Blog o’ Gnosis

Okay, so I’m out in the yard on Saturday getting it ready for May Day. The biggest task remaining is preparing the tree that will be the maypole. It is already cut down, which is good, and the branches are all cut off, very good. But it’s got this thick bark on it, and lots of short little nubby former-branch parts, that have to be somehow smoothed down in a week’s time. Distressingly, no one has shown up to offer to do this work for me. No strapping fisherman from down the street, no neighborly construction guy who just happens to have a draw knife in his back pocket. Not even any nearby lesbian phone company repair-type who’s not afraid to use a chainsaw.

Today I got the news that the only son of an old friend of mine is dead, a suicide at age 18. I have been sitting with this unbearable loss all day, wondering how it is that we pick ourselves up and go on with our lives after such a tragedy. He had had a turbulent youth and was beginning to exhibit signs of a mental instability that runs in his family. I don’t know all the details but I know very well the effort involved in trying to protect and shepherd an unstable youth into adulthood before he causes irrevocable harm to himself or others. It is exhausting, thankless, relentless. We do as much as we can, and being human there is always a moment we let down our guard, our constant vigilance. It is called rest, sleep.

Today I was out at Laguna Farm helping a friend with her computer. I took Vince out to stretch his legs after awhile and wandered around the farm, which is at the edge of the Laguna de Santa Rosa. We meandered in the glorious afternoon sun past sheds, trailers, chickens, fallow and planted beds towards [...]

What a weird year this is. First our New Year’s flooding and drenching gives way to a balmy, gorgeous January, and everyone is worried that winter is over and the rain has gone. Then Wednesday we finally got a single sunny day in the midst of over a month of straight rain, with more rain on the way through April. There is just no making sense of the weather anymore.