toil

It’s been a crazy few days.

Unbuilding things that weren’t made to be unbuilt, and seemingly made of the heaviest materials possible – but we just had to have them for the Red Nose District
( http://www.wickedsunshine.com/Projects/JustGoOutWithMe/JustGoOutWithMe-Gallery-ProductionPhotos-V1.2.html ) – loading trhe pieces onto the rental truck, then to get a huge dome, then to get Scott’s Peep Show Mini-Golf schtuff.
The next day meeting up with a crew at the RND’s 55′ semi (the largest legal in the US, apparently) , unloading the stuff that L.A. packed in there, re-packing it in not so much of a throw-it-in kind of way, then unloading three other trucks into the big one. Packed top to bottom, to the end.
Working on our bus – got the radio & generator working, loaded some of our personal gear in there, and soon a trip to drop off more. We pushed the departure time up another day – but it’s worth it. Not leaving tonight – that would have been insanity trying to get everything done – and hell, we’re still getting to the Playa five days early.

Soon.

I think I’m getting excited, when I can find time to be.

See you on the Playa, if you’re going.

Come find me – I’m setting up my tent right by our Big Black Bus, right behind the big top – not in the general RND camping area.

Hells.

YEAH.

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soon

The days have been full.
Full of making plans for going back to The Playa, full of plans, ideas, decisions that have been made and unmade and replaced with new ones that changed everything. Full of finding out that I, along with a big handful of people won’t be going to Seattle for Bumbershooot. No problem, I can dig it. I know the bus would make it yawning, but the producer wants to be absolutely certain that Gooferman gets there, so they’re flying, and the not-absolutely-necessary people who would have rolled up in the buss are left to finish out the week at Burning Man – those that are going, at least. Woe is us… Full of sitting in front of the computer as fast as I can, for days, weeks, trying to create a magazine, make things happen, adore this existence and the way it unfolds.  Today I finally got the hell out, walked as much as time would permit with every step making sure to push, with every stride searching for lenght, a bit of stretch and letting my legs know that i haven’t forgotten them. (I’ve tried to take care of them – I don’t make them scream as a statue anymore…) I think they’re pretty pissed. Hopefull my legs and I will be able to make peace with each other – after all, we do live in the same place…

Pffft.

These are the ramblings of the days that remind me.

And everything works as it is supposed to, as we allow it. We create every experience we have. We create how we feel – and no one else does, no one else can.

I can only be as me as what I see, and what I see is only where I am at the time. Everything matters.

A horn honks, some ass wanting to get through an intersection while the person in front of him is turning right, his way blocked by people crossing the street. Minding their own. Plenty of green light. As ass drives past the turning car I see his face contort in anger as unheard words echo inside of his car. This happened yesterday as i was driving ’round with Boe on our way to the fabric shop. 
Why do I take this in? Why did I want to pul him out of his car and beat him – or as the term goes – beat some sense into him? Yeah, just try it. Just try it and accomplish nothing but bloody face, blooty knuckles. I am not a violent person but I have little tolerance for ignorance. I am not a violent person by any means but sometimes I think people won’t listen unless I raise my voice or my fists. I haven’t raised my fists in more years than I remember. I have learned to laugh – and in this case, most, learned to know that they create their own experience. All I can do is laugh – so I do.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Down to the bus today to meet Mathew, the person who gave it to us, and do a run around. Man. what an amazing person. Pure. After getting the tour and intracies of such an old vehicle, I told him of our plans, and he was delighted. He knows he made a good choice in giving it to Boe. The Bus is family now, and we will treat it as such. Gods, it’s beautiful.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Still tons to do before we leave. We leave for the Playa in four days. My 40th birthday is on September 5th – and this will be the first one I have celebrated for years – and more years. This will be a celebration, encompasing all of the forsaken times, the birthdays that I chose to spend alone, wallowing – no more.

No more. I will always be becomming, all that I am at any given moment.

And right now, I feel that these words have been forced enough. I need to reply to an email about my books.

Make good dreams.

I’ve had some strange ones lately.

in this, exquisitely.

I don’t know how to write this. I don’t know how to write this without sounding like something, a being, who is any more special than you – because i am not. Never have been, never will be. These are the things that I want everyone to realize. Perhaps this is my path. Read these ramblings and know that you are a part of them. Believe in the bottom of sorrow, the lightness of joy – but don’t look to go where my heart has been.

By lovers I have been called an apparition, an illusion. Just a couple days ago I was called a mythical creature by a dear friend.
If I am these things, it is only you who make me so. If I could only express how deep the connection goes. I am only brilliant points of light and empty space, I am only energy, I am only me, my past in this life and what I choose to do with my now. I am hundreds of unsaid stories, beauty and pain. I am you.

I don’t know how to write this, the blessings that have come when I just simply let go and believe, when I swallow the sorrow and angst and simply believe that it will all work out – but I need to write this. I need to write this because it does. It always does. It always works out.

Recently I decided to dry the tears of frustration, and smile. No small task, not as simple as it sounds – but it was a decicision that needed to be made. Over the years I’ve learned to listen, and have been taught how to do this when needed. I decided to smile, listen, and let things happen as they will.

That’s really all it takes. I decided to let go of the frustration of not having any scratch to make the trip to Burning Man possible, the stress of everything in my current life. I let it go, and smiled. I decided to join the dance again. That’s really all it takes. Dancing…

The day after that, I recieved a response to my writing offering a free ticket to the Playa from a beautifully random someone. A free ticket to Burning Man. In my initial reply I turned it down, as II only need $20 to finish paying for the ticket I have already commited to, and know that someone else needed it more – but then I re-configured my thinking, and remembered that things happen as they are supposed to.

As it ends up, I a selling the ticket to a former lover and dear friend who is in a financial bind, for less than the cheapest tickets available. With that money I will be able to pay for my camp dues and pay off the rest of my ticket, and she can come to The Playa. Everything works out.
Shortly after I talked to another friend who wonderfully put me up for a couple months directly after the burn last hear, asking him if I left my Camelback at his house. I can’t find it anywhere. Kevin said he hadn’t seen it, but hell – he wants to buy one for another friend of his, and he will happily buy one for me as well for a belated birthday present. I saw him yesterday after far too long, and goddamn, I not only came out of it with a delightful conversation, but I also have a kick-ass thingy that will keep me in the water.

Everything works out.

Everything.

I still need a tent, but I just got a call for a job tomorrow which will possibly pay for that. Part of it, at least.

My throwing knives came in the mail yesterday. Time to start practicing again.

Damn. silly words with no poetry – but I am tired. A lot these days. time to lay out, give thanks, meditate. This didn’t come out as planned – the words… – but they are never planned, they just come as needed…

decisions

My last night in Oakland, tomorrow Lauren comes home and I must take leave. It’s been nice – an incredibly comfortable bed, a sweet dog  that always suprised me with the mess it did or didn’t make when I returned, and delicious solitude that I used unwisely until a couple days ago when I began to meditate again. Sure, I got a lot of outside work done, but the inside crumbled. I don’t really like this kind of solitude. Either give me a cabin or tent in the middle of nowhere, (an Enchanted Forest to get lost in and find the sacred places to sit where no one will find me) full of good energy, or put me in the middle of an active city where I can step out the door and have the world there at all hours. One or the other – I don’t do half-way well.

Still, it has been wonderful in its own way – and I learned that when I am able to begin looking for a home, it can’t be in the East Bay. Just my preference.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Things have changed over the past couple of days – I’ve remembered. This past weekend I went down far enough to need to – where it wasn’t just the usual shadows climbing that the next morning after getting the words out could bring the sun that is inside back. Weighted under the uncertaintly lf life and the way I chose to try to dull it only made it heavier, more serious. I forgot the game, the dance. Too many things to figure out – where is the next bed,  the next dollar, the next meal, how will I possibly make all I want to have happen happen? The magazine, the books, trying to figure out how I will find the money to get arrows for a performance I had talked about with Boe for the Playa – how will I gather all of my things, spread about the bay area, without inconveniencing everyone? How will I get money to get a tent, food?

 The smallest things weighed tons and at times I was resigned to simply staying here, my mind took me to the worst places. I looked at the homeless people, muscles strainded with their lives on their backs in ripped backpacks held together by any means possible and called them – the ones who weren’t completely out of their minds – I called them brothers, sisters. I try as best as I can not to look homeless – but I am. It is truly only by the grace and generosity of the friends I have that I am not in the street with them right now. I thought of the fagility of life. How the world is at our fingertips one moment and the next… I cave all of the non (obvious) drug addicts change when I could, when I had it. I can always spare something – but sometimes it was only a brief stop to talk.

I’ve been fortunate enough not to end up entirely like they have yet, but I know the value that a few sincere words have on the souI. I am intimate with their power because on the days following my lost weekend posts it was words from you that brought me back. Thank all who sent me messages. I needed it. Sometimes I can do it myself – most times. Pretty much always, and I have, long before I had the beautiful people I now have in my life came around – but gods, it took so much longer…

Perhaps that’s where I found my strength. Perhaps that is where i came to be me – the me for this life. Never thought of that before, but it makes perfect sense. I’ve become to believe… no – to absolutely, without any question know, that I/You will never be challenged with anything that The Great Oooh Ahhh doesn’t know that I/You can’t handle. Period. It’s not out to kill us. Simply out to introduce us to unfamiliar tunes that we need to figure out how do dance with. That is the most important thing for me to remember. I want to keep my easy  laughter.

I want to keep dancing, any way I can.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was earlier today that something hit me – and honestly, all I can call it was a decision. A Decisision. I was down, stressed, bent under the weight of everything – but then, literally in an instant, I remembered that this was a game. That’s all it took. the weight slid from my shoulders as I sat  – umm. well – as I sat on the toilet. Sorry for the graphic imagery, but that’s where – but anyway, (and this has nothing to do with where i was sitting) I remembered – and a day that wasn’t bad, but just kind of blank – all of the sudden, for the first time in days when I was alone – I smiled.

I remembered. It’s all a decision. I decided to laugh – and that changed everything in a small fraction of a second, and my dreams were back, and I decided to believe in them again, and I decided to believe in, most importantly, today, now. Seems to me that now is a pretty damn important thing. Seems to me that now is never as bad as we can make it inside of our minds – because our hearts are stronger. We just have the tendency to listen to the wrong things. 

The things that are easier. It’s so much easier to give up, to conform, to desert ourselves, our dreams. (Aren’t we our dreams? I am not a product of my father, my mother, my friends, or the society or “community”. I am affected by them, and I sure as fuck have my issues, we all do – but I/We have more strength than we know to work though them. I am only me, and only when I am me am I worth how glorious you are. Only when you are you – …)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now, the mundane part.
New business. It took a lot of hard swallowing to escape from the “I am a performer!” bullshit that I was wrapped up in for a while, but at the same time I can’t take a normal job.Freedom is sacred to me, and time bounces. I could never hold a normal job in the things that are coming up anyway – so now I am an independent IKEA furniture assembler. It started with a friend who just needed to have some stuff ut together, so I offered – I know how to do this, have based most of my previous lives on working with my hands and figuring things out.
From there my mind started working. “Hmmmm- bet she’s not the only one…” And in four Craigslist posts, got three jobw – one I could accept – and she was so happy that she tipped me 50% for an hours worth of work. That’s my new gig to carry me through. They will get more frequent – only been doing this for a little over a week. It will become a good business, i will hire friends who need scratch and help them out if I’m too busy for some reason, and rock it. San Francisco street performing is done for now.

Just found out today that I’m leaving for the Playa in ten days. Now nine. Tons to do. ohshit. Still don’t have a ticket (owe $25 on the one I bought) and don’t have my dies for Red Nose District yet. Selling my Resonator guitar for super cheap. $120.

Happy with a recent conversation. Very happy and at ease. Yeah, you this time, Miss Sensitive.

Fixed Boe’s engine and drive shaft on his van. Feel good about that. I would happily do it a hundred times over. He’s one of those people that I just want to give everything to. he has a certain something that is so genuine and loving – but I don’t think he knows it. I know he doesn’t try. It’s just him.

On the search for the perfect bar-made vodka Martini. Not stopping drinking, but drinking one hell of a lot less. All about self control that is liberating, not oppressive. Besides, I like olives – and I especially like drinks that come with snacks.

My books are being reviewed (read) by someone who I trust to do something with them in three days. She asked for a specific remender from me and another person who wants to make a movie out of a part of my life. A very dear friend dreamt a couple of days ago that the books went over well and a movie will be made out of them as well. I trust her dreams. they are mine as well – and mine come true through no small effort.

All it takes is believing.

All it takes is knowing.

There is no perfect peace – the first noble truth of Buddhism is right on – “Life is suffering.” – but we are fucking strong, and yeah, there will be suffering, sorrow, and immense pain that you don’t think you can make it through – but you can. I know this because at times I knew I couldn’t make it through, but i did. We all can. Quit being such a wimp, and learn to love it. Learn how to remember how much you are, how much you have to give – regardless of where you
r life sits right now.

Ya know what though? The buddhists have part of it right, but not all, in my opinion. Life is sufering, yeah – but that’s a bit dire. When you get down a bit deeper, life is exquisite – because we walk through the suffering, learn from it, and come out on the other side with eyes that have seen the shadows – and because of that, know how to see the light.

Life is exquisite.

Every drop of it is – and I’m one thirsty bastard – but trust me,  there’s enough of everything to go around – and you’ll have your share.

And we’ll share stories. We’ll share our lives, we’ll share our love.

Isn’t that what we’re doing now?

My leg is healing. This is good.
From a hole to a simple wound, slowly closing. I care for it myself these days, every day.

Most people have the luxury of knowing they will heal. It’s what our incredible bodies do, right?

Not so much me. Not these days. Every wound is a newfound terror, every simple cut a wish for an end to this. Strange thing is – I’m still here, I’m still healthy. Must be the way I see things, the way I choose – have chosen – to follow dreams.

For those of you who don’t know, I happen to have a little demon inside of me that fucks up anything that could be good, and makes everyone, eventually, go away. If you havent read that far back, I happen to have a little hiccup in my life in general. I’m HIV+. Simple as that. Have been for over 20 years.I only say this to you because I need to, and I’m a wee bit incredibly drunk, and I’ve met an entirely new faction of beautiful people from the first time I needed to announce this. I’m not right.. I write with my left hand. I don’t think like I am supposed to. I chase the fuck out of my dreams because I don’t know when I will end – and I want to leave a footprint, a track for people to follow.

This is no secret, but it needs to be contained, and not spoken of in general blig conversation. This is not bar conversation.

So – there it is. The lovers I have been with know, but most of you don’t.

And my leg is healing up nicely, and I will heal myself. and it is time to sleep, if I can.

I can’t express how difficult it is to post this. Hints have come out in a hundred posts, but nothing has ever been so revealing, sinnce I needed to, years ago.

but here it goes…

what he said stays…;

what he said.

“This is your home. You are always welcome here.”

What Albert said before I left for the meditation retreat – but after that, I had to go.
Places to be, things to do. Fight to remember that I am real, exist. New Orleans. Try to do something that matters. See with my own eyes the pain – and I saw that, and the purest beauty.

“You are always welcome back. The land misses you.” he said it again at Lightning in a Bottle.
“I will come back when I need to. You know how deeply I love you, the Forest – Is the grandmother tree still there?”
“yes.”
With Alberts blessing I spread some of Beans ashes on AliSuns private memorial, and laid a white lily in top of both. A secret place inThe Forest – you can only know it by intention or accident, by accident it means nothing, just a space. By intention we pause and crumble in this place.

The Enchanted Forest, blessed with the most beautiful of souls. Where Bean decided to go away.The train tracks are too close. It’s whistle still haunts me, but I am always in love with its romanticism. Where does it go after it has killed the closest friend I have ever had? The only one that stayed?

Where do I go?

In the four months that The Forest was home, two other suicides closely related, loved and known. I needed to go, and I guess find much more unintentional death – to Louisiana, to New Orleans. Shortly after Katrina. In my life I find a strange comfort in the absence of it. We go when we need to – but I am thankful that I got there after the bodies stopped floating by, noticed but ignored. Ignored by everyone who wanted to remain sane. The bodies are still there, still floating, and Louisiana is still ignored. Still – they are the most beautiful people I have ever met in any city I have ever lived in or visited, and as much as they need our help (and I have in my way) you just might understand when I say a sincerely written FUCK YOU.

When there, I tore down nothing built nothing – but as I performed as a statue in Jackson Square, I had an effect – and though I can count the people that cried in appreciation on one hand – they were still there. One needed to try to hide his tears from his daughter.

I talked to my apartment manager in NOLA recently – he called me out of the blue just to say hi, check in. His name is Drake. Old School Punk in the best ways. heart of gold.

He told me that they cut down my beautiful Willow tree. The peace that used to brush up against my kitchen window, the leaves that I sometimes remembered real by opening that window and caressing…

I wouldn’t have any qualms with cutting them down for that…

blood lust

I am not a cutter, never have been.
But I love blood.  Mine. Poison.
When I used to inject my drugs a thousand lifetimes ago I sucked deeply in the small pinprick of the needle.
When things feel wrong, I drink, or I pierce. I have been drinking too much.

It has been a long time since I went subcatuneuous, but I still have the needles, one by one, and in them, the ritual. There is nothing simple here, nothing like the ritual. I need to get my needles – blood better than booze.

. My blood is poison. Some of you know, most of you don’t. My life is precarious, precious, short.
I should have been long dead, but I’m not. It is something that I am not willing to give up for no reason. I have my friends, and through a hundred reasons I am only me and you are my purest beauty.

Perhaps the…

I don’t know anymore. There are some things that cannot be denied, I am only the me who so few of you know – but I reveal myself in these words, all I have.

Don’t fuck with me.

We do what we can to survive.

Wake up, pour the drink
try to ease myself away
from all of these todays and hope
dream
of tomorrow, and whatever lies there. I should know better than to depend on that far ahead but this has turned into an immidiate life
where nothing is certain and everything is different now

and I tell myself lies in order to make it through
and I smile and pretend
that in three days I won’t be homeless again
and I pretend that I am not now
and honestly, I am incredibly weary of this life
but there are things I need to do
and a few people that I can’t let down because tomorrow
tomorrow will be better but today
I tear myself apart
and things need to change
because I remember who I used to be
but I am afraid that I may not believe in him anymore.

I’m not dancing now. Sometimes the fight is necessary.

I will remember.

Cry for your sorrows cry for your pain cry for your fucking drama but don’t you dare cry for me. I’ve lived longer than most, a life fuller than many far older than mine and my violence seethes but i won’t let any but few see. Hide behind the makeup mask and hide behind what I will never let you know. I will only tell when I need to. I tell you because i need to and
you go away, better for you no sacrifice is needed but
but…

fuck this.

I am not anything without you, a shattered nothing – but I still go on,  I still thrive, I still
wonder what the next day will bring, and I am not as optomistic as I used to be – but I can change that.

the dance

keep fighting, make it into a dance
try to remember it is all a game.

The true warrior, I believe, knows that if it is called a fight, it becomes a struggle.
I am so incredibly weary of fighting. I haven’t felt the dance in quite a while – but it is time to come back to it.
Find humor in adversity, replace the dead eye automatic smile with sincerety, and live my life as it should be lived.

Love my life as it should be loved.h

Drowned in dreams, I am the Sea. Dive deeper…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A good day. Worked on Boe’s van, helped Holly re-potting her office plants. Lifted, hammered, used my knowledge and got dirty, used my hands in the way that they know. It *is* possible to carress steel and make it as supple as flesh. This is what I know.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A great evening. Company dime sushi thanks to Holly, seeing an old freind from years back. The story he has told me in how he got across the Berlin Wall, just to do his art… That I will never forget, though it was years ago. It was good to see him again.

I’m done. Well – for now…

Best to leave the words where they lay, whether it is anything worthwhile to read or not…

once was, will be again

So many times I miss the solitude, bred when I first started driving my little van to my litttle secret spot in Austin where I could pirate a wireless connection. That’s when I knew how important it was.

I have houses and animals to watch, I have a roof over my head – for now. But…

but for almost a year, i have not had a home – a true home, that I could make mine. Call my own. Decorate to my tastes, set up my altar, the sacred things. There has never been a place that I could come to and feel grounded in that time, except, pathetically, for my van. Unfortunately, that is gone too. Maybe it’s a message – the fucked up leg, the irretrivably towed van – time to find a home.

My home.

My books are being reviewed in ten days, perhaps finding a publisher – and warranting these two comments through people that I believe can make things happen…

Dearest kSea and Jacqueline,
Wow, i feel i have just been cc’d a jewel!
i would still like to make that movie!
Bliss
Pamela

Dear Pam & KSea,

This effort is amazing. I started the first book and realized it needed serious time to digest.
I’m producing a concert series currently that is relying on 100% of my attention.
Could you both send me a reminder to review this on August 12th?
I would like to give it my full attention for review.

Much Love,
Jacqueline

Hope. It’s still there. I think.

The magazine is moving forward. Other things I am desperately fighting for to become financially stable enough to find an apartment. To remember the life i had, but better – because it is mine, created by me – and most importantly, someone appreciates it…

Someday, soon. It needs to be soon.

I’ve been blessed with a strange combination of dark optimism. I know the sorrow that life is, but I also know the beauty that is everywhere. I’ve fallen, I’ve grown. I am not here in vain.

Without you, I would never have known that. I hope you know that you are. All of you. So many. You are where I find my strength – or, at the very least, the will to keep going.

Thank you.