Charon, the Odd Angel

I’ve discovered that it can be particularly crippling to sit down to a new blog post thinking about all you need to catch up on, so I’ve made the executive decision not to do that.

I’m starting where I am.

Where I am is the small town of Limestone in Western PA, just south of the university town of Clarion. I spend much of my summers and autumns here in an Airstream-only campground, on and off the road for a few weeks here and there.  It is a particularly beautiful and idyllic place with lots of trees, a lake full of frogs and fish, a wooded path leading to an Artesian well and really awesome neighbors. One notable perk of living full time on the road is that if you don’t like your neighbors you can hitch up and move. I never feel the need to do that here. Plus the view is always amazing.

Both cats are sleeping happily, which will be inconvenient only when I try to go to sleep for the night, at which point they will be wide awake and ready to play. I may need to prod them into some laser pointer games this afternoon as a pre-emptive strike.

I just finished up a guest spot at a new tattoo shop in New Castle, PA called Scars of Affliction and Tradition, run by Eric Junkin. It is a small street shop, clean, on the cooler side temperature-wise and it is a wonderful place to work. There was only a single day in which I didn’t have a tattoo appointment, and in the midst of the ongoing recession it was amazing to see people coming through the door ready to spend money, and not s small amount of it, on good work for themselves. It is a shop I will frequent regularly next summer when we’re once again on the eastern side of the continent.

In light of the cookbook project I’m working on with a friend I’ve been experimenting with raw food recipes a great deal and I’ve found them to be wonderfully beneficial for my energy level and mental clarity. I’m eating a fairly wide array of fresh fruits and vegetables, readily available from many different farm markets in the area, direct from the source, and enjoying them very much, which is a very different eating paradigm than I usually espouse. I find raw foods fit neatly into a low-carb lifestyle and being as flavorful as they are, the recipes I’ve been using help me avoid refined sugar and refined flour, both of which have been proven culprits in really gumming up my works. There’s nothing quite like being the only one to get riotously sick following a delicious home-cooked Italian meal to make you rethink your stance on pasta. To be even more blunt, the vodka sauce isn’t as tasty the second time around.

My time at Marlowe Ink each month has been wonderfully fun-filled and very satisfying from a work standpoint. I love my extended family and the work I get to do there as well as all the learning opportunities that being there affords me. I’ve even managed to find time to get tattooed myself. While James completes my back piece, Pup at Handmade Tattoo is working on the outside of my right calf and I’m to be tattooed by Kenny out there this coming week as well. My sidebar links have been updated to reflect the shops I work at regularly or have worked at in the past as a guest artist as well as those who have extended welcome to me for fellowship, shop talk, performance opportunities and occasionally courtesy parking. It is a wonderful feeling to know that I have multiple shops at which to work, spanning the country, and clientele at every stop along the way. It has been a joy to be able to meet new people, connect with other artists and to see how differently shops are run dependent on the demographics and economic realities of any given area. I don’t make as much money in the Midwest or Southwest compared to the East, but then the cost of living is much lower in both of those areas so I still find that I’m able to meet all my needs. The dollars simply go further and there’s more value to be had for each one spent.

I’ll be introducing a monthly audio component to this blog toward the end of this month and hope to eventually add a video here and there as well. My sidebar has been updated to link to all of the talented and generous musicians who have offered up their libraries for use as transitional, background and bridge music in my efforts. I am humbled and delighted by the diversity of that list and can hardly wait to edit my first audio post into reality.

As if all of the above wasn’t enough to hold my interests and keep my time occupied a conversation with a fellow swordswallower yesterday has led to the hatching of an idea for a fledgling business. Our online dialogue exposed a need in the variety arts arena that we are more than capable of meeting with a host of stellar resources. Conversations begin in earnest tomorrow afternoon and I can hardly wait.

Today, on the heels of this post, I will be joining Best Beloved up on the hill to help do some riveting on our 1966 Airstream Overlander as we make it habitable as well as road worthy. Progress is quickening in pace now that the frame and floor are rebuilt and reinforced and the rear walls are in. It is going to be an awesome trailer, with personal work spaces for each of us, special cubbies for the cats to hide in and a full service kitchen in which I can try out even more new recipes, raw and cooked alike.

This is the long and short of it, from where I am right now. I look forward to each day in a way I haven’t since I was a child enjoying summer vacations after the school year was completed. Here’s hoping all of your days are just as full of joy, potential and fascinating people and places. Thanks for reading and hope to see you down the road.

Wow, it’s been a while. I’ve been so self-absorbed lately that I hardly noticed how much time had passed between blog posts and I’m very mortified to have left it for so very long.

A lot has happened, actually. We’ve acquired a second Sphynx cat, a red-headed boy we’ve named Cesare. It looks like Anaphys has picked up two new shows this year. We have decided the best course of travel action for next winter. I am booked through much of June and starting to book for July at Marlowe Ink. The Vegas trip was absolutely and exceptionally wonderful for us both, on many levels. We got to see some of the Tucson Gem & Fossil Show, replete with things I adore. Then, sometime in early February, everything started to head south on me emotionally.

The condensed version: I’ve been depressed.

Yeah, I know, I know, who hasn’t what with natural disasters and Health Care Reform and copious amounts of snow, rain and cold in our faces for months on end now. I suppose I’ve been more introspective about it all and focusing (selfishly) on my own shortcomings and failures of late. It certainly didn’t help matters when the water heater in the Airstream decided to take a powder. Anaphys spent the better part of a week replacing it while we had a very generous friend able to host us at her home in southern GA.

That extended visit helped me to gather some perspective on things (thank you Ro, you are a Very Very Good Friend), read for pleasure (which always helps) and begin weight training on a schedule once more. Things are definitely looking up these past few days and I’m striving to hold on tight and ride this upswing that’s just begun.

In keeping with working on myself in alchemical first chakra mode, I’ve adopted Rob Faigin’s NHE eating and exercise program (or as close as I can get to the HIE program with the facilities I have available). One of the major sources of my depression of late was the fact that I’ve packed on about 40 pounds in the last three years. I even got my thyroid levels tested to make sure I wasn’t ill, which should give you an idea of how drastic and sudden this change in my physiognomy was. My family history is rife with weight issues and I do NOT want to spend my life obsessing over it, as was the example I was given while growing up. I want to be healthy and strong and full of energy. Two friends whom I greatly admire had fantastic success with the program so I am giving it a shot. Not to put to fine a point on it, but I FEEL GREAT. I’ve lost a bit of weight and a lot of inches off my waist in the past month and I now look forward to the upcoming Tucson Tattoo Expo at which one of my goals is to be able to tattoo in my little black velvet dress. Go me!

In addition to this basic work on my bodily health and fitness I’ve signed up for Pace and Kyeli’s 52 Weeks to Awesome e-course and am also negotiating with Leah Shapiro of Defy the Box for some life coaching. Leah knows me and knows my lifestyle so I feel she has a great foundation from which to advise me. I look forward to getting started with her.

Here’s the thing that I’ve finally realized: Now that I have what I’ve been wanting out of life, I don’t really know what to do or where to go next. Always, there’s been a structure of time and goals for me to follow, be it school, the tattoo shop or simply the responsibilities of making a living in the NoVa Area. Now that all of that has been altered or removed entirely I have a lot of open sky visible in my time-goals structure.

And I don’t quite know what to build.

I have ideas, of course, but not enough of whatever it takes to execute them, apparently. This is why I’m going for help from folks who have been where I am and know how to help others navigate effectively.

I’m looking forward to seeing how it all unfolds, and I promise I won’t stay away so long this time. I’ll have some pretty cool things to share in the very near future. Thanks for joining me to read about them.

We’re in Las Vegas. We don’t gamble. We don’t know if Brundlefly would enjoy gambling but we’re not going to give her any opportunities to find out.

We’re at an RV park less than three miles off the Strip, where it’s much quieter and much less bright, even taking into account the garishly-lit color-changing hotel and casino just next door. I’m doing laundry this morning, finding the washer and dryer prices to be relatively inexpensive considering where we are. We did the food shopping yesterday and found the same thing, to be true most especially at the Trader Joe’s.

I heart Trader Joe’s.

We have access to the casino with all its amenities while we’re staying at the park. There’s a bowling alley here, a movie theater, and an atrium within the casino hotel that houses a fiberglass waterfall amid a desert oasis, complete with animatronic animals of the American Southwest. It’s actually quite beautiful, for all of its artifice, and we enjoyed strolling through it during the evening. I look forward to discovering and re-discovering such little pockets of wonder in the other larger hotels out on the Strip during our stay.

I have been to Las Vegas before. Anaphys is here for the first time. I have been in and out of shows on the Strip with friends, who were both on and off the stage, but have never actually had the autonomy with my time and movement that I do on this particular trip. For the first time I am not desperately needing to raise capital to finance any debts or obligations. I am also able to pick and choose where to go and how long to spend there. Most importantly, I am able to begin figuring out for myself this place called Las Vegas, and from the viewpoint of a trailerite, it promises to be fascinating.

We had dinner at the casino buffet last evening (mistake … especially with the unadvertised MSG headache for dessert … ) and will be looking much more carefully at our dining options for the afternoons and evenings we are away from the Airstream. We have two guidebooks that give us prices and styles of cuisine to pore over and between them we can make some educated choices. There is wonderful good, fresh, whole food to be had even at places that ask you how many you are when you walk in, and we will find them while we’re here. There’s a sushi place in a diner shell that looks fascinating all on its own and we may swing by there after the weekend to see what it’s all about.

There are shows to be seen, most of which we cannot afford this trip, and many that are free for the watching if you know where to go and when to go there. We are even more enthused about things like museums, amusement parks, Red Rock Canyon and the Sekhmet Temple in the desert, things many people visiting Vegas don’t consider especially worthy attractions, which is a shame, really. The Natural History Museum has a display up on bioluminescence right now that I am really excited about seeing, maybe even a bit more than the dinosaurs, which is saying a LOT for those of you who know me.

For the most part, I think we’ll be spending our time taking in the energy and atmosphere that is Las Vegas in the 21^st Century and examining the major changes that are present. It sure isn’t what it was even in the 1990’s. There are far less people here for one thing. The casinos aren’t as loud when you walk through them. The noise used to be consistent, muffled and earthquake-y in its intensity. Now it’s simply a low-grade annoyance, like a neighbor in the apartment upstairs with the stereo up too loud. Even Anaphys, never having been here before, can sense that the energy level isn’t at all what it was, and that’s saying something.

We’ll be taking in a Vegas Vortex event for a while on Saturday and seeing what the energy level there is like. It has been many years since I’ve visited with Fire Tribe friends and family out here and I’m letting go of expectations about what I’ll find at this weekend’s goings–on. Here’s hoping the energy is still radiant and inclusive, though I’ve heard from more than a few people that even these events are not what they were in the last decade. It will be interesting for me to walk back into an environment of bliss and personal alchemical change having done so much changing myself these past few years. I wonder what I’ll find there, but I wonder what I’ll find within myself even more as I experience it.

The Strip will be the litmus test, with all the lights and splendor that go along with it. I’ve never felt overwhelmed by it, but I have held a sense of wonder and respect for the sheer size and spectacle of it all, which is a completely different experience up close and live than it is looking at it on a television screen or the Internet. I wonder how different it will feel to me now, under the circumstances of my visit, with the experiences I now have behind me in life. I’ve never fit into the culture here even in my twenties. Now that I’m nearing 40 the advertising lets me know that I’m even farther from belonging than before. Not that I mind. The culture here, for me, was one to be looked at and studied and sometimes appreciated, but never something in which to participate. The cultures at a level or two of remove, like the Vegas Vortex, are where I seemed to fit well before, but that is changing also.

The freedom of being a trailerite opens up new ways of looking at one’s self and presents opportunities for restacking priorities in a rapid and practical manner. It becomes obvious what is important in one’s life, and, more tellingly, what isn’t. Being in Vegas throws into sharp focus a lot of what we are told is important and what our priorities should be, but it is a hollow sort of endorsement this time around and it is difficult not to see that the Emperor is more naked than Brundlefly. The big influx of money is dwindling and I’m not sure this city knows how to survive on a trickle. Unlike us, it is unsuited to boondocking, and this is where I’m feeling a genuine sense of my own power. I’ll never gamble with the high rollers, but I consider what I have in life far to precious to risk. Its conservation, stability and future are all important to me, and I suppose that is what makes all the difference.

Part of the wonderful craziness that being a full-timer affords actually isn’t craziness at all. It only feels that way when you’re adjusting to a lifestyle change that takes you away from a schedule governed by the clock. That lifestyle tells us it’s breakfast time at 8am, work begins at 9am, lunch at 11:30 and so on.

Out here on the road it isn’t like that. It’s breakfast time when you’re awake in the morning and hungry, work begins when work conditions are right and lunch happens when there’s a logical break in the work process and you’re hungry again. You may not be hungry again until late in the afternoon. Then it’s dinnertime, perhaps. It’s really all up to you. Resting when you’re tired is another important component of this dynamic. Brundlefly knows all about that and teaches us every chance she gets.

It is challenging to transition into a lifestyle governed by the rhythm of one’s life, as ridiculous as that sounds. We’ve been trained out of it for so long, beginning with school days for most of us, taught that there is always a schedule to keep and that the consequences for deviating from said schedule were dire. Our time is not ours, and while time may be money, we’re taught that that’s not ours either.

Out here on the road, the moon phases are right in front of me, all the time. The moon shines in through the windows on clear nights and reminds me that there are other ways of doing things. The sunrise and sunset are integral parts of this style of timekeeping as well. The sounds of indigenous wildlife wherever we happen to be living also contribute to helping me keep in tune with the flow of the day.

I am not an early riser and never really have been. For the first time in my life I am able to choose to sleep well past sunrise if I wish. This has made a huge difference in my health, both physical and mental. For so many years I’ve been laboring under the idea that I must be flat out lazy to want to sleep past the sunrise and in point of fact I was told that I was lazy regularly while growing up and the idea took root and held fast. I’m just now coming to realizations that allow me to let go of this as a story that no longer serves me. For example, a lazy person doesn’t carry a 4.0 GPA in college while working multiple jobs, and this was my life story for nearly four years.

I can stop right there, can’t I?

The craziness part begins to surface when you realize that myriad pathways are now open to you as you build a new kind of life. It can be intimidating and labor intensive to sort out long held beliefs that no longer serve you, but it is the only way to create the life that is right for you.

The road has been a wonderful Teacher for me in this capacity. It has given me long stretches of open time to ponder what those stretches might best be used for and I have been filling them with art, reading, writing, conversation and friends and family whose company is good and healing for me, and who enjoy mine in the same manner. I am finding that each path that presents itself need not be a finite choice. Like most hikes, many of the paths will bring you full circle to where you started, only more refreshed and wiser for having traversed them. If you get tired along the way or discover you weren’t prepared adequately, there are routes on which to bail out and return to start until you are genuinely ready to tackle what lies ahead (and bail out routes have their lessons too). I don’t have to shut a door on an opportunity. I can defer it and try it on for size later.

Thus far the road has gifted me with a new Power Animal, a simple and effective way to jump start my exercise habit, fulfilling art and writing projects, opportunities for tattooing that span several states, a blossoming friendship with an amazing woman I greatly admire (as well as her daughter and husband whom I adore), ample resources and the lessons on how to best make them work for us, new and regular ways of connecting and communicating with Best Beloved and a sense of self worth that I don’t think I’ve ever really had before.

For me, right now, there is no Road Less Traveled. They’re all Roads I’m Going To Travel and I’m ready, willing and, finally, able.

So it’s been an interesting week here in the Airstream. Lots of exploration in and about Tucson and a few new adventures have led to my falling even more deeply in love with the desert and this corner of the country. It feels natural to be here and I seldom feel comfortable in one spot for very long. In point of fact, this coming week we head north to Las Vegas. Anaphys has never been and I am looking forward to showing him a bit of the Strip but also to taking him out to Red Rock and the Sekhmet Temple, destinations few Vegas visitors know or care about.

I got to hike parts of the Loma Verde Loop in Saguaro East and enjoy the solitude. The only other living things I saw were a few birds, a rabbit and an enormous red-tailed hawk that landed atop a tall saguaro to scope out the meal options in the area a few yards from where I was hiking. I took Anaphys to hike the Freeman Homestead Trail this past week and we enjoyed it without any sort of incident resembling my previous post, thankfully. Driving the one-way loop on the way out of the park we decided where to stop and hike on our next visit. We’ll likely get back to it two or three more time before our scheduled Vega departure.

Last Saturday was the opening for Tucson Roller Derby’s 7^th Season. The women were in great form and treated us all to a wonderful show that included three very close (like, skin-of-the-teeth close) bout scores that determined their winners within the final two seconds or so. By far my favorites were the Furious Truckstop Waitresses, followed by the home team, the Copper Queens. The ladies skated their hearts out for us and when the evening was said and done there was one not-very-seriously injured to account for, and even she was all smiles as the crowd filed out to head home.

I absolutely must give a huge thank-you shout out to all the ladies of the Tucson Roller Derby who took the time to stop and visit with our hosts’ young daughter, who attended her first Derby wearing a cast on her newly broken foot. She broke it in the middle of one of her karate classes, finished the lesson on it and then went to the movies. It was a day later that x-rays determined she’d broken a metatarsal. Tough kid. Everyone at Roller Derby agreed as they lined up to sign her cast. You ladies are the best of the bestest. You made a young lady’s evening and you totally rock for doing it. Wanted you to know.

After Roller Derby, the logical place to go for a bit of nosh was El Guero Canelo, the place that created the idyllic food known as the Sonoran Hotdog. It’s a mere four blocks from where Roller Derby was held and stays open until midnight. If you go, the Sonoran Dog is a must, followed by the Tortas. The salad bar is worth the trip on its own, and you get that with any food purchase so even a small quesadilla gets you a meal that is generous and healthy depending on the choices you make. I can’t rave about this place enough, truly. I owe Belfast a debt of gratitude for introducing us to it when we were all here for the Tucson Tattoo Expo last April. The Expo rides again this year, by the way. Here’s the skinny.

The day following Roller Derby I really needed some cave time. Fortunately there was a book on loan to us that intrigued me. I ended up reading it cover to cover in just under a day. It’s called American Nomads and it not only related the stories of some relatively unknown and truly amazing people in the history of the New World, it gave me a better sense of why this sort of life appeals to me so strongly. Even though I felt folks like Anaphys and me weren’t at all touched on by author Richard Grant, I still got a lot out of it and will buy a copy because I feel it’s an important work to have with us as we travel.

And what week would be complete without Brundlefly getting into places and things she shouldn’t? We do our best while on the road and while parked near friends to get Brundlefly into an environment where she can run about and stretch her little naked legs a bit. She has a pattern of laps she does in the trailer to be sure, but there’s nothing quite like an open living / dining room combo for really getting her speed up. She’s impressive, to put it mildly. We’d brought her into our hosts’ home a couple times previously with no problems. I had looked around for holes in the wall (they’re still finishing the house here and there) and other inviting dangers that might present themselves and having found none, I set loose our wee beast to have run of the place.

Her third foray in the house she ran about as usual for about an hour and then vanished. We called for her and looked behind and beneath furniture. This went on for several minutes until we finally heard an answering mew. It took us a little while to narrow down where it was coming from and when we did I practically had to peel myself up off the floor.

She was in the ductwork.

None of us could figure out how she’d gotten in there, but we dutifully began to unscrew the grating from in front of the duct where we heard her calling to us. It led to a wall. There was no way into the ductwork from where we could hear her. It took another few minutes for one of our hosts to determine where she’d gotten into the ducts. It was an open vent behind a bedroom door and we’d all missed it on the first cat safety sweep. He got down onto the floor to peer into it.

There was Brundlefly. I came over to see if I could coax her out and got down on the floor as he had been. I called to her. Her head popped right up in front of me out of the duct that led down beneath the floors. When I reached in to see if I could pull her out she popped it right back down again. To her this was the most fabulous game ever and she wasn’t about to stop playing. To us it looked for all the world like Whack-A-Mole. Only with a cat. In floor ducts in a house in Arizona.

When she came out on her own a few moments later, looking recalcitrant and completely covered in dust and debris, we scooped her up and took her back to the trailer, completely mortified that we had lost our cat in (literally IN) our friends’ house

So it’s been quite a full week here in Tucson and we’re looking forward to many more adventures. But no more filthy cats creeping through ducts. We’ve had enough of that one for a lifetime.