The West Coast Best Coast was settled by some crazy muther fu*kers. No doubt.

Imagine looking at that canyon, one of the seven wonders of the world, well deserving of it's implicated grandness, thinking, "let's see what's on the other side". But their horse and carriages didn't stop for the great chasm in the earth, no, they relented not, they pushed forward, they dreamed big and over the snow-covered avalanche/blizzard frozen gray mountains they persevered. Many surely died trying. Many surely decided the risk was not worth their family's lives so they settled in desert or plains before. But some ... the people I choose to feel an ancestry with, are the believers.

"There's gold in them thar hills!" - an alchemic purity of spirit that existed in this world, worth searching for, possible to find. These are my people. Only stopping when land disappeared - at the ocean, my people may not have discovered the alluvial nuggets that beckoned their impulsive idealism, but they did find something. Every day, setting sun across and aquatic horizon - we are touched and our dreams continue for one day more. The gold rush, I am convinced, is legitimate and lives on.

The mind of the people on the West Coast remains that of pioneers. Things change more rapidly here than anywhere else in the world. The fashion of the moment, the progressive thinking mind, the suggestibility required to try something new simply because it's new and ... who knows how brightly beauty may shine?

But the exact speed at which this city, Los Angeles, is capable of change, not only lays the foundation for eternal youth and sets the stage for the embracing of all modern practices, including cultural arts, science fiction religions and overwhelming international commerce via mass media, but also ignites a convenience compulsion that covets all things that don't take too long, last too long or require too much effort. In other words, the West Coast's Pioneering mind was the first to embrace organic agriculture while driving packing highways single-passenger in lieu of the car pool lane. Disposability is the down side of too rapid a change: disposable wardrobe, architecture and even identity. This change - obsessive change - for change's sake, leaves landfills needlessly where cemeteries and public basketball courts used to shine.

My industry, the film and television industry in particular, is the most excessively expendable industry of them all. The waste generated on set in one of filming a major motion picture, from the plastic, glass and aluminum beverage containers alone, leaves me wondering how I, who goes all the way for clean living inside and out, can possibly be content with quietly reusing my little glass water bottle while dozens are being tossed this very minute with only two sips depleted. If five more people on set are inspired to be responsible for just their water bottle after reading this, then ... maybe it really does matter.

As an actor in the Los Angeles film and television industry, my ability to even get through a casting director's door lies gently in recommendation and reputation, but heavily on headshot. Printed, mailed, dropped off, then resubmitted, the headshot often gets saved when one's audition warrants possible employment, but too often follows the path of common, unsolicited junk mail: straight from the press and into the trash.

The advent of online casting submission services like LA Casting and Breakdown Services allows managers and agents to communicate actors' images digitally, saving literally forests in paper production, hours in time and hundreds of dollars in photo reproduction. And while I wish with all my might that the digital headshot, resume and demo reel will take over as the exclusive professional casting exchange, I still count 300 headshot, postcard and business card reprints every other month in my promotional output.

1,800 shots/year really is something when you add it up. So I asked the photo reproduction facility, knowing that recycled paper is being used in everyday paper items due to it's actually being cheaper to produce than virgin paper and far more agreeable with our precious environment, "What percent of your reproduction paper is recycled?" They did not know, but they were happy to find out; "25%". Now, that's fantastic! "I'd like to print on 100% recycled paper. Can you help me do that?"

It took four weeks, $200 extra dollars and a small sacrifice in image clarity, but I can with near complete assurance state that with only tiny effort, I have become the first actor in film and television to print her shots on 100% recycled paper. This is the industry that so heavily relies on headshots. This is the city of where said industry's epicenter lies. This reproduction house is one of the most popular in Hollywood, and I was their first. They found out for me. And the next time someone else says, "I want to print on 100% recycled paper. Can you help me do that?" - it will be fast. And the twentieth time someone asks the same question - it will be cheap. The paper will be in stock and available.

We Who Travel West ... I stand at the ocean bathing in sunset's magick hour, dreaming that the next rush of gold might be right beneath my dirty fingernails. Feeling like the pioneer of everything that is about to be. Reminding myself that Pioneers are not settlers. My people before me did not settle on the plains. They did not settle at the canyon. And I won't be settling either - especially not "down". So while I welcome with open arms the countless pioneers I see rushing gold one by one, and encourage them to insist on 100% - nothing less, I still press on towards digital exclusivity and the legalization of the hemp plant so that deforestation for paper products can cease altogether - for once and for all.

I will not settle down.

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It's a king sized bed in a cold, April bedroom. I was just snuffing out so I could enjoy a read about elephants, my most recent spiritual study, but instead I got amped - really inspired and here I am like a maniac trying to write it down.

Writing things can be the first step towards magickal manifestation. It's like the vision is more formulated, more complete ... more real. Picasso and Spare might have to agree.

It seems like the full moon OR the nite after. Yes, the nite after and the entire two weeks after is a time to realize what in the first two weeks was sewn. My dreams became steeped in waking coincidence. Of course, I use that word to communicate, not because I believe in coincidences rather everything I am experiencing is like a destiny based jig saw puzzle and whoa am I inspired!

***

I want to become a working actor. A name actor. By the traditional means: I will audition, I will get called back, I will book, I will prepare and play, I will perform and play and I will be hired again because I am fun to work with, I am easy to direct, and I have great ideas that accentuate the material and a global vision that makes history.

I am your favorite bad ass. I am her unlikely voice of reason. I am his curiosity. I am my own buoyant muse.

Most importantly, I am the face of everything that is going to be. I want to become a name actor by the traditional means, and wait for the age and my inspiration to meet as the audience and movement seamlessly combine and see a beautiful green world sprout up between sidewalk cracks and underneath my very own finger nails.

***

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In the city, the Old Gods live, but you have to assimilate to the geography to know where to find them. Not in the wide, open, fields, plateaus, altars of nature, preferably in an Oak wood, but reigning over the underground pedestrian tunnel, link fence restricted, no light, motion - just the hollow sounds of cars accelerating over. Down where to colder air settles. And guards the openings of pedestrian tunnels or gothic tombs. In the city, the Old Gods live in LED billboards, social contortions and old trees.

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I keep giving and giving. But it feels like nothing is on it's way back to me. Which of course, is not TRUE, but that's how it feels.

It feels like nothin's been feeding the well and so it's Black Rock City dry.

But still I keep tryin to pull water up, pull water up to nourish other people.

So I'm giving without soul now. I'm giving in action, but in motivation, I'm feeling overdrawn empty well dry.

What I need is love. Isn't love always what's missing. More love is the answer to every question posed problem.

I need to feel more love.

Well, let's work through this then. Let's process. Here's the process:

I need to feel loved. What makes me feel loved?

ATTENTION. I know some think it's wrong, but it's just my way. I feel surrounded by the thing that doesn't touch. It's got power and tangibility and a bulbous moving pressure that reminds me I am alive. I feel loved when one person - not many, necessarily - when one person whom I admire sets their sites on my being with compassionate intensity. I can accept attention one on one like no other. I blossom with attention. I feel loved.

And why not let that attention be touch? Thy type of touch that drills consciousness into the shape, muscle, ligament, spot, microcosm underneath it's pointers. It's listeners. Attention via the listening hands. I can tell, people, who's hands listen and who's do not. I can tell because I have a built in love radar and I know, without touching, whose touch is embued with the depth of what it's connecting with.

Attention and touch.

I feel loved with attention and touch.

My well fills with more to give when I receive loving attention and touch.

So I guess the kickstart to feeling plentiful again is simple: I will hang out with a friend who pays attention to me and buy myself an hour and a half massage this week.

If that's all it takes to assure my clear water, strong center, freedom loving state of being so that I can give more and receive more without feeling depleted or taken for granted, then I'll get a massage every week. Who did I think I was not getting myself massages, anyway?

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She tried to warm her hands before applying the make up, which was clay, to my body. Thick, betonite clay designed to dry out over time. And crack. Like the photographer had envisioned.

The women prepared me as if I was Princess becoming Queen. They wrapped my locks with colorful string and stone beads. The White Skinned Woman cared about which way the hair laid and it mattered to her more than it has ever mattered to me. I began caring, too.

57 Country Woman tried to warm her hands before applying the make up, which was clay, to my body. And I become covered. And the clay dried chalky white over every inch of my nude body. And the women's hands were drying, too. So they took paints to my eyes, and took the color from my eyebrows. I saw a gorgeous albino woman looking out from white cracked skin behind wise blue eyes. And then they adorned me with artifacts. I held around my neck snake vertebra and one of the two-toed sloth's toes. Beaded loin cloth from Africa, embroidered tassels from Peru, arm bands from the Amazon. I carried the child sling basket - these, the 57 Country Woman brought back with her as costume ideas. And today there were costumes. And today an American Tribal Queen they decorated was not lost, not rude, not tired not once.

And four hours after the onset of the preparation, I found myself in front of a camera. With a man attached to it. And he was looking through the magnificent magnifier to see if the Queen had arrived. With palms painted gold, she had.

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