Thanks and No Thanks

Every once in a while a poem comes out and I can hear James Broughton whispering in my ear!

Thanks and No Thanks.

Thanks for aliveness that keeps us alive
Thanks for the ripeness that plumps us and pumps us
Thanks for the bounty of earth water fire
Thanks for the brotherhood burning inside us

Thanks for the questions that quest us inside
Thanks for the music that sings us
Thanks for the motions that speak when words don’t
Thanks for the food that sustains us

Thanks for the courage to go deep and wide
Thanks for the knowing to trust
Thanks for the fears we can carry inside
Thanks for the urges to thrust

Thanks for the wisdom that comes from together
Thanks for the palpable air
Thanks for the wealth of creation and loss
Thanks for the power to breathe

No thanks for the limits of kindness and patience
No thanks for the lack of good ears
No thanks for the eight years of Cheney and Bush
No thanks for the mongers of fear

No thanks for the shortness of days and of breath
No thanks for the corporate greed
No thanks for forgetting our gifts and our health
No thanks for our blindness to need

No thanks for overpackaging
No thanks for undermining
No thanks for pollution
No thanks for silence on things that matter

-- Stephen Silha
Thanksgiving 2009

Using humor!

This is so great! The headline: Gay Bashing Woman Humiliated for Wearing Hideous Skirt!

I love this idea of using humor to oppose.

Check it out! Click on the link for the full photo.

http://leftake.com/diary/1358/gay-bashing-woman-humiliated-for-wearing-hideous-skirt

Can fun change the world!?

Can fun change the world?

YES!!!!

Watch this!

Love it!

Love,

Aimée

Joy is everywhere

Joy is everywhere; it is in the earth’s green covering of grass:
in the blue serenity of the sky: in the reckless exuberance of spring:
in the severe abstinence of grey winter: in the living flesh
that animates our bodily frame: in the perfect poise
of the human figure, noble and upright: in living, in the exercise
of all our powers: in the acquisition of knowledge. . .
Joy is there everywhere.

Rabindranath Tagore

Share Living with Big Joy!

How do you manifest Big Joy in your everyday life? Give us some examples of things that bring you joy! Tell us how you bring more joy into the world in big and small ways.

Inspire others by sharing your own stories or stories of others who inspire you.

Just click comments below- and if you like, please sign your comment or select a profile!

root beer float in pajamas

Yesterday I put on my pajamas in the early evening and then drove into town while wearing them -- just to get a root beer float. For some reason it felt so wild to be driving down the road in my fleece sesame street pants (at 6pm). My sister made me the pants when she was about 10, so of course I had to send her a text message and tell her where they were going!

I've been desserted!

Soundcliff, a house on Vashon Island, overlooking Puget Sound

For several years already I’d been traveling north for the marvelous Thanksgiving days of feasting at Vashon, which James Broughton attended and encouraged.

This year I was excited to introduce my new partner Ken to all this, and show him off to them. Ken was very moved by meeting so many fun and loving men in the magically beautiful atmosphere of Stephen’s and Gordon’s island home, Soundcliff. Stephen and Gordon, Malcolm and David, James and Joel, Guy---it was all wonderfully too much, and we even later talked of moving there.

A month or two before we were to fly north again for the next year’s celebrations Ken came to me with an utterly surprising plan. He wanted to contribute something to this event and these extraordinary people. Ken is a nationally ranked sprinter, and his very supple, muscular body was the best thing he could think of. In the form of a dessert for the Thanksgiving meal, he thought! Naked, with decorative frosting.

Would I do that? Would Gordon the artist help on that? Yes for me, and Yes, I was sure Gordon would love “working on him” too. A Mac-nut to the core, Ken had already figured out how to generate the outlines of a Ken-length platter and paper doily on his computer.

I was so startled, and DELIGHTED. Ken is normally such a shy, reserved person in company, it seemed utterly out of character. “But I love them, it’s different,” he explained, “I want to do something that will be fun and special.”

He was writing a poem, too, which he planned to recite while lying on the table, when he was being “served.” He read it to me, and I was stunned again, and so moved. Ken had never written a poem in his life, and almost never wrote creative things. HIS POEM WAS VERY GOOD: SINCERE, SERIOUS, and also very WITTY and PLAYFUL, innocently MISCHIEVIOUS. This was truly extraordinary, and I pre-sensed what delight it would bring to all the men.

It suddenly hit me that this was A HIGH SPIRITUAL MOMENT, and gushingly told him so. He took that in, reflectively.

He soon had the almost six-foot long white paper doily ready, and then the six-foot long silver platter of cardboard. He measured my biggest suitcase, to establish that with one fold the salver would fit in. He slit the corners of the rectangle and slit a smaller rectangle 4 inches inside it with a razor, so that these flaps could be later taped up to form the rise and rim of the salver. He spraypainted it silver.

Ken and I experimented with commercial frostings (everywhere on him!), hoping to find that some would resist melting from the warmth of his body. And various bakers’ nozzles, for design possibilities. Just two days before our departure my niece Larissa visited us. Entranced, she suggested grape vine leaves of chocolate, and we made it a project right them and there to make some. In case I hadn’t adequately mastered this new technology I carefully wrapped up a dozen and resolved to carry them in a cool place (and took more of a special chocolate, too). Larissa was ecstatic to have her vicarious part in such a fun thing.

We packed, we flew, we arrived to hearty embraces at Vashon.

With Stephen and Gordon we worked out the logistics. Ken could get up on the table quickly, but Gordon and I would need some time to decorate him. Flowers, bugs and other goodies on leafy grape vines, which would emanate from Ken’s midriff. So Stephen would commandeer all the other guests out and off on a short walk.

We had fun in Seattle the next day, buying frostings, and a number of small, lightweight candy bugs and other things as extra ornaments to glue onto Ken’s body with more frosting.

Thanksgiving Day, after two-plus hours of splendid feasting, it was at last time for dessert. Stephen made a fine, mock-high-falutin minispeech, and dragged everyone away. Ken quickly and carefully laid out his platter and doily, then lay down on in, naked except for a tiny brown bikini. Gordon and I worked as fast as we could, and then we took photos---and the men were back. Stephen made them all close their eyes and then, holding hands to form a line, he led them in until they were circled around the dining table.

“Time to open your eyes!”

People were so surprised, loved it, laughed a lot, admired the colorful flowers all over his so delicious body, while pointing out the chocolate grape leaves, the candy bugs, the frosted big grapes decorating his midriff and other details. And then they nibbled.

“And you thought you’d seen everything!” Malcolm said to James.

“And now I have,” James came back.

I sincerely believe that this was one of the highest spiritual moments of Ken’s life.

-- Michael Hathaway

Living Big Joy!!!

Just for the fun of it!....

Recently I was watching Nanda perform at the country fair. As I was watching their performance I was struck by what a wild and creative version of fun and weird it was. Here are these four young men that make a living by entertaining audiences with their hilarious anecdotes and kung fu/dance moves. It just seemed like such a glorious version of what following your own weird can produce in the world. So many people walked away from their performances happy and uplifted from watching that little piece of craziness.

Check out this video of them on stage with the March Fourth marching band. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEgHuJUWyEA

Living juicy!

Big Joy Aimee's post about sending herself a birthday card reminded me of one of my favorites from the amazing, magical SARK (Susan Arial Rainbow Kennedy), which begins . . .

Birthday Blessing
O Joy! It's your birthday!
repeat this sentence: It's my birthday
and I can do exactly as I choose."
Let you "inside child" out to play.
Eat your cake with no hands!

James Broughton once declared, "I'm happy to report that my inner child is still ageless." Woo-hoo!

Visit Planet SARK and SARK Journal for more fun and delights.


Live juicy! Be your wild, succulent, wonderful self!

Give yourself a birthday card!

Every year I give myself a birthday card. I take the time to pick it out before my birthday and I write sweet things to myself in it. I open the card and read it (as though it is from someone else) on the morning of my birthday. I started doing this years ago when I realized that instead of waiting for someone else to get me a card I liked I should just get one for myself. I always know what I like best and what image really inspires me! Plus I realized that I'm the only one who will be present at every single one of my birthdays- so why not make it a habit to do something nice for myself.

Art cars and mutant vehicles

When we first read about the late Tom Kennedy and his "art cars and mutant vehicles," we said "This guy really followed his own weird!" He called himself an Adventurer. Tom's slogan: "Have more fun then the bad guys." He certainly did!

You'll love this 7 min. YouTube video of Tom driving Ripper the Friendly Shark.



Tom Kennedy died in April 2009, body-surfing off San Francisco's Ocean Beach. Perhaps best known for The Whale, the 80-foot vehicle he built for the Burning Man Festival (spouts fire!), and Ripper the Friendly Shark, his amazing and whimsical cars must be seen to be believed. You can see some pix and descriptions on his website.

And don't miss all the tributes, photos, and videos, including the kayak, here.

Just who was this guy?

Andy Parker's column in The Oregonian fills us in from Kennedy's memorial just outside Portland (one of many around the country):

Nearby, those who knew Kennedy sat around tables and talked about the man who for years pursued a white-collar career in newspaper circulation sales in Houston and Portland. Then a sculpture class and an art-car parade yanked him from the corporate world deep into a life of using his artistic and welding talents to sculpt cars into rolling visions of cinematic whimsy.

"He was all about making people smile," said a guy, who identified himself only as Mike, who helped Kennedy build the whale around an old school bus.

"You have to imagine," said Mike, "you're sitting out in the desert at night, and here comes this 80-foot whale with fire spouting up from the blowhole. It was hard to forget."

The same can be said for its creator, who person after person said had inspired them to slow down and live a life they believed in, not one they simply believed they should.

"He really stopped, got out of corporate life, made a big U-turn and learned to live life one day at a time, to make his life about everyone around him, one person at a time," said his mother, Pat Kennedy.

His goal was to persuade people to drop their guard and forget their fears. Which is exactly what persuaded Marci Macfarlane, owner of the Trophy Wife, to decapitate it.

"I bought the car, and Tom said we should cut the top off. And I said, 'This is Oregon, we can't do that.'

"And he said, 'No, it'll be fine.'

And it was.