Once again this year I have not made it to Burning Man. And now that I've moved about as far away as I could without drowning, I might not ever get there. But there is this thing that happens with festivals, the real ones, the ones where crazy people show up and build impossible things and create rituals out of thin air and there's drums and darkness and you drive there or maybe it's too far and you have to fly but there's this anticipation while you're enroute. You're going somewhere where all bets are off, anything can happen, and everyone who is travelling to this destination at that same point in time is pouring energy into what's going to be possible that never seemed possible before. Anything can happen and usually it does and it's amazing.

What I want for this perfect day is to remember every moment that everything and anything is possible and that I can make magic out of thin air and that it's a good idea to be friends with a hand drum or maybe a little shaker that allows for dancing and sound all at the same time because that's the best sort of multitasking. I want to remember that we own our house so if we want to paint a crazy painting on the outside we're allowed, or maybe add antlers to the roof or oh my god, why haven't I built a fire pit in the back yard? I want to remember that everything is possible and then make crazy things happen that I never expected or thought of ahead of time. I want to be surprised and to surprise myself and surprise other people too.

What would make this day and every day perfect is to find what I never expected to find, to do what I never expected to do, to make this little envelope of being the person I am a little bigger, to grasp a little more of the amazing universe around me and to love all of that while it's happening. I want to live in an amazing festival every single day and I think that would be quite a nice day. Perfect maybe.

I think I don't understand this question. Freedom implies freedom from something and that seems pointless to me before I even get started. Freedom from what I've decided has its hold on me? Freedom from myself? I don't know how to let go of all of it and not care anymore. If I jumped out of an airplane I would feel free for a few minutes, but if I were wearing a parachute I would immediately start thinking "geez, I hope this thing opens" and then there would be much less freedom right away. I create the absence of freedom for myself and I think that serves me in the day to day way. The care and the planning and the anticipation keep me alive from one day to the next.  I take care of a life I love, people and animals and gardens and sweet things I love and treat nicely, and I have no desire to be free of them. One day, in one moment, all of it will be gone for me and I hope that in that moment I feel free and jump without a parachute. But until then, I'm sticking with my caretaking and the lack of freedom that comes with it. I think if you get to be here in a body you trade off freedom for the experience and I'm all about the experience of this.

A very short while ago I would have said that was just a silly idea people make up to comfort themselves. I've always been a big Richard Dawkins fan, if that makes it all clearer. And I still am - I love nice, clear logic, well-presented, and I know how desperately people try to fool themselves.

But I also know for sure that the universe is full of things we don't understand and can't even recognize because we've pushed them out of our consciousness about the time we found out santa was fiction and the tooth fairy was mom and nobody is going to pull that stuff over on us again.

The past several weeks have been full of little disasters in my life - you know, computer not working, laptop not wanting to stay connected, miscommunications, flat tires, you get the picture. And I get this nudge to check - and this will make me sound even wackier to Richard - whether it's mercury retrograde. Yes indeed it is. Ends today and is back to full normal rotation early October. The site I happen to choose randomly is really well written, with a nice perspective that mercury retrograde isn't just about those little disasters, but an opportunity to revisit things.
So instead of getting frustrated with all these things, I've been thinking, well, what led up to this point and how can I redirect my life moving forward? Nice shift.

The flat tire was actually Krissy's as she was leaving for work. She called me and said she was pulling over into a church parking lot and would I come help her change the tire. I get there and we move everything out of the hatch of the prius and open the utility space and...there's no doughnut tire. She never had any occasion to check before. We are standing there looking at it blankly when this man drives up and says "can I help you?" and I say, "well, probably not unless you have a doughnut tire for our car because it isn't there." He says "No, but I have a tire repair kit and a compressor. I'm the pastor of this church and I have a garage out back." He takes off the tire, fixes it, puts it back on, checks the pressure on all the tires and adjusts it. Then he asks Krissy what field she works in (she had mentioned it was her company car).  I had previously mentioned that I work with a little girl - did not mention that she had autism - and Krissy said she worked with people with disabilities. It turns out his church is opening a school for children with autism. It's already approved and they're getting the funding.

And I won't even tell you about the dream I had last night because then I will truly seem pretty crazy, but I'll just say, the world is more complicated and interconnected, and life is full of things, that aren't explained by what we think we know, and some of the things we know aren't easily explained either.