Emmy June holding a local conference with her MFA faculty in a pile of leaves

“Perhaps I’ve always had this idea. That this is not real life. That real life is coming. On the way. Might be a little postponed. But this day, a day outside of real life, is a day for preparation. We are preparing for life to come. For real life. How long can we all wait until we acknowledge everything that we are a part of. Like the old saying goes, we are all connected – a living, breathing web of life. We are beyond eyelashes. Beyond dreaming, beyond bones, beyond our sleeping, beyond our eight hours shifts. We are everything. We are the earth, each other and the sky. We’ve come to defy the culture of the human experience. Defy reality as we know it. There are caverns and canals in bones. The densest parts of us are not completely solid. We are much like the deep, dark earth where vessels and waterways, channels and passages make way for nutrients, oxygen and wastes. Bones are kept and cultivated like the rich earth by the beloveds who steward over them. They drink, breathe, think, release, even grow. They carry us like earth carries us over hills, up the road, to the gas station, theatre, park. They breathe deeply and slowly. They know when they have had too much. They talk. They tell. Tell it straight. Don’t gossip. ”

— Emmy June Breffle

Emmy June Breffle (ze/zir, they/them, or she/her) is our resident prophet, cake and lasagna baker, singer, tiny house dweller, art book maker, gardener, and free spirit who asks the best questions of our guests, celebrates everyone on their birthdays with songs that extend to the ancestors, and writes inspired lyrical prose. Here is a flash piece she wrote in her first MFA class while she did not even know she was writing something wonderful:

Food and Poetry
by Eme June Breffle

The onion
graciously
lounges in
the basket.

She knows
she's sexy.
She knows
she's got

what you
want.
Knows you
can't handle
that,

but will try.
nervous she'll
make you cry.
you kinda

know she
will, but
you still
act surprised.

Emmy June’s memoir bookbinding and memoir writing workshops for the Outreach class

The Smell of Pages, Old Dusty Pages, and Rain
by Emily June Breffle

I joined the Army after high school because I wanted an adventure and I was too afraid to go to Massage Therapy school. My mom discouraged it. She will not get a massage and will not allow my dad to receive one either, from a professional, that is. She said they are whores. It was the first time I ever even heard the word out of my mother's mouth. Whore. It is such a nasty word. Whore. It is loaded. Whore. It has a context hidden from the world about the woman race. Subliminally set in the back of our minds, whenever someone reads from the scriptures, "the whore of the earth." It is a strange context because, if you ever meet a whore, you learn she is the exploited one. A whore does not even make her own money. Her body is taken and used in order to make money for a man, in almost every case. The whore behind the whore is a lost and greedy man.

Instead of going to massage therapy school to learn the healing arts of touch. I did not want my mother to see me as a whore, after all. I joined the United States Army as a Medic. That's what they called us, Soldier Medic. In all honesty, I became a whore. The United States Government, my pimp. They took my body. They took my energy. They took my sleep. They took my mind. And they did with it as they pleased.

Our mantra in training was, "attention to detail." I learned in the military, to go to sleep. If I were to pay close attention to everything we did, I would have gone awol. Awol means, go absent. I was too prideful, astonished, or scared to leave and go awol, because I signed a stupid piece of paper, with my name, Emily June Breffle. That said, I would do this damn thing for four years.

During those four years, standing in line. At attention. In formation. In training. In a helicopter flying to my first over seas duty station in Iraq. In a clinic handing out pills like candy, to anyone who complained of a back problem. In transport with a patient to the flight line - while they scream condolences for their missing limb. What I learned in paying attention to everything going on around me. To sargents taking commands from sargents, taking commands from luitenants, taking commands from captains, taking commands from other captains, taking commands from..... our beloved commander in chief.... he, taking commands from the ugliest most disgusting organized criminals to ever walk the face of the planet.... I stopped paying attention. When I payed attention I grew mad. Anger. Fury. Passion that I could not taste. I became argumentative when I payed attention. I carried a weapon everywhere I went. If I started paying attention, I could have killed.

Luckily, I never did kill, or even shoot my weapon, other than at the shooting ranges. Medics, we carry weapons, just in case. We carry med bags, in case, and we tend to use those more than our weapons. That is why other soldiers carry weapons. So that we can carry aid bags. The only thing I paid attention to were gunshot wounds and severed limbs and the sound of the radio, and when I was lucky, the stars.

Everything else was hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Even the explosions came to sound like, hummmmmmmmmmm. Not in the God sense. Aummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I learned in four years, to close my eyes and my ears unless someone was screaming or crying or bleeding, or drunk. Otherwise, I was as good as drunk. I coped with my four years by tuning out. Half of the trainings we did involved sitting around, playing cards, talking shit. I brought a book. Another thing my mother taught me, bless her, was to always carry a book with me. When others' shot the shit, I'd read my book. My head was in the clouds. I could not stand the conversations around me. I closed my ears and kept between pages. The only thing I could smell were the pages. Probably my favorite smell today. The smell of pages. old dusty pages. And rain.

Emmy June also makes handmade art books and sells them at the farmer’s market:

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