The PLAN

In a couple of weeks, I'll take rides on a couple of airplanes, and jump a couple of hours into the east. I'll set foot in Scandinavia, Mother of Winter, and a renewed desire for the perfect bath. I will spend a couple/few months travelling, bathing, living across European winterlands, and will return much rejuved!
I have nursed a dream for many years of creating a place for wellbeing and hot water for the place in which I live, the kind of neighborhood haven we could all use when the days get cold and the nights get long. I think there is a whole world of good to be had in a soak, a sweat, a nice long bath. The kind of good that can chase the winter blues away. I love public baths, and I'm excited to see what public bath culture looks like in Europe.
Soon coming, regularly-updated epic adventures, impressive pictures, tales of daring-do, and a great many bathtubs!

Some Other Things I Know For Sure

1. Madison is my home. It's where I come from and where I come back to. It's where I want to work and play, and cook and love and make and talk and dance and perform.
2. But it's not where I dream. Every corner of this city is six layers deep in memory for me, all this comfy cotton batting of the past to climb though before I can see anything new.
3. So, every so often, I need to leave, so I can dream new things, and shine up my eyes. Then I need to come back and make those dreams real.
4. This is very much fun for me!

Sky all the way to Road

As far as the horizon, and as wide as my heart, strong flowers...





































I started photographing roadkill as a kind of playful competition with this slice of awesome. Quickly though the conversation turned to speed, to distance, both physical and between species. That coyote we saw, perfect except for his raw jawbone (broken neck?) -- were we the only humans to see him? Ever? Probably the only ones to photograph him. That frog -- did the car that squished him even notice? When we move so fast, in cars, miles and air and neighbors speed past, and where are we? One biker I know says "Speed kills," and he means the Imagination, the Relation, the chance to greet a cousin before she is unrecognizable and flat.

Beyond the Bus

The sun is rising on land brand new, and I am heading out, out. Past a jigsaw night of highway and other people's dreams bumping into mine. Past cell phone networks and into the parlors of badgers and falling stars.

Got my home on my back again, and the image of my campsite calling. All I need is a good warm hat, and all the week will be cozy.

See you back in the world.

Falling Stars Know My Name

For many of my years now, nighttime has been for play. For dancing, for joking, for friends, for frolicking, for movies and dinner and parties. And for sleeping. Occasionally for fire. Very rarely, it is for fear and feeling small. (There is always the tricky 8 o'clock hour to be passed; somehow there is a door to depression waiting for between 8 and 9pm. (The Meridian Organ Clock points out that this bit of time is meant to be the height of activity for the precordium/heart/protection meridian, so This All may be part of the Opening Project.))

And then there's the moon. My body does know it's important to be under the moon. But that's a whole story in herself.

So, barring bonfires, owling, insomniac prowling, Halloween and the moon, it's been a long time since I put myself out in the night because of the night. For nearly as long, I've wanted to backpack myself to the Perseid meteor shower. To leave daytime to everyone else for a while, and give myself to some giant sky, the dark, and stars falling.

I always imagined hiking into the orange desert for it's unequivocable edges and purple sky. But it's August (maybe for the Leonids!). And I only have a few days. And I want grass beneath me. And N Dakota is exactly far enough, and dark enough. It's sky stretches forever and it's land is green. It's cities don't pollute the night sky with pale stains. And anyways, the summer's stress has finally crested. And my adrenals are exhausted. And my heart is stretched over many miles. And my camping equipment is perfect. And I've just mensed and danced my demons out.

And there is a bus leaving Tuesday.

Some Things I Know For Sure

1. Madison is home, and when I am here I am home, home, home without question. At home moving through these streets and grasses, the layers of memories and familiarities so thick it's like a dense white noise relieving the twitch of my reptile-survival brain. So easy to be here, building edifice against boredom becomes the lifestyle of choice, and I do my days gathering resources to do my nights of constructing more awesome.

2. Full-impact living for me, please. For the past couple of months, I've kept myself busy. Really busy, 11-hour-doing days, full-time-job-then-4-more-hours, "it's not an obsession, it's a community art project" busy. I've loved it. It's well and truly kicked my ass. And I've made beautiful things, big and impressive things, felt enormous emotions, deepened my insight into the intersections of synesthesia and empathy, forged closesness and love, and moved about so thoroughly my body is every cell comfortable. I started keeping myself busy to keep my mindself occupied and keep doubt at bay. Somewhere in there, I got pulled up short and slapped with a reminder that Power must be met with Presence. You are a bright light for reminding me I am always playing for keeps, darling, thanks.

3. I am moving towards the awesome. What started out as joking mantra has become concrete compass-rose, a real guiding star. A real, simple decoder-ring decision-making strategy: Does the thing in front of me move me towards the awesome? Yes? Okay, let's do. No? No thanks, nothing doing. I move towards what makes me happy, as often as I can, in word and action. Simple as that. Good work, good food, interesting conversation, kind people, more experiences. Moving this way also brings me towards Success, and Health, and Home -- in the inner-world-is-strong-and-well-lit sense of the word.

4. I don't always need to be home.

Gifts of Love

All through the mid of January I threw myself into designing a bittersweetsweet workshop. Fusing my two great loves in the world of wellbeing; the female and the aromatic. I had a two-hour window to perform a conjuring of living, breathing, healing sensuality, and I meant to make the most of every second. Figured it would mostly attract women in the night of winter, curled up inside woolen selves, missing sunshine and skin. Well, figured there'd be more like me out there. And I'm speaking now from the other side, from 4 weeks of steeping myself in sandalwood and jasmine at night, brewing honey into syrup with roses, vanilla, sweet wicked damiana by day. And remembering that, while it's our roots that place us deep in the world (like our crowns keep us hooked into the inspiration of the cosmos), it's that second chakra that keeps us solid in the world of the human (just as that third eye translates celestial inspiration into every day's insight.)

Which is certainly not to equate being a woman immersed in aromatic medicine with some kind of ambulatory womb, but is to say; if this life is about being in this body, and the thing that differentiates this body from others is skin and sensation and a particular sweetness of anatomy -- okay.

So I took all the time I might have to look outwards to perfect recipes and stretch the variations, to make little altars every day to the idea and flavors of intimacy in friendship, solitude, fantasy and memory. And it's good I think that I've been alone in this room, on these sharp winter days, to do this magic. It's gotten a little tangled, a little humid, like a dense sponge quietly living. The other, meatier side of solitude. Not the windy, heady heady satisfaction of the single mind, focused at leisure on a single point. More the deep silk and quicksand sensorium of this singular body, and the participatory insight of physical being. More incorporation, more direct experience, more living in nouns.

St. Valentine's, Modern Day of Consensual Acknowlegement that Love is a Powerful Thing We All Thrive Within, is my second-favorite holiday. I have not, for many many years, passed it without an Other to shower with all the gold of my imagination. I wrestled with that while I infused, composed and created the little labors of love with which others with shower their Others this year. And it's good now. Open hands, steady feet. And this wide gold mirror before me.