creative self-expression
In college, I once drank a cup of magic mushroom tea. It was at a party, before going out to Club Park Avenue with my roommates. This was over thirty years ago, in Tallahassee. And it continues to be the most vivid and fun memory of the times I spent at CPA. My re-introduction to… Continue reading Dispatches from Mushroom Space: My Psilocybin Retreat
https://youtu.be/NoAzpa1x7jU In 1982, the science fiction movie Blade Runner came out. I loved it. The setting was 37 years into the future - in 2019 Los Angeles. A dreary, rainy, crowded place with a techno-Asian feel to it. Harrison Ford plays a detective hunting a handful of artificial humans, replicants, who have killed several humans… Continue reading The “Tears in the Rain” Monologue
His name is Hidalgo. I traveled with him from the heart of Texas to the Pyrenees mountain village of Roncesvalles for a 500-mile trip through northern Spain to the holy city of Santiago de Compostela in the emerald region of Galicia. Along the way, I trekked to the core of my being. Hidalgo accompanied me… Continue reading All About My Mountain Bike
Almost fifty years ago, on a hot summer night in June 1969, the patrons of a mafia-run bar in NYC's Greenwich Village found themselves subject to yet another police raid and the humiliating rough treatment that came along with it. However, on this night the patrons fought back. The combatants lived in the margin of… Continue reading In Pictures: Stonewall 25 and Gay Games IV
I survived my fight on 737 MAX. The planes were grounded by FAA while I was in the air. Not sure what took so long given 2 crashes in five months of brand new aircraft that pilots have been filing complaints about. I don’t want to be macabre, but I did contemplate my mortality and… Continue reading A Brush with Mortality
Ten years ago, on the ferry back from Sausalito to San Francisco after bike riding there along the waterfront and across the Golden Gate Bridge. I had to work hard to make progress against a headwind despite the downhill descent on the tail-end of the bridge. Sausalito is an adorable little town. A magical bike… Continue reading Ride Across Golden Gate Bridge
Blossom Jasmine Nightmusk, 20th/21st century CE. First performance & last performance (she’s in retirement). BIO: Born in Tallahassee, Blossom performed worldwide as a solo artist and with The Linen Sisters, delivering her signature Street Gutter commando style cabaret act as far away as Sydney (during Gay Games 2002). In the heart of Texas, she twirled… Continue reading All About Blossom
Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the… Continue reading Vow of the Brothers of the Night’s Watch
John McCain’s Wikipedia entry is already updated to reflect his passing. He was born August, 29, 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone (Coco Solo, on the Atlantic side). So in addition to being an Arizonan, he was a Zonian by birth. What I appreciated the most about him in recent years was his courageous pushback… Continue reading John McCain, Zonian
Lots of activity at Trafalgar Square, setting things up for Pride festivities tomorrow. And I love the Assyrian protective spirit standing guard over it all. The British Museum has several colossal statues (“lamassu”) of this winged-man-bull/lion deity from ancient Mesopotamia.