Earth Day 2006

Our earth day festival was a big success! It was amazingly cool and evidentally all the people who came had just the best time :D Things really started to take off near the later part of the evening, when tons of people started showing up. A lot of them came to do the all might open mic and camp out. It was originally supposed to rain and storm all day and magically it didn't rain at all... it was actually sunny and nice all day and relatively warm all night. Our stage looked awesome, the lights were cool, and those of us selling art made a little money to buy food with for the week ;) I think the coolest thing about the whole thing was knowing that we threw an event that people REALLY dug... especially all the open mic bands and the whole late night crowd of kids that came... and by the way there were some really talented kids playing that night. They were rocking out the folklife center until like 6 in the morning. It was all so fantastic.

What is even better: we get to do the open mic once a month all summer long- and a lot of people have already told us how excited they are to come to them all. There are so many interconnected things that can happen through all this too!

Well we have another vending opprotunity this weekend to sell some art, so back to creating it is!

5 in the morn

Wow is it really 5 in the morn?

The four of us had a crazy creative spurt tonight and stayed up writing
and playing music and expressing ideas. Meanwhile we have also been
each working on our art to sell at earth day. I think we are all delirius
(sp?) now and the creative / productive boom has wained down to short
lived bursts of action in between long periods of inactivity. Time for bed!

Good night!

Circus Day!

Going to see the circus today up in Charleston... lots of fun!

Arts conference went great, we impressed lots of folks, and
it was this whole big thing. We may get more grant money
than we know what to do with. Also have a consultant
from the National Endowment of the Artss coming down to
help us write grants. It's been a while since all this happened
so my tone/descriptiveness may not be as excited as it was
immediately after returning from the conference. :)

Our earth day festival is rapidly approaching and we've got some
cool stuff made; mostly amber. I made some bumper stickers
and I'm going to make some cards and matte some prints. She's
designed and hand-made several clothing and jewelry items
that we're very excited about!

Lori and Robert's band is taking off- they are booking up pretty
fast- all the way to the fall; playing all over the state :) I think theyve got
about 30 gigs booked for the next 3 months or so. I've been doing the
lights and sound for them and both amber and I have been sitting in
on stage occasionally, usually drumming and whatnot.

We went to a yoga class with Lori and Robert yesterday
morning. It was my first one. I felt more rested and revitalized
afterwards than i have in a long time.

Our building is coming along quite well and we can't
wait till its done!! It's going to be amazing-------
I'll miss the mountain house once we move in to
the building but i think the whole thing will be
so fantastic, and there will be so much space
and so many resources for creating art that
we won't dwell on missing the mountain house.

Thats all for now! Circus time!

Fantastic!

Well we made to WV ok and we've been busy since we arrived.
We have been enjoying mountain living up in the huge, comfy,
quiet mountain house. We'll be living here for a month or 2
the building is absolutely amazing- they are still remodelling,
but moving pretty quickly. The coffee shop needs a lot of equipment and
research and money before we can get started on it and so we are going
to put it off until later- probably this fall. We need to get all of
the other functions going first. our art is priority over coffee :)
we may set up a coffee shop in a tent for festivals this summer.
I think we are planning on vending at like 12 different festivals
this summer.
We've got a workshop set up in the basement
for cutting wood, painting etc. and building a dark room down
there too.
Part of 1st floor will be gallery for photos, clothing, art,
and also we will have an office for graphic design / photography.
There is another storefront on 1st floor for our coffee shop.
There is an in between loft area between 1st and 2nd floor that
will be a lounge.
2nd floor will be apartments, another office,
our internet radio station (which will be broadcast eventually),
and recording studio.
3rd floor is huge- will be the music venue where we
will do open mics, play and book live shows, have lessons
like dance, etc. We will do live recording there for the
performances. Amber will have a full sewing room.
We also will rent the space out for receptions
and banquets as a source of income. We even have some
teachers from local colleges that want to rent out
the space to give private classes and lessons.
There are a lot of other rooms on the 2nd and 3rd floor
that we don't even know what we are going to do with yet.
So we are going to hit the photography / graphic
design market really hard. they have already started
projects for clients and with the diverse group that
we have, we can do anything like murals, signs,
photography, window displays, logos, advertisements,
etc etc etc. We can photograph events, video events,
record for musical artists, make promo packs,
promote. We even have a silk screen tshirt press
to make tshirts for peoples businesses or bumper
stickers for bands. We also have lots of artwork
that will be displayed for sale in our gallery:
Ambers clothes and jewelry, my photographs,
roberts photographs, paintings and sculptures and
furniture made by the other two guys, our cds from
local bands, Lori and Roberts band, and once we
record an album my and Amber's band.
Also there is a farm that used to be
kind of a commune/ artist colony in the 60s,
the folk life center, which we will be having our
earth day festival and culture festival on.
Culture fest this year will be a three day
festival with camping and all! Fantastic!
We got scholarships and stipends (for travel etc)
to attend this huge 3 day arts conference / seminar /
awards thing. We are going to be there representing
our organization.
Also we did a radio commercial (we also wrote
produced and recorded it) and its playing on the radio
station. We are also going to be doing a tv commercial
soon!

Hello Ohio, Goodbye

We are back home from Canada and so happy to be home. Reflecting on the whole thing, we had our good times and our bad times.

First the bad: We made a lot of money but we spent a lot of money- so we pretty much broke even. We also got stressed, overworked, and killed one of our cars.

The good: We have established ourselves as musicians! We both feel much more confident about our music and art, Amber is singing out louder and stronger. We wrote somewhere around 6 powerful folk songs that we are proud of and excited about. We have developed our own unique style. Amber has found a beer she likes - which is news because she hates beer - she discovered that she enjoys St. Andres Bohemian Style Lager. We also have new names - I'm Uni, and Amber is Indigo - these serve both as stage names and as names that we have given ourselves to signify our rebirth/growth as artists. I think most importantly, we left here feeling like amatuer kids "still learning" and came back real musicians and now since we feel that way, and put off that vibe we are automatically reguarded as such by others.

We have done a lot of visiting here in Ohio. Everyone is happy to visit with us but also no one is too excited to hear about our antics. Mansfield is still a drag, just like when we left. And it seems some family members wish I would get an engineering job and we would settle down, get a house, have a kid, white picket fence, etc. I don't think they quite understand us. Or want to. Whatever- we're quite happy in our bohemian-style instability. And even so it was nice to see everybody.

Oh and we also did a lot of visiting with Brandon. Such a cool kid. We always love talking to him.

The whole Canada thing also gave us a puh to want to go back to West Virginia, finally, where Lori and Robert have just bought a building. Long ago when we first heard their idea of buying a building, we were a little afraid and favored just vending out of a tent at festivals only, but we have since let go of those reservations and we are preparing to put everything into this. Now we will have a location in a building and tents so we can do both. We will all be living in the building, and working in the building, and playing in the building. So very fantastic!

Well as soon as we get our pay check we will be paying some bills and hitting the road again. West Virginia here we come!

Ode to Abner (and how we got home)

After a hard winter in Canada we have returned to Ohio!

Windsor to Toronto:

We left Windsor headed toward Toronto with a half a tank of gas and $7. About halfway between Windsor and Toronto (Woodstock maybe?) Abner the stationwagon began sputtering and smoking. We were not close enough to have it towed back to Toronto or to Ohio. After a couple hours of freaking out on the side of the highway in the freezing cold, we decided to have it towed to the nearest gas station and check the fluids. Used my check card to buy 2 quarts trans fluid and 3 quarts oil and $20 of gas even though i was pretty sure there was no money in my account. Fingers crossed, we jumped right back onto the road and made it back to Toronto... very slowly.

Stayed in Toronto for a few days to rest, admired the city, and went to open stage at ren cafe to play some originals we wrote, but list was full. Decided to wing it and try to drive Abner the station wagon back home to Ohio. Got paid too.

Toronto to Ohio:

Packed the car full to the brim. Bought extra oil and trans fluid, dozen doughnuts from Coffee Time. Made it all the way to the border: no car trouble! Got hasseled at the border about all the 'stuff' we had packed in there. Apparently we should have checked our laptops and stuff with customs? whatever. They eventually gave up and let us by. Into New York (yay!) transmission began slipping and started smoking (boo.) Began pouring it out just as fast as I poured it in, so we would drive for 15 min, then it would smoke, and we'd stop for a half hour to let the trans cool.

This carried on all through New York and Pennsylvania, and into Ohio. Finally, outside of Cleveland, we began to feel sick from the fumes, and it was breaking down about every 5 miles. To add to the situation, the engine cooling fan stopped working and it began to rain. We called a tow truck to get us the rest of the way to Crestline and much to our delight we made it under our towing limit by 2.4 miles! :)

Abner is past due for a retirement. Love that car, and Amber and I have a feeling it was just holding on for us. Kind of like it was running supernaturally. We put somewhere around 6000 miles (we think) on it since we recieved it for free. Well anyways, here's to Abner! Whether we were sleeping in the back, writing and drawing on all the interior with markers, hauling our guitars around, cussing and smacking the dash board because the dam thing stalled everytime a stop light turned green, or recklessly choosing to drive it for another 2000 miles on another crazy risky trip after claiming it was ready to be junked (over and over again). Goodbye Abner the stationwagon! You'll be missed!!

No money, no food, no gas! AGAIN!

Dude so more developments: yes the plot thickens. After spending 6 weeks or so living in Toronto, we were off to Windsor to travel to a really big store to try and make some money to put us ahead. Our job is kind of crazy, but it demaded that we learn to speak confidently in front of a crowd and we believe that as a result we have gained a lot of confidence to perform our poetry and music in front of a crowd. Of corse we have quickly learned to despise our new job for many other reasons.

Well as it turns out Windsor is a real drag. Good news is that we wrote a multitude of new songs in our little green hotel room. We are so super excited about them! Also just as our situation here has reached a newly undesirable apex, our friends in West Virginia have called and given us news that makes want to drop what we are doing even more! Turns out they bought a whole building in the town that neighbors their house on the mountain.They are starting a music venue / art gallery / etc etc. They are placing their beautiful house for sale and building a number of apartments within the building they bought. They want us to move there with them and do this whole thing. Sounds fantastic! There will be 6 of us total living and working in the building- kind of an artist colony/ ashram/ commune. Sounds kinda like what we had in mind the first time we were going to move in with them. Evidentally the building is super large with many floors and rooms (including a ballroom). In my mind the whole thing loosly parallels happenings of the big brother and the holding co.’s mountain home and the family dog commune’s avalon ballroom in SF in the early to mid 60’s.

Anyway, the stores in Windsor are not really hoppin, probably because it is february and the slowest time of year for retail sales. Reguardless, we are satisfied with the money that we are making. Unfortunately, we won’t see that money until we return to Toronto! Now we haven’t had a day off in over a week, and we’ve got about a week to go. We’re pretty tired but worst of all, yes we are broke again! With all the working how could we be broke? The problem is that WE are paying for the hotel, gas, and precooked food (ie pizza, takeout because there we only have microwave in hotel room) and it adds up qiuckly. We stayed one week in the hotel we intially booked, but downgraded to an unlisted, cheaper alternative for our second week. Our lovely stationwagon Abner is ready for retirement and has developed a gas leak in addition to the many other leaks he has. Therefore we are also spending more on gas than expected.

That brings us up to speed. We have about $1.50 in canadian quarters, 1 bottle of water, 2 guitars, 2 laptops, an amp, 2 suitcases, and some books. Oh also I found a mostly empty packet of sunflower nuts that have been in the car for nearly a year. We are in a small motel room that by my estimate is 8’x12’ and we haven’t eaten since 5 oclock. We are both pretty hungry that “meal” 6 hours ago was just a veggie burger for each of us. No fries, no potato, no salad. Just sandwich and water. Now I know 6 hours without food is easy, but what happens tomorrow? We wake up and go to work hungry and work our 12 hour day without food? We have made plans to buy a loaf of bread or something similar which we will consume to keep us from passing out. We kind of feel like slaves or prisoners. We are pretty fed up with the way things are going here and we are feeling ripped off: we are doing all the work and paying for all the expenses required just to do that work! To be fair, when we make it back to Toronto we will be showered our pay, but that doesn’t really help us now. I have put in a call to our boss to western union us some of our pay that we would have gotten last Friday but I’m not sure she will because I don’t think she was very receptive to the urgency of our situation. Probably because to her ‘have no money’ means only have maybe $100 or $200 left. That and she is a terrible listener.

Well now that I’ve complained about our situation suffice it to say that I’m not really complaining. We’ve definitely been in worse, and besides, it’s all a learning experience. Poverty spawns art. We have already written a half an albums worth of songs. Even if the whole thing turns out to be a flop, the crazy experience will have been worth it. Besides it may have been a necessary step to push us back toward Lori and Robert.

Valentines Day

So we went on a long Valentines Day walk through Toronto. We ate lunch at the Pulp Kitchen on east queen st. Great food there. Wheatgrass smoothies too. Then we continued on downtown and eventually crossed yonge st. to find the ice skating rink being prepped by the zamboni. Everyone sat on the surrounding benches with skates on in anticipation It was very romantic.

We’re people watchers, so we sat on the bench in our shoes watching all the couples skating or trying their best to skate. A young couple stopped in front of us on the ice. They waited for their friends to circle by for a picture. They were both dressed alternatively and had various piercings – they were adorable – quite punky. We sat for a little while longer oberving the beautiful event before we continued onto west queen st. This was our newfound favorite spot of town: kind of punky young cool crowd around. Some head shops, small music venues, and alt. clothing stores. The houses and buildings in the area are older and much prettier than on the far east side past greektown. Victorian houses, ornate designs, probably from the late 1800’s, I would guess. Colourful apartments in the 2^nd floors and attics, various storefronts on the 1^st floors of them.

Walking about, several hours later we passed the young alternative couple from the skating rink in the area. All around the streets were people holding hands, kissing, carrying flowers. Someone had even painted and chalked hearts up and down the sidewalks of all the streets west of downtown. On the subway couples holding onto each other in anticipation of getting home, perhaps. I know we were. Every station we passed seemed to display at least one couple on the platform about to catch the next train in leiu of their own distractions. Toronto may have been cold on Valentines Day but to a pair of moniless bohemian kids in love it was warm and cozy.

Open Stages

So we've been doing the open mics
on tuesdays its poetry /spokenword /music
and on thursday its accoustic music.
There is also one on wednesday night that we havent been able to make it to yet,
but we starting to get involved with the whole scene and the artists.

Last Tuesday night we did the spoken word open mic and a guy had Amber go on his radio show after with a bunch of live booked artists to do some spoken word and an interview. So she was on the radio! It was awesome. The featured band for hte radio show was called Lucy (formerly Chykweed). They were awesome.

So we've been writing more songs up here. We have also picked up a couple more covers. Our sudden decision to sign up for these open stages twice a week has forced us to realize that we needed to spend more time writing and playing and practicing. It's great!

We've also had the opprotunity to do quite a bit more reading because we have cut television completely out. I'm actually reading a biography about Janis Joplin written by her sister Laura.

We now must get ready to head out into the cold snow to go to another open stage tonight. Amber has a poem about our homelessness last autumn that is crazy with magic!

Toronto

So Amber and I have been living in Toronto for almost 3 weeks now. We are staying in this crazy big condo. It even has a fireplace in the living room. We have 2 roomates. One is an actress. The other is our boss. So our job is going okay right now. I think we are getting better at it.

Most importantly I think it is helping to cure our stage fright a little bit (especially amber's - she had a really bad case). We have given ourselves new names to use here. She is Indigo and I'm Uni. We found lots of really chill places during our explorations in the last couple weeks, but there is a place called renaissance cafe at which we feel pretty at home. We scoped out the open mics (called open stage here) this past week, and we are reading at the open mic poetry on tuesday and playing at the open accoustic stage on thursday. We've started writing songs again and picked up some new covers. I've also started new photo project.

Starting New

So it is 2006. Amber and I are leaving the day after tomorrow for Toronto. San Diego turned out to be too full, and even though we were looking foward to that warm weather, I think we are just as excited about Toronto despite the cold. We are almost all packed, and we *almost* have our scripts memorized :) .

Well we had a good Christmas. My sister threw her first holiday dinner in her new house and everything turned out really well. I thought she and Bill did a great job. It was tranquil, but not dead: people talked like normal people. In my family thats odd. We also had a good time playing bingo with Amber's parents and sisters.

A couple days after Christmas I did a real photo shoot for Amber's little sister Misty. I think I found something I really enjoy doing that I'm also good at. They were for her senior pictures, and since she doesn't get much of a chance to be her true self, that is what we focused on. We went to the city to do some of the shots, and there was some drama in her family that stopped us before we even got started. Misty had to make a tough decision on whether to rush back home to deal with the situation or to continue doing her own thing. I think it was the first real decision of her adult life. I am very proud of her for what she did that day. I think the photographs are very honest and symbolize an important time for her. I hope that she feels empowered by the whole experience and I hope it inspires her to get to know herself.

We had an amazing New Years as well. We took Brandon with us down to West Virginia to our friends house in the mountains: the ones we were going to move in with at one time. It was incredible. I think it was a perfect apex for the dawning of a new time. I think that Amber and I both had a very spiritual, perspective-widening experience and it was completely indescribable. Brandon, though had probably the strongest spiritual awakening of all of us. He's been kind of stuck in a rut in the same town, same job, same situation for a while, and the people he met on New Years and the things that we did and all of the music and drumming and jamming really inspired him. After we got back he told us how he felt about the whole thing, and he has decided to go find himself and his dream. He is already being more creative. It is a really great feeling to inspire someone else to follow their own dreams and find / create themselves. I guess I could say its one of the most rewarding things I've ever done, and it was partly by accident. One of my favourite things anyone has told me in a while came from him on the ride home from WV actually: he said "You guys sound kinda crazy, but it's the coolest thing I've ever heard."

Winter News

Well its winter in Ohio. Winter Solstice is in three days and Christmas is in six days. Amber and I have been working quietly in the Mansfield area for the past seven weeks. I've been working at a Chipotle and she has been working as a full time baker at Aspen Bread and Bagel. We've paid off all of our debt, and since we've been staying with the folks, we have been living comfortably in an actual house on a real bed! Amber often goes into work at 3 in the morning, but I must say that she has picked up some ability as a baker that my sweet tooth is thankful for. And my job has the benefit of providing fresh, good, filling, free vegetarian meals almost every day of the week.

We've got a little set up in an upstairs room of the house where we have been working on our music without too much pressure. We've done some writing and some recording, but most important of all we have done some chilling. We've hung out with family and we ran into an old friend, Brandon, who we've done some hanging with, too. Of course, all of the serenity was mixed with an overall feeling of disconnection. It seems that the Mansfield area is still as boring as ever and there are not really any (there must be some, but they are well hidden) people like us here. There are no places to play shows or open mics which sucks, although i think the temporary removal of these from our agenda lifted enough pressure so that we could actually practice and write without so much frustration. There were times when we had to take trips to Columbus just to feel like we were people again.

Anyhow, the good news is Jacob has hooked us up with the sort of travelling sales / infomercial / demonstration job. That means we are packing up and heading for San Diego in the first week of January!!! We'll be in San Diego for probably a month or two and then we are off to Hawaii for a couple months. We just found this out a few days ago. Supposedly the job pays well, too, and it is easy to get time off.

We are still debating over whether to fly out to San Diego or drive. Flying will be faster and cheaper considering gas and food combined for the drive, but it would be advantagous to have a car to get around with. Driving 10 hour days we could make it in 3-4 days. Driving slower would be more fun.

The downside to driving is choosing which car to take:

-Midsummmer, the 78 VW van would be perfect, but does not run.

-Stella, the 95 Dodge Avenger stalls, idles rough, and has some kind of unsolvable fuel injector problem. It's also sporty and so small that we can't fit much luggage in it. It's also a bitch to sleep in and it has 192K miles or something. It does have an alarm and a nice stereo, but the dome lights don't work which sucks at night. One tire leaks air over a period of time.

-Abner, the 89 stationwagon stalls on occasion, doesn't start in the cold, runs out of gas near the 1/4 tank mark "sometimes", leaks transmission fluid, oil, coolant, the transmission slips when it is cold, the engine fan has been rigged to work with a manual switch, the blower has been rigged to only blow out the defroster vents (yes no front or feet heat), has no cd player or tape deck and the radio is flaky. It does provide enough space to all the belongings we would need, including our guitars, a comfy place to sleep and change clothes, a rack on the top to put even more stuff if necessary, only has 137K miles, the dome light works, we've drawn all over the inside with sharpie markers, so it is kind of cool. It doesn't have an alarm as of yet, and oh yeah, the floor board has rusted though so the entire floor is falling out, but has been strapped up to help slow the process.

I'm sure there are more quirks I'm too tired to mention, plus I'm losing interest so I'll move on. Tough choice, though. I'm open to public opinion on this one.

If we fly, we won't have to sleep in any hotels or sleep in the car where it is warm enough to, we wont have to eat as many meals out, and we can arrive on a day that our lodging will be provided by the company. We can't really bring much luggage or our guitars and we won't have any means of transportation, so we'll be either renting a car, taking the bus, or walking. I doubt we'll have the money to rent a car right away. Also if we fly, we won't be able to explore California at will, and I think if we drive and end up there early, then we can stay at a youth hostel or in the car outside the city somewhere for a couple days.

We probably need to start packing and planning or something like that. It is only like 2 weeks away, but with all the Christmas and New Years stuff going on it's gonna seem like a lot less time than that.

Anyways, I've got to get to bed. We're making a trip to Columbus tomorrow to finish up our Christmas shopping. I should be awake for it.

Peace and happy various winter hoildays!

Autumn is here.

Well autumn is here... and it's actually begun acting like it! The leaves in some parts have started changing to yellow, orange, red, and brown. Most of the leaves on the trees in Columbus have just tarnished to an odd shade of green and they'll probably turn straight to brown and fall off.
We had been staying with my sister during the week and commuting to school and work and coming up to my parents house on the weekends. We decided after almost being robbed that we needed a place to feel safe. I'm all done with class, but I have two finals on Monday and one on Tuesday. Amber has finished her last day of work. I have a few scattered days of work left, and we figure we need to get out of everywhere for a little while. We are pretty behind on our bills so we are taking the advice of our own tarot reading which has just recently been realized. We are taking a step back, seeking refuge, and returning home until after the holidays are over with. We have done a lot of reflecting and we've both experienced a lot in the past couple of months. We both think rather than throw ourselves at the mercy of West Virginia in our current condition, we should reset, get seasonal jobs, get caught up on our bills, fix our beloved (but needy) VW Van, maybe even save some money, and just allow some stability into our lives for a while, if only for a moment. I think we owe it to ourselves to set sail with sanity.
Meanwhile Abner the stationwagon has been treating us well. He has become our main mode of transportation because of the space in the back. It's so wonderful: we have been keeping our guitars back there at all times and we have room for bags and luggage whenever we need to bring it somewhere. If only he didn't piss out transmission fluid like a drunkard, we would be set for now with him. Also: his 25mph maximum handling of any hill too high to see over calls his vacuum integrity into question. We like him, though.
I learned to sleep in the back quite comfortably as I had been doing so every morning in the parking lot of Caribou while Amber was still working. Amber went to work at 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning but I did not have to be at class until 9 or 11, so I would throw our book bags in the front seat, let down the adjacent rag rug curtains, tuck up the fore and aft towel curtains, crawl under the sleeping bag in the back and curl up to sleep beside our guitar cases. This was not the same as sleeping in the car on a dark, shitty street out of pure necessity. It was actually a comfort. There was much room, few items in the car, it was dawn, and I was in a nice place where I felt safe. Best of all, I knew Amber was safe in the coffee shop, the sun would wake me up when it rose, and I could go inside for coffee and bread or a muffin and talk to Amber and some of her co-workers before I left for school. It may not sound like much, but it was pretty nice.
Well for now I'm off to enjoy a rented movie and eat real food while sitting on a couch. Again, it may not seem like much, as I'm sure none of this does, but we have learned to appreciate things like this, and I like that.

Bad week, Good weekend

*I've decided the term "urban camping" is actually incorrect for our situation. It will now be referred to as homelessness.*

So as it turns out Amber and I have been homeless now for a month to the day. We've been sleeping in the station wagon for about 2 weeks now. Things are getting rougher. When you live in the city, and I don't mean in an apartment in the city, I mean actually IN the city, you see everything. You feel everything. You witness extraordinarily beautiful moments in peoples' lives, and some of the most unimaginable ugliness. You hear people getting home late at night looking for a place to park. When it gets cold at night, you get cold. When the sun claims morning and begins heating the car, you get hot. When it rains, you get wet because its still too hot to close all of the windows. The gusting wind commands your very bed to sway and every conversation walking by in the night awakens you. When you live on the street you become like a part of the city. You become a little more permanent and you are more of a fixture than a person in the places you frequent. This allows you to see things the way trees and sidewalks and buildings and gods do instead of the way a person would when speeding by and peering out tinted windows.

We haven't felt like ourselves in a long time, I think. We have been spending all of our time surviving and none of our time living. I haven't played my guitar in too long and I hardly find the time or sanity to write or read. I haven't even picked up my cameras in a while. It is discouraging. We have to tell our friends and family that we are staying with people because no one would stand for us to sleep in the car, but we don't feel good about imposing so we kind of prefer our own space. Nothing about another person's house feels comfortable except the bed and the bathroom. The car may only have a makeshift bed and no room our safety or privacy etc etc etc BUT at least it is OUR tiny little space. People notice that we are sleeping and living out of the car. It is hard to hide, I suppose, with all of our belongings being moved into the front seat of the station wagon every night and the rag rug curtains being dropped in the back to conceal us as we climb in the back to change our clothes and sleep. We named the station wagon Abner. We are going to paint the perfectly good exterior with peace signs and poetry and other art that comes to mind.


We run out of money quickly after a payday, because we have no place to cook and we are usually to hungry to have the patience to try to use our camp stove. This leaves us to eat out, and cheaply I might add, but it becomes expensive quickly, and with gas being just under $3 per gallon, we don't drive far, either. We use public restrooms in various places and brush our teeth at giant eagle most nights and caribou or the school most mornings. It is awkward trying to do regular things in public that people do at home without drawing notice from others.

I think that we were doing okay and were starting to settle into a routine, getting as comfortable as two could get living in a station wagon. As luck would have it, however, the "safe place" that we have been parking- right near our 'ex-apartment'- is no longer a place that we feel safe parking. Two days ago a man approached us with a hand in his pocket while I was adding transmission fluid to Abner. He began asking us curious questions and noting how much stuff we had in the back of the car. Sitting in the drivers seat, Amber became suspicious and dialed 911 on her cell phone but did not hit send. She held the phone to her ear. The man began to tell me that he used to be a burglar for 25 years. He then began to ramble about going to prison, then to college, then getting several degrees including a PhD. and passing the bar to become a lawyer in Ohio. Finally he told us to have a nice life and wandered away. We watched as he stopped halfway up the street to tease someone's dog who he did not know until the dog barked and he hid around the corner. We felt that he may have had a knife or gun in his pocket but he did not act because he saw Amber on the phone. A friend of ours was robbed a few months back by a man who acted in the same manner. Where will we park now?

Directly after the incident with the shady man, we drove up to a target in a nicer part of town. We had only some loose change and no gas and we were hungry. We also thought we could find a nicer street in that area to park for the night. As we pulled into the parking lot of target I noticed a silver Mercedes kind of cut us off. I then watched as the man driving it circled the lot for a close space and pulled into a handicapped spot. There were other spots not far away, so it was deliberate. He then proceeded to jog from the car into the store. His girlfriend sat in the car. Amber and I were kind of pissed, so we checked the car out for a handicapped sticker or at least one of those things that hangs from the mirror, both of which the car lacked. Amber then whipped out a notebook and wrote down the license number and we parked the car around the other side. We walked over and stood DIRECTLY in front of the car, read the handicapped sign that said $250 fine for violating and we headed into the store to go to customer service. We (especially Amber) had had enough of this crap. Before we even got to the counter I saw the girl was behind the wheel and moving that car- in a hurry! I pointed this out and we walked back out to see what was up. The girl was now driving in circles in the over sized lot and as she went by Amber held up the paper containing the license number. The girl noticed and shouted something back as she rolled by. We proceeded to walk on the sidewalk against the store and chat for about a minute when the car came buzzing by this time with the young man driving again and he spit at us and laughed a pretty forced fake laugh for our benefit. Lucky for him he didn't spit anywhere near us and probably got more on the outside of his car than he even did on the ground. The car came back around and he yelled obscenities at Amber that were pretty boyish almost to the point of amusement: "You're a cunt! You stupid cunt! Whore!" ... and so forth... and then he drove away. What a loser! Big man in a Mercedes parks in a handicapped spot (deliberately) then when his girlfriend is scared in to moving the car, he tries to spit on a girl and curse her out. Hope he sleeps well. Both of them actually.

So anyways, to sat the least we felt pretty unwelcome in the 'bad' as well as 'good' areas of town and so we funneled the last of our quarters into the gas tank and headed out to my sisters house where we slept that night and the next. We then came to Mansfield to see Amber's cousin Jeff who is home for a week or so from the military. We took him into town and he told us his stories about the war and about the army. We were a bit worried that he might be a little spiteful toward us for being anti-war hippie-types, but he seemed pretty comforted by our presence and our willingness to listen to his bitter news. We don't just sweep his pain under the rug and tell him all that "buck up and do your duty-believe in what you are doing" crap everyone else does. We really listen to him. He probably wouldn't admit it, but I think he appreciates that from us.

We have stayed last night and tonight at my mom's house. After a week of hellish despair and a sense of loneliness created by the complete lack of calls we received (except for Erica and my Aunt Flo, who is the biggest sweetheart by the way) wishing us a happy anniversary, we stayed to work on our van and relax. We also came to find out that Amber's parents couldn't call us because their only phone ran out of minutes, but they did not forget, in fact upon a really pleasant visit, it was the first thing mentioned: "How was your anniversary!?" As it turns out, MY parents and grandma didn't forget either. They had gotten us some presents and wanted to surprise us with them because they knew we would be up this weekend. We got a gift card to Bob Evans, a camping lantern, some chocolate, and some money, which we quickly spent on a Bob Dylan live collection cd and some of those wood-beaded seat covers to go in our van. We felt a little sheepish for doubting everyone but more relieved that they all liked us and remembered us.

We also spent the entire day vacuuming and scrubbing the van - inside and out. We found that the rust streaks on the outside rub off with a wet rag and some scrubbing. Cleaning up the van listening to live recording of Bob Dylan was about the best feeling we could have experienced until later when it got dark and we had a fire in an old potbelly stove and continued the music, roasting marshmallows and making smores while the dogs ran about the yard and played. My parents and my grandma sat on a bench further back and mused at the dogs mostly but Amber and I sat right in front of the fire and just absorbed the energy of the moment completely.

Finally, I got in the mindset to write, and it's late, but I couldn't be more contented than to have this level of sanity and calmness. I feel refreshed, and although I'm not sure either of wants to go back into the storm-like-disaster of homelessness that awaits us in Columbus, I do feel that this weekend was an important retreat and step back from it. I must be off to bed now, which tonight is in an actual bed. Good night, whoever.

8 year anniversary

So hey- today is Amber and my 8 year anniversary! That is- 8 years ago today we started dating. Tomorrow will be our 2 year wedding anniversary. We've really been through a lot- and still continue to. What's really cool is that we are both completely different people today than we were 8 years ago (of corse! we were only 14 eight years ago!). Looking at how we have evolved as individuals and as a couple is really interesting. It seems that we have both grown parallel to each other, closer to each other, and farther up, out, and in all directions as a result of each other.