Sometimes I Internet

[sometimesiinternet]

February, the last two weeks, Nordland, Washington, Port Townsend is the ‘city’ view looks like Belfast, no? 

I just think I won’t be making hardly regarded internet shouts into the void as often. Does it really matter? No. Additionally, I don’t have access to the internet during my evenings really. I return to my cabin and read and write and sew. I am reverting to be an old goat herder who lives outside the reach of modern technology and sits and stares at the ocean and lives in their mind. 

Do drop a line once in a while though. 

(Let’s see how long this lasts.)

[sometimesiinternet]

Views from San Diego. 2017.

[sometimesiinternet]

Well now it’s February.

I’ve been running a lot lately. By running I mean more of the slow crawl of a sloth with three legs or the shuffle of one who has a serious stomach bug and has spent the last hour or so throwing up but who is about 50 percent confident that the worst is over.

That is how I spend many an afternoon here on the town line between Corvallis and Philomath. Each of these afternoons I cross that line and run (see above) through the suburban landscape. There are many dogs who bark at me through windows. Their snouts almost bumping those windows in their excitement. I always make sure to wave at them and say hello. Sometimes I feel as if that decreases their lust for my blood but who knows.

Sometimes I also sing to myself as I run (again refer above). This probably makes me appear to passing cars as a stumbling, mumbling person, crazed. Whether or not that be the case at least I’m having a laugh.

A week back I was rounding a turn in the road and all of a sudden I found myself running behind three deer. They had been munching in a flower garden, abandoned for the winter, and I scared them. Thinking it back on it now it was a very Pocahontus moment. There was a little girl ahead of the deer in the road for some reason and as the deer high tailed it across and through another yard she yelled “Deer!” and pointed. I said “Yeah!” She then ran away down the road and into a driveway.

At this time I was also carrying a wet dirty baseball cap in my right hand. I had found it on the little wall on the side of the bike path. Now, I had run by this cap three times and by the fourth time I decided it was free game. If you did not know, I have a strange penchant for acquiring clothing and other items from the ground. You can find a lot of good stuff on the ground. (For instance, a year back during my summer farming in Maine, I was running and I looked down and saw up one of those car USB chargers that plugs into the cigarette lighter. I was not sure it would even work but it has been my trusty car cellphone charger ever since.) This cap had caught my eye in particular because it was fluorescent yellow and had the words CREW printed in capital letters on the front, classic. It is now in my possession and has been hand washed and scrubbed and will need some love and attention in the form of a bit of sewing. I am happy and there is one less piece of trash by the side of the bike path.

Yesterday when I was cresting a hill there was a bone in my path with bits of meat still hanging onto it. It was about three or so inches long. It was, however, gone today. 

I’ve been running without music during my time here at Sunbow. I am setting my mind free to tumble every time I run. I often end up running my mind through the same paces time after time though. Recently I have been thinking about my form as I run, especially near the end of the run. What would my track coach, Dale Nealy, say. Pump those arms more. Straight forward and back, don’t waste that energy pumping across your body. That has been recurring. I tend to make lists of things that I want to accomplish before leaving the farm. Some of these things I have actually done. Most I keep pushing around till another time. 

Writing on this platform has been one of those tasks that I have been avoiding for some reason. I have been writing in other forms such as the paper letter. I have one beautiful good friend who has diligently been writing me back and I to her. I have also just roped in another friend who I hope will come through and begin to desire written paper contact on a regular basis. 

Writing on paper is physically harder than typing on the computer. This is such a crazy thing to acknowledge. I am of THAT generation. I don’t know how to type properly with the form of the Type to Learn program that we all in the third through fifth grade had to struggle through and yet I can surly type faster than I can write on a piece of paper. 

However, I prefer paper to screen. It is more real. And I always try to pursue the real, whatever that means. I think though that writing in general make me more real, or more honest and expressive.  I have always been better able to write my meaning than to speak it. (To address a side note, I often find myself ending my sentences with “it.” I know that this is grammatically incorrect, I think. All of my english teachers cringe automatically every time I do this, they don’t know why but somehow through space and timezones they know a crime has occurred.)

 Well now. I have written more than needed and find myself slithering round topics that get increasingly more off topic as if there was a topic to begin with.

Thank you and good night.  

[sometimesiinternet]

A two month summation in photos. December-January, the jump.

[sometimesiinternet]

Number seven.

The seventh mouse was caught a few days ago. I found it when I awoke on a cold morning. The body had been smooshed in the middle from the metal bar of the trap and it had gone into rigor mortis by the time I picked up the trap to release the mouse into the outdoor trash bin. It’s little tail stuck out from its body like a flag in a stiff breeze.

It made me think about our bodies. They seem so resilient in the best of times and it is hard to imagine that with the right about of force we too could get smooshed by a being a hundred times larger who is under the impression that we are invaders. 

It is sad to kill mice because they are just trying to stay alive like the rest of us. It is also important to note that for our own health we cannot have them running around our houses shitting and peeing and spreading whatever diseases they might carry. Is there a balance? Should we not let our silly human morals get in the way of our own survival sense? 

It is the same sort of moral struggle that I think we come up against when we talk about conservation and land management and endangered species, to name some.  Do we as high conscious and self aware beings have the moral obligation to always think of the consequences of our actions?  Do we have to stop ourselves from killing all the wild beasts for sport and or food if we have no natural hinderance? 

There is no check on the behaviors of humans except the larger doom of climate change and our own morals. Since we are so “advanced” as a species and so grand, in a way, does it mean that our natural check must be such a large, destructive, and potentially earth shattering happenstance?

Is it actually a really bad thing that the earth will warm and that sea levels will rise and species upon species will die and a million of other horrible things, or is it just bad for the here and now and in the grand scheme of things just another blip in the evolution of earth as a planet?! 

These are the thoughts that can spring one to action to create a better here and now or paralyze one to inaction and depression. 

What will you do?

[sometimesiinternet]

Here’s something

The recent predicament (in my world the word predicament does not always refer to a situation of unfortunate circumstances but sometimes an arrangement of life that is temporary and something to figure with) of myself is that I live on a farm in a small cabin and I will be moving away in a little more than a months time. 

Less than a week ago with the span of two days my sister and I caught six mice that had infiltrated. Potential mice inroads to the house had been screwed tight and stuffed with steel wool. They, the mice, had been trapped within and were promptly ensnared in the traps we had placed about. A couch of sad and hidden disrepair was removed from the premises and no more mice were to be seen scampering. 

The following day or so in conversation with the old farmer who lives in a house across the drive a side comment was made by him on his unwavering certainty that you had not caught all the mice there were to be caught until you caught a clean seven of them. 

You see, we had only caught six, but in the time since no mice have fallen prey to our traps. The holes are sealed and rodents cry. My sister moved away, off to lasso the knowledge of a midwestern university and I sit alone in our (my) home.

The meat of the current matter is that I hear...sitting in the cabin...every once in a while a chewing, a scraping. Are the mice worming their way back into my life? Is that number seven fulfilling the prophecy? Am I just insane in the brain?

These are all valid wonderings and who to wonder them to but myself and by doing so create more wonder.

I wonder. 

I have a little more than a month to live here. 

The snow came down like in an east coast town yesterday and it was beautiful. They don’t salt the roads here and they wait to plough till the snow abates because who needs to go anywhere anyway?  

No one, that’s who.

A week ago two days from now. 

[sometimesiinternet]

Portland, Oregon. The last evening in November.

It started with a brisk walk across the I-5 and smell of bagels. Somewhere someone was toasting them. The pervasive bagel smell followed along the suburban street for longer than one would have though possible. She peered at the houses around her attempting to discern the source but failed; most of the windows were dark. After ten or so minutes her destination was reached and she slipped inside. The waitress only for a moment seemed dismayed that one single person in search of dinner would prefer to sit at a table alone rather than at the bar where the (insert sport of the season) game would be blazing bright on a big screen and where a single person might be uninvitingly chatted at when all they really were in want of was some grub, a beer, and a quiet corner to read.

The quiet corner she was placed in turned out to unfortunately be the young couples with small children corner of the restaurant. Couples and children seemed to stream in on all sides as soon as she sat down. She was surrounded. High chairs were ordered all around and infant humans refused to eat their main courses wishing only to happily snack on french fries.

She figured some redeeming factors in the midst were that she had not been carded for her IPA and that the children had not yet started to scream.

To immerse herself truly in the meal she imagined that she was a food critic. She was under cover as a loner, the kind who eat at restaurants with solely the dining companion of a Kafka novel and their own thoughts. Try not to get it mixed up, reality and fantasy.

The hour wore on and when Sorry by the artist Outkast drifted over the speakers the evening reached a new level, it settled in.

She had a farrow burger on a fluffy bun that tasted bad for you. The bread just about melted in her mouth and the burger was huge.  In the place of a side salad she had chosen the soup of the day, Chickpea.  It was alright for soup she supposed but there was no real joy in the eating of it.  Its general taste was mediocre.  Not good, not bad. She checked herself. If she were indeed a food critic she would have to find a way to describe the taste of this soup. Or was it more telling that its sub-par flavours had no words for them?

She finished the majority of the soup and looked round. The child at the nearest table had moved from the chair to the floor. It continued to eat french fries. There is something about young families that make you sad and glad at the same time. 

Her own meal shortly thereafter came to an end. The stray chickpeas had cooled and the farrow burger had been demolished, melty bread and all. She paid the check quickly and soon was again walking the evening streets.  

(snippets in the life)

[newyorker]

“Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” a poem by Adam Zagajewski, from 2001.  It’s been a difficult day for some, so we’ll be posting some of our archive stories to help you get through it. Find the full list here. 

[sometimesiinternet]

Thanks New Yorker. You capture my sentiment. 

[sometimesiinternet]

A November bike ride to the Whitman Mission Site. 

Historical. 

The sky had something to say.

[sometimesiinternet]

It’s a long way

It’s a long way from summer. 

It’s November. 

It’s foggy. 

I had a dream where Beyoncé was sitting on a water buffalo and they were water buffalo shoulder height in the ocean and I was on the shore. The moon was lighting the night but it was foggy all the same and so darkness swirled round the three of us. I waded into the water up to my thighs. She asked me what was wrong. 

It’s dreams like these that make us wonder at the amazing complexity of the brain. Never has this scenario played out in reality and yet within the recesses of my sleep cycle my brain formulated this mirage of Beyoncé and the ocean and large bovid animals of asian origin. 

There have been so many things that I have seen and wanted to write about but when the day is done and I am sitting near my computer my desire to write is pushed over to the side of my room for another time. I don’t prioritize it and should I?

Who says I should do anything? 

November is National Novel writing month. 

I have thought about this. 

Maybe I will write something. 

OR I won’t. 

Till then, here is a photo of something that I saw since I last wrote. 

The Columbia River. 

[sometimesiinternet]

What did you say the sky was like that evening last, an erie glow at line of the horizon, silhouettes of the trees just there, buffeted by stormy winds.

(statements half thought out)

[sometimesiinternet]

At the County Fair, a little while back. 

[sometimesiinternet]

Perceptions

I am housesitting in Oregon this week. Just a bit over the border in a place called Ferndale. To get here to take care of the cows and dog I must drive past a road paving operation. This operation has been an ongoing project of two years out here in College Place. They were finally paving the intersection of my street (12th) and College St. The entire summer it has been a crazy dusty potholed off-roading experience at that intersection. Now order is being created in that chaos. 

Driving back to the housesitting gig after work on Wednesday I had to stop at that intersection; there was a flagger with her large stop/slow sign. My windows were partly rolled down and I was playing some music (CCR if you are curious). The flagger proceeded with her stop sign to walk over to my car and talk at me. At first it seemed that she was attempting to make conversation so I listened but then it became clear that she was not talking so to hear my responses. She was just talking near me and in my general direction. She was pointing out first that it was hot outside. I said yeah, it was. She hardly batted an eye in my direction. 

She then proceeded to embark on a halting monologue of how she just stands there all day with no free will. The person on the other end of the radio is always telling her what to do. They yell at her. She has no free will. I tried to respond but when I did, it fell upon her deaf ears. She hardly seemed to notice that I might have something to say to her, even as she was the one who started the conversation with a stranger. I suppose she just needed to vent a bit. She has no free will.

I guess that was ok. After perhaps only two minutes I was released to drive across the one lane of pavement to the other side of the intersection.

On Friday afternoon I had a good conversation with Adeline, a friend of Leila’s who is visiting from France. I was thinking about how our self perceptions, how we view ourselves, are different, often, from how other people view us from the outside. Obviously one can never quite view another in the same way as she or he perceives themselves but how close can those perceptions get? We spoke about how a lot of it is based around confidence levels. Adeline was saying that many people view her as such a confident person while she does not believe this to be a true character trait. For me I worry that people perceive me as much more passive, quiet and therefore less confident person than I am truly. I worry that I come across as blander than reality. But throw that aside, those are just my inner wonderings and worryings. 

I was then thinking, in respect to Adeline, that she perceives herself in French, while I perceive her in English. This adds then a whole other layer of perception differences. And to me she can never explain her true self expression because that is closely twined with the french language. Then I was thinking about how not only does language shape perception but also culture. Through my background culture of USA and English I perceive her in such an apart way than she does herself. 

Such complexity, no? 

Now, again, I think of that flagger women whose job it was to stand at the intersection of College and 12th all day in the sun. In her conversation at me she expressed her need of free will, her want of a different job perhaps. Her unhappiness. I perceived her as a bit strange. She bothered me a little bit. Not because she was talking but because she was not listening to me at all. She used me to complain to, but did she perceive that? How more does she view herself? She is a person who obviously as a quota of self-worth. She does not feel that she should be yelled at and told what to do all the time. 

How often do we think of the flagger as a person of self-worth? 

If the road workers were allotted more money from the government for their projects they could just buy electric signs for both sides of the intersection that would alternate between stop and go slow. It appears that it is cheaper to have two folks on the pay role to simply stand there and hold a sign and communicate through radio. How can that effect a person’s perception of themselves? Cheaper than technology.

Perceptions. 

[sometimesiinternet]

And so it goes.

Some things that have been observed by me.

A week ago or so I was walking by our neighbor’s house with whom we share a bit of driveway. It was later on in the evening ‘round seven and the air was cooling off slightly.  The neighbor, who is commonly referred to amongst the farm folks as Big Mike, was driving ‘round on his riding lawn mower with a long handled hoe grasped in one hand. I only had to wonder for the briefest of moments what he was up to when he hefted up the hoe and hacked at the ground a few times. He was sussing out rouge weeds and putting them to their timely deaths.

Some things that have been observed by me.

A car with the words “No Money, No Honey” emblazoned across the base of the front windshield.

(ASIDE: Since the back window is called the rear window, ah la horror movie classic, Alfred Hitchcok’s Rear Window, there is only one windshield, and that resides at the front of the car. The back, or rear, window does not shield from wind. I know this because one fateful day I drove the 20 minutes into town (oh Maine) with no rear window. Well, it was there but it was in shattered pieces on the back speakers of the car through only fault of my own. I felt no wind from behind, thus it must not be termed rear windshield for there is no wind to shield from and it simply is a window in the rear.)

Some things that have been observed by me.

A red dress, prom-style, hung out on the front porch of a house in College Place. Rare, for ‘tis not the season for a prom. As I biked past this house I was interested in particular by this dress because it only just appeared out on the porch. It had not been there days earlier and thus showed signs of life from within. The house itself and adjoining side yard, delineated from the road with a mighty chainlink fence, look relatively abandoned. A wrecked seeming black car is parked crookedly on the un-mowed lawn. Nothing about this house has changed the entire spring and summer I have spent here in this town. Not a soul has ever been spotted or heard. It imbues in me a great curiosity and I wonder at it when by it I bike.

Most recently the red dress has disappeared.

Some things I observed.

[sometimesiinternet]

Olympic National Park, La Push, Washington 

13-15 August 2016

[sometimesiinternet]

Umatilla National Forest, Washington State

[sometimesiinternet]

Good morning farm/Good night farm.

Two views.

It’s been July. I’ve been working a lot, it seems. I say it every year but July, oh quick July, she flies faster and faster barreling forward to August, no stopping, no falter. There is not time to stop with thought, really. Looking back in review a great many things happened during her flight and yet and yet it seems as if I just returned back to the farm from visiting the sister. The month just started and now it’s done. 

Interns dribble away from the farm and yet and yet the workload increases. Veggies flow in from the field like a strong fall wind but the fall is far from here. Fall harvest dances at the edge of my vision, showing hints here and there in the eight rows of carrots and the rows of beets and the rows of transplanted brassicas already establishing themselves in the soil, righting their flopping leaves from the 90 some degree heat. They will survive. 

A memory: Arizona, summer of 2013, transplanting chard in the heat of the early evening. Our farm manager, Mark, singing half in jest and half in serious hopefulness, “you’re gonna make it after all,” as we watered in the little chard-lings almost at the same moment that other scooped the dirt around them. 

They did, make it, some of them. 

Current day. It is hot but the plants will make it after all they always mostly do. You might lose one or ten along the way but you hope you have planted enough that it makes no difference that some were losers. The difference is for the winner’s side. 

It’s like trying at so many things and if you try enough at enough things than the odds are that you will turn out more positive results than if you never even planted anything in the first place. 

Moral: Don’t stop trying. As my dear friend Cristina would say “try harder.” But really, do. If you don’t do anything than you will never fail but you will also never gain. So try harder and lose a little but gain more. 

Ways to spiral yourself up. Just don’t start spiraling the other way.