search query of the day: "anarchist cheerleader fucking flexible cows". Yes, I come in at number one. Thanks, faithful readers, for keeping me entertained. Keep 'em coming, o ye creative ones.

"Are you a model?" he asked, handing me a paper American flag attached to a toothpick.

I laughed, and shook my head no.

"Me and my uncle, we were over there, and we swore we'd saw you on TV"

"Nope, not me", I said, smiling and internally admonishing myself for feeling even slightly flattered by this man in the Detroit Greyhound station.

"You sure are a pretty lady. There's a homeless shelter down the street that needs to get more gloves and blankets, and we're giving these flags away for a donation so that the homeless can get more gloves. It's cold here and... you sure you aren't a model?"

I handed the flag back to him, and reached for my wallet.

"A donation of ten dollars is greatly appreciated. If you can't give ten, five is fine, but ten dollars would buy a lot of gloves"

I smiled and told him I was at the end of my trip and didn't have much money left. I rooted around through the pennies and nickels for the few quarters I had, and handed them to him. He bolted then, as the Greyhound station security were starting to move in.

"Thanks for talking with me, pretty lady," he said over his shoulder.

I stood there for awhile, embarrased at how many people had just seen me be duped so naively. Then I laughed out loud at how formulaic it was. Flattery and an opportunity to be helpful. And I fell for it, even though I knew consciously the entire time that there was no homeless shelter. I paid for a performance. And in addition I got the insight that, despite my protestations of feminism, I still like to be told I'm pretty. Shit.

I'm at Grand Valley State University, getting ready to speak to two classes of college freshmen.  These are the classes I love to teach because I literally blow their minds.  99% of the students I speak with have NEVER heard of a commune, and when I describe my life to them, it's beyond what most of them ever thought possible.  And opening people to possibility is my favorite playground activity.

I'm writing this just as much for myself as I am for your reading pleasure.  I need to reconnect with why it's important for me to be here, because I really want to be home right now.  My mind feels muddled and sloppy and I'm having a hard time articulating myself and all I really want to do is lay in bed and talk with a friend about these frustratingly confusing thoughts that are running through my mind.  But instead I'm here, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, wearing trendy clothes and a belt (ugh) and trying to communicate with students who I don't particularly understand.  Actually, I have to admit that I'm being pretty critical and judgemental of myself these days, which means that I'm also really judgemental of other people.  Yup, it's true, I have real contempt for some of the people I've met here, and that's not the way I want to be, but it's where I go when I'm struggling with myself.

Argh.

and when I was in Chicago, I learned they dye the fucking river green for St Patricks Day.

In Chicago. What a different world. Television! Television! Irresistably compelling and horrifying at the same time. I've started a mental account of sexualized images of women vs. sexualized images of men. Women are winning: 27:0.

Walked around the city today and one of the most obvious differences between my life on the commune and this weird world is how little exposure to actual Earth there is. Or Nature in general. You can hardly see the sky for all the tall buildings, much less any grass or dirt or, gasp, animals. Well, there's the pigeons.

I went to the planetarium and saw a movie called "The Future is Wild". It started out with the premise that in a few million years, humans will be long gone. Extinct. It moved on from there to hypothesize what kinds of creatures might exist then, but it took me awhile to move on from that original assumption. Just wrapping my mind around humans not existing... yikes. It means I'm not all that important. Once I got past that, I really enjoyed the film. Crazy creatures that shoot acid from their nose to ward off predators, and turtles as big as dinosaurs. What a head spin, to think about this planet in 2 billion years. It makes my emotional fears feel lighter.

I'm typing this from Serenalu's apartment. The best thing about the place (besides Sereunalu herself) is that she has great toilet paper. Soft and thick, so different from the one-ply shit at Twin Oaks. Ahhh... it makes excreting such a pleasurable experience! Except, of course, no composting toilets here. It all goes directly into clean water. I really felt out of my element this morning peeling an orange, and realizing the peel would go in the trash instead of to the compost. And then there's the television. Television! The Real World seems a lot less real to me now.

Just left a "weaving party" in the hammock shop with lingerie as the theme. We got a big basket of lingerie down from Commie Clothes (our own free thrift store) and then invited everyone who came into the hammock shop to put something on. I found a pink silk teddy that snapped at the crotch, which was more than fashionable snapped over my jeans. Just ask Hejira, she loved it. It was slightly chilly in the hammock shop, so I also found a leopard print skirt with a slit all the way up the side, which I put around my neck like a cape -- Fashionista Superhero!

We wove hammocks and listed to Postal Service and Louis Armstrong. Life on a commune...

And now I'm going to search the night sky for a glimpse of Saturn.

It's actually been warm in Virginia for the past 3 days. It's delightful to be outside and feel the wind on my body without cringing.

It's a different way of experiencing Life, to be comfortable of body -- beyond comfortable, pleasantly stimulated!

The sun seeps into me through the bare skin of my arms and chest (as we don't have the same cultural taboos about women taking their shirts off), and I remember how easy it is to be present,
simply,
in the enjoyment of sensation.

here's the weird seach query for today: "shoveling cow poop pictures". Over the Edge comes in at number 6.

I stopped milking the cows. I can't do it anymore.

I loved milking the cows because I loved working with them. I loved the interaction beyond words -- trying to communicate with another being that doesn't understand my language stretches my capacity for communication... I couldn't speak to them about what I wanted, so I had to operate on a different level. Bovine telepathy? Not really... but doesn't it seem like animals (especially dogs) can read your mind? It works on an energetic level, beyond words and even overt actions.

I loved working with the cows because they helped me explore myself. My first four hours in the morning were spent beyond verbal communication, remembering to be intentional and present -- because if I wasn't, I'd get kicked! After a couple close swipes at my head, I understood that being intentional about handling the cows teats was a matter of respecting them. I'd want anyone handling my teats to be intentional, not just absently groping around. I've had times where I should have delivered a kick to the head!

Things started shifting for me when Santana died last month. I felt the weight of her life. I realized she had spent her entire life in service (slavery?) to us, providing us with calves and milk and getting grain and hay in return. I started looking at the cows differently. I grasped that they're living their lives from the same source as I am living mine, and what I want most in my life is freedom. We control these cows, forcing them to live the way that we want them to live so that they can provide us with the milk and meat we want.

Soon after Santana's death we were training a young heifer (a female who hasn't calved before). We train them by leading them into the barn with a bucket of grain, getting them used to walking up the concrete steps into a gated stall where there's grain waiting for them. We shut the gate, they munch on grain, we take their milk. This heifer, Poppy, hadn't been barn trained before, and she didn't simply saunter into the barn the way our older cows do. She wanted to explore, to look around, to rub noses with the cows on the other side of the fence. And she wasn't all that interested in the grain I had to offer. As I started trying to coerce her, I felt a sense of dominance rising in me: "You've got to do this because I say so." And that felt so foreign, so opposite of what I'm trying to cultivate in my life, that I had to stop and think about it. Is this really just for me and my friends? Out of our desire to have milk? Is there anything in this for Poppy at all? If she doesn't care about the grain, she has no vested interest in entering that fucking barn. We teach the cows that the grain is what they want, just like mainstream culture teaches us that money and cell phones and fast food and makeup is what we want!

I struggled with this as I continued to work with Poppy. The more she refused my manipulation, the more upset I felt about what I was trying to do. I saw a wildness in her that I loved, that I desire in myself, and I was attempting to train it out of her??? I couldn't do it.

that was a saturday, the day of our dairy crew meeting. I went to the meeting at lunch and announced I was going to take a break from milking to explore these feelings more, and to see if I was resolved about this enough that I could stop eating dairy. Because of course, if I feel philosophically opposed to domesticating and milking the cows, the followup is to not benefit from it. So I stopped eating cheese, which had been a main staple of my diet here because we make our own -- everything from cheddar to romano to gouda -- and it's delicious and fresh. And now I see that its creation is reliant on the domestication and manipulation of these animals that I respect so intensely. It hasn't been hard at all to stop eating dairy. It hits me too deeply.

I was a vegan for a while in college, but that was more of a political decision. "I'm an activist, I'm a radical, I should be a vegan"... or something like that. So when it got too difficult to cook vegan food (when I was fired from the vegan restaurant I worked at), the cheese pizza my friends ordered from PapaJohn's was too tempting. I said I was a "freegan" for awhile (I won't BUY food with animal products in it, but if it's already been purchased it won't hurt for me to eat it!), and then the slope just got too slippery and I went back to indulging in cheese and milk chocolate again.

this time it feels different. I'm coming at it from the other side... instead of "I should be a vegan, so I'm not going to eat dairy products", it's "I can't participate in this oppression, so I'm not going to eat dairy products... I guess that means I'm a vegan".

Back by popular demand: more weird search queries that bring people to this site....

Feb 11
someone searched for "scab picking" on google, and I came up at number 20, number 17 for same search on yahoo (three different people in one day linked to me from this search! Is this some kind of fetish? Any thoughts, WickedCricket? Educate a perplexed hippie woman...)

Number 8 for "sauna in lima mixed", I'm ranked after the "Gay Guide to Lima" sites

"cheerleader accident leg"

Feb 12
someone from France searched for "Over the Edge", and I was ranked 56 -- who looks through that many pages of search results?

two different hits from searches for "cheerleader pictures". How disappointed they must have been.

Feb 13
"pictures of women milking tofu cows" ha ha, clever blog reader. Sadly, I'm not even first on this search. I come in at 3 and 4 after an article on the merits of soy, and a review of the movie "Final Fantasy."

yet another for "cheerleader pictures", and one for "cheerleader blog" (#7 on Google) -- do I think it was someone actually looking for me? Yes, on some egocentric level, I do. On a reality level, I'm more skeptical (though not entirely convinced against it!)

Feb 15
"wonder woman and superman friendship"

"pictures of women milked like cows fucking" -- I'm assuming this one is a joke, yes? I'm in the top ten on this one, yee haw (twirls finger lethargically in air)

and yet again, "cheerleader pictures". Maybe I should post some old photos of me in my uniform so it's not false advertising? Maybe not.

Feb 16
"serena lu" -- i come up number one! Interesting search query... was that you, Serena?

"milk homoginization unhealthy" -- Number one of 3 results. Ah, the merits of misspelling words! (I looked it up... proper spelling is "homogenization")

I heard a commercial on the radio today that made me scream out loud. There's a woman talking about how all she wants when she wakes up is breakfast at McDonald's. The idea of a sausage biscut compells her, it calls to her. And then the spokesperson comes in with "Who needs to think? Eat breakfast at McDonalds."

Who needs to think? I thought the corporate commodification of choice was working at a much more subtle level. I guess people are getting immune to to the more discrete forms of brainwashing.

Thank goodness I don't have a television -- I'd rip my hair out of my skull.

I'm going to let the cat out of the bag (don't worry, Mictlan, it's been declawed). I installed a program on my blog called GoStats that records statistics about the hits I get on this page. It can't tell me who you are or what you're wearing, but it can tell me how you linked to this site. Lots of people just type in trespass.motime.com, or have the site bookmarked, but I also get lots of hits from links on such pages as Ennui, Mictlan, and Likewise, and the Twin Oaks Member Webpages site.

but really, what's most exciting is when people link to me from a Google or Yahoo search, because GoStats tells me what the original search query was. Oh, it's so exciting. Let me share. The very first one I saw was "how to operate a steamtable". Other ones include "shiney tights", "spirit sprinkles", "rasicm" (I'm deeply embarassed that I come up on a search for misspelling racism!), "commune", "Life Choice Frozen Dinners", and at least 5 different people searching for "Clea Duval". The funniest ones, though, are the porn searches. People have clicked to my website from searches for "flexible cheerleaders", "fucking farm animals", and... here's the big finale...

"pictures of women being milked like cows"

I had a dream last night that I was in front of a crowd of people, belting out a song with fiery passion and a strong, full, uninhibited voice. I don't remember anything else from the dream... that image just popped up in my memory a few seconds ago.

I don't think the dream has anything to do with singing, really. Instead I think it's about my desire to be completely open and speak what's true for me in a clear, powerful way. I'm NOT doing that in my life right now, and I'm miserable. I'm quiet and accommodating and I'm being nice and I'm putting other people's "needs" before my "desires" and I'm EXHAUSTED from it all. And now I'm sick, physically ill.

Why aren't I being clear and powerful and brilliant and standing up for myself?

A. Because I'm afraid of being wrong. What if what I think I need isn't really what I need? And I fight for it because I think it's what's true for me, but it's not and so other people have done something that I asked for and then it ends up being worse than before, and it's my fault.

B. Because I'm afraid of people telling me "no." I'm afraid if I actually think about what I need and really figure it out and then ask for it, someone will say "no, I can't do that for you." It seems easier to not know what I need and not get it than to know what I need and not get it. I know this doesn't make sense, but it's the way my mind is working right now.

C. I'm scared of other people's anger. I'm afraid if I say what's true for me, other people will be angry about it. What does that mean for me? It means I suck, if other people are angry with me. That's what I make it mean. Because I seek my validation thru other people's acknowledgement of my worth. It's old "Dad" stuff for me that I've been working through for years... still not as enlightened about it as I had hoped I was.

in the dream when i was singing, everyone was amazed by the strength of my voice. They were listening in awe as I sang from my deepest self. GRRRRAAAW! I hate getting wrapped up in fear!

Guillaume Apollianire wrote:

"We took them to the edge and bade them fly. They held on. 'Fly!' we said. They held on. We pushed them over the edge. And they flew."

Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes

WARNING: story involves scab picking, read at your own discretion

I went sledding last week, after the East Coast got hit by a major snowstorm. According to experts here, early morning two days after the storm is the best time to sled; the snow on top melts slightly during the day, then freezes into ice at night. We went out at 8am the next morning, and the top layer was solid and slick. We trudged across a field to get to the hill, each step requiring excessive pressure to crack the ice and find solid contact with the ground beneath.

What I really want to write about (quickly before my laundry finishes -- it's a sunny day and I want to hang it out to dry before lunch) is the insight I got from the gash in my leg that I procured while sledding that day. So, gash in my leg from one particularly exciting and dramatic crash. Sled over head over legs and arms over her and him over me over sharp edges of cracked ice. My leg was on the bottom.

I ended up with my shin scratched fairly raw, and I did major herbal first aid once I got back to my room (calendula tincture and comfrey salve), and covered it with gauze. Over the past week and half I've watched it heal with amazement. Visible healing overnight! One day I was examining the strength of the scabs and scratched them off in two places. (I know "don't pick at your scabs!"... but it's irresistable) I took a bath last night and when I got out my other scabs had melted away, new smooth pink skin underneath... except where I had peeled the scabs off a few days ago. Still scabby and red. Of course. My body knows how to heal herself -- I just have to allow it to happen.

There are specific projects I'm working on, specific ideas I want to put out in the world. The point of Tuesday's post is that I can't be attached to these ideas being relevant at any point in time other than Now. I have a general sense of where these ideas will lead me, of what I can create with them, but I don't know for certain how things will turn out. For forward motion, I need to develop an awareness of what's true in this moment, (and then this moment, and then this moment), and be sure that I'm acting from that awareness and not from what I thought things were going to be like.

And so, I can't know what the "end product" of all this will be -- it's beyond the scope of any possibilities I can fathom at this point. (and it's ludicrous anyway to assume that there's ever going to be an "end point"! It will all keep going and changing.

AND as I type I have to acknowledge that there is some core idea that I'm focused on manifesting. There's a direction I want to see our culture move in. It's not specific, not "a world made up of small communities that operate by consensus and no one eats meat." I'm seeking a world that nurtures creation, that nurtures Life. It's vague and the words I use for it are constantly changing as my understanding of what's at the core of it changes. Three years ago I thought the core was "communities", and maybe in some sense it still is for me... but with a broader scope, encompassing all collaboration (one of my current key buzzwords).

see, it's shifty.

Band practice tonight... blech. Why did I want to sing, i repeatedly ask myself? I hate singing. That's not really true. I like it when I'm not me, when I'm a character onstage, when I'm playing a character who can sing. But when I'm just me, I hate it. Because I don't think I can sing. I know it doesn't quite make sense. "Why don't you just take on a character when you're singing with the band?" Not that easy. It's too superficial, it doesn't have any context. If I were singing for people I didn't know, it would be different, but I'm singing for all my friends, people who know ME, so I can't really be someone else.

Actually, this is a major benefit of living on the commune, in a broader scope: I can't act. An actress by trade, it's always unnervingly easy to slip into "acting" in uncomfortable situations instead of being present with what's really true for me. It works really well in the short-term, but over the long term it leads to a fairly shallow experience, because I'm not really experiencing all of those events, it's some other character. It doesn't hit me as deeply.

Over the past year and a half I've been here, people have gotten to know me. Me. They see me so much and in so many different circumstances that they've developed a fairly detailed picture of who I am, from all angles. And even though pieces of that include some acting, the different perspectives (socially, at work, in intimate relationships, in crisis situations, emotionally vulnerable) point to some core of Who I Am. And when people Know that in me, that's how they recieve me, and I just can't slip into acting mode as easily.

but this isn't what I really sat down to write about. I wanted to respond to a comment that Aravail made many days ago (Friday, Jan 16), summed up as "What do you want to create? What are we making room for? Tofu and hammocks? Sustainable life unto itself?" My answer: if we think we can define it now, we don't know what we're talking about. We're limited by our ideas of what we think is possible, and mainstream culture vigorously inhibits our creative minds. I'm driven to live on the edge of what I believe is possible, and then challenge myself to see more possibility beyond that. Hence the title of this blog. Life lies in the act of creation -- creation is essentially bringing into existence that which hasn't existed before. It requires stepping forward into unknown territory -- going over the edge of whatever boundaries or limits we've constructed. So, dearest Aravail, what do I want to create? Right now I want to create space for new creation, the space for possibility beyond possibility.

Sometimes I worry that this life isn't real.

I fear I'll wake up tomorrow in a hospital bed and the suprised nurse will tell me I've been in a coma for the past year and a half. "What about the commune?" I'll say. "What commune?" she'll ask. "Where I milked the cows and fell in love and made tofu! I live there!" She'll shake her head sadly, and explain that I was in a car accident in Maine two summers ago, and I've been on life support ever since. "No! I've been in Virginia! On a farm! With cows!" I'll start to get hysterical, and the nurse will give me a shot that calms me down, and then the memories of the commune will start to get fuzzy. My parents will come in crying and hugging me, and I'll try to tell them stories about the cows and traveling around the country to speak in college classes, but I can't quite remember all the details, and they just nod sweetly, thankful that their daughter is alive. Wildly delusional, but alive.

Years later I'll still have flashes of memories, brief images of the garden or the tofu hut, and I'll go to therapy. I'll fall in love, and one night while making love I'll call out "Paxus" and we'll stop and he'll ask me who Paxus is, and I'll say "I don't know."

I suppose this life is so far from what I ever considered possible, that sometimes I still don't believe it's possible. But it is, and here I am. (right?)