Lost in America: Boots

Just a few posts ago, thanks to the suspension of entropy on the internet, Lost in America was carousing wondrously among the slickrock canyons of Southern Utah. It's a time I can travel back to easily; fresh apricot juice dripping down my forearm, campfires with antelope skewers, the 3pm thunderstorm, the newest experiences of my life. And Boots, abandoned by a young man who couldn't rough it and split to Vegas. Salomon, US 10.5, men's. I put them on, and ditched my aging REI boots immediately. 

Boots were last used for hiking a few years ago when the tread gasped its last near Three Fingered Jack, on a broiling day trodding on Oklahoma hailstone-sized volcanic scree. I thought it was me, fatigued, that was slipping, but a brief moment of troubleshooting revealed a pair of bald heels. I abandoned Boots on the shoe rack and got into gearhead mode (What's the latest hiking boot technology? How brand-loyal am I? Have I read the most helpful reviews?). 

New Boots! Salomon, top of the line GTX and other Dow Jones-sounding acronyms! 

Here's the problem with New Boots: I think about them too goddamn much. How do they stack up to the legend of Boots? How do my feet feel? Is that a blister forming? Do they leak or am I just sweating? Man, these boots run warm. New Boots didn't cut the mustard greens, and back to REI they went after catastrophic waterproofing failure on a long backpacking trip in the Wallowa Mountains. I dislike (hate, despise, revile) hiking in soggy boots. Brand loyalty: EXPIRED. New brand: Lowa Renegade. Definitely waterproof; insole lacks support. Gearhead stuff.

Back to Boots. You read the word "bombproof" applied to good boots; this is a misrepresentation of their protective capability, yet the hyperbole is apt when it refers to defending the most abused part of a hiker's body. Boots are the avant garde, literally. Boots (the Pair) were, and I would wager still are, bombproof. 

Boots and I reconnected last summer, when I began working one day a week doing random construction projects with a friend. Me: grunt. Learning on my feet, hauling clay like a serf ("I'm not an old woman, I'm a man!!"). And, to spare New New Boots the wear and tear away from the mountains, reunited and again in love with Boots. Caked with wet red-brown clay, dodging nails on scrap wood, toes down in ratshit under a house, stomping down blackberry vines in the back of my truck, bearing the weight of me and a 300lb wheelbarrow over uneven terrain. Banged, scraped, and wedged. Nary a leak. New insoles. But, as one does as one ages, one wrinkle turned to a crevice turned to a seam turned to a flap, and Boots' own feet started gathering pods and wads of clay within, began to rapidly disassemble, and render unto themselves a state of retirement. Not re-tire-ment; the opposite. 

Boots are a talisman, fraught with meaning for me, the wearer, and now you, the reader. Boots introduced me to Oregon as one of my most valuable possessions. Boots were the most comfortable, longest lasting footwear I've ever had. I've daydreamed that someday I would talk with someone at Salomon, and they'd dig into the warehouse, which I imagine as vast as the one housing Rosebud, and find one last pair, the missing half of quadruplets, the pair that would retire me. Where would I be without Boots?

My Ring is Madrone

Whence came the phrase, "make an honest man of him?" How does the marriage ceremony change the way two familiar people act together? And why, for this skeptic, do these large stepping stones across the River of Life only reveal their impact upon the immediate moment of their incarnation?

Life is fractal; to dig deeper into oneself is to unfold the wrinkles, only to find more wrinkles; then they fold back over you. When you think you've found the ultimate sinuous seam, and tuck your fingers into its fold expecting to finally flatten out that pesky fault-line, you find another imperfection. Your only recourse is to call it beauty, and press on.

My own process began over a year ago, when I was forced to confront the goblin spinsters of my past. I sure didn't want to; similar to the personification of addiction as a reactionary parasite that manipulates its host to its own will, my own memory had built up a wall around its core, preventing me from accessing and investigating its roots, hindering personal progress, and, key at the time, putting my most valued relationship at risk. I was wrinklier than I had thought.

We talked and talked. We sought mediation, an empathetic and wise third party. I was, at least, willing. And smack in the middle of it all, when she asked, I said, famously, "yep."

Talk about throwing myself in the deep end.

If you've known me a while, you know of my propensity to drift and catch what current takes me where. That's how I landed in media, in farming, in beer, writing, editing, and, now, marriage. But the latter was the hardest and the best, and I put a paddle in the river to get there.

We canoed the Willamette River from Eugene to Corvallis during the summer, a weekend we had planned for years with friends and finally enacted. The perennial chauffeur, I took up the rear of our dry-bag laden vessel, and learned to steer on the fly. If you let it, the river will put you on the rocks, drag you through strainers and snags, and dash you to pieces on the rip-rap. It will spin you around in its innocuous eddies and scrape your butt in its shallow riffles if you are not always peering ahead and seriously manning (or womanning) the till. It forces you to choose a line long before you reach the event horizon of rapids, and then proves you wrong five times before it spits you out, dazed but grinning, the other side.

There isn't a more fitting metaphor to describe the last year.

Being conscious of one's decisions is to become part of the fractal, and at the same time to observe it from a safe distance. At one of the most beautiful places, at the south end of the beach, there is a tall gray rock mostly coated in deep earthy shades. That is what you see from a distance. Step closer and refocus; the shape remains the same, but the patches of color become more defined. Step closer; the rock looms taller and you see texture on the patches of color. Step closer; the textures take form: tree, grass, lichen, yarrow, barnacle, mussel, anemone. Walk to it and peer in; the rock has disappeared, and you are among layers of life that may extend deep below this vertical surface. You will never see that rock the same way again.

So it came to pass: we were wed. Over a weekend on the Oregon coast with the majority of our dearest friends and family, we stood in the sand and became a new "we." That night we partied with an expanded lustiness, felt the woven threads of our friendships tighten, and drank in the fire, the music, the stars, the beer and whiskey.

The change began when we stepped onto the bus, the drunken ship that brought most of our clan to the beach, and I felt the transformation in stages of introverted nervousness, glassy-eyed ecstasy, long sighs, and gum-drying smiles. Perhaps that's how a fetus feels as it prepares to exit the womb. The unifying moment was punctuation at the end of a beautiful sentence; it carried us from this to that with grace and humor.

Does everything sparkle now? Do you zap each other with lasers when your eyes meet? Do your smooches set off smoke alarms? Maybe.

The real proof, outside of legal matters, lies in freedom, security, and desire. Freedom, because a loose end is secure; my sail no longer flaps in the wind and I can move with ease. Security, because, in a setting free of ego and our hearts exposed to those we love, we affirmed our desire to be together. Yes, we tied the knot (and stomped the glass). Desire, because it is vulnerable, and having the other two allows its full expression.

The chores, commutes, and meal preparations of daily life have resumed; the magical weekend couldn't last forever, though we've been trailing glitter for a couple weeks. We saw our support network unite with us, and the love and gratitude we have for our community will never fade.

--Still Lost in America

Lost in Transition

Surprise! 

Somehow beer supersedes blog posting. For 3.5 years. Tricky. 

This morning was a flutter of activity preparing to receive a large batch of wood, spare oak rounds from a friend whose wood-coffers are full. The wood is for the oven. "What oven?" you ask. The mothafukkin cob oven. You eat out of it. It's badass. When the revolution comes, I will live in my cob oven. 

Still wet, but pretty much finished, late-June. It is now functional.

Speaking of revolution, I keep hearing that's on its way. Something is going to snap, the power will go out, streets will be taken to, and shop windows will preemptively smash themselves. I'm glad to know people with skills; welding, woodworking, food preserving, music making. The latter will be especially important, because how else are you going to enjoy burning your cedar shingles to keep warm?

Speaking of cob building, I've just caught wind of a Neighborhood Permaculture Design Course in my neighborhood. Like, just now I received an e-mail about it. One weekend per month from September through April, for a fairly affordable price. I just might do that. 

Of course, every day I plot a different course for my life. Am I dissatisfied working at a home-brew supply shop, teaching people to make good beer and learning more and more about doing the same? No, certainly not. I take pride in helping people, as well as selling quality ingredients and equipment. I'm happy to create lower-sugar sodas for kids and non-drinkers at the pub (though I'm still making sugary drinks, which is dubious). It's a fact that I'm in a growing marketplace of beer, and that beer is the foundation for civilization. I might just be ready to apply myself elsewhere, on an even more local level, with less focus on selling, more on community; same amount of beer. 

When I first started farming, at Even'Star in St. Mary's County, I was at the farm from January through early June. Most of my days involved weeding, cutting salad, collecting eggs, and preparation for planting. It wasn't until my last day that the strawberries were ripe, and I never got to taste any of the tomatoes I transplanted. My second farm job, at Fern's Edge, I saw through a full four seasons, which included breeding and birthing (though in reverse order, since I came to the farm right before kids were born, and breeding was done late summer). It occurred to me on Sunday that, in order to feel fully connected and see the circuit fully closed, you have to be there for five seasons; think Ouroboros, the snake eating itself; think Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring, which is an outstanding Korean film that really gets this point across. Any new job, lifestyle, location, you enter it childlike, and it's not until you have seen five seasons through that you have absorbed its nuance. By seasons I am more or less referring to actual seasons; the passage of time. You can think of it differently, but my experience at farms and in retail is sliced into seasons. 

I met a man a few days ago who is working on his fourth degree. And I thought I was indecisive. I feel fairly empowered knowing there are people out there who don't want to be categorized into a job, who continually build their knowledge, skill, and experience; the resumé may be a grab-bag, but it sure shows a capacity for learning.

My stars, it's time to go to work. I hope to post here more often. I may have a house and chickens keeping me in Eugene, but I'm still Lost in America. And so can you.

My variety rack is full!

I wear lots of hats nowadays. You know, Hats. That old cliche, the metaphor for "I am fulfilling more roles than that of Supreme Couch Potato, thankyouverymuch." It's been a pretty active month past, and as the weather changes, my activity level will increase at a mathematical (rather than grammatical) rate. This is because I do things outside, like play in the dirt and pretend I can garden and haul 140 lb. bales of alfalfa in a cart with flat tires up a trail of mud 6 inches deep and heft little goats back over the fences they jump. I may have lost some weight, despite the amount of food and beer I consume (though the latter is less than it was at this time last year...).

This is no excuse (it's a reason) for my not posting in a while. I will try to articulate some of the things that cross my mind on a typical day recently.

I had a daydream/nightmare while milking the other day: background: there are a bundle of goats that have CAE, which is basically goat HIV which is transmitted through milk (but not to humans), and they are kept separate from the other, socially accepted goats. My daydream involved the CAE girls getting into the main milker pen, and that I would find them all having a crazed, unprotected-teat-licking lesbian goat orgy, and they would all be infected and have to wear red collars and be goat pariahs.

I am reading a book called Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, and it's getting to my head. The chapter was on musical hallucination, and I've started hearing music in my head right before I go to sleep. I can see the way it's played on the guitar, and the sounds are catchy and original-sounding, and I want so badly to remember, but I'm too tired to wake myself up and be the hallucination.

I have planted peas and rhubarb and a little grafted plum tree, and I hope they grow big and yummy. It's the first time I've actually gardened for myself, and it's a different world. I (and Liz, who has put numerous hours into weeding and pruning our rose bushes) get to manage this yard. The landlord told us we have free reign, that he was glad to have the yard put to use. I don't think he knew what he was getting into. That whole damn yard is going to be beautiful, if not entirely edible (including eggs...), and grass-free by the time I can make a down payment on some land. The yard hadn't been tended in two years, so there are more weeds than grass in all the wrong places. But I'm learning how I garden when left on my own, which is basically to have a rotation of tasks that I do all at once and never quite finish. Edging, weeding, tilling, and braiding some baling twine were my tasks today (aside from planting rhubarb and potting the tree), and I went from one to the other until I felt satisfied that I had made a visible impact. It also hailed a bit, and rained, and hailed, and got sunny, and all the while it was about 60 degrees. Freaking Oregon.

On top of that paragraph, I have three jobs. The one I am going to use as inspiration for short films that nobody will understand. Another is doing landscaping for a pregnant woman who can't lift heavy things, and she pays me well. The other is a more serious, careerly endeavor. I am a "junior manager" sort in the home office of San Diego Motorcycle Training, run by my neighbor Joe. Joe deserves his own blog post. He's great, and he hired me. I'm on a salary for 8 hours of work per week until I'm sufficient enough to do more. It's a hard job for me because I'm not used to "office work" and "phones" and "efficient methods of communication" and "business practices." It's not a job I will have any stories about, but it is a job that could eventually offer paid leave and benefits. The only benefit the goats provide is the white, fat-infused substance that keeps me from getting very skinny. And stories.

These three jobs mean that I work six days a week, which is too much. That's the bummer here: there's just not enough days in the week. You know, Days. It's that old cliche that moms use when the house is messy. It's a metaphor that means, "my damn kid plays video games 6 hours a day." Or is it "not enough hours in the day," or "days in the year?" Whatever.

On S.N.O.B.B.E.R.Y.

On being a Supporter of Native Oregon Beer and Being Exceptionally Rank and goatY:

I am an ol-factory, a synaptic, smelly mess. I've begun to detect anomalous odors amidst clouds of organic fumage. The scent of beer and raspberries mingles with capric acid and ammonia, causing much confusion in my sniffer. I've been smelling so much lately, I don't know where I stand, where to stand. My friend and fellow goatherd Alex gave it to me straight:

"People who judge beer... they're snobs."

I turned a sensory corner, began to learn the art of beer-collage, the synesthesia of aroma and adjective. Things described as "horse blanket" and "dimethyl sulfide" now have, by popular vote, an ascribed smell, and vice-versa. Caramel, chocolate, nut, grass, citrus, and flower are now things that come in the form of beer. I already knew it was a meal in a bottle, but this is ridiculous, right? And for all my eschewing of labels, I find myself taking on the label of "Snob" with a capital S that rhymes with Mess that stands for TROUBLE.

It could be worse, you know, and I am swearing to myself that I will use my new powers to educate, not criticize; to learn, not spurn; to brew well, but not balk if you hand me a Rolling Rock.

Goat Sects

Renata came running up to the fence, bleating, with her one stubby finger-like horn bent the wrong way. She's a skinny girl, brown, relatively cute, and out of place at the lower barn. She had been put in a sick pen for some reason, and when an ailing old goat took hospice in one of the sick pens, Renata was displaced to the main part of the lower barn. Being small, she was automatically placed lowest in the pecking order and bullied away from the feeders, even maliciously headbutted in the ribs when she was just hanging around. She took to hiding on the outside of the wall of the enclosure. The past couple days when I went to feed them, she ran up to me and pressed her body against my leg and bleated. When I went to leave, she tried to come with me. I felt bad for her, forced to live in an unfamiliar place with testy, exclusive barn-mates.

Today I tossed a couple flakes of alfalfa (the good stuff) into the pasture space, just to get some of the goats out of the hay'n'shit they live in, and she ran over to the fence and gave me very pathetic eyes, about as pathetic as a goat can look. Since she's from the milking group, I brought her onto the wooden milking stand, put her head in the headlock, and gave her a scoop of grain (the really good stuff), which she began to devour. I sat down behind to milk her, gave one squeeze, and noticed a drop of blood on the ground by her legs. It wasn't from her teats. Apparently she had been pregnant and aborted, probably because of the tormenting and lack of food.

I let her finish the grain and put her back in a sick pen with a fellow milker, Hillary. Renata started headbutting Hillary away from the food.

Getting to know another species is pretty strange. To the extent that they're dumb animals, I'm a source of food and water, and they follow the grain bucket around like a hungry school of fish. I communicate with them through that, in a way. The milkers know what to do when I wake them up at 5 in the morning, and don't give me trouble any more when I "tsch, tsch" them down the muddy path to the dairy.

It's another thing to have animals that realize that you are a source of protection, or some sort of deity. One milker, Jardin, likes to rub her face on my leg when I'm leading goats up the ramp to be milked. The little cutie we call Rebecca's Kid comes up to me and tries to nibble my fingers, accepts my petting and the strange noises I make at her. I take these things as a sign of affection or tribute. And Renata, who sees humans and realizes that we're the ones to tell when something's wrong with her, except we don't know how to interpret pathetic eyes. It's almost impossible to tell when a doe is pregnant until a couple days beforehand, which is why breeding is pretty regulated (you don't want random goats dropping kids without warning).

A couple does have died in the last month; one of old age, the other of some illness that resembled the flu. Two now have aborted. I suppose those are standard statistics among 200 goats. However, there are a dozen or so does who are due for their first kids pretty soon, so the cycle will continue. Perhaps I'll get to name one. Names I would choose for a goat would include:

Albert Einstein, H.W. Longfellow, Rammstein, Her Majesty, Dinah Mo Humm, and Leonora

STUFF

It's one of the teenage answers:

"How are you, honey?"
"Fine."

"Would you like M&Ms on your pastrami sandwich?"
"I guess."

"What did you do today, honey?"
"Stuff."

The secret word for tonight is "STUFF." Except for its form as a verb, stuff is a pretty ambiguous word. If read enough times in succession, one may find its meaning to cease altogether. Stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff. Just a bunch of symbols. Now no longer ambiguous, "STUFF" enters the realm of the absurd. Read it again with me: STUFF?

We've all got it. Some of us are it (in adjective form: stuffy). It happens to our noses (verb: stuffed). We acquire it, lose it, deal it, and heehaw over its value in our lives. I got my stuff back recently. Previously it was across the country, and I acquired lots of stuff during my separation from stuff to partially replace the stuff I had been using, but which was so far away. I now have an abundance of stuff. Most of it is useful, and some is just for decoration.

Now the questions: Is it good to have all this stuff (AGAIN)? Well, what was it like without it?

It is nice to see most of this stuff again. Without it, recently, I had been proclaiming at random the things I was going to have in the near future (an apron! a pizza peel! a regular-sized pillow!). However, except for the upgrade in quality of stuff (the old, had-stuff as opposed to the newer, replacement stuff), I could have gotten by quite easily without all this stuff, as I had been for the last four months (plus three months on the road with even less stuff and even more excitement; is there a causative relationship here?).

The option of selling all my stuff and starting from scratch had been considered, tossed up and down like a baseball while determining the best pitch. It's full count (toss up), this guy's not the greatest hitter (catch), but it's the eighth inning and I'm tired (toss up), and the next guy's so good I'll just walk him (catch). It was just like that, come to think of it. The option was overridden by the potential energy spent selecting the items to be sold, assessing their value, selling them, then reacquiring similar items without sacrificing quality over price. Complicated. Such are the mechanisms of stuff.

So now I have stuff all over the house (the house itself does not count as stuff; I think stuff is inherently plural). Lots of it has become unpacked and strewn about in a fashion that is more than disorderly but less than symmetrical. It has been creatively arranged to divide space and indicate a particular activity that is designated for that space (large dining room table is reserved for accumulation of stuff; constantly-unraveling rug in the bathroom denotes bathroom activities, etc.). I am of a mind (of whose mind, I know not) that there is actually TOO MUCH STUFF in the house. This is a condition that can develop several plot lines:

1) Disease/virus: symptoms include growth and multiplication of stuff. If left unattended, normal operations may become affected or cease altogether.

2) Profit: stuff is sold, marketed cleverly on Craigslist. Example: "Coby DVD player, nearly new, with box, manual, remote. $20."

3) Stasis: due to constraints of time and willpower, stuff is stuffed. Closets will be relatively organized, but full. Stuff may stick around until it is decided that stuff will never be used or seen again.

Such are the infinite possibilities of stuff.

Some of the stuff I have is nostalgic. Things from my grandmother, Mona: a rug, painting, spoon, ice cream scoop, enameled cast-iron cookware, coffee table, a photograph of her as a beautiful young woman, a pair of sunglasses, a ceramic sign that reads "Casa Mona." That's most of the nostalgic stuff. I got a very strange feeling when I saw some of those things again, so far removed from the memories I associate with them, with Mona; a mixture of sadness, loss, holding-on, relief. The emotional weight of stuff.

Also, a marvelling at seeing some of this stuff: a very sharp knife, my stereo system and DVDs. Owning DVDs has been rendered a trifle these days, but I like the fact that I can watch The Fifth Element for the 77th time whenever I want, as loud as my ears and bass-thumped torso can stand.

There are so many philosophical aspects to stuff; I'm not going to bother un-cocting this matter any further because we all know this stuff already. Here is a short list of stuff that I claim, by gift, monetary procurement, or common-law possession, as my own:

a console TV that weighs close to 300 lbs.; 3 copies of In Stitches, a film by Mark McAllister; The Jewish Book of Why; a college diploma in leatherette folder; a pair of black leather boots handmade in Chiapas