The Impulse Itself: Parties, & Cycles & Life on the Farm

August 8, 2008

Parties, & Cycles & Life on the Farm

Kirsten Russel, Laura Scimeca

Equinox Bonfire and Fullmoon Jamfest, Seed-tending Time, Anngar Farm.
All photos courtesy of & brilliantly done by Geoff Demeritt

So, guess who finally, finally got a digital camera? Just in time for our next Farm Party! Tho I would never go back on hiring Geoff to photograph our last big Jam in March...

I gotta say, it's really been slow-going for me, metrosuburbanite girl now living this crazy outsized life here on the farm--the sunflowers like trees bent down now to kiss the ground from where they come, the bob-white singing in the bows of the holly each morning, the shadows on the porch that make the greens so green and the light so white and gold. The wind like an ocean through the sycamore leaves. The corn, so tall and ripe, taller than the street from the angle that I am used to peering at the roads so that now I can't see who is driving through this little patch of country that we call ours. How funny that this computer I write on is only 9 months old, this online deal now only 8a way of life for me for 8 months? It feels like forever--and change, balance, transition, is so subtle in its various manifestations that we curse ourselves with missing how easy it goes by...complaining all the while how we're missing it.

Tommorow is Bran and I's last big summer party--summer, that is, if you're going by the school rotation of the year. But it is the perfect time to celebrate, with the earth waning as she does and already, here on the shore, so clearly expressive of her tides. I saw my first V of geese yesterday, already. On my back flush with the ocean and parallel completely to the sky, I rose up out of my saltwater bob like a magnet had drawn me only to see a formation of geese flying across the top of the westend of the sky. And I thought, what? They only fly like that at travel time, at season's change....then last night on my ride home from the ocean, just as I turned on to the back farmroads near where I live and stake my current claim, there they flew again, in the orange and near green pre-thunderstorm night. And the weather this moringing--it speaks of fall. Go outside and let your mind float--see to it that you, too, know this to be true...

So this party tommorow was meant to have some fine musicians taking the stage, but every band we scheduled backed out than recommitted than backed out once again. Hard to say who will come. At this point, the only official band we have on is Firey Steve and His Moosehead Friends, these way hip young dudes right out of C-town. I am amped and fully stoked to see these kids come on. Otherwise, there are slated to be a lot of single performers--friends whose bands can't come or aren't all able to play together etcetra. And so it should be, Harvest time is about the individual's gifts and and at once about collectivity--which is why the energy of Harvest parties always always bring out the best jams....Impromptu sessions to light up the night...

Here are a few of our far out friends, in their finest elements, making music and soul shaking back at the turn of light..Equinox full moon first day of Spring...