Sometimes it rains outside his window. It hits the pavement I heard the cars on the busy street. Sometimes it is autumn in Chicago and raining all at once and he is in Mexico and he is in the Bahamas and I am in Chicago listening to the rain, spinning poi, and dancing after midnite alone.
I need a bath, but the water disgusts me. Must be I am avoiding something I'm feeling. When I can't get clean, when I can't drink water, when I really wish I could cry, is the sometime when the rain finds me.
Chicago, IL
Finally Alone
Finally Alone
September 19, 2005
Happydale, MI
This Is Evolution
This Is Evolution
September 14, 2005
I have a real smart friend. He is doing something I think would be a cool career in my other life - you know; journalism. But he's real smart, like real real smart and one time he broke different mental illnesses down to neuro chemical brain imbalances and made it sound entirely spiritual at the same time.
Well, I couldn't resist asking about yours and my favorite all time mental illness - the warrior maker, the insomniac creator, the artist midwife, the widow maker, the emotional flavor of the moment: Manic Depression. Otherwise known as Bipolar Disorder, this one could be summed up neuro chemically as follows: rocket serotonin (causing euphoric feelings) coupled with sky high dopamine (produces spiritual feelings). Oh, and then the gross lack of both in a few days and all the cyclical results inbetween.
Seems about right.
Remember I was classic BP for seven years. Classic except I never went on spending sprees. Only anarchist thievery.
Implode: In Michigan, there is something happening. It is hot, and it is humid, but it is secretly autumn inside a piñata, loosing it's nerves, ready to fall apart. Like gold, wine and pumpkin crayons leaving shavings all over the ground.
There is something happening and it feels big. Recently my psychic sense has become unignorable. And spinning poi under the waxing moon in a human green lawn with oak, maple, apple, birch, cherry woods all around, they surfaced like a vision on scrying glass water: I felt I was being watched. I knew it was infact. I turned around and could just barely confirm the presence of six shadowy, waxing moon figures. Surrounded by an audience (a gang?) of dear. We gave each other the stare down, I returned to spinning poi with the Ipod, and they bounced bound away feigning alertness, but I know making up cross-the-road jokes too tell when they finally lit bedtime candles settle in cuddle up settle down.
Well mostrecent, it seems to me I have something big to do. Huge. Massive. And it might be the fluctuations of the neuro chemicals associated with those of us displaying "unpredictability" and "aversion to deadlines" or any other still defined committal thing, but right now I I have just received two very important messages that I can no longer ignore and they are:
1. I receive my extra information via the body (I felt I was being watched) first, then my wildly powerful brain processes it in a microinstant and the connection is made (I know who is calling me before I answer pretty much all the time - and people I call uncannily say these words, "I was just thinking about you"). This is important because when you know how you take in your Otherworld, your psychic messages, your information, you can become better at it. Or just more aware in it.
The other message I received is:
2. I am going to do something Massive. Suddenly it seems I am working too hard to slow that thing down with imperceptible habits and beliefs. I feel like it has begun and I am compelled to get out of its way with my feel-good-being-present-Zen-bullshit. I'm ready to get on it and routinely and actively receive this thing.
I am connected…Damn dopamine.
This is not an illness or disorder. This is not something to medicate.
This is Evolution.
Well, I couldn't resist asking about yours and my favorite all time mental illness - the warrior maker, the insomniac creator, the artist midwife, the widow maker, the emotional flavor of the moment: Manic Depression. Otherwise known as Bipolar Disorder, this one could be summed up neuro chemically as follows: rocket serotonin (causing euphoric feelings) coupled with sky high dopamine (produces spiritual feelings). Oh, and then the gross lack of both in a few days and all the cyclical results inbetween.
Seems about right.
Remember I was classic BP for seven years. Classic except I never went on spending sprees. Only anarchist thievery.
Implode: In Michigan, there is something happening. It is hot, and it is humid, but it is secretly autumn inside a piñata, loosing it's nerves, ready to fall apart. Like gold, wine and pumpkin crayons leaving shavings all over the ground.
There is something happening and it feels big. Recently my psychic sense has become unignorable. And spinning poi under the waxing moon in a human green lawn with oak, maple, apple, birch, cherry woods all around, they surfaced like a vision on scrying glass water: I felt I was being watched. I knew it was infact. I turned around and could just barely confirm the presence of six shadowy, waxing moon figures. Surrounded by an audience (a gang?) of dear. We gave each other the stare down, I returned to spinning poi with the Ipod, and they bounced bound away feigning alertness, but I know making up cross-the-road jokes too tell when they finally lit bedtime candles settle in cuddle up settle down.
Well mostrecent, it seems to me I have something big to do. Huge. Massive. And it might be the fluctuations of the neuro chemicals associated with those of us displaying "unpredictability" and "aversion to deadlines" or any other still defined committal thing, but right now I I have just received two very important messages that I can no longer ignore and they are:
1. I receive my extra information via the body (I felt I was being watched) first, then my wildly powerful brain processes it in a microinstant and the connection is made (I know who is calling me before I answer pretty much all the time - and people I call uncannily say these words, "I was just thinking about you"). This is important because when you know how you take in your Otherworld, your psychic messages, your information, you can become better at it. Or just more aware in it.
The other message I received is:
2. I am going to do something Massive. Suddenly it seems I am working too hard to slow that thing down with imperceptible habits and beliefs. I feel like it has begun and I am compelled to get out of its way with my feel-good-being-present-Zen-bullshit. I'm ready to get on it and routinely and actively receive this thing.
I am connected…Damn dopamine.
This is not an illness or disorder. This is not something to medicate.
This is Evolution.
Black Rock City, NV
Dark Moon
Burning Man 2005
Belly Up
Dark Moon
Burning Man 2005
Belly Up
September 07, 2005
If you fire the pottery too long, it will shatter...
We were standing there watching another die. Maybe we had killed it. Maybe it fell out of a tree. But there was a moment in our species evolution when we were standing there watching the other one die and the synapses bridged, the apple's sweet flooded our mouths and innocence and ignorance both were lost forever, while we were standing over another dying and first thought, "I'm going to die, too".
It is in the moment of realizing our own mortality, that we realized we were separate and this entity called Ego came to exist. Defining our race as human; not the extra opposable digit, not the advent of language, but the knowledge that we will die, is what a raccoon a raven a rinocerous will never be able to do. How we deal with this knowledge, too massive for any brian, is like interplanetary baseball: Earthing's favorite pass time. It drives us to make art, write books, pave roads, network systems, be popular, have sex, have families - all of these things unconscious attempts at permanency by a brain so overwhelmed by it's own mortality, it would otherwise go crazy.
So there I am, dressed in super hero combat boots, as if I skipped school the day "subtle" was introduced into other kids vocabulary. Realizing that for once in my life, my transient status was not a social impediment, leaving me looking in through the window's at Tiny Tim's Chrismas dinner instead of ever bellying up to the table. No, in this week-long intentional artist community, my official gypsy status acutally worked to my benefit, recognizing familiar faces - Kokopaulie from Chicago, Kristin from Vancouver, Courtney from Los Angeles, Vatra from San Francisco, and my favorite fire spinner of all time (without him even knowing): Chris from the Windy City as well. Yes, here I was on equal footing. Super hero combat style. I had as much right to be here as anyone and it felt fucking great. I believe the back of the Black Rock City box reads "Insta-Community: Just Add Water".
So here I am with my transient fire family, 200 people strong - a truly elite group when you consider the rest of the 40,000 Black Rock City residents gathered around to see The Man become a flaming effigy structure fire, standing at the outer circle - only 200 fire spinners allowed entrance therein. And as I soak my poi in whateverchemicalburns next to 12 other people yielding fire poi, staff, double dutch ropes (you heard me), juggling pins and fire swords (real life light-sabers), and as I spin off and share flame from another's lit poi (never dims the original light), I feel the crowd making the silent prayers of inebriated religion and realize that no matter what Burning Man 2005 means to every individual here, that Man, set to burn in 20 minutes, is the object of that importance. And as a member of the honorable Fire Conclave, I am in between the two. A powerful role, to raise and direct energy of this magnitude.
With one match, my flames go up, his flames go up. The air becomes warmer around me. Everywhere I look there is spreading fire - spinning, jabbing, throwing, outofcontrolling. I burn me. He burns me. I stop keeping track I am swimming in flames. I am drowning in the music of twenty booming percussionists. I am choking on the hysteria of an infinite crowd of people and machines, shouting, screaming, staring, evoking, dancing my frenzied dance of uninhibited excstacy as burningchemicals ignite and the five story effigy goes up in a fireworks pyrotechnic volcano erruption of flames. Getting larger and larger urgent red orange and yellow, until the frame, the foundations gives in and the The Man comes crashing down, the crowd explodes and thousands of worshipers rush the pyre to pay homage, feed the fire, or roast marshmallows - whatever a Burner chooses to do...
It is not the prohibition of advertising, the absence of currency or the absence of toilets. It is not the presence of nudity, costumes or art cars. It's that we, like any human, will build and create, but have chosen to, if even for this one nite at Burning Man 2005, find the bravery to burn our illusions down, celebrate the impermanece of the unknown and make and make a mockery of our very own mortality. Laugh in the face of Death. Let go of our most precious and choose to live anyway.
We were standing there watching another die. Maybe we had killed it. Maybe it fell out of a tree. But there was a moment in our species evolution when we were standing there watching the other one die and the synapses bridged, the apple's sweet flooded our mouths and innocence and ignorance both were lost forever, while we were standing over another dying and first thought, "I'm going to die, too".
It is in the moment of realizing our own mortality, that we realized we were separate and this entity called Ego came to exist. Defining our race as human; not the extra opposable digit, not the advent of language, but the knowledge that we will die, is what a raccoon a raven a rinocerous will never be able to do. How we deal with this knowledge, too massive for any brian, is like interplanetary baseball: Earthing's favorite pass time. It drives us to make art, write books, pave roads, network systems, be popular, have sex, have families - all of these things unconscious attempts at permanency by a brain so overwhelmed by it's own mortality, it would otherwise go crazy.
So there I am, dressed in super hero combat boots, as if I skipped school the day "subtle" was introduced into other kids vocabulary. Realizing that for once in my life, my transient status was not a social impediment, leaving me looking in through the window's at Tiny Tim's Chrismas dinner instead of ever bellying up to the table. No, in this week-long intentional artist community, my official gypsy status acutally worked to my benefit, recognizing familiar faces - Kokopaulie from Chicago, Kristin from Vancouver, Courtney from Los Angeles, Vatra from San Francisco, and my favorite fire spinner of all time (without him even knowing): Chris from the Windy City as well. Yes, here I was on equal footing. Super hero combat style. I had as much right to be here as anyone and it felt fucking great. I believe the back of the Black Rock City box reads "Insta-Community: Just Add Water".
So here I am with my transient fire family, 200 people strong - a truly elite group when you consider the rest of the 40,000 Black Rock City residents gathered around to see The Man become a flaming effigy structure fire, standing at the outer circle - only 200 fire spinners allowed entrance therein. And as I soak my poi in whateverchemicalburns next to 12 other people yielding fire poi, staff, double dutch ropes (you heard me), juggling pins and fire swords (real life light-sabers), and as I spin off and share flame from another's lit poi (never dims the original light), I feel the crowd making the silent prayers of inebriated religion and realize that no matter what Burning Man 2005 means to every individual here, that Man, set to burn in 20 minutes, is the object of that importance. And as a member of the honorable Fire Conclave, I am in between the two. A powerful role, to raise and direct energy of this magnitude.
With one match, my flames go up, his flames go up. The air becomes warmer around me. Everywhere I look there is spreading fire - spinning, jabbing, throwing, outofcontrolling. I burn me. He burns me. I stop keeping track I am swimming in flames. I am drowning in the music of twenty booming percussionists. I am choking on the hysteria of an infinite crowd of people and machines, shouting, screaming, staring, evoking, dancing my frenzied dance of uninhibited excstacy as burningchemicals ignite and the five story effigy goes up in a fireworks pyrotechnic volcano erruption of flames. Getting larger and larger urgent red orange and yellow, until the frame, the foundations gives in and the The Man comes crashing down, the crowd explodes and thousands of worshipers rush the pyre to pay homage, feed the fire, or roast marshmallows - whatever a Burner chooses to do...
It is not the prohibition of advertising, the absence of currency or the absence of toilets. It is not the presence of nudity, costumes or art cars. It's that we, like any human, will build and create, but have chosen to, if even for this one nite at Burning Man 2005, find the bravery to burn our illusions down, celebrate the impermanece of the unknown and make and make a mockery of our very own mortality. Laugh in the face of Death. Let go of our most precious and choose to live anyway.
