primal scream

this is about your animal inside.

do you feel her, him, them, growling?
do you feel them calling?

i feel her. she's present, she's awakening, she's alive and she's raw.

there are instincts, biological, primal instincts that we repress.
i call you to answer them, to listen, to respond, to act upon them.

you are a creature, you are an animal, you are a bear a wolf a hawk a turtle a dog, you are these things and you should not forget that. you are earth, you are sky, you are dirt.

touch your skin and crawl your fingers up your arms, recognize your muscles and your tendons, your joints and your hair, your human.


everything that really matters is ensconced in your skin, your breath, your heartbeat. the breath of the world, my friend, of the literal and physical reality that we are a part of, no questions asked. you have no choice in the matter, you are here. can you leave?

lots of people leave. leave their bodies, leave their minds, leave their earth, leave their wind and their smoke and their pain. we have many tools for the leaving, the escaping, the distracting. we are incredibly, terrifying adept at the process of removing ourselves from our reality, from our insignificance.

from our truth.

there is no denying your flesh.

set your hair on fire, smell it burning. catch a fish from the stream and render its skin with your teeth. be freezing cold and burning hot, be taxed in every sense and see what else you can find. you have more left than you ever knew you did and, of course, it is always and never enough.

we can play our games and trade our papers and the greatest of any of us can be taken out by a rattlesnake just the same.

pay attention to your inner animal, she's talking to you and she has a few things she would like to say. are you capable of listening?

engage

This is what I have to say to women, to men, to anyone with a cognitive process, a brain, arms and legs and heart: Use them. All of them. Use them to their full potential, to your best ability, all the time. Use them for good and use them for each other, use them to encourage more laughter in the world, more empathy, more honesty and more life. 

We, as a human species, have a responsibility to turn on our brains, to tune in our bodies, to strengthen our hearts and hands and minds to prepare for a new reality. So many things we have learned, through our nearly catastrophic failures as a species in the past, we have then repeated. From the grand horror of war to the ever present experience of heartbreak,  with every lesson comes a period of remembrance and then an episode of forgetfulness. We have to re-learn our past mistakes with each new generation, sometimes seemingly with each new experience, forever participating in a crazy cycle that has run us to a point of near destruction. 

Your mind, your body and your lifetime upon this planet--those are the greatest tools you, you as one individual person in an unfathomably vast sea of people, you as one tiny, insignificant blip on the timespan of the planet upon which we walk, those are the tools that you were given. And we continue, again and again, to mis-use them, to depress them with fears and social anxieties and bad parenting and astoundingly trivial monetary disputes. Especially distressing is the degree to which women depress their potential with superficial, vain concerns--it is time to accept as fact the experience that when your body, your very vessel of life, is treated with respect and care, it is beautiful. When it is fed properly, exercised, watered and showered with positive attention it will be beautiful, you will be beautiful.  I am assuming that by reading this article you are affluent and lucky enough to be able to provide yourself most of these amenities if you so should decide--America can be an incredibly bountiful land and we are very, very lucky to be living in it. 

Our physical appearance, however, takes up far too much of our time, too much of our brainpower. So many women i know spend a large portion of their young adult to near adult lives nearly obsessing over this image of self--I know I did. An experienced bulimic, I can speak quite frankly on the ills and truths of consuming one's mind with shallow self-loathing. It is a waste of time, an insult to the future and a depression on the past to call yourself anything but beautiful. It is also a feat of incredible bravery to stare into a mirror and speak the words, "lovely."

We have to find a way to expedite our abilities to retain the knowledge of the lessons we learn in our lifetime. With the loss of oral history and family sense, and the amazing disconnects created by our increasingly digitized world, we can learn a lesson and then forget it faster than ever before. Consider the last time you were physically injured. Spend a few seconds dwelling on the sensations of pain, the frustration, the fear. Don't linger too long, but stay long enough to recall the promises that those emotions and physical reactions generated in your person. Promises like, "I will never take my _____ for granted again," or , "from now on, I will avoid leaping before i look," or, "I will pay attention when I am hammering." Easy enough, but how long did those passionate promises last? That freight train of disaster can, of course and with astounding ease, be applied to our relationships--if we aren't obsessing over our looks we are certainly gossiping about our relationships, creating patterns to our story that we do not even recognize and may never escape. 

Unless, we heighten. We take the time and do the work to create patterns of a new design. The brain is a function of patterning--a series of habitual and organic thoughts slung together through a series of incredible feats of anatomical genius. All those neurons firing and muscles twitches and mitochondria mitochrondria-ing just to bring us back around again, full circle? Lets progress from that. The patterns that create your reality can be uplifting or cause you pain--it really is a matter of your perception, of your intention and attitude.

Why are we not accepting, at birth, that we are worthy.  We should be able to rest in that we will have water to drink and food to eat. That we are valuable and possess a certain skill, an individual purpose that is exceptional in its uniqueness. Instead, we flail around for a couple decades, learning all our lessons of humanity that are constantly offered to you on a silver platter by those a few more decades ahead of you that we generally shun in the name of personal experience. And so many of us never get out. So many of us have battles to fight that are so much larger than any of this--abuse, violence, starvation, at least, when they are personally experienced they create a hell-hole of brain patterning that takes an incredible amount of focus and drive to pull oneself out of.

But we see it, everyday. I see it, in myself, everyday. I recognize my strength and admire my insanity. I truly believe that if each one of us, if every person who read this article, starting behaving in a manner where they would acertain to me that their mind and body and heart were engaged, fully, all the time, toward the effort of betterment of the world, in every direction--ecologically, economically, emotionally, physcially---i believe the ripples would spread and the laughter could be heard from the moon. 

We have a responsibility to remember. We have a duty to tune in, to pay attention and to recognize, to evolve within ourselves and create lasting changes that set the world up for greater success. 

I do not want to ruin this planet with sadness, fear and pain. It is an overwhelmingly exquisite place well worth the effort of preservation. 

breaking my knees for my own good

for a day, pretend as though you dont have functioning knees. i'm serious, its an incredible experience. everything changes--the way you move, the things you need, the emotions you feel. i imagine its the same with any major injury.

but, first, just standing. standing still becomes an entirely new experience. yoga becomes real. my whole life i have been standing with immense pressure on my joints--now, when i experience what it feels like to my swollen, fucked up knees to stand with my shoulders back, my lower back and core muscles engaged, my knees straight and facing forward, chin up, heart open----and it took me a year and a half of intensive yoga practice to realize how these simple, simple motions affect your entire life---now i can feel it.

try to do an entire yoga practice without putting pressure on your knees. if you can avoid this, you will experience engagement in other areas of your body like you have not yet considered. by imagining yourself light from the inside, lifting from your core and forgetting about gravity, you can experience lightness on your entire body. and your knees, your chins, your ankles, your heart...they will all appreciate the relief. relief that you've always been able to provide yourself--ways to make yourself feel better, by yourself and in your own skin. you do have to live in your body, after all. its rather nice if you can enjoy being there.

this has to be the right way to do this---all these lessons from this knee surgery have been incredibly powerful, rich and deep. to slow down, to focus, to love myself. i have been running a million miles an hour away from many things and toward no certainty.

i laugh at myself so much these days. granted, i have only had one week of immobility but, with my intense and rather overworked personality it has felt like a month. rather like the one time i went to jail for three days. that was moooore of enough of THAT shit, for me.

here's what i'm saying.

the things that im learning are not concepts that should be new to me, or anyone. these are the proper ways to live--paying attention to your body, listening to it, feeding it properly and nourishing it. standing up straight. being calm in your mind. doing work that makes you feel fulfilled as a human. letting the people you love in life know that you appreciate them and allowing them to appreciate you back. finding your focus and approaching your aloneness. laughing at yourself. sleeping. sleeping a lot. taking pain medication and putting in earplugs and submitting yourself to total darkness for 13 hours kind of sleeping.

nobody has time for this shit! we're all running around. and i most certainly plan to continue running but, the next time, those things will be a bit more focused, more calm, and more extreme in their allotments of joy and real expression. it is possible to take care of yourself properly on a very basic, daily level--no matter what you do or where you are--and, the best part of all of it is, that you will feel better, all the time. you will feel stronger, more beautiful and more interesting, just by treating yourself properly. i always thought the message of modern yoga, much like modern anything, is much too based in the visual, the appearance. my message for yoga is that yoga, much like life, should be based on acknowledging how it makes you feel, first, before acknowledging how it makes you look. and, fortunately and intriguingly, they are entirely symbiotic concepts. you feel better, you look better. they also cannot survive without the other, they're entire unsustainable as independent thoughts.

so far, there have been parades and antique air shows outside my window. i've been visited by my friends and family and had beautiful conversations with the ones i love who have involved lives somewhere else. i've had offers of financial support through art from a completely astounding amount of individuals from far and wide and i even have a handsome sound guy who comes by and fixes my speakers and sets them up for the perfect audio experience at my ear, couch-high, level.

the splendor of being loved is a bit too much, sometimes. there are so many out there who need love, crave it, search for it. and you gotta give it to yourself, first. what a doozy.

Begin.

You have to roll in the dark to see the light.

We all dance around, flailing our arms and flinging our hearts, and we don't have any answers. No matter who you're looking at, they don't have it figured out. There are days for everyone where your heart falls on the floor and gets stomped on and your brain is a fog of sadness and your body is ugly to you and your  life is one big fuckin crapshoot of shit you dont feel like dealing with; oh hell no i'm not going out there, the world is full of criminals and rapists and pirates and bastards who hurt me! Things are wrong! Things are painful! Things are difficult and I am exhausted. And I don't have any money. Or potential. And I stubbed my toe. And my stomach hurts. And nobody cares about me and my pants ripped and my family is weird and my job is hard and the sun is hot and everyone around me has personality flaws. And, also, it's much easier to sit here and bitch than it is to get up and do something. So fuck it.


We are really, superbly excellent at inventing ways to limit ourselves. As a human situation it may be our truest gift.

Or, anyway, I know I am. Or, have been.

I fall in holes. One day I'll tell you everything is shit and glare at you over the top of my mug of organic, free range chai tea with almond milk and local honey, trying to bring you down to my presumed, laughable level of loathing and darkness. You don't know me, shit is harder than you can possibly imagine. I am unique in my struggle. Hiss.

Yeah, on those days, don't listen to me. I can be a real asshole. I have a lot of practice.

I have lot of practice hating myself, I have a lot of practice with destructive thought and negative patterning. I'm a super good crier, a master of those kinds of sobs that wrack your soul, those ones that simultaneously release you and embarrass you with their raw tonalities---my god, that sound just came out of my body? Quaking in my heartache and fear those sobs of darkness provided me a backdrop in front of which i place laughter. Release. Trust. Joy. The beauty of the here and now and the incredibly simplistic concept of creating one goal in your life and allowing it to guide you--the goal of enjoyment.

Enjoying your life, your body, your friendships, your future, your past. Focusing in on creating things that are truly good and healthy and, basically, having a whole lot of fun. Resting in the notion that you know and trust yourself and that you are beautiful. Resting in the notion that other people are basically good and will not leap out from behind a building and bash you in the head with something, at least not most days. And, when they do, you have been training so long as a sad, angry ninja that you'll finally get your opportunity to release all that, too, when you kick the shit out of that guy. Or, turn the other cheek and learn a lesson or two from the experience, revel in some personal growth. Whatever floats your boat.

It's a lot more difficult to laugh with your whole gut than it is to cry. Both activities will snowball--the more frequently you do anything the easier it becomes--and that's a pretty basic choice. Would you prefer a life where there were more tears of sadness, of doubt and fear and confusion, or more guffaws of hilarity?  Would you rather focus on, in the course of your hours of awareness, the shit in your life that is limiting and annoying or the things that you like to do, the things that bring you joy and peace and bliss?

It's all your perception and its all within your power. Go write a blues song and then join the party. Go chain smoke cigarettes while lying on the floor listlessly pouring over your own destruction and then get the fuck up and stick your stupid face in a flower and breath in really deep. I'm talkin about using your whole lungs here--stick your face in the flower and breathe into your stomach, remind yourself of your diaphragm and huff that delicious flowery, succulent, passionate scent. Then tell me again what's wrong. Raise your hands up in the air and shake your hips from side to side. Real slow like, the first time, don't want to pull a muscle. Then open your mouth. I know, its difficult, multi-tasking like this. Shake your hips and open your mouth and now comes the hard part---sing. While high as a kite on the smell of a flower, shake your hips and open your mouth and sing. Or yell. Or read a food product label out loud. Just open your mouth and make noises with your voice!

Then, tell me how you feel. Tell me how you feel while singing and laughing and sniffing flowers. That feeling, right there, is what makes it worth it, to me, to be alive. What gives me the motion for my potion, baby, the grime for my rhyme.

Be gentle with you.
Breathe into your laughter!

To write.

To express emotions, experiences, thoughts, dreams, doubts fears stories in a literary sense.

To decompress moments into sentences, to apply perception and opinion and to generate solidity.

To write is something powerful. As to speak, as to yell, as to feel, as to vocalize or harmonize or express human capacity for thought on its most sincere levels.

A blank piece of paper, after all, is one of the most exciting things available in this world. 

Your options are limitless.

You could draw a monkey eating papaya from the hand of a goldfish.

You could write a poem.

YOu could perform mathematical acrobatics.

You could soak it in gasoline and light it on fire, fuck this! 

YOu could rewrite that first sentence--one more time work with me--you could draw a monkey eating papaya from the hand of a goldfish….but goldfish don't have hands. Goldfish have fins, you say, this is preposterous. The monkey is clearing eating papaya out of the hand of another monkey, they're brothers. They care about each other and feed each other papaya. They're Rhesus Monkeys. They live in Costa Rica. Its a fine life.

Again.

A monkey eating papaya from the hand of a goldfish because, ah-ha!, this goldfish has grown hands due to radioactive poisoning. The goldfish is no longer your average goldfish, this motherfucker has transcended. He has opposable thumbs, this average bowl-dwelling denizen you acquired from the local carnival. Do not underestimate him. We have a potential evolutionary uprising on our hands--the goldfish, in its hardy tenacity, has been overlooked for years. We haven't even noticed its covert transformation to the top of the food chain. The end of this perception is nigh. Tonight, the goldfish evolve. Tonight, they live to their full potential and climb out of the bowl. ONly to fall on the floor, dead. Cant breathe air, dumbass goldfish. YOu have gills. Sorry mate, better luck next time. INto the toilet with you.

notice the power of words.

do not underestimate this. 

choose wisely, grasshopper!

the dance of the ages

I see you--the oil painter and the photoshop wizard.  The jazz musician and the virtual DJ. The clarinet and the macbook Pro.

I hear you--the man with the guitar, the lyrics and the voice,  as well as the depth of the bass booming out of the speakers that can never be replicated by that same guitar, the party that never has to stop for human exhaustion, the complexity of sound available in our age.

I feel you--I believe myself to be a representative of a generation on the cusp--we have known both relatively technologically free lives as children as well as completely technologically inundated adult lives, our most formative years. The generation above us plays instruments and struggles to text message. The generation below us knew how to use a computer before they knew how to walk. They abbreviate the english language in expectancy of efficiency, multi-task management, the dull glow of a computer screen imprinted on our faces.

I run the gauntlet. I am giving it my whole-for-all attempt at experience. I am whomp-whomping with the best of them, raging all night to electronic music fueled by extension cords and hallucinogenic drugs. And, at the end of things, I can only hear a banjo. I can hear a mountain stream. I feel the dirt beneath my feet and the people at my side and they always, always take the cake, trump the techno.

As per most everything in life, the dance we perform on the stage of the double-edged sword of technology is similar to the dance we must perform in everything else in life--take it with a grain of salt, maintain your distance and your humanity, and observe its potential to create more beauty, more opportunity, more depth in your life. Acknowledge, also, its potential to strip you of the simple beauty of human interaction, the nit and grit beneath your fingernails, to take you away from a real, direct and truthful human experience and overwhelm you with the grass-is-greener advertisements, fear mongering, subliminal messaging and general thereisjusttoomuchhereicantseeanythinganymore nonsense.

The world is at our fingertips. I have an iphone and, on it, I can research the frog i find underneath a leaf in a field on the side of a mountain without carrying pounds of field guides in my backpack. I can look up words that i don't recognize and perserve the  the alarmingly homogenized English language.
I can see pictures of all my loved ones, my soul mates who are spread out all over the world, and I can instantaneously share experiences and emotions on a whole new level. It is a beautiful thing, it is efficient and intelligent and exciting and, lets fucking face it people, could all disappear at any given instant.

A hologram of Tupac rapping onstage at Coachella.
A recording of Bob Dylan reading poetry.
Creating a photograph on a computer screen, fingers flying body still dancing.
Creating a photograph in a dark room, chemical scents, body motion, a dance in the dark, sensory exposure.
Body still.
Body moving.
Heart still.
Heart moving.
To all things there is something beautiful.
Use caution, grant time.
Keep your head, know whats real.
your hands
your feet
the land
the sky
the sea
your heart and your
soul.

It is the modern age. I leap into her with skeptical arms and a appalachian upbringing.

"get your head out of the clouds and your feet back in the dirt my friend."
-Devil Makes Three

dream scape

so something that i always feel slightly uncertain of is the ability of situations or experiences to obtain a tinge of surreality the instant they are completed. i would say this equates to the feeling of vacation but i get the impression that my life as a whole is quite similar to some people's definition of vacation.

do you know what i mean? you experience something powerful, something extraordinary, like a journey or a relationship and, when that instant or series of instants comes to an end and something new begins, that experience feels like a dream, like it never really happened and you're just chugging along forward, in a different page of a new chapter.

it bugs me. i want my experiences to stick around. i want some way to fill them with concrete and keep them in my brain. everything about them, their smells and sounds and how they affect me. and a lot of my life is about that--from photographs to writing to tattooing, a lot of that is about creating something tangible from an intangible experience. isn't it? interesting.

anyway, that brings me to the point. these are two dreams that i had while sailing and i would appreciate some input on them. probably adding to my difficulty in obtaining feelings of realism from my actually realistic experiences is the fact that my brain works in overdrive while i'm sleeping to create journeys that rival the real ones in complexity and depth. and, also, hilarity.

here's dream scenario one.
saturday night

i'm out on the jetties where jason took me for a walk, they're flooded, the tide is high. my mom is walking where i can see her, she's telling a story to some folks i've never seen before but she's speaking in my voice. she sees me and starts to cry, her face is so sad it hurts me still to think about--twisted up and terrified. i hold her for a long time until, in an instant, i'm standing atop that wooden tower in key west, some spring breakers are surrounding me, they have sparkling piles of panamaian cocaine on their fingertips, they're flinging it in the air and teaching me strange new methods of inhaling it, fire breathing. i take off running down the tower, my legs are made of noodles, i'm trying to call Ted on the phone "Ted! Ted i'm high as shit! Ted i'm on a boat! in a tower! get over here and prove yourself!" i run off the end of a the tower and leap onto the foredeck of this enormous schooner where i am apparently employed, i know its my job to douse the spinnaker, the schooner has a gigantic figurehead of a full nativity scene and while i'm working with the huge sail i fall and catch myself on jesus' beard and the deck lights come on, i'm swinging wildly around on jesus, all the spring breakers are clapping.

cut to: real life sound of a halyard, stefan hoisting the genoa, leap up and sheet in.
12:45 p.m.

dream scenario two.
sunday night.

i played soccer in a field by the river for quite awhile. rather, i sat on the bench while Mary Disa scored goals with arcing kicks from mid field. typical.
then, i was painting at finnegans wake for the longest time--they let me set up a table for st. patty's day, and i spent hours painting this incredibly detailed scene of koi fish and butterflies on this woman's back. then Cliff showed up on a Polaris snowmobile, asking if i knew who's foul weather gear he had found then deciding to go across the street to take field notes on the "retard trying to score a date." i walked over to this table where Mike, Amy and Sleepy were having this meeting with a real estate agent from northern california who was interested in selling us small parcels of land, i tried to stab Mike in the neck with my paintbrush then Amy and I ditched out on that shit show and got on some kayaks, she said, "sounds like we're gonna buy us some land and build us a cabin, the four of us, we're gonna have us a television show and call it Little House on the Prairie two, its gonna be magical."
then we found this extremely elk who had been shot in the neck. Amy held its head in her arms until it died, i cried then sawed off its antlers, shoved it in a cooler and proceeded to push and pull the huge cooler a real long way down this gravel road to Anderson's RV Park which was, according to the billboard, still 500 yards away when i woke up.

dropping the genoa.






if i had a dream dictionary perhaps i could glean some meaning. or, as Cliff would say, thank god dreams are no sign whatsoever of clairvoyance or i'd have a shitstorm a comin.

if only life wasn't equally as strange as these dreams. just got kicked out of mexico, be careful what you wish for.



remember to be patient, humble and communicative. i gotta get my head screwed back on straight cause, baby, i'm all over the damn place.

whirlwind

the heart, the wind, the tides. consistently in motion, irreverently unpredictable, i follow these courses with the hop skip bounce of a young and feverish colt.

life is so undeniably long, so unapproachably short; cut with moments that give you pause, that create a platform from which you will operate, a persona through which you will flourish, expand, contract, deteriorate commiserate appreciate survive.

we are only human. ain't our fragility glorious.

i, for whatever it is worth, i am living. living fully. breathing, running, burning, skipping, fucking up and loving hard. i am back in my element--you place me aboard a sailing ship and all that was anxiety, all that was confusion, disintegrates i am left naked, sunburned salty, with calloused hands and peace in my heart.

lately, i have been approached by a gentleman of the unutterable sort. he has waltzed out of my past and slapped me in the face, he has given me cause for regret. his name is settlement, his name is dogged and blind loyalty, his name was doubt and distress. he was my mistress for many years past and he is gone, now. replaced by the shocking and overwhelmingly marvelous realization of the potential of life. the potential of relationships. the available real estate left in my smile--that bitch can get so much bigger than she has been, she can fill my face and swallow my pride and cast a blinding light across all things dark and dreary.

my smile could fill the universe. my course of understanding, of myself and others, could fill the pages of a novel. my shame for past mistakes has evaporated in the glory of opportunity.

life can, realistically, be anything you have the capacity of imagining.

isn't that fucking incredible?

we sail out today. hopefully we'll make it to guatemala in one foul swoop. only time and wind can tell and by god am i glad to be back in her hands.

i will be back aboard a sailing ship of my own in the near future. currently engaged in the operation of locating and solidifying a ship and crew--i have no intentions of traveling this world alone, not for much longer. not when i know now have held in my hands the unwavering and limitless potential of a new partnership; combined with the proper person, you are powerful beyond description. and, if and when you have the opportunity, always act like a banshee because of your heart. i will never, ever not err in the direction of a heart's murmur. she speaks to you, and the more frequently you listen the louder and clearer she becomes. like a damn freight train, sometimes, the heart's roar. her voice, though, like many things innate to us as a human species has been quieted, quilted, smothered with a veneer of plastic and complacency. retreat to your intuition, your wild nature, your voice deep inside and listen to what she has to say. she's kind of a big deal.

oh, the places we'll go.

cayo hueso

toss your intentions aside and follow me as we stumble magic gliding through this island of fantasy, city of wide-eyed bumblefeet from the frozen north colliding with the ships and captains, the bartenders and dancers, the mask wearing card carrying lunatics and the population of those who laugh too hard drink too much pausing never, partying on.

i could call this island home. its pleasant weather, comforting smooth streets, fleet of tall ships and menagerie of characters all worthy of a storybook feel closer to me than anywhere else i've lived. my week has lasted a year.

every corner i turn i find a drunken michiganer willing to dance the rumba, ride the bull and combat shot after shot of tequila. they merge, after a few days, into all one and the same. i adore them in their consistency, their wide-eyed bafflement, their intrigue and ther ability to keep this island alive with their steady stream of dollar bills. they are the masses and they astound me. wait until the end of the night and shock them with your worldliness, your imagination, your parade of music playing hoodlams carrying kazoos and teddy bears yelling ecastatic in our yes, we can get away with this here.

the island is changing, of course, everything is and does and will never stop but it has not ceased to permit wonderment, to continue to host a harbor afloat with a fleet of tall masted sailing ships, to approve of and encourage pirate themed attire and to generally embrace an attitude of frivolous allfornothing levity that i so do admire.

entertaining the notion of boredom in this town is akin to declaring the ocean shallow. it is unfathomable. music leers from every corner, potential conversation rests in every face, hip grinding debauchery two bad decisions away from every moment. you could achieve anything you are capable of desiring here, you are the limit.

use caution. the sea. the booze. the dance. the sun. the booming laughter. they all beckon to you in this island of bones, curling her fingers with a smile on her lips whispering warm nights windows down loosen up lets see where this can take us GO.

love

There is nothing i am capable of doing but sitting back and oogling at the incredible amount of absolutely rich and astounding humans who fill my life.

I say, damn.

And, having recently re-dedicated myself to the concepts of true and boundless love i am literally overwhelmed by the reciprocation i recieve from all these people, these crazy loons whom i am blessed and wholly humbled to know. You love me and I love you and sometimes the only exhaustion i feel is trying to understand how in the hell I'm going to have enough love inside me to go around, because you guys just don't stop. There's never an end to the capacity of awesomeness inside the human spirit, never an end to the train of marvelous individuals with integrity and light who will cross my path as i ramble onward across the face of this reality.

I could write it all over my face. Hell, i could almost tattoo it on my face but, don't worry mom, i'm not going to---THANK YOU. thank you all.

I've come into this period of life--i can unabashedly recognize that the reason i am accepted and supported by all of these people who i am thrilled to associate with is because I put love out there, because I live a life of strength and truth and bravery, or at least strive to, and so that's reflected in the relationships i keep. I do believe, though, that i'm beginning to walk down new roads where my relationships are able to deepen, widen, expand and contract with new grace and depth that might even blow my own mind.

Its a truly thrilling place, the future. Let's all try to envision it that way. Because, the only hope i've got is that, if enough of us can see a bright day ahead then, one day, it will be so.

an old favorite of mine:

be the change you wish to see in the world.

humans are limitless, vast and

late night airport musings

i've slept for two hours and i am not tired. my nose and brain are full of snot and i don't feel sick; my future is full of unanswered questions and i am greeted by a flooding surge of enthusiasm, fearlessness, certain joy. it is all....level. calm. ecstatically at peace. I have earned this voyage and i will not hamper, hinder nor affect it with sadness, shame, selfish doubts. many of my past journeys were colored with markers of these shades.

not this one.


to be called to a life of greatness is to shrug the shudderings of the weak and frightened mind. illumination, healing, laughter, raw and whole forthwith expression of self. this is real!

its so easy to utter forth convenient cliches of life; phrases and utterances that fill the pages of self-help books and yoga classes. now, go out and find your way to live them, to make dangerous and honest choices and take risks and live from your heart and discount doubt.

we are all capable of our own personal nirvana--achieving our own status of bliss. it just depends on how we define it.

the rat race has begun long before your legos snapped into place. they haven't been waiting for you. the man who drove me here has cancer from agent orange exposure while serving in vietnam and our country will not give him health insurance. death and dysfunction trail their rickety fingers dwon the spines of anyone willing to lay down in their beds. they are desperate for your company and they will warm your flesh and leave you panting; empty and careening downward, head attached but heart somewhere in left field. you'll have to sprint like hell to retrieve that throbbing son of a bitch before the vultures swoop.

its no joke, choosing joy.
what do you hear when you're left with no sounds
what do you see when all becomes dark.
who and why the fuck are you?
envision a different reality
a collective conciousness of those who have fallen and chosen again!
we may be pointless but we do exist.

material things

i'm packing for my trip.

i do believe 2006 was the last legitimate time i lived solely out of a backpack....i have been spoiled by sailboats, cars, houses.

it is difficult fitting your ambitions into a pack.

which makes me wonder.

i look around this house i have rented; mattresses with fleece sheets, ponies made of plastic and skulls of bone, costumes, photographs, animal hides, brass lamps, leather jackets, six pairs of shoes, art collections...my eyes google outward and i realize! i am rich!

rich! goddamn filthy, beautifully rich! look at all my shiny, wondrous treasures!

take note of what you have and be grateful. look around you, take stock. you and i are so damn blessed.

its incredible, and its a strange presence in myself that i have never really wanted to do be completely without my material goods. i have carted some crazy bullshit to the ends of the earth and back again. i dont look forward to amassing it all again and, somehow, owning things gives me great joy. my things that i treasure, of course, may be different from the average joe. i'm not talkin flat screen televisions here, folks.

i guess what i'm trying to say is

1. realize what you've got and praise it.

2. be aware that its all just stuff. consider what would happen if you lost it all and make sure it wouldn't hurt too bad. you still carry everything you need within your own body and, on a whole other topic, you should treat that temple with the greatest respect and attention humanly possible. its the only one you have and you can't get another one. at least not yet. beep boop bip!

fear

i would like to talk about this, the concept of fear. that little white noise that wells up inside of you whenever you encounter something in your world that makes you uncomfortable, uneasy, queasy wheezy otherwise disconcerted. why? what is it that you're scared of, exactly? how true is it? how long have you been shoving it aside, accepting it as part of your person?

i have made a sincere effort in my life to approach and engage every fear i have. between the concepts of engaging and facing fears and, my new years resolution, being as honest as humanly possible with myself and others i have a lot on my plate as i head into this next stage of life.

but, do i?

shouldn't those two concepts be things that are innate to us all? how deeply have we been programmed to disregard our fears and to shy away from our honest, raw selves?

we're all just fucking human.

we're all fucking beautiful and we're all totally flawed.

we break things and fuck up and take shits and sing off key and eat too many cookies.

fuck it.

i'm really awkward. it has taken me until the age of 25 to finally feel absolutely at home in my own skin, and this is thanks, in no small part, to all the shenanigans in my life that have occurred and literally forced me to face my fears, my demons, my humanity. from sailing a boat across oceans to thrashing around like a fool in deep intense love, i have knocked on the door of most every corridor of my heart. she answered. she smells like woodsmoke.

and now, through concepts like true self-acceptance and practices like the absolutely soul-bearing and heart-opening practice of Yoga, i have found that i have very little left to fear, and that most of the things that i do fear are rather irrational and definitely approachable.

boomshakalaka.

its uplifting, its inspiring, its energizing, its soulful its fun. its realizing you're not as important as you think you are yet, simultaneously, you're everything. you are all and you are nothing. there is so much that is left uncertain. what else is there but to approach your life with an open heart and fearless soul? and ain't it just the swellest feeling, let me tell you.

here's a fun list of things i can think of, offhand, that i'm afraid of today.

wolves with glowing red eyes

being trapped in a small space

being poor forever

being alone forever

that everything, perhaps, is useless.

not being able to provide for the people i love

not being good enough

midgets

the ocean

i bet you're afraid of lots of the same things. i bet your fears ebb and pulse like the very earth we walk upon. i bet you're more afraid some days than others, sometimes totally inexplicably.

so what.

so what i fear all those things. so what if they do happen? what if they happen ALL AT ONCE. imagine if i die alone trapped in a small box with a red-eyed midget wolf in the middle of the ocean while my loved ones die of starvation and poverty all the while they're making fun of me behind my back because goddamn if i didn't just go and put myself in that box, didn't i.

shift your perception. screw with your own concepts of what's up and what's down.

what if that midget wolf and i end up having a good conversation.

what if everyone loves you.

what if the whole world supported you because you were living for your passion and leading with your heart.

what if you keep getting the shit end of the stick but you never give up cause you're brave and you're awesome and you're the only you.

yeah, those things are better than midget wolves.

passion trumps fear.

passion jumps up and down on top of fear, laughing hysterically, thrilled in its only body and its only life.

passion wears a pinstriped top hat and enjoys vanilla ice cream in the shade.

its never too late to have a happy childhood

-tom robbins.

schedule of events

upcoming show! a menagerie of excitement!

Fly: from San Francisco to West Palm Beach the 22nd of January, midnight flight.

Enjoy: the company of Brenna Bean and family. tattoo.

Drive: southbound to the weirdest place i'll ever call home; Key West.

Enjoy: all you crazy conchs.

Await: the arrival of s/v Judy Ann and its steadfast Captains Meghan and Stefan

Depart: When the weather is right, sail to the Rio Dulce, Guatemala for http://diysailboatmeetup.blogspot.com/

Bus it: to Costa Rica for http://envisionfestival.com/envision/

Enjoy: the company of a veritable onslaught of wonderous, magical beings from across the country company converging in the jungle for one event.

Stay: until i would like to leave.

Return: to Mckinleyville for the duration of my lease. July.

there you have it.