To keep at hand

I am clean and sober
My family still is emotionally supportive
I have good relations and contact with my stepsons.
I have a phone and some wise friends to talk to.
I am in therapy
I have food on hand and a bed.
I have access to a weight room
I have gardening projects.
I have an aa sponsor
I have meetings to go to
I have a book I finished being edited
I have books to read
I have opportunities to work
I have good physical health
I write well and have a small online audience
I am secure where I live for the next months
I have the ability to choose my feelings
I have what I call a soul

How very sad but ultimately hopeful.

No picture today. Writing this from an itouch which is now my main Internet tool. Not because I want it to be but because unfortunately my bag with computer etc was crushed yesterday. The kindest and truest thing to say about it was that is was not really Anyones fault.

I got the first edit of my book back yesterday but now cannot do the selective stuff, the 'accept' or 'reject' functions on the first set of discretionary editing in what was to be a fairly simple 3 stage polishing after now the main constructive stuff and basic grammars been finished.

I was certified psychologically disabled last week. Believe me. That's an improvement. It will pay the rent at the half way house for shambling wrecks on the mend like myself for up to six months.

The editor, who is qualified at this, has told me that it is very good, perhaps even commercial publisher good but easily good enough to self publish and be proud of.

Pride would be an exceptional thing for one in my position.

I ended all relations with my nine year marriage yesterday. The pain and frustration had peaked. I am indeed broken however the situation with the ex s fuck buddy and the explicit admission of no commitment to a mutual future but the door still being open. We'll see. For now the humiliation is simply not helpful and there is thankfully after two years of separated hell (well one and a half but it feels like two) a limit reached of how catholic I can feel.

Sorry. Veered into reality show without entertainment value there for a bit.

Also sorry for misspellings but auto correct is on and I cannot see on this small screen what I am typing.

If anyone honestly thinks I'm worth investing in then email me about the price of a notebook
Just writing today to keep the immediate past at bay.

Full Screen Delight

Surface detail from subBlue on Vimeo.

The street's where it's at.

Kona Clown Fest 2012-project update-Jan 2011

Well I'm progressively devoting time to this project again.

I took part in the Kona Christmas Parade again to help cement my local participation. I got the crowd pleasers award the year before. No one has contacted me back re this year but my presence was certainly noted.

I have reached out to Mackenzie Muldoon, the director of the Toronto Street performance Festival. An eleven year old festival that has grown from strength to strength and is second only to the Edmonton festival in size and scope now.

She is advising me as regards finding local mandates for funding.

http://www.torontobuskerfest.com/

Also Liz Bolick, who runs the 'clowns in hospitals' unit of mostly ex Ringlings up in New York and thereabouts. I intend to have a significant outreach sector to this project and she and her especially trained performers are perfect for this.

Also Pat Cashin, director of the International Clown Hall of Fame and research center I have asked to help where he can. He's a clown and curator and historian and I want for this festival to be an eclectic annual meeting of Clowns from different backgrounds, The classic North American and European, Russian and also other less well known schools, Argentina, Australasia, Japan etc.

http://www.theclownmuseum.com/

Additionally, on a whim and because the timing was perfect I submitted a very short application for initial funding towards getting the presentation together to promote this concept to

THE AWESOME FOUNDATION  [Sorry that just has to be in all caps]

http://awesomefoundation.org/

The idea that initial funding for this comes from the Awesome foundation is funny.

That's all for now but rest assured I am working on this project earnestly.

I have got other things out of the way. Finished my book which is now being edited elsewhere and off we go.

The Joy of Giving.

listen.

Following The Ninth: In The Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony from kerry candaele on Vimeo.

A quiet moment.

Two Fifty Three Kelvin from Bart van der Gaag on Vimeo.


Two Fifty Three Kelvin from Bart van der Gaag on Vimeo.

approx 11-27 am wed mankind ceased to evolve.

Last tuesday i had the last of a series of appointments that culminated in me being neutered, that is, the door of my spermatozoa's bedroom has been locked forever, they have been left to talk among themselves and dream of what could have been, before being absorbed back into my body to become something more useful...like phlegm.

I am going to write a short story (which for me means thousands of words in really long sentences) Which I will then self publish and sell.
I realise that its a little like shutting the barn door after the donkey's dead and the doors all that's left of the barn but the idea of starting a writing venture by whoring out tales of my impotent sac is, I think, an astute stroke of genius. I will use spellcheck and it will have a printed cover and everything. Its a must for xmas.

(excerpt) I arrived at the abattoir for my 11am appointment, the waiting room was scattered with elderly gentlemen who’s entire bodies, either because of advanced years or some mysterious proctological condition, had taken on the consistency and texture of scrotal skin.

Every time the outside door was opened a faint breeze would enter and with it a subtle change of temperature would have the skin on their faces literally crawl, double chins would disappear and reappear, their expressions morphed involuntarily from wide eyed to squintingly suspicious.
I ignored them as best I could as I filled in an encyclopedic form that was forklifted onto my lap. This is my name, this is my wallet, no I suffer from nothing more than a well heeled disdain for my biological imperative, no I don’t get hot flushes and yes I fantasize about small asian men probing my anus with their index fingers.

Eventually my name was called, I was led into a room by a nurse and my blood pressure taken, given a cup and instructed to pee in it. Now I had prepared fairly extensively for this preliminary consultation, I had brought a portable DVD player with an external hard drive filled with 250 GB of assorted porn.

I had a small rucksack containing the soiled panties of 10 of the most lusted after porn actresses of the moment, 3 small phials of amyl nitrate , a small cassette player with a recordings of Kenny Rodgers I particularly enjoy and an inflatable Yack but my bladder was bare. The nurse left the room and I rooted under the sink to find alternatives and settled for filling the cup with ‘Pine-O-Clean’

I was shortly afterwards led into the doctors office, and it was like a dream come true, there, on the other side of an expansive desk, sat an Asian male with small hands. .....(to be cont...) 

Beautiful, but not Pretty..

Clinging

If I can keep you stimulated constantly, either by writing my words or winding wee world castles round your heads or as a street based clown, digesting and conduiting banal reality and creating comedy out of it then I am essentially defensively distracting you and myself.

You know what stumps me? I don't know what from.

I know it's anxiety based but also I recognise within it lies the only peace I've ever known.

You can't go through life as a professional 11 foot disgruntled dancing panto without admitting to yourself a certain grandiose precocious childishness.

When all that dissolves I remind myself that I'm alone, I am entirely poor. I have had no funds at all the last 2 months of my life and I should be dead.

It kinda puts a searingly unavoidable magnifying lense on the question we all ask from time to time.

"Why am I here?"

My pat answer was always "I'm a stodgy potato of a man constantly asking myself 'Am I realised?' "

Well the answer is . "I'm not."

I'm not realised. I have no idea really.

I'm funny but a lot of people are funny. I know funny, a lot less people know funny but there's still quite a few of us.

I'm just thinking aloud here.

Should I produce collective funny? Should I corral all the beautiful flawed folk who create the funny and focus them so that laughter is produced, on the streets, in hospitals, schools and hospices over a set period of time regularly?

I wonder, if I let go, could it work?

Perhaps I could acknowledge that living for free [so far] in a drug rehabilitation farm overlooking the sea is some sort of circumstantial gift perhaps even divine in it's own way .

I lost my mind and this place caught me and gently gifted me a footing.

I accept I have nothing more to lose. I'm not suicidal so I suppose I have no choice. What's to be done of me seems out of my hands. It frankly terrifies me.

Grock.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,820394,00.html

Wave upon wave of applause filled a circus tent in Hamburg last week as a preposterous, shambling clown, his baggy pants secured by a huge safety pin, his crudely gloved hands the essence of misplaced elegance, finished his turn. Friends and fans had come from as far away as Italy and England to see his act. They stood on their chairs, stomping and cheering. Long after the clown himself had shuffled off, wiping a tear from his dead-white face with a floppy sleeve, the cheers ran on, until at last a loudspeaker blared: "Please, ladies and gentlemen, do not applaud any longer. Grock is not coming back. Grock is never coming back."

The audience of 3,000 found it hard to believe that The Great Grock would ever give up the limelight and the sawdust, but the fact was that at 74, Europe's greatest clown was tired. 

As Adrian Wettach, the son of a Swiss watchmaker, he ran away from home at 14 to try his luck in greasepaint. For 60 years he played in circuses and music halls across the length and breadth of Europe and England. On a continent where clowns are universally rated as the top act in any circus, Grock was acclaimed as the greatest of them all. The Queen of Spain once gave premature birth to a royal heir from laughing too hard at his antics. Winston Churchill once urged him to take out British citizenship so that Britons might claim him as their own. Even Charlie Chaplin was once kind enough to concede that Grock was almost as good as he.

Offstage a solemn and fastidious artist who speaks seven languages and boasts an honorary Ph.D., The Great Grock spent hours and years polishing and perfecting the details of his performance. But he never tampered with its essential ingredients, which were as simple and absurd as life itself: a tiny fiddle produced from a monstrous case, the almost miraculous discovery that it is easier to push a stool toward a piano than it is to push a piano toward a stool, his look of ecstatic appreciation at a single sour musical note produced all by himself. In such endless re-enactment of simple and simple-minded truth, everyman could forget his own absurdity and laugh instead at Crock's.

Last week, soon after the curtain fell for the last time on his act, Grock and his devoted Italian wife headed for retirement and a 50-room villa on the Italian Riviera. He had earned his rest without question, "but who," asked one of the million-odd friends he had left behind, "will ever be able to make us laugh like that again?"

 

Planned new homepage

The sky will be some transposed weird thing and the windows will each be a link to some different aspect of my world.

 Various show concepts and applications, childrens stories, a book or two, videos. stilt-cam, clown car tomb, travel stories, festival reviews, performer critics, a short film, blog, etc etc.

The long slow process of learning how to do this has begun. Photoshop and dreamweaver and online tutorials are being played with.

Any other required skills suggested or applied effects I could learn and bring to bear would be appreciated.

I'm looking for a dark but whimsical circus feel.

It's good to be sober.

First off you get physically sober. Your body starts healing from the abuse. My mind became open to reformatting. When you take mind altering stuff daily then obviously your mind gets altered. For me their were some major landslides in my mental topography. At first, the first month, because I was living rough and day to day I simply couldn't dwell on the sinkholes that opened up. I was aware that I was demonstratively insane, inventing things in my mind set in the past and future and present.

I've always been proud of my mind. It was tragic to me to feel it slipping away as a walked miles here and there on the smallest pretext. Not least to simply keep moving for to stop would mean defeat. I had nowhere to go but accepting that I feared would devour me.

I'd visit Robert. Thank God for cancer huh? The bus was free.

Now a month on and I'm at a stage where I'm at last entering a period of emotional sobriety. Just beginning mind but I've weathered some old relationship triggers and survived those with new tools and have the beginnings of what might turn out to be the bedrock of some actual esteem.

Today was vicious in it's own educational way. Random urine test. One guy had split last week of his own accord and today two others had to leave.
They were all technically tragic but one is an older guy, a man-child who was befriended by the two others and more or less taken advantage of. A disability check long awaited for close to a couple of grand came in and these two others bought some heavy drugs and then bought them up to the house, a drug free safe-house, and used and gave then sold him some.

They've split but he took it all on this morning, packed his stuff, got ready to go back to prison. He had only one month before he would have been out of the system entirely.
They fucked up his life for short cash.

Sobriety is serious. If you are an addict the simple fact is that drugs are not your friend. Never will be.

We've had informal get-togethers round the smoking areas. People work so as they return they get tested and rumours get put to rest. I thought certain guys would test dirty but they ended up not and being some of the more vocally staunch. Scolding the poor dude who was leaving but loving him too. Mainly Hawaiian. I'm privileged to be round people who act the way they do.

It's scary too. Recognising how easy it is to fuck up and recognising too how lucky we are to be given this time and space to heal up.
I was frightened taking the test. I know I'm clean but that didn't dent my anxiety. With time I will lose my internal status as someone who deserves the worst I suppose.

Going for gigs for the summer season, looking ahead. Watering my heirloom tomatoes, 15 varieties. I'm writing a script for Hilby and open for any other written work. I'm still funny. I'm glad I didn't lose that. I feel quite vulnerable without my acerbic dark weapon. Funny is a better use of my time.
Main thing is I'm clean and sober and this whole thing is a trip.
I keep telling myself. It's good to be sober.
You might disagree. That's OK with me.
Still, early days. It might pay you to be careful. I may be able still to find some bile somewhere.

It's mostly about the Moose.

Sam Dwyer, conceptual artist and whimsicalist.

The Digital Native Explores the Meaning of Media & Jello from Sam Dwyer on Vimeo.

Putting the little guy to rest.

I have to let the little guy go.
It’s very hard because I feel as loyal to him as he’s always been to me. Not that he had much of a choice, he’s me.
He stood by me and lent me all the strength I needed when at three years old things got hairy. When glowering disapproval replaced unconditional love he was there whispering that it wasn’t me, that is was them who were bad. When they tried to trick me with their concern he was there protecting me, whispering again that their fear was all they had and not to be scared myself.
That their masks were just that.
He loved me, I knew his love was real because he never left me. Everyone else who used the love word had rules. Rules I broke seemingly whether I wanted to or not and in doing so seemingly showed how selfish their love was. Always, always, their love would flounder. I would be shunned, I was useless to them. They would isolate me and my little guy would be there, loving me. Telling me that their pain was theirs. That I was not to blame, that I was not bad and that he loved me and that they did not. I believed him. Why would I not?
I needed him so bad. I was so grateful he was around. Without him I would have lost myself and become the puppet required of me. I did try. I did like making others happy. Others happiness made me feel safe. The opposite of their disapproval which negated me. But for him. Always there, sharing the books I read in my room alone.
I trusted no-one but him. In the schools, the crowds, the relationships with family and significant others,[always with that love being exhausted] the foreign street corners where I plied my trade. The love from audiences could be reproduced short term and almost at will. I liked that as I also liked the affirmation of me and my little guy working hand in hand.
I say always there but when the pain came he left. That I did alone. The straps, the stick, the short bout of electricutions, the short bout of induced hallucinations, the canings, the unrelenting decade long waves of depression. 
That stuff I bore.
Later on the drinking and the drugs helped replace the times he slept. He was never there inside the fear but always outside waiting, ready to help,comfort. Also with answers, solutions. He didn’t feel the pain so I guess he was a bit of a purist in that regard. He didn’t bear the consequences but existed in the aftermath. He gave me surreal direction but I now recognise he needed wounds to lick to exist.
He was powerful in his own way but also very young I now realise.
I liked that. I could trust that. I feel I lent on him too hard and in doing so became him.
I liked the childishness, I liked the joy it gave me when it worked. I liked the way the agility of my mind merged with the childishness giving me a genius others recognised.
I’m sorry but he must go.
Any sentimentality I feel towards him is admissible.
But still he must go.
He’s killing me. I recognise this and so with as much genuine love as he’s ever shown me I must now simply put him to bed, tuck him in, comfort his fears as he has comforted mine and let him rest, sleep, retire, die.
Do I still need him to continue my work? My Vocation.
I kinda hope not. I hope to remember everything he taught me.
Maybe I can still take him out to play?
Boy this is hard.

A friends Needle-Point Hate Mail

from Toronto star, buskers survival tips...

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/whatson/article/852589--12-performers-at-buskerfest-offer-survival-tips

7. Lurk (a.k.a. Martin Ewen), New Zealand

Specialty: Sad mime

Tip: “One sentence huh? Leave it to the mime to have the longest answer. Survival is multifaceted so a variance of tactics and attributes are called into play for survival as a busker and include, but are not limited to, an ironclad faith in the treachery of circumstance, a binding addiction to the production of laughter, the ability to create and maintain momentum, the political ability to deal with the wide array of characters you’ll meet generally, a bias towards comic futility also helps, as does a robustly cheerful attitude towards failure. That is my sentence. Additionally: The ability to heal quickly; the ability to calm angry crowds; the ability to make them angry again — but still pay you. It’s advanced applied Stockholm Syndrome. Your hostages become grateful.”

Working/exploring some pertinent issues.

http://www.internet-of-the-mind.com/fear_of_abandonment.html

Fear of Abandonment, Ego States, & the Inner Children

Fear of abandonment is almost always a direct result of feeling or being abandoned at some point in childhood. This real or perceived abandonment is traumatic to children causing fragmentation's of the Self.
The study of Ego States through TA and Structural Analysis led to what has widely become known as Inner Child Work. Dr. Charles Whitfield was the original pioneer who lead the way with his Book, "Healing the Child Within".
Many more therapists, including John Bradshaw, have contributed greatly to the evolution of Inner Child Therapies. The "Inner Child" or "Inner Children" are metaphors for the neural networks that store the essence of the child who suffered emotional trauma and fear of abandonment.
TA's Second Order Structural Analysis offered the first real "Mapping" of these networks. As I mention many times in these pages -- The Internet-of-the-Mind consists of neural networks... embedded in networks... embedded in networks... and so on.
Introducing the Wounded Inner Children...
The Child ES - specifically theAdapted Child - is the primary location of the accumulated trauma. Here we have ego-states... embedded in ego states... embedded in ego states.
The Critical Parent ES contains all the critical parental messages given to the child. The younger a child is the more receptive they are to these messages...referred to as Injunctionsin TA language.
The Angry/Defiant Child is the neural network for the eight to twelve year-old part of us that contains all the thoughts, feelings, attitudes and coping style of that time in our lives.
The Vulnerable Child is the ES of the one to seven year-old part of us that carries all the woundedness, trauma and fear of abandonment from our childhood.
This is the part of us that Bradshaw and Whitfield speak of that has "gone into hiding" deep inside. In other words, it has been repressed or "disowned" by the subconscious mind in order to protect us from the pain and fear of abandonment it carries.
The main problem with repressed and disowned parts of self is that they don't stay repressed...they get triggered just like any other part of self. When they do is when we have "reactions" that are grounded in fear of abandonment.

The Victim: This player gets their needs met by having other people take care of them. They tend to blame others for what’s wrong in their lives and play the "why don’t you, yes but" game or the "I can’t do that, because" game.

Victim Ego States...

• Stuck in First Position the Victim vacillates between the feelings of the Vulnerable/Needy Child and the Angry/Rebellious Child - One moment expressing helplessness and hopelessness...the next throwing a temper tantrum.
  
• When the Victim can't get someone to persecute them, they turn their own Critical Parent inward and persecute themselves. When they can get someone to persecute them, perhaps by playing a game of "Kick Me", they can feel fully justified in their Victim role.

The Rescuer: Due to an underlying fear of abandonment, the Rescuer needs to be needed and so they attach themselves to a Victim... Rescuers frequently notice that others always come to them with their problems and don’t know why they do that.

The Rescuer subconsciously helps keep the Victim dependent on them by playing into their Victimhood - doing everything for that person rather than allowing them to experience that they can do it for themselves.

Rescuer Ego States...

• Stuck in Second Position the Rescuer has to be "all-about-others"...This person usually spent much of their childhood care-taking or unsuccessfully trying to please a wounded parent...doing for parent what they needed the parent to do for them (role reversal).
  As an adult, the roles are switched - the Rescuer is the adult now and spends her/his time care-taking and trying to please a Projected Vulnerable Child...
  Being stuck in second position, one way the Rescuer can experience his/her vulnerable child is to project that ES onto someone else.
  It goes something like this...The Rescuer projects their Vulnerable Child onto the person they see as the Victim... they then over-identify with the Victim and feel compelled to step in to "fix" or "rescue".
  In this way the Rescuer is vicariously and compulsively trying to meet the unmet needs of their own Projected Vulnerable Child. So...ironically...compulsive care-taking of others, then, is really "all-about-me".
  
• The Rescuer also spends considerable time in the Critical Parent ES...though not usually in an outward fashion. Instead the Rescuer's Critical Parent sends subconscious messages like this to the Victim..."Don't worry, I know that you're incompetent and you need me to take care of you."
  When things go wrong the Rescuer can turn that Critical Parent on him/her self...minus the nurturing tone - "You can't even take care of a simple little problem like that! What good are you?" In this case the CP is likely to be an introject (a recording of one of their own parents - called Introjected Critical Parent).
  
• Rescuing is a covert Victim role when the Angry/Defiant Child protests... "Look at how I have to sacrifice and take care of everyone else!" or "I'm only trying to help and this is the thanks I get for it!"

The Persecutor: Stuck in First Position this player is "all-about-me" andexternalizes their contempt through shameless and blameless behavior.

• In the same way the rescuer points their Critical Parent recordings inward - toward themselves... the Persecutor primarily Projects their Critical Parent recordings outward - toward others... "If all these other stupid people would do things my way the world would be a much better place!"
  
• Persecutors tend to disown their Vulnerable/Needy Child by subconsciously pushing it out of their awareness - i.e., repression. However, the Victims Vulnerable/Needy Behavior triggers that same ES in the persecutor.
  The Persecutor's angry and critical responses to the Vulnerable Child in the Victim are subconscious re-enactments of how s/he drove his/her "disowned" Vulnerable Child into hiding...
  In this way, the Persecutor is projecting his/her own Vulnerable Child onto the Victim. So...again, ironically... the Persecutor is actually talking to a part of him/her self whenever they persecute.
  
• Another Persecutor ES is the intrusive, Angry/Defiant Child who really believes..."If it weren't for you I wouldn’t have to act & feel this way!" - a covert Victim role because it is an attempt to make the Victim responsible for the Persecutor's own loss of control.