deliberately

I've been turning a bit inward lately. Spending less time in the studio and more thinking about projects I've shelved, playing Catan with the kids and listening to lots of music. I'm still producing, just at a reduced pace. I think it has a lot to do with the renaming and wanting to take the opportunity to be more deliberate rather than doing all the shoulds. What does this hybrid artform of mine look like when I take away all the expectations? What do I make when I just...make?

   
What's got leaf peepers thinking twice about driving up to the mountains this year has got me curious. There was a tree fungus that thrived from the unusual amount of water we got in the spring. The baby trees look like they were set on fire but the most established ones just have lots of funky leaves. Some with spots and some with burnt looking edges. Aspen makes one of my favorite yellows and greens. I'm wondering what kind of shift I might see in this years dye pot.

  

 I've been craving a new tattoo. Two actually. That Danielle LaPorte is a fantastic influence. She's putting out a range of gorgeous, shiney sacred geometry temp tattoos. The Metatron's Cube is calling to me. It contains all five platonic solids, reminding me a bit of that disc on Voyager that's supposed to be a crash course in what humans are. Only from the past instead of flying through the universe. The second tattoo is one I've been wanting for a few years now. It combines a Mollisonism and an image from Nausicaa of The Valley of the Wind. A stylized Ohmu with the phrase "everything gardens" underneath.

skillsharing

 This is the time of year I find myself knitting and knitting and knitting for craft shows. My goal is to have ten pairs of fingerless gloves on my table, among other things like hats and spinning kits and yarn. I just finished these gloves last night. They're extra long and all handspun. I'm tempted to keep them for myself, I like them so much. But then I'd have to make one more pair to meet my self-imposed quota. Meh.

 I decided to try and overwiner our tuscan blue rosemary. I'm not sure if it could have hacked the minus whatever-it-gets-to-here nights. It's flowering now and that generally makes me wonder if I'm making it happy or stressing out so bad that its making itself pretty in a desperate attempt at reproducing before it dies on me. I might try cutting it back a bit and making starts from the cuttings. I got the idea from this Juniper Moon Farms blog post.

 I've been making time to play with natural dyes lately, too. I'm brushing up because I'm teaching a yarn dyeing workshop with the Living Arts School on December 7th. The focus is on locally available dyestuffs, plants you could find growing wild plus a few you could easily incorporate in your own garden here in Colorado. I'll have a mix of prepared and whole plants and go over the various ways to tweak a dye bath to get more than one color/shade from each plant.

By way of example, here are some examples of a few of the dyes we'll be playing with. The browns are from black walnut hulls gathered in Wash Park in Denver. From left to right its been dyed onto tussah silk, hemp and alpaca. The pink(hemp) and orange(silk) are from the same bath of safflower petals. You can get a yellow from the same dye pot, too. The nice thing about safflower is that you can do the whole process cold.

This is from an indigo vat I've stashed in a corner by the stove. The fiber is silk that has been sitting in situ as the vat ferments and the gray-blue color has touches of red where the madder root took hold of the fiber, too. It's back in the vat and hopefully it'll get blue-er. I like the storm cloud quality of this stage too, though. The blue we will explore in the class will be more traditional, from woad and should produce a truer blue than this one.



 The jar is full of alkanet root that's been soaking in some Everclear that I found in the cupboard when we moved in. Alkanet isn't water soluble but alcohol will draw it out and create a deep purple/red color. This one doesn't exactly fit into the "local" rubric, but I'll probably bring some to the class anyway in case someone wants to try it. It gets used in natural cosmetics commercially and grows wild in Europe. It's a lot harder to find seeds for it here but I've seen them on Etsy now and again. This batch is currently evaporating out as I add snow to it so I can dye fiber in it without turning it into alkanet flambe.

Getting through

I've been reading Permaculture: a Designer's Manual by Bill Mollison along with some other folks at Permies.com this winter. I'm actually a little behind. Okay, a lot behind. Despite my lack of devotion it's a very interesting book. Lots of sciencey bits you don't normally run into in other books about growing things. Like, now I kinda know how a thermosyphon goes and why the wind gets all crazy around here toward the evening. The Permies site is my new favorite place to find anecdotal answers to whatever neo-hippie question pops into my brain these days.


This is one of Anais's drawings. I'm not sure why it ended up on a paper towel. We blow through art supplies, but not that fast. It's now the background image on my iPhone. She seems especially fond of drawing funny little animals and eventually I'd like to print up a bunch of them up for her via Artifact Uprising or something. So I've been collecting them like this for a bit now. We've officially decided that the kids are going to the school the next town over next year. I have forms to fill out and everything.

Part of the reason being that we are set (knock on wood) to move out of this teeny space and into one space both inside and out. I've been planning what to do with all that space outside. It's hard because I have to be realistic about what will grow here instead of just growing all the things. I have yet to coax a significant amount of tomatoes to ripen before the end of the season. I've only had two tries, but still. One of my goals is to grow the kind of food we can store, the staples of our particular diet like rice and quinoa and potatoes and beans. I'm also going to test out several medicinal and dye plants. And there may, MAY be a chicken or two involved. Possibly also a fluffy rabbit. I'm am almost certainly getting too excited about it, what with it meaning a bedroom for each kid and not living on the second floor. But there's also the fact that its at the base of a mountain, which means a constant deluge of chilly air in a region that doesn't have its last frost until June. So excited, but trying to stay realistic...I think.

Plants and post-apocalyptica

This is that time of year when I'm so unbusy it starts to stress me out as much as when I am trying to get ten things done at once. Its also the time of year for snow, that fluffy blanket of oppression, both metaphorical and not. So much of it that I'd give in to my hermetical tendencies and stick to the indoors rather than buck up, bundle the kids up and get our butts outdoors. Last year this was a (literally) depressing combination that I mistakenly tried to remedy with tons of books on growing things. The result was that by the time spring rolled in I was on the verge.

When I was little I thought I'd grow up and live in a mountain town. I loved visiting my aunt and uncle in Breckenridge and it all seemed so cozy and fun and interesting. Living in one now...I miss my city anonymity and having more that three places to go besides the apartment. There are awesome bits like hiking in the woods, meeting people who've known Gerry since he was a kid or feeling comfortable letting Anais semi-free-range around town. But there just isn't enough awesome to outweigh or even balance out that resigned feeling of ick I get when I think about being here for another year. Where to go from here has become one the the chief occupations of my brain in the past few months. Because beggars can't be choosers. Not even this one. What I thought was a serendipitous solution turned out to be not so much. I'm back at square one with more ideas than ever, but no real plan or means for actualizing them.

And yet, I'm not nearly as close to circling the drain as I was this time last year. I think part of that has to do with me being more focused on self-care (st. john's wort and immunity boosting blends of spices in my coffee, etc.) and not caring if its a placebo or really working. My mom and rest of my family have been extra supportive lately, too. That and for as much as I've done less this year, in some ways I've accomplished more. I didn't get back to Austin for the Renegade Craft Fair, but I did have a art batt included for a display at the Denver Art Museum, which led to getting a consignment deal with the gift shop there over the summer. And I may have done fewer shows overall, but I seem to have made more at each than I would have otherwise. I'm slowly adding more stockists to the fold and the whole Eat Agar thing is more cohesive product and brand-wise. My ethos and my output have become conjoined twins. Little bits of the over-arching plan I came up with three years ago are coming together. I'm even back to researching what would've been my thesis. Because who needs the approval of a committee to put a book together, anyway? Pfftt!

Help wanted

A couple of weeks ago the family and I meandered our way over the mountains to Paonia for the Mountain Harvest Festival. We packed up our vintage Explorer RV, the S. S. Bill Murray, and camped out in the town park. My mom came up and drove us around to visit grandparents in the area. We picked tomatoes and hit up Taco Time and my Grandpa Harold loaded us up with boxloads of apples and pears.

In between I was there to sell yarny stuff at the bazaar part of the festival. I wasn't sure what to expect because I've never done a craft show on the Western Slope. The feedback was pretty awesome, though. And the sales weren't bad, either. I had my first real custom order and got to demo spin for a bit during the farmer's market.
And something practically magical happened. Myriem stopped by my table and mentioned that she was from White Buffalo Farm. I think I may have squeed out loud a little. Paonia is a small town and the odds are probably smaller than I'd like to admit, but it felt like kismet to have connected with her. I discovered the organic farm online, while looking up things like permaculture and intentional communities. Myriem and Wayne(the current owner) have a plan to create an ecovillage within the farm, a place where artisans can develop a bit of "community-sufficiency" while working on both their craft and the farm. I have been daydreaming about running away to live there, or someplace like there since the doldrum-y dead of last winter. Myriem and I got to talking and we ended up taking a tour of the farm the day after the festival was over. It's situated by the river like the orchard I grew up on, with Akane apples(my favorite) among several other types of fruit and veg. They have lots of exciting plans for the place, including cob house-building workshops and farm-to-table events. Wayne is retiring soon, but it's also really important to him to preserve the legacy of the place. I think it's terribly clever of them and I want my family to be a part of it.

So of course there's a hitch. When is there not a hitch? This one comes in the form of a payment due to the bank by next Monday. They've raised the majority of it, but still need to come up with about $12,000. Here's the plan, in the form of an email Myriem sent to me this morning:

Dear Friends of Desirea! : )

Come on out for this lovely week of blue skies and aspen colors!
On the farm, we harvest tomatoes last week and are now harvesting Asian Pears.

I would be delighted to take you on a tour now that we are making such headway!

As you know, I am fostering the conditions conducive for a farm-based ecovillage in our region! As I write, we are setting the groundwork for an on-farm transition team and putting together an informal advisory board. In order to complete this process, I have an urgent appeal!

We need to raise 12k by Monday.
We are seeking loans of 2k to 5k with 25% interest.
Folks are to send payment directly to our bank in Paonia for deposit.
Funds need to be mailed by Wednesday afternoon or wired TH or FR or even on MON.
If we don't reach our goal, we'll return the funds immediately.
The farm has equity of $1million from which we would pay off this loan.
The early freeze hit us hard last week on our tomato crop.
Please spread the word.
This funding allows us to continue with building a transition team and move in the direction of a farm-based ecovillage.

Please call for bank account number.

Paonia State Bank
128 Grand Ave
Paonia, CO 81428

Once past this immediate hurdle, I would like to create a farm-to-table dinner and present our plans to Slow Food and others in the Roaring Fork. I'm looking forward to creating an exquisite event rooted in my French heritage. Je suis francaise heureuse de vivre dans une region gastronomique du Colorado! Folks from all over are welcome!

With gratitude,
Myriem

-- Myriem
Communications and Development
WHITE BUFFALO FARM
16877 Grange Road
Paonia, CO 81428

{What's in it for me?}
I mentioned a while back how I'd sometimes like to go home and this is one way of approximating that without condemning my kids to lonely-induced social awkwardness. I'd get to work on my fiber art and explore the other post-apocalyptic skill-set stuff I've been dipping my toes into all these years. Add community development to that and it's like I'd be doing my dream thesis in real life. "How do cultures on the verge of collapse perpetuate/preserve collected knowledge?" Let's find out! Then there's the potential for creating space for my mister to work on his guitar building thing and the Waldorf school down the road for the kids...

{What's in it for you?}
You mean, aside from the good, old-fashioned altruistic glow you'd get from doing an extra-good deed? When was the last time you were offered 25% interest on an investment? Or an invite to a picturesque, farm-fresh supper? Plus, if you happen to be of the notion that small farms are good and good food is hard to come by these days, this is an excellent opportunity to put some action where your heart is.

As I sit here on the floor of my kitchen, among the boxes and boxes of apples, pears and peppers we hauled home(I put up the last of the tomatoes yesterday), wishing I had a magic wand or maybe just better financial savvy, I'm also confronted with the possibility of making one dream into a reality, of flipping a lot of negative elements in our lives back into positive ones. Room to run, to develop my craft, to do work besides that I feel is meaningful. It's got some scary parts, too. There's a bit of risk involved in taking such a big leap. I'm willing to take it if it means getting to be a part of something so potentially amazing. But none of that can happen if there suddenly is no more White Buffalo Farm.

{More info on White Buffalo Farm}
http://whitebuffalofarm.org
https://www.facebook.com/WhiteBuffaloFarm
http://directory.ic.org/1691/White_Buffalo_Farm_Ecovillage
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/us/colorado-communities-take-on-fight-against-energy-land-leases.html

Walks in the woods

I don't have a lot of words right now, so here's a photo essay. We've been going on walks into the woods lately. There are tiny wild raspberries and scads of different kinds of mushrooms to try and identify. Toby loves shaking the aspens to make it rain and Anais is always on the lookout for the next pear-shaped puffball.

 

 

Rothko was a punk

My husband and I saw the Rothko exhibit at the DAM a week or so ago. It was another one of those shows they put together to elucidate the artist's journey from point A to point G or so. Going by what was in front of me, he started out making pretty obvious copies of Dali or Picasso stuff. The outlines are all drippy clocks and rearranged pieces of the whole. I had no idea he started out that way. The progression into playing with fields of color, scraping and layering and rotating the canvas didn't come until later. The end of the show doesn't give you the final, "typical" result, those delineated rectangles in combinations of three or four colors. But you do get to see him heading there, with the huge canvas sizes and swaths of blurry colors that swallow you up. There is something to be said, I think, about working at what you love first and finding your niche within that world secondly. In fact, it's nearly a truism that its easier to start big and refine as you go. But often times I know I've felt like if I didn't immediately have a natural talent for something I may as well give it up, no matter how happy what I'm doing makes me otherwise. I see my daughter shut down like that, too, sometimes. If a drawing goes awry or she runs into a skill wall with her sewing it's give up time because...because? Because if you have to work for it, somehow it doesn't count? Because the expectation that she'll do everything the right way the first time cognitively collides with less than perfect reality and that sucks? Maybe. That's how I tend to feel about it in my own work, anyway. One thing that the show highlighted for me was how much of a bunch of crap that line of thinking is. And how I should lead by example a bit more for my kids. Which is a bit of a wander from "wow, was Rothko ever a copycat" but that's my logic and I'm sticking to it. Also, it reminds of this Walt Whitman reading:
I think that, from now on Rothko is going to be our household saint for saying no to genius and yes to happy.

What's in a name?

There are many reasons we humans come up with for naming things. Familial lineage, descriptive ease or legal requirements are a few that come to mind. I seem to aim for obscure references, which probably means that half of my psyche is perpetually stuck in art school. In fact, that's exactly where I ran into the minimal sentence that is my Doing Business As name.

For a few glorious, frustrating months I attended Bennington College in Vermont. I was thousands of miles from everything I was used to and my whole world flipped upside down. Pretty much literally. Back in Colorado I was able to put minimal effort into getting good grades, but I was about as disconnected from my peers as a kid could get. Plopped into this new environment, surrounded by trustifarians and art nerds, I became overwhelmed at the mention of assignments and a compulsive party-goer. I had more new friends than my entire grade school career produced and yet I couldn't bring myself to write more than a paragraph. I loved Bennington, but I hated who it was turning me into. I ended up leaving after only one term. I packed a lot of memories with me though-and flyers.

Being the arty Mecca that it is a lot of the events around campus were advertised with handmade, hand printed posters. Bands coming through, dance recitals, movie nights were commonly announced in layers of screen print or blueprint with a dash of snark. And that's where Andy Warhol comes in, and Eat Agar. Just before the end of the term a Warhol festival was going down, complete with theme parties and a full-length showing of Empire. That's when I picked up this gem:

It apealed to me in the way an obscure reference often puts a sparkle in the eye of a budding hipster- agar agar being vegan gelatin and regular gelatin being one of the main components of unprocessed camera film. In high school I had come to the conclusion that if I wanted life to be like a movie that it was up to me to write and direct. I decided to make 'eat agar' my creedo, an art mantra.

When the time came to give my fiber hobby turned microbusiness a name I hesitated because it doesn't have much to do with yarn or fiber in general. But it does have everything to do with my worldview, still; post-hipster that I am. Deep down I am still the girl who believes you have to make your own magic. Besides, when have I ever been one for caving to the obvious?

 

Click your heels/ you can never go back

I miss my childhood orchard home. The now me totally gets that, but still appreciates the irony. The old (18 year old) me would probably be pretty pissed off that I've been schemeing so hard to get back. Not literally, but my thoughts and plans have been leaning toward the bucolic, the sheepy and the agricultural. The idea of establishing something between the Homestead Wool and Gift Farm and the Fibershed seems like a fantastic five year plan. Okay, maybe four year plan. I don't want to jinx myself. An onslaught of interesting books coming from the Paonia area haven't helped to dissuade me, either. Especially the one that saw the protagonist fly directly over the canyon walls of what was once my (albeit hormonally influenced) personal hell.

 

Manifest destiny

I'm not usually the type to set goals or come up with New Years resolutions or anything like that. But it wasn't very long ago that the thought of seriously considering myself a 'yarn artisan' seemed kind of far fetched, too. Back then I was daydreaming of hitting the road with my family and spinning wheel packed into some vintage RV, but kept my feet on the ground by telling myself it was more practical to get a teaching certification attached to my history degree. Pphfftt! After the prerequisite car crash I realized that there is no 'keeping one's feet on the ground'. The ground can disappear at any time. I have a sneaky suspicion that folks who come to take themselves that seriously make a habit of plan-making, as well. Therefore, in the interest of holding myself accountable and maybe bringing myself to attention of some passing wish-granting ( not so bitey) fairy, I'm going to up and tell you my plans and my goals for Eat Agar in this coming year. There are already exciting, exigent things brewing, but I also like the idea of having a record to come back to next year. especially one that I can't spill coffee on or lose in a move. These goals are still pretty basic, as I'm a plan it now & figure out the logistics later kind of person.

🐜 one major print ad

🐜 regular online sales stream

🐜 a dedicated dye garden & a fiber rabbit

🐜 an art shows worth of fiber art (beyond the usual yarn)

🐜 a small collection of pattern postcards (5-7)

🐜 1 regular summer market w/ a max. of 2 holiday markets

🐜 perfect custom order process online & at markets

That's it chickens. You know, besides all scouring, dyeing, spinning, photog, marketing, bookkeeping, etc...Any advice on how to accomplish any of the above or whacks on the noggin with a sparkly wand are welcome.

 

Foraging for color

I have a new hero, her name is India Flint. Between her and Rebecca Burgess I am feeling pretty excited about this dyeing fluff with plant stuffs business. When I went back home this summer to visit family I came back with all kinds of roots and flowers and leaves to try out. My grandparents helped me pick tickseed coreopsis along the roadside and after going through Harvesting Color with me my Grandpa John pointed out that he had several sorts of pants from the book right in his yard. In Georgetown I discovered wild hops and pokeberry, possibly leftover a time when folks still ate poke sallet and homebrewing was less a hobby than what you did if you wanted some beer in the house. So, between all those foraged bags of plant matter I've built up quite the stash of yellowy, purple-grey, earthy and acid green fiber. With winter coming on I'm wishing I got out there more, stashed and dried some rabbitbrush and sage at least. But that's what winter is for-planning and scheming for the things I'll do come spring.

I'll leave you with this mini-photo essay. It documents the process I meandered through from foraging to dyeing with aspen leaves, the last plant I gathered before the cold really set in here. In between the steps I was reading India Flint's amazing book, Eco Colour and getting lots of ideas to augment what I had already learned and put into practice with Rebecca Burgess' book. I highly recommend reading both if this is a subject that catches you, too.

 

I gathered most of the leaves from the old Georgetown Cemetery. It's part Royal Tenenbaums and part The Graveyard Book. I noticed that the place is also a bit of a botanic garden, so I'm sure to go back soon.

I left the leaves in my kitchen for a bit, too long I thought when I went check them again. So I added some fresher leaves from my yard and used an India Flint trick...I let them hang out in one of my pots for a few days. I giggled a bit when I stirred them one morning and they started talking to me with fermentation bubbles.

 

I know, I know. Pee in a bottle, right? But this is the color I got after a few days of cold, fermenting extraction. The next step was putting the pot and some fiber of various mordants over low heat and repeating that cycle a few times.

Which got me this handful of fluff, dyed a deep, earthy yellowy-green. I noticed that the color of the dye bath had deepened to an orange color and now I'm repeating the cold/hot cycle with some unmordanted fiber.

 

One thing that caught my attention in the cemetary was the abundance of lichens. Normally it's an ecological taboo to go scrapping this slow-moving, low-yielding symbiosis all helter-skelter. But cleaning it off of old gravestones is one of the exceptions.

 

 

 

 

The charms of Amarillo

Amarillo is a tough place to love, not to mention a tough place to find a decent latte or stroll merrily from place to place in. It sometimes feels like a ghost town in the making. People who live there must be really good at keeping secrets because alll the good stuff seems to be hiding. Since my husband has family there I've found myself wondering what to do with myself and my kids on more than one occasion. It wasn't until our last visit, driving through after the Renegade Austin show, that I could say I really felt l had discovered some redeeming characteristics. Namely, good thrift store shopping, good doughnuts and coffee, a bit of the art scene and something for the kids.

The first I located whilst tagging a yarn bomb just outside of downtown proper. Peering a the darkened shop window I spied cute vintage dresses. How could I stay away?

The next morning we were set to leave for home so I made sure it was on our itinerary. After coffee, of course. Roasters is the best place for that, really. I had learned that lesson on an earlier trip. It's a local chain, a touch Starbucks-ish but with local ambiance and good iced americanos. But what about those doughnuts? You cannot, I repeat- CANNOT leave Amarillo without doughnutting up. It's a quasi-legal reqiurement. So I was giddy to discover that the store I thought had gone out of business the last time I was in town was, in fact, right where it had always been. Like I said, it's a confusing town-in more ways than one.

Thank god for husbands who can read maps. Benjamin's is the art house of doughnut shops, an oasis of pastry in a desert of mediocrity. Green tea raised? You got it. Want a Cherry, candy and cake? Blueberry? Lemon glazed? Oh my freakin' yum! Get one of each and go to town! I mean it. Because next I went downtown, back to Heroine's. Remember the yarn bomb?

If good coffee and doughnuts made for a good morning then the folks at Heroine's made my day. Cute clothes, lots of selection (which, sadly, I have to attribute to Amarillo not having much of a hipster scene), a sweet shop dog and the guy at the register went above and beyond to help me out. They even have an Etsy site.

In between all this and, really, the whole time we were in Amarillo, I made my darling husband pull over to the side of the road about a bazillion times. For these:

One of those exceptional men with more money than sense has been nurturing the scene in this dusty Texas town for a while now. These prolific street signs are one of his projects. You can find them scattered throughout the "seedier" bits of town. Random quotes are generally the rule, but once in a while you find a graphic one like this. They have been a my favorite part of Amarillo since we started dropping in every so often a few years ago.

Our very last stop was several miles out of town and another of the benefactor of Amarillo's installation pieces: Cadillac Ranch. It's been moved once already to avoid the encroaching sprawl and the first hint I had of its existence was in a fleeting scene in one of my favorite movies, Arizona Dream. Cans of spray paint are scattered among the half buried cars and tagging is encouraged, in fact it's kind of the point. Art for the masses, by the masses. My own kids were happy to oblige. All of us were.

Thanks, Amarillo. For once, a good time was had by all. I apologize for taking so long to send this thank you note!

 

 

 

Man on fire

     I'm going to do my best to let go of understanding every little thing and see where that takes me for a bit. I can't go stand on top of a post for thirty years or take up residence outside the established economic system (yet), but there are small things to be done and I am more determined than ever to do them. I am rarely the one gushing about having felt a spiritual connection to anything, anyone or any place. The world does not now, nor has it ever really made sense to me on that level. There have often been times when I have wished it was otherwise, but if I'm honest the truth is that I've always been something of an agnostic, even before I knew the word for it. I think the closest I come to feeling religiously moved is during a really good show, listening to a new song or any random Joseph Campbell quote. It's cathartic, gives me permission to let go. It's the only time my analytical brain fades into the background and things take on an emotional tinge around the edges. The last big event in my life to feel like that was last year, when my car was rear-ended and I began to realize what a crutch continuing to go to college was. The big epiphany then was to leap into the handmade unknown and trust that doing what I was good at AND made me happy might not end in a complete disaster. The jury is still out on that one my friends, but the one consolation is the return of a sense of authenticity that I seem to have lost somewhere between here and the end of high school. I wouldn't give that up for anything.
     All of that babbling is just a long introduction to my gushing. I just finished The Man Who Quit Money and I feel buoyed, like testifying even. It made me feel like all that Sunday school, church camp and confusion was not for naught. That I didn't have to feel subversive for finding bits of solid advice in the morass of contradictions and justifications such organized religions are prone to. The quick and dirty summary is that it's a bio of Daniel Suelo, a man who gave up on using money in 2000 and the backstory and philosophy behind that. He has a blog and if you Google his name he had his own definition. What you might call his base camp is relatively close to where I grew up; my mom may have even met him growing up in Grand Junction. He is now officially my number one hero and I found myself plotting to track him down in future. At the very least I think I'll knit him some socks. I'm also pretty excited because the book's author gave me something I've been trying to put together ever since I decided it was better to live in the now with intention than to keep putting thing off and work toward a future of...whatever. He gave me the perfect Joseph Campbell quote, one that says it a million times better (and quicker) than I ever can. So I'll leave you with that and a ginormous recommendation for the book. Go! Go!

"A blunder, apparently the merest chance-reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces that are not rightly understood."