RIP Daisy

may daisy be happy wherever she is now.

pain

i've had a long and wonderful summer working outdoors with my body, the first time i've worked so hard physically in a decade. i realized a couple days ago that i haven't taken more than a couple days off in five months. my body has grown stronger, i look fit, muscled, which strokes my ego, but i'm also feeling the drain of so many days without restoration. i'm glad to know that i can go five months without much of a break, but i'm also noticing how much my will to persist obscured messages from my body, especially my arms. they're pretty much yelling at me today, saying something like, "dude, are you crazy? we're beat. stop!" and so i've listened and am listening more as they sing an achey dissonant chorus of muscular overtones that don't seem to emanate from any particular place, kind of like the subsonic hisses and rumblings produced by a dead dog lying on the pedals of a cathedral organ. if i listen closely, i can almost hear reverberation.

music

one of the joys of working in community this summer has been more or less nightly jams with whomever was at the faerie camp. i brought my guitar up and with a bevy of african drums we found our way into lots of interesting rhythms, jams and songs. my chops got better, i got used to singing in front of people and i let myself explore publically more than i've ever.

over the winter i'm looking forward to recording with my friend jade and other faeries. i had a fabulous dream a few weeks ago, a recurring dream for me (many of my recurring dreams have come true) in which i'm on stage, and i'm in my 60s, jamming away to an adoring audience. in this case the dream included a bunch of radical faeries along with me, and it felt just peachy bein' up there on stage. my astrological bent is to be an entertainer. i share my birthday with tom jones and prince and there are lots of other famous entertainers around my birthday, including some of my musical heroes like laurie anderson.

construction

here's the interior of the timber frame and straw bale structure i'm working on in vermont. with the roof on, the walls up and the windows soon to be installed, it's taking shape and it feels great! i've helped instruct about a hundred volunteers over the summer in varioius techniques from timber framing to packing mud plaster onto straw. i've come to think of teaching as learning and find that i learn as much as anyone while teaching. the act of packaging my knowledge into simple instructions somehow opens my mind. with all the physical work over summer i'm in good shape and that feels great, too.