I’m the Walkin’ Chick. All over these United States, I take marathon hikes for exercise, fresh air, and to get the real feel of a city. Two coyotes showing off in the middle of the day in downtown Colorado Springs. Seattle’s frequent but intermittent rain romancing me like eternal autumn. Blooming phlox blanketing summer in Green Bay. My memory of a city is based on one of three things: the friends I meet, the inside of the theatre, and the time I spend walking.
Yes, I’ve ended up lost. I’ve ended up where I shouldn’t be. But I’ve also ended up in a Hollywood movie star’s backyard and beside myself and a glacier in Anchorage. There’s always an adventure on foot.
So today in Pittsburgh PA I walked myself across the Monongahela River, and found a neighborhood exploding with life---just my type of hood complete with thrift shops, used book stores, and kooky characters. There was a store called E House, or something green and environmental like that, so of course I stepped in. Hemp, organic cotton, cruelty-free vegetarian products---high quality and affordable items no home or suite case should remain ignorant to. Then there was Hot Rod Body Piercing, a classy/tribal jewelry front I stopped into and walked out of one 14-gauge-horseshoe-hanging-from-yet-another-innocent-piece-of-skin older and one cool-new-freaky-friend wiser (you should see the size of the jewelry in his lobes).
Later, no longer on foot but still kicking for adventure, I am picked up after the show in a baby blue ‘72 Dodge Swinger and paraded to the best look out point of this architecturally captivating mini-metropolis, then whisked away to a run down movie theatre turned kickin club to be humbled by the local Bull Seal Collective making music, art and entertainment the way I have always dreamed of doing, and finally escorted into the Strip District for my cast mate, Pooh’s 29th birthday (and let me tell you, when the STOMPers go dancing, there is only one place to be). And truthfully, what story of city nostalgia is complete without another identity-protected cast mate of mine winding up bloody in the street? Exactly the way you are bound to wind up eventually with a nasty proclivity towards picking fights.
Which reminds me of the time I walked over the bat bridge in Austin TX. I met a boy there who smelled like desert sun. It was a small stage in Austin TX. The first row of the audience was so close you could sweat on them.
Athens OH next.
Real Feel
September 29, 2003
Will Not Stop Dancing
September 26, 2003
Autumn enters town on a train from some other era carrying a hat box. She is that cousin two years older whom you have heard stories about---so many stories. And here she is, unchaperoned and overflowing just after harvest.
It’s easy to tell her on the street. She blows a wet kiss up your back. She wears a scarf early. She’s been known to wear a scarf only. And somehow that makes her easy to spot.
If you want her to tell you something---she won’t. If you want her to walk beside you---she will.
Autumn will not stop dancing. She has never worked a day in her life. And something about her dancing reminds you of the things you’ve kept secrets about. You wonder how you never told.
I’m gonna take a four month long nap when her train leaves town.
It’s easy to tell her on the street. She blows a wet kiss up your back. She wears a scarf early. She’s been known to wear a scarf only. And somehow that makes her easy to spot.
If you want her to tell you something---she won’t. If you want her to walk beside you---she will.
Autumn will not stop dancing. She has never worked a day in her life. And something about her dancing reminds you of the things you’ve kept secrets about. You wonder how you never told.
I’m gonna take a four month long nap when her train leaves town.
How to Love
September 22, 2003
I am in Cleveland sitting in a filthy hotel room and yes, it’s my own damn fault. A mess is the sign of a creative mind but in this case I was host to just a plain good time, spanning a week upon returning to the road.
If inanimate objects are witnesses to our actions, keeping us honest, received and remembered, then the queen sized mirror (beveled edges, massive frame) in my foyer only knows how unique hotel nostalgia can be. When I look through the reflection I see a guitar I see singing I see music. I see glass I see tattoos I see rain. I see closeness I see laughter I see dreams. I see fresh flowers sitting next to my bed.
A young woman struggles out of that bed at 6am and here the mirror’s memory fogs, because as soon as she shakes her locks and gulps a glass of water, she is out the door, swollen eyed and unresponsive, sliding into the back of a limo---6am. The mirror will not remember her at the mic in seven different radio studios doing on-air morning interviews and playing anything in arms reach. In fact the young woman herself will not remember---6am.
As a consolation prize, I do however remember the Cleveland Indians slamming the Kansas City (Missouri!) Royals from the spectacular seats Elizabeth, Khalid, Mark Allen and I jim-jawed at Jacob's Field Tuesday nite. Free tickets from the sports station had me dancing flamboyantly and suggestively for two home team home runs, and it could be said that The Wave never dissipated on the shore of our stolen seats---hands high at the slightest suggestion of incoming tide.
Or clearly how it feels to be a month out of shape, just enough to really appreciate how physical this show really is. STOMPers together again, pounding in, sinking the stage and jamming that hands-and-feet grove clear through the upper balcony of this 2,600 seat house. I am in Cleveland performing and after a month lay-off my human abilities have peeked opening nite. I am enlightened through group mind, I am listening to our music like it was my own heartbeat, I am making eye contact with each cast mate every four bars, I am responding to the expressions on the faces of the first five rows, I am reacting at top speed without conscious thought and I am sweating rhythm, bruising muscles, catching breath, and appreciating every second of it.
But now I am in a dirty hotel room appreciating that I am about to loose stuff because it is exactly when your hotel room is this kind of mess that this loosing of stuff happens. I don’t have a lot of stuff and I don’t like shopping, so you can see, this loosing stuff thing isn’t really an option. In an attempt to avert the inevitable, I am now sorting piles labeled My Shit and Hotel Shit (dirty towels-Hotel Shit, rose oil-My Shit) as I fit my life possessions back into a black suitcase. I’m not feeling very creative as I strategically place the seaweed in it’s respective Shit Pile.
I remember what a plain good time this mess was and contemplate if my ideal love is a state or action as I glance the mirror’s reflection.
I see dancing.
It is an action.
Pittsburgh tomorrow.
If inanimate objects are witnesses to our actions, keeping us honest, received and remembered, then the queen sized mirror (beveled edges, massive frame) in my foyer only knows how unique hotel nostalgia can be. When I look through the reflection I see a guitar I see singing I see music. I see glass I see tattoos I see rain. I see closeness I see laughter I see dreams. I see fresh flowers sitting next to my bed.
A young woman struggles out of that bed at 6am and here the mirror’s memory fogs, because as soon as she shakes her locks and gulps a glass of water, she is out the door, swollen eyed and unresponsive, sliding into the back of a limo---6am. The mirror will not remember her at the mic in seven different radio studios doing on-air morning interviews and playing anything in arms reach. In fact the young woman herself will not remember---6am.
As a consolation prize, I do however remember the Cleveland Indians slamming the Kansas City (Missouri!) Royals from the spectacular seats Elizabeth, Khalid, Mark Allen and I jim-jawed at Jacob's Field Tuesday nite. Free tickets from the sports station had me dancing flamboyantly and suggestively for two home team home runs, and it could be said that The Wave never dissipated on the shore of our stolen seats---hands high at the slightest suggestion of incoming tide.
Or clearly how it feels to be a month out of shape, just enough to really appreciate how physical this show really is. STOMPers together again, pounding in, sinking the stage and jamming that hands-and-feet grove clear through the upper balcony of this 2,600 seat house. I am in Cleveland performing and after a month lay-off my human abilities have peeked opening nite. I am enlightened through group mind, I am listening to our music like it was my own heartbeat, I am making eye contact with each cast mate every four bars, I am responding to the expressions on the faces of the first five rows, I am reacting at top speed without conscious thought and I am sweating rhythm, bruising muscles, catching breath, and appreciating every second of it.
But now I am in a dirty hotel room appreciating that I am about to loose stuff because it is exactly when your hotel room is this kind of mess that this loosing of stuff happens. I don’t have a lot of stuff and I don’t like shopping, so you can see, this loosing stuff thing isn’t really an option. In an attempt to avert the inevitable, I am now sorting piles labeled My Shit and Hotel Shit (dirty towels-Hotel Shit, rose oil-My Shit) as I fit my life possessions back into a black suitcase. I’m not feeling very creative as I strategically place the seaweed in it’s respective Shit Pile.
I remember what a plain good time this mess was and contemplate if my ideal love is a state or action as I glance the mirror’s reflection.
I see dancing.
It is an action.
Pittsburgh tomorrow.
Love Like This
September 14, 2003
The china settings--your finest. The delicate brew--tap water. Pink Bear prefers milk while she sings the Teddy Bear waltz and Scrappy Kitty kinda comes because she has to. At four years old, your tea party hosting prowess is unmatched in Imagination Land and any spare afternoon is likely to transform a toy box and mother’s closet into a full costume party for you and a few of your closest stuffed friends. You provide napkins, paper hats, lemonade, sunshine and as any professional-tea-party-hosting-four-year-old-romantic would know, the one ever empty guest setting. In Imagination Land it is tragedy if Love knocks on the door with no place to sit. Besides, teddy bears really do make sucky guests what with that tea-sipping thing and all.
This weekend, in another fairytale land some twenty two years later, I sat at the bride and groom’s feet. A priestess evoked the elements and a minister pronounced the union holy just as a lazy Las Vegas sunset made silhouettes out of Red Mountains and a moon appeared quietly over our shoulders. Dear Regina and I, emotional equals, held each other in the grass sobbing a symphony for the proof we both ever seek and were now witnessing—love like this exists. Later at their Las Vegas hotel room, at a very private after-after wedding party, husband and wife restored marriage’s good name and gave lessons on how to love without boundries—how freeing commitment can be. I knew I had been saving that empty setting for something.
Knock, knock. “Oh, hello, Love. Would you like one lump or two?”
The lumps do not matter. Love harder.
On the road it is easy to forget that love like this exists. You get comfortable in your king sized bed in your spotless hotel room doing only what you like. You meet a dozen new friends every week, all of whom are very special people, but whom you know you will not see for another year at best, and in the mean time you will have met another dozen new friends each week until that next meeting arrives. You learn how to not make promises, not speak about a future, not lead love on. Not let love in.
But what if you are tired of waiting to be some hypothetical perfect human in some hypothetical perfect situation? What if love does exist like you always dreamed at four years old? What if when you hear knocking, you elegantly and adultly open the door and pour a cup of your finest. You do not question how long your guest can stay. You do not ask for why they are here.
Let us not delay gratification a moment longer. Let us invite Love in for a moment or forever. Let us look in the eyes, let us sing from the heart, and let us offer as many lumps of sugar as Love will take.
Grown up tea is sweeter than a four year olds dreams.
This weekend, in another fairytale land some twenty two years later, I sat at the bride and groom’s feet. A priestess evoked the elements and a minister pronounced the union holy just as a lazy Las Vegas sunset made silhouettes out of Red Mountains and a moon appeared quietly over our shoulders. Dear Regina and I, emotional equals, held each other in the grass sobbing a symphony for the proof we both ever seek and were now witnessing—love like this exists. Later at their Las Vegas hotel room, at a very private after-after wedding party, husband and wife restored marriage’s good name and gave lessons on how to love without boundries—how freeing commitment can be. I knew I had been saving that empty setting for something.
Knock, knock. “Oh, hello, Love. Would you like one lump or two?”
The lumps do not matter. Love harder.
On the road it is easy to forget that love like this exists. You get comfortable in your king sized bed in your spotless hotel room doing only what you like. You meet a dozen new friends every week, all of whom are very special people, but whom you know you will not see for another year at best, and in the mean time you will have met another dozen new friends each week until that next meeting arrives. You learn how to not make promises, not speak about a future, not lead love on. Not let love in.
But what if you are tired of waiting to be some hypothetical perfect human in some hypothetical perfect situation? What if love does exist like you always dreamed at four years old? What if when you hear knocking, you elegantly and adultly open the door and pour a cup of your finest. You do not question how long your guest can stay. You do not ask for why they are here.
Let us not delay gratification a moment longer. Let us invite Love in for a moment or forever. Let us look in the eyes, let us sing from the heart, and let us offer as many lumps of sugar as Love will take.
Grown up tea is sweeter than a four year olds dreams.
Harvest Time at Karyn's, Chicago
September 07, 2003
Every bite is direct from grampy’s garden. One thousand homegrown red fruits awake in my mouth. I taste perseverance, concentration, release and trust. I shine the dirt off and eat this tomato like an apple.
Michigan’s ingredients are unequaled in September. High humidity with low temperatures create afternoons of gentle sunshine and midnites of reflective quietness. Imagine fog, like a sleepwalker, sliding low over the land, hesitating thick above a pond, swallowing the pontoon boat you are floating on...in fresh water...at midnite...in Michigan...in September...under Mars.
Every year Labor Day waves a magick wand over the Midwest, the fetus drops, the mother pushes, and in one day summer has matured. I begin to think of autumn.
This is when the ingredients are unequaled. From vine to mouth, I dive into cantaloupe's orange pool, over my head in a deep end of dark sweetness. I devour watermelon perfectly ripe---a touch yellow on the flat side---too heavy for lifting and exploding with seeds. On a country road there is a hand lettered sign, so I pull into the farm’s drive, gather 19 cobs off an unmanned trailer and leave a few dollars in a container labeled Donation Box. Tell me what high-class chef can do better than Michigan sweet corn straight from the field. Tell me and I will abandon the garden forever. Tell me and I will light the world on fire.
This year when Labor Day’s wand wove, I was vacationing in Chicago (my other other home next to my Body, then Michigan). The seasons changed with the right spell spoken and I found myself again dining at Karyn’s in the heart of Chi-town’s young-money-itching-for-purpose neighborhood. The space itself is simply amazing fitting elegantly into the Gold Coast's heart, boasting a yoga/dance studio with seamless hardwood floors, a quaint urban greenhouse for sprouting seeds and a much appreciated parking lot for...parking, mostly. Several warm white therapy rooms are nestled in the back where Karyn offers massage, colonics and ozone baths to a clientel very interested in youth and attractiveness. In front there is a raw café filled with natural light, and this spring I attended the grand opening of her fine dining restaurant, delighted by an ambiance of elaborate simplicity---young coconut water served in tall, thin glasses.
There is an item of Karyn’s creation that must not go without mention; tasting of honey and light oil, Karyn’s Dehydrated Kale Chips are offered no where else in this country and definitely worth daydreaming about. But as much as kale is my favorite green, olive is close to my favorite fat (besides macadamia and avocado...avocado). And when I tasted the pale, tasteless atrocity atop Karyn's Bean Burrito, resembling more the pasteurized, canned black variety than any Kalamata, Gaeta or Nicoise I insist upon for myself, I could not help but take a second glance at all her ingredients.
But still, she is Karyn, not September herself. Perhaps I am being unfair. Perhaps I am still crawling through my grampy’s garden, drunk on the smell of nightshade. Perhaps I am still wiping seeds from my chin, intoxicated by the vine-ripened tomato. Perhaps I am humbled and in awe of the Harvest, realizing the greatest of joys---that nothing, not knife, not spice, not oven, need come between me and Nature herself.
Michigan’s ingredients are unequaled in September. High humidity with low temperatures create afternoons of gentle sunshine and midnites of reflective quietness. Imagine fog, like a sleepwalker, sliding low over the land, hesitating thick above a pond, swallowing the pontoon boat you are floating on...in fresh water...at midnite...in Michigan...in September...under Mars.
Every year Labor Day waves a magick wand over the Midwest, the fetus drops, the mother pushes, and in one day summer has matured. I begin to think of autumn.
This is when the ingredients are unequaled. From vine to mouth, I dive into cantaloupe's orange pool, over my head in a deep end of dark sweetness. I devour watermelon perfectly ripe---a touch yellow on the flat side---too heavy for lifting and exploding with seeds. On a country road there is a hand lettered sign, so I pull into the farm’s drive, gather 19 cobs off an unmanned trailer and leave a few dollars in a container labeled Donation Box. Tell me what high-class chef can do better than Michigan sweet corn straight from the field. Tell me and I will abandon the garden forever. Tell me and I will light the world on fire.
This year when Labor Day’s wand wove, I was vacationing in Chicago (my other other home next to my Body, then Michigan). The seasons changed with the right spell spoken and I found myself again dining at Karyn’s in the heart of Chi-town’s young-money-itching-for-purpose neighborhood. The space itself is simply amazing fitting elegantly into the Gold Coast's heart, boasting a yoga/dance studio with seamless hardwood floors, a quaint urban greenhouse for sprouting seeds and a much appreciated parking lot for...parking, mostly. Several warm white therapy rooms are nestled in the back where Karyn offers massage, colonics and ozone baths to a clientel very interested in youth and attractiveness. In front there is a raw café filled with natural light, and this spring I attended the grand opening of her fine dining restaurant, delighted by an ambiance of elaborate simplicity---young coconut water served in tall, thin glasses.
There is an item of Karyn’s creation that must not go without mention; tasting of honey and light oil, Karyn’s Dehydrated Kale Chips are offered no where else in this country and definitely worth daydreaming about. But as much as kale is my favorite green, olive is close to my favorite fat (besides macadamia and avocado...avocado). And when I tasted the pale, tasteless atrocity atop Karyn's Bean Burrito, resembling more the pasteurized, canned black variety than any Kalamata, Gaeta or Nicoise I insist upon for myself, I could not help but take a second glance at all her ingredients.
But still, she is Karyn, not September herself. Perhaps I am being unfair. Perhaps I am still crawling through my grampy’s garden, drunk on the smell of nightshade. Perhaps I am still wiping seeds from my chin, intoxicated by the vine-ripened tomato. Perhaps I am humbled and in awe of the Harvest, realizing the greatest of joys---that nothing, not knife, not spice, not oven, need come between me and Nature herself.
Overwhelmingly
September 02, 2003
I was shopping last week at Salvation Army in Portland OR, looking for something---anything---white. A well-worn and much loved nighty didn’t exactly jump off the rack at me, but instead demurely lured me in and there commanded my attention. It was the kind of nighty that hangs loose and straight to below the knee. 100% cotton, the fabric thin as wet tissue paper from practicality and the former owner’s loyalty to simplicity. Plain lace around the collar, the color so transparent pink that a careless eye would call it white. It was definitely pink though, and reminded me of gramma. It was two dollars and now it is mine. When I slip inside after a bath fresh and clean, it feels like gramma---suggesting nothing in the slightest of sexuality, but overwhelmingly irresistible for the sheer femininity of it.
At the 2003 International Raw and Living Foods Festival last week in the Oregon mountains, I met a funky raw lady from New York City named Echo. It was easy speaking with her right away. I get excited by that and somehow within a conversation about health, I don’t really know how, but somehow I shared that I am bi-polar. Echo spoke these words; “You must be so creative”... Something frozen inside me thawed. She was the first to ever have reacted that way. Could it be that others like me are overwhelmingly creative as well? Echo may never know the gift she gave to me that day.
I have a best girlfriend from Chicago, whose couch tonite I inhabit, who is expecting. Expecting miracles from the mundane, expecting magick from an egg shell, expecting the more and more independent being in her belly to have a dream of light, give the secret handshake, tap the morris code, proclaim the Open Says Me, and rearrange her insides to make a grand entrance into this world within the fortnight. Olivia with her chic hair cuts. Olivia wearing classy black. Olivia turning heads on the dance floor, now savoring every moment of pregnancy’s sweet surrender---my role model in motherdom. In my mind I imagine her wearing flawless red lipstick---like the day she was married, like the day we met---as she separates part of herself for the life of this healthy baby, smothered in life’s fluid and overwhelmingly red lipstick kisses.
At the 2003 International Raw and Living Foods Festival last week in the Oregon mountains, I met a funky raw lady from New York City named Echo. It was easy speaking with her right away. I get excited by that and somehow within a conversation about health, I don’t really know how, but somehow I shared that I am bi-polar. Echo spoke these words; “You must be so creative”... Something frozen inside me thawed. She was the first to ever have reacted that way. Could it be that others like me are overwhelmingly creative as well? Echo may never know the gift she gave to me that day.
I have a best girlfriend from Chicago, whose couch tonite I inhabit, who is expecting. Expecting miracles from the mundane, expecting magick from an egg shell, expecting the more and more independent being in her belly to have a dream of light, give the secret handshake, tap the morris code, proclaim the Open Says Me, and rearrange her insides to make a grand entrance into this world within the fortnight. Olivia with her chic hair cuts. Olivia wearing classy black. Olivia turning heads on the dance floor, now savoring every moment of pregnancy’s sweet surrender---my role model in motherdom. In my mind I imagine her wearing flawless red lipstick---like the day she was married, like the day we met---as she separates part of herself for the life of this healthy baby, smothered in life’s fluid and overwhelmingly red lipstick kisses.
