I am approaching an old residence of mine in Seattle from the alleyway. I see an AirStream trailer [*chariot] parked in the back. It is evening. I walk up and peer into the trailer, trying to get a sense of its dimensions and internal capacity. I startle awake a sleeper. A friend of mine, an actor, he is playing the son of the landlord with whom I became good friends. He comes out and we engage in conversation. I ask about his father and he eventually reveals that the man shot himself in his little bungalow behind the house. I am completely crestfallen but not surprised. The house was plagued by suicide in real life. Some things can’t be erased. The boy’s mother calls, asks my name, and explains that the old man left me something. I ask what it is and the boy says it is a white shirt. A white shirt? I am baffled. The boy goes to the basement, under some stairs to retrieve this article. It is an ordinary white oxford shirt, slightly too large for me, with white on white stripes. Suddenly I begin crying; I get it. He used to always rag on me for wearing all black clothing, said that I looked like I was in mourning and needed to get some color into my life.
Turtles, Frogs, Class B Motorhomes & “The Dream”
August 31, 2010 – 11:20 am
Sometime in elementary school, I had a pet turtle which I named “Chuck.” I wrote a song about this turtle on my sister’s electronic organ which is now lost to the ages, but Chuck looked something like this:
Chuck ate live goldfish, which was exciting. Even though we had other fish as pets after that, I never really considered them pets so much as I considered them feed. Anyway, Chuck was eventually dropped off a bridge in a state park because I was told we couldn’t keep him for some reason.
While they aren’t exactly cuddly huggable pets, the image of a turtle has of late been coming back to me. Has to do somehow with driving a big white utility van around all summer and it becoming sort of a second home emotionally. Spent a long time this summer as well with that Alan Watts quote about the act of imagining – down to the smallest specifics – one’s ideal of heaven as a way to invoke its existence into reality.
But before I get to that, let’s make the species-hop, for a second from turtles to frogs. It’s not a far leap, and it’s all going to the same place, trust me.
There’s a scene from Jim Henson’s 1979 “Muppet Movie” that has always haunted me. It’s when the gang has broken down in the desert, Kermit wanders off away from the campfire disconsolate and has a hallucinatory encounter with his higher self, one could say. His HGA helps him clarify his inner vision, that it is the collective dream which they all share which brought them all to this place. The first part of this YouTube video has the pivotal scene to which I refer:
I bring this into focus because it is that dream, I guess, which I hope herein to clarify for myself and in so doing take the foundational steps towards bringing it into existence.
In the meantime, I find myself back in hot filthy crime-ridden Baltimore, bouncing round from couch to couch, without a place to call my own until a sublet at a friend’s place opens up. Thing is, I don’t really want a place of my own. I don’t have any designs to stay here longer than a theatre contract or two lasts. By October, I should be out of debt again – a precious state which I don’t intend to befoul again upon the rocks of bad romantic choices like I did the last time a few years back. I mean, not forever, but for now. For a while.
What I really want, I guess, then is my own turtle shell I can take with me, a “dwelling place” that goes where I go. A gypsy wagon, essentially.
That image comes from a great photo essay site about gypsies then and now, called Castles and Caravans.
As a kid, I remember a couple aunts and uncles having their own RVs and thinking that was just about the coolest thing in the world. It is, really, the modern equivalent of the gypsy wagon minus the horses and tarot cards. But I’ve got the tarot cards, so don’t worry about that! The format of RV that appeals to me the most is, it seems, the class B motorhome – the ones that are basically the size of the white utility van I drove all summer. I don’t need a lot of space; I’ve not got many belongings left in this world. I don’t need much. And small ones are easier to park than those big stupid monster RVs.
I’ve done some work for a guy who has made his living, putting two girls through college, with a family business of hand-crafted leather and other hand-bags. He travels around in a Dodge Sprinter 2500 van laden with cargo from craft show to craft show around the country hawking his wares. And those things, for as small as their footprint is have TONS of room inside. Ever since I first saw one of these vehicles (which in Europe were first sold by Mercedes for years before ever coming to these shores) I wanted one. When I found out that they are used as a base for RVs, I only wanted one more.
Here are some shots culled from the web. I’m pretty sure these are mostly the 2500 series, but I could be wrong:
And based on the image title, I think this is an interior shot of the version of this vehicle made by Freightliner:
Though they are admittedly sort of weird and retarded looking from the outside, these puppies are not cheap:
Wrap yourself in luxury in the 2008 Great West Vans Sprinter Legend Class B Motorhome. Boasting a two zone floor plan, the updated Sprinter Legend makes you feel like you’re at home with functionally separate sleeping and dining areas. Measuring in at 22 feet, this Great West Vans Class B motorhome has a height of over nine feet and features a rear bed area that comes with your choice of a fixed king-size bed, a tri fold sofa-bed or twin single beds. The Sprinter Legend also has a Double Walled, Double Strength insulated roof, which provides twice the strength of single shell model. Base price of $87,500.
But who cares! I’m supposed to be imagining my ideal of heaven, not worrying about details like money – at least not right this second. (Maybe I could win one in a card game?) But money is important though, and to be specific about how this all will work is an absolute necessity. As I learned this summer, if you’re going to build something, you have to decide exactly how big it will be, how much materials will be used, what they will cost and how it will be assembled.
So I guess this plan goes in phases. The gypsy caravan class b motorhome phase goes something like this: I travel around in this vehicle, going from place to place like the journeymen of old, studying the traditions of my craft (that is, stagecraft) from masters all across the country – and maybe the world. But let’s start by narrowing it down to places I can drive to. For now, continental North America.
While I travel and work – sometimes for free, and sometimes paid. Sometimes paid well and sometimes paid back for my efforts in ways I could never expect. While I travel and work and learn and perfect myself and my craft, I will write and document this process on my website and elsewhere. I already make about $500 bucks a month on this site, though that figure has been slipping since I deleted sexy pictures of Scarlett Johanson, causing my traffic to absolutely tank. But let’s say I continue to pursue the dream and write about what I love and what sets my heart, soul and mind on fire. I like to imagine that will ultimately draw visitors back to my site, and this time because of they share the dream too…
So my website provides me with money for the road, and contacts to share my experiences with and the dream. The work itself gives me more money and good people along the way. On top of that, I sell articles to newspapers, magazines, websites and other media (and not to mention RV insurance). About my experiences, about the good creative work other people are doing. I help spread the fire. Meanwhile, along the way, I make pilgrimages to the weird places, the holy places, the haunted places of our physical and cultural geography and document them too.
Somehow this all snowballs into more work, more money, more exposure – not just for me, but for the people I care about, the people I love. Until I reach such a point where maybe there is a small pack of us traveling together, a troupe, a tribe, a company, a family.
Except maybe not so dirty. And not necessarily that many kids. But they could definitely all play instruments, know how to sing and dance, build and take apart things, do small handcrafts and just generally be the smartest, best-looking and awesomest people around. Plus add in various pets. And we don’t have to travel all the time. Just some of the time. But by the time this all rolls around – I mean, a few years from now – I would, I expect have made enough professional contacts that I could live and work in one place. Or a couple places and be satisfied and happy and thrilled with life and doing something good and worthwhile in the world.
And when I die, they can burn my class B motorhome like they do at a gypsy funeral. Cause fuck a boring life. Fuck living alone in a box working at a job you hate for no reason you can rememeber. Bring me love, bring my life, bring me liberty & adventure. But most of all bring me Heaven in the here and now! I’m tired of waiting… It’s now or never.
New link blog
August 30, 2010 – 10:39 pm
Lost the password to the old one and thought it was a good time to start over with a new one anyway…
Towards the Black Madonna
August 30, 2010 – 10:03 pm
It feels like the end of the year. I kept looking up at the date in Boston’s Back Bay Station, 8/30/10, with a sense of foreboding – this is it.
Now begins the long voyage home, but also into uncertainty, the unknown. What was, what could have been – all things return to the earth, their source. Decomposition and regeneration in the loving embrace of the black and fertile dirt.
Drove out to Sandwich on our last day for a mystical voyage. Edward Gorey’s house, the yarn shop, a New Age store in East Sandwich called Lavender Moon where I bought a Black Madonna as a going away gift, a book on chakras, a small bundle of white sage… Don’t burn too much – smoke gets in your eye.
Traditionally, a real Black Madonna is not something one can just produce; it is something that happens to a community when Heaven ordains it to be so. Countless wonderful legends tell of the sacred or miraculous origins of these images. More than thirty are said to have been created by Luke the Evangelist, others were presented to humans by angels or the Virgin Mary herself; many were found when simple people or even cattle, guided by divine forces, uncovered statues hidden in the earth, in springs, or in trees. [...]
The skunk, who I have nicknamed “Roger” made one final appearance in the costume shop last night. Guided by divine forces? Doubtful, more likely chips and snacks left in the pantry there, but we have to follow signs when they are given to us – whatever they are.
They are portrayed in the position called “majesty” or “Seat of Wisdom”. That is to say, Mary sits on a throne with a low back; she holds a toddler Jesus on her knees; both look straight ahead – no demurely down cast eyes. In the language of medieval symbolism this means that Mary is the throne of Jesus, the Seat of Wisdom. From her lap spring wisdom and power. She is represented as the Christian embodiment of Lady Wisdom, a personage described in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) as the first companion or the feminine face of God, through whom he draws people to himself.
The Shekinah, the glory of God, sparkling, jeweled, radiant: all beings rejoice in her radiance-
The colors of their robes were originally white, red, and blue with golden fringes, though they may have been changed during renovations. These colors were important in alchemy, an ancient discipline practiced in all the great civilizations. It sought transforming knowledge. The goal was to transform lead into gold, disease into perfect health, ignorance into wisdom, and humans into God. … Black Madonnas were the symbol for that latter goal, pursued in the Great Work …
The Great Work – Opus Magnum – Opera. The perfection of human experience through continuous effort, the applied struggle towards beauty both heavenly and everyday.
The Blackening, or the Black Sun (nigredo, sol niger). This is where all the impurities of the primal matter (the ordinary human) are burned and it turns black. This blackness stands for the death and rotting of the old false self. On Black Madonnas it is represented not only by her black skin, but also by the dark blue of her robes – dark blue as the night sky.
On the Amtrak heading out of Boston, many old retaining walls fallen, rotted away. Old train lines broken, rusted, their service stations razed. New patterns assert themselves along the lines we act upon again and again. A woman across the aisle from me gets up; she has lost her knitting needle. Searches around, finds it in the seat cushion, announces, “I’m sitting on it!”
As mother and earth woman, the Great Mother is the ‘throne’ pure and simple, and, characteristically, the woman’s motherliness resides not only in the womb but also in the seated woman’s broad expanse of thigh, her lap on which the newborn child sits enthroned. To be taken on the lap is, like being taken to the breast, a symbolic expression for adoption of the child, and also for the man, by the Feminine. It is no accident that the greatest Mother Goddess of the early cults was named Isis, the ‘seat,’ ‘the throne,’ the symbol of which she bears on her head; and the king who ‘takes possession’ of the earth, the Mother Goddess, does so by sitting on her in the literal sense of the word.
Outside Back Bay Station, I have a few hours to wait. I find a burger place, charging my phone in a nearby electrical socket briefly. Temporary rest, rejuvenation at 120 volts. Amen.
