Late September, I went to Texas to visit family. But, in the spirit of honesty,  I’ll  admit to the overwhelmingly selfish motivation.  I love New York, but it simply cannot meet my daily urges to flee to the woods and sit (or dance)–undisturbed– among the trees.  With a few free days at my disposal, I packed a small bag (yes, I managed to fly as one of the carry-on-only passengers whose efficiency I usually envy!) full of to-be-muddied clothes and hopped a plane.

The three days I spent in East Texas dancing outdoors and experimenting with alternative photo printing techniques were a much needed escape.  I intend to blog more about those particular aspects of my self-guided retreat, but the story I would like to tell now takes place on the day following my  re-emergence from the woods, therefore, more easily translates into verbal expression than a solitary few days among nature.  The trees never demand verbal thoughts or experience.

I wake up very early on the morning of my departure  to meet the Super-shuttle service outside of my hotel in Dallas.  I am waiting in the abandoned hotel lobby just before 5am, believing myself to be alone in the expansive marble foyer at such an hour, as the concierge has gone to fetch a bottle of water he so kindly offered to me.  But before he returns, I notice a man sitting in an arm chair near the fireplace, reading a magazine. Without really noticing I am doing so, I note that he does not have luggage with him ruling out an early flight as his reason for being up when any sane person would rather be sleeping, and simply deem him an early-riser.  Ten minutes or so pass in the haze of my tiredness while I sip on water and watch for the Super-shuttle from a seat near the revolving door.

My ride finally arrives but just as I reach the exit, the magazine-reading early bird calls out, “Hey, Miss, will you tell the driver I’ll be out in few minutes?”  A little stunned, I reply, “Sure” and walk out to the vehicle realizing my subconscious “detectiving” skills to be faulty.  I replace my earlier assumption that he is not going to the airport with a certainty that he is from the Deep South, based on his accent.  I am seated in the middle bench seat of the empty 12-passenger van for a few minutes before I see him exit the hotel and approach the van carrying something that rouses the detective in me again.   Perhaps because I am already on-guard, being a woman in a van in the darkness of early morning with a male driver and a mysterious male passenger, but the only items that come to mind as the possible contents of his very large plastic trunk seem sinister and worrying.  Why can’t he travel with a nondescript black suitcase like the rest of us?

His trunk loaded, he takes a seat in the row just in front of me.  I wonder if I should pretend to be napping against the window to avoid having to talk to him when the driver starts the ignition and the radio blares a spanish pop tune, eliminating all possibility of feigned sleep or conversation.  The driver turns the music down to a tolerable level but we continue in silence for a while, leaving me to my thoughts.  I now notice that my mysterious fellow passenger looks a lot like John Locke from LOST and begin to factor the meaning of this into my present situation.  Locke is awesome. But he is also creepy, and has been riding the ambiguous light/dark, good/evil line throughout his entire character arc. So I am basically exactly where I started, except that if I do die in this van, it will not just be at the hand of a mysterious man, but a mysterious man that looks a lot like a mysterious character with a mysterious connection to a mysterious island.  And that is a better way to go, I guess?  All I have to do it make it the 10 miles to the airport without a knife, or gun, or cadaver, or severed limb, or evil puppet, (or a smoke monster) coming out of that trunk.   And then his words break my strange web of thoughts.  ”So where are you headed to? Are you going or coming?”

As the conversation continues, I am slightly eased by the fact that he seems very nice, but I still try to answer his questions vaguely, leaving out as many details as I can.  Conversely, I learn that he is from Alabama and has been in Dallas for a boar hunting convention or something.  (Ah, so perhaps he does have tons of knives in that trunk! And hunting boar?  Locke hunts boar!)  And that he is headed back to Alabama early this morning because he has to lead a group of kids on their first hunting trip later that day…(Hmmm, maybe it holds kid-sized knives too.)

I am beginning to be lulled into what I hope is not a false sense of security (at least the trunk has an explanation?), encouraged by the fact that we can’t be far from the airport, when ‘John’ turns to me and says, “We’re going the wrong way.”  I have no idea where we are or where we are supposed to be but I am fairly certain a hunter needs a good sense of direction.  Another minute passes and he turns to me again, “Do you have a pen?”  I dig around in my bag, find a pencil, present it to ‘John’ wondering if it is a sufficient substitute, and he takes it, indicating that a pencil is fine.  Again, my skills of detection are off, because my assumption that he needs to write something with that pencil is negated by his white-knuckle death-grip around it.  A casual look on his face, ‘John’ is poised to jab my pencil into the driver’s neck if he makes another “wrong turn.”

“You can never be too careful,” ‘John’ whispers.  ”He could be taking us to an alley somewhere, where his buddies are waiting to jump us. ”

Okay, so, I’m looking out the window at a road that looks too small to lead to the airport, thinking I don’t want to be stuck in an alley with the driver and his gang, or a van with this man!  We have certainly gone more than 10 miles and the airport is nowhere in site, but this is Super-shuttle, not an unregistered taxi.  Surely everything is fine, right?  Maybe I should just redirect my worrying to the passing time and the threat of missing my flight. (And maybe keep an eye on that pencil to make sure it isn’t coming toward my neck.)

‘John’ asks a few questions of the driver in a threatening, intimidating voice, “Where are you taking us!? Where are we going?” The driver’s English is unintelligible, which only makes ‘John’ more certain that he is up to no good.  I will not comment on the racist assumptions at play because I would have to make my own potentially unfair assumptions about ‘John’ but I think he may have been living up to the Good Old Boy stereotype.  He remained white-knuckled until the van came to a halt, not in an alley, but at the front door of a house, from which a benign white-haired couple emerged with suitcases.  ’John’ merely chuckled a little to himself and handed the pencil back to me.

Our new passengers boarded, the last twenty minutes to the airport were uneventful by comparison.  I made my flight, kept all of my limbs, and never found out for sure what was in that trunk.  I knew ‘John’ could not be headed to Alabama via New York so I was fairly certain my plane was not going to crash due to electromagnetic oddities; However, I did check all of my belongings when I arrived in New York in case ‘John’ slipped in a note admonishing me for not believing him.  We had, after all, been going the wrong way.

Yes, moustaches are just generally amusing, however, the word, the sight, the mere idea of one has tickled a particularly personal funny-bone of mine for about a month now.  My hirsute boyfriend, Jim, is now a week into the Movember campaign, after an entire month of thinking, linking, and indulging in not shaving.  ”Movember (the month formerly known as November) is a moustache growing charity event held during November each year that raises funds and awareness for men’s health.”  Check EnemyOfPeanuts daily to watch the moustaches of Jim Gibbons and his Movember ‘mo growing teammate Matt Lubicky grow, in effort to change the face of men’s health!  Together, as The Venerable Gentlemen…from Space, Jim and Matt have already raised over $550 and there are three weeks to go!

So, if you are a man, or you know and love men, click here and donate now!  And, why not click here and buy a Jim Gibbons original t-shirt to support The Venerable Gentlemen…from Space!  (All proceeds go toward the fundraising efforts!)

So…back to dinner at Moustache, now that you better understand just how perfect the choice was that lead me here–thanks Amara!

Moustaches, bringing together friends, food, and the fight against cancer!

Moustaches aside, I must say that this dinner (delicious middle eastern food and wine) was truly about love and friendship and the inexplicable passage of time.  I am blessed to have an intimate number of friends that represent the very best of what people can be in this world–an intimate number, and still more than I can imagine I deserve.  So let me, in the midst of this silly post, thank you each for your individual way of embodying love in its undeniable truth. I find silliness works its way into each of these unique incarnations, a statement by which I now hope to flow seamlessly into my own bit of silly fun…

Falafel, Fighting Cancer

With this fusion of all that “Moustache” now means to me, I leave you with this thought…

Don’t let these chickpeas outdo you!  Everyone knows that moustaches are chick-pleasers!  (No? Really bad?  Sorry…No, no I’m not.)  Go grow one and tell everyone who asks “Why?” why!  And send your spare change or awesomely generous gifts here!

The lovely pups I am sitting are delightful, but very hairy beasts.  Add to the scenario my borderline-obsessive regard for crisp (I practically make the bed anew each night before sleeping), clean (thou shalt wash thy feet before breaching the 5 foot circumference clean zone around the bed), unwrinkled (those sheets gotta fit the bed like a glove), and definitely hair-free linens (dogs near the bed! Gasp!) and you’ll understand that I am one very busy lint-rolling lady.

Oh, but how can we not forgive these faces their shaggy splendor?

Sadly, I like both of these looks better than my own current look.  So, if I am gearing up for a change, I am open to suggestions…

Blonde, brunette, short, long?  Let’s hear some opinions!

(Also, a less serious post…cause I can do that too!)

Pinot and the Pea

During dinner, my co-worker, Sarah, managed to drop a pea from her plate onto the table.  Pea upon table, glass upon pea, the evening proceeded with a series of sips that shuffled the pea around our section of the table, beckoning the glass to follow.  I watched as it became an unconscious game.  Wherever the pea rolled, it’s resting place dictated the point upon which the axis of the glass belonged.  The conical base of the wine glass peaked just enough to perfectly house the un-squished pea.  Compelled by a gestaltist force, the fiftieth assembling of these puzzle pieces was as pleasing as the first.  I may not know where each of the pieces fits on a larger scale, but for one night something in my life had a definite place of belonging. 

And it is probably more telling than even I know that this “place” was never the exact same twice.  Equilibrium is relative to the elements of the condition in which homeostasis is sought.  And when working with congruent pieces, right is right, regardless of location.  

Obviously I had way too much time to entertain myself at this event.  I blame my empty wallet for the excessive acquisition of theoretical wealth from an evening with a pea.  But let this be a lesson for the Princess in perspective; centering oneself is not the same as placing oneself in the center.  Remove oneself from the center, find room for the pea, find rest.  

 I have been intentionally, cathartically, thoroughly rain-drenched three times that I can recall.  Each location, each compulsion was very different, but these experiences are not laced together in my mind by way of circumstantial information.  Rather, they commune in a place where sensory experience embodies the fullness of Truth, unquestioned, unassailable.  

As I recall, my age at the time of each particular event was nine, seventeen, and twenty-four.  The patterns goes something like this: Overwhelmed with the hugeness and smallness of life, shrinking under the foreboding “and” that cling to the coat-tails of each well-dressed answer, resigned to the unyielding reflection of my own temperament in the climate out-of-doors, I take my nine- seventeen- twenty-four year old plight out-of-doors.  

Walking in the rain, sans umbrella, sans coat, perhaps even sans shoes, begins as a pitiful surrender to the Big Bad.  But as the rivers and oceans and lakes and creeks fall down from the world beyond my reach, driving sorrow and helplessness and humanity into soggy bones, fullness awaits.  The rain indulges the self-satisfying urge to be absorbed by one’s own situation.  It makes sure you can feel it.  Though indulgent, it is also clever; Succumbing to my personal symbolism–supersaturating me with my own emotion–I absorb a universal, unifying element.  Rain is not personal.  Puddles, sloshing into my shoes, in between my toes, are not particular.  My problems, really, are not unique and therefore, perhaps not so perplexing.  

And I am undone, released from my self-enclosing, self-destructive world.  Walking gives way to dancing, slogging to puddle-pouncing, sorrow to hope, isolation to integration…wetness to dryness.  And what fell so relentlessly as pain and confusion evaporates effortlessly, returning to the atmosphere what I took, and taking some of me.  I have been purged.  

Stepping out into the rain requires abandon– a time offering, a sacrifice of the sense of self-sufficiency or the ability to remain unaffected.  But shouldn’t we more often stop toiling to build barriers between ourselves and others, ourselves and our surroundings, our atoms and those of all else?  It is rarely practical, but I say the intermingling ought to happen before another eight years passes me by.  

So…yeah! Bring on the rain!

Hmm…I realize only now that I have completely strayed from my original intent with this post.  Swept away with the rain I suppose. So, I’ll touch upon it in brief…(I can’t promise late night fantasies and not deliver).  Seeing as it did not seem wise to go traipsing about in the rain in the middle of the night in a new town, my desire to be transformed by rain settled upon dreaming up ideal scenarios, wherein being in the rain (literal and metaphorical) would always involve dancing due to setting and company.  So ideal scenario one:

Live as a gnome family in the roots of a tree!

I wish to gather everyone that I love and live together as a little gnome village in the shelter of tree roots!

Or…I wish to gather everyone that I love and travel around in an ice cream van dispensing love, hope, and treats!  There would be much singing and dancing and ice cream eating (of the non-dairy sort)!

There are words for these images.  As of yet, they lie underfoot, twisted and full of refusal.  Reflected in their leafier and fruitful skyward counterparts, I am quite sure they must, at some time or another, ripen and fall.  Though I know not what they sound like, or how they feel on the tongue, there is a sort of contentment that comes with sitting underneath and upon them, capillarily responding to an unnamed certainty.  Experiencing the inexpressible.  

“Trees are living organisms comprised of three separate yet intimately connected parts.  Even without a sophisticated knowledge of the complex chemical interplay carried on via the capillaries of the trunk between roots buried in the ground and the branches and leaves that spread out far above them, the early human observer must have understood that each of the tree’s three general areas somehow needed the others for the whole to continue to flourish.”  Ptolemy Tomkins, This Trees Grows Out of Hell 

I have always been drawn to trees, and have happily looked at them with wonder without asking myself why.  My unchallenged fascination progressed to such a degree that I found myself in line at a bookstore to purchase a book based on the fact that it had “Tree” in the title.  (Before you snicker or mentally hurl some adage about books and judgement and covers, I must add that this lazy, impulse purchase was a raving success!)  Impulse, intuition, instinct, inkling–whatever you want to call it, I am glad I yield to it sometimes.  This book, Ptolemy Tompkins’ The Tree Grows Out of Hell, turns out to deal with the question I have been asking myself without actually asking it.  It combines history with mythology and a little theorizing, positing a perception of Mesoamerican culture with the tree as a cosmic cipher.  How cool, right!?  With another half to read, this is to be continued after I finish gathering nuggets!  But for now…TREES!

Roadtrip scenery

Last weekend, Jim whisked me away to Vermont in celebration of our one year anniversary.  (Knowing and loving me entails knowing that I love lush green landscapes populated by more trees than people–and loving such things too!)  I spent the first day absorbed with far too much awe to think of taking pictures.  However, as time grew nearer to that which would required our departure, I turned to the camera to assuage my fear of forgetting just how lovely land can be.  

More roadtrip scenery

"MY COWS!"

The constancy, firmness, stillness of mountains arrests me, moves me.  There is a different quality of consciousness at the intersection of movement and stillness.  Like the photographs above–taken from a quickly moving vehicle–even still moments, isolated from their place in a succession of those that make up an experience,  cannot but be filled with teeming movement.  There is movement in stillness and stillness in movement. 

Into this Universe, and Why not knowing
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.
Omar Khayyam XXIX

Up from Earth’s Centre through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,
And many a Knot unravel’d by the Road;
But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.
Omar Khayyam XXXI

BUT–try again!  It is now fixed and working beautifully.  And for convenience I have included the link in this post, in addition to correcting it in the original “Rent My Apartment” post.  http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/abo/1189721516.html

Sorry, again, and thanks for stopping by!

My studio is located just a few blocks from the 86th Street 4,5,6 Express Subway stop.  It’s surrounded by great shopping and is just a quick walk away from Central Park and Museum Mile!  It glows with natural light in the afternoons and  is quite spacious for a studio.  Take a look at the pictures and additional specs below.  I am happy to work out an arrangement to leave the furniture you want to use and take what you won’t need.  Great for an individual, a cozy couple, or roommates who really like each other!  (Put in two single beds and arrange the room screen for some privacy!)  Take a tour and start planning your next NYC adventure! 

Light-filled studio with super high ceilings, strip wood floors, separate kitchen area, full bathroom, and good closet space. Laundry in building and full service next door. Video intercom security system. Air conditioner ready.

Available June 1st…Pro-rated for a later June move date. Please contact me for more details at jessi.rey.reynolds@gmail.com. Rent varies depending upon furnishings. I look forward to hearing from you!

More details at http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/abo/1189721516.html