Let me tell you of the days of bus riding from Oakland aboard the 15 person ride of the Yard Dogs. Let me tell you of women, focused flirt magic beautiful, men keen bounding youthful, let me say the day of our departure left us humming baby talk from bed to bed, our bus beds do rest heads and sit butts for conversation.
Cooper rest his head from hours of undulation – spinal coordination lifting boxes and bikes and frames and poles and bamboo and do who’s for shows. The crest with us flows, each the other knows, or gets to know. Or learns the new of what is one. We arrived in Irvine California, to make a show of sustainability. Sleeping in the parking lot, lots of goofy old kids awake from a slumber to cook oats on a propane stove as Kevin arrives to give us the tour of the site we will set. The caravan arrives on the university campus, it is Wayz Goose festival, it is rolling hills and buildings and blue and yellow balloons the colors of the anteater pride (mascot of the school). Their is a bus in UC Irvine were the wonders we are unload for 16 hours. In the daylight we are still unloading now its information, now its games, now its me the MC flowering these myths to worm holes of word. Presently stilt walkers dance,
Kevin wears Maliaka’s top hat, Emma serves listeners and Tom masterminds the structure to the chaos. Cooper’s chaos is viral and thus he falls, Jonathan’s passion must like wise go within, our general and best hand in bed we truggle on. Day done night begun and all to help. 30 yellow shirted primariy Asian students arrive to take a message from Zach to move us. We are these poles and banners and sheets of wood, Jonathan resurrects himself to play precise placement with steadfast Jeanette. I think a woman wants to kiss me, but my heart belongs to Ariel and so my lips watch her from a distance and grin. And so we are loaded, and so we are fed, and so we are off again into a close distance. We obliterate our wakefulness and lay battered by the road in our truckle beds awaiting a morning of Watts, Los Angeles.
Awaiting tours and, planting a garden in the halfway home. For my part the sleep finds me and leaves me in a city I haven’t seen for 10 years. My former relations emerge and I reach out to them. My old mentor Carl Weintraub. In a fit of glide, I arrive by metro to South Pasadena were exists Carl’s restaurant and astonishing joy happens. The discovery. The tree from 10 years ago
the tree by which my troubles vanished and inspiration arose, the tree is alive and well and Carl’s restaurant sits neatly beside. He shares the story of the theatre company we knew each other by, and the tale of the new restaurant by the old tree. He is fantastic. I leave my plate of shrimp and grits to kiss roots, and find Mer. She is my old roommate and older friend
whom connection has lacked conversation for oh 10 years. And now she picks me up in front of something studios in a little green speedy car. Her wit is firing so fast that for the first quarter of an hour I am summoned to laugh at rapid shifts in meanings and dizzy dialogues of double dealings. She is heart fast, yet her mind is unstill as yours. Her talent is strew throughout her hillside abode were class n craft make a former roommate wish for such tidiness 10 years ago. We go to a theatre were people are supposed to be funny. I fart uncontrollably beside a celebrity. He sits in fumes. I folick to get a kombucha. In the morning I return to my SLR posse and do the aforementioned garden prep. Their are 15 stout black men working to renovate a home behind them 3 Latin Men help us mostly white folk. I am gald to speak with them in my mother tongue, we are fast friends. This wisdom of community service is gentle.
Call it a gentle ride back to Oakland, a gentle shift of buses a gentle drive north to Chico. For there is Butte College, there is GRUB farm and these are places rich in earth knowledge in practice. We arrive to strengthen cheer and again I roar a bit on the mic. At the farm a 420 celebration happens with the 20 of us in a tepee and music and smoke and food. On a trampoline bounce ecstatic beauties through the sweet warm air. The silent field is a pace so sweet that we stay into the afternoon of the next day.
As we drive off I know this leg of the tour is over. That Ariel will soon be in my arms and the possibility of theatre is ripe for the road. We have grown into each other ready to hold Nahsee and Sheri for the long haul, absolved to let Andréa and dear Boot go off to the land of Washington. But more is gained than lost, friendship is easy and honest, experience comes at some cost namely exhaustion and frustration, but now there is time, long time to respond to the approaching summer tour, the approaching launch of Place, and all hands on deck we joy this.
See? This is beautiful. Thanks for your words and view of the world.