What is love?

What is love? What is this feeling, this sensation, this tide?
Love is that indefinable thing, that irresistible force that binds us all.
Love is the most beautiful feeling in this life, and the most painful.
Love upends the world, and makes life possible.
But what is love? What is this indefinable thing?

My favorite photo, and the turning of the wheel...

This is a photograph of my mother and grandfather. He'd just returned from WWII, from the European theater, having served under that nut General George "Blood and Guts" Patton. My mother looks so thrilled to see her daddy coming home. WWII was necessary.

Military-style fascism had to be crushed in Germany and Japan and all of the occupied territories. But this same fascism still infects America, and it must be crushed. Luckily, it's extinguishing itself.

My grandfather never fully recovered from his experiences in the war. For the rest of his life, he was very nervous man with a hair-trigger temper. He couldn't connect very well with my mother because she had been born in 1944, after he'd left to serve in the Army. He wasn't a dumbass, he was drafted, he didn't enlist. I respect him for this greatly. He had sense. When he came back, the economy was far worse than it is right now (just wait). What can I say? He was a good man who found it hard to express his feelings to his family, but we loved him just the same.

Today, I dug-out some of these old photos to show to my three-year-old niece, Zofia, to show her what her grandma looked like as a baby (exactly like Zofia, since we have non-recessive genes). She's a precocious little baby with a big heart and a mostly peaceful temperment. She rarely cries. She's a joy. When I showed her this and other photos and told her "This is grandma," she said, "No--this is Zofia!"

Rollie and Billie, father and daughter, finally united--it was 1946, and the Cold War had yet to be invented by the politicians (mainly the utterly corrupt GOP). When the wars have ended, when tyranny has been smashed, when people finally learn to live amongst one another in relative peace, and when we realize that we're all a family, we'll have the same moment of love that Rollie and Billie lived 62-years-ago. That moment was--and is--love. Love for ourselves and each other, because it really is that simple. The circle is unbroken.

My Garden, Our Garden

The Family Homestead--This is my first year cultivating a garden on the plot that my grandparents had for around 40 years. When they first moved to this house in 1963, the soil was sandy and rocky--almost barren. But for all that time, they enriched the soil in our 2 acres of land with their composting, giving it a richness to be envied. I miss them so, and so do our neighbors here who knew them. My grandfather died in December of 2003, and until this Spring, I was just too depressed and reluctant to start a new garden here.

But this year, it was time, and with a new life in our family (my niece), that time had come to bring more life into this world. There's something spiritual about growing your own food, it's a feeling that I cannot fully describe. It's not only emotionally-liberating, but it gives you a sense that everything is possible again, that life begins anew every year and that little else matters (except love and friendship). I know, what the hell is he gibbering about on a site that's filled with a lot of ugly themes about an ugly era?

Because: we all need to return to our own private gardens, a return to the arboreal, to our personal Edens. Plants have always held a fascination for me, and I sometimes have visions of a better life, and they're always there in the images. They're dreams of my childhood, when I used to wander through forests, through the ruins of the House of David in Northwestern Michigan (and its environs), and through nearby forests here in Indiana. Nature was always my asylum, a place of mystery and of joy. It still is.

This garden has healed my soul in ways I could never have imagined, and has helped me understand what I'm capable of. It hasn't just been an empowering experience, it's been one of self-actualization. So has this blog, but it can never do the work that my--our--garden has.

I've grown: leeks, cauliflower, eggplants, peppers, red and green onions, maize, four varieties of tomatoes, cantaloupes, and yellow squash. Not only has this helped lower our food-costs, it's made me feel very whole, more alive than I've ever felt. The feelings of accomplishment are beyond words--it just feels good. I and my family aren't eating so much processed-food because of it. My German ancestors did this for countless millennia--my mother's maiden name is "Blough, which sometimes has been spelled "Plough"--and I have to wonder if this knowledge is somehow passed-down in our genes, because it was so easy, so natural.

That's not to say it wasn't a lot of physical work, but it came simply, without very much trouble. I literally only had to dust for insects a couple times, and don't believe in using pesticides that much. That's it. You can go now. Try growing a garden sometime if it strikes your fancy, I couldn't recommend it more highly.

You didn't ask for it, but you're getting it: Baby Zofia!

South Bend, Indiana--Here's an older photo of my niece, little baby Zofia (we had no-choice in the spelling of her name, I would have used an "S"). This is the first-time Baby Z played drums ever! She was just one, now she's two.

I didn't and still don't care about the death of my father's mother, who could best be described as an undiagnosed psychotic. Conversely, when my grandmother and grandfather died (my mother's parents), it was devastating to my family and still is. Family is family, and not purely by blood, but also through behavior. Cruelty has its price: alienation. "Lil" had no friends left before her final descent into madness and dementia, and she earned it.

But this baby is the best consolation we could ever have for those we have loved and lost, and she looks so much like a Blough--like my mother and brother especially--that it's uncanny. Babies are such a joyous occasion, the good-side of life, and her coming helped me understand that life goes on and that mortality is necessary. She's the sweetest little baby I've ever had the honor to know, and this blog is my humble contribution towards making a better world for her to live in. Getting your hands dirty is part of the job, and there's a lot of work to do. How do we begin making a better world?

A first-step means taxing the ultra-rich out-of-existence and ending the legal existence of corporations. It's our world too, including Zofia's.

All I can think of is this baby's smile and her giggles. A natural musician? We'll see, it runs on my mother's side of the family! My great-grandmother played barrel house and juke-joint piano, ragtime, etc., like a charm. And girls can play drums now, it's safe to come out! We're all going to live together or die together, and babies are why we must have peace in this world, forget the adults.

Revised 10.13.2008