Wildflower Soul

I have been advised to think of art as an encapsulation of a moment, rather than a detraction from it so i shall block such troubling quandaries from my head and continue to scribble.

                              Whoever knew the entire Arsenal football team do their laundry in Santa                 Cruz?

At yoga this week i 'held my deepest desire' in the core of my body during the tree pose and offered it up to the gods, as live guitars strummed in the incense filled room and a man blew a didgeridoo up and down my body, as the instructor with feathered earrings massaged my feet with something warm.

Valentines day brought a smattering of little hearts across the miles and a little piercing in my ear; i was here, and i loved and i lived so much that it hurt.

Another Sunday, another goth club. I love the way that people dance here, free, wild, with their eyes closed,  feeling the music and leaving everything to rot on the sticky floor beneath their restless feet. I found a piece of moss gathered from the forest by my roommate to aid her cold tangled in the tassels of my kimono, a wonderfully quintessential fragment of this ramshackle life.

Friday signalled the beginning of my twentieth birthday weekend. It seems that the sticky globules of youth are caught steadfastly on the hands of the grandfather clock: reach out and slurp as many of them as you can catch on your tongue, for the alarm will be ringing before you know it. Bearing this in mind, we cycled through the city to a show at a house in aid of activists arrested in the 'Occupy Oakland' movement. Friends and members of Zami sweated over washboards and accordion as we danced wildly and sweat clung to the skylights, pianos unsuccessfully blocking stairways and balconies. Onto another porch under the sky, wander-lustful dragons breathing cigarette smoke dream into the air above us. 

Saturday brought my housemate's own interpretation of  Jenga involving bicycle whips and interpretive dancing. We ended the night in a hot tub filled with bubble bath outdoors in the darkness, skin tingling hot and cold simultaneously, the cool beer in our clammy hands evaporating with the rising steam.

My birthday itself was spent in the forest by the sunset tree. A wonderful cacophony of bubbles making rainbows in the sunlight and deer ambling through the long grass, garlands of roses and shrine-like gardens built from rocks. Real life nymphs and fairies swung and played wind chimes from the music tree as the hazy sun set over the ocean and the stars burned brilliant peacock feathers across the sky. We stayed until we could no longer feel our fingers and headed home to a bonfire in the back yard. Our friends voices created a circle of harmonies and old camp songs, of sweetness and of love in the glowing embers, most beautiful in their death. After a heart shaped lemon rind cake baked for me and adorned with a tea light, we fell asleep on the floor of the sunshine room together watching a surrealist film about dreams and existence. The violet-electric glow of the television wrapped itself around our bodies, breath rising and falling in unison, lives accidentally yet inextricably tangled together, safe in the hands of the universe. When i blew out the candle on my birthday cake I wished that things could stay this way forever. 

                                           


The following evening i cycled to the beach to watch the sunset. As I watched the sea blush pink and saw the violet shadows lengthen and fade behind the tall palm trees silhouetted against the boardwalk, i was overcome with a sense of the vastness of the universe, but a comfortable vastness. I felt certain that everything will fall into place, eventually. The world is unpredictable but it is constant, it lives and it breathes and will always move, like the surf breaking upon the sand. I sat alone, twenty years old and fought back tears caused by the insatiable concrete beauty of the sky.

 After a long week of mid term essays, i came home to a belated birthday surprise courtesy of my roommate; organic wine and birthday cake number two upon the floorboards and a parcel full of surprises, including a miniature version of London complete with London Eye, so that i don't forget.

I could never forget!

Instead of 'Shrove Tuesday' where the tradition originates from using up the ingredients for food one will be giving up over Lent, here it is 'Mardi Gras' which is apparently a 'celebration of sin' before sacrifice begins. However construed this interpretation may be, it seems rather more appropriate. I went to a Mardi Gras masquerade ball on campus. The 'bump and grind' mentality is frightening to say the least.

The days are becoming saturated with summer here. I watch the sunset from my roof and spend long and languid afternoons drinking beer in the garden, reading and writing and thinking long thoughts. Crammed into another sweaty room, another adventure, another person plunking a guitar as though everything depends upon the power of that moment encased inside their damp hands, i couldn't help but think that these people know about LIFE; raw, dirty, sweaty, unadulterated life. They know how to embrace it here, they know what ought to be the focus. I am learning.

Sing your children
Your children song
Sing your love child
Love is on
See through child eyes
Eyes are old
And old is magic growing
See the child lights
Spinning gold
Everyday girl
They blow away
Leaves falling to the water
Wildflowers
For you today
Sing your birthday
Your birthday blues
Sing your wild light
Wildflowers bloom
They will not forget you
And down/they go
To sleep/so slow
Away/they grow
They go
I wait/I wait all day
Sing your love child
Love is on
Sing your child lights
Sing your child lights
Lights are gold
Sing your child life
Wildflower soul

-Wildflower Soul

-Sonic Youth