Eccentricities

I feel that in sobriety everyone comes to the fun realization that they are a bit eccentric. That’s probably one of my favorite things about the sober community. We are a surprising bunch. You never know what we will get into. As we regain our energy and find that we have more time on our hands we start to spend it in new surprising ways. I have friends who took up mambo lessons, opened a bike shop, or started making their own fireworks, guitars, guns, bread, caftans… Others who learned to speak mandarin, train dogs for a living, remodel homes, become MMA fighters, counselors and well, the list is just endless. I too have done a lot of things with all my new energy and time that surprised me. Things I maybe talked about but never followed through on. Some things that had never dawned on me before. I went back to school, I taught myself how to animate and then even took some classes on that front. I finished a series of paintings (depressive, still-life, shy nudes - I like to call them). I picked up my camera again and got to know my neighborhood really well and then… I started foraging. Weekly. Sometimes daily. If you would have told me I’d be nearly forty and roaming around my neighborhood with a big fat grin on my face shaking down and climbing up all my neighbors trees on the reg I would have felt very misunderstood but, you would have been right. This year I have come home with peaches, dandelion greens, blackberries, loquats, onions, pecans, grapefruits, limes, chives, mustang grapes and herbs that helped me survive the heat and any anxiety that was creeping around. Right now citrus is in season. These little satsuma oranges are sweet, easy to peel and to pilfer as it turns out. Before you wag your finger at me for thieving - I only forage things I see going to waste. A lot of people around here ignore their fruit trees. I’m simply filling the void and showing my gratitude for the abundance I live in. What grows in your neighborhood? What seemingly weird hobby have you picked up in sobriety?

Day 310: Sautéed kale, scallions, red potatoes, leftover steak, loads of garlic and serranos with pumpkin seeds, pecans and bloobs. I cooked it all with a little ghee and added some lemon at the end. The citrus helps you absorb all the iron in the greens and having been anemic back in my drinking days I do what I can to keep anemia at bay.

Change

Today my neighborhood is loosing one of it’s farms. Yes, luckily we are blessed with a few but.. this one has been my favorite. Eden.. that’s what they called it. And rightfully so. I walk or ride my bike there two times a week and it has been that way for years. This land fed me through quarantine. The lovely folks who tend to it donated food to a recovery center I worked with. They have been my neighbors and a beautiful part of the culture in this place I call home. Beyond feeding me this farm played a big roll in the early days of my sobriety. Like many of us who quit drinking I found I had more time for hobbies. I bought a camera. A Pentax K100, like the one I had in high school. I took with me to the farm every week for a year. I was newly waking up with sun and the farm was on the same schedule. It was constantly shifting and growing too. In a variety of big and small ways. Some overwhelmingly obvious and others like a rumor. All of it had this rhythm that I needed to reconnect with. I was so out of touch with myself. I needed sun and dirt. I needed to witness things get dug up to make room for new crops. New seasons. I needed to be reminded that everything eventually becomes compost. How the ease of the morning sun becomes relentlessly bright, wilting everything in its path before it stretches out and breaks into shadows around rush hour. The process and evolution of it all was something I had forgotten. but could relate to. In a very grounded and natural way. Bringing my camera along helped me remember that there is always another perspective. I am so grateful for these photos now. Not simply because soon that land will have yet another condo building on it.. but because they remind me how beautiful change can be despite how challenging and uncomfortable it tends to feel in the moment. I will miss the convenience and the energy if the farm but I’m comforted in knowing that they are not done. They are simply moving to a new space. I hope their new neighbors appreciate them as much as I have.

Here are some favorites from that year. I shot black white film almost exclusively at the time and I think it was because so much of me wanted the world to be simple like that. If you’d like to see more shots from the farm or if you want to see some other places I wandered around aimlessly with my camera they can be found here.

Day 185: Scrambled eggs with pesto and Parmesan.. with my attempt at a gluten free savory zucchini bread… was it the worst thing I’ve ever made? No. But It was dry enough to have me worried that I might choke to death alone in my apartment and become a statistic. So thumbs down on this experiment.