Day 21- finally a post was worth writing

dave lent me his orange tercell and shaun, paul, and robyn took the hour plus drive to victoria. i didn't tell them that i'd never driven in canada before, but we made it alright in kilometers per hour and i brought a video camera. we wandered around the downtown area, it kinda reminded me of a saltwatersmell-deprived san francisco, and through the various expensive little shops and cafes. we chilled in the sun on the large front lawn of the parliament building and played our songs with guitars, harmonicas, and djembe as tourists and families wandered around the grounds behind the viewfinders of their handicams and shutters.

later, as i was pulling the car into a parking space in the downtown area, a lady loudly warned her daughter to be careful of the car full of "fresh driver's licenses." this was absurd because i wasn't doing anything extreme- in fact i was being extra careful in a car i'd never driven inside a country i'd never driven. we were all a little salty over this. before getting out, i decided we were 'independent documentary film makers' and paul agreed to approach this woman to ask if we could ask her a couple questions on tape for a documentary we were working on. she agreed, i turned on the camera, and we asked her what she thought was the biggest problem with society as she knows it. i chuckle even now in reminiscing this completely random move.

she opened up, i think, and through thick glasses and tired wisps of blonde hair, the short women told us about society's lack of acceptance. i silently slipped into a moment that i hadn't really expected to draw me in and did my best to maintain eye contact with her while maintaining a steady camera. society and the ridiculousness of girl's budgets on proms and the contrasting of relationships between businessman and crack-addict bums flowed from her lips. i internally guessed that her own prom had to have been at least 10 years ago and wondered about how much information she relied on from her testimonial, especially the part about how the rich don't understand or seek to understand the plight of the drug addict and poor. little did i know that this very interaction, as obscurely presented as it was, would lead to much bigger things a few hours later..

we split up for lunch and paul and i were on our way back from subway to meet the other two at mcdonalds when we passed a tattered guy sitting with a cardboard sign. he asked for change. i had no change and half-heartedly offered my harmonica and continued to walk. a few steps later, a rush of something i still can't fully comprehend, let alone write down, pulled my feet and i stopped. i turned. the first couple chapters of shane claiborne's book ripped like a darting whitecap of a wave, a wave that was this moment and step and breath and conceiving of full-fledged potential, and i went back.

his name was oliver and i didn't give him any money, but we walked to mcdonalds to get him some food and he asked me if i was a christian. i looked at him, his sunburnt face surrounded two wild green eyes that darted like a parrot fleeing a burning nest, and he continued to surprise me with questions about myself- did i smoke weed? do i want to? do i drink? he ended this with another affirmation that i must be a christian because they would occasionally stop to buy him lunch and never gave him money for weed. i asked him his story. for the past three years he'd been traveling from quebec and had ended up here, apparently, and then he told me about the time he got one hundred dollars from someone and spent it on a wild acid trip. the rest of the conversation was a rush of weed 101 lectures, the exploration of his personal religious beliefs and salvation, and his doctrine concerning the mystical spiritual relationship between Jesus and buddah. we talked heaven and hell and, although he didn't believe that hell would exist for those who never heard the gospel, he gave the camera an intense monologue of other religious opinions. amidst mouthfulls of fries, his own fried mind gained weightless momentum that was only stopped by the dying of my camera's weary battery.

i wasn't sure where we had landed at this point, or if he was even back in this universe yet, so we talked a couple more sentence and i reaffirmed Jesus' love for him and made sure he was good to go with food and then continued on our wanderings.

we have tomorrow off as well and tonight the three of us guys skipped rocks on the ocean back at camp and discussed a documentary we plan to start tomorrow. this post has gone on long enough, and i'm not the kind of person that can talk too much about the future without having to go back to make changes with these projections, so we're going to meet now and figure out some questions to ask people we want to go interact with tomorrow in the big city.

Day 20

tonight has to be fast, but i've finished the video. i'm happy with it and it seems to be a success. tonight after dinner, shaun and i went to the barn to work out and were met on the way back by a black bear. he was just chillin in the middle of the path. i took a few steps forward and the fella backed up a bit, but we decided to take the beach back to camp in case momma bear was sittin around ahead ready to drop us. i felt like davey crocket.

tomorrow begins my weekend off and the new zealand guys and i and another chick are goin to victoria to see what we can find to do. after a quality jam session just now, we've decided to bring our guitars and harmonicas with so that we might play the songs we've been making if the opportunity presents itself.

also, the head video guy asked if i wanna be responsible for putting together the advanced crew video. this is really good new cause now i have a personal purpose for bringing a camera on any such pre-camp adventures we may have in order to get footage for the video. i'm bringing a cam tomorrow on our trip for sure. this could turn into another documentary perhaps. we'll see. should be good.

Day 19

success. i finally figured out a way to get the mini dv to capture with the audio. it took rigging up some half-broken equipment, but i've been able to start editing the great prank documentary. this is tremendous news and literally made my day.

this week has really flown by quickly as well and as i went off after dinner to read and drink coffee with a rocking chair, i couldn't remember any period in my life where time had gone by so fast while managing to remain so constantly good and whole. tonight after dinner, some of the camp's challenge course rides were opened for the staff so most of us took a ride on the massive vertical-drop swing. the adrenalin rush experience really didn't match the intensity of the overall hight and speed of the ride for some reason, but it was still a fun time.

since 'blue like jazz' has been finished and passed on, i had begun the re-read of 'searching for God knows what', miller's second main, yet not as wildly successful, output. however, this has been temporarily postponed by a book called 'the irresistible revolution' by shane claiborne. both authors share modernish ideologies and adhere to a similar style of the recantation of secularized, christianity-based stereotypes, but, as can be expected, do so in different manners of wordsmithship. claiborne, a perfect example of the worthlessness of judging a person by appearance (just look him up if you're curious why this would be at all relevant), offers adjective-conservative and edgy sentences that still seem to remain as relevant as miller's introspective, train-of-thought guided raconteur. this is simply a matter of alternative vs jazz genres- if music were applicable to books and writing. i'll let you know if any of this changes as the chapters develop.

finally, i appreciate the several contacts of approval i've had over the past few days concerning the contents of this little blog. thank you. hello london and everyone back home.

Day 18

tragedy. the footage from yesterday isn't capturing on the computer via the firewire. i'm not sure how this is going to turn out; i've been working on it for several hours in between things today, but i'm going to be really salty if the lack of audio doesn't get balanced with the footage and then captured to the computer. we'll see.

today began as another work day, but the head photographer asked if i would be his assistant to help with some shots needed for a slideshow/video thing for a future presentation. i left the office for the afternoon and went with to the top of the mountain in the rain and then across the water on the ferry to operate the reflector circle, held under the models' faces, for the lighting of several portrait-style pictures. good times.

its gotten cold and blustery suddenly tonight and we've been too tired to jam, so we raided the kitchen for rice krispie treats and have chilled around the staff lounge and listened to music all night. it's awesome to get new stuff from new zealand and canada and the places in between.

finally, this mountain-top pose picture at the beginning of the post, taken by dave, is going to be used for part of a logo for the camp's summer leadership program. i was told today and, even though its kinda random, its kinda cool that a good thing came out of messing around with our cameras.

there's never really been a dull moment.

Day 17

today started as a work day, but a couple of the guys asked if i wanted to get in on a prank and, seeing how it is my responsibility to make videos of any important action, i left the office to do just that. sounds like a good reason, right? here's how it went down..

one friend, jen, had left her car, a teal caravan, at the ferry lot over the weekend when she went to the mainland to visit her rents. we left camp a few hours before she was to arrive back, bringing with a massive tube of saran rap and several cleverly-worded posters for the decorating of this otherwise bland vehicle.

i brought a full battery, a fresh tape, and the gl2 canon video camera along to 'document the important action' for future video use. this turned out to be an awesome experience in on-the-go, documentary directing that i'll begin to edit tomorrow morning.

after the forty-five minute drive, we found her van-tastic vehicle (that was one of the titled signs we prepared) and rapped the entire thing with heavy duty saran. surprised with our speed, we were forced to wait around the parking lot for an hour until the ship was to arrive.

documentation during this waiting period captured everything from the poster's lame word-plays to passerby's reactions to our van's artwork to our own reenactments of '"move that volkswagon rabbit!"- the car we drove in with, and finished with mocumentary, over-the-shoulder and blank-stare interviews among ourselves, the five villains. finally the vessel docked and we hid- i jumped into the bushes, of course, to get the reaction shots, while the others scattered around the parking lot. we waited. i'm going to stop explaining here because i'm not going to be able to do justice for the moments that followed.

i can't wait to go to my office in the morning to edit and produce this.

a couple guys that i hadn't gotten much time to chill yet went down to the dock after dinner and jumped in for a quick swim. freezing-cold water.

and apparently, there are several poetry-interested people here and they got excited by my idea to have some sort of weekly original poetry reading, complete with low lights and djembe accompaniment. we'll see how that goes.

also, tonight after group bible-study and swiping some left-over cookies from the kitchen, the two new zealand dudes and i went for another jam session. each experience has been jelling better and better and we're gettin some creative, malleable stuff, which is exciting for all of us. it'll be interesting to see where we might be able to take this..

Day 16

i finished blue like jazz last night. i couldn't really sleep so i sat out in the hall and finished the last chapter as 2 am rolled around. the ideas and philosophies of this book were like a strong breeze that summoned deeply settled soul-waters to the surface of perception. a few days ago, tim, who's also reading the book, and i were talking about traveling and today in the office amidst editing and listening to various itunesU podcasts, i've considered the validity of this past conversation.

our eventual conclusion was that traveling, especially when used as an identity or intensified purpose for younger persons as ourselves, can be really overrated. seriously. not bad or really negative, but overall overrated. most of us here are an international generation of pilgrims, as it were, enjoy this blowing in the wind, yet i can't imagine why this is. there's a podcast lecture from seattle pacific university that i listened to after lunch and the speaker was talking about christian community and most of his points paralleled well with one of miller's last chapters on the same subject. i wonder where this horizon-staring style of life will lead us, especially in regards to the evolution of community and truly understanding when we've found what we've been looking for. the big picture of dimming international economies seem like quite an unfortunate harmony to the free sound of perception and exploration for the future.

on the other hand, the bit of purposed traveling i've experienced and especially the short amount of time i've had here on the island has opened my eyes to the importance of what you are and what you do rather than who you try to think or show yourself as. the ocean has been a positive influence in this, a natural analogy of its creator as a tangible mirror for a nameless-boundary less and expansive surface that entails uncontrollable power and detail and balance and life.

before getting to the miller chapter that surprisingly deepened my own splashing conception of the acceptance of love, i sat on the pier and considered the difficulty of the struggle to 'be' in certain situations, regardless of how good they've become, because there's an unsettling that exists beneath torpid skin. i've been considering the relevance and roles of the flashing of seemingly good and achievement-oriented opportunities in life and the purpose of their strong twinkle and then sometimes sudden, uncaptured fade. this furthered my understanding that what happens to you is not everything, because if opportunities arrive that allow you to move and to travel then how much better off are you if you hadn't heard of it or felt its energy or if you had just continued to build upon the same life as before, especially if only to bring you to the same conclusion that these modes and purposes of transportation can sometimes really be overrated if heavily relied upon as an ambiguous escape.

i can hear the waters continue to kiss the mountain's feet in the blue and still midnight. i'm finding a place in all this.

i could stand on top of this mountain
and not be free from sin

i could jump into the ocean
and not be clean of it

i could wait for you forever,
as tired as i was
until my eyes were opened
and i could finally accept your
love



nobody heard my calling
and though i barely heard myself

you came to rescue me
right before i fell

i could wait for you forever
as tired as i was
until my eyes were opened
and i could finally accept your
love



i don't understand desire
if only to fool this soul

who keeps the vindication
that every breath must know

i could wait for your forever
as tired as i was
of feeling dry until i remembered
to fall into your flood

i could wait for you forever
as tired as i was
until my eyes were opened
and i could finally accept your
love

Day 15

today was my day off and i slept until 1:15 in the afternoon. with sleep out of the way, i'll be good to go for however long i'm up for tonight and for the beginning of another work week tomorrow morning. after awakening and having one jam session with some peep and doin some good work in 'blue like jazz', i went for a short run to the fitness barn and lifted for a while before running back in time to shower and have dinner.

i found satisfying and incredible clarity and calmness as some of us drank hot tea and leaned against the rail overlooking the trees and water- the kind that comes after running and lifting and showering and eating meat and chillin. after dinner, the whole camp headed into town to dairy queen, but instead of going on the bus some of us took the orange tercell with the excuse we would be going to wal mart afterwards.

in wal mart, we managed to play hide and seek and accomplish some successful isle-sliding before splitting up again and hiding around. on the way back to camp, i took my empty mcdonald's iced coffee cup and, under the inspiration of dave, taped it to the top of his little orange car. the ride home was filled with hilarious expressions of other passengers at stoplights and such who desperately tried to gesture to our attention the presence of that little plastic cup that still managed to stay solid on the roof as we were driving down the road. it was silly, but it was a ton of fun.

then tonight, the two new zealanders shaun and paul and i went up for a jam session and ended up with some quality material and beats and sounds and ideas. i've been listening to our recording over and over since. this will be built upon and expanded over the summer. i've made prospective plans for next week to go to a music store where one of the staff chick's brother works so i might get a discount on harmonicas and one other potential purchase for the addition of our little band.

last side note, i've discovered couchsurfing.com. this amazing international community offers access and shows availability from chill, usually art, outdoor, music, writer, or photographic-oriented student or teacher denizen who have an extra place to stay for pre-arranged, overnight travelers. the profiles also show levels of availability that range from offering a couch for the night to the willingness to meet prospective guests over coffee just to discuss common areas of interest and such. i have a three day weekend sat-sun-mon next week so me and a couple people might try this out sometime during that time.

i've still not made it out to the dock to spend the night. i want to quite badly but by the time we're done jammin or listening to music or chillin around, it's just too late for it to be worth it. like right now.

Day 14

two weeks. found out i had to work today and kinda struggled to focus inside the dusty office while working on more video intros and such. this insideness could become a serious problem, but i've been finding some interesting new bands to listen to during the work day and that helps. after dinner tim and i walked down to crofton and i plotted the course to the little food store on my gps.

the deer here are really awesome and behave more like cows than skiddish and fearful creatures. i happened to see more than usual today for whatever reason. must be something about the island. i also heard don miller's voice for the first time on a podcast and it was one of those moments where the little narrator in my head died to this exposure.. i made some good progress on 'blue like jazz' tonight on the pier after getting back to the camp.

i don't have much to say today, really, so i'll end this here. tomorrow might be a roadtrip. we'll see.