constant narrator

Coming out of the grocery store and setting down my bags to unlock my truck door, I spied a grackle on the ground. It was all puffed up with its feathers out and its mouth was open, as if to make a noise. No noise was coming from the bird. It looked really weird. I stepped towards it and it didn’t move. Grackles tend to be rather fearless. At this point I saw it was breathing funny and then it dawned on me: the bird was panting.

“Why don’t you get out of the parking lot and into some shade?” I said to it.

He cocked his head and looked at me with his little yellow I’d-like-to-peck-your-eyes-out if-I-had-the-chance eyes and slowly waddled (still panting) underneath my truck.

It’s hot out.

So, I volunteer for Project Transitions, an AIDS services org here in Austin. I’m their gardner for the hospice house which can have up to five clients/patients at a time. Michael helps out too, which I’m grateful for. Thing is, there’s not much to garden. The yard has been abandoned to the weeds for some years and only after cutting things down and back and pulling piles and piles of ragweed did I discover some pretty antique roses, rosemary, sea oats and a big ol’ firebush. This place needs love.

Being that no one has money anymore, non-profits are stretched thin so I had to go asking for some gardening goodness: compost, mulch and a bunch of plants. After being flatly refused by the first nursery I called, I called Emerald Garden, whose owner Jeff Yarbrough agreed to donating $100 worth of whatever I needed to the hospice house. w00t!

I went down today and he spent a long time with me helping me pick out Texas native plants that can take the heat/dryness and also bloom and be purty and attract butterflies and hummingbirds. I figure, this is the last place some of these people see, it might as well be beautiful and not just ‘tidy’. I got so many gorgeous plants I was bouncing up and down. A Yellow-Bell bush, a Hummingbird Bush, lantana, midnight blue sage spikes, a creeping sneaky-puss rock-rose that will wind between all of the plants on the ground… oh it’s just too good. I brought them over to the house and the care workers and clients were all grinning and forcing Kool-aid on me. I can’t wait to get it all in the ground.

I recently read this amazing book that dbauler left me called Motoring with Mohammed by Eric Hansen. It’s about his shipwreck on a desert island/rescue by Eritrean goat smugglers/driving with sheep in the backseat/Qat chewing in Yemen adventures. This gave my already itchy travel bug new life - it’s spasming. I’m starting to work on a local freelance photographer’s web site and one of the reference sites she gave me was Ami Vitale’s site. Wow. Knock-out photographs from far flung countries. I want to go somewhere really weird, somewhere that I never get over the culture shock, no matter how long I’m there. I adore Austin, but like all places one loves, one must occasionally leave it to love it more upon return. Anyone happen to have a spare ticket to Vietnam handy?

Yesterday I went to see my most excellent acupuncturist and friend Lori. I had seen her last week to help me with my astounding case of poison ivy which she managed to help me clear up in a few days (much to my joy). So this week I thought would be a bit lighter and I settled in for the first treatment which was only six needles. Acupuncture needles hurt or don’t hurt depending on where they’re placed, what mood I’m in, where my cycle is and on a million other variables. Yesterday, they didn’t really hurt. Once I was cooked over with a general Chinese 5-Element theory script, she did an Esoteric Sacred Geometry set of needles on me. This is some seriously trippy shit. The needles are set up in shapes that build other shapes out of energy so that when they’re in I’ve got an energy-made pyramid floating from my tummy.

Now, all of this is quite hippy-dippy, and I always start thinking of Kia when she would mock her Santa Cruz friends and say “I feeeel the e-nur-geeeee!” However, I can’t argue with results, and this stuff does crazy-good madness to my body and brain. I can feel the shapes set up above and below my body lying on the table, usually when she lands the last needle in the form into my flesh.

So, I was lying there with a nice light pyramid above my solar plexus and Lori starts doing Reiki on me. I place Reiki on the extremely subtle end of the alternative body work spectrum, with Chiropractic on one end of the scale (thunk-goes-bone-aahh) to Reiki and Flower Essences on the other as far as “I can’t always tell if it’s working but I’m willing to experiment with it”. I figure I’m a spaz who’s too twitchy to catch the subtleties, and know that folks are doing real work and concentration when dealing with it.

Not yesterday. Yesterday Reiki took my by the knees and washed a giant, light-made ocean over my entire body. Lori was just barely touching my knees and rocking a bit - yet the sensation was almost overwhelming. It was incredibly pleasurable and dreamy. I had a huge grin on my face. When she finished with the Reiki and took the needles out I felt really light and happy.

There’s no moral to the tale and I don’t have a snappy way to end it. It felt good while it was happening, I felt good afterwards, and I think there should be more things that feel good in the world.

…and so, late on the bandwagon, I join the lengthy ranks of my friends with blogs. My reasons are simple and selfish - I want to make myself write every day again, and I want to be able to keep my friends & fam up to date on what’s in my head and what’s around my body. Two birds/one stone = blog. Welcome. I promise not to be boring. Or at least, I promise to try really hard. Geez I’ve got to change these style sheets.