Colours of Fall Cue Sweater Weather in...Canada!!

Hey Squirrels! I have arrived in Nelson, a cuddly little cluster of warm and weird humans nestling beside a big lake in a valley tucked into the Selkirk mountains of British Columbia. The local population is about 10,000 humans although since high quality snow of the powder variety is about to start whaling on the town and surrounding mountain ranges, the ski and snowboard bums are gonna hit this place in droves. Bring on the wave of smiling faces and the new experiences. I'm yet to properly play in snow, and have only glanced at it briefly from afar while on a bike in Peru. And that one time in Bolivia when I woke up and my sleeping bag was crusted in ice. But that was on a bus and I'm pretty sure that it therefore doesn't count as snow. The weather is still surprisingly mild here. It's 5 degrees celsius at the moment and I'm still walking around with no jumper because there is no wind and also because I just had a green smoothie and am feeling fly as fuck. Avocado, banana and chlorella blended together are a magical fairy dolphin glitter fart elixir.

This paragraph has nothing to do with anything else but ...I had a dream about Michael Jackson last night. I was at a gig in space (it looked very much the scene in Star Wars where scores of different lifeforms conglomerate around the bar) and he was rocking some strange tunes. If any of those parallel dimensions actually exist apart from inside my pickled mind then it's good to know that Micky J is continuing his geniusness and getting the appreciation he deserves. I was certainly enjoying the show!

My plane smacked down in Vancouver pretty late last Sunday, and thankfully  immigration officers were as tired as I was so I didn't get the rigorous interrogative jousting that some of my friends have experienced. A good start! One of my lovely Perth buddies Liz  put me up for a couple of nights in her basement in North Vancouver, and a bit of a hike through Stanley Park saw us luckily happen upon an avante garde Halloween ghost train set up through the forest. I'd had a bit of the old 'puff puff give' which is extremely strong in this neck of the woods, and when a couple came up offering a free ticket on the ghost train I had no idea what they were talking about and thought that maybe they were part of the show. They practically had to stuff the free ticket in my hands while I made strange facial expressions and tried not to pee myself laughing. Liz and I enjoyed the next half hour of classic horror themed exhibits with actors bringing to life scenes from the likes of Frankenstein, Dracula and Jekyll and Hyde. How awesome is life when you step outside and get amongst it?

On the walk home Liz and I happened across a bunch of ravenous raccoons who were absolutely going to town on everyone's trashcans. Hilarious little animals! They make wickering sounds to each other kind of like UFOs in low-budget sci fi movies. I dig it. They lope around almost as if they know they're up to mischief and everyone is going to wake up totally pissed off that their trash is all over the road. I love them. The shiny black squirrels in the hood were cute too. I'm yet to see a skunk but everyone tells me they are prolific. I shall make friends with the skunks. Skunk spray totes smells like weed and burning rubber and apparently lasts for weeks if you get queefed on. So I shall be very sure to make friends with them before attempting any proximity visitations.

The twelve hour bus ride to Nelson from Vancouver felt like no time at all since the scenery through the mountains was so spectacular. I took photos of everything and then left my phone on the bus. So I have nothing to show you unfortunately. Them's the breaks kids. So I arrived in Nelson with five hundred dollars to my name and no phone. Lucky for me I have the most awesome brother in the world who generously loaned me some money to tide me over the next few weeks while I settle in here. Thanks Mike, I appreciate the support and shower you with energetic freddo frogs and chomps or whatever it is that you are truffling through at the moment :)

I have a bonafide address for at least six months, so all you people who have been frothing to send me pen-letters can finally make your fingers bleed from the enthusiasm and flood my mailbox! It's 1723 Ward Street, Nelson B.C.The postcode is V1L 1V9. I promise to write back and seal all letters with skunk spray once I make friends with said quasi-cat-dog-rodent-critters. You won't be disappointed. I'm living in the basement of a three story house on top of the hill overlooking town. I have three rooms to sprawl out in down there, as well as access to the cellar which smells sweetly of apples and pears plucked from the backyard orchard. I have no idea what to do with all the space, it's been so long since I've really occupied a space. But rest assured it's going to be a den of all things arty and extra-terrestrial. Speaking of which, I had a lot of photos of extra-terrestrial inspired artworks I completed in Guatemala but then I lost my phone so can't show you just yet. To be continued...

Nelson is an interesting town. It sits on top of a massive amethyst geode. Since all physical matter is energy condensed we are at all times energetically sharing information with our surrounds, and I am interested to feel the effects of that kind of huge crystal energy on my person. I must admit that the volcanoes I was surrounded with in Guatemala were a bit too feisty for me on the whole and I prefer an abundance of all the other elements. I already have a tendency to overheat because of a predominance of fire in my constitution, and that effect was doubled in Antigua. I had to seriously limit my intake of garlic and spices and heavy food, or put up with walking around overheated to the point of being unable to see properly amidst the molten sea of vacuousness going on inside me. I think I shall dub this kind of sensitivity to environmental surrounds as 'geopathy and 'geophilia'. I'm interested to hear of other humans' experiences with the geopathic smackdown.

Speaking of interesting geographical phenomena, on three separate occasions in my last month in Antigua I observed bright rainbow coloured light formations around the setting sun and in the clouds around the sun. Rainbows only ever form on the opposite side of the sky as the sun so it wasn't a misshapen rainbow. One of my physics/astronomy-enthusiast friends said he didn't know any naturally occurring phenomena that would produce such lights in the sky. A bit of research on the interwebs linked such lights to HAARP based climate control phenomena - these kinds of rainbow lights were observed in the sky before the earthquake disasters at Haiti and also in China. It doesn't mean that every rainbow light sighting in the sky signals a massive earthquake. But it might be evidence of HAARP interference with local weather patterns and natural tectonic plate movement. It could just as easily signal a HAARP suppression of minor tectonic movement so that it builds up to something major. Has anyone else seen anything like this of late?

How exciting that Nelson does not have fluoride in the local water supply! Rejoice! I have a feeling that it has something to do with the massive population of Freemasons in town (there are three masonic halls here and the three main families who own everything around here are masons). After all, the secret societies and upper echelons don't imbibe the same 'medicines' that they prescribe to the masses, and they would certainly want a fluoride-free water supply. Fluoride inhibits the uptake of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain, and in doing so creates a flood of serotonin. That sounds pretty exciting for anyone who loves feeling happy since serotonin is a feel good neurotransmitter on the whole. Ever watched the Stepford Wives though? For those who haven't the movie and book is inspired by the advent of Prozac and other SSRI anti-depressants - Prozac comprises 94% fluoride and regular imbibers of Prozac walk around in a vacuous haze smiling at everything and baking cupcakes like good wives would. There is nothing wrong with smiling or baking cupcakes. But if you are chemically induced into an agreeable mindset you allow sanctions upon your personal freedom that you would otherwise recognise as transgressions upon your personal integrity. WWII prisoners in Nazi camps were fed water with a fluoride at ten times the dosage currently in most water supplies today. Why? Humans dosed on fluoride will line up with few objections, even if they are lining up for a gas chamber or for some fiddling from Dr. Evil himself.

Fuck. That. 

What else is awesome about Nelson-town? There are organic fruit n veg collectives everywhere, recycled clothing stores, and communities of people offering sweatlodges, meditation evenings, dance workshops and the like. On Thursday nights at one of the local pubs there is a table tennis tourney!! I'm pretty rusty after a year of no paddle time and got butt-hurt in my debut to the tournament which had at least 50 people competing. But I am FROTHING to get back into it!!! I signed up for a sacred-geometry drawing course which starts next week and am losing sleep over how cool that is going to be. I just found out that two ripping producers of bass and ambient tunes in the form of the Desert Dwellers and Kaminana will be pouring themselves into some banging sets in a couple of weeks at the Spirit Bar. Holy carbunkled crab cakes, there is so much awesomeness to get amongst here! And did I mention that tonight I'm heading out to the local hot springs which are inside a cave?

Hallowe'en approaches and I'm going to roam the streets cackling at nothing on that night commemorating the destruction of Atlantis. I crotcheted a crooked beanie for myself to add to the witchiness and if it's cold I might wear other clothes too. But probably not. Nothing like a crazy lady running through town with no clothes on to scare the children after all.

I have two jobs all set to start in the coming weeks. I'm looking after a group of Waldorf school kids on Tuesday nights while their parents meet for a co-op. And I had my induction meeting for Whitewater Ski resort a couple of days ago, all set to cook in the ski resort in a few weeks when the snow really starts happening. And that job entitles me to a season ski pass in the mountains! I'm sure my next post will be full of photos of my falling over in various dignity-smashing poses down the slopes.

Also I'm going to start sharing more of the 'fairy-magic-pyjama-unicorn' things I'm into in this blog because it's a part of who I am and I'm not sure why I continue to hide it. I'll try add that stuff at the end so you can stop reading if it's not your deal. I totally understand what it's like to be smacked with a precipice of concepts that make absolutely no sense and sound crazy and every person in their own time I say. But I do have a growing number of friends that receive the same inputs from this reality we are co-creating so this is for you beautiful  beings! 

I changed the title of this blog because it's pretty obvious that I'm expanding the journey outside of the boundaries containing Guatemala. Also, to 'search' for something is an energetic choice to be without the very thing one is searching for. If you are looking for something then you can not simultaneously be in the same reality potential as the thing you are looking for. It sounds petty to joust over words like that but words are a powerful spell. The things we repeat over and over to ourselves in our minds become the realities we experience every day, be that illness or joy or whatever. It's all about taking sovereign responsibility for being here. 

Also, I am now regularly attuning myself with energy frequencies that are of interest to me and which I feel attracted to. I'm attuning myself in the same way that one would receive a reiki attunement, except that I'm not relying on someone else to channel the attunements to me. Of course this is possible. For various reasons we have been tricked into believing we are not capable of receiving the love of the universe direct to us without the help of a holier-than-thou conduit. This is bullshit. We are all from the same source, we are all special and we are all capable of opening ourselves to our full capacity and to be sensitive enough to feel and receive or refuse energy from myriad frequencies. You can change the channel on a television (if you still bother to feed your consciousness with that). There are so many more frequencies available and it's simply a matter of tuning in to a channel you enjoy and feeling what that is all about. Energy attunements I have received in the last few weeks are including but not limitied to benevolent Pleiadians, Reptilians and Arcturians, Praying Mantis ETs, Buddha, Jesus, Babaji, Paramahansa Yogananda, Tarantulas, Squirrels, Cicadas, Geese, Maple trees, amethyst, jade, quartz and fairies. I don't claim to be the most sensitive being around but there is a noticeable difference between each attunement and it's good fun fine-tuning sensitivity to these things. I hope to attain the sensitivity where I can discern the difference between different types of tarantulas - that would be awesome!

 The reason I started consciously attuning myself is because I get visitations from so many different non-physical beings that I get confused, and I'd like to know who's visiting and whether their intentions are benevolent. Also, a few weeks ago on my kindle two books just appeared without me having downloaded or paid for them. No one else has used my kindle in this time. One of the books was about self-attunements. The other book was the biography of Stan Romanek and all the strange abduction phenomena he has experienced in his life. A very interesting read on all accounts. Of course, there has been a lot of hoax-related criticism of Stan Romanek after he appeared on coast-to-coast with false evidence etc, but I wonder how much of that was a planted smear campaign, just like the bloody glove in the OJ Simpson trial ya know. The shoe doesn't always fit.

Guat You Say? Also Available for Children's Parties

Well, I just had the best day ever! It was Petrona's birthday today - she is one of the shoeshine kids I hang out with in central park most afternoons while I'm practing poi. Petrona's 9th birthday happened to fall on the same day as my Mum's birthday, and since I am not in the same locale to celebrate with Mum (happy birthday Mumsies!) it was a good excuse to throw a party for the shoeshine gang! I don't know who had more fun, me or the twelve kiddliwinks who for the most part work every day in central park shining shoes, selling chewing gum and making hair wraps for tourists. I must say that decorating party tables, screaming at nothing, dodging water balloons and inciting pinata violence are all things that I would like to do more of...

There was one thing that set this party of kids aside from any other kids party I've had the pleasure of being invited to. Every single one of them set aside a piece of fried chicken or a piece of cake to give to their parents when the party was over. I don't know about you, but when I was between the ages of zero and seventeen these kinds of altruistic thoughts were happening about as frequently as my desire to do the dishes or clean my room. I hang my head in shame and I am humbled by the beautiful nature of these children. All day, irrespective of blood sugar spikes, they were holding each other's hands and helping each other up and down in the playground and whatnot. If I reminisce to my childhood, I was the kid standing near the food table gargling all the little franks and then complaining of a stomach ache. Or piqueing out hard on fizzy drinks and becoming an obnoxious tyrannosaurus before remembering that I was really shy and trying to bury myself under the food table (with a bowl of little franks).

Yeah, I probably could have spent the same amount of money and done something more sensible like contributed to school fees or house rent. But I remember times when someone did something magical for me because magical occasions help kids to remember that they are special beings. This is especially important for kids who have been working since the age of four or five. Send in the clowns! Make it rain like a boss! Direct route to Hogwarts! Still, I do hope there are more sober and straight-thinking people out there taking care of these kid's school fees and rent, because if this is the future of Planet Earth then it is to be protected, nurtured and encouraged at all costs!

The table looked like this for about three seconds.

Miguel throws his meathooks into some papas fritas

Petrona was so excited when the cake came out that she cried! 

Petrona has her cake and eats it too thanks to prankster buddy, Dulce.

Oooh, another piece of candy...Oooh, another piece of candy...repeat until there is no more candy.

When all the snatch and grab subsided they all laid the candy out on the grass and shared it out fairly. How many kids do you know who would do that???

It was pretty much impossible to get anyone to be still after all that candy, but they insisted on this photo in the ruins. There's only ten kids here...I don't know where the other two went.

Jose assuming the ninja stance while Miguel photo-bombs like a boss.

Catching up with Petrona the day I returned to Guate.

Oh yeah did I mention that I'm back in Guate? 

The Canadian embassy decided that they required a police certificate from Guatemala declaring that I had not been involved in any shady antics. I think this is kind of dumb because in this country you can pretty much bribe your way out of anything. Anyway in order to get police clearance from Guatemala you either need to turn up in person or send your passport through the mail. I would rather smother my arms in beer batter and throw them in a deep fryer than send my passport through that gutter-like black hole of a postal service traversing Latino America. And so I find myself yet again in a country that I just can't seem to leave. I'll be kicking around in Antigua until (or if) I get the all-clear from Canada. 

 Rewind a couple of weeks back to the road-trip from Texas to North Carolina! Two solid days of driving for Lauren, too many coffees and a couple of cans of freeze-dried apocolypse strawberries later saw us finally crawl out of the Avenger to be birthed into the Bible belt of America. It's a beautiful drive, with more forest in Arkansas than I ever imagined would still exist in the States, and more churches than are possibly needed in every place we drove through. In Memphis we drove by a Mega-Church...you know the ones, they're bigger than Walmart and a preacher is being filmed for television and he makes people in the crowd speak in tongues and lose their shit. I would have liked to have gone inside to check it out in more detail but we were aiming for Nashville on the first leg of the trip. By the time we arrived in Nashville it was 2am and we were so tired that the motel we ambled into didn't look very suspicious. Even the name 'Apple Annies' seemed legit enough. The shrewd, scantily clad women slinking around like sewer rats looked a bit odd I suppose but when you're that tired it looks as normal as anything else going on in the circus that has started in your brain because dimethyltryptamine is leaking into your synapses unbeknownst to you. But the mirrors everywhere all facing the Californian Kingsize bed in our room were a dead giveaway. Whatever, we enjoyed the biggest bed we'd ever slept in, and if the dude behind the counter thought we were strange customers then good on him.

The next day's drive was more of the same, although swap all the aforementioned scenery for the delectable Smoky Mountains! I need to get back there for some hiking someday. I saw baby deer, armadilloes, squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, opossums and more! You name it, it was smashed into the tarmac and starting the slow rot to dust. Is it really that difficult to slow down for wildlife? I don't know...it just seems ridiculous. Lauren and I still got out of the car to poke a freshly bludgeoned squirrel. I know it's the closest I'm going to get to one of those elusive rodents, but with its eyes glazed over and staring at nothing it's just not the same.

See what I mean about too many coffees? Lauren wore her pyjamas for the entire roadtrip, and when we got to North Carolina a spider crawled out of them. The spider shat on her pyjamas and then walked away to continue being a boss somewhere else. Lauren still continued to wear the pyjama pants for days afterwards. This is a true story. I love you Lauren.

 I was only in North Carolina for a couple of weeks, sleeping on an air mattress in our lovely mate Sarah's laundry with Lauren. Ever shared an air mattress with a buddy before? If one of you moves the whole bed moves. I move a lot in my sleep. I'm sorry Lauren. But seriously we humans can adapt to any conditions. I even slept on the laundry tiles one night because I was getting up to pee every half an hour and when you get off an air mattress it makes grunting sounds like a warthog truffling around for snacks. That night of sleeping on the tiles might have been the deepest sleep I've had all year! If there is one major evolution in my consciousness that I have experienced this year it is in the sharing of space, and allowing any space whatsoever to be the space that I am the most happy in. For those two weeks in North Carolina that laundry was the best bedroom ever and I slept like the dead. I am extremely grateful to lovely Sarah and people like Sarah who open their homes to dusty travellers and allow us to share in the portion of reality they inhabit. Rabble rabble, I am rambling and the pictures will tell the story...

I like this old-school factory scene from North Carolina, because it reminds me of the front cover of one of my favourite Pink Floyd cd's - Animals.

Old-Salem in Winston-Salem is like walking through a scene from The Crucible, although it's not the same Salem (that's in Massachusetts)

Pointless waste of life, innit. Which war? All of them. Really fucking pointless. Who wants to play in this park? No one except for the woodchuck who trolled through here as we were climbing trees looking for Cicadas bursting from their old skins.

Lauren found a cicada. Muy divertido.

Trees in the States grow to astounding sizes and I felt like I was in an enchanted fairy garden at all times. 

I bought some LED poi in the states. Check them lights yo!

These muso's were cranking out the rock, and I am so thankful for the burst of delightful live music I enjoyed in the states.

Picnic at Hobby Park with Emmy, Lauren and Sarah. Picnic contents as follows - Chocolate peanut-butter bars, chili mango strips, chocolate coated potato chips, block of chocolate, and one pack of sushi. Strange tummy sensations ensue.

Well if you're going to call all the candy silly names like Dippy Goos and such, I'm going to buy more because it's funny. Oh wait what just happened!!!

Nothing too crazy happened in North Carolina to speak of. Sarah's partner Chuck introduced me to the hilarity that is 'disc-golf', where you use a frisbee instead of a golf ball and attempt to pot said frisbee into a net at the end of each hole. Needless to say I was really, really good at this. Good at throwing the frisbee into the trees I mean. As I keep repeating, the plethora of squirrels is more than enough amusement for me and I don't need to worry about potting a frisbee in a net. There were squirrels chittering all over the course...it was all I could do to refrain from squealing.

Oh yeah and as well as working on illustrations for a children's book, I've also started playing around with new painting techniques on the side. For your viewing pleasure...none of these are finished but show and tell is fun.

 Aaaaand all of this brings me back to the now, where I find myself in the fine company of this outdoor lounge that is a common feature in Guatemalan homes and the like. This is my home until Canada decides I'm worthy of an entrance stamp. If there was one awesome thing to come from being in the States it's the realisation that I don't do well on stodgy food...back to a wheat-free vegan diet for me! Oh and I quit coffee too! The comedown had me looking like I was lead zombie from Day of the Dead. For four days, absolute horror. I was so vacuous that on one walk in the park I fell asleep on the grass and I have absolutely no recollection of lying down. I bought a portable blender to help with the 'Kelly goes straight edge' cause.

I made a quick weekend trip to Monterico which is a few hours in a bus from Antigua. Just in time to watch BABY TURTLES hatch and scuttle across the sand into the evening loam. Is anything as cute as a baby turtle? Squirrels come close and that is all.

And with any luck my next post will be from the powdery mountain known as Whitewater in Nelson B.C! Adios!