Gifts --- Feast is at our house tonight! I miss my friends!


I have recently determined that Tori Amos may just be an angel! Apparently people who love her often also love Bjork (the two of them are my favorite musical artists after Tool). It's such a beautiful day today! I always love to look out the window from this spot, out on the neighbor's magnolia tree - my favorite! (the lilac tree is up there too!)


Improv poetry time!



Love sprinkles gay sparkles true bliss


Try now to give all and find strength


For the road is behind and remiss


In the face of those blind to its length.


Peace to the poor,


Sight to the sad,


Gift to the gift.



For you reader, I wish this love, and I give you some.

Stake --- My Meisner class has picked up again! it's a great tool for living in the moment: one of the goals is to respond to what's happening immediately with the other actor, as opposed some pre-arranged idea of how a scene should play out.


Volleyball games should start soon. The Baha'i choir is getting together again - working on "He Verily Loveth the Spot" (VERY hard!!). Sherry and I have started playing together again (also awesome prayers together). The Richmond Local Spiritual Assembly (including myself) should be studying Ruhi Book 4 (on the history of the Faith), and I'll be tutoring the book at the Falconers starting October 6. I'm very happy.


Today I walked to cure (type I) diabetes! It was a great event, held nation-wide, and sponsored by JDRF. We raised lots of money for research! My co-workers Niki and Keith, and his wife Chrissy - we all walked together. Then, spicy black bean hummus wrap for danio!

tonight, more Def Poetry - this time with a crowd! Maybe some role-playing too!

Everything --- I wonder... Does anything mean _everything_ to others? I look at the research I'm doing in Performance Studies, and think, "this means _everything_!" - as in, it's a crucial piece to the development of humanity, or at least human civilization. The same happens with some of the things people I know are involved in. Some things just have to be done. There's no way out of it. My passion is performance, so when I watch Def Poetry, I think, "this means everything," "this _has_ to be done." We're connecting human involvement in the world, human _performance_ in this life, with the essence of purpose and fulfilment, like when Tool says to "swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be human." The crazy album Bjork just and company just put out _had_ to be done. At the moment, our understanding of art and its ramifications are infinitessimal, groping to a world order wherein entertainment is on side of the coin, and ritual/healing/transcendence, as expressed in many cultures is the other. There is more, though. There has to be. Performance studies is digging in the mine, finding occasional gems in our cultures and heritage, awaiting to find at any moment a giant gem, a hidden world, a new Reality, or even a chapter or two from the "Book of Creation"!!


That's why I will devote the rest of my life to Performance Studies, and practicing the results and findings. Culture and society feeds, and feeds on, performance. Performance is a timeless currency, a levener, an end and a means, a seed and a fruit, a piece of the puzzle and a side of the polygon, a fraction and a factor, an engine and an energy.


Cascading down the mountain of Being, Life splashes into Living.

Mountains --- Ann Brenneman and I got to teach the 12-14-year-olds at Shenandoah Baha'i conference over the weekend. It was tremendously gratifying, especially seeing how they grew from rather reluctant and distant from the process to the point where they embraced it and took ownership. I got a new copy of the Seven Valleys (Baha'u'llah) which has a different set of endnotes, which adds a bit to my understanding. My car is in the shop again. For the same reason I brought it in on Fri... they had better fix it! Butterfly Effect was okay.


Peter, Orion, Robbie and I have started watching Def Poetry, a series of poetry performances hosted by one of my three or four favorite hip hop artists, Mos Def. It's just about the best television I have ever seen. Exquisitely inspiring. Work is hectic (sp?) again.


Bjork is crazier than ever (yes, and undeniably so) on her new album Medulla. It seems like it might also actually be good...

Worlds --- Life is too good for words! I'm getting back into the Seven Valleys - what an amazing journey! There are four worlds described therein, which provide an assistance in perceiving unity in all of God's creation.


Tonight is the last night for our bk 1 study circle!


I just orderd Bjork's new album, Medulla!


The Cluster Reflection Gathering was an immense success!


I'm back from house-sitting (AGAIN!) - and this one was the most enjoyable. I already miss Guiness & Zo (dog and cat)... and a house to myself is always nice...


I have checked out a whole bunch of books from the library to work on my new paper in performance studies, which will probably be called "What Truth?" - with a fancy, longer second part of the title, like "At the juncion of culture and established modes of meaning conveyance" or "How pedagogy, entertainment, and XXX signify to their audience" or "Questioning the established models of convincing performances" or "Potential expansions beyond our inchoate performance vehicles" (it'll be better than any one of those, I promise!)


I have to choose what weekly or bi-weekly activities I'll be doing this fall out of the following: 2-3 study circles, volleyball, Tai Chi, Capoeira, Choir, (mini)-band, role-playing, and probably a couple more... decisions decisions...