Twelve by Twelve Read Online Free PDF

“The sky is exquisitenow. What a real joy to have you visit.” Jackie went on to lay out several pages of facts, calling it “info I forgot to pass on,” mostly the names of others in Adams County living in a way that challenged corporate economic globalization — organic farmers, permaculturalists, peak oil radicals, beekeepers, an “intentional community” called Blue Heron Farm, the Silk Hope Catholic Worker, a couple of families trying variations on her 12 × 12 experiment.
    From this info she forgot to pass on the fuzzy edges of a story emerged. On one level it sounded like what Che Guevara used to call gusanos (worms) that slowly, bite by bite, cause the whole apple to collapse from within. It was the story of two competing visions of how to reshape the Old South and, indeed, the globalizing world. But deeper than that was something more. An extraordinary physician, activist, farmer, mother, wisdomkeeper, and visionary, taking the time that night to notice the beauty of the sky and to handwrite me a long letter in cursive, by candlelight.
    As if guided by instinct I flipped over the Oliver poem. In cursive, across the back lengthwise, Jackie had drawn from the exact phrase that had practically jumped out of the poem at me, a phrase that hinted about the shape of the world. She’d written: “A soft world?”
    My heart beat increasingly faster as I noticed the letter had a postscript: “P.S. And I really forgot the most obvious: I’ll be away till summer, out West. You are absolutely welcome to come and stay in the 12 × 12 for a day or a week or a month or more, and any in and out combination. Just show up — I’ll let the neighbors know.”
    I put down the letter and knew I had to go. I had to face this challenge to find a way out of my despair; to learn to think, feel, and live in another way. The 12 × 12 seemed full of clues toward living lightly, artfully in the twenty-first century. If beauty, as Ezra Pound said, loves the forgotten spaces, maybe so too does wisdom. New York would have to wait. Unexpectedly, I was bound for No Name Creek.

3. THAWING
    IT WAS DARK WHEN I DROVE UP to Jackie’s place. Toting a backpack, I groped my way along paths through a pitch black Zone 2 and into Zone 1, finally making it to the unlocked 12 × 12. I fumbled around for a light switch; naturally there was none. I managed to find matches and light candles. After exploring Jackie’s bookshelves and the tiny loft that held her — now my — single mattress, I wrapped up in a couple of blankets and sat in her great-grandmother’s goosehead chair for one hour, then two. I listened to the slight murmur of the creek, not completely sure of what else to do. As the quiet and darkness pressed in, so too did a mix of joy and trepidation.
    Jackie told me how astonished she sometimes was to wake up in a Garden of Eden. I felt no such thing my first mornings there. I rose at dawn, climbed out of the loft, and made a strong cup of tea. Cocooned in a handmade quilt in the rocking chair, I stared out into the cold gray light: the steam from my tea fogging my glasses and the windows; No Name Creek hardly stirring beneath a partial sheet ofice; the new moon cold and hidden beyond the horizon someplace; the stark 12 × 12 slab of frigid concrete pretending to be a floor.
    Without Jackie there, the place seemed completely different. Instead of her contagious enthusiasm and intelligence, there was only me. Me and a bunch of plants, barely breathing. A late frost hit on my third night, causing hundreds of farmers throughout the county to lose their strawberries and tomatoes, but the diversity and native-plant focus of Jackie’s farm hedged against the suddenly frozen soil. Some of her plants froze to a crisp and died, but most of them held on.
    Whereas I’d seen only the flourishing-of-it-all in the light of Jackie’s charisma, I soon realized that, aside from the garden beds in Zone 1, the earth around me was mostly slumbering. Stick