Farm Dreams (Are Made of Bees)

MY YARD is full of dreams come true. The yard itself, sunny and alive, I dreamed up during a cold, hard Brooklyn winter. I saw the Craiglist ad for a cottage in Oakland with fruit trees and I cried; it looked so much like my dream, and I figured that meant I couldn't have it. (But I got it. That still amazes me.) I dreamed up the foot-high cedar raised beds with tidy rows of carrots and leeks. I dreamed the flock of hens chilling in the shade of the fig tree, and, later, I dreamed the banty subflock, roosting in a barn-red mini coop perched preciously on stilts.

Cat & corn

Dreams are messy, of course, in the coming true. I've lived in '1 BR Cottage with Fruit Trees'  for ten years now. I had to cut down the loquat and the old lemon. The decrepit peach succumbed to disease, and the figs, which aren't very tasty, besmirch the patio. I've had hens murdered by predators and my vegetable beds infected with equally deadly Verticillium wilt.

But none of those disappointments ruin the dream. Such woes are the price of realness; they cannot outweigh the satisfaction of imagining something wonderful and bringing it to fruition. The lemon and orange I planted the year I moved in are big, productive trees now. I open a high window and grab some bout-to-be-juice.

Problems also shape the course of new dreams. The dread Verticillium has made tomatoes and squashes (and hella other things) hard to grow, which depresses me. Last year, as I watched my cucumbers wither and my strawberry leaves turn crisp brown, I started thinking of ways to produce food from my yard that would not involve soil. I began to dream about bees.

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Happy

I THINK I might be happy. Feels strange. 

There have been long, cold times in my recent life. Sustained happiness is a feeling I had kinda forgotten--perhaps even wished to forget, so as not to suffer unpleasant comparisons. I have been (mostly) glad for good happenings in the lives of other people, but tried to keep such concepts at a safe remove from myself. Better not to dwell upon that which is not quite an option.

But I'm pretty sure I recognize this warmth on me, feeling like For lo the winter is past. Looks like happiness.

I DON'T know about this happiness business. Really though. It's disturbing. Unhappiness has a cool certainty and deflated expectations. Happiness is such a wild risk. It's bound to crumble at some point. What if I get accustomed and can't bear the crumbling?

And if this whole happy thing keeps up...will I become obnoxious? Will I become the sort of person with an endless parade of charmed-life Facebook status updates, tormenting those less fortunate? What if I start expecting my life to be good, rather than being grateful for goodness? Will I turn into a total brat when little shit goes wrong? Will I avoid the sorrows of others, lest they tarnish the sheen of my bliss? I suppose I make the depressing, psuedo-Buddhist assumption that misery makes you empathic and happiness makes you arrogant. But I know some humble, happy people. Wonder how they do it.

Perhaps the best way to avoid these troubling questions is by dampening my emergent happiness with worries about the nature of happiness itself. Phew. I feel better already.

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Why Negative Rap Is So Damn Good

WHENEVER I listen to the Talib Kweli classic "Get By,"  I am transported to a land of rainbows and sunshine. In such a state of bliss, it is easy to think, 'Man, why can't rap always be about love and uplift and the beautiful struggle?' Indeed, many an earnest hip hop fan has, at one time or another, wished rap could quit being so wrong so much of the time, and just be more positive. Such laments are often accompanied by forlorn remembrances of the good old days, when rap was pure.

But such thinking is based on illusion. Rap has never been pure, and never should be.

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On Pain

II. On Ice

I WAS FROZEN for a couple years. On the upside I don't seem older than I did pre-freeze: my face hasn't seen much sun and life hasn't had much chance to wear me out. On the downside years have gone by and things have happened and I had no role in them. I couldn't. I was on ice.

I was frozen in my house, supine on an ice pack, for six months or so, then occasionally upright for the next year, thawing ever so slowly. Then refreezing, then thawing, again and again, up to the present pleasant thaw, three years later.

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On Pain

I. The Weird World of Variable Disability

I DON'T SPEND my days lying on the floor now. I do things, which is lovely. It is a great pleasure to blast the radio on the way to the grocery store, or walk from a parking spot near the lake to the gym, where I yoga and sauna.

It is difficult, then, to explain how Pain infects my life. So many of my dreams and ambitions feel stunted by Pain. One might suppose the operation of Pain on my life would be logical, a static set of limits, within which I function freely. The truth is more chaotic. Pain can overwhelm, even when it's not at its worst. Everything becomes hard. Thinking becomes hard. At some point Pain becomes a sickness. It's not just discomfort felt in one place; the whole body becomes incapable, lethargic, like when you can't run or speak in a dream.

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The Drizzy-Jhene Duet of Smooth Ambivalence

   "From Time"

   Drake ft. Jhene Aiko

   Nothing Was The Same

YOU DON'T really hear straight up love songs nowadays. Artists are too cool for You're mine baby I love you old-timey stuff. Everything has to be complicated, flippant, vengeful, sexual, ambivalent.

Drake is undisputed king of complicated, flippant, vengeful, sexual, ambivalent sorta-love songs. He excels (so Jewishly) at hyperanalytic relationship talk. He seems to spend ungodly amounts of time ruminating on woulda-couldas and past flames, which I find endearing and relatable. "From Time" is easily his best riff on this theme, with his neurotics calmed by some understated piano and the placid voice of Jhene Aiko.

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Love, Loss and Cheek Feathers Vol. II: Hard Knock Life

By Ximena the Hen, guest plogger

I BEGAN laying later than most. The other pullets were stepping out of the nest box clucking, tweeting egg pics, preening smugly like they knew they were real hens now, while I just waited. I waited for that feeling you are supposed to get, the deep soul urge that sends you looking for a bit of straw in which to leave your indent. 

Finally, after fall had turned to winter, the urge came. I needed the quiet of the nest box and the undulations of my oviduct as I needed feed and water. There is no greater satisfaction than laying an egg. In my early laying days I would set proudly atop my creation for a good hour after it emerged, enjoying the round certitude under my breast feathers. Sometimes I clucked. Mostly my celebrations were quiet, private.

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