The Divinity: thinking about, and engaging others in, your dreams

"The first farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility rests on possession and use of land."
--A quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson's An Essay on Farming that speaks to my dreams.

Last year when I began to write with ProgressiveU.org I didn't know.

I didn't know what I wanted to be and I didn't know myself except through the process of writing. But I read one of mvenus929's posts last year that really made me admire her ability to write confidently about her choices. It might have been this post, or it could have been that post. I think there is some divinity in being clear to everyone you touch what your intentions are, and asking different tribes for advice (and collaboration?). Now that I have a good number of choices of farms on which to seek apprenticeships in Montana (Lifeline farms in the Bitterroot Valley, the Blue Barn Ranch in Moiese and the University of Montana Peas Farm) and abroad (Polyface farms, Scottland farms) I'm more than willing to share some of that divinity.

Side note: these three farm opportunities make me question the recession and the inability of people, even in my northern part of the country (short growing season), to feed themselves with locally harvested food.

A good many people (elders sitting around the fire, mainly) remark that the college years were some of the best in their life. I wonder why. It is not because students have the most worry-less, carefree lives (although compared to people in developing countries we certainly do). No. I think it is because secondary education institutions give us social ties that we would (and do) otherwise dismiss. I'm not saying most college students join clubs, go to all their classes for stimulation, or engage in once a week Mushrooms For Obama meetings with new found friends where they cook mushroom mootar and quiche together.

Some of my classmates at the University of Montana are no doubt uninterested in these trials. Still, I've found that these are the things that make college appear, at least on the surface, to be a place of creative life. It's inspiring stuff really and comparable to the documentary "I Like Killing Flies" I watched last night.

The film's subject, Greenwich Village avant-garde cook Kenny Shopsin, a nutty Jewish man whose figure doesn't necessarily evoke inspiration, but whose life philosophies certainly do. His beliefs, which which he is more than happy to vocalize in the film, include, but are not limited to:

1)His child rearing philosophy that parents should try to impress upon their children the idea that they are not so great. Humans are not so great. Thousands of people in developing countries, after all, suffer in order to prop up some of the insane existences and lifestyles of Americans. He produced some examples--that organic lettuce that your wife is eating and the kid who makes an art video with a camcorder. "No problem, you're a piece of shit." In another country there is some brownskin, he says, who is dying at age 35 instead of 75 so that you can put that nutrition in her body or so that kid can express himself. It is not their fault, that is the way the system is set up, but you have got to acknowledge that your existence isn't that fucking special, nor omnipotent. "No problem, you're a piece of shit." Once you realize this, everyday life and simple accomplishments seem more extraordinary, because being perfect is a pretty depressing standard.

I might argue that this realization might also release you from the system that binds the third world, a release that might also allow you to do something about (it) inequity.

2)Another one of his half-baked schemes is that life and lifely relationships are akin to a couple trapped together at the bottom of a sand pit in the desert. Every morning the husband must pull a bucket down, fill it with some of the sand that would otherwise suffocate them and pull the bucket back up to the surface.

3)Serendipity is nothing to eat with the usual bagel and coffee. Meaning, if there is someone he knows through some serendipitous happening and they would like to further the relationship in some way, he takes it very seriously, almost as if St. Peters was calling to him, "You're next. Come on up." Serendipity is something to trust in this life.

At the beginning of the semester, I was urged to fill out an override slip in order to enroll in Neva Hassanein's class Community and Environment, for the class was full. I am convinced that this urging was literally an enabler, because now you can now call me an aspiring farmer (Green Underbelly is read Max Smith in Montana).

My mother spoke to me about serendipity tonight. If not for her introduction to Michelle, she would not have been introduced to the weekly basketball league or met Tanya. Keeping with the storyline, my mother encouraged me recently to get in touch with Tanya and discuss farming. The resulting manifestation was a few Sundays ago, when I worked on my first farm, the Blue Barn Farm, and I now have the hunger--the hunger that every aspiring farmer must feel in order to learn more and not end up like Wang Lung in The Good Earth. This whole network is at the mercy of serendipity.

4)The last life belief of the cook is that if Americans spent more time trying to figure out the meaning of life and less time working or worrying about terrorism or religion, we would not find ourselves at the gates of recession. For Shopsin, the MOL is to intellectualize the process of goals--to understand that everything that comes between him and the achievement of his dream, everything that happens, is the meaning of life. That, put quixotically, is the marrow.

And for the first time in my life, I've made a great demarcation between profession and schooling. There is this fantasy about college that, by god, if you study hard enough and get that degree, you will get that job. I had that fantasy until I told a friend about my passion for growing food. He referred me to absolutely the best video lecture on the web that I could have seen at that time. Serendipity, right? Relying on others advocacy, right? And so I have become passionate in my pursuit of farming, a subject I really dig studying. Now I am yearning and open to everything permiculture, botanical, soily (and plants that can be tickled). I want to learn as much as I can getting my hands dirty outside of the classroom so that when Carrot opens the gate to her family's New York collective, I can be just one of the many knowledgeable hands working in synchronicity.