hot wax.

i think i might have mentioned my um, “high interest” in wax and some of its joys.

all of them are fun, but in re-discovering the joys of self-depilation, i have firmly cemented my fetish as a fact of my personality. it is part of who i am. my father’s side is a hairy side (”swarthy” they sometimes call that) and i, well, i really just love ripping a whole patch of hair off myself all at once.

i made sugar wax yesterday, or Halawa, which ladies of the ancient “swarthy” races made use of, and still do. it is a simple thing – some sugar, water, and lemon juice, heated to a specific temperature then allowed to cool until it functions much like any other sort of wax applied to hairy skin and ripped off quickly – except that it hurts less, washes off with water and it’s made of simple, natural ingredients and taps into another little obession of mine – ancient grooming practices: ungents, waxes, paints… i have gone back to the land, but i’ve decided to go back only so far – i stopped somewhere around 5,000 years ago when women grew their own food, made their own ungents, ruled temples and dressed up for it. and so it is that i wear skirts with smooth legs whilst digging my hands in the dirt or blessing the appearance of the first calendula flower.

after the mixture cooled but hadn’t thickened yet, i stirred in single drops of chamomile, lavender, and tea tree essential oils and waited, waited and waited for it to relax to the right consistency.

miraculously, my first batch was a total go.  i spent the rest of the afternoon gleefully ripping hair off of myself out on the deck. a whole new world of wearing shorts to work has opened itself before me.

i know there are some issues involved – god forbid i attempt to be accepted at a rainbow gathering now…

it won’t happen, i know, because it never has, never would, and i’ve added myself back to the legions of women subscribing to what is apparently a societally influenced fashion that is not natural.

what’s natural is the fact that i can do this in my kitchen (and then on the deck) with three ingredients and that it feels good (and tastes good, actually – yes, even with the essential oils. Especially with the essential oils). what’s natural is that women have been doing this for thousands of years in preparation, mostly, for a ritual of some sort (and it’s a ritual in its own right). what’s natural (or maybe not, lol) is that i derive an intense amount of pleasure from the process and afterwards, i can’t stop running my hands over all this smooth, continuous skin. it’s not necessary, but if i can afford the time of the luxury, well, i can afford the dollar (truly) or so it costs to do it. the pain is quick and delicious like a spicy snack or an injection of cocaine (i assume, anyway – i thankfully possess an aversion to playing with drugs via bloodstream). maybe i should take the whole process to the rainbow gathering.

my dog lies dreaming at the foot of my bed – it is june already, almost the end of june and outside i’ve just heard the cry of a bird i’ve never heard before (it will take me about fifteen minutes before i am unable to duplicate the call mentally ever again). i haven’t heard any coyotes in a month, at least, and this saddens me. coming across highway 58 to Bakersfield, California, i saw a bunch of buzzards helping themselves to what was very obviously a dead coyote. it doesn’t seem to be a good season for coyotes. the owls have quieted, too. i wonder if it’s the heat or the trickle the water has become as we all wait for the rains to replenish us. i understand time is moving faster these days, even out here, so we don’t hope for rain, we don’t beg for it. out here, we gently wait for the rains to come, have faith and go on with our days. at least for now.

my yoga mat smells of fresh dirt. i am face down in child’s pose enjoying the scent, then i rise to downward dog and that spot in my back readjusts itself with a satisfying but quiet pop. it has been in the wrong place for days, a reflection of my overall state. with its repositioning, some endorphins are released and deep, oxygenating breaths bring my awareness to, tonight, my bloodstream (maybe it was that comparison i made between waxing and an intravenous shot of cocaine i made earlier in this piece).

i haven’t eaten much else other than brown rice and leafy vegetables this week, drinking lots of water and maté and water kefir. it is due to poverty as well as a desire to flush my system a bit and it’s working – i expect that’s why i’ve felt like i was swimming through molasses the past few days as the ole body started kicking out the jams and ridding itself of some heavy shit.

tonight i’ll go to bed a lot lighter and wake up a lot more energetic. tomorrow i get to wear shorts to work without scaring the customers – societal influences aside, when it comes to selling stuff, even piles of rocks, smooth legs make a difference.

Things I have learned from loving a man thirteen years younger than me… ***

1.    I am one lucky bitch.
2.    So what if he’s not intellectual? I’m accustomed to too much stimulation, he says, and have to get used to a more simple state of being.
3.    He is twenty-two. He is half-cherub and half-satyr. In the 1400’s I would probably be nearing death’s door as I approached my thirty-sixth year so yes, I still have issues about our age difference (key words being “I,” “have”, and “issues”). Part of me wonders why he isn’t experiencing some of these life’s greatest pleasures with someone his own age, someone with that air of freshness who isn’t jaded by experience and is still earnest enough not to need irony.  The other part of me is well-practiced in the art of now – wondering about the objectives of a playful universe is perhaps a pointless endeavor, especially if it means time spent doing something other than enjoying this experience to its absolute fullest while I can.
4.    Men his age generally travel pretty light. Men my age usually have enough baggage for both of us. Or children from a previous marriage.
5.    He had a terrible education. I explained Darwin to him and introduced him to Thoreau. He rubbed the neck of our 89 year old neighbor the other day after we finished helping her set up her garden. I will never forget the rapturous look on her face. Who couldn’t fall in love with that?
6.    Just because he’s young doesn’t mean he can’t be a freak. Bend that however you need to.
7.    He thinks I’m a beautiful goddess. Who am I to argue?
***You knew it was bound to happen, so don’t act shocked.

chicken politics

Here’s how it’s been lately – I’ve had a little angst, but nothing more than usual, I guess…
Okay, maybe a little more. Last night I dreamed that March 4th came to town and did a show – I was having a fun make-out session with one of the band members (no, sorry) when I woke up.
Coincidentally, about the time I was happily rubbing around in my dreams, my real-life loveliness decided to crawl in next to me and rub his skin up against mine.
I can’t remember most of the detail of my dream – I remember that the band was playing in Silver City but it wasn’t the Silver City I’m familiar with, and then there was a flash of dreamboat’s crazy blue eyes and devilish grin and some obviously impending sex and then I seagued straight into waking life and some obviously impending sex, and I still couldn’t figure out if I was angry about it or not.
I’m a little homesick for Portland – various, various aspects of Portland call me back, and then I am reminded that now is not just real life, it’s a practice round, too. I’m picking up all sorts of valuable skills I could go back to Oregon with, and probably find myself some work in some beautiful place. I’m learning a shit ton about how to (and how not to) grow food, xeriscape, companion plant, set up a pond, identify, prune and encourage growth of flowers. I’m discovering the politics of chickens and why grabbing one by the legs, tossing it into a canvas backpack and dumping it back out at the neighbor’s is actually the humane thing to do.
See, I could have just ate her instead, because she tormented my baby Bantee, a gray ball of fuzz with feathers all the way down to her feet.
My gray Bantee, also known as Henrietta (c’mon, every flock has one) has the feathery-ist feet I’ve ever seen on a chicken. . I have, at this point, seen a lot of chickens. But Chicken Little, the infamous little one I once wrote about in far fonder terms , went straight for Henrietta every day, viciously, and then incited the other two grown hens and the rooster to add to it all. They were terrorizing her, drawing blood from this poor chick, and yanking out her fluffy tail feathers. It was the most evil politics of  late elementary school, far beyond not getting picked for kickball. What goes on in the chicken coop can be downright disturbing sometimes.
Deep-seated issues? Oh, no, I’m fine with the fact that I didn’t get picked for kickball. Really. It meant I could go off to a quiet corner and note my observations instead.
Anyway…  the end result was that Chicken Little, one of my original crew, got relocated for the time being. At her new home she’ll be able to range freely again with a bunch of other hens (we can’t let ours do so at the moment so we’ve expanded the pen instead). She won’t, however, have a rooster to service any longer, or a rooster to protect her, either. My little flock of birds will now be able to integrate. I once sequestered the troublesome chicken and everyone else got along fabulously, even dustbathing together, though I’ve thrown a stick in an otherwise smoothly-cycling process: while they were asleep this evening I added two more to it, two little three month old Bantees with fuzzy feet – a rooster for Henrietta and another hen, just so there’s enough for both of the boys. The Bantees will hatch more chicks for us if we ever want them – they’ll sit on everyone else’s eggs and are such caring little birds it is said they could raise a baby kitten.  For us at the moment, however, this would result in some of the ugliest chickens in existence – if you’re feelin’ inclined, google yourself some pics of aricaunas (our Rooster) and Polish hens and try to imagine that result. Mostly I will probably just be happy and content with their tiny, high-iron eggs: for a girl who’s currently rocking a palm-sized bruise on her thigh, high iron anything is a good, good, good thing.
Also disturbing to witness is the deflowering of my teenage hens, of which Henrietta is one. Now that she isn’t scared to come out of the hen house, she’s up for a turn too. Roy is very, very big compared to her. At the moment, the earliest bloomer, of a type I can never remember the name of and simply refer to as “Butterball” instead as they are large and yellow, has taken the brunt of Roy’s newest affections though, thankfully. I unfortunately had to witness it yesterday, as any disturbance in the coop when I am home sends me running to protect the little gray chicken that lets me hold and comfort her every day.
I hope her little tribe works out alright in the bigger pen of things, and I hope Roy doesn’t get all egotistical on that tiny little rooster with fuzzy feet and a crow that sounds like the chicken equivalent to toddler. God, he’s terribly cute.
I got these two new additions from my “neighbors”, a Quaker couple that live about 15 miles further down our two-lane rural highway. They are ranchers who used to own a much larger, very well-known ranch called The Ponderosa (yes). After both of them reached their eighties, it was time to shrink it down a little.
The new ranch is a much smaller 80 acres. The husband, Gene, is now 94. He’s still completely functional and active – drives, ranches, and raises cattle and several different kinds of birds. He is a little hard of hearing at this point but has hearing aids. Elizabeth is now 89. She is also mostly coherent, a master gardener with a little less short term memory now. She also has hearing aids. They are assisted by a Mexican ranch hand in his sixties who speaks Spanish, mostly. He is also hard of hearing. Somehow or another things get done.
They also have a steady influx of friends and neighbors coming through to help, and us, too – we go over once a week or so and work in the garden with Elizabeth, though I always take a detour to Gene’s aviary so I can watch the little Bantees and the peacocks and turkeys as they strut.
Why is this so fascinating to me?
I don’t know, but I could happily help someone else out doing this. I envision myself with a yurt, some neat furnishings and a good wood stove and the Oregon forest, taking care of the chickens and plants, my dog snoring away in her bed at night right next to mine.
I could see this, which is why I can also much more easily see this, what I’m doing right now. I feel isolated but lucky about where I am with the time, opportunity and freedom to learn the things I’m learning, things I could put to use anywhere again, especially in places of beauty and serenity.

bugs

it is insect season again.

i am studying things on a microscopic level – tiny green aphids, a tiny praying mantis, tiny plants in tiny pots that i have everywhere…

i have to deal with the aphids but i can’t until the mantis moves somewhere else.

i don’t know their names but i watch them grow and flower and i collect their seeds and scatter them all over a certain spot in the front of the house – we’ll see what happens.

in the meantime it is critter season. a laptop at night is a sort of Mystery Science Theater of various moths, gnats and mosquitos in silhouette floating around the screen as i write. it can be distracting, but at least the sound of my typing masks the dooming buzz of an impending itch.

i should be outside under the stars.

*sigh*

but in the meantime i’d like to go back to talking about that tiny praying mantis. this is the second time i’ve seen one this tiny – i can’t tell whether it’s a baby or a miniature but it is just as fascinating, either way. the green aphids cover a small set of green chili seedlings and the mantis was there, i assume, to chow down. ants, too, have gotten in on this, and i haven’t ever seen as many green aphids in one place as i have just now. paired with the mantis, it is a mostly unparalleled microscopic drama.

the front of the house is exploding with flowers – bunches of sexy columbines, pink roses, yellow roses, and tiny orange ones on a tiny bush that comes up to my thigh. there are irises everywhere and wildflowers. everything is flowering and i am obsessed to the point of considering, one day, sitting in front of a bunch of new squash sprouts for a day just to see if i can actually witness plant movement as they rise toward the sun. they grow so quickly. i finally have the time and space to notice stuff like this.

too, i am perhaps slipping a bit far into it but  (and that might actually be the point). i wanted to be somewhere i could holler without interference for a while and i’m pretty sure i got what i asked for.

i have become a fanatic, and quickly.

despite this, i question my dedication to a desert. were it not for the river and soil,  and the proximity to hot springs, national forest, organic produce and friendly, cool people, neither of us would probably be here. i watched a movie the other night called “Humboldt County”. It was kinda corny and kinda not and i found one of the lead characters  incredibly attractive in a way i’d previously found other kinda scruffy boys living out in the northern california woods, doing what the character was doing.

i will readily admit that despite the miniature nature circus i observe daily here, glimpses of the forest in the movie made me feel a little achy for a change of more humid scenery.

i am enjoying my close-enough proximity to a town of 10,000. i can go in, and i can leave, and when i get home thirty minutes later i breathe a sigh of relief and listen to wind and birdsong. so i’ve been toying with a little fantasy of having a set-up like this in southern oregon or northern california or somewhere, 30 or 40 minutes from a decent dose of culture and lovely people but enough isolation that i could carry on with the in-depth studies of things i feel like i should be pursuing for the next good while.

it’s a fun fantasy, and not out of the question either – when i’m not busy focusing on a truly beautiful present, i let my mind carry away with this and in the meantime i learn about growing stuff in this violent sun.

throat opening…

t’s like heroin, and I’d forgotten. it had been five years or so since I’d read anything.

Back then it was twice as difficult. I do attribute some of it to the medicinal puff I never seemed to be able to avoid beforehand, and some more of it might have been attributable to the three or four glasses of wine i’d drink as the other participants performed – i’d be paranoid, self-conscious, completely introverted and drunkenly nauseous, generally, by the time i stepped up on stage.

i am aware of the point of memorizing your work – it is, in part, so that you can actually perform the piece, so that your hands are free to flap and gesticulate or twitch nervously underneath a podium where no one can see you ripping off your cuticles one by one.

also, if i’m reciting a memorized piece, no one can see how badly my print-outs are vibrating from a strange, strange nervousness that has nothing to do with my throat chakra.

it has everything to do with the space between my eyes and the space inside my chest.

but fuck it. i had a couple of them memorized, and i was far too nervous to perform them. i am not much of a performer anyway, but i want people to hear my words and they don’t read the same way to everyone – not unless i speak them out loud how they were meant to be spoken. and the thing is, once i’m up there, it comes out the way it should – all while my paper rattles and my memory fails me and my eyes remain glued to the page.

this, and i was considered sober. i’d had coffee and a cigarette, neither of which i’d had in a week, and probably a bad idea since it sent me into minor digestive distress along with a good case of the jitters – but i’d grown up just enough to realize that there are a few things in life that are actually better off done not stoned, and so relievingly, the introverted self-absorption and endless tangenital prattle were not present. given the digestive relief marijuana can offer, however, don’t think i wasn’t thinking about it.

my cuticles are fine today. it went really well, as a matter of fact, and then of course i got stoned, had a couple of glasses of wine and devoured some ridiculously gourmet french fries.

i had to stop and get some rolaids on the way home. for fuck’s sake.