Look at your hand.

I will tell you how to see everything you need in life right on your five fingers.

Look at your pinky finger, look at it and be reminded-
     You need to breath.

• Good air, fit lungs, medicine to stay healthy, and good aromas.

Then look at your ring finger, look at it and know-
    You need to sleep

• A lot goes into a good nights sleep. You need shelter, one that feels save and warm; you need to have a satisfied mind that won't keep you up with thoughts half thunk, a tired body healthy and well exercised from the day, and a clean soul that won't trouble you with deeds left undone.

Now look at your middle finger, it reminds you of a basic need-
    You need to shit

• Some of us don't like to talk about it, some people don't even like the word, but we all know deep down how important it is. It means you have to eat, and to shit well, you need to eat well. Means you need to exercise and move around. Means you need to be able to take care of the shit somehow, most people just flush it out to sea, but its better to decompose it on land, leave those minerals to the earth, but you gotta find a safe way to do it, compost it. You need to keep your body clear, inside and out.

Your pointer finger
    You need to love

• "I ain't  gonna tell you how to love or be loved, because you get a different genie each time that lantern is rubbed." To be human, you need love in your life, maybe not always a special sweet heart (though that is nice when it happens), but you need to have love, your very life depends on it. Without love you never would have made it past your first week, and I doubt many of us could live a whole day with out some love, even if its just caring for yourself. We can't be a human alone, our speech, our thoughts, our triumphs, our deaths, it's all with others, part of our shared life.

But then there's your thumb, the one that grasps things, it gets you in trouble.
    You want to control things.

• Now control ain't a bad thing, we all know that its mighty useful to have some control from time to time. But wanting to control things gets us in trouble. Most the other animals don't have so much control, and they do just fine making do with the world as it's given to them "the sparrows in the sky, they do not sow or reep..." but we can shape the world. The thumb makes us want to hold on to things, to control things to shape the world. Make a fist, see how your thumb covers the other fingers: you can't love with control, you can't control the fact that you shit, you can't maintain control in you sleep, and you have no control on how much longer you will be breathing for. Controlling things can be good and can be useful, but be mighty careful, the chains that bind go both ways.

I stole the basic idea for this post from a cool dude named Leaf living in Eugene, as far as I know its his original material, and I wanted to give credit where credit is due. But I did have to rebuild a lot of it from scratch and half remembered conversations long past.

This blog is also about the adventures of getting to the farm, and this gem is one of the real highlights of going through Eugene a couple weeks ago.