Aloha

 It's the first of the month so I'm movin' out.  I've upgraded to a sweet new home in the same neighborhood that fits me better.  To use the customary Hawaiian word for both 'goodbye' AND 'hello'.....Aloha!

Won't you come visit?  http://leap-year-baby.blogspot.com/

On your way, please check out my interview with the lovely artist and my friend Amy Komar on her blog: http://artistinthearctic.blogspot.com/ 

See you soon pink balloon~

~Leap Year, Baby...

the light

As I proceeded to tell the story of that moment from yesterday I realized that if I really delved into it, the whole day was rather synchronistic...

First, interactions at work with my one-on-one high school pal were laborious and tenuous, reminding me of pulling teeth. In the moment, I grew frustrated, tired and more and more irritated with each communicative attempt. It was almost one of those scenarios where I want to throw my arms in the air and then march into my office and shut the door, left in the comfort of my introversion...but I AM working on patience and perspective after all, so I hung tough...

And then I became acutely aware of the teaching styles of two the aforementioned 1/1 pal's professors (once again I have found myself trapped in the professional role encapsulating the stage of maturation I hated most...teenage adolescence): the first, the story-teller, recounting factoids about the Civil War and general European aims and ideals of colonialism. He had a considerably high percentage of student engagement and respect. Kids were raising their hands to ask pertinent questions! Bravo Mr. So-and-so.
...the second, the hopeless optimist/idealist too eager to dive into some hearty juicy material and circle inside the constructs of the English language with a leaky boat and a lot of faith (akin to myself), short on patience with lofty goals. He got frustrated and shut down in the middle of class..."I'm done with this" he said, "read the rest silently and do the work". The thinness of his teacher-skin shone then, all student credibility lost in an instant.

Of the latter I thought what is this guy doing here? Though I felt a kind of sad likeness to him...and then thought what am I doing [in this field]?? Ah. I should have seen the rest coming...

The final bead in this string of happenings or awarenesses, led to the epiphany.

"You're being an ingrate" the woman said to her son in the middle of the coffee shop where I was awaiting my interview later that day (that of course is an offshoot topic which I glaze over for the moment). "You're being an ingrate" she said again to him, who by the way I hadn't heard say anything whiny or childish or selfish. She said it no less than three times until I just had to see what her spoiled and apparently embarrassing child was doing, so I turned around. I curtly glanced at her. Then the boy, then back at her as she caught my judging expression. Then to the boy again just to make sure I wasn't missing something...

Now, parents disrespecting, neglecting, or mistreating their kids is a hypersensitive issue for me. I attribute this trigger issue to my desire to be a positive role model and to keep my morals anally intact (forget that I said anal back there, ok?) I have not really ever articulated the "why" in this truth, however. Though it is seemingly obvious that its roots come from my own childhood.

[disclaimer: sometimes at the moment of clarity...epiphany...we look back and go "duh"..."that was so obvious" and "what took you so long?". But we all have to do things our own way and in our own time, right?]

The woman talking to her son brought me to the light...to my realization-trail (it's linear now and makes so much more sense! duh!)

It's all about me. 'Me' being talked down to when I was shy and unable to fend for myself...as a child ridiculed, mocked, belittled, tricked, disregarded, manipulated and critcized essentially compelled me to do better. It fostered my trigger issue sensitivity and I, at 18, wanted to do something about it...build kids up, make them feel special, unique and valued. Rise above..be the difference...and so on. Be a teacher!


I would stop childhood injustice in the world one kid at a time!
(read with newspaper headline inflection)

And for me that is what it is really all about. None of this crash-course teaching, none of this seven-periods-a-day-times-thirty-kids kind of work...that is not going to achieve the work I yearn for, nor does it suit my ever-increasing introverted tendencies to be "on" against my will. I don't have thick skin (not thick enough), or patience (not patience enough) to permeate the behaviors and issues en mass...then try to scurry through some manufactured "one-size-fits-all" art lesson as an afterthought.

I do like interacting with youth one on one. I do have passion for being one who builds kids up when others are breaking them down. But I was never made from the mold of American public school teachers. I always knew that. But now I know why. And it means in my head that I'm not crazy or scared or a slacker or an excuse-maker...so now I can proceed to take action. In the right direction. With confidence and fortitude. Finally.

...It was then I realized this visit to Pearl Bakery may not be about the interview or the position at all. Rather, it was perhaps but a vehicle for my long-awaited epiphany.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*This post begins the "phasing-out" of earthseeandsky as I've known it over the past several years (an homage to travel and transience, transition and conundrums). My writing will not cease, but I will spend more energies on developing words that invite and recognize opportunism, synchronicity, inspiration and creative intention. Thus, earthseeandsky will become a more art-centric blog ( that will certainly still highlight the ironies of life) with a new name and fresh face, a space of images, words, art, people, things, and places near and far. Stay tuned, oh loyal triad of patrons!

accidental poetry (#4)

one

a glimpse

a step further

retain

such

stillness

(assembled from gathered text fallen, collected, reassembled in and out of May 2010)

Time for Tea

Images from my recent show at Townshend's Teahouse on NE Alberta Street, Portland.

Mixed Media Paintings:

Original postcard sized minis:

accidental poetry (#3)

dream.

express passion

deep
deeply
deeper

a step further...

bellow at a garden party in
stillness
if we are to see or to believe in anything
as such
one day~


(assembled from gathered text collected, fallen, reassembled. 4/14-4/15)

Ceremonial Hanging

In many traditions there are customary coming-of-age ceremonies to solidify the "growing older" of the human body, the maturation of form, and other such passages a person travels through over time. Thirty is in many ways and to (too) many people a milestone of sorts...for better or worse. As I described, my "thirty" ceremony included a journey, a companion and the sea...a symbol of vast expansiveness, unknown, and seeming infinity to stare into. (what a good way to ring in the the future on the day of your birth, no?)

But I also commemorated my turning thirty with a ceremonial hanging:

(Images from show at Cup & Saucer, NE 30th and Killingsworth, Portland, OR through March 31)

I hung my first Portland show.



No matter how seemingly minuscule this show will become in my future endeavors, successes, and achievements, it feels satisfying now and inspiring to start off this decade on the good foot; to know that I have forward movement in the direction of my most desired goals while I look longingly and with intention into the great unknown.

accidental poetry (#2)

and let the chains rattle and great puffs of
passion
flow

and it falls on
every
thing
quiet(ly)

after such
stillness
butterflies come perfect to the light.

(assembled from gathered text collected, fallen, reassembled. 3/10)

sea/bay. day.

THIRTY.

What is so frightening about this number? Why, despite the fact that I have felt that twenty- eight and twenty-nine were immense amounts of work and I am finally feeling grounded and "content" does THIRTY still cut like a knife?

I was confident that my last two years of preparation, Saturn-return enduring, life-lesson learning and personal growth were going to make the actual moment of my 'turning' easy. Perhaps unnoticed(?). Yet like the minute hand on the clock and its eardrum-blowing *TICK* to, say, an inmate on death row waiting for the other shoe to drop, the TICK struck loudly, and came by surprise and I spent the first half of my big day in an even bigger funk.

Swirling like the incoming tide, my mind went to work obsessing over life's little details, compromise, the notion of contentment, the concept of fulfillment, and an overwhelming feeling of failing at it all. I guess I had that " Oh no! What am I doing here?!" sort of general commitment freak-out. Daunting.




But luckily I had already lined up a journey, a companion, and some time with the sea.




Ahh, the sea...vast, expansive, mysterious, unknown, quiet and calm despite its great action and intent, beautiful and powerful all at once. The sea is a centering place, accidentally metaphorical and sweet. Smelling salt sea air enlivens the nose, the senses, and awakens the mind. Watching nature active and at work inspires me to do, continue, be. By the end of the day "thirty" was beginning to settle in a little better, my mind became calm, my level of contentment felt momentarily satisfying, and my future, like the sea, became a simple mystery to which I can look forward mostly fondly.


I am grateful for my sea/bay day. O

And one thing I have certainly learned over the years: On big days its always good to have a mini-journey on hand and someone lovely to share it with.

Ode. the nature of uncertainty.

Post three of my renaissance is a little more straight-forward. But just a little.


It's shocking when something unexpected, something sudden, happens to uproot your whole notion of things. As in: "yesterday was like this, and today, well now today is suddenly not like I planned...and it feels uncomfortable, maybe it hurts a little or maybe it builds me up so I'm taller than the highest tower...but I wasn't ready for it and I didn't see it coming. Shoot. I don't like it. And now I have had a reality check."

Here's my something:

A friend of mine died yesterday. Someone my age that I knew really really well and was really really close to at one point in my now-seemingly short life...is gone. Maybe I had temporarily put this person in the archives of my mind, not forgotten but no longer though of..but I immediately draw him back out and remember his significance to me. In the time and place, it was huge. The idea of this person having left the earth and the physical plane to exist in that other, higher(?) place feels incomprehensible. Feels foreign. Like I just can't wrap my brain around the notion.

Yet it swiftly jolts me to a place where time is completely fleeting, unknown, beyond control. Life throws those wrenches to remind us of this I guess...to refocus our sensibility to the side of the spectrum that touts love, respect, appreciation, and the concept of treasuring people, memories, places, experiences. It's easy to drift to spectrum-side that's not so appealing, kind or optimistic, isn't it?

And so, although I feel sad at the unexpected, today I will refocus my somber and off-put feelings from this unfortunate life-wrench as I remember my friend and our times shared, our memories, our experiences...and deliberately thank the cosmos for the fortunes in my life, for the people around me with whom I share love, and for the chance to breathe today, to ride my bike, to paint, hear music, and write this little blog if I want to...because I had another day of living. At the same time, I'll brag about my friend just a little, because he was kind, humble, loving, protective, ambitious, and sweet, and really didn't have to go just yet. He'll certainly be missed by those who got to enjoy those aspects of him in their daily lives.

Tim Burke, you will be missed.

Today, acknowledge the uncertainty of time and tell someone who matters to you that they do, just in case you happen not to have another chance.

accidental poetry (#1)

replaced by regret:

poor, material

burning

eloquent

you.


(assembled from gathered text lost, then found again. 11-09)

The vision (also known as "resolution")

Hello.

It's me.

Creative (writing) me.

I'm back.

Is anyone still reading?

It has been an entire calendar year. Where have I been?

A long hiatus from many things was called to order in January of last year. The ability to creatively 'think with words' flew the coop. My manifestations were more visual and tactile. My being was undergoing a period of intentional growth. My physical self, unsurprisingly, uprooted and re-rooted again. Elsewhere. But this one's gonna take. It feels right.

In the absence of my writing ritual we've begun a new year. 2010. Wow. How some things have evolved.

But to leave my little wordsmith blog hanging in the cobwebbed nooks of cyberspace any longer and dishonor this new year and all its glorious potential would be a travesty. What's more, turns out (against all intention) I've got a resolution. Go ahead and say 'I told you so'. It's actually more a vision for the path lain out before me...and it includes resurrecting this space. So label this my launching point...the public assertion of things to come:

I want to design my day-to-day. I want to feel inspired, become charged by my surroundings, fueled by the joy of operating on my terms. Doesn't life have so much more meaning that way? I want to take little adventures of discovery, see new things, remember old but unique ways of looking, structure my creative times not force them and fill my life with centering, holistic experiences (yoga. dance. reading. and acupuncture!) that I may create ART. Success through art means taking this energized, evolving product of a heightened state of daily living, thinking, being-the ART- and living off it. No, from it. Sharing it with the universe, stimulating thought and conversation, spinning my fuel, my energy into a means of teaching others to find theirs...Success feels like a liquid, flowing, that emanates from me to everything around...that I share, but also which I absorb and with which nourish myself....its circular.


Ironically, I am ever surrounding myself with circles. They emerge in my paintings, I am drawn to their presence in nature, I observe the movement as made by the body a circle. I relish the idea of returning to the place of origin, the start; of coming back to where it started, while still continuing around again in forwards motion....so this vision, it feels like home.

Yes, success for me as an artist is circular: create, share, teach, receive, experience, translate, create, share, teach, receive, experience, translate....and on it goes. And here it begins. Again. With more intention.

one hundred [and eighty] degrees. difference.

Last week it was so cold that particulates (as local commercials refer to the disgusting throat-gagging dirt pieces from exhaust floating around our clean "last frontier" air) landed on every visible thing...street signs, light posts, fences, stoplights, tree trunks, car windshields and branches. The branches in return took on this droopy 'weight of the world' look that was neither sad nor happy but at least a bit beautiful and set against the sunset on a clear early afternoon could make one feel they were living in at the tippy-top of Earth. Like Antarctica. Or another planet certainly. Which was cool.

But that was the only cool thing about the weather of last week...and the two weeks preceding it...because at record numbers of consecutive days in the negative-thirties-to-fifties, every human being was edgy. And that's putting it lightly. Trapped inside our one-hall-wide-by-two-floor-high school building to start off 2009, for example, my students had to "walk a mile" around the school during recess every day and get the wiggles out....up the stairs down the hallway, down the other stairs and along the lower hallway to go, you guessed it, back up the stairs again. Ten lap loop.

It is needless to say the term 'cabin fever' took on new meaning.

Then, as if from above someone was watching our little lemming-esque misery with empathy and had finally decided to intervene, the cold cap on the sky that was keeping all those things frozen, leaving us like the inhabitants of a literal snow globe, just lifted off and let some freakin' warmth come in. And sunshine too.

Instead now its too warm to behold...three days so far at thirty-to-fifty above. We all take time to recognize that in degrees that's a hundred points difference. Or in other words, the weather did a 180° . The air is light and fresh with smells pleasant, natural, blooming. People clean out their cars, shovel the driveway, throw on some skis and a hat and glide down the trails. No need for snow pants, down coats, long underwear, sixteen layers, suiting up, warming up, or plugging in. It feels strangely like "break up and thaw" time (late March or early April) as cars slide across slick melted roads, and snow slurps off metal roofs forming icy mounds around our homes. Our confidence in living here may be slightly revitalized.

But I think we're all a bit confused biologically...our bodies can't help but think that we are out of the trenches. 'Spring is coming!' our minds and souls exclaim. But calendars show the glaring truth: it's only January. Almanacs point out the obvious: the heart of winter is just around the corner....February's often the worst. And we find ourselves dreading the next move in the game to which we are pawns.

What I realized today about the limits the Alaska-winter darkness and cold can impose is that these really have to do with space. The cold cap which will inevitably return to finish its yearly stint keeps our minds, souls and psyches contained. What is out there, we do not know. We forget the smells, the images, the colors, the infinite distance that surrounds us, for we cannot often even see our hand in front of our face. And if we can, its wearing a glove. And we saw it with our headlamp on. Our toes hide in socks day in and day out (even while sleeping), our bellies, our elbows, our knees, our cheeks both north and south lose the remembrance of sun's rays and air's heat. Our skin's screams are muffled by fabrics in abundant layers. Its rather claustrophobic.

When all the days of frigid and dark let up, I'm reminded the ultimate reward of living here is being able to climb a mountain, find a dome, or scale a boulder to look out at the earth from a new view...to place oneself atop something and spin around one hundred and eighty degrees to see the expanse of space before you. And remember what all the other stuff is for.

Square tires, ice fog and EPA air quality advisories! Oh my!

About five days ago the weather took a turn for the worse. By now I'd say it's dipped down to negative fifty, as in -50...numerically, at night in the valley where my little heat-box cabin lies. Despite the makeshift plastic window sheaths I have fashioned, frost is overtaking my cabin via all the exits...sneaking in underneath the "airtight" door, sticking around the edges of the windows and onto the sills and frames, freezing over the very screws that hold these key components in place. They look like little ice cookies. M&M's. Not nearly as exciting. I suppose this is the payback I get for minimalizing the extreme-ness that winter could muster back when it was a mild -22.

Well, I surrender...I've been one-upped.

I had always heard scary terms from Fairbanks' year-rounders like "ice fog" and "square tires" as I kept up my 'summer only' persona over the last two years. Well, now these notions are no longer tall tales. I have seen, and felt, them first hand. The latter is reminiscent of the Flintstones' (auto)mobile, save having to pedal my bare feet extremely fast against the naked ground to propel the structure forward. After an eight hour shift at the book store/cafe though, alleviated by fifteen minutes of warming up the guts of my treasured jeep cherokee as I fidget like a lady-in-waiting that it may deliver me safely home, I unplug the heating mechanisms from the outlet, hop inside, and put the pedal gently down. Thwump! thuw-thuw-thuw-thuw! Square tires indeed.

After a few minutes of 'burning rubber' the tires remember their previous form and soften just a little. By the time I get back home they are finally ready for the task of rolling. I guess, better late than never.

If I take the highway home past the train yard and "industrial alley" to use the term loosely, I get to pass through frozen exhaust, hovering eerily around the lightposts and other structures, just a few feet above my trusty car. It is odd, ghostly, awe-inducing, and like a bad accident, crime scene or horror movie I want to see more. Only with my hands over my eyes, fingers cracked for peeping through. Just a bit. And from the comfort of a heated car, café, home. The fumes spewed out of mufflers from backs of cars and diesel trucks, emanating from trains, factories, and various industrial buildings seem to freeze and float in space, as if someone were privy to a giant fog machine and infiltrating our arctic stage. It's cool. But, oh my! It's toxic.

When walking out of some fine establishment where down-clad winter brave-hearts escape from their one-roomers and vacation families, say Fred Meyer (think Wal-Mart) or Wal-Mart (think K-Mart plus groceries) the smell of diesel tickles the nose. Gags the throat. Many leave their cars locked and running for far too long in my opinion, utilizing such luxuries as "autostart" or spare key sets at the very least. I was not surprised to hear my favorite NPR host remind those of Fairbanks proper of the critical air quality advisory....if one was thinking of going on an outdoor excursion it is ill-advised due to polution levels in the air. (Not to mention the fact its INCREDIBLY COLD). But it turns out this is further exacerbated by the waste from wood-burning stoves to the Nth degree...to levels that set EPA running north to rectify the air if Fairbanks can't do so alone. And fast.

Something tells me this scenario plays out each year.

Surprisingly, the winter air and I have remained on the same team though. I'd greet it briefly and cordially on trips to my outhouse or to run the car a while...I'd even embrace it on short walks between my brother's house and mine, wearing socks, pants, capilenes, more socks, a sweater, a fleece, a thermal top, a hat, two hoods, sorels, my trusty headlamp and a scarf around the face to reveal only my eyes for navigating. Oh and two pairs of gloves.

Today, however, Old Man Winter has taken this thing to the next level. He took my car, froze its guts and left me stranded in my heat-box for an undetermined amount of time. Today this winter stuff is a bully and I no longer in control...next topic: "cabin fever"!

"Moon-pours" (the shortest day)

I notice on a given night that in the evening (i.e. post-3p.m.) the moon resides above my outhouse. Its picturesque. My simple latrine, adorned in holiday lights which I have adapted to 'every day lights' for approachability and practical visibility, is dressed up for the night. Surrounded in a blue winter-moon glow. Sometimes worthy of a Christmas card photo. Like a winter gala of sorts. As I wander outside and back in again, the cool night lights remind me of the marvel of gravitational pull.

Because by early morning, the potty has turned into a pumpkin. No longer the belle of the midnight ball, its left to dwell in darkness. The moon instead pours its gentle luminescence on my driveway, a whole different cardinal direction from its nightly position. It almost seems to light my path for the day, encourage my waking, dressing, layering, trudging, living.
Its phases are frequent, swift, and obvious. They sweep through weeks unnoticed, seeming to cycle from full moon to full moon almost overnight. (Depending on how we define "overnights" up here.) But when it approaches stages nearing full, no headlamps are needed for traipsing to pee, and there's no getting away with squatting in the yard to do so. No way. There's just too much light in the sky. On the snow. In the trees. All around. Up here the moon has a personality. It's got definition. Purpose. Style. In a sub-arctic winter moon's got a lot of 'face time' and knows how to work it too.

Especially today. It's the shortest day. At dusk-y 3.6 hours of daylight, sunrise melds into sunset almost seamlessly and before you know its happening, its already gone, changing shifts with Luna who will soon dictate the night. These sunrise/sets last for hours at a time, beginning far before official sun "rise" on the horizon, and lasting well beyond the dropping point. They illuminate the sky on clear days in the most unique sky colors nature can make. They paint the mountain ranges and dust the clouds. And make every day of freezing, dressing, heating, covering, packing, hauling, chilling, warming, 'plugging-in' worthwhile.

We're on the upward curve of the pendulum swing here in big north now. On this day, people are rejuvenated by the prospect of another moon-less summer. Its arrival is just around the corner. Soon December daylight hours will be matched by January ones, November's remembered through February's. Before we know it, daylight hours were far surpass those we are accustomed to. As minutes of light are gained swiftly each day the moon will begin cramming in elegant drags across the horizon from outhouse to driveway pouring light all around, before summer encroaches and forces it to fight for a place in the visible sky with the great sun star.

Enola-->alonE

I grew up next to this small and kind of rough-around-the-edges town called Enola where my parents owned rental properties and where I would thereby be a frequent and unwilling visitor in the back seat of a car, staring dazedly out the window in thought while they performed tedious managerial tasks in summertime, weekend days, or evening hours. It was some time making these trips before I realized (or was told) that "Enola" spelled backwards is "Alone". But I remember, and still strikingly feel, the change in my entire impression of Enola, knowing it had this secret meaning or ironic parallelism. The association drained the joy straight from the town. In the back seat of automobiles my imagination created this swirling story about the founder and nam-er of this town "Enola"- his life, his history, and his obvious staggering alonE-ness.

I distinctly remember the first time I felt the incapacitatingly empty feeling of being alone...not just alone like "no one was there" but the kind of alone where you are acutely aware that even if someone could be there, you have no one to call upon. I had just cracked my noggin on a shelf at work and was gushing blood everywhere. Now, head wounds bleed a lot so it sounds worse than it probably really was. But nonetheless my supervisor immediately phoned the New York City ambulance to come and sweep and whisk me and my bleeding skull straight to the emergency room. It was the first and hopefully only time I will see the back of an ambulance.

Because my wound was minimal I sat upright in the back rather than laying on the cot, talking to the EMT as we sped past NYC traffic in my "emergency". It was winter. It was afternoon. It was already dark outside. I was crying faintly...more because of the empty feeling that fell upon me as I rode by myself holding gobs of quickly-crimsoning gauze to my head than from the injury itself.

Upon arrival the EMT delivered me to through the sliding doors in wheelchair & blanket and smiled as he turned and walked away. As I continued to be shuffled from waiting space to waiting space, tv room to tv room, I grew progressively more weakened by "alone". Others sat with their families or generous and patient friends awaiting their turn for treatment. I sat alone. I went into the exam room alone. I got anesthetized, sterilized, and stitched together alone. These were all okay because I had someone there to distract the hollow alone-pit from growing ever deeper; kids in the lobby, fellow wounded, the kind and funny doctor.

But then I was sewn, wrapped and patted on the back and it was time to go. Almost robotically I stepped out onto the New York street and headed toward the subway stop in my usual New York stride...as if it were just any other day traipsing around the city. And that's when the growing pit of alone became a bottomless hole. Here I was injured and bleeding, whisked, shuffled, assessed, stitched and released and no one even knew about it. No one ever would either, if I chose not to mention it. That felt awful.
I cried hard, wet.

(art about 'alonE'.)

Since that day I've been more inclined to moments where this feeling seeps back in...the most recent of these being last night. Because I can see the Alone train approaching from a greater distance now, I'm more cautious and more aware...but defenseless nonetheless. I sense the 'gutted out feeling of dropping a pebble into the empty well of my self' growing ever more frequent and more intense. I can hear the plink and the resonating echo. The bottomless hole somehow gets deeper.

In my pursuit to find the road to travel on in this life and someone to share the journey, I've begun to face the sad and melancholic music; its a windy one, steep and narrow maybe , not laid out flat and smooth before me like mid-western savannah lands...I have no idea what lie ahead or if anyone else is even out there feeling their way through the dark like I, because I can't even see the view on the horizon.

In limited-language-summary format I suppose alone is seeking the comfort of someone to hold your hand, to give a hug or to say 'hey, its going to be okay' or 'I understand, I'm making the trip too'. Alone is simply craving someone who will just be there to call and come when you split your head, mend your heart, lose your way, or otherwise get lost on the trippy road; and the paralyzing fear that despite all concerted efforts you'll end up in a metaphorical crummy town you've named after your own solitary sorrow.

Hardly/Strictly 2008

The sun penetrates the other hillside, snaking through the crowd and over to the other knoll where we lie...we look up at the gnarled tree torsos contemplating their annual count, presuming their historical tales...

...and in the park tucked between tall and wise evergreen trees I'm glimpsing Sam Beam, his beard, his guitar- taking in the acoustic side angle and falling down the spiral toward Wonderland, absorbing archetypal stories amidst my descent. I turn each one around in my brain and derive my own meaning, while still fixing my eye on the words that lie there on the stage (page). They're there. And they may be literal. But all around has fallen away. I slip into my day-dreaming.

Behind the tree today, my own versions of each word become incapacitating, inspiring, frustrating, limitless. I want to exist omnipresent-ly that I may simultaneously feel and experience all the moments that I conjure with all the people I am wishing were 'neath the tree with me. Recalling each reference, eviscerating each relived or newly-created moment. And (as usual) I'm thinking.........

I often wish I were a better storyteller, that I could generate a sort of ephemera or ambiance or mood...a guttural feeling, a wave of emotion that sweeps over one, few, or many as I divulge experience, thought and action in such a way that they feel connected to it on some primal level: love, faith, loss. (In my visual narratives, stories fall short when they become too abstract). Too, I wish our (American?) culture had a sacred story or stories with nuances and familial excerpts that only ancestors knew, passed through generations 'round fires...and that words were only stored in verbal transitive forms at times when history required they were best preserved as so....like tee-pee hopping with your parent's parents in a loin cloth and headdress.

What is it about narrative song writing and a solitary guitar that is hardly personal yet speaks strictly to you? ...And on days when you seem to need only that exact conversation too...
Perhaps the human-ness of the vulnerable one-man-show invests us all in his authenticity. Without the glitz of the back up vocals, drums and bass acoustics, we are allowed to see that he is but one of us.

In my world artists/albums, like intentions, get stored in vertical files while I continue to repeat the same beloved but tired songs. By nature our species follows habit: we sit in the same chairs each time we enter a familiar space, we park our cars and bikes in the same spots because they are familiar, and we even vote for the same political party as our parents did or as we have been brought up to do without questioning the value of the others sitting on the shelf. They may have exquisite notions and refreshing tunes but we are deaf to hear them.

Until the sun gleams through the meadow and reaches the other hillside to allow for seeing clearly for just a moment...long enough to dig out a forgotten tale...


~So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten~ S. Beam/Iron & Wine

bad dream...

Early this morning I dreamed. This has been happening most mornings as of late, and in fact its been happening throughout most nights as well. I attribute it to secret stress. The only constant in these recent nights and mornings is the interrupted patterns of periodic rest that I anxiously add up to "enough" sleep around nine each morning so that I may rise and temporarily forgo dreaming any more.

...and instead begin my daily pursuit of a more tangible dream: the one every American is manufactured to strive for...

I haven't written yet on my experiences amidst my fellow community members of a temporary town called Black Rock City whose overarching purpose for coming together was to question, consider, escape from, and simultaneously become privy to "the American Dream". But I've had notions about the hype. And as I now find myself on the losing side of this wild goose chase for another go at the 'dream', I question every interaction, development and conviction to this end.

[In the most generic sense and for the sake of illustrating my point, I'll just say that the blazing headline "American Dream" is encapsulated by that gleaming vision of a wholesome family beside their conveniently "fuelish" automobile in the driveway of their suburban home with the white picket fence and Fido all decked out in his special outfit, the "portrait bandana"... and we know just by looking that dad worked from the bottom of his company right to the top...he has health care, vacation savings for the entire family to go on trips to Disneyland and other prefabricated recreation areas, and a strong 401k.]

Just before the close of summer thousands of vagrants, the products of these aforementioned dream-lands, come to a remote and isolated place to test the limits. Donning a weeks supply of "basic" necessities for survival, a mass exodus convenes on the solitary road to the desert. Only, a week's necessities somehow require the use of a rented camper complete with all the amenities...stove, indoor lavatory, bunk beds, firm sheltered structure....to 'rough it' with strangers, and in hopes of creating "community".
So I wonder, having rented a camper to hold all the "basics", do these participants reconsider their place in this bubble "American Dream"? Do they evaluate where their values align and misalign with those inside the bubble? Have they stepped outside of their comfort zone for this experiment at all? Do they wonder what they can do to adjust the dream of Americans to encompass more of us??

For, my dream is certainly different from the one I described above...I want love all around in all facets and manifestations, and to know that if I'm not well I will be taken care of. I want financial stability insomuch as the ability to pay back what I owe for an education I intend to use and enough left over to eat and travel. I want children worldwide to be given every opportunity they deserve and I want other people to give a damn to see that this is achieved. I want everyone to earn what they are worth when they put in hard work and reliable dedication that they may be able to afford a shelter for their families, and someday I would like to have a space of my own. I like to envision many sharing a more humanist dream like this as well.

But this morning in my little temporary bungalow ( a couch in a living room of a condo-built-for-one, me making "two") I dreamed of filling up with gas. I inserted the pump just so in the place where we all know it goes, and watched the numbers tick by like a slot machine...40....50....60...the gooey stinking liquid finally spilling out on my shoe at 62. I scratched my head and furrowed my brow, thinking that even this number was too high for just one tank. I consciously questioned the texture, color and smell of the fuel I had just unloaded into my automobile, turning to check the dial again... does something smell funny? did I put in the right kind? it wasn't diesel was it?? But, I was satisfied by my reinvestigation of the pump and hopped in my car turned the key and maneuvered out and on my way. The car stuttered with a quick and startling backfire as if a gunshot were just fired inside my ear sending my nervous system into a reactionary convulsion. It happened again, and as I went into panic mode I looked out the passenger window and my car was inundated with flames. Suddenly I could smell the searing metal, nylon and rubber. I knew it was about to blow. Magically I pulled a drop-and-roll move to the other side of the car and out onto the road just as it blew into a million smithereens, burning everything in its wake there on the street. I was mysteriously spared even the slightest contact burn.

This all happened in what seemed like milliseconds in my dream scape, and I awoke with a start, my whole body numb and tingly as if every inch had fallen asleep and was that pins-and-needles feeling that seems so agonizing in regular waking-life scenarios. I had that disoriented feeling that sometimes occurs after intense dreaming, as I struggled mentally to decide what was the real (and unfortunate) truth and what was only a visual film playing in my mind. While sometimes I'm disheartened to find that all the turmoil is an actuality, a tribulation of this earth, at least this time it was as they say "just a bad dream".

compartmentalize

My whole life fits in the back of my car.


There's a sense of satisfaction in this. I have been packing and repacking, then repacking again, and doing "one final pack...I swear! the last one!" for over a year now. With each relocation I perform this ritual of readying myself for departure both physically and mentally (with much greater emphasis on the latter) for the moving on and looking forward, the new spaces to mold myself to and new people to meld with. I've left so many things all over this land.

Schlepping all my goodies to the airport, and having already dumped a few in the hands of that glorious mail system our nation has, I glare at uniform ladies behind the luggage scale as they tell me I will owe them an extra fee.

"I move a lot. How is someone supposed to move from one side of the country to another on an airline without an extra fee??" I often mutter, wishing I had only an overnight pack and sleeping bag stuffed into carry-on and was going on some exciting excursion with someone I love.

But now, the satisfaction of having all of my material possessions crammed into the back of my jeep like a jigsaw puzzle assembled 'just-so' sets my mind at ease. Extra fees no more!! And while I haven't actually placed all of my things in the literal space, I envision it fitting. Like a glove. My capacity for spatial awareness is surprisingly good...I'll chalk it up to my visual learning style...


In recent past this dividing of things into separate containers has come in handy when organizing the levels of my life. As in, "sure. I could freak out that I don't know what's happening next (a week from now) but instead I'm going to put that in its storage container riiiiiight here! and focus on what I do know about today." I find administrators are successful at this game. Both in the workplace and in their own meticulous personal lives. Perhaps this is the essence of a 'multi-tasker'...being able to shut out this one-thing right-now in order to get these two other more urgent things done. And while I've boasted of my multi-tasking skills in cover letters past, I'm pretty sure I've managed to take them to a whole new level as of late....the administrator level!! ooooo....aaaaahhh....

And in the meantime I've noticed I probably used to be a forecasting-the-future emotional wreck.


While diving head first into yet another arduous job search and ridin' with style on the couches of others, I'm working like the devil to compartmentalize each day...put each development (or NON-development) into its little plastic container on the tall and accommodating shelf of my brain to make room for others more pressing, more key.

But today each little thing fell off of its shelf, climbed out of its neat little box and began traipsing around the interior spaces of my brain. In a haze I blundered about trying to accomplish my 'to-do's'....for naught. I was lost the hurricane of my thoughts. Directions. Desires. dare I say Goals.

I felt like my grown self lying on the floor with four children pulling at my limbs...
Immobilized. (does this make any sense?!)

But I digress. The feat of the week is that my whole life fits inside an automobile. I have my car to hold all my earthly things and get me "there". When its time I just load up, fit each thing into its place...its own compartment...and head out into the sunset.

The only question is where to go...

Lit Up (my arctic dénouement)

After three weeks of somewhat uncharacteristic but dismal weeks of hanging rain clouds and daily losses of six to seven minutes of daylight, the clouds parted to reveal the setting of the sun..."no big deal" many think- unless they've been to the interior of Alaska. As is to be expected here, this summer season I haven't shared the big dipper in the night sky with someone special far away, I haven't admired a sunset from atop a modest hill or "dome", I haven't had to curb my drinking/hiking/waking/thinking. The sun is always there. Until this night...when suddenly the sky was all lit up.
The glow caused by the setting sun triggered many thoughts, the first being the marvel of the Alaska sky. In summer when rains do fall they usually occur in contained and isolated areas, and do so swiftly and without much impact. ("Virga", I have learned). More often than not these patterns leave a spectacular rainbow to arch across the great blue. I have seen nearly a-rainbow-a-day some weeks. On other days the clouds appear like cartoon sketches or video-game symbols of what clouds "might" be, according to creative minds that render imaginary worlds.

But when dark has come, it comes on fast. That's when I know it is time to go. By season's end my skin crawls for something new, yet harboring saudades for the comforts of the closest thing to home I know. Conditionally, the anticipation of new adventure, new scenery, new people, new work exhilarates my soul; conditionally, because I know where I'll be going, who will be there when I arrive, and what I can hope to resurrect and dig in deep. But first:

While exchanging climates several times, I'll head out to the desert and partake in the notions of a temporary society with ideals that range from free trade and barter rules to free love and breaking rules and find my place just left of the middle. Like the stepping-out-of-one's-self that comes with oversea travel and the subsequent removal from one's own culture as he steps into this other realm, I hope not only to take in what transpires around, but to reassess a bit of the core as well. I'll leave early, but not for any sacrifice, subtracting my presence from the apex-the great ceremonial burn [reminiscent of my nature??].

Sometimes the best moments are the little rituals in life for which we build no hype but that keep us smiling into another day- sunsets and rainbows to name two. Though my preferred moment may be inconsequential to the masses, not unlike the man that burns in high expectation to highlight the cause for gathering, I too will be lit up.

(As the great choreographer David Dorfman once said in earshot, "perform little rituals every day".)

Do you?

Brontë

I like picking up morsels of information in unexpected locations, settings, scenarios and discussions. At the end of every day I wish to have accumulated one new bit of information (like, the Great Wall of China is 4,000 miles long...that one's from yesterday). Whether trite, useless factoid or priceless gem of wisdom, in my humble opinion, its advantageous to learn something every day. Even more, I like investigating the way people tick; what makes we humans so very different from one another in our desire for stimuli, our reaction to stimuli, and our internalization of stimuli?

Picking up an insight about human nature...well that's just priceless.


What struck me was a discussion I had about the literary genius of Emily Brontë, and her blaze of creative talent in the form of one and only published novel, Wuthering Heights. It is written by a contemporary gal of the literary scene (name escapes me now) in the foreword of one edition of Wuthering Heights that Emily never left the comforts of her own town, was not a pioneer of sorts, never experienced the extremes of emotion, never set out to discover "new life and new civilization". Rather, she was quite content to stay put, and even after leaving home to try her hand at the role of a governess, she wanted nothing more than to get back to the safe satisfaction of home turf. And fast.

And then she wrote a book...

I remarked, half bitten, doesn't creative expression thrive on literal and emotional experiences? Can it actually stem solely from the invention of the human mind? In the same place? Time notwithstanding?

Though I hardly call this art, here at earthseeandsky I muddle through ebbs and tides of land-tromping and try to glean something from each experience. I have my feelers out for new stimuli that I can suck up and mull over, and once habituated my "creativity" periodically wanes. Not that I need a new physical place, just to look in the nuances. It takes bits of new information or a fresh insight to rouse new writing (or painting).

On a personal level, I argue art has to come from something...art is 'creative expression'...which implies it has a reference point, and is a communication of some idea from this point. It may expand exponentially to the state of scarce traceability, but the point is still the nexus. Emily's genius, consequently, escapes me. But, I've yet to read Wuthering Heights.

The best part about this entry though, is that it slipped through the cracks...it was read before completion. And now its completion is different, thanks to human intervention, human reaction. And that is what I' m talking about.

In all my writing about nothing over the last year, what I realize just now is that the writing is only for the purposes of 1) increasing my desire for and attention to stimuli, 2) sharing my reaction to it and my interpretation of that reaction, and 3) for serving as a catalyst for you do the same. Its like a conversation face to face with a good old friend at our favorite neighborhood bar, on any given night, at the drop of a hat. We mill about over the what the how and the why of human nature until we've gone full circle and concluded nothing...and then I go and turn it into art.