no goals

These photos made 9.13 from the side door. It had been raining; it was wet. I, in my slippers, did not step beyond the mat.

Lately, I have been depressed. Since when? We are all here in middle age trying to solve our overwhelm with hormones but, even with the assist, I feel bent helpless, dislocated between the training and surround of my young years, the legacy that came with me out of my mother's cut stomach muscles and wove its way silently through a half-told story I played along with: the irrevocable path from that to this, the world I ache to exist in, soaked in an uncomfortable awareness of the extreme limits and slant of my own perspective, so that even my daily actions feel like ripples of a stone dropped in the deep past. 

Yearning for purpose and community and wisdom: it is so trite. We are here in the foie gras factory: the Earth suffers (the violence of extraction; the violence of mono-cropping; the violence of underpaid, unrepresented labor; the violence of the slaughterhouse) so that we can be stuffed in all our sense holes. The different discomfort I long for: the time and training needed to meet my needs and the needs of my neighbors with my own hands. The lack of that: a cyclic state of fear and agitation, car commute and digital currency exchange, the infinite distraction loop of media and reaction to media - I mean we've all heard it, we all feel it. So trite. 

Years ago I was lamenting the vast ache in me the shape of the public school system in Portland, Oregon, in which I was working at the time. The person I was speaking to, who at the time I thought of as a friend, who neither lived in the U.S. nor worked in public schooling, turned to me impatiently, in what I could only identify as scorn, or rage, and said: if you don't like it, do something about it then. We aren't friends anymore; on bad days his words still plug up my throat, throb in my head. It doesn't help that I can remember him speaking to his own children in the same tone. What a bunch of whiners.

I've been puzzling over the concept of having goals in life. Perhaps this is an American thing? I sense that I am meant to have goals; that if I did, I would feel less lost, less helpless. The public schools which still agonize me, as my second child redoubles the effort to thicken her skin in the fourth week of 8th grade, all have goals: from 84% attendance to 91% attendance for target populations, for example, over the course of 2025-2026. Reading these goals, receiving the daily automated calls from the attendance system, I feel only coercion and surveillance. I do not feel concern or collaboration. There is no one on the other end of the line. This maps pretty well with what I occurs somatically when I reach for a goal right now. 

Even in the garden, I feel dislocated. I am tending, observing, reaching for presence, inviting connection. But the whole thing, despite that I am doing it, that I make choices and enact them, witness the plants' expressions and respond, feels dramatically beyond me. I feel small: a pill bug coming on winter, a moth with tattered wings: either I can do it, but it doesn't matter; or it matters, and I can't. The big box of metal pieces that will become a raised bed; the bamboo sprouting, the failed grass, the thicket of thistles along the fence. How to engage with them without the voice of my ex-friend in my mind, without the robot call: this is a message to inform you that your spirit, infinite and organic, ever changing, dust to dust, was absent today from doing everything it has been assigned. 

Yes You May

 

 

Back to work now, but for a month I was only myself. Or: for a month I moved slowly - inching, crying, impatiently disrupted and afraid, toward my own center. I went away and came back, multiple cars broke, Aster rode in a tow truck for the first time. I prayed dry-eyed to the gods of burnout at the Western edge of the Pacific and I bowed weeping at the thrift. There was a new washing machine and a new engine and a new bumper and a newly minted high school graduate and other than the kid, all these things were old - cast offs, adapted and respectfully tended by people I respect, who operate in the other economy - where new things barely exist. I spoke some bad Spanish, read some poetry, tended the archive and the divorce. I walked with Aster 1000 times for at least 100 miles. I asked myself if I have done anything in this life and if I am going to do anything at all. I said, what is the point?? I cooked and cleaned; I wrote; I learned that some estrogen patches are different than others and some work for me and some don't and I saw what can happen in a few weeks: a glimpse into the spiral of a deeply hormonally unbalanced mind-body, and it scared me. 

 

 

Meanwhile, all along, the garden. 

 

 

Orange poppies moved from the sidewalk strip. Ditto starburst allium. Black foliage dahlias shifted from the strangling root grip of the bamboo - already thriving in this soft soil. Peonies divided and replanted from wherever the heck they were. Grasses from Lowes years ago, bought for an installation thru OTF at Willamette U, dragged about in pots, delighted to be in the Earth (can you imagine the relief?). Roses from the divorce garden on Sauvie, before that at 5615, before that: David Austin bare root. The fox gloves doing their own thing, with some nudging by me.

 

A Nootka there in the center, from a natives nursery (Echo Valley?) and that gorgeous and strong dark leaved rose. Another character from the street strip, starting to recover from my vicious, adamant transplant (when tough plants thrive in shitty conditions... they don't want to move): a pea relative I don't have a name for. That Nootka is wild in all this sun and fertility and sprouting runners everywhere. I know, I know, I'll be the one editing them out. But sometimes when I think about a garden what I think is what can this garden do for herself? Who will still be here if there is no supplemental water for years? If no one weeds? Who will still be here for the bugs, the birds? If this Nootka takes over - ok. If the oak can stand, yes. The foxgloves will continue their cycle, the native bumbles will make their homes. 

 

 

The oak. Two years in the ground this October. I'll write them a birthday post. 

 

 

The lavender I planted because Mo said so. To heal the tree hole. 

 

 

Newest surprise. Who are you? 

 

 

This orange rose. Oh the journey we have been on together, my friend.

Aster's fish, in the path. She love gardening.

 

 

All the rest of the plants that were in front of the bamboo, starved and choked, I moved to this corner. Joe Dirt came and took the dying fig out, and worked the bamboo back to its enclosure. We laughed: the job never done, but he helped me get a little momentum.  

Sweet rhubarb transplant from Beth and Benjo's yard. Next year we will eat her. And this fountain grass - lush! This is the year I learn more about grasses. 

All the Douglas Spirea from the divorce garden is thriving. The rest is on the other edge of the little deck - not pictured. Also here: a mallow that made it through last winter; some asclepius from this year (how few plants I have bought) and one of the purple mint relative - many of whom are splashed about the garden from the bamboo bed transplant. The ones that take will bloom next year - I've given them lots of choices.

The opened space - where I'll put down weed cloth after another pass with the pick axe, and then a steel garden bed on top. Some place for lettuces and sunnies. Kale and beets. I think. we'll see.

Last view before we go in the door. I would never have planned this garden - a garden like this. Maybe I would never have planned this life. But here we are, alive. Together.

A roll of film from fall

 

Because this is a blog and no one reads blogs anymore. Because I'm not on social media anymore. Because I don't know how to share intimacy with strangers, and I'm not sure I want to, but also I'm not gonna hide this light under a bushel no

Here is the whole roll. Every image crisp and bright. I made these on Belinda's camera, an N2000, leant to me by Holly. 

When I took it in to Blue Moon because it could only beep - not advance, not rewind, not release, not open and close the shutter - the man who took the film out for me in their film loading closet told me to just toss the camera body and get a different, older, manual model. The lens, he said, is fine. I lament this advice, and my amateur's willingness to accept it in the face of a crotchety, snobbety expert. I left with my disdained heirloom. I want to save this camera but I can't make it work. 

Now, new batteries don't do anything. I clean the contact points. I mull over youtube. She doesn't even beep anymore. Nothing. Holly says she will take the broken body back - it does not have to work to be valuable. I try to find out exactly the lens: 28-50, and then a 70-macro range. She swivels into and out of herself. 3.5-22 aperture. I read Nikon body reviews on reddit. None of this is photography - to me: I want to witness the world. Instead I am in a maze of references, make dates, serial numbers. I am thinking of money. I want to be thinking of leaves and eyelashes. 

 These images are caught light from the body of a ghost

Kira and Z and I conspired through conflict and misunderstanding and vague texts to get some film photos of them in the fall of their senior years. At the last minute as we slash and burned bad plans and jumped into the car to go to the land that used to be Christine's farm and now is Laura's home and simply always was Wapato, and held me when I didn't know that this future could exist - but when I drove out there I felt stronger to move toward it. As we drove, we all breathed out what we had thought and made space for what could be.

The conditions were perfect. The camera allowed us 20 exposures.

Here ya go, world. 

 

Aster-share

We met Aster the day after Thanksgiving at Mountain Humane in Hailey, Idaho. The vets there gave her the birthday of July 31, 2024, so she was about 4 months old. Her litter had been ditched the month before, brought into shelter and given the full work up - shots, spay/neuter. Because they were all there together, they continued to play as they had since birth, until each of them got adopted. The shelter staff called her Harley Quinn. She bit our hands and rolled on her back and peed. Obviously, we were smitten.  

Now, we are coming up on a year of having Aster in our lives. I think we’ve done a great job together. Aster is confident, playful, super food motivated and therefore easy to train, sleeps through the night, gets along great with all types of dogs, has met and not harassed multiple cats, loves babies and toddlers, loves kids and teenagers, loves my friends - her people - and feels friendly but mostly uninterested in adult people she doesn’t know. When she sees a little kid or someone she loves, she pulls her lips in a submissive smile, showing her beautiful white grin.

She’s still a puppy, at 50 pounds, so she can be pulley on a leash when she knows we’re headed to the park, or when her - substantial - prey drive is activated. Squirrel! She knows and responds well to terms like place, wait, here, sit, down, ok, leave it, and come. She rides in the car cheerfully, goes to friend’s houses, takes long day time naps. She does not always come when called, if she is doing something more fun, playing with a dog or chasing a very good smell. She never runs in the road (anymore). She still needs more training, more development, more maturity to be a truly reliable dog, especially in the city, where safety demands on dogs are so much higher and the environment is so much more distracting and stimulating.

Most of all, Aster is a joy-bot of athletic delight. She is fast, coordinated, playful, healthy, enamored with the wild environment. She eats raspberries, blackberries, currents, and hucks off the bushes. She eats fallen cherries, figs, hawthorne berries, mountain ash berries… she has been known to eat a baby vole or two - there are so many! - and last spring got a bird - before we could stop her - who had fallen out of the nest. She is a delight on a long hike - climbing up to the highest view points, drinking from the hidden creeks. She blasts across the beach with a broad smile, kicking up the surf. At the river she chases sticks, swims, jumps, balances, explores, rolls in dead fish. 

Aster is the opposite of reactive. She is active. Leaning into whatever is offered, ready to try, trusting, hungry, delightful. Everyone loves her. At the dogpark, I watch day after day as Aster knocks a dog to the ground, pins them with her mouth on their neck, and dances like Kali over their bodies. Again and again, the dog hops up and comes back for more. Dog owners tell me all the time that their dog doesn’t usually play anymore - except… with Aster.

I find that she needs two hour-long sessions outside, at least one of which is off leash - ideally both - and at least one of which includes a dog friend or two. When she gets this - and also regular longer hikes, exploration in nature, regular training, playful engagement at home, and lots of snacks - she is easy. Settles on her mat in the kitchen while I cook; naps while I write; stays home alone without a crate for 6 hours, celebrates everyone who walks through our door. When Aster does not get the engagement and play that she needs, she is an annoying puppy. Pushy. Whiny. Underfoot. In and out the back door. A sock stealing, dog-bed chewing, jumping up-on-you puppy.

I prefer to give her what she needs. And. This is a lot in a day, for one person who is also a parent of two with a full time job. If you’ve made it this far: here’s my dream. I feel shy sharing it, because - as you can probably tell from the above - I really like this dog, and my kids are deeply bonded to her. So hear this with compassion: I want to share Aster with another household. I’ve been divorced for 2.5 years. My kids live at my house half the time - every other week. On the weeks they are here, Aster makes perfect sense. When they are not, I want to rest. Write poetry, maybe see a movie, work longer hours. Have a break from the dog-park. I’d like to be able to go out of town occasionally, and on meditation retreats a few times a year.

I share all this not to defend my dream, but to give you a sense of who I am - who you’d be sharing a dog with, if you turn out to be my dream person. I have a lot of experience co-parenting humans in committed platonic community. I've never raised a puppy before. For me, working together to tend life - beyond the barriers of the nuclear family structure - is political, necessary, challenging, and full of possibility.

I think my dream person lives in North or NE Portland - unless they live outside the city and have space where Aster could be more free - I’d be willing to drive a longer dog-exchange commute to offer her that. You have space and energy for our girlie - maybe you run, want a hiking buddy, or already have a dog? You want the goofy cozy giggly that a young dog at home can bring - Aster is not - yet? - cuddly, but she is super affectionate, and bonds quickly with new people. You can maintain the training we have already done, and communicate consistently with me about what you are experiencing and working on with her. You are into creative, norm-bending social arrangements (bonus points for full blown queer vibes). 

I really think this could be great! You get freedom and attachment, and so do we. All the joys of a puppy without the burdens imposed by nuclear living. You get a dog who’s already trained, has a vet relationship, and a built-in babysitter. And, hopefully, we get each other: somebody to text dog pics to, commiserate about annoying behaviors, share the costs.

If you’ve read all this… and you’re still curious, drop me a line?

devonfrances@gmail.com