Midtown 34th Street Project

Midtown 34th Street

We have been working away on our Midtown 34th Street project.
I believe we have finally figured out how to manage homeschooling, production work, gardening, building and contending with the administration of this project. To be honest it has been such an undertaking that there have been two or three moments where Nando and I have looked at each other and said "I quit."

Bus living is crowded, City bureaucracy is a headache, networking takes an enormousness amount of time and patience with four children is by far the most difficult lesson.

However, we have been fortunate to have great sponsors and donations to our project. Everything has been moving along smoothly. It seems we have found a place to build the community we all desired for so long and search for through our travels.

I'll post some pictures shortly.

Also, for local readers, join us on Saturdays from 10am - 5pm for our general volunteer day and then join us for Kundalini Yoga on Sundays at 10am sharp.

Married September 28th 2012

Homeschooling and Midtown 34th Street Project

The days have been long, but very brief at the same time as we begin to balance the preliminary steps of a large Sustainable Urban Arts Center with the City of Miami by launching a test site called Midtown 34^th Street. The test site will feature gardens, WVO, an artist residence, other sustainable system experiments and tests for our larger project. See the blog www.midtown34thstreet.blogspot.com

Day after day we struggle with permitting technicalities in our heads, wish for a magic fence to manifest, among other things. However a great plant manifestation happened on the weekend, Galloway Farms of Miami donated a number of trees and plants and also the City’s adopt a tree program had promised us some more plants. On top of this Shell Lumber donated wood for our fence and our friend Stephan has helped Nando gather a number of pallets that now compose our compost bins and elements of the future fence.

On top of this project I have begun Christopherus' homeschooling kindergarten curriculum with Luciano.

The first week worked out really well, I felt that Luciano had a calmer energy and all his needs were met. Except socialization with other children, which has posed a small temporary problem, as we are awaiting the arrival of our friends Sam and Tom with their children Harper and Mateo. This may solve some aspects, but play dates are a good solution too.

Waldorf is so rhythmic and is also careful of not becoming to formulaic as well. It is such a beautiful structure that really allows you to form who your family is by examining our interests, activities and identifying what should needs to be nurtured. I suppose this is just the foundation of the early childhood and early parenting. 

My daily schedule goes something like this (although not always):

-Wake up bedtime cuddle, maybe a song or rhythm while I make the bed, depending on the mood of the children

-Dressing, sometimes I layout clothes the night before so there is no arguing, or I just let him pick out of two or three options

- Breakfast, Luciano helps make tea, he pulls the tea pot out to heat water on the stove, get the teas bag, his cup and the agave. While the water is getting hot, he puts agave in the bottom of the cup, opens the tea bag, readies a spoon and puts everything else away. I even pour a little almond milk into a cup so he can add milk for himself. This has become a great morning ritual, he even pours some of his tea into a cup for Imogen and gives her a spoon. Sometimes tea prepping is not on his list, he may want to crack eggs, add pancake ingredients to a bowl of whatever, I just go with the flow.

-After breakfast we clean up, Luciano puts all the dishes in the sink and sometimes I give him the spray bottle full of white vinegar to clean the table and floor, Imogen comes behind him with a rag or paper towel and wipes up the vinegar. This works beautifully and they lose interest just in time for me to be done with dishes.

Then we do a little prepping for a morning walk or outside play. I hum or sing a song that some into my head (at first I felt silly singing, but I realize that the spirit of it is to simply put everyone in a good mood, so even if it’s not specifically a kids song, I think that just the general positive energy that comes from music is what helps move the kids. So while this happens we brush our teeth, put shoes on, fill water bottles and get ready to go out into the world.

-Morning movement in Donna Simmons curriculum she stresses something very easy to miss, that I think is so beautiful. She says don’t ask your child what does the day feel like, but take them out to move their bodies and let them discover on their own, And so too often I see children who need to be narrated to constantly to understand the things around them. The benefit of “talking less” is that you really cultivate an independent thinker, someone who observes, someone who becomes mindful and flowing. Not so dissimilar to the foundations of Permaculture. This technique is very difficult, for instance you see a butterfly floating pass, do you say look at that butterfly? No, I think the recommendation might be something dear Anna Blash (a friend and unschooler schooler) did in front of me once, she began to sing a little song with the words being, what is fluttering in the air, its orange and white, etc…all the children began to look around to discover something, she never pointed at it, she never even revealed it with her eyes, and when the children looked to see, they all felt a special discovery.

This said, in the mornings I strive to get Luciano out to look around, although I do have to set an agenda for longer walks, otherwise he gets disappointed when we return home without accomplishing something and begs to keep walking. This conflicts with Imogen’s nap time and food preparations.

This has become a small problem that I’m hoping to work out with some inventive agendas such as millipede collecting, lizard spotting or leaf collecting. I initially wanted to ask him questions about the sun, the temperature, etc. but I think in time these things settle into the subconscious and build.

When the morning walk/movement has been successful, Luciano willingly returns home and ready for a snack. The first week we would wash our hands, pull out an apple or two and I would set up a cutting board with a knife and let him slice apples, he really, really enjoyed using the knife and eating the fruit of his labor. By this time in the day Imogen is usually ready for her first nap of the day. The first week of this schedule, she napped like clockwork and everything ran smooth, but not so much in the second week, she was so stimulated by Luciano that I couldn’t get her down, but she was so tired, she wouldn’t let me put her down, so I tried to either engage her in an activity too, or settle Luciano down for the daily story and she might doze off.

The stories are such a significant and important element of this philosophy or education.  I have always told Luciano stories, but I always changed them and told different ones two or three times a day. However, this curriculum recommends telling the same story at story time for a week, to really let it sink in, after the first telling of the story, the subsequent days of telling the same story should involve some engaging activity. So my first week I started with the Three Little Pigs, this version does involve the pigs being eaten, by the way. So the second day of the story I pulled out some natural, air drying modeling clay and I began to sculpt a pig and a house. I didn’t instruct him to do anything, I did put a piece of the clay in front of him, which he naturally started playing with it and listening to the story at the same time.

Post the story he went off developing ideas of things he wanted to make with the clay and asked me to do it for him, since the clay was really hard and not really manageable for little fingers.

The third day of the story we acted it out with finger puppets and props laying around, the second day I told it outside and built houses with bamboo straw, sticks and rocks, the fourth day I painted a scene as I told it, the fifth day I used the sculptures from the second day and on Saturday he asked me to tell him the story early in the morning while I was making the bed, which surprised me.

After the story time, he would just keep playing by himself while Imogen slept and I got to work on my projects until he was done. Then I try to have a daily project. I’m currently collecting a seasonal inventory of these. It has to be flexible for me since Imogen might be awake at this point and she will need to take part too. I always have my eyes out for materials or ideas.

Depending on how much time all the above took, lunch happens before or after the daily project. I usually have something simple and fast planned that doesn’t involve too much, unless it is cooking day (Mondays). Then we clean up, including doing some chores that I’ve given to the children, Imogen particularly enjoys feeding the animals. Then I engage the kids in more physical play, in the garden or with other children, something to get them moving again.

I might give them another snack depending on when lunch happened, then basically I prep dinner, get them in for showers, story time and bed. Well, that is the ideal day. Of course there are weekly things that happen that get slotted in for projects or outings. The curriculum recommended setting themes for the day so that your child may start to recognize the differenced in the days of the week. My themes for Luciano being 3.5 and Imogen being 1.25 are the following:

S- Son & Dad, plus organize day (this day allows me to get organized, clean and also for Nando and Luciano to share some one on one time.

M- Cooking/Soup Day

T- Outing, Shopping, Play date day

W- Crafts and Special Project (this day I usually introduce something new, last week was simple sewing)

TH- Love Day- This day is for nurturing our family, we tend our animals by brushing them, giving treats, water plants, groom ourselves with a family bath, maybe scrub the floor.

F- Tea Party Day

S- Family Movie Night

These are things that work for me and seemed to cater to our lifestyle at the moment, but I’m sure these things will change as our work and projects change.  I consider this first year a training course for myself. There are so many homeschooling blogs that I find so inspiring, it seems like the real key to it is nurturing your interests so that you may nurture your child’s.

Our Millipede Bug Jug

Kombucha mother

Our Fall sculpting

Mangrove seeds from Bahia Honda

Jack fruit seeds

Mate Sun Tea

Imogen is ready

Compost

Herb spiral

Three Billy Goats Gruff eating grass

First sewing project

Sewing a billy goat

Biting the Bullet: The Heat of Miami

Bus living is tough, one might envision, and one has envisioned this no strings attached mobile living situation, traveling, living anywhere, especially that idealistic field in the country side, perhaps there are sheep running around, cows grazing, or perhaps a seaside picture. But this is not the case, it is more disgruntled faces of folks wanting you to move on, folks who say to Nando, and I quote, " I use to be a Dead Head." Nando's expression is priceless, his face is absolute cultural mis-communication, I see WTF in the wrinkles on Nando's forehead as he looks to me as an interpreter. I want to laugh so hard, but my laughter is always condescending to both parties, so I restrain.

I explain to Nando, I explain here, I explain to my parents, I explain to children and even our friends. This is a commitment, this is a choice to rebel against the shit. The rent, the bills, the constant work. And this is what is in our hearts, but in reality I think we spend so much time working on developing a framework for ourselves that it ostracizes us out, we become black sheep everywhere, we only find solace in our other bus family friends and they are one pair in the world.

We always console ourselves with the idea that everything we suffer for only allows us greater opportunities in the future, richer educations for our children, unique experiences had by none, but some where else we punish ourselves with the whys of going against the flow, the battle of rents, material comforts and as the sweat drips from our brows and we force ourselves to read books, play games and smile for our children, we raise our eyebrows and say yes this is hard and I don't know how to remedy it.

During the visit to my parents houses Luciano got indoctrinated with television, I would sit and watch with him, all the stories had good vs. evil and my favorite and most difficult to digest is the ...Ever After.

My obsession with this began in Suburbia outside Jacksonville. Death is so much more apparent in suburbia, in deep routines and efficiency there is little room for non linear thinking. Day after day the same, waiting for retirement, a quick calculation of the rest of your life. Wake up NOW, Work NOW, Drive NOW, Home NOW, Eat NOW, Shower NOW, TV NOW, Sleep NOW, repeat Endless.

TV, Movies and media saturation propagates the belief in this lifestyle, as Chomsky says: manufactured consent.

Although if one begins to analyze the content of  popular films, novels, tv we always end with an "ever after". A main character ventures through a struggle, a battle, any conflict and ends up with resolution. Most of these heroes or protagonists would never allow themselves to settle into a stagnant tv watching lifestyle and if the audience would ever recognize that their hero, the character in which they are suppose to identify with, would never find themselves settled into an an armchair staring absently into a void while this world of ours moved around us in such a hideous way, these characters would slap them (you)  in the face and say "WAKE UP", and then everyone across the plugged in globe would stand up, go outside, rally together, hug their neighbors, kiss their wives, play with their kids and take down big business everywhere.

After all, "Ever After" must entail enlightment, since life never changes, just perspectives. Struggle against adversity creates enlightenment, one comes out on the other side altered. Every character I have encountered ends up with greater consciousness or commits suicide, which may also be attributed to a lesser ideal of enlightenment (maybe an existential enlightenment).

So there must be levels of contentment and enlightenment. There is no ultimate enlightenment as we are never content or all knowing. Cinderella ends up with Prince Charming, the end?, no, they argue over what to eat, she becomes frigid because she is Earthy and longs for a nude swim in the river on a full moon and he is appalled that his princess would be nude in the peasant's river. It's never "Ever After", it is only for a moment and no matter how many summers I sweat in this bus or suffer my own self criticisms of not pushing the envelope in the right way or living up to my unrealistic expectations of myself as a parent and advocate of the philosophies I hold so dear to my heart, I believe that it is all for the best. That the outcome will outweigh the banal comforts of a regular life. That if life is worth living that there must be constant struggle and inner peace with this struggle. A great enjoyment of evolving and living up to a greater cosmic vibration and in the end you leave this body and sigh just in time to catch your breath.

The film never continues, if it does it becomes a B-movie or someone got smart about this and devised a prequel, in which you never have to see Cinderella old, longing to be nude in the fields and remorseful about her turn over to an elitist empire. One might argue that Prince Charming loved her so dear he facilitated her witchy dancing or even denounced his crown for a simple life. But still would he be happy on mead and cheese, of course not, it would just be another placating ploy to make the audience to believe that there is a situation of a linear non changing plateau of happiness and this specific story places the happiness of one upon another, a complete co-dependent relationship. But I digress.

We look at our children and see mirrors of our own attributes that run so deep we never even considered that they were our own. They were there, left untended, grew wild and now that we ask them to stop, our lives shift in order to mold better versions of ourselves, as gently as possible weeding the worst out and fertilizing for the best. We pursue our intuitions, we follow our hearts and hope that our children will do the same.

Exit Macclenny

Well, our amazing summer travels turned into reversing back to Miami to work on a large project with the City of Miami.

We are proposing a Sustainable Urban Arts Center and are scouting county land for the project.

We are driving down the county roads, making a stop to a exotic Florida spring and I can't help this fear that arises from my belly when we drive through this part of the State.

There is the Florida State Hospital, a huge prison, a correctional facility and pretty much nothing but trailers for the residents of this area. The grass is perfectly manicured, as all the prisoners are constantly maintaining it, they all speak poorly of women, like to impose their authority aggressively and I find their persecutions, no different then those Muslim renegades who show their loyalty through stoning, suicide missions and the alike. None of them have perspective, none of them have choices.

I like this Thomas Jefferson quote: No people can be both ignorant and free.

I feel it is a little ironic and very apt to today's American culture.

The land is so green and laden with Spanish Moss, like grey hairs and stagnant air, a place that use to be rich in energy, a place that use to provide endless resources for people who knew how to listen to the land. Now the residents complain of the heat, the drought, the mosquitoes. But if the land was in harmony, if the rivers and ponds were full of fish, if bats and owls were in equal balance with the insects, but they are not, pesticides dropped from the sky kill a great deal of insects, the waters are polluted with pesticide down wash, over fished and even the architectural decision infringe on ones enjoyment of the land and dis-balances the ecology. For instance, Salt Springs State Park decided to frame their spring with a huge wall, thus cutting off the ecology of the earth and the animal and organisms that depended on the beach and transitional water land habitat. Also, Lake Okeechobee has a giant retention wall or hill that completely surrounds it, I suppose one year it flooded the land and devastated the local area and the military or government built the wall that stands today. Now the area is barren, stagnant and culturally frightening. No one uses this huge lake as a resource, it is just fished and perhaps to death.

It is like a reversion to the time of the puritans, those people who expressed so much fear of nature and believed the forests haunted, full of beasts and naked witches. Perhaps the contemporary fears are West Nile, poisonous spiders, snakes, flesh eating bacteria and naked witches.

I feel so desperate for a place free of television, movies, video games, fast food, processed food, pesticide food and negativity. A place that is soft and flowing with nature, a place to show my children the beauty of it all, how wonderful it can be, why we should protect life and what real wealth is.

If you know this place, please invite us.

Bus Project Retrospective

Bus Project Retrospective

I feel that it has been so long since I have written a good in depth post and that time has passed so quickly that a good retrospective is in order. I have finally taken some steps back away from our lives on the road and considered the people we have met and the stories we have:

I’ll pick up from Flagstaff last November. We were running from L.A., deciding that relocating in that city was not a brilliant idea. We were chasing some WVO down for our bus. We called some numbers we saw on the collection tanks behind some restaurants and finally, somehow came across this man:

It was very cold, there was snow on the ground and he (Steve) told us some places he had not collected that we could fill up, however these places were empty. It is always a restaurant tour when looking for WVO. So, he invited us to come to his refinery and pick some oil up. It was very dark, Nando pumped about 10 or 15 gallons of WVO, which was all Steve had, then we had a long conversation about reclaiming life, living off the grid, away from corrupt lifestyles and politics. Then as a gesture he slipped Nando $100 to buy some diesel. How generous, how unexpected.

My general impression of the States on our way across was great poverty fueled by fear and repression of truth through cultural rituals of consumer culture and media indoctrination. The poverty was cultural, spiritual and lifestyle effect. It was if this country is living with a vision of wealth, a sort of American mythology, the typical Hollywood interpretation of this country, yet the reality is, you can not live that life, because you all have crippling debt, spend more money on material objects then the food you put in your body and pray for someone to fix it all for you. 

But this guy in Flagstaff, traditional as an original settler, a sort of frontiersman, portrayed the real American values, a renegade blended in with the norm. His consciousness heighted with his own awareness and dislocation from popular culture. He had his WVO business and a real presence of engaging with truth and interpreting reality.

Our next stop was to visit our dear friend Marcus Abel in a little place called Carrizozo NM. Before we got there we decided to stop and visit the petrified National Forest, which was a bit strange. We had previously bought an annual National Park Pass for $80, when we got the law called on us for emergency “camping” at Rocky Mountain National Park. So we thought we would take advantage of the pass to enter the park. As you approach there were fields of petrified trees in pieces, layer out like tomb stones in folks’ yards and then there was a visitor center that we thought was the entrance of the park. Nando ran in, asked if it was the entrance and as he left, he was given a free piece of petrified wood stapled to a business card. As we approached the real National Park entrance we were stopped by a ranger to ask if we had any petrified wood, we said yes, before any explanation, the ranger asked in a monotonus tone of voice if it was the piece on a card from the Visitor Center, we said yes. Then he smiled and nodded and let us pass. This happened again in the same robotic fashion as we exited the park. The park was a little depressing, the museum was sort of neat with its taxidermy animals set in their mock environments, I love things like that, except maybe the animals should all be wearing suits and ties and playing with iPhones in a court room. My creative ideas aside, they had an incredibly intact pre dinosaur skeleton which captured Luciano, also they had a nice map of what the continents looked like when the forest was flooded with volcanic ash and then cooled by sea water to petrify the trees. I always find continental drift such an important part of understanding history and how things happened. I would love to see an entire evolution of the world timeline along side continental drift detailed. We walked the park; it was cold and semi unmemorable.  

Yes, Carrizozo. As we drove through the flat arid dessert, I dreamed of a wild oceanic place with giant sea monsters, then giant lizards then the dinosaurs. I considered how land becomes desert, how little nutrients seem to be in the land, how course and dry the plants that manage to live here are, how rigid even the texture of the skin of the animals are. How remarkably hot in the day and extremely cool at night. The desert, so much like the vastness of my heart and spirituality, a mystery unto itself and completely rejecting contemporary culture and claiming its own by eliminating the opportunities for just any organism to survive, these organisms must be extraordinary to maintain a life here. And what better of a blank canvas to ask for to have your visions come to fruition, to dance naked, intoxicated with the fruits of the desert. As this was going through my mind the full moon rose as if it had been lit on fire by the sun. As if the sun shot it with a flare of light so strong that the moon, after so many long years of rejecting the sun’s kiss had finally allowed itself to indulge in its romance. If ever there was a night to howl at the moon, tonight was the night.

 And Carrizozo? This place was not even a pin mark on our map; the town is surreal and full of eccentricities. We arrived late at night; we met Marcus and his daughter with visions of our breath against the stars. He invited us into his live workspace, which looks like an old storefront. The front part of his studio was small black and white tiled floors with paintings in progress against the walls, amongst pieces of aged wood and strange metal bits from various machines and functions. Beyond this space enter their live space, fitted with a nice wood burning stove, full bath, kitchen and organized simplicity. We sat and discussed our travels, as he and his daughter had also recently completed their travels in a VW van painted with the same energy as their free spirits. They had amazingly come across Carrizozo and decided to come back to it. His daughter had found a place for her to learn the things she wanted and he the solitude to concentrate and work. The filming of some film like the Book of Eli uplifted the façade of the town? The rest of the town was in disrepair with rusted corrugated metal coated with bright New Mexico colors. There were ceramic donkeys placed amongst the town, all individually created and different from each other. It was sort of the town theme, I suppose.
 

Surprisingly there were some cool, as in hip, as in alright, artists who have taken the town as their own and despite the cold and isolation, Carrizozo proved to be a sweet little hide away from the world. We met the locals, who all had incredible lives, Columbia graduates, successful artists, stage productions, writers, and beautiful artists. We got toured around their lives and wished we could have stayed longer to embrace the small growing community, but had a date with Miami film production. Our last day we walked over to a little café that was rated highly by the locals. As we walked in the tables, chairs and décor was from 1950’s and so was the waitress’s hairdo, except it was more feminist. As we waited for our organic lunches, I looked on their bookshelf to find a book called The Simian People or 7 dimensional light people and guide to …..I’m sure someone can research it, as I’m currently at the Florida Georgia boarder, sweating in a pine forest near the Okeefonokee Swamp with no Internet. That beside, the book was written by this woman who claimed to be able to channel these perhaps enlightened and transcended being from maybe a specific place in the cosmos and that you too could heed their advice. I found this very interesting and later found that more of this would fall on my lap or at least my research into some greater spirituality and cosmic usage ;) .

    

We did our laundry from the back door of dear Marcus’ studio and saw some real local culture, enjoyed a dinner with the artistic community and excused ourselves from exiting so soon. On the road we drove with great time and good rhythm, until we said, where is Gorda (our cat)? So back to Carrizozo. We joked about what everyone had constantly said, “you never leave Carrizozo” and so it was true. Back to Marcus’ and a whistle to Gorda and away we went. Finally.

When Nando and I had first met each other we traveled in a little Mazada across the country to Burning Man and a general romantic tour, I was about 4 months prego and we stopped to see my Dad who was at the moment living in Texas. We drove through Texas and got pulled over a few times for no reason other then Nando being of the complexion of a Mexican. And what was even more particular is that the cops would come to my side of the car and ask if everything was okay. I would shake my head in disappointment, get really boiled blood and want to become a civil rights attorney and bring those small minded, racist, hypocrites down. But then that would be my life and that would just be negativity daily, with little life time accomplishment as this is a deep corruption in the world. So, no tickets, no warnings, no speeding violations, each of these Caucasian cops would let us go and nothing more. Hmm?

Pyramid Lake is a sacred place for the natives, it is strictly for natives, but when we inquired to some natives as to the whereabouts of this mystery place, they led us right in. No one was there, we were so dusty we stripped and swam in the  clear volcanic waters like a private ceremony just for us. 

So while we were traveling in the bus we decided to avoid Texas at all costs. We swooped around to visit some of Nando’s forgotten relatives.  Cousins that he grew up with in Colombia are now living in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. We had a nice time visiting, ate some Colombian infused food, sang anti consumer culture songs and I found out that all of Nando’s relatives call him Chino. Which I thought was funny and must remember for future addresses.  I was so surprised that after two nights of parking in Caligula's suburban neighborhood, that not one of his neighbors complained about the bus, at least not while we were there. On other occasions we had cops come within a few hours or neighbors complaining directly, which is always nicer then a secret call to the police. Another visit that we wished could have been a little longer, but Miami was calling, the season was cooking and production was in motion.

Singing our anti-consumer song in OK

Out of OK we ran into some bad traffic, we looked behind us and saw nothing but trucks for miles, we have noticed this on the road but never so compacted as this instance.

Nothing but trucks for miles!

The rest of the journey was so quick, soon we were in Miami, parked at the warehouse where Luciano was conceived, working away and beginning our winter meeting our new friends and life.

On the road I had coincidentally received a text from a midwife friend who had told me that there was a waldorf inspired school happening at the Farm in Little Haiti, I was gobsmacked, as this is exactly the thing that made us want to stay in Denver and Portland. This is what we were looking for in a community that we would want to grow our roots and raise our children.

The second day of being in Miami I approached who is now a dear friend,  Anna Blash (see her article in MiamiZine at www.artofculturalevolution.org) . I offered my time, money, services, whatever to try to get Luciano involved and she rejected me initially, but soon she came around, called me and asked me to come volunteer. Which soon turned into a lovely intellectual relationship with lots of dialogue about child education and parenting. I felt so charmed and lucky to be apart of this little sprouting waldorf inspired co-op at Miami’s very own urban permaculture farm. It seems like the entire season Nando worked making commercials and hip hop music videos (See his Blog www.artofproduction.blogspot.com) 

and I was attending the Farm school, getting to know intimately the children, parents, teachers and the inspired method of relating the three. I spent days and days getting into the rhythm of Waldorf
and Enki education at home. I wrote out an active curriculum for the school, drew patterns for felt crafts, cooked extensive impromptu vegan meals, edited fairy tales and got first hand views of the published Enki curriculum.

Baby Chick

 

 

Luciano celebrated his 3rd birthday with his Farm school friends.


The education given at the school might have been missing a little balance, but the experiences given are hard to come by and generally this school offered a great supplement to a real homeschooling curriculum. I have left the school and the parents that I have met eager and excited for my future of homeschooling Luciano and Imogen.

Field trip to Monkey Jungle

Everyone from the school at Monkey Jungle

Banana Spider at Glaser Farms

Glaser Farms

A Silver Back at Monkey Jungle who was a rescue from a circus who took all his teeth out :(

Circle Time

Friday Field Trip

Luciano's brother Felipe

But slowly, as anything else that is new , the school became conflicted with its operations, commitments, time invested. The underlying energy seemed to diffuse and now I believe the school might be closed for the new school year. However, Luciano made some good friends whom he loves and speaks about often even today.

Luciano's birthday at the Miami Zoo

When we returned it was so refreshing to see all of our friends and celebrate birthdays, holidays, general days and have conversations and a familiarity that is invaluable. To work and develop projects together. At the warehouse, our Italian friends had shipped over tons of white carrera marble from Itlay. They were making Art Basel preparations to exhibit a completed marble piece designed and fabricated by Tiziano, pictured below.

  

El Dia De Las Velitas

Salvidor

 

Buena Vista Birthday Treats for Heather and Sammy's  8th Birthday Flamingo Park Miami Beach

Thanksgiving Day nap, Imogen styled by Cinzia 100% Italia

   

                                                                                     

Pedro's BBQs

Cinzia

Heather's T-Day Turkey

My choice for dinner

Valeria and Pedro get married

Scenes from Bus Living Miami 

Four little Monkeys....

 

Full Moon over the Bay

playing post rain

Yes, I often feel like the She-wolf

Our garden at the Yard 261 Ne 73rd Street

His Worm Painting

 Jayme @ any night at the warehouse

Fawn, Sammy, Karen, Meli and Lauren watching xmas trees burn on the tracks of Little Haiti.

Burning

Sunflowers coming

Lauren with nudist Buddhist Luci

Crafting

Composting

Team Zissou

Luciano's Third birthday

Sunflowers in our garden

Beach Day with tia Lauren

The start of the garden

Complete

Everyone was hyped for Art Basel, my dearest friend Lauren came from Portland, Nando was doing install jobs and the parties were being planned. It was the usual hype and temporary cultural inoculation that comes to Miami yearly. We got passes for a few shows, attended a few openings and Nando went out partying with the usual crowd. 

Art Basel Install @ Emanuel Perrotin Miami

 

An Art Skeptic

Gallery Diet Basel Week

Wynwood Art Crowd Circus Vendor



A better idea is Sabor a Peru on Biscayne, the ceviche is amazing!

Meanwhile, acquaintances of bus living popped back into town and were being pushed around Miami by the law and we put our necks out to try to squeeze them into our parking situation at the Yard in Little Haiti. And after some technically sweet worded emails, Tom, Sam, Mateo and Harper parked up with us at 261 73^rd Street.

Tom and Sam

I think we were all a little dubious, as we had both been burned from previous attempts at communal bus living ideals. But actually this led us to set our boundaries right away and develop a beautiful rhythm and relationship. Mealtimes were shared and alternated, and while one was cooking dinner the other bathed and prepared children for bed, and while one cleaned dishes the others read stories and readied children for sleep. It was a very sweet flow when it was on track, but otherwise it could tend to stress us out if the needs of every child were not met. Just as anything else in life. Sam initiated a coffee addiction for everyone as she took on a job at a very nice coffee shop in Wynwood (Panther). We experimented with dinner plans, schedules, art ideas, activities, zine making, kimchi, kombucha, sewing, wood tossing, fly breeding, composting, butterfly hatching, carpooling, car pushing and property acquisitions. Some of these experiments were successful and some not so. I must say after months of Farm school trails, that I had finally found a partner who helped shake it up for me and together we could support each other energetically, emotionally and independently.

Kids on the bus

  

The interior of the other bus, a MCI

Begin Easter

Easter Party at Shawnee's 

Yummy Shawnie's Green Thumb Popcorn

 

 

Today Sam and Tom are in Britain visiting Tom’s folks and Nando and I both miss them and wished we could travel somewhere and have a vacation from the struggle against the Miami heat, jobs, money making and habitual chores.

Too much work!

Mateo

All the kids playing as usual

Butterfly World for Harper's big 3

Is that Nando?

A casino's rainwater collection system

Philathrofest pre-party at wynwood walls, asleep before the party began.

Tom's birthday speech with booby cakes.

Kite flying Orlando @ my dads

Some runaways

Panther has the best Popsicles, think this one was basel

Beach days

lauren impersonator

A quick trip to Nando's sisters (saltwater) pool for Mother's Day

MOCA opening

Dad's shoes already

We participated in many events during the last six months in Miami. The non-profit was invited for a community day in El Portal, where Nando and I served his famous Colombian beans, brown rice, tostones and mixed green salad. Post that event we produced a Zine for Philanthrofest that took place in the green space in Midtown. We also conducted a series of interviews that we have been collecting all over the country, trying to edit together a real taste of contemporary American Culture. We also put together a great project proposal for a Sustaibale Urban Arts Center and are pushing forward with the project and collaborating with the City of Miami. Which is very exciting.

Meanwhile, our friend, neighbor, fellow eco bus liver and temporary parenting partner runs Artlurker and launched his Knight Arts Foundation funded Miami's Writers Prize at Locust Projects. It's great to see things happening and growing. We will be partnering with Tom and Sam in our future initiatives. 

Our booth at Philathrofest

Together we documented an un-commissioned public art piece, check out Artlurker's review of the piece here: http://www.artlurker.com/2012/06/downtown-pop-up-drop-off-o/

Currently we have been visiting my family in North Florida near the Georgia boarder in a town called Macclenny, if anyone is interested I have posted about Macclenny in another post, which can be seen here:  We arrived post my grandparents having some health issues that resulted in my grandmother having a few bypasses in her heart and my grandfather stressing out and being admitted to the ER. So our arrival was a little dubious and all of my immediate family seemed to be carrying a great deal of stress on their shoulders, including my mother. We considered leaving the day after we arrived, but didn't want to disappoint or offend and as Kurt Vonnegut mocked in his book Breakfast of Champions, we often accept bad ideas for the sake of being nice. 


The problem is, that I always romanticize what our visits to my childhood home might be like. I imagine chickens running around, herbs and flowers, fresh vegetables, and a world of natural exploration for my children beaming with life and fertility. But the reality is that even in poverty no one utilizes the land any more. It is manicured and  pest controlled, its feared and moaned at. Nando and I always dream of a piece of land like this one, with turtles and ducks in the ponds, food gardens, fruit trees, fowl, fresh eggs, a tree house for the kids with a bridge to a little fort where the kids could play out stories and bless the land with their enchantments. 


But this will never happen here, something has been taken away, as I wrote in the introduction to the Zine we published in Miami this Spring, " Most people rarely enjoy life with a deep enthusiasm or joy for the ordinary day-today things. People seem to have lost a love for themselves or perhaps the world around them, No longer is pride found in the creation of a beautiful homemade meal, it is held much higher to buy." And from this quote I am reminded that the reason that most of America buys food if because they are constantly working and they are constantly working to pay off debt for the things they bought to make themselves feel better about working a job they hate, and they do these things because the TV and media said this was normal. It is a perpetuating spiral of creating the walking dead, or as Alison Gresik mentions in her writing Walking Depression. 


I suppose when you live in real America who is so culturally undernourished it is hard to understand when you see someone who is attempting to liberate themselves and their children from these restraints.  I now know that when impoverished minds see the unconventional they react with fear, run a few labels through their minds and for us it is usually one of the following: gypsies, hippies, deadheads, bums, on the other side when we meet some like minded contemporaries they understand us, get excited about meeting us and we recognize these people by the time they spend with us, the questions they ask and the hospitality they offer. Bus living is difficult and a real science. We built our home with our hands, totally from scratch, developed systems for our utilities and waste that would be sustainable, ecologically conscious and safe. We studied through trial and error, we have become experts on things like human waste, drinking water, household toxins, WVO collection, diesel engines, rigging among other topics and situational encounters that involve being solved with our own two hands.

Its funny that anyone would see our family and our adventures and feel sorry for us and say something like: “Well, I hope you can afford a house one day.” And in my mind I want to say, I hope you can too, as I imagine most of Americans don’t own their homes, they own mortgages with a lender who owns their home. I feel so adamant about this "real wealth" ideal, real wealth being time with your family, eating real non gmo, pesticide, hormone free foods, seeing the Earth and enjoying life with deep breaths and joy. My adamancy with this ideal has even prevented me from attending the MFA program in San Francisco. I refuse to get on board with any of these political financial institutions making everyone so poor and those deceptive politicians, corporate CEOs and lobbyists so rich. I rather take it into my own hands, keep our projects going and pursuing an authentic life. That is what gets me excited, pursuing the truth, rejecting the fear and going forward with a spiritual evolution. I wish I could share that energy with my family, I wish I could heal their wounds and make them feel love and joy again. But being here for such an extended period of time as we renovated the bus to build Luciano his own bedroom, has only reaffirmed who I am and reminded me that I have always been the black sheep in my family. I have always pushed the boundaries of their beliefs and see that acceptance, as an adult may be conditional.

This is the worst outcome I would expect for my relationship with my children. I feel so connected with them and I’m constantly trying to improve myself, my ideas, my emotions so as to show them something meaningful, so as to instill a real engagement and not a divide between adult world and child world. My vision is to slightly alter my life in ways to incorporate the children into my life that teaches them to be real people, and as they grow they have their own lives, their own interests with the passion to pursue their curiosities about the world as their parents had demonstrated. This is the real education. Of course at this stage my children are still very young and creative play is their number one job at the moment. But I have already learned so much from my parent friends who have already began to homeschool their children and I’ve seen their mistakes and their successes. Patience and persistence seem to be the key factors to many successes with homeschooling and parenting.

We have created a great space for Luciano in the bus. He has his own loft style room above our bed, where he engages endlessly in his creative play.  Although I have noticed a quiet invasion of plastic toys, mostly robots and dinosaurs, which I am dubious about. So much plastic. Before I could simply make the toys disappear, but now there are emotional attachments, but not the mental capacity to understand the reasoning.   So they linger with our secret resentment. Nonetheless, it is a nice space for him to operate, dress himself and take on new responsibilities.

Luciano's room complete

First playdate in his room

Two weeks ago Nando received news from Miami that his green card had arrived and that he can now begin the process of applying for citizenship, which means this bus might really become international. We have waited so long for some resolution for his immigration problem and it has finally begun to untangle itself and we have so much relief. Our plans for the immediate future are to head to Earthhaven to visit Patricia Allison, then up to NYC, maybe CT and Maine? We might also get married to aid in the citizenship application. It seems like an energetic hump that we are overcoming by soon will enjoy the other side. 

Comment and let me know I have readers. It will power some writing momentum :)

Sunset over suburbia

The Bus emptied, racks down

Full Moon over the field

A tropical storm passed right over us, flooded the Glen Saint Mary River and left a lot of Macclenny near the river, underwater, here we are walking to access the damage near by.

Vero Beach Jacksonville

My aunt and I with our children hunting sharks teeth

Rainwater Filtration System complete!