Far away up in the highlands of Northern California a mildly disgruntled and aching baby wizard is wrestling with her fire. It is a fire made with an old oddly shaped Oaken log, which will not lay down and get lit as most logs willl...
She is cold and a bit perplexed....receiving news from TT this morning (text toon Luisa) she allows how many mountains have come and gone recently. She is a baby wizard, feeling far too old to be a baby anything...and yet still a sort of retarded long time baby wizard (you would think the stage would be over by now).
Almost as soon as TT's name is mentioned the fire starts to cackle brightly. All that new construction wood set around the edges of the old log is catching fire. TT often has that effect on Baby Wizards fire.**
The baby Wizard is sitting in a small room in a small wooden cabin in the Green wood. The house is much too small for the six(+!) people who periodically fill it...really its a one bedroom with a large split room add-on. It is decorated with paintings and photographs, bookshelves, a small round table and a little wood stove with chinese pictures of elk on the side....it is too dark outside to even see the outline of the Oak and Madrone and Bay Laurel trees which surround the little cabin until dawn which shall break shortly . Meanwhile the High Priestess nee Baby Wizard writes to her cyberpal Text Toon in the tiny village of Foolandia amidst the snowy mountains of e-mail where they share a cyber tribe.
The news from the list is good and bad TT, Betty visited her sister who is fighting cancer, I think it was Doo Dah's Hard drive which failed(?), and Hakim has been silent because his throat is infected again (talked with him on the phone prior to his silence). Heidi went to Venice for carnival, Juanita joined the list even though we may crash her computer, and there are several more who were "snowed in" in the recent flurry of e-mails and are yet to be known if they have survived the "Request for less" which came from a clown corner. Darla visited an SCA faire and Jim L has been helping me with my Faire History.
We had a rousing group therapy session about the Faire blah blah blah, and we all agree that creativity is good and people with power trips and greed heads are misled.
Venta came up with the great term "Firewall of Sycophants"
There is a plan in LA for a grego concert and Caco Voodoo Party this Saturday feb 26, a March 19 Agoura Paramount Ranch reunion and Plans still in the air for NOrth South Stupids/Fools April 1 extravaganza.
The baby wizard pauses here and remembers to light a candle on her "anciano" altar for the protection of the ancestors, the descendants and the Tribe. On the wall above her computer is a fruit crate nailed to the wall with lots of pictures, atop that is an in verted drawer nailed in covered with odd toys, necklaces made by babies, paper dolls, framed Tina Moddoti and offrendas.Her baby Apol is in Las Vegas with her dad (patrick who raised her) and Mariah (Swadeshi girl). That town may never be the same. The other baby Lulu is sleeping, until it is warm enough to get up and go to school where the rigors of third grade await her.
On top of the stove is a giant black cauldron. Inside of this cauldron bubble all sorts of ingredients the Baby Wizard has assembled. Occasional bagpipe squeals, morris bells and peals of laughter bubble up....what is it? why it is a Thomas Festival cooking on the slow to go stove. Whirling all around the little house are magic plant spirits , invoked fairies, and her *impossible posse* of homies conveniently able to follow her everywhere.
They help the baby Wizard out of bed in the morning and help her to assemble the magic tools she needs to get through her day. Elexion and Rosa and Sally drag her into the kitchen to put on the kettle for green tea, Bob T and Ronnie Wilson are over by the stove, poking the stew and heating their butts on the stove. Thurel waits quietly over baby wizards shoulder, a fairie on the bookshelf...."dont you think you better go back over paragraph three?" he says eyebrows raised "you are changing tenses an awful lot..." his eyes are always twinkling when he makes a correction. "I dont think you spelled Moddoti right" he says, "but I like the obscure reference to the 1923 Cuernavaca Free Art School scene".
Far away below busses are pulling on and off the highway. The baby wizards cabin is on a hill above the cross roads with 101 and the South fork of the Eel river and the Avenue of the Giants. The big velvet ribbons swilrl and cross surrounded by redwood fir and greenwood, and lay each morning wrapped in a blanket of river fog (unless its raining). Amidst this mist the little cabin seems to be swirling with rainbow wisps of light and sparkling bursts of effervescent bubbles like giant pollen bursts. The baby wizard is alone and yet she is surrounded by this massive swirling party of fairies, ancestors and homies. They tug her out of bed in the morning and prop her in front of the computer and make her pull magic wisps of frothing light out of the cyberbox for their Thomas Festival stew in the big bubbling virtual cauldron.
"I dont know how you can stand the cold and the damp" Constantine sniffs, " You are going to have to have your party when there is better weather than this" he says confidentially.
"Drink your tea" says Alan, "You are so Yin these days you need the warmth...that last round of percocet really left you cold I can feel it" rubbing baby wizards cold hands
"Boy this fire is getting nice " says Bob "You realize that you are all fools arguing about etiquitte dont you" he says very self satisfied "I find that funny"
"But Bob" baby wizard says "some people feel bad because they arent reading everything, or they are afraid to contribute because they are afraid they will say too much" she has very real sympathy and concern in her voice. The etheric lights in the house flicker for a moment.
"Well do they have to read everything?" Bob asks her
"No" she says, "They can actually read who and what they want"
"Does anyone have to listen or wait their turn while they talk?" he asks (Bob not really clear on the whole cyber thing)
"No" says baby wizard
"Not a problem he says" smiling self satisfied as if he had just solved all of the major problems of the universe. "Now werent you going to write a piece for ThomasFest list this morning?" he says with that velvet growl.
Michael Shamus and Uncle Stinky grab baby wizard away into the next room where she enjoys the magical effects of flowers. Having listened in on her conversation with Bob ...Uncle Stinky has something to say "I think they need to learn more tunes" he says very matter of fact, eyes twinkling all the same.
"dave that is not the answer to everything" says baby wizard, firm but gentle,
"Oh" he says. "I've got a class to teach anyways" (insert uncle stinky grin...huge and sweet)
"I think it needs more smut" says Glad Pickering..."something to spice it up a bit more...tell em where the bodies are buried"
"Always the dark angle" baby wizard sighs and turns back to her letter to TT:
WEll send me a sparkle TT for Thomas Festival Dreams, I am working on really
making a free performance series happen in the next year, probably in the
fall, a short tour of california. I would like to have it made cyberLand compatible
including streaming media and a CD burned in by the end of the shows. I am
really excited at the prospects of being able to connect people to the music
and the energy possible for these performances. I have not run a good three
ring circus in a while (although kids count on that regards) still I dont
think I have lost my chops. I feel a magic thin golden thread between us,
and with this thread I weave my dreams.
sincerely
baby wizard