on the liberties of a short life

as deaths tend to do, my Dad's death has called to my attention the ultimate shortness of life.

now many things that once seemed to matter don't seem as important.

this loss has drawn me into definition. if something so clumsy and so ugly as death can do that, why do we continuously seek beauty of some padded, unscathed form? that is empty. exhaustible.

I'm finding it easier to be OK with the things that once threatened me. my physical oddities, for instance. my perpetual longing to be a smaller, more petite woman is more easily discarded lately. what an arbitrary, irrelevant wish. we all have bodies--we are all biological beings, and remain inescapably subject to this fact. sometimes people are small. sometimes people are tall and rangy. sometimes blood vessels burst in their brains and they are snatched away abruptly while their dearly loved ones stand nearby helpless. which among these is more significant and startling?

it's a matter of scale, really. life has deeper depths than I ever thought and they make themselves known to me, simultaneously causing all of those other presumptuous facets to pale and wither in comparison. they flake off like old scabs we brush off once better skin has emerged.

these are thoughts I may develop more another time; this might be amended with an edit.

on what is to be done

to do


graduate from ncsu with a major in psych, minor in agroecology having completed psy 499 (research w/faculty).


... all the while taking my farm job seriously, regarding it not merely as a means of income but an opportunity to gain a great deal of information and experience about sustainable agriculture.


develop as a pencil artist to the point where it may be an additional means of income.


co-manage the ncsu s.o.u.l. garden cooperatively, efficiently, and effectively, helping it to achieve its full potential and serve the ncsu community while also regarding it as an opportunity to develop skills in logistical planning and working with others in a cooperative and goal-oriented way.


pay off my undergraduate loans (approx. $22,000 worth by the time I graduate) while cultivating an attitude of peace and acceptance, knowing that hard work and a humble lifestyle is not only necessary but beneficial.


go to grad school for environmental psychology?

on the deepening and clarifying of love

I'm thankful for loving & attentive family and friends. thankful for my siblings' presence and my mom's resilience. thankful for garden work, school work, and the comfort of routine.

I am thankful, too, for warmth, sunlight, clouds, our cats, our dogs. thankful for quietness, for darkness, and solitude, and blankets.

for those of you who can only manage to say "this is awful, I'm so sorry" - you're right. it is awful, and I'm sorry, too. thank you for acknowledging it for what it is. for those of you who will say "it's going to be okay, in time," I'm taking your word for it, because I've never lost someone this close to me, or this suddenly. for those of you who have made me laugh, and looked me in the eye, held me, and done nice things, thank you. all of those little instances make a big difference.

in some ways this feels like a crescendo of a season of losses. in my mind the tokens of childhood have been snatched away at a slow and steady rate, like the bitter beating on an ancient drum. our old dogs, the house, the horses, gone. but my very father?

like the rest of my family and many others who knew and loved my dad, my emotions go from shock to despair to acceptance and back again. but here's the deal: I don't really know what I am accepting.

my dad's death is, for now, the rub. it is the crux of things. my family was one thing before saturday evening and it is something else now.

it's pretty hard to believe that I'm only three days in.

interestingly, this line from Wendell Berry's short story Fidelity has been on my heart ever since I first heard of my dad's condition: 

She thought it strange and wonderful that she had been given all these to love. She thought it a blessing that she had loved them to the limit of her grief at parting with them, and that grief had only deepened and clarified her love.

my goofy, capable, warm, affectionate, humble father has been taken from us. his death has not merely opened up a gaping hole but rather, a new dimension. I will be exploring it for the rest of my days.

so, I am thankful for all of those things I mentioned above. but most of all I am thankful for my father. 

on love, of all things

I am the youngest of three daughters--closer in age and life experiences to my sisters than my parents, but closer to my parents (until recently) in proximity. these days I wonder if that position in the sociology of my family has contributed to my inclination to want to meet many people and know how they tick.

among my sets of older friends I play the role of "little sister." this is not contrived--it is more natural than anything, but though it comes easily I can still recognize its advantages: there is less pressure to know, behave, and understand things on the level of my friends in their mid to late 20's and 30's (or beyond!) but I  still may be included in hangouts and happenings on a level with which everyone is pretty comfortable. it's fine--it's great, really. I have my friends of similar ages and experiences to me and we can mouth off, call the shots, assert ourselves, and generally enjoy the safety of sharing the same latitude in life. we may as well enjoy these years of hypotheticism (which is evidently not a word, but I'm going with it) while we can. it won't last forever, at least not to such a grand scale as we currently enjoy, but is is our necessary prerogative to explore haphazard ideas of how the world may be and should be before having to reckon with how it actually appears to be.

one of the cool things about having older friends is that I can toggle between doing silly things with youngsters (or older friends who act like youngsters) and then engage in reflective dialogue with my dear buddies who have gone through the motions and grown out of them. today I spent some time fishing with my best friend. he asked me if I could see why he doesn't care for going out to crowded bars and running around town. absolutely, I said--I always could, but there's plenty to be said for a little healthy dabbling in the common habits of city culture. yet already I have grown weary of the anxiety of being alone in a crowded room, or trying to hold conversations in the places least conducive to conversing, in conditions best suited to alternative forms of relating to people that are quite far from being healthy or beneficial.

it seems like growing up (more importantly, just plain growing) is finding that proper mix of the experiential and the reflective. but I suspect many lack any navigating principles to guide the proportions.  as unsure as I am about matters of my own faith and convictions, I am thankful for the sensibilities that have been instilled in me. my mother emphasized communication and consideration to what I realize all the time was an exceptional degree. my time alone as a homeschooled kid in the country prompted me to fill my time with art, craft, and curious inquiries into animal husbandry, history, science. my early best friends made being friends with the opposite sex no big deal--normal, easy, interesting. and my first regular job opened to me the ever-burgeoning world of agroecology--not to mention the practical value of principles like hard work and attentiveness. sometimes I feel as though I have been a passive participant in my own life and that someone is tending me by introducing joys, challenges and new material at exactly the right times.

sensibilities are not enough, however. for as long as I can remember I have been a little hard on myself by actively questioning my own motivations for my actions or interests. that doesn't mean I always find the answers, or that I do a good job of making adjustments when self-objectivity would seem to doing so. but none the less, I feel I am at least somewhat attuned to changes in my thought patterns, goals or understated intentions. it is disturbing, then, to notice my preoccupations shift from more selfless pursuits to selfish ones.

when I make any effort to trace these shifts to their sources I find that they have much to do with the people I'm spending my time with. no surprise there--so long as my norms are dictated by my society, the closest semblance to living a principled life will be to skim the surface of sensibility or mildly entertained interest, never truly committing to one when things get difficult. I'm at risk of becoming a delightfully likable but ultimately boring and ineffectual person by seeking to toe the line in an effort to be relevant, inclusive... and included. can one be a distinctly principled person, whose "action from principle, the perception and performance of right" makes for good change in the world without compromising my various dear associations and friendships?

perhaps it comes down to the mixture. not surprisingly, I'm reading lots of Wendell Berry these days and he draws a distinction between a community and a public. as it stands, I am (for better or worse) enjoying living in a public where I am comparatively independent from others and need not shoulder the yoke of others' dependencies on me, save for a handful of dear friendships whose requisite needs are welcome and reciprocal. it's a far cry from the communal ideal. but it has its advantages, provided I recognize it as a season in life to be actively encountered and observed but not expected forever. the most significant advantage is that while I function as an individual in an amorphous public I may make community happen on a smaller and deliberate level. still on my terms, and hence still not fundamentally communal, I may currently pick my society and retreat from them when I've had my fill.

yes, it's consumptive and no, it is not ideal. but it is beneficial for the time being--at least for me, considering it as food for thought. the trick will be remembering that even in the smallest pseudo-communities I can be thoughtful and reflective while still offering myself sacrificially to the other(s) involved. a table of fancy friends outside of a bar downtown is not community--it's portion of the public whom I happen to know to some extent. but I may yet offer what can be found within committed community: sincere interest in the welfare of the other, and an honest extension of aid should I be in possession of any aid to offer. jokes, laughs. the boldness to offer a private observation and the patience and warmth to receive the timid confessions of others' observations. commiseration over bad weather, car trouble, busywork or lack of work.

love, so it seems, always finds a way to make room for itself. ah--love, that's a principle. that's a start.

on better thinking

it was a long time coming, but recently I finally admitted to myself that I am not very good at thinking alone.

"thinking out loud" with others comes easily to me, though I suspect my friends grow weary of my vague allusions and verbal mulligans as I attempt coherent thought and speech. it must be like watching a toddler as she tries to capture butterflies with a net, or chase chickens into the henhouse. how uncooperative my thoughts can be.

but I digress. such considerations for my listeners notwithstanding, I've straightened out many of my thoughts after trying them on for size out loud with trusted friends.

perhaps I've relied so heavily on vocalizing my thoughts because they won't budge otherwise. when left to my own devices I just can't seem to get things straight. I drown in my own internal thought life. it has been chaotic, thus direly unproductive.

I just get distracted. I begin thinking about something in a reflective way and my mind darts off in another direction, leaving whatever thoughts that were beginning to form in the dust before they can coalesce into anything coherent and recognizable. honestly, it's quite discouraging to be nearly twenty-one years old and feel as though I'm still navigating this world with a primitive, undisciplined mind.

but hallelujah: all of this is changing because I am choosing to respond to the world with an internal voice. it is clear, deliberate and reflexive.

it's simple. I just say the stuff I would say to a friend, but instead I say it inside of my own head.

is that how everyone manages to be a thoughtful and coherent person? if so, I am behind the times. because it feels stilted and unnatural. and I constantly question whether I am truly reflecting the nature of my thoughts, my feelings, or the situation at hand or if in fact I am presenting some version of it to some veiled, hypothetical listener. it begs the question of whether or not we possess a singular, true "voice" or if even in our internal lives we can only manage to access some side of ourselves--some organizing theme.

(more on that last bit another time).

in any case, it's working. for example, it used to be that I struggled with task organization at the farm. all of the elements present in my circumstance would swirl around me without any imposed order. so my mind would be a mix of these pieces--sometimes named, sometimes mere notions such as pictures or scents.

these days, when I can muster the mindfulness to do so, I begin constructing a narrative about my surrounding situation. the mix of initial sensory responses are not disregarded but rather built upon. instead of my mind remaining a mix of images of squash bugs and large pumpkins coupled with the musty scent of tomatoes, the word "overgrown," a recollection of fungal rot followed by a pang of fearful dread, and the memory of rough tomato vine skin against my fingertips as I remove a sucker from the crook of two branches, order emerges:

"there are squash bugs attacking the pumpkin vine so I should remove their eggs and spray the living escaping adults with greenlight pesticide. nearby, the tomato plants are developing more suckers than I've been keeping up with so I should prioritize spending extra time removing those to avoid the clustered branches and leaves that led to fungal problems last summer."

it's a process, retraining one's brain to develop better thinking habits. but it's about time.

on choice words

nestle in
the nearer the dearer, dear
here, a nook in this crook
of my neck's nape.
of my crooked crescent spine.

or there, my cupping clavicle
fortifying collar-bone big timbers
trembles. tremors.
presented to you, prone
prickle-pear, supine.

on scale

my wealthier young friends flood the feed with photos of their travels. india, italy, thailand, and so on.

I remain here, near and dear, brown-skinned growing ever browner.

no encounters with ancient and obscure religion or authentic gelato mark my days. instead, I am enraptured  by my daily trysts under the boughs of pine, oak and redbud trees, where my grimy, dewey neck is lovingly kissed by the wayward breeze.

this is a summer of small things, cupped with both hands against my heart, against my eyes. little things seem much bigger when viewed closely and felt completely. you know, there is so much to be found in moments.