summertime!!! the humidity has arrived! i'm actually glad for it, i love the heat. and it's soooooooo lush and green and hilly and pretty around here....gorgeous, i tell you.
sorry for all the complaining and sadness last time...the funk has moved on. i feel pretty glorious and happy once again. hurrah! this weekend was bee-u-tiful...we...drum roll please...opened the beaver run pool, which probably holds the title for most-peed-in pool ever, but let's not dwell on that...i had my first official lifeguarding experience (oh yeah, thanks to beaver run i'm a certified lifeguard now. pretty cool. if you get into trouble in the water, don't worry. i can save you. and i have a pretty nice whistle.) watching over a pool of special needs kids is a bit stressful, actually, ( at moments i felt like i would be the one to have a seizure) but also fun to watch everyone play...
lots of the kids went home over the weekend, so we all got extra time off. went to a music festival in philly, so much fun and refreshing to be out in that world again. dancing is such a beautiful release. and we had a really lovely barbeque with the entire community yesterday...i love it when we all get to come together, and just eat and play together...even when you're dashing around making sure chris isn't biting courtney, and natalie isn't devouring the dessert table, there are still moments of peacefulness, and it's still a super good time.
the garden is amazing!! so much lettuce, and onions, and garlic, and sweet peas and parsley. we planted the tomatoes, and the herb garden is pretty lovely too...lots and lots of chamomile and oregano, basil, lavender, cilantro, so many different kinds of sage, rosemary...lovely. i'm working on building up the herb garden outside our house, but it's kind of slow going. anyway, we'll git 'er done soon.
i get to go home in a week! yippee!! for four whole days! my little sister monica is graduating from high school (!!!!!!!!!) and my wonderful friends billy and emily are getting married (!!!!!!!!!) so much excitement, i just might burst. i better go. before i burst.

we sowed radish seeds in the garden the other day...radish seeds are tiny. someday they will grow up to be great big radishes (well, i mean, as big as a radish gets...). within that little tiny seed there is all the potential for the plant, for life, for growth. not so long ago the earth was barren, the trees bare. now everything is exploding with growth, and green. the world is amazing.
and yet i still feel heartache-y lately. quite a lot. if alone-ness is the presence of oneself, and lonliness is the absence of the other...well, i guess i'm feeling them both very acutely. somehow, regardless of how beautiful my life is, and that i am surrounded by people who love me. while beautiful, it's also busier than anything, and hectic, and stressful, and everyone's just trying to cope with their own thing so much that we often miss each other. it's like we take care of the kids so much, we struggle to take care of ourselves, and sometimes end up completely forgetting to take care of our peers...i struggle with finding that balance.
some other things i've been pondering lots...
what it means to truly love unselfishly, without expecting anything in return, without any selfish motives, to truly take myself out of the equation. to love and give knowing that those you give to can't give back to you in the same way, maybe not in any way that you can see or feel immediately...what they do give is actually much deeper, but it takes time to realize it. maybe you love and try your best to help, and you get slapped in the face, or bitten, or kicked, or your shirt gets ripped. either you keep trying as lovingly as you can, or if you can't do it with love anymore you walk away until you can come back in gently.
everyone has a limit.
no one is infinitely patient.
and loving unselfishly means to truly desire the other's joy and happiness, without regard to how it may make you feel. their happiness brings you happiness.
pain is transformation.
it is by going through the fire that we come out stronger, able to withstand things which we could not before.
but dang, fire hurts.
i'm feelin' the burn.

so, drum roll, please....i have decided, officially, to stay here through december. sorry for all the suspense, those who have suffered. i apologize.
so yeah, beaver run isn't quite finished with me yet, i've decided. i don't know what they beginning of next year will look like quite yet, but hopefully i'll live in the same house with high school students, keep teaching the yoga elective for high schoolers, and a class for co-workers, work on the land and in the barn, and teach drama and circus arts as an evening activity. i think it'd be cool for the kids to put together some kind of production and then take it out into the wider community, visiting nursing homes and other schools and things. because lots of volunteers come and give to and work within this community, but these kids have something to offer to the wide world, too. and that way in a sense they're also giving back to all the outside support they recieve.
a friend and i also have this idea to start an herb-workshop elective with the high schoolers, making teas and soaps and salves and tinctures and things. it'd be good activites like stirring and grinding are good therapeutically for lower functioning students, and then the higher functioning ones can also help in more detail with those processes, and also with making labels and sorting and packaging and whatnot. and it's so therapeutic for them to be working with plants, and creating healing, natural materials for the rest of the community...yeah. we'll see.
easter here was so beautifully beautiful. the whole school worked together to create a play, which told the goethe's story of the green snake and the beautiful lily ( a very complex allegory about...?) and we then performed it together over the course of the week before easter, called holy week, filled with all kinds of special events. we all did land work together as a community in the mornings, had very special silent supper and this beautiful ceremony on thursday as remembrance of the last supper. good friday was a little too somber for me, but i guess it is a pretty somber day. and then easter sunday was SO beautiful, waking up to bells being played at dawn, and having a lovely celebration as a community, and then a beautiful brunch, and by brunch i mean the biggest feast one can imagine. i kind of learned to make ukranian easter eggs during lent, where you use this very delicate tool and create designs using wax and beautiful dyes, and then blow the the inside of the egg out so it's left hollow. they take sooooooo much time and patience, but they're very pretty. and my family came!!! well, some of them. the day after my birthday, which was the best best best gift ever.
the weather is beautiful, although we're having a bit of a drought. but it's so goregous and green, and aside from feeling quite stressed about the amount of seminar work i have to finish by the end of the month, life is good. but my goodness, do i miss all of you people!

so. beaver run's a pretty great place. the world's also a big, beautiful place, as of yet largely undiscovered by myself. i say this because i'm at a bit of a crossroads...i need to decide whether or not to stay on here for another year...by tomorrow. anybody?
i have a SUCH a travel itch, an urge to spend just years wandering and exploring, i want to travel to india desperately (more and more so every time i look at your blogs, k and linds) and study yoga and see what working with special needs' kids is like there, and visit the adult camphill community there, and just be in india! i've also got a major pull to return to africa, go work in the camphill children's village in botswana, or a women's collective farm and school for orphaned children in kenya, or go back to ghana...or go wwoof in alaska, or do an internship on a biodynamic farm in tennessee...or travel to central america...!!!! but then of course i'm doing volunteer work, and how would i pay for any of this? and all of these things will still be around next june...

i really really really love the kids here, the way we work and learn and grow with them, how self aware and honest they force me to be, the sometimes painful ways they teach me. the community is also beautiful and supportive, a bit too north-western european for my taste, but i still have complete freedom to be who i am. and within the community as a whole i have a small, precious circle of beautiful like-minded friends whom i feel so close to, and who are just so much fun! if i stayed on i could continue to teach yoga (i'm teaching a yoga elective for the high schoolers this term, starting in two weeks...wish me luck!), both to groups of students and one-on-one as therapy, and keep working in the garden and on the land, learning about biodynamics and organic farming...i could work with the bees and have andreas teach me all he knows, could keep on with all the community art projects and festival life we're just beginning (making murals, puppets, natural sculptures...)...the seminar's amazing, and i'd love to continue that for another year...i could help lead a drama group for the students...oh dear....and yet the thought of being in the same place for another year somehow makes me a little restless...

oh, and did i mention beaver run has offered to possibly pay for me to take a trip to india during the month of august we have off, to study yoga and visit a camphill there...!!!!

help!

wow. it has been a very long long time, huh?sorry. i hope someone still reads this...the long absence is pretty inexcusable, i mean, it's not like i don't have anything to write about...
well, happy springtime everyone!!! i hope all of your spirits are blossoming right along with the forsythia and magnolia and daffodils and all the other pretty pretty flowers...spring comes a bit sooner here than it does in frigid chicago...which i am lovin! the leaves haven't returned yet, but they will soon, in all their green glory. even the rain is refreshing, promising new growth...the smell of springtime is definitely one of my most favorite scents.
so....hmmm, where do i begin? we just had a two week spring break, and it was a completely and totally bee-u-tiful two week chunk o' time. four lovely lovely friends and i roadtripped down to north carolina, visited friends at warren wilson college and daydreamed about going back to school their someday and studying sustainable agriculture or outdoor education or appalachain music or some such nonsense...it's a gorgeous place. 1000 acres in the mountains of north carolina (this is where last of the mohicans was filmed, ya'll), a work study school, so everyone works on a crew in addition to taking classes...they have a college farm, raise cows, pigs, and horses, a big ole vegetable garden, women's herb garden, a blacksmith shop, an eco-dorm with composting toilets, kickin' music, art, and theatre programs...school sponsored extracurricular sports include ultimate frisbee and climbing...it's a pretty rad place to learn. the night we rolled in, we had just brought in our bags when we heard bluegrass being played out in the common area, a group of kids just randomly playing togther and one girl step-dancing. one of the kids knew how to call squaredancing, so we all just danced for hours...one day we went for a beautiful 4 hour hike in the hills, climbing trees, playing in the river...such a lovely place, filled with lovely people. after a few days we decided we needed more heat, though, and meandered south, taking our time and ending up all the way down in key largo....lindsay, your home state is BEAUTIFUL.
white sandy beaches, breathtaking tropical vegetation, the everglades, SO many herons and ibises, and egrits and i don't even know what else but they were awe-inspiring, and alligators!!! just hanging out on the side of the path through this park where we did a 15 mile bike ride gawking at all the amazing wildlife...and the OCEAN!!! we all got salty and sunburned and very very happy...life is grand. it was a stellar vacation, most especially so because the beautifully open and fun lovin and good hearted cats i was with...it's such a blessing to connect so deeply with people you've only known a short time...they remind me so much of my chicago family, and how much i miss and love you all. now i have a beaver run family, too. how blessed...
...next time i'll actually write something about beaver run herself ( and i promise it'll be sooner than 3 months' time), but for now i'm still revelling in the glory of vacation...love love love!to each and everyone of you...

happy new year, all. new beginnings, new thoughts, new dreams. methinks this will be an exciting year. and a good one...
i hope the holidays were joyful and happy for all. it was lovely to have such a massive break (two and a half weeks, phew!) and happily, it's been just as lovely to return to beaver run. the long break also thankfully has seemed to fade memories of the paradise play (the story of the fall of adam and eve is performed a few days before the shepherds' play, the story of the shepherds coming to meet the baby jesus, is performed on christmas eve. the shepherds' play is very sweet and joyful...full of warmth. the paradise play...not so much. adam and eve incur god's wrath, he sends an angel with a flaming sword to drive them out of paradise, the devil (that was me) is running around with a chain in a scary-if-you're-under-the-age-of-twelve-or-so costume shrieking about the flames of hell...yeah. why do we perform this for children, you might ask? not entirely sure. it's very, shall we say...conservative? oh but it's supposed to be redemptive in the end, you see, because the devil gets what's coming to him (the devil and god are both male characters, by the way) and is condemned to writhe along in the dust on his belly, and adam and eve have attained knowledge of good and evil, thus free will. in case it's not obvious, i'm not sure how i feel about the plot of this here paradise play and how it's presented, but it was a cool experience to be a part of something with so much history, and that was at it's core simple storytelling...people from the community presenting the play as a gift to the rest of the community. that was nice)...don't get me wrong, it was a blast to play the devil. but a bit odd to actually scare little children. one little girl, erin, who happens to be very aggressive herself, was so afraid she had to be taken out, and kept yelling "no snake, no snake!". and the older kids, who knew it was me, for the remaining few days before vacation kept referring to me as the devil in day-to-day life...it was funny...but i think i'm glad they're over it now.
it truly is so wonderful to be back with the students...i didn't realize how much i missed them until they all started coming back last sunday. as trying and exhausting as they can be sometimes, they make me laugh everyday, reminding me of the humour and beauty of life, they inspire me in the way they overcome their challenges and limitations, they keep me creative and teach me so much about myself, the world, what it means to be human, what i'm doing with what i've been given, they're helping me discover how to live my own truth in a gentle, gracious, and respectful way...in short, they're fabulous. you should all meet them. really, you should.
i've put off doing my heaps and heaps of seminar homework long enough, it's really getting shameful. thus i must sign off.
oh, but first, i hereby dedicate this entry to the pigs...they're probably bacon by now...

my grandfather musing about what a wonderful life he's been blessed with...
"i've known and worked with a lot of fabulous people. life is all about the people we get to know. we can do nothing by ourselves."
happy christmas to all.