrooms); salad dressing of apple cider vinegar, olive oil, fresh parsley, one bulb of green garlic fresh out of the ground, greens and all, homemade mustard, blackstrap molasses, and Portland-made miso; cultured ketchup out of some of the last year’s tomatoes paste from the freezer; and three small pieces of salmon (less than half a pound total) baked in parchment paper with nothing, not even salt, on them. They are delicious. Sunday is also family day and dinner day. Sunday is also Softball day, but I wasn’t able to get my chores done in time to go to Tiga’s game this week. We won. Monday we go back to school and work and chores and homework. We sit on the back patio a whole lot, admiring our handiwork in the backyard. But we get stuff done. We talk all the time, while we are happily busy with our hands. I’ve been in the process of quitting nail-and-cuticle-biting. Bradley has already quit drinking. The garden is lush, the cats are happy, the bird has stopped biting. Everybody is doing better, see? Today, I wrote a letter to the first midwives I had, the ones who left me feeling helpless and tragic about the miscarriage while I was in the process, a letter explaining my dissatisfaction with the services they had provided. Continue reading fear and growing
Push the sideways triangle to hear Juss Like Heaven Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. I don’t have words to explain what’s been going on. Or maybe I do, I’m just too lazy to find them. Okay, I’ll try. I feel like I can fly. But then I try, and find I’m even more bound to the ground than I used to assume. I feel like I’m happier and healthier than I’ve been in a long time. Then I think about writing a letter to my Eudaemonist and start to cry because thinking of her makes me think of everything I’ve been through since I’ve seen her last and the tears are not from pain as much as relief that it’s all over. It sounds silly when you write it, but it is all seriousness when it happens. What I mean to say is that I’m more keenly aware of the limitations of my body than ever. But such an awareness (and acceptance) allows me to better use myself closer to my full potential (even if that is lesser than I formerly believed). Life is an exercise in dichotomy these days.1 I think I mean contradiction. But not quite contradiction. Bifurcation?2 No. Now I’m just being silly. 3 What do I mean? In a recent ramble, I spoke of balance, and yearned for it. I think I’m closer to it than I’ve ever been4, but the dot-danged strangest thing is that balance isn’t what I imagined. It doesn’t mean walking down the straight, flat, partly-cloudy paved road of life5. No, no, it means that there are times when you need a machete to hack your way through the rainy jungle of days and there are times when you roll down the grassy, daisy-covered summerdays but that when you add them all together and divide by the total number of days they equal balance. That’s why I’ve been crying and laughing at the same time so many times a week these past few. I’m going to die. But I get to live right now. So I’m never without a reason to be exuberantly happy or dangerously sad. But of late, they have been so firmly intertwined that I can’t bring one to mind without the other forcing itself upon my heart. And though you might have another name for it6, that’s what I call balance.
P.S. Remember that kale plant I told you about. Here we are, about to eat her.
I remember the day that Jonas and I were at that other bar we worked at together called the Social Club and we were listening to The Beatles and he laughed his biggest Jonas laugh about those particular backing vocals. I liked those times. I like these times, too. I know that can’t possibly make sense to many people out there (or, secretly, I hope that it does), but I appreciate the good times and the bad. A housemate of mine once said that people are just trying to make themselves feel, anything (which is why they try to feel so bad if they can’t feel good, why we create drama, and why we make jokes, right?). Today was better than yesterday, which was better than the day before. I feel stronger, strong enough to laugh, strong enough to make an herbal iron syrup1 (flavored with the pomagranate molasses from my dad’s garden outside Shiraz, Iran–have I mentioned that I have to get out there someday soon?), strong enough to ride the bus and walk in the rain to acupuncture. I also feel thankful. I feel thankful for the two months that were given to me by that baby. I’m glad that I got to experience pregnancy. I will be looking forward to the day when I’m lucky enough to feel sick to my stomach all day. I can’t wait for the mood swings and having to pee all the time. I will leap with joy at every discomfort that signifies that I have the chance to become somebody’s mama yet again. Cue Ella, singing “They can’t take that away from me.”
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