San Francisco to Bejiing in 8 days!
What I love about life is how it throws wicked opportunities atcha if your post box is open... And when you put your attention on something, however trivial it may seem to anyone else, it will manifest if it is your dream and there is a happy longing associated with it. My letter box is like a whore’s moo moo – wide open, patiently awaiting that golden cheque of adventure in the mail, smiling…
When I was a kid, I fell in love with VW split-screen camper vans. I spent a huge part of my childhood rolling down sand dunes and body surfing on Llangeneth beach, a romantic pocket of Welsh countryside where the surfers would tumble out of these kick ass cool VWs… I was utterly smitten. In the mid 90s I learnt to enjoy the adrenalin of high speed driving and discovered that VWs are compatible with Porsche engines… Oh yes! Outwardly maintain some kind of bohemian-hippie status, but secretly hack it at 140mph… my kinda machine.
Three years or so ago, my mum dragged me to a lavishly converted barn in the English countryside to meet her new friends Nina and Dave. Nina had found my mother in the yellow pages under the ‘Feng Shui’ section. My mother was apparently posing as someone called “The Cosmic Cherry”. She would re-orient home layouts for a fee, according to ancient Chinese principles and a little bit of her own whacko-soothsaying thrown in. It turns out her work on Nina and Dave’s gorgeous property did them wonders – she even exorcised a ghost.
While wandering around the exquisite house I noticed a canvas painting of an orange and white VW split-screen camper van, the same colours as the one my mum used to ferry my brother and sisters around in when we were pseudo-hippies in the late 1970s.
I exclaimed to my now new friend Nina –
“If that had a Porsche engine it would be my dream mobile.”
Nina giggled –
“Dave’s got one of them.”
“You’re kidding?”
“In the garage, snakeskin interior and it breathes out fire… and it won the bling award on the Gumball Rally…”
“The Gumball?”
“Rich boys with toys rally, ya know, Maximillion’s gig? Dave loves it.”
At the time, I was in a rock-punk-rap band called ‘Weapons’ and we were preparing our next music video shoot for single ‘Love Is Thunder’. A hippie camper van that can trot a wild 140mph and breathe out flames sounded perfect for my vehicle in the vid!
“If I drive the camper in the band vid, what about the others? What will Justin, Mo, Pete, Blair and Tasha drive in the vid?”
Nina nonchalantly started to walk me across the manicured lawn towards a fat set of garage doors.
“Well, Tasha can have the Ferrari, Justin the Lambo, Mo the Harley, Blair the Aston Martin and I guess Pete can drive the Mclaren…”
The garage doors unfurled like an origami puzzle into another world… and my entrance into the sphere of fast cars and collectibles had begun.
Fast forward 2.5 years and I’m now settled in Los Angeles. I get a call one day from Dave –
“You wanna do the American leg of the Gumball rally, San Francisco to Bejiing with me and Phil?”
“You kiddin’ me right?”
“Nope, it’s all set. We’ll pick you up at the party in LA and drive to Vegas via San Diego and various check points along route.”
“When?”
“Three weeks time.”
“OMG!”
“You in?”
“Is Sarah Palin the anti-christ with titties?”
“See ya then, g-force…”
My dream. Not only was I gonna rock’n roll in my fantasy mobile, but I was going on the most notorious car rally in the world, alongside some of the world’s pimping-est cars.
A word of caution:
Now don’t get me wrong… at heart, I’m not someone to gush when a racing car zooms by. Quite the contrary, I’m the kinda chick staring at those balding imbeciles cruising in their convertible Bentleys who internally muses: “What a tosser!” When I hit traffic lights in Beverly Hills and an Italian stallion pulls up in a Lambo, revving to impress, gesticulating crudities at me through the slick glass, I’m that gal that turns up my stereo, picks my nose and flicks it in the direction of the dick in the fast car. In a nutshell, I don’t get wet at expensive, flashy cars, even less the drivers of such extravagances. But it’s paradoxical right? Coz I adore the rush and adrenalin and speed and excitement of stepping on the gas, pushing up the numbers on the dial and whooshing into the distance, full throttle, riding by the seat of my pants… Who wouldn’t?
So GUMBALL hit Los Angeles and I was ready. The party kicked off at ‘The Roosevelt’ in Hollywood with a champagne-toxic bang. 8am the following morning and I was standing outside the Kodak Theatre surrounded by a throng of the world’s fastest cars, as well as a celebrity addition – THE ORIGINAL KIT CAR! Yep, Knight Rider was on the rally, driven by Hasslehoff’s adopted kid friend “Hasslehog” – an Austrian BMX pro who despite his petite teenage frame was reknown to have a cock the size of the Andes mountain range. Every time we sped past him on the freeway, he would wave a huge brown dildo out of the window at me. It was quite disconcerting… Just where had it been to be that color?
The film crew joined Dave, Phil and I in the VW for the first leg. We hit the 405 and well… I’ve never seen the 405 display as many skid marks as a horny trucker’s pants. It was a Lamborghini convention snaking the freeway. All those driving their cars to work that morning were hit by a futuristic looking chase scene straight outta a movie… it was electrifying. And there was I, full body out of the convertible VW, hacking it at 130mph, weaving in and out of the daily grind with music blaring, the wind rushing through my veins. Dave triggered his various horn sounds as he proceeded to overtake everybody on the inside lane - no one expects a hippie van to whoosh past at that kinda speed – and well, suffice to say, I was pumped. The 405 had a lot of smiling faces ;-)
Fast-forward to the first check-point at Huntington Beach where we ate a luxurious breakfast, had a photo shoot with the Jackass boys, and witnessed a bikini fashion show modelled by cyborgs with down syndrome. Gumball is full of surprises. And that was blatantly evident when, at lunchtime, we cruised into the private estate of the wealthiest guy in California who had a private Ferrari collection he wanted to share. It felt like I had entered the homestead of a bad guy from a BOND movie. A sick house… I mean we’re talking SICK! I was waiting for Oddjob to come out and smash me in the face with his bowler hat. Worse still, I got cornered during dessert by a gangster rapper from Vegas known as “The Panty Sniffer”. He proceeded to place large headphones over my ears so that I was looking across the bling baddy estate listening to, “I get an erection when I whiff your yeast infection…” Certainly not the kinda thing to write home about… less still publish in a blog?
Check-point three was an industrial estate where the boys with toys were able to show off their speed skills and spin 360s without worrying that the explosive sounds and petrol fumes would offend eco-friendly locals. The VW wasn’t equipped for such debauchery, so we showed off our impressive 4 sec or so 0-70 as we sped away with flames shooting outta our ass… it was kinda appropriate that we had a flaming ass hole as Dave and Phil – pilot and co-pilot respectively – had ever so gradually begun cloning one another… I was slightly concerned when their t-shirts were not only similar, but matching. Same hair do and everything… hmmm…
The sun was shining and I was getting hot. A new film crew had joined us and needed some action. So I launched myself out of the roof, gumball stickers on each nipple, arms aloft like the home coming gladiator entering the ring… only I was showing off in front of a bunch of fat families lining the San Diego check-point, waving their Gumball flags. I’m a cheap date.
After posing for hundreds of eager car lovers, we received a police escort to our luxurious hotel – THE SAN DIEGO IVY - the owner of which, it transpired, was driving in the rally with his sexy playboy fiancé. As we pulled up, the streets were all cornered off for our welcome. The crowds cheered, cameras clicked and the resident Gumball Tanoy Monster yelled crudities down his speaker for all to hear. I leapt out of the VW and launched myself onto a waiting police motorcycle. As I straddled this beastly machine, Gumballers planted stickers on the back of the cop’s bike. He was so heavily engaged in feeling my pert behind grind his armoured cod-piece, he didn’t notice the camera crew surrounding us and the blatant disregard to his authority. Before he knew it, we were being filmed as I ran my hand up and down his menacing baton, yelling, “Yanky cops sure know how to ride it rough.” Then, to my horror he started getting “fresh” when our photos were being taken -
“Which room are you in?” he asked, eagerly salivating…
“Huh?” I replied, assuming I had misheard him.
“Your room number? Tonight?”
Did I really feel his outstretched arm move towards groping my left tit? Nah! Really? …
I made my escape, but no sooner had I entered my gorgeous suite in The Ivy – there he was standing in the street below… right in front of my window! I could hear Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO blade-curdling SCRATCH noises tear into my brain as I ducked on all fours and proceeded to pull the blinds down without being seen. PHEWee! Close call. I’m never returning to San Diego.
That night, The Ivy threw a rather outlandish affair by the pool. I suspect that every working girl from Hong Kong to Miami had been flown in for the occasion. The elevator would PING open every five minutes and outpour a school of lipstick in dresses so short I caught a few spider’s legs creeping out for breath. Scantily-clad girlies danced on the bar, twisting their teenage hips to filthy Prince tunes and we hit the sack from exhaustion… I slept like a princess.
The day we had all been waiting for arrived… the trip to VEGAS!!!
8am and we were on the road. This time our destination was on a serious time constraint. We had to reach a private air force base and have the VW checked in for its trip to Korea… The journey was awesome as we bombed through the desert roads, taking-in the fire-orange mountains shaking on the horizon like old men with Parkison’s disease. Dave was in his element carving the narrow roads, hurdling bumps and probing pot holes, while Phil and I sung along to “God Is A DJ” blasting out of the stereo.
2pm and we hit the private airport. The VW was stripped and carted away for its long flight to Korea, and we were elegantly transported to the ‘Million Air’ waiting room to get our own private jet to Vegas. Turns out, the jet was the Rolling Stones private jet they use for touring the US. And there it was on the runway, all-tempting like Mick’s glossed rubber lips approaching the mic…
I spotted the enormous silver turbine straight ahead of me and, turning around intuitively, my jaw gaped open in awe as the dreamy vision of the Sheikh of Saudi gracefully walking towards me in his perfect, crisp, white dress appeared on the horizon. I gushed and knew I had to get in that turbine with the Arab. Moments later I was standing in the massive turbine singing Sean Paul’s “Shake that thing!” while booty grinding with the Sheikh. “Sheikh that thing, c’mon let’s sheikh that thing…” He certainly did shake it… loose.
When I was supped, I entered the plane and had the fortune to share seats with Maximillion, who gave me the low down on the thriving Gumball enterprise he runs with his beloved, hot wife Julie. Turns out, the guy has quite a history with extreme sports – skateboard champ, BMX-ing, entrepreneur since ever since, and a Spike Jonze buddy from way back. And his co-pilot for the Gumball transpired to be a photographer I hung with in South America back in 1995. I’m not certain either of us can pin-point the exact location or nature of our meeting, although it’s certain that it involved some kind of Colombian-Peruvian-Bolivian intoxicant and a wealth of amnesia.
TOUCH-down in Vegas and the Gumballers were chauffered to the Hard Rock Hotel where Dave had secured us the celebrity suite – equipped with pool table, bar, and… a BUTLER who could get one anything one desireth. Dave and Phil ordered pizza and I booked three midgets, a ball gag and a hostess trolley. We hit the casino and after Dave had lost about as much as a deposit on a small country, we decided to quit our losses and head into the Gumball Party. And what a party it was! - THE CUBAN BROTHERS (aka filthy Glaswegian comedians) were on stage as we entered, stripping off while performing break dance antics that happily reinvented mentally retarded looking dancers with dislocated limbs into sexual icons. I was impressed. While I was secretly fondling myself to the sight of the filthy Glaswegians waving their trouser snakes at a drooling throng of Gumballers and Vegas hookers, Dave purchased a champagne bottle the size of a wig-wam. He nourished the entire club with champagne out of that single bottle – no shit! It kept pouring on and on… by the time we ‘d exhausted its liquid nectar, the whole club was screaming and dancing and it kicked off into the early hours… This was a party to remember!
At some point we were in a cab racing to the nightclub JET where I lost my sandals and found myself dancing next to a ladyboy with awkward boobs. Then we were somehow back at the Hard Rock and I was forced to watch an inebriated Dave and Phil, in full blown clone attire, speak to their loved ones on skype, expressing in northern drivel how much they love them. It was at that point that I puked. Then I called ‘the Butler” to remove it and feed it to the midgets I had stowed away in my closet.
Deliriously, I whispered farewell to Dave and Phil at 6am as they departed for their connecting flight to Korea to continue the rally all the way to Bejiing. Then I passed out until I was myself heading homewards to Los Angeles…
I got back and received a phone call from my very gorgeous new boyfriend. He said, “Come over to the house, I got something funny to show you.” For a moment I thought to remind him that after the 405, the cop, the school of hookers, the Cuban brothers, the butler and the dwarfs, there wasn’t much left to shock me into giggles… but there, in his driveway, was a white, very nice, Lamborghini. His mate Ken had just dropped it off and given him the keys… weird right? So a week later, I watched him rev the lambo to my birthday party and I thought to myself - that dream wasn’t on my list? - but it’s sure funny how life surprises you if your letter box is open!...
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
TRUE STORIES from a Welsh Hermit Minx in Tinsel Town…
HUMPING
My month began with humping on a Malibu beach. Not me, alas. A guy, mid 30s, and… a hooker. I assume she was paid? Then again, maybe… hmmm… maybe he was just an eyesore of a guy in a suit that just happened to be dating a twenty year old beauty pageant with a penchant for blowing in broad daylight on a week day? An ugly rich guy that got lucky? It’s strange that neither of them noticed the family 10 metres away, building a sand castle while the pageant bobbed her head up and down under a blanket as discreet as a tea towel. And even more surprising that they failed to notice Bozza, Shane and I standing up watching in the front row, right there on the shoreline, a stone’s throw away from the live sex act? One thing’s for sure … there was a lot of flotsam that day… We climbed the cliff and watched the rest of the show from the royal box. Bozza filmed, Shane giggled and I played with myself. When we got to the rubbled parking lot there were only three cars and one had a baby carriage. It didn’t take Einstein to eliminate and deduce which was the Johns car. I left a note:
“Wicked show! It’ll be on youtube at midnight…”
Why did I recount this? Well … Since moving to Laurel Canyon, once famed for its rock star inhabitants and debauched parties, I have made a hermit’s perch in the hills and spend ample time alone writing. When I do rear my head even for five minutes, let alone a rebellious day trip to the beach, shit like that happens – ALL THE TIME. I’m wondering whether I’m attracting it because it is fuel for my scripts, OR whether the world has got more mad, small and silly?
SEX AND THE CITY…
Awful film, great soundtrack. I’m biased coz my sister’s music is in the movie, but hopefully she won’t mind me airing my opinion of the movie itself… As the late genius comedian Bill Hicks once said about ‘Basic Instinct’ – “Piece of shit! Walk away! WALK AWAY! – PIECE OF SHIT”… Angry ranting aside – PIECE OF SHIT MOVIE! – it got me thinking about sex and the city, not New York, but the City of Angels. In the past months I’ve been dry as a bone. Not a smidgen of action to write home about, not even clam typing. Is it because nearly two years ago, I hopped from the Rock God with big balls and an acorn of a penis to a guy in a wheelchair who had a penis the size of the Andes mountain range, to a one night stand with a 6-foot five Bear Man in possession of a not even bite size sausage, to a guy who dislocated his nut on our first night of carnal activity? Do not question the authenticity of what heart secrets I have just laid bare. It is all 100% true… If truth be told, I left out the one night lesbian action that saw me fly off a bed and spend half the night next to a vibrator called "The Rocket" because, compared to the men, it was a "what you see is what you get" kinda affair. The others... they were all such strange encounters…
As I pretend to be Sarah Jessica Parker in front of my mirror wearing an outfit that would look better on a goose, one of the questions I pose is – am I attracting these mysterious sexual encounters because I have a darn good sense of humour and it is fuel for my scripts? Or, in another outfit that resembles a puffed up bag lady wearing sparkly Wellington boots, I ask whether the world has got more mad, small and silly?
BREAD
Whether we create reality or whether reality creates us, there is no doubt that coincidences happen ALL THE TIME… I was hiking up my hill in Laurel Canyon with my sister, telling her how I’ve noticed that if I give my attention to particular people in the hood, notice them behaving strangely or sense something about them, however small, they will somehow enter my reality in trippy ways. For example, when I first drove up my street 6 months ago to check out the rentals, a seemingly ‘high’ English woman helped direct me up the narrow trail. A day later I passed her again in the same spot and this time she said, “Did you find what you were looking for?”, in that fortune teller, psychic type, crystal ball tone. Or was it crystal meth tone? Anyways, she hit me with a weird look and then… I saw her one more time after that outside her wooden shack… then I never saw her again UNTIL, 5 months later I’m walking with my writing partner Thomas up the trail, telling him about the time I met the crystal meth lady…
From the plateau viewpoint at the top of my street you can gaze over Los Angeles to the ocean. It affords a spectacular view of mountains, Hollywood sign, observatory, downtown and… the wooden shack… Thomas gazed down and noticed the spooky wooden house. As we meandered down the hill, he happened to put his trash in a garbage can without realizing it was the same house he had pointed out from the peak. Then, in the same moment that I relay to him that this is the house owned by the woman I had been telling him about, he exclaims while holding open the garbage can - “Aaaah! Georgia! Take a look at this…” – And, inside the garbage is a ouija board.
So fast forward a month, and I’m now telling this to my sister as we hike past the same house. I’m explaining how, as a writer, it doesn’t matter that most of the time I’m a hermit in Disney land because as soon as I step out shit happens. Just in the moment that I tell her about the ouija board, we both stop dead in our tracks… to the side of the trail, on a spike, is a fresh loaf of bread. The perfectly shaped loaf on the spike sat under two photographs tacked on a wall: a sunset scene and a dog bearing its lethal teeth. Both the bread and the photographs were under a deadly nightshade plant containing enough Datura blossom to destroy 250,000 neural pathways. What the ****? My sister gets a little spooked. I’m thinking, “Welcome to Laurel Canyon, Jim Morrison is fucking with us from the grave.” We stroll around the corner and there is the local lady I fondly call – the Welsh Witch - and an actor who was big in the 80s, sitting on a bench having a cup of tea.
“What’s with the bread on the spike up the hill and the trippy pictures?” I said.
“Oh that’ll be Shakey…” she said matter of factly.
“But what’s with the bread?” I said
“He’s got a source.” said the 80s actor.
“A source?”
The Welsh Witch held up a bag of bagels.
“Do you want them? We’ve got too many.”
My sister and I are now beyond confused.
“Right, Cool, Yeah I’ll take a bag of fresh bagels, “I said.
My sister and I went on our way, munching bread, when we noticed more bread, just lying there on a driveway. Then another loaf. And another. Weird. Funny though right? Like weird funny. Like when you feel turned on by something sick.
I’m wondering whether I attracted the bread on the spike because it is fuel for my scripts, OR whether the world has got more mad, small and silly?
MENTALLY RETARDED NEXT DOOR NEIGHBORS
Have you had one? Not a learning difficulty case… I mean fully-fledged psycho neighbour – the whole works, the entire anti-rational package?
I met mine last Tuesday. I was watering the herbs on my deck when she leant over and commented on my basil.
“You growing basil?” She loudly vocalised while leaning over her deck, gazing down at mine.
I turned off the hose already feeling the darkness of the encounter… I’d heard that Shannon was “work”, but had safely avoided contact for my entire 6 months tenancy.
“Yeah, I’m growing three different types of basil.” I replied.
“My deck is better than your deck. Even though yours seems bigger, mine is better.”
“Did she really just say that?” I internally registered.
“You wanna see it, wanna see it, wanna see it?” She pressed…
“Erm… I’m kinda busy right now, but if you need to find a tenant I have lots of friends…”
“Honey, there are TONS of people who want to live here with me. TONS. I just meant do YOU wanna see it?”
And, this is where it gets super-trippy, like when you’ve just realized that the mushrooms you took three hours earlier are suddenly working… EVERYTHING warps into another dimension…
As if on Broadway, Shannon launched into song at top volume, AT ME –
“Anything you can do I can do better! Anything I can do better than you…”
Dumbstruck, holding my floppy hose, I gawked with an awkward smile. When she finally came to a close, I replied with Jedi deflection –
“Are you a singer? You should be. What a great voice. I gotta scoot now, to a meeting. Nice meeting you… You will not talk to me ever again and I can go on my way... you will not talk to me ever again and I can go on my way...”
BAM! That is what I call mentally retarded. Transpires that she’s the neighbourhood’s “aggressive drunk”. Great for a script though, right? Which brings me back to my questions, my quandaries and uncertainties about this odd life I seem to be suddenly living here in the US of A… Am I attracting this stuff because God has a really warped sense of humour and wants me writing this shit down?
DEATH
Then it hits you… in the midst of everything, every day people are dying. Every day. Every god damn moment, someone is dying, someone is losing their loved one, someone is weeping from the heart of their being and praying…
Someone I love died this week. It wasn’t sudden or unexpected, but it still kicks you, right? I witnessed myself weep to the core, feeling the wound of love as it hit me another level that everyone I love is going to die. Me too. Everyone without exception. It puts the petty shit into perspective. It is a necessary consideration. It allows a space in the heart to smash open…
I suddenly felt –
“Whoa, if we all lived every day on the basis that we’re all vulnerable to death, all fragile to the wound of mortality, maybe there would be a little less honking on the freeway?”
“Maybe, just maybe, if we considered that those sour faces and grimaced expressions we encounter every day come from sad, melancholy people enduring the sickness or loss of a loved one, we might not retaliate with anything less than an understanding smile, a courtesy lane change, a generous and feeling response… I have a dream… ”
In the Great Spiritual Traditions they say that it takes approximately three days for the body to transition after a passing. During that time, it is profound to meditate and pray for a safe and easeful transition for your loved one. Taking this on board is a remarkable gift to the spirit… Out of feeling this death, a layer around my heart has been peeled away. And despite all the jokes and the sillyness and the ambition and the passion and the commotion and the craziness of every day LIFE, I can say with my hand on my heart, in moments of Communion with The Great Mysterious One, there is no problem about any of it whatsoever. As the Great Sage Adi Da says, Love is indeed Always Already The Case…
p.s. Turns out, there is a dealer in the neighborhood and he hides his merchandise inside loaves of bread! Ssssshhh! If you spot a loaf on a spike might be worth slipping into your bag ;-)
My month began with humping on a Malibu beach. Not me, alas. A guy, mid 30s, and… a hooker. I assume she was paid? Then again, maybe… hmmm… maybe he was just an eyesore of a guy in a suit that just happened to be dating a twenty year old beauty pageant with a penchant for blowing in broad daylight on a week day? An ugly rich guy that got lucky? It’s strange that neither of them noticed the family 10 metres away, building a sand castle while the pageant bobbed her head up and down under a blanket as discreet as a tea towel. And even more surprising that they failed to notice Bozza, Shane and I standing up watching in the front row, right there on the shoreline, a stone’s throw away from the live sex act? One thing’s for sure … there was a lot of flotsam that day… We climbed the cliff and watched the rest of the show from the royal box. Bozza filmed, Shane giggled and I played with myself. When we got to the rubbled parking lot there were only three cars and one had a baby carriage. It didn’t take Einstein to eliminate and deduce which was the Johns car. I left a note:
“Wicked show! It’ll be on youtube at midnight…”
Why did I recount this? Well … Since moving to Laurel Canyon, once famed for its rock star inhabitants and debauched parties, I have made a hermit’s perch in the hills and spend ample time alone writing. When I do rear my head even for five minutes, let alone a rebellious day trip to the beach, shit like that happens – ALL THE TIME. I’m wondering whether I’m attracting it because it is fuel for my scripts, OR whether the world has got more mad, small and silly?
SEX AND THE CITY…
Awful film, great soundtrack. I’m biased coz my sister’s music is in the movie, but hopefully she won’t mind me airing my opinion of the movie itself… As the late genius comedian Bill Hicks once said about ‘Basic Instinct’ – “Piece of shit! Walk away! WALK AWAY! – PIECE OF SHIT”… Angry ranting aside – PIECE OF SHIT MOVIE! – it got me thinking about sex and the city, not New York, but the City of Angels. In the past months I’ve been dry as a bone. Not a smidgen of action to write home about, not even clam typing. Is it because nearly two years ago, I hopped from the Rock God with big balls and an acorn of a penis to a guy in a wheelchair who had a penis the size of the Andes mountain range, to a one night stand with a 6-foot five Bear Man in possession of a not even bite size sausage, to a guy who dislocated his nut on our first night of carnal activity? Do not question the authenticity of what heart secrets I have just laid bare. It is all 100% true… If truth be told, I left out the one night lesbian action that saw me fly off a bed and spend half the night next to a vibrator called "The Rocket" because, compared to the men, it was a "what you see is what you get" kinda affair. The others... they were all such strange encounters…
As I pretend to be Sarah Jessica Parker in front of my mirror wearing an outfit that would look better on a goose, one of the questions I pose is – am I attracting these mysterious sexual encounters because I have a darn good sense of humour and it is fuel for my scripts? Or, in another outfit that resembles a puffed up bag lady wearing sparkly Wellington boots, I ask whether the world has got more mad, small and silly?
BREAD
Whether we create reality or whether reality creates us, there is no doubt that coincidences happen ALL THE TIME… I was hiking up my hill in Laurel Canyon with my sister, telling her how I’ve noticed that if I give my attention to particular people in the hood, notice them behaving strangely or sense something about them, however small, they will somehow enter my reality in trippy ways. For example, when I first drove up my street 6 months ago to check out the rentals, a seemingly ‘high’ English woman helped direct me up the narrow trail. A day later I passed her again in the same spot and this time she said, “Did you find what you were looking for?”, in that fortune teller, psychic type, crystal ball tone. Or was it crystal meth tone? Anyways, she hit me with a weird look and then… I saw her one more time after that outside her wooden shack… then I never saw her again UNTIL, 5 months later I’m walking with my writing partner Thomas up the trail, telling him about the time I met the crystal meth lady…
From the plateau viewpoint at the top of my street you can gaze over Los Angeles to the ocean. It affords a spectacular view of mountains, Hollywood sign, observatory, downtown and… the wooden shack… Thomas gazed down and noticed the spooky wooden house. As we meandered down the hill, he happened to put his trash in a garbage can without realizing it was the same house he had pointed out from the peak. Then, in the same moment that I relay to him that this is the house owned by the woman I had been telling him about, he exclaims while holding open the garbage can - “Aaaah! Georgia! Take a look at this…” – And, inside the garbage is a ouija board.
So fast forward a month, and I’m now telling this to my sister as we hike past the same house. I’m explaining how, as a writer, it doesn’t matter that most of the time I’m a hermit in Disney land because as soon as I step out shit happens. Just in the moment that I tell her about the ouija board, we both stop dead in our tracks… to the side of the trail, on a spike, is a fresh loaf of bread. The perfectly shaped loaf on the spike sat under two photographs tacked on a wall: a sunset scene and a dog bearing its lethal teeth. Both the bread and the photographs were under a deadly nightshade plant containing enough Datura blossom to destroy 250,000 neural pathways. What the ****? My sister gets a little spooked. I’m thinking, “Welcome to Laurel Canyon, Jim Morrison is fucking with us from the grave.” We stroll around the corner and there is the local lady I fondly call – the Welsh Witch - and an actor who was big in the 80s, sitting on a bench having a cup of tea.
“What’s with the bread on the spike up the hill and the trippy pictures?” I said.
“Oh that’ll be Shakey…” she said matter of factly.
“But what’s with the bread?” I said
“He’s got a source.” said the 80s actor.
“A source?”
The Welsh Witch held up a bag of bagels.
“Do you want them? We’ve got too many.”
My sister and I are now beyond confused.
“Right, Cool, Yeah I’ll take a bag of fresh bagels, “I said.
My sister and I went on our way, munching bread, when we noticed more bread, just lying there on a driveway. Then another loaf. And another. Weird. Funny though right? Like weird funny. Like when you feel turned on by something sick.
I’m wondering whether I attracted the bread on the spike because it is fuel for my scripts, OR whether the world has got more mad, small and silly?
MENTALLY RETARDED NEXT DOOR NEIGHBORS
Have you had one? Not a learning difficulty case… I mean fully-fledged psycho neighbour – the whole works, the entire anti-rational package?
I met mine last Tuesday. I was watering the herbs on my deck when she leant over and commented on my basil.
“You growing basil?” She loudly vocalised while leaning over her deck, gazing down at mine.
I turned off the hose already feeling the darkness of the encounter… I’d heard that Shannon was “work”, but had safely avoided contact for my entire 6 months tenancy.
“Yeah, I’m growing three different types of basil.” I replied.
“My deck is better than your deck. Even though yours seems bigger, mine is better.”
“Did she really just say that?” I internally registered.
“You wanna see it, wanna see it, wanna see it?” She pressed…
“Erm… I’m kinda busy right now, but if you need to find a tenant I have lots of friends…”
“Honey, there are TONS of people who want to live here with me. TONS. I just meant do YOU wanna see it?”
And, this is where it gets super-trippy, like when you’ve just realized that the mushrooms you took three hours earlier are suddenly working… EVERYTHING warps into another dimension…
As if on Broadway, Shannon launched into song at top volume, AT ME –
“Anything you can do I can do better! Anything I can do better than you…”
Dumbstruck, holding my floppy hose, I gawked with an awkward smile. When she finally came to a close, I replied with Jedi deflection –
“Are you a singer? You should be. What a great voice. I gotta scoot now, to a meeting. Nice meeting you… You will not talk to me ever again and I can go on my way... you will not talk to me ever again and I can go on my way...”
BAM! That is what I call mentally retarded. Transpires that she’s the neighbourhood’s “aggressive drunk”. Great for a script though, right? Which brings me back to my questions, my quandaries and uncertainties about this odd life I seem to be suddenly living here in the US of A… Am I attracting this stuff because God has a really warped sense of humour and wants me writing this shit down?
DEATH
Then it hits you… in the midst of everything, every day people are dying. Every day. Every god damn moment, someone is dying, someone is losing their loved one, someone is weeping from the heart of their being and praying…
Someone I love died this week. It wasn’t sudden or unexpected, but it still kicks you, right? I witnessed myself weep to the core, feeling the wound of love as it hit me another level that everyone I love is going to die. Me too. Everyone without exception. It puts the petty shit into perspective. It is a necessary consideration. It allows a space in the heart to smash open…
I suddenly felt –
“Whoa, if we all lived every day on the basis that we’re all vulnerable to death, all fragile to the wound of mortality, maybe there would be a little less honking on the freeway?”
“Maybe, just maybe, if we considered that those sour faces and grimaced expressions we encounter every day come from sad, melancholy people enduring the sickness or loss of a loved one, we might not retaliate with anything less than an understanding smile, a courtesy lane change, a generous and feeling response… I have a dream… ”
In the Great Spiritual Traditions they say that it takes approximately three days for the body to transition after a passing. During that time, it is profound to meditate and pray for a safe and easeful transition for your loved one. Taking this on board is a remarkable gift to the spirit… Out of feeling this death, a layer around my heart has been peeled away. And despite all the jokes and the sillyness and the ambition and the passion and the commotion and the craziness of every day LIFE, I can say with my hand on my heart, in moments of Communion with The Great Mysterious One, there is no problem about any of it whatsoever. As the Great Sage Adi Da says, Love is indeed Always Already The Case…
p.s. Turns out, there is a dealer in the neighborhood and he hides his merchandise inside loaves of bread! Ssssshhh! If you spot a loaf on a spike might be worth slipping into your bag ;-)
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
THE FREELAND FIGHTERS - Coachella '08
In 1992 on a remote beach in Thailand, I met Adam Freeland - a young pleasure seeker from England. A few mushroom trips later and he was listening to my early cassette tape recordings of Spiral Tribe and getting noticeably excited -
"This is what I want to be," he said with a cheeky face oozing teenage enthusiasm. "I want to be a DJ..."
Having full faith in the motto, "you become what you meditate on" (Adi Da), I replied, "you can be ANYTHING you want Adam Freeland..."
Back in the UK, my beau at the time - the legend Phil Dawson (an original Freeland Fighter) - picked up a pair of decks for Ad and he was away...no stopping him. Ad worked his ass off - not just to become a DJ, but to become THE BEST in his field. Ad is living proof that if you set yourself a goal and work hard at accomplishing it, you will manifest your personal life vision. The Freeland sound was born and break beat was about to kick-in a new religion.
Fast forward several years - fans, friends, wild adventures and booty calls in every city on the planet - and Adam Freeland has built up a posse of very committed and talented faith-full followers. The "Freeland Fighters" as we're often called - all members of *THE CULT OF FREELAND* - are an eclectic soup of rebel ecstatics. Amongst the crew are music journalist whiz kids Anthony Bozza and Matt Diel; designer/model Shane Rucker; female sci-fi book club founders Kirstin Lee, Lizzy Jordan, Megatron and co; directors Richard and Guy of Happy Worldwide; photographer Adam Lathem; producers Rebecca Lloyd-Evans and Steven Oliver; Crackle TV brainchild Josh Felser; a whole heap of artists from Seattle via Oklahoma; and a one eyed dwarf, that hardly anyone spotted, called "Tiny Cyclop". It was this melting pot of tricksters that head for Coachella's dance tent at 4.30pm on Fri 25th April, clad in gold and silver robes, lifting metallic helium balloons, shaped a mystical "F", into the azure desert sky...
WHAT THE "F" IS "F"? - was on everyone's lips ... FREELAND balloons dressed the sky for the rest of the festie and attracted a wave of new members to the cult. Initiates were embraced and asked "Can you feel it? - As soon as the fresh initiate was able to "feel it" they were given a gown and set to work the Freeland vibes ... obviously it isn't possible to discuss the esoteric depths of what you actually "feel" upon initiation, but if words could do it justice Aldous Huxley, William Blake and Shakespeare would all have written of it... and Einstein would have summarized it thus:
"The doors of perception x an infinite grain of sand + music be the food of love = FREELAND
Ya dig it? And so the Freeland Fighters kicked off Coachella with a BOOM! KCRW veteran Gemma Dempsey writes of it; punters youtubed it; pics were taken; hearts were shaken; and it all ended with DJ Freeland stage diving into a sweat pit of ecstatics chanting WE WANT YOUR SOUL! This was an electronica love fest...
The Freeland Fighters are spreading like an attractive herpes virus... before long, everyone will have "the feeling" rushing through their veins, licking along their arteries, caressing their neurons with a delightful whoosh of "F" ... just be open and it will come... like a receptive conduit, be available to the "F", let your heart get smashed wide open and... well... next year when Coachella comes round, be sure to locate the cult... you will never feel the same again.
For pics of Freeland Fighters Susie, Bozza, Shane and myself...
For an initiation... remember, "you become what you meditate on..."
*THE CULT OF FREELAND* - mission statement mysterious.
p.s. how amazing was Roger Waters!!! Did you feel it?
And now for the shallow star spottin' musings of a Welsh Minx @ Coachella ...
My slightly intoxicated and accidental celebrity star-spottin' kicked off with David Hasslehoff wandering through the VIP area with two young ladies, looking like a tanned Adonis who'd had one too many shots of Knightrider. He was followed swiftly by a very short Steven Tyler and his two babes who looked like they needed to get back to kindergarten. Owch! I was delighted to see the guitarist of my fav band My Morning Jacket wandering around back stage (best band on the planet right now), superseded only by two brief encounters with politco maestro heroico Sean Penn... then, there was the guy from that wicked comedy duo Flight Of The Conchords and I accidentally blagged a light from that bloke out of Good Charlotte, only to have Paris Hilton retrieve the matches when I was done... there were many more famous rock bands that I passed, but they all blended one into the other... Once upon a time you could tell the difference between Dylan and the Dead, nowadays they all look like a uniform trail of designer messy hair cuts and drainpipe jeans... and that's why it was so refreshing to see the FREELAND FIGHTERS breeze through the crowd like an orgasmic sneeze...
HIGHLIGHT OF COACHELLA: Jim James of My Morning Jacket giving his sense of the profundity of Portishead - a dream speech if ever there was one! Jim - u rock!
"This is what I want to be," he said with a cheeky face oozing teenage enthusiasm. "I want to be a DJ..."
Having full faith in the motto, "you become what you meditate on" (Adi Da), I replied, "you can be ANYTHING you want Adam Freeland..."
Back in the UK, my beau at the time - the legend Phil Dawson (an original Freeland Fighter) - picked up a pair of decks for Ad and he was away...no stopping him. Ad worked his ass off - not just to become a DJ, but to become THE BEST in his field. Ad is living proof that if you set yourself a goal and work hard at accomplishing it, you will manifest your personal life vision. The Freeland sound was born and break beat was about to kick-in a new religion.
Fast forward several years - fans, friends, wild adventures and booty calls in every city on the planet - and Adam Freeland has built up a posse of very committed and talented faith-full followers. The "Freeland Fighters" as we're often called - all members of *THE CULT OF FREELAND* - are an eclectic soup of rebel ecstatics. Amongst the crew are music journalist whiz kids Anthony Bozza and Matt Diel; designer/model Shane Rucker; female sci-fi book club founders Kirstin Lee, Lizzy Jordan, Megatron and co; directors Richard and Guy of Happy Worldwide; photographer Adam Lathem; producers Rebecca Lloyd-Evans and Steven Oliver; Crackle TV brainchild Josh Felser; a whole heap of artists from Seattle via Oklahoma; and a one eyed dwarf, that hardly anyone spotted, called "Tiny Cyclop". It was this melting pot of tricksters that head for Coachella's dance tent at 4.30pm on Fri 25th April, clad in gold and silver robes, lifting metallic helium balloons, shaped a mystical "F", into the azure desert sky...
WHAT THE "F" IS "F"? - was on everyone's lips ... FREELAND balloons dressed the sky for the rest of the festie and attracted a wave of new members to the cult. Initiates were embraced and asked "Can you feel it? - As soon as the fresh initiate was able to "feel it" they were given a gown and set to work the Freeland vibes ... obviously it isn't possible to discuss the esoteric depths of what you actually "feel" upon initiation, but if words could do it justice Aldous Huxley, William Blake and Shakespeare would all have written of it... and Einstein would have summarized it thus:
"The doors of perception x an infinite grain of sand + music be the food of love = FREELAND
Ya dig it? And so the Freeland Fighters kicked off Coachella with a BOOM! KCRW veteran Gemma Dempsey writes of it; punters youtubed it; pics were taken; hearts were shaken; and it all ended with DJ Freeland stage diving into a sweat pit of ecstatics chanting WE WANT YOUR SOUL! This was an electronica love fest...
The Freeland Fighters are spreading like an attractive herpes virus... before long, everyone will have "the feeling" rushing through their veins, licking along their arteries, caressing their neurons with a delightful whoosh of "F" ... just be open and it will come... like a receptive conduit, be available to the "F", let your heart get smashed wide open and... well... next year when Coachella comes round, be sure to locate the cult... you will never feel the same again.
For pics of Freeland Fighters Susie, Bozza, Shane and myself...
For an initiation... remember, "you become what you meditate on..."
*THE CULT OF FREELAND* - mission statement mysterious.
p.s. how amazing was Roger Waters!!! Did you feel it?
And now for the shallow star spottin' musings of a Welsh Minx @ Coachella ...
My slightly intoxicated and accidental celebrity star-spottin' kicked off with David Hasslehoff wandering through the VIP area with two young ladies, looking like a tanned Adonis who'd had one too many shots of Knightrider. He was followed swiftly by a very short Steven Tyler and his two babes who looked like they needed to get back to kindergarten. Owch! I was delighted to see the guitarist of my fav band My Morning Jacket wandering around back stage (best band on the planet right now), superseded only by two brief encounters with politco maestro heroico Sean Penn... then, there was the guy from that wicked comedy duo Flight Of The Conchords and I accidentally blagged a light from that bloke out of Good Charlotte, only to have Paris Hilton retrieve the matches when I was done... there were many more famous rock bands that I passed, but they all blended one into the other... Once upon a time you could tell the difference between Dylan and the Dead, nowadays they all look like a uniform trail of designer messy hair cuts and drainpipe jeans... and that's why it was so refreshing to see the FREELAND FIGHTERS breeze through the crowd like an orgasmic sneeze...
HIGHLIGHT OF COACHELLA: Jim James of My Morning Jacket giving his sense of the profundity of Portishead - a dream speech if ever there was one! Jim - u rock!
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
MUSINGS - COLOMBIAN SHOCK!
EXPERIENCES FROM THE EDGE...
COLOMBIAN SHOCK
Backstory...
Imagine getting thrown in jail at age 21 after receiving libelous national press coverage connecting you to the death of a "talented Oxford University student" who you neither knew nor dealt any drugs? Apart from your mother's womb, this is the first time in your life you experience what it's like to be incarcerated: physically - by bars and fences; mentally - by aggressive strangers who are all at once victims of a cold world and violent perpetrators of keeping it that way; and, emotionally - you're burdened by gut-gnawing guilt for having potentially screwed your father’s legal career, your own legal career, the reputation of your family and, remorse, because secretly you really had a good time taking recreational drugs "recreationally" for a brief hedonistic, post-uni, let-your-hair-down, period of your life...
After many days and months in the slammer, fighting the writhing snakes surfacing from your deep unconscious, you paradoxically discover a freedom while in prison. In the midst of the shame-full ordeal, you feel re-born, but without having to convert to a religion for the privilege. A profound happening so exhilarating occurs, you could wank for the Olympics. A nine month sentence passes and you're released... Now obviously, the things you took for granted before – the scent of a rose, the sound of birds, the feeling of sand between your toes and men's bits massaging your palms - are appreciated a hundred fold. The sky is limitless with possibility and everything that crosses your path is for a reason. Fear has been faced, fondled, f***ed and forgotten - or so you think...
Not even a year later...
The Colombian boarder was a nightmare from hell. My post-prison journey in South America kicked off with a familiar feeling - traveling is, in my view, surprisingly much like jail. It's all about contrasts - peaks and troughs – stepping into The Unknown with no seat belt on, suffering endless trials, experiencing random moments of unexpected beauty waiting in the wings. Despite being an Oxford university Law graduate with a few clever quips up my skirt, I'm a geographically challenged Welshie with no common sense and a moustache issue. I seemed to blend in well with the hirsute Venezuelans packing the crickety yellow old school bus like a crowd of over-sized battery hens, just as I'd been able to entertain the lesbian fraternity in Her Majesty's Prison with comical rap performances. But I soon discovered that just as I had to adapt to the "prison language", my two rehearsed words in Spanish - "adios" and "cervesa" - didn't spark a cock-a-doodle-doo of conversation. I was in the trough part of an adventure.
Without warning the bus pulled up to the ominous frontier and Pablo, an Italian stallion artisan with greasy locks and eyes like a bull frog, hopped off leaving his luggage behind? Before I could fight my way through the throng of pot-stomached locals, the bus was bombing at high speed into no man's land..."Argh!" I screamed in an accent that would have made Tom Jones beam,
"Que Pasa? Donde? Adios? Cervesa?", but to no avail.
I reached for my "Learn Spanish in a wink" book and yelled,
"Donde esta la casa de Pepe?"
The driver's response to my obvious torment was to make a series of gesticulations which are impossible to repeat without diagrams and a blow up doll. With an evil snarl, he put his foot on the gas and we continued to bolt along the desert strip from the boarder. He was like Michael Schumacker on amphetamines. After fifteen minutes of gripping the moustache of the woman sat practically on top of me, we entered Maicao.
Without so much as a "ciao", I was pushed off the bus by several podgy hens and both my backpack and the Stallion's luggage was thrown at me from the roof rack onto the dusty road. Showering me with dirt, the bus skidded off into the distance and I found myself surrounded by scarred youths carrying flick knives and an over eager dwarf cab driver carrying a big gun. Shaking, I lit a cigarette - a prison tactic when facing sudden fear. Pretending not to notice my audience, I sat on my backpack and fumbled for the Lonely Planet guide. I read in horror the following warning:
'Don't stay even minutes in the boarder town Maicao. It is a lawless town. Killings are frequent. Get the first bus to Santa Marta...'
It actually felt worse than standing in the dock being sentenced to nine months imprisonment. Dumped at some sort of cross-roads, the streets were in rack and ruin in every direction. Grime littered every wall, pavement and shack. Several joints selling beers were filled with intoxicated villains. Carts and cars drove by churning up more dust. I felt sick. A tank appeared with a few men riding up top in military uniform, pointing serious machine tools at the locals. I put on my shades and lugged on the filter - if the police or army asked to see my passport, a regular request in such countries, I had no 'entrance stamp' - illegally in the country! Worse still I was a vocabulary-disabled "gringa". I didn't know how to order a cab, let alone explain my way out of arrest and imprisonment. It's in such moments the echo of parental sensibleness plagues the brain,
"You are so naive darling. You are so stupid. I told you so. What were you thinking?"
For twenty minutes, that's one thousand two hundred seconds of sitting in a lawless town illegally, I remained in position lugging cigarettes and nervously plaiting my facial hair. Suddenly - praise the Virgin Mary! - Pablo appeared through a mushroom cloud of tank smoke, his eyeballs goggling out of their socket like loose pasta shells. And he had the cheek to shout abuse at me with annoying Italian inflexion.
"You stupid f***ing gringa! You didn't get-a your passport stamped? You're in grandissimo problemo."
I was not about to take any pesto from this spaghetti-slurping, arty farty, twit.
"I'm aware that I have no entrance stamp you silly Wap. Now get in a taxi with me back to the boarder where you can explain in your self-professed fluent Spanish what happened. At least "I" salvaged your luggage..."
It worked. We hailed the dwarf back to to the boarder. Pablo argued with the officials and I got my tits felt for free by the dodgy guard in the cowboy hat. Then midget man drove us back down the same desert road towards Maicao, past shantytowns and enormous billboards advertising Coca-Cola and Nike to the world's impoverished. The army pulled us over and a bunch of matchstick chewing sixteen year olds equipped with M16s, demanded "regalos". Pablo was forced at gun point to hand over some of his silver jewelery and I performed a pee show on the desert highway.
When we finally drove back into Maicao, the dwarf professed that I'd agreed for him to take us all the way to Santa Marta - seven hours away - by car. Pablo translated. I denied. Pablo ranted. The dwarf shouted "$500!". Pablo's eyes started frothing,
"Did you a-negotiate with this dwarf, you silly woman?"
"Does the Pope use condoms you silly wap?"
Immaculate conception emerged in the shape of the bus to Santa Marta. We leaped from our cab into the moving getaway vehicle and the dwarf organized half the town to chase after us. For over a hundred meters on desert highway, a band of thugs relentlessly chased after our bus carrying sticks, knives and bottles. Dust splattered their faces and we breathed a sigh of relief as they disappeared into pea-size shapes on the horizon. The dwarf disappeared from sight before his gun...
A sign on the road read - 'Welcome to Colombia!'
Welcome to Colombia", I internally mused.
The next three months in this misunderstood country transpired to...transport me to some unpredicted peaks...
© G3 1996
COLOMBIAN SHOCK
Backstory...
Imagine getting thrown in jail at age 21 after receiving libelous national press coverage connecting you to the death of a "talented Oxford University student" who you neither knew nor dealt any drugs? Apart from your mother's womb, this is the first time in your life you experience what it's like to be incarcerated: physically - by bars and fences; mentally - by aggressive strangers who are all at once victims of a cold world and violent perpetrators of keeping it that way; and, emotionally - you're burdened by gut-gnawing guilt for having potentially screwed your father’s legal career, your own legal career, the reputation of your family and, remorse, because secretly you really had a good time taking recreational drugs "recreationally" for a brief hedonistic, post-uni, let-your-hair-down, period of your life...
After many days and months in the slammer, fighting the writhing snakes surfacing from your deep unconscious, you paradoxically discover a freedom while in prison. In the midst of the shame-full ordeal, you feel re-born, but without having to convert to a religion for the privilege. A profound happening so exhilarating occurs, you could wank for the Olympics. A nine month sentence passes and you're released... Now obviously, the things you took for granted before – the scent of a rose, the sound of birds, the feeling of sand between your toes and men's bits massaging your palms - are appreciated a hundred fold. The sky is limitless with possibility and everything that crosses your path is for a reason. Fear has been faced, fondled, f***ed and forgotten - or so you think...
Not even a year later...
The Colombian boarder was a nightmare from hell. My post-prison journey in South America kicked off with a familiar feeling - traveling is, in my view, surprisingly much like jail. It's all about contrasts - peaks and troughs – stepping into The Unknown with no seat belt on, suffering endless trials, experiencing random moments of unexpected beauty waiting in the wings. Despite being an Oxford university Law graduate with a few clever quips up my skirt, I'm a geographically challenged Welshie with no common sense and a moustache issue. I seemed to blend in well with the hirsute Venezuelans packing the crickety yellow old school bus like a crowd of over-sized battery hens, just as I'd been able to entertain the lesbian fraternity in Her Majesty's Prison with comical rap performances. But I soon discovered that just as I had to adapt to the "prison language", my two rehearsed words in Spanish - "adios" and "cervesa" - didn't spark a cock-a-doodle-doo of conversation. I was in the trough part of an adventure.
Without warning the bus pulled up to the ominous frontier and Pablo, an Italian stallion artisan with greasy locks and eyes like a bull frog, hopped off leaving his luggage behind? Before I could fight my way through the throng of pot-stomached locals, the bus was bombing at high speed into no man's land..."Argh!" I screamed in an accent that would have made Tom Jones beam,
"Que Pasa? Donde? Adios? Cervesa?", but to no avail.
I reached for my "Learn Spanish in a wink" book and yelled,
"Donde esta la casa de Pepe?"
The driver's response to my obvious torment was to make a series of gesticulations which are impossible to repeat without diagrams and a blow up doll. With an evil snarl, he put his foot on the gas and we continued to bolt along the desert strip from the boarder. He was like Michael Schumacker on amphetamines. After fifteen minutes of gripping the moustache of the woman sat practically on top of me, we entered Maicao.
Without so much as a "ciao", I was pushed off the bus by several podgy hens and both my backpack and the Stallion's luggage was thrown at me from the roof rack onto the dusty road. Showering me with dirt, the bus skidded off into the distance and I found myself surrounded by scarred youths carrying flick knives and an over eager dwarf cab driver carrying a big gun. Shaking, I lit a cigarette - a prison tactic when facing sudden fear. Pretending not to notice my audience, I sat on my backpack and fumbled for the Lonely Planet guide. I read in horror the following warning:
'Don't stay even minutes in the boarder town Maicao. It is a lawless town. Killings are frequent. Get the first bus to Santa Marta...'
It actually felt worse than standing in the dock being sentenced to nine months imprisonment. Dumped at some sort of cross-roads, the streets were in rack and ruin in every direction. Grime littered every wall, pavement and shack. Several joints selling beers were filled with intoxicated villains. Carts and cars drove by churning up more dust. I felt sick. A tank appeared with a few men riding up top in military uniform, pointing serious machine tools at the locals. I put on my shades and lugged on the filter - if the police or army asked to see my passport, a regular request in such countries, I had no 'entrance stamp' - illegally in the country! Worse still I was a vocabulary-disabled "gringa". I didn't know how to order a cab, let alone explain my way out of arrest and imprisonment. It's in such moments the echo of parental sensibleness plagues the brain,
"You are so naive darling. You are so stupid. I told you so. What were you thinking?"
For twenty minutes, that's one thousand two hundred seconds of sitting in a lawless town illegally, I remained in position lugging cigarettes and nervously plaiting my facial hair. Suddenly - praise the Virgin Mary! - Pablo appeared through a mushroom cloud of tank smoke, his eyeballs goggling out of their socket like loose pasta shells. And he had the cheek to shout abuse at me with annoying Italian inflexion.
"You stupid f***ing gringa! You didn't get-a your passport stamped? You're in grandissimo problemo."
I was not about to take any pesto from this spaghetti-slurping, arty farty, twit.
"I'm aware that I have no entrance stamp you silly Wap. Now get in a taxi with me back to the boarder where you can explain in your self-professed fluent Spanish what happened. At least "I" salvaged your luggage..."
It worked. We hailed the dwarf back to to the boarder. Pablo argued with the officials and I got my tits felt for free by the dodgy guard in the cowboy hat. Then midget man drove us back down the same desert road towards Maicao, past shantytowns and enormous billboards advertising Coca-Cola and Nike to the world's impoverished. The army pulled us over and a bunch of matchstick chewing sixteen year olds equipped with M16s, demanded "regalos". Pablo was forced at gun point to hand over some of his silver jewelery and I performed a pee show on the desert highway.
When we finally drove back into Maicao, the dwarf professed that I'd agreed for him to take us all the way to Santa Marta - seven hours away - by car. Pablo translated. I denied. Pablo ranted. The dwarf shouted "$500!". Pablo's eyes started frothing,
"Did you a-negotiate with this dwarf, you silly woman?"
"Does the Pope use condoms you silly wap?"
Immaculate conception emerged in the shape of the bus to Santa Marta. We leaped from our cab into the moving getaway vehicle and the dwarf organized half the town to chase after us. For over a hundred meters on desert highway, a band of thugs relentlessly chased after our bus carrying sticks, knives and bottles. Dust splattered their faces and we breathed a sigh of relief as they disappeared into pea-size shapes on the horizon. The dwarf disappeared from sight before his gun...
A sign on the road read - 'Welcome to Colombia!'
Welcome to Colombia", I internally mused.
The next three months in this misunderstood country transpired to...transport me to some unpredicted peaks...
© G3 1996
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
MUSINGS - CACTUS JUICE!
This is one of a series of articles I wrote under the umbrella title:
EXPERIENCES FROM THE EDGE...
CACTUS JUICE
Vilcabamba is an unusually tranquil village in the far south of Ecuador. It lies in the ‘valley of longevity’, whose inhabitants are rumored to live to one hundred or more. Andean hills branch out across the landscape like ribs from the rib cage. Deep greens, purples, browns and pinks blend one into the other, forward rolling down slopes in a multicolored leotard. A distant cloud forest hovers over Vilcabamba like a hummingbird controlling the weather patterns. This is a sleepy town that periodically stirs, then retires indoors for another rest. It's a stoners wet dream...I was a 23 year old adventure seeker, traveling South America for one year of intrepid exploration and casual hedonism before I would return to my native (damp) UK and begin "the career" as a lawyer, or run a record label, or both?
I found a cheap bamboo hut on stilts that had a ladder leading up to the balcony. I settled down for a month. I soon learned that many travelers never leave Vilcabamba, especially disciples of Johnny Love Wisdom - an American guru who encourages his devoted to get rid of their teeth and eat a strict fructose diet. I had no intention of plucking my canines. My adventure to this time warped place was specifically purposed - to study quantum physics books that I'd laboriously carried around in my backpack for three months, and to trek in the wild. Moreover, one of the promises I made to myself when embarking on this journey to South America - I must be always-open to spontaneous opportunities that might never come my way had I stayed in London and started at a Law firm straight out of university. I rapidly discovered that when one is "open", very unexpected arrivals show up. During my final week in Vilcabamba that challenge manifested on my doorstep in the guise of a shamanic guru (with a little "g")...and I received a drill on cactus exploration.
He shouted up to me from the bottom of the ladder,
“Am I invited to the gig then wild thing?”
I nearly choked on my joint from embarrassment...I was apparently singing, loudly - belting my lungs out to an obnoxious tune. He was all sweaty smiles. The scouse accent threw me a bit - I hadn’t met any Brits for a while and this thirty something, tree-hugging hippie didn't resemble your average shell-suit wearing kleptomaniac from Merseyside.
“Of course you can," I said, "Climb on up!"
I was suddenly face to face with a scraggly haired, skinny man with turquoise eyes shaped like fish-eye lens'. Before introducing himself, he lit a wooden pipe in his left hand and the flame illuminated a seven ribbed cactus tattooed across his perspiring chest.
“My name’s Ise – pronounced Izzie – Ise Real. Greetings fair maiden!”
Izzie's royal iris' opened up like the Queen’s curtains and his huge pupils danced like pissed court jesters. I burst out laughing.
“Izzie Real? Are you taking the piss?”
“Sir Real to you!" he winked, "I'm an organic shaman - in harmony with nature, balancing the forces, tuning on in, like.”
Izzie had a smile like an alligator - reptilian lips with a lot of side teeth. It transpired that this Liverpudlian herptile, wearing nothing but a pair of men's briefs, was under the influence of a powerful hallucinogen that, along with very old people, inhabits the valley of longevity. My ears pricked up as Izzie told me all about the cactus of the four winds. Trichocerus pachanoi, otherwise known as San Pedro, contains mescaline. For over three thousand years, shamans throughout the Andes region have used it for divination and healing.
Izzie's bedraggled, unimpressive appearance was at odds with the eyes - eyes that had crossed through doors of perception and danced in ballrooms of ecstasy. I gazed into the goldfish bowl of his soul and felt that had Aldous Huxley done the same, he may have written Brave New Inner World and grasped infinity in a single glance. It was an odd feeling - the knowledge that a stranger has power over your superficial world, a power capable of getting to the nitty gritty beneath the physical frontiers.
"The cactus gives you clarity, like. We shall take communion together at dawn."
We were really gonna scoff it together? But we'd only just met? I was a tad nervous. Sir Real sensed my anxiety.
“Georgie, the use of natural hallucinogens has been part of human experience for almost as long as..."
He stared into me...Self-conscious, I tried not to blink too many times. Five minutes later, he continued. He didn't blink once.
"Even the master of visions and the priest of prophecy – Nostradamus – was partial to ingesting the naughty nutmeg to heighten his awareness.”
Captivated by his charismatic, albeit greasy, hand gesticulations, I rolled another joint and urged him to continue...
“Sacred hallucinogens were placed on this planet to trigger human evolution. It's dangerous to consume their spirit unless you’re ready. Preparation is important."
Flickering in the candlelight, Izzie's alligator grin suddenly cautioned my enthusiasm. I felt the fear of pre-indulgence paranoia swirl my already lunched-out brain.
“I appreciate what you're saying but surely psychedelics can also make you lose your nut? Did God screw up then? What about those people in the 60s drinking vats filled with trippy liquid - mental hospitals boomed in business...”
Izzie scratched his dripping scalp and I noticed that the seeming extent of his drug-wisdom, contrasted with his ever-youthful countenance, didn't add up. I figured he must be older than thirty, but not a single grey hair groped his head...
“I’m fifty-seven Georgie.”
I spat out a smoke ring...
“How the hell did you know what I was thinking?”
“It’s easy to ride the waves of telepathy when one is attuned by nature to do so. Eating the cactus today wasn’t just to get high. If I wanted a simple trip I’d munch a tab of acid and stay home to watch the Simpsons. This is is a religious experience. San Pedro is sacred, like...It frees the soul!”
The phrase "religious" caused me to quiver and, reading my mind, Sir Real expounded...
“While I was in Mexico, a long time ago, I took the peyote cactus in the desert and an Indian guided me. He told me the white man goes into his church house and talks about Jesus. The Indian goes into his tepee and talks to Jesus."
Izzie's smile stretched beyond alligator proportions.
"It provides a religious experience, for those who are heart-erm-receptive, because it's a tool to communicate with the Divine. These psychedelics are sacred medicines.”
Hmmm? Reality check juncture. Have you ever experienced those moments when time stands still like a comedic statue? - I couldn't believe I was sat on a bamboo balcony, in the heart of South America, smoking pot with a bloke older than my father - a guy who nibbled psychedelics like sweeties and turned out to be an ex-con armed robber / reformed fully fledged shamanic doctor. And he was sweaty, with a reptilian smile.
Like a perfect salesman, Izzie convinced me...coerced?...attracted me to agree to...well...in five hours I was going to slurp the loopy juice with this rather unique scouse imp.
“Ok Izzie, you win. I’ll take cactus communion!”
Izzie chuckled a grin so wide, I could have reached out and touched his wisdoms.
“There’s no winning or losing twinkle toes. There’s only yielding and loving...”
Izzie disappeared into the night and I passed out. At five am I awoke to find a ghostly apparition at the bottom of my bed - Izzie was holding a torch under his chin.
"Snap snap...up you get, like?"
We commenced to climb the rocky, coiling path, which rambled up the mountain. Izzie beat a hand-drum on route. As we ascended, the dawn air became lighter and soon we hit a beautiful green plateau. Izzie led the way through some swaying trees and we passed armies of San Pedro all standing dead still like breathing corpses. I felt my tummy jolt in anticipation. We reached a clearing right on the edge of the mountain. Our spot afforded a panoramic of the entire valley.
“Time to down the holy nectar kiddo. Listen to the heart-beat of my drum."
Izzie removed a transparent bag from a secret pocket inside his underwear. He held it up with the excitement of a child. The liquid was a deep, dark, witch-face green.
It smelt and tasted vile. I pinched my nose and necked back the potent smelling, shampoo-tasting, Cactus of the Four Winds. Ugh! I wanted to vomit immediately but the heave turned into a heavenly floaty sensation, whereupon the drumming suddenly began to be felt from within me. While Izzie sat in lotus position as Buddha the Scouse, feather tucked behind his clammy ear, I spontaneously meditated and danced the next seventeen hours away in ecstatic union with Mother Earth. I didn't even know who she was, but by the end of the "trip" she was my best buddy.
It was early morning and two huge rainbows arched across the sky. Everything appeared to breathe, pulsate and blend together. As insane as it sounds (especially to a chick who had graduated with a BA/MA in Law and is, apart from occasional poetic rants and stoner sessions, predominantly left brain-attuned), I felt a universe open up inside me. I communicated with PLANTS! I morphed with the clouds. My right brain decided to join the party and then both sides of the brain took a vacation. While they were on holiday, I was given a glimpse of no-mind freedom.
“Izzie!” I was almost crying with joy. “There’s no separation between us in reality. We are simply swirling particles in a bleep of space-time. The animate and the inanimate are nothing more than a congerie of particle-waves – super-hologram images. Jesus wept!”
Whether he heard me or not, whether I spoke it out loud or not, only God knows? And as these esoteric secrets and long sought after revelations streamed through my consciousness, I felt the Grace of the Mystery that breathes you and me infill my dumb-ass ego-self.
Izzie's side teeth chattered away as he continued to feed me energy in silence. Occasionally, I would come back from "the other side" to an awareness of the heart-beats jiving from Izzie's drum. I was high as a kite, bird, treetop, cloud, pyramid peak or rig of very tall scaffolding. I was up there, out there, earthed and rooted all at the same time. The valley of longevity - a timeless place where cactus’ spend hundreds of years in the silence of contemplation - had given me a great insight to the edge of normality. How to communicate such a gift?
As night began to lower its charcoal cloak over the sun drenched hills, Izzie started to chant. I was breathing more deeply than I had known possible. At times my breath suspended...It felt like each breath was a gentle wave rolling in and I was the witness-surfer, gliding on the crest of Reality. Izzie kept chanting and for a moment I remembered that I was on a mountain with a strange-stranger, it was getting dark, we had no torch and home might well be a few hours away...
Suddenly, as if to challenge my pinch of concern, a dozen or so fire flies hovered above our heads. Izzie nodded to me and got up to leave. This is when one of the most spectacular, and never-in-a-million-years anticipated, occasions happened. The fire-flies led us down the rocky, winding mountain path. They simply did. This was no hallucination. A group of wandering luminescent pilgrims, shepherded myself and this content sweat-box, all the way to my bamboo hut...
Izzie had not spoken from the moment I consumed the San Pedro earlier that morning. And yet we felt totally connected. Words weren't necessary. Silence really is golden. And in the space of silence so much had been conducted. The chalice of my body-mind had received an overwhelming amount of love. And the indebtedness I felt to this crazy-wise psuedo-sage...well...
I bid farewell to the organic shaman and hoped to meet Sir Real again for another adventure. He gave me a big scouse-like squeeze, more like a moist rugby tackle than a hug, and accused me of causing the first hair on his head to go grey. I waved goodbye,
“See ya around grease bucket, I’ll catch you on the astral plane.”
Izzie Real went on retreat with Johnny Love Wisdom and I took the first bus to the Peruvian boarder, pondering the beauty of an ex-armed robber obsessed with nature. Then eight months later I bumped into him in Mexico...and that is another story...
© G3 July, 1996
EXPERIENCES FROM THE EDGE...
CACTUS JUICE
Vilcabamba is an unusually tranquil village in the far south of Ecuador. It lies in the ‘valley of longevity’, whose inhabitants are rumored to live to one hundred or more. Andean hills branch out across the landscape like ribs from the rib cage. Deep greens, purples, browns and pinks blend one into the other, forward rolling down slopes in a multicolored leotard. A distant cloud forest hovers over Vilcabamba like a hummingbird controlling the weather patterns. This is a sleepy town that periodically stirs, then retires indoors for another rest. It's a stoners wet dream...I was a 23 year old adventure seeker, traveling South America for one year of intrepid exploration and casual hedonism before I would return to my native (damp) UK and begin "the career" as a lawyer, or run a record label, or both?
I found a cheap bamboo hut on stilts that had a ladder leading up to the balcony. I settled down for a month. I soon learned that many travelers never leave Vilcabamba, especially disciples of Johnny Love Wisdom - an American guru who encourages his devoted to get rid of their teeth and eat a strict fructose diet. I had no intention of plucking my canines. My adventure to this time warped place was specifically purposed - to study quantum physics books that I'd laboriously carried around in my backpack for three months, and to trek in the wild. Moreover, one of the promises I made to myself when embarking on this journey to South America - I must be always-open to spontaneous opportunities that might never come my way had I stayed in London and started at a Law firm straight out of university. I rapidly discovered that when one is "open", very unexpected arrivals show up. During my final week in Vilcabamba that challenge manifested on my doorstep in the guise of a shamanic guru (with a little "g")...and I received a drill on cactus exploration.
He shouted up to me from the bottom of the ladder,
“Am I invited to the gig then wild thing?”
I nearly choked on my joint from embarrassment...I was apparently singing, loudly - belting my lungs out to an obnoxious tune. He was all sweaty smiles. The scouse accent threw me a bit - I hadn’t met any Brits for a while and this thirty something, tree-hugging hippie didn't resemble your average shell-suit wearing kleptomaniac from Merseyside.
“Of course you can," I said, "Climb on up!"
I was suddenly face to face with a scraggly haired, skinny man with turquoise eyes shaped like fish-eye lens'. Before introducing himself, he lit a wooden pipe in his left hand and the flame illuminated a seven ribbed cactus tattooed across his perspiring chest.
“My name’s Ise – pronounced Izzie – Ise Real. Greetings fair maiden!”
Izzie's royal iris' opened up like the Queen’s curtains and his huge pupils danced like pissed court jesters. I burst out laughing.
“Izzie Real? Are you taking the piss?”
“Sir Real to you!" he winked, "I'm an organic shaman - in harmony with nature, balancing the forces, tuning on in, like.”
Izzie had a smile like an alligator - reptilian lips with a lot of side teeth. It transpired that this Liverpudlian herptile, wearing nothing but a pair of men's briefs, was under the influence of a powerful hallucinogen that, along with very old people, inhabits the valley of longevity. My ears pricked up as Izzie told me all about the cactus of the four winds. Trichocerus pachanoi, otherwise known as San Pedro, contains mescaline. For over three thousand years, shamans throughout the Andes region have used it for divination and healing.
Izzie's bedraggled, unimpressive appearance was at odds with the eyes - eyes that had crossed through doors of perception and danced in ballrooms of ecstasy. I gazed into the goldfish bowl of his soul and felt that had Aldous Huxley done the same, he may have written Brave New Inner World and grasped infinity in a single glance. It was an odd feeling - the knowledge that a stranger has power over your superficial world, a power capable of getting to the nitty gritty beneath the physical frontiers.
"The cactus gives you clarity, like. We shall take communion together at dawn."
We were really gonna scoff it together? But we'd only just met? I was a tad nervous. Sir Real sensed my anxiety.
“Georgie, the use of natural hallucinogens has been part of human experience for almost as long as..."
He stared into me...Self-conscious, I tried not to blink too many times. Five minutes later, he continued. He didn't blink once.
"Even the master of visions and the priest of prophecy – Nostradamus – was partial to ingesting the naughty nutmeg to heighten his awareness.”
Captivated by his charismatic, albeit greasy, hand gesticulations, I rolled another joint and urged him to continue...
“Sacred hallucinogens were placed on this planet to trigger human evolution. It's dangerous to consume their spirit unless you’re ready. Preparation is important."
Flickering in the candlelight, Izzie's alligator grin suddenly cautioned my enthusiasm. I felt the fear of pre-indulgence paranoia swirl my already lunched-out brain.
“I appreciate what you're saying but surely psychedelics can also make you lose your nut? Did God screw up then? What about those people in the 60s drinking vats filled with trippy liquid - mental hospitals boomed in business...”
Izzie scratched his dripping scalp and I noticed that the seeming extent of his drug-wisdom, contrasted with his ever-youthful countenance, didn't add up. I figured he must be older than thirty, but not a single grey hair groped his head...
“I’m fifty-seven Georgie.”
I spat out a smoke ring...
“How the hell did you know what I was thinking?”
“It’s easy to ride the waves of telepathy when one is attuned by nature to do so. Eating the cactus today wasn’t just to get high. If I wanted a simple trip I’d munch a tab of acid and stay home to watch the Simpsons. This is is a religious experience. San Pedro is sacred, like...It frees the soul!”
The phrase "religious" caused me to quiver and, reading my mind, Sir Real expounded...
“While I was in Mexico, a long time ago, I took the peyote cactus in the desert and an Indian guided me. He told me the white man goes into his church house and talks about Jesus. The Indian goes into his tepee and talks to Jesus."
Izzie's smile stretched beyond alligator proportions.
"It provides a religious experience, for those who are heart-erm-receptive, because it's a tool to communicate with the Divine. These psychedelics are sacred medicines.”
Hmmm? Reality check juncture. Have you ever experienced those moments when time stands still like a comedic statue? - I couldn't believe I was sat on a bamboo balcony, in the heart of South America, smoking pot with a bloke older than my father - a guy who nibbled psychedelics like sweeties and turned out to be an ex-con armed robber / reformed fully fledged shamanic doctor. And he was sweaty, with a reptilian smile.
Like a perfect salesman, Izzie convinced me...coerced?...attracted me to agree to...well...in five hours I was going to slurp the loopy juice with this rather unique scouse imp.
“Ok Izzie, you win. I’ll take cactus communion!”
Izzie chuckled a grin so wide, I could have reached out and touched his wisdoms.
“There’s no winning or losing twinkle toes. There’s only yielding and loving...”
Izzie disappeared into the night and I passed out. At five am I awoke to find a ghostly apparition at the bottom of my bed - Izzie was holding a torch under his chin.
"Snap snap...up you get, like?"
We commenced to climb the rocky, coiling path, which rambled up the mountain. Izzie beat a hand-drum on route. As we ascended, the dawn air became lighter and soon we hit a beautiful green plateau. Izzie led the way through some swaying trees and we passed armies of San Pedro all standing dead still like breathing corpses. I felt my tummy jolt in anticipation. We reached a clearing right on the edge of the mountain. Our spot afforded a panoramic of the entire valley.
“Time to down the holy nectar kiddo. Listen to the heart-beat of my drum."
Izzie removed a transparent bag from a secret pocket inside his underwear. He held it up with the excitement of a child. The liquid was a deep, dark, witch-face green.
It smelt and tasted vile. I pinched my nose and necked back the potent smelling, shampoo-tasting, Cactus of the Four Winds. Ugh! I wanted to vomit immediately but the heave turned into a heavenly floaty sensation, whereupon the drumming suddenly began to be felt from within me. While Izzie sat in lotus position as Buddha the Scouse, feather tucked behind his clammy ear, I spontaneously meditated and danced the next seventeen hours away in ecstatic union with Mother Earth. I didn't even know who she was, but by the end of the "trip" she was my best buddy.
It was early morning and two huge rainbows arched across the sky. Everything appeared to breathe, pulsate and blend together. As insane as it sounds (especially to a chick who had graduated with a BA/MA in Law and is, apart from occasional poetic rants and stoner sessions, predominantly left brain-attuned), I felt a universe open up inside me. I communicated with PLANTS! I morphed with the clouds. My right brain decided to join the party and then both sides of the brain took a vacation. While they were on holiday, I was given a glimpse of no-mind freedom.
“Izzie!” I was almost crying with joy. “There’s no separation between us in reality. We are simply swirling particles in a bleep of space-time. The animate and the inanimate are nothing more than a congerie of particle-waves – super-hologram images. Jesus wept!”
Whether he heard me or not, whether I spoke it out loud or not, only God knows? And as these esoteric secrets and long sought after revelations streamed through my consciousness, I felt the Grace of the Mystery that breathes you and me infill my dumb-ass ego-self.
Izzie's side teeth chattered away as he continued to feed me energy in silence. Occasionally, I would come back from "the other side" to an awareness of the heart-beats jiving from Izzie's drum. I was high as a kite, bird, treetop, cloud, pyramid peak or rig of very tall scaffolding. I was up there, out there, earthed and rooted all at the same time. The valley of longevity - a timeless place where cactus’ spend hundreds of years in the silence of contemplation - had given me a great insight to the edge of normality. How to communicate such a gift?
As night began to lower its charcoal cloak over the sun drenched hills, Izzie started to chant. I was breathing more deeply than I had known possible. At times my breath suspended...It felt like each breath was a gentle wave rolling in and I was the witness-surfer, gliding on the crest of Reality. Izzie kept chanting and for a moment I remembered that I was on a mountain with a strange-stranger, it was getting dark, we had no torch and home might well be a few hours away...
Suddenly, as if to challenge my pinch of concern, a dozen or so fire flies hovered above our heads. Izzie nodded to me and got up to leave. This is when one of the most spectacular, and never-in-a-million-years anticipated, occasions happened. The fire-flies led us down the rocky, winding mountain path. They simply did. This was no hallucination. A group of wandering luminescent pilgrims, shepherded myself and this content sweat-box, all the way to my bamboo hut...
Izzie had not spoken from the moment I consumed the San Pedro earlier that morning. And yet we felt totally connected. Words weren't necessary. Silence really is golden. And in the space of silence so much had been conducted. The chalice of my body-mind had received an overwhelming amount of love. And the indebtedness I felt to this crazy-wise psuedo-sage...well...
I bid farewell to the organic shaman and hoped to meet Sir Real again for another adventure. He gave me a big scouse-like squeeze, more like a moist rugby tackle than a hug, and accused me of causing the first hair on his head to go grey. I waved goodbye,
“See ya around grease bucket, I’ll catch you on the astral plane.”
Izzie Real went on retreat with Johnny Love Wisdom and I took the first bus to the Peruvian boarder, pondering the beauty of an ex-armed robber obsessed with nature. Then eight months later I bumped into him in Mexico...and that is another story...
© G3 July, 1996
MUSINGS - TRIUMPH IN TIBET!
This is one of a series of articles I wrote under the umbrella title:
EXPERIENCES FROM THE EDGE...
TRIUMPH IN TIBET!
TIBET is land of saints and bandits, indescribable beauty and incalculable hardships. Its sci-fi landscape - countless snow peaks fringing Mad Max sand dunes; spongy emerald hills rolling into ocre-mauve rocky sculptures that bow to the ancient ruins of once flourishing mustard colored kingdoms; flat-stretches smothered in purple flowers and leaping bunnies that blanket the earth as far as the eye can see; the roof of the world where a brontosaurus crossing your path wouldn't appear strange; the land of snows where madly-sane tribal people with purple chapped cheeks and eyes that bark, all at once scare and allure you; a place where you can see dusty-rose mountains bounce like mirages on the horizon 100 miles ahead; a shambala in the sky filled with celestial turquoise lakes, the legacy of monasteries too rich to depict with words and all under the gaze of a Mighty Everest...
This special, mystical land is BREATH-taking...not least because it's mostly 4500m above sea level. Yep - you stroll, drive, run, wank, dance and play at the height of planes swooping over European skies. Every step is an effort not to pass out. Headaches, nausea, nose bleeds, fainting, fevers and fatigue are all common symptoms at this socially unacceptable altitude. Garlic is man's best friend. Oxygen masks, nasal sprays and intravenous glucose hits are all highly recommended.
My travel buddy Peta and I were at the last leg of our journey - we had spent six months capturing our adventure on camera from the banks of India's sacred Ganges, through the jungles of Nepal to the peaks of...this nauseatingly beautiful hell- paradise. The first six days of driving from Kathmandu to Lhasa saw Peta and a couple of German Buddhists puke and squirm. I managed to keep it together enough to shoot scenics for the show, while feeling like I was about to black out into oblivion.
We encountered a great test to our fear in Lhasa as we were surrounded by dozens of Chinese officials in army attire who chose to follow and film us at His Holiness The Dalai Lama's former palace - the Potala. We ducked into a tunnel - there are over 1000 rooms in the Potala - and suddenly found ourselves in the private chamber of the 13th Dalai Lama, not open to the public...then we got the hell outta there. The next day ten hours worth of our footage was smuggled out by an Auzzie lawyer.
Just before departing for the peak of our pilgrimage, Peta left to film the former palace of His Holiness Karmapa Lama. I had been feeling progressively weaker so I stayed back with a chamber pot and some garlic. Then, suddenly, I fainted on our hotel balcony. It is the first and only time in my life I've had my eyes wide open and seen nothing but pitch black. I now understand the term 'black out'. The next thing I remember, I was on a drip and breathing apparatus in Lhasa's Chinese 'hospital for the people'. For ten hours I lay in a bed wondering if I was going to die. No one spoke English. I had no idea what medication was being pumped into my veins. Too weak to struggle, I remember recalling the Great Sage Adi Da's instruction in his book 'Easy Death'. Had it not been for the peace that filled my body from that recollection, I swear my heart would have leaped from my body in fear. Having heard myself cock-confidently rap that I don't feel a shed of fear about death many times over in my dumb teenage life...when the possibility of it...unexpectedly hits you...well...I yelled for a chamber pot...My fear was probably escalated by the Chairman Mao clone having his oxygen treatment in the opposite bed and the young Tibetan girl a metre away, screaming because her spleen had exploded...
A day later and we begun the testing long journey across the size of Western Europe on a non-existent road. In my fragile state, nine hour days driving in the back of an oil truck with the smell of diesel creeping into my lungs, and then ending each day camping the cold nights by remote rivers where wild nomads attacked my facial hirsute...well, it was humorous endurance. They say that it's the journey that counts and not the destination...wrong! There are exceptions to the rule. I couldn't wait to reach the holiest of holy pilgrim sites...the infamous Hindu-hailed, Buddhist-beloved, Jain-jollied and Bon-boasted - 'Mount Kailash' - a Shambala hot spot circumnabulated by thousands of devotional pilgrims of every faith and creed, all striving for...enLIGHTenment...
Mount Kailash...OH ME OH MY! Kailash resembles the imaginary ice cream you want to lick forever. Standing in the spotlight - a lusty movie star on the red carpet - Kailash out-celebrities the backdrop of several awesome snowy peaks like a Masai Warrior's loin-tackle would a bunch of Japanese tourists in a police penis line-up. Kailash is Einstein, Da Vinci, Jesus, Mohammed, Gotama, Lennon, Mozart and Marley. Kailash restored my health instantly - like a light going ON...BINGO...
Cold, rain, wind, farts, garlic breath, altitude and attitude sickness aside, the sun set gloriously and we camped by a beautiful river that eventually flows into the Mother Ganges many thousands of miles away. The following day was spectacular - Sagadawa - Buddha's birthday. The energy was electric, even if Buddha did fail to show for the party...
(There were rumors Buddha was hanging out with the Beastie Boys and Richard Gere at a hamster fest in chutneyferretsville, but the rumors were soon dispelled when a rather serious German mantra-mumbling, born-again-Buddhist, announced that he'd been spotted with Elvis and Jim Morrison at a roadside cafe in Patagonia. The three legends were seen studying the esoteric significance of the double 'L' patterning the Welsh language. Apparently, Buddha sung their national anthem like a true Welshman, to the extent that the small Taffy community inhabiting this remote area of the Andes invited Lord Plenty to be their mayor...and several sheep grinned at the prospect...)
...The party was infectiously jam packed with hundreds of feisty Tibetan pilgrims and western voyeurs all waiting for a very tall sacred pole erection at the appropriate hour. Tibetan timing, as I soon discovered, is as accurate as a politician's promise. We waited patiently...and waited...for the enormous, flag'n bell adorned wooden phallus to stand to attention...but it refused to get a woody. In an attempt to drum out the dwindling energy, Peat and I ran around causing trouble - laughing with the limbless, sharing jokes with monks and missfits, kissing the brave...and eventually with a heave and a ho and a heave-ho...the pole went up...Wow! Powerful stuff...it didn't lean to the left, nor the right, which (apparently) is profoundly auspicious...
Having received the blessing of Buddha's birthday rod, we departed for our four day circumnabulation of Kailash with the knowledge that Buddha was happy - the one-pointedness of his heavenly todger being a cosmic sign that things were just dandy. The 'kora' was tough. We were to climb to nearly 6000m, sleeping in icy conditions in a tent that we'd rather haphazardly rented from two stoned imbeciles in Nepal with no front door and a shortage of pegs. We fixed my spoon to hold the guy ropes down and used Peat's sarong as an entrance flap. That night, I had the most powerful experience of my life to date - a heart-expansive, celestial run-in that is almost indescribable...
Suddenly, as I lay curled up in my sleeping bag, I lost bodily self-awareness. Any sense of "I" and "me" got swallowed by the magnaminous feeling-scape of the holy mount. The 'infinity-feeling' kept expanding until there was nothing but a pulsing vastness of blissful thoughtless feeling...and it didn't stop...it kept expanding to the extent that my ordinary association with the 'body-mind' disappeared completely - there was simply NO SEPARATION. This was not an intellectual assumption or drug-induced insight, but a direct, tacit and tangible first hand REALIZATION, in the present, as a living Truth. Paradoxically, "I" was all at once the limitlessness of outer space, my immediate environment, family, friends, the sound of the rushing river, the expanse of the entire Entirety in fact! I lay enveloped, caressed, kissed and fucked in an orgasmic 'witness position'...when gradually the Realization receded and I returned to ordinary feeling-awareness, it became obvious that in every breathing moment, I choose to dissociate from the Bliss of Reality, that it is an activity that "I am DO-ing", that I must take responsibility for...At this point, there was no way I could sleep! - I was pumped with so much energy I felt like I could run to 6000m. I left the tent and filmed the moonlit sky...it remains one of the most precious nights, etched into my heart...just me...standing there engulfed in the presence of...dwarfed in the presence of...alone, wired, alive, ecstatic! The chick who was laid up in hospital five days earlier was now at the roof of the world. And I had received an unspeakable vision, a gift, a blessing.
On day two, having not slept a wink, but still pumped with the 'infinity-energy' of my previous nights encounter, Peat and I celebrated by dressing up in...well, I wore a Chinese leopard-skinned whore outfit with four inch platform heels and Peat donned a black wig and purple heels. We climbed the hill in front of Kailash's north face and performed a trippy sketch where an Essex gal (Peat) and a Welsh slut (moi) have miss-read their holiday brochure and have somehow ended up in Tibet, thinking they were literally going to MOUNT Kailash...(Kailash cannot be mounted, only circumnabulated)...We prostrated in our fancy attire, twiddled our mala beads, sung 'Wham' songs, played an intellectually-challenged game of 'Scrabble' and drank bite-size Baileys before retiring to our tents for another night of freezing astral travel...Another day at the office.
The following day we climbed to the height of the Mount Kailash victory 'pass', breathless and exhausted, only to stumble upon a Yanky playing John Lennon's 'Imagine' on his guitar. This is one of my all time favorite childhood songs. I whipped out the camera and sung along between tears. Bright prayer flags blowing in a sublime breeze, Peat and I did a poem-rap to camera and then continued our 12 hour hike to a monastery. The destination, the journey, the climb, the presence...sweet as Grace...
After visiting the fantastic 'Guge Kingdom' - Western Tibet's spectacular ancient city - we bathed in the hot sulphur springs on the shores of Lake Manasarovar - the female 'Yoni' counterpart to Mount Kailash's male 'lingam'. Out of the blue, I suddenly felt a swoon of the mysterious presence that had intoxicated me at Kailash. That evening the same Divine Feeling that had revealed itself to 'ego-reinforcing George' completely overwhelmed me again. I was transported to the realm of all-expansive feeling and this time I felt the concentration of infinity rest at the heart. It went on for almost an hour. Afterwards I was charged with such an extraordinary energy, like an energy-mirror - I felt the pain of the ego-knot I tighten with my every reactive emotion, dissociative activity and separative motives. It became clear to me that there is nothing more important than consciously allowing this Mysterious Process space to unfurl its petals. I realized that I had a responsibility to develop the muscle of sadhana , to engage an ever-increasing dedication to spiritual practice in the midst of my hectic human life...
The penultimate day of our time in the wild - this inhospitable, remote, snowy, scorchingly hot, bizarre, bewildering land that is Tibet - and our camera batteries finally died. After driving through nine rainbows, our final capture was a double rainbow arching its hues over the too-beautiful-to-describe landscape. I wept. Whilst playing frisbee with some Tibetan children, vagrants in this no-map-place, the heavens opened...And silver light rained onto our gathering. We 'wrapped up' our filming - sixty hours of whacked-out weirdness. Speechless, enraptured, exhausted, blissed-out, sun burnt, snow burnt, blistered, gob smacked, god-smacked, joyous and jolted - Tibet has provided a teaching I shall never forget...but, having felt too much, I dare not return.
© G3 JULY, 2000
AN ASIDE
That the profundity and depth of revelation increases...happiness soars...and a sensitivity, tolerance, compassion and undulating desire to Realize the Divine Mystery intensifies the more the disciplines of a truly religious life are practiced with seriously kick ass, taboo-bustin', True Humour...well, those were the heart-seeds planted during my time in Tibet... That Realising Truth is possible even for a Westerner surrounded by material comforts and all the ephemeral illusions of the conditional world - that all of us have the potential to become Brightness Itself - has been rammed up my skirt and my clit has been quivering with excitement ever since...Tidy!
EXPERIENCES FROM THE EDGE...
TRIUMPH IN TIBET!
TIBET is land of saints and bandits, indescribable beauty and incalculable hardships. Its sci-fi landscape - countless snow peaks fringing Mad Max sand dunes; spongy emerald hills rolling into ocre-mauve rocky sculptures that bow to the ancient ruins of once flourishing mustard colored kingdoms; flat-stretches smothered in purple flowers and leaping bunnies that blanket the earth as far as the eye can see; the roof of the world where a brontosaurus crossing your path wouldn't appear strange; the land of snows where madly-sane tribal people with purple chapped cheeks and eyes that bark, all at once scare and allure you; a place where you can see dusty-rose mountains bounce like mirages on the horizon 100 miles ahead; a shambala in the sky filled with celestial turquoise lakes, the legacy of monasteries too rich to depict with words and all under the gaze of a Mighty Everest...
This special, mystical land is BREATH-taking...not least because it's mostly 4500m above sea level. Yep - you stroll, drive, run, wank, dance and play at the height of planes swooping over European skies. Every step is an effort not to pass out. Headaches, nausea, nose bleeds, fainting, fevers and fatigue are all common symptoms at this socially unacceptable altitude. Garlic is man's best friend. Oxygen masks, nasal sprays and intravenous glucose hits are all highly recommended.
My travel buddy Peta and I were at the last leg of our journey - we had spent six months capturing our adventure on camera from the banks of India's sacred Ganges, through the jungles of Nepal to the peaks of...this nauseatingly beautiful hell- paradise. The first six days of driving from Kathmandu to Lhasa saw Peta and a couple of German Buddhists puke and squirm. I managed to keep it together enough to shoot scenics for the show, while feeling like I was about to black out into oblivion.
We encountered a great test to our fear in Lhasa as we were surrounded by dozens of Chinese officials in army attire who chose to follow and film us at His Holiness The Dalai Lama's former palace - the Potala. We ducked into a tunnel - there are over 1000 rooms in the Potala - and suddenly found ourselves in the private chamber of the 13th Dalai Lama, not open to the public...then we got the hell outta there. The next day ten hours worth of our footage was smuggled out by an Auzzie lawyer.
Just before departing for the peak of our pilgrimage, Peta left to film the former palace of His Holiness Karmapa Lama. I had been feeling progressively weaker so I stayed back with a chamber pot and some garlic. Then, suddenly, I fainted on our hotel balcony. It is the first and only time in my life I've had my eyes wide open and seen nothing but pitch black. I now understand the term 'black out'. The next thing I remember, I was on a drip and breathing apparatus in Lhasa's Chinese 'hospital for the people'. For ten hours I lay in a bed wondering if I was going to die. No one spoke English. I had no idea what medication was being pumped into my veins. Too weak to struggle, I remember recalling the Great Sage Adi Da's instruction in his book 'Easy Death'. Had it not been for the peace that filled my body from that recollection, I swear my heart would have leaped from my body in fear. Having heard myself cock-confidently rap that I don't feel a shed of fear about death many times over in my dumb teenage life...when the possibility of it...unexpectedly hits you...well...I yelled for a chamber pot...My fear was probably escalated by the Chairman Mao clone having his oxygen treatment in the opposite bed and the young Tibetan girl a metre away, screaming because her spleen had exploded...
A day later and we begun the testing long journey across the size of Western Europe on a non-existent road. In my fragile state, nine hour days driving in the back of an oil truck with the smell of diesel creeping into my lungs, and then ending each day camping the cold nights by remote rivers where wild nomads attacked my facial hirsute...well, it was humorous endurance. They say that it's the journey that counts and not the destination...wrong! There are exceptions to the rule. I couldn't wait to reach the holiest of holy pilgrim sites...the infamous Hindu-hailed, Buddhist-beloved, Jain-jollied and Bon-boasted - 'Mount Kailash' - a Shambala hot spot circumnabulated by thousands of devotional pilgrims of every faith and creed, all striving for...enLIGHTenment...
Mount Kailash...OH ME OH MY! Kailash resembles the imaginary ice cream you want to lick forever. Standing in the spotlight - a lusty movie star on the red carpet - Kailash out-celebrities the backdrop of several awesome snowy peaks like a Masai Warrior's loin-tackle would a bunch of Japanese tourists in a police penis line-up. Kailash is Einstein, Da Vinci, Jesus, Mohammed, Gotama, Lennon, Mozart and Marley. Kailash restored my health instantly - like a light going ON...BINGO...
Cold, rain, wind, farts, garlic breath, altitude and attitude sickness aside, the sun set gloriously and we camped by a beautiful river that eventually flows into the Mother Ganges many thousands of miles away. The following day was spectacular - Sagadawa - Buddha's birthday. The energy was electric, even if Buddha did fail to show for the party...
(There were rumors Buddha was hanging out with the Beastie Boys and Richard Gere at a hamster fest in chutneyferretsville, but the rumors were soon dispelled when a rather serious German mantra-mumbling, born-again-Buddhist, announced that he'd been spotted with Elvis and Jim Morrison at a roadside cafe in Patagonia. The three legends were seen studying the esoteric significance of the double 'L' patterning the Welsh language. Apparently, Buddha sung their national anthem like a true Welshman, to the extent that the small Taffy community inhabiting this remote area of the Andes invited Lord Plenty to be their mayor...and several sheep grinned at the prospect...)
...The party was infectiously jam packed with hundreds of feisty Tibetan pilgrims and western voyeurs all waiting for a very tall sacred pole erection at the appropriate hour. Tibetan timing, as I soon discovered, is as accurate as a politician's promise. We waited patiently...and waited...for the enormous, flag'n bell adorned wooden phallus to stand to attention...but it refused to get a woody. In an attempt to drum out the dwindling energy, Peat and I ran around causing trouble - laughing with the limbless, sharing jokes with monks and missfits, kissing the brave...and eventually with a heave and a ho and a heave-ho...the pole went up...Wow! Powerful stuff...it didn't lean to the left, nor the right, which (apparently) is profoundly auspicious...
Having received the blessing of Buddha's birthday rod, we departed for our four day circumnabulation of Kailash with the knowledge that Buddha was happy - the one-pointedness of his heavenly todger being a cosmic sign that things were just dandy. The 'kora' was tough. We were to climb to nearly 6000m, sleeping in icy conditions in a tent that we'd rather haphazardly rented from two stoned imbeciles in Nepal with no front door and a shortage of pegs. We fixed my spoon to hold the guy ropes down and used Peat's sarong as an entrance flap. That night, I had the most powerful experience of my life to date - a heart-expansive, celestial run-in that is almost indescribable...
Suddenly, as I lay curled up in my sleeping bag, I lost bodily self-awareness. Any sense of "I" and "me" got swallowed by the magnaminous feeling-scape of the holy mount. The 'infinity-feeling' kept expanding until there was nothing but a pulsing vastness of blissful thoughtless feeling...and it didn't stop...it kept expanding to the extent that my ordinary association with the 'body-mind' disappeared completely - there was simply NO SEPARATION. This was not an intellectual assumption or drug-induced insight, but a direct, tacit and tangible first hand REALIZATION, in the present, as a living Truth. Paradoxically, "I" was all at once the limitlessness of outer space, my immediate environment, family, friends, the sound of the rushing river, the expanse of the entire Entirety in fact! I lay enveloped, caressed, kissed and fucked in an orgasmic 'witness position'...when gradually the Realization receded and I returned to ordinary feeling-awareness, it became obvious that in every breathing moment, I choose to dissociate from the Bliss of Reality, that it is an activity that "I am DO-ing", that I must take responsibility for...At this point, there was no way I could sleep! - I was pumped with so much energy I felt like I could run to 6000m. I left the tent and filmed the moonlit sky...it remains one of the most precious nights, etched into my heart...just me...standing there engulfed in the presence of...dwarfed in the presence of...alone, wired, alive, ecstatic! The chick who was laid up in hospital five days earlier was now at the roof of the world. And I had received an unspeakable vision, a gift, a blessing.
On day two, having not slept a wink, but still pumped with the 'infinity-energy' of my previous nights encounter, Peat and I celebrated by dressing up in...well, I wore a Chinese leopard-skinned whore outfit with four inch platform heels and Peat donned a black wig and purple heels. We climbed the hill in front of Kailash's north face and performed a trippy sketch where an Essex gal (Peat) and a Welsh slut (moi) have miss-read their holiday brochure and have somehow ended up in Tibet, thinking they were literally going to MOUNT Kailash...(Kailash cannot be mounted, only circumnabulated)...We prostrated in our fancy attire, twiddled our mala beads, sung 'Wham' songs, played an intellectually-challenged game of 'Scrabble' and drank bite-size Baileys before retiring to our tents for another night of freezing astral travel...Another day at the office.
The following day we climbed to the height of the Mount Kailash victory 'pass', breathless and exhausted, only to stumble upon a Yanky playing John Lennon's 'Imagine' on his guitar. This is one of my all time favorite childhood songs. I whipped out the camera and sung along between tears. Bright prayer flags blowing in a sublime breeze, Peat and I did a poem-rap to camera and then continued our 12 hour hike to a monastery. The destination, the journey, the climb, the presence...sweet as Grace...
After visiting the fantastic 'Guge Kingdom' - Western Tibet's spectacular ancient city - we bathed in the hot sulphur springs on the shores of Lake Manasarovar - the female 'Yoni' counterpart to Mount Kailash's male 'lingam'. Out of the blue, I suddenly felt a swoon of the mysterious presence that had intoxicated me at Kailash. That evening the same Divine Feeling that had revealed itself to 'ego-reinforcing George' completely overwhelmed me again. I was transported to the realm of all-expansive feeling and this time I felt the concentration of infinity rest at the heart. It went on for almost an hour. Afterwards I was charged with such an extraordinary energy, like an energy-mirror - I felt the pain of the ego-knot I tighten with my every reactive emotion, dissociative activity and separative motives. It became clear to me that there is nothing more important than consciously allowing this Mysterious Process space to unfurl its petals. I realized that I had a responsibility to develop the muscle of sadhana , to engage an ever-increasing dedication to spiritual practice in the midst of my hectic human life...
The penultimate day of our time in the wild - this inhospitable, remote, snowy, scorchingly hot, bizarre, bewildering land that is Tibet - and our camera batteries finally died. After driving through nine rainbows, our final capture was a double rainbow arching its hues over the too-beautiful-to-describe landscape. I wept. Whilst playing frisbee with some Tibetan children, vagrants in this no-map-place, the heavens opened...And silver light rained onto our gathering. We 'wrapped up' our filming - sixty hours of whacked-out weirdness. Speechless, enraptured, exhausted, blissed-out, sun burnt, snow burnt, blistered, gob smacked, god-smacked, joyous and jolted - Tibet has provided a teaching I shall never forget...but, having felt too much, I dare not return.
© G3 JULY, 2000
AN ASIDE
That the profundity and depth of revelation increases...happiness soars...and a sensitivity, tolerance, compassion and undulating desire to Realize the Divine Mystery intensifies the more the disciplines of a truly religious life are practiced with seriously kick ass, taboo-bustin', True Humour...well, those were the heart-seeds planted during my time in Tibet... That Realising Truth is possible even for a Westerner surrounded by material comforts and all the ephemeral illusions of the conditional world - that all of us have the potential to become Brightness Itself - has been rammed up my skirt and my clit has been quivering with excitement ever since...Tidy!
MUSINGS - ESOTERIC EPISTLE 2000...
"It is the most important function of art and science to awaken this [cosmic religious] feeling and keep it alive in those who are capable of it."
- Albert Einstein, The World As I See It
Latest developments. As Autumn creeps into a crisp post Summer swoon, the leaves of my mind are colored with an array of emotions. I feel into my personal cocoon of daunting change and witness a battle between 'struggle' and 'surrender' playing out in the heart-space gymnasium. Metamorphosis-moments are always painful, but it's the kind of pain that liberates - a yogic pain pushing one beyond physical limitations; a Tao pain revealing life paradoxes that release the grasping mind; an Autumnal pain whose often icy bite also brings the magic of color and transformed geometry.
I embrace this pain as a witness to my own cocoon ordeal. I see the yellows of ego-"I" crunch beneath my feet on the London sidewalk. The reds of fiery purification consume my attention. The oranges of holy chaos possess my crown. The browns of attachment and aversion eats at my gut. The ochres of passion squirm in my loins. The mauves of delusion stare at me from every bill board professing product-salvation. The fading greens of passing youth...I smile inwardly because I know, deep down in the depths of my...erm...consciousness, that it's in the midst of Autumnal alchemy that the lead of bullshit life patterns and reactions transmute into the gold of transformed tendencies and greater equanimity. Yep! It is only through yielding to the always-opportunity for seasonal change that real growth can be achieved. And real growth always awards an improved happiness.
Happiness, a fragile branch on the sturdy trunk of life, is the inevitable fruit-bearer for all who transcend (apparently) negative life concerns. The more one participates in the 'going beyond', the swifter one is armed to combat 'tricky stuff' that might ordinarily be perceived as hardcore hellishness or insurmountable life turmoil...hmmm...I feel like climbing a tree and tasting the scent of an orange.
So how goes the leaves of your mind?- Are they grasping to branches of (deemed) 'security' and 'safe' choices or do they let go, fall away, and prostrate at the feet of the Great Tree? Are we allowing the Master Giver of Wise-dom to release us from the bondage of presumed separation or do we slave to stay green in this strange and uncomfortable mortal illusion? Do we have the determination to walk the path of the warrior? Can we happily consent to changing colors and shifting shapes - the stripping away of old habits, the almighty fall through and beyond the well of our own created fears, the holy jumping off place...Can we truly fall awake in love, deeper and deeper, until we are Autumn-kissed leaves decorating the ground at the Master's lotus feet? Will we surrender to such sweet Grace?
Such questions are posed in the cocoon of my heart...And as potential butterfly wings wrestle with the pain of the clinging caterpillar - its tight grip on an assumed self-identity strangles the emerging flight vessel - the m-fields governing all of space-time's holographic intercourse shudder...to deny such flight, to ignore the beauty of ego-renunciation, to shun the prowess of butterfly expansiveness IS... madness!
There is a saying in Tibetan Buddhism - "What is like a smelly fart that, although invisible, is obvious?...Ones faults, that are precisely as obvious as the effort made to hide them."
In my cocoon of heart-wounding-insight, there is a G3 saying, rather more obvious than a Zen koan, but less crude than a Viz annual - "What is moist like a panty hamster that, although occasionally whiffsome, provides unimaginable bliss to all parties? -
...The Great Mystery, whose daunting Unknown is, in fact, Unqualified Ecstasy when suckled, nibbled, tasted, fondled, teased, tickled and f***ed senseless."
...Hmmmm? If any of you reading this feel that you're presently enduring a skin shedding, life changing, re-evaluating, ego-confronting, pattern distorting, cocoon-inhabiting, bout of POSITIVE disillusionment...remember that WE ARE, without a shadow of a doubt and a sneeze of discomfort, in fact - the butterfly, the fart and the panty hamster. Ya Dig it? ... Big up respect to the hardcore massive who jail break out of their cocoon of fears and have the guts to fly through The Great Mystery's theatrical, and very beefy, curtains...
GOD BLESS!
© G3 September 2000
- Albert Einstein, The World As I See It
Latest developments. As Autumn creeps into a crisp post Summer swoon, the leaves of my mind are colored with an array of emotions. I feel into my personal cocoon of daunting change and witness a battle between 'struggle' and 'surrender' playing out in the heart-space gymnasium. Metamorphosis-moments are always painful, but it's the kind of pain that liberates - a yogic pain pushing one beyond physical limitations; a Tao pain revealing life paradoxes that release the grasping mind; an Autumnal pain whose often icy bite also brings the magic of color and transformed geometry.
I embrace this pain as a witness to my own cocoon ordeal. I see the yellows of ego-"I" crunch beneath my feet on the London sidewalk. The reds of fiery purification consume my attention. The oranges of holy chaos possess my crown. The browns of attachment and aversion eats at my gut. The ochres of passion squirm in my loins. The mauves of delusion stare at me from every bill board professing product-salvation. The fading greens of passing youth...I smile inwardly because I know, deep down in the depths of my...erm...consciousness, that it's in the midst of Autumnal alchemy that the lead of bullshit life patterns and reactions transmute into the gold of transformed tendencies and greater equanimity. Yep! It is only through yielding to the always-opportunity for seasonal change that real growth can be achieved. And real growth always awards an improved happiness.
Happiness, a fragile branch on the sturdy trunk of life, is the inevitable fruit-bearer for all who transcend (apparently) negative life concerns. The more one participates in the 'going beyond', the swifter one is armed to combat 'tricky stuff' that might ordinarily be perceived as hardcore hellishness or insurmountable life turmoil...hmmm...I feel like climbing a tree and tasting the scent of an orange.
So how goes the leaves of your mind?- Are they grasping to branches of (deemed) 'security' and 'safe' choices or do they let go, fall away, and prostrate at the feet of the Great Tree? Are we allowing the Master Giver of Wise-dom to release us from the bondage of presumed separation or do we slave to stay green in this strange and uncomfortable mortal illusion? Do we have the determination to walk the path of the warrior? Can we happily consent to changing colors and shifting shapes - the stripping away of old habits, the almighty fall through and beyond the well of our own created fears, the holy jumping off place...Can we truly fall awake in love, deeper and deeper, until we are Autumn-kissed leaves decorating the ground at the Master's lotus feet? Will we surrender to such sweet Grace?
Such questions are posed in the cocoon of my heart...And as potential butterfly wings wrestle with the pain of the clinging caterpillar - its tight grip on an assumed self-identity strangles the emerging flight vessel - the m-fields governing all of space-time's holographic intercourse shudder...to deny such flight, to ignore the beauty of ego-renunciation, to shun the prowess of butterfly expansiveness IS... madness!
There is a saying in Tibetan Buddhism - "What is like a smelly fart that, although invisible, is obvious?...Ones faults, that are precisely as obvious as the effort made to hide them."
In my cocoon of heart-wounding-insight, there is a G3 saying, rather more obvious than a Zen koan, but less crude than a Viz annual - "What is moist like a panty hamster that, although occasionally whiffsome, provides unimaginable bliss to all parties? -
...The Great Mystery, whose daunting Unknown is, in fact, Unqualified Ecstasy when suckled, nibbled, tasted, fondled, teased, tickled and f***ed senseless."
...Hmmmm? If any of you reading this feel that you're presently enduring a skin shedding, life changing, re-evaluating, ego-confronting, pattern distorting, cocoon-inhabiting, bout of POSITIVE disillusionment...remember that WE ARE, without a shadow of a doubt and a sneeze of discomfort, in fact - the butterfly, the fart and the panty hamster. Ya Dig it? ... Big up respect to the hardcore massive who jail break out of their cocoon of fears and have the guts to fly through The Great Mystery's theatrical, and very beefy, curtains...
GOD BLESS!
© G3 September 2000
MUSINGS - LOVE IN LION COUNTRY...
In July 2002, I embarked on an adventure to shoot an extraordinary film in the heart of the Kenyan Masai Mara. The film is a true love story set in lion territory. Natasha – a blond, blue eyed Canadian girl, 24, spent five years living with the Maasai tribe after falling in love with a Maasai warrior. She and Saalash are now married with three happy, talented children. At the time of the initial shoot, they had a baby girl called Acacia.
What struck me as unique about Natasha's choice to live the Maasai way is that this primitive tribe of simple peoples live off cows blood and milk in the middle of the bush where giraffes and zebra, hippos, lions and rhinos roam free. Far from the comforts of suburban Canada, their home was a hut made out of cow dung with the shrill of hyenas howling into the night. Children covered in flies; women toiling in the heat to collect water and firewood from several miles away; men shepherding their cattle in the precariously wild African plains...all this patterned the scene as I arrived to film Salaash's 'coming of man' ceremony and, more poignantly, the final ten days before the couple would relocate to Canada.
In a country as corrupt as a politicians promise, Natasha and Salaash faced the harsh reality of where to best raise their child and build a future? It had been a heart breaking decision for them and I was privileged to enter at this critical time - a time to capture their compelling love story set against the backdrop of a vastly different cultural heritage; religious devotion; rite of passage; community spirit; and, the cherished ingredients of real contentment that connect these two lovers.
When Natasha arrived in the Mara - a mellow Canadian who had already decided that her life purpose was to be a mom and raise lots of healthy kids - she had no idea that her future husband was going to look, smell and feel like an African bush man...The moment they met, they both describe feeling physically sick..."Love sickness" universally translates. Over time, they began to learn each other's language, share stories and connect in a deeply feeling-space of extraordinary love and commitment. Unlike some of the tabloid-tarnished stories I had heard over the years - "Western chick marries Maasai Warrior" - Natasha and Salaash were so obviously star crossed lovers. And indeed, to this day, they remain proud parents, doting intimates and best friends.
Visually the Maasai are one of the worlds most colorfully adorned tribes. At 9, their ear lobes are cut and stretched and they hang decorative beads from each dangling lobe. Around their necks, copious necklaces, hand made for specific ceremonies, display the particular rite of passage age bracket of the Maasai.
I arrived in the Mara and was immediately transported into another world. It was Salaash's 'coming of man' ceremony and the moment he would have to sacrifice his beloved cow. On day one I filmed half a dozen warriors make prayers to the sky, then pierce a spear straight into the cow's brain. The cow didn't seem to struggle. The warriors gently blocked the hole with special leaves and the cow was down and peaceful. They peeled away the skin around its neck to make a bowl and proceeded to drink the blood straight from its body – fresh and warm. Immediately, the stomach entrails were removed for the women who were celebrating in a nearby enclave of bush secrecy...They ate it raw. I was gifted a freshly cooked giant rib and shared my meal with four semi-naked teenage boys in cow skin skirts who happily fondled my hair.
Other highlights during my stay were experiencing the happy devotion of these peoples to their God “Engai’. They seem to live a far more 'grateful' life than we tend to in the West. They also know how to let their hair down and JUMP! - House of Pain, this is your music video! The other amusing ritual is consumption of sausage tree cider - even the Maasai have their village idiot and mud hut drunk! Finally, we visited a lively witch doctor who had predicted to Salaash as a boy that something very important and WHITE would enter his life and make him travel. At the time, it was felt this would be some kind of albino cow...Natasha's arrival on the scene years later was, of course, spookily accurate.
As Natasha, Salaash and baby Acacia prepared to leave their tribe and homeland, we captured the tears of these ‘people of the cattle’ who are living a humble life, completely oblivious to what is beyond the dusty plains. For most Maasai who have never left their village and seen even a safari lodge - let alone experienced a sky scraper, burger joint or freeway - they are happy to reside in a difficult and dangerous environment rather than face the rumored congestion, stress and hostility of the city...One dark night, a week before our arrival, a woman’s scream was heard for many miles. A leopard had run into her hut and carried away her eight year old daughter in its strong jaws. The girl's body was never found but two dogs, a cow, some sheep and a goat also faced the same fate. This is not fiction but reality in the Mara.
The Maasai live each day for its own sake. They warn one another from planning ahead because they say - ONLY GOD KNOWS what is coming in the future. In this way they're very present with life. Most of their conversation is casual gossip, usually relating to cows, which are their currency and livelihood. Their religion is based on seeing everything good that happens as a gift from ‘Engai’ – the black god – and everything bad as coming from the red god. Superstitious it may be, but few Maasai violently squabble and they're relatively peace loving and gentle peoples. I recall a road rage incident in London upon my return and how much I craved the Maasai vibe...
Natasha is a remarkable woman who showed enormous courage by following her heart and embracing a way of life that would be unthinkable to most westerners. Her life with Salaash is one of tremendous love. Since returning to Canada, they have had another two healthy children. Natasha now runs a successful attachment parenting group in Canada that helps teach women the Maasai way of raising children close to the mother. The couple are presently adopting a fourth child from Ethiopia. Salaash has been back to his homeland, accompanied by an 84 year old Diviner and Natasha's brother who helped him build a number of wells for Maasai villages.
BACKSTORY
It was while shooting a travel show for TV in Africa back in 1999 that my Spiritual Teacher Adi Da first appeared to me in a dream. Later, I stumbled on a black and white bird wing in the Mara and intuitively collected the feathers and kept them in my travel diary. Seven months later, I returned from Africa. A year later I would meditate in front of an alter with the birds wing placed to the side of Adi Da’s picture. During moments of bliss-stillness, I started feeling my Teacher draw my attention to the feathers and to Africa in meditation. I felt the necessity to get back in touch with the young Canadian girl whom I had met and to see how her life had unfolded in the bush...Around the same time Adi Da began to talk about Africa and how important it was that the tribal groups get back in touch with the spirit of their ancient religious heritage. I knew that somehow I had to make a film and get back out to the country where my Teacher first started instructing me in dreamtime.
© G3 15th July 2002
What struck me as unique about Natasha's choice to live the Maasai way is that this primitive tribe of simple peoples live off cows blood and milk in the middle of the bush where giraffes and zebra, hippos, lions and rhinos roam free. Far from the comforts of suburban Canada, their home was a hut made out of cow dung with the shrill of hyenas howling into the night. Children covered in flies; women toiling in the heat to collect water and firewood from several miles away; men shepherding their cattle in the precariously wild African plains...all this patterned the scene as I arrived to film Salaash's 'coming of man' ceremony and, more poignantly, the final ten days before the couple would relocate to Canada.
In a country as corrupt as a politicians promise, Natasha and Salaash faced the harsh reality of where to best raise their child and build a future? It had been a heart breaking decision for them and I was privileged to enter at this critical time - a time to capture their compelling love story set against the backdrop of a vastly different cultural heritage; religious devotion; rite of passage; community spirit; and, the cherished ingredients of real contentment that connect these two lovers.
When Natasha arrived in the Mara - a mellow Canadian who had already decided that her life purpose was to be a mom and raise lots of healthy kids - she had no idea that her future husband was going to look, smell and feel like an African bush man...The moment they met, they both describe feeling physically sick..."Love sickness" universally translates. Over time, they began to learn each other's language, share stories and connect in a deeply feeling-space of extraordinary love and commitment. Unlike some of the tabloid-tarnished stories I had heard over the years - "Western chick marries Maasai Warrior" - Natasha and Salaash were so obviously star crossed lovers. And indeed, to this day, they remain proud parents, doting intimates and best friends.
Visually the Maasai are one of the worlds most colorfully adorned tribes. At 9, their ear lobes are cut and stretched and they hang decorative beads from each dangling lobe. Around their necks, copious necklaces, hand made for specific ceremonies, display the particular rite of passage age bracket of the Maasai.
I arrived in the Mara and was immediately transported into another world. It was Salaash's 'coming of man' ceremony and the moment he would have to sacrifice his beloved cow. On day one I filmed half a dozen warriors make prayers to the sky, then pierce a spear straight into the cow's brain. The cow didn't seem to struggle. The warriors gently blocked the hole with special leaves and the cow was down and peaceful. They peeled away the skin around its neck to make a bowl and proceeded to drink the blood straight from its body – fresh and warm. Immediately, the stomach entrails were removed for the women who were celebrating in a nearby enclave of bush secrecy...They ate it raw. I was gifted a freshly cooked giant rib and shared my meal with four semi-naked teenage boys in cow skin skirts who happily fondled my hair.
Other highlights during my stay were experiencing the happy devotion of these peoples to their God “Engai’. They seem to live a far more 'grateful' life than we tend to in the West. They also know how to let their hair down and JUMP! - House of Pain, this is your music video! The other amusing ritual is consumption of sausage tree cider - even the Maasai have their village idiot and mud hut drunk! Finally, we visited a lively witch doctor who had predicted to Salaash as a boy that something very important and WHITE would enter his life and make him travel. At the time, it was felt this would be some kind of albino cow...Natasha's arrival on the scene years later was, of course, spookily accurate.
As Natasha, Salaash and baby Acacia prepared to leave their tribe and homeland, we captured the tears of these ‘people of the cattle’ who are living a humble life, completely oblivious to what is beyond the dusty plains. For most Maasai who have never left their village and seen even a safari lodge - let alone experienced a sky scraper, burger joint or freeway - they are happy to reside in a difficult and dangerous environment rather than face the rumored congestion, stress and hostility of the city...One dark night, a week before our arrival, a woman’s scream was heard for many miles. A leopard had run into her hut and carried away her eight year old daughter in its strong jaws. The girl's body was never found but two dogs, a cow, some sheep and a goat also faced the same fate. This is not fiction but reality in the Mara.
The Maasai live each day for its own sake. They warn one another from planning ahead because they say - ONLY GOD KNOWS what is coming in the future. In this way they're very present with life. Most of their conversation is casual gossip, usually relating to cows, which are their currency and livelihood. Their religion is based on seeing everything good that happens as a gift from ‘Engai’ – the black god – and everything bad as coming from the red god. Superstitious it may be, but few Maasai violently squabble and they're relatively peace loving and gentle peoples. I recall a road rage incident in London upon my return and how much I craved the Maasai vibe...
Natasha is a remarkable woman who showed enormous courage by following her heart and embracing a way of life that would be unthinkable to most westerners. Her life with Salaash is one of tremendous love. Since returning to Canada, they have had another two healthy children. Natasha now runs a successful attachment parenting group in Canada that helps teach women the Maasai way of raising children close to the mother. The couple are presently adopting a fourth child from Ethiopia. Salaash has been back to his homeland, accompanied by an 84 year old Diviner and Natasha's brother who helped him build a number of wells for Maasai villages.
BACKSTORY
It was while shooting a travel show for TV in Africa back in 1999 that my Spiritual Teacher Adi Da first appeared to me in a dream. Later, I stumbled on a black and white bird wing in the Mara and intuitively collected the feathers and kept them in my travel diary. Seven months later, I returned from Africa. A year later I would meditate in front of an alter with the birds wing placed to the side of Adi Da’s picture. During moments of bliss-stillness, I started feeling my Teacher draw my attention to the feathers and to Africa in meditation. I felt the necessity to get back in touch with the young Canadian girl whom I had met and to see how her life had unfolded in the bush...Around the same time Adi Da began to talk about Africa and how important it was that the tribal groups get back in touch with the spirit of their ancient religious heritage. I knew that somehow I had to make a film and get back out to the country where my Teacher first started instructing me in dreamtime.
© G3 15th July 2002
MUSINGS - Freestyle Rap About The Mystery...
I free-styled this ditty-rap during a trip to the Middle East...
The ONLY thing guaranteed in life -
Other than cheap thrills, struggle and strife -
Is change, decay and dust to dust...
So living a sacred life NOW is a must!
A sacred life allows us to be
Ever PRESENT in this Great Mystery...
And it starts with positive disillusionment -
Coz we're full of boredom, doubt and discomfort!
And once we re:cognize that most of the moments every day
We're preoccupied with silly things that arise and pass away,
That we're suffering the bondage of 'apparent' mortality,
Then we can start to FEEL the pattern of The Great Mystery!
And Divine Humor will disperse all the stress-full reaction
As life takes on a mystical and magical satisfaction...
This is the start of the 'spiritual journey' or 'quest'
And it's an ordeal of de-LIGHT, a comical test!
We all have an incredible adventure ahead,
An opportunity to grow, to DO LOVE INSTEAD...
To transcend fear and step into The Unknown
To probe the depths of heart discovery, together, alone...
Leap into the void that is pregnant with possibility,
Fulfill our potential and be high on whipped-Qi
Here's wishin' us all a wicked journey together...
May we grow and outgrow whatever the weather...
May we climb to the peaks and laugh in the rain -
And whichever route we take - Choose the BRIGHT path...
Again!
I love YOU...
More than fish can swim gymnastics
More than the Pope increases the single mom statistics
More than birds can fly and G3 can digress
More than Bush will lie and The Dalai Lama will bless
More than baked beans make us fart and certain plants make us high
More than Batman is gay and onions make us cry
More than terrorists are twisted and politicians are impure
More than flags breed contempt and soil needs manure
More than naked men look silly and ugly women make men think
More than blogs are for nerds like me and tabloids sell a stink!
More than even a casual ditty can be meaning-full and more...
I bid ye love from an ecstatic poet-whore...
Dedicated to all those who have the guts to embark on the road less traveled...g3 xo
© G3 22nd January 2002
The ONLY thing guaranteed in life -
Other than cheap thrills, struggle and strife -
Is change, decay and dust to dust...
So living a sacred life NOW is a must!
A sacred life allows us to be
Ever PRESENT in this Great Mystery...
And it starts with positive disillusionment -
Coz we're full of boredom, doubt and discomfort!
And once we re:cognize that most of the moments every day
We're preoccupied with silly things that arise and pass away,
That we're suffering the bondage of 'apparent' mortality,
Then we can start to FEEL the pattern of The Great Mystery!
And Divine Humor will disperse all the stress-full reaction
As life takes on a mystical and magical satisfaction...
This is the start of the 'spiritual journey' or 'quest'
And it's an ordeal of de-LIGHT, a comical test!
We all have an incredible adventure ahead,
An opportunity to grow, to DO LOVE INSTEAD...
To transcend fear and step into The Unknown
To probe the depths of heart discovery, together, alone...
Leap into the void that is pregnant with possibility,
Fulfill our potential and be high on whipped-Qi
Here's wishin' us all a wicked journey together...
May we grow and outgrow whatever the weather...
May we climb to the peaks and laugh in the rain -
And whichever route we take - Choose the BRIGHT path...
Again!
I love YOU...
More than fish can swim gymnastics
More than the Pope increases the single mom statistics
More than birds can fly and G3 can digress
More than Bush will lie and The Dalai Lama will bless
More than baked beans make us fart and certain plants make us high
More than Batman is gay and onions make us cry
More than terrorists are twisted and politicians are impure
More than flags breed contempt and soil needs manure
More than naked men look silly and ugly women make men think
More than blogs are for nerds like me and tabloids sell a stink!
More than even a casual ditty can be meaning-full and more...
I bid ye love from an ecstatic poet-whore...
Dedicated to all those who have the guts to embark on the road less traveled...g3 xo
© G3 22nd January 2002
TV - FREE RANGE CHIX
How to describe this insanity? - George and Peat (that's me - The Welsh Dragon - and Peta, The English Rose...) set out on a 7000 mile adventure from the sacred banks of India's Ganges through the jungles of Nepal to join pilgrims at the roof of the world - Tibet. We filmed as we went and captured a happening-as-it-happens, irreverently spiritual, travel comedy...below are snapshots of the action...there's an entire series waiting to be edited when I get a free moment in LA LA land ;-) ENJOY the infectious energy and pass around...
George meets a stoned Baba!
A trailer!
THE CHIX MEET YODA
THE CHIX MEET THE WOLFMAN
George meets a stoned Baba!
A trailer!
THE CHIX MEET YODA
THE CHIX MEET THE WOLFMAN
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
MOVIES - The Mad Dash
I'm presently producing a movie called The Mad Dash which is a dynamo golf-rap-comedy. I read the script in June last year and was immediately hooked. Then I met mini Tiger Woods golf/rap prodigy Lil Jordan on the golf course - he's such an inspirational child star in the making. I'm so excited to make this flick, not least because of my history with rappin' and sport...Justin Timberlake is top on the list to play the role of Dash...more to follow...
MUSIC - WE WANT YOUR SOUL/THUNDER REMIX
My buddy Adam Freeland called me into his makeshift stew-d-o in Brighton and we yelled "We Want Your Soul" down the mic for a while until hoarse...this track rocks a wicked anthem to our hero Bill Hicks and the HAPPY team did a great job of the vid...Who would have thought it would hit the charts, get record of the week on Radio 1 and still be played now for its politico vibe - Ad - you are da man!
">">
For a wicked dance remix of Weapons' Thunder by Danny Griffin of Rave Dayz DJ Daisy fame...and his trippy live visuals:
"> ">
">">
For a wicked dance remix of Weapons' Thunder by Danny Griffin of Rave Dayz DJ Daisy fame...and his trippy live visuals:
"> ">
WE WANT YOUR SOUL!!!
My buddy Adam Freeland called me into his makeshift stew-d-o in Brighton and we yelled "We Want Your Soul" down the mic for a while until hoarse...this track rocks a wicked anthem to our hero Bill Hicks and the HAPPY team did a great job of the vid...Who would have thought it would hit the charts, get record of the week on Radio 1 and still be played now for its politico vibe - Ad - you are da man!
">
For a wicked dance remix of Weapons' Thunder by Danny Griffin of Rave Dayz DJ Daisy fame...and his trippy live visuals:
">
">
For a wicked dance remix of Weapons' Thunder by Danny Griffin of Rave Dayz DJ Daisy fame...and his trippy live visuals:
">
COMEDY - MY ALTER EGO - MAVYS DAVIES...
Mavys Davies happened spontaneously one day after a Weapons photo shoot. I was feeling feisty and seduced a sexy teenager into creating a microphone out of a cucumber. Welsh people are known in the UK as "Taffy" so Mavys decided to have her own TV show called "Taffy TV". This was MD's first band interview. Thhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifere is a show she did with 'The Naked Chef' that I will post shortly...triple X...I promise. This episode needs a Brazilian, but for one take and zero prep it aint bad! Watch out - Mavys is STEAMINGLY HOT!
Taffy TV!
">
For a more licentious Mavys Davies in her show "The Naked Chef' see:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TaffyTV
Taffy TV!
">
For a more licentious Mavys Davies in her show "The Naked Chef' see:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TaffyTV
Saturday, March 29, 2008
MUSINGS - When it comes to the CRUNCH...
Once upon a time, I played squash for Wales. My mum is still a world class vintage player. I throw a mean frisbee, whack a wicked ping pong, toss a good salad. I've been known to dabble in Tai Chi - mainly bend over, asshole to the sun, sphincter warming at sunrise on my roof deck. If I get writer's block, yogic-inversion is a tactic I employ. I also enjoy spinning... like a Dervish...when the Sufi vibe hits me. But gymania - abs, squats, ceps, thrusts - was an alien concept for a Welsh lass used to a daily work out dancing naked, singing into her hairbrush-mic to extremely loud, unrepeatable music.
When I settled into LA LA land at the beginning of 2008, I discovered an African dance class at the infamous gym on Sunset - Crunch. It is wicked. It totally revolutionized the image I had built up about institutionalized "fitness culture". Don't get me wrong, I was still in shock after seeing treadmills with TVs; gay men in their throngs, love muscles gleaming, picking each other up over weight machines; emaciated personal trainers who need to eat some breakfast; camel toes congregating in pilates classes at dawn to compare groove jam; and B-list celebs showering off their fading careers...But I'm happily surprised at how much fun I'm having...I mean, it isn't every day you get to jog next to "The Fly"; share a steam with the hookers from 'Crazy Girl' and watch the producer of 'Scrubs' skip a marathon around the club while resembling an epileptic undergoing exorcism...
'Crunch' is everything my beloved friends back home might suspect would suck me into a downward spiral of cosmetic obsession and physical perfection correction, but instead I've discovered African dance - shaking my batwings to live drums every Sunday morning while flamboyant, sweaty men flex their toned bits through the glass. It rocks. They say, "don't judge a book by its cover" - Crunch is that book that, from the perspective of a naive sheep-shaggin' Welsh chick, looks like a turd with fake boobs in lycra. On closer inspection, it's just a turd like every other turd. After many years of frequenting yoga classes filled with self-conscious, angry, middle class posers repeating the 'namaste' mantra without having a friggin' clue how to translate Sanskrit, it's almost refreshing to be in a happily gay gym where no one's pretending not to be superficial...
© 2008 G3
When I settled into LA LA land at the beginning of 2008, I discovered an African dance class at the infamous gym on Sunset - Crunch. It is wicked. It totally revolutionized the image I had built up about institutionalized "fitness culture". Don't get me wrong, I was still in shock after seeing treadmills with TVs; gay men in their throngs, love muscles gleaming, picking each other up over weight machines; emaciated personal trainers who need to eat some breakfast; camel toes congregating in pilates classes at dawn to compare groove jam; and B-list celebs showering off their fading careers...But I'm happily surprised at how much fun I'm having...I mean, it isn't every day you get to jog next to "The Fly"; share a steam with the hookers from 'Crazy Girl' and watch the producer of 'Scrubs' skip a marathon around the club while resembling an epileptic undergoing exorcism...
'Crunch' is everything my beloved friends back home might suspect would suck me into a downward spiral of cosmetic obsession and physical perfection correction, but instead I've discovered African dance - shaking my batwings to live drums every Sunday morning while flamboyant, sweaty men flex their toned bits through the glass. It rocks. They say, "don't judge a book by its cover" - Crunch is that book that, from the perspective of a naive sheep-shaggin' Welsh chick, looks like a turd with fake boobs in lycra. On closer inspection, it's just a turd like every other turd. After many years of frequenting yoga classes filled with self-conscious, angry, middle class posers repeating the 'namaste' mantra without having a friggin' clue how to translate Sanskrit, it's almost refreshing to be in a happily gay gym where no one's pretending not to be superficial...
© 2008 G3
MUSIC - Rappin' in Weapons!
You can view Weapons videos here and also check us out live on Weapon's Myspace page.
We shot 'Love Is Thunder' in the underground dungeons of London where the stench of corpse debris, coupled with PMT, made me feel...delicate...
Blackline Ninja is my favorite Weapons video. We had such fun shooting this. I was clad in a HOT leather jet blue biker catsuit and the crotch ripped on the first take as I performed a Wing-Chun kick ;-) On the second take, my beloved brother JG whacked me in the face with his mic and chipped my tooth. I think the vid catches the energy of the band well. Enjoy!
Black Line Ninja
">
Death Of A Nation was a classic - we were approached by some kick ass students in Bristol who did this on zero budget and pulled it off real sweet. The best part of the shoot was throwing plastic tarantulas on bassist Pete Cherry to help him overcome his fear of spiders. The make-up is a little twisted, but the energy is infectious and the lyrics say it all...Michael Moore, Bill Hicks, George Carling - this one's for you!
Death of a Nation
">
We shot 'Love Is Thunder' in the underground dungeons of London where the stench of corpse debris, coupled with PMT, made me feel...delicate...
Blackline Ninja is my favorite Weapons video. We had such fun shooting this. I was clad in a HOT leather jet blue biker catsuit and the crotch ripped on the first take as I performed a Wing-Chun kick ;-) On the second take, my beloved brother JG whacked me in the face with his mic and chipped my tooth. I think the vid catches the energy of the band well. Enjoy!
Black Line Ninja
">
Death Of A Nation was a classic - we were approached by some kick ass students in Bristol who did this on zero budget and pulled it off real sweet. The best part of the shoot was throwing plastic tarantulas on bassist Pete Cherry to help him overcome his fear of spiders. The make-up is a little twisted, but the energy is infectious and the lyrics say it all...Michael Moore, Bill Hicks, George Carling - this one's for you!
Death of a Nation
">
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
