So my tour podner, Brendan, says to me last nite, "doesn't Summerfest (our first festival) seem like a lifetime ago?". When in fact it was only six weeks. It's just that so much has happened in the past six weeks neither of us can put the puzzle together. Pieces are missing in my jigsaw brain - in the cracks of the couch with a few copper pennies no one cares about, in the oops-too-good hiding place along with last year's renegade rotting easter egg, loafing around under the coffee table with that unidentifiable crusty hairy something your burnout roomate is about to try to smoke. The colors and half images on the pieces I do have look like Picasso, Klimt and Paul B. Rucker soup. I respond to Brendan, who just started traveling extensively, um, six weeks ago with the onset of our tour, "Welcome to my life."
It has been five years now that I have been gypsying hard: three theatre tours have taken me from Scotland to Alaska, production contracts from San Francisco to Las Vegas, spontaneous vacations from Brazil to Jamaica, and the endless pursuit of love that keeps me roaming, ever ready for a new experience, flashlighting caves, fingering crevices, turning up mossy rocks and exploring deserted graveyards for the mere adventure of it. Is this what people mean when they say "free spirit" along with my name? Is there any other way a spirit can be?
What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. Notice how that piece influences the puzzle.
We are as free as we believe ourselves worthy, able, allowed to be. So now at the end of Brendan and Tonya Kay's raw festival tour which I have officially named the Don't Think This Doesn't Apply To You Tour, I want to thank my Thinker for believing in such lofty levels of possibility that my Prover might have fire spinning in the mud, film shooting in Manhattan, sweat lodging in Ontario, and boating under Nigara Falls to prove. Did I know I would get such joy from being the Pied Piper of Poi at every festival, leading a trail of dancing spinning children everywhere I went? Did I know I would discover ripe wild blackberry bushes while during an emergency roadside pee stop on Hwy 5? Did I realize I would go to that heavy metal show, meet that wild fig forager, have that "un" conversation, witness those two full moons, steel that forever kiss - all of which changed my life. These things we can not plan. And oh, how plans limit the possibility surrender offers. Five Year Life Goals, what?
It is a blur. The past six weeks. My entire life. Our grand purpose. Perhaps these journal entries, email updates and digital photos are just assistants to a brain overwhelmed by experience - a way to remember what would otherwise easily be lost under the coffee table, crusty hairy headache smoke, forever. Or perhaps these writings and images are more accurately the pointless frantic scurry struggle race to see this puzzle come together before I become just one easily forgotten piece myself.
summing things up
San Francisco, CA
Don't Think This Doesn't Apply to You Tour
San Francisco, CA
Don't Think This Doesn't Apply to You Tour
August 30, 2004
International Festival of Living and Raw Foods
Portland, OR
What is Now?
Portland, OR
What is Now?
August 23, 2004
I know pain. But that is not now.
My knees have crumbled like two towers beneath my weight. I have fallen. I have forgotten how to get up. But that is not now.
I have lost faith in humanity. I have given up on what I believe in. I have seen a loved one die and so so badly not wanted her to go. My heart has broken.
I have placed my own life on the scales, weighed against the word "why". Life has come up short.
I have been misunderstood. I have been a mistake. I have cursed the sunrise and feared the Dark.
I have been sick, I have been injured, I have been insane, I have hurt.
I know pain.
And that is how I know, that is definately not now.
My knees have crumbled like two towers beneath my weight. I have fallen. I have forgotten how to get up. But that is not now.
I have lost faith in humanity. I have given up on what I believe in. I have seen a loved one die and so so badly not wanted her to go. My heart has broken.
I have placed my own life on the scales, weighed against the word "why". Life has come up short.
I have been misunderstood. I have been a mistake. I have cursed the sunrise and feared the Dark.
I have been sick, I have been injured, I have been insane, I have hurt.
I know pain.
And that is how I know, that is definately not now.
The Living Source Cafe - Raw Restaurant Review
Vancouver BC
Sacred Plants
Vancouver BC
Sacred Plants
August 20, 2004
I stood over the glass display, so clear Sherlock Holmes' monocle would certainly prove futile - no finger print, no belly lint, no DNA detected here. The enclosed case, doing just what a fine art gallery display should do: focusing the critique's attention on the enclosed crown jewel - in this case, a well positioned, quite erect blown glass masterpiece. A swirling, swelling, serpentine face in every color of the glass bubble gum rainbow. So haunting, so reveiling, the onlooker is left feeling responsible for the world's perversion - wondering if every act of originality hasn't been subliminal "sin" since that metaphoric apple bite in the Garden of Eden. And if that is the case, if innocent sin really isn't just a natural desire for growth where stagnancy existed before. Oh, how art asks the questions not meant to be answered.
Most of the display case artwork was well above my spending limit for...um....the entire month. But the Big Spender Who Could certainly spent her money well, for in addition to owning a character-releaving oracle and magnificent coffee table conversation piece, the owner will also be able to enjoy the finest herbs - passion flower, white willow, chamomile, and any other fine herb freedom will alow - via this chef-d'oeuvre. Each fine glass piece of art doubling as a high-class glass smoking pipe for those who wish to truely create ritual out of sacred plants and their bodies.
Intelligent hip-hop was spun over the sound system. Creatively dressed twenty-somethings danced a bit at the door. A group of jovial men stood in a circle. Absolutely no one coughed.
In the summer evening air on the back patio, I felt profound unto myself as I gazed over Commercial Dr. alley murals, a few potted flowers, the occasional Harley Davidson cruising slowly through. The Bikram Yoga instructor from next door talked Love. A fellow Rasta talked truth with simple words. The owner provided one of his favorite masterpieces for the table to enjoy. When we all finished our ritual in smoke, we worshiped plants this time in the stomach. Freshly juiced greens, local and in season tomatoe-based soup, basil salad dressing fresh picked from patio pot. All served with a smile from the most powerfully life-loving equal I have met in a long time - The Living Source's raw chef. That smile. These plants. This art gallery / raw cafe / Safety Zone. There is no where else in North America doing this. How did everything happen so perfectly in my life to lead me to this very moment?
Just another question not meant to be answered.
Most of the display case artwork was well above my spending limit for...um....the entire month. But the Big Spender Who Could certainly spent her money well, for in addition to owning a character-releaving oracle and magnificent coffee table conversation piece, the owner will also be able to enjoy the finest herbs - passion flower, white willow, chamomile, and any other fine herb freedom will alow - via this chef-d'oeuvre. Each fine glass piece of art doubling as a high-class glass smoking pipe for those who wish to truely create ritual out of sacred plants and their bodies.
Intelligent hip-hop was spun over the sound system. Creatively dressed twenty-somethings danced a bit at the door. A group of jovial men stood in a circle. Absolutely no one coughed.
In the summer evening air on the back patio, I felt profound unto myself as I gazed over Commercial Dr. alley murals, a few potted flowers, the occasional Harley Davidson cruising slowly through. The Bikram Yoga instructor from next door talked Love. A fellow Rasta talked truth with simple words. The owner provided one of his favorite masterpieces for the table to enjoy. When we all finished our ritual in smoke, we worshiped plants this time in the stomach. Freshly juiced greens, local and in season tomatoe-based soup, basil salad dressing fresh picked from patio pot. All served with a smile from the most powerfully life-loving equal I have met in a long time - The Living Source's raw chef. That smile. These plants. This art gallery / raw cafe / Safety Zone. There is no where else in North America doing this. How did everything happen so perfectly in my life to lead me to this very moment?
Just another question not meant to be answered.
Yes! to Life Festival
London, ONT
Secret Space
London, ONT
Secret Space
August 09, 2004
Footsteps on my right. Footsteps on my left. It is a gravel road I am standing on and the nite is sure dark out in the country. The stars are close enough to connect the dots and the trees are just black silhouettes.
Two dimensional vision. Surround sound hearing.
Shrill soprano insects on my right. Breakfast cereal crackle pop on my left. It is a bonfire we are all gathered around. We started out with the obligatory half-hearted hippie drumming and dancing, but in sudden stillness, after the thudding pittered out, we discovered something.
Each of us perhaps entirely different. Quite possibly entirely the same.
And I stare into the fire and feel the skin on my lips tighten as all bodily moisture goes a.w.o.l., man overboard, escaping, no-time-for-a-kiss-goodbye Backdoor Romeo. Don't we all crave at some point this complete transformation? Like the log deciding to not be a log anymore. Letting the blue flame dance in that secret spot that before tonite you had ignored. And your health suffered for ignorance. I lean back and open my legs as the log becomes heat, light, smoke and ash. Nothing remains unchanged.
This is not profound. This is simple. This is ordinary and common. I lift my head to see 12 other people, practically strangers, enraptured, taking in the same experience.
This is normal - an every day kinda thing.
Two dimensional vision. Surround sound hearing.
Shrill soprano insects on my right. Breakfast cereal crackle pop on my left. It is a bonfire we are all gathered around. We started out with the obligatory half-hearted hippie drumming and dancing, but in sudden stillness, after the thudding pittered out, we discovered something.
Each of us perhaps entirely different. Quite possibly entirely the same.
And I stare into the fire and feel the skin on my lips tighten as all bodily moisture goes a.w.o.l., man overboard, escaping, no-time-for-a-kiss-goodbye Backdoor Romeo. Don't we all crave at some point this complete transformation? Like the log deciding to not be a log anymore. Letting the blue flame dance in that secret spot that before tonite you had ignored. And your health suffered for ignorance. I lean back and open my legs as the log becomes heat, light, smoke and ash. Nothing remains unchanged.
This is not profound. This is simple. This is ordinary and common. I lift my head to see 12 other people, practically strangers, enraptured, taking in the same experience.
This is normal - an every day kinda thing.
Buffalo, NY
Nothing After "But"
Nothing After "But"
August 04, 2004
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
A cartoon character rainbow bright kinda girl who hasn't washed her hair for a month or more, we'll call her Interrupting Comet.
Interrupting Comet has been driving around the country with green coconuts and a meet clever in the bed of her grampy's sharp white pick up. She sings out the window at the top of her lungs. She cackles with her touring partner, we'll call him Stickyfingers, until her belly cramps. She ponders if it is the mere fact that she is road tripping another 6 hour drive that causes the sky to darken low north east south clouds to the west, and spill the burden with we underneath.
She figures it is the least she can do to be rained upon and there is nothing she could say right now after the word 'but'.
Oil cotton clouds cried on the shoulder of an Interrupting Comet then this weekend, when the tent she was in proved not at all suitable for being a tent. Doesn't the organism thrive sometimes in most unpredictable ways? Awake all nite in the middle of a saturated 200 acres of upstate New York wonderland, listening to the raindrops peek through, drip, drip till her sleeping bag became like a slobber spit wad on elementary school bathroom ceilings (we all tossed a few). Yes, it is unpredictable to be just one nerve, just one capillary, just one cell of this gigantic intelligent, nearing immortal, biosphere organism.
Unpredictable because we can't see the whole picture.
Under Blue Moon August Eve she spun fire in bighting nite whet wind. At the artistic and communal Living Now Raw Festival, she had 30 poi spinning students squishing ankle deep in sexy mud filth, using their bodies in ways they had never before, taking risks, succeeding, failing, becoming more. And on her road trip now to London, ONT for the next raw festival, she takes it easy in the pickup cause it is light on whet pavement and her wise grampy said, "You can buy another truck, but you can't replace grand daughters."
We just can’t see the whole picture. You never know what part you are playing, what rain cloud you are emotionally supporting, what the intelligence of the collective organism is going to request of you next. So take it slow.
Interrupting Comet, wh---?
DIE OLD!!!
Who's there?
A cartoon character rainbow bright kinda girl who hasn't washed her hair for a month or more, we'll call her Interrupting Comet.
Interrupting Comet has been driving around the country with green coconuts and a meet clever in the bed of her grampy's sharp white pick up. She sings out the window at the top of her lungs. She cackles with her touring partner, we'll call him Stickyfingers, until her belly cramps. She ponders if it is the mere fact that she is road tripping another 6 hour drive that causes the sky to darken low north east south clouds to the west, and spill the burden with we underneath.
She figures it is the least she can do to be rained upon and there is nothing she could say right now after the word 'but'.
Oil cotton clouds cried on the shoulder of an Interrupting Comet then this weekend, when the tent she was in proved not at all suitable for being a tent. Doesn't the organism thrive sometimes in most unpredictable ways? Awake all nite in the middle of a saturated 200 acres of upstate New York wonderland, listening to the raindrops peek through, drip, drip till her sleeping bag became like a slobber spit wad on elementary school bathroom ceilings (we all tossed a few). Yes, it is unpredictable to be just one nerve, just one capillary, just one cell of this gigantic intelligent, nearing immortal, biosphere organism.
Unpredictable because we can't see the whole picture.
Under Blue Moon August Eve she spun fire in bighting nite whet wind. At the artistic and communal Living Now Raw Festival, she had 30 poi spinning students squishing ankle deep in sexy mud filth, using their bodies in ways they had never before, taking risks, succeeding, failing, becoming more. And on her road trip now to London, ONT for the next raw festival, she takes it easy in the pickup cause it is light on whet pavement and her wise grampy said, "You can buy another truck, but you can't replace grand daughters."
We just can’t see the whole picture. You never know what part you are playing, what rain cloud you are emotionally supporting, what the intelligence of the collective organism is going to request of you next. So take it slow.
Interrupting Comet, wh---?
DIE OLD!!!
