Reinvention

It's been months since I fiddled around the internet, plenty of time, no real purpose. Busy-ness has a way of making free time so sweet. I am half blind from staring at the screen, I have used over half my battery capacity; its delightful.
I have recently been feeling I am too old to be starting anything. People my age should know what they are doing, they should have arrived. Before you tell me how ridiculous I am, I knew that the moment I could identify the idea. But I still needed to wallow in it a bit, feel hopeless, cry, complain. Now I'm seeing things a little differently. I've identified an urge to reinvent. Its not inconstancy, its innovation, constant adaptation to the ever-changing moment. Just because I once loved the shape of my life doesn't mean I can't mould it into something new when the urge strikes!
I can't remember how much I've written about Camphill or the Beehive Creekside and I don't feel like going back to check. Basically the job I've had for the past year and a half, and the house I've lived in for a little less time than that, stopped being just right some time ago. It took me some months and some agony to get to the next step, because it will be challenging and that is not my usual m.o. But when I am sharing a meal with 12 people who all make there own very distinct kind of sense (not always apparent to others), when I am walking the paths through quiet woods or over windy hilltops, when I am singing with friends, when Barry is babbling to me about all the hungry people I have to feed, when I am making quarts of pesto and freezing gallon bags of kale that were grown just a stone's throw from the kitchen where I stand, and so many other things that take up my days in Camphill, I feel like I'm in the right place. And when I am in my little cottage by the creek, the quiet is so forceful that I can barely stand it. It used to be full, now its empty, I don't know of what.
That is how it has come to be that in August I will again pack myself up and move, this time into a house I will share with around 10 people, roughly half of which have developmental disabilities. I will work hard and share almost everything. Who can say what it will bring? Fullness, I hope.

News, such as it is.

I am so busy these days, sometimes even forgetting that I have email, occasionally posting a blurb on facebook that sums up my status at the moment. I have left some of you in the dark for too long!
Spring is bursting forth here after what seemed like an interminable winter. This past Saturday saw the opening of fishing season which heavily effects my tiny creekside road. The fish and game folks dump some poor trout into the stream on Thursday and by Saturday afternoon, after MUCH tailgating, they have mostly been caught. A few persistant fishermen still haunt the stream outside my bedroom window, making me less inclined to my usual exhibitionism.
About a month and a half ago, I fulfilled an 8 year long dream and cut off all my hair! Don't shreek, don't faint! It was hugely liberating for a person so largely identified by her hair all her life. It is now such a non issue, leaving me to feel that perhaps now people are free to notice who I am more than what I look like. Of course there is then the terrible possibility that who I am is not nearly as interesting as a mop of curly red hair, but I took a chance.
In a few weeks the village where I work will be putting on the Sound of Music. I haven't been in a musical since college and am more than thrilled to be in it. I am however playing Mother Abbess, so it's not exactly a glamorous part, but the music is quite good!
In light of that, I feel I really must leave you and go learn my lines. I hope Spring is tickling everyone's long-be-stockinged toes and leaving you feeling the thrill of possibility!

(200)8 Great Tunes

As I've said before, the volume of my posting seems to be in direct opposition to the fullness of my life, so I am actually delighted in a way to hardly ever have a moment to write!
But I do enjoy always enjoy compiling a short list music that sums up the year newly left behind. My compadre Jason Mraz came out with a new album and gave an outstanding performance at World Cafe Live in April. Lily Allen was a staple of our soundtrack on the January trip to Water Island. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova picked up a well deserved Academy Award for Falling Slowly. If you haven't seen their movie Once, you absolutely must! Also check YouTube for her acceptance speech at the Oscars. The rest are pleasant petals of a flowering year of joy and hope. Here's to a new year of even more for you me and the world!

1. New Soul - Yael Naim
2. Live High - Jason Mraz
3. LDN - Lily Allen
4. The Dynamo of Volition - Jason Mraz
5. Can I Stay - Ray LaMontagne
6. Make It Mine - Jason Mraz
7. Falling Slowly - Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
8. Everybody Got Their Something - Nikka Costa

Early Resolution

Last night I was reading Annie Lamott's Bird By Bird. I bought it at a used book store in Grass Valley (I have not been in Grass Valley since 2006!) and it has been my in-between reading ever since. I am generally a fiction reader. Having been read to at bed time by my parents long past a reasonable age, I am sort of addicted to a story before I drift off. But when I am in between novels, waiting for them to travel between libraries, I pick up Annie. She is so funny and real and encouraging, but I generally don't follow her advice, opting instead of sitting down and writing my 300 words a day to daydream about how much everyone will love me when my brilliant novel is a bestseller. But last night I read the chapter about why one should write. Her reasons were a million times more inspiring than promises of fame, fortune and validation (which, by the way, are almost certain not to happen). So, in preparation for the day when my aged tv no longer transmits broadcast signals, I am going to try each afternoon when I get home from work, instead of lying there letting crumbs of one kind or another cover my couch and my person while I watch celebrities promote their latest endeavors and compare pictures of their dogs and children, to sit down and write, in case there is something important to me (and possibly one or two other people on earth) waiting to be written. From time to time these attempts could show up here.
If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it, as most of her advice is well applied to any pursuit in life.

Say Cheese

As I have been here writing up a catering menu for the last two hours, I decided "what's a few more minutes?" But I am down to 33% battery and will be virtually blind when I finally look away from the screen, so really, only a few minutes!
On Sunday I learned how to make cheese! It's just another of my miraculous job benefits that I can now take a gallon of the milk given by my cow neighbors and in about 12 hours turn it into a wheel of creamy fresh cheese. Everybody i work with seems determined to be their own grocery as well! Yesterday my breakfast consisted of a slab of Saul and Jolynn's bread with a generous sliver of my cheese and a glass of Dane's kombucha. It's so freakin' satisfying to eat fresh and local!

Not that bad

The event so complained about over several days actually went off without a hitch and with lots of willing help! We even got a write up in the local paper; unfortunately the girl who wrote it didn't seem to understand what she was there to cover and there was no mention of the tasty food, our hours, or even that we are open to the public! Once my body sensed the event was winding down, it gave the all-clear to a nasty cold that had been in a holding pattern during the previous week. Sniff, sniff!
Between a weekend in the kitchen and sitting in the dirt around the fire at Madeleine's going-away party, I found myself in desperate need of the laundromat this afternoon. They are building a new drugstore next door (because, with one on every other corner, we were in need of more options?) and there was some traffic re-routing around the 'mat. I asked the guy in the hard hat if I was allowed to turn in across the closed lane and affirmed warmly. On my way out I thought I'd have to turn left and find a back route to were I wanted to go, but he saw me coming out, came over to my car and told me I could turn right but to watch the sign holder who would give me a signal. All pretty mundane stuff but I felt really taken care of. And the guy in the hard hat was very pleasant to look at!

Change

I recognize that I take a little longer than the average person to assimilate a change in plans. Part of my assimilation process includes complaining to a number of people about how terrible this change is and who I think is responsible. Not exactly enlightened behavior, but we need to have some faults, right?
Sunday is the Gala Opening for the cafe; a concert by a Venezuelan group followed by a reception which, until this morning, I thought was for about 35 donors and supporters of the renovation project. But no. Add the entire village and all the people who are apparently saving their rsvp for the last minute and I am told I should plan on about 150. Elegant, dainty hors d'oeuvres are really fun to make for a few, but for hordes they are a pain in the ass. Additionally, everybody seems to be very busy themselves and getting help has been like pulling teeth, plus everybody and their brother came for lunch today, preferring to come as close to closing time as they could manage, eating me out of soup, salad and hummus and generally magnifying my cranky mood.
Luckily some zen little part of me knows that it will all go swimmingly, everybody will be impressed with the reception and say lovely things about me and the food and I will probably, in the end, have a good time. Maybe some day I will be able to skip the middle step where I feel undervalued and mistreated and go completely with the flow!