"april showers bring may flowers"

...or so tells me Wes, the self labelled "gardener and landscaper," whom i met at the hardware store last week. we had a short conversation on our way from the customer service desk to the bathtub supplies over in aisle 23, in search of a basin plug (for CLC's outdoor, fire heated bathtub). Mr. Wes was quite excited at the prospects of more rain because "it really will be better for the flowers. i'm a gardener; i know." i wonder if that phrase ("april showers...") was created to appease the cabin-fever-stricken masses at the thought of yet another day wishing for summer, or if this quip-writer was just as excited as Wesley at the prospects of yet another sun-blocker in the height of spring. i must say, it was quite refreshing to speak with someone so enthusiastic about the rain. my dear friend Wes has invited me to probe deeper into my unappreciation of these magical morsels which fall from the sky. (especially living in the desert!)

so as i look out over the glaring laptop to the hazy skies and pounding drops outside, i'm trying to remember that this blessed rain serves a greater purpose than to keep me and the ten other folks up in cuyama today packed inside the kitchen tent. what about the may flowers? without these dreary days, they could not be; they are a product of balance between the light and the dark.

on a lighter note (humorous, not arid or clear or blue), this brief visit to stormy skies reminds me of the seemingly endless days spent this winter avoiding the rain. wait... avoiding the mud. you see, all around camp we have this hard packed dust-dirt that serves as our pathways. and, these lifeless paths double as a sponge, soaking up every raindrop so that in just a few minutes of significant rainfall, the walkways have turned into slick puddles of mud, threatening at every footstep to send one to their muddy doom. and, well, human and animal feet alike all collect copious amounts of the wet dust, spreading it over all visible horizontal surfaces. the kitchen floor is the worst affected, making it difficult to imagine the white lanolieum under the layers of chocolate brown, telling the story of the day in the tracks of feet, animal bodies, shifted furniture, and broom strokes.

van dwelling in the mud, for an order-loving cappy, such as myself, is a whole other subject that i won't delve into at this moment. i will say, that on days this past winter, when the rain came down in a constant sheet, it was not unusual for me to curl up with a blanket on Maaka's ugly faux-velvet loveseat with some novel, luke warm tea perched on the "coffee table" constructed of twenty two boxes of 12" Saltillo tiles covered over with a bright blue tarp, all the while strategically timing pee breaks between waves of rain. now that's living. and it only gets better now that i have a hottie.

but, even as i'm finally finishing writing this, the rains have stopped. the chorus of toad calls from the pond reminds me that it is indeed spring. it's nothing but drier and warmer from here.

in fact, i wonder if the triple rainbow i saw last night will be the last of its kind for six months.

thanks for your help Wes. i hope that plug works out alright.

thank goodness for the distractions of the big city

two days in town and my head is spinning from all the possibilities that it offers. it's a welcome relief to feel divine intervention in the form of chance meetings between people and places and perfect moments instead of the pure messages i receive from the quiet desert (that rarely involve other humans). sometimes it's nice to frantically pour out energy, dancing at a drum circle at Earth Day, or contra dancing with energetic older folks on sunday nights.

i'm just feeling quite thankful for my good friend Arden today.

and sleep.

on quantum physics...

...These are some of our top theoretical physicists struggling to come to terms with what we now know about the world. Their ideas are bound to change and grow as consciousness grows. Nothing is certain except that there is no going back to the easy optimism of the Age of Reason. The cosmos is an unreasonable state of affairs that seems to owe more to mood than to method. It dances to music inaudible to individual ears, but it is just possible to pick up the rhythm if you concentrate on being rather than doing. If you get deeply involved, as children do.

-Lyall Watson, Gifts of Unknown Things

confessions of a dog lover

Emptiness makes us uncomfortable. Silence is usually interrupted by applause from someone who thinks the symphony is over. We try to abolish intervals by our manic insistence on keeping busy, on doing something. And as a result, all we succeed in doing is destroying all hope of tranquillity.

-Watson, Gifts of Unknown Things

...and here i sit inside of a cramped trailer, Angus (my elderly, canine, boyfriend, who is very black and bull-like indeed) in toe, on a perfectly sunny day that i should be outside rejoicing, all for the sake of "doing something." (as if basking in the sun weren't enough!)

the cuyama compound--er--center is all but deserted this week. it's just me, five codependant animals, and one dan fontaine, whom cyndi called to come take care of the precious' while she and warren are out of town (figuring that my attacks of impulsive adventuring are unpredictable and unhealthy to the food/love needs of her babies). however, having these animals all around, needing as much as they do, has taught me heaps about physical affection, unconditional love (like not getting turned off by the aroma of rot), and how much these animals need consistency (maybe everyone needs a little consistency).

i've never had a pet, with the exception of an albino rat named Elvis, and even that was too much responsibility for me; when i moved into a treehouse, he moved into a kindergarten class room, and lived out the last of his days quite happily, i've heard.

i grew up around cats, but was never responsible for their life. mom always bought the food, fed them, and gave them all the love and affection they needed. i'd occasionally sit and pet one, but usually they were a source of entertainment for me, something to dress up, torture (humanely, of course... we're talking tape on the paws and socks on the head here), or wrestle with (as much as one can with a 15-pound animal). and with all that, there was always the opportunity for me to check out, leave, close the door, never look back for a day or a week or forever. i never took to the time to recognize the same needs in them that i, myself, carry; they were only objects to me.

so now here i sit (my sister, Little Bear, has joined the hideout) surrounded by these dogs, needing food, water, and lots of love. spending the last few months with them in such close quarters ("on 450 acres," you say? well, when it's pouring and 30 degrees outside, you'd better believe that every last domesticated creature on this property is crammed into the kitchen with the oven door open blasting warm, effiecient, propane heat), i've come to learn the distinctions in their personalities. Angus has the deep, chocolate, insecure eyes, the whine, and two painful back hips that make even just getting up quite a feat for him. he butts his over-elongated head into me whenever i'm petting him, asking for more, but almost never approaches me to begin with. there's River, the oldest in the pack, and never seen without a smile; he's God-incarnate if i've ever seen one. i can only hope i'm as content as him when i'm 105. i could write a novel about Little Bear, and the intracacies of her behavior. she is accutely aware of group dynamics, both canine and human, and how to get her way in most any situation. she is stubborn as all hell (which is why i like her so much... plus she's the only one that's doesn't smell like rot), and quite affectionate once one is accepted into her pack.

with these distinct personalities, how could i not recognize them as individuals, and very much alive. how can i ignore Angus' depressed flop on the ground, River's grin as he comes to topple me, or Little Bear's morning head-nuzzle? i'm finding building my relationships with them similar to that with the plant life of this land: the more i know the more i want to know. and the more i know, the more deeply i love them, and the more blurred are the boundaries between human and dog.

so my conclusion is that cyndi was right: they have gone and made a dog lover out of me. and now another kind of person, one who likes having foul-smelling animals around, doesn't seem so alien to me.

my world view has just gotten a little clearer.

they say it's the wind that makes those desert-folk crazy...

the wind has been a fairly constant theme in my life the last few weeks.

when mark and i arrived in joshua tree a few weeks ago, the cold, northern winds made a mockery of our attempts at cooking dinner the first night (we settled for heaping bowls of quinoa, enjoyed from the comforts of the truck cab, topped with various condiments whose bottles and baggies were scattered over the dash, console, and floor), and threatened to blow away the tent if we dared to leave. during the days, we kept warm on south-west facing slopes, stripping down to t-shirts and shorts while climbing (of course, reaching the top of the face promised a fresh blast of glacial air to chill the bones).

i looked forward to the comforts of home, but then i finally got home and remembered that 1.) my life is camping and 2.) i live in the desert. at the driveway gate i was greated by a brisk northern wind that sent me digging frantically in my clothes bag in search of anything more than shorts and a strappy tanktop.

of course here, there are some shelters (like this fine trailer!) and with shelters comes a need for power; our sources happen to include the wind. it's quite lovely, really, enabling me to burn up hours on the internet and listening to my Toad the Wet Sprocket CD on repeat. however, when the wind gets howling, that turbine makes an atrocious sound that sometimes makes me think for sure that the 80' x 30' shed is just going to take flight. it's a humorous situation, mostly. and interesting, the way my mind has subconsciously taken in this new information and now can determine the approximate wind speed (in reference to how it feels to my body, not in terms of numbers) based on the pitch of the turbine.

but back to the wind. awareness is a big lesson. awareness to the rhythms of the day, direction and its association to temperature. and then once the wind has pulled me out of my self-absorption, i'm primed to take in all sorts of other information, like sun and moon locations throughout the day, where the meadowlark is every time it makes its call, the raven getting chased away by kingbirds, the sweet smell of Artemisia.

and the wind reminds me of the beauty in change; the strength in flowing with life and not becoming stagnant. that's what this spring has been for me; it seems fitting that the wind is here in this time as well.

what ever happened to that one girl?

here's a little update on life in cassie-land; i'll start where i left off with a lot of folks:

in july 2003, i busted out of that crazy commune and headed straight back to santa barbara in my cute little '85 toyota van. i spent the summer working summer camps with WYP, slept in people's yards, and generally enjoyed the romance of homelessness in a beach town with no responsibilities. i'll spare you all the gorey details, but essentially, i drove up and down the west coast several times (my van has seen that drive at least five round trips), moved back to hood river in january, got engaged in february, got unengaged in may, left entirely in august, drove to phoenix to work for Anasazi, and finally moved back to california in january. i'm now living outside the town of Ventucopa, which makes Trout Lake look like a metropolis, on a bit of land in the high desert of the California interior, with three other people, four dogs, and two cats (see below).

on the surface, even writing it out, it seems that i've done nothing to aid in the "forward progression" of life, which it is true that in the traditional modern sense: i've not gone back to school, done any apprenticeships to a particular skill, or landed any jobs with any sense of security (as if there is such a thing). however,the skills that are not tangible, not classifiable, nor monitarily valuable, and i've found, imparative for survivial, have made their presense known to me in not the most comfortable terms.

americorps was the transition from the adult-babysitting-service (college) to the harsh (and envigoration) realities of life. real life doesn't have the constant feed of social circles or built in identity associations. in school i chose to take on the labels "good student" (with the expectation of future security), "computer programmer" (as in, "i'm smart and somehow better than you for it"), "non-sorority girl" ("look at me; i'm so cool because i wear vintage clothes... i'm so original with all my original friends"), etc etc etc... americorps was much like school in this respect: it gave me a whole set of hats to try on, and exclusivities to indulge in.

college never taught me how to truly LOVE living, how to find value in myself without producing something "useful", how to have meaningful friendships based on connections of the soul (rather than similar backgrounds, judgements, or lifestyles), how to have a successful intimate relationship, how to listen to the needs of my own body, how to have compassion for those who are hurting (which is really everyone)... realizing that all of these things are missing from one's life, that, "wow! now i have to make some decisions and stick to them and i could fall flat on my face with no one to pick me up and now there's no one standing over my shoulder saying 'good job' and giving me the standardized letter to tell me i'm 'progressing,'" and that all of my previously based identity labels are no longer relevant, is enough to drive one insane. and well, i think in some ways it did me in.

so amist all my wanderings, i've fallen flat many times. i've even rubbed my teeth in the mud while i'm down, returning with a gritty smile. i've been plumb-nuts many times, and sometimes for loooong times (where i was never really sure of seeing the light again). i've learned many things, but nothing i could explain to another soul and be fully understood. it's all just life, and we're all just learning to live.

all the "how's" and "where's" and "when's" are insignificant if one can never enjoy the fragments of moments that make up this life experience. does it matter how big my house is if i can't look my lover in the eye and be swept away by the miracle of his being?

welcome

have some tea, a look around, and don't forget to say hello.