Pedaling Tandem on a One Seat Bike

I'm finally comfortable riding my bike fourteen miles without stopping.
I'm learning how to shift smoothly, right before I need the change.
I'm enjoying the trail, able to notice the flora and fauna -- while breathing simultaneously.
I'm no longer a heavy drag on Craig.
I'm not noticing any difference in my weight or body structure. This matters not.
I'm feeling the warmth creep into my muscles, and anticipate it.
I'm looking forward to that G-Spot on the trail. The part where sacred waits for me to return.

I always yell as loud as possible -- I LOVE YOU GOD -- with no hands.

The deer, eagles, mice, rabbits, slugs, and woodpeckers stop everything - concurring with holy silence.

Then He breathes on me his pleasure. I feel it begin on the top of my head. It drips over me like a
wide nozzled shower head, covering all of me.

I hesitate to confess -- my brain throbs in time with my swollen heart and tingling skin. My body melts.

Great sobs of joy erupt, enlarging my rib cage. Tears blind me. I can barely breathe.

It's alright, because in that place on the trail I find myself clinging to Someone else, a tandem tangle.

Here Be Dragons

say the ancient cartographers

marking dangerous places

outside familiar territory. 

Disasters befall adventurers

who dare to travel past 

publicly approved comfort zones. 

Green lights keep everyone safe. 

Tight fences keep bad guys out. 

Regulations assure and reassure. 

Airport security finds hidden danger 

before it grounds a plane. Our own 

FDA makes sure meat, and milk are pure. 

Right? 

I’d rather meet Linford and Karen

at the edge of the world, and face down

the fiercest, fire breathing dragons 

than live in a world where natural cob

homes are outlawed and destroyed 

and their builders put behind bars,

where by the book inspectors sign off 

on conventional houses that pass

but shouldn’t, 

where real estate agents persuade 

young married's to buy a house they

can't afford, hanging them upside down,

where raw milk from real cows

eating green grass is condemned, 

and cooked honey is considered safe, 

where pharmaceuticals try to corner the market

making herbal home remedies illegal, and give  

doctors plenty of free, questionable samples 

where the only remedy for pain 

or sleeplessness is a pill, and being 

disturbed or uncomfortable is intolerable.  

where choices to legally homeschool 

are trying to be taken away by a government 

that legally let me abort life, 

where pure cotton is loaded with pesticides,

and peanuts are grown in that same ground 

after the damage is done, 

where bleached, separated, modified, manipulated grain grown 

in lifeless, weedless ground is blamed for 

glucose intolerance in pasta, pastry, and bread,

where women ruin their eyesight with lash extensions,

deform their mouths with duck lip injections, and try to make

down there look like an airbrushed pubescent girl, 

where women think large lumpy breasts, rump lifts, liposuction, and 

facelifts are necessary for self focused happiness, and lovely brown skin 

dies trying to bleach itself white. 

Go ahead and cook your brains -- straighten your dyed, curly hair, watch TV until you forget how to converse, swing your marriage, don’t die of natural causes - let chemo and radiation take your last dollar and your last vista view. Throw away all your books, give up your guns, immunize your babies, get a flue shot every year, take fluoride on all fronts, soak your house in formaldehyde, let it preserve your body when you die, cover the ocean in a layer of plastic soup, melt the glaciers, buy another car, just try to poison the super duper yellow jackets, fleas, giant wasps, try to cure the lyme disease epidemic, let the government shut down, bake a turkey that lives with 20,000 others in a cesspool barn gasping for light and fresh air, eat tasteless eggs, and BBQ beef that smells like feces. 

I’m feeling partly paralyzed and completely confused by what is allowed and disallowed. Approved of and not approved of. It seems all turned around crazy. We're upside down, backwards, topsy turvy, and inside out. 

I want to be a dangerous expedition hungry adventurer who’s not of afraid going where there be dragons. I wish I could get ahold of one of those old maps so I knew what direction to head off toward.  

 I can’t, so I’m just going to follow Over the Rhine to Nowhere Farm, where they left the edges wild. 

Meet Me At The Edge Of The World could start the next revival, become the latest manifesto, start the newest trend. But it won't, because most people are more afraid of dragons. 

Peter Turchi's Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer prompted this crazy rant. Don't blame him.  

I take full responsibility. I know this is badly written, but I am sooooooooo mad about the crazy things going on in our world. Forgive me if you want, but I'm not sorry. :) 

   

Taking the Waters at Soap Lake

Sunshine leaves

echoes of light

bouncing off 

healing water

cupped between

pentagon stacks

of baked basalt

lining hot
canyon walls

where table top

mesas remember

 silhouette reliefs

of the ancient ones 

who came
for healing -

taking the water

before we did. 

Locals ask if you're taking the water. This means soaking in it for health reasons, not drinking it.

Soap Lake has an ancient history we don't know much about and a more recent history.

Native Americans called it Smokiam, which means "healing waters" and Let-to-to-weints, which is said to mean "healing water springs." 

Be sure to stay at The Inn at Soap Lake. The grounds are lovely. 

Winter Wheat

It sprouts -

It cocoons -

It ripens - 

It dies -

  It gives -

life via 

berries ground 

mixed with water

leavened to rise 

 baked brown 

broken for bellies 

 hungry for more 

than bread alone. 

More than any other growing thing besides those plants and trees that somehow put down roots in pure rock, winter wheat gives me a big dose of courage. I know what it faces during the long winter, and yet it continues happily in the spring, hardened against what summer may throw at it. Hard red winter wheat is what I use for bread. Hearty bread. Soft spring wheat won't do. Grinding it and burying my hands in the warm meal brings a sacred joy. 

I just discovered Bluebird Farms Grain in Winthrop. My first order arrived - Rye, Farro, and Einka/Einkorn. Heirloom, ancient grains organically farmed. These are the innovative, brave farmers. It is a beautiful endeavor. I want to support them. Applaud them. Cheer them on. Curtsy. 

(This picture is NOT from their farm. This is merely dirt, not healthy soil. There was no life in it. There wasn't a farm house to be seen for miles and miles.)