me me

can can you you say say cheese cheese ? ?

photo by salmonellapez

the art of blah

i'm feeling blah. i find it's a healthy state of mind for meditation. a subtle depression, lack of enthusiasm, lethargy--nothing calls me to action, no one is pressuring me. sometimes i feel as if i can't move. i'll look out at my leg resting on a chair and it's not a great leap for me to consider that it's someone else's leg. sit, feel, observe, stay quiet, don't move. the art of blah. i also feel like watching television while blah. i consumed two episodes of queer as folk last night. it didn't change my mood much, other than to cause me to reflect on how different my life is from those in the show. how did we, as a culture, come to consider blah as bad? why have we not been able to embrace it as a natural and beneficial state of affairs? when was the last time you saw blah being touted as positive? when i turn blah, it's my inclination to push it away, pretend to be happy. but, i've noticed that what starts to move me from blahdom is the acknowledgement of it. until i own the blah, allow that it's a part of me and stop bashing it (which really is bashing myself) i remain stuck in blah. static blah is a bummer. but dynamic blah is pretty interesting. so, i say, embrace your blah! relax into it, open up to its charms, soften your rejection of it, rejoice in blah, observe its flow. take boring pictures. say nothing interesting. make no excuses.

ecstatic reflector dream

i had a dream last night that reminded me of dreams i had about sex before i'd ever had sex. i drifted in this dream, into buildings, through parks, down streets. i looked, watched, at first casually. then i met a person who seemed to reflect me in some way. we stopped and looked at each other. we didn't speak, just stood across from each other. the more we observed each other the more difficult it became for me to distinquish him from myself. a sensation began in my heart, a deep tingly sensation and my pulse quickened. it spread through my entire body, intense enough that it was barely bearable. at the peak of this sensation, which felt in many ways like my experience of love, it dawned on me that there was nothing between us, that in fact we were discreet physical manifestations of the same entity. i felt as if i might dissolve, that one step further and i would cease to exist, that he and i would somehow short the universe. but, the sensation went only so far. there was no climax. this was the part that reminded me of my pre-sex sex dreams. i would reach the moment where i would have had to do something i'd never actually experienced and the dream would simply end, or go into a kind of inifinte loop.

so, i walked some more, looking for other people or things that might spark the same experience. how much of this world was undifferentiated from me, i wondered? i went on to repeat the dissolving with other people, things and even songs that i sang. i realized i could dissolve into anything if i found the right approach, state of mind. desire seemed to make it impossible. if i wanted to dissove, it wouldn't happen. to enter the experience, i first had to find a state of balance, calm, harmony, then it could begin. i practiced developing this state and i became pretty good at it. i was able to move further into dissolution, to push the envelope, but the further i dissolved the harder dissolving further became. it seemed that dissolving was a progressively denser experience that required increasing intensies of calmness to penetrate.

unlike in my adult life here on planet earth where i know what happens when you go all the way with sex, the other side of dissolution is still a mystery. but today i'm looking out the window a bit differently.

jammy skies

every once in a while a casual encounter turns magical. last weekend, daisy and i trekked over to jade's house in jersey city. we hung out a while then took a tour of the house. upstairs jade has a small recording studio and before long i had a guitar in my hands, jade a keyboard and daisy a microphone. we jammed for a couple hours. what delicious songs we made! if listening to music can get you high, making it can come close to...nirvana? someone said to me recently that you know you're in the moment when time becomes intangible. i know i'm in the moment when my tongue sticks out. i have a little sore spot just to the right of center below my lower lip where it hangs out when time-machining. i want to do more things that get my tongue out.

rugasana

last friday i drove down to new york with my architecture school friend and classmate andrea to attend a memorial dinner and party for a classmate who died last summer. i hadn't seen most of my classmates in sixteen years. i was impressed by how good everyone looked. and not that anyone is getting senile just yet, but i was reminded of my grandmother who had alzheimers because, even though we'd all obviously aged a bit, like my grandmother in the midst of her decline, our personalities seemed utterly unchanged and entirely independent of our experience. we all had more stories, more things, more people in our lives, but our essences hadn't shifted one bit. my first boyfriend ever, john, said to me over dinner, "you seem just the same." my impression that the last sixteen years of my life had wrought tremendous change evaporated, perhaps through my eyes. it reminded me that the most efficient and peaceful way to live is to simply accept oneself, or better yet, celebrate oneself.

the party started at a restaurant called "park," an old parking garage, and moved on to a small living-room-like bar called "bongo" then proceeded to an apartment in the now chic gallery district of chelsea where we enjoyed more alcohol and delicious buttery egg sandwiches until 4:30am. at that point, andrea and i, not relishing the idea of crossing town and the river, begged a couple couches and a few blankets with which to crash.

in the morning, i did a little yoga with a rug thing over my head.

public art

i was in new york over the weekend. on my way to the train station i encountered this amazing projection of madison square garden on the wrapped post office building.

jbw effect

the jason bruce whipple effect has me in its grip. it's a pleasant effect inducing convulsions of creative thinking and performance. i would call it inspiring. many people have this effect on me and i am grateful that they continue to appear in my life like muses and cheer leaders. in this particular instance, photographed, the jbw effect induced me to enter a friendly's restaurant in the springfield mall. the effect emanates from jason and in this case was amplified by his leaning up against a post and making incoherent gestures. if it hadn't been for jason's alluring performance at street level i doubt i'd have considered entering the place. i was more attracted initially to the absurdity of the brief strip of colonial fence atop the modern strip mall. at one point in my life i would have been drawn in by the oversized greasy posters of deep-fried food in the window. but, it was jason, his lust for ice cream, and his offer to buy one for me, that ultimately sold me on friendly's.

inside, we were assaulted by a layout reminiscent of bad highway design. visually, it was confusing. the busy carpet pattern made understanding the relationship between stools, benches and tables difficult, if not impossible. it appeared at once organized and completely chaotic. in contrast, the stainless steel production line extended directly behind the registers to the rear of the restuarant inducing a kind of horizontal vertigo. i nearly pitched directly into the counter.

after declining to sit, which caused some confusion, and after ordering two ice creams, one hard, one soft, which required at least 70 keystrokes at the register, a noisy and rapid stream of paper emitted from a bank of printers down the line and three employees in regulation uniform began to execute our order. i ordered soft. the fabricator operated the twistee machine competently, if slowly, and presented me my cone with the exclamation, "now, isn't that beautiful!" in fact, it was misshapen and listing. jason and i looked at each other in silence. as she handed it over to me i mentioned that i'd requested "chocolate sprinkles." she frowned, walked it back down the line, consulted the printout which apparently did not specify sprinkles. a bevy of command and control language ensued between the person who took our order and the woman who'd made my cone. it sounded like the chatter pilots make when approaching an airport. sprinkles were finally added to my order, sparingly.

unfortunately, for jason, his order was first presented to him as a denial: "i'm sorry, we are out of cookies and cream." jason immediately began a search for a second choice while the friendly's team offered to create cookies and cream for jason by taking vanilla ice cream and mashing cookies into it right on the spot! i applauded their ingenuity, but jason moved on to another, perhaps safer, choice which i cannot remember.

this is the kind of situation i find myself in during jbw effect. i thoroughly enjoy it. it reminds me of kant's description of beauty (the one thing i remember from philosophy class): purposive purposelessness. we were very seriously up to nothing in particular and that was pure delight.

slabbiness

faeries circling the new foundation

me posing on a post

the foundation is in at faerie camp destiny, a concrete slab of varying thickness protected from frost by a somewhat elaborate gravel and insulation sandwich beneath the concrete that, in theory, will keep it from heaving. this foundation marks the end of the construction season at destiny, where i've been camping for the last month. we'll be working a couple more weeks to tie up loose ends and put the place into hibernation. it's been wonderful to be in the woods. i miss it now sitting here at the computer. i hadn't realized how much my strength had abated, even with yoga, until this last month. i love the feeling in my body after a full day's work on my feet. i feel the day's work embodied in my muscles, bones. i mentioned in a heart circle at destiny how i really don't get feelings of accomplishment from milestones like the foundation going in. i realized after i said that that i in fact do feel accomplishment but it comes in much smaller packages. i feel accomplishment after lifting a beam, making a fine cut in a post, keeping my tools sharp, little stuff. at the end of the day all those little things bring me peace. the feeling is more one of harmony than pride, that i've achieved some kind of balance.

faerie foundation

here's what i'm up to lately...putting in a foundation with the radical faeries. i'm having a great time building something new for a change. my prior projects have all been renovations. i suppose you could say that all construction is renovation because you're altering the earth, landscape, ecology, so forth to make way for a building. in fact, i would definitely argue that, and would also argue that most construction does not think of what is being removed as integral to a design.

i'm having a fantastic experience in the woods, working on this project with a bunch of volunteers. we're learning together. my days start awakening in a tent, then breakfast and usually some chat with other people camping, then doing dishes from the day before. next we begin work which includes working on the foundation, cutting timbers, fetching water, cutting wood, repairing tools. lunch happens sometime after noon, then more work until sundown, after which we have dinner and sometimes light a fire and make up crazy songs together. i'm on my feet most of the day. my posture has improved. i noticed yesterday when i lifted a heavy saw how much stronger i've become living out in the woods. i feel hearty!

banal glory

i love this kind of scene. they're all over the place, but occasionally you find a gem, like this one. i'm attracted to the geometry. big box stores create fabulous diagonals. i suppose any place that's as large as a shopping center is bound to create powerful vanishing perspective effects. in this case, many of the diagonals resolve in each other creating divine harmony. i wouldn't want to live here, but visiting is just fine.

morning wood

here's my view every morning at faerie camp destiny where i'm speniding most of my time. i enjoy living with trees. they're majestic and reliable, most of the time. occasionally they tip, drop a branch, uproot. they encourage me to take a long view of things.

lukoil faggot

the other day i drove into our local lukoil to fill up. at one of the pumps stood two guys next to a truck. one guy was middle aged, a bit pudgy. the other was thin, muscular, short-cropped hair. he was talking loudly. the gas station attendant was standing outside on the curb arms crossed glaring at the younger guy.

as i drove past the two to get to the other side of the pumps i heard the younger say, "look at that faggot in his red faggot car!" i laughed to myself at the same time i felt a primal tinge of animal fear in my spine. i got out of my car and began to fill up. the younger guy was yelling at everyone, everything, calling people names, screaming at cars driving by. i thought i'd been spared when he guffawed and yelled, "look at that faggot in his orange faggot shoes." he had a thing for color, i realized. i ignored him and continued to fill up. then he came right over to me and said to my face, "hey, what's up with those shoes? are you a faggot?" without much thought, i looked right in his eyes and said, "yep," a bit surprised at myself. for the first time since i'd been there, he stopped talking. then he said quietly, ducking his head a bit, "really?" i said, "uh huh." he asked me more about my shoes. i took the cue and asked him if he wanted to try one on. he looked at me for a second then accepted. he took off his boot revealing a dirty sock. i handed over my orange shoe, an orange rubber clog actually, and stood on one foot while he tried it on. he said, "wow! where the hell you get these things? i'll buy these off ya! how much?" i told him where to get them. he then introduced himself by name, asked mine, shook my hand and told me it was nice to meet me. then he told me how his uncle had come out of the closet and what chaos that had caused in his family. the scene closed with him returning my shoe, putting his boot back on, getting in his truck with his pal who had silently watched, perhaps in as much amazement as me, and drove off holering out the window that he'd just tried on "some faggot's orange shoe!"

if i had been with a group of gay men i'm sure there'd have been a lot of cat calling and name calling right back at him. but it was just me and for some reason, i didn't resist him, i just told him the truth. i felt great afterwards. i don't know if it made any difference in his life, but it brought home to me that telling the truth, honoring myself in the face of attack and more importantly respecting and honoring the attacker is a weapon powerful enough to interrupt patterns of violence and hatred.

timber framing

here's a pic of me and peat at faerie camp destiny. we're working hard cutting a timber frame that will eventually house a kitchen, bathroom, shower and mechanical room for the camp. it feels great to be working with my hands. though i was incredibly sore after three days of physical labor, i know my body likes it and my spirit likes it. i sit at a desk way too much.

picture by jason. more pix of timber framing and faerie camp destiny here.

still drinking coffee

it's got me. coffee shenpa. my feet are tapping, my fingers tingling, my teeth gnashing. it's chemical stress and i'm a coffee achiever! i used to hate the way it tasted. i had my first cup on a hot summer day in silver plume, colorado. i'd not had a drink of anything for hours, my parched lips begged me for cool moist anything, my head ached with the kind of pain that can make you cry. why i'd not asked for water is now a mystery to me. i was a nervous teenager obsessed with the illusion of self-reliance. i came across a kitchen-service-sized percolator in the back of a dusty general goods store, the kind with the glass tube on the side that shows you how full it is. some cups next to it invited me plus no one was watching. i drew a cupful, drawing the black spigot tab toward me, watching my cup fill. an acrid steamy smell filled my nostrils. i had my doubts but took a swig anyway. i gagged. it tasted terrible. in fact, it probably was terrible in the scheme of coffee these days, but i didn't know that then. i added lots of powdered creamer, so much that it became sludgy. i couldn't bring myself to finish it. i don't recall how i found water later, but i'm sure i thought it was nirvana.

nico's roast

some pictures from nico muhly's birthday lamb roast over the weekend. nico is an up and coming composer and conductor and the son of painter bunny harvey and filmmaker frank muhly. david ford and i met bunny and nico in rome while visiting my friend garrett finney who was a fellow at the american academy. bunny was also at the academy during a break from her teaching job as an art professor at wellesley college. we ended up renting her apartment for a week while she was away in paris. when she returned we discovered (well, probably before then) that we all lived very close to each other in vermont. nico was then 13 years old and could play a mean streak on the academy's piano. he's now 25 and has been called one of the most promising young composers in america by the new yorker, has worked with bjork on her recent album, has conducted and premiered pieces at tanglewood, will debut his own album soon and the list goes on.

the lamb roast was somewhat grisly. the sawing and carving was done on a woodworker's bench with a hack saw! nico requested a roast to put to bed or at least acknowledge an early life trauma around his pet lambs being put before him on his dinner plate. i'm not sure how the event worked for him but everyone seemed to delight. the liver was the best i've ever tasted. yes, i ate meat. i've been doing it lately. hmmm.

shenpa

shenpa: tibetan for "attachment". read about it here!

nova scotia

bench at gampo abbey

sunset at gampo abbey

gabriel and i travelled to nova scotia, canada, last week, to visit buddhist friends and buddhist places there. the car became our home as four of us crossed the vastness of nova scotia on our pilgramage. the land is stark and beautiful, quiet and reverential. it's no wonder it was chosen for the seat of shambala's western practice. the elements force plants, animals and buildings close the the ground, creating a short and messy haircut of a landscape. i took lots of pix. more are here. i'm being lazy. i only posted a couple here.

the highlight of the trip was a visit to gampo abbey, a tibetan buddhist monastery quite literally at the end of the line on the north side of cape breton. this is the place pema chodron lives, teaches and practices. she's a fairly well known author now, apparently canada's best selling. despite the monastery's distant and difficult location, quite a few "pilgrims" showed up for the afternoon tour. we were guided through the main floor, library and finally the meditation hall, passing many shrines to shambala's teachers. those who wanted to meditated for about a half hour.

our friend deborah, who kindly drove us hither and yon, is a buddhist shrine and flag expert known as the "betsy ross" of shambala because she sewed the first shambala flag designed by chogyam trungpa rinpoche. she prepared the shrine brocades in gampo meditation hall and, i believe, also makes traditional clothing for monks and nuns including pema. i enjoyed seeing and being in this place that i've heard about for so long. it is much smaller than i imagined. but the setting is more spectacular and inspiring than i could have imagined. set upon a cliff high above the sea, the sun sets through the meditation hall windows over water rippled by the play of whales and dolhpins. it's breathtaking.

we took a ferry home across the bay of fundy to cut some of the drive home. coming back we realized how much wilder nova scotia is than coastal maine, which felt like a shower and shave after a week of roughing it.

willoughby and bread and puppet

jenny and eran

sky above willoughby

a bread and puppet ship

moving the crowd

hands in the forest

after the show two performers cross the field

some of vermont's highlights: lake willoughby and bread and puppet. the former is a lake in the northeast kingdom of vermont that sits between two enormous rock cliffs. it never seems real to me. just too darned amazing. it works pretty well as a wind tunnel too and on saturday sitting on the beach felt more like being on the prow of a ship.

the latter is theater troupe based in glover, vermont that puts on shows during the summer in a giant outdoor semi-circular theater vaguely reminiscent of greek amphitheaters (it used to be a sand pit, if my memory serves). back in the good 'ol days tens of thousands of people showed up for one giant event. they're now doing shows on weekends to smaller, less insane crowds. the way they use the landscape in their productions is breathtaking. the way they use cardboard is inspiring. one of their mottos is "cheap art".

with smaller crowds the performance moves about the land. we started in the theater, moved in procession up the hill, back down to the theater, then another procession to the hill, then into the forest where the performance ended in silence. slowly people left.

there's some information on bread and puppet here.

coffee, AGAIN!

for the past few years i haven't drunk coffee. i'm now working on architecture and i find myself drinking coffee. nerves, feeling stressed over designs, worrying about quality, comparing my work to others...anxiety! i ran into these stresses in architecture school and i wonder if unresolved issues are surfacing. a few months ago i was happily eating a healthy diet, no suguar, no caffiene, no meat, just grains, beans, veggies, cultured foods, getting plenty of sleep, daily yoga, a balanced life and i felt good. but, i'm resolved to work through this, figure out how to find balance in my design work and restore balance in the rest.

unshaven operator

here i am, unshaven, unwashed, hard at work blogging for the first time in a good long while. what have i been up to? i've taken about 500 pictures, almost none of which i've put on the web. i'm up to my neck in architctural drawings. i'm now chairman of our town's design review board which oversees all downtown projects large and small to make sure that egregious architectural mistakes aren't made. so far we've mostly examined fence installations. i visited gabriel at the sterling renaissance faire a couple weeks ago and had a nice time with his friends there and meditating while walking the shore of lake ontario. i'm taking a trip to nova scotia in a week with gabriel. gabriel and i are still working on our relationship, doing a lot of counseling, which is challenging but very rewarding. i've taken a couple jobs as a designer doing interiors in downtown white river junction. my application for architectural internship is happening, but the beauracracy that oversees it seems anything but professional so far. i'm rearranging my studio to suit my new focus, giving away old equipment (a piece a day, at least).