Matt's Missives

well, here i find myself back on denman for a while, building garden beds and doing chores. it's kind of nice to be back and in one place for a few weeks. but there's something that's bugging me here--that no one is interested in having any kind of fun. i got here on friday, and so far we've really done nothing but work. now, don't misunderstand me-- i know how much work this project is involving, i have a good sense of the value of work, and quite often get pleasure from it. but i also believe that in order to really do good work, you have to balance it with a certain amount of leisure time. i mean, really: how healthy is a life that you're waiting until tomorrow to enjoy? i need to find a way of bringing this up so that people don't get defensive and tell me "i don't really understand the work involved in this place," cause that's just a load of shit.
despite that, though, it's nice to have some fresh air, time to play guitar, read, etc.

Posted by matt at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

remembering to dance,
under the stars or in the rain

remembering to fear,
and try to understand it

remembering to share
with people i don't understand

and remembering to love myself
despite all the things i can't stand.

why have i forgotten so much?

Posted by matt at 03:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

i've gotta find a way to survive this work thing. tomorrow is my "on" shift--having worked monday and tuesday, i had a two day break, now i work friday and monday, then thursday and friday. anyways, i'm totally dreading it. i know i just have to suck it up and say get on with it, but there's part of me that just says this is not how i want to spending my time . . . particularly since it's gonna involve crawling around in a dank crawl space surrounded by fiberglass--toxic stuff. anyways, i don't mind working hard, i just hate doing stupid stuff for other people. whine whine whine i know. this is me being negative.

Posted by matt at 01:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

hold on magnolia
i hear that station bell ring

you might be holdin' the last light i see
before the dark finally gets a hold of me

and it's about to get hold of me, but not yet. i'm holdin' out against sleep, cause i've forgotten the power of dream. i don't look forward to them right now, though that will change, given time. i hold on in the dark, against the light of sleep. i want to stay away for fear of missing something, and yet to let go is such sweet relief.

hold on magnolia to the thunder and the rain
to the lightnin', that has just signed my name

hold on magnolia to that great highway
no one has to be that strong, but if you're stubborn like me
i know what you're tryin' to be.

and so it is, and so it goes. hold on magnolia, i hear that lonesome whistle whine. it's calling for me, it's saying matt, it's almost time, stand, face the north, face the west, face the south, face the east, face it all, let it all go. such is life, so it is.
goodnight.

Posted by matt at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

and just like that i'm home again. did some roofing on emerson's shanty yesterday, and there's discussion of building me a shack before winter hits heavy. it's coming. the air is cooler, the clouds lower and things are greening up. pace is slowing down, warmth feels good again and the mushrooms are sprouting. i carry the audubon field guide in my pocket, and a knife. no wallet, no keys, no identity more than the one i choose. morning was spent cutting and hanging tobacco, getting reacquainted with the plants. this afternoon we pick walnuts. it's harvest time.

Posted by matt at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

and another week passes, somewhat unlike the ones before. a week in the insanity of a desert beset with alkaline dust storms, hot off the ground kicking up into your eyes, nose, mouth. my mouth is raw, because despite our best precautions dust gets everywhere, especially food, and as you eat it subtly burns your mouth, so by the end of a week your tongue and cheeks feel raw from that alkaline taint. my lungs are raw, because despite the respirator i wore, it still crept in. my skin is baked a deep brown, and dried from the sun. my senses are shocked, my body recovering from dehydration, improper eating patterns, lack of sleep, exposure to extremes, some good-natured drug abuse, and all around over-stimulation.
picture 30 thousand people, mad max, salvador dali, the circus, a pagan celebration of rebirth through fire, experimental intentional communities, and giant rave, roll them into one, put them on the moon (or in this case the black rock desert), and you've got where i've been for the last week. i left the desert partly relieved, partly reluctant. i fell in love, and though we left the burning man fantasy behind, i'm not sure i left her in it, though only time will tell. she, a true desert rat, me, a child of ocean and forest and mountain. compatible, but destined? who knows. i'll save the cheesy, heartbroken poems until properly polished.
as emerson says: build create communicate destroy. to that i'll just add:
burn baby burn.

now homeward bound, to the place i love so much.

Posted by matt at 12:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

shit. victoria has finally stopped feeling like home. it's pretty nice. i used to love coming back here and feeling like i was supposed to be here, but in the last year i just got tired of the same faces, doing the same thing. when i was here in april it was the last time i felt at home, and that was because of the friends that were living here. now we've all gone our own way, and i come back into town and realize that there's noone for me to stay with, really, so i stay with friends of friends. it's great to feel i know this city well, to know some people here, but to be less than visible. i don't have to talk to people everywhere i go, i am in the shadows of this city again. great.

Posted by matt at 05:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"i'm getting weaker, i'm getting thin, i hate how obvious i've been." --songs-ohia. sometimes i feel like this too (with girls in particular), but then i realize better to be obvious. i hate mind games, and i'd rather just be able to say "hey i've got a crush on you, and if it's not reciprocal that's okay, it's just a crush." unfortunately life doesn't work this way, and all you have to do is sort out confused looks and half smiles.

Posted by matt at 02:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After heat of the day, a fatigue that lasts from noon to six, i can work again. trench digging and some time in the garden takes me to the lake. the evening means cooler waters, and less people, and as i make my way down the trail i take particular pleasure in the noise made by cowboy, my four legged associate, as he's the only one making any noise. the horizon is tinted pink, from the giant setting sky furnace, the waters are as still as i've seen them, the ripples normally found on the surface have been transposed to the northern clouds. i dive in, the only being to break the stillness except the occasional fish, surfacing, or the occasional insect, landing, and surfacing see nothing but pink, on the water, in the sky. and the water washes away all the heat, and any of the anger or sadness i might have felt today. and so i kick around and appreciate my brief solitude, a few moments in a day. on shore again, ready to go, i reach into my pocket to find the stone that has been waiting for the right time to be skipped at the right place. so i send it out, towards the friend who has the other half, and it takes one long leap off the water, and lands, far from where i found found it, in its new home. and i go home. and it only takes one moment to realize some things.

Posted by matt at 05:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

apparently poetry recitation and walking are good for the heart. dactylic hexameter, the old greco-roman meter, has particular benefits to the heart. this makes sense as it's essentially what is known as the walking beat in african rhythms. 12312312312312312. it reminds me of bruce chatwin's discussion of universal grammar in relation to humanity's nomadic nature--that language evolved from this particular rhythm, evidence of which is the tripartite organization of language: subject, object verb (in any particular order), 123, walk on. quite intertesting.
in the vein of universal grammar, i read yesterday that according to some anthropological linguistic institute over 700 of the 1000 languages they have extensive records of contain the word papa in reference to father. common origins . . .

Posted by matt at 05:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

a day of work done, chores completed and now the half hour of free time before I go to bed. i started work at 8:30, put some siding on a porch, as well as wood tops on a railing. this involved much planing and cutting of wood. came home, watered the plants, fed the sheep, practised some tai chi, did some more work on my "rustic" shelving unit. today's work was tying baling twine around the joints, where the cross-bars meet the posts. i'm building it entirely out of rounds, which is quite an interesting experience--difficult in the plumb and square arena. it looks very rustic. this unit is part of the "renovation" we're doing in the brown (our trailer) to make winter a sane experience for us all. we've ripped out the furnace (we have a wood stove), and we're in the process of organizing the food, dishes and books into something resembling a planned communal living space. after the shelves, it was dish time, eat time, more dish time, accounting time and now it's writing time. that must mean it's almost bed time. it's busy, but i like it that way.

Posted by matt at 06:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

well, it's been a while since I updated so . . . lots of projects, from greenhouse design, to outhouse, thoughts on reorganizing the kitchen space (it's a little cramped, and if it doesn't flow better we'll all kill eachother during the winter) as this week's project. a whole plethora of natural building, gardening and permaculture books courtesy of Andrew, and some new friends (Meegan and Lindsay) in Courtenay just about round out the changes that are happening around here. It's my week off work, should be a busy one, involving much reorganizing . . . I'm realizing how messy this place, when it really doesn't have to be. that is all for now . . .

Posted by matt at 04:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

every project gives its own little lessons in humility . . . and either you let it beat you up or you let it remind you how much there is you don't know. . .

Posted by matt at 09:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

after collapsing from a 13.5 hr. workday, involving hauling junk in the morning and then 10 hours of haying, I wrote to my friend Mike of the long day. He had little sympathy, saying that it was 12:30 and he was waiting for "beam time" (he works at the particle accelorator). What follows is my response:
the beam does not demand that you throw 35lb bales from field to truck (stacking them 4 high) and then from truck to barn, waking with your fingers like arthritic claws, imagining for a moment that you have descended prematurely into the aging process and your joints will never be the same, pain so intense that it will not let you sleep past 7:30 until you uncurl your fingers and massage your knuckles and try with pins and needles to lure yourself back into dreams. science does not move 1200 bales in a day. that'll feed more livestock than any beam.

Posted by matt at 06:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yesterday I worked harder than I think I ever have, on a given day, in my life. It was an epic 13.5 hour day. Starting with work at the construction site, staining wood and piling junk. A quick break and I headed out to the hay fields at noon, to hay the rest of the day. Loading 35lb bales from field to truck, from truck to barn. 10.5 hours (actually, just 10, cause we had another .5 hour break). We loaded 1200 bales of hay. I lifted so many that I woke up this morning with what Pete affectionately calls "the claw." This is different from the pins and needles I've had for the last few weeks from hammering and sawing heavily--waking with numb hands that take a few minutes to shake off. This was a pain in the tendons, runing from knuckles to elbow, making it extremely painful to bend my fingers. Lovely. All in all though, it felt fantastic to work that hard.

Posted by matt at 01:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For a long time I've thought that the current problem of invasives--scotch broom, blackberry, purple loose strife to name a few of the more obvious ones--is one that nature would settle itself (I owe this mode of thinking to a variety of influences, but most noticeably my friend and ecologist Adam Ford). Of course, it's difficult to convince a lot of people, particularly environmentalists, of the unknown benefits these plants may bring. Though they're quite destructive in the short term, eventually they'll reach some kind of equilibrium. That's kind of the nature of nature. Anyways, this ramble is all to say that I feel somewhat vindicated. Permaculture expert (and co-creator) David Holmgren has this to say about invasive species in Australia (re: the burgeoning Landcare movement):

Implicit in permaculture strategy is the acceptance that nature is an active designer herself and that it will be the co-evolutionary development of wild systems which may be the real keys to sustainability. Wild nature is evolving new ecosystems from a mix of self reproducing species at an ever increasing speed. This "ecosynthesis" is natures self organising response to the disturbances since European settlement and follows patterns described by systems ecology.

In some areas especially along streams the ecosynthesis process is advanced to the point where forests of mixed native and exotic species are beginning to show systemic characteristics. Study of these advanced examples of ecosysnthesis is conspicuous by its absence apart from a few informal permaculture inspired projects.

For more this interview, information on permaculture and Holmgren's forthcoming book, Permaculture Principles, visit:
http://www.holmgren.com.au/

Posted by matt at 05:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A little explanation, at long last. I'm on Denman Island, 45 minutes north of Nanaimo, in the Georgia Strait between mainland BC and Vancouver Island. The island itself is about 1200 people, and maybe 20 or 30 km (?) from north to south. Most people who visit Denman know it only as the gateway to the more touristy Hornby (attractive because of its fine sand beaches), if they even bother to learn its name. Though Hornby is the more celebrated island, I've so far found Denmaners nothing but welcoming. We've found work and great community, in only our first month, in a place where there's supposedly nothing. It's true that people here are a little more insular, isolated, than those on Hornby, but it's just that they like their privacy, they like doing their own thing, something I can strongly relate to. There's a group of folks here who are welcoming and politically motivated, and manage to blend tradition with innovation, for the most part seamlessly. Not to say Denman hasn't had its share of problems of course, extensive logging, and a push for development (like golf courses and condominiums) since it's so close to Courtenay, but there seems to be a strong community resistance to that, to which we hope to add our own voices.
As for who "we" are, I use that term to refer to Peter, Emerson, Sam and myself, those of us who live on "the farm," thus far unable to find a more original name. The property itself is 40 acres of wetland, forest and cleared area. We have 11 sheep, 20 young chickens, a quickly developing garden, one dog, a treehouse, and lots of ideas for the future. We're basing our development of the property around permacultural principles (Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, Toby Hemenway have all published excellent books on the subject), with an eye to some hoped-for political activism. For more information on these subjects go to: http://www.livejournal.com/users/madfarmers/
Denman looks to be my home for the indefinite future, and although I'm always a little to restless to stay anywhere forever, basing myself from Denman, growing with the community here, seems like a pretty great possibility.

Posted by matt at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If yesterday was a snake day--and it was--today was all about birds. Loading bricks, and lumber yesterday I kept running into these two garter snakes--one at each end of of my carrying--basking in the sun, slithering away from me. Today, while cutting Scotch broom I ran into a small nest of what looked kind of like robin's eggs, only a little bird started scolding me who looked nothing like a robin. I worked as gently around the eggs as possible, but I think I still left them too exposed. Then I saw this turkey vulture land and walk around in the field I was working in--it took a few minutes for it to notice me. Then, after arriving to my paradise home of 40 acres, I sat in a maple tree drinking wine with Emerson, Pete, Rianna and Sam and we watched the chickadees who lived inside the tree feed their young. Definetely a bird day.

Posted by matt at 05:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, here I find myself on Denman, farming, landscaping, just working in general. I'm sleeping in a tent, cooking in a trailer, but pretty much living outside. It's exactly what I need . . .

Posted by matt at 02:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)