From The Half-Red House

Here are some scenes I filmed this week at the Darling Hill Community Farm, where I had volunteered to do some watering.

The farm got off to a slow start this year, due to the fact that the male partner of the farm-couple has gone to prison and both morale and labor have been hard to muster. Nevertheless the first CSA pickup has happened, and things will work out  OK with a little help from friends and neighbors.

The young man went to prison because of a serious offense, but he has left a huge gap in the community that supports and is supported by the CSA. Like the boy in Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories who had both “wishes and freckles”, this young man had dreams, and one of those dreams was to live independently on a boat; another, of course, was to farm this land.

The unfinished boat on the farm is a testimony to the fact that there are no such things as evil or good people, only evil or good acts. I’d prefer to think we are each the best thing we’ve ever dreamed or done, and not the worst.

I attended a beautiful posthumous birthday party for a young friend who was murdered. Her friends and relatives planted a magnolia tree in her honor, and the Amandla Chorus sang a number of beautiful songs. The Concord Feminist Health Center, where she had worked while studying for her nursing degree, sent out a poem she had written, which consists of a list of statements beginning “I believe..” Some of these statements are zen-like and paradoxical, some are a puzzle to me (Who are David Hasseldorff and Michael Knight?), and some hit home rather strongly.

I believe in Steiner, Goethe, Schiller, Lucifer and Ahriman

I believe in good and evil, and neither one is wrong

I believe the imagination is real

I believe that love does not conquer all but is definitely a deciding factor

The background music of the video is improvised folk tunes played in a stairwell on a b-flat pennywhistle.

Last night I had a persistent dream that combined elements of my stay in Boston last week, the pervasive graduation-time ambience we are are all swimming in, a remarkable video by the Danish folk singer Edward Mikalski (http://www.myspace.com/edwardmikalski and http://www.myspace.com/shepted see below) and the twin horrors of the BP Oil Spill and the Gaza nightmare. Two of the characters in the dream were grey rats named Marvin and Green, who lived in the litter-choked sub-basement of an academic building not unlike the ones I work in at U Mass Lowell (Don’t remind me I’m late already ).

In the dream, I met Marvin during an interlude in a graduation ceremony, after hearing “uplifting” speeches about how bright the future is supposed to be. I was walking down a corridor with a companion, in some kind of hurry, when Marvin’s deep, cultured voice spoke to me from somewhere in a heap of litter in the room we were passing by, ” You humans really do need to pay attention to nature, you know. You’re dying and we need to talk. In many ways, you’re just like us.”

My companion just said, “That’s Marvin; everybody here knows Marvin.”

Marvin introduced me to his friend Green, who also had a charming voice and manner. These were not cartoon rats or threatening rats.

Most of what Marvin had to say got lost in the waking-up time, but he had profound wisdom to convey, mainly through his demeanor.

I met Marvin several times during the dream, in various places. Our farewell meeting, Marvin was perched on an ivy-covered wall and gave me the  sad news that Green had disappeared and was presumed dead.

On Thursday night, I walked in the rain from the Boston YMCA where I was staying, across the river to Cambridge. On the way, I approached an old homeless man pushing a heavily-laden shopping cart just  as a woman walking a pit-bull crossed the street to enter her apartment. The dog started menacing the old man and tugging on the leash, and the woman made a special effort to pull the dog close and discipline him. She said some friendly words of apology to the old man, who went on his way. I remember details of the old man, the shopping cart, the woman’s face that are impossible to describe, but which came from a brief lifting of the veil of expectations and stereotypes that surround me most of the time.

Last night I had the good fortune of seeing this video. We’ve all heard the story of the lotus that rises from the muck at the bottom of the pond to produce a beautiful, pure flower that floats above the polluted water. Here it is illustrated in a striking way. Doesn’t the scummy oil-sheen look like a Matisse painting? Isn’t that bird speaking to us?

One great way to prepare for the year to come is to slow down and walk a labyrinth. (It’s also an opportunity to donate to vital local services if you live in the Peterborough NH area.)

Everything slows down to “one foot in front of the other” for a half-hour or an hour. It has to be experienced; it can’t be described.
Here’s a video you might like:

I finally got the coyote to slink behind (or is it inside?) the machine.

Coyote is an archetypal trickster, and he is always getting inside things that are normal and makes them non-normal. The images on which this is based are in freely licensed through the Wikimedia Commons. I hope you’ll bear with me while I do some fumbling

Last night I dreamed, among other things, that a fleet of dumptrucks came to my house and dropped piles of miscellaneous construction debris in our parking area, blocking our cars from leaving. This was big chunks if houses, roofs, even the complete frame of a one-story house. Each piece of wood and metal had a purple tag that said FOR SALE: MAKE AN OFFER. I called the police and complained and they told me that everybody in town had gotten the same number of house-shards delivered. It seems the destruction from last year’s ice-storm (about this time last year, hmm) had wrecked many houses and the town couldn’t afford to dispose of the rubble, so they were holding a kind of town-wide yard sale to see if they could raise some money by selling it. (in my dream I was able to see the pristine lawns in other parts of town covered with the same kind of debris.) I said, “But this is our driveway and we can’t get out!” The policeman at the other end of the line answered that I just needed to find someone with a truck who wanted to buy it. Everyone in town is in the same position.

I am somehow reminded of the health-care plan that has been so badly bungled by Congress… everybody now will have to buy health insurance from gouging mega-corporations, whether they can afford it or not; this is a burden that falls so unfairly, so heavily on some and so lightly on others. Please, why can’t we just raise taxes enough to dispose of all the debris as a town? Why can’t we afford something good for all of us as a nation instead of making it an individual financial transaction?

Denise woke from sleep this morning to tell me of a dream in which the two of us had bedded down on a sidewalk, and a Quaker friend, Judy, walked by and asked us what we were doing there. In Denise’s dream, I gave a long answer about the plight of the homeless and the need to be in solidarity, but Denise answered, smiling, “I just love the sidewalks of New York”.

My dear friend Kilsoquah (www.myspace.com/bluebirdsarefree ), who lives in Tucson had posted a notice that she was attending an event at The Bitter End on Bleeker Street in New York (http://event.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&eventID=506574.35532), and it occurred to me she might visit us on our patch of sidewalk after the show, in Denise’s dream-space.

I think both

Yesterday evening, I experienced what what Quakers call “being held in the light” by friends here on MySpace.

There was a very difficult issue that had to be resolved at our Land Trust meeting, and I found myself becoming more and more upset as the time of the meeting approached. I was also experiencing laryngitis and generally feeling physically lousy. I released part of the anxiety by obsessing about the Honduran coup, which took my mind off this more immediate problem for a while. Finally, I posted a “status report” here asking for “prayers and good thoughts” as Denise and I headed down the hill to the meeting.

I’m thinking a lot about the dear friends I’ve never met who are gathering for the solstice at Stonehenge today. I’m still not sure how we’ll celebrate solstice here, but I sense that the effect of all these people peacefully gathering in that spot at that time will be felt everywhere. If you have time, you might want to read this blog form someone who has been involved in organizing the event. (http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=101578661&blogId=495872315)