Postmodern Pastoral

Today was sheep slaughter day. I was pretty nervous, knowing I was going to watch something die. I got hardly any sleep. When I watched the sheep twitch and yank itself around with blood coming out his neck, I was surprisingly calm and quiet. I expected to be disturbed or disgusted, but I wasn't. I definitely felt some big emotions though, it's hard to pinpoint what they were. Solemn, content, religious, poetic perhaps. Maybe it wasn't even an emotion, but an action in my soul. I surrendered to how unfair life is.  "One must eat the other, who runs free before him. While fantasizing the beauty of each movement. A sensation not unlike slapping yourself in the face." -Jane's Addiction  The teachers at this communal farm are lovely, Raye held the front legs down while Shelby straddled the sheep. My classmate Blaine held the back legs down, and my other classmate Billy stirred the blood in a bowl to keep it from clotting. Raye's gonna make blood pudding in the...

The sweat rolling down the back, the tight white pants and the pooched out butt, the heart beating against the ribcage, the Oscar Meyer wieners, covered in mustard, going into everyone's mouth. It's a metaphor for sex, and the eroticism is below the surface, it can only be felt, not seen.  The pitcher has extreme focus, like a predator eyeing it's prey. The batter's contorted, like stress on a spring, waiting til the exact moment to burst. A white ball is thrown across the field. The batter has a split second to decide to swing or not, his mind explodes in two different directions, and it's a strike. He has just a moment before he has to raise the bat again and lock in his focus. Takes a few breaths, and then tenses his body up again. Every muscle from the feet to the fingertips to the eyes, contracted and held, and the heartbeats are getting louder.  Another pitch and he doesn't swing, it's a ball. A moment of relief. The back and forth between stress and r...

  I was with a group of rambunctious teenage boys on hog mountain, the sun was setting and lighting up beautiful red cliffs, I wanted to carve a spoon and was splitting some wood. I waved my machete up and down and instead of the juniper I hit my left index finger. It was a deep and long cut, but I still had sensation and was able to move it. I'll be fine, my coworker Kyle did some awesome first aid. I thought of my violin, I thought if it was worth it to call my supervisor to take me to the hospital, I thought about missing work, I thought about what kind of example I was setting for the boys if I went to the hospital for such a wimpy injury, I thought about how rude the boys were to me that week. I thought about how I needed to lead the band down hog mountain. Hog mountain is incredibly hard to navigate and it's dangerous if you go the wrong way and I was the only one who knew the way down. Had to make a lot of decisions, and decisions are hard for my tiny little brain, espec...

To hike a long hike, you gotta go into town every once in a while to pick up the care package your Mama sent to the post office. Well it's Sunday, and I'm in Front Royal and the post office doesn't open until 8:30 in the morning. Luckily for me, I found a super secret gay man network called Grindr. I can pretty quickly find a place to sleep on Grindr, lots of great men on there, most everyone is happy to help a hiker.  I knew I wouldn't make it to Front Royal in time to pick up my package, so 2 days ago I had to slow down, I got on Grindr back in Luray and a really nice guy came and picked me up. When he texted me he sent pictures of his big house, and said he'd pick me up in a Mercedes-Benz, he talked about his multiple airbnbs and his house-keeper. I mean, I got the impression that he liked showing off his money.  He married a woman, but that ended in divorce because of course it did. And his ex-wife and kids have nothing to do with him. So here he is fairly fresh...

You ever finally get a group of friends together to go out and have a fun dinner and see some cute city sights, and then like 2 minutes into the party you realize "wow I have no personality" Or there's a fun guy you wanna be friends with, so you text him, "hey" and he says "hey" back, and then at that point you literally have run out of things to say.  Or you have a day off, so you stay up late and you intend on sleeping in, but then you wake up at 6:30 am anyway and the rest of the morning you're even more tired and cranky than normal.  You have ingredients for a salad, but it takes too long to chop them all up, so you microwave some popcorn, after a few days, your lettuce goes bad, and you hate throwing it out. It's Thanksgiving and you take an airplane and a long car ride to go see your folks, and at home you all just fall asleep in front of the TV.  You forgot to look at the date until you got to work and all of a sudden it's your birth...

  I'm spending a few weeks with my brother Luke, and his family in Houston. It's very peaceful. Luke has a toddler and we basically play all day, and we have nap time, so I get a nap everyday. Golly I'm so grateful for naps. Yesterday morning Luke and his wife had to run an errand so I was babysitting for a few hours, Luke gave me permission to use the TV if his baby was going out of control. It's nice to have the TV as a safety net, but I know Luke doesn't want his child to get addicted to screens. There's this balance of short term compromises against the grand vision of how to raise a child. We didn't watch TV, we read Calvin and Hobbes.  I had friends Daniel and Addison visiting from Austin and I wanted to meet up with them, at noon we met at Spa World, the Korean spa on the west side of Houston. It's quite a drive, but everything is a drive here. On the way I listened to "I'm Glad My Mom Died" by Jeanette McCurdy, so I guess the drive ...