Post Art Farm
I’m gonna stop writing this ritual in newsletter format because I know it’s ultimately limiting depth! I’m starting to accept more and more that the 2D, the computer is not going to be where my deep embodied focus happens. The 2D is not going to be where radical reconnection happens with our bodies and each other. And lol omg your email inbox — hell portal of multitasking and spam — is definitely not going to create space for receiving depth!
A month on the prairie at Art Farm made this as transparent as dragon fly wings: we need 3D accessible third spaces to metabolize grief, to tend to the fibers (stories) between us and explore how to make these threads of solidarity stronger.
I’ve spent the last few years kind of obsessed with the ~potential~ of our digital tools, and I’m OVER IT. The whole digital age feels like that rat drug study where scientists learned only the rats with depressing ass cages keep going for the cocaine in their feeders. The rats with access to play and connectedness don’t want coke even when they have access to it. This reminds me of when Barking Dog said Americans will soon realize we’re all on a reservation.
The more time I spend on my computer — even time attempting to make something digitally meaningful — feels like a distraction from 3D truth, from 3D action…it’s convenient for ~some~ that our main way of organizing ourselves is now digital and IT CAN BE FUCKING TURNED OFF…our ecosystems are rapidly changing and our machines won’t rebalance the nutrients of the soil…and the soil will decide if we continue…
I’m pretty fucking useless without this screen. What will I meaningfully contribute when I can’t plug in these things? I’m not trying to be anti-technology, but I’m trying to be more honest with myself about which technology is going to matter, what is cultivating life.
Back on the Prairie
I spent an evening with two Nebraska organic farmers, and we talked about what people like me, with privilege, can do in this moment of climate emergency. If you have time, you have privilege! If you have $$, you have time…use it to learn useful, hard, not sexy things. Everything meaningful takes a long ass time and is hard work.
Currently, I’m experiencing post-Art Farm depression — the sorrow of returning to complexity after simple collective land living! Much about Art Farm feels post-apocalyptic — decomposing art, weird strangers coming together in synergy to build from the decay. So much gratitude for experiencing an example of what is possible. So much gratitude for my star map growing deeper roots.
Of course, this residency was also grandpa Larry’s — this project is a collaboration after all. So I left a piece of him in the barn house.
What I know for sure:
Grandpa Larry in Victoria Barn House
SOIL UP change
new skills unlocked!!! was I a welder in a past life? I’m excited to keep being in 3D —> dissociation can’t have me
ancestral reconnection is necessary to heal the wounds of colonization and capitalism, to rebalance the soil, to create the foundation of any new structures —> this next chunk of time I’ll be working through what it looks like to do this in parallel, together —> it’s too hard to do alone!!!
this fall and winter are going to be dedicated to deepening chosen family bonds or as Barking Dog would say - digging my fox hole! Or as Ray would say, finding those who will reciprocate. Or as Aurora would say, finding my WHO.
deep focus is the antidote to…most suffering? I’m going to keep working on this project (writing and talking to Larry) and see where it leads —> not sharing that process in newsletter or digital format will challenge me to find long-term delayed gratification (like the harvest) and internal validation..oof
Here’s a poem, a vision, to close out. Thank you for trying it with me! <3 maybe I’ll send thots occasionally via this, but who fucking knows
(particularly) prairie therapy
in the barn of antiques
that didn't make it to the store
before grandma died
a dictionary flips open to the letter 'P'
the word 'particularly'
stands out to
to an exceptional degree
the prairie was a blanket
a French word for meadow
called the Great Plains
that stretched from
the feet of the rockies
to the missouri river
from canada to texas
tanji
to the Ioway
the prairie is mutually dependent
an estimated 0.1% remnant
in what is now called Iowa
97% privately owned land
an industrial agriculture
sacrifice zone
but tall grass remains devoted
20 ft deep
it's significant
specific!
that iowa—
the most biologically altered state —
is where i was restored
it was prescribed
you burn me to the ground
with your particularities
explicitly
your sounds
the limb lightning
and ticking
our people made the same river dirty
karma is
soybean green
John Deere green
the color of yearning
seeping into chemical creeks
hazel eyes
and trout flies
the horizon,
extremely visible here,
specifies where
responsibility lies
between expansion and contraction,
fertility and your death
panorama
all four directions
say the soil
will decide if you continue
if im alone
im haunted
by people i no longer speak to
and climate changes we're getting used to
no good choices
no good attention
so now people are my addiction
and idk what feels good
in the old barn house
we ate mushrooms
and someone asked your name
before we diverged to cry
our own separate ways—
me-i went to the pit in the ground
to find comfort in the sound
of my own breath
starting to have moments where
i deeply crave myself
and yet keep coming back to
stir relationship broth
drag spoon through awkward soup
talking vs. connecting
so what will you do with your peculiarities
if there's nothing particular about your pain?
come to the prairie and
write poetry
with roots 20 ft deep?
the corn husks are still clasped in prayer
at this time of year
imagine porous people arriving here
in four directions
for prairie therapy
it's late summer
so the corn will be clapping
we've been protective of our pain
possessive even
paying a high premium
the prairie will teach us patience
to overcome victimization
from the soil up
Mississippi models how
to redistribute
my pain is mine
thick in the atmosphere
like Co2
your pain is mine
particularly
photosynthesizes new
pathways to
pleasure
if you've questioned proximity
being close to everything
but stars
but plants
but people
is your freedom really at the desk?
on your computer?
if you've probed privilege and
productivity
to find freedom in your building hands
coursing through your receiving arms
could you be ready to work as hard
as your hard-working heart?
if you'd prefer
power to the people and
prosperity over punitive
penal systems
if you'd pulverize patriotism
and compost poop
if you're skeptical when they say
purpose-driven or
priority
if you're into poetic programming
playing and
pillow fighting
if you've questioned psychiatry
google
horse therapy
goat yoga
horticulture therapy or
cow cuddling
and then fucking go outside
for free
or go fucking outside!
(but land ownership makes
sex outdoors
particularly hard)
if you've questioned private
anything
and purity
or participating
politically
if you're proud to come from
poor people
if you want to be prepared
for a new world
that's coming whether we've
planned for it not
if you're tired of pretending
pollution and
pleasantries
if you practice peace
with praying feet
the prairie will protect you
come where deer prance
precisely the heartland of
preservation,
please!
transformation =
willingness to be surprised
so don't fly over
stay a while
the prairie in particular
needs therapy
you want to hear the pros?
besides the meadowlark songs
and the juiciest clouds?
a balance of opposites
flat green and vast blue
quiet warmth with the
tallest grass so there's
always enough food
ceremony creekside
mice tattoo
pigs plucking guitars
foxes fiddling folk songs
crane on banjo before
fire fly discos
crops in 9 year cycles
farmers in drag in
grain silos
raves in freedom fields
stomping space for pow wow
the buffalo are grazing again
retired tractors play pool
artists in barns with fossils
wolves unschool
no where to plant my love for you
like an inhale stuck
up my chimney head
I exhale
prairie green
particularly
the color of
liberationLove YOUUUUUUUUU, seriously, I really do,
Vero
