Tag / entheogens

La Brea is the new Melrose. Remember the artists – of the fashion and fabric sort – remember how they dreamed of having a store front to display their designs. Back in the day that was Melrose. Where they could afford it. Where they all found their dreams coming true. And they did and they established a street famous now for the radiant, urban, west coast open air fabrics that decorate many a Hollywood body and every few years, the rest of the country as well.

They made it the center of local fashion and the rent went sky high and the new, young designers dreamed of Melrose openings, while only the established could showcase.

I live in the La Brea / Wilshire hood. The Beauty District. SoHo: South Hollywood. I am drunk and walking home. I live here. There are three noteworthy wine bars in my hood and I walk home from a Masi, northern Italy, Amarone style tasting with my television development partner and see the parking attendant, with his mohawk, reading a book while he waits for the next wine bar patron, like me, probably drunk already upon arrival.

Bless the northern Italian wines.

Graffiti hedgerows, cacti and succulent lawns, a stumble, a stagger – even the industry executives look deeply in the eye and they are real people and I am just a misty inhale, unafraid of … anything. Longing for the intimate adventure and learning everything I know from the community consciousness. All I do is listen. Really well. I don’t watch tv. I don’t read any newspapers. I don’t listen to the radio stations or even watch the Youtube. I listen hard to the people who talk to me and take it in like it was the voice of the Universe giving me vital information.

What is so vital about living? C’mon now. It’s not actually that hard to keep living. Anymore.

I’ve been to paradise where the people don’t need money. The land gives so much food, none would fathom paying a price for a banana. They gift and give and socialize and sit. And there isn’t a lot of work to be done. There is no property to own. I’ve eaten the raw cacao in paradise and I’ve walked the glittering sidewalks of Hollwyood. And the people – the people in both locales are the great variable. They are surprising beyond belief, but all the while predictable. Perhaps we should listen to each other deeper. Looking in the eyes of the executive and wasting time on a chit chat with the native.

My native people – the designers, the artists, the producers, the neighbors laughing every nite – so stoned – watching sports. I love them. I cradle a bottle of Masi Massianco in my arms. A gift from the tasting at 320 South Wine Lounge on La Brea in Hollywood tonite. A birthday gift. Because every day of October is a day to celebrate being alive to me. Happy birthday. No drunk driving. Just a stagger home and a chaser of oj, spirulina and MSM.

How did I grow up a farm town girl in Michigan and turn into the most integrated, authentic wild woman in the majorest of cities? I don’t feel any conflict. I feel every day with my wide open, screenless windows, I am outside. I am in nature. I am with community. I am healthy. I have opportunities. I am stimulated. I am curious. I am in the right place. Give me love, give me music, give me wine. I will do what I must to continue this blessing. Without revision, I offer myself complete. I give and give and receive. I receive, too.

How far back is your earliest memory?

In support of a modern physician’s perspective on the effects of marijuana, I have no clue what I was doing yesterday at this time. I can’t remember if I saw your number on the ID of my phone. I can’t actually remember what I was walking into the other room for and why there is a pen covered in wax on my nitestand and why the heck is the light on in the hallway again?

But I pioneeringly propose that short term memory loss not be seen as an unwanted and often embarrassing side effect of euphoric herbal ingestion. Rather perhaps, short term memory loss is the secret to true happiness.

My short term memory is blindfolded in the back of a passenger bus – we still get to Colorado, we just have no idea how. My long term memoirs though – watch out – are hovering on the moon making maps of Universal history for God’s remodeling plans. I mean, get this: I can remember counting Easter eggs shades of spring flowers from behind white crib bars. I also remember the way the people’s feet sounded on the second story apartment stairs from my apartment below – I moved from that home when I was 2.

And somehow, if I really put some effort into it, I am convinced I can remember things before I had words to describe them. What if I could go back and have an actual memory of that warm, dark cave. What if there is a memory before that?

My long term memory is challenging my simple earthly happiness, but like an avalanche gaining momentum, the motion is addictive. I am endlessly curious, I love to learn and heck, I am good at this long term memory shit, so why not feature your assets:

I can remember watching television standing up. I was very very small. I saw two young black men on a show they called Star Search (the old skool series) and those two young seemed really alive, more than any other person I had seen on the screen, and they wore matching white suites and their skin was so so black.

This is how I remember it from 3 years old at least. So intelligent. So honest.

Those men in the matching white suites danced and made sounds with their feet – nice sounds. Their aliveness and those nice sounds made my feet move, too. They danced without music. The nice sounds were the music.

My mom caught me grovin and said, “Tonya, do you want to take tap lessons?” I started tap dancing when I was 4 years old – only one year older than Shirley Temple. When my shoes were the size of a deck of cards, and my little tiny taps already sounded nice, I imagined I was a lot like Shirley Temple, indeed…

Chicago, IL hosts The Human Rhythm Project, an phenomenal annual tap festival where famous hoofers perform and give class and create community. I was getting schooled in a master class by Dan The Man Porter, after he had taken a Polaroid of us together, written his digits on the bottom of is, and handed it to me saying how “good we look together”. He taught me everything I know about a shuffle in one week and he told a little story about how in the day, he and his tap partner snuck two costumes from racks backstage and barged out on the Star Search stage before they were anyone doing anything. They just riffed off of each other, hoofer improv style, and of didn’t even use any musi. They danced a capella.

Today I just got out of a tap class with my favorite tap choreographer, Amanda Leise, and well … I can’t remember if I ever thanked my mom and dad enough for just throwing me in tap dance lessons at age 4. They didn’t know. I didn’t know. But little kids have to try. And the more chance you give them to love something, the more things they will discover they really love. And shouldn’t a kid have a basket of things to love that they can choose from or not even have to make a choice. Just have it all. Just have everything. Just die with a store house of beautifully connected, fully appreciated memories. Now if I could figure out how that light got turned on in the hallway again.

I went to Toronto’s raw restaurant today. Boy, was it chilly. Not cold, but downright chilly. I walked to the restaurant and passed another vegetarian on tour, Rob, the set designer and lighting lord – a real punk rock dude. I brought him with me.

The place was bright and simple and clean and healthy feeling. Green and orange and yellow accenting well stated white. Nuevo 50′s diner chairs. Upon entering: a warmly lit dessert display case featuring strawberry cheese cake, Greek halva and a suspect stock of lavish cacao bars like Willy Wonka, like “I’ve got a golden ticket” shit. All gold, green or orange foil each one costing an oompaloompa $20.

I looked closer at the ingredients and there were almost-familiar ingredient names that I recognized as almost-familiar entheogen names. Entheogens are consciousness altering plants. Like morning glory seeds, kava kona root and the exceptional marijuana. Not all consciousness altering plants are drugs. The word drug implies only that a substance is illegal in the United States. Like cocaine, Ritalin and for some reason, marijuana. This ingredient list, however, listed items quite similar to some legal fungus and vine entheogens I am rather familiar with. I will research it on the apple laptop later.

Cool. So don’t ask me why my cell phone decided it was time to leave me. Was I avoiding intimacy and withholding sex? Don’t ask me. All I know is she was not in my pocket as I sat at the table, removing my metal wallet, skeleton gloves, patchouli oil (the touring artist’s absolute) and a concierge desk Toronto map.

The Live Health Cafe has been open just over a year. It is the only raw vegan restaurant in Toronto, ONT. 5 million people live in Toronto, ONT. Jenny Italiano is the founding owner of The Live Health Cafe. For some reason, they decorate with plastic plants, which to the best of my knowledge, don’t even kinda do what a real plant does. Or fake me out in any shallow way. I looked up the ingredients of that chocolate bar and yes, they include potent aphrodisiacs and a mild hallucinogen without side effects besides having trouble falling asleep. I, Veruca Salt, “want my golden ticket NOW” and bless Canada, five bites of that of that $20 chocolate bar made me skin roll, feel quite amphibious, and had me squeezing my legs together for two full days.

I never found my phone.

Salvia quietly quietly go insane.

“Are you stoned?” she said, the gorgeous girl behind the counter, as she packed a fresh pouch of Unity Tea: a fragrant blend of lemongrass, black pepper, cardamom, ginger and that unflavor of flavors, licorice root – identifiable in throat but not on the tongue.

“I just got out of a Bikram Yoga class,” I responded feeling purged from an hour and a half of sweat racing to the surface of my pores as if I had been holding it hostage and upon it’s release, it had a long lost lover to attack in an aggressive oral embrace to discover if all the wet parts thereof were still loyally his claim.

“That explains it. I wondered what that otherworldly glow was you have.” She put the boiling water in the steel teapot, like my nitely bath water, the steam rised. The words, “otherworldly” and “glow” resounded in my mind.

Again, I have been traveling, this time a week in Chicago, where life changed forever. But there I go again, being redundant, as if travel or change haven’t become givens in my life. A wedding on the weekend with Smashing Pumpkin’s Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, but most importantly my best friend, Jdrive, in attendance, was half Rock-n-Roll/half Midwestern – kinda like me and the things I love most: Downhome Flamboyant, Girl-Next-Door Superhero, Just the Good ol’ Bizarre Boys. Then two days shooting a Perkin’s commercial, but this time instead of being talent, I was choreographer – part of the production team – and I tell you, the collaboration and appreciation I experienced from that perspective is definitely something I invite into my career again. Finally, a long anticipated reunion with a few new blatantly brilliant and belligerent magickal friends exposed me to a plant that shattered my concept of reality – even my concept of Chaos, left me baffled and confused and wondering why anyone would ever choose to delay gratification on this earth one day longer. Life isn’t a dress rehearsal. This is what we call the Muppet Show.

All this in five days. My life, oh, my life. Swallowing licorice root, surfing free coffee house wireless, looking at a near full moon with an otherworldly glow. Not stoned, but undeniably high. Doing exactly what I always dreamed of doing. Oh, my life.

I stood over the glass display, so clear Sherlock Holmes’ monocle would certainly prove futile – no finger print, no belly lint, no DNA detected here. The enclosed case, doing just what a fine art gallery display should do: focusing the critique’s attention on the enclosed crown jewel – in this case, a well positioned, quite erect blown glass masterpiece. A swirling, swelling, serpentine face in every color of the glass bubble gum rainbow. So haunting, so reveiling, the onlooker is left feeling responsible for the world’s perversion – wondering if every act of originality hasn’t been subliminal “sin” since that metaphoric apple bite in the Garden of Eden. And if that is the case, if innocent sin really isn’t just a natural desire for growth where stagnancy existed before. Oh, how art asks the questions not meant to be answered.

Most of the display case artwork was well above my spending limit for…um….the entire month. But the Big Spender Who Could certainly spent her money well, for in addition to owning a character-releaving oracle and magnificent coffee table conversation piece, the owner will also be able to enjoy the finest herbs – passion flower, white willow, chamomile, and any other fine herb freedom will alow – via this chef-d’oeuvre. Each fine glass piece of art doubling as a high-class glass smoking pipe for those who wish to truely create ritual out of sacred plants and their bodies.

Intelligent hip-hop was spun over the sound system. Creatively dressed twenty-somethings danced a bit at the door. A group of jovial men stood in a circle. Absolutely no one coughed.

In the summer evening air on the back patio, I felt profound unto myself as I gazed over Commercial Dr. alley murals, a few potted flowers, the occasional Harley Davidson cruising slowly through. The Bikram Yoga instructor from next door talked Love. A fellow Rasta talked truth with simple words. The owner provided one of his favorite masterpieces for the table to enjoy. When we all finished our ritual in smoke, we worshiped plants this time in the stomach. Freshly juiced greens, local and in season tomatoe-based soup, basil salad dressing fresh picked from patio pot. All served with a smile from the most powerfully life-loving equal I have met in a long time – The Living Source’s raw chef. That smile. These plants. This art gallery / raw cafe / Safety Zone. There is no where else in North America doing this. How did everything happen so perfectly in my life to lead me to this very moment?

Just another question not meant to be answered.

I can smell it walking down the street. That aroma like Miles Davis, heavy on the high note. Bright like sunshine drying clothes on the line. Evaporating into your nostrils, focusing your third eye, the scent always fleeting, here then gone, lingering just long enough for you to register a question mark.

…?

I’ve learned from excessive outward motion (my current record in one city without leaving: five months) and obsessive inward emotion, that comparing cities, people, communities, solar systems, lovers and breakfast cereals only breeds dissatisfaction and the craving for someone’s else’s Lucky Charms. Judging and choosing favorites also fosters the most selfish of human emotions: missing, which has absolutely no use in a touring artist’s life. So I won’t exactly say that Vancouver is a favorite, but I will say that in the past year of touring, there are three cities I would like to challenge my five month record in: Portland OR, Anchorage AK, and now Vancouver BC.

In other words, I’ve fallen in love. And I walk down the street, checking out the real estate, as another question mark comes to mind. I mean, doesn’t it seem ludicrous? It’s a plant. It grows. It is native to….earth. A government making a plant illegal is like outlawing elbows. Laws can’t stop a seed from sprouting and as far as my spirituality is concerned, the Creator doesn’t make mistakes.

So when I walk for an hour without seeing litter or graffiti, I give this city a shout out. When I open my bedroom curtains and see Cypress Mountian posing for her postcard, I blow her a big sloppy kiss. When I buy my hemp seed foods right off the grocer’s shelves, when I smell the unmistakable aroma of sweet jazz sunshine being smoked on the street, when I feel uncommonly safe walking alone downtown after dark, I try not to make comparisons, but simply appreciate Vancouver for what she is.

Howdy, Neighbor… pass the Grape Nuts.

She’s my favorite devil. Look at her dancing like she was born in motion. Floating and undulating right from the warm womb. As if sitting still were contrary her very nature. I wondered why she never watch tv.

And when I place the tightly rolled cigarette to my lips, I…share with people. In conversation, in action, in energy, in symbol. If I want connection, I will stop at nothing to have it. I will not live a half-assed life.

Tastes like smoke has a memory, comes in my body through my lungs and leaves to tell the story. Ahhhhh…. breathing other peoples’ stories.

The man drinking alcohol feels invasive dull dangerous when I’m sober. We all hyper-sober floating and undulating right from the womb. The club in Delaware so round and supportive suddenly. This all in drifting thought. Gone as soon as it comes. In fact, there is no Delaware.

Seems she’s VIP again and doesn’t even know it. Everybody sweating and smiling. She really gets me into trouble, making me think the entire world exists like this. Why wouldn’t it? Why doesn’t it? All that matters is she does.

She taught me the difference between commitment and devotion. We don’t talk about her train out of town. But she reads my mind and pulls an extra hour from her back pocket – spring ahead, fall back – says its for wasting whenever I need. Tonite Autumn leaves with me.