JackieBlue
Well-known member
- When we left Throw Away Girl and Crazy Goat Man; they were at an impasse. Throw Away Girl decided at that point to make herself as scarce as possible. She went about her chores and kept to herself as much as possible. During the next month or so; she and Soul Starer got to know each other better. They spent lots of time on the beach, or the headlands, or the redwood forest. Their first "date" was a trip to San Francisco.
They went immmediately to the Haight Ashbury district. Throw Away Girl had brought a bunch of vegetables to give or trade. The largest harvest was beets. That may have been why they had such an intense and uplifting time. The aroma of the beet is musky, and it can heighten phermones.
So they gave some of the vegetables away, and wandered in and out of shops; then headed for Golden Gate Park. When they got there they found that Robin Williams was performing at one of the outdoor pavillions. So they sat and rolled a joint, leaned back against a tree and puffed tuff. The atmosphere was buzzing with life, but what was more amazing is that it was such a "live and let live" kind of vibe. It is a city so there are always the ugly things that cities have: trash on the sidewalks, smog, homelessness, drug addiction, etcetera. San Fransisco is not a threatening city though, like some are. It is more just a typical hilly port city. Port cities have influences from other cultures flowing in and out of them every day, be it goods, services, or people.
When Robin Williams finished up his act; they headed back across the street and up Haight to where they had parked. As they walked along they passed a man who was spouting some sort of poetry, but this poetry was a of different kind than Throw Away Girl had ever heard before. This was the poetry of windowpanes, white fluff, puddles, alice in wonderland, and boxes of rain. Soul Starer looked at Throw Away Girl and said "Do you want to trip?" She told him yes, and he set off back down the street, in the direction the man was headed. When he came back he had Tall Trippy Hippy with him. He said "Hold out your hand." She did and he squeezed 4 drops of LSD into her palm. He then breezily resumed walking, leaving his stream of consciousness behind him in a silver swirl.
Throw Away Girl and Soul Starer decided to go for a walk. They walked down to panhandle park and played fetch with the dog for a while. Then they walked back up to Haight and into Buena Vista Park. Whoever named Buena Vista knew what they wer talking about. The park provides a complete panoramic view of San Fransisco and the Bay Area. It's also a great place for boys to pick up boys, if you're interested in that sort of thing. The trail on the opposite side of the park goes down into the Castro district. In fact Soul Starer did get checked out by some dudes. It was pretty comical at that point.
When we tired of Buena Vista, we went back down the hill and went to track down one of Throw Away Girl's college friends. When they finally found the house, she was getting ready to go out. They were in the Twin Peaks district by then so they decided to see how far they could drive up to the top of Twin Peaks. They parked the vehicle in front of a new housing complex that hadn't opened yet. It seemed to be very close to the top, and they wanted to walk the rest of the way. Impossible as it may seem Throw Away Girl and Soul Starer got to the top of Twin Peaks through a lot of brush and trees, and ended up a little lost. Lost in the woods in a city. It takes a special kind of person to be able to accomplish that.
When they reached the top there was a clearing around where the giant radio towers are. They sat and rested for a while, both of them marvelling that they had found such a secluded spot smack dab in the middle of a major metropolitan area.
After resting for a while they decide to head back down hill. The descent was much easier with a road to follow, and they found the truck with no problems.
Throw Away Girl was beginning to peak at that time, and it was the first time that she had ever driven, while tripping. It was very late; around 2 am, and the city had quieted for the night. They cruised down Divisadero and on to Embarcadero, the barren streets, the yellow glow from the street lights, and Encryptical Envelopment playing in the tape deck; served to put Throw Away Girl into almost a trance. It felt as though that moment in time had been destined to happen, even though nothing in particular was really unusual, or inordinate. The lack of traffic added to the effect. They took Embarcadero all the way down into North Beach, where the road begins to curl around the coast, cradling the water of the bay. As they gain altitude they pass the Cliff House and get a fantastic view of Alcatraz. There is a small park on the cliffs next to the Cliff House (this restaraunt has one crazy history.) Throw Away Girl and Soul Starer decide that this is where they will spend the night. They gather their blankets and enter the park. Trail began to meander through and under great cypress trees that showed silver in the misty moonlight. The slow fog had begun to creep in for the night, and came in mists and puffs up the cliffs and into the cypress groves. Throw Away Girl and Soul Starer layed their blankets down on a flat rock overlooking some old army bunkers and Alcatraz. By this time Throw Away Girl was in a mood. So she stripped naked and climbed into their blankets. Soul Starer didn't really seem to know what to do, so he just slid under the blanket. He spent the rest of the night just touching and exploring her skin, occasionally stopping to kiss her sometimes gently and other times urgently.
When the sun rose, they watched as the Golden Gate Bridge began to glow in the rays of the sun. They packed up and hit a coffee shop, then heaaded back north. She dropped him in Mendocino later that afternoon, and went back to the farm. She settled back into her routine for a couple of weeks. The whole time she was thinking of Soul Starer.
There was a nasty storm that had been predicted that weekend and it was supposed to rain steadily for several days after that. Chuck was going to be away for several weeks, adn she hoped that if nothing else she might get some help in the garden while the Crazy Goat Man was at play. Throw Away Girl went into town for some supplies; all the while hoping to catch Soul Starer somewhere. She met him as she came out of Corners of the Mouth (the local health food store.) She grinned and asked him if he would like to come out to the farm with her for a few days. He agreed and they went back to the farm.
When they got there, he helped her finish up the evening chores; holding the lamp for her as she herded the goats back into their night pen. The heavens decided to open up at just about the time that they were finishing up, but they still managed to get soaked through to the bone. They went to her cabin and stripped off their outer layers, and built a fire. When the fire got going and the cabin was warmer, They both stripped down to underwear. Soul Starer told her that he had brought some more acid if she wanted to do some. She agreed, they had a bottle of wine with dinner, ate the acid for dessert and then lay back to digest for a while. After some time they began to get a little bored, so they decided to play with paper and hand shadow puppets. They were occupied for several hours, but all of a sudden both of them grew quiet. Insitinctively they both gathered up the paper mess and put it in a bag.
They both laid back on the bed and slowly kissed. They touched each other softly for a long time, then something snapped and it reminded her of the the phrase "I want to fuck you like an animal." Afterward they both lay spent in each others arms and drifted off to sleep.
Throw Away Girl was dreaming. She dreamed that they were on a beach with lots of little kids and their families. She looked to her right, and the ocean all of a sudden looked like a wall as tall as a skyscraper. At the exact moment the water hit her she sat straight up in bed gasping for air. Soul Starer woke up and put his arm around her, "What's the matter? Are you ok?" Throw Away Girl said to him "What if I'm pregnant?" He told her that they would deal with it if it happened, and they both went back to sleep.
Soul Starer stayed with her for a few more days and helped her in the garden and with some of the chores, by the time Crazy Goat Man was back, Soul Starer was gone. Throw Away Girl had told him about Chuck's aversion to him. He was pissed, but they had decided that at some point they might push the issue a bit more with him. The day that Crazy Goat Man arrived home was a Friday, so Throw Away Girl asked for the weekend off, and went into town to find Soul Starer. That night they slept in a driftwood house that had been built on Portuguese beach. They both squeezed into one sleeping bag and Yup slept across from them. Soul Starer made quiet love to her as they drifted off to sleep. She woke up early in the morning to what sounded like a baby crying. She sat listening to the waves for a few minutes and it didn't seem to go away. At first she thought that maybe the water was playing tricks on her; so when it didn't stop she nudged Soul Starer awake and asked him if heard the baby crying too. Of course he didn't, but Throw Away Girl began to worry.
Another few weeks went by, and Soul Starer would come and stay with her off and on, when Chuck wasn't around. One afternoon they got into the farm truck and headed down the ridge to Mendocino. The truck had been acting kind of funny, like not staying in second gear unless you really jammed it in. The tailgate had fallen off, and some of the light fixtures were failing.
As they descended the switchbacks through the redwoods, Throw Away Gril tried to keep her speed down. Suddenly she touched the breaks while they were about to go around a corner, and the brake pedal went to the floor. She tried to stay cool and down shift. It kept popping out of second and the truck had begun to fishtail. She then tried to cram it into first gear so that they would at least slow down more if they were going to crash. The shifter popped out of first and wouldn't go back in. This is when every thing becomes slow motion. Throw Away Girl knows she had to make a choice; either hit a redwood and stop or go over a rock face into the gravel quarry. She picked the tree. As she steered toward the tree the truck began to tip and it rolled one and a half times. Neither of them were wearing seat belts.
When the truck came to rest on it's side; they climbed out and shook off the dust. Throw Away Girl looked at him and asked if he was hurt. He said no, but a look of worry came over his face. Throw Away Girl said "Am I bleeding?" Just as a drop of blood splatted down onto her cheek. Shit!
They were still almost 10 miles out of town and even further from a hospital. She was feeling dizzy and disoriented, so they made the decision to leave the truck and start walking until someone picked them up. Luckily they only went a short distance. The people took them right to the hospital. They waited for quite some time in the waiting room, the hospital called the police, and then she was taken into an exam room and given the routine pregnancy test before they sent her to x-ray.
In the meantime the doctor pulled Throw Away Girl's hair out from the wound. He was trying to decide if he needed to shave her hair. He decided not, but then he took a large pair of tweezers and began pulling debris out of her head. Big chunks of rock, pieces of plastic, and smaller bits of gravel, he pulled out of the gash. To this day she still has a little piece of "something" under her skin in that spot.
By this time the on call doctor comes in and looks at Throw Away Girl very seriously and says "May I speak with you privately?" She already knows what he is going to say. She looks at the doctor and says "No it's ok, he can stay. He's the father." The doctor looked at her a bit strangely and asked her how she knew; as the pregnancy was only two to three weeks along. She told him that she just had a "feeling." The doctor* shook his head and said "Women's intuition."
Throw Away Girl was given a choice about having x-rays or not. The doctor recommended them, and assured her that becuase the x-ray was of her head that ther shouldn't be any danger of exposure to radiation. So they wheeled her into x-ray. When she returned, the CHP was waiting for her in the exam room. The doctor prepared to give her ten stitches, while Throw Away Girl gave the officer the details of the accident. He asked her why they hadn't called the police before they abandoned the vehicle. She kind of shook her head. She hadn't even thought of it; what she was thinking of was getting to the hospital, due to the considerable blood leaking from her head. She told the officer. The cop said that he understood why they had left the vehicle, but that Chuck did not, regardless of the fact that she needed medical care. After her conversation with the officer the doctor returned and told her that according to the x-ray it looked like she had a severe concussion and that she shouldn't be alone for several days.
So Throw Away Girl and Soul Starer left the hospital and hitchhiked back to Mendocino. Chuck was too busy to come pick her up; he had told the police. So she made her way to his town house. She went in the front door with major gauze wrapped around her head, almost like a swami. Chuck met her in the entry and the first thing he said to her was "Is your insurance going to pay for this?" Not "Are you okay?". Not "How are you feeling?" But instead he was thinking about money. She was more than a little mortified; and a lot fed up with Crazy Goat Man. She told him that she wasn't sure, but that she would definitely find out. Chuck then proceeded to tell her to hurry up and get in the truck; he would take her back up to the farm, before he headed off to some conference. Throw Away Girl was even more mortified. She told him that she would rather stay with some friends, he asked her what friends? She told him that she would stay with a girl she knew, Sita. He said okay and she went back to find Soul Starer. She was in shock from the concussion, from the pregnancy, and from Chuck's insensitivity to anyone but himself.
////This is where I leave you again. It appears that this is a four part story. I thought that it might be. Throw Away Girl and the Crazy Goat Man appears to be a "pregnant" story//////
* Later when Throw Away Girl needed a copy of her positive pregnancy test; Throw Away Girl went to the hospital and waited for almost two hours. The same doctor came out and knelt down in front of her, then very seriously, said "You're pregnant." Throw Away Girl almost peed her pants laughing. At that point she was almost 6 months pregnant. You would have thought the guy would look at the date!
When we left Throw Away Girl and the Crazy Goat Man, they were knee deep in goat shit. By this time Throw Away Girl had been broken in, and had fallen into a routine. Since most of her time on the farm was solitary; she would get up when the turkey gobbled in the morning (which, incidentally, was actually before the rooster crowed.) She would put another stick of wood on the fire and put the teakettle on and pull on her clothes and boots, to tend animals. The first chore of the day was to milk the goats.
Milking goats was more peaceful and enjoyable than she had ever imagined. Throw Away Girl only felt this way because goats can be pesky creatures, and are hard to catch or to herd back into a pen if they decide to go for a little walk. When the goat was in the stand eating it's sprouted grains and carrot pulp though; all was calm. Just the mewing of the barn cats, the munching of the feed and the spray of the milk into the pan, broke the silence. When this chore was completed, she would take the milk to the main house, filter it and store it in tall mason jars; to be made into cheese or for having with oat groats in the morning. She always saved a bit of the fresh milk for just that purpose. After tending the goats and the milk, she went back to the chicken coop.
By the time she had let the chickens out for the day and gathered the eggs her teakettle had heated enough to make some tea and a boiled egg. the remainder of the water she used for her oats. After breakfast she would meander back to the main farm house and grab an orange, or whatever fruit happened to be kicking around the kitchen. Then it was off to the garden to weed, and harvest what she could from the neglected beds. She uncovered 3 cold frames, leeks, carrots, sorrel, lettuces, beets, globe artichokes, jerusalem artichokes, and several different types of brassicas. What she could harvest each day was mostly to keep herself fed. Along with some rice, it was the main part of Throw Away Girl's diet.
Some days she would take early morning walks in the forest to harvest mushrooms, other days she would make a day of feeding extra carrot pulp and other vegetable waste, to the sheep and horses. The horses were allowed to free range, just as the chickens, but they rarely got anything extra in the way of grains. The sheep were moved between several different pastures and were only penned during lambing season. Sometimes Chuck would spend some time at the farm, but he spent most of it in his water tower office; talking on the phone to lobbyists and who all knows what. We are talking about the Crazy Goat Man after all.
Many of the chores or projects that Chuck had Throw Away Girl untertake, were jobs that hadn't been done in years. Prune this. Chop that. Divide and spread out perennials. Harvest vegetables for this person or that person. Root kiwi clippings. Grow orange trees from seed that had been saved from our fruits. Make twenty different types of chevre. Write and article about sustainably harvested trees. The man was a never ending river of busy work, but after the goat pen cleaning, she never saw him do anything more than milk goats, ruffle his shaggy white hair, and spout pompous, self righteous, hypocrisy about environmentalism; out of his yellowed buck teeth. ( Notice that the man kind of looked like a goat?) Throw Away Girl echoed some of his view points, but she also saw middle ground; where Chuck had never ventured.
On occasion people would come out to the farm. Some would stay for a week or two, others just dropped by for the day, but noone stayed very long. I began to get the feel that the locals weren't overly fond of him. He had had a woman staying on the farm, previously and there had been some dispute about a goose that she had, and contaminated water sources, and other grievances that Chuck would go on and on about; claiming that she was insane. They had been battling in court for several months at that point. Throw Away Girl found out at this time that Chuck was actually living off a trust fund, and that the farm was just something of a hobby or a token badge to say that he "lived off the land." Chuck lived more in his own world than in any world, that you or Throw Away Girl had ever lived in.
Most of the time though, Throw Away Girl was by herself in the peace and quiet. Many days she would quit working at around two in the afternoon. If it was a sunny day she would grab some fruit for her lunch, take her clothes off and lie in the grass; letting the sun and fruit recharge her body. Some days she would fall asleep in the late afternoon rays, other days she would sit with her journal or sketchpad and let her mind wander. It was early spring and there were still a lot of rain showers and brief thunderstorms. She would end up running for cover sometimes, but she had never seen so many rainbows in her life. The quiet beauty and solitude was magical and healing. Throw Away Girl had notever felt so healthy and alive.
By the end of the day, she would steam up some vegetables or make some soup, listen to NPR, and write letters, play solitaire, or just daydream until she drifted off to sleep. After a while Throw Away Girl felt that she should go into town a little bit and meet some people, because being alone isn't perfection all the time. One does need to remember how to speak and interact, after all.
So Chuck told her that she was free to use the farm truck {remember? the one that the tree had fallen on}, to go into town from time to time. At this point Chuck hadn't offered any sort of stipend. Throw Away Girl had been working for almost two months. Chuck decided that she should harvest several bags of vegetables each week, and market them to folks in town, so that she could earn some money. His other idea was that she dig up plants to sell in front of his "town" house. So, with no budget, or new seed, Throw Away Girl harvested what she could out of the garden and made grocery bags for six customers, sometimes with cheese or milk and other times without. Chuck would make most of the deliveries and kept 25% of the profit. Throw Away Girl was making somewhere between 15 and 30 dollars a week. Not much; considering the amount of work that she did and the meager board that was offered to her, but she was happy; so she was able to let this go to some degree.
On her first trip to town, she sat in front of the house for several hours. She didn't have any customers, so she decided to go for a walk. Throw Away Girl walked around the block and down onto the main street. Probably many of you have seen pictures of Mendocino on postcards or whatnot, and not known that it was Mendocino. It is a historical district and the "hysterical" comittee made sure that all the buildings were maintained in keeping with historical reference. So imagine this picture book town, with victorian era houses. It almost looked like New England, in fact it became a "town" when loggers from Maine headed west to harvest the "big" trees. Many movies have been filmed there beginning with many silent films and moving on to ones like:The Night of the Living Dead (the original), East of Eden, Slither, Cujo, Karate Kid III, The Majestic, Overboard, and Dying Young. Mendocino is also the home of the "Murder She Wrote" house.
As she strolled down Main street, she came upon a duck pond, in front of which was a fence. There were two guys around my age sitting there with their dogs. As she passed by, she smiled, and one of them asked if she could spare any roaches. It was the first time she met Soul Starer and Yup. She laughed and told them that she would smoke a joint with them, so they wandered off into Headlands State Park. After finding a somewhat secluded spot they began conversation and she found that Yup was from South Carolina, and that Soul Starer was from Sacramento. They said that they knew a couple that were from New Hampshire, and that they would introduce us. So the three of them spent the afternoon hanging out, and they introduced her to all of their "street" friends. This is California code for homeless by the way.
When she made her way back to Chuck's house it was nearly sunset, and a wind had begun to pick up. She went inside and found Chuck and his wife making a light dinner of bagels and lox. Throw Away Girl was excited. Protein! Something besides goat milk and eggs anyway! Then Chuck began to tell Throw Away Girl that she should watch out for people that hung around town too much. She asked what he meant, and he told her that there was a lot of riff raff around. Now Throw Away Girl had never been one to judge, and if she were to judge then it would be upon her own deductions and not based upon hearsay. She decided to take this information with a grain of salt, well, well just because Throw Away Girl WAS riff raff, and didn't feel that she should make herself, or even think herself, superior to any other being. Judge not lest ye be judged, was her motto.
The next day, she met Soul Starer and Yup and they gave her a tour of town, showing her all the shortcut alleys, the Chinese Temple, great pocket beaches to explore, and of course the best places to just sit and absorb the sun, the ocean, and life itself. At the end of the day Soul Starer walked her back to the house, and she headed back to the farm.
When she woke up the next morning Chuck was at the farm, so she went down to have a word with him. Throw Away Girl had given them a brief overview of what she had been doing by herself for the last months, and both of them were interested in coming out to the farm to help out on a regular basis. Throw Away Girl approached Chuck about the subject, and the man literally went apeshit, and told her that there was no way in hell that he would have that sort of person on his farm whether they were working or dead. She was shocked. One would think that a farmer would want all the free labor he could get, but no Chuck was too good for them. Chuck went on to complain about how she had been ammassing the weekly bags of vegetables. Telling me that some people complained about dirt on the vegetables. Ummm hello, dude. They're vegetables. They grow in dirt, and one can only get so much dirt off root vegetables without scrubbing them. Did Chuck provide a brush, or even a sufficient sink? Of course not! So Chuck and Throw Away Girl come to their first impasse.
////This is where I leave you again, I hope you enjoyed reading and that you are looking forward to the exciting end of this story. Until then keep your veggies clean and the riff raff at bay.////////
When Throw away Girl decided to go west, she applied for several apprenticeships in California, Oregon, and Washington. She was accepted for two of them, the first was an organic farm on an island off the coast of Oregon. It was run by two women who seemed very nice. The apprenticeship was to provide room and board and a small stipend and began in April. It was November, and Throw Away Girl wanted to get out of Dodge (so to speak) quicker than that. At the time, Greyhound was offering a one way ticket to anywhere in the US for $98; so she accepted the second apprenticeship, on a farm in Mendocino, California. It was an all organic farm and "school of country living", surrounded by hundreds of acres of state forest (Jackson State Forest, to be exact.)
The main farm building used to be a saw mill used back in the days of the first raping of the redwoods. It was built of redwood, in the Victorian style, with a water tower connected to the back. Since purchasing the property the owner had built 5 other outbuildings in addition to the already existing barn, sawmill, and gardening shed. All of the water was gravity fed from several diffierent water towers and a giant main tank that was part of the original mill. The farm was entirely solar powered. The buildings were of varying sizes and levels of comfort. The job entailed recovering a 2.5 acre garden plot and establishing a market garden, and it began in February. She would get free room and board, a stipend, and a share of the profits from the market garden.
So she set out for California in late January, visiting a few friends along the way, and taking a few long layovers. She arrived in San Francisco late at night, on the first day of February,'98. She called a friend from high school and he hopped the city bus. Thow Away Girl crashed at his apartment that night, then the next day on a bright and sunny morning; she began the last leg of her bus trek north. She arrived in Willits at around 3 in the afternoon. She called the farm owner, Chuck. He said that there had been landslides all along highway 20, over to the coast, and that there was no public transportation running to and from the coast.
Now at this point; Throw Away Girl started to freak a little bit. She had less than 3 dollars in her pocket, and nowhere to go. She had fasted most of the way to California, and was starting to feel a bit weak. She had met a guy on the bus that was traveling to Arcata, he said that she should just jump back on the bus and come stay with him at a friends house. So with nowhere else to go; she decided to just jump back on. Figuring that she could look up some old friends that she knew were living there. They rode to Arcata, where the bus driver began to give her a ration of shit about staying on the bus after her scheduled stop. He told her that she would have to pay extra and that they wouldn't release her luggage until it was paid. So the dude she met starts yelling at the bus driver about how Throw Away Girl had paid for a one way ticket to "anywhere" in the US. "Isn't this anywhere?!?!?!" he said. The bus driver finally gave in; and released her luggage.
So Bus Dude and Throw Away Girl set off for his friends' house on K Street in Arcata. They arrived there at around midnight, proceeded to smoke A LOT of herb, and pass out. Bus Dude was about the loudest snorer on the face of the earth so there wasn't a lot of sleeping done that night, but at least she had a place to lay down; that was dry and somewhat warm. The next morning she looked up her friends and took off to visit them for a while; leaving her stuff on K Street. She went back in the afternoon and hooked herself up with a ride back to Willits the next day. She spent another sleepless night accompanied by LOUD snoring.
She woke up the next day at around 11 AM, and waited for her ride to get his shit together for the ride south. At around three they all hopped into a blue VeeDub bus, and bumped their way south on the 101. It's the first time that Throw Away Girl gets a real good look at the giant redwoods. As they cruised down through the groves, she began to have a great sense of peace. It was almost like the redwoods had their own aura.
When they arrived in Willits, it was sundown. Throw Away Girl hopped the last "Skunk Train" bus and headed over the ridge to the ocean. It was around seven when she finally arrived in Mendocino. Chuck met her at the bus stop. She jumped into his pickup and they began the ten mile trek out to the farm. On the ride; Chuck told her a little bit more about the farm, mostly about the animals. There was Pudge the dog, an assortment of barn cats, a flock of chickens, 25 sheep, 10 goats, a turkey, a pony, and a Belgian draft horse. Another important fact that he relays is that Throw Away Girl will be the only full time resident of the farm. Chuck had another house in town that his wife and step daughter lived in, so he was only at the farm a few nights a week. When his truck arrived at the farm; Chuck drove right up to the cabin that was to be her home. It was a small 10x10 cabin with a ship bed and closet built into it, a small propane cook top, small woodstove, a 40 watt lightbulb, and her very own outhouse (albeit a spidery, doorless, lean-to of a thing.) Chuck then told her that he had to get back into town and won't be back until tomorrow around lunch time. Throw Away Girl was flabbergasted. This guy was going to just leave her on his farm, when he barely knows her. Not to mention the fact that she is ten miles from anywhere, it's dark, and she will be alone with all of this guy's animals. She wasn't sure what to say, so she just told him to have a good night and that she would see him tomorrow. All the while thinking; what in the hell did I get myself into?
So she built a fire, unpacked her things, and began to settle in for the night. When she woke up the next morning it was to rain and a really loud turkey noise followed by a barking dog. She jumped up and got dressed to see what all the commotion was about. The dog was chasing the turkey, so Throw Away Girl shooed the dog away and the turkey flapped it's wings in her face. Anyone who has ever met up with a male turkey knows that they can be really mean when startled, and this one didn't want to back down. What a welcome!
Throw Away Girl began to explore. She went around the goat pen to the chickens, let them out, and gathered some eggs for breakfast. Chuck hadn't told her where she could find food yet; so she figured the eggs would get her through until he arrived. She went and poked around in the barn for some feed. Then she fed the goats and chickens. There were 3 baby goats. Two of them were twins, just born a few days before. She figured their moms probably needed something to eat. Besides the goats were loud and jumping up on the side of the pen. That can only mean one thing.
After she got the animals fed she headed back to her cabin to eat. It was so quiet. Her sense of peace deepened, and she wrote in her journal about it. After breakfast and journaling, she decided to go for a walk She walked back down the driveway, checking out all of the buildings, the other animals, the orchard, and the old mill, the farm truck that had a tree fallen on it, but she didn't see the garden. So she sat out in the sun for a while until Chuck returned. The drizzle had stopped by that time.
When he got back he showed her the garden first. She had walked right past it earlier, but hadn't noticed it because the weeds were as tall as she, and as dense as a jungle. She thought to herself, let's just go with it for now. So then he took her back to the goats. This is when she realized that the goats are his favorite project. He brought one of the moms into the barn and taught Throw Away Gril how to milk it, then how to sprout the grains to feed the animals. Afterward they turned the goats out into the pasture, and went into the main farm house. When they step[ed through the front door, Throw Away Girl was shocked. It was a gigantic mess. There were papers, boxes, dirty plates, and serious dust bunnies everywhere. You couldn't even see any furniture (if there was any, and she was having serious doubts by now.) He didn't even say anything about the disaster, and had her follow him into the kitchen; which was just as horrible. There were some things in the cupboards, but most of them were almost empty, the stove was a propane stove from the 20's (not very safe looking), and it looked like Throw Away Girl was going to be living off rice, oats, and whatever she can scavenge for.
Chuck then taught her how to make soft goat cheese, or chevre. It takes most of the day to cook down the goat's milk, in the meantime Chuck showed her the different stages of cheese and how to make different variations of it. He showed her the water tower and the bath tub room. Most of the water was solar heated so there were only certain times that one could bathe. Chuck then decided to make dinner, which consisted of rice and some steamed carrots, beets, leeks, and cabbage. Which was quite tasty considering, even if it was bland. As dinner wound down, Throw Away Girl looked up and saw Chuck licking his plate clean. She was a little bit shocked and cracked a bit of a joke about it. Chuck looked at her with all seriousness and said "I expect everyone who eats here to lick their plate, it is wasteful not to."
Throw Away Girl was dumbfounded. She told him that if her mother ever saw her doing something like that she would have a heart attack and die, and that she would be sure to clean the plate, but he would never see her licking it. Chuck seemed a bit annoyed, but Throw Away Girl held her ground. There are just certain things that one doesn't do. Licking one's plate is one of them. So Throw Away Girl thanked Chuck for the meal and asked what was on the agenda for the next day. He said that they will be cleaning out the goat pens, and composting some of the garden beds. She bade him good night and went back to her cabin.
The next morning they let the goats out to pasture, and Chuck told Throw Away Girl that he only cleaned the pens twice a year and he was a little behind schedule. Now for any of you who know anything about farming, or animals, pens get mucked out at least monthly if not weekly. It can cause disease and it just gets to be too big of a job. It was pretty obvious to Throw Away Girl that this guy wasn't thinking too clearly, nor was he much of a farmer.
So they went into the pen with shovels and began to shovel shit into the back of the partially crushed farm truck. After a little bit of shovelling she realized that to combat disease, compost more material, and make things more difficult; Chuck had laid down plywood or particle board for every 5 or so inches of goat shit. So now they were chopping up partially decomposed wood along with 6 to 9 months worth of shit. They proceeded to fill and empty the truck 10 times over the course of the day. This was the day that Chuck became "The Crazy Goat Man."
/// This story is a long one so I've decided to break it up into two if not three installments. Happy reading, and hang on to your muck boots because there's more "Crazy Goat Man" coming soon..............
So I'm really needing to write, but I'm not sure where to start, or even what to really talk about. Have you ever felt that all the pieces of your life don't fit. Like when you get a puzzle at a yard sale and it has a bunch of pieces in it that don't go to the same picture. Well that's me.
When you're a kid you have this vision of how things are going to be when you grow up, maybe not right down to the details, but some sort of idea. So I feel like; as I've gone through life, that that idea gets more and more skewed. I feel like I lost my way somewhere. Looking back I try to see what defining moments led me to the place that I am now. I can think of a few, but I always fancied myself this strong person who could overcome a lot. That is the impression that others have gotten from me as well. The truth of the matter is that I am not that at all. I'm a mess.
It's like there's the cool and calm facade that is holding in a tempest of pain, weakness, vulnerability, and mistrust. Sometimes when I think about this shit I can think of certain events that may have caused it, but explaining the reasons doesn't make it go away. It doesn't make it easier to accept either. So how do you turn it around? How am I supposed to get rid of all this hurt, anger, pain, and general misery.
I have recently come to accept that I am clinically depressed. I fought this diagnosis for a long time, because I felt like I couldn't let myself be so weak. It's time to accept it though. I have entertained thoughts of killing myself since I was just a little kid. Some kids say that shit to get attention or to make their parents feel bad, but for me it was real. The really fucked up part of this is that I honestly don't have a reason to. There is no good reason for anyone to purposely kill themselves, but yet the feelings and impulse remain.
Sometimes I wonder at what I point I became such a good actor. Maybe because of the way I was brought up. The whole "suck it up" mentality. There's definitely merit to that, but at which point do you give in to the fact that you can't always just suck it up? Noone is that good at life. I guess that the whole growing up in an alcoholic household taught me to overcompensate, to always want to be better, so that I would be worth loving.
What is worthiness about though really? I'm of the opinion that if you are a good person then you should be worthy of happiness, but apparently life just doesn't work that way. I take being a good person seriously, and maybe I have come up with this ideal of who I "should" be. Maybe that's why I feel like my life has been something of a failure so far, or maybe more like a series of failures; not only to the general population but to myself. How do you give yourself a pep talk and tackle all this bullshit? I don't know how to be any better of a person.
So I guess this rolls back around to the whole Throw Away Girl thing. I seriously believe that everyone else is more important than I am. This is wrong thinking, I know, but how do you start to see your own self importance, when your life is not anywhere near the place you want it to be. I'm 32. Isn't it time to be settling down and gathering your happiness and accomplishments around me? Now the wierd thing here is that I have accomplished a lot, and I've done a lot of great things, but my heart doesn't know that it is enough.....that it counts for anything. I have so many things that I want to do in my life, but here I sit; stuck in my hometown, living upstairs from my parents, two kids, no husband, a fat ass(well not so much ass, but stomach), not making more than ten dollars an hour at any of my jobs, no credit, student loans up my ass, no degree, and nowhere to turn. I feel like I'm bitching and moaning all the fucking time, but doing nothing about it. I feel so paralyzed. I think I'm scared. I'm scared of inviting more pain into my life. I'm scared of failing even more. I'm scared to trust.
I have all these really awesome people around me. They are all so supportive; so why am I not counting my blessings? What the fuck is wrong with me? That's like the eternal question, the root of all this evil. There must be something wrong with me. I mean seriously, if you want to be someplace else, you just pick up and do it, right? That's how I've done it in the past; so what is it that's holding me back? Damn. I'm so tired of it all. I wish that I could just enjoy life, MY life.
It's weird how I have this eternal loneliness thing going on. I've always felt like it was me alone against the world, and when I get frustrated with people, life, just the everyday buzz of shit; I want to run away, to go off into the woods and leave it all behind. Not really an option, but the strangest part of it is that I don't wnat to be alone against the world. I don't want to be lonely anymore. It's like there's this war going on in my head all the time. I'm wondering when my brain cells are going to call a for a peace treaty.
Another part of this is that I have become sensitive to every little nuance of anything that I do wrong. Sometimes I can find something wrong with what I did, even though my rational mind tells me that I did okay. Nothing I do is ever good enough. I could always be better. Maybe it's that I can accept my imperfections, but it may also be that there are so many imperfections that they are overshadowing what IS good. If I can't see what's good, then how the hell can anyone else see what's good about me? It's no wonder I am where I am. I can't stand myself, so I don't know how you all, or anyone else can. I feel like I have to apologize for being such a whiner.
Who knows if this makes any sense to anyone, but if you have any advice....please offer it up. I am just not sure I'm up for this fight.
