It is an easy thing to dig potato trenches in the rain…

The most annoying part of digging four 20 foot long potato trenches in steady rain, I discovered today, is the dripping on my scalp. Bending over to wield the mattock, the rain hit my hair, then ran or dripped onto my scalp, mimicking the Chinese water torture we all heard about when we were kids. I can confirm: it is somewhat maddening. I wore the wrong boots and developed admirable clumps of mud and weeds on my soles, rendering walking a carnival act: think fun house not high wire. My shirt stayed dry in the front, but the back got gently, inexorably, saturated. Rinsing the mud off my hands by grasping the raindrop-beaded grass, I “dried” them on my shirt or pants. Soon my black winter hiking pants – my selection for the task since they are both waterproof and fairly warm – were a rich reddish color from the knees down from the mud, and a lighter shade of mud-tones on my thighs and butt where I wiped my hands.

The potato trenches were not in the plan for the day, but when I offered to do “anything” to be helpful, the farmer hesitated. Walking down to the garden area destined to be a potato patch, we talked about mulch and manure, and using potatoes as shock troops in the campaign to transform former lawn into garden. “Digging potato trenches is the heaviest, nastiest job,” she admitted, showing me how deep and how wide. “Come back to the greenhouse if you get sick of this.” Dig down to the solid clay with the mattock, ripping out weeds and grass, then follow with the spade, widening and deepening the trench to ready it for planting. No problem.

After the trenches were dug, I went back to the greenhouse and pricked off celeriac with two wwoofers. That was a fun sentence to write, partly because I know a translation is necessary: pricking off is gardenerspeak for replanting tiny seedlings from an open tray into tiny pots or six packs. Wwoofers are laborers that come from all over the world to travel and work on organic farms (WWOOF = world-wide opportunities on organic farms).

My potato trench digging reminds me of two quotes: in Much Ado About Nothing, the prince, Don Pedro, remarks to Leonato that “the fashion of the world is to avoid cost and you encounter it.” Of course, I remember this little throwaway phrase so well in part because the completely delicious Denzel Washington delivers it, and let’s face it – I hung on his every word in that flick. But my potato digging adventure struck a similar chord in my farmer. Her tone spoke volumes: “You want a heavy job? But the fashion of the world is to avoid work/effort/cost and you seek it.” Are you crazy?

The second quote is from William Blake’s The Price of Experience and is a wee bit darker. This one also reached me via pop culture: Van Morrison mumbles this poem in his song “Let the Slave.” Van’s ranting renders Blake’s words almost frightening but so evocative, I find myself recalling them frequently.

What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song?

Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price

Of all a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.

Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,

And in the wither’d field where the farmer plows for bread in vain.

It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer’s sun 

And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn.

It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted,

To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer,

To listen to the hungry raven’s cry in wintry season

When the red blood is fill’d with wine and with the marrow of lambs.

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements,

To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughterhouse moan;

To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast;

To hear sounds of love in the thunder-storm and destroys our enemies’ house;

To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, and the sickness that cuts off his children, While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door, and our children bring fruits and flowers.

Then the groan and the dolour are quite forgotten, and the slave grinding at the mill, And the captive in chains, and the poor in the prison, and the soldier in the field

When the shatter’d bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead.

It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:

Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me.

William Blake 1797

It is an easy thing for me to dig potato trenches in the rain, getting cold and filthy and exhausted when I know I can go home and change my sodden clothes, get warm and clean easily, and fill my belly with damn near anything I please, healthy or otherwise. I don’t take for granted my blessed and cushy life; I come to the farm ready to work: ready to do “the heaviest, nastiest job” laughing at the wrathful elements, aware that any of this can turn on a dime.

I am humbled by farm work, and in awe of my farmer. She lives what I dip my toes into each week. Farming is an impressively dirty enterprise, and a rather humid one as well. Much like other activities I find myself drawn to (bushwacking, yoga), I find farming to be a spiritual exercise. Farming’s every effort is a prayer of hope and a celebration of faith. Weather, insects, or bad luck be damned: I am planting seeds. I shall harvest.

And so I will continue to encounter “cost” despite the fashion of the world, because, deep down, I want to know what it feels like to be spent, to have left all of it in the potato trenches.

Productivity, Creativity, Angst and Homemade Bread: A Meditation on Unemployment

“I’m struggling with meaninglessness,” I announced while indulging in my pre-dinner glass of wine on the deck with my husband.

“Drink more water,” was his reply.

I laughed, because this is one of our standard jokes, and after five years of marriage it is really nice to share the intimacy of a standard joke.  But it wasn’t satisfying and I persisted.  “I think I have existential angst.”

“This isn’t new.  You felt this way when you had a job.”  Thank God for partners: his ability to hold the longitudinal thread of my vague restlessness is incredibly helpful.  I thought it was a symptom of unemployment.  Apparently not.

And apparently it isn’t going away.  Like a nasty cough or an annoying neighbor, this amorphous sense of dread, longing, and dissatisfaction with myself just keeps hanging around, offering snide comments or eating all my congo bars.

This week I will complete my first three months of unemployment.  It has been a huge lifestyle change, and I have embraced it with vim and vigor.  I chop wood and bake bread, and by doing so, managed to shave about $2500 from our family’s budget over these first three months.  While I hike or walk the dogs I wrack my brains for ways to continue that trend – to extend the savings beyond swapping wood heat for propane and homemade bread for storebought.  Almost everything I buy I look at askance: can I make this at home?  Beer is next, with tutelage from my husband, a former beer judge and president of the local homebrewer’s association.  I make bread, crackers, yogurt, dog treats, and human treats.  I am busy and productive, keeping the dogs walked and brushed, the laundry done, and the bills paid.  But the angst keeps circling overhead, like a damn vulture.

There is no question that I have been productive.  If you were of a mind to do so, you could tally up exactly how productive and assign a dollar value to it.  But the feeling that nags at me is in part a sense of not doing enough.  Not accomplishing enough, and discounting what I do accomplish as not valuable enough or just plain not good enough.  What the hell is this about?

It finally came to me the other day: I’m not writing.  I mean, I do write a blog post here and there, and a little something for Yoga Modern when I can, but I’m not working on any major creative project.  I’m not plying my trade or honing my craft or whatever you might want to call it.  I’m productive as all get out, but I’m not being creative.  Or if you want to argue that baking bread and making yogurt are creative, then I’m not being creatively self-expressive.  And I have the time to notice.

I admit that having the time and mental space to notice and acknowledge angst is a luxury.  When working full time, I really did just address the minimum daily requirements and fall into bed exhausted every night, barely aware of any emotion unless it was cranked up to eleven.  And when the internal pressure mounted, I wrote, even when I was working full time.  In fact all three of my novels were written while working full time and mommy-ing full time.  So what’s going on now?

I don’t know.  Self-doubt, a la “Am I really a writer?” – yup.  But that’s ever present.  Procrastination as a front for laziness coupled with fear of commitment?  Sure.  But that’s pretty much eternal too.  What is different is that I no longer have the external structure of a job.  I no longer have the distinction between “my time” and time that is owned by someone – anyone – else.  The restructuring of my time, creating routines, and protecting sacred creative space are all brand new to me – I’m only three months in and still feeling my way along the walls, not yet figuring out how to strike a match and shed some light on this new place.

I have ideas: two of them to be exact.  And I think I’m afraid of them both in totally different ways.  Scared they’ll be boring, scared they’ll suck, scared they’ll be exactly as all my other ideas have been: meh.  Not too bad, but not worth the years of my life spent developing them.  And yet I know I can’t not write them (apologies for the double negative).  They’ll stalk me to my death, hissing and snarking, taunting and seducing me until I write every last lousy word.

Everything I have learned about myself, life, and angst, over the past 45 years allows me to say with great confidence that I will get started when I’m good and ready, and that no amount of blogging, whining, or angst-ing will change that.  But awareness will and already has.

Culture Shock

Guest post by Maya Fischer

Culture shock sucks. Most people only experience culture shock in the first stage – the honeymoon stage. This is the first few months in a new culture where everything, the food, the music, the language, is new and exciting. For most people, this is a vacation. And then they return home to their lives in the culture they have been living in for many years. For some people, they may move and decide to live in a new country and experience culture shock in its entirety. Then they are a part of this new culture and everything is peachy.

For those of us who are exchange students, we have it the worst. We leave our homes for one year and experience culture shock in all of it’s sucky-ness and then go home when we were just getting comfy.

Let me start at the beginning:

Culture shock has four stages. The first, being the honeymoon stage, is just that. Sweet, fun and light. Everything in this new culture is exciting and wonderful and the people love that you are an outsider and they have the opportunity to show you around their world. It’s great. And then the second stage sets in after about two or three months.

The negotiation stage: People don’t understand your hand gestures and laugh when you stumble over your words. You can’t find boxed macaroni and cheese and for some reason no one has ever heard of tap water. Life sucks. You miss your bed, your dog, and hell, you even miss the stupid commercials on television that made you sing along. You have seen behind the curtain of this new culture and it’s not as shiny as you thought.

Thankfully, this doesn’t last all that long. Next, is the adjustment stage. You realize you have memorized your bus schedule and know where to find a good cup of desperately needed coffee after school. You can understand and mimic the slang your friends speak and find that you can’t quite remember what your bed smells like because your bed is the one you have been sleeping in for the past few months. You’re on your way and you feel confident that soon you’ll actually be able to understand this dang dialect (maybe).

Lastly, and this is what sucks for exchange students, is the mastery stage. It hits all at once. Maybe you were sitting on the bus after school, just watching the cars zoom by. Or grabbing a chocolate bar in a Müller during lunch. Or perhaps you were sitting in your favorite cafe writing an essay for school when the waiter brought you a peppermint tea you didn’t order and a free slice of cake. But it hits you. This is your new culture. You’re a part of it. No longer trying to master the hand gestures and the innuendos. You are there, baby.

And then you realize you’re leaving. And soon. You have just mastered climbing the great fucking wall of China and someone tells you that it doesn’t matter. You’re going home soon. The year is almost over and you are just getting started. You have found yourself in a whole new country and love being a part of this new culture when BAM you’re packing your bag and getting on a plane back home. But it’s no longer home because you just were home! It’s a mindfuck. And it’s worst for exchange students, because we see it coming. We know it’s going to happen. Heck, in the beginning, we were wishing for it. And now, we’ll do anything to stay.

Culture shock sucks.

Cracker Jack

My husband calls him Cracker Jack.  I call him Jackjack or JackAttack, or Big Mac Attack.  He is our latest canine houseguest, a young male Belgian Malinois rescued from a neglect situation in Tennessee.  He was one of six dogs rescued; the rescue organization refers to them as the Tennessee six-pack.  Two adult females, two adult males, and two puppies (one of each) were removed from a muddy pen where they had spent their entire lives.  In Jack’s case, we think this means that for the past 3 or 4 years he has been living outdoors 24/7, with limited access to food, water, or shelter.  When he was picked up he weighed in at 35 pounds and he does not have a small frame.  He stands taller than my Iske and now weighs 42 pounds.  I hope to help him reach at least 60 pounds.

He arrived with great drama: while I was on my way to pick him up I received the call on my cell phone.  Jack is urinating blood and looking uncomfortable and ill.  I arranged with the emergency clinic in Kingston to be ready for us before even reaching Jack in Mahwah, NJ.  When he arrived, he huddled in a far corner of the SUV that drove him up from the Pennsylvania border, reluctant to come anywhere near me.  His driver coaxed him out, and walked him: more blood.  I noticed how distended his belly looked: he looked like those horrible photos of starving children with huge empty bellies.  Jack’s head and limbs were dwarfed by his barrel-belly.  And he looked miserable.

We drove him straight to the ER, and x-rays revealed possible bloat.  He was barely able to walk, moving slowly and carefully as if everything hurt.  I left him there, to be rehydrated, watched, and possibly have his stomach emptied if it didn’t subside on its own.  He was started on antibiotics for a urinary tract infection as well.  All in all, not an auspicious start to our foster care arrangement.

The next morning he got the green light to go home.  Apparently overnight he had had a “massive diarrhea blowout” (the vet’s words) and was feeling much better.  He was described as “ravenous.”  I think the word fits, body and soul.

At home, like any Malinois, he just wants to be with a person.  He loves my husband and me equally, and seems very open and willing to connect with people.  He is not playful, not interested in walking or chasing wildlife, no desire to interact with my dogs at all.  He doesn’t want to be outside much at all.  All this, I suspect, will change, as his body and heart heal.  He is still very much in crisis, still recovering from years of deprivation and torture.

Yes, torture.  Sounds histrionic but it is an accurate description of what these dogs were tolerating.  Malinois, as much or more than any other breed of dog I am familiar with, need to be with their people.  They suffer, mentally and physically, if they are not committed in a monogamous relationship with their beloved.  They thrive when the bond they develop with their person is treated as paramount and explored and enriched on a near daily basis through shared challenges and activities.  My pack and I accomplish this through hiking: together we take on a mountain and work at making it up and back down safely.  My dogs help me with navigation – sometimes fresh snow or thick brush will cover a route and their noses show me which way to go.  Sometimes they show me the best way through a cliff band or around some rocky ledges.  Sometimes I lift or carry them over some particularly tricky spot.  Together we look out at viewpoints, and I know they are all the better for having worked with me to reach this place.

Other people grow their bond in other ways: any of the canine work or sports, from search and rescue to dock diving, offer opportunities to deepen and hone the human-canine bond.  That is what malinois need, and that is what sets this breed apart.  They hunger to grow in relationship to you, and they make you grow.  They are only limited by your limits and they let you know that.  Then they inspire you to move beyond where you were stuck, doing so with love in their hearts.

The Allure of the Pick-Up

Truck, that is.  The pick-up truck is a country road staple, as quintessentially “upstate New York” as aging apple orchards and aging hippies (at least in Woodstock and Ithaca). All kinds of pick-up trucks grace our back roads – gleaming new Ford F150s, and rotted out Isuzus from the 1980s and everything in between.  There are work trucks, manly trucks, mid-life crisis trucks, and trucks because that’s all anyone in this family ever drove.

Pick-up trucks are gas guzzlers.  They are two-seaters that gorge out on fuel – the more handsome and sleek they are, the more you should worry.  Add in four-wheel-drive and your gas mileage just took a nose dive.  They are ridiculous commuter vehicles, and even more absurd “drive to the mall” vehicles.  If you are driving to the feed store to stock up on 50 pound sacks of feed, ok.  Somehow I doubt that’s what the teeming hordes of pick-up truck owners are doing with their trucks when I see them driving around out there.  The best of them might get 20 miles to the gallon.  Compare that with my diesel Jetta: 45 mpg in the winter, 50 around town in the summer.  That’s why I bought it: 5 seatbelts and a “way back” for gear or garbage, with an eco-consciousness that could satisfy even the eco-fascist I have become.

I wash out and reuse plastic bags.  I have solar panels on my roof.  I only wash my clothes in cold water and I never use my dryer, relying instead on the convection heat from my woodstove, which burns standing dead wood I cut on my own property and split by hand (nope, not even a rented log splitter for one day’s worth of use).  No fossil fuel burned to make my heat… well, almost none.  You see I own a pick-up truck.

But I digress.  I only eat low on the food chain, and only buy food from local farmers (that’s a tiny white lie – I *mostly* buy food from local farmers… so far I haven’t discovered a durum semolina farm locally, so I am still purchasing pasta and rice from Far Away).  I buy raw milk from a farm down the road.  Tom’s colleague provides us with eggs from his chickens.  I feed my dogs poultry from another local farm, and kibble that is made in the USA of organic ingredients.  We don’t have cable or satellite television, and read out loud to each other for entertainment in the evenings.  I bake all our bread.  White vinegar is the only cleaning fluid you’ll find in this house.  I am a registered yoga teacher, for heaven’s sake!  I reek eco-purity.

But I do own a pick-up truck.

Ok, truth be told, I don’t own it.  Tom owns it.  But I own Tom (wink) so I guess it really is mine.  And I love it.

I love driving it.  I cruise down the back roads and give that little fingers-just-lifted-off-the-wheel salute to all the other pick-up truck drivers I pass.  I don’t smile; that would be too enthusiastic.  I am smug in my high clearance, four-wheel-drive, off road package brute.  Sometimes I sit on the tailgate to deal with my gear before or after a hike, but mostly I climb up with a rough and tumble devil-may-care coarseness, as I sling something in or out of the bed.  I haven’t ever sat barefoot on the hood drinking warm beer and soft summer rain, but I feel like the heroine from a Bruce Springsteen song every time I ride shotgun with my husband at the wheel.  I can’t park it or complete a three point turn in fewer than seven points, but I’m sure my credibility doesn’t suffer too much.

So what is it about the truck that turns me into Daisy freakin’ Duke?  Admittedly, I don’t indulge in this nonsense often, but bad weather or a load to haul will send me scurrying for the keys.  We even keep a knife on the truck’s key ring because, let’s face it, if you’re a truck-driving kind of gal, you probably will have some use for a knife before the day is out, even if it’s just to pick your nails.  I enter a hazy world of denial, shattered by a visit to the gas station, when I drive the truck.  I pretend it is all ok.  The truck coddles me, and makes me believe I am safe – safe in the world in the most general, global, universal way I can imagine.  The truck is like a symbol of the all-powerful all-American good daddy that will protect me and keep me safe from the scary bad world out there.  It is Clint Eastwood and Rocky Balboa all wrapped up in Bruce Willis.

The crazy thing is, when I drive the truck I feel like I joined the club of truck-driving men, and suddenly the world feels a whole lot less threatening.  My attitude does this total shift from uptight eco-czarina who scrimps and saves at every turn to abundant truck-driving friend to all.  I radiate benevolent warmth and good will, and feel safe capable of handling whatever comes my way.  After all, I’ve got the truck.

 

Maya and Anne

They call my generation the “sandwich” generation.  I am sandwiched between two women.

One recently moved to a different state, one thousand miles from where she had been living for nearly a decade.  She joined a progressive community group and began volunteering at her local food pantry and clothing closet.  In her spare time she takes tennis lessons and plays on a competitive team.  She found the local farm in her urban locale that offers fresh local produce and buys there whenever she can, despite the fact that she does not own a car.  She campaigned for Obama in the last election and regularly sends me political (and raunchy) emails.

The other woman recently moved to another country.  She is living a fully bilingual life, functioning in a language she barely knew three months ago.  She manages public transportation on a daily basis to do all she needs to do.  She is attending a demonstration against censorship this weekend (I have the pleasure of being able to utter an awesome phrase: “have a great time and don’t get arrested!”), but must be back in time to attend a video interview with an Ivy League university.  She’ll be back home in the United States next summer, but won’t spend much time living at home: she is already exploring opportunities for projects elsewhere.

These two women inspire and impress me.  They both defy the stereotypes of what women their age might do.  I am lucky and blessed to have them both in my life.  And yes, in case you don’t recognize them from my description, they are my mother and my daughter.

Unemployment, Or Defining What You Do By What You Aren’t Doing

I got dressed the other day in street clothes for the first time in two weeks.  Not hiking clothes and not yoga clothes, I actually took off my pj pants and donned real shoes (cowboy boots for those of you that need to know) and went out to visit a friend.  Not working has been like that: not leaving the house unless I’m going hiking or going to a yoga class for 10 days at a clip.  This is fascinating and noteworthy to me, not a complaint or a concern but simply of interest.  I’m shifting into a life that is defined by what I’m not doing (going to work), and apparently by what I’m also not wearing.

The house gets pretty freaking quiet by about 3:30 p.m. each day.  My own thoughts are loud; my voice, when I speak to the dogs, echoes self-consciously in my head.  I am busy all day every day but my head is starting to get a little emptier.  I have stopped having intense disturbing work dreams every night.  I think the psychic purge is over and I’m starting to settle into this new “routine.”

I say routine with quotes because there is no routine.  Each day has the same routine it had when I did go to work: walk the dogs at daybreak.  Walk the dogs after breakfast.  Feed the dogs in the afternoon.  Walk the dogs again.  Stoke the fire.  Make dinner.  There are vast expanses of mental energy and hours on end that are unaccounted for in between those six activities.  Some days I fritter them away.  Some days I hike.  Some days I don’t really know what happened – it was all a mishmash of dinky tasks, laundry done and bathrooms cleaned and stuff.  Stuff.

I have time and space to think.  I can notice both my own inner workings and real world stuff I need to address.  And then I can address it.  I can think a thought through from beginning to end without getting interrupted.  Mostly what I’m noticing so far is how grateful I feel for this opportunity to stop.  And along with the gratitude is a hefty dose of guilt and a complete inability to hold still: I drank the work ethic Kool Aid.  So far since getting laid off 13 days ago, I’ve split half a cord of wood, climbed 8 mountains, scrubbed the mildew off the bathroom cleaning, written 8 articles, made several loaves of bread, attended two yoga classes… but I still feel like I don’t do enough.  I’m still keeping track, counting up the accomplishments, weighing and measuring to determine worth.  I discount those things I do for me, looking for worth by being productive for the good of others.  Loading music onto my MP3 player doesn’t count as being productive.  Cleaning the bathroom does.

Hiking is the magic two-for-one miracle.  It is for me.  It is completely for me.  It is my church and my yoga class and my therapy session and my visit to the gym.  But it does double duty as my dog walk.  Better than the perfunctory three mile road walk that we manage on days when we can’t get into the woods, hiking restores my dogs’ sanity as well.  There is nothing so peaceful as Iske, Cinder, or Lily after a full day in the woods.  They are content to their very bones.  And being surrounded by three beings that radiate pure contentment is for me too.  Win-win.

I have no idea how long this will last or what will come next.  I have never lived this way before, and stand in awe of my ability to tolerate the not-knowing.  This watching and noticing and staying with it, whatever it might be, is my yoga.  Those yoga classes I keep buying online?  They are fine.  I get off my chair at the computer, and in population for a while.  I stretch and tone like the rest of the female population in America.  But my yoga practice is happening somewhere else.