Laurie Johns Weblog

Kaaren took this photo outside Madison and titled it “Laurie’s favorite corner of the farm.” It’s lovely; everything is in spring. I saw lots of the Midwest this past week driving to Lake Michigan for my uncle and godfather Anthony’s burial. He was born in 1923 in Chicago. I hadn’t seen some of the Tenerelli family for years and I felt somewhat in the spotlight trying to explain my upcoming plans without confirming their belief in my insanity. Its hard for others to understand my desire to live without a regular schedule, income or a pension.

Jack (Caleb’s puglet) was a great travel partner and he really loved the beach; he flew up and down the shore to exhaustion. Despite his enthusiasm, it was the saddest road trip I’ve taken somehow. Even the most upbeat music in my collection contributed to my state of malaise. On the way home, I ended up in my old neighborhood park in Madison, Wisconsin with my good friend William wondering why I couldn’t seem to laugh. Kaaren and I had dinner on the shore of Lake Monona and a good cry and also, finally some laughs.

I came home to an email from a yoga teacher, yoga alliance certified and insured moving to Vermillion with her husband from Portland, Oregon. She’d like to take over my yoga classes here at the gym. We have had most of the same training and know the same CorePower folks. Sometimes the universe opens up and allows us entry. I love when that happens. Think it. Be it. Let it happen.

I finally went to Caleb’s FACEBOOK page and posted a message. I didn’t really mind telling everyone who asked that I hadn’t heard anything. I figured it meant things were going well. After all, not spending time documenting our lives means we are living them.

Here is his response

“i am in shizuoka (SHEE ZOO OKA) haha
i LOVE it here. on sunday after i go to church with oba-chan (grandma) i will head to kanagawa to stay with yuki!
i went on a hike in the mountains here yesterday and cut down some bamboo! i’ll bring it home so that i can make things out of it…

i miss you and jack! i wrote post cards, but i never sent them! maybe today….
ummm what else… im going to tokyo today to see reina’s relatives. we’ll go out for sushi i think.
love love love.
caleb”

 
East Lake Okoboji

Lake Okoboji is a natural glacial lake and as far as I know, is the only spring-fed, fresh-water lake in the country and only one of two in the whole world. Despite the natural uniqueness of the place, it has managed to establish itself as a summer party town and the owners of a Sioux Falls Restaurant will be capitalizing on that fact when they open the doors of their Okoboji branch on Thursday.

I will be helping them to make their non-biodegradable mark on the landscape. The place, I have to admit, is really nicely situated. In fact it’s carved into the side of a hill right along the shore of the lake with a large lighted sign visible from the water. There are 65 docking spots for boats and because it’s on the east side of the lake, magnificent sunsets. The entire restaurant, in fact, is outside but Ailee has managed, so far, to keep her pearly white skin. I, on the other hand, left on Sunday a few shades browner. Jack the dog spent way too much time in the car was really happy to be back home in his own yard and with my many more than necessary shoes to chew.

The training lasted two days: all of Saturday and all of Sunday. Most of the regular staff was there at least 12 hours each day, but most of them have been transplanted for the summer months and have temporary hovels they are calling home. Ailee was eating cereal out of red plastic cups and sleeping on the floor until I brought her a mattress. No one seems to mind the temporary inadequate conditions; they are all geared up  to make a killing. Not motivated by money, there are lots of things that I need to reconcile to make this short-term gig work for me.

Urging myself through something I think will be difficult for me has always been a motivator. I will also be teaching 3 new yoga classes at Yoga Okoboji. I found a sweet spot at Gull Point State Park for camping and will be doing my own daily 36 Sun Salutations there on the opposite shore of the lake until I leave for Driggs, Idaho. Maybe some other campers want to do or learn yoga, which I am also beginning to cultivate new attitudes about. It seems to be a time of great transition.

Spring is without a doubt the most glorious time in Vermillion. Lilacs, crocus, tulips, phlox, iris, lillies, parsley (it wintered over!) peonies and apple blossoms have all made appearances on my property. Caleb moved all of the fish to the large pond, re-fashioned the 2 waterfalls and has new lotus roots in both ponds. Madog (across the street) wanted to give us his guppies, but Caleb kindly refused. He knows each and every koi in that pond and there must be over 60.

Fortunately it’s peaceful outside because inside the house is pure chaos! Reina, Caleb and Maiko are all packing for Japan and Megan is getting ready to move into a place of her own. Things got so hectic on Saturday, I found myself terribly displaced and the answer seemed to be to get into the car and drive…and to keep driving…however, with a yoga class on Sunday at noon, I knew I wasn’t going far. I ended up at Mike and Amy’s lovely acreage just north of Wakonda.  Amy has been moving lots earth around her place too and there were so many birds some of which we needed a book to identify. It was exactly what I needed. I spent at least 30 mintes in the pottery studio walking around and shaking out my legs while looking at an awesome view of the countryside and some really nice pots! Thanks Mike and Amy. Jennifer says I have the extremes down, now I just need to find the balance.

Rebecca (flying tomato farms) left a nice variety of starter vegetables on my porch as a reminder to get my garden in. Thinking of the harvest (I won’t be here for that) brings on feelings of ambivalence. It’s a funny place to be in: trying to disengage and to enjoy the fruits of my labor all at once. Some days I don’t really know who I am.

I feel the same ambivalence about leaving my yoga classes. I’m trying to condense the classes and merge the two styles I teach. The students seem to be accepting this with grace. The evening class is enjoying the longer stretches and the morning class is gradually getting used to a more energetic practice and livelier music. I’d like to spend some time working on fundamentals too. It seems all instructions are worth repeating over and over. Roll your triceps toward your ears, lengthen the spine, lift the heart, press the backs of the thighs away from you, draw your arm bones up, and take the shoulders onto the back plane of the body— how much all the fine tuning enhances the practice.

Being in Okoboji brought me full circle back to my life Spencer 15 years ago—to Chad Hobmeier—splitting with Rick and making plans to move to Colorado—and in the end, coming back to Vermillion. I wouldn’t have written the circuitous path of my life in that way…but then again, I guess that I have.

 In June of 1999, I took possession of the house I currently live in. I had rented a room in this house in the mid 1980s from a philosophy professor on sabbatical in Cambridge England. A few years prior to my moving in, in a fit described by him as a middle-aged crisis, he erected a greenhouse on the south side of the house. The greenhouse was one of the reasons I bought the house, but it was also the first thing I took down and replaced with my own version.

Shortly after moving all of my possessions in to the house, I left for Europe for 4 weeks leaving my then boyfriend to work on the house. He removed all of the carpeting from the upstairs bedrooms and the stairs and most of the carpet tacks. He also began work on the study downstairs. His vision was Italian fresco; he achieved it pretty well, but it is my least favorite room in the house. The built-in desks face the wall and it feels like a cave. But he painted a beautiful midnight blue ceiling with gold-stenciled stars and everyone who sees the room is charmed. He covered the cracks under those stars like an ill-practiced surgeon not concerned with scar tissue. He can’t be faulted really; he didn’t know what he was doing. He moved out about 3 years ago and I have been trying to love that room ever since.

I focused on the exterior. The first thing I did was to begin to secure some privacy for myself. One rainy afternoon I went over to a friend’s with a shovel and many plastic grocery sacks and dug lilac seedlings from the bluff side of her property. It was among the hardest work I had ever done. I didn’t know that lilac roots grew laterally and that they are really tough mother fuckers, but I managed to dig about 20 small seedling up to plant along the north side of my house on the property line between my house and the guy next door. It’s eight years later and I have a very nice 7 ft. lilac fence between my property and his.

Before taking possession of the house, I came over one early afternoon to work on the lawn. The neighbor came out of his house to inquire about what I was doing. I told him I was applyig some some weed and feed. He wanted me to know he had a lawn care business and suspected I was also in business. I remember thinking “it’s a good things I am not in competition with you, because its noon, I’ve put half a days work in already and you are drunk.” One summer I took a trip to Ireland to work out the logistics of having a couple share the house with me.  When I returned, I saw smoke coming from his house and called the fire department. I knew he was passed out drunk in there. The firemen extracted an on-fire pot from his stove and fumigated the place. I figured I’d saved his life. We never spoke of it.  He has actually been a really great neighbor and has assisted me with all sorts of things relative to taking care of my lawn. He also got cancer from using all of those chemicals and has since quit that lawn care business. On Sundays I used to listen to him and his friends hang out in his kitchen and say fuck a lot. That practice seems to have stopped too.

First pond

Pond #2 in progress

water plants

Fours years ago my son dug his first pond. A small sweet pond on the south side which he dug by hand. I built a patio around it with the bricks taken from the former owners midlife-crisis green house. Leroy, the former owner, had installed two layers of bricks on the floor (for heat) but had not built a foundation, just placed the bricks directly on the earth and there was large den of snakes living under those bricks. When we displaced those snakes, they were homeless and roaming for quite some time. Occasionally one of them would end up in the pond and I would have to fish it out with a long net and set it free. Caleb was less kind about ridding his pond of snakes. He had purchased koi from various locations on ebay and treated them as pets. Two years ago Caleb decided to dig another pond and hired a backhoe to do the work. This pond was 6 feet deep, so the fish could over-winter there. Once it had been filled, he brought over the kayak his dad built for him and floated for days in the pond. I spent all my extra money on flat stones and roofing rubber for him and he bought the fish, again on ebay and also lots of exotic water plants. He also purchesd a large pump and built a very sweet water fall. The sound is lovely. This new pond was an attempt to keep his fish alive through the winter. Even moving them into the house one year proved fatal.

Stove

In 2004, I installed a wood-burning stove in my new non middle-aged crisis greenhouse. Caleb had all of the fish in a large plastic container in the corner…where I wanted to move my bed and close off the rest of the house so I could live like a pioneer. I decided the claw foot tub upstairs would be the perfect home for the fish. I wasn’t even using the upstairs and the kids were spending the winter at Rick’s. They really disliked the wood burning stove and smelling liked “baked ham” as they described it. I filled the tub with water and let it “cure” for 2 days. Perhaps I had not accounted for the vast temperature difference between my cozy fire room and the upstairs, because when I moved all of the fish to their new home, they stopped swimming immediately and I knew they were all already well on their way to death. I think Caleb has finally forgiven me, but it has taken him a long time to appreciate my stove.

That first winter when I moved into kitchen and sunroom, I never wanted to leave. I was teaching graphics at a small liberal art college, but had worked out a schedule that only required that I drive three days a week to Sioux City. The rest of the time I spent writing and reading in my cozy room. My friend Carol was having a hard time getting me out of my house. I felt so tired I told her and needed to rest. When she finally came over to see what was the matter with me she exclaimed, “Jesus Christ, no wonder you can’t do anything; its like a sauna in here—open the door and let some cold air in.” But I was happy and never enjoyed winter more. I remember waiting until the sun was almost down before making the long trek to the shed to replenish my wood supply. I burned more wood then necessary at first, but finally figured out the efficiency of that soapstone stove and adjusted my practices. I could heat the rooms on just two thick logs a day. I always intuitively knew when it was time to come home and stoke the fire. All my friends got used to me jumping up in the middle of whatever was going on to go home to heat my rooms and warm my soul. The kids thought I loved the fire more than them.

One summer before taking an extended road trip to California, I moved all of my furniture into the kitchen, sunroom and den and hired a guy to re-finish the floors. Another year I painted all of the downstairs rooms in washes adding beautiful depth to the walls. Two years ago, I hired Jose Mendoza and crew to replace the brick foundation. I have since almost forgotten how hard on me that was. And now the owner of our local mexican restaraunt and I share a silent story about the summer Jose was in town. This past year, I closed the pocket door between the dining room and living room and moved my bedroom to the main floor to accommodate two renters.  The experience has been good for the most part and it gives me hope that I can leave my house for longer periods of time. I don’t really want to sell my house. It is my soul in a way. It has given me an opportunity to become more grounded than I’ve been in my life. I enjoy making a cup of coffee and wandering around the yard to visit the many plants given to me by my two Carol friends. I’ve seen the place transform in a magical way. It has also taught me about maintenance. How taking 5 minutes upfront saves loads of hours in the end. Even about simple things like putting away my clothes or dishes. Pulling an occasional weed on my morning walks around, saves me from spending endless hours doing yard work.

Now I am getting ready to leave my house for 4 months. I have trepidations, but it has also become necessary for me to leave this town. I had once fanaticized about making Vermillion a place that I’d want to live in, but I feel powerless to make the changes required. Hyperion is coming to town and so many people seem okay with this. I don’t want to live in a place where people trade quality of life for economic growth. Why an oil refinery? Why not a tofu factory, a brewery, or a wind generator? And where are all the people needed to oppose this idea?

I’ve been looking at communal living. Some of the places look kinda scary. Even the yoga community I long for in some ways looks kinda scary. My friend Cynthia was over the other day thumbing through the Yoga Journal Conference catalog when she came across a photo of an instructor on stage and a sea of yoga mats laid out before him too close to one another for her comfort. She declared “look at them, it looks like a cult where he his their leader.” Fanaticism on any level is a scary notion. I’m not exactly certain what I am looking for, but I have a sense that I’ll recognize it when I see it. I’ll be in Okoboji Iowa teaching yoga during July…a sort of trial run away from home and then I’ll be heading west, southwest and northwest to get Anusara trained. I’ll be struggling to keep my house during that time away. But I’m not ready to let go… not just yet.