Just For Fun: Comforting the disturbed, disturbing the comfortable

I've been to a lot of parades. I've even been in a few, including the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York City one year. But my favorite parade to watch, and to participate in, is the Just For Fun Parade here in San Marcos, Texas.

The beginning of the Just For Fun Parade, 2012

Just For Fun Vikings, 2012

Basically, on the fourth Saturday of April, a large flock of "San Martians" put on some festive costumes, drag out their hula hoops, stilts, unicycles, bicycles, tricycles, pennyfarthings, skateboards, wagons, musical instruments, flowered garlands, day-glo accessories, tie-dyed T-shirts and all manner of whimsical things and parade through downtown. There are always a couple of rock bands riding on trailers. There are always children and dogs dressed up in colorful costumes. There is always at least one Viking, and typically a gorilla. San Marcos is a pleasantly strange place full of pleasantly strange people, and this is how we let our freak flags fly, giving them the momentum to keep flying throughout the year. Not everyone participates, and not everyone appreciates it -- but I did notice that the number of people who stepped out of their places of business to watch and wave as we passed by did outnumber the people passing by in their cars who looked genuinely concerned that this was going on. I imagine these people need hugs.

The Callous Taoboys, featuring what looks like
Pippi Longstocking on drums, 2012

I hadn't participated in Just For Fun in several years -- I usually get down to the Square and watch as the parade goes by, as the older photos indicate -- but this year I am very glad I did. I got to meet people I hadn't met before, because at the staging ground and during the parade there are no strangers -- everyone is a friend. I got to talk and march down the street with friends and acquaintances I don't get to see often. I got to see what kind of whimsical weirdness other members of my community felt like sharing with the town that day. (Even some of the people who'd lined up to watch the parade were in some kind of costume, including one guy clad in a flesh-toned body suit with a thong and what looked like strategically placed bits of a wig -- did anyone get a good picture of that guy?) I got to add my own little dash of color to the ephemeral, colorful, spangled tapestry of joy that is the Just For Fun Parade, and there's not much that feels better than taking your weirdness out of its box, putting it together with other people's weirdness, literally parading it around in public and making people you don't even know smile.

Your humble blogger in a belly dance costume and waving as she
marches among friends, 2014 (Photo by Julie Balkman)

It doesn't matter how old you are, how much money you make, what kind of very serious business you have to deal with every day -- fun is crucial. As the Internet meme says, we don't stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. And I love the Just For Fun Parade for giving the town an opportunity to very publicly play. Of every spring rite I've heard of, this is the one that I am most convinced keeps its participants -- those parading and those watching the parade -- young.

And as for the people who looked a little upset by the parade ... bless 'em. I hope they know how to have some kind of fun. But that's another thing the Just For Fun Parade accomplishes: Comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable. It comforts the "disturbed" by letting us be as weird as we wanna be together (though I would argue that we're not as disturbed as the people who never do anything for the sake of fun or hilarity). It disturbs the comfortable by reminding them that they share a city with people who aren't afraid to let it all hang out -- and maybe it challenges them to do the same.

Party on, San Martians, I love you all!

"Pics or it didn't happen": Being present in the age of the selfie

Note: Hahaha! One person answered my poll question, so no more poll questions for a while. That person said they post pictures of stuff online sometimes.

Last weekend I went out to see my favorite band of the decade, Chasca. They're a glam band, they're local, I know all the guys personally, and I have a deep affection for each of them. They play at a bar called the Triple Crown here in town about once a month, and there's a regular crowd of friends and fans that you can count on seeing at every show -- delightful and colorful folks that I'm happy to know. It's less like a show at a dive bar and more like a party where I know I'm going to find old friends and make new ones.

As always, at their show last Saturday I had a blast. The opening bands were all great, I was dressed up in a belly dance costume, everyone I met was really friendly, there was much hugging and mingling and dancing and sweating and singing along ...

and I forgot to take pictures.

I was having such a good time I completely forgot to let my phone and its camera get between the fun and my face.

(L-R) Ian, JT and Junior of Chasca
at a show a few months back

Normally I do share a lot of stuff on Facebook and some on Twitter (I have an Instagram account but I never use it). I take pictures of food if it's particularly pretty, or if it's the first time I've cooked a particular dish. I take pictures of weird things I see on the roadside or at the grocery store. I take pictures at parties and concerts, too, but I started noticing when I went to a concert about six weeks ago that while I was taking pictures, I wasn't really paying attention to the music, and that's why I was there in the first place -- to be in the presence of music I love, not to document for posterity that I go to rock shows. And while I was trying to get a decent shot of a bunch of musicians in motion under strange lighting, I wasn't really in the moment. I had traded my own focus for my camera's focus.

My disenchantment with photographing everything became complete at the Texas Wild Rice Festival earlier this month, when I saw three women standing in the river together taking a selfie. One, it seemed kinda stupid to have a fancy phone in the water. Two, the river is such a pleasant and sacred place to be, especially with friends, I couldn't understand why they weren't just enjoying being there together.

Maybe they were having a great time and just took a brief pause to capture it. But this is the age of the selfie, a strange period in the course of human relations characterized by the saying, "Pics or it didn't happen."

(L-R) "The Seans" (Sean Hannon and Sean Palmer) and JT of Chasca --
again, from a few months back

I suppose it has to do with how we communicate with each other now -- social media and mass communication make it easy to just take a photo and share it with everyone instead of telling everyone we know a story about some cool or interesting thing we were a part of. But I can't help thinking that sometimes it's healthy to exchange those thousand words that a picture is standing in for -- take time to talk, and listen, to each other, like people used to do before technology made it possible for us to let 500 people, some of whom we've never actually met, know what our breakfast looks like.

A recent study indicated that photographing something makes you less likely to remember it in the short term. Part of me wonders if that's the case because when you stop to take a picture, you're no longer in the moment. You have to step outside of whatever's going on to become an observer of the situation instead of a participant in the situation. It's a violation of the simple rule, "Be where you are."

So be where you are! Sure, take a photo, but be fully present as much as you can so you'll remember it, feel it, and have a great story to accompany the photo. Life isn't just a bunch of pixels -- it's breath and sweat and laughter and real human interaction. Enjoy it!

I'm grateful that I was able to really be at the Chasca show this past weekend, because it was far more fun to have conversations with old friends and new acquaintances, get hugged, dance, sing and jump around than to spend an inordinate amount of time messing around with my phone's camera. And as a bonus, the night I didn't stop having fun long enough to take a picture of it, there were three or four professional photographers there, shooting photos and video. Here are my friends:



(And at about 1:45 you can see me in the background in a belly dance costume -- so even though I have no photos of my own, I got documented that night anyway!)

A new poll -- posting pictures of your life online

I'm curious about how many of you take photos of absolutely everything and post them online, and how many of you don't think sharing stuff online is that important. Answer the poll here!

Online meditation conference

This is starting today over at entheos.com: Meditation 101. It's a series of interviews about meditation -- what it is, how to do it, different aspects of it. It's free to watch, and the interviews will remain available online for 24 hours. I've been meditating for a long time, but it never hurts to refresh and learn more, so I'm going to check out as much of it as I can & thought it would be good to share. Enjoy!

"Hey, you got your rebirth ritual in my fertility celebration!" "Hey, you got your fertility celebration in my rebirth ritual!"

Plaid Easter Egg. Yes.

It's Good Friday, one of the most solemn days in the Christian calendar, marking the arrest, persecution and crucifixion of Jesus. The day we celebrate his resurrection, Easter, shares a name with an ancient goddess, Eostre (also Osta or Eastre), who breathed life back into the world every spring.

I wrote earlier this week about thriving in chaos, how a crisis can help people live up to their potential. That's what today symbolizes for Christians -- the agonizing death that must come before rebirth and ascension.

St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans.

But there is a rebirth -- a victory over death. For Christians, it is embodied in the Resurrection. When the women go to look for Jesus to anoint his corpse, they find an empty tomb. He is risen and the stone covering the opening to the tomb is rolled away. When he first speaks to Mary Magdalene, she mistakes him for a gardener -- who is, after all, a man who toils to bring life into the world.

I found an old email from a dear (and now departed) friend of mine, Dr. Edward Shirley, a theologian who taught and changed lives at St. Edward's University. This is part of his Easter email from four years ago:

There is no better way to describe it than it was a crappy situation all around. Religious leaders who were more concerned with their authority than with the welfare of the people. A corrupt foreign government that was concerned with its own power. An innocent man condemned to death for treason. 

Good Friday was not so good for Jesus. His closest associates, the men he had chosen as his inner circle, had abandoned him. One of them had betrayed him outright to the authorities. Peter, the Rock, had wilted in the face of a question from a maidservant. Only a handful of women stuck around to watch him die. Two days later, the men still cowering in fear, three women ventured to his tomb. The story is they found it empty. Their first thought was that someone had stolen the body. Only after they encountered the Risen Jesus were they transformed. 

One of them, Mary Magdalene (called by Tradition "the Apostle to the Apostles"), took the news to the men, who were reluctant to believe her. Peter, the Rock, and the beloved disciple ran to the tomb. The Gospel of John says that the beloved disciple (the mystic, who rests at the heart of Jesus, just as Jesus comes from the heart of the Father) got there first, but he waited until the Rock got there. Somehow the entire community was transformed through the encounter with the Risen Christ and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

Ed went on to talk about the theme of renewal after crisis in Biblical history and in the history of the Church:

Yes, out of Good Friday came Easter Sunday. Out of the Great Schism came the teachings of mystics. Out of the corruption of the 13th century came the Franciscan way. God, it seems, had been doing this for a long time: Abraham and Sarah, well beyond child-bearing years, became the parents of a great nation. Joseph, sold into slavery in Egypt, rose to "vice pharaoh." The Israelites, coming out of slavery only to be confronted with the sea, marched to freedom on dry land. The kingdom and Temple destroyed, the king of Persia returned them to their land and rebuilt the Temple. For one who is familiar with the themes of the Jewish Scriptures, it should come as no surprise that Good Friday was not the last word.

Spotted Easter Egg by Molly Hayes.

Some Christians refuse to use the term "Easter" because they think it is too closely tied to the pagan goddess of spring, and instead refer to the celebration of Jesus' return to life as Resurrection Sunday. Me? I celebrate the fertility of spring and the Resurrection together. Although one is specific to a particular religion, and it is an important celebration, both recognize that life renews itself and that after the coldest winter, the world will grow and bloom again. After the darkest night, the sun will rise.

This song -- "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground" -- is one that Blind Willie Johnson wrote by meditating on the suffering of Jesus on Good Friday. It is moving enough that it was included on the Gold Record that was sent into space aboard Voyager in the '70s and is arguably one of the most soulful songs ever recorded. Whatever your opinion of Christianity, I hope you enjoy the deep emotional expression in this song, and I hope that you get joy from the rebirth and renewal that comes with Easter (the goddess and the holiday).

Thriving in chaos

Over the weekend, at the Texas Wild Rice Festival, I got to hear Dr. Jim Kimmel give a talk about what you can learn from a river -- how people and the environment interact with each other. About 100 years ago, along the stretch of the river now known as Sewell Park, a man with an augur would come through and plow up the vegetation growing in the waters, including the Texas Wild Rice, to make the area more welcoming for the many swimmers that visited it. Once it was discovered that the rice was an endangered species, it of course became illegal to plow it up. However, once the rice was protected by law, it thinned out. When it was being plowed up regularly, it always grew back, and always thicker and than before. After a major flood in 1998, during which the river basically dredged itself, the wild rice once again came back stronger than it was during the years of calm. Some species, Dr. Kimmel said, need a certain amount of chaos to thrive, to reach their potential strength.

The San Marcos River at Sewell Park, with Texas Wild Rice waving in the water

I think people are another species that need a degree of unrest in order to grow. The only way we are ever really challenged is through difficulty -- coping with crisis, tragedy or trauma. To survive, we have no choice but to grow stronger. But at the same time, we need a secure base -- like a riverbed -- to stay rooted in. That base can be family and friends, a broader community, a sense of faith, or even something as basic as the knowledge that we have a roof over our heads and know where our next meal is coming from. This is true for emotional growth, spiritual growth and artistic growth. I don't like to play into the idea that suffering is necessary for art, but exploration and adventure may be. The strange, the unexpected, the daunting experiences that life has to offer -- a certain amount of chaos. Don't be afraid to let yourself get cut down a little. You'll grow back stronger than before.

A celebration of nature and community along the San Marcos River

The Texas Wild Rice Festival was held here in San Marcos this weekend -- an ambitious undertaking inspired by the San Marcos River, which is home to several endangered species and is the centerpiece of the oldest continuously inhabited spot in North America. Texas Wild Rice only grows in one place on earth: the upper 3 miles of the San Marcos River -- the segment of the river that flows through town.

I grew up here in San Marcos, and like so many other native "San Martians" have developed a love for the river that is both ecological and spiritual. While some people go to church to get in touch with the divine, for me there is no more effective way to do that than to go down to the banks of the river, take off my shoes, stick my feet into the water and feel the pulse of the river as it pumps up through the springs upstream. Knowing that people have lived beside these waters for thousands of years makes it an easy spot to feel a sense of continuity, of connection with the ancient. Knowing that the river is home to unique species of plants and animals lends it a sense of wonder.

It warmed my heart to see so many people from so many different backgrounds coming together to celebrate all aspects of the river. Locals performed songs and poems about it, several different environmental groups were there to discuss water conservation and habitat preservation, a group representing the indigenous cultures was there to highlight the history of the area, artists were selling their wares inspired by nature in general and the river in particular. There was a drum circle, hoop dancing lessons, fire dancing lessons, yoga and breathwork sessions -- a multifaceted event that brought all kinds of people, from young hippies to more mature ecology experts, together for a common cause.

Plus the mayor, who had promised to float down the river in an inner tube wearing a suit if the organizers met their online fundraising goal, did just that. Who doesn't love a city official in a suit and red sneakers chillin' in the middle of the river?

San Marcos Mayor Daniel Guerrero, making good on a promise and wearing sensible footwear

When a group of people from diverse backgrounds find a common cause -- something to love, protect and celebrate -- wonderful things can happen. Strangers become friends, different groups working to address related issues come together and find ways to solve problems, and a true sense of community is born. I'm grateful to have seen that kind of unity manifest here in my home town, along the banks of the river that I -- and thousands of other people -- treasure so much.

Here are a few more pictures from the festival:

Near the Communi-Tea Area on the festival grounds

Handling critters!

Dr. Jim Kimmel sings and speaks about rivers

The Texas Horned Lizard Exhibit

Part of the Habitat Conservation Plan, an effort involving several entities
including the City of San Marcos and Texas State University

Festival Season in San Marcos!

It's my half-birthday! And I'm heading out this morning to spend most of the day at the Texas Wild Rice Festival at Sewell Park here in San Marcos. Music, art, yoga, tea, local vendors, environmental education, nature walks, a screening of the movie "Yakona" ... a little bit of everything will be going on, all because of some folks with an Indiegogo campaign and a dream. If you're in the neighborhood, check it out!

Loving Your Art: The Parable of the Texas Playboys

Note: Seven people answered my poll question about making time for creative endeavors. Six respondents said they made time but not as much as they would like, and one respondent was too busy with other responsibilities. See the results here.

When you were in high school, what did you want to do when you grew up? Are you doing anything like it now?

I am fortunate to live in a town full of musicians. And it's a small town, so most of us have known each other for decades and support each other's endeavors. A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend I've known since fourth grade. We were at a bar where his band had just played, and a band with some other old school friends in it were preparing for their sound check. My friend commented that even when we were teenagers, all of us school chums were somehow involved in making music – whether in the school marching band or choir or after-school jam sessions with friends – and that we knew back then what it was we were supposed to be doing in life. My friend said, "And I'm going to keep doing it until they just won't let me do it anymore. If there's a maximum age, I guess I'm screwed."

The Texas Playboys Reunion, 2011

I thought for a second and asked him, "What about the Texas Playboys?"

Our home town hosts an annual Western Swing festival every spring, and for many years, members of the Texas Playboys, the famous band once led by Bob Wills, held a reunion show during the festival. Of all the musical events in town, that was the one show I never missed. I always loved watching men (and one woman) in their 70s and 80s up on stage playing music as deftly and joyfully as those of us in our 30s and 40s do. I told my friend, "If there's a maximum age, I haven't seen it yet."

My take on creativity is this: Without ascribing any particular religious or spiritual name to it, whatever power made the universe wants to continue making, and remaking, and it uses our hands to do it. Sometimes the energy takes over completely, as in the story of Laurence Olivier, who after receiving praise for a stunning performance on the stage reportedly said, "I know it was great, damn it, but I don't know how I did it!" Other times, the artist has more conscious control over the product, but it takes some kind of inspiration or urge to form experience, emotion and imagination into something for the rest of the world to see. Practice hones an artist's skill so that when the inspiration comes, the artist is more adept at translating it into a shareable work of art.

Creative energy is a boundless force accessible to anyone who remains open to it. And my friend was right -- when we were younger, we easily tapped into that energy as musicians. Before the demands of "real life" set in, you have more time and space to express and explore. But eventually, we all write resumes instead of short stories or make budget spreadsheets instead of sheet music, and we can get closed off from our creative power. Of all the artistic types I know, most work uneventful jobs, many are married with children, but rather than choke on the pabulum of day-to-day life, they remain open to their creativity because they love it. And in a world where wealth and status are glorified, doing something for love is a transcendent act.

It's no small accomplishment to become a responsible adult but remain as enamored with, and devoted to, artistic endeavors as you were when you were young. Which is why the Texas Playboys encourage me, and why I mentioned them to my friend: If people twice our age can joyfully let the music flow through them, there's hope that the rest of us will never find out what the "maximum age" for creativity might be. If you're not doing what you wanted to do when you grew up, it's not too late to start. Here's some proof:

A question for you

Ahead of my next post, I am curious:


Do you make time for creative endeavors? Click here to answer my poll!

Willkommen, bienvenu, welcome, come on in!

This blog marks my return to online writing after a long break to do a bunch of stuff that it turns out wasn't that important after all. It seemed important, but I am a writer, and I can't fight my own nature. You have to pursue whatever it is that speaks to you, right? And what's speaking to me right now is the urge to start discussions about things that uplift the spirit. I would say that this is a blog about "conscious living," but that term is a very big umbrella for subjects ranging from social justice to dietary choices. There will be some of that, but there will also be poetry, music, art, nature, and stories of people coming together for a purpose. There will be jokes. There will be cat pictures. There will be belly dancing. There will be rock-n-roll. There will probably be a lot of rock-n-roll.

Some posts will be more personal, some posts will be more general. Some may have a religious or spiritual tone, others may have a scientific tone. Don't expect politics, because although I am politically active I believe that any society ruled by broken and unhappy people will become broken and unhappy, and thus it is more important to focus on people finding joy in this world and becoming – or remaining -- whole.

In a way, this blog will be an ongoing statement of my personal manifesto, which I hope will resonate with other people. As the blog name implies, I believe that living is a process by which we can grow from mundane creatures into something precious and powerful. I believe in the overarching life mission of living in this world without letting it turn me into a mean, contemptible person. I believe in following one's passion. I believe in helping and inspiring others, and I hope this blog will be a part of that. I hope to get discussions and thought processes going with my posts as well as some polls, and comments are always welcome. 

And now, a public service announcement from Bob Marley: