I work in what I've come to think of as the anti-life building. A skeleton of steel re-inforced concrete mesh that must act as some kind of mineralized Faraday cage, stuffed with synthetic fibers spun from the deeply mined blood of the earth and pressure sealed so that no fresh air can enter. I enter refreshed and living and at the end of the day feel like an electrified corpse, my skin all buzzy with a billion nano-gnats, infected with that barely audible buzz of the computer and the fluorescent lights, but feeling depleted inside as if my life stuff was mined by the building itself. I often wonder why I continue to work here, but then I remember Judy's story of wondering the same about living in the city and seeing Eagle flying overhead headed toward his aeryie on Ross Island and catching his eye and knowing-"If he can thrive here, so can I." This memory floats up in the mind and I think*I don't know what is around the corner*keep walking.

But all along the way I am fed and I seek to learn how to feed. The Hawk feeds me. There is a pair that live near this building. I often see them catch the thermals rising off the freeway, lifting them in graceful spirals to some upper lever current that speeds them straight away to the northeast. One afternoon we watched her eat her kill on the ledge only 20 feet below us. This morning as I locked up my bike I heard her insistent and tonally slanted shriek. She was floating in the air, having found, I imagine that "perfect wave" that allowed her to stay suspended in one spot without a flap. Another cry and she descended disappearing onto the top of a nearby building*not so fast that I thought it was a strike, but when she emerged she flapped heavily and I thought maybe her feet looked bundled and bigger than they should have. So she feeds me.

In these strange times some of us do our work to heal ourselves, our families, our communities (of mineral, plant and animal), our society and Earth herself all out in the open; sometimes the work is hidden, in the dark secret corners of our bodies, in the bellies of bureaucratic beasts of steel and concrete. Wherever your work takes you may you be fed by the sky clouds, by hawks and pansies, by the roadside sentinels of dandelion, mullein and fireweed by the beauties small and grand, seen and unseen. May today's dirt inspire you to action.

In peace,
Tim