Do You Believe,” The Disciple Asked The Rabbi, “that God Created Everything For A Purpose?

man the crazy thing about babies is that like, some people would think that reading a baby a book about farm animals is teaching them about farm animals, but really it’s teaching them about the concept of a book and how there’s new information on each page of a single object, but really, beyond that, it’s teaching them how language works, and beyond that it’s really actually teaching them about human interaction, and really really it’s them learning about existing in a three-dimensional space and how they can navigate that space, but actually, above all it is teaching them that mama loves them.

if you need me i am going to be binge-reading the archives of my favorite blog on the entire internet which is written by this sweet old man who lives on a farm in the pacific northwest with his husband and a bunch of animals. there are nice pictures of flowers and ducks and the tone is so gentle and soothing:

like… fuck…. i love everything about this blog…. it’s the one good thing left online

In another universe, I am seven and rolling down a hill with my childhood best friend. Grass stains are quickly appearing on our clothes and not a single hair is still in place. I giggle when I reach the bottom and wish for this to moment to never end. I wish for a lifetime of rolling hills and a girl with freckles more beautiful than the stars.

some of my favorite woven tapestries, by Cecilia Blomberg:

Point Defiance Steps

Mates

Rising Tides

Vashon Steps

Pro tip for adulting: being late isn’t a death sentence for 95% of things. All you gotta do is call the moment you realize you’re gonna be late, apologize, and then give another small apology when you get there. The thing people really don’t like about lateness is that it seems like the other person doesn’t value their time, and since calling shows that you value their time, that leaves only the mild inconvenience of waiting a bit for them to deal with

i hope you heal from the things no one ever apologized for

I love people.

I always hire my guests to help me with ‘chores’ (if they’re willing!), the kind of task that’s fun at first but less fun when you have to keep going for hours (burning all the broom bushes in the pasture, picking many kg of berries to make syrup, carrying a mountain of logs into the wood shed and building stable log piles so they don’t come cascading down later…) And every time I’m amazed by the way humans can make the most tedious tasks genuinely fun through… group dynamics? just the way people start interacting and bonding with each other when everyone is focused on the same repetitive physical activity. It’s hard to find examples because it’s always so specific to each situation; but I mean things like

people spontaneously specialising and developing a feeling of expertise and pride in their subtrade, no matter how silly (putting away firewood involved one Log Selecter outside going back and forth delivering logs to two Pile Builders who piled them up in the shed, and each rapidly created their own well-oiled System and became convinced it would be hard to replace them now that they had mastered their craft)

new vocabulary being coined and immediately adopted (the Pile Builders came up with nicknames for logs of different lengths and shapes so they could ‘order’ them from the Log Selecter more efficiently—”I’ve got a One-Armed Bandit here, I need another one to fit next to it, but with an ‘arm’ on the other side” “Here” “The arm is on the same side!” “Just turn it around and the arm will be on the other side”)

songs emerging almost by themselves (a song about fishing mussels was repurposed into a song about picking plums; a whole new song was invented to encourage weirdly-shaped logs to fit in with the others as we tried to fill all the gaps)

stories being told. Weaving a trivial task into a complex imaginary plot and context to make it more entertaining and meaningful

the extremely human compulsion to write down our knowledge to share it with future generations (I was told to take note of the best & quickest knot to tie up foliage when making tree hay, for the benefit of whoever does it next summer)

beliefs as to the Right Way To Do Things quickly solidifying into myths or superstitions, as we forget what drove us to do things this way in the first place, but trust that we had good reasons so now it’s the Way It’s Done

I always tell people to help only if they feel like it and we can stop anytime and I’ll finish later by myself, but what usually happens instead is that they want to come back at the same time next year to do this exact chore again because of how they’ve made it theirs in just a few days (or in one afternoon!) Give a group of humans a banal task and while they’re at it they will come up with a whole new inside slang, a few work songs and a handful of founding texts and myths, until it feels special and important. I love seeing the way these miniature folklores just emanate from people doing things together.

thinking about how fiona's bit in the first shrek movie about how ogres are so ugly and unlovable, which is overheard by shrek, is the perfect example of how self-deprecation can really harm not only the people around you who love and care for you, but also people who share the same characteristics that you are mocking in yourself

“Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest—thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the under wood. You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated.”

— Beau Taplin (via quotethat)