Censorship and driftwood

Well, after much soul searching, I decided to return the blog to the website.
There had been a fiasco with a blog post I made. Apparently there was offense taken, so I self censored and took the blog off totally.

Now, hopefully with wounds healed, and my voice back, I will write. Not often, but when I do it will be my truth, and in this freest of countries, without censorship. A blog really isn’t for any other purpose except to pen outwardly your inner voice. For the most part, no one else cares what your inner voice has to say. It would be lovely if blogs really did change minds and alter belief systems. But maybe not… then we’d all be the same and what would be the point of the inner voice or the blog at all? The exercise in typing words to page in the off chance that someone else will read it is just that. An exercise.
And maybe, the person reading will connect and maybe not. You can’t please everyone all the time and everyone should NOT be or think just like you do! So opinions, beliefs, thoughts, memories, and voicing any of them should be mostly kept to oneself, and if allowed outside the confines of the mind, then others can chose to read, or not, chose to agree or not. In this cyber age, all one has to do is to ‘back out’ of the page and go someplace else. And that is the risk of the writer and the responsibility of the reader…

We have been in the loveliest of landscapes, and meeting the most wonderful people on this tour. We always love our job, but somehow this past month has been more vivid and fulfilling than ever. The paying of bills is at the bottom of the list of why we do this.
And while we have often thought over the years that our work was not that essential to the world, and that it takes us away from family and community, there are other gifts we receive that give us a different perspective.

Here is the short list of wonderful diverse people we’ve met in the past few weeks: a world champion sea kayaker, an explosives expert for the movies, a psycho therapist, a music teacher, someone born in a Japanese internment camp, an old cowboy, an Indian, a painter, a dancer, a titanium engineer, a medical engineer, a lawyer, an arts advocate, a classical pianist, a hairstylist, a postman, a balloon pilot, a traditional Mexican ‘chef’, a theater/drama teacher, an English teacher, a choir teacher, an expert on sea chanteys, lots of school children of all races, nationalities, sizes, shapes, level of education and income… What other job could be so infused with humanity? What other job could prove to me that I am but a fair-skinned drop in a universe brewed to perfection? What other job looks back at the ancestors for stories and learning, while performing for the immediate audience, while teaching the next generation? What other job teaches me more with every experience, than I could ever possibly bring to it?

At our advancing age, we discuss the future… how long can we keep up the road life? How many more ‘bags of finger food’ can we consume? How many more cheap motels, or expensive motels, or gas stations, or weather delays, or… How many concerts will people be willing to pay for when they stare at wrinkles and gray hair? How many students will be willing to participate with ‘grandparent’ types? What is the smallest amount of money we can make and still be viable? How can we keep our music skills honed and our creative juices flowing in the face of a world with deeper problems than our tiny efforts can effect?

Constant questions that we have carried in our back pocket, since we started this insane lifestyle. Questions that seem to have no answer, either internally or externally.
We keep going, while we can. We can’t think of an alternative, nor can we imagine not doing this. It will need to be reckoned with at some point, but I feel like Scarlet…
‘I’ll think about it tomorrow’….

A poem:

Driftwood
The definition of adventure
Once grounded in earth and air
Now
Plump and heavy
Stuck here
Rushed there
Soaring on wings of water
To other possibilities
Casting away bark
And exterior hardness
In order to allow
A different kind of life
To absorb deeper
Into the grain

It seems happiest
When afloat
Dark, soft, slimy
And oh so free
In creek, river, sea
High centered on land
Causes a skeletal gray
Atrophied limb waiting for rain
To re-plump cells
And maybe
Just maybe
Raise the tide enough
To carry it away

Driftwood
Is the definition
Of adventure