i'm a red-faced lion

Music and Booking Shows

2012-01-30T00:30:00.001-08:00

I've been having a very busy year getting adjusted to parenthood. Throughout this time there have been many songs calling through and tugging on my heart. Pay attention, they say. Learn who you are, they say. Just be, after everything, stop becoming everything other than yourself and just be. Believe in your ancestors, whose fact is no fiction. Trust yourself and the inner learning that is always taking place.

Look for me around Portland, I'm playing guitar with other people and smoothing out the edges of some new material for a project 8 years in the making.

I spent the lunar new year on land that had just been flooded, and was gathered into the year of the Dragon through the element of water.

So we say let creation flow. . .

Love and ecstasy, do I belong with thee?

2010-08-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

Love and ecstasy
Do I belong with thee?
Is that where I am?
Where I have been going seems so far from your face
This putrefaction of the physical rots
in landfills of cigarettes and dirty diapers where we study accounting
I wonder Where are the likes of Pythagoras?
and
Hermes Trismegistus:
"Let's go there and purify," they said and came here in the 20th century with veiled faces
And into the 21st with veiled minds
Looking for my lover, anatta

DIY plant medicine is a real healthcare plan

2010-07-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

Real healthcare -- what is it? The human family taking care of the human wellness throughout the human comedy

There are a number of plants already growing in our backyards being tended by the rain, soil, and sun who have healing properties to share with us. Plants that can be taken as simply as a fresh tea or decoction, whose benefits include fortifying our bodies' immune systems, help with digestion, calming our nervous system, clearing out our lungs and sinuses. All these plants and more are in arms reach to keep us healthy and connected to our bodies and the places where we live. We want to balance and heal our systems that have gotten used to putting up with toxic damage to their molecular structures. What is strong enough to aid us when alcohol tobacco and firearms are playing with us? Herbal tinctures. Living foods and juices. Cultured foods. Organic gardens everywhere. Organic plant medicine and wild edibles are already growing everywhere. You just have to look...

When we help propagate and disseminate medicinal herb species and vegetable species and fruit species, the plants become some of our greatest allies towards a self-sufficiency that includes freedom from the dominant cultural paradigm of superficiality, sickness + famine, war, and ignorance. We are not immune to these human conditions, though our consciences can no longer bear it and we cannot continue to take part in Greed as Culture (what the world worships and what's raping it in the ass simultaneously). Though it has become alien to us in our "little boxes" society, going against the stream is a much simpler and more direct experience. Our plant allies are there waiting for us in sidewalk cracks and abandoned lots.

3 questions to conclude:

What can we learn from the life and death of what have pejoratively been called weeds?
Is the equanimity of Dandelion an illusory façade?
Who can stand up to a 9-ft tall mullein plant, and say...anything?

Spontaneous Poem #1, paragraph form

2010-07-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

heart song singing praises of everlasting peace and joy
joy is built on a rock of peace
not confusion or anguish
not comfort or pleasure
but naked peace naked presence

present peace

present peace

present peace

OMing, praying centering prayers, breathing consciously, let go let God
the heart of now is the heart of Logos
the heart of Christ
Yeshua the great Buddha Lord at the beginning who neither stands nor sits

Jizo Bodhisattva rattling his staff to alert the insects and the snakes
who coil up the tree

come over
my friends come over and lets have a tea
lets have a tea for all time lets have a tea for all time
not stopping it fast
enid, ened
not stopping it fast ened
fast enough
fast enough for all time fast
fasting from time not fast enough fasting from time
all time not fast enough

41st annual Oregon Country Fair

2010-07-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

We went to the OCF this past weekend near Veneta, outside of Eugene.

It's a magical tour through an enchanted forest filled with awesomely inspiring people.

Here is my wife, Janessa, and our son, Odin, and me. The sun hat was big enough that it shaded Odin when I was carrying him. It's from an estate sale in Portland -- the deceased had a lot of hats, and this one is great for gardening.

Eric, on the other hand, still wears his hats. He is still living. I saw him playing songs in an area for performance with a lot of benches called the Still Living Room. It's reserved for Fair elders who've been coming and playing for a while, like Eric Nicholson who's been doing so for 20 years. His songs are timeless, and of the spirited Earth.

One year Odin

2010-06-22T22:47:00.000-07:00

One year from the last post, a baby boy was born to my wife and me. We call him Odin. His middle name is Tabor, which is the name of the volcano/park in Portland, Oregon where we got married...it is also a mountain in Nazareth where the Transfiguration of Jesus may have taken place. Nazareth is the capital and largest city in the North District of Israel, and the childhood home of Jesus according to the New Testament.

purpose

2009-06-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

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