Carousel days and Unity parades

Jenn was simply ebullient and graceful last night in Carousel. Her voice swept through the flaps of the tent with all the svelte, sincerity and class of an operatic diva-- a voice capable of sawing open both hearts and tear ducts simultaneously. Her 'autumnal' hair was long and curly in a Lousia May Alcott Little Women sort-of-way. When the spotlight's illuminated cone captured her vibratto the entire audience (including her brother) fell in love. Is that why I left early and cried. Hoofing home, through the park late at night. So proud of her...wishing my father could have seen his daughter. Pissed off that the wound of death hasn't completely scabbed over. Raking up scattered leaves of family remorse sifting inside my chest, wishing I could set the crumply heap ablaze and start new, which of course, will happen over time. Life isn't a unicycle (Thanks arya). Nor is it a motorcycle. Geez; my analogies are so lame and cheesy this morning that even my witticisms are subject to mold....

Anyway, I have two beautiful talented siblings. We're not very close. When I first left home it was my sister Beth who asked me to leave. Told me that's what mom and dad wanted. They didn't want a bum-son lounging around the house stringing compoud sentences together via Microsoft Word. Jenn and Beth were kind of sheperded through the arts under the aegis of my parents. But maybe being a loner sometimes forces you to find yourself--find what you are capable of dreaming and seeing... I used to (many, moons ago little tree) practically breathe under Hesse's adage "The true profession of man is to find his way to himself..." That's true but can be quickly contorted especially when finding yourself is synonymous with Loosing yourself in a spate of vices.

I never would have heard of Uncle Mike or the Baha'i faith ( or arya or daniela or Pearl or Hafai) had I not drooled over Joseph Campbells books and his compelling recorded lecture series for years first. When asked the inevitable query of "What is the meaning of Life" by Bill Moyers in the widely anthologized POWER OF MYTH documentary, Joseph Campbell politely asserted that he didn't think singular "life" possesed any sole meaning.

"Not true." Moyers barked back in acerbic retort.

"I don't believe life has a purpose. Life is a lot of protoplasm with an urge to reproduce and continue in being....sheer life cannot be said to have a purpose, because look at all the different purposes it has all over the place. Each incarnation has a potentiality and the mission of life is to live in that potentiality...."

( I Love that, 'live in that (your) potentiality'. I remembered the 'protoplasm' part but just dove into the catacombs of the library to retrieve the rest)

Campbell: ......How do you do it? My answer is, 'Follow your bliss.' There's something inside of you that knows your in the center, that know's when you're on the beam or off the beam. And if you get off the beam to earn money, you've lost your life. And if you stay in the center and don't get any money, you still have your bliss.

Moyers: I like the idea that its not the destination that counts, its the journey.

Campbell:Yes. As Karlfried Graf Durckheim says, "When you're on a journey, and the end keeps getting further and further away, then you realize that the real end is the journey." (Moyers, 229, 230).


A blessing in my own life was coming into the Baha'i faith through this ontology (epistemology? dunno. Ugly philosophical word--you know what I'm saying). I had pretty much jettisoned the whole notion of a supreme Godhead and everything and then, gradually...wow. All of this plus Uncle Mike's mysticism and knowledge kindled with Arya's Odyssey (first Baha'i lecture I attended and still, by far the best) left my spiritual Longing blasting off the mystical launchpad inside my chest.

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Amazing things are transpiring in the community right now thanks mostly to Mike and Marjean (Beautiful Marjean, she's in her 80's and her face is post-stroke sloped; but she's a beautiful angel)...Keep in mind that our community is older, ego-aged and dwindling. Our feasts are almost always under 10 memebers. Mike and Marjean (along with myself...which really makes people jilt their necks in wonder when they see us together) rented a hall and had a huge Naw RUZ party last March. The whole time I'm plagerzing lines from Doubting Thomas, saying that there's just no way given. Turns out 120 people showed up......

(here's where I just wrote like-5 plus beautiful heartfelt pages about Mike and Marjean, their actions, and even about how Mike found the faith. Low and behold the Computer crashed and and only saved the first part of it.....Think the concourse was involved? There's a story about how all of the Master's miracles were chronicled and Shogi Effendi sent the manuscrupt to be destroyed b/c he didn't want people being attracted to the faith b/c of certain (weird) deeds actuating through spiritual gifts.

FIVE PAGES!!! UNCLE MIKE'S STORY (including seminary...usurped to the Greenpeace recycling den in cyberspace, along with my LOVE POEM TO STACI PERKINS last Spring, my ten pages of the Nucelar woods and my short story I flushed out of my skin in a fit of rage that I'm sure would have won the Nobel.....

.....ahhh, nothing beats lessons in detachment

Arya and Daniela rule. Everyone else who reads this log on a daily baisis and refuses to comment will be riddled with impotency...