my first word was 'dada'

the sea has been dense with hurrican upsets lately: organic matter shaken from its place under the salt water. when it washes up onto our beach, drying and stinking from the decomposition of fishes and sea vegetables, we put it back on the plants as black gold and watch them love life even more. i can't shake the feeling that i am in a parallel universe that never makes you shiver at night and where something is always blooming or fruiting. loving and unloving are taking their resp ective but equal tolls on my mind. the former is something that i've realized maybe i don't know anything about. at least that's what padi says. but i am curious nonetheless, how does one love? i am determined to find out. anyway, the farm has trickled down to just 5 of us: four ladies and ben. i am in the kitchen between five and ten hours a day getting all sorts of steam burns and cuts and jaundicy fingers from tumeric root. my roomate sophia and i harvested a few pounds of ginger yesterday and it is pickling right now for sushi next time we get sticky rice! i started flipping through one of our herb books and really want to educate myself on that while we have a quiet farm. toward the end of this month, we are supposed to be getting like twenty new interns. this is good because shit will get blent, but i need to be a leader to them since i am long-term(-ish) staff and that's intimidating. self-discovery, enlightenment, projection, intuition, that hoochie koochie hippie stuff, thats all happing to me and with me and it's all good to me like a complete protein or an overcast day. i have been having lots of vivid memories of my father and what his hands look like and what his speghetti sauce tastes like and how hard he works and how many things he has studied and given commitment to and how i know exactly how to make him laugh. things i associate with him like hot springs and beards and the smell of sawdust and the way an artichoke blooms on its way back to seed.