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the cloud in me

Standing in a circle of rocks with my feet firmly grounded, my chest rightly upwards and my outspread arms flexing backwards like the hawk overhead.  The cloud drifts towards me and I am inside it.  Making light of the unseen, moisture in the air articulates the energy fields around me.  The field presents itself.  Rumi’s field—the unseen—hiding in plain sight.  Should my vision be so limited as to miss this field simply due to the absence of this one cloud?  Or should my vision expand, to see the world as it truly is?

The apparent standing void between me and that great fir tree vanishes with the swipe of the magi’s wand as the cloud drifts towards me—drifts closer, closer, closer still—and suddenly, I’m inside it.  Enter cloud--enter truth.  I see an interconnected web of electric information fields, swirling and swirling (spiraling?) around me.  I stand afloat in a wide-open sea.  I rise gently upwards as the white frothy wave you call jared--and I recede. 

You can keep your gifts of gold and frankincense dear magi, for it is richness of a different kind that I seek.  Thank you dear cloud, for showing me what could not be seen.  The tree is within me regardless of whether or not the cloud unifies our fields in visible light.  The cloud simply reveals the truth--space is an illusion of the mind.  Each cresting wave is another singular possibility of all the possibilities of the same interconected and wide open sea.      

As author David Icke points out, of the millions of stimuli that my unconscious mind (the sea) receives in a given moment, my conscious mind (the wave) averages those down to a relative handful of pieces of information and calls that synopsis “reality”.  A better description might be simply to call it “your reality” or “his unique perspective on reality”, or perhaps even "your cliffnotes to the experience presently known as reality". 

Energetic information fields (waveforms) from the “outer” experience enter my brain and are interpreted and decoded based on everything I have learned up to this point in my life (learned consciously or unconsciously).  I then, in less than an instant, take the path of least resistance towards editing out those 10 million or so pieces of “extraneous” information until a manageable 40 or so are left behind as “reality”.  It is at this exact location, deep inside the brain, where this “reality”—completely unique to each person—actually lives.  Only inside here.  It turns out that the Native Americans were being quite literal when they spoke of the “fir tree in me” or the “cloud in me”.

understand and Apply this knowledge to anything you like, and you will see the world begin to shift around you--from the inside out.    

SPACE

The dragonfly doesn’t mind the weeds or the thorns as it floats above my garden.  I wonder what it thinks of me, sweating and toiling?

Walking around this place I feel a bit like the dragonfly actually.  AFLOAT.  Afloat and adrift.  Around and around.  Back to the source we go. 

When the land calls you, you don’t even have to answer.  The answer comes in the language of action, and it arrives in your cells.  Even your mitochondria and DNA hardly hear the faint arrival of the call as it appears all at once from the SPACE within.  Your nucleus itself is but a single raisin in the bowl of this space, and it hears the call as if from the bottom of a deep well.  The sort of space that only an electron microscope knows is there, but science is sure of none the less.  The space that makes you wonder exactly just how does this pile of neutrons and protons sit down at the computer and type these thoughtened words.

And from this SPACE, comes it all.  The space that lies within me being no different than yours, I hardly see the reason or rhyme to this call, that call, or none at all—although now presently, rhyming on reason with the benefit of yielded time has generated a new frame of mind.  One that affords clarity.  Reason over time affords clarity.      

The ubiquitous and omniscient scientists who call themselves they say it takes about six months for all of the cells in your body to regenerate anew.  The implied meaning being: if you start today with a new way of life you can be a completely new person come Christmas.

And so, the story goes, this happened to me.  And as predicted above, the call came and went answered independent of my flesh and bones.  I then became a carrier.  Like that of a virus.  The virus was inside me and as it’s host I have years later become inundated with its’ essence.  In fact, it’s impossible to say where it ends and I begin—although, if I am speaking with right language, I should note that the implication of SPACE is that it would be impossible for you to know where anything ends and begins if such concepts exist at all!

all space being equal and interconnected in an expanding universe, imagine the power and wisdom of this space but for even a moment and you understand the might of this internal call.

And as I open myself up to the possibilities and wonder of this space the feeling becomes overwhelming.  ANd when there is no longer anything left to overwhelm, you have found the eternal space within.

once here, float about gently like a dragonfly.

____photo by Kelly Turso

earth. air. water. fire

According to the Sonoma Biochar Initiative (SBI): 

Biochar is simply a specialized form of charcoal that is suitable for use as a soil amendment (typically combined with compost) to increase agricultural crop yields and conserve nutrients and water. Biochar is able to fulfill these functions because of its unique physical structure, with literally millions of tiny pores that hold the nutrients and water for the plants’ roots to access and enjoy. In many ways it’s akin to a coral reef in the ocean, acting as a natural attractant, sanctuary, and incubator by creating infrastructure for billions of organisms to thrive.

This is our second year experimenting with the production of biochar, and this year we have quadrupled the size of the pile we are working with.  A supber form of recycling/upcycyling, we have taken the debris and unusable elements from our forrest restoration effort and created the ultimate carbon sequestration and long term soil amendment.

Again, to quote the SBI:

Biochar is made by heating woody waste materials (of many different types) in the absence of oxygen, in a process called “pyrolysis.”  The wood is not burned, but at temperatures of about 450 to 700 degrees C  gasses are produced that feed the pyrolysis process, leaving behind essentially pure carbon with its millions of microscopic pores. This is “biochar.”

photo and quotes from Sonoma Biochar Initiative website.

Under the wet safety blanket of the blessed incoming rainstorm, we have ignited the pile.  Some people have been working on mobile commercial applications for producing biochar at multiple sites, but here at our own burn, we have opted to take advantage of a large hole lefover from the removal of some douglas firs that were shading out the farm to act as a “container” for the fire, adding to its anaerobic nature.  While the fire does not technically need a “container”, as the SBI website demonstrates, it is a decision we made based on our own experiments last year, and I will, of course, let you know how it turns out.  

As you can see from the video, or maybe you can’t, there is very little actual smoke coming off of what is a pretty sizeable fire--most of what you see is steam releasing from the earthen banks.  Check out the size of it when Juan walks by the pile--The flames are over 20 feet tall (the pile was just ignited prior to this filming).  It will die down and soon glow like an ember.  At the end of the process, what we are left with is a blackened version of almost it’s original self, more or less melted down a bit.  The gasses cook and escape while the majority of the plant matter remains in the pile, much like the product you encounter after vaporizing as opposed to smoking.  This carbon pile is then crushed and mixed with compost.  As the SBI photo above shows, the microorganisms in the compost pile have plenty of surface area to latch onto in the porous biochar.  This not only sequesters a huge percentage of the carbon usually burned off in brush piles, but it turns that debris into our most valuable resource:  long term soil quality. 

Standing in the pasture, where we will be producing high quality fruits and vegetables for our guests in just a couple year’s time, it was really powerful to witness the metabolic forces of fire, and time, and compost, and soil playing out on such a grand and dynamic scale.  The water soaking in, the air and the smoke swirling overhead, the soil beneath my feet, and the spirit of it everywhere.  

Thank god for the rain.  Its’ slick lubrication has been missed by all the cogs and gears of the forest. 

The creeks will rush today.

on the passing of friends

Ten years ago today I woke up in the early hours of the morning to incomprehensible news.  Two friends, back from their own awful discovery, awoke me from a drunken collapse and told me that two of our best friends had driven into a tree and died. 

Never before had a shadow fallen into me so deeply as this time, but what sprang from the well of this sorrow has been the most unbelievable string of discoveries-my evolution, really.

I think about them all the time.  Usually in the form of, what lesson would they want me to learn right now?  What would they think about this?  Or, they would love this.   They would be so proud of me for this. 

In their absence, they give me so much, and yet I miss them so dearly.    

state of the moment, or dear spring mountain

January 31, 2014

Dear Spring Mountain,

The rains have barely come, but thank GOD they have. 

Milky white orbs floated in like the macy’s parade, and like a tourist on 6^th avenue we just stood and gawked at your mass and glory. 

I pulled my hiking sneakers inside for the first time in a year, and pulled the tarp over the woodpile.  I swear it; the pasture grew half an inch just as the first rain clouds billowed over this mountaintop--overnight. 

And to you clouds, filled with the life force of a thousand seas—you with your wet and your way.  With a visible inhalation, the open field surrounded by towering trees inflated it’s ribs to await the in-breath of your moist arrival.  Like the downward squat of the hawk before it takes flight, it poised.

The lake is a bit low, with small collections of woody debris wherever its coastline ebbs, but it is still impressively clean and translucent.  At least ten feet of clearance as you peer down from the shore.  The air temperature has been quite low at night, and I can’t imagine the water temperature is much above mid-forty, but I continue to plunge through the winter, for the experience is most worthy of the effort. 

There are squirrels everywhere, and generally in groups of a few.  Both grey and red, they walk the same path across our front deck multiple times throughout the workday.  Surprisingly, the two dogs have learned to ignore it.  The neighbors reported a mountiain lion in their vineyard a week ago today, although we have yet to see it.  coyotes, bobcats, foxes, deer, turkey, and a few more, are, however, safe to cross off the list.  

The magnolias are in full bloom an entire month early as a result of the drought, and the apple blossoms have opened as well.  

Thank god for the rosemary’s dank blue kingdom, said the honeybees.

The smell inside of a cloud is remarkable.  From the sea, over our neighbors in west county and the santa rosa plains, and smack dab into the peak of my nostrils; spring mountain, 2300’, facing west towards the sea and north towards infinity. 

We dance in gratitude of your arrival with reverence for all that is.

Love,

Jared

Proprietor :: Be Here- Farm and Nature Sanctuary

photo by lisa