workshop days

Another day of fabulous under-employment used to its full advantage. My time was largely devoted to working on gear -- painting both pairs of stilts black, finally fixing the 4 footers, and replacing the yarn-thin aircraft cable on my poi (can hold a VW bug) to the some pencil-thick stuff (can hold up a city bus).

Paint under my nails, a burn on one finger, and a lovely sense of accomplishment. I worked hard for an education to become a white-collar worker for what?

I've pretty much geared for a big jump at the end of the month. I'm pretty sure the landing spot is Toronto, though I don't actually have a place to live or a job yet. Details, details.

Everything has been on the up since I decided to ditch this cowtown. There's a decompression party in town tomorrow, a stiliting/fire gig on Sunday for the harvest moon/Autumnal Equinox (the Equinox actually being next Thursday, but who's keeping track?). I think I'm off to visit the parents next week, though I haven't worked out the details.

I should do an Albertan farewell tour... We'll see. It's an exciting idea, this picking up and going idea. It's not as though I haven't been moving around constantly for the last, oh, eight years or so. This time it's not just going and coming back. This time it's going without plans of ever living here again. FOr some reason that makes it seem much more significant.

The pic is from the road trip up. Love Chevrons for only using SELF for their self serve.

a rainy weekend in my little basement

Rain rain go away, it feels like you're here to stay ... another weekend in this soaked little city. It was like this right before I left for the burn, too, leaving me breaking down bikes in a rain jacket and building stilts in my little basement. The weather reminds me of Vancouver in January.

It makes the city feel even more lonely for the other places I call home. I don't really want to be back -- driving out of the rockies felt a bit like punishment, cruising through its endless suburbs into the little downtown core reminded me of how little I want to live here. Toronto?

The burn was great, though not my most spectcular. All for my own reasons, of course, a certain difficulty I feel being present, and some criticisms boiling through my brain about what the little festival should be (mostly thanks to reading "this is burning man" in the weeks leading up to the festival). I am not so idealistic about the place as I used to be, one part annoyed with the virgins, one part annoyed with the deification of the Man. I was almost pleased to see some incredibly stupid dangerous things going on, proving that the place hadn't been entirely tamed. As one piss clear writer put it "Burning Man nostolgia isn't what it used to be." Art projects to deal with the annoyance to follow.

Many thanks to all the friends I spent it with and the new friends that I met. Highlights include modelling/contact dance, critical stilts, the temple burn, the lost canadian and the Kanuckistan burn barrel, mad dancing on the 10 o'clock end, the tower of flower, the fire finger garden, and lots of other little encounters.

The pic is from a hitchhiking trip just before the playa at the Whiteswan hotsprings. Playa photos to follow, as soon as I deal with some developing. Fabulous times, indeed.