CURRENT MISSION

Cast aside from Poetry, all that is not Inspiration (Blake)

ABOUT ME

You can get a better sense of me from my writing:
http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com
http://panmesa.tumblr.com
http://www.twitter.com/eve11

How about I tell you a story, instead of "all about me". This was written on March 23, 2007 in post-Katrina New Orleans, LA.

I'm tempted to snag the sign from leaning against the front porch from a marketplace in New Delhi, India tempting us with "lotus and green teas" and bigger bolder lettering proclaiming, "Buddha Teahouse."

Later, setting my crowbar on the high shelf, I rescue a yellow slicker, a 3-set Robert Johnson album, a refurbished AT&T phone, an air compressor, once-a-boy's high school diploma secured in an aluminum can that looks like it was designed for fishing tackle and to outlive school learning and a box of check registers.

Now we're seated on the curb in the Ninth Ward hunkered against the white van's well wheels, trying to escape the sun for a minute as the pinchers plunks off couches, mattresses, wood slats and chunks of drywall from the pile and plop the molding fragments from someone's once home into the dump truck.

It took me eons to get to the point that it'd feel like freedom if the storage locker in Salt Lake City cut the lock and auctioned every ounce of my past away.

"What Kali uncovers should remain so." - the inscription that Moose (with the infinity symbol to the right of Moose) on my copy of his Illusion Fields CD

I tell the film student seated beside me from Towson University that I'm here for a video project. He tells me he's documenting his fellow classmates' week-long spring volunteer break in order to help raise future funds for ACORN's Katrina Relief Work. "We don't study documentary filmmaking in the curriculum. So I'm learning as I go."

I'm learning as I go too. Except it's not documentary filmmaking.

I begin to notice that when one hears "video project" they're off and running imagining I'm a documentarian capturing the rebuilding of New Orleans. Another Spike Lee perhaps.

Or if mention I'm a writer, it's that I'm a journalist here to expose what's really going on.

Nothing could be further from my strengths, as I'm a lousy historian and documentarian. Attention to precision and detail has never ever been my forte. My talents lean in the opposite.

Epic, mythic in patterns and sweep. Perhaps I've more in common with J.R.R. Tolkien, the creator of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, whom coined the term mythopoeia, or myth-making.

So whatever it is I am that one wants to define what I'm doing, it revolves around myth and the building blocks of universes which in my waking visions keeps circling back to music.

"The Ancients used their knowledge of the musical principles of vibration, harmony and balance as tools to learn how to live better lives for themselves, and how to create â

PHILOSOPHY

"In art, as in life, instinct is enough." - Anatole France

"When something is sacred, it cannot be bought or sold." - Starhawk

"I’m talking about carving out a place in the larger culture where a condition of abnormality can be sustained, where imagining the unknown and the unknowable — impossible to buy or sell — is the primary enterprise." - "The Boom is Over. Long Live the Art!" New York Times, February 12, 2009

The Wisdom Of Sharing Stone Soup
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There are many variations on the story of stone soup, but they all involve a traveler coming into a town. The inhabitants try to discourage the traveler from staying, fearing he wants them to give him food. They tell him in no uncertain terms that there's no food anywhere to be found. The traveler explains that he doesn't need any food and that, in fact, he was planning to make a soup to share with all of them. The villagers watch suspiciously as he builds a fire and fills a cauldron with water.

With great ceremony, he pulls a stone from a bag, dropping the stone into the pot of water. He sniffs the brew extravagantly and exclaims how delicious stone soup is. As the villagers begin to show interest, he mentions how good the soup would be with just a little cabbage in it. A villager brings out a cabbage to share. This episode repeats itself until the soup has cabbage, carrots, onions, and beets-indeed, a substantial soup that feeds everyone in the village.

This story addresses the human tendency to hoard in times of deprivation. When resources are scarce, we pull back and put all of our energy into self-preservation. We isolate ourselves and shut out others. As the story of stone soup reveals, in doing so, we often deprive ourselves and everyone else of a feast.

This metaphor plays out beyond the realm of food. We hoard ideas, love, and energy, thinking we will be richer if we keep to them to ourselves, when in truth we make the world, and ourselves, poorer whenever we greedily stockpile our reserves. The traveler was able to see that the villagers were holding back, and he had the genius to draw them out and inspire them to give, thus creating a spread that none of them could have created alone.

Are you like one of the villagers, holding back? If you come forward and share your gifts, you will inspire others to do the same. The reward is a banquet that can nourish many. - by my friend, David Chamberlain, http://www.exquisitesafaris.com

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Still relatively new to the formal concept of coach surfing (done relatively serendiptious in the past...). I'd like to be able to have artists visit us (I'm a writer/shaman and my partner is a musician) for slightly more extended periods of time than the typical CS 2-3 nights in an artist-in-resonance program and maybe help set up a subset of CSers willing to host artists in same extended and expressive way as well.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I used Coachsurfing.com to do a two-month road trip in 2009. Now that I'm more stable (relative term for galactic nomads), I'm looking forward to hosting.

Interests

spontaneity, Tao, beauty, art, artists, ephemeral art installations, artist collectives, Reality, myth, (soul) alchemy, flow, walks (I'm carfree), writing, poetry, imagination, inspiration, the tea experience, exploration, fractals, troubadours, Renaissance, Beats, flowers, nomadic lifestyles, redwoods, deserts, Edens, communal tables, rivers, galactic travel, telepathy, prophecy, apocalypse, shamanism, unseen, Internet, inner-nets, what I don't know I don't know

• arts
• culture
• writing
• poetry
• documentaries
• film making
• beauty
• dining
• running
• coach
• flowers
• reading
• traveling
• drawing
• coding
• music
• fishing
• surfing
• boxing
• history
• journalism
• volunteering
• rivers

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies: The Matrix, Shawshank Redemption, Pan's Labyrinth, Chocolat

World music.

Books: Actually enjoying children's books the most at the moment. Jack Kerouac is also my mentor, soul bud.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

All the people who came together in unity to help each other immediately after the Indian Ocean tsunami.

Teach, Learn, Share

Oneiromancy:
The magi that followed the star to Bethlehem weren't master astrologers as much as skilled in the art of oneiromancy, or reading visions and signs. If you haven't noticed by now, inspiration often speaks in code and symbols.

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada, China, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, Portugal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States