it rained all day

even after i got home
form

function
we hope that someday

we can control time
but we are all living

we will all die
and we do not possess

time

Click here to access About Place Journal‘s latest issue SOUTH.  My map works “Homeplace Not to Scale” appear in section three.

 

 

1. “People who have been landless know that the land is invaluable; it is worth everything.” – Wendell Berry, The Essential Agrarian Reader, pg. 29
2. How can you stay in the house all day and not go anywhere?
3. Tax policy: “Limiting the pro-life agenda to the issue of whether abortion should be legal or illegal is the most hypocritical example of a low-sacrifice issue masquerading as faith-based justice. Regardless of your view of the legal issue, you cannot claim to be truly pro-life unless you are also willing to fight for the high sacrifice of Judeo-Christian guided tax policy.” – Susan Pace Hamill, professor of law at the University of Alabama
4. A question: how to get mad without feeling hopeless; how to be hopeful  without being useless?
5. Land use: “As agrarians, we are advocating both that rural land remain open and working, and that people move back to these places… That is, people moving to rural communities should be buying a small property to call their own, but also a share in the much larger surrounding countryside.  How can we accomplish such a transformation of landowning aspirations?” – Brian Donahue, The Essential Agrarian Reader, pg. 46
6. 2016 I decided to create specific, reasonable, and visionary desires.
7. 2014 I decided that life is the pursuit of art service sex education children adventure love and family.
8. “We don’t just choose the things we like; we also like the things we choose.” – Alex Korb, neuroscience researcher
9. Unqualified affirmation: “Bugbee argues that “the measure of our understanding of reality lies in our capacity for the responsible realization of unqualified affirmation.” Unqualified affirmation presupposes that we allow the world of things and bodies to become fully present to us, to let their demands be felt by us, and that we not distort or block – whether through fear, laziness, or arrogance – the stream of reality that continually surrounds us.”  Norman Wirzba, quoting Henry Bugbee, The Essential Agrarian Reader, pg. 89
10. Sometimes focusing is the act of starting over again each time you get interrupted.  It’s easier for some to do than others, but it is possible.

 

 

 

Pretty much

A journal is only useful to the one using it

When they’re using it

Afterwards

we call it special

keep it on shelves in boxes and museums

where it collects dust and is as dead

as something that breathes no more

the case for osmosis

this is how

we/ they used to write:

an idea would come to

you

you research

expand idea

draft

draft

redraft

show

feedback

redraft

publish

ruminate.

This is valid.

So is mess.

A brain rejoices in an opportunity to be challenged; to exercise

The case for osmosis 

is a phrase that comes to me

while

flipping through

Orion

fingering images

absorbing ideas without reading

being childlike

as an adult

the case for osmosis is both a

poem

and the beginning of a poem

yet to be researched

 

Raccoon 

little house mtn

all the high school peeps

a hint of love

dads and moms

old memories

home home

home

fields

birds

worry

Lauren

helping people

optimism

grasses

a grass wreath

3 little boys two actually little

daydreams

rabbits

see how they run

see how they live

can we go doe hunting in your yard?

of course, and of course not

fish

salmon potato soup

the grocery store

the post office

a tenderness

a wildness

1830

1860

more rabbits

a squirrel

frogs that overwinter by freezing themselves

death, the dying

2016

is dying.

a spruce tree

she went to China. they went to China

sickness

driving

Boxing day

chevre

fried chicken

Green Egg

curvy roads

train rise

curry leaves

 

dear fellow human being on the train

you looked to me like

“someone to fall in love with”

 

if only everyone were so

ready

to be loved

 

if only everyone were so

ready

to be

loving

 

We’ve been educating ourselves in social justice

through social media

and strong, loving friendships

 

And?

Maybe when we moved away

from home

We became so happy to be

among friends

that we forgot all those

unlike us

we say to ourselves

remember this

and yet we rarely do

where it counts

where real courage is needed

‘ain’t ready to quit’ JA sings

we aren’t ready until we are

I’m interested in it until I’m not, Bill T says

We’re inside until we’re out

we’re inside until we’re not

 

the next time I want ice cream

I’ll probably eat it

even though later

it makes me feel sick

 

anything else would require real change

and I haven’t changed yet