Saturday, December 11, 2010

I want to be a farmer.

I want to be a farmer when I grow up. My vision is not to toil on the land to sell a product that is highly undervalued due to the current injection of fossil fuels into agriculture. No, I want to have a homestead, a subsistence farm. Really, a small piece of land where I have a large veg patch, some chickens and/or goats, some woods for fire and for my goats to eat in. I want to have days filled with milking and canning and harvesting and making cheese and jam and bread. I want the sound of birds and water running and dew on my toes on cool summer mornings. I want a farm dog. A collie, or two, who stays on the porch or in the barn, who watches over the farm like a little soldier always at arms. I want some turkeys too, and some geese and ducks for delicious and gigantic eggs. Oh, and some scraggly farm kitten, grey tabbies, who are always having babies and always finding and killing all the rodents and bugs that pester us.

I want a wood burning stove that sits in the middle of my house and becomes a meeting place for all those with cold toes. I want to chop down our wood, and feel it burn to warm us. I want to always have some water warming on it- and have tea which transfers the life of the tree inside me to warm me from the inside. I want to witness the transfer of life and energy. From wood to fire to tea. From seed to plant to stew. From duck to egg to omelet.

I want to feel the seasons change. To eat according to what nature provides. Nature has a way of providing food that is perfectly satisfying in season. The rich sweetness of pumpkins and squash in fall, the soft, light berries of summer, the thick and meaty potatoes and carrots and kale of winter, the fresh new herbs of spring.

This is the first time in human history when the majority of farmers entering agriculture were *not* raised on farms themselves. I'm a little bit scared, but ready for the challenge.

Friday, December 3, 2010

life is long

I felt for the very first time today that life is long.

It is a very abrupt and distinct sensation. Food doesn't taste as brightly as it once did. I know a lot more useless facts that are part of the ritual entry into adulthood - these guardians of the status quo and I nod at each other in mutual understanding of our shared monotony. Oh yeah, we all know about the Soviet Union. Sweet. The places that I know so well - train station, office, bedroom - are just places through which my body moves, having no real interaction with the space I am in. I never pause to look at the sky anymore; why bother looking up at the mess of suffocating gray clouds? I am now in the long slog of adulthood.

I feel the break from childhood palpably. I feared this moment my whole life. I spent the twilight of my teenage years signing you can't be twenty on sugar mountain and was terrified of the day when twenty would arrive. But twenty didn't come with any large transition, no kick in the ass to get off the mountaintop. Just more brightness, even more brightness and excitement, really, than I had ever had in my life.

Going to Rome and my subsequent travels staved off adulthood for a few years, I realize now. Oh so THIS is what everyone means when they tell me to become an adult! Food tastes like cardboard now, and life seems long. Like an endless hamster-wheel of death. We go through these motions again and again, these behaviors we learned so very long ago that have now become the rote reality of our existence. We don't think, we just act. We wake up with the alarm, morning routine, commute, sell our bodies for money, eat to stay alive, come home and schedule in relaxation and pleasure time.

It makes me feel tired. Or the opposite of that, like the spark for life is being extinguished. Like I have so much energy, so much joy, joie de vivre that is being pulled out of me by this thing called adulthood, by this long-life-syndrome.

I watch all the other people who move around me, and I wonder if they've resigned themselves to this too? Can I be the only one who feels it, or are they so far gone that they don't even remember that they've forgotten?

I will not resign to this thing that is called adulthood but should more appropriately be called the trap of death. I refuse to have a long-feeling life. I refuse to wake up each morning and think oh, right, this again. I will not surrender to this crap. I will not live any version of my life but the most fantastic, brilliant, heartbreakingly luscious one. Time to start planning the escape.