purple me
purple ute
purple daisy and kenny
i'm a few days behind with pictures. here are few snaps from lundi gras, the day before mardi gras. lundi gras afternoon there was a purple party.
mardi gras day couldn't have been better. blue skies, warm, thousands of costumed new orleanians, brass bands. i'll post some pictures later.
gator and grovelers
rider
throw me somethin'
aftermath
calm
passing sax
we went out bead whoring last night. this is a respected new orleans tradition and on the parade routes you will find all manner of people from the homeless and infirm to the tuxedoed and gowned, though the latter tend to whore from balconies rather than the gutter. but, wherever you are and whoever you are, you do the same thing. you wait and wait, sometimes for hours, drinking optionally and sometimes perfunctorily, until through a fog of queasy perception a glistening, bedazzled hundred foot long alligator with bright beady eyes conveys upon its back a crew (spelled krewe down here) of more profoundly foggy patrons who don glossy featureless masks (that bring to mind "silence of the lambs") and who, through an undisclosed and no-bid process, selectively hurl wads of colored plastic beads at certain of the begging crowd. because i'm tall i'm able to intercept and interrupt many of the throws which would otherwise go primarily to those with more sex appeal to the riders.
of course, the picture i'm painting is stereotypical and reinforces the prurient at the expense of the sacred. while it is true, it isn't the whole truth. mardi gras is as wholesome as it is unsavory, one of the few balanced american rituals i've encountered. if you want to find the tits, ass and frat boys that television networks can't seem to resist, there are a couple blocks on bourbon street where you can wallow in them. but, you can find that most anywhere if you're determined. what you won't find most places, and what you do find here in new orleans, is a unique magnanimous spirit that, for the duration of parades and the weeks-long celebration of mardi gras, at least, encourages openness and kind spiritedness that's rare. while bead whoring is easy to tag as sinful greediness, there are beads enough for everyone.
if anything, bead whoring is about letting go. you have to let go of pride because you must beg. you have to let go of greed, because, at some point, you just can't carry any more. you have to let go of stereotypes, bigotry and phobias because you're out there on the street in an eclectic mix of people in myriad states of consciousness. in the end you have to simply laugh at yourself for taking so seriously worthless plastic beads.
having done this now for nine years, i can tell you that not participating is more silly than jumping in. if you stand aside and merely witness you won't experience any benefit. you will walk away with your contempt, that's all. if you participate, even just a little, jumping in, begging, groveling, shouting, leaping, reaching, and watching too (very important so you don't get clocked in the head) you will discover the wonderful cleansing properties of bead whoring. whoring rids you not only of adult behavior but of all the stuff that separates us, that leads us to ignorance and intolerance. i believe bead whoring is so respected down here because it is the therapy that everyone needs.
cocktail dress
the party
as parties go, last night's was tops. it's held in a windowless non-descript single story building with a windowless steel door lit by a single flood light. the environs would probably be described as abandoned and dangerous by a suburbanite. but, nothing could be further from the truth. opening the door, the warm and friendly spirit of mardi gras greeted us riding on the trumpeted notes of traditional carnival songs. everyone was costumed, fabulously costumed, except for a lone photographer dressed in black who weaved through the thickets of baroque, ridiculous and beautiful. i wore a cocktail dress made of cocktail napkins, a couple with accent stains. i discouraged hugs and touching because of structural concern (napkins, tape and staples are unstable), but that's common at these costume parties where no one wants their hours of toil destroyed by a momentary clumsy embrace. it wasn't until we got home that the dress met its fate at the hand of my dear friend david ford who snickered gleefully as the napkins fell.
the muses high heel
david ford
butterflies at muses party
mike and don ready to parade
for the past six years a number of us, some from vermont, some from new orleans and elsewhere, have paraded giant illuminated butterfly puppets. this year we paraded with muses, the only all female parade. this parade is fun. we followed a giant illuminated magical high heeled shoe that changes color and pattern. in prior years we've marched with orpheus. the puppets are the creation of gabriel q, john tidd and myself. we built the first set six years ago for orpheus and since then gabriel has produced another eight of them for different clients (website). people here love them. they bring a human scale and a level of interaction that once was common in parades but has been lost to larger, more spectacular mega floats carrying dozens of riders tossing beads. we toss nothing, just our enthusiasm and smiles, which, for the most part, are happily received. this year it took 2-1/2 hours to march the several mile route. all went flawlessly. it didn't even rain, as it has for the past three years.
i shot a portrait of david that, to me, sums up the feeling of mardi gras and new orleans this year—dressed up, defiant, reserved, ready to party, concerned, an air of melancholy, the harshness of a damaged environment everpresent in the background, irreconcilable contrasts.
bead whore
high water mark in a church
17th street
folded arches
17th street breach
interior
a mud encrusted couch
car and clothes
history revealed
new orleans used to proudly measure the success of mardi gras by the amount of trash culled from the streets. more pounds meant more revelers which meant more money. this year would measure up as the most successful mardi gras ever if it weren't for the fact that most of the trash in the street is an unholy mix of house parts, wrecked auomobiles, upturned boats, soaked stuffed toys, rusted appliances, bent street signs, uprooted trees, downed power lines, twisted roofs all glued together by a filthy endless and monotonous texture of disaster.
yesterday, one of my friends here, gloria powers, took me, with several others, on a disaster tour, intent that all who visit should witness the near total destruction of an american city and the condition it is in six months after the hurricane. the destruction is spectacular and fascinating. the inappropriate juxtopositions of objects is a continual visual feast. but, after driving for hours through neighborhood after neighborhood of water soaked, wind damaged and uninhabitable houses my curiousity turned to melancholy with the weight of so many people's lives upturned and the magnitude of the devastation.
nonetheless, mardi gras is on. the parades are rolling, beads are flying and while there aren't a lot of tourists here this year, the spirit of healing is in the air amongst the natives. the crowds on the parade routes, made up mostly of families, are as appreciative as they are celebratory. i hear less "happy mardi gras" than "thank you, thank you." people are simply happy that anyone has showed up. the parade floats have been reworked to address the hurricaine, the aftermath, and to lambast officials and their shortcomings. the people here have stories to tell and the most important contribution i've been able to make here is to simply listen and acknowledge their experience.
it is happening and i'm going to be in it. i'm flying down tomorrow. i'll be marching in the "all female" muses parade with our butterfly puppets. i have no costume ready this year. i'm going to play it by ear, just see what moves me and hope there's some stuff to work with. maybe just debris.
i like I-89. there's a section south of montpelier, near randolph, that's high and majestic. the sky there is often spectacular. i also like the drive south of white river junction through the mountains near grantham. there's some kind of plant alongside the highway.
feeling better. saturday a bunch of faeries visited in the afternoon to review plans i've been working on for the faerie camp in vermont. that went well. later most of us went out for indian food. yum. today i hopped (my car is a rabbit) up to montpelier, took a yoga class with danny (great). i always learn in danny's classes. he's a wonderful teacher. i ate lunch with danny and roger at their friend anne's house, for whom they're sitting house, aka house-sitting. roger's just returned from staff managing a program at kripalu yoga center, a role he's going to be taking more often there. kripalu will benefit from his contagious positive energy, i'm sure. i got a preview of one his burning man outfits: sparkle bunny. i can't wait to see the rest!
today, i fired someone. i've never done this before. it was awful. it was deserved but nonetheless it sucked. i want to believe that people, given the right environment, encouragement, guidance, will improve, but there's something bigger at work that i have no control over and as much as i'd like to wave a magic wand and fix people's lives that's not the way things seem to work. the hardest part was making the decision—trusting intuition and following through. i've known for months that this needed to happen but i didn't trust my gut which told me that all kinds of things were wrong. not attending to my intuition, i began to be affected by my employee's problems. this last week i've had tremendous headaches. perhaps my intuition was punishing me for not listening to it. i'll know tomorrow. someone said to me this afternoon, "at least you feel terrible. it lets you know you care and are human."
i received the comment "???" on my last post. i'm taking that to mean, "where are you?" and so, i respond, here i am, thank you for asking. i find myself without time to write. but, i am meditating every morning, sometimes evenings, and getting better at calming. i've been very stressed at work because of some employer(me)/employee(someone else) dynamics and on the other hand my relationship with boyfriend (gabriel) is improving and after a long spell of distance and cold is warming and growing intimate. i find myself craving chocolate cookies in the afternoon, right now. today, i'm resisting. i've had headaches the past five days. the weather is crazy, crazy. someone told me vermont weather will be like georgia in twenty years. start planting peaches.
since returning from vipassana meditation i've been meditating at least once a day, twice a day if i can, for an hour. it's been a challenge. all the distractions of living and working fill my mind with persistent thinking that's hard to quiet down. it takes me almost an hour to get to the state where i can begin to sense my body without interruption. at vipassana, i'd wake up in this state, ready to go. so, i've learned the value of going on retreat. i've also learned how much i deal with each day and how much energy it takes to manage it.
so much metal
liquid galaxy 1
marching dots
baglove
16th & 6th
bridgeport
liquid galaxy 2
stretch
some pix i snapped on my trip to new york city last weekend.
one of the nice things about taking the train down to new york city is the turnaround that happens in palmer, mass. no one gets on or off at the train station, but you go past it twice as the train reverses direction. i've always liked this building. it's got something going on that most buildings don't. what makes it so appealing, i've wondered? this time, i happened to be re-reading a book called the old way of seeing by jonathan hale. much of the book talks about regulating lines and the innate ability of human beings to detect patterns, especially human-scaled patterns. hale argues that what makes buildings likable and interesting are the hidden and sometimes sacred geometries that regulate their design. in most buildings these lines don't exist. with this in mind, i drew some lines over the palmer station and found it singing with regulating lines. a regulating line is a line that can be drawn across a facade that connects at least three important points. the points can be corners of openings, center points or edges. as you can see in the picture there are lots of lines that connect the windows and doors. nearly every point of the facade connects with other important parts of the facade. the overall composition fits within a triangle anchored by the two doors and the peak of the gable. now, try this exercise on your average suburban home or commercial building. you'll find the lines tend to point nowhere creating a kind of blankness, void, absence. according to hale, the trend away from ordered composition began in 1830, when the symbolism of architectural elements became more important than their placement. eventually the notion of ordering a facade with geometry fell from the vocabulary of the common builder and the common world became a less beautiful place.
i'm taking the train down to new york city in about half an hour. i'll be meeting with radical faeries tomorrow. we're going to discuss plans for the radical faerie camp in vermont. i've got new plans i'm taking down and some models of a proposed timberframe, pictured. back on monday night.
i neglected to mention that i went to the vipassana meditation center in shelburne falls, mass. there are centers worldwide. more info: www.dhamma.org.
i'm back, not fallen off the earth, though it feels like i've been to space and back. my retreat at vipassana mediation center was fantastic. it was the most intense ten days i've ever experienced—challenging, scary, surprising and wonderful. after ten days of silent meditation for about 10-11 hours a day, i can say with certainty that vipassana meditation works. i highly recommend the vipassana program to anyone interested in the subtler natures of one's body and mind.
the program is experiential. you're skillfully guided and learn by doing. there are discourses in the evening but by the time they happen you've likely experienced much of what the teacher talks about. i learn best this way--theory after experience. if you do decided to go sign up early. their programs fill far in advance. i had to sign up six months in advance.
i'm now working on architectural plans for faerie camp destiny, a radical faerie camp in vermont. i've got about another month of design and then we'll begin construction. at the moment i'm doing budgeting and timberframe design, trying to figure out just how big a building i think is feasible and if the camp can afford it.
i opened the date book my sister, megan, gave me for christmas with phrases from paramahansa yogananda, the famous yogi who wrote autobiography of a yogi and was one of the first to introduce yogic practice to the west. the phrase for the week is:
the cultivation of intuitive calmness requires unfoldment of the inner life. when developed sufficiently, intuition brings immediate comprehension of truth. you can have this marvelous realization. meditation is the way.
what better send off for my meditation retreat?
krishna das
roger
danny
ann
i travelled up to burlington, vermont yesterday to see a krishna das concert with danny, roger and ann. krishna das performs traditional hindu chants which are sung with the audience in call and response. the chants are devotional, sung to myriad gods and goddesses and simply repeat, again and again, lulling one into a heavy breathing (because you're chanting) meditative state. i'm pretty sure it gives you the same high as christmas caroling.
we chanted for three hours and afterwards i felt energetic, a bit tingly, knees tired from being bent, ass sore from lack of padding, but i must say i really learned how to sit! i took a yoga class with danny in the morning in which i discovered my abs and how weak mine are. my belly can attest. sitting, i began to play with my abs, pulling my belly in and up, creating what's called a lock in yoga. this seemed to lengthen my spine, set me upright. i was surprised after playing around for about a half hour while rocking and chanting to find my pelvis suddenly roll forward and my legs relax. truly, for the first time since i can remember, i found myself sitting, unsupported and relaxed. hallelujah! i've been trying to achieve this for years. and since i'm going to be sitting a lot later this week and all of next in a meditation retreat, i'm happy this bit of enlightenment landed in my lap. my abs felt taught, like a stretched sheet, but they weren't straining. it felt like my torso was floating.
we all went out for a bite to eat before and afterwards, had great, fun conversation. it felt like vacation, silly and relaxed, and occasionally meaty when we probed. getting back to danny and roger's in plainfield after midnight, i slept by their wood stove and had a crazy dream about trains.
while checking out at the montpelier coop, the cash register display informed me it was performing "tender validation." i mentioned to the clerk that everyone needs it.
i just started reading this amazing book: light on life by b. k. s. iyengar. the first chapter is the most inspiring description of yoga i've ever read. i'm looking forward to reading the rest!
this book chose me. i sat down with a pile of other books at the bookstore and it was there just waiting for me to pick it up, and i did!
for new years i've pledged to stop using my car to drive into town. i walked in today, took 30 minutes. i arrived in town invigorated, tingly. i enjoy walking. when walking cars seem brutal. if i walk back that'll make 60 minutes a day where i'm just doing my thing, free to think and get a little exercise. i was instructed by michael to throw my socks out. he may have a point. if i keep up this walking, i will probably need to get new socks. minutes before the midnight bell they had some serious issues. but i did walk to town in them today and i'm no worse for wear. barb and i tried on some shades. she's going to cut my hair today.
