some new beginnings

So, I am preparing to sign up for my first Herbal Medicine course, which begins on March 2 at Learningherbs.com . They seem a little home grown, a little kitschy, a little granola wholesome, but I like their approach to medicine making and herbs and they have great resources and knowledgeable people. And, they have a great newsletter and lots of classes that I can take through the internet at a distance course. Then, I have decided to study "The ABCs of Herbalism" with Susun Weed. She is really well known in the herbal world and I would guess highly controversial, but she works through intuition as well as botany, and she is a bit witchy and wild, which I like, although her website is a bit over-the-top.

I have to say, though, that I am feeling more and more committed to "kitchen table ordinariness", or whatever it can be called- nothing fancy or outwardly aligned with a particular dogma or organization, and not something i have to carry around as a burden. I think being invisibly, ordinarily present with life as it passes in, through, and out of a kitchen, for example, is what I am interested in doing- not just preparing food, eating and cleaning up after, though that is a large part of it. Last week, I taught meditation to a woman in a kitchen, which was just about the perfect place to do it. I often meet with folks and listen to them in a kitchen. I use my kitchen as a work space- herbal medicine making, spreading out things to make marmalade, dye wool (when I start doing that), spin wool, and paint. I find the kitchen to be a room that can be used for many things both solitary or intimate, as well as festive and large. Kitchens are good places for meetings and dinner parties. A kitchen seems to be a nourishing place full of possibility and where one can make a cup of tea.

Also, I am going to take a basket weaving class here from a coworker of nic's who is really an incredible object and installation artist using wild and found materials and the techniques of basket weaving. Go here. The class is March 23, I think.


Both of these things- basket making and herbal medicine making are things I have been wanting to learn and practice since I was a girl. And now I am going to do them.