More Magic with Friends

I kicked the day off with a reading and consultation by the absolutely phenomenal (and I do mean that; she has ALL kinds of phenomena working through her!) Marcy Currier; my card of the day is the Empress, as I am working with my definition of the mother and how it relates to sustainable creativity, patience, trust in the process, etc. And the card she showed me has a creepy bird head, which is appropriate since one of the room-mates I'm living with is a "vegan taxidermist," so it looks like this pretty much all over the house. Ooh, and right now I am inspired to go spread out in the living room amongst all the bird heads and do my social networking from there! What a sentence. Haha...

Here is the card:

And here is more more about Marcy, one of the most multi-talented and gifted creators I know: blog... business... mystical frogs... production company!

Wild and Wonderful Weekend!

It started with a reunion of friends from the Magical Forest, Omega. It continued with the marvelous Monique coming over for a playdate, in which we jumped around the four feet of available space in my room chanting and dancing, collapsed at the end to meditate and listen to some gonging, followed by Kundalini yoga. The buzzing high I was on only amplified that night, after my friend Travis invited me to a party up in the Oakland Hills. It was filled with a magical tribe of artists and musicians, a huge house with lavish altars and shiny instruments and art rooms, and candles, and ceiling to floor windows that offered a spectacular view of the city twinkling far below. I was in heaven.

I didn't get home until 4 in the morning, and woke up again at 10 to go jump on trampolines with my friend Isobel. These were not just any trampolines; it was a whole warehouse full of them. And so I went to visit the Adelaide and Luke after 24 hours of bouncing, dancing, chanting, and sleep deprivation.... the result was a lot of tears. A lot of healing. A lot of release. And on my way home to Berkeley I went to "Heartform;" for more chanting, meditation, dance, and community bliss, and that was the perfect end to a magic weekend. I came home with a coyote sticker for Luke and a "Kiss of Motherpeace" painting by an extremely inspiring artist, Jah Ishka. Oh, and on the subway I read an article all about a band who got to financial independence using a combination of social media and networking and the like....

inspiring!

Trickery Transits (Part Two)

Our second group transit took place on January 16th, to the Trickster Arts Salon with the theme of "Juke-Joint at the Crossroads." Our merry band of three was comprised this time of me, Luke, and Jen Tillman, an incarnate fairy if there ever was one. We were all in good spirits and no one was rushed or belligerent, and we regaled Jen with the story of Buzz Brooks and his Cab Cabaret on the way down to the Powell Bart station.

"Thank God we can just take the subway over this time," we said.

The first thing I saw once we got on the train was an ex-colleague of mine from fundraising for the San Francisco ballet. He had always struck me as a little off, and now he seemed very off, wearing sunglasses on the train and speaking loudly on his cell phone about all the injustices San Francisco had done him over the past few months.

"Not in New York," he kept saying. "In New York they would never..." blah blah blah and this and that and I tried not to listen or care because I only wanted to think about merriment and trickery.

Our train hadn't moved after about ten minutes of sitting there, and people kept piling on. Those of us who had been there a while started to exchange questioning looks from time to time.

"Oh, WHAT is going ON?!" My ex-colleague from the ballet moaned to the general public, before continuing into his phone, "See, this is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. The public transportation system. Oh, just get me OUT of here!"

I wanted to get him out of there too. Jen and Luke and I tried to make the most of the situation. I offered people around us the chance to buy my greeting cards, which I was carrying in a box to sell at the salon. They all politely declined. We then started playing a game in which you find the commonality between two very different things; bowler hats and airplanes, for example.

"British, and British airways!" Luke finally said. I didn't feel particularly inspired by the game, but I played along anyway.

"Clowns, and warthogs," I said, and that stumped the group for a while.

"Both can be hams?" We finally heard a woman behind us venture.

"Yes!" We all said, and giggled, before we were interrupted by an intercom announcement.

"Sorry, folks, for the delay... there's been a security incident that we are checking out. We'll be moving along in another ten to fifteen minutes," the intercom announced.

"Ohhhhhhh," the moan of my ex-colleague stood out over all the others. "This would NEVER happen in New York!"

He then tried to engage Luke in a comparison of the two cities, but Luke, despite being a steadfast Long Islander, politely declined the invitation.

So we stood in quiet desperation, and thought up more games, and considered dancing a jig or something to make the most of the bowler hats and boas we were sporting. The police went by and gave a suspicious glance into the interior of the car. More people piled onto the train.

"Ohhhhh.... I feel like we're going to DIE on here!" The ex-colleague from the ballet whimpered.

And finally, we began to move. Everyone smiled at each other with over-exaggerated sighs of relief. We made it all the way to the next stop, and then we didn't move again.

After five or so minutes, another intercom announcement came through the train.

"I'm sorry, folks, but there's been a medical emergency," the announcement said. "We're going to need to wait here while we take care of the problem. Thank you for your patience."

The last part of the announcement was inapplicable to the ex-colleague from the ballet, who was already huffing and puffing loud "Excuse me's!" as he forced his way out of the car. The last thing we heard as he trundled to the escalator, still on his phone, was, "That's it! I'm moving back to New York within the month!" He will be sorely missed.

So that was a nice change of atmosphere within the train car, and made the waiting a little more bearable. After ten minutes or so, a pair of paramedics shuffled by and popped their head in.

"Anyone need medical attention?" They asked, rather hopefully.

We all exchanged bewildered looks, then looked back and shook our heads, no.

They shrugged and moved on to the next car.

"I'm sensing a theme here," I said to the man next to me. "What do you think will be at the next station? Bandits? A live tiger?"

Jen, meanwhile, was contemplating something, looking our ensembles up and down.

"You guys," she whispered. "I think this might actually be our fault."

I thought about it. I thought about Buzz Brooks and his cab cabaret. I thought about our bowler hats and cowboy boots and glittery feather boas. I thought about how the theme of the salon this time was "The Crossroads." And when we finally jerked into motion, but the intercom had one final announcement to make,

"Attention all passengers. This train will be turning around after 24th Street. This will become a Richmond-bound train. All passengers continuing on past 24th Street, please transfer at the next platform. Arriving at Mission 24th Street, the final destination of this train."

I nodded solemnly to Jen.

"I think you may very well be right."

Puttin' on a Show!

For the full story and more pics, click here!

Trickery Transits (Part One)

Last Thursday marked my third Trickster Salon, and I have noticed a theme developing, namely, that every experience of actually getting to the Salon has been more absurd than the last. The first time, I ended up wandering around the piers of Fisherman's wharf with a jester hat poking out of my bag. I never did find the salon (It was on the other side of the city, in the Mission. Don't ask me why I thought a Trickster convention would be held at the wharf).

The second time, I was a featured performer and a little stressed out about it, which led to drinking a bottle of whisky as I spray painted my hair pink and donned a tutu. I was also wearing a garter and a flamingo hat on my head, and gloves, and paper hands taped to my chest, and that was only the beginning of the accessories and instruments and toys I planned to bring to the salon, and my being drunk wasn't exactly conducive to keeping it all together and actually getting it to the salon. Luke had had a long day at a job, and still had to work the late cleaning shift at the Adelaide when he got back, and it was after about the second or third time that he had to run back through the rain to get a guitar capo or wallet or pony, that he got stressed out, which very rarely happens, and demanded that we take a cab or else we were never going to make it there at all. Cole, the third member of our party, was very amicable and pleasant through the whole thing. I was less pleasant, but agreed to the cab, and pretty soon we'd flagged one down and were on our way.

The driver had a long white beard and a funny looking hat, and at first he seemed to be existing somewhere in the realm of normal cab drivers, albeit extremely chatty ones. He told us that his name was Buzz Brooks and this was his "Cab Cabaret," ("Perfect!!" I crowed, "Because we're going to a TRICKSTER SALON!"), but Buzz scarcely stopped talking to get the address of said salon before launching into a rambling discourse about cab-driving, life, and his Aunt Peggy.

"Who?" Said Luke, in the passenger seat.

"Why.... my Aunt Peggy!" Said Buzz, and, without a moment's hesitation, cranked the radio dial so that the music that had been playing softly flooded the cab, and now he was singing along with the pre-recorded version of himself about his Aunt Peg, who apparently has a mustache among other issues.

With Buzz in his own little happy world, the rest of us exchanged pointed looks while trying to process the situation.

"The man tried to tell you when we first got in," said Luke, wryly. "It's a cab cabaret."

"Where are we? Have we wandered into an alternate universe?" Asked Cole.

"This is PERFECT!!" I crowed again, in a trickery and whisky fueled haze. "Oh, UNIVERSE!"

Buzz, ever the entrepreneur, revealed to us once we arrived at the Mission that the entire cab ride had been tape-recorded, and we could purchase the memory of our special journey for a mere seven dollars lumped in with the fare.

"PERFECT!!" I yelled for the third time, and before Cole or Luke could stop me, forked over 19.45 for our Cab Cabaret Experience.

Later that night, I eagerly inserted Buzz's custom made cd into my computer, only to have it stick there and make obstinate whirring noises. I inserted it into each of the Adelaide's public desktop computers, to no avail.

"So much for BUZZ and his stupid Aunt Peg," I growled.

"He looks a bit like an evil elf, come to think of it," noted Luke as we scanned the Buzz Brooks website for contact info of where to complain.

And so that was our first group trickery transit.