Rainbow Serpent Trance Festival 2007

or as Cartman says, "i think you've got hippies..."



We set out a little late, but the journey didn’t take long. Two hours and we were there. I ended up driving the precariously unstable and over-loaded jeep because Sean and Shner had whisky for breakfast.

Beaufort, the site of this year’s Rainbow Serpent, is a sleepy sleepy sleepy town north-west of Ballarat. On this particular morning, however, the amount of energy passing through, lining the sidewalks and spilling over onto the road, filling the bakeries and supermarkets and liquor stores, is enough to keep the locals laughing in their rocking chairs for a few more Australia Days.

On my way to buy gum I hear “gawd.. theresum funny lookin people ere, isn’t tha-riyt bob? I don’t think theys brush their hair, doesn’t lookliyk’it, isn’t tha-riyt?

The locals have come out to watch. Truth be told, so have I.

Another hour plus in a car queue to get through the entrance gate. People push their cars, sit on their cars, climb into other people’s cars, play guitar while driving their cars, abandon their cars, create drum circles next to their cars, and wave at the rather castrated-looking policemen riding up and down the shoulder.

It was late afternoon when we got to the car park. Unloading three cars jammed to the windows with people and camping gear and torn supermarket bags, we waded through the dust storm kicked up by thousands of rusty cars and painted vans and wildy colorful buses that look like they were abandoned 15 years ago, and probably were, but are now transporting de facto families of skirt-wearing men, endlessly layered women, and impossible to scare children across unmarked terrains in their borderless worlds.

Our scouts Dotan and Shner found a perfect camping spot, insulated from the wind by trees and a ditch, but flat enough for six tents in a circular formation, with chairs, tables and eskies in the middle. We were on the border of an open field that for the next three days would be used for kite running and spinning frisbees; a field full of outstretched hands. Through this field we walked to get to the water tank, to the eco-friendly waterless bathrooms (they make our communal excrement into compost and reuse it in the fields) and to the Market Stage where DJs played without pause for four days and nights.

I’ll get this out of the way. I was expecting better music. The trance was often heavy, industrial, repetitive, going nowhere. I had come for progressive, psychedelic, a journey through fairytales and science fiction. And I did get it sporadically, as I was always within earshot of one stage or another.

But mainly, I did get it from 3 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Sunday, the true night of Rainbow, the monster set on the Main Stage, thousands upon thousands of us, all the same by now, in pyjamas, with wings, in bear costumes offering hugs, trancing through hula hoops, trancing while juggling fire, wearing uggs, bare foot, trading sun glasses, defying gravity, all differences having merged throughout the preceding days, connected now by the dust, the rain, the dead girl on the first night, the chill out, the chai tent or the gypsy stalls or the shared drink, smoke, life story here, joke there. we danced for 13 hours, and welcomed every cold wind, every drop of rain, every burst of sun, every water bottle, every whisky and coke, every lip balm, every smile, every wandering eye, every beat, every track, every moment where we forgot everything else there is, was, or will be.

Then we crawled into billowing tents and slept for a few hours, each in our own time. Knowing that before sunrise we would all somehow meet again on the dancefloor, making the trip for the 30th time across that field, to the stage, left side speakers, see you there, whenever.

When we left on Monday afternoon, the music was getting good again, the stage was full again, people were high again. I considered staying. I wasn’t ready to leave. But one more night like that, I thought, and I might end up buying a long-abandoned bus, painting it with my fingers, installing decks and a cooker, and picking up every hitchhiker I see as I transport my hopes and my hunger across endless unmarked terrains, my husband wearing a skirt, my child eating dirt, and me at the wheel looking forever out into the distance of my new borderless world.

more photos here

Short Story: Secret Society

In one hour and forty minutes our lives had forked like a viper’s tongue.

Her fingers scraped across the floor as she hoisted books and bras into an oversized laundry bag meant for our stained sheets and intertwined underwear. On the bed, raped coat hangers and books bought arm in arm, now one ear-tag more mine than hers.

“Jesus Danny, your denial is unbearable,” she seethed, “You’re a human blackout.” Her muffled voice hissed inside the wardrobe: “You and your fucking secret society”

I am a member of the secret Tourette society. We are a motley crew of tapping, humming, rhyming, ticking, eye rolling individuals. We lick elevator doors and caress street lamps, and if you stand next to us on the subway with snow crystals glistening on your hair, we might lick your winter jacket and apologize desperately while tapping you three times on one shoulder, then three times on the other.

“Why are you giving up on me, Mel?” Hissss.

For one year she had been empathetic. But my ticks had become worse in the past months. I lost my job. I found Johnny Black.

You know what I miss? The freedom of a glance, corrected, controlled, diverted. I miss owning my thoughts like as children we owned our imaginations, exploratory but safe. I also miss having sex without mooing like that cow we saw in Costa Rica.

“Your true soul mate will find it endearing,” she said as she dragged her last suitcase to the elevator. Holy fucking shit, I thought. That bitch is right. “Intelligent, independent Journalist, 27, seeks open-minded 20-something for love and friendship. Only those who find mooing endearing need apply.”

I sit on the floor awaiting salvation. She would pause. She would apologize.

My ears and hands, prematurely nostalgic, tingled with the desire to relive every fixation of my infinitely perceptible imagination. To move her hair from my face in the morning. To hear the water falling off her in the shower.

It was time for me to say something. I looked up and saw an empty room, barren and without the seeds of tomorrow. For a moment her sighs were within earshot, but in the time it takes an elevator door to close, I was left alone with my Tourette.

I mooed involuntarily for three hours after those elevator doors closed. I finally went out to get a beer and when the new guy asked me for my ID I showed him my wrinkles and asked for a break. A fake. A rake. A cake. A steak. And fries. And beer. No, only the beer! Give me the goddamn beer! Mooooooo.

Every morning of every day sees the sun rise over another evolution in my tick-eroded personality. Tourette has a whore and that whore is change and change has bastardized my self-determination and left me strange. Two graduate degrees but change is all I got. The change in my ticks. The change in my wallet. And six empty beer bottles, and six empty nights since the elevator doors closed and left me alone.


Inspired by Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

===

rainbow serpent (my australia day flag)

tomorrow i'm off to Rainbow Serpent. raw as i've been the last couple of days, am i in the right state of mind?

to give you a taste, opening ceremonies consist of:
Spiritual Blessing for Inner Peace with Aboriginal Elder & reigning Miss Rainbow Auntie Mona Wilson
One Heart of Unity Meditation with Portia Merek
Ground & Aerial Dance Performance by Nocturnal Sunshine
Original Sound track produced by Oblique Industries & special guests;

in addition to the 24hour three-stage DJ line up, there are also such things as Conscious Realm of Theater, Creative Expression Sessions (kite making), and Spontaneous Workshop Presentations.

uhuh. escape from samsara, forever.

spent the last couple of hours with Yulia and Dotan, who I'm driving up with, and they're pretty excited. i think i might be too, but it's padded with other stuff, and will eventually bust through unannounced as i walk through the rainbow crowds.

for now, in addition to reminding myself how this music used to transort me, i am enjoying making sure that my tent is a cooshy ethereal outback retreat center. forget mats... i'm going mattress. sleeping bag? nah. fluffy blanket, soft pillows. a flashlight only for what candles can't illuminate. friends are bringing vodka. me, camomile tea. i like wet ground smell, but jasmine essential oils will be my lullaby.

Sean is bringing a stove. and a portable shower.

reading selection:
Book of Longing - Leonard Cohen
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse

writing selection:
large red hardcover notebook for short stories
small black moleskin for fragments and fireflies
easy roll black pens

i'll be back tuesday. and will bring you news from the moon.

***

Love Itself - by Leonard Cohen.

The light came through the window,
Straight from the sun above,
And so inside my little room
There plunged the rays of Love.

In streams of light i clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the nameless makes
A Name for one like me.

I'll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door -
Then love itself was gone.

All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.

Then I came back from where I'd been
My room, it looked the same -
But there was nothing left between
The Nameless and the Name.

I'll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door -
Then love itself was gone.

a toast to twisted minds

sometimes, old jerry lewis and family guy do the trick. other times, you're feeling love for the underdog.

Ah L'Amour watch

Rejected watch
(funny until, well, you'll know when you get there. can't tell a genius when to stop though, can you?)

Elba Goodey's Little Danglers watch
(old friend, philosophy major turned puppeteer, presents a puppet called Gordon having withdrawal symptoms)

the existential threat of meatballs

There’s something about the freedom of deciding what I will have for dinner that I miss on an almost existential level. It’s so nice to be safe in the nest, to be taken care of, cooked for, cleaned after. But also, it’s not. It’s terrible. It’s deathish. Every night in New York I would eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and if I wanted. That has been my life for 12 years. It’s a strange thing, but tonight, as I looked down over my mother’s delicious chicken meatballs and pasta, a single tear dropped directly into the sauce; a tiny little salty puddle, and I ate around it so I would have time to process what it meant, and then I made it my last bite.

----
(mum... your unconditional love is amazing. don't take it the wrong way. i love you.)

darkest forest

You can only go half way into the darkest forest, then you're coming out the other side. - Chinese Proverb

letting go

I have to let it go, my anger. There it goes. It’s going. I can see it, a little wobbly, maybe, a little unsure where to go, exactly. First time on your own is always hard, I whisper, but keep putting one angry foot in front of the other, my friend. I think we’ve grown apart, you see. Hard as it is, there’s someone out there who needs you more than me right now. So off you go. Ciao, old pal. Adios and all. I’ll see you around. Maybe even tonight. Maybe sooner than we think.

i, memory

She wanted to hold me. All the time. She wanted to feed me. To dress me. To brush my hair and pet me. She wanted in some part of her she learned from movies and her own mother, to be a good influence in my life. To teach me about love and protection. But somehow, in a way neither her nor I understand, she became disgusted when I lay in a pool of blood and water between her legs, wrinkled and curled from my 9-month gestation, shrieking from the shock of passing through her dark body into a world of light. She became disgusted that day by the way she had been pinned down, her legs held apart, arms grounded, mouth stuffed, eyes left to gape.

Her memory had no choice but to reject with primal violence all reflections of that day of her life. But for all its trying, there I was, forcing her to remember. So she had no choice but to reject me, with all the primal violence of her fist and belt and cutting board. I felt that she loved me between welts. But in the end, I was the memory she couldn't kill.

=============================

(sorry to get a little dark kids. this is from a workshop on the short-short format. the method is that we look briefly at an image, and then write. no thinking. no pausing. just break through your inner-censor. just write. the image here was of a kid with no real expression on his face. don't know why this is where i took it. but then, that's the seduction of giving up control of your thoughts. you never know where you will end up.)

words to wake you

Steve Jobs' Commencement Speech at Stanford Video - Text
(stay hungry, stay foolish...)

Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Video - Text
(no, we are not satisfied...)

sit back. listen. be moved. do something.

what if i said yes?

Meet Hector Cardenas. He's a New York artist, and the person i thank for one of my most enlightening conversations of the last decade. A little over a month ago, Hector unravelled his latest painting in an exhibit called "What If I Said Yes?" His speech that night was shared with me, and it's so wonderful that i'm compelled to keep passing it on.

Hector's Speech
No NO NO NO.

No, defines me. Saying NO keeps me safe, I know when to say NO and it gives me a sense of self.

When I say NO to something I inhabit the territory that I’ve defined as being me.

I say NO and I draw a border. I place a fence.

I am myself when I say NO.

I defend the confines of what I believe is me by saying NO. As long as I can say NO I have the control I need in order to live in what I understand is me.

I like NOs.

I celebrate NOs.

I respect the NOs from other people.

I respect your border, your frontier your definition of who you are.

Together we go as far as our NOs allows us.

I explore the space of what I define as who I am and when I get to the end of it, when I get to the border, the fence, I feel and think NO. I act NO.

There is a reason for NOs to exist.

I live inside a fence called NO. It’s an encircling long fence.

Thanks to NOs I’ve survived, my parents said NO to colds and illness, to ignorance and pointy objects, NO to hitting someone else, NO to junk food, NO to too much tv, etc.

I inherited a bunch of NO’s.

And everything would be fine if I could just accept and live with the NO’s I got like a perfectly fitted suit.

Oh but like a curious cat the questions arise:

What is beyond NO?

Why NO?

What would happen if I jump the fence of NO?

What if I say yes?

A few days ago, I was walking to school with my daughter Valentina when she told me:

Daddy stop!

She wanted to go back. I turned and saw red fallen leaves on the sidewalk. But she wasn’t interested in the leaves, among them there was a broken dirty old one-eyed power girl doll.

What happened inside me was instantaneous, I thought NO. Valentina had taken me to my NO fence.

But in that time that exists between thinking NO and acting NO, after
feeling NO and before saying anything I asked myself the question:

What if I say yes?

What if Valentina is right?

What if she knows what she is doing?

What is she thinking?

I stopped, kept silence and observed.

That’s when she said: “Look daddy, a treasure!”

The dirty old broken one-eyed power girl doll looked everything to me except as a treasure, that was until I heard what Valentina said.

In her world there was no fence.

I was able to get into her world by saying YES to her decisions.

In her world she was going to school and suddenly she found a treasure. It is the equivalent to me finding $5000 in the street with my name on it.

In order to behave in YES mode, to say YES to someone else, I have to believe it. Otherwise comes YES with reservations, a YES with resentment. A YES with rolling eyes.

In order to have a true YES, I need to shift my faith to the YES.

That becomes the key to open someone else’s world.

I have to believe that the other person is right.

It is my choice to stay in my world with my fence of NO’s surrounding me or say YES, believe YES, and get myself into another world. In this case into Valentina’s world.

Suddenly, my fence moves a little and increases my territory. It expands with YESs and doesn’t expand with NOs

So what if I say YES? What if I believe YES?

For me is an adventure, an adventure into another world, the world of someone else. An expansion of mine.

For the person who receives the YES, YES becomes a little package of love that creates reaffirmation. Recognition and acceptance of that person’s world. And when I hear YES I feel loved. I feel that my world is recognized and accepted. I feel happy.

About a year ago, I was having a conversation with Maddalena, a friend of mine, who is here tonight, and I said that it was very easy to make someone else happy, the only thing needed for it was to say yes. This idea, I said could be applied to any circumstance, like right now for example I told Maddalena you and I are talking, you say something and I’ll say YES. Then, she said:

Oh I love the painting that Erik bought from you (Erik is also a friend of mine and Maddalena’s boyfriend at the time. Since then Maddalena has made him happier by saying YES to his marriage proposal) Maddalena continued, I would love to have a painting similar to that one.

In my mind a flurry of thoughts came and went in a fraction of a second resulting in a simple but meaningful YES. She was happy.

She probably forgot about it. We haven’t mentioned what happened that night since then. I finished the painting this summer and decided to make a big deal by giving it to her as a surprise. I thought it would be fun.

I think we are all treasure chests full of YESs and NOs, each one in different combinations, and the way we are all making that particular combination of YESs and NOs is what makes everyone of us special.

Tonight I’m saying yes to myself, with my YES’s and NO’s and I’m saying YES to you with your YES’s and NO’s

The NO’s for the comfort the YES for the adventure.

It doesn’t matter how I combined my YES’s and NO’s because that it is what makes me, me. That is what is supposed to happen.

I’ll keep my NO’s. Nothing wrong with them, but if I feel adventurous, the answer is right there at the tip of my fingers completely accessible to me. I just have to say YES. To believe YES.

And now I present to you the painting that originated that evening: YES.

========
Another project, full of heart, by Hector: Hearty Shirts
========

happy street corner

the corner overflows with hippies and their dogs and their lentil burritos at 1 a.m. it's a street party, maybe spontaneous, maybe not. i wasn't there, and it's late now, you can tell by the bottles and the wrappers and the abondoned sandals. an aboriginal guitarist, young and husky, is singing the blues. some know the words, and i'm singing whatever comes. it's a nice night, warm, cool breeze. it's the st. kilda of my 1969 greenwich village dreams. a moment ago i was just walking by. now i'm a neighbour. now i'm a dog-patter. now i'm a "no thanks, no beer tonight, but do you have a cig to spare?"

Repeat Into Silence

(June 13, 2004: from the Starbucks series)

She walked into the café and all the twilight strangers felt an enormous sadness enter the room. A heaviness they knew came from the outside, unmistakably not their own. It had a universal quality, the final disillusionment of human hoping, and so it resonated, yes, but it was not their day to enter the existential vacuum. Their thoughts thick but fragile like the froth in their cups, they raised their eyes and met each other in the air, sympathetic, searching, building walls around themselves. One by one they saw her, she removed her hat, her sunglasses, and they found her eyes, the deepest of wells, red and blue, puffy and determined to hold on to reality. She found a table and sat down carefully, overly conscious, overly composed. She saw only what she needed to. The chair to ha,ng her coat on, the bench for her bag, the spilled sugar on her table to brush to the floor, replace with her computer, the 'on' button, the blank page and the keys. A quick breath and she started to type. The twilight strangers had forgotten about her already. Their thoughts had turned to themselves. And this is how it is, she knew. In cafes. In love. It was 12.20 a.m. and she was hungry. She’d just finish this sentence and have a look at the menu, which the waitress had placed behind her computer while she typed and without her noticing.

Repeat Into Silence is the story that she wrote...

Repeat Into Silence

He looks at me with his love-brown eyes. A straight face at first, his eyes in deep conversation with mine, we're saying everything we have always said, and how it will be forever that these words exist between us.

And then a quick smile dawns over his cheeks, and mine follow like a wave that flows from his heart to mine. And there's nothing that I can say, except for "marry me." And nothing that he can say, except for "no." Except that he could say "just tell me why," and I could say, "because my world will not have it so."

And there's nothing more I can explain, and a void opens up inside me and slips its shadow over all the love that drowns in me every day, as if it did not die yesterday too, and as if I do not die in his presence, and in his absence, and in my solitude since I left him behind to find a road that does not open before me.

"There's nothing more I have ever wanted and nothing I have been able to want since," my wounded truth sends into his almost closed believing.

"But yet," he says, "you cannot choose me to love every morning and all the following day?"

"I have chosen it," I say a thousand times.

"But you cannot do it in this life, in our real life, outside of your heart, outside of your poems?"

"I cannot," I do not say but say nothing meaning the same.

"And you cannot explain why," he says not even asking.

"I cannot" I repeat into the same silence, a place that once roared with my voice and my excuses and my begging for forgiveness and chances, a place we eventually evacuated and that I now carry with me everywhere, making me as meek and barren as the smoldering hope in the ambers of these daydreams.

"Then," he says, "we will be always apart and never together, and you will always be alone and I will soon pull the shroud over your impossible presence in my life, which will be rewritten without you."

Frozen and buzzing I turn from these ghosts in the empty seat before me, and I do not know whether to breathe again, or how to live, except for in these imaginary conversation between you and me, in this café and so many others, full of people living their lives while I make up stories so I can still feel you in mine.

never, never, never give up

Walking past a storefront, I see a magnet:
“'Never, never, never give up.’ – Winston Churchill.”
I go inside, pick up the magnet, go to the counter.
I wait.
Three shopkeepers, three people ignoring me.
They walk past me. They talk to each other. They answer the phone. They talk to other people.
I look at the magnet.
“Never, never, never give up.”
Who am I kidding?
I drop the magnet. Pick up my bag. Walk out.

the disenchanted ones

I walk into a party and know I should be observing the youthfulness of social chatter and bonding of minds over the clinking of glasses. But instead I scan the room for the outsider elements, feel myself seeking out the estranged emotions in the room, the one’s who prefer to stay in the shadows, the flicker of isolation in a red and tired eye, those who are bored despite distractions, and hungry despite the chips and dip. I walk into a party and instantly look for the disenchanted ones. The pensive amongst the merry, the modest amongst the needy. And I always find them. And they always find me.

hello city i hoped for

hello music
hello thousands of voices singing the words to my song
hello picnic baskets and colorful throws
hello wide smiles and the friends that music makes
hello damien rice, herbie hancock, pete murray, ben harper, dave matthews, john mayer, lee scratch perry, crosby steels & nash, john butler, yo la tengo, bo diddley, taj mahal, chick corea
hello australian summer. these are the sounds that you will make for me.
the festival season is alive. the sun has made promises. and i am going to follow the music. everywhere.
hello.

wrinkles, wrinkles

Wrinkles, wrinkles.
Such gross manifestations of having lived.
We should sprout flowers for the days that have passed,
not wear time’s stretch marks like scars,
observing our skin’s decay while waiting for life to start.
Lines crawling around eyes trying to shine with youth,
cracking under laughter that makes us hungry for more life.
Wrinkles, grotesque and insincere.
Lies on the surface of our souls.
Cracks in the sweetness of our immortal dreams.

just thoughts, you know

bombs. bombs. bombs. so much terror now that it has touched all of us. it reaches right into our lives, and takes things.

feels like every week i am writing to someone somewhere to say... "hey, are you okay? i heard there was an explosion, i heard there might be more, are you okay? is everyone okay?" and i send off those emails now like any other, like a 'happy birthday', or 'loved your holiday pictures,' or 'i saw the funniest thing today...'

it's been there so long now that i can't remember when it was all new. when the terror first took hold. first on the outside, and then on the inside. before i started becoming numb.

staring into space today, i thought of a random piece i wrote in 2002 when i was just beginning to realize that i was affected. strange to read it now. i remember that day so clearly.

Just Thoughts, You Know

I got up just after you today, around 9.3O. I wanted to sleep but couldn’t help visualizing myself being strangled, you pinned down, forced to watch. In the end I crawled out of the blankets and stood in cold shower water and counted to 10 before making it hot.

Then I finished the coco pops, sorry. We’ll buy a bigger box next time.

Then I opened the curtains and read the paper, 180 dead in Bali, Saddam will use chemical weapons, sniper will kill again and watched people run from the rain.

I decided to join them. I needed a workout.

The gym was almost empty, which was perfect because the music seemed louder and I got the treadmill I like with a view onto Broadway and 38th street spontaneous scene creation in my mind: a man stops on Broadway, faces me, lobs a Molotov Cocktail straight at my window. I run, dodging rowing machines, rugby-dive forward propelled by apocalyptic boom, propelled by crumbling ceiling, flames licking my shoes, I don’t hear fire engines, people on the street yelling “jump! jump” jump and be paralyzed, wait and burn, “jump! jump!” inhuman screams from the inferno, spot flagpole intact perpendicular to gym wall, lunge for chain, chain is not tied, scream, falling fast, scream… and 40 minutes went by fast.

Then I went to Macy’s. God I hate that place. I came to get a Sheseido powder refill and left with 37 perfumed strips in my pocket. I also bought some deodorant because I know you hate it when I use yours. Well, you don’t hate it, it’s just that I always drop it and crack the lid. I did it again this morning to your new one, but don’t get angry because you’ve broken every mug I’ve ever bought. Anyway, now I have my own, it’s Eternity and you can use it whenever you want.

So it was 4 o’clock by then and I wanted to get home around the same time as you, so I ran through the rain and squeezed into the train doors. I looked around for a seat and saw one beside two middle-eastern guys a few feet to my right. One looked like you, just like you actually, but with a thick beard I had trouble persuading myself it was safe to sit down and, you would have laughed at me, I started imagining I had 30 seconds left to live, do you know I am afraid to shower when you aren’t home? I leave the door and curtain open, I watch the beads to see if they rattle and when the doors opened on 57th street I saw people talking to their dogs and buying gum and I felt like I’d been given another chance.

So I went to the supermarket… I thought I’d make lasagna for the first time. I’ll make it with eggplant, zucchini, but first I wanted coffee sleeping is hard, every night my dreams wait for me so they can crawl inside my head. Sometimes there’s murder, always there’s the possibility of it... and I’ll also use beef, we still have some in the freezer, lately my dreams don’t care if I’m asleep or awake and they take over my mind in the same way. No matter how many I shake off, there’s always another, there’s always more. And I thought I should try cooking with wine, like that Bourdeau you’re always drizzling over our chicken. So I went to the liquor store on 57th and got some red.

Anyway, I had a good day. And I know what you think… the subway thing was stupid. I know it’s stupid, I knew even then. But they were just thoughts, you know. Everyone has them.

Hey forget about it. Come here, give me a kiss. I died four times today.

mists & mirages

Saskia resurrected this from the surreal mists and mirages of history this morning via email. I wrote this six years ago, sitting at Valeska on 2nd avenue one unusually warm evening early in the year. my computer was a large black chunky heavy thing that i threw into a dirty orange shoulder bag bursting at the seams and lugged with me to whatever exposed, inspiring corner of my mad city called my name.

Years later now, and so true all over again. More true now than ever. More true even than it was back then.

one true thing about my spirit
How is it that feelings of loss and pain are always accompanied by feelings of pure love not for a person or a situation or an idea (that has touched me and taken a room in my mind for its own visions) but for life just life And how is it that I am so taken with this love with what this love does for my soul and how that love is in fact my spirit and that as much love as there is in my spirit is as much love as I have to give And does this mean that I will always have strength to remain my better self as things fall all around me because in the falling I see love and in the debris I find hope and in the carnage I smell love's hope still fresh and looking for life?