Your skin is something that I stir into my tea
I got laid off/fired from my job. It is a very strange feeling to be unfettered by a 9-5 after 8 years of desk job. I was super sad and ashamed at first, but then I thought, "Wait a minute. I can do anything I want, now. So I did.
I took a trip to Los Angeles to see friends, then down to Oakland/San Francisco for an Acro Yoga festival.
First, I stopped in LA to see Bex and Betsy. Rebex is so awesome, she will melt your face off.
She lives in a beautiful collective called The Ecovillage. It is filled with hippies.
They also have bantam cochins. I just about died. Since they are very small chickens, they make very small chicken noises which just makes me want to hug them until they explode.
One of Bex friends' houses.
Why no more jars, you say?
Because they have enough, damn it.
From Bex's I went to visit the lovely Betsy Jetson, who is not pictured here due to illness, because nobody likes to have their picture taken right after they puke, and that's what Bets spent most of my visit doing, unfortunately. Here is her roommate Rob instead. He's a good kid. Here, he and Jimmy The Cat are listening to Charlie P on my iPod.
He took me out into LA and we saw some bands play at various dive bars.
Terrible outfit at one of the bars. Why would you wear fishnets under shorts under white socks in black boots? TELL ME!!!!
I should have let this man tattoo me.
At the Hustler store. That was my nickname in high school.
On the plane to San Francisco, I got along really well with the flight attendant named Rosa sitting next to me, and we ended up going downtown and hanging out all day. It was brilliant. I made her eat vegan food. She did not enjoy it, although I don't know how anyone could not love this spicy tofu soup.
We didn't do much other than sit around and talk. Here we stopped in the park for the first sun I had seen all trip. Then we went and saw Inception. My favorite part about going anywhere is the people I meet. No doubt.
I couch surfed the entire time I was in Oakland/San Fran. It was the best idea I have ever had. I think that if I had been in a hotel room the entire trip I would have been miserable. Instead I got to meet great people and sleep in homes that are lived in not shitty and depressing like hotels. Pictured here is a girl named Indigo (left) that was also surfing with Robyn (right) for the duration of the Acro Yoga festival.
The day before the festival I spent with Indigo and we headed to Haight Ashbury. This lady had a baby green cheeked conure.
Oh building, why do you have to be such a jerk.
This lady worked at a wonderful cafe where I ate the best hummus bagel ever. She doesn't like having her picture taken, so she has this mask of herself that she can wear for pictures instead.
Indigo, my couch surfing buddy from Denmark, is a raw food vegan who only eats fruit. How intense is that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitarianism
What up, hippies?
I got my ears pierced again here:
More San Fran delights. One of the ugliest dogs I've ever seen:
He could totally smell my burrito in the bag Indigo was carrying for me.
Ironical. She was pretty tolerant of me in general.
Best story ever! so we're sitting in the park, we do some acro yoga, we eat some of her fruit and we hang out. Up comes this 21 year old boy named Jacob. He smiles strangely at us for a while and then says "Have you ever heard of ayahuasca?" He is very clearly under the influence of hallucinogens. He's having trouble finding words, and he smells like a crazy person. He asks if he can have a piece of fruit, eats a peach and then begins to repeatedly ask me if I'm single. I explain boy-band and he is given pause, but then continues to question me about my romantic availability on and off for the rest of our interaction. I took the below picture of him, and when I showed him he said, "That's a kid. You took a picture of a kid." I agreed with him.
He turns to me at one point and says "Do you want to see something gross?" I told him I would as long as it doesn't involve the harming of animals or children.
He pulls out this piece of paper below. He would only let me photograph the back of it, not the inside, but there, he unfolded it and explained to me that this was his heart, his heart that he had rescued from another dimension. He had drawn all over the paper on the inside, and he explained to me each part, like "Where this line and this line intersect but don't actually touch, that is where my heart lives. My heart has been broken, it has been Chinese lined and it is in pain. My heart is Chinese." This aspect of the conversation lasted a long time. He went into "Coo is the sound of oo, is the sound of a heart breaking and it is the worst sound in the world and I've lost the other o, if you find it, let me know. This tear is what's left of my heart and this where my heart is Chinese lined. Hurt Heart Hate." and etc etc. At one point I asked him why he thought his heart was Chinese and he said, "Because it makes no sense!" The whole thing was pretty tragic. Add to that the fact that he kept asking me if I was single, and then asking for every detail about Ian.
There's really not that much you can talk about with a crazy person at a certain point, so I was going through pictures and texting and all of a sudden, he leaned in and kind of smooshed his face into my shoulder like a cat and just stayed there. Indigo grabbed my camera and took these pictures, which I very much appreciate, but I really wish she would have caught him with the whole face-plant thing instead of just nuzzling. He would occasionally make small kissing noises into my shoulder. Then I would lean away to get something or what have you and he would sit up again, then shortly after take another face plant into my shoulder. I was obviously not feeling threatened.
We were at about 45 minutes of tripping hippie when the talk of his Chinese heart and all of the pain he was in began to just start repeating, so I grabbed a post card that I had just purchased with a big rose and the word "bliss" on it that looked like this:
and on the back wrote "For Jacob: For his heart"
I handed it to him, he looked at it for about 30 seconds, grinned, then got up and walked away.
Acro!
Reverse star:
Side flying:
This is the only dude to give me a really satisfying flying experience this trip. I spent a lot of time basing again, but he ruled. He and his beautiful wife were there with their brand new baby acro yogi.
I like it when people smile while doing yoga.
Turn table! I can't remember for sure if I successfully did this on this trip, but I think I did base it.
What you see when you look up at the Acro Yoga festival
Partner Thai massage
MC Yogi concert, bitches!
This is what I looked like for most of the festival. Sweaty and blissful. I would say Acro Yoga is better than sex, but they are so completely unrelated that comparing them is unfair. But I really do look like I've just had a weekend of the best sex ever. Bed head and all. That is my happy face.
The last night I stayed in Oakland I surfed with a girl named Tiffany Foo.
She lives here:
http://www.terrastemple.com/index.html
Just about the sweetest person you'd ever meet. When I left, she jumped up and hugged me like a Koala bear with all of her arms and legs.
Then, it was back to LA to hang out with all those kids for another couple of days before heading home. Breakfast with Zev and Bex.
Rob doing oodles of homework.
Johnny getting down with his bad self. Not pictured: The ever lovely, currently barfy Betsy Jetson.
In place of Betsy, you get Jimmy the Cat.
On the way home, the tops of the clouds looked like an ocean with mountaintops for islands.
I didn't tell you everything about this trip, but this trip was so much to me. I am changed forever (or for the rest of the time that I am me.) I am also very glad to be home with my best boy in the world and all of the people I adore here.
What's next?
I took a trip to Los Angeles to see friends, then down to Oakland/San Francisco for an Acro Yoga festival.
First, I stopped in LA to see Bex and Betsy. Rebex is so awesome, she will melt your face off.
She lives in a beautiful collective called The Ecovillage. It is filled with hippies.
They also have bantam cochins. I just about died. Since they are very small chickens, they make very small chicken noises which just makes me want to hug them until they explode.
One of Bex friends' houses.
Why no more jars, you say?
Because they have enough, damn it.
From Bex's I went to visit the lovely Betsy Jetson, who is not pictured here due to illness, because nobody likes to have their picture taken right after they puke, and that's what Bets spent most of my visit doing, unfortunately. Here is her roommate Rob instead. He's a good kid. Here, he and Jimmy The Cat are listening to Charlie P on my iPod.
He took me out into LA and we saw some bands play at various dive bars.
Terrible outfit at one of the bars. Why would you wear fishnets under shorts under white socks in black boots? TELL ME!!!!
I should have let this man tattoo me.
At the Hustler store. That was my nickname in high school.
On the plane to San Francisco, I got along really well with the flight attendant named Rosa sitting next to me, and we ended up going downtown and hanging out all day. It was brilliant. I made her eat vegan food. She did not enjoy it, although I don't know how anyone could not love this spicy tofu soup.
We didn't do much other than sit around and talk. Here we stopped in the park for the first sun I had seen all trip. Then we went and saw Inception. My favorite part about going anywhere is the people I meet. No doubt.
I couch surfed the entire time I was in Oakland/San Fran. It was the best idea I have ever had. I think that if I had been in a hotel room the entire trip I would have been miserable. Instead I got to meet great people and sleep in homes that are lived in not shitty and depressing like hotels. Pictured here is a girl named Indigo (left) that was also surfing with Robyn (right) for the duration of the Acro Yoga festival.
The day before the festival I spent with Indigo and we headed to Haight Ashbury. This lady had a baby green cheeked conure.
Oh building, why do you have to be such a jerk.
This lady worked at a wonderful cafe where I ate the best hummus bagel ever. She doesn't like having her picture taken, so she has this mask of herself that she can wear for pictures instead.
Indigo, my couch surfing buddy from Denmark, is a raw food vegan who only eats fruit. How intense is that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitarianism
What up, hippies?
I got my ears pierced again here:
More San Fran delights. One of the ugliest dogs I've ever seen:
He could totally smell my burrito in the bag Indigo was carrying for me.
Ironical. She was pretty tolerant of me in general.
Best story ever! so we're sitting in the park, we do some acro yoga, we eat some of her fruit and we hang out. Up comes this 21 year old boy named Jacob. He smiles strangely at us for a while and then says "Have you ever heard of ayahuasca?" He is very clearly under the influence of hallucinogens. He's having trouble finding words, and he smells like a crazy person. He asks if he can have a piece of fruit, eats a peach and then begins to repeatedly ask me if I'm single. I explain boy-band and he is given pause, but then continues to question me about my romantic availability on and off for the rest of our interaction. I took the below picture of him, and when I showed him he said, "That's a kid. You took a picture of a kid." I agreed with him.
He turns to me at one point and says "Do you want to see something gross?" I told him I would as long as it doesn't involve the harming of animals or children.
He pulls out this piece of paper below. He would only let me photograph the back of it, not the inside, but there, he unfolded it and explained to me that this was his heart, his heart that he had rescued from another dimension. He had drawn all over the paper on the inside, and he explained to me each part, like "Where this line and this line intersect but don't actually touch, that is where my heart lives. My heart has been broken, it has been Chinese lined and it is in pain. My heart is Chinese." This aspect of the conversation lasted a long time. He went into "Coo is the sound of oo, is the sound of a heart breaking and it is the worst sound in the world and I've lost the other o, if you find it, let me know. This tear is what's left of my heart and this where my heart is Chinese lined. Hurt Heart Hate." and etc etc. At one point I asked him why he thought his heart was Chinese and he said, "Because it makes no sense!" The whole thing was pretty tragic. Add to that the fact that he kept asking me if I was single, and then asking for every detail about Ian.
There's really not that much you can talk about with a crazy person at a certain point, so I was going through pictures and texting and all of a sudden, he leaned in and kind of smooshed his face into my shoulder like a cat and just stayed there. Indigo grabbed my camera and took these pictures, which I very much appreciate, but I really wish she would have caught him with the whole face-plant thing instead of just nuzzling. He would occasionally make small kissing noises into my shoulder. Then I would lean away to get something or what have you and he would sit up again, then shortly after take another face plant into my shoulder. I was obviously not feeling threatened.
We were at about 45 minutes of tripping hippie when the talk of his Chinese heart and all of the pain he was in began to just start repeating, so I grabbed a post card that I had just purchased with a big rose and the word "bliss" on it that looked like this:
and on the back wrote "For Jacob: For his heart"
I handed it to him, he looked at it for about 30 seconds, grinned, then got up and walked away.
Acro!
Reverse star:
Side flying:
This is the only dude to give me a really satisfying flying experience this trip. I spent a lot of time basing again, but he ruled. He and his beautiful wife were there with their brand new baby acro yogi.
I like it when people smile while doing yoga.
Turn table! I can't remember for sure if I successfully did this on this trip, but I think I did base it.
What you see when you look up at the Acro Yoga festival
Partner Thai massage
MC Yogi concert, bitches!
This is what I looked like for most of the festival. Sweaty and blissful. I would say Acro Yoga is better than sex, but they are so completely unrelated that comparing them is unfair. But I really do look like I've just had a weekend of the best sex ever. Bed head and all. That is my happy face.
The last night I stayed in Oakland I surfed with a girl named Tiffany Foo.
She lives here:
http://www.terrastemple.com/index.html
Just about the sweetest person you'd ever meet. When I left, she jumped up and hugged me like a Koala bear with all of her arms and legs.
Then, it was back to LA to hang out with all those kids for another couple of days before heading home. Breakfast with Zev and Bex.
Rob doing oodles of homework.
Johnny getting down with his bad self. Not pictured: The ever lovely, currently barfy Betsy Jetson.
In place of Betsy, you get Jimmy the Cat.
On the way home, the tops of the clouds looked like an ocean with mountaintops for islands.
I didn't tell you everything about this trip, but this trip was so much to me. I am changed forever (or for the rest of the time that I am me.) I am also very glad to be home with my best boy in the world and all of the people I adore here.
What's next?