230 months.....

Yesterday, fiddling about with papers and pencils, i decided to write down some TR life stats about where i have lived, adding up the months. This is all part of a larger exercise - figuring out when i was most content/most depressed and what the parameters were among other things.

As someone whose life was marked by incessant moving, it was starkly obvious what has gone awry. Longest time occupying any one place - 230 months at LeisureLand before we started yearly migrations in 2017. Nearly TWENTY years. No wonder i got moldy, settled, depressed, isolated and stale. This bird needs to fly. Often.

Also, 42 total months spent homeless: on tour with bands, couch-surfing with friends & relatives, between bands on the streets. No address, no phone, living out of suitcases and boxes and storage units.....

....but in crunching numbers and memories, it became clear to me when TR's America was truly Great: 1966, from March to August. Six months of preschooler bliss, that time between when we moved from LA til I had to start kindergarten in Elmira, Oregon in the Fall. Life will never be that way again. I'm OK with that.

It also was pretty good for a 2-year stretch from 6-1978 to 6-1980, and again from 9-1990 to 1-1992.

Bad times? yeah they're in there too. The 9 month stretch of homelessness when i was 10 was awful. The homelessnesses of my early 20s were different, i was on my own and able to fend for myself quite well, as much as an autistic person can. Semi-feral, quiet, unnoticed....

Late Winter, Early Spring - When Everybody Goes to Mexico

Do you recognize that title? It popped into my mind this morning, i heard it in the theatre of my mind. Great reverb there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTNaO0xSYsI - hear it here.

It's early John Denver, a deep cut from Rocky Mountain High album. Released in 1972, an instrumental precursor to the Windam Hill acoustic guitar sound of the 80s. I used to listen to this repeatedly for hours as a kid of 11, wondering how it could be in the actual key of C, but sound like a D-shape chord on the 12-string. It didn't occur to me until I read an article a few years later by Leo Kottke in Guitar Player magazine about the necessity of tuning 12-string guitars down from standard E tuning to compensate for the higher tension on the neck. So John WAS playing in D-form, but it was actually C-sound.

Well then!
(slurps tea)

Woke up before sunrise this morning and was mildly surprised that the first orange rays of El Sol didn’t stab into my eyes like usual as i was sitting at the table with the first cup of tea. We're past the Solstice by 6 weeks, and the Sun is obviously rising substantially farther north now, having moved just out of the frame of my SE-facing window here at 31 degrees north latitude.

The Earth has moved in relation to the Sun - last Sunday was the first day of Early Spring, known as Groundhog Day in the US, Imbolc and Brigid to the Old Ones, Candlemas to the Church.  My chickens will start laying soon at home in Oregon. Here in the Borderlands, flowers are starting to bloom, things are green, the young male blackbirds are starting their rusty attempt at calls. Today’s temperature will be near 80F

I am coming up on FOUR solid weeks of good mood, no depression at all. Remission.

Is it the Sun, 

the addition of huge amounts of B12 to my diet, 

the lack of alcohol, 

the good weed ...

…. the onset of Baby Crone maturity as I approach my second Saturn Return and seven years of no Blood? 

Whatever it is, I like it and hope it follows me back to Oregon in another 7 weeks or so. 

Stay tuned. I want to stay tuned. The music is better.

Living Truly Tiny Spaces

Check out my Pinterest board of really small humanspaces. They're no more than backyard forts some of them, very useful and practical to many people, especially the unhoused. Lockable, dry, critter-proof. A warm safe place to sleep. Anyone who has ever tried to find one outdoors in a city knows how difficult it is and how brutal the resulting lack of sleep. A little wooden cube-home is far better than a cardboard box, a tent or a tarp, and some can even be moved by bicycle or hand-pushing as well as small cars. I would allow villages of these types of shelters in cities experiencing housing crises. Bring back "Hooverville", but with style, dignity and services. Yes, in my neighborhood. It's being done in Eugene.

That's another topic.

When I say "tiny house" in my universe, I mean under 200 square feet, not some of the bungalows and cabins and such featured on so many "tiny house" websites, where they sometimes stretch the definition up to 1200 sf. That's a generously sized 2-bedroom house for a family of 4-6 where I grew up. Tiny compared to a starter McMansion i guess.

My little writer's cube, the  "CactiShack" or "RatCube" is 24 sq ft (6x4x6) and i could take care of all my functions if needed, if i lived in it in a tiny village. Sleep, eat, drink, art, body-care, communications, crafts.
Yes, Even that function.
But usually it's most convenient and hygenic to be close to a shower and toilet facility if your space is this small. I'll show you the inside in a future post.

( How do i do doo when there's nowhere to do da doo? Shit in a sturdy bag, wipe if needed, put wipe in bag, tie it shut. Pitch it in the trash. Just like a bag of dog-shit, a load from the catbox or a dirty diaper. Extra nice if you put clean dirt, pine-needles, kitty litter or sawdust in your bag first, especially if there may be urine as well. Use a small wastebasket or bucket to hold your bag if you need help with aim. Wet-wipes are a nice way to keep clean. I've not needed this system here. My RV is 30 ft away.)

I have lived small in hotel rooms, rented rooms, curtained-off corners, old single-wide trailers, old station wagons, old vans, and now an actual new-ish self-contained RV.  It's 200 sq. feet. No slide-out rooms. We find it very useful and practical space so much that we live in it full-time. We even have a mobile recording studio in the back "bedroom" area. No kids, no pets, no cigarettes......

But something about the nestlike confines of a very tiny space inspires great bursts of creative thought from yours truly. Let's build a blanket fort under the table and invent something.....

Here's the current state of the CactiCube. There's a bird on it.

This is  a shiny fun thing made out of a regional favorite beer.  I hung it on my painted saguaro "holiday tree" See how i did it! Relaxing informal fun video i shot out in my writer's hut. https://youtu.be/mugdB-uzp9c No music or loud sounds, just me monologuing and punditing, but there IS the sound of cutting aluminum cans with scissors a few times. Beware. It's harsh to some ears. I like it like hot sauce - poquito, por favor!

Another sunny day in el desierto, y muy ventoso, so I stayed in our casa and worked on websites and stuff, updating the band's online presence, etc....meow......blah.... also marinating my brain in the New Tune in preparation for more editing..... read the news on the website for more. Meow. Blah. Etc.

http://www.raventones.com/news.html

Starting again ....

Greetings fans, friends, family, freaks, feathered ones;

I’m back
I apologize.

I realize that in the past ten years or so Facebook has absorbed a lot of my best writing, because it was fun and new and addictive in its simplicity. Shorter sentences, quicker reactions, thumbs up and friendly commentary, i got seduced by Zuck’s little universe.  It has a place in the Scheme of Things, but it is only a planet, NOT a universe. He’s an Important Nerd, but not the Supreme Programmer.

I’m still there. It’s useful.
(I never played Farmville. Never.)

Way back in the Aughts, this blog “MEOW MEOW MEOW, BLAH BLAH BLAH” was hoppin’ with all sorts of topical nonsense and witty essays. Then i had one of my destroy & purge & giveaway episodes and took it all offline. It still exists in a harddrive back at the sticks & bricks. I think.  Facebook really ate my brain. Relatives! Groups! Forums! Pages! I fed my brain to it, actually. With mustard and sprinkles on top.

I’ve changed a lot since then, it many ways large and small.
I found out the True Nature of my operating system, it has made me a kinder and braver Captain. Also being a bit older now, I give less shits and fucks about things that used to matter. I’m onto the long game now. I’m 57.5 Earth years old. Knowledge of limited time left on this planet means greater care is to be used in deploying mental and physical resources towards the Goal - the evolution of Consciousness. I’m an Artist, it’s what i do.  Metaphorically speaking, I’m here as part of the repair crew working to re-illuminate all the loose and broken lightbulbs in the cosmic billboard that says EAT AT JOE'S. many styles, colors, sizes, voltages, flash rates.....

 No really, the message is a bit different, but this is Metaphorically Speaking, not actual blueprints.

Anyway, time to fire up the starship again. This is your Captain speaking, Meow Blah III, coming at you from the Imperial Dam Long Term Visitor Area on the edge of El Desierto Sonora, deep in snowbird country, surrounded by rocks and polite elderly Canadians and frightened blustery old Americans waiting for Greatness to return.

Until then, as always, stay tuned.......