Oh so much stuff. I'm not in a very "hey lookit me and all the great stuff I'm doing" kind of mood, but its time for a new entry. The Halloween Party was awesome, if i do say so myself, thanks to Debbie for hosting it and letting me and others (Bob, Ben, Jody, etc.) participate so deeply in organizing and decorating. It all turned out great. So many nice elements that all came together: all the stuff hanging from the ceiling, the variegated shiny objects on the walls, the lighting, the Transmogrification chamber, the Kaleidoscope, the lounges, and best of all the God/Goddess, who took seemingly forever to build and perfect (as befitting such a being) but who gave delight to many and who was in the end, appropriately, loved to death.
Puppetganza was a blast too. Bruce's Ghost Ship Conseulo puppet-rap was the capper for sure, although I am not objective since I provided the instrumentation and some vocalizations. The kids seemed to love it though. Good crowd for a sunny Sunday afternoon too.
Wow, it's tuesday already. Last weekend was one of the most unusual I can think of. The juxtapositions of sadness and joy. Debi Marsh's funeral was Saturday at Mt.Calvary Cemetary way up atop the West Hills. It was the saddest and most tearful gathering of people I have ever been at but it was amazing and beautiful too. I rode my bike all the way up and joined with a big group of others of this amazing community and we rode en masse in the middle of the funeral procession to the grave site. The funeral director guy had clearly never seen anything like it but he took it in stride and had us fall right in. The service was graveside, presided over by Debi's Grandfather. He was the sweetest old guy imaginable. Her parents also spoke, it was obviously heartbreakingly difficult for them. She was deliberatley placed in a biodegradable coffin with no embalming fluids, the quicker to return to the earth. Her family asked everyone who wanted to to sign the coffin with whatever expression they wished, and/or to toss flowers or anything else they wished into the grave once the casket was lowered. It was such a sad and beautiful experience I can't even really describe it. Funerals are always sad but there really is a qualitative difference when it is someone so young and shining.
The bike people bombed back down to town when it was over and rode over to the wake in NE Portland. The next day (Sunday) there was a special memorial ride at which David pulled Debi's bike in a trailer, garlanded with flowers. There will be more permanent memorials upcoming, David has talked of painting a mural.
Saturday night Babs and I labored (enjoyably) to bake several apple pies, a couple of which to bring to the big ice cream social we had here at Peninsula Park Commons Sunday evening. My neighbor and fellow Commonsor Eli Spevak hosts a huge ice cream social every year. It was a total blast. Hordes of people, a whole chest freezer full of homemade ice cream, piles of potluck food. It was also a chance for some of my friends to help me celebrate my birthday, in fact I had the hilarious experience of a roomfull of friends singing me Happy Birthday in monster voices. Babs gave me this really super cool apple peeling/coring/slicing device. It will get used, let me tell you. Carla Forte gave me an original framed artwork. A couple of people spanked me.
Anyhoo. Life goes on. I need a real job. Details.
Well, Debi Marsh passed away earlier this evening (yesterday now I guess.) Words aren't adequate in any way. It is not hyperbolizing in any way to say that she was a wonderful, lovely, and truly radiant person. I last saw and spoke with her last Wednesday at the Shift bike social at which she gave readings as the "bike mystic." I remember that at the time I really did think to myself what a nice and positive interaction it was, as in fact it always was with with both her and David (and still is with him.) I'm not just saying that, it really is true. Some people have the glow to them. She was one of them. I remember the first time I met her and David was at the first Multnomah County Bike Fair, they were doing the big chalk-art design on the cement in Col. Summers Park and were gracious enough to let me help them color it in, and i specifically remember thinking what cool people they were, and so they are, the cream.
I was not at the hospital earlier today before she went, but Amy tells me she looked not only beautiful but truly aglow. As if, I suppose, her pure Being was there in one last simple expression of who she is. And maybe as if she knew, from some vantage point of looking down on things before going onward, how much love was pouring to her from so many people. I don't know.
At almost the very moment she passed (based on when I got the call a bit later) I was at home after running some errands and I idly picked up my Tarot deck. The first two cards at the top of the deck were Death and the 10 of swords (which denotes final endings), and when I split the deck there was the 4 of swords, which denotes repose and withdrawal as well as (depending on the inquiry) being in a hospital. I wasn't trying to be ghoulish, its just what came up. Actually the Death card and the four (and 9 and 10) of swords had been coming up repeatedly over the last couple of days. Death in tarot does not usually signify a literal passing of a human life, but in this case seems to have. I didn't want it to, I kept metaphorizing it in my mind when I saw it, but it was not a metaphor this time.
But that's all trivia. The reality is something inexplicable. I dunno. I have nothing actually profound to say. Like I said, words are totally inadequate.
The last interaction I had with Debi was me pulling a card from her deck which signified new friendship and her telling me that I would make and have significant friendships with people who share my values (plus that I would meet a "special friend" at the next Breakfast on the Bridges,) and then her giving me my actual "bike fortune" wrapped in a piece of tubing. She gave out a bunch of those that night, it is nice to think that she had such positive interaction with so many friends and people of her community so soon before leaving.
There will be a funeral on probably Friday and a more informal gathering and ride sometime soon after that.
for a beloved member of our community, Debi Marsh, who suffered a stroke and is in a very far place. I'll just quote Amy Stork's email to the Shift bike-culture list today:
"I am very sorry to say that on Friday Shifter Debi
Marsh had a stroke while riding the bus. Complications
from the stroke caused her brain to swell and caused
even more serious damage. The doctors have said it is
likely that she will never regain consciousness. She
is surrounded by her family and friends."
Debi (age 32) and her boyfriend David are both the sweetest and most wonderful people you could ever hope to meet. I don't know what else to say at this time.
Tonight people gathered to support David at the home of friend Gretchen Hogue, 2147 SE Yamhill. I imagine this will continue in the coming days. Debi is in the ICU on the 7th floor of OHSU Hospital.
Even if you don't know them, if you read this, could you send some thoughts or say a prayer or something?
Today I helped in the early stages of the creation of a God/Goddess/Ruler-Being of another world. Soon He/She/It will be whole and will love us, heal us, rule us. Stay tuned.
As of today. Yee-Haww! Finally! Not sure if or when there will be a housewarming as such, but come to the ice cream social on Sunday October 17, 4:00 PM. There will be many gallons of ice cream made up special in Eli Spevak's ice cream mixer. They will be made beforehand (the mixer is at his old house) and biked over here on cargo bike. Potluck dinner will follow at around 6:00 PM.
The Address:
6325 N. Albina, pumpkin yellow at the corner of Albina and Holman.
Ride your bike. We have a nice new pair of bike racks by the corner, with 7 decorative bike-haiku tiles inset in the concrete. The haikus were written by several different people and I lettered and painted the tiles. They turned out nice.
My birthday is near that date too. I'm not doing a specific birthday celebration but sometimes people do give presents to other people on or near their birthdays. Sometimes they just give them a big kiss.
I'm all cups and swords, water and air. At least that's the gist of a professional tarot reading I just had. And it rang very true. She looked at the spread (over 25 cards total) and said something to the effect of "wow, i've never seen so much water and air. You're like Florida. A swamp with hurricanes blowing through it." In other words, a combination of murky emotionalism and over-intellectualizing. Astrologically, a direct consequence of sun in Libra and rising in Aquarius (intellectual air signs) with moon in Pisces (swampy over-sensitive emotional coloring to everthing.) And that really is how my experience of things is. At least I have Mars in Saggitarius and in mid-Heaven. Gives me a drive to wild exploratory adventure. And Venus in Virgo. That's more problematic. In a nutshell it makes me perfectionist and overly picky. All in all, I wouldn't wish my chart on anyone. On the other hand, I love being me.
Anyway. Somehow I'll figure it all out. Mercury in Scorpio. See into the hidden underlying causes of things. Maybe even myself. Wow, wouldn't that be great?
Of the volcanic kind! Like you don't know about it already. But Man, I love it that Mount Saint Helens is erupting again. Probably just the opening salvo. I can hope? I love volcanoes! The eruptions in 1980 were a majorly exciting thing for 12 year old Danny Miller. We lived in Colorado at the time but were on a Spring Break road trip to Los Angeles when the first minor eruptions happened in late March that year. Then things calmed down for a bit except for a bulge that grew at the rate of a foot a day on the north slope. I remember that, in late April. Then Kablooey! I used to spend hours looking at the issue of National Geographic that had pictures of the ash storm that descended on Yakima, Ritzville, and Spokane. Incredible stuff. If you hike in the south Washington Cascades your boots will still kick up clouds of the stuff 24 years later.
That summer (1980) we took a trip out to the Northwest to visit family and friends and as we drove up I-5 from Portland to Seattle there was an eruption, a big billowing plume rising up (smaller than the May 18 eruption but much larger than today's.) Damn that was cool. I snapped pictures from the car as we drove. Still have them somewhere, not sure where.
In subsequent years I have spent so much time hiking in the Cascades, that I feel I have an almost personal relationship with these mountains. I know that sounds uber geeky, but what can i say? Each of the major Cascade volcanoes is a unique and fabulous mountain. If you spend time on and around them (and moreover live within sight of them) it is hard not to love them and personify them. Being up on the meadowed slopes of one (say Rainier or Adams) on a summer day and they really come alive. Almost constant rumblings of ice and falling rock, the mountain in its constant erosive evolution. So when one of them *really* comes alive it is cool beyond words. If I had had a mind for science and math I might have been a geologist or vulcanologist. But I always had a more artistic and writerly bent, so I draw and paint the energies instead of measure them.
Anyway. I didn't watch the debate last night, partly because I had other things to do (things involving my own life) partly because I knew the Bush part of it would be painful and annoying to watch. Why submit myself to that? Why?
I tell you though. As much as Bush deserves to lose in a 99 to 1 precent landslide, I wouldn't wish this mess on anyone. The single solitary reason to argue that Bush should return to office is so that he can inherit his own disaster. Because my GOD... the english language is sadly inadequate to describe the sheer, colossal, mind-rending, catastrophe that is the ongoing (and growing) result of the terrible mis-rule of the Bush regime. Arrgghhh!!! AMERICA MUST RESCUE ITSELF FROM THE GRIP OF THIS LUNATIC TEXAS CRONY-CAPITALIST, (not so) CRYPTO-FASCIST SICKNESS!
John Kerry, well, it has taken me awhile to warm up to him, but I am now quite convinced of his genuineness and decency. I think he actually believes in service and the common good. And compared to Bush he isn't merely "not Bush", he is a veritable Rushmore-face of statesmanship and intelligence. America may or may not have become an empire. But even empires need good emperors. If you were given the theoretical choice between a Nero and a Marcus Aurelius, who would you vote for? I thought so. SO GET OUT AND VOTE. And pray.