All Hallow's Eve Day

i posted an update on the IndiegogoAudacious Year/Having My Cake and Sharing It Too and i was treating it like a blog.  So i stopped and quickly went to practice transferring monies from Paypal to my bank account so i could go out and get supplies and saw that it can take up to 3-4 days for funds to be available.

Does anyone else remember the advent of electronic banking and e-checks and all that jazz?? When we were told/sold on how secure and easy and fast everything would be once we learned the details of the electronic wonders of going cashless and paperless???  Why is it that the money is GONE from my account prety much instantly in this system but there is still a lag of days for it to appear?  The days the money spends in limbo land is when it all gets used by the corporate powers that be to combine these relatively small sums from these individual transactions and wheel and deal with them covering their cash flow problems while depriving us access to our monies. GRRRRR!!!!!

So i am SOSOSOSOSOSO SO OH so thankful for the people and the direct action of caring.  The abundance, excess, barter and gift economies. i was able to bake last night because of a donation from Bex. He is moving from a house into a couple of rooms in a shared boarding room style house.  And Bex donated what ended up being alot of stuff.  Including Chef Josef (trader Joes's) Brand Coffee Cake mix (which happens to be vegan) and flour and sugar and carob powder and salt and other good stuff!  i was able to bake up a storm last night in prep for tonight and i was such a calming experience.

Ok i have to go and pick up Sheep Shaped Muffin Tins from Jakey!  Will post photos of the cakes a bit later and also hopefully images of the flyers i made yesterday for tonight!

Soft launch successful w/out video!

So it is done! Gave up for the moment on waiting for the video and slapped an image in there and pressed "Go Live!" and voila!  Within minutes, someone had made a donation! It was crossed posted to Facebook and a friend saw it and the barrier was broken. let it keep coming in. Thanks friend!!! for the support!  i need to back away slowly from the computer and put some warm layers on and GET OUTSIDE and PLAY IN THE SNOW!

So go and take a look at http://www.indiegogo.com/Having-My-Cake-and-Sharing-It-Too

Maybe i'll be up to going to a party?

So remember to:

Decolonize the Occupation!

Smash The State

Dismantle The Patriarchy!

Challenge All Forms Of Oppression!

AND BAKE SOME CAKE!

Waiting is a trial

So as the world waits impatiently for YouTube to do what ever it has to the video to make it accessible.... time slowly slinks by.

i went to a Moving Out party last night hosted by someone i met last June at the Trans Health Conference. They were at the time in a relationship with a friend of mine. (Learned last night that that has ended.) Bex is leaving their house of the last year with a lot of sore, sour, burnt and burdened feelings.  They invited friends over to celebrate and to burn our troubles away in a backyard fire.  i had thought i was just going to go and make a social appearance but i needed this too.  Some of the guests threw in the whole year 2011 several times. Along with their bosses and jobs and other constraining circumstances.  Wendy who was the most active participant at first eventually explain her approach was BURN ANYTHING that you are having problems with! Not to rid yourself of them per se but to transform them and free them from their current bound situation. HA!
That was a nice invitation!
So i added Reluctance, Hesitancy, one geared towards my Lover/friends the wording which i presently can't conjure back up, Family, and one more.....hmmm.... These are things that i want to see transformed, released from their current stuck bound place in my life.  We made it even more special with Sparklers and by adding the dried up boughs of Bex' x-mas tree from last year for lots of snap-crackle-pop.  Bex is finishing up the ritual in a special private way.  So mote it be.  Thanks Bex!

And we had grilled cheese sandwiches, and roasted red pepper soup and mini-wafer cookies(stroopwafels) and fauncy chocolate covered cookies from Trader Joe's.  Well into the evening another friend of Bex' showed up, in the midst of our burnings, and Mason turns out to be co-workers with Morgan at the Attic Youth Center. so nice to have the circle be revealed.

Still waiting for the video to be available..... Maybe i need to upload it again....

Pin-Up Girl to make her Video Debut!

i made a video today as an intro for the indiegogo campaign! It is in the uploading process at YouTube.  And so once that happens i can attach it to the Indiegogo site and we are ready to Go Live!

It took 23 takes before i had something i could work with. i incorporated The Pin-Up Girl Cake Pan into the mix. She did very well! A natural!

So hopefully a bit later tonight i can relax a bit and have a bit of fun and then continue with all the rest of the preparations.

Morgan has been a peach and great help.  More later.

Day Of The Dead Ritual!

There will be a Day Of the Dead Ritual on Baltimore Avenue between 47th and 48th Sts beginning All Hallow's Eve, October 31st, at sunset and continuing through to sunset on the Day of the Dead, November 2nd.

There will be an altar to hold offerings. Please bring somthing to place on the altar for your Dead, to honor your Ansestors to celebrate thier lives and your ability to celebrate with them. 

Offerings of cake are appreciated. Other kinds of edible treats are also welcome. 

Don't name it until you taste it.

This advice is part of a story that Cara Jennings told me about her cooking strategy.  That when you are cooking something up and are either not the best cook or haven't made the dish before, you don't tell folks what it is. You wait until they are eating it and ask them to name it.

i have tried to apply that advice to other situations.  People expriencing something for the first time only have their fantasitical preconcieved notions to prepare themselves for it.  So why not remove some of the preasure from everybody and give them more opportunity to actually engage in the moment and discover for themselves what the experience is?

So my expectations of what things will be also need to be checked and i need to let things be discovered as things reveal themselves.   The challenges of doing these things (Indiegogo campaign, blog, creating a care group, making a 48 hr baking ritual happen etc) is also the exciting journey of discovering the moment. Learn from them, appreciate them, incorporate them in the being aware of the doing of them.

i, let alone anyone else, have never seen a 48 hr Day of the Dead Cake Baking Ritual on Balitmore Ave before. So we will all discover what that looks like as it all unfolds.

the struggle lingers on...

So after 5 hrs of tinkering and cutting and pasting and coming up with Exciting names for the Perks and adjusting budgets.... i go and save all this work on Indiegogo and it Errors. All gone.

So much for an easy soft launch today.  All the good commisserating from folks and the advice to "do the work in a word program" are all well and good. It takes a while to develop the descipline of online writing.

Should i be doing that right now?

i am working away at reconstructing what i can remember and making up the rest.  Maybe later tonight.

It is good to know Brad Will is close by.  i miss him dearly. For all his needs and desires for street action, he was always up for some cake. Figuring out wild and strange, unexpected and provocative methods to get into people's hearts and minds and bodies was one of his specialties.  He is with me in this fight and pleasurestruggle.

So Soft Launch Sometime Today.

There will be a soft launch of the Indiegogo Fundraising campaign today.  Hopefully within the next hour or so.

Yes money, funding is an aspect of putting myself out there audaciously this year.  It makes me REAL CRANKY. Mostly because of all the (to me) awkward and troubling hoops i have needed to jump through to get it all this far.  i spent years making the personal pitch, face to face, and then adjusting the project to my ability to make it happen.  This is a much more complicated and complex affair.  i hope i honor my own past experience and have made those traces visible and intrigueing. 

Will post again when we are launched.
Blessed Be, Divinely Doo-doo.

Big day!

Blogs are dangerous and crazy. That said, i should try and embrace that sentiment. The focus and work i have been putting into so many things seems to be counterproductive. At least it seems to me at the moment. My great and grand "blah blah blah" of community and care seems trite to me and empty when i am so grind stone nose shaving.  Even after i have tried so hard, in myriad ways to open this up and include others in the process. Ask for assistance and others perspectives. i still feel so dang alone in this.  It sucks.

Just plain sucks.  i try to convince myself that this is just a typical period when creative vision blinds one and at the same time leads one forward. This too is not what i wanted. No siree bob.

Is it so scary?  Am i so scary? Scary in the audacity? Scary in the complicatedness and complexity? Of the seeming chaos?  My definition of CHAOS is: Chaos is not disorder, it is one's inability to percieve the order.

i am often called crazy. What is attached to that label varies.  There is an old adage something like: To be crazy in an insane world is healthy.  There are probably several variations on that one.

Well yes for most of my life i have been working towards a world, a culture, a cosmology in which i was me; in which i am able to be and thrive and rejoice at it all with everybody else being able to do that too.

It is crazy in a world in which violence of great variation and scale is embrace not only as outward tools of LAW & ORDER but also as tools of liberation.  i mean this beyond the "us" (the good guys) vs "them" (the bad guys) but also the violence we allow ourselves to tolerate towards each other in the "us" (the good guys) while we confront the "them" (the bad guys).

As a counter to the "us" vs "them" i have been offering "we".  "We"ing is the process of recognizing oneself as part of something larger without that having to exclude anyone else.

"Us & Them"ing is a consequence of objectification. One does not only objectify the Other but also one's self. Objectification is the process of turning a person, or group into an object, thing, inert and dead. Something that can be manipulated and bought and sold, judged and dismissed, but aside or used for one's own purpose. It does not have to be considered beyond what can "it" do for me? How can "I" use "it"?

The concept of an "us" as an "it" becomes clearer when one thinks about privilege, especially the ones that are not so easily identified. The "us" of white people; the "us" of ablebodied people; the "us" of relatively more money/power people; the "us" of the "in the moment" cool people; the "us" of the advocate for the little people; etc.  One can use the objectifying look at one's own self identity to 'move and shake' and use that place to get what one needs without respecting the "other" let alone one's own innate subjective self.
______________________
This is not what i started out to write. HA! Another aspect of blogs is their ability to allow one to go places unexpected.  What i did want to write about was the plan to do a soft launch of the Indiegogo Campaign today.  Waiting around any longer to get input/feedback from other folks in the "Reply All"/Care group is not worth it.  What there is and how it is is just going to have to be good enough for now. Maybe someone who reads this can give some feed back!

Vocabulary and Concepts

It has been pointed out that i often use specific words or concepts in ways people are not familiar. So i am going to try and collect them here to aid readers in their quest to enjoy and participate in this Audacious Year.

We-ing: The process of becoming aware of a sense of community that doesn't create an Us/them dichotomy.

compartmentalization: In the negative sense it means creating a place for parts of ourselves that are hidden and secreted away (sort of like being in the closet) that is actually very important about how one makes their way through the world;
in the positive sense it mean things are arranged so that things are in their appropriate places.

Complicated/Complex:  Ben Emmerick offered this articulation of the two similar words- Complicated is the number of elements in a system; Complex is the number of relationships between the elements in a system. If this intrigues you please investigate the School For Designing A Society  http://www.designingsociety.org/

permaculture:

natural building:

Social Permaculture:

Natural Community Building:

Nacre: i am using the term nacre to describe how we take irritants and let them be covered, layered over inside oursleves as an Oyster coats an irritant in its shell to eventually produce a pearl.  We nacre over many things to keep them from bothering us and eventually we produce our "pearls" of suffering. i want to be able to make this a bit more concious of a process. Identify the irritants and decide whether they need to be removed or used for some beautifying purposes. It is how we often don't know or remember where our "pearls" of beautiful suffering came from and they eventually start to choke us. Or we try to pawn them off as prescious family heirlooms.

Filter/Net:

Shine a little light!

When i run into the darkness, shine a little light, so i know where you are.

when i sing from the darkness, shine a little light, so i know where you are.

When i am silent in the darkness, shine a little light, so i know that you are there,

When i scream in the darkness, shine a little light, so i know you have heard.

When i return from the darkness, let me tell you the stories of dancing fireflies in the gardens.

When i return from the darkness, let me tease you with stories about how the stars came to be my guides.

Success...

So this morning i wake up and realize that i need to be clearer about a shift.

That for me to be successful in inspiring others in creating a world in which i want to live i have to find ways to be seen, ligitimate, real in the current world.  That means i have to figure out how to be a success in this current world that doesn't compromise or limit the potential for this other worls which i want to be. 

That also means inspiring others to (in what ever way) explore and engage inthe process of articulating the world they want to be a part of.

A lot of this transformational process involves recognizing the parts and patterns in the current world that support us; create an identity for us; recognize us; empower us.... that just might not be the best tools for getting through and to a place that is ultimately more interesting and fun.

How do we learn to give up something that has been working (well or poorly)?

How do we learn to try new ways?

There is a lot more to share about this as we go along.

i need to fugure out how to be a success in the current paradigm that uncovers, reveals other possibilities and option for creating the world i want to be a part of.

Sept 17th Steps Forth

Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 10:38 PM
Subject: Steps forth...

Dear all,

So it has been about 3 months since i sent out the Dignity and Grace missive.  i really need to just accept the idea of linear time as a tool to be used when appropriate.

Some of you have been bumping into me and jostling me through this period. i am very greatful for that.  More of that would be welcome (and other things too) because it continues the process of helping me locate myself in these very new senses of self and place.

Presently i am sitting in back of Sandi Ford's house in Asheville, NC. Tomorrow i head up to visit Bryan Konrad at the Allegheny Mountain School.  i am on Day 12 of this new period of my life after signing off on the last of the major family responsibilities.

i have so far made it to Madison & Milwaukee, WI; Urbana, IL; The Loveshare Skillshare Gathering for Sojouners Land Project at Laughing Winds in TN and a short visit to IDA.

Along the way i have been testing the language i am using to describe the next year's work.  It has been..... good.

You all have been witness to much (in bits and pieces) of the challenges i have faced this past year.

As i figure out how to honor this past year and move forward i hope to be more engaging and hopeful!

So here is my current vision for the next year or so.  The three project in many ways are meant to balance each other and create some synergy.

i would appreciate your thoughts and insights, comments and concerns, etc.

Andy, who lives up in Ontario, where i spent a month this summer, probably has the best (? a better?) feel for these projects because it was through his efforts i managed to make it through some serious junk during my time up there. i hope he gets the gumption up to click REPLY ALL to share his perspective.

So the three projects for this next year more or less are:

Family Healthcare Crisis Conversations-
Using the notes, handouts, forms and other detritus from my Dad's initial illness, surgery, rehabilitations, dying process and ultimate death as fodder, i want to facilitate conversations to identify potential tools for people who find themselves and their families in the midst of Healthcare Crisis.  There are quite of few resources for planning a Major Healthcare Event (crisis) and others for recovering/healing from Healthcare Crisis but surprisingly few for when one is thrust into it without preparation. 

Starting with the people (this includes you all) who have been aware and supportive during this period because you are familiar with my particulars and then slowly increasing the circle of participants, i hope to mark a trail that others can follow and create guidance points and directions through the mass of info. Andy pointed out that i was making myself sick in chewing over this cud and that by inviting others to browse through that they might be better able to digest it and extract the good stuff. i created several tools in the midst of this all, that the Professional Healthcare Providers recognized as powerful and lacking. There are probably many more to be found.  At some point my anger will transmute and then i will be able to engage the Professional Healthcare Providers and involve them in honing the identified tools and finding ways to put them into practice.

When i was up in Canada, Andy, his partner Cathy and i invited their friend Fran to participate in a first run and it went very well.  i hope to hear from some of you and schedule a time and place for a Conversation to take place.

-------
Puzzlement-
Creating a participatory, collaborative puzzle making methodology, sort of a multi-layered, intention filled Exquisite Corpse Puzzle.  Guiding a group of people or members of an organization through a series of creative exercises to find a collective experiential visual vocabulary that gets worked into a finished product (puzzle). The puzzle then can be used as a way to share the group's or organization's mission and purpose and also be used as a fundraising product.

Andy shared with me that he is tired of my surviving off of odd jobs and that i need to create a way to sustain myself well by what i do well.  Puzzlement draws upon my traveling workshop experiences and weaves it with my Mental Health Handicraft skills. We see this taking 2 or 3 years of fostering before it will be able to fully support me.

---------

Having My Cake and Sharing It Too-
Baking a cake everyday for a year.  Having had little control over my food intake this last year, i want to engage others in the act of food preparing, daily celebration of life, negotiating emotional and nutritional needs, the food scarcity/abundance discussion, transformative power of intentional food love and more.  Part blog, part documentation of consumption/celebration, part act of discipline, part whimsy and mostly a way to reach beyond the comfort of comfort food and challenge myself to complete each step of the next year.

i have over the years, baked many many cakes, often as part of public events. From time to time i have made them into participatory events by offering the cakes (usually Character shaped Cakes) to be decorated with various instructions. FX: at Queeruption 99 in NYC i baked 4 or 5 cakes and then instructed the hungry mob to decorate them as their favorite Intergalactic Transgender Warrior. Fun Mayhem Ensued; at Maynooth Pride (Canada's smallest Pride Celebration) in July, i baked a Barbie Cake and explained that Barbie was actually an Inter-dimensional Being who came here sometime ago and had been captured and enslaved by the hetero-normative, gender binary Powers That Be to do their nefarious bidding but that she longs to be free and we must help her by embuing her image with all our most Wonderful Super Powers so that she can break free from her bonds and come and play with us. That was fun.  i have started again to collect Character and fun shaped pans. These and my baking skills will be a starting point for a very interesting adventure.

In addition, there is this idea floating, dangling, teasing of doing a kick-off marathon baking event for Day of the Dead through All Saints' Day. 48 hrs of baking cakes for the dead. Besides my Dad's death i have had 8 other deaths, excluding the pets in the last 10 months. This could be REALLY cathartic for me and others.  So if you have any ideas about where and any interest or know of any others who would like to join in the baking let me know.

From the 17th Oct. Unthwarting the package

Contents:

1: Intro:

2: Family Healthcare Crisis Conversation

3. Having My Cake & Sharing It Too

4. Puzzlement Laboratory

5. The Year Of Living Audaciously- Indiegogo Fundraiser

Dear All of you,

Being in this cluster of people who have been a part of this Care Group (Caleb-and by extension Carlos and Calder-, Morgan, Albo, Joy and Sara Valentine) and other people who know me in Philly has been a good thing.

One of the things that has become clearer is the need to let you all know that what i am going through is a good thing. My letting myself experience all that is there, no matter how terrible it might seem to all of you and even to myself, it is worth it.  It is my work.

Where i am struggling is how to make it more accessible to others and how to make what i am doing an invitation for active and transparent participation.  The 3 projects are attempts at just that.

i can talk to myself all day (and i do) and dialogue with others til the cows come home but how to leave a better trace, trail, map?

A month or two ago, i texted  myself: “It isn’t that we are doing things totally wrong, it’s that we aren’t doing enough things right.”  i then texted a few minutes later “May all your mistakes be worth it.”

i have been thinking about the first text and now would say maybe- the things that we are doing “right” are lonely and scared. They don’t have friends to hang with and support each other. There isn’t a critical mass of them and that “right” things don’t actually all look the same as each other. “Wrongs” have a herding mentality in which they all jockey for position.

How do we support and encourage the “rights” so that they can be recognized and find each other to work together?

So chew on that while i continue.

i am, each day, better at articulating what it is i am doing.  It is not the easier thing to do.

So some clearing up.

Family Healthcare Conversation:

The first stage of this conversing is for me to process the mountain of angers and frustrations i am carrying around. i am not in the place I want to be yet to share all the stuff, good, bad and beyond with the larger world. i really need you all to speak up and help make these conversations happen. i need to offer some sense of my travel plans so that you all can say what works for you time wise.

In response to Kathy’s queries, i want to remain as actively passive in the process as possible. Offering the materials, as openly as possible, that allows your curiosities to guide the process. i don’t want to clutch onto what happened in the conversation in Killaloe and use that as THE model for proceeding. i want the process to be such that you all can engage and i can respond and monitor my feelings and interest in your responses. 

In the conversations i have had about Family Healthcare Crisis that just happen, it is startling how quickly i end up ranting and tearing myself apart.  In the Killaloe set up, that didn’t happen. So Kathy, that would be some “good stuff.”

One of the things i think is important is the process of separating “my shit” from “other’s shit”. This is where and when i need others’ perspectives who know me so that the shit of my family dynamics, the shit of the Medical Healthcare Establishment, the shit of this sometimes shitty world and my own shit can be teased apart and the delicate and intricate connections be revealed.

It is so easy to take a cleaver to these things and just “get the job done.”

i feel that quite quickly the more practical offers in Kathy’s queries will be able to be responded to.

Having My Cake & Sharing It Too:

So a week from tonight i am starting to bake for a 48 hr marathon- From sundown on All Hallow’s Eve through All Saints Day to sunset on All Souls Day /Day of the Dead.

There is a FB Event set up and several people have already come forward to help with set up, baking and getting supplies.  There is still lots to do.

This event is the kick off for the year of daily cake baking. Since 2012 is a leap year that is 366 days of baking cakes AND having the attendant conversations around it.

 i am going to have a blog specifically for the Cake Baking. (Thanks Morgan for the encouragement and guidance.)

The Puzzlement Laboratory

Note the additional language.  In conversation with Andy today, we kind of worked out that The Puzzlement Laboratory is a reworking of pleasurestruggle. Andy shared that he has no interest in me using my time, talents and energies in running an organization or doing payroll.

The Puzzlement Laboratory will eventually be a physical space, a workshop/workplace with shelves and cupboards to store projects and a worktable and adequate lighting. This is something i made clear up in Canada this summer: that i want a space to work in within the next year. In addition to a physical space it will be the portable toolboxes and tool chests i carry around with me both internally and externally. My traveling show of wonders.

The participatory endeavors that result in an object that maps the group’s endeavors to articulate itself is an aspect of the work in The Puzzlement Laboratory.

Having My Cake and Sharing It Too is project of The Puzzlement Laboratory.

The Family Healthcare Crisis Conversation Phase 1 –Help Me Heal is a project of The Puzzlement Laboratory.

The Family Healthcare Crisis Conversation Phase 2 – Crafting Tools for the Coordination and Communication of Care is a project of The Puzzlement Laboratory.

The Family Healthcare Crisis Conversation Phase 3 – Engaging the Medical Healthcare Establishment in Dialogue is a project of The Puzzlement Laboratory.

 The Craft and Art i produce – what i would like to call Function Box Bombs are products of The Puzzlement Laboratory.

The Year Of Living Audaciously – Indiegogo fundraiser

So the idea of doing an online fundraiser has been swirling for a while. Trying to craft language and image to make sense of the various parts has been really thwarting. So instead of casting about and turning myself inside out in the struggle to narrow things down for each aspect, it seems to make sense to just go for it and make a fundraiser for the whole package.

In moving forward with this, the lovely folks at Indiegogo have many suggestions to increase the returns.  One of the most important aspects is having a team, several people who will be listed on the site and help post updates and create activity and answer inquiries and promote it far and wide.  i hope a few of you will be open to being listed.  If you aren’t familiar with Indiegogo or even Kickstarter check them out.

With the Day of the Dead Cake Baking marathon quickly approaching i need to get this up and running. There are more than a few costs that need to be covered.  Luckily, locally there have been several offers of assistance, for decorating and bakers and also a flour donation is in the works.

i have been working on a list of Premiums for the various levels of donations (another important aspect that increases $s) but need more ideas.   

i am going to send this out now. Morgan’s workshop Games for Actors & Non-Actors starts in a few minutes and it make me feel oh so good to do this work/play.

Later this evening i will send out a more specific fundraiser email.

With pleasure in the struggle

xtn



Premiums

i think i am trying to hard with this list of Premiums. Morgan corrected me by reminding me to say Keep It Simple. And i responded: Keep It Simple, Simple.
So these are all under review.  Please post your ideas.

Premiums

$0- Your dead will be honored at next year’s Day of the Dead Cake Baking Ritual

$5- i’ll bake a cake in honor of someone or an event of your choice.

$10- A hand crafted potholder or a piece of Mail-Art.

$25- A 2013- 13 month Cake calendar with recipes!

$50- A quarterly Zine about Having Your Cake and Sharing It Too. Recipes, reports from the road or

An item from the Arts & Crafts Gallery

$100- A selection of Audio stories from the years travels on a thumb drive

Or

A Gallery of Cakes for a Screensaver.

$250- A copy of the book A Year Of Baking Cake, Conversing and Concocting Community. (working title)

$500- A Day of Cake baking in your community as a fundraiser for a cause of your choice

Or

A daylong Puzzlement Laboratory workshop for a group in your community.

$1000- A custom designed and sewn bed size quilt.

We have already started.

This is a blog to chronicle The Year Of Living Audaciously!

There are 3 basic elements to this year.

Having My Cake And Sharing It Too;

Family Healthcare Crisis Conversations;

and

The Puzzlement Laboratory.

This blog will soon be linked to several other Social Media outlets and endeavors including an Indiegogo Fundraising campaign and each element will have its own blog or web presence.

That's it for now.