The short answer is: I am moving. The question being: Where have you been, Leila?

The actual decision to move was quite sudden, but the underlying reasons have been simmering for quite awhile−frequently causing me to be absent from my usual haunts.

For awhile I entertained the hope that I could contact each of my friends personally and share my news, but as reality has revealed itself, it is now clear that a more impersonal (but no less heart-felt) public announcement is going to have to suffice. My move date approaches with the speed and stealth of Mercury, and last night I learned my moving truck is arriving even sooner than planned …

So, I love you, but I am moving to my property in eastern Washington. (And I apologize, I really do, for the sudden and impersonal announcement.)

My new home will be on the property that I own, free and clear, and I will move into a structure that I own, free and clear. I like the notion of this. I have never had a home that was mine, truly mine, and I want one. I want to feel like I can do whatever I want. I want to feel like the work that I do is mine, and isn’t something I will eventually lose to a landlord or in a divorce.

This is the structure that I will move onto my property. It is a 1957 Streamline trailer that I bought from my brother for the equivalent of what I pay for one month’s rent in Seattle. Admittedly, it needs a lot of love.

She’s been gutted some time ago, and painted on the inside a few times. We’re working on peeling off the paint, which is easy in some spots and “impossible” in others. I’ll also have to add some appliances, do some plumbing, and set up a solar power system. And, by the time I have that all done I suspect winter will be falling and I’ll need to come down off my mountain.

But I’ll cross that bridge when it arrives. In the meantime, for the next few days I am packing up my apartment and buying a few supplies. Then my siblings will arrive to help tote and load and drive my (way too many) possessions 300 miles east.

In a very interesting twist, the move is slated to happen on the one-year anniversary of the final fracturing of my marriage. I like that timing.

Something I’ve not been good at saving is my dreams, my sleep-time meanderings. I used to remember my dreams quite easily, but quite awhile ago they began to elude me once I woke. Perhaps it was part of aging, I don’t know.

But this weird thing happened about a month ago. I was having a rough time actually sleeping and fatigue was beginning to wreak havoc, so I decided to medicate and I took an Excedrin PM.

Excedrin PM and I met back in the days when I was cocktail waitressing. All the girls would pop a couple about 2:15 a.m., as we sat down to balance our tills at the end of our shifts. By the time we finished our accounting and got home, we were good-to-go to la-la-land.

In recent years, I haven’t taken an Excedrin PM since November, 2008–a time when I was in such misery that I surrendered to just sleeping away as much time as I could.

But since then I have been E.P.M.-free, until about a month ago, I used the little blue Excedrin PM crutch to sleep through the night. And,

I remembered my dreams.

Weird. It was like some buried switch was toggled ON again.

Yesterday there was a huge rainbow in the early evening sky. David and I saw it from my window; he explained that it was made up of particles and smog. I argued that rainbows are what happen when angels have orgasms.

Later, in my sleep, I dreamed that the rainbow had come closer and closer to my apartment building. I could see it with one end of its pretty arc there in the swimming pool outside my window. And then I knew that it would come closer, until I would be right beneath the end of the rainbow. I stood and awaited its arrival.

When I woke I imbued metaphor on my dream, and came to believe that the rainbow right on me was about me being my own treasure. Or perhaps, about the rainbow recharging my heart-of-gold.

Whatever the meaning, it was a great dream to be inside of.

Photo of the same rainbow from a different angle, by John Cornicello and used with his permission.

I just had an amazing dream.

I was invited to be in a high-wire bicycle act. The performer who was training me was adament that I would do just fine–but there was no training per se, just putting me on the bicycle and setting me off onto the wire.

At first, and oddly, I was set loose in a direction of travel opposite of the one used in the regular act. Over and over my “trainer” pulled me back, each time slightly farther than the last, each launch therefore slightly more powerful and each journey taking me slightly further.

In time, it was time to make my debut for the audience, and then–in the way of dreams–my trainer decided that we would do the act together, one of us riding on the shoulders of the other. And he thought that I ought to be the one on the wheels on the wire, because anything else would make a stack that was just too tall, I would be too frightened to be that high up.

As we stood on the launching platform talking about all this, I said that I was very nervous. But we reached into a striped, cardboard box of Cracker-Jack-prize looking things and began stuffing them into our pockets to rain on the crowd, and I proceeded to pull my hair up and out of harm’s way in preparation for our ride.

Image: Look No Hands! by George Boyce and used with Creative Commons license.

Having some trouble today keeping faith. Fear. Sorrow. Grief. Emotions and doubts clouding this big-blue-sky morning.

The feelings get all jumbled up and it is difficult to rise above the mess. What is what? That twist in my belly, is it fear? The tension in my brow, is it anger? Or, more fear? The hot spot beneath my breastplate. Sorrow?

The tightness just beneath my ribcage. Emotions? Or just a natural result of six hours of Pilates this past week?

In any event, I am such a frightful mess today. On top of the puzzle of possibly buying a home, on top of the emotional fallout from talking with my (ex) husband last night, on top of some mounting angst for all the undone chores that await me—it is Mother’s Day. And mine is dead.

Thus, my admonishment to myself, Keep On Truckin’.

A name arrived this morning for my piece at SEAF: Caught in Gramma’s Notions.

This is the piece that started out as a “wall treatment” and which has evolved to be an “installation.” And yes, I am excited about that.

This has been the convergence of several threads, including friendships and smaller projects in the past. It’s definitely been a case of “my reputation precedes me,” because even though my Festival boss doesn’t know me or my work, I’ve been set loose on the project and told to apply my own aesthetic. This freedom is simultaneously thrilling and frightening.

But as you may have already read, my Mondo Beyondo exercise commanded that I say, “Yes,” and do some flying, some breaking down of my barriers, and I’ve taken on this project.

So this is how it’s going.

In the meantime, I am also pursuing a home, in part because my apartment rent now equals what a mortgage payment would be. My brother has been coaching me via long-distance telephone calls and the occasional email. He has decided that I ought to buy The Yellow House that I’ve seen. I am, however, a mega-ton less confident than he, about my ability to rehab this decrepit house. I am nervous about the scope of the work and feeling like if I buy this house, I will do nothing else but work on it for the next several years.

So, my brother sends me an email, looking for the current status of the deal, and I reply, “I am doubting myself.”

He sends a prodding email in return. Now mind you, none of my siblings can spell (and I am thrilled that in spite of this they do send me emails). So my brother sends this email with the perfect typo.

carry on you don’t need to drought your self we need to stop the bleeding before you run out of blood

Something in the way he said “drought” rather than “doubt” really struck me. Perhaps it was the visual of it. Probably more so it is the sense of causing my own drought . . . my own lack . . . my own parched landscape.

And it wasn’t anything that will directly contribute to acquiring The Yellow House, but the other morning I was driving along somewhere, and realized that my (ex) husband didn’t leave me so much as he quit our marriage. Now I don’t know to what extent that is true, but it is a way that I can frame what happened. It is not, all about me.

Nevertheless, I’ve had self-doubt lately, about so many things.

My dear friend, Elke Siller Macartney, is in the midst of creating a series of books and she sends me snippets now and again. Usually they arrive at just-the-right-time. Yesterday she sent a bit that included these words

but the mind takes over and begins to spin a tale of doubt, of assumptions, interpreting through a gauzy veil . . .

I read that and went off to work on my project for SEAF. In the early part of the day a friend sent an email about my efforts, which made me smile and fortified my confidence

and I am sure it will be amazing (cuz that is just how you roll)

Much later in the evening, I call my sister to see what she knows about the history of fish-eye buttons. My sister is the kind of button collector who owns the Big Book of Buttons, a $350.00 tome, so I thought she might know something about the origins of this thing that is the inspiration for my new art installation.

She did not. However, in the course of our conversation by brother piped up from somewhere in her living room and said, “Buy the house.” I told my sister I thought I’d need another $60,000.00 to buy The Yellow House, money for which I had no known source. And she offered to lend it to me. Just like that.

Isn’t it intriguing how we can doubt ourselves so severely, and meanwhile all around us the world sees us so differently.

During my Mondo Beyondo work last month, one day the lesson was about saying, Yes. Part of the premise was about not seeing ourselves the same old way, and thereby releasing self-imposed restrictions on the possibilities for our lives.

Luckily, that was the same day that I was approached to create a wall ornamentation at Seattle Erotic Art Festival (SEAF). If this Mondo Beyondo encouragement to say yes had not been a guiding principal for the day, I would have outright declined the opportunity. But, I left the door open, and began talking with the festival organizers (although honestly I didn’t give a full-on Yes right away).

And then I contemplated, and realized I might be getting in over my head, uncomfortably. And I steeled myself to say, No.

But I had committed myself to Mondo Beyondo, and I stuck it out, and confirmed with SEAF that I would indeed make this wall happen.

Big leap.

Sure, sure, all I am doing is decorating the back sides of some of the walls that will display artworks on the other side. Sure, sure, it is only adornment, and not like it’s supposed to be high art or something. But, I mean, it is an art show and all …

While several people who know me have described me as, “perfect for this job,” I have actually never undertaken anything of this scale. Something like 60 running feet of wall, being adorned not as a result of some artistic notion that popped up for me, but a project that is really someone else’s notion.

Anyway. I am excited to be doing this. And I am excited to see the “theme” of the Festival unfurl. There’s an overarching storyline about Buttons, a postal worker who has a fetish for fish-eye buttons, and who inherits a Cabinet of Curiosities. You may already know that I have such a cabinet in my home, together with roughly five gallons of vintage buttons. Sympatico!

Following on yesterday’s post about the street art under the First Avenue Bridge, tonight I watched the Seattle premiere of Exit Through the Gift Shop.

I admit that I have a more friendly attitude toward street art than many folks do. Probably this film will be condemned because it honors “vandalism.”

I think the movie was more about doing what we love; being bold, and following our hearts. For just the encouragement that the film conveys, I say, “Go see it.”

Besides, is there any more positive review of a movie than an audience that applauds heartily at the end?

p.s. Do be sure and contemplate that title.

I mean, I could live anywhere, right? Why the hell not live in a circus tent?!?

At least that’s the notion that crept up on me today. Another day of Mondo Beyondo dreaming sprinkled with a dose of Empire Building. And up pops the realization that a home (my home) can take any of many shapes. How about a circus tent?

Well, why not?

In her book, The Wishing Year: A House, a Man, My Soul A Memoir of Fulfilled Desire Noelle Oxenhandler examines the role we play in making our wishes (dreams) come true. There is the belief that (and I am paraphrasing) our job as humans is to show up and do what is within our humanely powers to do. And Noelle shows us that acts such as building shrines are a very real and valid part of this. She says

. . . when I wish in the mode of the ancestors, I adopt an attitude that is both confident and humble. I commit to doing everything within my human power to make something happen—while also recognizing that my human power is limited.

And it is there, on that boundary, that I place my shrine.

My overarching wish/dream is for a home that suits me. A home that is a launch pad for whatever it is that my life is to be, whatever it is that I have to shine on the world. I realized a few weeks ago the wisdom of re-phrasing my search from “I want a house” to, “I want a home” so as not to limit the possibilities. Perhaps my home doesn’t involve a house at all; I don’t know yet. But, I do want to keep the doors open for whatever Opportunity & The Universe might present for me.

This morning I completed the Mondo Beyondo exercise that asked me to imagine my life 5 years hence. And as I wrote my uncensored vision of April, 12, 2015, the experience of being inside the Teatro ZinZanni spiegeltent kept slipping into my sights. And I was silly happy about this.

Okay, so whatever. It’s a grand and fabulous notion. It’s glitter and glitz and really, where’s the practicality? But I don’t think that’s for me to figure out right now. It’s just for me to be clear and bold about my dreams.

Oxenhandler says,

When we consciously articulate a wish, then we also give ourselves a kind of permission to receive the thing we desire. We thus remove some of the false obstacles that may stand between us and the thing we desire . . .

So, I built a “shrine”, an object that encapsulates elements of my dream of my home, that reflects the spirit of what sings to my heart.

In this close-up, you can see that’s me, sitting there inside the tent—in a puddle of glitter. Sweet!

Photo of me in the tent is part of John Cornicello’s Friends project and my Circus Porn project.

And thank-yous to both Beth and Elizabeth, who passed along to me their copies of the circus-themed Anthropologie catalogs. I still want those red & white striped shoes!