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

I woke up this morning!

Emphasis on MORNING. Not "this predawn, ultradark, sun-on-opposite-side-of-world" sort of morning, which is the tail end of the day for many people. Nope, I woke up this morning. Liz was out of bed before me! I was able to follow through with my dream (which contained a lot of hugging of friends; a theme that's been turning up every couple weeks since October or November. It's nice!)!

!

I suppose I hadn't worked a "full week" at anything since the last week of May. Please don't fault me for sounding so relieved; those goats really know how to permeate. A hypothesis of mine was laid to rest: it takes fewer than five days to get every layer of my work uniform (sometimes up to 5 on my torso) insulated with the sweet-sour smell of the farm life. By the fifth morning I could smell my clothes when I walked into the spare room (I sure as hell don't keep them in an area of common passage) and though I didn't gag, my eyes rolled a little from the stench and the irony. My coffee smelled like farm sleeves, tasted kinda like coffee. I have whole beans that I won, er... stole... from a white elephant party. I have no bean grinder, but I do have a mortar & pestle. I don't recommend it for grinding coffee.

I woke up this morning! I will wake up tomorrow morning as well and I will make crepes and put pear/anise and blueberry/ginger goat cheese on them and I will lounge in my boxers and I will play scrabble and go to bed at a reasonable hour (after 9:30) and I will have more hugging dreams and I will play my guitar and I will be done with this post. Hurray!

In Teats We Trust

I know I am not getting out enough; I spend my evenings cooking and zoning out to primetime TV (it's free!), my afternoons playing guitar and doing crossword puzzles, and my early mornings talking to goats as if their floppy ears and misshapen pupils process my silhouette and the sounds that emanate from my mouth into a comprehensive personality with which they knowingly interact. I refer to them as "people" and "folks," apologize to them when I slice off parts of their hooves, and thank them when I return them to their pens. I am grateful to them for providing me with both a meager income and all of the near-expired cheese I can imagine consuming.

Biding my time at the farm is giving me time to work on my bilingual comedy routine; my audience is perfect: contained, relatively sedate, and a hair smarter than a chicken. They listen especially well when I wield a flake of alfalfa or a bucket of grain. The latter is the best; while my fellow goatherd sneakily fills the grain tray I can guide a flock of hungry kids in circles with an empty blue bucket to avoid her being trampled by extremely cute hooves. You see, I get very excited about the blue bucket as if there were grain in it, and the silly kids think it's true.

So I've done a lot of goat-related things lately. I have more goat friends than people friends. My right hand can now be officially described as "bigger than my left." My relationship with poop has become more intimate than I think it's reasonable to imagine. When I feel a nibble on my pants or have my hand slammed against a wall by the hoof I'm trying to clean, it's just another day at the office.

I talked to my brother on the phone the other day; he's still in that "disposable income" phase, the phase that would be heaven if not for the hormonal imbalances. He asked me why I had worked on so many farms (3), and why I was doing it. My response was, "well, I have to pay for food and housing and stuff." Something in the way he repeated what I had told him tipped me off: "So you mean you have to pay for housing and all your food and stuff??" He is in Fiscal Flatland; the third dimension of money is a nonentity to him; all he knows is that money is gotten and spent in straight, easy lines. The third dimension, obligation, has yet to be imposed upon him, and is finally coming upon me in ways I had hoped would never furrow my brow.

When I realized his cluelessness, I remembered being that way, giving my paychecks from Olsson's right back for CDs without worrying about gas or food money, much less rent money. Even after being bailed out by my folks for fiscal irresponsibility, it took a few years (and paying rent) for the concept to dawn. This last year I had a job and a living situation that afforded me plenty of extra money for both saving and spending proudly; I left that job and that house and that money (that three-month-long trail of money) to seek a fortune, and my fortune's embryo is a goat. Life is a goat. I'm not dismayed. I like goats well enough. My only hope is that my fortune's larva makes a little more money.

This Morning

3: 40 a.m. First accumulation seen since a glacier in Colorado.

Buxom Does Really Get My Goat!

I woke up at 4:00 this morning, grabbed a hunk of (delicious garlic rosemary) bread, put some muesli in a cup with some rice milk, and ran out the door. I drove past the exit where I was supposed to get off the highway and ended up being a half hour late for my second day of work at Fern's Edge Goat Dairy.

Goats. Where do I begin? My first glimpse of them was yesterday when I came in (right on time) to the milking room and was faced with six goat asses, dangling udders, teats being sucked into pulsating vacuum tubes, milk flowing into a tank. Somehow this didn't phase me, and I learned right quick how to clean, strip (get the juices flowing), and insert the teat into the tube. It's not a very complicated process, and although it's only about 80 goats that get milked (of 200 on the property), it's a very factory-like process. I suppose that's what happens when you mechanize. My prior farm experience involved nothing more mechanical than an auger I used to drill post holes. This is high-tech modernity!

I don't know if you know this, or want to, but teats are far out! Have you ever looked at 80 different sets of teats before? Probably not. They're like snowflakes, but more squeezable. Some of them are large and dangly. Others are small. Some are wrinkly. I think I must have very wide palms because I can only use two or three fingers to squeeze an average sized teat or I spray milk all over my hand. Some teats are in just the right place, and others you might have to search for and pull back a little bit. I don't know how the goats feel about this; they have their heads stuck between metal bars, munching away on grain and kelp powder or trying to bite their neighbor's ear.

The morning shift takes between five and six hours, and involves feeding the multiple pens, milking two sets of goats, twelve at a time, and then feeding all the goats and the cows. It's crazy how fast time passes when you get to work two hours before the sun. I still have most of the day ahead of me. I don't really have any gripes about this job, especially since I got rubber boots. I just gotta go to bed early. Well, my hands smell like goats right now, which is a strange combination of raw milk, hay, and ammonia. You have to deal with a lot of goat shit, which is a small step away from dirt. Also, goats use urine as a sign of posession. I haven't been peed on yet.

It's a relief to know that somebody needs my work in exchange for their money (and they really need me-- very short staffed-- though the pay's not great), and I'm looking forward to hearing the same thing from the U of O (if you take out the "of" it's just You Owe...) pretty soon. I'm pretty sure they're gonna want me.

Goat pictures coming soon.

The Kitchen Spews Forth

Kitchen in America begins here.

My Mom once had a job at the National Children’s Center. She brought home some funny, if not slightly inappropriate, stories of the people there. One man would ask her every day, “What did you have for dinner last night?” That is the question I seek to answer here.

Last night was pretty special. I started in the morning, actually, with a poolish (2 c. water, 2 c. flour, ¼ t. yeast). That’s the easy part; it just sits there. Same with the soaking chickpeas. It was great to come out in the morning and see they had inflated so much as to pop off the lid of the yogurt container. The little successes are just as tickling as the big ones.

In the afternoon I cooked the chickpeas to the tenderness of a clump of dry soil; easy to mash (electric appliances here = toaster oven). I then created my dough:

2 c. poolish 3.5 c. bread flour ½ T. salt ½ t. yeast 1 T. fresh rosemary ¾ c. water

It turned out to be a really dense dough, and it took a very short knead to get that gluten developed (I haven’t worked with bread flour in quite a while). My original intent was loaves, but the more I thought about it, the more pita seemed the logical end. Turns out that pita dough is basically the same as bread dough. Go figure! I plopped the dough into a bowl with some olive oil and turned back to the hummus:

3 c. soft chickpeas 3 T. tahini juice of ½ lemon 2 t. salt 2 cloves of garlic any herbs you choose (I chose some paprika, pepper, and 1 T. rosemary, since our rosemary bush is HUGE)

Mash all that together, or if you’re fancy, process it until it’s as smooth as you want it to be (I like mine smoother than Smoove B., but the potato masher is no match for a metal blade spinning faster than John McCain’s head two weeks ago. Chunky it was.).

Back to the pita. It’s freaking easy. Preheat your oven to 475. If you have a baking stone, you know what to do with it. If not… you’re on your own. Divide the (risen) dough into as many pieces as you see fit, ball them, then press them into discs (don’t roll them yet) and wait 20 minutes (science note: the gluten has to adjust to the stretching it’s about to receive. If you don’t give it a preliminary squish, it will keep springing back when you try to roll it out.) Roll the pieces out thin, about ¼ inch. Let them sit (unstacked, if possible) for 10 minutes, then spritz your baking stone with water and put on as many as will fit. Now is the fun part.

I like to watch my bread rise in the oven. It’s like watching a fetus grow, but it takes just a few minutes and you can eat it afterward. Watching the pita has a cinematic bent to it; suspense builds as you see little bubbles form on the surface, and you’re not sure whether that’s all you’re going to get, or if it’ll go all the way and form a big steamy pocket. After three minutes, you will know. If it inflates all the way, congratulations, it’s a pita. If not, if your dough lacks some gluteny chromosomes and it miscarriages, do not worry; you have a darling bubbly baby naan! Carry on. Don’t let these brown or they’ll be too crispy and not moist and floppy.

This last bit I credit to Liz for the inspiration; she wanted tempeh. A quick sauté of red pepper, fresh-from-the-CSA-box specialty onion (I don’t know what specialty, it was light purple and shaped like a tamale), toss the tempeh in until brown, and garnish with some cilantro. That’s it! Make a bed of hummus on a plate, put the tempeh on, and serve with hot pita (that’s been sitting under something, keeping it warm and moist).

What a delicious meal; our recent cooking had lacked that Mediterranean flavor, and this was the perfect remedy. The rosemary and cilantro really perk things up, and the textures all went together so well. Filling, too; one serving was just enough.

Giada, eat your heart out.

Next: Tempeh-mental!

Mushroom, Mushroom!

They poke their little heads out of the duff...


Or emerge like seashells from stumps...


This lobster used to be a russala until a parasite attacked it.


This chanterelle looks like a butt.


A slug: a more mobile, slimy form of mushroom.


These white ones were my favorite; they were soft, velvety, and looked like ghosts.


Eat 'em up, YUM!

Home Space

View into the back yard. Note apple tree.


Artichokes?


Chardy chard!


The back yard looking at the house.


Living space.


First whole wheat bread and caraway/currant scones! Deeeeeelish!

Underdog Vs. The Invisible Snowball

This true, new babe from the woods, used to having income poured into his lap, knew nothing of what it means to be, still, Lost In America.

New intelligence:
house
job tentacles

New house! Gas stove! No cats! Garden!
Practically paradise in every way. Pictures coming when I stop stealing slow internet and go to the library.


Still waiting. Not tables. Just waiting. Turning compost, turning pages of my crossword book, turning slowly into vegetable matter via ingestion. Turning in applications.

I know I'm perfect for this job. That job is me, and I have to wait until the 2nd week of December before I know, unless they do the obvious thing: close the classified ad, toss out all the other applications, and hire me now, which is what they really ought to do. I'm gonna tell them so when I get the chance. In the meantime, I'm waiting for a call from a temp agency. And for Publisher's Clearinghouse to knock on my door. And for that CEO's extra tax money to enter my bank account. And for ... well, you get it.

Here's a very sappy ode to some people who deserve an ode (the odeious):

You are responsible for my cold toes;
your good vibes warmed my heart.


Michael Glaser, eat your heart out.

I'm no longer pacing the way I was a couple weeks ago; the move and the groove have kept me busy enough. Halloween had me dancing in drag in a house designed with the intent of having psychedelic raves. Since then I've been cooking and baking. Yesterday, the DIVA center showed selections from the Punto y Raya film festival, which should be an inspiration to anybody who loves electronic distortion and epilepsy (that's you, Noise Test!). Today... I will be thinking of ways to use the garden over winter, prepare it for spring.

American Abject

I've been thinking about abjection, about wearing your guts on the outside, the externalization of negativity, like barfing on a stage on a suburban cul-de-sac. I remember this movie, a Japanese movie called Pinocchio 964, that I was forced (ok, not forced, but encouraged) to watch in my Horror Film class a couple years back, and I remember hating it so much because the displays of abjection (violent, unceasing illness and deformity in populated areas) were so overblown, an onslaught of sound and image that, instead of being justified Hollywood-style, left nothing to reason with. As we discussed in class, it was an abjection of Japanese silence and internalization after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wonder what the American abjection could look like.

It may be like Total Recall, Fight Club, or the horse-head scene from The Godfather, or when Barton Fink wakes up next to a dead woman. Normally, when we think of abjection, it is of "abject poverty," which is sort of a redundancy; society excludes the destitute, and those within the society, speaking personally, have trouble identifying with it. Abjection is a surreal experience, having yourself projected, or ejected, from any frame of reference.

To situate myself in this discussion, I'm feeling a little bit abject, and I'm feeling strangely responsible for that feeling. Accompanying that are bits of regret, depression, and confusion that come from lack of future-certainty. My connections are mostly through the ether (the internet, phone), my current home is temporary, I'm separated from my family and friends, and I'm unemployed, tasty chum in a sea where the sharks are starving but not hungry. In some ways it's abjection, in others uncanniness.

There is a three-minute film festival coming up, and I'm having trouble visualizing exactly what I want to do, or how I can do it. All I've got is my digital still camera. This is not a new limitation for me; there are just ideas now to be parsed through, the transition from the mental to the physical image, the barrier of progress. And how to display abjection without seeming pathetic or trite, how to get over my own discomfort displaying my work, how to explain myself.

Imagine waking up, brushing teeth, performing morning rituals in a pile of nasty compost, preparing breakfast in industrial waste, shaving your face with a railroad spike without a look of disgust, but the normal, blank, pre-coffee stare. All conveyed in still images. . . I suppose that's a beginning.

This is all very unsexy.

Routini

I run like clockwork; waking thinking coffeeing pooping biking internetting jobhunting cooking eating thinking biking cooking eating movieing thinking sleeping repeating. Basically. It's getting out of hand. Last night Liz and I went for a walk around the neighborhood before dinner. Tuesday I went mushroom hunting with Jason.

I discovered last week that the media network in Eugene actually exists; there is one, and it is in no way affiliated with craigslist. I think it avoids craigslist as a rule. So now I'm trying my hand at "networking," a method of making friends with the idea that they will lead you to money. I walk into places and chat for a minute before handing them my resume, but not before they tell me that "the economy sucks right now," and that nobody's really hiring, at least they aren't. And with a grimace they take my resume and say, "good luck," as I leave. Other companies that don't seem to have an exact address I've learned aren't worth a call. The "company" is a dude with some equipment, like me if I had equipment and people called me with personal projects like weddings and can-you-put-this-home-movie-on-dvd.

My days are full of cooking! I have just enough time to do all of this before I need to sleep. All of my food is cooked by me, not by someone else because it now comes in a plastic tub and still has root strands, bitter green tops, dirt in the crevices. I get to choose the combinations of foods that I eat, and I get to know how much of what is put in, and it all comes from a big little farm in Junction City; it's almost too much. Perishables sitting in a plastic tub in the shade outside my door, for lack of refrigerator room. I think life would be easier if that was my life. Life as a Napa cabbage.

My liquid bread turned out beautifully, just as a homebrew should. The hops leveled out, the body is palpable, the malt is refreshing, and the nose is somewhere between Wisconsin and Belgium. I think I'll call it The Fog. It's a hearty 7.3%, and is available only in bombers at my house in Eugene, so come'n get it!

Shuddering in America: America Who? Government.

As the internet ambassador for campaignatorial absurdities, I am going to comment vaguely on comments put forth by the loquacious Shuddering Noise Machine on the last future-president debate. Here it goes:

It was about five minutes into this business that I was distracted by John McCain's blinking. It didn't stop. Every syllable, blink. Blink Blink Blink, those gray lids over vacuous irises, as if his own voice was a hammer landing on a nail driving into cheap, thin plywood, waiting for it to split with every blink. I decided from then on that he was either lying and knew it, or he was lying because he wasn't sure what the right thing to say was. To his right, Obama; composed, serene, articulate, yes, and he blinked at a fairly normal rate-- the only moments I noticed were when he stumbled over the "what are you going to cut?" question, and perhaps a bit on healthcare. I too wish your employer would give you healthcare. I wish I had an employer to give me healthcare.

What got me slapping my forehead and exhaling forcefully was that when McCain had the rebuttal: on healthcare and Ayers, notably, despite the fact that Obama "won" those rounds without breaking a sweat, McCain's choice of rebuttal was to state his original claim once more, giving the last word clearly; "we need to know the specifics of your relationships," etc. This, I am afraid, is what will stick in many a mind. Obama has linguistic power, but at times it goes over my head. Smart and capable as he is, we have to remember that W somehow got "elected" twice, and that focusing on trivial behaviors such as flip-flopping and b'yah!ing and other distortions have swung elections; it need not be overstated that it is likely that most people get most of their campaign news from The View and Entertainment Weekly. I know my housemates do.

On to Joe the Plumber. I kept hearing "Joe Strummer." Joe Strummer, you're rich, but you're dead. Sorry, your employer can't help you there. I will send him a fine. I think that Joe T. Plumber would be mighty confused and vote for Nader after the Abbott/Costello pickup routine that's just been put on him. Debates should not resemble Warner Bros. cartoons, nor should they target a single person out of 95% to give all of their well-researched policy changes. I want some. I want $5000 so I can pay off my college loan and I want the economy to change... but I don't want it to change in four years because I want to buy land reeeeaaaallllllllly cheap... if'n I can get a mortgage these days. Wait, who am I rooting for anyhow?

I think McCain said, in the same response, "we need to spread the wealth around," and then, "we don't need to spread the wealth around." Is that correct?

I wish that Obama had said, "Sarah Palin may have been a clever choice for running mate, McCain, and she may be governor of the largest territory in the nation, but she's governing fewer people than live in D.C. Oh, and she supports people who want to kill me." I'm not sure how he kept face on that question. If Sarah Palin is a role model for women, I guess we can erase the last 40 years of women's lib. Especially after McCain's remark that "her husband's a pretty tough guy, too." Does this mean that it would really be Todd Palin as VP, or that he would be holding her hand? Or does it imply that she is also a tough guy? Senator Government probably thought up so many good comebacks after the debate was over. I can imagine him lying in bed with Michelle and being like, "yeah, well if she's a role model for women, than I'm Mr. T. Ha! Take that. . . no, you're not Bush, but you're still an old white puckered-faced asshat. . . "

I would like to spend a day, or maybe an evening, with Obama, make him a pizza, have a beer, and talk about music. I think he could use a break; four to eight years as president is going to give him a lot of gray hair. He is welcome into my strange home any time.

A brew update

I want to inform all listeners-in on this blog that, as noted before, I am back in brewing business. Next week I shall open what has come to be known around the house as "Over the Top Hop," which I may extend to be "Over the Top Hop Parade," and it will be hoppy. It will probably be the last hoppy thing that happens to my carboy for a long time. Plans for now are... well, last week I realized that a freeze is coming soon, and those grapes and apples in the yard aren't gonna like it much, so I better get them drunk 'fore too long. Thus:

a Pyment: honey wine (mead) with grapes

and

a Pyment with the juice of delicious apples

Just one gallon of each, each gallon also containing a pound of local honey and Blanc yeast, now going "blip, blip, blip," (as digital as fermenting gets) inside the insulated box in the kitchen, 'cause who knows what kind of temperature fluctuations go on in there. It should take about a month to finish, and a questionable amount of time before it's completely delicious.

Speaking of wines, Liz's mom is here in Eugene now; from their cousin's wedding they returned bearing three gallon-sized bags FULL OF CHEESE. Their cousin is a cheese broker. So today we took a little trip to King Estate winery and had lunch-- trout club sandwich, sweet potato chips with truffle oil, greens salad, honey thyme ice cream (wow), and the Alsatian flight which included a pinot grigio, Gewurztraminer, and Riesling; the Gewurtz the outright best of the three with the best body, mild tang, and peach/apricot hints that went well with the meal... and we bought a bottle to go with some of the cheese-- goat and manchego, if we have it. I feel rich. I have been cultureshocked. The mountains southwest of Eugene are refreshing, serene (apart from the visible logging), and a place I would consider steading.

I am in the public library at a table and I think there is somebody doing something inappropriate directly across from me, so I'm gonna go now.

Horse of a Different Crater

This has been a week of implosions. Had my car window smashed in on Saturday; saw the deepest lake in the country; learned of the collapse of a business that was my home and my family for many years, if not my whole life; and now I get to hear the national marketplace squeak and slither to a halt on the TV that blares constantly from the living room while I am in the kitchen experimenting with glutinous rice balls wrapped around sweet bean paste; they look like fried eggs from a charred chicken.


It's a lake that fills the carcass of the volcano called Mount Mazana, and it's so deep you could stack the Sears tower twice at its deepest point and, because of the water displaced, it probably would not stick above the surface. The water is, indeed, bluer and clearer than the sky, which happened to be quite hazy from forest fires burning a few miles off. Liz and I met Tony there on Sunday. The story of how we got there is exciting: My passenger window was smashed in sometime Friday night/Saturday morning, and we temporarily cancelled the trip because nobody could replace the window on Saturday. Oh, and nothing was stolen. So my housemate Trey suggested I go to the junkyard and pull a window; we first opened up the door's guts and extracted the bits and chunks, figured out how it all works. The junk yard happened to have the exact window I needed sitting on their shelves, so for $50 I got a new window and put it in myself (total savings: $110). So we uncancelled our trip to Crater Lake, which was fortuitous becuase Sunday night was the last night the campsites were open for the rest of the season. What luck!

It was a good trip; two good hikes, good beer, great jam around the campfire. Yep. So we got back on Monday. The beer seemed to have stopped fermenting after transfer to the secondary, but it had actually lowered four points gravity (a good thing; means alcohol is being produced) and tastes like... well, to put it mildly, it's DAMN HOPPY. I mean geez.

I can't say that it was a big surprise to hear of Olsson's closing. That said, I was in shock for most of yesterday after receiving links to the two Washington Post articles that gave brief praise and condolences to the passing of a former D.C. icon. So it went; the way of the Pony Express. You can't put wheels and an engine on a horse, and you can't make digital that which relies on physical space and material to exist; that is the Achilles heel of book and record stores that still rely on expensive retail space and an ambulatory customer base. And what could have been done? To compete with Amazon and iTunes is like... well, you understand all that. Monolith.

For Olsson's to not last through the spending season, though, seems to me a harbinger, a real live harbinger. This spending season will probably be deflated by media attention to the stumbling drunk economy and the "black guy or white woman" question (why it's even a question is beyond me; that person, that human being named Sarah Palin is an idiot, while that other human being named Barack Obama can form many complex sentences without tripping over his tongue). My expert prognosis is "not good," possibly "hunker down" in regards to the coming months as we watch Capitol Hill: The Reality Show Where Everybody Loses When One Person Fucks Up on TV.

As a person with EDS (Employment Deficiency Syndrome), I am sarcastically enthusiastic, gleeful to have moved to a place where jobs were already scarce and at a time when my interest lies in an area (making things out of wood, primarily) that requires oodles of money to start up. That's my whine.

I would like to say, to have said, "I have the perfect solution! This bookstore will no longer flounder at the whim of dispassionate corpo-nazis!" And to have had a new direction, some old-world method pulled out of an attic that would actually freshen the business, would force people to get off of the internet and walk, actually walk with their feet and legs and swinging arms, blinking eyes, sweating foreheads, into the store that they know is the best because it's been around longer than any other, because they know a bunch of people who worked there and see them on the street and at concerts, or who met their lovers there, or because it smells like paper acid dust that turns the music in the air into a blanket that feels so good you just have to bring the music home. Isn't that how it's supposed to be? The answer is "YES."