A couple of months ago, I became acutely aware that I was circumcised without my consent and that a foreskin might have been something I would have liked to have. I felt anger towards a culture that takes away natural pleasure, destroys intact working systems, and violates bodies, as I so often have, but perhaps never so personally. And I felt frustrated because couldn't see anything I could do to resolve my loss, except to resolve to never circumcise any future son of my own. But then, I read an article about circumcision that mentioned the possibility of foreskin restoration, with a link to a website providing a device to such an end. Hope! Or rather, if hope wishes for something over which I have no agency, what word can I use to describe the seizing of that agency?!

Circumcision became a popular practice among christians in the 1800s as a means to "cure" masturbation. Circumcision strips away the most sensitive nerve endings in the penis (in the ridge of the foreskin) and exposes the glans, a naturally soft, moist mucous membrane (just like the inside of your mouth), to the abrasion of the outside world, with the effect of making it dry, hard, and largely desensitized. While this really sucks for men, it does not, in fact, "cure" masturbation, not that I need to assure anyone of that. But it almost sucks even more for women who end up on the receiving end of a desensitized penis trying to still get off. From what I hear, when a man is intact, the rolling back and forth of the foreskin over the glans, which requires only a very subtle movement, provides so much pleasure that pounding never becomes necessary, and the two pelvises stay closer together for a much greater amount of time, with much increased pleasure for the woman.

None of the health or hygiene claims in support of circumcision hold any merit, according to both common sense and current medical opinion. The intact penis actually produces its own anti-bacterial cream (and lubricant), smegma (scroll 2/3 of the way down to reach the relevant section).

So, I am restoring my foreskin, as much as I can. Techniques for doing so work on the basis of skin under tension creating more skin to relieve the tension, just as in the bellies of pregnant women and the earlobes of people stretching their piercings.

Aside from the primary sensory benefits, I feel like I am getting a chance to physically revoke my membership to the Judeo-Christian tradition, and even to this American culture. I am rejoining the the 3/4 majority of the rest of the world as an "unchosen" pagan. yippee!


In a similar vein, but on a different subject, I recently learned that the use of hops in ales was brought on and enforced top-down during the Protestant Reformation, replacing a wide variety of herbs that were often medicinal, and also highly inebriating, and that such was done so expressly because hops is an anaphrodisiac for men (that is, it decreases sexual desire), as well as it being not nearly as conducive to altering one's state of consciousness (it actually just puts you to sleep and makes you need to pee). Hops is filled with phyto-estrogens, so it could be beneficial for a woman in menopause to consume, but not very good at all for men. So now I am wondering if anyone knows of a commercially available ale that does not contain hops? And if not, that's cool - I'm way excited about brewing my own gruit, anyway.

I am amazed by the hidden, subtle ways in which this culture negates sexuality, and with it, life.
Get your knife off my penis. Get your hops off my libido. You can't control me anymore.

*scratching head - yawn - rubbing eyes - big stretch - looking around*

I've been hibernating.

But I smell spring.


Actually, I've really only been sleeping an average of nine hours a night. And when I'm awake, I've been eating and staying warm and other activities of that nature.

I share an apartment with my friend Julie and her 18 month old daughter, Luna. Maybe I'll tell more about them later. They fill me with wonder.

This past fall wore on my nerves. I slept on a couch in a Catholic Worker house for a couple month - never without a place to sleep, but not really having a home either. It stretched me - living with so many people. I spent most of my energy staking out my ground on which to just exist, so I didn't have much energy to put towards "doing" much of anything.

I partially moved back in with my parents for a while until the stable, beautiful, awesome apartment fell into our laps. (I still sleep at least one night a week at my parents' house these days.)

The era of stability, tranquility, hibernation (the era of the apartment) started mid november. The only furniture we have is a table and two chairs and a bookshelf. I sleep on the floor, on a mat (or a "rug") made of sheepskins. We eat a lot of sourdough pancakes and quinoa and eggs. And okra and onions and garlic . . . I've been really excited to have a kitchen that is fully open to my fermentation pursuits. Julie and I share much of the same food culture and values. We always have several things bubbling away along the back edges of the countertop - sourdough, komboocha, mead, kimchi, matsoni (yogurt that yoges at room temperature). Julie just recently started souring rolled oats by simply filling an emptied wheat starter with oats instead. She's been making "pancakes" (imagine a fried porridge patty) with that too, sometimes souring the rolled oats with wheat as well. Oh, and I have to recommend my favorite type of kitchen knife, which I first used at CAMP for food not bombs to chop up garlic - the ulu knife, the design of which originates from native Alaskans. You can find them on ebay, often emblazoned with the word "Alaska". Julie daily (sometimes hourly) makes medicinal herbal teas, much to everyone's enjoyment and good health. I've really been digging the bitterness of dandelion root (no pun intended) and am attempting to use it as a bittering agent in my current batch of mead, in place of something like hops. I've also been trying to learn how to brew beer from scratch with wild yeast. It brings me much satisfaction just to be making my own malt, but I wonder if a wild beer has to be a sour beer. If anyone knows how people brewed beer before commercial yeast (and what that kind of beer tasted like), shoot me a note!

I stressed a lot towards the beginning of fall 07 also because I struggled with failing to find a niche to fully integrate myself with New Roots. The crux of the situation rests at the fact that they farm, and I want to garden. Their pace, their flow, just wears me out. I tried to keep up by developing an addiction to coffee, but I quickly recognized that I did not want to live like that. I still want to collaborate with them on projects this spring and summer, just not as a member of their collective (not that I ever was one, fully) but rather on my terms. I want to construct a rocket stove next to their earthen oven, for outdoor cooking that will still work when blackouts happen. North city is full of vacant grassy lots. Fields of them. I'm getting excited about making seedballs and planting trees. The thought of playing with moss graffiti appeals to me as well.

On a broader philosophical level, I keep receiving the message that the future is completely open and unwritten, that right now is completely open and unwritten, and I hold the responsibility to do the writing. Joseph Campbell talks about it in terms of creating your own mythology that will give you the zeal to "follow your bliss." Tim Boucher decided to stop suffering and instead is now writing the musical of his life and is inviting everyone else to gather together in and script their lives for themselves as well, with some tips for how to make it the best musical possible. And Ran Prieur wades into the grey swamp of reality, attempting to pull people in from the black-or-white high and dry shores of ideology, with the message that we can take whatever was good from the past (regardless of where or when it came from) and create something completely new.

So, I do not go to school and I don't have a job. I am routinely presented with long chunks of unscheduled, unstructured time. Right now the script that I write defaults to either locking in to someone else's schedule, usually either Julie's or Luna's or my brother, Mike's, and structuring my time that way, or plugging away at the never-ending to-do list, which mostly consists of technical projects, material rearrangements/procurements, and things to look up when I'm around the internet again (the apartment does not have internet). I visited Portland, Oregon recently, and I really enjoyed how intentionally and consciously I scheduled my time while I was there. On the train back home, I reflected that I'd like to meet every day with a similar commitment of presence.

I want to shift the plot of the musical of my life in a new direction. I visited Portland to check out a program that purports to share in and practice the knowledge of just about everything I am interested in learning about right now - "hunter-gatherer skills, keen awareness, martial-arts, green mobility and living, interpersonal clarity and peacemaking principles, entrepreneurship, permaculture and personal health." They call it TrackersTEAMS. I call it the next Act in my play.

I want this program to provide just enough non-coercive structure to allow me to practice that continual presence and focus my intentions and actions. I don't want to be racing and pushing to keep up or succeed, as those are the patterns so ingrained in me that I wish to break.

It will be really hard for me to leave St. Louis and my family of friends, partly because I fear that I'll never come back. Of course, if that happens, I will have found a new home and a new family. I just feel uneasy about pulling up 21 years of roots when I really want to have my roots as deep in the ground as possible right now. Perhaps those 21 years of roots were only growing shallowly under the surface. Or perhaps the roots have grown straight down, and when I move, I will break off a part of myself to leave here forever, or to come back to. Either way, can anyone else hear Joseph Campbell calling out "rites of initiation!"?!

Part of the source of my desire to put down deep roots right now came from watching video of an interview of my friend, Thomas, who lives (with 5 year old roots) at Dancing Rabbit. He has me thinking about visiting Red Earth Farms soon. I want to plant tree seedlings that won't just get mowed down.


*scratch, scratch - yawn - zzzzzzzzzzzz*

"My efforts won't matter to the world. It's best to keep the peace."

Holy shit, is that really my world view? How did I ever come to that conclusion? What could my family have done to me (or not done to me) to make me that resigned to my lack of value to this world?

The books tell me I must have been neglected when I was young, but I don't remember feeling neglected. My mom tells me I was breastfed for a year, at which point I had almost completely self-weaned (I still wanted to nurse before bed at night), and then I was weaned the rest of the way. I may be wrong about this (and my mom will definitely let me know if I am), but I get the impression that I did not sleep in a family bed but in a crib. But I definitely have fond memories of snuggling in the family bed as a toddler and small child before going off to my own room. Could I simply have followed in my dad's footsteps, imitated his personality? Maybe he was neglected. Maybe his dad was neglected. . .



The words "enneagram" and "nine" took waaaay less time to become cliche for me than the phrase "people-pleaser", so I'm using them as little as possible these days. Honestly, I've grown tired of focusing so much attention on baring light on all the ways I am not integrated and whole. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've ended up enacting the "law of attraction" and have manifested some more bad habits by reading about what "nines" do. So, since I have no clue what the real secret is (how to succeed without positive thinking), I'm focusing on the positive.

I've found a book by Riso that provides mantras to aid in focusing in on integrating and letting the rest go:

I now affirm...

• that I am confident, strong, and independent.
• that I develop my mind and think things through.
• that I am awake and alert to the world around me.
• that I am proud of myself and my abilities.
• that I am steadfast and dependable in difficult times.
• that I look deeply into myself without fear.
• that I am excited about my future.
• that I am a powerful, healing force in my world.
• that I actively embrace all that life brings.

(text pulled from this site)

Basically, I can transform myself with right action and self-love. And both of those things lead to practical application in the form of developing a personal agenda - what my opinions, beliefs, and passions are, separate from everyone else.

So, step one: separate myself from everyone else (momentarily - after my agenda is set, I want to be able to hold onto that while still communing with others)
Step two: declare my opinions, beliefs, passions. I don't want to get into all of my opinions and beliefs and passions right now, but I'll use one as an example. I am currently very passionate about learning how to stalk, hunt, kill, and dress animals, both as a way to grow in community-sufficiency and as a spiritual practice.
Step three: set up a structure of some kind to either express or make my opinion, belief, or passion a reality. So, for hunting, I need to create a ritual for myself of waking early in the morning and going on a walk first thing with the intention of watching the animals and their behaviors and habits, starting to build a relationship with and deep knowledge of them. At the same time, I need to be reading about the technical aspects of tracking, making a kill, and dressing, or seek out an elder who can share that knowledge with me, as well as the wisdom that comes with being so intimately involved in the life and death of another animal. As I gain more knowledge, I will need to incorporate practice of more skills during those daily morning walks - how to walk, how to read tracks, how to construct, handle, and use whatever kind of weapon I learn will work.

It sounds like a great plan. If you're familiar with threes at all (that's what I integrate towards), you could see that this is looking like something a three would come up with. Unfortunately, there's no way I'm possibly going to get up tomorrow morning at or before dawn to take that walk. And there's absolutely no way that it would happen every day that way. BUT, what I will do is commit to going on that walk every day, just not necessarily at dawn. Some days I'll make it at dawn, and gradually, it will become a routine thing. And that's what I need - life-giving routines.

I do want to say that there are positive things about being *ahem* that number that I already have down. I'm great at listening to people, receiving them exactly as they are, holding them without any judgement, and really feeling what they're feeling along with them. I'm good at that. And I love doing it. That, and in the midst of lighter conversation among a group of people, when one person misunderstands what another has said, I can usually jump in and clarify what was meant more easily and quickly than the original speaker. I also probably have vast powers of intuition that I've got mostly locked up right now. I think, when I unlock them, they could express themselves in the form of telepathy, maybe even psychokinesis. Now that's cause for excitement about my future!

Since moving to New Roots, I've gotten really into the Enneagram. It was something I had heard of in the past but never really looked into. But everyone up here was referencing it, so I figured I better educate myself.

It has turned out to be a very useful tool, broadening both my understanding of myself and of the people around me (more so than any other personality type system has).

In my reading, I recognized myself in the ninth personality type, sometimes called the peacemaker. I am calm and serene; I desire for everyone and everything to be united and without conflict; I am lazy and lack self-direction, allowing myself to be guided by the people around me. I accommodate other people, giving in to their wishes without giving credence to my own needs or desires (I people-please). I invest my identity in other people. I am an introvert to the extent that I shut out outside stimuli so that my inner calm is not disturbed, which leaves me living for the most part in my own fantasy world. I avoid conflict at any cost. These characteristics make me a nine.

I have a one wing, which I used to express a lot more when I was Catholic. Ones are idealistic and driven by a strongly defined morality. Perfectionistic. Judgmental. I've let a lot of that go, I think.

Nines integrate towards the three, which for me means that for me to become more healthy and whole as a person, I would need to develop self-direction, initiative (which I mentioned in my last post), and self-confidence. I'm not there yet, but it helps to have clearly stated what I'm moving towards.

Nines disintegrate towards the six by becoming overwhelmed with anxiety over the fear of being separated. It's this anxiety and fear that drive me to people please, so it is also this anxiety and fear I need to let go of, accepting the possibility that people may not react well to me not giving them what I think they want, but also learning to trust that they will still love the real me (although I'm still in the process of figuring out who that is).

I don't know if this also falls under the three integration, but the other big thing the enneagram has shown me I need to work on is my avoidance of conflict. This is the other big thing I am working on right now - being able to sacrifice my short-term peace of mind in order to involve myself with situations and people where conflict is likely that, in the past, I would have simply avoided.

I've felt pretty stagnant since I stopped going to school (that place that trained me to follow the authority figure's directions), but I'm starting to feel stirred up.

The enneagram has also helped me understand other people better, seeing clearly that everyone is not motivated by the same basic desire that I am. Which sure is a good thing, else the human world would be a very calm, lazy, boring place.

So, here's to self-discovery and integration!

I love watching things grow. I didn't really notice that about myself until this year. I think maybe that's why I ended up growing my hair out so long. I enjoy witnessing slow, gradual change.

Gardening requires two virtues, initiative and patience. I've got patience down pat. Initiative on the other hand . . . Regardless, for a first attempt, my garden is doing relatively well. Many of the seedlings I started indoors either didn't get watered enough and dried up or were eaten by mice; half the seeds I sowed outdoors apparently did not sprout at all, but half did. And a few of the plants I started inside did make it. It's been a learning experience to say the least. I tried square-foot gardening (or my version of it), Grow Biointensive (R) spacing, and some cobbled together wisdom of companion planting. And since it's my first year, I can't really compare all of that to anything else, but it seems to be working!

I have an annual vegetable bed in a community garden (about 15'x5') where I am growing (or have grown) radishes, peas, okra, watermelon, bok choi, arugula, swiss chard, beets, onions, leeks, carrots, basil, tomatoes, sweet peppers, and borage. I also attempted to grow broccoli, artichoke, collards, spinach, and squash but they either didn't even sprout or were nibbled to death by bunnies.

In the backyard, I've got mostly fruit (which I realize is the reverse of permaculture zones - having the annual veggies, which need more attention, farther away. oh well.): blueberry bushes, blackberry, strawberries, grapes, a peach tree, two apple trees (Cox's Orange Pippin and Ashmead's Kernel), and an almond tree. I've also got garlic, cucumbers, and cantaloupe growing in the backyard. The sunflowers I planted either didn't come up or were too tasty for someone to pass up. Oh!, but I spread shitty city compost over the whole garden area in the backyard, and I've got amazing volunteer tomatoes and lamb's quarters as a result!

That initiative thing I mentioned earlier. . . I haven't started any herbs growing yet. I've got the seeds. I just need to go out and plant 'em.

I will. Soon.

So, to update since my last post, I found a place, a community, to move into: New Roots Urban Farm. It's in north city, about a mile north of downtown, and a twenty minute bike ride from my parent's house. It's a CSA, growing all kinds of veggies. Their overall mission is food security - more specifically, providing quality food to a neighborhood who's only "supermarket" is a glorified candy store, and doing so on a sliding scale, meaning everyone pays what they can. That's all fine and good - it's not what I'm interested in doing in the long term (which is a more personal version of food security), but it's fine and good, for now. I fit very well, culturally, there, and that's the most important thing. This past month or so that I've been there has probably been the most socially stimulating month I've ever experienced. It's thrilling and exhausting at the same time. Also, as the farm acquires more land in the future, they'd like me to start up a forest garden!

I'm continuing to homeschool with my brother in some capacity. Right now, we're set up for me to be at my parent's house with the express purpose of learning with my bro two days out of the week, which has turned into a great balance for me because where ever I'm headed next is someplace I want to be.


I'll see what I can do about making posts here more regular and interesting. No promises, though.

I'm lonely, sad, and anxious enough of the time that I'm looking for a change. I'm in the process of looking for an open bed (or -- even better -- an open spot in a bed) in some communal living situation. I love my family and am very grateful to them for everything they've done for me, but I need to get away from the suck of the tv. My original impetus for thinking in this direction was realizing how much I didn't want to spend this summer living in a refrigerator (A/C).

I'll let you know how my quest turns out.