7th June, 2003

I woke up at 6:20 groggy, but ready to go. At 6:25, I was downstairs waiting for Duncan, Henrike, Selina, and Luis. We were  supposed to leave promptly at 6:30, but there was a lot of milling about and tiredness and we didn’t get into the car until 6:45.

Duncan started speeding on those narrow twisting back roads with their high hedges on either side. He was pushing it up to 60mph on the straight parts and riding the brake on the curves, slowing us down to about 50mph.

It was a quiet and very tense ride. Henrike asked Duncan to slow down and he started yelling at us all for making him late. Selina asked him to slow down as well and Duncan started defending his driving.

“I know these roads so well, I could practically drive them blindfolded.” “I am in control.” “I’ve got excellent reflexes.” You may recognize these defences from speaking to a drunk driver.

Anyhow, I felt embarrassed that he was arguing with them, and angry. I asked him what good his reflexes and control would be if we were to run into anything unexpected- like a tourist driver hurtling down the wrong side of the road. He did not answer that question nor did he slow down. Around this time we made it to the main road where these speeds would be acceptable anyway.

He dropped the other three off at Temple Bar and then brought me to the Co-op, where we were to help Bryan set up.  This was a very similar set up to Temple Bar, only we were given folding tables and we were in a gymnasium/auditorium in a church.

Bryan warned me that the market was “The Twilight Zone” and that people would be coming up to him and commenting on the state of his chakras. But after Duncan left us there to run the market, nothing like that happened. It was certainly a stereotipical affluent liberal anti-war pro-yoga scared of brown skinned people but would never admit that kind of vibe, but no one gave any readings or anything.

We had a very busy day. We’d gotten no price list that morning, so we had to remember as best we could what to charge. We found that out just as we were finishing setting up in the moments before the market opened for business. That, and the fact that this was a much talkier customer base, made for an extremely busy and fast paced day.

Riding high on the buzz of a busy, talkative, flirtatious day, I’d forgotten all about this morning until Duncan came to pick me up.

“Did you think my driving was crazy this morning?” he said to me instead of ‘hello.’

I paused shortly yet dramatically.

“If you’re still dwelling on it, maybe you think it was crazy.”

“No I” blah blah blah something something something all very similar to the things he was saying this morning. No intellectual development or refinement of the ideas whatsoever- exactly the same.

I put my hand up and interrupted him gently. “Honest opinion: I didn’t mind your driving, but I thought it was very rude to ignore the requests to slow down.”

“I slowed down.”

Had he forgotten I had been sitting next to him, with a clear view of the speedometer? Was he hoping I had a bad memory, was extremely gullible, or that I was otherwise stupid? Were his eyes begging me from behind thick glasses to let him save face just this once? I couldn’t answer any of these questions nor could I figure out which questions were smart to ask. So I said “oh” to him in such a way that he would leave me and not talk about it anymore, but which also showed him I wasn’t on his side- you know the intonation.

I rode home with Luis in the back of a refrigerated truck. This made me feel like a real illegal immigrant (which I technically was) and I was glad to arrive home safely. We were having a nice dinner to welcome Sam to the farm.

I think I’ll like her, but there was some sizing one another up, circling like tigers, or whatever image you like to use when two people are not sure if they will like or can trust one another but are nontheless going to be living and working in a shared space.

I was annoyed by Duncan and a little by Sam too and I started to think about how the assertion, “I know.” is probably not so closely associated with wisdom. Wisdom is probably more about letting slippery things slide and not trying to make them stick.

Denis asked Sam something along the lines of, “What are you running from?”

She kind of didn’t really respond but also kind of mumbled that she wasn’t running from anything and Denis pressed the point. “Everyne who comes here,” he declared, “is running from something.

I said, “I’m not.”

“That’s what everyone says.”

I didn’t bother explaining that I would never run from anything bad, only towards something good, and I didn’t even bother telling him “oh” the way I described above. I let it pass. The conversation moved on.

But inside my head, part of me dwelled there on that question. I did not ask the obvious followup- ‘why is Denis so sure of this/what is it in him that makes him feel this way/what reaction is he trying to get with this question?

No, instead, I searched deep, trying to figure out if I’d been lying to myself about my feelings and motivations and if, somehow Denis had seen through all that.

I went to bed hours later still thinking about it because sometimes that’s how I get.

6th June, 2003

I couldn’t shake off my restless night. I was tired, resentful, and lazy today.

We spent a great part of the day, Selena, Luis, and I, planting courgettes (zucchini).

Under the hot blue sky toiled, and then, sometime in the middle of the hot afternoon, we, by common silent agreement, moved into the shade of the tree lined border heading down along the slope of the hill between two fields.

We lounged there an uncounted length of time, listless and powerless in the heat, chatting mindlessly.

Luis, in his hypnotically rhythmic cadences explained his dream house. Not too large, near the sea, but not close enough to hear the crashing of the waves, solitary and suited to studying, very quiet, with a few flies buzzing around.

Why?

Because to hear flies buzzing reminds you how quiet it is.

Luis made that nervous big smiling face normally reserved for repeating “Get it? Get it?” after telling a joke no one laughed at, and Selena and I were both looking at nothing in particular.

I was smiling politely, but also horrified at the thought that a bunch of buzzing flies would be a relaxing sound to a guy. What kind of buzzing is going on in his head all day, I wondered.

We continued to lounge in near silence until the afternoon cooled just a little, and we finished our planting.

I tried to make a stir fry for myself this evening, but it was so salty, I needed two sips of water after each bite. Got to change my strategy. Such a bad cook sometimes.

5th June, 2003

I wasn’t here today. Not really. I mean, I sorted through huge mounds of rotting vegetable matter with that horrible solid stench of rot made worse because you can smell the once delicious scent behind it and that horrible texture of solid things becoming lose and pouring out of themselves.

I did also have a secret and solitary dance party in the afternoon, hoping no one came in, but letting the fear of discovery add to the fun. But really, I wasn’t here.

Today I was in my head. In my thoughts about thoughts about thinking and in my memories. Half blind, I went through my day taking note of almost nothing that passed. I kept remembering James. For no reason, I remembered him.

About a year before this, I’d been working in an after-school daycare program and Summer camp. In addition to all of my other duties, my job was to stay by James’ side and help him take part in every activity. Kind of silently, self-effacingly, getting him involved as fully as I could imagine.

He had a small list of diagnoses that I was supposed to remember, but these annoyed me as I felt they often got in the way of treating him as a person. So I can tell you he had severe autism and two other things just like that, but I don’t even remember the fancy acronyms. As I said, they annoyed me.

What didn’t annoy me was the boy. I came to love him some. We became friends.

I had no reason to be thinking of him today; none I could figure out, but I thought a lot of him and the way he called me “Mi’-uh”

I remembered his white teeth, his blond hair, and blue often red-rimmed eyes. I remembered the helmet and leash he was sometimes forced to wear and how both of us seemed to agree it was a bit of an indignity.

I met his Dad once at a Halloween party and they guy came straight up to me, beaming, to shake my hand. “He loves you, man.”

One day, he had an accident and crapped himself at camp. I had to help him clean himself up. I started gagging and dry heaving and James giggled high and loud in between pretty accurate imitations of my almost barfing.

When the end of camp came, we were supposed to give every kid an award. I was working with the 5 year old boys and the two autistic kids, and I know they need a lot of praise and building up, but even so, the idea of giving everyone an award bothered me a little. But instead of abstaining and giving no one an award, and instead of giving everyone a little cookie cutter, I decided to give everyone something really accurate and personal.

James got Most Popular, and everyone was very happy to agree that it was true. I felt like with James I got a preview of what it will be like to love my own son someday.

I miss him, and I wonder how he is and if he even remembers me. I wondered if I could become his friend, but there is such a suspicion in that industry of a single male continuing his friendship with a child. The whole thing is dehumanizing and sad.

Now, at the end of the day, shaking, I am so tired, I wait to unload Denis’ truck which is not coming back to the farm until about two in the morning  because it broke down.

4th June, 2003

I spent an hour lugging a wheelbarrow full of sand along the driveway, finding holes, and filling them. Dump, pack, repeat. Mindless mule work. Sweaty, upper body, core, and legs work. Balance work.

I spent the next eleven or so hours pulling orders from the warehouse and packing trucks. Not only do we sell both our home-grown food and our imports at markets- we also handle bulk sales to many other people.

So during the day, while I’m packing our vans, we are getting different visitors who run different markets and co-ops and delivery services all coming by. It lends a highly social aspect to a physically demanding day and keeps me fresh and enthusiastic over the long hours.

Lari, Cordelia’s daughter, came by just to be adorable I suppose. She said I was a big bear. What a sweetie. I suppose today was a name-calling kind of day anyway, because several people called me a Texan for a little while too.

I got an email today from an old friend, Jason. Our mutual friend, Dzon had written me a limerick I’d like to reprint here:

There once was a boy in Dublin
who was so fatigued he was stumblin
When a boy half his age
with glass shards of rage
tried unsuccessfully to mug him.

I was touched. It feels good to be remembered. Even when they get the details wrong, it’s so sweet.

Imagine the hell of going through life without having an effect on other people- and yet, I act like that’s what I expect. I get teary-eyed surprised whenever someone remembers me.

But even with all this sweetness and joy, and even after such a physically demanding day where my muscles are sore and tired, and even after feeling so comfortable and social, I could not bring myself to join the others in the hot tub!

Too shy. Too scared. Too ashamed. How sad. I can hear them out there laughing and the music is good. But I can’t get over myself. This really bothers me about myself.

3rd June, 2003

It was windy and rainy today. Not cold gusts though; a very moderate temperature which would have been pleasant to work in if I had not been soaking in my own sweat under a pancho Henrike had insisted I take.

Today was the the first day I did not need to ask anyone what I should do- I had a nice mental list going. I crawled through another couple tunnels, weeding them (Saying “Fuck you!” to each nettle I pulled- it’s a love hate thing). Some of the grassy weeds’ roots bite deep and hard into the soil and my hand gets tired from all the gripping. I was feeling a real soreness in the wrists today. I’d better rest them some.

Selena, a new worker, arrived from Germany today. She’s medium height- strong and stocky, but also very curvy at the same time. She has short dark hair, a wonderful open smile, and a shockingly low and pretty voice.

I was sorting through disgusting, half rotted produce and other rubbish in a light rain, just heavy enough to soak everything and make the liquids run down my arm, but not heavy enough to wash any of the filth off of me. My hands were gritty and stinky, and every time I had to push up my glasses or scratch an itch, I got yuckier.

When Henrike introduced her, Selena reached to shake my hand and I reached halfway out and said, “It’s filthy.”

“I don’t care.”

We shook hands and I turned back to working with a smile. Selena joined in and I did that thing where you work just a little bit faster when you meet someone who impresses you or whom you want to impress. And so a crate holding two week old milk, slipped out of my hands, covering everything else in the pile. I gagged a little, but was able to keep it together.

Then, at the bottom of the milk soaked pile were little plastic bags filled with green slime which used to be lettuce. Since the plastic had to go in one pile, and the slime in another, I had to open the bag. At this point, I actually doubled over and dry heaved.

This always amuses me a little. So my dry heaves sound something like “BLAAAAGDZ! BLAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAGDZH!” which can, depending on the audience, make other people either laugh or dry heave.

Here and now, Selena laughed some.

It had been such a wet and nasty day that I didn’t even talk to anyone after we were done working for the day. I just walked to the shower with my head down.

But while I was in there, the sun came out and dinner was made! I was refreshed!

We got to talking, Henrike, Selena, and I, and Selena asked about my education. I told her I quit college to do interesting things.

“Like what?” Quipped Henrike. “Sort through rubbish?”

“Hey-oooooo!”

And the day ended with a final little bit of good news and cheer.

I had been stressing all week about whether or not I’d be able to overcome my body shame and cultural conditioning and go in the hot tub with everyone. They do it nude here. But my tough decision was cancelled due to inclement weather.

2nd June, 2003

I woke up early with a bubbling nervous stomach and silently jogged down the stairs suppressing a giggle in a big hurry to get into the kitchen first. Today was Henrike’s birthday, as well as our day off on the farm, and I wanted to surprise her with an omelette on toast.

I don’t know how to make an omelette. She got a heartfelt open faced scrambled egg sandwich from me instead.

But I had also bought some fine and fancy chocolate, which I now melted with the zest and some juice from an orange which I dipped strawberries, cherries, and bananas into.

Then I left immediately to go find the stone circle everyone told me about. No one knows when or why it was built. If you fall asleep in one, fairies will steal you away. They have energy. They were just for cows to scratch their asses on. They were simply calendars.

I am sure there were more guesses than that, but none of them mattered right now. I was walking up the road and on my own on a bright and quiet Monday. I climbed higher up the mountain* and got a good look at the flat green lands spreading to the South and West until they hid behind the hazed horizon’s curve.

This was one of those warm bright days with a big blue sky and many little clouds riding fast on the winds. Little thick clouds. Serious enough to blot out the sun for a time and cover the land in shadow, but small enough, their chill only lasted a few seconds before they left you under the warming light again.

I stood a while on the curve of this road, most of the way up the mountain, watching the tiny black shadows of the clouds racing across the flatlands- striking in their very smallness, or the appearance of smallness anyway, for I could feel their massive size and weight any time their shadow passed over me.

I stood watching a long while enjoying the chilly heat , what I imagine a hot Summer’s day at the foot of a glacier feels like. I started hearing my adventure song. I identify deeply with the searching beauty of this piece, and the strength of it. I sometimes remember it and hear parts of it again in my memory during times of natural beauty and wide views, as well as times of reflection immediately following hardship or conflict.

But this time, was truly for the beauty of the view and of the day itself. I didn’t feel heroic, not really (maybe like a beginner hero) but I felt the weather and the land wer heroic today.

I looked off towards the North a bit and saw a small settlement- perhaps Baltinglass. It’s hard to get my exact bearings up here. As I looked for other buildings and roads so I could verify whether I was seeing Baltinglass or not, I was struck again by how wholly unnatural this land was. All of the green and lovely miles I could see were totally tamed and boxed in by fences, walls or roads.

The wind picked up and the temperature dropped steeply. A cold hard rain started pelting me in the face with thick drops and then stopped again, all in the space of two minutes. All the meanwhile, there was a strong wind blowing towards the East (I had and still have some confusion about whether that meant is was an Easterly or a Westerly wind.) which suited me well as, regardless of any Irish colloquial blessings, I quite like the wind and rain to blow into my face and I like to walk into inclement weather head-on.**

I walked on then, drying quickly and feeling warm again, hardly thinking at all, but also still kind of listening to my adventure song and dreaming of Adventure and Heroism in Capital Letters.

In front of me, up the road some, there were black banners flying in the wind. This seemed strange to me and as I walked on, I saw they were tattered black banners hanging on the barbed wire. I wondered what kind of crazy farmer needed to make such a statement and wondered also if I should be more wary.

I walked on nonetheless. The banners were just strands of a torn garbage bag, stuck upon, not hung from, the barbed wire.

I journeyed on up the logging road towards the stone circle. Many smaller logging tracks crossed this main dirt road, so I decided to use the lines of the road as kind of a grid to help make sure I didn’t cover the same ground twice.

I came upon the far edge of the mountain, which opened up a view over a large forested valley with just one little town and the Wicklow Mountains proper. I could see a firetower off in the distance, overlooking the whole scene from the opposite side of the valley.

The road continued to curve around the mountain further away from the Kiltegan side, which was the one thing Denis warned me against- not to end up walking around the entire thing.

So I turned back into the woods.***

I saw a structure there. Walking through damp grass and nettles, I found an empty stone shed, 9 feet high, with one window and one door. Not really a window as such- more like a slit in a bunker or a battlement. It was locked and silent, and seemed wholly out of place here.

I walked on to explore the next section of land and came upon a field of stumps and brush. All harsh browns- both dark and light, and dead, dry brush choking up this field with sharp tangled deadfalls and other invisible obstacles.

At the end of this field of carnage, towards the bottom of what had undoubtedly been a pleasant gentle slope, I saw a red pitted metal roof. I wandered towards it and saw the remains of a stone house. Moss covered all the walls and vines made their way in over the broken walls and through old frames of windows. Nettles grew in a thick bunch in the part of the house I imagined to have once been a bedroom.

I walked to one of the windows and stood up on my toes to see the view only to notice I was four or so feet away from the road I’d come in on.

I walked back into shady woods and stepped, three different times, into a thorny vine which, because I was wearing sandals, left me with a thorn in my foot each time that I then had to sit and remove.

I found a moss covered rock wall there and laid down on it. So comfortable! The moss was thick and soft, and the stones were sloped so my head was elevated above my feet. It was great!

It was so great that I took a nap!

I tried to meditate, but I couldn’t silence my inner monologue or ignore it. I also was getting quite hungry. So I decided that even though I’d not yet seen the stone circle, I’d go back home.

But then, I thought, I didn’t come here to quit. I came here to see a stone circle. I wavered several time between continuing and giving up before finally deciding to continue. I walked  around past the next road I was using in my search grid. I got stung my nettles and sank into some mud all the way to my knee.

Finally, in a field of devastation, I saw the stone circle. Another clear cut field of stumps. They must have recently had the machines there though, because there wasn’t any brush laying about and there were methane scented mud puddles with the shimmer of petrochemical rainbows floating on them.

My intention had been to go and meditate there, but the field was bright and ugly, and I was getting very hungry now. And the stones were really very small anyway- hardly bigger than myself. I tried to pretend I was not disappointed. But I had imagined a rugged palisade of standing stones.

So I walked back back down the road towards Kiltegan and there on the road before me, I saw a graveyard. It was interesting to see two hundred year old graves of non-celebrities could still be so well maintained.

There were spots though where the graveyard had not been maintained. I fell times down one three foot hole covered by brambles or another that looked like it was just smooth- which made me laugh even as I was getting all scratched up.

I walked home then, and everything was quiet-normal. Henrike and Denis were resting, The house and cats were quiet.  Duncan beat me decisively at chess. A pretty normal night.

Notes-

*Mountain, of course, meaning high hill.

**Some blatant and obvious foreshadowing now that I think about it.

***forestry plantation- trees for harvest. Norwegian pines for paper pulp.

1st June, 2003

Today was my Sister, Niki’s, birthday. Another one on that very small list of people who’s birth dates I have memorized. I thought of her some while I was at a small and fancy market at BrookLodge. No concrete idea what she’s up to really, but I know she uses her time well.

Me? I was selling vegetables. I did take a long break to walk around and see what was there. It was one of those alternative, homeopathic, massage therapy, vaguely Buddhist, love and light, artisanal, organic, free range, essential oils, sacred geometry, liberal, progressive, all-inclusive, magical-thinking, fancy candy made of carob instead of chocolate kinds of places.

Oh and there were these two dudes selling poitín (po-CHEEN), which is a kind of Irish moonshine. They didn’t fit in or not fit in. They just spent the day laughing through their beards. I already forgot what they were legally selling because they were so ready with an offer of the strong stuff.

A red headed American girl, Sam, walked by and told me she was just going around with no plan, looking for work too, so I brought her over to Denis and got her a job. She’s short and skinny, with a wide friendly smile. I think I’ll like her.

At the end of the day- same ending as every market day, we tear down our umbrellas and tables and load everything back into the van and glow with the warm feelings of teamwork, accomplishment, and physical activity- Denis asked Henrike and me to wait for him in the van.

We watched him laughing with a woman some and the feeling in the van was extremely tense. He was obviously and publicly flirting. It hurt Henrike’s feelings terribly and it made me feel so embarrassed for her that I, still kind of a stranger, was seeing all this.

When he came back I got to sit in between them literally be stuck in the middle of a classic girlfriend/boyfriend argument you will no doubt recognize in its bullet point reduction:

-You were flirting!

-No I wasn’t!

-I saw you with her!

-She was just a friend!

-You were treating her like more than a friend!

-We were just having fun! Relaxing!

-Well I wish you would relax with me.

You know that old song.

I spent the rest of the trip home contributing my share to the silence. I do not know what was going through their minds, though I can guess, but I can tell you I was thinking uncharitable thoughts about their relationship and judging Denis harshly for his lack of respect towards Henrike’s feelings.

Then I judged myself even more harshly for judging them without all the information. It’s just not fair to any of the three of us for me to judge and label their relationship.

I realized I have a tendency to idealize people and their relationships and then to lose respect for them when they are somehow less than I imagined them to be.

But perhaps I was only turning inwards so hard because of the damn tension in that van.

Who knows? But by the time we got back, I was chilled out and laying contentedly sleepy in bed, wanting nothing more than to read. Well, there was one thing I wanted more than to read- and that was to not climb down the thin ladder from my 6 foot bunk and creep down the steep narrow stairs and across the house to find my book.

31st May 2003

Today was a big market day- that totally crowded busy farmer’s market in Temple Bar. I have only been twice now, but I have quite an affection for it already.

Even on a very hot day like today, I took pleasure in straightening up the produce and helping the customers- a few of whom remember me from last week! That really pretty girl from Massachusetts took me to lunch too!

But there was a dark cloud glooming this day. Kera. All day long (not literally- I did have that lunch break) she was following me around micromanaging me and making all kinds of suggestions about how to do my job. She often did so in a jokey teasing way. Just kind of making fun of me.

She also takes a lot of things personally and cannot really take suggestion. If you compliment someone within earshot, she pops up and asks some variation of “what about me?”

You probably know the type I am describing.

Anyhow, either of those traits, I can work with, but at this point I still have trouble with people who have both at once. So at the end of this long hot day, I had my first petty bullshit argument in Ireland. Truly, a landmark event.

We were loading up the hundreds of boxes of leftover produce and scraps into the trucks at the end of the day. We had two markets tomorrow. Some of what we didn’t sell today was going to market, and some was being composted.

Henrike was standing in the back of one of the trucks calling out what she needed in that van, what needed to go in the other van, and what should be composted.

Kera brought up a box of celery which Henrike said she didn’t need. Kera argued with her. This non-argument went on for about two volleys when Henrike decided to end it by taking the celery.

When Henrike took the celery into the truck and was safely out of earshot, Kera said, in a sing-song voice, “I win.”

I was horrified that she would be so rude and stupid and so when she started telling someone else what to do, I told her to “be cool.”

“What!?” she asked, and I could tell she was already very angry.

“Be cool.” I repeated. “Um, do you guys say that here?”

Pat, an actual master of being cool, said they do. “It pretty much means to chill out.”

She asked me why I would say such a thing to her and so I repeated that whole exchange that ended with her saying “I win.” She then whipped her head away from me and started picking up boxes while yelling, “God! I was just kidding! A joke! Geez!”

A few minutes later, I was singing to myself and she came up to me and said, “It’s not that pleasant.”

“What?” I asked, sweetly deadpan.

“The singing. It’s not that nice.”

“You wanna give it another try?”

“Fuck off!”

And I hope that is the pettiest story I ever have to tell.

30th May, 2003

Today was hot and sunny. (Again. Are the Irish all lying about the weather here? It’s been an awful lot of blue sky sunny days.)

We released the pigs into the field that would be their new (and final) home. It was oddly inspiring to see them gallop together up the hill towards their shelter.

Henrike and I were speaking about the ethics of eating animals then while we stood there and when I said that maybe- MAYBE- I would eat a wild animal who had been hunted, she seemed very surprised.

She would never eat a wild animal. She feels she has no right to them. “But a pig you raise to eat,” she said, gesturing over the fence to the happy, smiling fellows, “a pig who has a good life… that what it’s for.”

She’s not wrong. It does make sense. But something about taking an animal and stripping it of everything that once made it powerful and dangerous, then enslaving it to be a dumb bag of meat…. Something about that really bothers me and I am not sure how best to communicate that.

So I say something a lot like “Hmmm. Yeah. I can see that.” and we went back to the farmhouse.

Which is where I had the most difficult test of my vegetarianism yet. Someone waved a piece of artisanal free-range humanely slaughtered venison sausage under my nose.

I wanted that sausage with my whole being.

I could feel it smooshing between my teeth, the casing snapping open, and the rough textures of hand ground meat with the crunch of the occasional peppercorn filling my mouth. Oh! I could taste the salt and feel the euphoric rush of the fat and oil going strait to my head while my lips tingled and burned from the spice.

But of course, there never really was any question of whether I was going to eat it. I knew that from the beginning. But it makes me wonder. Would I eat an animal if I were starving? Which brings me to a bigger question. If you violate your morals simply to save your life, did your morals mean anything at all?

A big question. A huge question. So I did what all honest men must do when confronted by such a big unanswerable- I admitted my lunch break was over and I went back to toiling under the hot sun.

Hours later, hands burning from the nettles, mind retreating from the heat, I staggered into the farmhouse, sank into a chair, and ate corn flakes with bananas- which I assure you hit me just then as hard and joyous as any recreational drug ever did.

I went to lay in bed smiling, just feeling my hand buzz from the nettles and looking out through the skylight to watch the rich blue of the eleven o’clock sky fading to black and letting the stars out.

29th May, 2003

I had to harvest four pounds of nettle tops for BrookLodge in Aughrim, a fancy resort and spa hotel in the Wicklow Mountains. They wanted to make fancy nettle top soup.

I waded through a field of stinging nettles about 4 feet high, pinching off their tops. I quite enjoy the sting now. The tingle is shocking and then pleasant with heat lingering in the skin for a long while after. I do have some raised and red ugly looking bumps all up and down my arm, but there also is that giddy heat!

I wonder if stinging nettles are used in Ben Gay or a product like that? Were they ever used in right of passage ceremonies? Could that tingle go to your brain if you, say, brewed beer with them? They hurt and they’re annoying, but they feel so good. What a strange plant.

I realized it was Chris’ birthday today. We’d been friends since high school and he was no off on his own journey- somewhere in the Persian Gulf, operating radios for whatever unit he got attached to. He is one of the very few friends whose birthday I have memorized, and I hope he gets out of this stupid pointless war ok.

After I got my four pounds of nettle tops (and if you think that’s easy, weigh a bag of leaves next time you rake!) Bryan told Denis he wanted to bring me with him to BrookLodge to help him.

Drink.

I mean, what else? We pulled into this fancy, lovely place, gave the chef his bags of nettle tops, and then went straight into the spacious and well appointed bar for a “liquid lunch.”

We “talked politics,” which, as it does about half the time, meant we complained a lot. I guess it was fun. I did approach real rage at the stupid wars and Bryan told me to run for President. Which actually would be cool. I’d be amused to cut military spending and increase domestic aid.

I lost the rest of the day in a drunken daydreamy haze. It was nice, but in the evening, I felt this ridiculous pressure about not having achieved enough that day and an equally ridiculous resolution to be more productive tomorrow.

Heh, President. Relax.