guest blogger: Elizabeth Proctor

Due to the popularity of last week’s guest blogger, I have decided to have another this week. The following entry is written by my soul sister and partner-in-crime, Elizabeth Proctor. My normal entries will follow.

I can feel that this is changing me, and that the change is irrevocable.  The things I once hated I have grown to love the most.  I love not having access to the internet.  I love being unreachable to everyone but my fellow cabin-dwellers.  I love living each day simply to live it, to prepare meals, listen to music, workout, read, and write.  I can no longer picture a life not immersed in nature.  I can’t research a concept I am curious about with a mere click of a mouse and I can’t read the daily news, which sometimes still feels crippling.  But I am learning how much to feed the chickens in order to produce the most eggs, which food waste to compost and which to brew into natural pesticide, how to distract an angered bull long enough to get by him, and how to walk two miles barefoot in the mud under sheets of rain and an ethereal flashing sky of thunder and lightning.

This life is so much more basic than my previous one -- not to say easier.  It’s true that I have no deadlines, due dates, nor obligations outside of keeping the plants and animals alive.  But it takes an entire day to do a load of laundry -- a day that must be strategically chosen for one that seems less likely to end up in downpour -- a choice that must be intuitively made based not on weather reports, but simple observation of the sky.  Here, getting from point A to point B means that you walk.  It doesn’t matter if there is a road conveniently leading in your direction, if the weather is agreeable, if you have to wade through a river and spend the next five hours soaked up to your waist, or if there are venomous snakes lurking in tall grasses.  Here, if you want to eat something, you make it.  It doesn’t matter if you don’t have all of the preferred ingredients when the closest grocery store is a two-hour-long journey away, if the bread takes three hours to rise, if you forgot to soak beans overnight, or if there is a power outage.

Here, if you think you are hearing someone screaming bloody murder, you are probably in close proximity of the wild parrots.  If you notice someone peering in the kitchen window in curiosity, it’s probably the sloth that lives in the trees surrounding the house.  Here there is no crime rate.  Here, the fear of walking outside at night means that you are watching out for coiled snakes in the path, rather than defensively clutching your wallet or your rape whistle.  Here, the world is still so natural, raw, and thriving that everything only wants to live and defend itself.  The rainforest does not lend its inhabitants the nasty habit of preying on others for material or psychological gain.

I am learning about myself as well.  I am finding emotional buttons I never knew I had, and opening up to people I never thought I’d open up to.  I am discovering the limits of my knowledge, of my conversational skills, of my grief, and of my comfort.  I am learning which comforts I am willing to sacrifice and which take precedent -- they are different for all of us.  I am becoming increasingly interested in yoga, in learning which arcane positions I can twist my body into, how to deepen my breathing and synchronize movement with inhales and exhales, and how to still my mind.  I am learning that I can fall asleep easily enough to the sound of cicadas, bullfrogs, and crickets, but that rainstorms mean that I will be up for a few hours.  I am learning how to communicate through a language barrier, how to remember new words and phrases, and that despite cultural differences, the language of human emotion is universal. 

Returning to San Francisco will be the real challenge.  I’m not sure how to survive in the city now that I’ve learned how to live with the jungle.  Now, the city seems like a far more dangerous, intimidating realm with predators lurking around every corner, with plastered obstructions hiding genuine sentiment, with psychological vices far more perilous than booze or sex, where constant struggling is masked by the façade of a smile, and where social warfare is the most carnivorous, venomous, and bloody of all crusades.  It’s funny how my fear has remained stagnant throughout these past months, with only the modification of source.  Originally, coming here was the nightmare that I was going to have to learn to live in.  Now, my thoughts of leaving offer me the same uncanny disquiet that I felt only three months ago as I packed my bags full of insect repellant, pain relievers, sunscreen and poncho.  I suppose that, like the dwellers of the rainforest, each one of us only wants to survive, in whatever way our environment allows.  But if I’ve learned anything above all else, I’ve learned how adaptable we really are. 

My days here are limited.  But I don’t doubt that I will learn to live with, and even love, the city life once again, though perhaps through an altered set of eyes.  But even as I type this, I can’t help but doubt the so-called substance offered by a life of rules and regulations, of time limits, careers, weekends, vacation hours and loans.  I’m not sure why this sphere of living has been the one implicitly referred to by the phrase “the real world,” but I do know that my own personal definition of such a phrase will always be one that is drastically opposite -- perhaps one more enlightened, perhaps regretfully wistful.

-- E. Proctor, October 2010

October 24^th, 2010 –

Mentiras y Mosquitos.

I’ve been having a hard time sorting out my thoughts – determining what I’ll put in my blog. I feel dishonest, though, writing for an audience. It’s almost as if an invisible censor is in place before my thoughts even emerge. Before my sentences are articulated, I imagine them being on this blog. Getting feedback. Praise. I enjoy compliments – does that make me intolerably pretentious? Philosophical, poetic, brilliant – all words that my kind readership have used in reference to my banal linguistic traipses. I don’t know if any of those adjectives should be taken as compliments. I don’t want to come across as pretentious. I don’t want to be perceived as one of those self-proclaimed “intellectuals” who hides behind polysyllabic words and the habitual regurgitation of unoriginal ideas.  The fact remains, however, that my latent hatred for elitism just solidifies my position as an elitist. It’s an itchy paradox. Or maybe it’s just the mosquito bites that are making my skin crawl.

I build a rhythm. I start from my bony ankles and wrap my fingers gently around their circumference, tracing the outline of bone and sinew as I dig my nails in deeper. Tingles rush through my body like electricity as my fingertips tear up those little mounds of pocked flesh. My hands move up my calves and to my knees – leaving a trail of bloody holes – scorched earth behind them. The barely-opaque pallor of my legs is tinged with a twisting sanguine stream. I stop scratching for a second – despite the exquisitely ceaseless penetration of my fingers through my epidermis – jouissance is never reached. My hands fall limp at my sides. There is an empty moment teasing me with a brief exhale of comfort. It is immediately followed by a pervasive stinging-turned-burning-turned-searing as the blood trickles in drops down my dry skin.

Is getting called erudite a compliment?                          

October 26, 2010

I’ve been playing a lot of chess lately. I beat Kelly and Liz but I have yet to beat Six. They're all outstanding players, and I've probably lost two games for every game won. I’ve been studying famous openings from the masters and I memorized the grid and algebraic number system used to describe transcribe notable games. It’s actually fascinating. 

When I was little, I played frequently but I always lost. I realize now that it was because I never looked more than a move ahead. I was extremely offensive (ha! still am…) and I didn’t take into account the future impact of my decisions occurring in the present. I’d delight in taking an enemy bishop. Before I was even done relishing in my victory, my queen would be gone. It’s funny how my cultivation of life skills and certain elements of common sense made me an excruciatingly better chess player. The same skills used to excel in strategic chess maneuvers are most definitely applicable in “real” life, whatever that means.

I went on a run in the torrential downpour yesterday. It was one of the most exhilarating workouts I’ve ever had. It was probably only a mile and a half in total. The majority of it, however, was uphill. The terrain here is also extremely rocky, so It’s difficult to maintain a good pace when you’re always watching your footing. I made it to the cemetery and back. The cemetery here is about a 20 minute hike away from the house. It’s old and overgrown – overlooking vast sprawling hills concealed by lush cloud forests. Kelly and I hiked there together last week. We sat in the center under the orange tree and sucked the juice from fruit that otherwise would remain uneaten. I’m not sure who planted that tree, or what sort of recycled carbon brought it to fruition, but these oranges were vibrant. Kelly picked apart his carefully and sucked on the pulpy sections one by one. I bit into mine and tore off half of it, letting the juices spill down my chin and onto my dress. I think it would be apt to say that our methods of consumption closely mirror our analytical approaches. Kelly is meticulously Aristotelian; disassembling, categorizing, and dissecting until the whole has been completely dismantled. I, on the other hand, am ravenous and destructive. See: Stephen Crane’s poem “In the Desert”.

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter--bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

In other news,  I can almost do the “crow” position in yoga. I think if I practice every day, I'll be able to do it in a few weeks. It looks like this: 

I am going to become a renaissance woman if it kills me. I want to excel at everything.