I spent the day out at the bale house. So far I’ve learned about drain tiling and conduit wiring and two methods of wall construction (stud and bamboo, stud and string lattice) and practiced one of the methods on my own, the latter, in which you pack the bales overtight then lattice them into place then cut the cords and they expand the one inch or so to make a solid wall. And I learned how they make the rounded windowsills, which involves lathe around a curved particleboard frame stuffed with clay-tossed straw (I finished off three of those today). I’m starting to think of keeping closer track of all these details and if I wind up actually building one of these at some point some kinda way, or something something, I could add up the route I took and write about it.

So far two main things stand out about this experience: 1. the environmentalism implicit in every choice that would result in the construction methods, including the aspect of communal labor and 2. the communal aspect of communal labor. Social situations are not my strength. The only thing I’m good for in a social situation is observation. If what you want is an outsider on your insides, I’m your girl. Otherwise, the smallest exchanges can fill me with unease, and I mix my animal metaphors, and wind up looking like this right before I head for cover. But if there’s a TASK involved, that helps a lot, and if the task is PURPOSEFUL that’s even better. Plus this is a church not a bar we’re talking about, Church of Christ Something Liberal, and definitely NOT into proselytizing about anything other than environmental and social issues. They quietly added me to the “many hands make light labor” email list and left it at that. That all suits me very well. It’s like an Amish barn raising (ish).

[I like quiet work.]





Then it was Halloween of course. There was only one punkin, so the compromise was three eyes and two mouths.

I had one too many conversations with myself throwing my own voice for the other part, conversations in which I had shit-canned myself, and then I didn’t want to talk to any of you sons of bitches any more Playlist:

Nina Simone - Love Me Or Leave Me

Josh Ritter – Come and Find Me

Snow Patrol – You Could Be Happy

The Killers – My List

The Blow – True Affection

self-help reading + music

Spinoza conceives of “God or Nature” and its relations to the “finite modes” (that is, the ordinary finite things of everyday life, such as rocks, tables, trees, animals and human beings.) The first is the standard interpretation, according to which God-or-Nature is nothing less than the whole of reality, on which ordinary finite things (“finite modes”) depend as states of qualities that it produces in itself. . . Spinoza defined “religion” as “whatever we desire and do of which are he cause insofar as we have the idea of God, or insofar as we know God.” While not a person, not purposive, and not transcendent, his God is nevertheless the omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, blessed and necessarily existing cause of all things. There is indeed an appropriate attitude to hold towards God, in his view: not worshipful awe, but rather the pure “intellectual love of God” of which many theologians have written as the soul’s highest good. In Spinoza’s revisionary understanding of it, however, all knowledge is ultimately knowledge “of God”, and so intellectual love of God is the final affective result of any fully adequate rational understanding (of anything) whatsoever.

-from “All Necessarily So: Spinoza’s Ethics” Don Garret (TLS review)

"Wolf Among Wolves," Bonnie Prince Billy

self-help reading + music

A girl cries. Her father beats her, convinces her she’s dumb.
She’ll land back on that cave of herself again
And again for the rest of her life. So many are like mythical creatures
Blindly returning to tackle whatever invisible monsters
Brought them down so long ago in the Trauma Caves.
Maybe the greatest wonder of wonders
Of being alive – the lake like a glittering shield,
The leaves turning to tangerine, gold, ruby
And so infinitely on – is we have not, as yet, undone our world.

"The Wonder of Wonders", Greg Delanty

"100 Days, 100 Nights," Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings

dontcha wish you had patented this?

Cowboy Junkies - Cutting Board Blues

"They became more than 60 percent more reactive to negative emotional stimuli. That's a whopping increase—the emotional parts of the brain just seem to run amok."

It was a beautiful day here, probably the last before my ass is cold til May. So I plucked the boys outa school and took them to the country out through Albion to Lake Ontario, apple picking and walking around the closed beach-front shops. The colors are a little over-ripe, but still good. They loved the picking part, especially Ears, who kept picking and picking and saying “I like quiet work, I like the quiet here, I like this because it’s quiet” until I had about 80 pounds of crispins, grannies, and idareds to find recipes for. Then maple ice cream before heading home. Through it all, I was inexplicably anxious – not so as you could tell, just under the ribcage like a mouse running around in a cabinet inside of a tidy-looking house, making little scratching noises. I wish I could tell the bouts of pointless anxiety from the bouts of intuition.

I think talking to my grandmother this morning [in hospital w pneumonia again], listening to her speak in short words with a suck on an oxygen machine between each one as she tried to get out “thank breath for breath the breath books breath I breath love breath you . . .”, and the ominous sounding horoscope got hooks into me that I just couldn’t wiggle entirely free from.

for virgo today : Now is the best time for you to check in with the powers that be. - After months or even years of going back and forth in a relationship, you will reach a major turning point, thanks to a revelation, today. Sometimes things come to an abrupt ending, while other times they just slowly fade away. Certain truths are starting to become too obvious to ignore -- so you will have to stop ignoring them. Until you see things as they truly are, you can't move forward and give your full attention to someone who is much more deserving of your time.



don’t be a stranger – perfect problem

the Harlem Experiment House Band - One for Jackie : The Harlem Experiment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallows_humor

why did the chicken run around with its head cut off?
why?
because he wasn't used to it.

nerdy girl

Deee-Lite - You Sexy Thing (Hot Chocolate cover)

for Virgo this week: A study by the University of London's Institute of Psychiatry concluded that overindulgence in text messaging and emailing typically leads to a ten-point loss in IQ, whereas pot-smoking causes a decline of only four points. You probably won't have to worry about either of those dangers for a few weeks, though, since you're entering an astrological phase when your mind will be working more efficiently than usual. In fact, given how smart you'll just naturally be, you could actually afford to kill off some brain cells. Even if you toke up while texting, your IQ is likely to be above your normal level.

actually, I'm not sure how to take this . . . "above my normal level" . . . hmm :/

"Just Like Heaven (The Cure cover)," Katie Melua
bonus - jos gonzalez - time to send someone away
Fionn Regan - Be Good or Be Gone

[manic day]

I went to a sustainability conference Saturday, then Sunday took the little guys out to a new house being made of straw bale construction. It’s going to be part of a church, actually, on Grand Island and it’s being collectively built by congregation members under the direction a contractor who also knows how to do living roofs. I’m going back to help plaster and then there is going to be an earthen floor, which is not at all like dirt, it’s all the clay excavated out to make the foundation mixed w slag and whatever and then hydro-stamped flat and oiled repeatedly to a sheen that’s as waterproof as lino and looks like leather.

The contractor says he’ll let me help w each of the steps so I know what they entail and then can repeat the process with my own friends [ha] someday whatever. Having something built from scratch out in the country has been one of my longest-running desires, but [aside from the lack of man power, so to speak] when it comes to standard new builds, the wood and other materials are so expensive and also inferior to old growth woods of older houses that then I fall back on a fixer upper farmhouse train of thought, then lose my mojo. I looked at micro houses for a while, but . . . well they’re cool from an environmental point of view, but they’re more nifty than beautiful and not very durable. The bale houses are sturdy as fuck and are god sooo beautiful, and o you should smell it (though straw makes my nose run like hell, but still worth it), it’s like that new-construction cut wood smell mixed with clover of hay and if you’re into this kind of thing it’s like porno practically, like the equivalent of a cottage dancing around a pole.

The one I saw is about this size, though without kitchen/etc. bc it will be more like for weddings and other worship gatherings etc.:








But I like this one, which would be something like 25-30k (minus land), or 15k if you did it entirely yourself:

and this one is cool
(I'm not kidding.)

In other news, I was up at a grueling 6 am this morning for another one of those emergency meetings at work. After nagging FPH to worry 3x (my self-imposed limit), I went Zen/limp about the EDU dept kicking the bucket etc. - that's good because the situation has a decent chance of shutting the place down entirely, so t'z probably wise to be thinking 'say la vee' about it all as much as possible.

time

"Miracle In Itself," Ron Sexsmith

the cat empire – lonely moon (rec'd)

(self-pity party heatin' up . . . hit the tunes)

It was a burst day. I worked from 9am-10pm on campus and in the stretches between classes I got approximately everything done. It goes like that, boom and bust. The booms come mostly when I’m bearing down and enduring something I don’t like, so I might as well be effective if I’m going to be forbidding anyway.

(Thanks to DmS for that one laugh.)

lol

for Virgo this week : The faintest star in the night sky is Van Biesbroeck's star. It's only about as big as the Earth and is just .002 percent as luminous as our sun. Every other heavenly light outshines it. From one perspective, then, it's a puny little thing. And yet it is visible despite the fact that it's almost 19 light years away from us. From that point of view, it's an amazingly intense, potent, brilliant body. Is there anything about you that resembles Van Biesbroeck's star, Virgo? I think there is. Celebrate and show off that part of you in the coming week.

I was in high school
when I realized that not doing anything
was categorically different from deciding to do nothing,
but beauty blew a fuse, the hold music put me in a trance,
and what was black and heading towards me
transported me here like a cow in a comic hurricane.

--David Berman
from "The New Idea"

9 am class
11 am class
12 30 class
2 30 class
get agenda out for ugc committee
grade speeches
prep improvisational speaking exercises
answer 11 emails
grade 37 papers (fail at this by half)
tkd practice
gather camping equipment for Montessori trip
dinner lunches bath homework
pre-bedtime reading
8 30 class
clean kitchen . . .

I am not essentially optional in my own life, a lesser imperative than the necessities/tasks – That is a hard thing to remember.

Heard B. B. King on “Rock n Roll Roots”, one of those Midwestern radio pleasures I do like when I’m there - For an old round black guy, B. B. is hot:

B. B. and Van Morrison – Day Like This (If You Love Me).

Home. Sis and B-in-Law came home last night and he told me Helen Keller jokes until I thought I was gonna piss my pants.

"Chains and Things," BB King

ahh Sesame Street, I still like to watch it. No, seriously [whatever! people what crap like "Biggest Loser" and like it, so bite me] And I aaaallllways liked the Yips Yips best by far.














I'm naturally attracted to inscrutable devices from another planet.

gene vincent - be bop a lula
eddie cochran w jerry lee lewis - be bop a lula
elvis w jerry lee - be bop a lula
ritchie valens - be bop a lula
the stray cats - be bop a lula
the everyly bros - be bop a lula
meteors - be bop a lula
bill blacks combo - be bop a lula

the trek over southern ontario touching down in detroit then into WI and back again is like following the pieces of me as if they were breadcrumbs and back again

after yelling at The Dramas and threatening to retire their dog to a farm as soon as I could find one, Dan drove me to the airport to make that trek, and it felt exactly as described above, both defining and defying my instincts to herd to gather to collect to tend to

say la vee, nothing to do but keep trying

sometimes somethings are alright - when I walked in she knew right away Auntiti going bonkers smiling to get picked up and her hands in my hair and on my necklace she loooves back and forth back and forth sliding it sliding it on its chain looking up into my face and slapping slobber kisses on me one after another

her mother left 1000 directions, my brother-in-law only one: "you can order anything you want on pay per view but not porn it's too expensive"

be bop a lula is Dawglet's favorite song - if you sing it to her, distress stops immediately. omg if only I had more such ways, generally speaking. [sigh]

There is only one thing that’s changed
Like a plug pulled at the bottom draining him away
To tired
Too tired

It makes me sad mad as hell

Nicky Click - don’t gotta pay for love (feat mr Owl)

black pouring over color, jackson pollock

(Does anybody else see the guy mopping on the right and the woman tossing and turning with her head triangulating willy nilly on the left?)

"What Can I Say," Brandi Carlile

huh.

It looks/seems/is absurd, of course, yet come snowfall I might be tempted to try it just once, eh? It would be REALLY wrong to arrange a little group-pee, but god the boys would DIE giggling. I'd never live it down (which also has a vague appeal hahaha). But why'd they make it so big? Well, . . . lol oy nevermind nevermind.

for virgo this week : "Water that is too pure has no fish," wrote Zen teacher Ts'ai Ken T'an. Keep that advice close to your heart in the coming days, Virgo. Your clean, clear ideas will become sterile unless you mix in some quirky, unruly emotions. Your spiritual intentions may become awkwardly rigid unless you loosen them up with a bit of healthy blasphemy. So please don't push for utter perfection. Be careful not to burn away every last flaw or banish every last messy doubt.

(level 2 scared me) [armscrossy]

robert plant & allison kraus - fortune teller

Jose Gonzalez - Killing for Love

Today

I block out with music the sound of yelling then sobbing (his) downstairs. I fight fret (I fail, miserably).

I leave, go to my competition prep class, come back, work and work and walk into the dining room off and on where sits on the dining table a big flowering mum with ear-colored blooms and I like it. I bought it yesterday for only 5 bucks cz it’s crooked, and on the table are the things I got the day before, a great deal on fall coats for the little guys ($8 closeout) and Gap boxers that say KAPOW.

I have no idea why, and really fear that I will never understand it in this life. What is Wrong (with me). I like to be happy and like making do with that, like happiness is a tight budget that can go far enough. I like to Be. And it’s not like I didn’t think that over, because I did. Obviously.

No wonder I like kids, they like to Be, it’s their job to work their leg muscles and smile at people they know and cry at people they don’t. That much I understand.


What do you call a penguin in the dessert?
What?
Lost.
[pause] (lol) I think you mean desert.
(giggle giggle)

.“. . . you will soon be dealing with a challenge you have faced before: how to synchronize your two major archetypes, the lover and the warrior. You will be asked to cultivate the tender, considerate instincts of the lover within you while simultaneously feeding the fiery discipline of your inner warrior . . .”

if only I could bow-pull my way through life

The problem with wrath is the same as lust. You have to desire to not-desire, so good luck with that. And when you don’t want to be angry, you’re pissed off that you are. Between the lover and the warrior, of course the warrior is going to win [I mean, who gets to workout more? Duh.] and will probably spout some bullshit about self empowerment into your inner-ear too just to add insult to injury.