finding whimsy...

i am craving a little whimsy in my life lately. of course, i will be getting ready to depart the country in a month, there will be whimsy there, but it really can't arrive soon enough for me.

sometimes life feels so staid. so boring. in some ways every day is the same, and then there are amazing and wonderful things that happen every day. but there's still a sameness to them. perhaps it's perspective that changes? the way we look at things? the way i look at things?

i had a great time last week, working a cirque du soleil show that was in my town. it was called quidam, and it was amazing. when i watch things like that, though, it's impossible not to know or feel how hard the performers have to work in order to maintain their bodies, their athleticism, their skill. if one has to work so hard to create whimsy, is it still whimsical for the performer? do you think? or does it become the same drudgery that many of us experience with daily routine. if your daily routine is whimsy, is it still that for you? i know that as a performer, sometimes it seems like drudgery to create beautiful things because it takes hard work. practice, diligence, DO IT AGAIN! i won't say it isn't worth it, but in bellydance, we often laugh at ourselves....

rehearse for six months, spend hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars on costumes, makeup, hair, tools, fuel, any number of things....hours getting read, preparing....and perform for twenty minutes. in bellydance, it's often even shorter than that. five minutes. fleeting. and yet freeing...getting to create magic and give that to someone else with what you do.

Black Rock Rendezvous...

so, this desert. owns a piece of my soul. so much has happened there. joy fear release creativity art mine and others. being in or on the desert when no one else is there is amazing. a friend recently shared that she had heard "absolute silence" for the first time. that sensation and feeling is like a comfortable old pair of shoes for me, but slipping back into them is always amazing, like a hug to your spirit. this weekend was special, though. this group of amazing people have this organization to help preserve and protect this amazing desert and area, and they had a shindig. we showed up early and the above picture is the weather we encountered. we huddled down in our little tent trailer, and existed. we chatted, read, spent time together, laughed, joked, and had a great time. we listened to the rain hit the canvas of the trailer. it always seemed louder on the canvas than it did when you had to walk out in it. it probably rained for near eight hours before there was any standing water on the playa, but once there was, it pretty much hung around all weekend...seeing the rivulets and wash outs where the desert chooses to put it's water as it snakes out into the playa is a beautiful thing to watch. here's the water collected in a tarp in the back of our truck at one point:

at some point before the rain started, we found a little lizard, a horned toad, i've heard from a couple of people. he was so cute and man was he cold! i don't think i would like to be a reptile:

at one point, we did seem like the only people on the planet. visibility across the playa was minimal, you couldn't see the mountains on the far side, and there was a feeling of being marooned. here's my sister, loving life in the middle of all this expanse:

later, more people came. this was both a blessing and a curse =) it was amazing to see friends, make new friends, reacquaint with those not seen for awhile, and get to know better those we had seen, but perhaps not known as well. some very awesome friends, eric and lynn, brought some amazing fire toys. the illumishrooms:

this takes creativity! i want to build something like this! with my own design, but this isn't complicated, at least not the design, but it works very well together. eric did this. he's the man. here's his little mini poofer too:

and those are all the pictures. sometimes i wish we could have one of those sieve things like they have in harry potter...where you can wisp out all your favorite memories and put them somewhere for safe-keeping and then string them out and "reinstall" them to relive them again whenever you need a pick-me-up. somehow, i think some folks, however, would become addicted to this. i might even be one of them =) this was definitely one of those weekends! caught up with the major things, at least those i am willing to write about at this moment =) there's always stuff on the horizon, but i need to think about things for awhile first before i share them with folks. i hope you understand.

 ~peace

Adventures in Insanity...

ahhh....i still marvel all the time at how lucky i am, to have the life i do =) in my last post, i mentioned the fire weekend, and graduation. before any of THAT happened, our local food coop was having a local seedling sale. i really wanted plants that were proven locally, and that real people had raised and had luck with, so tomatoes and peppers were gotten, various varieties of each.  then was graduation. here is a pic of my surrogate daughter, yurie and her mom after graduation:

i was so proud of her! i know i had nothing to do with raising her, her mom did a fantastic job of that, but since she's been here, and the entire time she's dated and been friends with my son, i have come to love this girl! i think she graduated with a double major, one was accounting and maybe international business. she was a mad woman with the taking of the classes, and dealt with all the stuff she had to do to support my son being in Afghanistan too. yes, i cried! it's likely the only time i will get to meet her mom, and while it wasn't a long moment, it was a good one... then, we were finishing up the yard, so we needed to plant and get out to the fire gathering. THAT, too, was amazing. i was worried about going ALL THE WAY out to gardnerville, but it was a quick trip, and as soon as we got there, i knew it was going to be a good time. here's some of the crowd, just chillin':

then, a few of my favorite people were there. cody, his brother cory, and cory's fiance' chelsea among them. here's cody :

and here's another of my favorite people, grin:

finally, later that night, things began to light up. here's a pic of the giant ex-propane tank that was 

converted into an amazing piece of art:

and while there was fire spinning that night, i did not personally indulge. i was having a bit of a sore back from all the yard work. cory is a kick-ass staff spinner, but in a rare moment, was caught on film spinning poi:

i was going to write about the black rock rendezvous in this post too, but i think that deserves it's own post, so that will be next. the fire gathering was ostensibly to build fire barrels and other artwork and for a variety of reasons, not much on THAT front was accomplished, but our progress in friend-making, merry-making, visiting, sharing, and general camaraderie went beyond anything i hoped for! this was a GREAT time! one of the best things about the weekend was the fact that dan came out with me. i am pretty used to doing these sorts of things alone, but it was sure nice that he was there. gosh, i love that guy =) until the rednezvous post....

 ~peace

hectic holidays....

the holidays were hectic around here. my nephew returned briefly from the army, he was home for two weeks. i cooked a lot, we showed him a great time, and hopefully he feels loved and like life is good for him =)

i got to perform in the community nutcracker held in fernley this december, and this is something that i am so glad i did. i will definitely do this again. i did initially because i love to dance, but found out after we were there that this was a community performance to raise money for scholarship funds for kids who otherwise would not be able to continue taking fine art classes at the university level without this scholarship help. a worthy cause, and we had those girls shakin' their groove thangs by the time the weekend was over =)

here is a picture of myself and my dance partner with a very flushed looking teenage santa:


hopefully next year we can convince more dance sisters to join us!

on new year's eve, controlled burn performed at our third annual "fire and ice" extravaganza at northstar at tahoe. the village there is a lot more filled out this year and in spite of the chaos that generally accompanies an event like this, it was a good show.

after the show, i went to a friends house, who does safety for the group, and had a quiet and festive new years celebration.

that's about it, for now. will try to post again, soon.

there is less than a month left in the presidency of gwb. although the celebration truly began in november, it seems more real now. i have spent a lot of time on obama's transition website. i am going to make a concerted effort to never be apathetic again, i believe that's how we got where we are now, and our newly elected leader wants to change that. i am in the process of reading "the audacity of hope" and it's quite engaging, so far. now, i just need more hours in the day =)

peace.

blood moon weekend

friday i worked half a day. i mean, i was there. some work was actually accomplished, much to my chagrin, but motivation was not high, it was a blood moon weekend!

by noon, i was ready to head out, and my friend i was carpooling with was to get me at 2pm. a quick lunch and then home to pack. i hadn't packed previously, but the weather promised to be nice in sacramento, so i wasn't too worried about that. we headed out pretty much on time, and the drive was lovely. watching the fall foliage was amazing. it's so interesting to watch the trees turn their vibrant colors, some yellow, then interspersed with bright reds and oranges. fall is truly an enchanting time, hinting at the bareness of winter, but giving a colorful and grand show before we are left with nothing but stark, bare trees.

we checked into the hotel without incident, and our room was decent. i think i may explore different places to stay if we make the trip next year, the place we were was okay, but seemed sort of expensive for what we got. it seems we could maybe do better. being there, though, was familiar, and yet new. having been there before, but the experience was new with a new companion. we headed to dinner reasonably early, then back to change for the show and get all fancied up, and head to the venue. one thing for which i was incredibly grateful over the weekend was my husbands tomtom gps thing. that little thing is amazing. i had pre-programmed all our destinations into the unit, and just had to tell it where i wanted to go and it took us there. i wonder sometimes at the routes it chose, but it never failed to get us where we needed to be =)

once we arrived at the venue, we were almost immediately greeted with the other members of the group who had come down in a separate car. everyone was there, and it was on time. huge relief number one taken care of. erika was on her stilts, which was awesome. that woman can't seem to stay off them, but they seemed to enjoy that she was there, so that part was good. we went inside to get the lay of things, and they were pretty organized. i got to connect and say hello to the beautiful amy or unmata and her partner and the tech advisor for the show, raven. they were awesome to be around and we kind of just got to chill until close to time for the show. this is always an interesting show because the stage space is somewhat small and presents some logistical challenges. someone took video of our stuff, it should be posted soon, i will post a link, perhaps, when it's posted. the show went very well. we were third from the end, and that seemed to be good placement for us, within the context of the groups that were there. we got the theme award, apparently being the only group who paid attention to the theme, which made me proud. our crew was very small, we only had seven performers, but then managed to pick up three guests who had come to our burning man decompression party, so that left us with an even ten. the show was pretty amazing. technically, we had some challenges, but we pulled it off, and there was one duet i was especially proud of. this young girl i asked barely two weeks before the show to do a duet with a tall, lanky staff spinner and she said she would. they learned a really awesome lift in less than two weeks and their portion of the performance was stellar. me and cindi also did a non-traditional piece that i hope to keep and perform again later in the year.

there were a couple of groups we could totally learn things from, and i hope that we can work towards that. we have our own style, and the gradation of things being what it is, we did well, but i'd like to improve. one can always improve, no?

after the show, we headed back to our room quickly, then went to the blues bar that was right down the street from our hotel. we had asked a bunch of people to meet us there, but who knows who was going to show up, ya know? several did though, our guest fire breathers who performed with us, and they were super fun to hang out with, and rog and his lady showed up for a bit, but they left pretty early. after the bar closed, we headed to a late night restaurant for some snack food stuff and that left us back at the hotel about 3:30am. it's a good thing i am of the mindset that all late nights such as those are training for burning man, or i might have been tired the next day =P as it is, training is good, right?

cindi and i both being semi-morning people, we couldn't sleep past 9am. we headed out to forage for food and walk around the downtown area. it was really cool. the merchants along the area we were in sacramento were having like a safe merchants trick or treating event thing for local kids, so we had a great time getting to look at all the costumes on the littles. it was pretty fun. saw lots of really cool little shops with lots of really expensive clothing. wow. we had greasy spoon breakfast and thai food for dinner, then it was time to head to the theatre for the blood moon show, disease 101. the show was great, but the topic was sort of depressing. although there were humorous aspects of the show, it's hard to be uplifting talking about lice, cancer, parkinson's disease, mental illness, things like that. it was an interesting choice, one that took courage and which i admire by amy. all in all, it was a good show. we ended up sitting with and getting to visit kerry and her group, who had also come down for the fire show. it was great to see her and what she's doing with her group. they happened to have an extra ticket for the after party, so that meant we only had to buy one, so we did that and headed there after the blood moon show.

the after party was one of the best parts of the weekend, although the entire weekend was an experience in itself. i think by the after party, several of the dancers and volunteers are just so delirious after having worked so hard to put on the show, it's a little time for them to be silly. seeing raven polka was definitely a highlight. and talk about how boys are icky. can i get an amen sistah? hahahaha...it was in fun, but also very amusing and largely true, for me.

managed to get in some shopping, too, for family and for myself. found some jeans of a type i hadn't been able to find locall, so was very happy about that. sunday we headed home. we went through apple hill on the way home and MAN was it crowded! when i've been there before, it's after halloween and i now understand the wisdom of that choice! we actually turned around and did something different because just the road to GET to some of the places was backed up for miles and miles. the drive home on hwy 50, though, was very pretty, with more glorious fall colors.

i wanted to document this weekend, and tell about it, but i think i've lost the flavor of the weekend. perhaps i will make another post that is random snippets and images from the weekend.

that's it for now, anyway.

peace!

p.s. tonight i get to WELD for the first time! WOOO HOOOO!