Slug Fest! - 2001

I used to live in a co-housing biodynamic/devic garden community in the Rose City area of Portland, Oregon. We called ourselves Mir Cabaaning, and we had a terrific group of folks who came in for garden workshops, healings, channelings, feasts, and other occasions. On the property were three human residents - Sid and Marilyn Frances, and me. We also counted two cats, Marble and BJ, as vital community members. And all the garden plants and the trees, and the office computers, the printing press, the cars, the house - all were communicating community members.
Marilyn, Sid, and I laughed a lot. I imagine now, remembering our time together, that the universe just wanted our hilarity, and so put the three of us together for a while. I rented the trailer out back, in "Eden" - the huge biodynamic vegetable garden where I lived with old BJ. Sid and Marilyn owned the property, lived in the house, and worked at their mom-pop printing business in the converted garage office to the side. Marble supervised the entire deal, and guarded the grapevines with amazing ferocity. Not even his only pal, BJ, dared go anywhere near those grapevines; and more than once I saw fur flying as Marble whomped any neighbor cat who strayed too close.
At a certain point we were guided to convert some of the vegetable area into a cosmic peace garden of concentric circles. The whole Mir Cabaaning associated community showed up for the digging and feasting the day the transformation began, and it was a marvelous event. Out of the blue, three musicians with harp, flute, and guitar appeared and sang of sacred things while the digging went on. They were grounding a piece of heaven there in the circling circles of the cosmic peace garden.
The garden was a place for healing and meditation. Even Marble and BJ came to a feline detente with the neighbor cats, as the catnip we'd planted there grew huge. On sunny days we humans would smile at the sight of so many zonked-out pussies lying in the shade of their favorite herb. The Peace Garden plants loved to be sung-to, and, as with all plants and trees, they deeply loved the sound of the flute. Perhaps that's why the nature god, Pan, is always shown with his flute. Sometimes the garden would play jokes on
the communicator (me!). Once the plants called for me to "marry" a huge collard green. I did the ceremony, and it made a good story. Word of it got around the Portland spiritual community, and before long a hilarious story got back to me. At some gathering where people were talking about devic gardening, one of our community members had mentioned my name, saying that I was married to a collard green. The woman she was speaking with said, "Well, for heavens' sake! I'm married to a cabbage!" Who knows - there may be a day when we're all connected in such ways with every other non-human on the planet.
Toward the end of summer that year we were guided to have a Slug Fest in order to honor the power animal of Portland, the Slug. Actually, I was the one so guided. I had had several far-out (even for me) slug experiences and so I had no desire to resist my guidance when I received the nudge to create a slug-honoring event. Not so for Marilyn, who had worked against slug depredations among her veggies for many, many years. Sid - well, Sid had yet another great thing to make jokes about, and his laughter, as always, got all three of us laughing. Marilyn finally relented, and we put out the announcement for the date of the Peace Garden Slug Fest.
Our community showed up in force, and there were a number of curious visitors as well, including my actress daughter, Corrie VanAusdal, and her boyfriend Matt. Among the newbies there was a young man with a rooster problem. He had a rooster companion named "City Boy," who went everywhere with him. The young man's bride-to-be, however, refused to allow City Boy to participate in their wedding. In fact, she refused to marry unless her young man got rid of poor City Boy. As it happened, there were a husband-and-wife biodynamic farm couple at the Slug Fest, who offered to adopt City Boy and let him live with their hens.
Well, the Slug Fest was a smashing success. We did a Slug Dance, my daughter Corrie led a round of Slug Comedy Improv, the visitors all received Slug Names, and we had really yucky-looking Slug Refreshments (they tasted wonderful). And Sid, ever the one ready to say just the right thing in exactly the right way to get just great, hearty laughter from all, comically recited a poem of mine, In Search Of The Slug Sublime.
Portland Oregon ("Portal-Land" to some of us) will never be the same - nor will the USA, nor Planet Earth; and certainly our Solar System and Galaxy are now somehow magically different, all because of the Mir Cabaaning peaceful Slug Fest. Hearts and Stars go to Sid and Marilyn, somewhere in the Great Beyond. I hope Marilyn has achieved her desire of studying
personally with Rudolph Steiner! And perhaps Sid has been trading jokes with Seth, of SETH SPEAKS fame, a great favorite of the Mir Cabaaning community. Perhaps the magnificent old apple tree still stands on the old Mir Cabaaning site, with BJ buried beneath it. And wherever Marble is now, surely he has moved to a higher level of his mystical grapevine guardianship.
To Portland, and Dynamic Peace, and all the Mir Cabaaningers, now scattered! To all the little co-housing community experiments popping up in cities all over the planet! To Biodynamic gardening and farming! And hooray for Slugs! Sid and Marilyn, these laughs are for you.
IN SEARCH OF THE SLUG SUBLIME
by Carolion
If you follow the trails of glittering slime laid out in the night so late,
over the lettuces, over the beans, and over the cool grey slate --
over dew-damp grass you'll see soft bodies glide,
slathers of slithering slugs with no guide
but the yearning to merge at the end of time
with the joy of the Slug Sublime.
Over the nights and under the days,
sluggishly humming their hymns of praise,
they slide to the rhythm of slippery rhymes
in search of the Slug Sublime.