That eclipse burst through something very old in me - the last vestiges of tolerating abuse and manipulation from people who claim to love me. I no longer care about being good or right.

As always, there’s a mysterious parallel - when I clear something for myself, I start having patients come in needing help for the same ailments. I would say one of the great powers of acupuncture is moving blockages so we can return to ourselves - like undamming a river so that the salmon can come back in.

It always surprises me how we can forget aspects of our old joy, our congenital inborn nature, as we become burdened with toxicity, trauma, and fear. You don’t even realize you’ve forgotten until it’s back - that Spring feeling of hope, of wanting to love and be loved. This nature of ours can always return, but room must be made for these things actively - often by letting go.

Why was I born to witness this?

If I remember far enough, I feel a shove - my ancestors pushing me through the void, through my mother, as a last attempt at saving something. They had hope, even if it was small, I could protect a piece of the life that remains which they themselves allowed to be so forgotten. I was their wish.

My eyes blur and I spiral outwards in all directions - each day my hands grasping at some book some pen some person that I love. I call people. In dreams I chain myself to every old tree at once, and fantasize that tears or words or even violence could move someone to stop the grinding noise.

I need not remind you of all of this and forgive me for lingering in the horror of it all.

I am able to remember the optimism sometimes - of how when we are gone, the wildness will overtake the beams of steal and the earth will move and crush our empires under it. Smoking cigarettes I think of how all life comes from the deep sea from the vents that plume steam from the core of the earth that never stop and all things can regrow, even if forever altered. I remember the winters of my youth the snow waist deep and the birds singing in the clear cold air. I remember.

cliff riders duck behind a waterfall in the Pololu Valley in Hawaii, 1960 (Walter Meayer Edwards)

1. Urge towards quiet/silent contemplation at twilight.

2. Particular regard for children without the desire to have them yourself

3. Wakes up in the middle of the night like right in the middle and gets up for a while, then goes back to bed. (Night Vigil)

4. Enjoyment of choral music / has been in / is currently in a choir

5. Appreciation of female authority, disavowal of male authority (contribution from my friend quail)

6. May have repeated experiences of lesbian love that never fully fruit because there is satisfaction and experience in slow life-long bond building that has little need for titles

{depicting lesbian love was impossible for male writers for centuries so as soon as it would get close to blooming on the page one of the female characters would have to just pass the f*** out, and the image that was used repeatedly by these writers was the classic “I feel faint!” pose with the back of the hand over the forehead you know the one and then she falls into the arms of someone}

—ref “The Apparitional Lesbian” Ch. 1

In this life it’s as if there is some sort of barrier there. Like, to the settling of love into something other than this ever-changing spiritual kinship. That the end result could be something akin to a marriage, fully committed, feels unnecessary. For a long time convents were one of the few places women and transmasculine or nonbinary or just unusual female people could go to escape marrying a man… And while this was a blessing, the romantic scene inside the walls must have been brutally existential. Quiet and even, hidden, but dripping in meaning and drenched in candlelight. Who knows what the hell to do with all of that now. Lifetimes of love for each other and now we are cast about the earth, lost and spread around. There’s a lot of bravery needed in this realm of love for a former nun.

7. Unexpected appreciation of the architecture of churches or other holy sites.

8. Has many ‘Sisters’ — a unique form of relationship that bridges the category of friend-companion-lover, with a shared interest in the devotional arts.

9. (generally gay)

10. Needs quiet time in nature.

(in the modern day you see them achieve this by moving out into the country

in pursuit of hermeticism,

or filling the house with plants;

frequent vacations to the desert

safe in the walls of adobes

looking at the birds)

11. Constantly Engaged in some Handicraft

..healing or sewing or gardening or drawing or song…//tattooing, poetry, painting…

12. Enjoys soup and maybe Porridges and maybe in this lifetime doesn’t have a great handle on feeding themselves because they spent lifetimes being fed by the convent. Perhaps there is a perpetual nostalgia for some place where food is provided to you so you can be in devotion to your faith or your craft without worry.

I believe that in this life, we were meant to be freed up from the Church by force, so that we absolutely cannot rejoin it even if we wanted to.

So, generally, you’re gonna be something prohibitive like

a Transsexual, a dyke, an idolater, or a heathen.

—it is not because God hates us now,

—it is because we have all realized in previous lifetimes that the Church created by Men is the Greatest Lie ever told, and is the central force in keeping people separated from their personal connection to a higher power/unified consciousness/deity/or whatever you believe in even if it’s just - Silence.

In this light,

The final stage in our devotion would of course be - being expelled from the Church.

So here we are, you and I. On the curbs and porches - smoking and playing our newest songs for each other, making big pots of soup and ambiguously pursuing the art of healing. Drinking mulled wine. Raising sheep and ducks for their big, juicy eggs. Appreciating fine, slow things like good books and old pastimes, going on walks to look at the moon, sweeping the front stoop free of leaves. Watching the seasons change.

Is there still something we can do together more intentionally? I believe we are meant to be free thinkers now and to challenge one another and shake off notions of decorum. Nuns have always been loud in many ways but then there is the gagging hand of priestly oversight…

All this withstanding it is a blessing to be alive and to be free this time around. Join me, sisters, on this voyage into the unknown.

{Ben Cao Gang Mu / vol. 16 / Li Shi Zhen, 1596AD}

Read more

{On resignation to being alone forever}: /(A friend tells me they will never seek Love again) —

I can relate to the choice. All of us deserve to rest. It is often the case that much pain has brought a person here, to the edges of things. Beside you there are others who have leapt and tumbled through the gauntlets of suffering. You can hear them breathing.

There is a way that anticipating things will always remain the same level of bad or empty will protect you from disappointment for a time. But in my experience, it doesn’t get to the root of it all. The wound itself. (We all have one).

What I’ve observed is that we can’t know the plan the world has for us. And we also don’t really get to decide if we are lovable. It is possible that you will grow old as an un-partnered dandy surrounded by your friends - and if this is The World’s plan for you then there will be joy in it. If it is in your nature, then the choice will come to soothe you like a lover. If this is the case then nothing anyone says about it should matter to you (including what I am saying here).

We can see that water finds its most easeful course through the land. Wind blows over the hills not under them. Nature has an orientation towards unhindered movement when left to its own workings. You can trust it will bring you where you need to go to the extent that you can let it take its course.

If you are meant to be in partnership, then you will surely be brought to the threshing floor. Stung and bitten by these questions. Haunted by desire. Asked repeatedly to carry the first faith - in Love. Is it worth it to stay in the fire in pursuit of it? Good thing yr a poet at least. People around you will prod at you telling you to not give up and you will swat them away. Because you know that there is a kernel of truth in their egging you on. The heavens speak through our mundane world to us.

It is okay to say that you feel broken and that you are scared. You are still being carried by something.

At the end of the day you can choose to resign yourself to being alone if you want to. but its meaning does not go far beyond the symbolic if it is in resistance to your nature. it assumes that you control your fate, which you do not. For me, deciding I will never have what I want deludes me into feeling like I have some hand in my life path. Or, at least, it’s a bit of a “gotcha” feeling at the universe. But we are just leafs on a river. And what if there is something more to it all?

A friend asked me recently if I ever allow myself to fully long for the kind of love I want. I’m trying it out. I’m trying to have compassion for my desires, to wrap them tenderly in roses (petal and thorn alike). Is it possible to live alongside this yearning for Love and be warmed by it without burning your hand? Or without dousing the fire suddenly in a fit brought on by its generous light? In the past I have hoped that a lover, or a friend, would show me how to feel safe in the world. And many have tried. But the god damn game is rigged and you have to dig the key out of your own guts like in the Saw movies.

Keep a glimmer of mystery in your eye as you slash open your belly my friend I love you. 🩷

ps: in my book I’m reading {A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism by Caroline Moorehead} I learned that one of the keys to fighting fascism is to trust and delight in your own mind and ideas. I believe this extends to the heart. There is no shame in wanting Love.

{image: French sacred heart votive lamp, 19th Century}

xo

#love

Being trans right now

is like clinging to the branches…

The joy of Being is so great (root), but then the world all around you is steadily turning against you (wind). It is uncanny to glance up at faces you once knew as neutral-welcoming, like the cashier at the grocery store or the mechanic, or even a friend or family member, a stranger, and the gaze has shifted. People’s eyes grate over you chipping off pieces. They look at you with disgust, which surprises you because you were actually having a really nice day. You were smiling, you were dressed up.

As the days pass me and my friend Quail are zooming to talk about Frantz Fanon and his “zone of non-being” where you recognize that the people around you, even those who say they love you, you come to understand that to them you are not human. Your suffering is not recognized as valuable. Not in a heart-sense anyway. Not unless you prove it. They will watch you die without intervention.

But then also it is only when you realize your own humanity that you are ready to rise up. You must find it in the face of all of this.

Self-actualization and bodily autonomy is the right of all people, and we will continue to fight for that. We are strong and we are holding onto life in the ways we can but each loss from murder or suicide is a reminder of how tenuous that can be. Each trans young person who has to sit through the agony of puberty without help is felt by all. Bodies are added to our shoulders each day - a growing memorial. Every trans person I know has a passion project; usually an attempt at furthering the human understanding of love and beauty. but also most of them live in poverty. Our elders who opened pathways for us are getting evicted from their homes and we pass the same $50 back and forth between us. We all know it, we talk about it. We wonder when someone will help us. There is a perpetual disenfranchisement that sets in like waves washing over you and carrying you out to sea. Seeing loved ones remain neutral is the anchor that drags us down to the darker waters. Even so, we dream. And we carry out miracles.

Did you know trans people die of infections at a much higher rate than the average population? It’s from avoiding medical care due to experiences of discrimination. We also smoke more. This is because tobacco as a medicine holds other things at bay and protects the spirit. It helps a person exist in multiple planes of being at once. We use it in excess

If it is alignment with their hearts, some people learn how to be kind to others still, especially those who stare at us with hungry, dripping mouths (“especially those most in need of your mercy”). Others feel their heart pounding in their chest and it’s just pure rage. I taught myself how to pray, and the choice to have faith can help but the nihilism and the atheism have merits too depending on the soul that carries them.

We each find our ways.

We are only human after all.

Today I, too, feel afraid. My mind and heart are racing, skimming the surface of some unplaceable endless Ocean looking for my friends whose heads are below the water. I am here night and day. I am afraid I will not get to them all in time.

shift the limbs of trees,

and drink up the brambles —

crush them in your mouth /

alleviate the brush

that blocks my way.

I find great company with you,

And if you might

Enjoy me too,

Please help lift all things that bind me.

You who casts away the biting flies,

and moves the clouds

off of the moon /

who stirs the sea,

and carries songs over the hills —

Hear my prayer,

for I am caught,

and needing aid.

Blessed is the one who
does not root themself
in the council of the hopeless,
nor sits among kings,

but whose delight is
in their love of the World.

They are like a tree
planted at the water’s edge
bringing forth their fruit
in their given season.

You see how their leaf
does not wither —
whatever they do prospers.

Fear is a poison
that Love cleaves away.

What do you think? Do you like it? Not so heavy and dogmatic. I try to make the psalms sweet. I keep tailoring them until the words ring true. (more on process below)

Here is an example of an unedited version:

Psalm 1 {from the New International Version Bible]

Blessed (1) is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked (2)
or stand in the way that sinners (3) take
or sit in the company of mockers (4),

but whose delight
is in the law (5) of the Lord, (6)
and who meditates on his law
day and night.

That person is like a tree planted
by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.

Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.

Therefore the wicked
will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly
of the righteous (7)

For the Lord watches over
the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked
leads to destruction.

Footnotes on contentious words:

1: “blessed” - the hebrew and greek also say: “Happy”

2: “wicked” - a word I particularly do not like. From the hebrew rāša’ - an adjective: wicked, criminal, one guilty of crime, deserving of punishment; murderers, guilty of hostility to God and his people, guilty of sin” / from the Greek: “impious” “fool”

3: “sinners” SIN: from the Greek hamartia - an archery term meaning “missing the mark” - closer to “a mistake” than the christianized reading of “sin” which indicates a severe separation between a person’s actions and the will of God.

4: “mockers” : aka “the scornful, scoffers” - those who “turn away from the Lord” - i don’t particularly find these designations for people useful and generally transform them.

5: “law” - greek Νόμος: law, order, instruction / also song, direction, command

6: “Lord” - I have attempted to replace this word with things like “love” “earth” “nature” “creator” “universe” but no other word fully captures the combination of passive natural processes of our Earth, the way love iterates itself through the world, and the creative impulse behind it all - the magic and order that moves and guides all things. I see “Lord” as a word representing all of this and enjoy doing the work of detangling this word from its patriarchal roots, but will sometimes replace it. Etymologically, there is a mid-13th century tie to the old english “hlafweard,” literally “one who guards the loaves,” from hlaf “bread, loaf” + weard “keeper, guardian” - I find this to be nice, but it is too long to include in a psalm meant to be memorized and utilized.

7 “righteous” - Greek Δίκαιος: honest, true, pious, innocent, everyone “who is such as must be”

Notes on Process:

To “remix” the Psalms I do a mixture of honoring the potency of their original wording as they are presented in English translations of the old testament. To do this I look side-by-side at the New International Version (2011); the New American Standard Bible (2020), the King James Version (1611), and the English Standard Version (2025) and select the phrasing I enjoy best from each, line by line.

After doing the first sorting of words, I begin the process of looking into the etymology and history of contentious words like “Lord,” “sin,” “wicked,” “righteous” etc. by breaking down their Greek and Hebrew roots. (The bible is, after all, a Christianization of the original Greek that doesn’t just translate but also imposes christian morality over the words). I do this investigating to see if there may be creative ways to bring in older meanings of these words that are not burdened by hierarchy, while also making the text more understandable to the modern reader who is not interested in religious dogma. Before they were included in the Old Testament, the Psalms were the people’s magic and were seen as having practical uses. In my own exploration of them, I have found this to be true. I see the psalms as useful allies, but I cannot tolerate the us/them dichotomy created by Christianity.

I have a personal enjoyment of minimalism in my prayers, so there are also places where I have taken out portions that I find repetitive or unnecessarily scolding in order to make the prayer more focused. It is possible, in my ignorance, that I have removed crucial bits of the prayers and shifted their original meaning, but that is exactly what biblical translators have done throughout time. I am consistently learning and growing in my understanding of scripture. I am an archivist and value old things. But I am also firmly against positioning one group of humans above another. We are all in this together.

This post will be part of an ongoing series exploring the psalms.

“The Booke of Psalmes” - Psalms Chapter 1, Original 1611 Bible Scan, courtesy of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania

Pseudomorphism in stones is mystical af. And the parallels to the human spirit are many. The term means “false form,” and is used to describe a process where one mineral slowly replaces another mineral, but maintains the form or shape of the first. In this case, malachite (green) has replaced azurite (blue) in every way on a chemical level, except that its crystalline body is now shaped like azurite!

This happens because the transformation is going down on a very small scale little by little, so that the shape of the original azurite crystal is not disturbed. There are a few types of pseudomorphism. This one is called “alteration.” Petrified wood is also a pseudomorph but under a different process, called “substitution.”

As with all science, much of this is still a mystery when you really get down to it. This is why geologists use the word “assumption” a lot, to describe the guesses they make about the natural factors that cause pseudomorphism in certain individuals. It is “assumed” that water was present, or copper, or heat, etc.

It is also not fully known how this chemical transformation can and does continue occurring even when a stone is moved ...onto a bookshelf, or into a museum for example. Geologists talk about something called “necessary systemic energy” which is an undefined factor akin to choice or consciousness in the stone. It is possible that they initiate and facilitate their own transformation. We see this in “self-healed” crystals as well (a topic for another time).

What’s cool to me about this is...honestly everything. And the ties to trans experiencing are *chefs kiss* -I see this as one of the topics in mineralogy that illuminates the consciousness of stones. They are beings with free will and their own life path! I’ve been saying it since 2014 and will continue to say it.

CW: violence against trans people

“It has pleased divine Providence that a woman of the name of Jeanne, commonly called The Maid, should be taken and apprehended by famous warriors within the boundaries and limits of our diocese and jurisdiction. The reputation of this woman had already gone forth into many parts: how, wholly forgetful of womanly honestly, and having thrown off the bonds of shame, careless of all the modesty of womankind, she wore with an astonishing and monstrous brazenness, immodest garments belonging to the male sex…” (2) —Trial of Joan of Arc (opening statements)

May 30 was the feast day of Saint Jehanne.

“Jehanne” {ju-ahn} is the name the saint signed on paper, the old French feminized form of Johannes (both deriving from the Hebrew name Yochanan meaning “God is Gracious.”) Other common names for this Saint include Joan of Arc, Jeanne, Joanna, and “The Maid.” With friends and family and with their mother - “Jeannette.”

Saint Jehanne was imprisoned by the English and put on trial in an Ecclesiastical Court in 1430 for being a heretic, for partaking in activities incongruous with their sex, and for “receiving revelations” from Angels and Saints (particularly Michael, St. Catherine (Hekaterinē) and St. Margaret) who she claimed to speak to directly. For these crimes, and others, Jehanne was put to death in the Old Market Square in Rouen on May 30, 1431 - at around age 19.

Before their execution, Jehanne was subject to six public examinations, nine private interrogations, and then formerly accused of 70 criminal articles, including multiple instances of witchcraft (carrying a mandrake root believing it would bring good fortune, hanging with the old ladies in town, dancing at the base of an ancient Fairy Tree during Church services…). The church also didn’t like that she was leading armies, having sex, and learning things from other women (like how to ride horses). Joan also claimed repeatedly that God would forgive their sins, but at this time the Church upheld that no person could know whether they were forgiven on their own.

One of the more visible aspects of Jehanne’s disobedience, which occupies 5 full articles of accusation and holds a prominent place in the commentary of the Church officials throughout the trial, was that they wore men’s clothing and refused to take it off, stating that God had commanded them to do so. “those (garments) underneath as well as above” — their chosen non-conformity in this regard is equated throughout the trial to bringing evil out into the world.

“I would rather die than

revoke what I have done

by the order of Our Lord”

Another intriguing accusation by the Church is that Jehanne allowed himself to be adored by others - another aspect of orthodoxy being that nothing but the One True God is worthy of devotion. That the sacred is entirely non-human (except for Jesus), external to our animal nature, and safe from the arms of Death. Hidden and remote from our own earshot. This is all false of course.

I believe that Idolatry is probably a necessary facet of the “Trans spiritual canon.” You know, worshipping something other than God as God? Like believing that coming to know yourself deeply, or coming to know another person deeply, can be akin to knowing a whole universe, a whole divinity? You know space is mostly empty…our bodies are mostly empty too. But something takes hold of the matter that is there.

Trans People’s free enactment of their individual beauty and life for the sake of Beauty and Life, their honoring of what they know to be true of themselves, and standing up for their right to exist as they so choose, is made possible by a great fortitude in spirit, and our collective history. It is also made possible by the Laws of Nature, as we are an intrinsically necessary aspect of the world that arises spontaneously out of nothing again and again, like flowers coming in their given season..

“I refer me to God”

There is an inextricable connection between the tender vulnerability of transness, which seeks only to Be, and Nature itself. Neither of us (trans people nor Nature) can seemingly find a good reason within the colonial mindset to excuse our continued existence. If you want to, you can smother out all goodness for a time. You can oil-slick coat it so it can’t fly. You can drain it of any life, crush it down into the smallest of pieces, cut it down to the ground. But birth and death are endless things. The only action that changes anything about anything really seems to be Love, which is a wellspring unending that we need only harness with confidence that we are justified in It.

Joan could have lived.

The trans body the trans person the average abandoner of their sex the impenetrably butch individual the effeminate one, the cult of women who chopped off their breasts in devotion, the Dianic tribes, the transfemme emperor, the ones who self-castrated, the ones who changed sex and name and dress to fight in the Civil War and just stayed that way forever. The trans woman beaten and kicked in the head until she’s seizing up on the restaurant floor. The trans panic defense, usable in court. I always think that Joan is depicted as older than they were.

I believe many of us share a pain that they, too, felt, upon witnessing the people of Rouen allowing them be led to the pyre. To be tied to the wooden beam. To burn. I find I am quite different than I used to be. I am no longer able to romanticize Joan’s death. At what cost did they edge-out their eye out that way? To be impenetrable? At what cost did they stand up for justice?

There is no perfect victim. There is no way for the persecuted to present themselves in such a mode as to avoid being consumed alive. Sometimes, there is nothing that can be said. The hand must be held back from the weapon. Protections and actions need to be enacted at the level of a culture or a society or a community in order to stop violence of this nature. Bystander intervention needs to occur. Justice is intrinsically woven into the laws of Love.

You know what I heard? After St. Jehanne died, just moments after, people in the onlooking crowd started to scream and cry. “We killed a saint! We killed a saint!” The public wept.

Maybe the one day the west will scream for Palestine and weep for the dead. Maybe one day, the pang of regret. I hope it occurs before it is too late.

I am reminded of the writing of Sophie Strand on the matter of St. Joan — “She did not court martyrdom and was increasingly frantic as she realized her voices assurance of victory might not conform to the victory she had imagined for herself. When her counsel shifted and Michael the angel of war was exchanged for Gabriel the angel of acceptance and compassion, she spooked, asking the angel, “Will I burn?” She reported that he said to her, “Wait upon him in all your doings.” As she approached her execution, it seems she experienced a radical crisis in the personal faith for which she is so well-loved. I think it is more compassionate to the human being to allow her this personal apostasy” (full piece “No Savior” by Sophie Strand)

There is something deadly tender about connecting to this Saint as a trans person now. There’s something fresh-born and delicate in knowing one another across time. It feels private, like a blood oath between friends. I think of Jehanne in the prison at night. In their room at night, or between battles. It is said that they spoke to Angels and to dead saints but I feel my hand touch something more human in them as well - the fear of death, the longing for companionship and understanding, the wordlessness of seeing oneself as small in relationship to the all the forces of the world.

It is possible that Joan was gender non-conforming at heart, and that the reason they weren’t willing to change into women’s clothing was because they knew they were right.

I think about visiting Domrémy, the place of Jehanne’s birth where the fairy tree once was (perhaps a Hawthorne or some kind of Oak?) or the place of their death. To step into the square where they were murdered like so many others in our community (by burning or stoning or drowning or being left out in the elements or worse). Sometimes I wonder what can be done on the killing grounds to turn the tides.

I used to talk a lot about how part of being Trans is standing on the edge of life and death, where since you come very close to death quite often eventually you find that you’ve lost your fear of it. You were willing to sacrifice many of the things that tethered you to secure, known places after all, in order to pursue your own happiness and liberation. It took faith and trust in your own desires, and that’s the key here. You say “death take me, I have nothing left to lose” because you have already lost everything and you are still here. There is something about you that is endless, and you have such faith in the righteousness of meeting Death, knowing we will all meet it one day, that Death tells you “from this day on, I walk behind you as your friend.”

As mentioned above there is something difficult here to chew on. Something about being willing to settle for early death as a likely outcome for my trans kin. I have not been able to finish writing this until now even though St. Joan’s feast day was a week ago, and it still does not feel complete. Maybe I’ll finish it next year when we feast again.

In the meantime I hope that they will find joy in seeing us live openly in the face of such great misunderstandings.

images:

1. Paul Dubois (1873)

2. From Jeanne d'Arc by Frantz Funck Brentano, Illustrations by O.D. U. Guillonnet (1912)

3. Illustration of Jehanne Cutting Their Hair by Josephine Poole

4. St. Joan Illustrated, by George Bernard Shaw

5. The earliest surviving depiction of St. Joan, a sketch by the secretary of the Parliament of Paris, Clement de Fauquembergue, in the margin of the official register he kept for daily events on May 10, 1429, after Paris received word of Joan's great victory at Orleans. “Since de Fauquembergue had never seen Joan he sketched her based on the reports he had received of a young maid leading the French army carrying a sword and a banner which he emphasized in his sketch.”

5-9. Excerpts from the Trial itself

10. artist unknown

11. Christopher Whall (1922)

Heart of Water, Mayan Permaculture Village

space is collectively owned by the community

Ice Cream Bean Tree - nitrogen fixer

Coffee - good understory tree for forest systems

SWALE::

“A swale is a water harvesting ditch on contour with a soft mound on the lower side, designed to slow water down to a standstill, eliminate erosion, infiltrate the surrounding area with water, and recharge the groundwater table.” -Geoff Lawton

^”swales on contour can drought-proof gardens, farms and pastures with water harvested passively”

• bottom of the swale needs to be level with the landscape

• maximum slope 18 degrees, no minimum slope, they work on flat country

• microswales

• Nitrogen fixer

• Phosphate for fungi

“Farm bund” / swales - Reforestation of 500 Acres of land outside of Jaipur via traditional water harvesting methods

“How a Cooperative Conserved rainwater to grow a forest in drought-prone Dharmapuri of Tamil Nadu”

Piyush Manush

Founder, Cooperative Forest

Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu

“He convinced his friends to pool their resources to buy land and developed this into a green patch. With the help of his friends, Piyush Manush managed to acquire 250 acres of land.”

process:

1 - they created rainwater harvesting structures on 10% of the land. “as soon as it rains it will show you what it can do.”

trenches/check dams/and ponds

2 - they planted 20,000 trees.

cost 2 million to create water harvesting structures and plant trees.

It is now member owned.

They make a profit “forest for profit” - not because of greed but because it is meeting needs. “if economics is involved, people will get into green businesses.”

They water they conserve recharges the ground water in the local region.

CHAUKA SYSTEM::

“Lapodia is a drought-proof village 2 hours away from Jaipur”

-it was once barren, with no groundwater even after a good rainfall / and can now survive 3 continuous years of drought on one good rain

“we have become self-reliant”

History—

-a person repaired a defunct pond

-his efforts inspired other young people to join

-he started an organization to collect water and restore ponds. (Gramin Vikas Navyuvak Mandal Lapodia - GVNML)

-they planted trees

-canal built (3-4km) after careful study of the drainage patterns of the land

-employment of traditional Chauka system to restore the grasslands

-goal is to retain capture 9 inches of rainwater evenly across a piece of land

-soil moisture increases with 9 inches of water

-they also built “sacred groves” for the animals to feel safe and have food

GREAT GREEN WALL::

^”one of the largest scale land restorations on the Planet” / GREAT GREEN WALL

——>HALF-MOON

-a water-holding structure w/deep pits dug inside and outside of the moon called “zai pits” that collect plant debris and allow water to slowly sip into the earth

-trees, herbs, etc. planted in these pits

—> these become a concentration point of plant and animal life

-after 7 years of growth—> temperature in these areas drops of 5-8C compared to the barren land surrounding.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

-tree canopy breaks the drying winds from the desert.

-“animals becoming fat”

-REGENERATES PERMANENT WATER TABLE BRUH

-WATER TABLE WILL RISE SO FARMERS CAN WATER THEIR CROPS

-LEGIT SOLVES HUNGER

CHINANPA:: - aquatic farming technique utilized in Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City)

¿Cómo construían sus chinampas los aztecas?

“How a Farmer turned 90 acres of wastleland into a lush green forest in Odisha”

TREE BUFFER::

Tree Buffers to keep rivers from drying out,

ft org: TREEAID

Daka River, Yendi, Ghana

• riparian buffer

trees planted 60-100 meters away from the river bank. the river is on one side, humans are on the other

- when it rains, the soil won’t be flushed back into the river.

-additionally, if any farmers on the human side are using chemical fertilizer, it won’t wash into the river. when too much fertilizer gets in the river it causes “eutrification” - so many nutrients in the water that algae starts growing in excess

PROJECTS::

“The Church Forests of Ethiopia” - Emergence Magazine

2000 year old food forest in Morocco

Dhun-1 (Phagi tehsil, India)

“breathing life into barren land

by going back to old wisdom”

• “farm bunds” water catchment

• “water is the source of life”

Escosystem restoration camp (Spain - La Junquera Farm, Camp Altiplano

Restoring land degenerated by industrial agriclture:

step 1: decompact the soil

step 2: dig a pond

step 3: swales

step 4: compost

step 5: groundcover

step 6: trees

• “Keyline Design”

Hope in a Changing Climate - Liu, China - reforestation documentary

—Give a hat to the hilltop

top of the hills had to be replanted with trees

—Give a belt to the hills (terracing)

—As well as shoes at the base

Dams built so that the hills could come back to life

Regenerative agriculture in the Saudi desert (AL BAYDHA)

SEEDS/GARDENS

- there is “centralized seed conservation” - when you keep all the seeds in a bank

And “decentralized conservation” - where you distribute seeds to local farmers so they can be grown and proliferate elsewhere

^ here they have farmers “adopt” certain seeds and take an oath that they will protect and spread that species for as long as possible

Wherever there is low atmospheric pollution,

You will find lichens growing on the trees.

“Keyhole Garden Timelapse”

When edges are in control, the garden is in control.

GARDEN EDGE PLANTS:

Strawberries

Pennyroyal (smells nice)

Nasturtium

Brahmi

+ plant perennials on the edges so you don’t have to disturb the edges very much.

Mix your annuals and perennials together.

For every fruit tree, a guild:

One large, medium, and small legume tree

One tiny bush

Four or five small plants

One to two ground covers

Some herbaceous support I can cut for mulch

(re: poisons)

**You can kill any plant by not letting it grow leaves. You don’t need to use poisons.

If it can’t photosynthesize, its roots will die in place.

Tomato cages with cucumber growing up the side to shade the tomatoes

Tomatoes with marigolds and lettuces as companion plants

The pH of soil is generally determined by the parent rocks in the soil, and whether they are acidic or alkaline

DRYLANDS RESTORATION

Creating Shade is crucial.

In dry lands, you fear the Westerly sun. When the sun is setting after the heat of the day, it gives you that extra burn. You want to shade off the West. You ideally shouldn’t have any windows on that side of your house.

First plant pioneer species - hardy, thorned trees to create shade and leaves for mulch/topsoil - then more sophisticated support species can take their place

• The most fertile ground has undisturbed, partly disturbed, and heavily disturbed ground in a matrix. And the edge between is where you get the most fertility. As we disturb the pioneer plants, other plants come in to take the edge effect.

SPIKY PIT:: - ultimate compost situation

Have a lot of brush?

• Dig a big deep pit maybe 2 meters by two meters

Fill it with logs and finely chopped branches, straw, manure in layers.

• On your land, make a big triangle, of three pits

Between them a fungal web will form

And nourish all the plant life in the area

Deep at the bottom of the pit, rainforest type soil will form

• See what happens in 1 year or so

DRY CLIMATE TREES

Mesquites

Legumes (make good mulch)

Shahtoot Mulberry

Deciduous legume Albizia Lebbeck

Ponciana Regens

let in winter light

And close off summer light

Cassia Bicapsularis

Acacia

Neem trees

Casuarina - fix nitrogen and phosphate

Hibiscus Tiliacus

POLLARD THE TREES:: (type of pruning that encourages upward growth to create canopy + you can use the chopped branches as mulch/compost

Food forest tour:

-ft. chop and drop

+ You can build a high stone wall on the southern side to give one area of sun blockage / fence off the desert

OTHER TIPS

“Project Kamp: #135”

You can make your own methane using compost & a bio-gas harvester (essentially just a sealed container of liquid compost and a way to collect the gas from it)

“Free Water Forever”

How to install a 30,000 gallon rain tank in your back yard

POOLS::

“New Wildlife Pool at Zaytuna Farm”

(To make a natural pool — use GEOFABRIC

& Polymer to help it hold water)

MIYAWAKI FOREST::

- for urban afforestation

•A dense, native forest suitable to areas as small as 100 square meters.

Akira Miyawaki (Japan, 1970’s)

•Designed to rapidly become a “climax forest” - a type of ecosystem that generally takes hundreds of years to form.

—within 30 years looks like a century old natural forest

1. “This Urban Forest Becomes Self Sufficient in 3 Years”

1. “How to Create Natural Forest”

Process:

1 - find native plants (at least 100 species)

2 - put them in grow bags with coconut peat (coir pith), cow dung, rich soil.

3 - flowering plants, shrubs and creepers must be grown alongside the trees

4 - prepare ground for planting:

-remove stone from the earth & loosen soil

-cow dung, coconut coir, and chaff are mixed well with soil on a proportion of 10kg/square meter

-roots spread and grow better in softened soil

5 - keep plants near the site for at least 2 weeks so they can acclimatize.

6 - grid out area

plant FOUR SAPLINGS PER SQUARE METER

-they will grow faster because they are close together and competing for sunlight

-squeeze at least 400 plants of over 100 varieties in an area of 100 square meters.

7 - MULCH

8 - optional to use shade plants in hot summer months to aid initial growth, will need to be watered in the first 2-3 years, after that becomes self sufficient.

1 Marie

A long ways back my grandma told me that her mom thought prayer was “the most underestimated force in the universe”

and I took that lightly at the time

but then in the weeks to come I remembered that this woman, Marie, raised 5 kids and used to bale hay under the Oklahoma sun, she cooked for the entire household and cleaned it up too, she was the heart of that little spot just holding it all together. She read the Bible every day - Psalms and Proverbs were here favorite parts. Her and my great-grandfather were both going to college when the Great Depression hit, then he found himself chasing his lost horse for 40 miles through the countryside because there was no way they were losing him. They sold cream from the cows for money. My God that time must have taken some serious prayers. Dusty air, no end in sight. I figured she did not actually say that thing about prayer lightly, just quietly but in a way that echoes out forever, as is the way of prayer.

In that same season, my great-grandfather, weary, hired a plane to pour agent orange across the forest on their land, poisoning the trees — it was promoted to farmers at the time, to quickly clear the woods for more grazing and planting. But they didn’t know the ground would be poisoned for decades, unable to hold life.

2 Forest Ecosystem

You can build a forest out of a desert

if you can just hold the water in the ground.

You dig ponds and channels along the contours of the land. Then once it rains, you put big tough thorny trees and they dig roots down and shed their leaves and in their shade other things can begin to take hold and soon the birds are dropping seeds and you cut down excess branches for soil and you let the first of the trees grow tall to make a canopy. Then though the filtered light, all manner of things take hold.

When an ecosystem like a forest reaches a certain level of diversity (sheer number of different species it contains), it tips, and it becomes exponentially easier for new species to enter the system. As new things enter and diversity grows, so does the ecosystem’s resilience to change. Things that would once devastate the region, like invasive species, diseases, swarms, heatwaves, drought, now can’t get foothold. There is too much difference to take the whole thing down.

The forest is as strong as steel

With all its small threads woven tight

And flexible like water

And brings the rain

And holds the rivers

And feeds the soil

Creates shade.

Is home.

Humans were born on the edge of the forest where it meets the plains. It’s where we learned to stand.

3 Saint Francis

I’ve read about Saint Francis.

His first convert was a King.

The King heard him praying all night in the next room over while everyone else was asleep (he was saying “my God, my God, my God” over and over again),, this King was so moved, that the next day, he gave away all of his riches to the poor with the aid of the Saint and vowed to follow him and become a monk.

What is it that moves the hearts of men?

Saint Francis himself was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant and was know for the flamboyant parties he would host for his friends, his taste for fine things, his desire to become a knight. Eventually he started to hear God speak to him. He gave away his things and opened his palms upward. At his death bed he called out for the company of his best friend, a female (or some theorize, transmasculine) monk, who had already felt that she was needed at the monastery and had ridden out immediately upon getting the sense, arriving before the Saint’s prayers were finished.

4 Sharon and the Apple

When we go to Italy to visit my family we hike a lot, and before the hikes we pack snacks. One day on a mountainside, with just one apple left and some distance to go, my sister said that she was hungry.

This was a common occurrence because my sister requires a lot of snacks to get through life, and I should have anticipated it. But my first animal, carnal desire was to clutch at my apple and admonish my sister for not packing her own.

Then I thought about the span of walking ahead of us, the beauty of the scene, my love for her and the way her company bounced joyfully all around. We looked over the peaks together and talked about life. It is worth being a bit less full to make sure she can go farther with me.

I split the apple in two.

5 The Taco Bell Miracle

I was off of some long highway in my light blue Toyota, on one of the many road trips of my youth (relaxing travel method for the neurodivergent and broke). I had about a $12 food budget at the time, and a few meals to cover with it, so I went to the Taco Bell.

I pull into the drive thru and order three of those little burritos, thinking about how wild it is that you can get the same shit at any Taco Bell no matter where you are even in the middle of god damn nowhere, and I go up to the window and there’s two people standing there looking right at me. One of them is sitting at the computer and the other is standing there with a headset on and a Taco Bell visor and they open the window and they go “Merry Christmas!” and hand me my food (it’s August) followed up by “our computer just went down so you can have your food for free”

“The Taco Bells were ringing for me that night” (said my Bestie)

6 Saint Juniper

My friend Quail taught me about Saint Juniper. He is the patron saint of comedy. Some comedians hold a sprig of juniper in their pocket when they do stand-up. He’s the origin of the phrase “he’d give you the shirt off his back.” These are connected because the most brilliant type of wit comes from those who have nothing to lose.

Each day Saint Francis would leave his home clothed and shoed, but would return in the evening naked. This was because when he’d see a person without a clothes, or without shoes, he would give his away. The other members of the church would hide the precious objects, which he would also give away. He knew what was real and what wasn’t.

7 The First Pizza Miracle

There was a year of my life where I lived in this long blue bus. It was my first real attempt at quitting my job and being “just an artist.” To illustrate how well that was going..

One day I was hungry and I didn’t have any money, nor did I have any food. This was a somewhat chronic situation, to the extent that I did not feel eager to reach out to friends and loved ones to help me. So instead, I was laying on my side on the floor of the bus praying. It was the only solution I could think of. Prayer has that way of always being there, even when you don’t have anything at all. I asked out loud for someone to hear me, and said that I was hungry and just needed some food to eat. That I was trying really hard to do what I thought I should do, but needed some help.

I did this for awhile and then just remained unmoving on the floor staring at the wall of the bus.

And then, a knock on the door!

Highly unusual,

as I’m in a giant field

and all of my land-mates are hermits who I rarely see.

Outside of the door it is my neighbor and I’m still quite surprised she’s there and she goes “I got a pizza and I only ate half of it, do you want the other half?”

8 The Second Pizza Miracle

One time a few years ago I got myself into a pretty bad situation up in Canada. I was there visiting my partner at the time who was abusing me, and this led to me needing to find another place to stay quite suddenly in the midst of the trip. It was deep winter there, February, and I just walked out of her place. It was like 10pm. Didn’t have much on me, but I had to get out. I noticed a ways into the walk that my hands were not getting cold to the extent that it defied the laws of physics and anatomy. It was well below freezing. I didn’t have gloves but I didn’t need to put my hands in my pockets. It was like they were dipped in little bathtubs. I could not explain it. Found out the next day that one of my closest friends went onto their knees and prayed for me that night, they just felt called to.

My partner left her place to stay elsewhere so that I could sleep in the apartment that night, and the next morning I reached out to the one other person I knew from that area. I was across the river from a big city in this little suburb, without much money (around $75, not enough to procure any lodging), wondering if they could help me find somewhere to stay for a few days while I figured out what to do.

Roughly 10 minutes later I’m getting a text from my bud and they say they have a friend who is JUST about to leave town — but they offered to give me their apartment if I could catch them before they go! So I’m standing in the parking lot behind my now ex’s apartment with all my bags and my hat on and I text this kind stranger to get their address and they send me their pin and I pull it up and it’s one block from where I’m standing. I look across the road and see them waving from their front yard.

When I get there (shortly after) they invite me inside, they check in on how I’m doing, if I’m okay. They say that they have friends in the area who can come hang with me if I need, that the people upstairs might be a little loud, that I’m welcome to have any of their food and drink although they don’t have a ton of stuff. They say they trust me to take care of the place and hand me the key.

When I got hungry later in the evening, after meandering the warm one-bedroom to look at all the queer, Indigenous art and poetry on the walls (it was such medicine for the amount of pain and fear I was feeling at the time), I looked through their snack stash. There was some condiments, ramen noodles, then in the freezer I found — a little pizza! Perfect size for one person (don’t need much). I saw a golden glow above its crusts.

9 Medicine School

I wouldn’t have gone to medicine school if it weren’t for my friend Ella calling me out of the blue late one night to tell me about what she learned in class that day. I was sitting on my back porch down on the wood planks on a big dog bed that I had appropriated as a cushion. For several months Ella had been eagerly sharing details with me from her adventures in Chinese Medicine School, but on this night it was a more.. forceful telling. She said “Jonah, you would really like this” and told me about how they learned in class the ways that the emotions affect the physiology of the body. Like how sadness or fear or anger could make an organ sick, or affect the movement of blood and energy. She told me about how the Black Panthers used acupuncture to treat addiction in the Black community, and how Chinese doctors used to treat immigrants and Black people and Indigenous people out in community clinics on the street before these communities had access to hospitals and western doctors.

I had been praying for a way to deepen my medicine practice to be able to help my community. I had been searching for how I could better serve the world. My dad is a physician, and while I had always loved medicine, my transsexuality and several other experiences had revealed to me that western medicine was not a space of knowledge-making that would be able to contain me, so I had given up that dream long ago. But when I was a kid I would wander around in the woods behind his house pretending that I knew how to use the different leaves and flowers to heal people. I knew that at some time I would be shown where I needed to place myself to do my work.

And now Ella is calling me. We are in the midst of a pandemic. It is winter of 2021, at what I would call the peak of Covid fear in the United States, in the depths of lockdown. She’s telling me to do it now, what better time? It was as if everything I had ever done had led me to that moment.

There just so happened to be a great school for acupuncture in Austin, where I had already been living for 7 years or so, which I thought was fitting as both my grandfather and great-grandfather completed their higher education in Austin (something I didn’t learn until after I moved here). Maybe this is why I moved here spontaneously so many years ago? I applied. I waited. I had several dreams of old teachers showing me plants that I could use as medicine.

In my school admission interview, one of the things they were most excited about was my experience in learning about and working with stone medicine, which surprised me. This is a spiritual /healing practice that is quite dear to me. I was in awe that such a practice could be valued and recognized within a significant medical modality, but as it turns out minerals have been used in traditional Chinese medicine practice for centuries/millennia. As it also turns out, being a visual artist lends itself perfectly to memorizing acupuncture points and anatomical landmarks and wielding creative thinking to come up with point prescriptions and do holistic diagnosis. My childhood education in Japanese language meant I already knew many Chinese characters and was primed to memorize all the herb names we learn in Mandarin/Latin/and English. I had already spent years doing mineral healing work with people, laying stones on their bodies to align their energy, so I was familiar with how to interact with people in need of medicine. Long ago, a psychic told me that one day I would use the elements to help heal people. I began to feel like I was sliding down a slide into my own fate..

I had not done anything to be offered this invitation into a new life but wait, prepare myself, and trust, and say yes when the opportunity arose.

10

I WANT FOR NOTHING

ALL IS CONTAINED WITHIN

ALL WILL BE PROVIDED IN TIME.

ART BY: @ catscrypt on IG

my body is a mother of its own

i settle into the riverbeds of it like a hand into clay

i laid this ground year after year

the sedimentary layers

i sowed the trees

there is a gentleness to my body that i cannot always find in my soul

it is the first thing to trust

— when i am within myself i do not feel shame, as a person in the place of their birth only follows the laws of their own land. i am as i am. i am within myself, no man can judge my spirit through this flesh, save for the reachings of my own mind. i am obscured, save for the ghostly candles of my own ancestors. i am the One Who Lets Light In, moving the curtains aside. no one can do it in my stead.

.

effortless,

like dust floats in air.

as a rainbow

through a prism, sudden

aided by foolish trust

and hoping

carried by winds

who bear direction

i seek thy face.

bristled in pains

from all around

i am

simply drenched with it,

stinking,

unremoving is the smell

unrelenting

as when a beast is warm in body /

all the dead coldnesses

will try and cling to it.

cover me with thy loving hands.

{image: ice sculpture by Andy Goldsworthy}

when i get home alone at night

i clean all the corners of the rooms

i look at the dog shadow

i walk up and down the hall.

at a certain time i cannot outpace sadness, though i have tried to fill my days with good work, at night it finds me nonetheless. the lights are low and it drapes itself upon my shoulders like a shell of brambles drawing blood

do i cast off the sorrow with disdain

or let the inky oils from within its thorns

draw new passions from my heart?

art: “Oklahoma Cyclone” (c. 1900) by Uriah Smith

It is a good night to make an offering at the crossroads.

Perhaps this old prayer can be of aid..

Talisman on Bloodstone ft. Anubis (left) and Hekate (right); turn of the 2nd-3rd century A.D.

On the left, Anubis in kilt, right hand holding a flail, left hand holding a wreath (?), facing Hecate trimorph on the right. Hecate is clad in a peplos, her three heads crowned with modii, uppermost hands holding burning torches, middle hands holding daggers, lowermost hands holding whips. Below the figures in four lines: φορβαφορβη|βριμωφο|ρβαπιπ|ορθε → including variant of φορβαφορφορβα.

PGM IV. 2785-2890

“Prayer to Selene/Hekate (/The Triple Goddess / GodX) For Any Spell”

From the Greek Magical Papyri (2nd C BC - 5th C AD), Egypt 

“Come to me, O beloved mistress, Three-faced

Selene; kindly hear my sacred chants;

Night’s ornament, young, bringing light to mortals, /

O child of morn who ride upon fierce bulls,

O queen who drive your car on equal course

With Helios, who with the triple forms

Of triple Graces dance in revel with /

The stars. You’re Justice and the Moira’s threads:

Klotho and Lachesis and Atropos

Three-headed, you’re Persephone, Megaira,

Alickto, many-formed, who arm your hands

With dreaded, murky lamps, who shake your locks

Of fearful serpents on your brow, who sound 

The roar of bulls out from your mouths,  whose womb

Is decked out with the scales of creeping things,

With pois’nous rows of serpents down the back,

Bound down your backs with horrifying chains

Night-Crier, bull-faced, loving solitude, 

Bull-headed, you have eyes of bulls, the voice

Of dogs, you hide your forms in shanks of lions,

Your ankle is wolf-shaped, fierce dogs are dear 

To you, wherefore they call you / Hekate,

Many-named, Mene, cleaving air just like

Dart-shooter Artemis, Persephone,

Shooter of deer, night / shining, triple sounding,

Triple-headed, triple-voiced Selene

Triple-pointed, triple-faced, triple-necked,

And goddess of the triple ways, who hold

Untiring flaming fire in triple baskets, / 

And you who oft frequent the triple way

And rule the triple decades, unto me

Who’m calling you to be gracious and with kindness

Give heed, you who protect the spacious world

At night, before whom daimons quake in fear /

And gods immortal tremble, goddess who

Exalt men, you of many names, who bear

Fair offspring, bull-eyed, horned, mother of gods

And men, and Nature, Mother of all things,

For you frequent Olympos, / and the broad

And boundless chasm you traverse. Beginning

And end are you, and you alone rule all. 

For all things are from you, and in you do 

All things, Eternal one, come to their end.

As everlasting / band around your temples

You wear great Kronos’ chains, unbreakable

And unremovable, and you hold in 

Your hands a golden scepter. Letters ‘round

Your scepter / Kronos wrote himself and gave

To you to wear that all things stay steadfast:

Subduer and subdued, mankind’s subduer, 

And force-subduer; Chaos, too, you rule.

Hail, goddess, and attend your epithets,

I burn for you this spice, O child of Zeus,

Dart-shooter, heav’nly one, goddess of harbors,

Who roam the mountains, goddess of crossroads, / 

O nether and nocturnal, and infernal,

Goddess of dark, quiet and frightful one,

O you who have your meal amid the graves,

Night, Darkness, broad Chaos: Necessity

Hard to escape are you: you’re Moira and / 

Erinys, torment, Justice and Destroyer,

And you keep Kerberos in chains, with scales

Of serpents are you dark, O you with hair

Of serpents, serpent-girded, who drink blood

Who bring death and destruction, and who feast 

On hearts, flesh eater, who devour those dead

Untimely, and you who make grief resound

And spread madness, come to my sacrifices,

And now for me do you fulfill / this matter

Offering for the rite: for doing good, offer storax, myrrh, sage, frankincense, a fruit pit. But for doing harm, offer magical / material of a dog and a dappled goat (or in a similar way, of a virgin untimely dead)

Protective Charm for the Rite: Take a lodestone and on it have carved / a three faced Hekate. And let the middle face be that of a maiden wearing horns, and the left face that of a dog, and the one on the right that of a goat. After the carving is done, / clean with natron and water, and dip in the blood of one who has died a violent death. Then make a food offering to it and say the same spell at the tie of the / ritual.

Tr: E. N. O’Neil

From the Greek Magical Papyri (2nd C BC - 5th C AD), Egypt 

It seems related to their duties — it is as though, in order to dole out their compassion, there is a need for them to take on whatever form will facilitate the process best. Regarding Guanyin, this ability to change form is described at length in the Lotus Sutra (the initial po…

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