Joplin, MO

We are camped at the KOA in Joplin, MO, surrounded by Interstate Highway, Industrial this and Retail that - Anywhere, America. The roar of traffic is incessant. It blends together in a way it did not at the AOK Campground in St Joseph. Here, it is a dull mono-tone, no vehicle but the occasional motorcycle standing out amid the cacophony.

Lights are all around, sometimes blinding even from a quarter-mile. I block certain lights with certain trees as I dance. I'm in the middle of the campground, dancing to the sound of tree frogs, about ten thousand of them within hearing at various distances. I key on one and then another. Sometimes an underlying rhythm compels them all and I am caught, as by a wave.

I stop dancing to hang a tarp above the tent. Val Kyrie is showering. A group of men are milling around a rentable trailer between the campsite and the shower house. It occurs to me that Val has been gone a long time, longer than seems necessary, and I begin to worry. There is a code to get into the shower house, but the code is the same for the men's and women's showers. An abundance of discomforting images fill my head as I walk to the shower house to check in.

Every so often air pressure is released, suddenly, behind a fence, truck and trailer air brakes maybe. It sounds like a giant animal snorting aggressively, maybe a dragon. Thinking about my fear, this fear of men, of what men are capable of. Where does it come from? Why should I be afraid for Val?

Thinking of St Joseph, four gigs in two days and a strange paradox. Exceptionally well attended, as library gigs for Val Kyrie go, yet so many attendees just sitting there, staring, vaguely hostile in some indefinable way, as if predetermined not to be open, not to enjoy the performance. Val, at one point in the last performance, a bit exasperated - from the heat, humidity, and overall unresponsiveness to her words, to her music - mentioned corn and soybeans. It was clear, many in the crowd had never given any thought to mono-crop corn or soybeans, or what they mean.

The energy, the vitality of a landscape funneled upward and elsewhere, the land poisoned and polluted, local community destroyed and the people made fat, listless and angry. I see the name Jesus everywhere, and yet this tour through the breadbasket has been a strong reminder - in America nothing is sacred but Hierarchy, and the Market.

Who are the men who have brought this fear of mine to this world? Who are the men who maintain it? Walking through this campground in this small but very busy city, revolving security on golf carts patrolling the grounds, I realize in some Nations, I could not say the things I say. In America, we are allowed to say almost whatever we like. We think that is because we are a democracy. I say it is because we are fat and listless, and in our fat listlessness we do not threaten the men who rule this Nation. We are angry too, though we blame everything but hierarchy, and the expectation that we must bow down to the Market. Sky gods telling us hierarchy and the Market are inevitable, that they sustain us, the only reason we do not live like apes.

I can say what I say because there are only about five or six people listening. If there were ten million people reading my words, then sky gods would have reason to be afraid for hierarchy, and the Market that sustains that social pyramid, which they benefit so greatly by.

Val is fine. She is flossing her teeth as I knock on the door and call her name. I walk back to the campsite and continue dancing to tree frogs channeling the Divine. All around us are the tones of Empire, the mad machinations of the Market, the crass, grasping, insatiability of the Machine. Yet even here, the rhythms of the Earth are calling and I know, there is a greater power inside me than any I can be given; I need not bow down to anyone, or anything.

And a message to Deerslayer, who set the tone for this whole tour with a violent criticism of Val Kyrie, in a public forum, though he would not take full responsibility for his words:

I have renounced the gun. What can you say for yourself?

Blessings

The Riverview Cafe open mic, world premiere of two of my Sacred Theatre dances, was a rousing success, I think. It felt good. The crones loved it, four mature ladies thanking me directly afterward, one asking me on a date, another handing me a US Grant: "I found this in a Baltimore bar. I think you should have it." She plays a fine flute. I have the dances on video (and audio of S. with her extraordinarily generous blessing), thanks to my friend Kevin, who borrowed the video camera and tripod. My good friend Chad borrowed the ipod I needed to play the music. I'll put the video out there, if I can figure out how. My ridiculous PC isn't likely capable of compressing the data.

I think I'll bring the swords and deer horns on the 29th. I couldn't have danced in front of anyone a few months ago. I think it was William James, or was it Henry, who said one of the most remarkable things about this life is the way in which the impossible becomes possible. I lit a pair of swords on fire this past Wednesday, and danced in my back yard. Twice. I was nervous, but I don't think anyone noticed, and it all seemed a little mundane after. On the fourth of July, on my 37th birthday, I danced to a well-done fireworks show, to the impressive sax of a talented fellow named Raven Wolf, to a dozen djembe and doumbek, with my deer horns. That was fun. More of that would be nice.

Every so often a few dollars trickle in, unexpectedly, enough to pay for coffee and the occasional meal. I have friends who care deeply about me. My father can't understand why I don't get a job with an oil company or a trucking service; how can I tell him I'm done with the conventional, that I have become effectively unemployable from a mainstream perspective, that I'm not even actively looking for a job? I'm going to write a second book, even if I can't get the first one published. If that means I lose my house and end up living in a garage somewhere, well, I am alive. Thriving, really. Loving Life. Even if, from a mainstream perspective, I am a total failure.

The tomatoes are starting to ripen. I've had a few radishes this week. the western sand cherries are ripe, the lettuce is bolting almost immediately yet, it's all starting to add up to a significant portion of my diet, what my yard produces. The healthiest portion, really. Wherever I am in six months, I'm going to have an abundance of potatoes and beans, canned tomatoes and salsa.

This really is a beautiful life. Curious, that it has taken me off the grid. A strange fate. But I'm dancing. I have something to say, good friends, more useful skills and knowledge than most, and currently, shelter. If nothing else, I'm proving to my self at least, I don't need much to be happy.

Not that I want to be living in a garage, come winter. But I will, before I go to work for an oil company or a trucking service, or any other employer who requires me to participate, on a daily basis, in the plunder of the Earth, in funneling resources up the steps of a social hierarchy. Regardless what my culture has to say about value, wealth and productivity.