Another Trip Around the Sun

In an effort to study my own personal habits and basically out of morbid curiosity as to exactly how many events I forget or loose with time during a year. I have made a commitment for my birthday this year to write as many "daily journals as possible." With the intent of examining my life patterns a bit more closely this year.

Will it end up being fact, fiction or just plain shit? We shall soon find out, Im hoping for a loose braid of fact, fiction and mystery which seems to make up most of life thus far.

 My birthday August 20th 2016, on the eve of my 35th birthday this year, I found myself busying myself in my studio space just past the post office in Manchester. A small town by the sea, surrounded by cows and the dairy farmers who ranch them. My studio is a giant space of a building, 130 years old and once a dairy creamery. I have renovated it, to meet my specific needs including a 9ft x 6ft wheat paste art piece bolted to the wall. Complete with custom mass making capable sewing machines, hammock in the office lounge and as much weed and rolling papers as we can smoke.

 On this day I am trying to finish stamping my clothing companies logo onto 9 brown paper bags, that need to be shipped out to models I used at an event earlier in the month. Swag bags as they are called go a long way in acquiring free working talent for shows and I am no stranger to these bags and all their little nuances.  A friendly face appears in the doorway, and I know immediately all of my working potential for the day has disappeared and the party gods will not have me working on my birthday this year.

 We roll and smoke all the weed we can fit into an extra large paper immediately. Then proceed to get awkward high together and talk about nonsense. I can only get a reaction from him when I tell him I am planning on shredding the lengths of fire hose he has brought me into strips and making a "mesh dress" for my next show. His face holds a momentary light of interest...slipping quickly back into complete stoned bliss the next.  We mutually decide I am done "trying to do any of this silly shit today" and make our exit from my studio.

 I find my boyfriend, somewhere running from one job to another in town. We decide on something to eat and head to the store, a bottle of Melagro tequila makes it way into the basket. The birthday has begun.  Once back at the house, our friend has parked in the driveway and is sitting inside the car. Why people do this I will never understand, just go inside already.  We proceed to BBQ and take shots of tequila. I begin to feel the familiar itch of birthday creeping up my spine, induced by tequila. I have a fleeting thought of the m word. Moderation. I then realize moderation and I like so many birthdays before will not be seeing each other tonight and proceed to take giant shots from the bottle washed down with lime and salt.

 After yelling inside at each other for an hour all hopped up on booze and weed we decide to get the decks warmed up and play some records. I enthusiastically run upstairs with my bottle in hand and immediately eat shit to the floor when the rug slips on the wood flooring and literally disappears underneath me. Even a sober person would have to take a knee with this type bobbie trap laying around. I take the cue from the universe and stay down on the rug and begin sifting through records. My friend is a vynl freak and he thinks we cant tell, but I can tell. The quick once over of the vynl, the sideways glances at the labels the twisting of the knobs and fervent tongue swathing of the lips. All the signs of a dopamine fiend full throttle.

I have imposed my "one carpet two legs" rule on myself and refuse to do anything further from a standing position. I proceed to finish the bottle of Tequila, Dj on my knees and pick records for everyone and yell at them. I think at one point I just straight put the headphones on and gave up nodding my head into the abyss of sounds only I could hear.

Another Beach

I wandered down to the beach today to walk along the endless expanse of blue green waves and watch the whales surface. Hoping the roar of the rolling waves would help me sort the endless siege of thoughts raging in my mind.

I walked to the lighthouse down a deserted stretch of the Mendocino coast watching the beach houses become less and less overbearing on the cliffs above. I stumbled app-on a raft made of driftwood. Laying helplessly at the tide line. Mast, rudder, and steering apparatus included. Quite a feat of artistic and natural skills combined.

The driftwood boards lay across the rafts deck loosely and I sat on it to pass some time. It became so obvious to me as I sat there on this make shift raft staring into the chaos that is the ocean breaking on the shore. This craft would surely fall apart should the ocean reach its resting place here at the tide line on the beach.  All the artistic natural talent in the world couldn't save it from the waves it was meant to sail over, smashing it into a million pieces on it maiden voyage.

 So I sat there coincidentally, a wanderer lost in thoughts appon a faulty raft waiting to be washed to sea.  One giant metaphor for us and all of our securities. There are never any, its just how we perceive everything that keeps us clinging to our faulty delusional rafts until the tide finally washes us out to become one with the eternal endless abyss of life flowing by. 

Yourselves and Each other ...an open letter to a thief.

Heavy is the heart that labors beneath the pressure of lies and deceit.

Blind are the eyes that cannot see through fear and judgement to realize their true potential.

Feeble is the mind that allows thoughts of jealousy, greed and malice consume it.

Empty is the soul that wages war on itself and others through the fractured lenses of ego and hypocrisy.

May you find the strength to transcend these mundane and most basic of aliments of the human experience.

Blessing on your journey.

Take care of yourselves and each other. 

Moving up

When your rooms too small, move out. When the cities confines start to close in, get on a plane. When the world becomes your soap dish, make a spaceship and head for the next star. Life is to short to waste time thinking of all the things you would do if only you could.

Invisible

. I'm the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave, but the artificial warmth of my smile, that phony, clownish curve, the kind you see on miserably sad people and villains in Disney movies, will remain behind as an ironic remnant. I am the girl you see in the photograph from some party someplace or some picnic in the park, the one who is in fact soon to be gone. When you look at the picture again, I want to assure you, I will no longer be there. I will be erased from history, like a traitor in the Soviet Union. Because with every day that goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more invisible... -Elizabeth Wurtzel

One morning

".....and then one morning you wake up and you've forgotten all those things that made you unhappy, sad or less than who you are, and you are surrounded by love light and happiness once again."

Parasite in the land of plenty

I have become a tour guide, for a few weeks. Unintentionally and kicking and screaming the whole way. Acosted by people from home in my new surroundings, people stomping demands of "you will make sure I have a good time" and "Its your job to make me have a good time." No plan, no interests, no guide book and nothing to contribute.

I give the speech I had not known resided inside me, about making your own happiness and finding your own way. As the words cross my lips I understand that I have crossed over. There is a difference in levels, and respect and actions between us that is huge. Well at least we are in Kho Phangan I think, where the Thais are used to the typical disrespectful white people banging around. Excessive weirdness and ignorance.

Many scooter rides with the ungrateful tourist strapped to the back seat into the day and night, prove to be wearing on my soul. A refusal to learn compiled with a huge sense of entitlement make me not miss my home country even in the slightest. The fact that I have to be in charge of this persons good time irritates me. I cant wait for the day she leaves.

After much negotiation and several stomping off fits, I manage to get a night to myself. I spend it at a compond high atop a hill dancing and smiling, watcing the moon rise. Round and full above me surrounded by hiding dancing people far from the Had Yai maddness. Safe, and full of life. Not thinking for a moment about her and her demands.

Watching the sun come up from the water as I float and drink the last of my beer. Wishing the clock would stop as the hour I have left ticks slowly away. One last hurray, and then a feverish gathering of things and a blurry morning ride to the dock. We set sail back south, away from the isle of parties and distracted people. Criminals hiding from the law and confused travelers. But still harboring an ugly 160 pound bag of shit with a grin and a bikini to the next island.

The sun is blinding on the boat, amazing, calming and comforting. The sound of the engine blaring sooths as I sip coffee with the guatar player from Job 2 Do on the deck.
She is yelling again. Into my bad ear and demanding something, Im begining to think that that slice of watermellon I injested at last nights party may have had more than just "love" infused into it. As the sunrise turns many new shades of life, and the yelling disapears into charlie brown trumpet noises.

She has disapeared again, thankfully. I cringe at the thought of when she might rear her ugly, demanding face again. All too soon, I discover as we disbark from the boat she is back to demanding things. Lost and ignorant and to impatient to wait and see. She stomps behind me to the bus, dropping clothing and papers from her badly packed duffle bag she has unimaginativly thrown over her lumpy sunburned shoulders. She is now the ugliest being on the planet at this moment I am sure.

I fall fast asleep on the bus, uninterested in conversations with her or about her she has given up I presume and leaves me to sleep. The bus carries us slowly, hour by hour closer to Railay. I gather my things from the underside of the bus, and make my way to the tuk tuk that will cary us to the dock, and the boat from the dock that will take us to my island. She is lucky. ..but shes oblivious in her world of entitlment she sees nothing. Pouting I watch her disfigured face a marr in the beauty around her on the boat ride in. I am smiling.

As the boat comes to a stop far from shore, low tide is a bitch. She clambors to get herself and her dragging duffel out of the boat. The boat man throws the bag to her and I watch in silence as karma makes my day. The bag knocks her off the slippery concrete walkway underwater and she falls into the murky low tide mangrove water. Computer bag submerging, heel gouging on the rocks. She squeels. I laugh a little inside.

So the journey contines.