Naima and Alixa are led in their lives by coincidence, or signs, that demonstrates when they are moving with the guidance of something much bigger than their “plans”.  That spiritual yellow brick road has been re-revealed to me.  And it’s always so exciting when you hear something, it is repeated in a billboard, then again in a magazine article, then again in a facebook status update, then again in a K’Naan song, then again on a t-shirt of a random person in the audience at a Hurricane Season show.  It makes your breath catch for a moment, the corners of your mouth creep slowly, slowly toward your ears, your head feels pulled to the sky.  And you want to feel that way always.

It’s even more special when you witness it happen with others – a shared moment of magic.  Like the time the crew was stuck between Portland and Arcata and Sugarcube wouldn’t start.  Pippi had been working on it for nearly an hour.  I had been sleeping on the bus, oblivious to our breakdown.  Alixa was holding the flashlight and offering ideas as to possible solutions; the rest of the crew was standing in the rest stop picnic area.  Pippi was getting visibly exhausted starting and restarting the bus, attempting to have it turn over.  Alixa asked me to pray.  I said a silent prayer that went something like, “Yo!  Sun!  I’m rolling with two fairies so I know you ain’t gon’ have us out here like this.  Let’s get it poppin!”  Just as Pippi begins sharing her disbelief, that baby purred awake!  Alixa and I were like, “Holy sh*t!”  It was as if All That Is was saying, “Ahhhh, shut up Lindsay and let me show you what I can do you non-believer!” right on cue.

Or when we were guided by Esther (an enchanted being if I’ve ever met one) in Boulder Creek, California to go meet Jayson at the Big Sur Spirit Gardens.  I swear this white dude was blessed by the heavens with this extraordinary power to make all around him peaceful.  While there we were all clear that we were there to bear witness to Alixa meeting her next spiritual guide.

What a blessing to participate in such wonder.  And I don’t even know how many people have approached Alixa and Naima after shows all over the world telling them how a life has been changed forever.  Pretty powerful stuff.

It is all intensifying as I get closer to and through Thanksgiving.  For many years I have made a point to fast and go into a form of meditation on and around this day.  My connection to my indigenous blood line is sadly limited to this time every year when I immerse my mind, body, and spirit into a state of reflection, healing, and love.

And here we are, the day before Thanksgiving.  My will is always tested, but my soul is always full.  And this year’s holiday presents a whole new element – the unsettled spirits of New Orleans.  It was a sleepless night last night as I was washed over by their memories.

Tonight is the show.  I pray that the message of love provides audience members in Hurricane Season whatever it is they need to live another day in celebration of this life and the lives we have lost.

Before heading out, Pippi got a new veggie oil tank and we had a cage created for us at a welding spot at 555 Studios by a dude that saw the show two nights before and wanted to offer us that service for free. While we waited for finishing touches on it, a few of us went into the Detroit Summer offices in the same building. Diana tells us Hurricane Ike is coming and if we wanted to be safe, we should get out now. Off we go – to Ann Arbor.

We clankity clank into “A Taste of University of Michigan” with our new caged tank blocking Sugarcube’s swinging doors. As acorns fell, banging loudly on the roof of the bus, the rain picked up, and new students walked around the parking lot getting free food from various ethnic restaurant vendors, we unloaded the set.

At the University of Michigan we had our first night in a hotel. I had started a conversation with Huey weeks early with, “I’m not high maintenance or anything…” But seriously, knowing we were going to be staying in a hotel got me excited! I’m not hard to please…

It is here in Ann Arbor that we watch hours and hours of television to see the damage Hurricane Ike was wreaking on areas of the Midwest we’d just left, and watched as the stock market crashed with a need of $86 billion to bail companies out. (It’d drop dramatically as we went on through the Midwest.)

It is also in Anna Arbor that I read and finish Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel. I hadn’t heard of her or the book, but some friends suggested it to me before leaving for the tour. I’d seen “Water,” looking at the lives of Hindu women and their fate after the death of their husbands. Now I was reading one woman’s relationship with her faith – Islam.

Amer, our gracious host, sees I am reading and asks me what I think about it. I admitted that I was disturbed by the preface, written by some white dude who clearly has issues with the religion and praises Ali’s forthcoming “indictment” of Islam. It had rubbed me the wrong way and I’d read excerpts of his preface to the Hurricane Season crew. It said on the cover that it was a best-seller and I couldn’t help but think that that was because of Americans’ brainwashing by our media, and a desire to have someone from “inside” agree with “our” representation of the faith. Amer begins telling me why he doesn’t like the book. I ask, “Oh, so I’m assuming you’ve read it?” “No. But I’ve heard her speak and read other things she’s written.”

As completely objective as I am when it comes to the religions of others (except Christianity, and since I grew up in it feel I can say what I think about that faith without apology), I felt myself reacting to what I felt was a defense of the treatment of women in Islam by a Muslim man. I told him I was actually more interested in hearing what other Muslim women, particularly women who have not denounced their faith and are critical of the treatment of women, speak on Ayaan Hirsi Ali. “Fair,” he said. I could have hugged him for that backing down. I was extremely sensitive after having read her story and having seen “Water.”

Being a part of Hurricane Season, knowing that the creators are both women, hearing the words of women through the performance, working with the most forward-thinking women whose love – not anger or hate – has them act… I am seeing Toni Blackman’s words in another light. She’d told me that women are going to save hip hop. And I can’t help but think, “women are going to save the world.” I am guilty of constantly having male names on the tips of my tongue when talking about thought and societal transformation. This tour is having me look for the sheroes whose names will come easily when I go to speak on changing the world.

She and her husband were a part of the Iranian revolution over 30 years ago.  Mrs. Jahanbegloo is extremely passionate about humanity, freedom, equality, and the institutions that impact or influence those things.  She believes that there will be a revolution in the United States if Barack Obama is not declared our next president on November 5th (since we know something will be off until after midnight).  Though all of us in the HURRICANE SEASON crew have admitted to our belief that that be so, it is in our lifetimes that we’ve seen a stolen election, and the apathy of the following one.  We have a bit of cynicism over the passion with which this millenial generation has, and the extent to which we’d be willing to go if such belief is not actualized.

I am beginning to take a closer look at what our generation considers a movement.  If it isn’t e-mailed, posted as a bulletin or on Facebook, if it isn’t text messaged, or made into a music video how effective is it?  Pretty much ineffective.  Word of mouth is now word of cyberspace.  And though it means we can get a message out faster, with little to no misinterpretation in its spreading – how many will actually step out of their homes, change their shopping habits, turn off their televisions or radios, travel a distance to make a difference?  How many?  It is possible to stop this system in one day.  One.  Yet we have not been collective in our energies or efforts to make any one demand plainly evident to the dominant paradigm… ahhhhh! soap box…

Another world is possible – I keep that as a mantra when feeling overwhelmed or disheartened by my own train of thought.  Tetris told me that the Zapatistas (a revolutionary group of indigenous people in Mexico who in 1/1/94 had an uprising against the oppressive, internationally-owned Mexican government) have built a movement through poetry.  Subcomandante Marcos delivers speeches to the people and the Mexican government in poetry!  (Can you see Bush spitting anything lyrical?!)  Named after Emilio Zapata, I’m told the leadership is 50/50 male to female.  Though I know I romanticize indigenous people all the time, believing that the “old ways” were better ways – I know when hearing the Zapatistas’ story and their current actions that another world truly is possible.  (Great resource: Left Turn Magazine for more info)

This mantra becomes even more evident when Tetris and I begin looking at a treehouse book.  It’s a book of “grown people” treehouses, some with extremely elaborate hook ups, others remind me of the dope treehouses of the rich kids in my childhood.  She says she wants to build one one day.  And after witnessing the creation of the set for HURRICANE SEASON, I know it’s simply a matter of her finding the time to do it!

Pippi for the first time ever, drops the transmission pan.  Our very own Grease Guru is turning into a true to life Grease Mechanic!  After the parts are put back together, Huey jumps in the driver’s seat for the first time and pushes on the gas… pushes on the gas… pushes on the gas… lol  The thing isn’t catching into first gear.  We pull over and subsequently reverse all the way back into Pegah’s yard.  Another unexpected night in Yellow Springs.

Our group dinners in these cities are always filled with thought-provoking conversation. I am practicing listening, and I’ve learned so much about myself – in terms of what I feel I can offer to conversations, when I simply want to “look good,” and when I feel the need to defend or attack an idea, concept, or belief. Hearing Tetris share about growing up between Colombia and Massachusetts, living without her mother or father for years, starting school not knowing the language and having a younger sibling that she wanted to protect made me envy her perspective and understanding. “In Colombia, we are forced to be politicized early; it is the nature of living in Colombia. We are bombarded by the politics of America and therefore understand US politics in a way that its own citizens don’t.” Though I am truly as proud of my ancestors and predecessors who are so completely of this land (e.g. my beloved g-dad, Octavia Butler, the Lumbi – my indigenous ancestry, Toni Morrison) as I am critical of their placement here, and displacement, I do not have the “outside looking in” perspective that would provide what I believe is a much more creative (or spiritual) way of living life itself. Somewhere in the conversation someone said: “In this country it’s more about hope than it is about faith.” Ashe, I say to myself. Hope makes one close their eyes tight with hands pressed firmly together, head tilted back in some sort of prayer. Faith is the action – I believe – one takes after hope. You move with faith. People sit on their asses, with remote in hand, 100 lbs overweight hoping a “lose-weight-while-sitting-in-that-same-recliner-and-watching-your-favorite-sitcom-diet (or contraption)” commercial will come on at 2AM. People walk around the track before having to take their children to school, with a few new friends, 100 lbs overweight with faith that the pounds will begin to disappear. I am no longer interested in working with people who are hopeful.

Haitian children seeking dry land after Ike

Those who move in faith remind me of a line that is repeated in HURRICANE SEASON: “We have NO time to philosophize peace.”

Amanda tells us that there’s a sunflower field in Yellow Springs. She said that through the course of the day, the head of the sunflower faces the sunshine, slowly facing east, above, west, and below again. We tell Huey she’s gotta go set up the camera and record this transition of the sunflower heads in real time, and fast-forward it for the documentary. She declined. (lol)

The next night we decide to use the fire pit and grill in Pegah’s backyard to prepare our dinner. Amanda’s son, Austin comes over. He’s a vibrant six-year-old. He asks each of us to follow him to the backyard. He comes back in at some point to report that Tetris has discovered a swarm of bees. She comes in. She’s been stung. A bee got inside her pant leg and stung her. We are all shouting out home remedies we know to manage bee stings. I’ve never been stung by a bee before – I ALWAYS run no matter what folks have told me – but I saw an aloe vera plant on a table and suggest they put some on her quickly reddening thigh. I’m told she was brave and moved the log that was home for the bees, far away from the fire pit. Austin coaxes me to go out and sit with him as Tetris goes back to building the fire. I sit on a stump as he shines a flashlight so his mother can locate wood for the fire, and Tetris fans the flame. Suddenly Austin starts shouting something incomprehensible. “Ahhhhhh!!!!” He’s screaming and running toward the house. His mother runs to him and is asking, “What is it Austin?! What’s wrong?!” “A beeeeeeeeeeeee! A bee stung me!!!!!! Ahhhhhhh!” Amanda picks him up and he’s stiff as a board. He’s grabbing right under his belt buckle, at his hip bone. As I watch at a distance, still on my stump, not wanting to get in the way, I feel a pinch on my left arm. I wipe my sleeve and sure enough – there’s a bee attached, holding on for dear life or stuck. I jump up and quietly walk to the house too. As folks run out of the back door to see why Austin is screaming, I’m walking in telling them, “We both just got stung.” It hurts like hell and wish I were six and could warrant the same leniency to scream at the top of my lungs. I hear him yell, “Oh, the pain!” And we all are fighting the urge to burst out laughing. Then he says, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe!” His mom says, “You should stop talking and take a deep breath in, then out. In, then out.” Then I hear him say, “I need some aloe vera!” Hilarious!

We wind up cooking on the small grill close to the house’s back door and on the stove. Pippi goes to work on some portabella mushrooms, while Huey works on the turkey burger meat. I taste a grilled mushroom and could immediately understand the moniker, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach! Once it was all done, Pippi asks if we want our bread toasted or not, and I think, “The girl just made mushrooms tastier than a juicy steak, can breathe and juggle fire, is a mechanic, and is now asking if I want my buns toasted…” “Lindsay,” I say, “I’ll marry you!”

That night we watched Water directed by Deepa Mehta. Extraordinary! A film about the life Indian (from India) widows and the life they are supposed to lead as Hindus, set during the time of the rise of Gandhi. We learned that people protested the film and threatened her life for wanting to tell this story in her way. It took five years before she could begin shooting again. It is the last in a trilogy that I can’t wait to see parts one and two of.

This is the first of many confrontations I’ll have with religion.

FIRST OFF:  Love, love, love to: rolando, jennifer, sparlha, tyrone, ayinde, jamel, atiba, cj, jullien, julia, caitlin, and kelli for reaching out!

Cincinnati continued…

HURRICANE SEASON is a pretty hi-tech multi-media piece.  It has visual collages, and audio testimonials interspersed with Climbing PoeTree’s poems, full-bodied Cat’s Cradle, and stick dancing.  It’s all perfectly timed.  And when/if there are any technical difficulties, it is extremely difficult to hold up the show.  Therefore, when the projector begins overheating, and screen goes blank during the show in Cincinnati – I can feel Naima & Alixa’s anxiety as I stand in the back of Bi-Okoto Dance and Drum Theater.  

For those of you who haven’t seen it, HURRICANE SEASON, is a call for transformation – for self, for community, for humanity.  Pre-intermission is heavy – with a focus on environmental injustice, policing and criminalization, and land rights & displacement.  Post-intermission is focused on solutions people and communities world-wide have created and practiced.  So when during intermission a young man who had helped us to unload and build the set has what appears to be an emotional break down, Pippi comforts him.  He was guided outside and offered water.  He threw the cup back as if a beer mug in a saloon, but instead of chugging, the water pours out the corners of his mouth and down his clothes.  Pippi later says, “When you see a grown man crying in public, you’ve gotta take notice.”  She later goes on, “Man, I need training for how to deal with folks in crisis and with mental health issues – I’m a magnet for them!!!”  Tetris recounts, “That poor man…”

At the completion of the show, members of the audience have candles lit and I ask them to make a wish.  I urge folks to take their time and formulate a wish that would be significant for them to make, urgent, meaningful and to avoid rushing through it.  Once I blew out my candle I watched as each person blew theirs out, silently praying that it not occur to them as an unimportant exercise, but the first action in what I hope will be a life of acting after professing intention.  And ultimately, we were left with three flames still burning, spread through the room.  It was three women – each representing for me a generation.  And elder sat in the front.  She had paid what is the maximum amount asked of folks to donate – twenty dollars.  She had purchased merchandise.  She had signed the mailing list.  She had come from the suggestion of a friend in California.  And her eyes were open, watching as the wax melted down the sides of her candle.  The second was our host, Suriah, a twenty-something new mother, committed to organizing.  Her eyes were closed and she held her candle’s base with both hands.  The third, a nine year old girl.  She had asked about the set, the bus, and was visibly excited before the show.  As each of their flames lit up their face, and others remained virtually in darkness, tears began to form at the rim of my eyes.  “Of course,” I think, and smile, “of course it’d be this way.”  What feels like an uncomfortable silence is bearable when the elder blows out her candle.  When Suriah blows hers out, I turn to the little girl with a smile on my face.  She has her eyes closed, then opens them and looks to the ceiling.  Then she looks around and closes her eyes again – almost afraid to see if others were looking at her.  And I breathe a breath of strength, directing it to her.  She opens her eyes, blows – darkness.

The next day, before going back to Bi-Okoto to break down the set, Huey, Pippi and I watch early episodes from a season of In Living Color.  I was one of those kids who loved to watch the Fly Girls, thought Fire Marshall Bill was hilarious, learned what I thought was a Jamaican accent from “Ay Mon”, and for whom “Men on Film” was a guilty pleasure.  And though watching it on Hakiym and Suriah’s floor was surprisingly far from humorous, the pride I had while watching Keenan Ivory Wayans come out at the start of the show with a big smile on his face – as if to say “Hell yeah I have a show and I pray that y’all love it!” – remained the same.  It made me think of how proud I always am when brothers and sisters succeed in accomplishing their dreams – but specifically when artists, social architects, and cultural ambassadors “do the damn thing!”  And again, I am reminded of my own contradictions and the messages I send to the youth that are watching me.  Am I a good example?  Am I on the right path?…

Speaking of contradictions – we have this running joke on the tour.  Huey’s creation of course.  If you are on a blind date, or a first date, and either they don’t look the way you thought or it’s just not going so well, you can always all of a sudden fake a peanut allergy.  Begin a fake shallow breathing and say, “Oh my goodness, do you smell peanuts?  There has to be peanuts in here or something made with it!  I am deathly allergic to peanuts!  I have to go… no no, I don’t need help getting home… I can’t talk about …” and start a fake shortness of breath, and run out.  It’s so hilarious when something is happening we don’t like or are uninterested in and someone breaks out saying, “Uh oh… I… think… I… smell peanuts!” and run like hell.  I have done it once when Huey started playing Fela Kuti as we began breaking down the set – she is always playing Fela when we have to do that manual labor and I told her she is going to make it so that every time I hear Fela I start looking for grunt work. (lol)

The set includes these bamboo stalks that are 8′ long and 5″ in diameter.  You can carry 3 max at a time – and you have to have skills and strength to pull that off.  Each has a name etched into it to identify its role, its place in HURRICANE SEASON.  Some hold screens, some are the base of the water zampona, candler holder, and cloud chamber, one holds the projector.  I would smile each time I was asked to hand someone James Baldwin or Harriet Tubman.  On our bus ride to Yellow Springs – a rest stop for some days – I asked Naima (Mama Lou) to share all of their names.  They are James Baldwin, Harriet Tubman, Frida Kahlo, Audre Lorde, Janet Cyril, Sitting Bull, Eunice Brie (Yvonne Etaghene’s recently passed g-ma), Nina Simone, Octavia Butler, and Sojourner Truth.  So ILL!!!  Naming- words in general – are suddenly illuminated for me, and I begin pondering how our next destination came to be known as Yellow Springs.

We’ve already deduced that it could be the weight we are carrying (five women, cinder blocks for the set, the weight of the full set itself, merchandise, our personal travel needs, and our newly crafted seating – which is also a compartmentalized storage unit AND folds out into a bed thanks to Pippi), it could be some aspect of our steering (we’re in a 1990 Ford E350 Diesel; Pippi likes to say, “Ford International 7.3 Liter Diesel!”), it could be our tires… who the hell knows?!  But we have to figure it out or cancel Pittsburgh.  Etta is our activist coordinator and location scout in Pittsburgh and she calls up Johan – the mechanic saviour.  Together, at 9pm, they drive the 2 hours and 45 minutes to get to us in the middle of Pennsylvania.  As we wait, we pull out the bed and all five of us lay head to foot in a tentative slumber.

Fisch and I secretly plan our escape back to New York – sharing what we’d take and what we’d leave behind (me – I’d take my Samsonite fanny pack with my brand new Blackberry, Playboy lip gloss that’s a gift from Raquel, my i-pod, tea bags, ultra fine point Sharpie, tampons, to do lists, id, and debit cards; Fisch – she’d take her brand new MacBook in it’s cardboard box). 

 We laughed it off, knowing that hitchhiking as single Black females back to New York is far more dangerous than eating like Naima and Alixa, using grey water bathrooms with their friends, and unloading and loading sets is challenging.

Johan says it’s our right front wheel bearing and sway bar bushings (whatever the hell that is!), and tells us to get some sleep – we’ll try to find an open car parts place in the morning – LABOR DAY!  

Alixa and Naima go off to find a place near this rest stop to pitch a tent, now that we’ve got two extra people who have driven so far out to save us we have to do a bit of camping.  When they return they tell us, “Your suite awaits, second tree on your right!”  Amazingly, it can fit two full sized air mattresses, and we rest our heads for 3 hours.

Up again.  We’ve seen three different shifts at dear ‘ole Blue Mountain Travel Lodge.  And we’re off to get wheel bearings in a place called Shippensburg, Pennsylvania (40°2′58″N, 77°31′26″W).  Johan and Etta drive behind us as we sway to and fro trying to stay below 45 or above 55 to avoid the most dangerous side to side action.  As we drive through some of the most beautiful farm country we see plenty of Amish folks. 

 It makes me think about how little I know about the Hasidic Jews I see so much of in Brooklyn, and that I don’t know anything about the Amish outside of how much they remind me of the Hasidic Jews.  

We get the part, Johan and Pippi do the damn thing and off we are to Pittsburgh, still swaying – yet telling each other, ”Oh, yeah, it’s a little better.  Can’t you tell the difference?” I’m in the back with my internal dialogue saying – “HELL NO!”

Grey Box Theatre.  It’s complete with Gina and Doug (who I’ve nicknamed Christopher Robin due to his stories of his life sounding like adventures with Winnie the Pooh and he’s nicknamed me Bomba since my new way of cursing has been shortened to a bastardized version of a West Indian bad word). We have our first home cooked meal – compliments of Bekezela.  Alixa exclaims, “These are the best chick peas I’ve had my whole life!”  And truth be told, I wasn’t sure if it was that I was starving or was happy for warm food – but they were slamming!  The place is cool, but the best part about Pittsburgh for me was the woman who lives above the theatre.  She appears to be a normal, youthful white lady, but she’s got tools and equipment cleaning gum off the corner of the joint.  At first I thought she worked for the theatre, but then I saw her plastic cup of red wine left chilling on the sidewalk…  Doug and Gina tell us that the woman has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder AND… insomnia!  So she spends her nights making sure this one corner is immaculate.  Deep…  I told them I’d love for her to come visit Brooklyn.

Awe… Brooklyn.  Right as I am greeting folks from Pittsburgh to HURRICANE SEASON, I am hit with this overwhelming feeling of nostalgia for my beloved Brooklyn.  I started dreaming about the Halal spot on Bedford and Fulton, since I’d been eating pita, hummus and avocado for two days.

Some dude tells Pippi, “A woman covered in grease, it’s so HOT!”  We pack the bus in record time – 3 1/2 hours – GO TETRIS GO!  And we sleep to get ready to head to our next stop – Cleveland, Ohio – where great food, loving friends, and our first performance of HURRICANE SEASON in a church awaits!

Got 4 hours of sleep at Li’s momma’s house in Philly. Woke up with enough time to look around at pictures, and saw that my girl Li is the “model” on the cover of LONGING TO TELL: Black women talk about sexuality and intimacy by Tricia Rose! How on earth does one become a book cover model?! Only Li would know… We wake up to see highlights of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination. Li’s mom is amazed that we – women with social, political, economic, environmental, and spiritual transformation at the heart of what we do – missed what most deem a moment in history. I don’t want to tell her we missed Michelle and Hilary’s speeches. And I dare not tell anyone I didn’t see any part of the Olympics.

There’s no time to shower; a four hour set up ahead of us. I tell Alixa “I am going to be hella skinny by the end of the tour with all the exercise I’m getting from setting up, eating humus and pita, and constant running.” She says, “Yeah, I always lose weight when I’m on tour.” *gasp* (FYI: she’s tiny as all hell, though she likes to boast that she’s a giant next to her people) New diet? Touring with ClimbingPoeTree.

The Rotunda. Lips chapped, mouth dry, and definitely not dressed for “world changing”, I begin greeting guests. Time has slipped by as we set up and doors have officially opened – AAAAHHHHHH! Philly’s organizer for Hurricane Season is the one that tells us another hurricane is coming – straight for New Orleans. It is the three year anniversary, we are performing the first night of the tour, and a hurricane is coming for New Orleans?! We realize we are missing so much of what’s happening in the world by not getting a newspaper, reading anything online, or watching television.

It is my job to greet people as they come in, preparing them for a ritual of a modified form of libation, then to welcome everyone and open the show, then dismiss them to intermission, then greet them upon completion of intermission, and last close out the show and facilitate the solution-cipher. So once the opening sequence begins, and my nervous jitters had just dissipated after welcoming over 100 people, my heart jumps – in approximately 1:30 minutes I’ll be on stage again.

There’s so much in Naima & Alixa’s poetry, and now additionally, their multi-media piece. I’ve seen it 3 times and cry each time. I am inspired each time I hear it. I learn something new each time it hear it. I am excited by the possibility of learning each and every poem by heart and knowing every fact that is revealed in the piece.

We return to Li’s for a good night’s sleep and have to wake up to break down the set the next morning. I felt like I was in “Groundhog Day”, it all felt like I’d done it before. As we break down a set that has taken us 5 hours to do in the past, Lindsay (aka Pippi Longstocking due to her “don’t you worry about me; I always come out on top” attitude) books an appointment to have our brakes fixed. We miss it. We’re still swerving. She’s freaking out.

Off to spend the night with a friend, her husband, and two amazing kids (Phoebe and Morgan), with vegetable oil strapped to the back of Sugarcube (the name of our white tour bus) we speak to folks asking us about our bus and the exposed oil as we bump along the cobble-stoned streets of old Philadelphia. When we finally get to the house, all but Pippi and I go to bed for a nap. When they awake from their slumber we talk of Ted.com, verichipcorp.com, and bean-eating and its implications on cramped tour buses. After they fall asleep I’m up considering how lean I’ll be, having my babies in another country so I can forge “vaccine” documents instead of my kids getting chips implanted in their bodies, thinking how did Li manage to get on the cover of a book, knowing that evidence shows 90% of y’all will peruse my blog, 9% will actually leave something for me at some point, and a measly 1% will actually make sure I know I’m loved and heard… oh well.

Day 3

Kyla (aka Bobby Fischer or Fisch for short) goes out with camera & business cards to talk to community members about what unnatural disasters they are facing. This footage will be used for the documentary of HURRICANE SEASON: hidden messages in water. She comes back to the house, hella excited! While speaking to folks, she meets Matt, a recent evacuee from New Orleans. A sister Fisch interviews tells her that housing is a major problem, that homes have been turned into empty lots and she isn’t sure of what is planned for the now empty land. She said that the police were given more money and a program called Beacon that provided activities for youth, was stripped of funding. What is probable when a society directs more money to policing and incarcerating than educating and stimulating?…

And the ladies of HURRICANE SEASON begin to ask ourselves, are we successfully building community with this huge undertaking? Are we preaching to the choir or are we informing and inspiring the communities most in need of movement building?…

And off we head to Pittsburgh… with a major monkey wrench in the game.

Come back to hear about our adventures at Blue Mountain Travel Center!

It’s 15 years (almost to the day), and I’m off on a new adventure – a national tour with Climbing PoeTree, HURRICANE SEASON: Hidden Messages in Water. It’s been a long time coming. Three and a half months on the road, five women, an extraordinary mission. And I was to pack everything I needed such that it’d fit in 17 x 24 x 15 dimensions… Yeah – RIGHT!

Background…

After leaving Landmark and receiving the best training money can’t buy, I took one year and became a partner in DOPE SWAN, co-founder of The Re:Construction Period, and restarted my children’s clothing company – Phefeni Childrenswear. In this year, after saying yes to going on tour I have finally been able to articulate what I believe I am on the planet to do, and I began taking actions consistent with that.

Fast forward…

In the days leading up to leaving Brooklyn for Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Ann Arbor, Chicago… ahhh you get the picture – I was all over the place! I wanted to see everyone I knew I would miss. I did everything BUT pack and clean my apartment. The thing needing my attention most? Laundry. I’d gone almost 5 months without washing clothes… YES! I have THAT many clothes… plus it’s the summer time, less is more! (oh quit your mental yapping!) The night before I am to leave I still haven’t washed clothes or packed, I … cleaned and organized so that whomever would be subletting would WANT to stay in my apartment. My girl Ashley and my homie Lyshaan stopped by to bid me adieu, to discover I had 8 loads of laundry sitting in the middle of my floor. So they graciously pack me and my 8 garbage bags full of clothes into Lyshaan’s Range. Oh… what a sight to see! Ash begins immediately taking pictures for the Minority Report NYC blog of the pile. Hilarious! Thank god for me it was 3AM and could put all eight loads in at the same time. So I got it all done in the span of one load… pretty dope. Two hours of sleep and I’m back up. Cleaning. Again. Next thing I know my homie Ayinde is over; bringing me a book turned into a three hour “help Sallome” period. In which time, my cabinet above my stove straight threw itself off of the wall in an apparent attempt to somehow prevent me from having anyone over to look at the apartment to sublet it!!! I couldn’t be bothered. I had a bus to catch!

In the time between leaving my apartment for the last time until December 14th (with my 17 x 24 x 15 dimension-ed packing) and meeting the ladies to head to Philly I: A) had my myspace deleted – ON ACCIDENT (with ALL my photos of friends and family I saved in albums no one has seen but me, all gone), B) left my best friend with hella clothes to take to Goodwill, C) realized that I’d only had about 6 hours of sleep in 3 (going on 4) days, D) got stuck in an elevator at W14th for about 8 minutes trying to come above ground from off the train, E) realized I hadn’t eaten a thing in over 48 hours, and F) dawned on me that it was my ex-love’s wedding day.

I nearly cried when I saw Kyla (our resident documentarian for HS) and our beautifully painted tour bus (it’s what used to be a mini school bus, painted white, with gorgeous stenciled birds and spray painted water on the back and sides – oh I’ll get you a picture!). There were Lindsay (our grease mechanic who also aided in converting our former diesel run bus into a vegetable-oil run one), Li, and SummerLee looking all greasy (lol) putting hella vegetable oil in the bus.

Oh but the fun doesn’t end there…! On our way out of New York (over 12 hours late) we discovered we had a steering wheel, tire, and weight issue – swerving to and fro along the interstate. Close to our destination, Lindsay had to pound the break and nearly kill us because a deer gingerly strode across the highway! Somehow we started singing The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s theme song, and then Li (known for her outstanding one-liners), in describing how to reach her mom’s home says, “FOLLOW THE YELLOW LIGHTS, AND VEER TO YOUR RIGHT.” Classic. Story of my life.

I intend during the course of this trip to let all my friends and family know how the tour is going, what I’m learning, and what difference I believe I am making for others through this blog. I hope you enjoy the trip as much as I.

Thanks for all the well wishes! oh! and if you have any pics of me/us, please send em… I’m fresh out!