Monday, June 29, 2009

just to consider for today: what is it you plan to do, with your one wild and precious life?

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver

when i got up to the top, my head got light

welcome to my new online gathering place.
here, i will detail for you the love and the struggle of trying to become more compassionate and cruelty free in my daily life.

this will be a record of How We Lived Then, so that i can look back on it, and future me will say, oh, how hard it was, but how glad i am that i did it.

for those who don't know, i became vegetarian almost three months ago, and i wrote about that in a zine called "going to watkins glen," which was a limited edition print of 70 copies. i will not be reprinting this zine, for various reasons, the need in the world for some things to be fleeting, rarified, once in a lifetime, i suppose, some things you can never catch in your hand again. that said, i will be talking about some of the same themes from that zine here, as well as my reasons for going veg, the struggles that i'm having with trying to eat more vegan and kick that dairy habit, and the profound experience that i had visiting farm sanctuary in watkins glen, new york, a few weeks ago for an event called zoop.

i will also be experimenting with vegan cooking, and some friends and i will be putting out a vegan cookzine relatively soon. recipes will be posted and tested here!

this is a crossroads in my life - i plan on documenting it most carefully.
when I got up to the top, my head got light
for a minute everything in the world was alright
I saw the next tree just ten feet away
give or take a few feet I guess
then I pushed off into the air with all my might
headed out into the center of the morning light
I knew that I was gonna make it
the new tree hardly shook to acknowledge my arrival
I knew that I would be alright

"treetop song," - the mountain goats