happy YOU birthday. Millions of blessings on your sweet, sweet soul. Plus a delicious cake and a puppy licking your face.

(ps I kKNOW your birthday was yesterday but I called you and you didn't call me back! But I know you are a very growned up farmer now, with a very growned up job, and sometimes growned ups are busy)

7.18.05

when things get tough, we will eat

popsicles together.

orange sugar syrup dripping down our chins,

our hands,

our lips, that momentarily pause unkind words.

when we are old, you will remember me as this:

22, a mop of dark curls.

if ever I do not have you, I will

remember you as this:

smiling, stunning blue eyes, sticky hands, purple lips.

waiting for a baby...or a dog...

Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo.

happy you birthday!

happy 27th year on planet earth.
may this year be filled with warm fires, good books, tasty drinks, delicious snacks, and friends to share them with.
i love you forever.

dogs always have more fun.

its like where's waldo.
but my names not waldo.
my name is hubert.
so it's like where's hubert?

3 very interesting characters.  who is having the most fun, i wonder?

so secretive, even i couldnt find it after i posted it!

....................................................................................

"I think if it's not magical, it's not going to happen, because all the other solutions I see around me - religious solutions, scientific solutions, intellectual solutions- you know, everything is too little too late and not good enough." - woody allen

but how come your letters be looking so much more different then mine do?

and your youtube was top secret but luckily i am very crafty and smart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMPF6lpM0XM

rare llamas.

the alpaca is not far behind!  long live the pacas!!!

presents for you.

i am growing more kale than I can even give away.  I eat beans and kale every day.  I smell.  

but my new haircut looks ohhhh sooooo niiiiiiiice.

also, I bought a new computer.  It has a program called Time Machine that I am too scared to open, but saving for the appropriate time.  

did i ever tell you about jimmy howard, liz godfrey and the tiffany song heaven is a place on earth?
its not a good story...
mostly about jimmy howard picking on me to impress liz godfrey while that song was playing.
then i came across this:

ooh baby do ya know what that's worth?
ooh heaven is a place on earth!
they say in heaven
'love comes first'
we'll make heaven
a place on earth
ooh heaven is a place on earth!

well i don't have a picture right now. but it is all as you would imagine it.

in the meantime, here is a poem.

(ps. am i allowed to say you are looking mighty fine these days? you are looking mighty fine.)

Wild Peavines

by Robert Morgan

I have never understood how
the mountains when first seen by hunters
and traders and settlers were covered
with peavines. How could every cove
and clearing, old field, every
opening in the woods and even
understories of deep woods
be laced with vines and blossoms in
June? They say the flowers were so thick
the fumes were smothering. They tell
of shining fogs of bees above
the sprawling mess and every bush
and sapling tangled with tender
curls and tresses. I don't see how
it was possible for wild peas
to take the woods in shade and deep
hollows and spread over cliffs in
hanging gardens and choke out other
flowers. It's hard to believe the creek
banks and high ledges were that bright.
But hardest of all is to see
how such profusion, such overwhelming
lushness and lavish could vanish,
so completely disappear that
you must look through several valleys
to find a sprig or strand of wild
peavine curling on a weedstalk
like some word from a lost language
once flourishing on every tongue.

there's not many...

i'll take more.

and you the same.

ps

(i really look like my dad in the one with me and mariah)

pps

nice talking with you today.

how now brown cow

working on the garden, listening to church.

a ballerina,
kinda
.
.
.

just the little things one finds when one cleans out one's belongings.

all hail Moving Day, and the great unearthing that follows.

hope.

20 May 08

Oakland, CA 9:00pm ------> New York, JFK 05:33am

mine garden.

kenneth patchen

i dreamt we were walking together in an orchard. i kept asking you, over and over,
where are the paw paws?

like
like

where are the delicate little treasures?

cause i'm hungry.

"In Louisville, on a corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I was theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers...I have the immense joy of being human, a member of a race in which God himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. If only Everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is not way of telling people that they are all walking around Shining like the Sun!"

from...Thomas Merton. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

happy easter, shining sun.

today,

3 years ago you threw a red bike into the streets of chelsea and i looked you up and down. we had no idea what was on its way. i can remember being introduced to you and shaking your hand (how silly) and the flannel shirt you wore, and the wool hat, and the way you crossed your legs at the table (which i found very cute), and seeing your wounded wrist (gross) and watching you get egg salad in your beard (endearing), and you dropping your bike 3 times as you were saying goodnite (which could make a girl feel good that she could do that to a boy).

i don't give a shit what has happened or is happening. the only thing i want today is to sit for beers with you (guinness. miller high life.) and just be. i want to steal life for a day with you. you are too far away and i don't care to reason with myself today about why that is, all i can do is just feel the wrongness of it.

i miss you.
i love you.

i was a lover

before this war.

This is the day
that the Lord has made
This early morning after a
restless night
Sixty one degrees
humbling gathering sunlight in the backyard with children
making mudpies
making pies
This day,
finches on the ivy vine
a beautiful day
and i'm kicking stones around the street
with barely a word in my lungs
Even this is the day that the Lord God made
a visit to my aching father
looking more like a newborn each day
so smooth and soft
the confusion of my own aging hands against his
it is one more day, no matter good or bad
it is still a day and i need all of them right now
this one, with my family and
this one alone
crying in the car
hot, hot tears
This body cannot contain the magnitude of these things
where everything ugly rests up against everything lovely
and somehow in the cries of help, i'm sorry, and thank you
finds a Hallelujah with volume
All the trees of the field clap their hands or beat their fists, I don't know
how this works or how it ever ends, but okay.
Surely, it is all Hallelujah.

friday night, my mom and i went to see anne lamott speak on her new book. she is funny. bizarrely holy. she is comfortably aging, and that makes me feel comfort. it actually makes me feel very young.

she wrote a book called Travelling Mercies that really changed me in that way that only good, truthful books can do. i think i might've asked you to read it at the height of a growing season, and possibly in the middle of War and Peace...two very involved projects. either way, i know you didn't get to read it. But i always wanted you to read it. or to read it out loud to you.

i read it in june of 2005, while sitting on a plastic chair in goshen, guarding a cherry tree from pesky birds. the book, it so happens, is the reason why i wasn't getting much guarding done.

you can blame anne lamott for the full bellies of the birds that year.