journal.saipua.comSAIPUA

JOURNAL Friday, March 6, 2020 There is a type of man who was once worth throwing a coy glance at until he opens the door in front of you with his elbow or worse uses the napkin from his coffee on the doorhandle or worse shirks his hand up into his sleeve creating an instant prophylactic with his jacket. In an instant, that potential Interstate 87 rest area romance is dead in the water. Granted I'm no longer looking for love on the NY State Thruway (or in the parking lot of Stewarts) but I notice how completely unsexy fear around germs is and I've been trying to work out why. I remember years ago excitedly meeting for the first time a well known media blogger type and sitting down to lunch in Brooklyn at the start of flu season... after we greeted one another she pulled out a tube of hand sanitizer and I was like oh no girl, we done here. There's something specific about germaphobia that says stay back! we will share nothing . Something that indicates an unwillingness to surrender to being in a moment, or in community together . If you've had a romantic partner who doesn't want to come close when you're sick, you feel this - it's utterly disappointing and hurtful. I'm not advocating for cavalier behavior in this moment. I wash my hands more now too. (Did you know it's the friction of rubbing your hands together that helps to eliminate germs more than the type of soap you use?) But more importantly I'm ingesting raw garlic and apple cider vinegar and trying to get enough sleep. I like to imagine looking out for each other in these ways of preventative care instead of fearing each other and this sense of alienation I'm sensing around me in the city. Try this and be well! 1 whole bulb of garlic, peeled 1/2 cup of Apple Cider Vinegar Buzz that up in a blender, vitamix, or food processor Or if you have none of those tools, you can crush the cloves under a heavy knife and let them macerate in the vinegar. Take two spoons of that tonic 2 times a day with some water and honey if you like. Caution: if you don't have something in your stomach and take it straight it will make you double over in sudden sick full body pain, which I'm sort of into, but that dissipates after a few minutes or so. 3 comments: Monday, February 17, 2020 Shampoo song of myself. This is going to read like sponsored content because I'm about to tell you a story about my bathing routine and truth be told my paycheck (let alone this farm) is supported by the sale of bar soaps and recently, a little body oil. Relinquishing wedding work and floristry made for some big economic shifts in the business of Saipua and my life - I had to cease most of my frivolous city type spending and adopt austerity measures. I'm shy to get into this topic too deep as it's one I know we love to judge one another about. That aside, my relationship to money and luxury is so complex I could write multiple memoirs on the topic (lace it with flower arranging how-to pages in order to attract a publisher?) Suffice it to say I like extremes and my practice here knits together a deep sense of frugality with exemplary acts of hedonism. We do, after all, have a 4-foot disco ball in the big barn which we fire up not only for large dance events (save the date; SUPERNATURE is July 25th!) but also for the occasional mid week ' microdisco .' Mediocrity is the enemy! And so follows, my story. My song of shampoo. All fall I used the scrap ends of shampoo bottles lying about my farm house; a place which housed on and off many women in the last few years and so there were a plethora of random travel sized bottles to use up, and then some quite luxurious bottles, half full and stuck deep in the closet. I went through them all, a desire to not waste anything, all the while in the back of my mind devising a plan to - only when this cleaning out of old shampoos was complete - I would go online and treat myself (dear god I'm getting sparkly telling this part) to giant brown bottles of AESOP shampoo and conditioner with the pump handles and then! I would be a complete woman. I do all this and get to the checkout phase on the website of AESOP and stop. Days go by. I use a bottle of Dr. Bronners once and say never again. Every time I'm in the grocery store or food coop I peruse the haircare section but nothing seems right or good enough -which is also to say that nothing compares to the status-signaling brown bottles (the largest size!) that I have deeply sewn into a future version of my best self. More time passes, now I'm using a bottle of Johnson&Johnson no-more-tears shampoo reserved for my nephew. Jessa Blades, natural beauty extraordinaire visits us and I casually mention that I'm looking for a shampoo. She rattles off some small brands - all of which I immediately fail to register. 'And AESOP?' I ask. Full of synthetic ingredients. Which truth be told, never bothered me much - I don't need organic skin care I want packaging! I want gold! What transpired from there was a dark cycle of weeks in which I would repeatedly tell myself that I would buy the shampoo if I accomplished certain goals around the farm. Then inevitably I would wisk away the reward away right at the end leaving myself feeling pitiful. This is a pattern I'm an expert in, and rather than try to unpack its origins (rooted surely in my suburban childhood shopping mall traumas) or analyze my sense of self worth I now try to reroute and reprogram when possible. Or as my therapist suggests; kindly acknowledge it with an "oh, there THAT is again" and move on. It was haircare recently. This past summer it was linen sheets. Soon it will be something else that I begin to associate with my sense of 'deserving' and my ability to give myself permission to spend money. The work of capitalism is so deeply engrained in us, and our sense of pleasure, care-taking and well being. I think it's wildly fascinating and I enjoy pulling it apart at the edges of myself, for better or worse. I don't think about shampoo anymore because I sorted myself out this way -- I use my own saipua bar soap (clary sage recently) to wash my hair...I get a really thick lather going in my hands and wash the hair closest to my scalp. Then after the bath, I rub our new snake oil into my hair, just at the ends. This makes me very pleased, to have rerouted this obsession with products I make myself. I also really like the way my bathroom looks without branded products lying about. You can make it too if you want: 'SNAKE OIL' for Face and Body (and now also for hair conditioning) 4.5 oz. grade A olive oil 3.5 oz. virgin organic deodorized argan oil 2.5 oz. virgin rosehip oil a few drops of the essential oil of your choice -- (NOTE: don't overdo it with essential oils. When Jessa was here we had a conversation about how powerful and potent essential are, and how people tend to go a little gung-ho when using them. They can in fact be tough on sensitive skin and as with any potent plant preparation, require some respect or shall I say - the benefits are felt more deeply when one practices a bit of restraint with them. Easy for me to say, in truth I'm the one standing over Susan in the soap kitchen yelling MORE! MORE! as she works on scents with essentials. We contain multitudes.) 4 comments: Wednesday, February 12, 2020 There has always been a blue heron here. There could be many, but I can't tell one from another. I only ever see one at a time. The heron seems to spend most of his time tucked into the depths of swampy areas around the farm. The way to see him is to walk along the edge of murk -- alone because he only flies in the presence of a single witness -- do this early in the morning or at dusk because he rarely flies mid day. You hear him before you see him, the sound of air displaced by his six foot wingspan as he scripts a path through the drowned out poplar trees in the beaver swamp. When you catch sight, it will confuse you; startle you as if you are seeing something you should not. A bird entirely...