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Lee Newberry's LiveJournal:
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| Saturday, March 14th, 2009 | | 7:56 pm |
Coming Out Of Hibernation
The past few months have been wonderfully, deliciously mellow, filled with languid mornings and evenings spent with good friends and conversation. This is in stark contrast to my last three winters which were filled with hard work, exhilaration and terror, sometimes in equal measure. Spring is coming in fits and starts and half-days. In a week we'll have as many hours of light as of dark, and it only gets brighter. I love spring. Festival season is starting up and long-dormant email lists are burping out the first larval ideas of just how much fun can be fit into one summer. Artists, bohemians and other assorted lunatics are emerging from their homes, blinking in the sunlight and wandering the streets in wedding gowns and shopping carts. Winter still makes itself known when the sun goes away, but its grip is loosening; this city is about to bloom. In other news, I'm shaking out my flickr account and posting again: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scuppers/Happy solstice, all. The almanac says every day is three minutes longer than the last. Let's celebrate. | | Monday, January 5th, 2009 | | 3:51 pm |
Right Effort
One of the most important lessons I learned on the boats is that the right effort will transform lethargy to energy. The buddhists have a word for it. It's a little bit of positive intention and a lot of doing small things to take care of yourself without wasting a lot of time. It's kind of a pain to make that effort when you're out of practice, but always worth it. On the boats, I worked myself into exhaustion on a daily basis and the decision to coast at the bottom or lift myself up was made regularly. Here on land things are more mellow and it can take a couple weeks of exertion to force the issue. Which brings me to where I'm at now. Portland Center Stage is staging three plays in six weeks and thanks to Snowpocalypse 2008 the build process is a week behind. It looks like our next weekend will be in February. It will take that special effort to get through this and enjoy myself. I'm grateful now for previous experience. | | Monday, December 22nd, 2008 | | 6:25 pm |
White Christmas
 Portland is suddenly experiencing a once-in-a-generation christmas snowstorm. The whole city is shut down. It's pretty incredible. For once the hysterical news reports were right. We've had something more than a foot of snowfall over the weekend and about eight inches of it is sticking. It takes all of two inches to shut this city down. I am reminded sharply of childhood visits to lake tahoe. | | Friday, December 19th, 2008 | | 12:17 pm |
Busy Month
December is a hectic month in the entertainment industry. I've been putting in 40-80 hour weeks between a few different gigs and that leaves time for food and sleep and little else. (Well there was santacon. I love bringing saturnalia back into christmas.) Life is good. I don't know how I'll be doing this time next month but I'm doing pretty well right now. I'm saving as much money as I can and keeping an eye out for a stable job. I'm doing new things each day, like building walls of cardboard boxes twenty feet tall and installing snow chains for the first time. For the record, I hate snow chains only a little less than fishtailing. I've also obtained a copy of How To Cook Everything. It has become my breakfast reading material. I'm cooking something new and interesting every week. I will subject my family to this process on christmas. I'm feeling pretty optimistic about it. Speaking of christmas, we have snow on the ground in Portland and it may stick around until the 25th. This is unusual. Our news outlets have been blaring out ARCTIC BLAST '08 updates for the past week to the amusement of anyone who looks outside and sees a thin layer of melting snow on the road. Still, it would be nice to have a white christmas for once. This being Portland, there's a loose plan to get a whole bunch of people downtown in a giant bay-to-breakers style snow parade/race/party if only we can get a whole four to six inches on the ground. I hope it happens on the rare day I'm not working. An that brings me to today. I've got the whole day off to relax and clean and prepare for christmas. It's a good month. | | Monday, September 8th, 2008 | | 8:39 am |
| | Saturday, September 6th, 2008 | | 5:42 pm |
Short Cuts
The party is over, we're all shaking off our collective hangover and cleanup is moving apace. Today we all move off the playa and into Gerlach. The big stuff will be off site in a week. The playa will be clean down to the granular level in three weeks. I'm shaking off the tunnel vision and trying to pick specific memories out of the past month. It's hard; I'm still pretty tired. I keep a haphazard journal out here, so I'll give you some of the ( highlights: )As I've mentioned before, I've been uploading pictures of all this nonsense at http://flickr.com/photos/scuppers/ | | Monday, September 1st, 2008 | | 11:04 am |
Day After
...And it's done. The man burned, the temple burned, and a whole lot of other things besides. It was a great week, a hard week, a week of revelation and connection and loneliness and engagement and excitement and more than a little dust in strong doses. I may post more if I can write about it coherently. We get better at this every year. | | Monday, August 11th, 2008 | | 9:06 pm |
Into The Dust
It's that time again. The prefabrication is done, the perimeter line is pounded in, and we're all leaving the tiny little town of Gerlach and rolling out to the playa. I'm only here to type this because a particularly inconsiderate neighbor blocked me in with his truck - I'll be driving into that temporary reality tomorrow morning. I can taste the open horizon, the gritty sweat in my eyes, fire in my hands and a whole mess of alkaline dust sweeping past me like someone pulled the plug in the sky. It's time to build us a city and burn that man down. I'll be back in a month with a wild look in my eye and a story on my tongue. | | Thursday, July 31st, 2008 | | 10:45 am |
Incommunicato.
I'm leaving for Burning Man today. W00t! If you want to get in touch with me, I'll have intermittent email access out there (but don't count on it). If you need to get a hold of me in an emergency, call the office at 775-557-2200. If you're going to the event and want to track me down (please do!), go to Playa Info on the center camp circle. Punch my name into the computer and it'll give you my camp location. | | Friday, July 25th, 2008 | | 9:09 pm |
Anticipation
This time next week I will be in the desert. This is a funny time of year for me. Long lazy nights and an itch to run out into that late warm twilight. The Oregon Country Faire was pretty amazing. I have a lot of photos up on my flickr site. ( Here's a journal entry I made in the thick of it: )It took me a week to recombobulate from that. And no sooner have I settled in at home than I find myself packing to go again. My life is a little crazy. This year's burn is going to be weird and wonderful. I'm looking forward to stepping on that pie crust, to smelling that clean dry air, to running with my eyes closed and watching something big and burning fly from a trebuchet. I'm looking forward to building that magical, evanescent city. | | Thursday, June 5th, 2008 | | 1:38 pm |
Settling In
Rain falls softly on my roof. Spring is late this year - the sun is seen only in flashes between breaks in the cloud layer. The sky is blindingly grey in more hues than that austere color ought to contain. Last night I saw the stars for the first time in two weeks. Beautiful. Life continues apace. The past two weeks have been full. -Reuniting with friends, -Cleaning house, -Tallship sailing (the Hawaiian Chieftain and Lady Washington are in town), -Seeing plays, -Job hunting, -Cooking (notable for someone who doesn't cook for half the year), -Dirty work for the Oregon Country Faire, -Ramping up for Burning Man, -Planning out the next year. Yes. Professionally, I've got a handshake agreement to be a staff carpenter at one of the more established theaters in town. This makes me very, very happy. Also, I worked my first Union call a few days ago - setting up and breaking down the Kanye West show that came through town. It went well. Kanye West has the biggest ego I've ever witnessed in person. Very entertaining. Life continues to be rich and surprising. | | Monday, May 26th, 2008 | | 11:48 am |
Safe And Sound At Home Again
...Let The Waters Roar, Jack. I'm back home in Portland. It always amazes me that so much color and life can be fit into a place that sees the sun so rarely. The past few weeks have been good to me. I spent some needed time with family in the bay. Then there was a week of hedonism and kittens in Santa Cruz. I have the best friends ever. I got home five days ago. They have been filled with reunions and cleaning. My priorities have shifted recently. Sharpened. I'm going through my belongings and tossing a bunch of stuff I've been holding onto because I thought I should have it. Kibble, someone once called it. I'm putting in an application to the stagehands union, local 28. (Noah, you can lord it over me when I've actually collected a paycheck from them.) We had a rare sunny day on Saturday. It was glorious, like a Michelangelo painting in light and time. I spent an enjoyable few hours painting a giant sunflower onto a neighborhood intersection. (See first statement)  I'm feeling about as well balanced as I've ever been. Credit the intersection of hardship, philosophy and love, in that order. | | Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 | | 9:03 am |
Back In The World
I jumped off the Lynx on Monday. I'm in the bay area right now resting and regaining my equilibrium. The last four months have been pretty hard on my psyche, so this will take a few days. ( Warning: Rumination Ahead ) | | Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 | | 9:16 pm |
| | Friday, March 21st, 2008 | | 2:20 pm |
Rise And Shine
Due to the life choices I've made and the things I commit to in the name of living fully, I sometimes wake up stunned and surprised to still be alive. These moments fill me with a deep happiness beyond simple relief - I look around and realize that I've become a little better at understanding the beautiful, twisted world I live in, that I have discovered harmony where I saw only noise and fury, that I have widened the spectrum of human experience I can assimilate. This morning was one of those mornings. We spent 48 hours transiting from Oxnard, CA to Morro Bay. Right in the middle of the transit lies Point Conceptiont, just north of Santa Barbara; the worst place in California for weather. We sailed around it. No motor, just 4,000 square feet of canvas driving us upwind as we tacked our way through the weather wrapping around the point. I was sick as a dog. For most of the transit I stood at the helm or on lookout trying to keep down sips of water before collapsing into my bunk between watches. The boat sailed beautifully, heeled over until seawater sloshed through the gunports, going eight knots with the nose pointed 40 degrees from the eye of the wind. 1812 technology all the way. This tour has been pretty difficult for me. I feel like I've climbed the steepest rise, the single most difficult bit. It won't get easier from here, but I'll be better equipped to meet the challenges. At the moment I get to spend ten days in Morro Bay, fixing up the boat and taking people sailing. It's really pretty here and the people are friendly. | | Friday, March 7th, 2008 | | 10:16 pm |
Incomunicado
Hey all, The boat is in Oxnard, CA. We still haven't found winter. My cell phone took a swim a little awhile ago, and internet access is scarce here. I am thus hard to contact right now. This will hopefully change soon. | | Saturday, February 16th, 2008 | | 8:58 pm |
The Grind
We're back in Oceanside, CA. It's pretty here. Miles of beach, clear days, and temperate heat. They know not of your winter here. Things are pretty difficult on the boat. The Lynx is a boat that demands a well-tuned, aggressive crew. The current crew is not. This vexes the captain and bosun, and the whole crew is going through a phase of hard work and character building, with a daily reminder from the chain of command that we aren't up to par. It's frustrating and necessary. It also makes everything else I do in life feel easy and relaxing. So that's where I am right now. Working really hard, learning a lot, expanding my capabilities. | | Saturday, January 26th, 2008 | | 8:47 pm |
Ramping Up
It's been a really lopsided week. Most of it has been pretty relaxed. On wednesday, however, we took a film crew out into some moderately heavy offshore weather. It started at 15 knots of wind, clear skies and 2 foot swells. Over the course of ten hours, it built into 35 knot winds, 6 foot swells and pounding rain. We sailed the whole time, heeling until the rails were almost under water. The Lynx is a fine, weatherly boat, capable of blazing along at 10 knots while pointing 30 degrees from the eye of the wind. It was the hardest I've ever sailed a boat. The captain, mate and bosun were having a great time. I was terrified. It was a benchmark day - I hadn't realized just how much my seamanship had atrophied after seven months on land. It's days like that one that steel my resolve to push my own boundaries, to open myself to the full range of human experience. The rest of the week was easy. Fair winds, low seas, enjoyable duty. San Diego is a pretty port with a skyscraper park near the waterfront that sounds some really nice echoes when we shoot the guns at it. I'm spending my spare time practicing knots, studying the finer points of our curriculum and working my way through an excellent book called Seamanship In The Age Of Sail. I may someday get tired of subsuming myself into my work. That won't be for awhile. Oh, and a couple nights ago, the captain treated us all to a night at the San Diego symphony. The San Diego philharmonic and the London philharmonic played Beethoven's fifth symphony to a sold out audience. It was strange and beautiful. (I've put some new photos on my Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scuppers/) | | Saturday, January 5th, 2008 | | 8:19 pm |
It's my fifth day on the Lynx and I'm settling in well. The first couple days were shaky - jet lag + long days + transit = metabolic suckerpunch. A twelve hour night of sleep cured that. Now I find myself deep in the business of learning a new boat. It's grand. There are a lot of challenges, usual and unusual. Spending months ashore between tours means rebuilding muscle every time, while working a new boat (and a schooner at at that) means having to constantly reevaluate the way I look at rigging, sailing, and seamanship. My world is rapidly shrinking to the dimensions of the boat, plus whatever port we happen to be in. My attention focuses accordingly. In life on shore there is a great deal of wasted time and space. Driving, television, shopping, untended gardens, attics, basements. A lot is ignored. Not so on a boat. Every bit of space has a use, every moment of the working day is used. It makes for a fine environment in which to push oneself to learn rapidly, to put forth a great deal of useful effort and to overcome one's own foibles, shortcomings and blind spots. I'm not a terribly disciplined person in my daily life so I enjoy this opportunity to grow and improve myself in ways that I am not normally inclined. I had missed the rhythm of the boats, the steady supporting schedule of day sails and maintenance and mealtimes that the crew comes to rest on like a well-laid keel. I had missed also the feeling of camaraderie, of coordination and mutual understanding that develops amongst a crew. The trials and discoveries come fresh every day. I will write more as I observe more. | | Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 | | 5:18 pm |
Where I'm At and Where I'll Be
[A lot has happened since I last wrote here. All the things in my last post have transpired and then some. I'm not given to broadcasting the minutae of my life, which is one reason I tell people I'm a terrible correspondant. For the past six months my life has not chrystalized in a way that allows me to say "this is where I am". A friend recently asked me what I was up to. My response formed the germ of this post.] Mexico is warm, humid, and very tasty. I'm in a seaside town called Manzanillo where my grandma lives. I'm here for christmas, which is done differently in this part of the world. Christmas eve is the big day, with presents and fireworks and music and the midnight mass, while Christmas day is spent in a collecive hangover. In a couple days I'll go to Guadalajara with my uncle. He's a schoolteacher there, the kind of man whose brain whirls with the effort of connecting everything he knows with everything else. He lives in a gorgeous house that may or may not be haunted. On the 30th I fly back to Portland. The 31st will be spent unpacking, repacking, setting my affairs in order, saying goodbye to friends, and dancing until the small hours. Early on the morning of the first I'll catch a plane to San Diego and jump aboard the 1812 privateer schooner Lynx, at which point the real fun begins. I've signed on as the education officer, which is equal parts deckhand, teacher and cat herder. I'll be on the boat as she slowly climbs the coast until until May; we'll be somewhere in the San Francisco bay by then. I go to the boats to grow. It's a conscoius, daily process of improving every part of my thought and action as I work myself into exhaustion every single day for three to six months. What seems impossibly difficult one month becomes routine the next. Every challenge I overcome brings me to another. The brutal, exhilirating physicality of it makes the lessons solid and meaningful. I go to the boats to teach. Most people hate my job. I introduce hundreds of schoolkids to the boat every day and I mediate their interaction with it. I work the necessary logistics, making sure every kid gets to spend time experiencing everything we're prepared to share with them. I teach the teachers, ensuring the consistent quality and richness of the educational program. I get to plant the idea in every kid's head that the world is much larger and more engaging than their classroom. Our schools are filled with kids who can't sit still, who learn by doing, and who are highly incompatible with the office worker's metaskills that the school system is designed to impart. I don't just give them a field trip to make history class a little more relevant. I introduce them to a whole new method of learning and interacting with the outside world. Every idea I communicate has a physical analogue on the boat and they all get put in the kids' hands. You'd be surprised how many ADD kids get real sharp when abstract symbols are put away in favor of concrete reality. And that's where I'm at right now; relaxing, memorizing the education program for the Lynx, and looking forward to four or five months of very difficult and rewarding work. |
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