Word Lust

To the untrained eye this just looks like a bunch of words. Random and meaningless. To a writer, this is like porn.


Look at those beautiful words all crammed together, one on top of the other in total phonetic orgy. No verbs, nouns, or adjectives, just words. Muscular, lean, beautiful words. Together in the oblivion of the page, not caring what anyone thinks. Free of grammatical confines. It's pure, beautiful, random expression.


This is the product of wordle.net, the ultimate site for word nerds. Enter any text or link to a website, and it will grab a sampling of the words and randomly display them in a text mosaic. The larger words are the ones that appear most often in the selected text. You can change the colors, and decide whether you want mostly horizontal, vertical, a mixture, or a total free-for-all. Click and they all rearrange creating new pairings, unexpected phrases, accidental alliteration, glimmers of brilliance.

frantic cartoon half existence
life comes ebbing
lusty orchard afternoon
simplicity begins
like honey gossamer inspiration
imperceptible sentinel
former dying green edge
gentle brutish sun
pale winter meadow
mud-heavy valley
heaven speaks

These were all random pairings. Oddly beautiful on their own, strung together they don't make a half bad poem.

And the most beautiful part? You can do it over and over again and never get the same result. Very dangerous for obsessive compulsive types.

Pimp My Celestial Oneness

This is one superbad shag parlor. The artist/inhabitant known as One Feather has been working on transforming his 1976 Dodge Sportsman home from nondescript utility vehicle to cosmic wonderbus of love and harmony for the last 13 years. And he's done a hell of a job.


He spends his days in the parking lot in front of the beach boardwalk in Santa Barbara spreading a message of unity, love and peace to all who stop and gawk. Looking is free, but if you want to take a photo, a monetary offering is encouraged. This is how he makes his living. I had no cash on me, but he was kind enough to let me take photos anyway. I told him I’d find an ATM and come back later with a few bucks to keep his hempmobile humming.


If you get a chance, stop by and see it in person and meet the man behind the mobile masterpiece. It’s a 3D tapestry of tiny objects, toys, textures, words and color. Definitely worth a few bucks to take it all in. I am sure karma is coming to get me because we got busy and I never made it back with the cash. Sorry, dude. I will stop by next time I’m in SB. Promise. Cause seriously, this is cool.

Fatal Idealism: The Pippa Bacca Story

In my mid-twenties I made a conscious decision to live an “uncensored life,” meaning I would ignore the inner voice that said, “mmm, maybe not.” The voice that was “keeping me from expressing my true creativity and fully experiencing life.” It was about the same time that I took a solo-backpacking trip through Europe to explore the bohemian life. I was desperate to get to Morocco. Cautionary tales of young women kidnapped and sold as sex slaves would not deter me. Somehow, I never made it farther south than Barcelona having acquired some French traveling companions and gotten sidetracked by the seemingly endless nights in Spain. In retrospect, I think that was for the best.

Having just read the tragic story of slain Italian performance artist Pippa Bacca, I am reminded of those times and my then fierce belief in my own immorality. Bacca, whose real name is Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, set out on a trip from her hometown in Milan to hitchhike across North-Eastern Italy, Serbia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and Syria. She and fellow artist Silvia Moro would make the trip, at times together, at times splitting up, wearing wedding dresses in an effort to spread a message of peace, harmony and love among nations.

At first glance, it seems an incredibly foolish thing to do. But I do not think these were stupid women. I think these were women who valued truth, beauty and life itself, above all else. Women for whom the prospect of personal harm was less important than the opportunity to alter the course of human relations. An idealistic and perhaps overly simplistic idea, but certainly a worthy one.

“…man, like a small god, rewards those who have faith in him.” -Bacca and Moro in a statement on their website.

The sad reality is that trust and dreams are extremely fragile and exposing them to the world, risky. Three weeks into their journey, Pippa was brutally raped and murdered by a man who gave her a ride in Turkey; a sad, though not completely surprising, ending to their epic journey of hope.

In the end, perhaps Ms. Bacca succeeded in her quest. She will remain a symbol of faith in the human race, which will hopefully inspire greater unity and understanding among the people she hoped to reach. Her story becomes a far different work than she set out to create, but something that resonates deeply, a tragic poem that pokes at the heart and refuses to be forgotten.

Make Mime A Double

It’s fall, which means not only is it time to start bulking up for the long winter months, but it’s is also the end of the official season of the Mime. If you were not lucky enough to be in Périgueux, France during August for the International Contemporary Mime Festival, you may still be feeling the jones for some classic “trapped in a glass box” action. Though the deck chairs and iced lollies have been packed away, cold weather won’t be keeping the silent thesps from donning their tights when the 30th Annual London International Mime Festival kicks off January 12, 2008. Legendary master of the silent art Marcel Marceau, who died in September fearing for the future of the craft, would be relieved to know that there is a mime festival happening somewhere in the world just about every month of the year. Go mimers, go.