sisterfiction

i wrote this a couple weeks ago for Emma on her 11th birthday, enjoy...

Once there lived two sisters twelve years apart in age. They were tall blue-eyed beasties with, more often than not, dirty feet and large smiles. Their enormous grins were both a blessing and a curse, for while their pearly chompers drew people toward them, they also sometimes revealed that they had recently been eating spinach, or pulled pork, or pineapples. This was a small burden, and the sisters rose above it gracefully.
In fact, one afternoon, at an R Picnic,
(Where all the foods began with the letter R), the sisters rose so high above the smattering of comments regarding a smidge of radicchio here and a morsel of romaine stuck there, that they fully levitated off the red picnic blanket and shot straight up into the ether.
The older sister gazed at the picnic attendees—a hodge-podge of local eccentrics, a few wing nuts, and a judge and doula for good measure- as they sank into the distance, and she sighed, “Mad Pierre was on the absolute verge of serving me some of his roasted rabbit. Wonder if they’ll save us some.”
The younger sister wondered if they would ever be in any condition to consume gamey carbons again, for their celestial ascent had begun to quicken headily. First their shoes dissolved, in a slightly ticklish, caressing fashion. Then their hair rolled out of the tight braids they had put them in before preparing ratatouille that morning. The younger one giggled, “I swear, my hair just sighed!”
It wasn’t just sighing, it was cooing and purring, charmed by the comets and galaxies flying by with an electric hiss. The younger on laughed, a fat mango slice of a chuckle, and somersaulted seven times with panache. The older one bent herself into a pretzel and cart wheeled blissfully. Below their slap happy smiles the world was a glowing green kiwi of life spinning slowly without much rhyme or reason. The sisters paused in their cosmic calisthenics to peer down at their earthly domain.
“What a weird world, Sissy,” squeaked the little one, for she was wise and astute. They simultaneously developed lumps in their throats contemplating the mysterious joys and tragedies of human life. From way up there they couldn’t help but notice how everything, every drop of sweat on a Haitain’s brow, every bus stop littered with wrappers of Atomic Fire Balls, every sigh of every tree, and every mothers’ warm dry palm are inexorably connected for all time. The sisters saw all this together and joined hands with a squeeze.
“There’s so much we can do, “ said the young one, who saw how opportunities lapped at every door like ravenous lions.
“There’s so much we must do,” said the old one, who saw all the places love can fill in.
“Too bad we had to be swept up to this great height to see it all.”
“If only we had a little red fish to lead us home again.”
The young one was about to express her mistrust in any little red fish as an intergalactic vehicle when, through the starry darkness, a smiling sunfish swam steadily toward them. His fins were golden and, while he was no spring chicken, he was beautiful beyond compare.
“Oh,” said the little one.
“Hello,” said the tall one.
“Shall we?” inquired the water creature, slippery with suavity. Not too slippery, however, for his back fin made a perfect handhold for the big sister, while the little one held onto her shoulders.
“How did you know?” she whispered, as they began their exhilarating plummet to Earth.
“Oh, sis,” the big one squealed over the cry of the rushing wind, “You know it too. You get what you ask for.”
Earth was now a life- size playground for animals and oceans and gods and men. They could almost smell the seaweed, the popcorn, the sneaker feet, and the morning breath. It was good to be home again. The rest was like riding a bike down hill with no hands on a muggy night in July.

now now

i'm writing these words on the front porch of my new home new pines in central, minneapolis.
there's a black pitbull named Warhol next to me on the front steps, and my housemate Will is clacking away on a more genuine machine, a suitcase typewriter. Rosemary's trying to jimmy the lock on the mailbox.
Today was the warmest day yet, and though I spent the majority of it working inside the coffee shop, the heat of summer is tingling my toes and giving my bones some light.
from the soles of my feet, which ache from the cowboy boots i danced in on the treacherous basement floor of the Tardcore Compound, to the top of my head which is still crusty with pink gloppy paint. There's glitter in my underwear, and a sweet feeling of self-love rockin my socks.
Its been a good couple weeks back in Minneapolis, the best ever in fact.
A new scheme is brewing, that has nothing to do with England.
More with carpentry and ceramics, and Spanish lessons. Winter in Costa Rica.
I can feel myself making a conscious choice to be happy and sane, productive and true to myself.
This neighborhood feels like it has so much potential, so many opportunities. I wanna ride away from the sunrise every morning here, and wake up with a life to love. Can I get a hell yeah?

no, THAT's amore

{photo by Devin Asch, taken at the end of my old drive way on Big Eye}

glavanizing

gallavanting

goosebumps, gosh. serendipity super smooth. surly. bold brash ballsy. blase.

welcome wished would you like to

mouth mumble mimic moue

head butt beer breath

cigarette lips kiss slip tongue fun

jet lag

i dunno if this blog is going to get much more of my attention. it certainly has been lovely to write and read the responses here, but returning to minneapolis is an art form, and introspection is habitual and self-perpetuating. and outside is more fun than computer screens.

tonight amelia took me to a play-back theatre performance with some folks from a Theatre of the Oppressed group at MCTC. improv on the sidewalk in uptown, which is starved for some freaky raw love.

i'm at an impasse as to what'll happen in the fall, the rest of my life. so i'm going to create the most perfect situation and let it happen.

say what you love,

travel light and take nothing personally.

good night.

sober is the new fucked up (again)

Last night I dreamt that I was fully and completely off the wagon, to the extent that I was blacking out entire evenings again. Failing to retain memories from adventures still fresh in my bones, absent in my mind. Unable to be accountable for things done or said. MIA in my own life.
The dream gave me a hang over, and I sneered out at the grey skies, all right, all ready. I get the picture.
I met this person a few nights ago and had awesome connection, conversation. you know when you're immediately able to trust a person, that instantaneous feeling of familiarity and attraction. The conversation turned to sobriety, which was surely an anomaly behind the pub we met at, and I told him, I've was sober from 4-20 last year to about the middle of march this year. Now you're drinking again he asked? and goddamn, but I don't have an answer to that. Did something happen that acted as a sign to me, yes you have this thing under control and you can drink now, and it doesn't matter and its not a waste of time?
No.
I was uninspired and depressed and in a foreign place where no one would remind me that my sobriety is one thing at least that I'm proud of.
Yikes. I feel almost obliged to write this here, to make my frame of mind accessible, because I want to understand. I want to know how the booze-y stuff works in my brain and body, and I want to know how you feel.
Is it unexamined in the vast majority? From 17 a beer in the hand is just Plain Old Normal, like a smile on your face, or a light on your bike. Does it make you question your perspective ever, or is that just the affliction of those who spend too much time inside their own heads? Are you thinking about what you're putting into your bodies?
More importantly, is it real?

“The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love”
-Tom Robbins

your feet smell like cheese puffs

oh, i love a good montage...
picnicking with my dad on fish and chips on the bowling green above Bishop's Castle- a small, laid-back village with steep hills and friendly folks, talking to a couple of hot air balloon pilots (drivers? captains? what's the correct title?), riding horses up at the Foxholes on a grey Friday morning, driving cross-country with my dad with ShugE's live in florida cassette singing in our ears, getting lost in the smooth green hills of the Welsh border, drinking my way through a few evenings of old friends, meeting a soft-eyed gardener in the dark courtyard behind a divey pub called "the vaults", rocking out to Jeff Grimes' band playing Sex Machine at their free gig before they continue on to London, getting tackled by gangs of small cousins with wild, crazed eyes, and incoherently adorable accents, serendipitous meeting with some sexy gipsies from Manchester sippin tea fireside at yee olde family farm house listening to my dad tell stories about coming to that place as a kid, carved above the fireplace : we're simple people here,we like it like that, we keep our heads down and don't no one come near less we want 'em.
philisophical blatherings with optimistic undertones, sunburn peeling, eyes burning from the hot hot love this screen delivers to me (sorry, spending too much time googling " merkin")
where the fuck am i going to get 60, 000 greasy green american dollars?
the hustle continues...

last day

this page isn't big enough, or i don't know enough polysyllabic words, to tell you how good it feels to be here. my hands aren't big or quick enough to draw you a picture on this screen of life here. i want to whisper it in your ear and leave you with a pistacchio gelato kiss-print and the smell of the sea in your hair. i want to tattoo this tale on the back of your arm so you need a mirror or a friend to read it. I want you to fall asleep in the sunshine and dream this dream I've been living, and wake up and tell me, ok.
my last few days in sicily were spent ducking baby Mediterranean waves, hitch hiking in big trucks and fast cars, climbing on ancient obelisks and crumbling castles at odd hours, doing ceramics with the kids of Calatafimi after school, walking in the sun forever. Running around under the fat fat moon, and fava beans are the most delicious thing recently. More pubs and driving around very fast at night. Learned how to say the most important word in Italiano: soletico (tickle). Explored the ancient temple and theatre of Segesta. Learned how to slow dance (i think). Rode on a motorbike, worked in a greenhouse, moved a HUGE pile of wood. Deflected the Italian machismo. Bam!
For a few days I put up with the increasingly greasy approaches of a man who worked on the farm. I overlooked his overt grossness, telling myself that he was my friend, it wasn't a big deal. One morning I'd had really bad dreams (that Seward was cemented over, randomly) and when I woke up he was at it again, "why didn't you come to sleep with me? what's the matter, you don't like men?" I suggested that he give it a rest. He said, "ohhh, in italy it is tradition for the men to joke about the sex with the women. bla bla bla"
so i say, "oh really? that's part of your culture? ok. let me tell you about part of my culture. when an old man makes bad jokes about sex to me i say fuck off. or in italian, va'fanculo."
This, apparently, is a good way to make a point.
Everyday for the last three weeks I have walked down a big hill to let the chickens out of their coop, then hiked back up. In the evening I would go down again and feed them and collect eggs. Climbing that hill never got any easier, but I got stronger. The chickens did not get any less freakily aggressive, but I got braver. Life is fucking amazing, if you let it be.
Right now I am enjoying the hospitality of my friend Francesco in Palermo. We just looked at his work, which is documenting the plants and animals of the nature reserve that I lived in for the past few weeks.
Tonight, to London.

ps, my pits are sunburned, baby.

an essay

"you done good"
its official. you've paid you're 2o dollar membership fee to the good people of WWOOF, chosen a destination, and now you are waiting. Waiting, at an abandoned Sicilian train station, a sunny airport terminal, a gas station in North Cali. Your stomach is dizzy with anticipation. What will you new WWOOF host be like? Your mind races, but a complacent feeling of opptimism hypnotizes you. They arrive, usually in a dirty jeep or pick-up truck. Maybe they are sauve behind cat eye sunglasses, or borderline-psychotic with overactive facial features. They make you feel awesome, or they make you wish you were a karate master in a different time zone.
Sometimes it sucks a big one. You have to know that. Sometimes your sleeping bag gets peed on by an inbred, lice-ridden cat, with you in it. Sometimes your WWOOF host never acknowledges you. It happens that you have to make a daring escape, and it feels like the universe has disemboweled your naivete. Maybe you get cornered in a cabin by a shirtless farmer who just wants to give you a quick back rub before his wife gets home. Its creepy sometimes, and you're compelled to pack abruptly and climb over the back fence one fine Saturday morning. You know who you are and what's good for you, so you don't hesitate to go looking for it.
More often than not, you find it right off the bat. The perfect farm, a place to unwind and build calluses and breathe lots of clean air. Its sublime.
You stick your hands in the dirt and feel pure bliss. Baby tomato and basil plants make you feel like a mother or a magician. You put your back into it and your best face forward.
You get over your fear of chickens, the dark, huge insects and isolation. Maybe you start to get over yourself. You get sunburned, stoned, and sweaty. You get to use big tools with cool names. You watch the clouds drag their shadows over the contours of the valley and feel your heart as big as a watermelon inside you. You entertain fantasies of your eventual return home. Never again will you take for granted the luxuries of toilet paper, technology, running water, and the happy buzz of a busy life in the city. You write impassioned letters and experience hourly revelations.
Around the new people in your life you are shyer than usual. Social ineptness plagues you, and childhood recollections confirm your fear that yes, you ahve always been strange and unknowable. You get over it, and make friends wherever you can find them.
You play Texas hold-em on the porch when it rains with a 50-year old man as tan as a Cuban cigar. You escape the farm with a Hawaiian kid named Ezra and kayak in the ocean. You explore an underground pub in a seaside village in Sicily. You dance your ass off at drugged-out electronica parties.
Flying on mushrooms on one of said parties, dancing on stage with your leg brace, sweat and glitter, you are privy to the secretely emormous capacities of living each moment fully.
You form rock-solid friendships and get involved in the most convoluted seedy sex-things. You start/stop shaving your legs/ wearing underwear. It feels great!
Back at the ranch, you get word that a new WWOOFer is coming. Yipee! You dream of a wickedly devious co-conspirator, a new best friend, a fling. Somtimes its a sexy Canadian and you end up getting raspberry kefir slurped off your decolletage at a nude beach. Sometimes you just awkwardly take turns hitting the bong before going outside to work "in the hole" in silence.
If you are extraordinarily lucky you get a double whammy of North Carolina's finest, a couple of wise kids fresh from their cross country bike trip. Together you create the best improv slow jams known to man and the strongest ganja biscuits and of course your heart breaks a little when you go your separate ways.
Other times its a whole passel of surrogate sisters and the seven of you have hilarious hitch hiking adventures to and from the beach. "who could resist?" you say and giggle maniacally.
Oh, hitch hiking is mode of transportation du jour for the WWOOFer. Your thumb gains new respect and in a moment of unfathomable dorkiness you write a poem about it. It catches you rides on the backs of motorcycles and countless pick up trucks. Tourists pick you up for the novelty, locals pick you up out of good-natured habit, creeps pick you up cuz they can't help it. You learn that saying No to a sketchy ride produces a better rush than slamming a 40. You find that the least aggressive stance on the side of the road is a relaxed face, eyes focused on the yellow line down the middle, not making direct eye contact until they pull over.
You are given beers, pizza, a bitchin' dance mix, pears, joints, life stories, coconuts, chocolate, a Kahuna's blessing, adviece, incence, invitations to eat pastries, go swimming, and milk a cow, all for being foolhardy enough to ask for a ride. One time, at a truck stop in North Dakota, you are offered a live turkey.
You watch the sun set a couple hundred times, and you never get bored. Beyond the internal revolutions these experiences incite, you are making good ripples in the Big Bathtub. Don't that make you stand a little taller? You are helping an individual sustain their vision of organic farming, and you are manifesting the truth that We Can Trust One Another.
You feel like a scout, sent out to ascertain the truth that the world is a safe place. You are testing the waters bravely and finding that yes, it is safe to visit foreign places on next to no budget , leave your cell phone, and spend inordinate amounts of time alone, outside, or doing manual work. It'll make you honest yet.


www.wwoof.org

Things are lookin up. Thermal baths and circling hawks and new friends. love.

damp

when you're learning a new language, it crowds your mouth like peanut butter with no rice dream. your natural tongue lies there like a phone number you never call anymore.
another wwoofer is coming to this farm in a few days, and some french-polynesian tourists. Horray! the introspective-wallow can retreat to the back burner.
I discovered a huge cache of nutella in the kitchen. oh dear.
recent neat stuff, built a fire this morning to dry my one pair of pants over. also suceeded in only packing one pair of pants. hiked down the side of the mountain to put the chickens away and feed them, got caught in an icy hail storm. hung out in the chicken coop until it passed. can have 3 year old- level conversations with people on the streets of Calatafimi.
soon: will continue to collect the awesome pieces of old silician pottery that stick out of the mud. will stop having weird violent dreams. will attempt to translate the italian copy of Siddhartha that i found in the house. will not consume entire jar of nutella.
one of the dogs is in heat, and these two weird dogs showed up for a day. they were the saddest dogs to run free in beautiful Italia. they reminded me of lame girls who drink Smucker and date lame guys.
after my last post i walked home, got totally fucking lost, could see Villa del Bosco far away on a hill, it was this little speck in the distance. the sun started to go down and i ran back to town because it was getting dark. hitched a ride with the nicest man to wear a plaid fedora. slept like a baby. life is awesome.
grazie, shugE, Eric. Show me some pictures, yo. Babies and Pasties.
my gramma can swear at your gramma in Italian.

liscio biccelecletta

Sicily is under my feet and in my mouth and filling my ears. I woke up in an empty farm house speaking english in my dreams, after staying up trying to learn Italian. The patience of people rocks my world. My "often" is as convuluted as your "spesso".
Even the birds speak Italian, faster than American birds. Is it lonely? I found a copy of the backstreet boys' "show the meaning of being lonely" when i was trying to get the radio to play. ick. am reading "crying of lot 49"..succeeded in getting the jazz station. now the only english i hear is Louis Armstrong, and the rest is slow, giggly half-english, half-italian pantomimes of conversations. I will walk back to Villa de Bosco soon, along skinny streets- steep cobbled 10 ft wide streets between old apartment buildings with laundry hanging and old men walking slowly and kids smoking cigarettes. Sicily is trashy and classy. Ancient monuments and neon graffitti. (my favorite has been i (heart) hip hop). Beautiful sicilian men and women with bright bright make up. At night I am alone the only human for kilometers and kilometers (no miles here, kiddo). it is beyond tranquil. it is calmer than a vicodine enema. the thing i am facing is me. the only obstacle, as always between self and bliss, is self. is it cliche?
"where ever you go, there you are".
by the way, if you didn't know, your comments make me wriggle with joy. yup.

things in life to love (recap)

the elasticity of the material of life and minds and hearts, there is always more room for ideas and people and things and places to love, there is always room for growth and better understanding
the up swing of the mood swing, pharmacists have drugs for sale to even out the furrow we plow, but lordy lordy i wouldn't know what the top looked like if i hadn't seen the bottom
the push and pull of friends across continents and oceans
the necessity of collaboration
the art of celebration
the ubiquitous nature of like-minded folks in the oddest of places
the magic of the postal service, and the satisfaction of correspondence
the clarity of sobriety and

i wrote this in a treehouse a year ago, thanks for reading:


THINGS IN LIFE TO LOVE
Everything,
including the skinned knuckles, the scary dogs, the stiff lower back, the full belly, the new day, the passage of time, the continuance of now,
the laugh of a gecko,
the fart of a friend, the thump of memory of gymnasiums past, the quiver of excitement, the vastness of possibility, the texture of chocolate, the purity of minimalism, the feeling of teeth, the divergences of skin, the truth of language,

the "i love my body"ness of living in a body rather than in a ray of light or within the molecules of a pheremone,

the introspection of cats, the abundance of oxygen, the smoothness of discovery, the disappearance of cake, the power of suggestion, the ache of homesickness, the existence of ocean, the inevitability of change, the subtlety of omen, the frenzy of wind,
the knowledge that We Are All One Family,
the destruction of fear, the tingle of catharsis, the nobility of dreams, the expression of love, the fullness of hug, the tan face, the free heart, the dancin' hips, the bicycles bicycles bicycles, the flow of the universe, the perfection of silence, the buzz of cicadas, the sigh of sleep, the hammock on the porch,
the inanity of cartoons, the juice of exertion, the free stuff, the whirr of corduroy, the volume of the written word, the accessibility of creation, the ease of positivity, the vibration of co operation, the word PONO,
the tang of Hawai'i, the sisters oh the sisters and the brothers, the rythym of kisses, the beach balls, the spirit of acceptance, the shape of feet,
the sound of your name,
the electricity of a crush, the absurdity of squirrels, the ticking of a clock, the multitudes of perspective, the speed of recovery, the creak of trees, heart chakra, sunshine, the cleverness of me, and your beauty,
the stretch of mornings, the rumble of a laugh, the willfullness of hair, the size of the sky, the smell of marijuana, the sound of footsteps,
the wag of a dog, the strength of a wave, the tinkle of rocks under the water, the taste of coffee, the high of hitch-hiking,
the squeak of clean, the grit of dirt,
the squeeze of familiarity, the loose of new,
the everlastingness of every moment, our collective worthiness, the sass of flirtation, the wayward Puna sunday, the exhiliration of speed,
the perfection of detail.

now

Day after tomorrow I'll get up at 4 am to ride in the dark with my dad to the Standstedt airport. When the sun comes all the way up, I'll be in Sicily. I'll take the train to Catalfimi and jump off into a new story.
Its incredibly beautiful today. I just went for an awesome bike ride along the river with my dad. My heart is wet and woozy, a thick muscle in between strong lungs. Spring's here!
Minneapolis! It'll be a good day when I'm swapping spit with you again!

wigga, PLEASE.

By the way, I got accepted to Oxford Brooks yesterday. Yow.

33,803

That's how many days my Grandpa has been alive. Today is his 92nd birthday. Nine of us gathered at the Poliana (polish) Club to celebrate. Salud!
On the right is a photo of my grandparents, by Steve Pike.
My Babka passed away about ten years ago, when I was getting my first smooches with a boy on roller skates, when she was almost 82. At lunch my Grandpa leaned across the potato pancakes and vodka to tell me conspiratorially, after I'd finished rolling a smoke for my dad, "Some people say that smoking kills, but your grandmother smoked very strong cigars until she died. In fact, the doctors dismissed her from the hospital at the end of her life because she insisted on smoking."
The story in my family goes that when my dad was in hospital as a child, after being hit by a car, my Babka made a promise that if my dad recovered, she would give up smoking cigarettes. After he got out of hospital, my grandmother gave up smoking completely for awhile, until someone suggested that she could smoke cigars and still keep her word.
A better story about my Babka, that I've been told over and over, since I was about 5, also features smoking. She was at the cinema alone, when a strange man came and sat a few seats away from her. She was smoking a cigarette, as you could in those days. The man moved closer and closer, until he was right next to her. Then he put his hand on her leg. Just as slowly and calmly, my Babka ground the hot end of the cigarette into the back of his hand. He moved away.


If, the next time our paths cross, the swathe I am cutting through the madding crowd is wider than usual, if I am more rubenesque than the last happy time we met, do not be sad that I can't fit into my tight pants anymore. Every extra inch of flesh hanging on my hips is pure bliss, pure eating-with-family-and-sitting-around-shooting-the-moon, high-dairy-content, joy. And if I'm sad that my belly isn't flat anymore, remind me that surely there is no better way to get fat than to share pudding with little cousins and spend hours talking slowly to inebriated relations. Life is awesome.

bloody sodding blighter

other good britishisms:
they're always calling me dear, love, love, poppy
as in, "all right, love?" "cuppa tea, love" "cup of sherry, dear?" (at 1pm).. less awesome britishism is 'sorry'. Every other freakin sentence, people say sorry. if you pass them and say 'scuse me' they say sorry. I stepped on a girls foot in the underground and she said sorry. ..so I fed her to the crocodile I conveniently had in my wallet.
On Tuesday I went to a pub that's been around since before the great fire of London, in 1666. Its on fleet street in central London, called ye old cheshire cheese. poosa recommended it, and me and my cuz Becky walked there from Trafalger square. which is going to look like the picture on the right in 50 years. We didn't climb on the lions at Nelson's column, but we were featured in about 45 other people's vacation pictures. Didn't go to Camden Market either, cos it burned down about 6 weeks ago. I only have very splotchy memories of Camden, having only really been to the head shop that sold magic mushrooms out of a deli case, but I know lots of people really loved it, and its a fucking tragedy that its all ashes now.
The next day Becky and I explored the Indian markets in Whitechapel, passed up the hash cafe and parted ways at the Mile End tube station. I headed East to Kensington to visit an old friend, Joe, at his work. I followed the directions he'd given me over the phone, from the tube station left to the med kitchen, down Evanston Place to Queen's Road. Then down to #41. Easy.
I felt awesome and in awe of the gorgeous buildings under a tumultuous grey sky, except when I got to #41, it was under construction. There were men in hard hats carrying sheetrock into the building and buzz saws screaming, and saw dust everywhere. And that was just the front steps. Bemused, I asked a man standing in the bed of a pick up truck if the building was all under construction. Affirmative. My heart did a little hiccup, then i asked if there were any architects around. A construction worker named Gianni guided me through a maze of scaffolding and cat walks, to the back of the long building, where a little office incongruously sat.
I love hugging people for the first time in 4 years! Joe is as awesome as always and currently designing an underground swimming pool. We stuck our heads out the window to look at the workers digging 50 feet below us, and giggled maniacally. I swear my life is a spy movie.
Sat outside a cafe and drank coffee and caught up for a couple hours. Last time I saw him was at an outdoor music festival in London, when I was 19. He's been in South Africa a lot recently, and is getting married in a few months.
After , I went to The Natural History Museum and looked at dead things. Like kangaroos and a civet. And climbed inside a huge fake human womb. Creepy but soothing.

Blar

Survived Easter.
This means, staying up until 3 am on Saturday with my dad and aunt and uncle drinking mulled wine and eating roast potatoes. Then getting up Sunday morning, going to the obligatory mass, skipping home with my cousin Beth in the unseasonal SNOW that fell here yesterday morning and melted by 1pm, kicking off the Easter ho-down with a champagne toast and mountains of super rich food. Good God. My aunt Jenny, who's a teacher on the island Guernsey, showed up on Friday afternoon and didn't stop cooking until around 6 last night.
In montage: corks all over the dining room floor from 3 different types of bottle, many versions of each, snowballs with my 6 year old cousin George, finding out that an old sweetheart is getting married in a couple months, rolling cigarettes for my dad, drinking for the first time in almost a year, my uncle John's lips totally purple from Claret and rhaspodizing crudely about anything, my cousin Beth's 4 month old baby Dominic lying on my belly, and me on the floor, catching his drool and making him smile (babies are rad), George and his sister Pippa teaching me karate, talking to this amazing woman Marlene about her home in South Africa, clouds of gorgeous smelling hash smoke filling the house, hours of playing Jenga..
I've been pretty fuckin sober since the end of last April. I drank more this weekend (3 glasses) than I have all year...learning that there is more to be learned in observation that introspection.
Is an addict someone who can't change their perspective on drink/ drugs? I don't know if I am an addict. More likely, someone with very low tolerance. I used to have no self control with booze, but this weekend showed me that I am getting better at that.
This was the first time all year that I felt like I had reason to drink. Twelve people I love gathered around a table for a "high feast" in their tradition, it felt fitting and good.
Beth rocked my world this weekend. She has matured so much in the last couple years. "having a baby will do that" my uncles say when I comment, and I tongue the baby tooth that, despite being almost 23 still hangs out in my mouth like its '93. She is an amazing mum and a fun girl and her heart is as big as Atlanta, and in just the right place.

and this

basically, i'm excited about life again.

Distance is different here. 3 hours takes you half way across the country, and the most common complaint about Oxford Brooks, from students, was the distance from campus to oxford city centre. How far is it? 4 miles. Schmear America all you like, but you gotta admit it primes us kids for trekking smaller countries without fear. (Just for the record, schmear doesn't come up in the spell check's dictionary, but it recommends I subsitute the word 'henchmen'. would you still understand me then? would you still love me?)
I interviewed with the head of the Performing Arts program at Oxford Brooks on Wednesday, then went and toured UWE, who accepted me. UWE is just outside Bristol, which is a rough kinda city moving at high speed. Its close to the sea, so the air reminds you of salty lips.
I took 3 buses and a 3 trains back to Cambridge last night. My cousin Orlando came over to share a bottle of Courviosier and tell us stories about his pirate-life in college. I love having cousins. He's a good one, too.
Royal Holloway sent a fat envelope with a cover letter that stated that someone in admissions was "delighted to inform" me of my acceptance to the University of London.
Holy mother of mango!
Whether or not I decide to go there, this is really exciting. Oxford Brooks isn't as good a school, but that city pulled a hold-up on my heart. Look at that fucking picture! The whole city is full of that gorgeous architecture.

I used to have this friend, and she's still in my heart, but our roads split a while back and are headed in directions that know little about each other. But there is one thing I used to say to her a lot and now i say to you, "my dear, I am absolutely delighted to be alive"

Sometimes, the best thing to do in a city is get lost in it. Night time is best, under bright moon and shifting clouds. Flip your collar and take a walk across the rare wide open spaces, then down alleys and slink between shadows. Remind yourself that they are nothing to revile or fear, either within you or in the crevices of a foreign neighborhood.
Shadows are just as much a part of life as light. Surprise yourself with the direction your feet take you and stay present with the sensation of being lost.
When you find yourself on a familiar road with familiar lights filling your eyes, breath it in freshly.

less said...

This, I suppose, is the forum for photos of pre-pacific adventure Geach.
At least the clothes were recycled? If I remember correctly, the sweet old lady who made that dress had salvaged the materials from a dumpster at her son's athletic wear business. Dan Shultz just emailed this to me. Cheers!
Ladyfest was cheek-chewingly awesome. In a trashy kind of way. More on that later.

blooming

there's a magnolia tree with fat pink flowers just coming out in the front garden. spring is moving in, leaving its toothbrush next to the sink, and chasing my morning breath.
i'm plotting my Mediterranean adventure, and listening to Eddy Burke. oh Minneapolis let me rhapsodise about your musical curves some other time, i've got a perfect farm to find.
if i'd had more than 3 weeks to prepare for this trip (and spent that time either not being sick or depressed) if only if only. this may be more interesting though. sicily looks ripe.
my cousin is going to try and get me a job punting, which is a very lucrative tourist attraction. the river thames runs through cambridge, along the 'backs', which are the gorgeous, woodsey areas behind the colleges. tourists pay out to ride in simple wooden skiffs, navigated by someone (possibly me, hit the deck) with a 10 ft long pole, that they use to push off the bottom of the river.
spent the night with my cousins orlando and chrissy and my dad. it is FUCKING AWESOME to learn to get along with my dad, as a person. i am learning more and more that people who are hard to get along with are NOT an excuse to be self-righteous or bitchy or disrespectful..these folks are just the same- another chance to interact positively and learn what you can and be as awesome and present and open as possible. this also applies to the future and past selves. i used to shit talk myself and my past hijinks, trying to distance myself from it, but what a waste of this fleeting moment. take the one its hard to love and hold them gently..
Ladyfest in Cambridge tonight!
xoxo.

out of the depths

staying in tonight cos i have to write an essay on Medea for the University of Sussex. mostly i've been listening to Black Thorns on the internet and fidgeting. i'll slap some brain vomit on here and get back to it.
The house i'm staying at has a full-bodied taste, an intense ambience, a slightly unpleasant physical odour. There's a solid charm to it, as my large family of questionable (usually dead-on though) taste has been living there for the last 50+ years. There's a genetic memory in my blood of this house on Richmond Road. The front door is bright blue, and there are instruments everywhere. Due to my grandpa's fresh craziness, all the doors inside the house have Yale locks on them, to keep him from tearing up books. he seems fairly innocuous to me, mostly he lies in bed listening to Agatha Christie books on tape, or singing Polish National Anthems, but it breaks my heart cos the light's gone out. He was so brilliant a philosopher and teacher in his younger years, up until very recently, and now he's this broken man. He lies in bed in a room with a black wall and a crucifix hanging over his head. I've never seen someone die like that. Is that living? For how long could you go on like that, snorkeling through delirium?
My grandpa on the other side was lucid up until the very last hour of his life, even though he was physically demoralized. Is one worse than the other? Seeing someone you love in the same body and form, but their mind all twisted and dried up is tragic.
My dad's been taking shifts with my uncle More (his real name) taking care of my grandpa, giving him baths and making him meals and flipping over his books on tape cassette. Mostly my dad plays the piano and reads and goes for bike rides. He's pretty depressed about being old and unemployed and stuff, but doesn't talk about it. I want to make him feel better, find him some zest in his life here, and leave him better than I found him. I can feel my heart aching for people who have an over abundance of love and life in their lives. I radiate toward people with smiles the size of billboards and wiley eyebrows. Send me some of those.

oatmeal, anyone?

its thursday morning, i am adjusting to waking up to hear my father say "err, are you getting up?" through the door.
i slept late ish after yesterday.. which began with a crazy drive down to the train station through morning traffic, hopped on a train and wrote a letter to Trevor, got off in central London and took the Underground to Vauxhall, then took another train to Egham. A blustery, windy 20 minute walk through Egham got me to the Royal Holloway University of London. A fellow giving out slick invitations to a st. Patty's day club night welcomed me onto the huge, historic campus. Ehm, lemme re-phrase that. The campus is centered around the 'founders' which is a huge gorgeous 5 story building that frames a big courtyard. You want statues? Well, shiiiiit, they've got dragons and bearded guys and scrolls and flowers and reclining naked woman. I talked to a girl from Malta in the courtyard, she had been interviewed that day too. Greece looks better and more accessible all the time.
Anyway, I showed up and realized I had only a moment before I'd be late, so i tore off across campus, through groves of huge trees, past hideous 'modern' buildings, over a footbridge (at the top of which I felt the full brunt of the 38mph winds we were getting yesterday), and into the theatre department office, the 'Sutherland house'.
Full of adrenaline, and a little sweaty, I got my information packet for the day and talked to a local girl named Claire. Then me and 5 others went into a studio for group seminar. An American professor gave us a passage of theory, written in the bitter sixties, to discuss and we went at it. Karen, the professor, would guide the conversation gently, and the other five prospective students all had a lot to say on the subject. We were talking about stagnation in theatre and unfortunately the words, "Kylie's tour" came out of the professor's pink-lipsticked mouth. Other than that it was fine, I feel good about what I added to the conversation. I wrestled with myself internally a bit, cos I most definitely don't know as much about British theatre as the other folks, who were all from villages in England. After that me and one the folks, Dean, walked around campus and went into the Student Union to get some water. There's a bar in the SU. Which is open at 2:30 in the afternoon.
After that there was a Q &A session with a third year student, and then an improv workshop, which was really fun. MY group acted out a glorious bike race, start to bloody finish.
I love talking to English people. I love their confidence and the stereotypical 'stiff upper lip'. Yesterday I talked to tons of people. After I was done at the school I walked back to the train station and hooked up with a few kids I'd met earlier and some I hadn't. Rode the train all the way up to Cambridge, and then the bus to the city centre and then walked home, always in the company of one or more of these awesome English kids who are in the same boat as me, in many ways. We may not have much in common in how we spend our days, but we are on a mission to go to school for theatre, and if that thread is enough to make us open and friendly and fun, that's gorgeous.
today will be glorious. I'm going to my cousins' Orlando and Chrissy's house to visit and play with their kids and borrow a bike. Then I'm going to tool around and hopefully find some work..I needs to make some pounds to funds my Mediterranean adventure. I'm optimistic that the best thing will work out.
I rode my dad's mountain/hybrid a bit on tuesday, into town twice and back up the big hill (which makes Minneapolis look like SF, if you know what I mean).Riding down the wrong side of the street is surprisingly easy to get used to. The huge buses that come tearing down the skinny old one-ways, hell bent on making you into a spiky flapjack, not so much.
Bikes! So many people ride 'em here, scruffy kids and old men in florescent vests and sassy business ladies wearing suits and heels. All is right in the world when I'm on my bike with a smile.

i hear its all melted in Minneapolis. Spring is coming!
i love you cos it feels good.

the good news is

Somewhere between Minneapolis, Toronto, and London Heathrow, my back pack and duffel bag are having an adventure. This has a number of consequences.
First, contents of the duffel bag were all gifts for my father, as well as a pair of my shorts and a rain jacket for me. Also a 15 mm wrench.
My father will have to go on, for a few more days at least, without the American products he had me gather before I hit the road this weekend. These were
12 packs of Ginger altoids
12 packs of Liquoirice altoids
4 tubes Walgreens-brand antibiotic cream
2 pairs 32x32 cocstco-brand blue jeans
and a pack of mr tuffies tire liners.
He will have to be brave.
Also, there's a copy of the comic, the Fabulous Faery Freak Brothers #2 that I got at Comic College. I was going to give this to my dad, or my uncle.
Second, I have one pair of clothes. This is not a bad thing. I don't have to think about what I'm wearing in the morning, since I slept in it sans pants. This gives me no bullshit time trying to put on something that I think looks more something than something else.
Third, I haven't brushed my teeth since Sunday. This seems to be in keeping with British customs.(stereotype? we'll see.) If I end up staying in the UK, perhaps I'll look back at this week of insulated teeth and remember how it was the first American tradition that I relinquished.
In the huge bathroom at my dad's (and it literally is a Bath room: the toilet hangs out on its one in a small closet. No pretences here. That room is for shitting and pissing only.) I discovered "medicated flavor dental sticks" which promise to help you keep your natural teeth for life. Fantastic! The box proved to hold irregularly shaped splinters of wood. I scraped one on my teeth according to the directions. How the fuck are you meant to massage your gums with a pointy bit of wood? It actually felt good in a clinical sort of way. Toothpicks are so gross, but these are kinda nice.

Okay, so this's my first blog entry. I'm going to use this to get myself writing everyday on the computer. Like a warm up for the essays and strange British correspondence I have to keep up on. Hopefully I'll get my paws on a camera and be able to post photos. No promises. Otherwise I'll just keep a running commentary of my experiences over on this side of the Atlantic.
I'm in Cambridge. Tomorrow I'll take the train to Surrey, just south of London to interview at Royal Holloway. Right now I'm going to go eat potatoes with my dad. and post this email I just sent to my friend Andrew earlier, when I had the brain fart to start a blog. Read on, its like eavesdropping..
thanks for writing to those guys. i'm optimistic always about finding nice folks, if you keep your heart open to it, you can't help but run into potential co-conspirators. i was given some tickets to see this play Equus last night..showed up feeling greasy from the airplane, and walk through a crowd of dressed up folks, only to find that my seat was right next to the most awesome people in the theatre, a couple of straight-shooting local lesbians. new friends make my heart go bang.
this town is so beautiful! i'm going to develop huge jaw muscles from gaping..at the river at the old gorgeous architecture, at the hot 3 speed bicycles that are everywhere at the flowers that are blooming everywhere..the stars are really bright here and the air is damp always.
the toilet in our house has a chain coming from the ceiling that you pull to flush. and everyone in england leaves their butter out.
thinking about making a travel blog. glad you relinquished the phone is face of huge fucking truck antics. keep your eyes on the road and the ones that you love.
love, lucy

that goes for you too. be well.