claytor lake

claytor lake

me and fellow yogi traveller danny setting up camp in a state park in virginia on our way down to a yoga gathering in tennessee. we decided to camp rather than hotel. so much nicer and a lot less expensive. i'm going to take my tent everywhere now.

kitchen fire

Image161.jpeg

i love sitting around a fire with friends. someone said while sitting with me, "too bad we have to return to reality tomorrow." i thought, this is reality, and all the rest of it out there is the greater illusion. later i thought, genius is the ability, no matter the intellect, to live one's truth, one's essence.

fern weekend

Image158.jpeg

i spent the weekend at faerie camp destiny, a radical faerie sanctuary in vermont, where i'm helping design and build some structures. the ferns are just coming out. tent caterpillars hung in the thousands from the tree canopy by long silky strings. you could hear them eating the forest. it sounded like light rain. every time i looked down there were a few of them on me.

orange & orange

orange & orange

stepping out of my car at the post office my new crocks encountered a peel of similar color. is this a visual rhyme of the impossible rhyme? i'm finding so much comfort in imperfection.

bubbles

bubble

gordon brought me toxic bubbles. these come in a little tube from which you squirt a gooey glue-smelling substance onto a stick and blow. i can't believe they allow kids to play with this stuff. it smells so noxious.

beautiful dirty

beautiful dirty

i couldn't help snap a shot of this amazing composition in my kitchen sink consisting of nested dirty dishes.

ocean fingers

ocean fingers

back home in vermont. i left that wedding suit in p-town. the b&b is sending it to me. this week i have a lot to do to get ready for a faerie gathering this coming weekend. since i'm more or less the architect for the camp buildings that are going to be built this summer, i need to make some big architectural decisions. i'm feeling like i need to talk to some other people in the group about them, gain some more perspective, and perhaps the gathering will be a good place to do that. some confusion.

p-town

beach

so, from suit to baseball cap (another article of clothing i never wear) i arrive here on the beaches of cape cod just outside provincetown. the smell and sound of the ocean blissed me out, as you can see. gabriel said i looked good in the baseball cap, but i was feeling self conscious about it. i kept wearing it because my glasses are so fogged up that direct sunlight hitting them fogs my vision. i become so vain in gaytropolises.

wedding

Image152.jpeg

gabriel, my partner, performed at a gay wedding in massachussetts. i tagged along. great food. i dressed up, a highly unusual event for me. i really dug the gold chrome hung ceiling in the function hall. there we three functions going on: a memorial, a baby shower and a wedding. seems like a good business. by the end, though, i was in a bad mood, felt really blah and unable to share in any of the mirth going on. i didn't know anyone there, which may have been part of it, but this has happened at almost every wedding i've attended.

Birthday

Happy Birthday Gabriel! Today he's 42 and my partner of about nine years. We're heading to the cape where he's performing at a wedding and I'll just hang out. Then we're going to P-Town to do relax for a change. We've got a room in a B&B, the first time we've done this. I'm looking forward to walking the beaches, catching some sun (though I really don't like it much) and reading.

arthritis

Image148.jpeg

so, i've got osteoarthritis of the knees. this doesn't surprise me too much since my knees always hurt. but today i got the official diagnosis. being tall i've had all kinds of accidents with my knees: falling, twisting, banging them into all kinds of things designed for shorter people. what do i do now? my extensive web research indicates not gaining weight and exercising regularly--use those knees, just not too much. yoga seems to help a lot. bless my knees.

the dot is back!

the dot is back!

what a day! the wrap goes out and the dot comes back. our beloved polka-dot restaurant back online with chef mary at the helm. the heart of white river is beating once again with all your favorites, less the tripe, after a complete makeover. the wrap meltdown caused a lot of smoke and water damage to the dot, but you wouldn't know it today.

eating the wrap

Image145.jpeg

i came across the charred remains of our notorious strip club, the wrap, now commonly referred to as the melt, being slowly consumed by the jaws of justin excavation's eager machine, the same machine, i believe, that has eaten so many of our downtown's relics. the former porn shop in the basement, silhouette, is now clearly visible. i relished the notion of the great claw delicately fingering a smutty dvd as if contemplating a purchase (or a theft).

buzz cut

hair

i cut my hair really short last night. my yoga class went well, four students. my healing session was interesting. i'm not sure what it did but i enjoyed the experience. i have some healing mantras to chant to myself: "my true self's essence is trust." that's one. he seems to have recognized my lack of trust for myself and my recent explorations of my truths. bonus points.

d & m

d & m

a recent evening at the firehouse in white river junction with david f ford sporting his tongue while michelle of the famous michelles puts her hand over her mouth.

i teach my first regular yoga class today. i'm also seeing a healer today. i have no idea what that's going to be like, but i'm looking forward to it.

i started reading American Shaman today while having my car inspected. i didn't put it down for a couple hours.

g!

bunny love

i was feeling very blah this morning (hay fever) until i saw this picture of my friend gordon.

matts

matts

matt and matte, here in the cooler gallery in the tip top building, currently with a photo show up.

longhorn

longhorn

on my trip through the plains we came across all kinds of animals we don't see out east: longhorns, buffalo, road runner, prarie dogs. the prarie is so beautifully green in the spring before the summer heat sets in. i felt like getting out of the car and just walking into it, forgetting everything.

return

logan

returned to the northeast today, flying into logan airport. read a couple great books, The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon and Keep the River on Your Right, both recommended by my friend Roger, pictured elsewhere here. Great reads.

Simpson Home

simpson home

We visited the home of C.R. and Maggie Simpson, my great grandparents, in Lawton, Oklahoma, yesterday. I found out some new things about the family: they had money (I had thought they were poor), they fought a lot (I thought they were congenial), C.R. drank a lot (I thought they were dry), and they divorced twice (I thought they'd been happily married). C.R. ran a pawn shop in Lawton and traded with Geronimo.

A & E

a e

this is a typical scene along the interstate: stuff that used to be. in this case a roadside filling station with only the letters 'a' and 'e' left in the sign. there is a lot of this stuff out there. obviously things aren't as good as they once were.

i've been looking at roadside america through a new lens given to me by the movie the end of suburbia that really scares me. on the plane to denver i read the long emergency by james howard kunstler that posits the end of the american way of life as we know because of our overindulgence in a limited resource, fossil fuel. check it out.

willem

willem

my nephew willem sports his shades this morning as we crawl into the gas guzzling suburban for the final stretch to lawton, oklahoma, where i'll be for a few days at a family reunion.

door stopper or industrial nipple?

Image122.jpeg

on a road trip now, travelling from colorado to oklahoma. stopped in amarillo, texas, where upon opening our hotel door, i found this kind of sexy.

bunny boy

bunny boy

a schizo bunny hopped up on my roof and made obscene gestures.