26 November 2008
ciao
I think some people get the idea that the more you travel, the easier it is to say good-bye. Perhaps it just gets easier to evade them, but it's never easier to say them. But really I think we begin to realize that good-byes aren't necessary anymore, only "see you soon"'s.
24 November 2008
pensamientos de los ultimos meses....
So much has happened. Luckily I took to writing things on paper. Here are some bits and pieces, some all the way back from summer:
6 August 2008: A few nights ago, as I was trying to fall asleep, I was closing my eyes for just a few seconds and then opening them again. Robert Frost was right! Every time I closed my eyes I could see a jumbled mass of branches, laden with cherries. Each time the same, only the cherries changed- sometimes with long skinny stems, or in big, thick clumps, bright red or deep purple. Ah, cherries. I even dreamt of selling cherry tacos.
22 August 2008: Except for the few hours a week that I spend in the library, I spend all of my time outdoors, working, eating, playing, sleeping. It's easy to forget what hot water and a non-stiff neck feel like. Flush toilets and mirrors have a novelty to them that I hadn't known before. My picking barely improves because I am so distracted by the beauty of the mountains, the trees, the sun, this life. Also, it's impossible to believe that money is more important than these moments.
21 September 2008: The community of pickers, so small, is one of the most gossipy groups of folks I've ever gotten mixed up with. I suppose there's only so long you can talk about cherries or ladders or snakes and people are undeniably fascinated by the lives of others. Eh. I really like walking between Vialo and Dawson orchards: tall grass, endless amounts of fresh, organic apples to sample, a feeling of hiddenness and solitude, if only for a few moments.
23 September 2008: He said it was like looking into a mirror. I am caught off guard and slightly astounded by having found him and by the fact that we have so little time and then there's life. I hear a heart beat and can't tell if it's mine or his. How nice that there is no awkwardness between people who have never been strangers to one another.
28 September 2008: Fall arrived exactly when the calendar said it would. Leaves are browning on the trees and the sumacs are already bright red. Snow fell on the mountains, folks not used to the cold are getting nervous. Thank God I have this little toasty cabin.
29 September 2008: Last night Sergio and I made a real, sweet, picker soup: #2 butternut squash that I picked at the Mariposa, carrots that another picker left behind, ginger, garlic, chiles that Abraham won as 3rd prize in the annual chile pepper eating contest in Keremeos, cayenne, parsley + thyme + chives from Seth and Melissa's garden, a cucumber also left by a past picker and some coconut milk. Making it even more wonderful was that we got to share it with friends as we laughed and leaped and stumbled over language hurdles and stomped the cold out of our feet.
The trees here are old, with birds' nests and gnarled trunks. I'm much happier working in these trees than in rows and rows of pesticide-laden "fruit twigs," as Seth calls them.
3 October 2008: At first I was tired and not feeling social but by the end of the night they had to swear to me that it was the last ride leaving for Dawson to get me go. If there'd been more cumbias on the pub jukebox, I probably would have stayed anyway. The partying allows us to open our hearts and minds in extreme bursts where suddenly torrents of camaraderie and love push through us, like dams bursting and when the cruda comes, the down, we are unsure. For brief moments we are allowed an incredible freedom of expression but afterwards we are left with wild, tormenting, beautiful, vibrating emotions and thoughts, all dammed up again, we feel damned.
4 October 2008: I've spent a lot of my working hours pondering my place in the system of agriculture, the food system. System, system, that word always appears. I'm an agricultural work, a fruit picker, a migrant. We have a little community and we joke about our meager and ever-changing lives, we share stories of hitch hiking and bosses and the lives we've had in other places, in other times. We even laugh together about the discrimination we collectively face by local business owners and employees. We talk about our families, our friends, our homes, desperate to share company, we fall in and out of each other's arms, cry on each other's shoulders, dream together, taking every moment in our hands, taking each other's hands, swinging around, jumping, dancing, weeping, falling, always laughing, all the colors and the time passing so fast.
I am such a small piece of this agricultural mosaic. I feel momentarily guilty for picking only the perfect cherries that are sent to wealthy consumers in Europe and Japan while perfectly good cherries rot in odorous mounds. But my place is so small and here the sky is so big that, with the stars and the mountains, one can't really feel personally responsible.
5 October 2008: Hard work is a miracle cure for anxiety and despair. By the end of the day I just wanted to keep charging up my ladder, thrusting myself into branches, twisting my aching thumbs around stems, pulling down bag after bag of golden delicious apples. I became immune to the scratches and the bugs, completely immersed in thought.
The moon is perfect and crescent-shaped tonight. Snow fell on the mountains to the north. Everything looks perfect and blue and purple and smoky, the taste of winter on every breath we take. Work is becoming ever more unpredictable.
6 October 2008: Today the cold bit so hard in the morning. My fingers burned and ached, every apple was a struggle, I really wanted to cry. Every day is getting colder, things are settling and I feel like I have to resist in order to stay awake, stay on top of things. Otherwise I'll fall into a dreamy hibernation for the winter.
16 October 2008: A couple nights ago Melissa and I both dreamed of bears. Both of the bears were big and neither of us were afraid. I feel quite connected to this place now. And though I've been a week without work and stressed out, the sunset gets me everytime!
6 August 2008: A few nights ago, as I was trying to fall asleep, I was closing my eyes for just a few seconds and then opening them again. Robert Frost was right! Every time I closed my eyes I could see a jumbled mass of branches, laden with cherries. Each time the same, only the cherries changed- sometimes with long skinny stems, or in big, thick clumps, bright red or deep purple. Ah, cherries. I even dreamt of selling cherry tacos.
22 August 2008: Except for the few hours a week that I spend in the library, I spend all of my time outdoors, working, eating, playing, sleeping. It's easy to forget what hot water and a non-stiff neck feel like. Flush toilets and mirrors have a novelty to them that I hadn't known before. My picking barely improves because I am so distracted by the beauty of the mountains, the trees, the sun, this life. Also, it's impossible to believe that money is more important than these moments.
21 September 2008: The community of pickers, so small, is one of the most gossipy groups of folks I've ever gotten mixed up with. I suppose there's only so long you can talk about cherries or ladders or snakes and people are undeniably fascinated by the lives of others. Eh. I really like walking between Vialo and Dawson orchards: tall grass, endless amounts of fresh, organic apples to sample, a feeling of hiddenness and solitude, if only for a few moments.
23 September 2008: He said it was like looking into a mirror. I am caught off guard and slightly astounded by having found him and by the fact that we have so little time and then there's life. I hear a heart beat and can't tell if it's mine or his. How nice that there is no awkwardness between people who have never been strangers to one another.
28 September 2008: Fall arrived exactly when the calendar said it would. Leaves are browning on the trees and the sumacs are already bright red. Snow fell on the mountains, folks not used to the cold are getting nervous. Thank God I have this little toasty cabin.
29 September 2008: Last night Sergio and I made a real, sweet, picker soup: #2 butternut squash that I picked at the Mariposa, carrots that another picker left behind, ginger, garlic, chiles that Abraham won as 3rd prize in the annual chile pepper eating contest in Keremeos, cayenne, parsley + thyme + chives from Seth and Melissa's garden, a cucumber also left by a past picker and some coconut milk. Making it even more wonderful was that we got to share it with friends as we laughed and leaped and stumbled over language hurdles and stomped the cold out of our feet.
The trees here are old, with birds' nests and gnarled trunks. I'm much happier working in these trees than in rows and rows of pesticide-laden "fruit twigs," as Seth calls them.
3 October 2008: At first I was tired and not feeling social but by the end of the night they had to swear to me that it was the last ride leaving for Dawson to get me go. If there'd been more cumbias on the pub jukebox, I probably would have stayed anyway. The partying allows us to open our hearts and minds in extreme bursts where suddenly torrents of camaraderie and love push through us, like dams bursting and when the cruda comes, the down, we are unsure. For brief moments we are allowed an incredible freedom of expression but afterwards we are left with wild, tormenting, beautiful, vibrating emotions and thoughts, all dammed up again, we feel damned.
4 October 2008: I've spent a lot of my working hours pondering my place in the system of agriculture, the food system. System, system, that word always appears. I'm an agricultural work, a fruit picker, a migrant. We have a little community and we joke about our meager and ever-changing lives, we share stories of hitch hiking and bosses and the lives we've had in other places, in other times. We even laugh together about the discrimination we collectively face by local business owners and employees. We talk about our families, our friends, our homes, desperate to share company, we fall in and out of each other's arms, cry on each other's shoulders, dream together, taking every moment in our hands, taking each other's hands, swinging around, jumping, dancing, weeping, falling, always laughing, all the colors and the time passing so fast.
I am such a small piece of this agricultural mosaic. I feel momentarily guilty for picking only the perfect cherries that are sent to wealthy consumers in Europe and Japan while perfectly good cherries rot in odorous mounds. But my place is so small and here the sky is so big that, with the stars and the mountains, one can't really feel personally responsible.
5 October 2008: Hard work is a miracle cure for anxiety and despair. By the end of the day I just wanted to keep charging up my ladder, thrusting myself into branches, twisting my aching thumbs around stems, pulling down bag after bag of golden delicious apples. I became immune to the scratches and the bugs, completely immersed in thought.
The moon is perfect and crescent-shaped tonight. Snow fell on the mountains to the north. Everything looks perfect and blue and purple and smoky, the taste of winter on every breath we take. Work is becoming ever more unpredictable.
6 October 2008: Today the cold bit so hard in the morning. My fingers burned and ached, every apple was a struggle, I really wanted to cry. Every day is getting colder, things are settling and I feel like I have to resist in order to stay awake, stay on top of things. Otherwise I'll fall into a dreamy hibernation for the winter.
16 October 2008: A couple nights ago Melissa and I both dreamed of bears. Both of the bears were big and neither of us were afraid. I feel quite connected to this place now. And though I've been a week without work and stressed out, the sunset gets me everytime!
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