Final Narrative, IHP 09-10

I wonder if any part of this project could ever be final. I feel as though this "final narrative" will still be forming in my mind even as I present this, even as you read these words. This is one moment I am capturing, one thread I am following in order to provide a snapshot of something beautiful and fleeting. I have spent a year thinking about textiles, thinking about why they draw me in the way they do, and have found myself less grounded than before but perhaps more free to explore. I have found that I will continue questioning, continue sharing and continue walking.

For now, I want to stroll along this loop I lay out in the final pages of my portfolio. Once I began looking more closely at my own fascination with fabrics, I realized it went beyond the cloth itself. The body interacts with textiles in a unique way: they are an intimate part of our lives yet are largely taken for granted. There is a poem in the way fabric hangs from the shoulder...there is so much grace in a crumpled sock hugging a pink ankle. We have surrounded ourselves with textiles, so flexible and fine, so durable and dynamic. Our horizons are marked by clothes on a line and the sweeping curve of a sheet in the breeze. Our second skin is made of cotton and wool. We live in a cloth ecology. Yet even this glorious truth has shown its dark side. The damage caused by producing textiles at a massive scale is undeniable, and thus our bodies are interconnected with textiles in another way. By alienating ourselves from the practice of creation on an intimate scale, our clothes, our sheets, our woven environment, have become poisonous.

This brings us one step further along this little loop to the important aspect of textiles as a focal practice. There is an immense and important difference between production and creation, just as there is a difference between violence and power. They may both appear to reach the same ends, but the process of getting there makes all the difference. The producer produces for the sake of the product, while the creator creates for the sake of creating. The latter is an act of love, care and patience. Creation demands attention at every level of detail. Creation actively links the body to the process and in this way is the antidote to alienation. When we are alienated from the process of creating something as central as cloth, we are lost.

This brings us to the final piece of the circle, the bit that ties it all together again. Communities are woven literally and figuratively by textiles. People identify culturally through their clothing, and not only aesthetically. Think of the camaraderie found when you see textiles that you recognize being worn by someone you do not know. Think of the patterns and textures that fill the spaces in your memory. Our communities are knit out of these things. Without a relationship to our clothing, we loose our relationship to our places.

Weaving has also become a meaningful metaphor for rethinking a way of being in the world. To live as one thread in a tapestry of millions of threads could be a viable mode of being, rather than striving for dominance and control. Cloth is resilient, it is flexible, because it is made up of so many tiny threads. Some threads cross, some do not but they all add their strength to something greater. This larger entity is forever changeable...it is nothing but its threads.

After all this, after this year with all the beauty and struggle we have seen, this is what I have come to. Perhaps we should live in the world like a thread in the cloth.

There are spaces between hopelessness, tiny slivers of inspiration that do not claim to be anything other than life. It is in these places that something amazing happens, like a lightening of being, or some nonsense like that.

What I really mean to say is that two days ago the hibiscus blossoms were brighter than I have ever seen them. It made me want to cry just to see them dotting the hedges along the dirt road, the road I walked along in peace for the first time in a while. The things you learn when you stop trying to learn! You realize that the earth is spinning when you spend a day watching the sun cross the sky. Sometimes it feels like I have been tossed up in the air and I am just waiting to come down again...but I have to admit, the view is pretty spectacular from up here. I have nothing real to say at this moment, just something deep inside that feels like a jello-sculpture of calm. Green lime jello on a hot day. I am pretty sure you all know what I mean, so I will leave it at that.

But I have to say, the hibiscus was so brilliant on that day, right when I least expected it.

The Countdown Begins: 19 days

I am on my way home, slowly but surely. Of course, the end of my adventure is obscured behind a mountain of final projects and the unbearable grief of saying goodbye to a new found family...but nevertheless, the calendar does not lie.

Also, the end of this adventure acts as the beginning of another adventure. Only this one will last for the rest of my life. Sitting in class today listening to one of the last doom and gloom lectures of the year, I was struck by a strange anxiety. When the capitalist system collapses and the nation-state disintegrates, where will I get my clothes? Hmmm...re-entry might be more painful than I thought.

I have been warned that many of the things I now say without second thought will not be readily accepted back home. This perplexes me, because I am thinking the most incredible, glorious, radical things. Let me enlighten you:

The first thing I want to do when I get home is cook. I want to cook every meal, with my family, with love, with joy. Then I want to go for a hike. I want to hike a different hill everyday. I want to make T-shirts with obscurely witty slogans on them and laugh about it later. I want to make a puppet theater with my sister. I want to plant a garden. I want to fix my bus. I want to make everyone around me feel good and free. I want to go to Basalt town council meetings and ask obnoxious questions and take too many notes. I want to buy land with my love and partner, Jeremy. I want to build a dry toilet, a bike-powered washing machine and grow cotton. I want to host full moon bike-in movies to fund my personal revolution. I want to play the banjo really really well. I want to have babies. I want to dance. I want to have a lot of friends. I want to say that I think the nation-state is falling appart and then toast the end of the nation-state. I want people to calm down. There will be dancing at the revolution, and beer, so chill out.

As fun and fruity as this sounds, it is radical. This is revolutionary and it has nothing to do with signing petitions or attending meetings. Social change should sprout from a place of joy, and it will.

I cannot wait to come home.

So, what does freedom mean?

According to a very perky and all around professional PR person at the World Bank earlier this year, Freedom is "...well...I mean I think we all know what freedom is. Our definition is the same as yours, you know...the freedom to work."

Well, if thats what freedom is then I am out. See you guys later.

And by "you guys" I am not really sure who I am talking to. Because the last time I checked, work has become, well, work, and a lot of people have come to dread their jobs. There is no choice not to work, just a thousands of things you could do at any given moment. And of course the one job you do choose is the wrong choice and you are stuck climbing the corporate ladder until the glory days of retirement when you realize all the money you saved was siphoned off by well groomed but all around unspectacular human being who smiles too much and eats all the shrimp cocktail at parties.

I really do not want that to be the moment when I realize that I should have just settled down with someone who made me feel wonderful, planted a garden, and had a potluck every single night. Because what is freedom worth if you cannot spend it with the ones you love? And what is freedom, exactly, if you do not get to create it yourself?

At this point, our freedom of choice is standing dumbfounded in the laundry detergent aisle, wondering how the hell there could 10,000 variations of the same simple product. And lest you do not feel free enough, the cereal aisle is just around the corner. Hold on to your hats! And our freedom of expression has become learning how to use words in just the right combination so as not to hurt anyones feelings or step on anyones toes, or at least stupify them until you have a chance to run away or change your mind. Another option is to create a catchy slogan that can be easily slapped onto bumpers and T-shirts, have a martini, and call it a job well done. Poets and songwriters barely suvive in the damp little corners of popular attention and can, every so often, Wow us with a piece of true beauty before it recedes again. Popular music beats its way forcefully into the eardrums of every citizen, until even your grandmother is wondering "where my bitches and hos at?"

In America, the land of the free, a good percentage of our population is, or has been, in jail. And just to drive all of this home let me lay out a well known and universally feared senario: going throught airport security.

There is nothing more freeing than taking off your belt, coat, shoes and jewlery for a apathetic stranger in uniform. And if the feeling of synthetic carpet between your toesies doesnt do it for you, why dont you put all of your liquids into a plastic bag, while a college-age, pimply grumpy-face empties the contents of your exuisitely packed bag onto the table in front of a bunch of rubber neckers. You feel as if you are hiding something, as though you should yell "I have a bomb!" just to cut the tension in the air. But you know that even a child sneezing will probably be slammed to the floor by a over-worked and underpaid rent-a-cop, and so you keep quiet.

Feel safe? Better yet, feel free.

Im guessing the answer is no. Solution? I got nothin. But living in the United States has become, I have heard, increasingly like living in a police state. So perhaps the best idea is to get together with your friends and family and create a space that makes you feel really, truely free: all the way from your Blackberry to your Bluetooth.

SHIT!

It did not occur to me until recently that pooping into a porcelain bowl of water was a little bizarre. But about a week ago, we met with a man who showed us the beauty of pooping into a little dry box instead of a bowl of water, and BAM, the clouds parted and I saw the light.

This revelation is about on par to the joy I felt when I learned how to properly wipe with my left hand, but I feel like it would be easier to implement the dry toilet than to retire our beloved Charmin Ultra. The dry toilet is a genius invention. The beautifully designed bowl separates your poop from your pee (I choose not to use the painfully sterile words "feces" and "urine") and allows your unencumbered shit to plop down into a box of its own kind, followed by a scoop of ash, to dry and compost into a rich yet texturless soil. The pee glides down its own pipe into a separate holding tank to be diluted and spritzed onto plants and trees, which gleefully accept your golden gift. Does it seem too simple to be true? Well this is no joke. In fact, the reality of the situation is not funny at all.

Today, in the average city, there are tons and tons of shit flowing beneath the feet of the cosmopolitan . Once the poop is flushed out of sight and out of mind, it is multiplied to 600 times its original volume by mixing with water alone. Thats how much water it takes to move your poop elsewhere. In other words, the amount of water used to flush one persons waste in one year could be enough for that same person to drink for 60 years. With statistics like that, we cannot be too surprised about the shortage of clean drinking water in the world: we are shitting in it.

Unfortunately for most, dry toilets go against various zoning laws in most towns. Its actually illegal to not poop in water. It is really too bad, because the soil produced from our poops could be incredibly beneficial to put back into our gardens. Imagine the joy you would get from knowing that you had completed the cycle from your seeds, to your vegetables, to your poops, to your garden! Maybe if we began to see the beauty of our own "waste," we would find a new found connection to our nether regions and bowel movements. If we knew that our poops would be feeding our garden, maybe we would put down the Twinkie and lay off the antidepressants. After all, what could be better for a bad mood than a nice, big shit.

Earl: Part 3

What a sight Earl was, all bear arms and mountain legs, and sky eyes. He stood there, quite still, and watched, scratching one big hairy arm with the other. Next to where Earl stood, there was a brook, a noisy little brook that tumbled and flowed over pebbles and stones. The brook saw Earl, with all his goofy extremeties, and laughed out loud. All the little water particles were doubled over laughing and giggling at such a strange sight, and the brook began to froth and foam. Little droplets of water flew up and landed on Earl's face and, where they landed, a sweet little mouth began to form. Earl began to play with his newly formed mouth, and opened it up wide. Right at that moment, the brook decided to play a trick on Earl, and spouted a little fountain of water right into his open gob. Earl swished the water around for a moment, and then suddenly, without warning, let loose a wild, carefree laugh. He laughed and laughed, and the brook laughed back. This was how Earl got his mouth and his voice.

A little round robin heared this laughter and alighted on a branch near earl. She looked him up and down, as it was difficult not too, and decided that Earl was an interesting creature, but was lacking something very vital. It was something that every other creature had, yet Earl stood there without it as though nothing even mattered. The robin hopped to and fro trying to figure out what exactly was the missing piece, when suddenly it dawned on her that Earl was missing his heart. This made the robin nervous, for she has never met a heartless creature before, and she twittered uncertainly. The robin knew what she had to do to remedy this empty state in which Earl had been existing for as long as time, so she hopped off her branch and landed on Earl's breast. She puffed herself up and tweeted a little tune, and suddenly Earl was filled with a warmth that he had never felt before. It raced through his boulder legs, and flowed out of his bear claw hands, and he opened his new mouth in awe. Earl had a heart, made of robin love and spring-time grace, and he could finally feel. Earl stopped merely existing, and began to live.

He looked around with a new appreciation, and saw the splendor of the trees and the softness of the clouds. He touched the grass with his paws and felt...good! This was the first time that he felt anything at all. Earl longed (yes longed!) to race through the forest and picked up his legs one and a time and bounded through the shrubbery like a jack-rabbit. The breeze tickled his face, and he laughed, and the branches caught the hair on his bear arms as he flew past. He saw a pretty tree leaning daintily over a river and hugged it with all his might; he watched a little ant crawl on is hand and it made his heart swell. Earl was feeling, and Earl was truly alive.

As the sun began to set, Earl became tired, and looked for a place to rest for the night. The stars began to come out one by one, and Earl took in their beauty hungrily. As he entered a small clearing somthing small and white caught his eye: it was a little dove, lying in the grass. Earl was curious, and went over to inspect this wonderous little creature. He picked it up gently and turned it in his hands, and realized suddenly, with horror, that this poor little thing had no heart beat. The little dove was dead. This was Earl's first experience with death. A sudden pain pierced his chest, and tears began to well in his eyes. He held himself with his bear arms but it made to difference. He tried to run but his legs buckled beneath him. Earl was scared that his heart would break into a thousand pieces and he would lose the abilty to feel. He sat in the grass, rocking the dove gently, and wept. These were the first tears to fall from him new sky eyes.

After a while, Earl lifted his head and asked, to nobody in particular, "What is the point of having eyes if they can cry? And what is the point of having a heart if it can break?" A moment later, a thousand tiny butterflies flitted out from the darkness of the woods. They surrounded him, and for a moment he was soothed. All the little butterflies began to speak in unison, as soft as a flap of a wing. They said "Dear Earl, poor thing, the pain you feel is a very important part of life. You have felt the sunshine on your skin, and now you have felt the pain of heart break and death. You are complete, dear Earl. Now you are whole." The butterflies came together and landed all over Earl, and he began fuller and more tangible. His heart felt a little stronger and he wiped the tears from his face. This is the moment, the very special moment, in which Earl found his spirit.

He stood on his boulder legs, and lifted his bear arms to the sky. With all the voice he could muster from his lovely brook mouth, Earl yelled to the world a great, resounding "YES!"


THE END

New Zealand

There is a way of putting up you guard against he sight of perpetual tragedy. You steel yourself against starving women and bony children, you fix your gaze just beyond the slums and lean-to huts. Everything is seen from behind a veil, from behind the bus window, behind a notebook, behind the security of always knowing you will go home.
But nothing, nothing, can prepared you for the velvet curve of a New Zealand hill. It enters your heart by way of your eyes and then expands inside you. There is simply no way of stopping it, and entering New Zealand is dangerous unless you are prepared to be forever heartbroken, always longing for the glistening bays and the floating islands. The sheep speckled hills melt into mountains and the mountains melt into sky, and after a while you feel the tears fill the spaces between your eyes. You realize that this is so beautiful that it is sad. It is so beautiful it makes you wonder what else could possibly matter...the slums melt away, and that woman's toothless mouth moves silently. The hunger and suffering in the world and in your soul are blown away with that breeze that fills hollow valleys. You can give yourself to the water that turns your body to ice. You can give yourself away. And that is what breaks my heart.

Earl: part 2

Earl stood, contemplating with his large and lopsided eyes, his new chunky immobile legs. He didn't have too many thoughts about the state of himself, as you can imagine, and so merely sat still like a small mountain and the base of a greater one.
Suddenly, a jackrabbit shot out from beneath a pricker bush nearby. Laughing hysterically, the rabbit chattered his two front teeth at Earl and pointed his lucky little paws at him. Earl was not embarrassed, but was intrigued by the speed with which this fuzzy little beast hopped and sprang around him. The rabbit inspected Earl's huge boulder legs and realized the predicament of this odd looking stick boy with the sky in his eyes and the mountains in his legs, and not much else. The rabbit began to run around Earl, as fast as he could, kicking up quite a cloud of dust and pricker thorns. The whirlwind began to move in Earl's leg, and they began to stir. With a giddy yip, the rabbit took off running and caught Earl in his wake and Earl's great legs began to move and jerk along. One lumbering step after another, Earl took off running after the rabbit, and that is how Earl found his speed and mobility.

Earl clomped along merrily, unfortunately the jackrabbit had not taught him how to stop. So along Earl went, his new eyes watering in the breeze, until he ran into a bear. Now I wish I could say he happened upon a bear, but as he could not stop his gait Earl literally ran right into the bear. The bear roared in disbelief at this wild looking creature who had to rudely disturbed him, and rose onto his back legs with his teeth bared. Earl felt no fear, cause he was still rather unsubstantial at this point, and so blinked once or twice and stood still. The bear toddled forward and grabbed a hold of Earl in his mighty arms. He squeezed Earl until hi eyes bulged and wrestled him to the ground. Unfortunately, Earl was so little that the bear hug did little to affect him, and the bear stepped back in surprise. Humbled by Earl's strength (or lack thereof) he bowed his head and grumbled an apology. As a sign of his sincerity, the bear took off his arms and placed them gently on Earl's slight frame. There they hung, furry and huge, and without knowing why Earl reached forward and embraced the bear. Thus Earl had arms, and because there is not much else to do with arms, he learned to hug.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Ode to Jeremy

Oh what a joy it is to leap,
To break away from those chains that keep
You tethered down and blue.

To allow yourself to laugh out loud
In spite of the faces in the crowd
Who wickedly frown back at you.

For to tiptoe onto the branch is really a wish to fall,
And if you must feel the ground to jump then you should prefer to crawl.

I stood there quaking, knocking knees,
As you watched me from the ground,
But I took a step and then again,
And you smiled at the balance I found.

You told me to jump, breath deep and jump,
And now I wish I did,
For I scratched my belly on the branch
As cautiously down I slid.

Good thing my fear for climbing trees is not my fear for love,
For I've leaped into that mysterious thicket and found it as soft as a dove.

Sometimes love is like a dove and a dove... 


Viva la Revolucion 
Made up by eight-year-olds

India

Africa

Earl

Once upon a time there was Earl. Now to talk about Earl in terms that are understandable to the average person living today I would have to say that Earl was neither male nor female, per se. Neither was he thick nor thin, big nor small, old nor young, nor any of the other binaries with which people are described. Imagine, if you will, a two-dimensional and rather empty figure like a child's drawing hung on a refrigerator in an abandoned apartment building and you will have Earl, no more and no less. And Earl existed, as much as Earl could exist, in a rather dreary world.

Things in Earl's world were colorless, and the other beings were cruel to him (I shall refer to our genderless Earl as "him" to appeal to the limitations of the English language!). His mother-figure didn't pay him any mind, and his father-figure always told him "NO." In fact, all of his friend-figures and brother-figures and sister-figures told him "NO" as well, to the point that Earl could no longer do anything at all. Now as Earl lived in a two-dimensional and rather empty world he didn't feel much of anything, no happiness or sadness, boredom or joy, so the days past and he sat in a world of "NO" for as long as time.

One two-dimensional and rather empty day, Earl began to walk to nowhere in particular. His mother-figure paid him no mind, naturally, but his father-figure stood in his path and said "NO." Earl walked right past. His friend-figures pulled his twig arms, but Earl shook them off and kept walking. All his brother-figures and sister-figures cried "NO" as loud as they could but Earl ignored them until he had walked right out of that two-dimesional and rather empty world altogether.

As Earl walked, the sky noticed him and and followed him for a while. The sky was feeling rather good that day, and shone a deep blue and wore only thin wisps of clouds in a scandalous assortment here and there. He puffed proudly for Earl, but Earl did not so much as glance upwards to the sky, and the sky became angry. The sky threw on a deep purple cape that was dripping with tiny shimmering stars, in order to catch Earl's attention, but Earl kept walking, quite unaware. In a fit of rage the sky took a bit of sun, a dash of cloud and just a hint of starshine and blended it into a ball which he hurled down at Earl, hitting him square in the face. The ball broke into two pieces and became Earl's eyes. For the first time, Earl looked up to the sky and saw.

The sun was setting and the sky wore the colors like a spurned lover, all fire and broken hearts, and Earl gazed upon it in wonder till he couldn't any more.

Now Earl felt no fatigue, as he wasn't made of much of anything, and so he continued walking until he came to a mountain. The mountain was huge, and sat heavily shrouded in mist and clouds. The mountain creaked and groaned under her own weight, and Earl paused to take in such a spectacle. His new eyes felt heavy and awkward on his face and Earl adjusted this way and that to properly see the massive mountain in front of him. Earl looked down at his own two-dimensional self and pondered his twig legs and the mountain saw this rather pathertic dispaly and felt sorry for him. The mountain stood tall and strong, yet settled deeply into the ground, but Earl didn't really stand at all, at any height or with any meaningful weight. He just sort of was. The mountain, being a woman of few words, let loose a couple of fine boulders from her heights and rolled them down her craggy bits right down to Earl where they crashed into him and became his legs. And there Earl stood, tall and proud as any mountain, with eyes that reflected the sky, yet he was too firmly grounded and could not move at all. He was still, just as the mountain, but still felt the need (if you could call it that, you understand) to walk.

...TO BE CONTINUED...

This tale is to be continued in another blogpost. Just something to whet your appetite, but please stay tuned for the continued tale of Earl, and his transformation! Cheers!

Hi, I'm Sadye, and these are my contradictions.

Well, no, I'm not going to name them for you.

But I am going to delve into the prickly thicket of contradictions and see where I get. Let me begin by saying that we are mentally battered on a daily basis with impossible situations, hopeless exploitation and, yes, a never ending stream of contradictions. The world is full of them! And the more I try to find a solution to these problems and carve an ethical path through the fearsome tangle that is everyday life the more contradictions I discover inside myself. I see the danger of hyper-consumerism yet I keep buying new things in every place we go (by the way, I excuse this by claiming they are "gifts"); I see poverty and exploitation reducing good, beautiful people to shrunken skeletons on the side of the road yet I don't reach out to them or even offer a kind word; I give scraps of food to mangy flea bitten dogs yet consciously avoid the mumbling toothless woman who is tugging at my sleeve. Arg! And the list goes on, as you can imagine. Of course, these are some of the darker contradictions and there are many little ones too. I drink Coke sometimes cause it is amazingly satisfying, even though I hate that corporation with a fiery, undying passion for all the wreckage it has left in its wake. And the list goes on and on, and day after day I wake up humming a tune and little birdies alight upon my finger and I skip off to class only to be battered again.

What to do? Let's compare our contradictions to a pet hermit crab. You have to love them and give them attention, but not really too much, cause they aren't much fun to play with anyways. Actually, if you get too involved with them and start poking your fingers into their shells they might pinch you, and then you get angry with the hermit crab even though you should have been minding your own business in the first place. Still, you must accept that they are in your life, and tend to them kindly, look at them from afar and ponder their grotesque beauty. You can't just let them die because they smell, and let me tell you from experience that that is one stench that does not just go away...it clings to you and infiltrates your dreams and you cannot for the life of you ever forget that you let that little thing die.

We must accept these things and move on. Life is too short, and art and beauty is too important to live with our minds caught in the muck of intellectual masturbation. Let's take a picnic to the creeping forest of existential crises and look around for a while, but then lets come home, cook a meal and bask in our ignorance and relish our undying curiosity. The world is so freakin' huge! And all we can do is try our best, think as hard as we can, and lighten up a little.

Groovy.

If Dresses Could Dream...

We walked through the cotton fields and the woody heads leaned and toppled from their stalks. Cotton is pure white, colorless, each fiber stoically rejecting the colors of the rainbow. It is the semen of our clothing, bursting forth and dripping down its branches. My cotton dress paid silent respects as the branches caught my hem and wondered about this offspring. Woven and printed it must have been as unrecognizable as a tattooed teenager, yet a frayed thread gave itself away and I imagined a tearful reunion. My dress had no idea of its origins, these heavy white balls oozing grace and laziness, only to be describe by words like "undulating" and "sensual"...but they are just fibers. Oh! but the way they tangle and matte in the branches! Cotton is wild, it bursts! It flows! And my cotton dress paid its respects. On my way out I wondered if it wanted to stay, saw the simplicity of its ancestral heritage and longed to be reduced to fibers and seeds, dirt and an absence of color, in India, under the sun.

The infamous Mama Siyaya (snuff box included)

Photo Credit: Kelsie Meehan

A quick ballad to harken in the new year...(sorry for the poor rhymes!)

The earth rest her head on the shoulder of the moon, and bare-assed and carefree we howled like loons,
High on our freedoms and passions and fears, drunk on our laughter and smiles and tears.
Those tears they will flow in this year to come, entangled in laughter and sipped like harsh rum,
Hot and dusty we'll surely fall to the ground, but take just a moment and glance all around.
There is no stopping these moments that fly by, though we beat down our fists and ask again WHY?
Why do our hearts break again and again and when will the time come when we stop asking when?
If your wings seem broken and your voice is too weak, the open your eyes and see how loud you can speak.
You speak with your feet that have traveled the world, you speak with your hands and your silk sails unfurled...
catch hold of the passions that in you do blow and let them take you to the places you know
You know you don't know and that is the key, so when you look in my eyes you'll see only me,
Looking back at your beauty and wonder and grace I can't see broken wings for the curve of your face.
With fingers entwined we can stand side by side with no destination but a ticket to ride.
And in our frustration though we grumble and fume, remember that even prison bars can be made into a loom.
All through the night crickets whisper my name and still every morning its just the same game.
I can say, however, with some certainty, you are the ones I want playing with me.
So lets sit in the sand and let go of time, sharing our thoughts and spitting broken rhymes,
For though the moon is appearing to wane, its a lunar eclipse just in time to entertain
These notions I have deep inside my dreams that maybe, just maybe, nothing is as it seems.
Let's break all the rules, lets show all our teeth, let's pull the blade of love right out of its sheath,
For dangerous though such a thing could be, a world without love is much more scary.
Try compassion without fear, friendship without tyranny, and if you want to sing a song come and sing it with me.
As the moments spin on faster than not, feel the flames of life making your heart burn red hot.
There is no mold that can hold us inside, and our lives are dynamic though we have tried
OH! Lordie knows the efforts we've taken to appear put together and to not be mistaken.
So put your guard down and please step away, forget all your enemies right here today,
For there may never be a better time to just start anew, to reflect on these years though quickly they flew.
Every moment is yet another we've created, and every moment is an opportunity to become elated, and lets hope for joy though it may be belated, and lets practice love though it may be outdated,
Cause this is the new year, it's two-thousand-and-ten, and there is no saying if a time will come when
The world will be at peace and live in harmony, and all of the people with speak for the trees...

So NOW is the time to become engaged! Come take me hand and let's rattle this cage.

Happy New Year!