Today Is the Greatest Day I've Ever Known

Not for any particular reason. But don't you find it more satisfying to live every day and believe every day is the greatest? It makes life so...great. Cause it's a choice, right? Every minute of every day, how you're going to do it, deal with it, love it or hate it. And hate is, in general, a waste of time. Sometimes a good mechanism for self defense, but mostly a severe waste of the prescious time we have here on this lil' planet that's slowly, but surely, melting away, only to freeze us back into an ice age we cannot even concieve of with the information we have in the history books so far. We have an idea, but no real idea. No first hand experience. Just fossils of things that were frozen in time. Which is what we, or our children, or our children's children and their domesticized animals will be.

It's not depressing, really. Just what is.

I'm in No. Wisconsin again and these are the things that cross my mind as I drive and see no snow on the fields. Or industrial (a.k.a. mass) farms along side the road. We know those aren't good for community's water systems. I believe it's not good to eat meat form them for a myriad of reasons. One of which is that you're eating fear. And fear, no matter what body it's in, is transfered from being to being. And no matter how indominable your spirit, no one single human being can absorb that. It's accumulated and whether it's from the chemicals the animals on whom we feed are fed or from the negative energy they harbor through their lives into their deaths, we get cancer. And we die painful, medicated deaths.

It's not really depressing. Just what is.

I think about this stuff a lot when I'm around my family. They've been with me on my vegetarian crusades (I'm not currently on one, but writing this reminds me why I might think I should be) and on my anti industrial farming bouts and pro community, local food campaigns (which I'm always on. I'm a true believer.).

I need to learn to farm. And do for myself and my family, because this system we're in, it's not going to last. It's unsustainable and our food stores in this country are inadeqate to sustain our nation's human population. Simply, the diversity of the food we farm is inadequate. Swaths of corn, potatoes; mega farms of pig, cow and chicken. Soy beans. The corn is fuel grade, not edible. If we come to dire straights, and we wll, we are screwed.

This is why I wanted to buy The Wilma in Missoula. But I can't do that. I don't have $5M to throw down. I would loooove to though. Love to foster a politicized community; have my own farm that sustains me and those close to me; be near fresh(er) water sources.

II

Today I had lunch with an old mentor. A woman who taught me in a program at Planned Parenthood for peer education, which I mentioned in a previous post. She really opened my mind up to some ideas I'd kind of shed as I got older, or to where I've come. It was really inspiring.

1. Peace Corps
2. World Health Organization
3. United Nations
4. Red Cross
5. "Think big. You've made this many rash decisions so far, don't go half assed."

Great advice, Jenny, thank you.

So I have a whole new revived energy for this...again. I love the idea of the Peace Corps. In Latin America. I come home bi-lingual, with credit going toward a graduate degree, sustained, on the ground professional and meaningful experience. A two year committment. What do you think of that? I'd come home, likely when I'm 29. 29 years old, friends. 29 years old.

III

Great books have been introduced to me. American Religious Poems compiled by Howard Bloom is the running favorite. And I started Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and was laughing out loud at a small U of MN bar today while I waited for Jenny (II). On page 10 and looking forward to more. Favorite bits so far (raions d'etre "reason for being" in French.):

-In context: little boy riding to the cemetary, presumably for his father's funeral, with his mother. "She was wearing the bracelet that I had made for her, and that made me feel like one hundred dollars. I love making jewelry for her, because it makes her happy, and making her happy is anohter one of my raisons d'etre."
-"because entomology is one of my raisons d'etre"
-"She was obviously mad at me, but I didn't know why. I hadn't done anything wrong. Or if I had, I didn't know what it was. And I definitely didn't mean to do it."
-"But I still couldn't figure out what it all meant. The more I found, the less I understood."

III.II

My mom loves Billy Collins. (I think it's hilarious that I just opened to "Victoria's Secret" which is the author's rendition of his experience flipping through a Vici Seci catalogue.) It's fun to read a poet who's living in the same times we are so the cultural references mean a little more. You're not stretching to understand; you're identifying.

IV

My dad has several nicknames for me, some of which are not in use. All I can remember are listed below:

1. Bubbles
2. Noodle Person
3. Sooz a doodle
4. Schnookums
5. Bunny

That's all I can think of at the mome.

V

What else?

VI

What not?

VII

I tried to think of a haiku on my drive past my old house today.

It was in a room
hidden in the back of the
house I part of you

It came easier this time.

VIII

I do not actually know Roman Numerals.

IX

I think this is the most appropriate Billy Collins poem, considering the title of this post:

The Only Day In Existence

The early sun is so pale and shadowy,
I could be looking up at a ghost
in the shape of a window,
a tall, rectangular spirit
looking down at me in bed,
about to demand that I avenge
the murder of my father.
But the morning light is only the first line
in the play of this day--
the only day in existence--
the opening chord of its long song,
or think of what is permeating
the thin bedroom curtains

as the beginning of a lecture
I will listen to until it is dark,
a curious student in a V-neck sweater,
angled into the wooden chair of his life,
ready with notebook and a chewed-up pencil,
quiet as a goldfish in winter,
serious as a compass at sea,
eager to absorb whatever lesson
this damp, overcast Tuesday
has to teach me,
here in the spacious classroom of the world
with its long walls of glass,
its heavy, low-hung ceiling.

X

Good night!