On the Road

I arrived here in beautiful Durango a week ago today in a rather roundabout way: flew into Albuquerque, took a 13-hour Greyhound to Grand Junction, CO, and was then picked up by Dev (another staffer) to drive down to Durango.

Somehow I not only managed to survive with minimal sleep deprivation, but I also took some pictures of the southwest Colorado landscape during the final leg of my trip.

Learning Spanish

I am obsessed.

Just ask my family. Every single day, practically, I am at the computer, staring at pictures and saying things like, “El gato duerme” and “Japon esta lejos de Brasil.” (“The cat sleeps” and “Japan is far from Brazil”, respectively.) When I am procrastinating, I do my Spanish lessons. When I am sick, I do my Spanish lessons. When I go somewhere, I take my audio companions (and I get grumpy when I accidentally leave them in the car that I am not driving). I form sentences to test on the Latino guys at work, like, “Huevo sol ariba?” (“Egg sun up?” You know… fried egg, sunny side up…). I scour Craigslist for ads in Spanish to read (the Personals are especially interesting). All this thanks to working with Latino people and wanting to be able to communicate with them better.

I was not always this excited about Spanish. In fact, it was the opposite. I wanted to learn ANYTHING else instead: Spanish was too “common.” Every kid in America was learning Spanish.

So I grew up trying to learn French (less common? Apparently). However, every program I tried only catered to one learning style and/or did not teach me anything useful. Also, I realized a few years ago that I really had no reason to learn French at all: I had no particular overwhelming desire to travel to France, Belgium, or Canada, no French friends, no obsession with French culture, food, literature, music, or anything. That was when I quit, too relieved to feel disappointed in myself.

At the beginning of June, though, when I started my new job in the restaurant, my disheartened attitude about language learning in general made a 180:

Spanish is the second language in this current workplace of mine. Half the employees are Latino and they are always talking to each other in Spanish and to the rest of us in Spanglish. Immersion has presented itself, and therefore the motivation to learn to communicate. Sure, these guys speak some English, too, but why limit ourselves? Especially when I see their faces light up every time I understand what they are saying or say something in their language. It is, really, deeply flattering when someone from another country has chosen to learn your native language.

My dad bought Rosetta Stone Spanish levels one and two a couple of years ago for anybody in the family who wanted to use it. Up until June I considered it a “might as well as a last resort” option. But now, it’s ended up being exactly what I’ve needed.

Now I can’t stop. I am always hungering after anything Spanish-related… poetry especially, but basically anything that has any Spanish word in it or has any associations with Spanish whatsoever (like bags of nacho chips). What I really want is, once I have gone through all five levels of Rosetta Stone, to take maybe 6-ish months and travel in Mexico, Central, and South America, completely immersing myself in the language and culture through a combination of WWOOFing adventures and homestays that will probably include dancing lessons.

Did you know they have majors in foreign languages? I mean, I knew, and it kind of makes sense, but then it kind of doesn’t. While couchsurfing a few months ago I stayed at a couple’s house where the girl was working on her master’s in French, dating an Actual French Dude From France who, as a plus, helped her with her assignments. I mean, I guess that’s what you need if you want to teach French, which was what she was aspiring to do…

…. But really? Wouldn’t it be super, amazingly, stupendously fun to design your own “major” around a foreign language? I mean, just by opening myself up to learning new linguistic processes, I have acquired a thirst I would have never guessed would follow. What if I followed through completely on these inclinations, and started studying Spanish poetry/literature, Spanish history, Spanish architecture, Spanish geology, Spanish… whatever! There are 21 Spanish-speaking countries, including Spain in Europe, Equatorial Guinea in Africa, Mexico in North America, and the other 18 in the Caribbean, Central, and South America.

Where to start??

Well, I know for one thing that I have always wanted to study Argentine Tango in Argentina, so there’s a start.

Regardless, I am SO EXCITED. Don’t stop me now!

Beach Trip

We arrived at the beach to see many beautiful.... beached tires.

Beet: it's what's for dinner!

 2-week-long appetite loss = gone.

-Ginger-curry greens (turnip, green wave mustard, beet) with onion and white eggplant (garnished with dill)
- Fried goat cheese
-Boiled beets
-Some walnuts and raspberries to boot

What I Want to Write About

Wednesday or Thursday or something, I will be leaving for a week to go do a mini writing-retreat with a couple of friends.  I basically want to write about the farm.  And I basically want to save myself and my brain up for that.  I have some specific writing goals pertaining to that, but mostly I want to pick topics about the farm and do freewrites on all or a lot of them.

But I'll share some thoughts on life with you first, so you aren't completely in the dark as to "why Jessica suddenly stopped blogging."  If you cared; which, really, it's okay if you didn't.  I write to write, and if people enjoy it, it's just a bonus feature.

Last night as I was falling asleep, I had the singularly most ingenious thoughts of my entire existence.  However, I was so very tired that I would not get out of bed to jot them down.  Naturally, they have been forgotten.

Perhaps I could trace myself to them?

"Mornington Crescent" by Belle and Sebastian was and still is in my head.  I do marvel at how I associate this Sebastian not with the one at the farm, but with a lovely British fellow who stayed at the hostel and whose real name was Gavin; he was rather meek and shy-acting but had spiked prematurely gray hair and a nose ring; dressed very stylishly; worked as a window washer in London, and was quite the party animal.... was out clubbing when I was at my tango practica.

Then I ran into him in a couple of different places around the little sunny town of Ashland, Oregon, like the two-story bookstore with the coffee shop upstairs and the jungle-like courtyard in the back that I didn't discover till the last day I was there...

Last night I had just put down The Witches by Roald Dahl.... let's see.  I always read at night till I get tired and then put down the book and promptly fall asleep.  And I have to ask myself, why can't adult literature be this good?  I haven't liked reading something this much since... I don't even know when.  I love all sorts of books, but this just beats them all.  Basically, I rest my case that kid stuff is just better, and I'm going to keep on singing Veggie Tales in the grocery store.  Don't try to stop me.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, a list of topics I want to write about.  Let me know if I have forgotten anything or anybody.  It's probably because there are several geese hanging around in the street and I keep watching them so that they don't get run over...

picking
harvesting
weeding
kitchens
dining rooms
bunk house
fire pit
sunshine
Jordan
Luke
Kat
Josh
KB
Rhyan
Prentiss
The shack
cigarettes
kale
mustard
chard
turnips
radishes
beets
rain

books
Maddie
Sebastian
Reed
Daniel
Nicole
April
The kids
wine
Chase and Charlotte
Arugula
red fire
red oak leaf
black seeded Simpson
seed trays
microgreens
sprouts
Jonstuff, even though he wasn't really there...
Marlee
Anna
Caitlyn
salad spinners
Saffron and Andrea
Hutch
tents
beer
weed
Jonathan's farm
chefs
that random freeloader chick
chickens
Backfire
Cheddar Blossom
Two-face
Tigger
strays
dogs
Arthur
Sam
Heather
Kamyren
New Orleans
Nola markets
the Mississippi
Baton Rouge
driving
Louisiana swift bus
Jazz and blues
bars
cliche Nola/tourists
stupid Bourbon street
Daniel's house
Mark and Shelley
Delaney and crew and house
the creek
swimming
pickup trucks
the van
Mr. Wobbles
clouds
sunsets
movie nights
Super Bowl
Academy Awards
Ronald
Frank
Elijah
The Addam's store
The Star
Volero
Texaco
St. Francisville
The William's Store
shopping
thrift store
buskers
Casey
Shanti
Elicia
Dallas
Whining
hot house
harvest room
tool shed
carport
water bottles
the view
golf course
plots A-G and Sometimes H
potatoes
Mardi Gras
beads
fire ants
cows
dishes
cooking

GOOD GRIEF THERE IS SO MUCH.

The Air Conditioner Blues...

Yesterday I got rather in a dull mood and I can’t seem to really get out of it. “Dull” really is the best way to describe it, because I feel like a pencil lead that really needs to be sharpened.

Over the rest of my existence, particularly this summer, you are going to hear a lot of this “at the farm...” business. I apologize if this is annoying you, but I was there for a pretty long while and I fully intend to write about it as much as possible while the experience is fresh in my mind.

The thing about me is that I am solar powered. No sun? No Jessica. I mean, yes: there is a Jessica in this world and she is a fully functioning human being, and she didn’t die. Or anything. But her problem is that she seems to lose all amounts of energy that there ever could be on a cloudy day. And when that happens, she sort of starts to wonder if there is something wrong with her and whether she is broken.

Back to the first person.

It seems worse than it did, and I think that in the past ten seconds I figured out why: on the farm, I was out in the elements, whatever they were, for basically the entirety of my time there. The only time I wasn’t was when I would go to the bathroom in the house; otherwise, everywhere I was was either outside, or an indoor room with doors and windows open and no heating or air conditioner. I must be experiencing shock at going back to a more closed up, indoors-focused life, like when you put broccoli seedlings in the ground and they act like they are dying for a week or two.

So, that is it. I am dying.

Don’t act too alarmed, now.

Now more than ever I am seriously considering pitching a tent in the back yard... I am not sure I can survive like this. I feel so depressed.

I really do.

I just want to crawl into a little ball on my bed, and sleep forever, and not worry about anything, and definitely not breathe this stuffy “conditioned” air.

I need a tree to sit in.

There are no sufficiently sized sitting trees here in my yard.

I apologize for being extremely whiny and discontent-sounding right now. It’s quite unfair, I know, that I should come home to my parents and then be very upset with the living situation they are presently offering me. Well, it’s not like they can help that they live in a house. I mean, they could not, but my dad really likes to be a good dad who provides nice things like houses for his family. I could do without such luxuries, but I am sure the rest of my family appreciates it.

Now, the only question is: do I pitch my family’s five-person tent up in the attic, or do I go to Wal-Mart and get my own little yellow tent, the twin of my old tent back at the farm?

I would actually like to pitch our big tent, for the sake of having lots of free space, as well as the ventilation advantage that it will have in the summer when it gets really hot. But at the same time, I do know I will be getting my own little yellow tent for traveling purposes. I talked to this German couch surfer once and he got his for $20, and it was very compact and conducive to travel. He also bought a floatie raft as a mattress. He was a very awesome person.

Well, with that issue pinpointed and the solution resolved, I do feel a little better in my head.

The next issue is: movement. Work.

At the farm, I was working for eight to ten hours a day at least; often I was working twelve to fourteen hour days. Of course it was tiring, but this has happened before... I like working jobs where I’m moving all day, and when I come back home, I’m just not. I try to do my little workout in the morning, and maybe swim every once and a while, but most of the time I really don’t even see the point in doing these; they accomplish nothing but keeping my body in shape. I didn’t need to work out at the farm because I was simply moving all the time.

So, I clean my room, or I load the dishwasher, or I do laundry. But I miss the farming; I miss the work and I miss the schedule and working with people who didn’t mind work, and whom I could relate with on the level of not wanting an office job EVER.

If my job was sitting around on the computer all day (and a few times it has been... HELP), then I don’t know what I would do with myself. I just can’t stand it.

All in all, I just haven’t felt myself the past couple of days. Of course I am completely overreacting to this; just because I feel in the doldrums doesn’t mean that I have become a stranger. But I need to get out and doing something, preferably outside, or I shall go nuts. Absolute nuts.

I need a place where I can sing, a place where I can walk around a feel free. I need a place where I can say what I need to, or just not say anything at all. I need the solace of forest acres and the lull of wind rushing through the leaves so I can sleep. I know that Raleigh isn’t really a city at all, but I feel like a fish out of water here regardless.

It’s sad. I want to enjoy my time here... and I know I will. I’m spending time with family and some of the best friends in the world, and I am making money. But this just isn’t where I am meant to be forever. Nature beckons.

Fireside

Just ashes and stale smoke.

Fire is this really cool thing that happens with wood and friction and oxygen. Oxygen is this weird thing that is supposed to be the air, but the air is really mostly nitrogen, so I have no idea why we keep giving oxygen all the credit.

What do you think of when you hear the word “nitrogen”? For some reason, I think of a balloon-shaped banana... and what I really meant to write was a banana-shaped balloon... anyway.  I really ought not to think this, considering balloons have helium in them and bananas have potassium in them. I never was very good at chemistry, folks. The periodic table was as interesting as it got for me, and still I didn’t understand what I was doing.

That aside, fire is still cool, and I should really attempt to stay on topic. That is part of this exercise.

It is?

Now it is.

Okay, then.

Fires can be built in all manner of ways, and everybody seems to have their own idea as to how they should be built. Put three people together to build a fire, and it becomes chaos, because they are all trying to do it three different ways, but nobody really notices, because of the whole “common goal” thing. But if one of you is leaning, and the other is stacking, and another is just throwing a bunch of brush together and staring at it for a long time, that is when it is time to name a leader. Unfortunately, everyone thinks his way of building a fire is right, so they try to hijack the project, and we’re just left with a bunch of egos pushing each other around.

It’s kind of a big mess.

And a really horribly accurate reflection on the world these days...

Nevertheless, somehow the fire gets started eventually. It was probably because one person, whose name may or may not have been Jessica, just decided to sit back and have faith that eventually this would happen despite the circumstances.

Many a night we would build a bonfire in the pit across the street from the farm. The area was tucked away in an old overgrown private golf course surrounded by woods full of Live Oak trees towering like pure-hearted wise old giants who would hold us and give us shelter for eternities if we only asked them. We would talk about life on the farm, laugh about the owners’ kids and their favorite word, “diaper”, and occasionally exchange stories about life before the farm, involving eternally famished pet pigs, “find the fire in the trashcan” games, and general musings about the days when everyone’s hair was longer.

Many significant memories and feelings are surrounded by images of the fire. A couple of times we kept it burning all night and managed to stay awake, catching ninth and tenth winds, musing philosophy. Many times we would do a fire several successive nights, starting it from the previous night’s red coals.

You all should really burn a pixie stick and listen to the sound of the falling melted plastic.

We didn’t always have fires in the fire pit. Sometimes we had them inside the old colonial-style kitchen. The space was big enough to roast a significantly sized pig in (which the owner of the farm occasionally did, actually), and the room had a crunchy, dusty smell to it. A few times we would go over to neighboring farms and have fires with the other farmers. Many musicians worked at Jonathan's farm, so there was always an exchange of tunes, which seemed ever so much more haunting around the flames; at Chase and Charlotte’s, we’d hike through the woods and across the creek to have a big fire on the beach.

One night, everyone else was drunk and high enough that on that beach I taught them the “Single Ladies” dance.

That really does cause me to question my own sanity, when everyone else has to shove a bunch of substances into their bodies in order to reach that state I apparently exist in all the time; the state of whimsy, of low inhibitions... why people feel like they have to fill their lungs with smoke in order to see beauty in a thunderstorm, or feel the world is still a safe place.

And then what? When the substances aren’t there, existence is harder, and you just wait for a time when you can continue their consummation.

I do not wish to chide anybody; people I love are like this, and I still love them. I am just sad and I wonder at this sort of existence. It is very easy to embrace it to the extent that your mind mistakes it for heaven; the epitome of being. That is what I see in the eyes of every gambler in Vegas with a cigarette and beer in one hand and a slot machine lever in the other: this is all there is, this nothingness, and its sinister song is a never-ending siren’s melody.

Am I powerless to show anybody that it isn’t this way? That new life can be drawn from a simple walk down to the Mississippi to pick a flower and swing in a giant swing right over the water, watching the ships go in and out? Would anybody believe me?

In which Jessica keeps waking up in her own bed

It was a strange sort of normal seeming transition for me to go from sleeping in a tent every night for four months to go back to sleeping in a bed. The first night it was okay; I slept like a little rock and woke up on my back, and surprisingly every inch of the aforementioned posterior was touching a section of bed. But after that, the wonderfulness of the bed wore off and I started to sleep horribly. The bed was too squishy. I could feel all the squishy parts of it all over me all night.

It didn’t help that there was a cat walking all over me...

Wait a second.

There were cats at the farm, too.

The thing was, I was at a farm. Now, when you think “farm”, you probably don’t think “living in a tent.” And if you do, then you’re really awesome. If you don’t, that does not make you not awesome, it just makes you a normal person who goes about life assuming that the other parts of the world that you do not see are a certain way, which is NOT TRUE GUYS. But since you assume that anyway, you probably think that “farm” means “cows and roosters.” Which, incidentally, were also a part of my stay. I don’t know if you would assume I would be sleeping in a house. I mean, there was a house there, but it was not for me to sleep in.

I slept in the house once, because I was sick and the family who owned the house and the farm and whatnot decided that I should sleep inside in a real bed so I could get a better night’s sleep and heal faster. It worked. I was in Louisiana, but even Louisiana has cold winters, especially when your only source of heat is yourself and hopefully your blankets are insulated enough to help you keep your own heat to yourself.

This is actually another cat from the farm, Cheddar Blossom

Even though the night was supposed to be comfy, and it was, there was a cat. The farm owned four cats, along with some strays that still ate the food, and one of them was in the house all of that night. She came into the room and happy pawed my face and then slept on my head. I don’t know why she couldn’t have just slept beside me or on another part of my body, but she was this particularly strange calico named Two-face who was kind of whiny and had lots of fleas and gained weight around her stomach only, so we kept wondering if she was pregnant, but then she wasn’t, because her stomach size fluctuated by the week and she never... well, anyway, that is pretty irrelevant.

In the really early days they put me up in the bunkhouse over the colonial-style kitchen. That was cold, too, but the cats would usually sleep with me, so I wasn’t too bad. Everyone was jealous that the cats seemed to like me best. They said it was because I have a calm nature. I didn’t know I had a calm nature; I feel pretty... I don’t know, over-active in my head, and I very often have trouble sitting still. But, I guess, I do not really get strung out or stressed... definitely not as much as some people. So I suppose that is what they meant. How nice of them.

After three weeks, I determined to move out to a tent.

Actually, I determined after the first week, but it took me two more weeks to actually get around to it.

I waited till this girl named Marlee left. I then took her tent and the book she was reading and her muck boots. She was aware that this was my plan, so I exaggerated it to say I was taking her identity and soul too, so she would know that I really wasn’t eagerly counting the days till she left. Fortunately, she wasn’t one of those serious, sensitive girls who can’t take a joke; Marlee was a really cool girl. Her hair was a little longer than mine and nearly as curly, so I kept observing her hairstyles so I could follow suit once my hair grew to that length.

Marlee walked with quite the swagger, and for about a week of wearing her boots, I felt compelled to walk the same way. But then I got my own swagger when I started having this Christmas song in my head that I can’t remember the name of which compelled me to do a kick-march sort of dance through the rows of kale and feel like I should apologize for singing Christmas songs. I did for a bit, but then I decided that this was a favor that nobody in the world deserved, especially if they thought they did. I have a right to sing any song I want to at any time, right? Right.

Marlee’s tent actually belonged to the farm. It was a happy yellow Junior Scout tent that I had to sleep diagonally in. The first night I slept in it, it was a low of 20 degrees, and I think I woke up every time the temperature dropped, feeling my bones shrink and maybe crack a little. It didn’t help that the evening prior, I had drank a beer and eaten some beans that had not been soaked long enough, so I was extremely gassy. Imagine how it feels to have gas freezing inside of you.

My last night in my tent, I discovered that a sleeping bag is much more warm and insulating than three blankets, and I wanted to hit myself over the head for waiting four months to realize that.

I felt so accomplished after my extremely cold night in my tent. I could do ANYTHING. And I still can, but at that point, I really could.

Upon my return home, I kept waking up thinking that I must be at the farm, and finding – lo and behold! – I am not.

And, most of all, I kind of want to go back to sleeping on the floor, or pitch a tent in the back yard. Apparently my mom is all for the latter.

Down in New Orleans

Luke, Elicia, and I went down to New Orleans to stay with former WWOOFer Daniel for a few days.  First, we sat by the Mississippi, drinking beer and watching this Great Dane run back and forth along the shore with its owner.

Later, we were back at Daniel's house, drinking wine and discussing farming, philosophy, and finally, journaling.  Daniel remembered waking up one morning after some night of crazed incoherence and finding this written in his (wet) journal. 

We had a beautiful night out on the town, listening to jazz, bluegrass, blues, big band jazz, zydeco, and everything in between.  We ended the night playing tag in one of the city parks with some random crust punk named David - base was a frozen strawberry Daquiri.  I fell head-over-heels for New Orleans that night, and there are many more adventures to come...

Farm Days II

Marlee rockin' a shotgun - i.e., what we do on our days off.

The neighbors' horses let us take pictures of them.

Some 'shrooms found on a hike up in Clark Creek, Mississippi

Um.  It was just one of those days. 

Lovely sunsets every evening. 

Bayou Trip

The McClendons sent all the Wwoofers away on a late afternoon Bayou tour near Lafayette.  This was the biggest gator spotted, a little over 6 feet.  

Tons of decoy ducks; they reminded me of the opening scene of Ernest Hemingway's Across the River and into the Trees

Real ducks flying away - Mexican ducks, I believe. 

Early Farm Days

This is Samantha.  She is a 2 1/2 year old farm girl, sleepy after a long day of following all the Wwoofers around.  

Maddie plays gee-tar when not working in the fields.  

Red Giant mustard greens in the afternoon… ah…

The neighbors have cows who come and graze in nearby fields every morning.  

Dishes the better way.



The Wwoofer dining area!  Pretty much the best place ever.



“All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.” ~Ernest Hemingway

Early morning kale, smells that mingled with frosted mud and sent my wandering mind back and around…



Foggy morning live oak and fence post; a perfect morning for a walk around the 65 acres I now call home.