heartsprout!

things are moving

2009-08-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

•:*¨¨*:•:,¸,,:•:*¨¨*:•:,¸,:•:*¨¨*:•:,¸,,:•:*¨¨*:•:,¸,:

including us. we're moving out of our beloved house. we are choosing another path than buying our big old 1920s six bedroom brick bungalow.

in our search for where to land next i sent out a correspondence with a local west asheville co-housing community, querying about available space for rent. it felt good to write and aaron agrees that it feels good to read. here it is:

between the 3 adults in our family we have about 20 years of community living experience. among us we have lived at dancing rabbit ecovillage, ganas community on staten island, the last remaining of the hippie communes in san francisco, with the then finders in virginia (now open circle community), at birdsfoot in upstate new york, and at the sequatchie valley institute at moonshadow. we have also founded or contributed to various other community upstarts and experiments, some of which continue on today.

our family is committed to our own personal and collective spiritual growth and expansion, our happiness, as well as an outward community service that stems from our spiritual well-being. we continue to have interest living and growing in a vibrant community setting. after moving to asheville a year ago, our lease is up in the amazing west asheville home we've been exploring community in (yet again!) we are currently in a flux phase in our lives and would love to have the opportunity to contribute to westwood and also experience what your co-housing community is about, potentially to be able to choose to stay for a long term.

we invite your well-wishes
BIG LOVE
<3

universal expansion

2008-10-08T17:51:00.000-07:00

things are moving. shifting. transforming. a lot of people are scared, fearful. others are hopeful, optimistic. i'm one of the latter. i see and feel energy and the interconnectedness of things in a deeper and deeper way each day. and it ballasts my capacity to find my own center, my own little place in the larger pattern of it all. where i fit in. how beautiful and perfect it all is. sometimes. or rather, it's there always, and i sense or perceive it sometimes. when i open.

so i open more and more. to wonder and beauty. to abundance. to light and love. to compassion. to healing. which brings us back to transformation.

to me, the crucial work ahead is less about external reality and more about inner work. undoing judgment, on all levels. unraveling oppression and old stories of good and bad. transforming hurt, through the alchemy of compassion, into strength and wisdom. and further compassion. for all that is.

a quote:

2008-10-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

"If you knew everything was really all right, and that it always has a happy ending, then you would not feel trepidacious about your future. EVERYTHING is really so very all right! If you could believe and trust that, then, immediately everything would automatically and instantly become all right." -the Nonphysical entity Abraham, speaking through Esther Hicks

whew

asher is challenging me to believe this more and more and more every day.

i often think of my role in his life as someone who's been on earth longer is to show him what i've learned about the world, about how to be safe, not fall down the stairs, how to watch the trees swaying in the wind, communicate with me about when he's hungry or wants me to read a book, how to DO so many things that take us through the day-to-day. and i certainly also make a focus of showing him my joys and my inspirations and love to share with him when he takes a special interest in some crumb he picks up and carries around. and i'm coming to realize that i feel SO much better when my focus is less on showing him the world and more on letting him show me myself. he shows me everyday where i get stuck, what my hang-ups are, where i can love myself more fully. when i get frustrated in my caring for him, there's always the opportunity for a breakthrough and release of some story that's holding me back from a fuller experience of joy. he's my shaman. and he came into my life to help me expand and grow and live in the light.

(:

the agenda

2008-09-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

there's always an agenda, isn't there?
there's always something we're working on or moving towards
or an outcome we're expecting or hoping for
there's always a strategic focus
there's always a paradigm under which we're functioning

so what is it?

often we're answering the question of how fill our days starting with "well, we'll need to provide for our food" and "we'll need a place to sleep" and "we'll need to be 'productive' today"
we consider the projected future needs of our physical manifestations
and maintaining the status quo

but, zooming out for a minute, and considering our lives on a grander scheme
on a longer timeline
as part of a whole
what considerations do we want to have when answering the question of how we fill our days?

what about "i aspire to be happy" or "my focus is to maintain and nourish connections to god" or "my work is to be inspired and inspire others around us" or "how will we contribute to global spiritual evolution today"?

how would we live if those were the FIRST priority?

ning-ing

2008-09-11T16:01:00.001-07:00

View my page on West Asheville

forest abstracts

2008-09-07T14:42:00.000-07:00

+ low light (just after sunset)
+ long exposure
+ beautiful patterns everywhere
+ intentional camera movement
= these

also here

finding home over and again

2008-08-22T15:31:00.001-07:00

we just got some pictures from the former mary grogan (who's now going by m!). it's awesome to see what's going on back in virginia, all the projects and excitement we left behind. it leaves a sentimental twinge of joy and expectancy, and also beautiful gratitude to have found home such as we have in asheville.

i'm definitely finding home. and it's in my heart!

riverside

2008-08-09T06:08:00.000-07:00

the old industrial part of town is down by the french broad river between downtown asheville and west asheville. rene and i went down there a couple of days ago and took a bunch of photos. i put together a little gallery here.

chillin

life in asheville

2008-08-01T18:27:00.000-07:00

bj, asher, karin (who is taking the name phoenix), and i moved from virginia to asheville, north carolina a few weeks ago. it was a pretty whirlwind lead-up, move, and landing marked with lots of excitement, nervousness, sparkliness and serendipity. the entire process of deciding to visit, considering moving, deciding to move, and moving took just under two weeks! so, from the outside i imagine it looked (depending how you look) like quite an abrupt/spontaneous/inspired/courageous/foolhardy/fickle thing to do. i suppose it may be a little of all those things. but from the inside, it feels amazingly right. and also really consistent with the direction of our dreams and of our inspiration.

we arrived just under a month ago. it took us a grand total of about four or five days to find an amazing house to rent in west asheville. the house is very big, with 6 bedrooms and a huge (for city standards) backyard. we chose it because such a big house would allow us to choose other people and families to move in with us and share the house. this has proven to be a really, really good choice. its been so easy and smooth meeting people, and the ability to host others has supported us in creating community in our home.

in the past few days, we've invited four other people- two single dads with 7 and 8 year old daughters to move in with us. such a strange and wonderful coincidence. we certainly weren't looking specifically for that profile, but each of these new families feels like such a good fit to live together with. it all just sort of clicked... and continues to click.

we all just took a relatively impromptu daytrip to a local swimming hole up on the blue ridge parkway, just south of town. the place is called skinnydip falls. we had a great time together and it sort of gelled our connection to each other and contributed to a shared sense of friendship, familiarity, affinity and conviviality. a gallery of photos from the trip is available here.

skinnydip falls

the new crew (minus cedar)

from left to right in above pic:
herve and daughter sienna, beej, ashman, moon, rene (a mutual friend), phoenix, et moi

cedar (moon's daughter)

other super exciting things that i've been up to in the past month... i've been getting involved with a forming worker-owner cooperative called asheville treecyclers. it's a rather ambitious, and very inspiring project. the idea is to produce locally harvested and processed lumber by diverting urban trees that get cut down for a variety of reasons (not for timber) from their otherwise inevitable demise as "green waste" (compost or mulch). then, the treecyclers woodworker co-op will use this wood to produce a variety of furniture, crafts, art, and building products. one of the reasons that i'm so excited about this project, and about getting involved in a big way, is that it brings together so many of my interests, passions and skills- woodworking, trees (protecting, admiring, caring for, working with them), design, co-operative work structures, local economy, and local culture. oh, and web design and development, and photography, as i've just started to build the website, and we have plans to do some photographic storytelling of the cycle from tree to timber through creative process to product.

speaking of photography, our new friend rene is a very talented professional photographer. and we're discovering a lot of excitement for collaborating with one another. next week we're gonna go explore the river arts district, which is the old industrial part of town. and she has invited me to come be a back-up photographer at some of her gigs. i've often toyed with the idea of making photography more of a central part of my creative process. you can check out rene's website here.

um, oh, and we've been having lots of bike adventures. asheville is really bikeable, so we've been able to leave the truck parked and get around, explore and do most of our travel by bike. i forgot how much fun it is! especially when we convene a big group. moon and cedar are big on bikes, and herve is excited to get a bike and use it as his main transportation. so it looks like we'll have a super bike friendly household, complete with two-wheeled outings.

gosh there's a lot to write about, but i'm going to leave it at that for now.

life is wonderful, full, abundant and expanding.

hangin with asher

2008-07-15T17:25:00.000-07:00

asher and i spent some time outside, taking some photos today. it was (and still is) an incredible summer day here. the weather has been magically good lately. i put together a little gallery that you can see here.

smiley head

the homefront

2008-06-24T19:10:00.000-07:00

serendipitously, last week karin and asher and i had an easy ride down to asheville, nc with my parents as they were passing through town.

whoa!
people, i've never felt so at home in all my life.

i've never been able to so clearly feel at home simultaneously in my body and my spirit. i've never before felt so easily understood and understandable. i was glowing. both of my parents and also aaron commented on how my voice has changed in talking about my experiences and about living there. i'm more at home in myself. and i think i'm staying.

aaron was up in philly with nancy at an r.e.m. concert (which he said was brilliant, by the way) and he called us after it was over and asked whether we wanted to meet him back in culpeper or we wanted for him to come down to asheville. we told him we were having amazing experiences and we wanted him to come get a feel for the place himself.

i felt clear that i was either called to live there, or i was there to experience myself and experience home in a way i never had before just to know that it was possible. if it was the latter then i would know what sort of feeling i wanted to create and manifest in wherever i was making home for myself. (i mean, i think i can live in "asheville" without moving there...)

karin, aaron, and i (and to some extent asher) hemmed and hawed about what next steps to take and have settled on spending more time in asheville to experiment and see what the place has for us and us for it. as my dad says, "experiment, see how it feels in everyday life".

so, that's the news folks. asheville is calling. and it's radiant and alluring.

4 teeth and 10 steps

2008-06-11T14:20:00.000-07:00

baby jo update:

today we noticed FOUR new teeth busting through on the top row (to make a grand total of six including the bottom two).

and also asher decided to take his show on the road and within 10 minutes made three runs of 5, then 7, then 10 steps respectively.

whew! as my mom says, he's the hardest working baby in show biz

ask

2008-06-09T20:06:00.001-07:00

ask and it is given: learning to manifest your desires

a new book that recently found its way into my life
whoa.
it's the most amazing thing i've ever read
the premise, the content, the manner in which it got written
all of it fascinating
i have fantasies of *manifesting* a crateload of them
and sharing the abundance of amazing wisdom
so maybe i will
the information in this book has helped me piece SO much together
the world makes a lot more sense to me now
... again

three hundred sixty six days

2008-06-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

yesterday was asher's first birthday! hurray, hurrah. we took a nice little picnic, ash, beej, aaron, and the kape. it was lovely, we made friends with some geese, made enemies with some ants, splashed in the lake, fed the fishies, tossed the floppy frisbee, and all in all had a darn swell time.

w asher st

then we went out to a thai restaurant for a couple special birthday treats. it was tasty and delicious. plus, the thai family(and friends) who run the place are SO cute with asher. they just love him to pieces. he's made friends with them before and they remembered him and gooed and laughed together.

and today, on the first day of his second sun, we climbed around, explored the creek by the red cabin and generally frolicked and played. it was fun.

stream baby

crossing

son my sun

2008-05-30T17:47:00.000-07:00

brilliant - luminous - radiant thing
the bright crest of your brow
begins and ends the arc of my day
you spin round in the sky of my life
and i know light
and i know warmth
and i know what it is to reach upward
away from the earth's weight
toward you - golden - shining
and i know joy as
you spin round me
spin around my heart
brilliant - luminous - radiant thing

my southern food epiphany

2008-05-22T07:05:00.000-07:00

i just returned from traveling. bj and asher are still in california.

when we were in the south, we ate food from the south. it was tasty. and very greasy. and hard to resist. partly because it was tasty. partly because i didn't want to miss out on what everyone else was eating. partly because i've gotten into some pretty unhealthy habits in terms of what i choose to eat.

as the days passed, i found my energy level getting lower and lower. i wasn't really aware of it until a few days into the trend. and even then, i didn't really have a sense of what was going on for me. until right towards the end of my time in mississippi, we went out with some old friends of the harden jones family to a southern family restaurant with classic mississippi cuisine- fried catfish, fried chicken, fried pickles, fried hushpuppies, fried potatoes, fried onions. and cole slaw and greens. i was pretty hungry and i ate of it all...

then it dawned on me... the food i'd been eating was contributing to my energy and general feeling in my body. i basically was clogging up my system with lots of tasty but non-nourishing foods.

then, the first day of the stone workshop i went to after i left mississippi, i got sick. headachy and a little fevery. i went to bed right after the day's work ended at around 5. as i laid in bed, sensing all that was going on in my body and noticing the thoughts that went along, i made some agreements with myself about how i wanted to make some changes in how i treat my body. specifically regarding the food i take into myself to nourish it. below is a rough overview:

things that nourish my body and contribute to my health and energy that i want to eat regularly:

whole grains

organic fruits and vegetables

fermented foods

local, organic, compassionately raised meats (on occasion)

local, organically raised eggs

nuts and dried fruits

sprouted and other live foods

organic milk, cheese, butter and yogurt

foods sweetened with honey (on occasion)

live, clean water

basically whole, local foods

things that don't nourish my body that i'd like to eat only on special occasions:

sweet foods with processed sugar

coffee and teas with caffeine

salt and salted foods

processed or fractured foods (foods that have been broken down and recombined)

chlorinated and fluorinated water, and water stored in plastic

basically processed foods that come from far away

things i'd like to learn more about and maybe relate to differently:

foods made with wheat and gluten

dairy from cows versus goats or sheep

i've been eating more aligned with these choices from the past four or five days and i've noticed a different in how i feel already. not only physically, but emotionally too. i feel better about myself when i know that i'm making choices that demonstrate care for myself and my health.

i also feel clear that i'm not trying to be dogmatic about my attitudes toward food. i don't plan on being absolute about only eating "these things" and never eating "those things." but having some clear guidelines that i articulate for myself has been useful in the past and seems to be helping already this time around too.

dead prez really says it better than i can:

be healthy

the whirlwind in which we see those places bj previously called home and we visit the greatgrandmothers

2008-05-19T14:47:00.000-07:00

asher and i are on a trip to california
which is an extension of a trip to jackson, mississippi
my hometown. well sort of.
it's where i grew up
but it's not mine anymore
and that was an extension of a trip to northeast mississippi
where i was born and where i spent many summers
to help move and settle in my 94 year old mississippian to the core grandmother
who just moved back to ms from an extended 4 year stay in ca
and as a prequel to that trip aaron and asher and i went to visit bradley and nada and logan
in the glorious sequatchie valley near chattanooga tn
a very significant place to me in the explorations and adventures of my lifetime thus far
now asher and i are in the bay area
staying with my parents
and karin is here too
today we're going up to grass valley for a visit with asher's other greatgrandmother
this is all very significant and overwhelming in ways that i haven't identified yet
...
i'm getting lots of practice staying at peace or bringing myself back to peace when things are complex and complicated
!

dispatch from m i crookedletter crookedletter i crookedletter crookedletter i humpback humpback i

2008-05-12T08:03:00.000-07:00

(recycled from an email dispatch back to the culpeper crew)

we caught our flight out of dulles just fine and were really practicing being present and letting our lights shine in a confusing, disempowering, disconnected place. it felt amazing. it was like we surrounded ourselves in a bubble of heart chakra juju goodness.

asher seemed to make a great time of it all and we were blessed to be sitting on the airplane across from another little boy his age. he was content most of the flight to wander back and forth between our laps and to sit and watch the neighbor baby. can't imagine air travel with a baby being any smoother or more enjoyable.

the baby and his mom were traveling from ireland to visit the mother's sister who now lives in nashville, and is the only member of the family who lives in the states. on one of the mom's several flights through immigration her stroller got lost, and she was something like 15 hours into traveling, making her way through airports with two bags and one tired baby all in her arms. we offered her our purple sling to help her get around and she took it from us gratefully, but then once we landed we helped her carry her bags and then her family was there to help her and she gave it back.

we spent a couple of days hanging out with bradley, nada and logan on their land. it's such a beautiful spot they live in. the sequatchie valley is an amazing place. seeing the lives they are creating for themselves there really puts into perspective a few things. first, as if this hasn't been driven home enough already, raising children with just two caregivers is really really hard. ESPECIALLY, when you're trying to start an off-the-grid homestead on your own at time same time. second, goats are wonderful animals. and they can do a lot of work for you on a piece of land. but they take a lot of work and care themselves, if they are going to be healthy, happy and thriving. fencing is an investment of time, materials, energy, and money. third, dealing with the "waste" that is produced on a homestead is vitally important.

we made the drive from tennessee to mississippi yesterday. it was really beautiful, especially the natchez trace parkway. one of the most beautiful roads i've (aaron) ever seen.

on the way i (bj) talked to my mom about some of the things i've been spinning for myself and we've been spinning for ourselves about living in love and creating healing and being present. this trip is a challenge and an inspiration to me to put all of these energies out into the world in a complex time and space in my life.

we got in to tupelo last night and met mimi, bj's grandmother, and a bunch of family and friends at the place where she'll be staying. it was really heartwarming, and also kind of sad. all sorts of mixed up emotions. the way that we relate to the elderly and to death is really out of sync with the rhythms and the cycles of life. that all comes into focus for me when i go to "old people's" homes. we're spending the next couple of days in tupelo, and we'll be hanging out with mimi some more, so it will be interesting to see what continued learning comes of this.

may!

2008-05-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

the arrival of spring, and warm weather, has hastened a flurry of activity and busi-ness in our lives. not a lot of computer time to really go into all of the amazing things that have been unfolding, but i wanted to at least run through some of the biggies:

downtown culpeper

bj and i have been chillin in culpeper, virginia, excited to be getting to know the area, meeting new folks, finding out about local projects, farms, and other groovy things.

happy hay baby

in early march, we went to a strawbale wall workshop in maryland and learned how to build with bales. it was a lot of fun and we met some really interesting people.

the hoods and the marets

on the way back from the workshop, we took a little tour of my hometown, dayton, maryland, and visited some dear friends of mine, the hoods. it was really nice to share with everyone the place that i grew up. and it was great to see the place where i grew up. it turned out that the family that is now living in the house i grew up in, invited us in to look around, so we really got an intimate view into my history.

red cabin demolition

we started the process of renovating the "red cabin" on the high field (aka the 90 acres, aka the land). we pretty much gutted the interior, removing all the walls to make space for a redesign of the floor plan. we're now in the process of putting it all back together, nice and tidy. it's turned out to be a bigger project than i think we had anticipated. but the end result, a clean, insulated, well-organized communal kitchen and living space, seems exciting enough to keep us plugging along.

first down

as a part of moving onto the land and fixing up the cabin, we cleared an area of trees from around the cabin. lots of oak trees, some pine, poplar, hickory, beech and birch.

this is what it looks like now

me beth and becky

i flew out to california to gather up the rest of our things from sonoma to bring back to virginia. mostly the woodshop tools, materials and wood. i coordinated the trip to coincide with becky visiting the bay area, and we both stayed at beth's house and it was really nice.

it was very nice to be back in the bay area. it was also a little sad. i still have a pretty strong love for california.

the truck all packed up

becky and i in utah

then becky and i drove back across country together. it was nice to have a lot of time alone to talk and share and spend time.

back in culpeper

it was really nice to get back to virginia and be with the crew again.

friendly

our first timber

we hired on a local sawyer to help us cut all the trees we felled into lumber for our building projects. we cut large timbers to build a small timber frame structure later this year. we also cut a lot of boards for flooring, paneling, siding and for making furniture.

timbers

fix up crew

plugging along on the red cabin...

hello world

other than that, we've been tromping around, getting to know the area, the land, each other, enjoying the springing forth of spring.

today, bj, asher and i are off to tennessee to visit bradly, nada and logan. then on to mississippi for more visiting to and help bj's grandmother, mimi, in her move/return home. then i'll go to new york for a stone foundation workshop. and bj and asher will head back to california with bj's mama for a little visiting. bj and asher will hook up with karin, who is on an adventure of her own right now hitchhiking out to california. then they'll travel back home together sometime around the end of the month.

whew!

lovely lovelies

2008-04-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

yesterday was brilliant
aaron had arrived home the night before with the rest of our earthly possessions and a BECKY! in tow
so i woke up in the morning to my lover and friend looking back at me
and to a becky to have breaky with
then shortly thereafter max and bob (his guardian) and jill (his biological mother) arrived for a few hour visit
but max ended up staying the night because we were able to take him where he needed to be in the morning
and becky and aaron and i went off on a brief bike adventure out on a nature trail behind yowell meadow park
yum yum i love those two SO MUCH
then we all participated in unloading whatever was to stay here off the truck and hung out on the lawn and did handstands and told jokes and ate cheese and carrots
then there was a brilliant lunch that rannie cooked up
and mary bartlett showed up with an amazing supper plan
and cooper and brandy called and said they were in culpeper on errands and wanted to stop by
so then comes suppertime
what a spread!
mary b made us this beautiful two-part soup, one side red and spicy, the other side green, smooth and sweet. she poured them into the bowl at the same time so that they each held their own side. and we dolloped yogurt cream on top. and a delicious salad and a squash dish and quinoa and then homemade rhubarb torte from homegrown rhubarb for dessert
and there we were
counter clockwise around the table it was mary b, karin, nexus, cooper, max, aaron, asher, mary g, brandy, rannie and me. !!
what a crew!
the social scene felt so fluid and wonderful
great conversations and connections abounded
and i went to sleep with a full belly, a smile on my face, and a gentle lovely feeling of peace in my heart

geez. how blessed do i feel?

The Appalachian Forest

2008-03-22T08:58:00.000-07:00

yesterday we all (except for aaron who was flying away to california) went over to our friend mary bartlett's house (that she shares with her daughter lily). she's gentle, wise, and so much fun. she's been gardening and growing her own food for about 30 years. we're all very excited about coming to know her better.

so we showed up at her house to help out in the garden. yesterday was on the biodynamic calendar a root day so we were planting beets, turnips, onions, carrots, potatoes... i think that's all.

what an awesome day we had! there was much camaraderie and love shared on the little hillside garden behind her house.

we're planning to participate in the garden tending regularly this season to help us grow our connection and relationships with mary (and hopefully with lily), learn from her experience, and participate in growing a good portion of our own food. woo-hoo!

she loaned me a few books before we left, one of which is The Appalachian Forest, A Search for Roots and Renewal by Chris Bolgiano.

the inside flap of the cover says:
"In the coves of southern Appalachia are fifteen hundred species of flowering plants, including more kinds of trees than in all of northern Europe. here are bewildering nuances of biodiversity, with mosses, fungi, spiders, salamanders, mussels, fish, birds, and people like none other on earth. Searching for home, we moved into one of the grand old mansions of the planet....

"The Appalachian Forest describes a place once rich with old-growth woodlands – American chestnuts ten feet in diameter, tulip poplars more than two hundred feet tall, warblers and wild turkey abundant beyond imagining – whose landscape has been systematically devastated by cutting and mining. Comparing the past and present land and people of this region once known as The Great Forest, Chris Bolgiano finds the promise of ecological recovery.

"More than a biological overview, the book explores mountain life and its many contrasts, such as generations of human poverty amid a wealth of natural resources. The mountain farmers, Cherokee, foresters, biologists, bear hunters, and grassroots activists that Bolgiano comes to know all define a part of the diversity of her Appalachian home.

"Meticulously researched, yet lyrically personal, The Appalachian Forest reveals a powerful message: the need to preserve mature, connected forests for the benefit of all living things in this great wilderness – including people."

oh wow. i think this is the book i've been looking for. perhaps it's been looking for me as well. thanks to mary b for bringing up together. i'm so excited to let this book help to introduce me to the history of this place i'm learning to love to call home. i'm excited to let this book help me proudly call myself one of the inhabitants of this land.

i'm drooling in anticipation.

living in the light

2008-03-03T14:17:00.000-08:00

(this post is dedicated to the lovely and amazing dana -mother to ayani, and partner to efrain- who just wrote me a letter that said she appreciated reading a recent blog post on my motherhood journeys)

i'm so incredibly amazed by how blessed i am.
i can't believe how many of my dreams are coming true and even are true in THIS VERY MOMENT. and the thing is it feels like it's less of a change in what's going on in my life (though there certainly is a TON of amazing synchronicity and beauty) than it is a change in perspective. a step towards living in the light. i'm waking up to reality all over again. i feel like it's enlightenment creeping up on me.

one of the definitely significant aspects of what's allowing this to be true for me though is the amount and quality of childcare i have access to. everyone here loves and cares for me and asher in extraordinary ways that help make space for self-care (and thus sanity for a new mom!).

here's some of the more daily details:
last week asher got a real tongue fascination going, pushing his tongue out over his gums and bottom lip over and over. it just happened all of a sudden and then one day he stopped. and lo and behold, there were two little teeth popping out of his lower gums. two teeth at once!

he seems to be saying words in the copy-our-sounds fashion. he said something like hot after i touched something hot on the stove and said hot to show him how i was cautious around the stove, twice he said something like bark after karin did while identifiying trees when we were all on a hike in the woods, and 4 times on his 9 month birthday he said a dog sounding word when a dog came near us. whoa! it's surprising to me that he's exploring talking before he'e ever seemed to

he had his 9 month birthday yesterday on one of the most magical days i've had in a while. karin, aaron, asher, mary, and i went down to charlottesville and hung out with max (newly nicknamed maxleesworth) for a funtastical weekend of swing dancing, friend making, timber frame house touring, veggie juicing, hula hooping, trampoline jumping, sock wrestling, sun basking, and grocery shopping. we got to meet kristin (who let us stay at her house) and tommy stone, old friends and fellow community members of mary and rannie.

lisa's back from her ayahuasca excursion to amazonian jungle in peru. she says her trip was wildly successful and she's currently taking a long bath soak to cleanse and purge on the outside to match what has happened for her on the inside.

there's recently been a slew of visitors passing through: my mom and my dad on separate trips, my best friend since first grade emily, and my kindred soul friend from college days kathryn. nancy was also going to be visiting because she's relatively local in levittown, pa with her grandmother who's having health concerns. but the concerns turn out to be greater than expected and so she's hanging around in pa instead.

our group continues to figure out who we are, how we're relating to each other, who we want to be and what we want to do in the world, and we're constantly materializing these new aspects of ourselves in quite beautiful and healing ways. we're creating new social inventions that work better for who we are in this incarnation.

the flurry of activity that came along with visitor frenzy was so much fun and invigorating at the same time as it was tiring and confusing because of the lack of clarity about what my days mean. every day is a new adventure in creating a schedule for me and asher. within the context of sorting out our new lives together it made for a complicated set of transitions from guest to guest and also helped add some clarity to what we're doing by helping me get some different inputs and gain an outside perspective.

tonight mary, lisa, and i are going to our 4th class out of 8 in a beekeeping course put on by our local bee club. whoa. we're learning so much amazing information. and in our morning meeting today we decided that we're overwhelmed enough with all that we want to get done this year that we're satisfied just to begin to do these learnings and to make these connections and that we're going to hold of on actually deciding to get hives and care for colonies on our own.

one exciting thing that happened in last week's class is that i met this guy who brought a cultured juice he makes from juice and champagne yeast, a culture he's been continuing for years now. now when he gets to the bottom of a bottle of his yummy fizzy juice concoction he swirls around the thick yeasty dregs and begins a new bottle by adding this starter to a new batch of juice. tonight i'm bringing him a scoby (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) mother from the kombucha batches i'm brewing. and today i started a new sauerkraut from the old kraut juices left in the crock and some new cabbage, carrots, and salt. fermenting and new fermenting buddies. yum yum.

oh yeah, and speaking of all we're planning on doing this year, that may as well be the topic of my next blog, eh? updates on community plans out here in my new life and adventures on the east coast. wa-hoo.

big fat tuesday

2008-02-05T20:16:00.000-08:00

oh happy happy mardi gras.

beautiful decay from an adventuresome day

for a while now (a couple weeks maybe?) asher's kept a small (to medium) fuss going when he's with me, and has seemed mostly happier when he's with other people. so that seems pretty clear that he wants to spend less time with me than with others. however, whenever he sees me, for the most part, he makes sounds and faces and gestures that indicate that he does want to be with me. confusing.

on my end, i'm lovng being with him in all the change he's going through: growing, crawling, continuing to explore his voice and his communicating with us, eating food (yesterday he had his first for-real-official food: mushed butternut squash; deeming him squASHER for the day), possibly beginning to sign (he makes a clenching and unclenching of his fist sometimes that looks like the sign for milk/nurse), spending more time with other people... and at the same time i'm super excited about being able to be settling into a home and diving into projects. i feel like i've been winding up for a real long time and now my legs are spinning and i really wanna touch down!

so aaron's thoughts about the situation are that asher and i are both wanting to spend time together and both exploring our autonomy, we're working on extracting ourselves from one another, becoming more of our personal selves in relation to the other. but it's a process and it's a big transition for both of us.

and then there's today: TODAY i took some time away (4 hours!) from asher and went on adventures. mary and karin kept him, gave him some more of the mushed squash, helped him use his new sippy cup from the thrift store, took him on walks outside, and generally had a fun, happy, and peaceful time together. wa-hoo! happy day for the little babes.

and happy day for me. bike adventuring; exploring the grounds of an abandoned farmhouse mansion; a malt, milkshake, and fries from the diner a couple blocks away; downtown mardi gras celebrations including free gumbo tasting, board games, and making new friends at the coffee shop. being out and about without asher kept being such a confusing thing that i decided i wanted to just defer to aaron and lisa: i made attempts at just turning that constant "tend the babe" voice off and let them steer me back when they thought the time was right. "right, yeah, of course. he's fine. he'll be fine without me." as nexus said, "wow, you're not just a dairy!" what a transformative day. yum yum yum

abandoned farmhouse

nexus, lisa, and me on the spiral stair fire escape at the mab

cultivating stillness

2008-01-24T13:44:00.000-08:00

"to meet everything and everyone through stillness instead of mental noise is the greatest gift you can offer the universe. i call it stillness, but it is a jewel of many facets: that stillness is also joy, and it is love." -eckhart tolle

the power of now is amazing.

i'm overcoming some of the painful stories i've come to tell myself. and remembering some of the beautiful stories i've had as a young'n and at various other points along the way. down with down, up with up.

on the more physical plane, there's now a little community blossoming in our little home in culpeper, virginia. there are seven adults and one asher baby living on the third floor of the medical arts building, a few blocks from downtown. (just about 3 blocks from the amtrak station if you're thinking about visiting...)

there's also 90 acres in nearby etlan that we're planning to build and garden on this summer. hopefully we'll have lots of work parties and events in the warm months for y'all to come out to. nudge. (:

and we're going to some hot springs on a visioning retreat next week to figure out how to fit all of our dreams into the span of our lifetimes. or something like that.

a whole new era

2008-01-23T15:43:00.000-08:00

so, hanging out in mary's office just now i set asher down in the middle of the floor, he sang a little song, then immediately crawled over to a piece of furniture and pulled himself up to standing. and... he's off!