the root cellar

goats and rainbows

2008-08-20T09:46:00.003-06:00

we've some guests here at the farm for a spell while their home digs get renovated. goats are great in a lot of ways, fucking hysterical and really friendly. but man they are a pain in the ass. getting into everything...onto everything....through everything.
really makes me appreciate my sheep.

and this here is the buck. he stinks. he makes these gurgling snorting sounds and kind of waddles around. he's like some sort of gnome/troll type creature out of a fairy tale......kinda creepy

lots of rainbow action lately w/ all the rain. heres a nice double...

my latest housing plan is to try and get a little place right in town...either vegas or santa fe and kinda float between the farm and town....best of both worlds. hoping to get a place that would accomodate my mom as well....i think the sunshine out here would do her good. ahhh but this is just a plan/scheme in a long line of plan/schemes eh? but having one at least gives me a goal...even for a little while....i don't do well w/out a plan!

peering inward, hands trembling

2008-08-16T07:51:00.009-06:00

raining.
rain rain rain rain rain.

My visitor has gone, theres no baling of hay happening due to the rain factor and everything seems soooo vast and quiet, seductive and excruciatingly solitary.

visitors from big cities are always so odd to have around. their lives from their own mouths seem so unreal to me. So cerebral, indulgent, and steeped in human drama. And they observe the farm in passing, storing bits of memory in their travel bag, souvenirs of endless space, animals lives and high desert quiet.

i don't miss the big cities.

but...that said, the quiet now tells me i miss the pitter patter of human activity. i enjoyed the sound of someone doing dishes in the next room. The sight of someone passing by outside the window, knowing someone sleeps in the shop next to the house in the early morning while i write the my desk.

the rain lets up to a drizzle.

the quiet tells me i'm tired of doing this alone. tired of being the only human heart beat.
the only hands.

i want to hold hands while sunflowers bloom and track the days passing. someone to bring in greens and carrots from the garden smelling like earth, singing a low song and planning for winter.

theres a chill now in the morning, the sun rises so much later and theres nothing quite like the warmth of a human body to my frame. the bloods journey beneath smooth skin and that slight give of ones bones to accomodate the embrace.

the warmth.the hands.

ahhh. such a poet....always longing for something.

the rain has stopped.

tid bits....its all i have

2008-08-11T06:28:00.004-06:00

hey there all of you.
i've a visitor right now. so seeing as i live in a hallway...things are tight and i don't have too much room left in the ol' brain for blogging.

its been raining like crazy....like build an ark amounts of rain.

my little chickens are not so little anymore! and their voices are changing...they've dropped an octave or so.

somewhere deep inside my brain/heart is a storm brewing, i'm just too preoccupied and/or stubborn and/or scared to look at the enormity of it. the lightening searing through dark space. the pressure bearing down. the sky ready to flood.

and theres a tower ready to fall.

to be continued....

where is erin?

2008-08-03T16:34:00.009-06:00

i've been swallowed by the heat.
i wake up at 5am and have a window of about4 or 5 hours to get as much done as possible and then i slip into a heat induced stupor til around 8 pm then make some food and go to bed.
eeee.

i think i handle the cold better than the heat. when its cold i just add another sweater and stay busy...or get into a bed with a hot water bottle beneath a pile of comforters and sleep.

with the heat...what can you do? i can only get so naked...can only lie so still for so long...can only get in a cold bath so many times...
i miss the mountains.

so heres some photos...this way it seems like i'm posting interesting stuff without my brain actually having to work. i swear that thinking too hard just makes me hotter.

check my chiapas corn...its a good 12 ft high or so!!!!! no ears yet though... its putting up a good fight against the grasshoppers but we'll see.theres a lizard on my window...some yarns i've managed to spin despite the fact that wool is the last goddam thing on the too hot planet i want to be touching.and then there is me...sweltering me.

hot water makes it all better

2008-07-29T17:42:00.004-06:00

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

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

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

at least for now.

ok...brace yourselves

2008-07-27T05:35:00.004-06:00

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

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

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

fuck.

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

ugh.

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

oh sigh.

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

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

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

another return

2008-07-25T14:11:00.006-06:00

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

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

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

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

return

2008-07-25T06:55:00.010-06:00

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

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

poeta joven

2008-07-13T10:59:00.003-06:00

goin' to the homeland...

2008-07-12T06:45:00.004-06:00

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

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

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

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

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

midsummer nights dream-a-thon

2008-07-08T06:42:00.004-06:00

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

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

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

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

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

2008-07-04T12:37:00.007-06:00

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

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

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

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

a sandwich can kill you

2008-06-23T09:03:00.004-06:00

came across this BBC story this morning. i can't quite wrap my brain around it yet...but theres a poem in there somewhere just screaming to be written. its one of those moments when it strikes me that this is our world, this is whats its come to.
humor is a survival skill. reclaiming language and lives.
spinning power on its head.
i would love to know what anyone out there thinks about terrorist bread.

farm visuals and little me memories

2008-06-22T06:40:00.004-06:00

this is one of 2 -very- old geldings that have come to the farm. they most likely won't be with us for too much longer.and here is the high desert in all her cholla bloomin' glory.and this is the muddy acequia...always turns red like this after it storms.

and i'm going home to new york in a few weeks, very very exciting since i haven't been home in around 6 years now. My mother is excited too and has been sending me all these photos from when i was young...

this last one is my favorite since not only am i sporting an awesome outfit but also its from the time in my childhood that i thought i was a dog, seriously...ate dog food, hung with the dogs, slept with the dogs...

lesson of the day

2008-06-17T21:26:00.001-06:00

do not cook polenta while naked.

picture worth a 1000 words

2008-06-16T13:15:00.002-06:00

An Iraqi child armed with plastic toy weapons approaches a US soldier in the Shia enclave of Sadr City, Baghdad.- BBC

dreaming of home and sick as a dog

2008-06-16T05:42:00.005-06:00

people, i have been sick. not your average environmental illness can't remember where i put my tea one minute ago sick, but stomach flu sick...or food poisoning....or something that makes all the contents of ones body come rushing out by any means possible.
lovely.
and that was a few days ago...since then i've just been really weak and sore and dizzy, esp. in the 100 degree weather...esp. in the house i'm now in that i'm pretty sure is not insulated in the roof so theres absolutely no difference between the outdoors and inside my house.
lovely.
so lying around woozy and nauseous in the heat for a few days gives me way too much time to ponder my fate. ask myself the dreaded question...what the hell am i doing with my life?

i'm really missing owning my own place, which sounds nutty coming out of my lower class mouth...but it puts a whole different spin on all the stupid problems that come up....because its MY home. but now i'm living in a classic new mexican 1/2trailer 1/2 cabin thats not mine...i'm just a farm hand. the main room is something like 8 feet wide and 25ft or 30ft long...i live in a sweltering hallway. i still don't have hot water...which at this point is only remotely tolerable since its an inferno outside....but my point is that all these things would feel different if i owned it, if i'd commited to it.

pride of ownership and love of the land is what kept me going for 5 years up on the mountain...til poverty ran me off...but i held out as long as i could because i was in love and determined to stay. and still i mourn the loss...esp. when i'm this sick and cant do much to distract myself.

i do like this farm...even though grasshoppers ate my whole garden....i like it when its 6am and it isn't hot yet, or when the wind isn't wailing, or theres nobody around wanting things from me or cutting through my yard and invading my privacy, or changing things around and messing with my fragile routine. i like the owl in the orchard, and the big old cottonwood outside my window.i like having enough money for food and the occasional treat like music or a trip to santa fe or the thrift store.

but i need my own home.i need to be in love again. my life has been too transient, even as a child ....i told my mom that i moved out of chacon using mostly paper grocery bags and she laughed and said " oh, you got that from when you were a kid and we moved so often there was no time for the formality of boxes with labels"

no wonder home is so important to me.

lookout chicken

2008-06-15T06:07:00.001-06:00

fucking grasshoppers

2008-06-08T09:07:00.006-06:00

over the last week the hot weather has brought with it hundreds...no...most likely thousands of tiny little grasshopper youngin's that have systemaically and completely destroyed most of my garden. they haven't attacked the corn or squash yet, and i remember from chacon that they seemed to leave the squash alone...but we'll see. its pretty depressing. i've decided to let the chickens into the garden...fuck it...might as well get some eggs from these destructo-bugs.

these were my beets, not long ago the greeens were so full and dense you couldn't see the soil at all. thankfully the food part is underground, like the turnips in the next photo. they aren't quite done yet but they're edible.
its the same grisly scene with the carrots and peas and calendula...and my fledgling basil is completely gone gone gone.

for some lighter viewing ...theres always wooly booty to bring a smile to my face.

expecting breath

2008-06-06T13:00:00.008-06:00

Most of my lovers have been able bodied (and middle class, but we can analyze that another time). altho i’ve had a couple of lovers with what i would call disabilities...whether they acknowledged them or not. but this is my first crip lover. that is, this is my first crip on crip sex.

the consciousness is everything.

like a series of caves i’ve entered, one room leading to the next unexpected room.

sex, like life/survival, is so wrapped up in the pretense of ones ability to perform “well”. to impress with feats of mind boggling proportions. and believe you me i haven't been immune. relative to where i’m at i can pull off some fantastic hoop jumping antics if i’m turned on enough, or for whatever less than ideal reason like insecurity or competition or good ol’ internalized ableism.
its that super crip that kicks in when i just need a little more more more....to hell with the repercussions, i’m gonna fuck this person to a sensless puddle, or let them fuck me till i’ve surpassed reason and pain, leave my own bedazzling mark on their memory.

but sex is also when the monsters rouse from sleep. scars rise to the surface red and singing. adrenaline and endorphins penetrate the well protected pain of everyday life and carry it to the edge of the body, the rims of the eye lids, the tip of the tongue and fingers.

open. its dark and i’m using all my senses to find my way along the walls.

i’m getting too old to pretend anymore.

here under the steady gaze of this lover the sudden flood of tears or pain or memory or exhaustion journeys into and out of pleasure weaves brilliant tapestries of real fucking life exists outside of everything expected of us.

everything expected of us.

the shaking gaping aftermath like rings rippling on still waters surface. undiscovered, we enter the next dark dank room.

in this place,without the harsh light of pretense, breath is the only thing expected of us.

i won’t go back.

checkin' in...

2008-06-02T15:39:00.003-06:00

things are movin'...i'm movin'.... add to it some heavy life happenings and you have the perfect recipe for sparse blogging.
my hands ache from doing so much lifting of furntiure and cleaning and screwing( the screwdriver kind that is) and hammering.
ouch.
i stubbornly do everything in sandals because its a million fucking degrees outside and as a result i've got a wide array of guages, bruises, scrapes and jabs all over my feet. see? stubborn.

i'll officially be in the little house on thursday-ish.

wish me luck people.

its the little things

2008-05-26T18:47:00.004-06:00

i found this at the thrift store...not only am i a wallace and grommet fan but come on people...its a sheep! i love its wooly jumper.

after 2 glorious days of nonstop rain...

2008-05-17T07:01:00.005-06:00

everything is just beaming green and hap hap happy...this is my bed of beets and peas!
can someone please tell me what kind of tree this is? its draped allover with these gorgeous flowers that are just humming with bees.
and this is the resident cutest thing ever comin' at me for treats. (its all about food)
my pasty legs on the bridge.
the rain was just the trick to get my zapatista corn to make its grand appearance!! yay! my basil and calendula also came up after the sacred soaking.and here is one of the survivng romaine plants after the second and seemingly fatal chicken attack...it truly is a garden miracle.

...and with the owl comes death

2008-05-15T14:31:00.005-06:00

so, since my rather intense owl visit a couple days ago i've been pondering who it is that might die or if maybe just maybe i'm through with all that and it was just an owl and me occupying the same space...end of story. but i just got a call from an old old friend and yesterday his dog, that was once our dog, died. She was really old for a big big dog. Akeyla was her name...we got her from the oakland flea market when we lived in the east bay, maybe '93 ?. At that time we also had Lupa, my beloved wolf-dog that was rescued in portland. Lupa died back in 2002.
I don't have any digital photos of Akeyla, but she was a big shepherd/sled dog beastly huge girl....an endless endless appetite. if i find an old photo and can get it up here i will.

so, there we have it...at least now i can relax about the whole who's gonna die question.

....is it 1989?

2008-05-15T07:17:00.012-06:00

I had the strangest day in vegas yesterday. really strange. a bit unsettling.
i love vegas really, its a great little town. i've been going there for years now for supplies, to the hot springs, the thrift store, to get my veggie oil for the mercedes. but yesterday came at me like some archaic homophobic brick.
it was weird.
now, like a true farmer i dress like a "man"...but swagger like a limp wristed fag...but thats always been true.
but let me preface this story by letting y'all know that i cut my hair. shaved it off. and no big deal right? well, apparently it is.

now, no one threw beer bottles at me or yelled "faggot" out there car window or chased me with a baseball bat like back in the days of my youth. this was very low level and persistant.... men looked through me or at the ground, women clutched their boyfriends arms or pulled their children closer. this in a town where everyone usually smiles that warm new mexican smile because its not some big city where you become numb to the humans around you.
and mind you, i'm super smiley and friendly...hell, i can charm anyone...or so i thought.

at the opposite end of this surreality was the vegas queers, of which there are many when you're equipped with well tuned gaydar....some of which looked at me like deer in headlights...eyes saying "what are you doin? you'll take us down w/ you!" while others gave furtive knowing urgent glances.

have i mentioned this was all really weird?

having almost 2 decades of queer living under my belt including the mandatory time in san francisco, its intense to feel like i've stepped back in time to a place where there is no pride parade, no lgbt organizatons , no queer neighborhoods or places to go....things that big city or college town queers take totally for granted anymore these days.

i hadn't realized how much a bit of a pony tail had been glossing all this over for me.

and i like small towns....sigh.

but smaller towns that are queer friendlier are usually whitey college towns and waaay out of my class range. and living in some upper class town would have its own kind of surreal ickiness for me contend with.
so ....i'm stuck between worlds.

whats fucking new.

ahhh...so today i'm just here on the farm. i'm just a farmer.
til' the next time i go to town....