I'm pretty much a mega-fan of making plans and deviating at the first branch. Looking at some of my choices, it looks a little like I might be obsessed with changing the plan. I love and fear and hate the plan, it makes me feel safe, but I fear the possibility of stagnancy and spiritual degradation and hate the feeling of being stuck. My charts are filled with water. :) Within Mayan astrology the boy and I have multiple hands in our charts. The hand is the sign of magic, it is the manipulator, the ability to give form and shape to ideas and elements. It's the holy damn spirit with a thumb. I consider myself different forms of water, a lot of times I feel like the middle of the oceans with the moon overhead. I can readily identify with the sky goddess Nut or Nuit, fantastically blue and covered in stars, stretching everywhere. I feel dark and wet and expansive, very kaphic.
So I need a little earth sometimes, and this is that, far away from the ocean or the mountain streams and close to the ground. It's something I've been afraid of committing to, but it's better to deal with the feelings that come up from all this - I feel like whatever and everything I do here in Springfield will make future endeavors richer. Gardening, building soil, being immersed in normal, everyday, repeating cycles, these are what nourish me. They make me feel delight and joy and the heart-like pulse of living beings. This is the feeling of home, and I carry it with me, but it has unfolded exponentially inside this new house where M and I live together.
OK, enough about that, happy birthday to me! A quarter-century tomorrow! Thanks mom, glad I came out easy and early on you! I'm afraid this means you're getting old, though. :D I'm going to have a french pastry and remember the story of the day I was born as told by my sister who ate ice cream with my brothers and dad and loves to tell the tale. I've always associated my birthday with my mom's because hers is in 2 days and my grandpa always bought a cake for us to share. To Abby(/ie) and Patty. :)
love, as always and usual,
Abigail
18.2.10
21.1.10
overjoyed! how I came to know beauty,
and the spiritually progressive struggle to live with her in Springfield. :)
So! I'm really excited to share some photos of the house, which should become available shortly through the flickr page linked on the side there. -->
There should be more as soon as the sun comes back out, haven't seen it in 4 or 5 days. :/
I've mentioned my obsession with the new house, here in Springfield, with M and Eli, to a few friends. However, I need to let everyone know how thoroughly engrossed I am with this house. My compartmentalizing and always working brain knows most corners in and out. It's interesting that before I fell asleep in St Pete, (after we'd been through the house for about 25 minutes or so and looked around and put in the offer and went on down to Florida) I would run through everything I remembered of the house. Anyway, that's my house story for the moment. We have successfully gotten everything off the walls, the million knick-knacks the 97-yr old lady who lived here left us, changed the kitchen faucet, added a fancy under-counter water filter, and pulled up the carpets to find the beautiful, almost perfect oak hardwood floors. It feels so much cleaner with the old carpet up. It appeared on first glance to be beige, and then I pulled up a sill-plate or something and saw the color it was at installation. It surely was beige, but it was clearly gray where previously it had appeared beige. Ew. :)
I'm increasingly excited about a) getting out my books, b) setting up the kitchen in the basement, and c) cooking more and more. Lately we've had plenty of soup, something I have previously made infrequently, but something about hearing my brother-in-law's mama made soup all the time in the old country spurred me on this economical soup frenzy. It's brilliant- you add some potatoes and carrots and onion and celery (how the hell else do you use celery?) and What Ever else, and it's soup! I've been adding a handful or two or quinoa, and it gets stew-y, it's delightful. Miso is also a staple of late, have a ton of mung bean sprouts to throw in tomorrow. I feel relieved when I don't have to think too much about cooking, and soup is just so... immediate and warming and delicious. Thanks mama!
Thinking a lot about friends, life partners, family, after the trip south to my family and the return to friends and a couple of life partners. Keeping relationships in general fruitful and useful seems like a very delicate balancing act, connecting, reconnecting, and disconnecting. all three seem ultimately necessary and appropriate at different times. This seems clear to me at most times, but really, it is delicate, like hollow glass chess pieces on a marble board, maybe. I really think about it within the context of the garden, where each plant is a hugely complex and inter-connected being, where you decide which little beings you wish to assist to thrive, where the grass is also a million living beings, and the weeds (which are often such nourishing and sometimes potent medicine) also have to be thinned and/or removed- but! Everything in the garden is composted, which is returned to the garden to help all the other plants thrive! So these things are very mixed up in my brain, which I like.
with love, and more soon,
abby
So! I'm really excited to share some photos of the house, which should become available shortly through the flickr page linked on the side there. -->
There should be more as soon as the sun comes back out, haven't seen it in 4 or 5 days. :/
I've mentioned my obsession with the new house, here in Springfield, with M and Eli, to a few friends. However, I need to let everyone know how thoroughly engrossed I am with this house. My compartmentalizing and always working brain knows most corners in and out. It's interesting that before I fell asleep in St Pete, (after we'd been through the house for about 25 minutes or so and looked around and put in the offer and went on down to Florida) I would run through everything I remembered of the house. Anyway, that's my house story for the moment. We have successfully gotten everything off the walls, the million knick-knacks the 97-yr old lady who lived here left us, changed the kitchen faucet, added a fancy under-counter water filter, and pulled up the carpets to find the beautiful, almost perfect oak hardwood floors. It feels so much cleaner with the old carpet up. It appeared on first glance to be beige, and then I pulled up a sill-plate or something and saw the color it was at installation. It surely was beige, but it was clearly gray where previously it had appeared beige. Ew. :)
I'm increasingly excited about a) getting out my books, b) setting up the kitchen in the basement, and c) cooking more and more. Lately we've had plenty of soup, something I have previously made infrequently, but something about hearing my brother-in-law's mama made soup all the time in the old country spurred me on this economical soup frenzy. It's brilliant- you add some potatoes and carrots and onion and celery (how the hell else do you use celery?) and What Ever else, and it's soup! I've been adding a handful or two or quinoa, and it gets stew-y, it's delightful. Miso is also a staple of late, have a ton of mung bean sprouts to throw in tomorrow. I feel relieved when I don't have to think too much about cooking, and soup is just so... immediate and warming and delicious. Thanks mama!
Thinking a lot about friends, life partners, family, after the trip south to my family and the return to friends and a couple of life partners. Keeping relationships in general fruitful and useful seems like a very delicate balancing act, connecting, reconnecting, and disconnecting. all three seem ultimately necessary and appropriate at different times. This seems clear to me at most times, but really, it is delicate, like hollow glass chess pieces on a marble board, maybe. I really think about it within the context of the garden, where each plant is a hugely complex and inter-connected being, where you decide which little beings you wish to assist to thrive, where the grass is also a million living beings, and the weeds (which are often such nourishing and sometimes potent medicine) also have to be thinned and/or removed- but! Everything in the garden is composted, which is returned to the garden to help all the other plants thrive! So these things are very mixed up in my brain, which I like.
with love, and more soon,
abby
21.12.09
Feb 19 1985
I was born on a new moon on the first day of Mardi Gras, the last day of the Chinese year of the Rat, and the first day of Pisces. My birth number is 8, which is interchangeable with 11, and I gravitate toward opposites, like Virgos and otherwise generally incompatible persons/situations. Interesting.
3.12.09
the state where I live
M and I are somehow addicted to anchors, what with the acre and now, on the 7th, a little 2-bedroom brick beauty about 5 blocks away from it. It has a nice little fenced yard for Eli and a long garage for M's jewelry tools. It has a second kitchen and toilet in the mostly finished basement, a toolbench, and a bar, as well as a ringer washer! I don't think the old lady who lived there ever used a modern washer.
So that's an update. For now we are living in my older sister's home with her husband and 13-year-old daughter. It's going well, and I'm hoping to get out into the yard very soon. Saturday we'll be out at the community garden hopefully putting little babies in the ground or tending what is already there, or helping install another garden across the road. I'm not sure what we'll be doing exactly, but I'm looking forward to working outside, considering it's mid-70's out there. We've actually had to run the air conditioner! It's amazing. There are great big culverts along the roads to take away water from the rain, and there are tropical-y birds in parking lots and along the roads. It's fun to look at all the plants that grow here in the sun, all the citrus and beautiful big tropical-y plants. I'm not sure when we're leaving here, sometime I suppose, to get back to the little house.
I'm getting into this Ursula LeGuin novel called the Beginning Place that I found at one of my favorite stores called Prairie Archives back in Springfield. It's about two troubled youths who are barely holding it together, but who emotionally support their mothers in the "real" world, but who somehow find, separately, a path between elder bushes into a mountain creek that runs up to a little mountain town. It's pretty good, and I love Ms. LeGuin. I bought some cheap secondhand copies of a couple of her paperbacks today. Yay books! Every time I read a good fantasy book I feel like I need to never stop, like I'm watching a good show on TV without the eye strain.
It often occurs to me that I can't really write about interpersonal relations, which are what make my world go 'round, which is I suppose why I don't write here more often. I feel like the world is a richer place without rehashing it, for sure.
from my heart,
abby
So that's an update. For now we are living in my older sister's home with her husband and 13-year-old daughter. It's going well, and I'm hoping to get out into the yard very soon. Saturday we'll be out at the community garden hopefully putting little babies in the ground or tending what is already there, or helping install another garden across the road. I'm not sure what we'll be doing exactly, but I'm looking forward to working outside, considering it's mid-70's out there. We've actually had to run the air conditioner! It's amazing. There are great big culverts along the roads to take away water from the rain, and there are tropical-y birds in parking lots and along the roads. It's fun to look at all the plants that grow here in the sun, all the citrus and beautiful big tropical-y plants. I'm not sure when we're leaving here, sometime I suppose, to get back to the little house.
I'm getting into this Ursula LeGuin novel called the Beginning Place that I found at one of my favorite stores called Prairie Archives back in Springfield. It's about two troubled youths who are barely holding it together, but who emotionally support their mothers in the "real" world, but who somehow find, separately, a path between elder bushes into a mountain creek that runs up to a little mountain town. It's pretty good, and I love Ms. LeGuin. I bought some cheap secondhand copies of a couple of her paperbacks today. Yay books! Every time I read a good fantasy book I feel like I need to never stop, like I'm watching a good show on TV without the eye strain.
It often occurs to me that I can't really write about interpersonal relations, which are what make my world go 'round, which is I suppose why I don't write here more often. I feel like the world is a richer place without rehashing it, for sure.
from my heart,
abby
16.11.09
one acre
1.05 acre in Springfield, IL, never built on, never farmed- connected to an unnamed woods with an unnamed tributary with an unrecognized yellow-colored liquid dripping down one slope into said unnamed tributary and eventually down into the cement overflow structure that leads deep under the surface of the land.
OK, so the good part is there is tons of space to grow food and medicine and trees, plenty of open space and wooded space within the acre M will own officially in a few days. It's exciting! We have a cherry tree, a pear tree, a crabapple, a hickory tree, and I don't even know what else because all the leaves have fallen, and my tree identification skills are limited. It's exciting, though, as it's near to some of our dear friends with whom I am very excited to better develop relations. It's also exciting because it does back up to the woods with a water source running through, with owls, birds, possoms, foxes, rabbits, cats and dogs, PLUS. I suspect it will not be hard to draw people to the scene to help and enjoy our quiet, end of the road location. It will definitely be a project in permaculture, considering we don't entirely plan to build a home there. M is excited to put up a storage shed/birdhouse with open space, and I keep thinking how great the wood-fired hot tub will be. I imagine prairie and flowering trees and shrubs all along the road, with more fruit and nut trees and so many haws!
In any case, this is the update. We'll be heading to FL early next week with a stop at our buddy's place in Birmingham- exciting! I'm happy to see my folks and grandma and sisters, and the weather just turned November yesterday. It was a happy accident that we were able to pick up two truck loads of composted manure and unload them on Saturday when the weather was balmy and hard to believe. Now it is icey-cold rain and greygreygrey skies. Yay snowbirding!
with love,
Abigail
OK, so the good part is there is tons of space to grow food and medicine and trees, plenty of open space and wooded space within the acre M will own officially in a few days. It's exciting! We have a cherry tree, a pear tree, a crabapple, a hickory tree, and I don't even know what else because all the leaves have fallen, and my tree identification skills are limited. It's exciting, though, as it's near to some of our dear friends with whom I am very excited to better develop relations. It's also exciting because it does back up to the woods with a water source running through, with owls, birds, possoms, foxes, rabbits, cats and dogs, PLUS. I suspect it will not be hard to draw people to the scene to help and enjoy our quiet, end of the road location. It will definitely be a project in permaculture, considering we don't entirely plan to build a home there. M is excited to put up a storage shed/birdhouse with open space, and I keep thinking how great the wood-fired hot tub will be. I imagine prairie and flowering trees and shrubs all along the road, with more fruit and nut trees and so many haws!
In any case, this is the update. We'll be heading to FL early next week with a stop at our buddy's place in Birmingham- exciting! I'm happy to see my folks and grandma and sisters, and the weather just turned November yesterday. It was a happy accident that we were able to pick up two truck loads of composted manure and unload them on Saturday when the weather was balmy and hard to believe. Now it is icey-cold rain and greygreygrey skies. Yay snowbirding!
with love,
Abigail
10.11.09
Medicine is Magic
As reminder to myself:
Magic is transformation, and in that sense our food is medicine and therefore magic, and all the air and water and emotions and electronic radiation are all medicine/magic/transformative. The words we speak effect our bodies and the bodies of other critical beings who comprehend and utilize the words as triggers and instruction for transformative acts, consciously or unconsciously. In this thinking space, the Good Word takes on an entirely new meaning.
Magic is transformation, and in that sense our food is medicine and therefore magic, and all the air and water and emotions and electronic radiation are all medicine/magic/transformative. The words we speak effect our bodies and the bodies of other critical beings who comprehend and utilize the words as triggers and instruction for transformative acts, consciously or unconsciously. In this thinking space, the Good Word takes on an entirely new meaning.
1.11.09
puppy and change of plans
Today M and I drove outside of town to a conglomeration of farm houses and every kind of animal milling about- peacocks on the porch, chickens in the drive, goats and cows munching on maturing thorn apples, and kittens lurking while a family of blue heelers panted around, going from one person to the next to be petted and loved on. We went all the way out there because, well, the other night we were drinking a bottle of wine in our bedroom suite here (it was so rainy and dreary, and you can't watch episodes of this American Life every night). Well, so, then we started looking at photos, banksy graffiti, and a tent overflowing with polyurethane foam as an art piece, etc, when I decided I wanted to look at craigslist in the farm and garden section. Turns out we got the last pup in the litter born on August 9, so he's been weaned and socialized out on the farm with mom, dad, and a year-older sibling. His mom is from Australia, has a naturally bobbed tail, and this may be his 12-year old dad's last season. The old farmer guy selling them has been raising them for a long time, and his daughter and granddaughter were there helping us out, granddaughter remembering when they last were wormed while grandpa remembered wrong. He's a beautiful little puppy, 12 weeks old today, so he got a lot of good farm time in. He's like a little little kid, hasn't slept all day, keeps waking himself up and grumbling at me. He likes to be physically connected, and he won't take his sleepy head off the crook of my arm. :)
He's our Halloween dog. Maybe we should give him a name reminiscent of the occasion. It's hard to name another being, and that's the first thing you're supposed to do for training I guess, and everyone asks that first. Blue Heelers are so sweet. They're super smart, love working and playing, have tons of energy, are super friendly, and they're cute as a button I think. This guy likes to be outside (duh), and he LOVES eating. and not once has he nipped at anyone.
On to the change of plans- well! The boy and I are leaning toward a little house of our own in the ghetto of Springfield, right between our friends at the real Little House ( lhintheghetto.blogspot.com ) and our newest Springfield friends, a couple who are really interested in living more sustainably in their $2000 tax-auction little house. That would mean a whole community of folks within a few blocks, including the guys formerly haunting the main LH and now living it up a couple blocks away. I don't know anywhere else where you can pick up a $6000 house in the middle of an OK and mostly habited neighborhood and be spitting distance from plenty of friends. It's like a little village in town. Besides, the pup needs a yard to run around, and we need a space to plant and tend chickens. M's pretty excited to have a footprint in his hometown, besides. I think that's really what made him want this pup so bad.
So, yeah, still heading down to the FL for the warmth and holidays, looking forward to that. The plan to move to NC is still tentatively on for a slightly later date, it's just important that we throw down some roots and make a place for ourselves here, since we end up here all the time. It will help my sanity here. :)
with love, and help me think of a good puppy name,
Abby
He's our Halloween dog. Maybe we should give him a name reminiscent of the occasion. It's hard to name another being, and that's the first thing you're supposed to do for training I guess, and everyone asks that first. Blue Heelers are so sweet. They're super smart, love working and playing, have tons of energy, are super friendly, and they're cute as a button I think. This guy likes to be outside (duh), and he LOVES eating. and not once has he nipped at anyone.
On to the change of plans- well! The boy and I are leaning toward a little house of our own in the ghetto of Springfield, right between our friends at the real Little House ( lhintheghetto.blogspot.com ) and our newest Springfield friends, a couple who are really interested in living more sustainably in their $2000 tax-auction little house. That would mean a whole community of folks within a few blocks, including the guys formerly haunting the main LH and now living it up a couple blocks away. I don't know anywhere else where you can pick up a $6000 house in the middle of an OK and mostly habited neighborhood and be spitting distance from plenty of friends. It's like a little village in town. Besides, the pup needs a yard to run around, and we need a space to plant and tend chickens. M's pretty excited to have a footprint in his hometown, besides. I think that's really what made him want this pup so bad.
So, yeah, still heading down to the FL for the warmth and holidays, looking forward to that. The plan to move to NC is still tentatively on for a slightly later date, it's just important that we throw down some roots and make a place for ourselves here, since we end up here all the time. It will help my sanity here. :)
with love, and help me think of a good puppy name,
Abby
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