Like a foot massages, sour cherries in season, and the way the sun glows off his perfect tan chest, the Grand Canyon is endlessly astonishing to behold, no matter how many times one has been there before. It does not matter whether I am driving along the rim as the painted desert sun stretches shadows into grotesque proportions or if I am on donkey back wobbling down too-narrow crumbling cliffs, this crevice in the earth's cleavage, this crack in the crust's back, never ceases to elevate me to giddy rapture.
A day trip from Las Vegas, I remember hiking down into the gorge in the unforgiving arid summertime heat. I climbed down and in down and in, witnessing history on visual display like geography's birthday cake: white layers on top of yellow on top of red, dripped in black.
I remember, too, one New Year's Eve (2005 to be specific) watching the sunrise over the elevated horizon, making peace with my 2004, and speeding back to Los Angeles 100 mph, passing aromatic pines and grazing elk as I buzzed the dawning park exit, in the hopes that that evening I would make a date with a new prospect perchance to steel a kiss from his hauntingly full lips as the clock struck twelve and turned my life into an eternal glass slipper.
But by far, my favorite way to experience the most natural of wonders, is 36,000 miles away in an airplane on a clear day, like today. One can actually see ice melting down the Rockies, collecting into streams, snaking through the landscape, cutting grooves into the planes and hollowing, over lifetimes over centuries over aeons, hollowing out the masterpiece we call the Grand Canyon – one of my top three pleasures in life.
And it is not just the vastness of this cavern making "civilized" living for miles radius impossible. It is not just the ancient stories written on its wise walls. The Grand Canyon’s allure lies in that when I am contemplating it, I am contemplating nothing at all. What was washed away, what was carved through – the absence of earth is what the canyon is. Perhaps we all are just remnants of what we used to be – born blocks of soft clay, chiseled away at by experience, no longer whole, but gaining shape, wisdom, beauty and definition in maturity. The Grand Canyon and I: precious sculptures defined by what isn’t there.
Portland, OR
Top Three Pleasures in Life
Top Three Pleasures in Life
June 27, 2005
Portsmouth, NH
Around The World
Around The World
June 24, 2005
Today I graduated United States Gypsy University.
I was promoted to Executive Consultant of the North American branch of Transients, Inc..
I was awarded a gold ribbon at the Well-Traveled Yankee Competition.
I was upgraded to first class on Domestic Airlines (and let me tell you; the extra-wide seats and the glares on every economy class passengers' one-bag-o-peanuts face as they boarded last, was worth every piece of lost luggage in the past six years and even that one strip search in Detroit).
Because as of tonite I have fulfilled a vagabond destiny. At 9:28pm EST, Wednesday June 23rd 2005, while performing with the Mark Goodman Tap Company in Portsmouth New Hampshire, I walked across the Memorial Bridge and set foot in Kittery Maine, making it official: I am an Expert Nomad of all 50 United States. I feel like someone should throw me a party.
Or send me a handmade sympathy card. After all - what has a gypsy chick got to look forward to now? New Mexico - performed there. Wisconsin - backpacked it. Montana - roadtripped through (and through and through). Guess I'll have to call up my friends at the Coven of International Migratory Spiritualists. Perhaps it's time to leave footprints around the world.
I was promoted to Executive Consultant of the North American branch of Transients, Inc..
I was awarded a gold ribbon at the Well-Traveled Yankee Competition.
I was upgraded to first class on Domestic Airlines (and let me tell you; the extra-wide seats and the glares on every economy class passengers' one-bag-o-peanuts face as they boarded last, was worth every piece of lost luggage in the past six years and even that one strip search in Detroit).
Because as of tonite I have fulfilled a vagabond destiny. At 9:28pm EST, Wednesday June 23rd 2005, while performing with the Mark Goodman Tap Company in Portsmouth New Hampshire, I walked across the Memorial Bridge and set foot in Kittery Maine, making it official: I am an Expert Nomad of all 50 United States. I feel like someone should throw me a party.
Or send me a handmade sympathy card. After all - what has a gypsy chick got to look forward to now? New Mexico - performed there. Wisconsin - backpacked it. Montana - roadtripped through (and through and through). Guess I'll have to call up my friends at the Coven of International Migratory Spiritualists. Perhaps it's time to leave footprints around the world.
Hollywood, CA
Study in Domestication : or Someone's Been Sleeping in My Bed
Study in Domestication : or Someone's Been Sleeping in My Bed
June 11, 2005
I have a dresser that sits in the recesses of my mother's basement. I found it in the attic of the last physical home I had, Chicago, and I packed it up when I left that home in early spring 6 years ago.
Today I wake after 11 hours sleep in someone else's king sized bed. One of hundreds I have slept in in the 6 years since my Chicago home, and I wake bleeding and thinking about that stoopid dresser I have saved all this time. It is a unkept antique piece of furniture. It was an arduous task getting it out of my Chicago attict. It has been a thorn in my mother's basement side for over half a decade. What is it about the dresser that feels like my heart this new moon?
The bottom drawer is deep and is packed with gifts people have made me with their own hands: other people's art. I have photograph prints from New York, poetry from Wisconsin, blown glass from Oregon, oragami from San Francisco, sketches from Maui, letters from Europe and a worn out braided piece of yarn a little girl managed, through many hands, to deliver to me after seeing me perform in STOMP. These are the things that can't be thrown away. Hand made gifts more alive than any diamond or gown.
In the drawer above that, protected and wrapped in scarves of purple, blue, and green, are "tools" of my spirituality - things I once used in an attic in Chicago to connect to what I percieved as divine. Four heavy glass goblets I stole from various restaraunts across the country, incense burners fit for the Pope, sconces and wands and magickal unmentionables. These are the things can't be thrown away. I hope to "drink and never know thirst" from that stolen chalice again someday.
The next drawer above is thin and holds only one thing: the cloak my grandmother sewed me. Black velvet outside, purple velvet inside, draping long to cover the ankles, hood fitted preciesly to shadow the eyes. I have worn it ritualistically only a handful of times, including Halloweens, an outdoor autumnal festival, and to sing at my grandmother, herself's, funeral. This is something that can not be thrown away. Darkness rests on the wearer's shoulders, but inside, through knowing black, the soul becomes ever deeper, like the purple ocean's everever.
The top two drawers are discreet and tightly packed. If I could open them without crushing the contents, I would feel the rush of all my created symbols - the mysteries I have uncovered - Pandora's taboo unleashed - opening the top drawers is inescapable tears. In these drawers are things I have collected from the earth, things I have made or found special. In these drawers are the objects I have "worked" with. There are lady bugs, there are bird bones, there are pine cones, sea shells and feathers. There are river stones painted with runes, there are beads and spells and wishes and intentions and beliefs and disappointments and love, so much love, so much care boxed up, unopenable neglected mostly forgotten in the recesses of my mother's basement.
6 years without a home (only the soul knows where is home) - 6 years without a home I have nothing, need nothing, am nothing, in that: free. But something human in me, not enlightened, not divine, something powerfully human has a need, and I wake shaming myself for needing anything by making terrible wishes to burn that worthless dresser - burn everything I ever held onto, every symbol of connection, every forgotten reminder, every dried up butterfly wing to ashes - watch the last pieces of myself so far off and irrelevant consumed in flame, transformed to ashes, burn and laugh, burn and laugh like a madwoman alive. Because the owner of this apartment I have been house sitting for, returns in three weeks and I do not live here. I must move on before Papa Bear finds Goldielocks sleeping in his bed.
Just today, I wish I could lay here forever and possess something and call it mine.
Today I wake after 11 hours sleep in someone else's king sized bed. One of hundreds I have slept in in the 6 years since my Chicago home, and I wake bleeding and thinking about that stoopid dresser I have saved all this time. It is a unkept antique piece of furniture. It was an arduous task getting it out of my Chicago attict. It has been a thorn in my mother's basement side for over half a decade. What is it about the dresser that feels like my heart this new moon?
The bottom drawer is deep and is packed with gifts people have made me with their own hands: other people's art. I have photograph prints from New York, poetry from Wisconsin, blown glass from Oregon, oragami from San Francisco, sketches from Maui, letters from Europe and a worn out braided piece of yarn a little girl managed, through many hands, to deliver to me after seeing me perform in STOMP. These are the things that can't be thrown away. Hand made gifts more alive than any diamond or gown.
In the drawer above that, protected and wrapped in scarves of purple, blue, and green, are "tools" of my spirituality - things I once used in an attic in Chicago to connect to what I percieved as divine. Four heavy glass goblets I stole from various restaraunts across the country, incense burners fit for the Pope, sconces and wands and magickal unmentionables. These are the things can't be thrown away. I hope to "drink and never know thirst" from that stolen chalice again someday.
The next drawer above is thin and holds only one thing: the cloak my grandmother sewed me. Black velvet outside, purple velvet inside, draping long to cover the ankles, hood fitted preciesly to shadow the eyes. I have worn it ritualistically only a handful of times, including Halloweens, an outdoor autumnal festival, and to sing at my grandmother, herself's, funeral. This is something that can not be thrown away. Darkness rests on the wearer's shoulders, but inside, through knowing black, the soul becomes ever deeper, like the purple ocean's everever.
The top two drawers are discreet and tightly packed. If I could open them without crushing the contents, I would feel the rush of all my created symbols - the mysteries I have uncovered - Pandora's taboo unleashed - opening the top drawers is inescapable tears. In these drawers are things I have collected from the earth, things I have made or found special. In these drawers are the objects I have "worked" with. There are lady bugs, there are bird bones, there are pine cones, sea shells and feathers. There are river stones painted with runes, there are beads and spells and wishes and intentions and beliefs and disappointments and love, so much love, so much care boxed up, unopenable neglected mostly forgotten in the recesses of my mother's basement.
6 years without a home (only the soul knows where is home) - 6 years without a home I have nothing, need nothing, am nothing, in that: free. But something human in me, not enlightened, not divine, something powerfully human has a need, and I wake shaming myself for needing anything by making terrible wishes to burn that worthless dresser - burn everything I ever held onto, every symbol of connection, every forgotten reminder, every dried up butterfly wing to ashes - watch the last pieces of myself so far off and irrelevant consumed in flame, transformed to ashes, burn and laugh, burn and laugh like a madwoman alive. Because the owner of this apartment I have been house sitting for, returns in three weeks and I do not live here. I must move on before Papa Bear finds Goldielocks sleeping in his bed.
Just today, I wish I could lay here forever and possess something and call it mine.
Hollywood, CA
manymorerealallthetime
manymorerealallthetime
June 06, 2005
I will dance with you. You will love dancing with me. We look around at everyone looking at we. I see the veins pop right out, like life is expanding before my very eyes, the visual pumping of your laser gaze on my breast is the blood shooting through your popyeye forearms. And incomparable well worked and receptive hands.
I will draw you. You will love what you look like to me. Falling in love with every line, every angle, every shadow - especially the ones throwing that symmetry off, that false want to be The god. Imperfect; the soul.
Perfect perfect spirit.
Depth and expanse.
I will put a pencil to paper and make your skin the colors it reflects to me.
Hot Domestic Pink 50's Pajamas is me sleeping in your king sized bed not waiting for you. I will not wait. I do not wait. I go. Good thing you go with me.
You can
go
You can
leave
You might leave. You will leave. I still want these days, these weeks, the more most all the time white beads for places and spaces already did she mean? Yes, what enticing creatures humans be, being blessed aware of our own mortality, yet choosing every day like the dj just chose our favorite song.
It was gonna happen sooner or later.
You will love dancing with me.
I will draw you. You will love what you look like to me. Falling in love with every line, every angle, every shadow - especially the ones throwing that symmetry off, that false want to be The god. Imperfect; the soul.
Perfect perfect spirit.
Depth and expanse.
I will put a pencil to paper and make your skin the colors it reflects to me.
Hot Domestic Pink 50's Pajamas is me sleeping in your king sized bed not waiting for you. I will not wait. I do not wait. I go. Good thing you go with me.
You can
go
You can
leave
You might leave. You will leave. I still want these days, these weeks, the more most all the time white beads for places and spaces already did she mean? Yes, what enticing creatures humans be, being blessed aware of our own mortality, yet choosing every day like the dj just chose our favorite song.
It was gonna happen sooner or later.
You will love dancing with me.
