Considering the nature of my life as it is: a series of moments, only occasionally written by the time on a clock face, but more often punctuated and defined by the urges of bodies: mealtimes, the feeding and watering and playing with of animals and children, naptimes and sexual encounters and physical touch and sometimes the settling down and reading of a book or indulgence in art or film or dancing. The ecstasy of simplicity, of doing what bodies ask of us, of doing what the land asks of us, its parched tongue caressing our worn hands. The walking of food to a neighbor, the kind of grief and acknowledgement of need and sickness and the days of our lives intertwined with the cycles of this shifting, rolling earth. The kneading of dough and the movement of water, acts of humility: contact with one another's skin and fur and feathers, with one another's sustenance and perspiration and hot breath and excretions. The breaking down of one into all, of all into many moving parts, of breezes and shadows and sunset and parasite life cycles. The rising of all like performers -- synchronous and slow -- in this grand dance of existence in all its demands and guiltless wanting, in all of its perfect splendor, in all of its grace. The setting of all simultaneously ruled by the Sun: the children to bed, the birds to roost, the dog to patrol and then to sleep, the breeze shifting and calming as though tired and making way for brilliant stars.
Sometimes it's hard to live out here, and winter is especially isolating. As we all retreat and focus on inner work and reprieve from the often constant movement of other seasons, we tend to reach out less, travel less. This is true for both us and our friends we see often, usually, and so since the Solstice it's been quiet here at the Ranch. We've really not gone anywhere, and no one has really come to visit.
However, I'm reading "The Independent Farmstead" by Shawn & Beth Dougherty, and feeling renewed and inspired. Sometimes this path feels too difficult, and I reminisce on the period of my life where I was ignorant of the depth and multitude of the issues that plague our species and where I just lived in the way that society dictated. In a way, ignorance really is bliss. In a way, it was just easier.
But I think back on the suffering I experienced then: the suffering I experienced at jobs, at the hands of others abused by our society, the suffering I experienced feeling like I was drifting along without a purpose, and the suffering that came from seeking purpose in careers that I could never attain because of my chronic inability to engage in personal politics. In a way it was easier to work many hours a week, eat out, go to parties, and move through life unthinkingly chasing the next thing that made me feel alive, connected, loved, despite that those experiences never lived up to my memories of them and despite that they were always so fleeting.
So it's not that we don't suffer now, of loneliness or of hardship or of our own interpersonal shortcomings. But we feel guided by purpose and by duty, and in so many ways that eliminates suffering. Though we don't always have other humans here to feel connected to, we do often, and in their absence we are connected to place, and to other living things that help sustain us and which we sustain in return.
We must think of everything as a cycle, and consider how to close the cycle. There should be no "waste" ideally.
Let me share an example:
Birds in the wild don't lay an egg a day for no reason. Some birds, like geese, might lay a few eggs during a specific season when the eggs are most likely to be fertilized (a specific mating season, if you will, usually the spring). Laying eggs requires energy and nutrients, and wild animals don't spare either of these without good reason in general. However, with chickens we took jungle fowl and selectively bred and selectively bred them until they became today's prolific layers: chickens that lay 2-300 eggs a year (an egg approximately every 25 hours with the exception of molting and winter when daylight hours are shorter). In exchange, we feed our captive bred friends differently: more, for one, and at different macronutrient proportions (higher protein and calcium supplementation are two examples).
This is excellent when it's a mutual, closed cycle. We get the extra eggs, and the chickens get to spend their lives pecking and scratching in the sunshine in a protected area. Originally, these chickens would have been fed agricultural or other "wastes", and this makes this a closed circuit. The chickens eat something that might otherwise need to be thrown away or directly composted, composting it more efficiently (well, kind of, chickens aren't ruminants and pass a lot of undigested food, but anyway) and providing a valuable source of nutrition for us in the process.
When, however, we order commercial feed rations in plastic bags this ceases to be a closed cycle. We are now creating waste in the form of plastic, energy loss from shipping, labor and resources expended to house and store this feed (in a store or warehouse) and so on.
The question, then, as we're creating this space and changing our lifestyles from "consumers" to zero-waste producers, is largely how to close all of our cycles. How do we use everything? How do we produce what we need? How can we truly never see a single thing as "waste"?
We aren't there yet, but this is absolutely vital to making positive ecological changes and to building a true ecosystem.
*Quick edit: ruminants also pass a lot of undigested food. Slightly more efficient than chickens, different diet still not perfect. Neither are we humans, but you get the point.
The Geminid meteor shower was incredible, although we just about froze to see it, and we hampered our visibility a bit by huddling around a fire (it was necessary).
We also finally got this piece up: "The Lamb", a collaboration between myself & my partner.
Night & day differences shown. I have a goat skull in the works right now and lots of ideas for how to use it now that I've gotten more comfortable cleaning & bleaching bones.
People sometimes come over and think it's weird that we have compost toilets. I personally find it weird that a significant percentage of the world's population excretes body wastes into ~a gallon of clean drinking water and flushes it 6-10 times a day, whilst a not insignificant portion of that same population is facing significant water shortages.
Alright dear ones, it's time to make a little announcement.
For anyone reading this without context, let me provide some:
My partner & I own Rancho de la Libertad: a regenerative agricultural project and spiritual & artistic sanctuary in the high desert. We host ceremony here, provide a landing space to travelers interested in what we're doing, I provide ritual tattooing to those who need it, and we're doing the slow work of regeneration of soil and moving to turn back the ecological desecration that's occurred here in the last 150 years since the settler & gold rushes.
But it's in trouble. We're poised to lose our primary income stream soon, and this means that we won't be able to carry the current mortgage on our house. We're looking at purchasing instead a plot of vacant land between 40 and 60 acres and living in tipis, completely off grid. This positions us actually better for a few different kinds of opportunities. We can expand our regeneration efforts, live more sustainably, eliminate our energy costs (currently a huge part of our monthly bills), provide more living spaces for less money for travelers & residents, and have animals that we don't have the space for here, like horses & cattle.
Losing Rancho de la Libertad wouldn't just be devastating for our family, but for the artists & wanderers that we routinely host here for ceremonies, stargazing events, tattooing rites, and more generally so that they have the space to escape the city and have physical space in which to create and rest.
With that being said, we don't want anything for nothing. I recently (as you all know) opened up a ko-fi store, and am going to be releasing an Etsy store in the next 24 hours as well. We will be using our collective creative skills to craft meaningful spiritual objects in an effort to try to begin an alternate revenue stream.
I additionally will be posting a goal on ko-fi to crowdfund land and get us started. If I've held space for you, provided a beneficial meditation, or if you've stopped by the ranch and you have 5 dollars to spare, please consider if we're worth some of your support.
I will still make a point to not turn this into just a sales channel: I don't aim to trade this beautiful community I've found for sales. Occasionally you'll see shop updates or discounts from me, but otherwise the rest of what I share will be the same.
And for fun, I've opened up a discount on my ko-fi shop from now until the Winter Solstice.
Dia Sacrificia was transformative, and incredible.
The postponement of the event led to a smaller turnout, which ended up being a blessing. The tight group forged quick bonds, and was more open to ceremony and participating in the rituals than I think they would have been otherwise.
A 40 foot heptagram was carved into the earth, a fire dug out into the middle, candles placed for each of the seven planets. In this space we ended ceremony, warmed bare feet by the fire, made offerings to the earth.
I hand painted our altar, which my partner built on Friday, a temple to Osiris and to our ancestors, who were most certainly with us throughout the evening.
The meditation I led brought us into connection with the true nature of time, of different states of Being, with our ancestors, with our guiding spirits,
and the ritual I performed, my first performance in years, a ritual self-tattoo, commemorated years of transformation and spiritual work, and was rejuvenating in ways I can't even begin to describe.
All were welcome, all joined the following day in meals and communion, in cleaning up and drying marigolds, in play and laughter.
Like shaping the earth, shaping a life takes years, but it feels as though we are on a wonderful path with wonderful people, and I am so grateful.
So, a few photos from the morning after, to share what I can of the experience.
Finally got the studio-in-progress organized and it's workable, although I'm definitely still looking forward to getting tipis together and having a better ceremonial space for tattoos.
To-dos include hanging art, setting up a space for my illustration & flash portfolios, sanding and refinishing my workbench, and getting some fitting and dedicated linens for the futon.
Feeling so, so inspired after this weekend's festival & visit from one of our favorite friends, even though I wasn't able to participate in some of the festivities to the extent I had wanted to.
I'm feeling like I have much of my energy back, pain has mostly subsided and all signs point to recovery going better than we initially thought.
We're converting the Airstream into my studio, and kid-proofing it this time so my daughter can come hang out and do art with me. I haven't had a proper studio in a very long time, and the delay in getting tipis built made it look like I wouldn't have one until spring. But here we are, and I'm extremely optimistic that I'll be building, painting, and holding space for tattoos again very, very soon. Eventually I do think I'll build a tipi specifically for tattooing, but for now we'll be using them for guest spaces and building one very large ceremonial space. In the meantime, the Airstream works quite well as a studio. Quite frankly, in its current state, it will make a better art studio than guest space anyway.
I painted one of the objects that is a critical part of my performance for the Dia Muertos event yesterday, and have been figuring out many of the other details and making a list of the few things that I will be purchasing for the ceremony & celebration.
I have plans to finish processing the fox bones & sheep skull that I started forever ago this week, and I'm praying that they haven't degraded too much, but whatever their condition it will feel good to finally get those finished and usable for some projects I have planned.
My neighbor had a ceremony and slaughtered a goat with her family this weekend, so I inherited yet another skull I get to start on as well.
Lastly, a new friend of ours gifted me an entire hide worth of black Italian leather to create things with. I'll need to get the proper needles, awls, and some other supplies (which I've needed to anyway to work with the other leather I inherited last year) prior to doing anything with it, but I have many ideas and cannot wait to share them when the time comes.
This emergence from my recent low-energy and relatively depressed state feels profound, and I feel like I'm just radiating gratitude for this much hoped-for change.
Some more updates, since it's been pretty motivating for me to share:
While kiddo was napping today I was able to make a significant amount more progress on some projects that have been sitting around, and some new ones.
A friend of mine brought me a dead (found) fox a while ago, and we cleaned off most of the tissue together, however the bones, along with a sheep skull my neighbors gave me, then sat in water for somewhere between 8 and 10 weeks while I was fighting morning sickness and then healing from the recent loss. I had been putting off that project for so long since I had just developed this strange fear of becoming nauseous if I smelled the bones, but today I finally got everything de-greased and into a peroxide soak. Some of the more fragile bones had soaked for too long, and became compost, which is unfortunate but not the worst outcome for something that would otherwise have been thrown in a landfill.
With these, I can now make talismans for two friends: one new friend who's moving into a new place, and another friend who I just feel would appreciate or benefit from having one in his space.
Additionally, the skull will feature in a sculpture project that's been awaiting me finding someone to assist for at least a year now.
I was also able to paint a few eyes for a project I just started, and flesh out ideas for yet another project from found materials that has been just sitting in the back of the old studio building for a very long time.
Some of you maybe noticed at one point in time that I would reference our land as "Rancho de la Libertad" and then that that switched to referencing it as "Rancho de la Liberta"
This stems from both our Americanized family members and our family members directly from Mexico having a really funny debate amongst ourselves as to what the correct spelling/grammar would be here.
Well-educated Hispanics are probably scoffing at me/us, but I think it's a really harmless reminder of the complexities of language and the divide that Chicanos straddle between two languages (neither of which was originally theirs, which adds to the complexity of how Spanish is in various parts of the Latino-Hispanic world versus the Spanish-Hispanic world). Finally we consulted some Spanish dictionaries and several online translators and decided that the correct form is "Rancho de la Libertad", so I'll be fixing that everywhere.
I always think of Luis Rodriguez's "Always Running" (probably the book that has the most to do with saving my life) and how in it he says something about how his mother speaks neither well-educated Spanish nor unbroken English, and so no one ever listens to her.
All we can do is keep learning, and try to pass on language to our children (something our assimilated parents couldn't do for us).