Simmer abstraction; steps 1-18

1. bones soften, meat unravels, falls to bottom of pot

2. your hair on the tip of my tongue

3. gambol up the bank, oh bear, oh voiceless angel

4. cracks through porcelain growing grey mold

5. valiant foil drives devil-head toward circular brilliant stamina

6. clay, straw, metal, burning, vanquished, crafty boots, bitter leaf

7. a leaner and a ringer = 3 points

8. loud silent bells dutiful calvin rackstrap zoozoo, deeming elephant rag-to-riches capable

9. mille sacraficio, en danza colefizione, blanca verinzalla ceronna

10. b;a55(* resurgence glack -_++

11. in a field of black, white mask tulips bound with carrot top

12. your enemy, my enemy, common denominator held over to the square root of zero

13. lyle lyle crocodile, took his tooth and away he smile

14. let someone else take care of it this morning, you need a rest and some hot soup

15. deedle dee, lalalal-l-l-laaaa la la laaaaaa ladadaaaaa, sketches of spain

16. "the copper sea bracing up a cobalt emerald sky..." 1986

17. this region of my belly corresponds to mercury

18. "now is the time for your loving dear, and the time for your company" r. farina

Frost, simplicity, roots, virtue

this morning the frost was heavy on my windshield, no delicate patterns, a chilly blanket blocking my view, i sat letting the engine warm, then hopped out and rubbed away enough of a patch to see on my drive home.

all weekend an easy pace, walking, going inward, taking part in the dance, holding space for love and miracles, allowing trust to be expressed, accepted, appreciated... it was that and more. how simple things are, my path is no longer one of extremes, emotions are not run away from but neither take me away from myself, that core of gratitude and non-judgment, riding crest and trough free of willful mismanagement, listening closely, bathing in gentle kindness.

its time for pumpkins, dancing with all souls while the veil is thin, visiting grief on the vine, muddy boots, heavy hats, watching the childplay in grace, bursting open roots in oven, outings through firelit streets where now is corporeal, dead to dead to living, helpful notions retrieved by congregations changing hands.

how beautifully we found each other's virtue, gave that chaste and quiet spirit a name, a safe room to voice his-her commonality, playtime, restful, smiling, protected and loved, honest secrets gathered toward the center, patterns of leaves in walkway changing, changing, giving a hand, change to watchful change, lending that hand, pulling each other up to our feet, laying down again in music, in image, in celebration of this simple gift.

"Thank you for the world so sweet.

Thank you for the food we eat. Thank you for the birds that sing. Thank you god for everything."

last evening i went over to linda's house to work on spiritual chants together. we have been discussing possible projects in music for about 5 months, testing the waters, meeting up with others interested in collaboration, but this was different. the foundation was laid 3 weeks ago when she came over and recorded some chants from different regions of tibet and india, to the various gods and goddesses. we built upon that foundation with improvised guitar-voice celebrations, prayers for the moment and in the moment, spiritual chance, i think that describes it well, for more than an hour.

thanksgiving is coming up pretty soon. last year was very tough, it was the turning point in more than four years of regular visits with kore and walker, mostly at their mother's house, which was never ideal and eventually had to change. its been a difficult change, and continues to be a daily process of letting go and making new choices. i've also, through the process, continued to deepen my relationship with recovery, and have met and integrated with dance community, truly blessed in both of these ways. i've grown closer to my family, my creative work has a new depth and challenge in it, and i'm in a relationship with virginia that promotes kindness, passion, well-being, adventure, nurturing, relaxation, self-responsible and deep communication - all of the things i would have wished for had i been wishing for them - but this happened as a gift.

similar to the unfolding last evening of prayer-songs with linda. we simply got into process as individuals and let the universe take care of the rest, paying attention, being fearless, being sensitive to each other but continuing in our own work, and being free to play with the beauty of sound without judgment.

Forgetting, remembering

that line you used to describe our intimacy
how it feels to be intimate with you

your lunch
where you work and the color of your door

sandblasted virgins in an otherwise empty fountain
a bleating lamb caught between the paws of the beast

religion
god

helpless notions on ridges of steel
help is just a phone call away

your middle name
your middle, top, bottom and extremities

value proposition
immense sea of possibility

arbitration
legality

where winter begins
snow down my collar and up my sleeves

hell exists
heaven is here and now

Dance paleontology

bones, ligaments, gut and might, tenderness, falling, batches of sweaty stubble careening through the studio, another turtle dance in the gallery space which lends itself so well to observing as well as moving. then we carefully expose the structure and unrehearsable process in group circle munching salty bits, cheese and nuts, drinking 'turtle juice' letting the night move forward into our quiet homes, our chocolate musings, private conversations to clarify any emotional fog, perhaps a nightsleep alone, perhaps not.

i sometimes grieve not having danced as a child, collided with the realization that my nature and passion in dance may have blended very powerfully with the athleticism and balance i attempted to find some satisfaction with through baseball, wrestling, a bit of gymnastics and even one partial year of jr high football. growing up in rapid city, south dakota, the possibility of dance being discussed or discovered as a talent or strength was slim. i am so grateful that i have this day, this week, this month and year and coming decades to continue to explore how i move outwardly through space to express my inner life.

merce cunningham grew up in centralia, washington - not that much different of a town from rapid city i suppose - and all of his instincts toward movement were manifesting as a child, it all came together inside of him, he did formal training at cornish in seattle and then moved to new york. there is still a huge amount of research for me to do on the history of his work, i feel drawn to him like no other popular modern dance artist/creator. if i lived in new york i would study at his school, and have given myself permission to do both of those things at some time in the future. dance, like all of the things that matter to me in life, is not going to be cast aside because i missed some specific expression of it in my youth.

Mirror vacation

in deliberation, the range of opportunities, an ocean

dance of shore, sand, tide and time's delicate retreat

"all around my hat, I will wear the green willow

and all around my hat, for a twelve-month and a day."

we hear voices, rejoin the mirror as captains of destiny

rather than castaways trusting some tragedy out on high seas to deliver us

gratitude feeds us, majestic wings in pale blue sky

"torn down where the limpets are blue

the pelicans witness, the waters deliver"

baste, wean, coagulate, call those wild turkeys out from their woody hiding places

set them on fire in thanksgiving, raise their scalded feet above your widow's peak

brilliant shadows, bursting appendix vantage point relishing lapdog hollow legs

"the extraordinary!

like a moon rock, or the droppings of an exiled venusian."

cypriot growling headstrong, let's wrestle tonight beneath orange omelid beetles

hooping yonder belly within thistle scores, dirty abrogation in whole fruit

gastile, voracious malachite garden, hanging loud trainwrecks in globes of pearstock

"nonadditive effects of damage by different herbivores

on ramet growth or mortality"

New clay mine, bears, death, a haunted hat

It was a beautiful weekend, starting with turtle dance in fremont after which we drove to lebam, arriving after midnight and sharing a cup of wine and 2 chapters of jane eyre before bed. my intention was to relax for the entire saturday, but the propane held out only through heating up tea water and cooking a pan of bacon, so we schlepped the tanks to raymond and enjoyed a townie 2-hour adventure. the young man who filled the propane tanks had beautiful hands, long fingers, graceful and gentle in their work, and his manner with us was humble, informative, left us both smiling and commenting.

over and over this weekend new levels of communication would open up when one of us would take that first dip into the well, a little bit of risk, or perhaps enough clarity on a thought that had been forming, but uncannily the other would echo some mirror, or balence to the other that turned the well into a lake and we woud swim, dive, pick up stones on the shore, skip them across the surface knowing they would eventually drop like feathers to the mucky bottom. it was our direct experience of the concept being discussed on npr's 'science friday' where quantum physics and free will experiments yield evidence of multiple-layered realities, existence vibrating in frequencies that allow simultaneous time-space events. the most profound example was, and perhaps this sounds a little silly, but my hat disappeared in the bed for all of sunday morning, we both searched in turn thoroughly through sheets, blankets and pillowcases, and then it literally, at a moment when neither of us were paying attention, reappeared on top of the bed 6 inches from virginia's lap, laying there in plain view with no warning, one second gone, the next returned.

late saturday afternoon our talk turned for several hours to fear and death, and on the ensuing walk we took bears had shit in enormous black piles, filled with berry seeds, it was beginning to be dusky, we were not able to find the beaver lake that must be huge as it has lowered the creek level through at least 2 miles of the valley, every step was full of wonder, our pace was meditative, the talk took us deeper into elements of dark-man images, clearing the way for more trust, more compassion, more collaboration and understanding.

on sunday i dug a new clay mine up by the compost bins and started working the interior wall of the northeast corner of the cabin while virginia spread her images and tools across the table to begin assembling cards for loved ones. it was a grounded, simple and comforting way to work together on our own projects in a common space, more evidence of the ease we both experience through this loving exploration. and we returned to the city last night, full of dinner from evey's in pe ell, letting the weekend fade slowly with more jane eyre, and then a deep night's sleep.

Bed Peace

last night we watched a documentary of john & yoko's 8-day bed-in during 1969. both virginia and i were hoping for more footage of them and less interviews, but the sweetness and intelligence came shining through, even considering the heavily john-centric focus. yoko has always been one of my favorite artists, and even early on when i was in high school i was pleased with her being in john's life. this was in direct opposition to my best friend joe, and many others i knew who were caught up in the dragon-lady myth and misogyny it represented. i certainly had my own issues with fear of women, fear of losing control over my life, especially in high school, but i think it was the story i heard about how john and yoko met, the ladder with the sign that said 'yes' at the top when you climbed it, the film with the flies, all of their hair and the 2 virgins album cover controversy... it appealed to one facet of my aesthetic and creative side that i had no direct awareness of at that age.

this photo was one of my favorites from the stills that were part of the media frenzy documentation. and the climax - the recording of "give peace a chance" with john in full voice keeping the energy high, biting into the lyrics in the verses, amazingly accomplished guitar from a sitting position on a soft bed - it was all so beautiful. and relevant to these very disturbing times we live in.

our administration and the corporate entities it works for, that it crafted the iraq war to feed profits to, are no less vile than the nixon administration and the vietnam quagmire. given that this is 2006, not 1966, and some folks in the world have actually taken the lesson of vietnam to heart, makes this iraq war that much dirtier. our hands are soiled with the deaths of 1/2 million or more innocents, our vice president and his cronies are dancing in the blood waving their fistfulls of greenbacks with giddy delight, this is hell, folks, and we are all three prongs of the 'axis of evil' rolled into one.

lets all go to bed for a week and see what happens. find someone you love, someone who you are kind to and who is kind to you, someone smart and compassionate, fun, ready to settle in with, vulnerable and snuggly. hit the sack for peace.

Thick, precipitous, untelevised

unifoil copper river tamping drains toward rain forest pathogen
its holographic finery straining her ears toward melting glacial song

blessing expositions in a houston shootout, trails of glory
lifting thematic heads above a sea crowded with marigold instruments, an entire orchestra floats on yellow rubber rafts playing our song

here come hangliding elkherders wrestling drafty inequalities, hold onto your vision miss american latitude, terror along meridians, unproven hatrack resurgence

those lois lane vacuum cleaner greeting card anthems took over when hal's battery ran down

not to say...

Being Father

this past weekend and for the past 2 days i have been grieving the loss of time with my children, trying to reconstruct what i should, would or could have done differently, sooner, never, walking on my own eggshells made of razorblades, bumping up against the wall that blocks me from compassion, viewing the distance with attachment and getting caught up in various levels of anxiety in the process.

last night at the dance i went inside my body and tore out the organs, raw and writhing, with my teeth, that held me into this particular orbit, a sea of wooden horses on a merry-go-round, not the living, snorting hot oaty breath-horse that i know i am. no one called me on it. no one tripped over the mess. so those old pieces of me dissolved in my sweat dripping down into the floorboards, and my body was filled again with fresh systems of compassion, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, reproductive.

i can't say enough about the support i am receiving from virginia around this and other issues that come up, and there is a complementary reverberation within her life. we continue to find new ways to be kind to each other. there is an ease, a comfort of being together, and we freely accept that gift from the spirits who bless us, from the nature we live in.

Tenderness

tenderness inside, tenderness all around the perimeter, tenderness in voice, in thoughts of winding around each other, the may dance, the year to follow, passion and tenderness intertwined like our fingers when we dance, in ecsatatic circles tender waves reach us, move us mouth to mouth, my mouth to your sex, your mouth to mine, sweet morning with tender caress, helping each other awaken with a gentle nudge of loving, just while the tea steeps, then off to work, off we go, me on the motorcycle you on the bus, tender hearts wide open in caligraphic lace, hearts on heels, scrubbed clean in the bath last night, tracing the lengths of your limbs with the loofa, making the most of every touch, rinse, all of those images today belonging, belonging to this day.

RainingHorse dutifully starts the race

miro fell onto his sword to reconcile differences with other artists
his appetite for destruction was insatiable
if you took fruit from his alabaster transom
he would slice your reason into coral lenscaps
telling me this now was a mistake