jane__innerviews___redtree jane what is the weather like where you are? how do you feel about ice? do you make music? if so, how would you describe it? do your moods change with the moon? how do you decide who to innerview? what should i do with all the little pieces of wood i have collected? 070906 ... rtree the weather in western pennsylvania is very hot, 88 degrees. i am sunburned and exhausted by it. ice is very nice and well appreciated. i drink reeds ginger brew with ice almost every night. the only music i actually make is when i play the recorder at my clown shows. it's the way i announce my story time to the kids. it's gypsy clown music. i don't think my moods change with the moon, unless i'm simply not aware of it. i love the moon. i always did. i remember sitting in the back seat of my parents' car watching it, as if it was slicing through trees and mountains and riding along with us. i love moonlight on stones, on the sea, the soft shadows it makes. i love to be able to see the full moon from my bedroom window and watch it. a full moon is such a comfort somehow. evidence of how circles are necessary for completion. i love to talk to people that are interesting. at blather, i usually investigate posts and look for words and ideas i like and want to know more about...the reasons why people write what they do... as for your wood...i guess it would depend what kind of wood it is... if it was driftwood, you could make a sculpture or a mobile...or if it is scrap wood, you could piece it together and make a collage and then paint it...or at least if you are ever really cold or if you want to hang outside under the stars with mr. blue eyes and you need to build a fire, well, there you go. 070906 ... jane what movies are you into right now? how is the situation with your cats? what is some advice for someone who is in a creative block? what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? is it care-ah-melle or car-mull? 070928 ... rtree we haven't been to the theatre in squirrel hill (pittsburgh neighborhood) for quite a while. we love going to movies there because it's usually crowded with people who love films and they laugh out loud and even stand up during the film to shout or raise a fist or cheer. i can't even remember the last one i saw. i'm embarrassed to say the "nanny diaries," but my wife IS a nanny and so i kind of had to see it. but i've seen some cool art documentaries on photographers at home on dvd and my wife and i are currently watching "weeds" season 1 and 2. it's killer. i want to see "factory girl." i saw sienna miller reading her script for that film in the lobby of the chelsea hotel when we stayed there. i hit the stray cat with a big rock and he hasn't been back since. my cats are doing much better without the terrorist slinking about. thanks for asking. makes me feel good that i could help them out, you know , play the big bad super power country stepping in to help out the poor country. do something new. it will somehow work its way into your art and be a reason to say your art is actually evolving. my new rave ice cream is woo city. it's made in ohio and it's organic! and i love ciao bella coconut! "car-mull," in these here parts. that's how we be saying it. 070928 ... jane you seem to have traveled a lot..? where have you been and what have been your favorite places/experiences with traveling? or feel free to share traveling horror stories, sometimes they can be fun to laugh at later. can you discuss a bit on your views of the importance of the family unit? you have been married with children for quite a while as i take it, and i would love to get some insight on the experience {my parents were married for 14 years before they divorced}. and maybe some insights about what it's like to raise children & see them go off to college? what's your favorite kind of weather? do you ever eat fast food? do you feel bad about it afterwards if you do? is there any kind of food that makes you just always feel good? do you schedule out your days at all, or do you kind of let the day take you as it will? 071016 ... r t r e e sunshine_comes_quietly i love to travel and usually make a trip every march. however, this year, since my oldest daughter bethany is getting married at robin_hill in june2008 (in which skites are invited...for skite definition, that's a different philosophy altogether} we will probably being saving our funds. however, my mom is flying us out to california in december of this year for my brother's annual/very cool christmas party in ventura...which means no berkeley/portland next march. boo-hoo! but, sometimes working for the family is more important... still, i like to travel and do consider everyday as a sort of trip somewhere. i work as a personal gardener, and so i'm always driving from one house to another, immersed into particular adventures, always coming home with a story. my favorite traveling experience ? hmmm...i'm really having trouble with that question...so many. too numerous to delineate...treehouse in mt. rainer? earthship in taos? premiere party with de niro in the tribeca grand? worst? doing a puma commercial while missing the train outside of seattle. fortunately, it stopped so i could get back on, however embarrassed. *************************************************** the family unit...i would have to go all the way back to when i first wanted to have children. that would be at age 17. i always wanted girls. i had three. i met my wife at a christian youth meeting in the basement of a church built in 1897. it actually was love at first sight. she was everything i wanted in one glance...beautiful...smart...willing to take risks...affectionate...supportive...yet, demanding and needy...how did i know this? vision. once i took her on a date to the stick hut i made in the woods behind orchard hill, the small neighborhood i grew up in. we hiked and ate trout i cooked over a log burning fire. i looked into her eyes and saw our future. i called it rynomari. two years later i rode a bus to california. she would leave florida and join me. we made a life in a one bedroom apartment five minutes from the waves. when our first daughter was born, i stopped surfing and we began our family. actually, we were so thrilled when kathy discovered she was pregnant. we were so giddy and loving life completely. i made her do all these pre-birth exercises and classes. but, it was fun and educational. even if we grew disillusioned to thinking we were going to have the perfect birth experience...(more later...) 071023 ... redtree the birth was long and intense and the doctor had to use suction ...when she came out and i saw her for the first time, it was like she was being created in front of me. i was crying and laughing at the same time. an epitome of happiness that will only be equaled, never surpassed...and to think she is the one getting married...(actually i saw her today...we planted 50 maureen marbled white tulips in her moon garden today in the rain.) we were three then...kathy breast fed. i took turns getting up to rock her back to sleep. family began. i just asked kathy why we waited three years to have another child. "we were in the moment," she said. with hilary born three years later, beth was growing up fast, playing big sister and maria from the sound of music at the same time. we listened to new age music, had no television, performed puppet shows, made up songs, and visited worlds we made up in our heads. two more years and greta came, although her birth was most difficult of all. we thought we were going to lose her and even when she survived, they said she would have learning difficulties. (she made the dean's list last semester.) family was the reason we decided to uproot ourselves when the girls were 6, 3, and 1. we left california in a 1984 volkswagon vanagon and drove to the east coast on a 16 day odyssey of reawakening. no jobs, no place to live...my parents did help,but recreating ourselves was like recovering from a severe injury, a healing, like sheakespeare said, "by degrees." little by little we took root, grew new leaves, and prospered. we homeschooled the girls, rented a 100 acre farm for four years, and ended up buying a small farmhouse with five acres, robin_hill where we live today. we disciplined. we hugged. we had our fights. but we never went to bed mad at each other. we took turns giving five minute back-rubs. we read books out loud to each other. we played games. we cared for animals and cried when they died. oh, and so much in between. 071023 ... redtree i remember when we said goodbye to greta the first time we left her at college. all five of us were standing on the street in nolita. we took turns hugging her. when it was kathy's turn she just erupted. it was so hard, but so good. we're extremely proud of our baby girl. the little one who always tagged along and had to play the boy roles in all of the plays they made up. i talk to her on the fone often now...just yesterday about how she's riding her one speed schwinn across the manhattan bridge from her new kensington, brooklyn place. she's a snowboard instructor so i know she' playing the ride like a game. i once rode my bike to work for eight years. it's all about staying in touch. i make her mix cds. i make her magazines. she tells me about all of the projects she's working on. she'll be home for thanksgiving at her sister's new house, but unfortunately for us, she'll be shooting a documentary in kenya over christmas. 071024 ... red tree weather is huge for me because of my gardening business so i'm used to working in every and all kinds...i prefer puffy white clouds in a vibrant blue sky and about 65 degrees. that's perfect for me. i rarely eat fast food. i had 2 burritoes at taco bell once this summer and hilary and i shared a pumpkin pie blizzard at dairy queen last week. it was fun and i don't feel guilty about it because i'm normally aware and disciplined to the eating of good, holistic food. kathy could be a holistic counselor with all the knowledge she has accumulated. we are very experienced with growing organic food, sprouts, herbal remedies, juicing...etc. recently we have discovered cacao (raw chocolate) gogi berries, and himalayan rock salt... ************************************************* my days are usually scheduled because i have many gardening clients and too much work to do...however it's all about squaring the circle...framing the day into bite-sized valuable moments...loving people for who they are, chatting them up, smiling, asking them about their grandchildren, talking about their journies...and then when i come home there are animals to feed, presents to work on (the prize for rclg) plus i'm copying out affame le geant into a graphic novel type form...so i guess i'm a stick floating on my own stream...hopefully i'm one of plato's prisoners that broke free from the cave, no longer forced to see the shadows of puppets in the firelight. now i see the sun! 071024 ... jane beautiful. thank you. 071024 ... jane speaking of birthdays, when is yours? re: today's rclg question, what would you send up to space? 071126 ... btree jane...this is why i love you so much... music: i would definately send up an ipod full of radiohead, sigur ros, innocence mission, american watercolor movement, tresspassers william, matt pond pa, the very hush hush, black heart procession, yann tiersen, tons of movie soundtracks, old musicals, operas, classical pieces (bach, mozart, hayden, especially beethoven's 9th digitally drawn out to last 24 hours...) and live footage of bonaroo, coachella, and glastonbury music festivals... books: "watership down" by richard adams "proust was a neuroscientist" by jonah lehrer "les miserables" and "the hunchback of notre dame" by victor hugo films: "waking life" by richard linklater "the virgin spring" by ingmar bergman "a nightmare before christmas" by tim burton a documentary of burning man ...and i would include an hd camera for them to make their own film. art: the rclg prize children's artwork that i have collected banksy jenny holzer andy warhol cartier-bresson sophie calle claude monet poetry: keats, bukowski, whitman, dickinson and then i would just play around a bit with a tape recorder and tell stories and jokes and read some stuff i wrote...perhaps i could even interview some folks... 071126 ... oh my god i forgot my birthday...o221 071126 ... jane funny you mentioned black heart procession, have you ever seen them play live? 071127 ... bare tree no, but i do enjoy the video of "not just words" with shannyn sossamon dancing about...have you seen them? 071127 ... jane i did see them here in sacramento at the old capitol garage in october of 2002, with pleaseeasaur, who i wish i could follow around the globe. it was a fantastic combination because it was so bizarre (i mean pleaseeasaur is bizarre anyway, but a total dichotomy with bhp). to this day that show has been my argument for multi-genre music shows, instead of all punk shows, or all hip-hop shows. i like variety. and it bothers me that we can't get booked because no one in town is really doing what we're doing. it's very frustrating. anyways, i think i'm supposed to be innerviewing you. :) here are some fun ones: if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be and why? if you were a fruit, what kind of fruit would you be and why? if you were a color, what color would you be and why? if you were a time of year/season, what time of year/season would you be and why? 071128 ... warmth and ashes tree i love trees. i always have. when i was little, there was a crabapple tree that grew on the property line between my family's house and our neighbor, where my best friend vikki lived. we fought over who that tree belonged to. i spent countless summer hours under its spreading branches absorbed in imaginative play. i studied the bees that got drunk on the juices of its rotting green fruit and i remember the day another friend and i had a funeral for a rat beneath it. i work with trees quite often. i suggest certain types to my clients. i wrestle their heavy rootballs into my truck. i pull my back. i plant them, water them, prune them, cut them down, turn their branches and trunks into firewood, but mostly i love when in the spring, my favorites, like kwanzen cherries and bradford pears flower out...yet, it's the saucer magnolia that wins my heart, for she and her ineffable fragrance stun me every time. i could pass out from smelling her delicate, inner petals. and i love our 100 year-old/100' twisted, gnarly walnut trees here at robin_hill. there are ten of them and they are like sentinels. we also have several huge, 100 year-old white pines that surround our farmhouse and sing their high-pitched ancient songs when heavy winds pass like fingers through their string-like needles. and i am always thrilled after a snowfall, how our trees hold it in their arm-like branches, covered, dipped with buttery, creamy frosting. still, if i were to be a tree, i would be shel silverstein's "giving tree." why? because, there is no other reason why we are here on this earth, but to live by giving everything we have. 071207 ... warmth and ashes i also think it's amazing how a tree's roots are so deep and search the soil for water and nutrients, no matter what the earth offers it. i've seen trees cling to the sides of cliffs growing in practically all rock. but what they do manage to find they absorb and transmit. take in and send forth, like us breathing or eating, turning oxygen and nutrition into something living our blood can carry throughout our bodies. i've seen trees get sick and drop their leaves early to protect themselves. i've seen them get attacked by insects but allow only parts of themselves die. and even when they die, they become habitation for woodpeckers and the like, for burrowing insects, until, with time they fall to the ground. i remember once when i was alone in the woods and became stuck in a torrential downpour. the only shelter i had was a fallen tree whose whole insides had become hollowed out just large enough for me to crawl inside and wait out the storm. that's the kind of tree i want to be. 071207 ... crOwl fruit i loved blackberries as long as i can remember. it probably was the first fruit i ever picked on my own because they grew around my house. my friends and i would put them in a bowl and pour milk and sugar on them and munch away. but it was the silvery, purple liquid that remained which became some kind of nectar of the gods that i sipped with absolute relish, wishing the bowl would never empty...i would want to be a blackberry because it is the one fruit that basically represents my true nature...the blackberry is an aggregate fruit that consists of many other smaller fruits called drupes...kind of like how our soul consists of many smaller souls, or how our "self" consists of many smaller individual selves that all collectively form one person...also has that sense of community...like red_blather, where individuals unite to form a whole. i also love avocados and would probably like to be one of those just because i could live in california again. i lived in ventura from 1979 to 1989. i would climb avocado trees and vehemently shake the branches and then gather up the fallen fruit in five gallon buckets. kathy and i would place them on the windowsill of her little house at the bottom of a hill of nasturium and sage and impatiently wait for them to ripen, squeezing them everyday until they were ready. we ate them so many different ways...plain, on goodwiches, in rice, with lemon juice and salsa, but the greatest memory was mashing them up for the girls when they were babies. "cado, daddy?" they would say, blinking eyes as big as saucers. i guess i would want to be an avocado because as a person i want to be able to mix well with other people...be open...compliment the other...and perhaps the waiting for the ripening involves the creation of something...patiently allowing it to develop in its time. 071212 ... crOwl kind of weird i said, "her little house" i meant "our" OoooOOOhhhh spooky freudian slip! 071212 ... crOwl color we left california when our girls were 6, 3, and 1. we drove cross country in a 1984 volkswagen vanagon that kathy's grandmother bought for us. it took us sixteen days and we kept a family journal. i interviewed the girls all along the way and they drew pictures of what they saw, like the grand canyon, the native americans of santa fe, and the endless rows of midwestern corn. once when we were in new mexico at a flea market in a dried-out riverbottom, a native-american woman took one look at hilary's blue eyes and removed her chunky turquoise necklace and put it around hilary's neck for her to keep free of charge. she said they were as blue as her eyes. i wear two turquiose rings. one is my wedding band i bought in albuquerque. the other i bought last march in a return visit to santa fe, eighteen years later. and even you, margeaux, said, "...more or less turquoise." i am also fascinated by the sanguine red of my own shimmering blood oozing from the surface of my skin after being torn by a rose thorn. or the orange of a shiny persimmon ready to pick from the tree. the yellow of lemons in a handcrafted bowl from a friend when asked what he like about snowboarding all he said was, "the clouds," because that's what he saw when he looked up. or the bright, lively green of euonymus alatus compacta when it flushes out in the spring. or the purple of wine. but BEING a color is much more than simply admiring its beauty. if i were to be a color, i would think of immanel kant and ask these three important questions first. "what can i know? what ought i to do? what may i hope?" i would be the first color of the morning when darkness submits to the light at the edge of a cloudless horizon, crisp and true, with a promise of cheerful alacrity. i would know that all who behold me would say to themselves, "this will be a day like no other." i would enter their soul and guide them to the highlights. i would hope that the memory would be preserved. 071213 ... c r 0 w l season fall into winter because there's such a sense of completion and well deserved rest. life requires boatloads of responsibility...so many boxes to check. fullfilling what's expected and demanded of you is a crowning achievement...kind of like when all the leaves fall from the trees, each one representing something that had to be done... i guess i love that feeling when i can sigh forth out of exhaustion knowing i've worked hard...i've done my best, and it's over...at least until the next thing comes. when snow is a blanket, sleep is more than just closing the eyes. rest is a chance to live a completely different life. 080127 ... unhinged (you are a hollowed out tree kevin. one that i have crawled in, to watch the ants of thoughts scurry and work and scamper to make homes in my head. one that i have crawled in when the storm of my life gets ready to blow me away. reading your reminisces of your beautiful family made me tear up a little. what i wouldn't give to live where i could have avocado trees in my yard....mmmmm) thanks for this jane. i'm too much of a peacock to ask him questions in return. oh kevin. a cusp pisces. now our affinity to each other makes cosmic sense. (and i feel like a horrible friend for not knowing that before now) 080127 ... jane regardless of your actual beliefs, if there is an afterlife, what would you like it to be? {jeez does this question even make sense? i am so non-eloquent today} 080306 ... redTree awesome question which i'll be giving a lot of chairlift thought today... 080307 ... redTree i like this question a lot because you are giving me the freedom to tell you what i WANT it to be, which excludes me from any scientific restrictions... i want to return to wherever i began...plain and simple. i want to go home. where is it? i have no clue except for a few instances that give me glimmers of hope and possibility. once when i was 18, i passed out from an exhausted week of poor eating and too much partying and fell on a crowded street in ft. lauderdale and banged my face against an iron post. my girlfriend told me i was laying there flat out having seizures. however, the whole time i was unconscious, i felt like i was in the presence of some type of comforting beings who cradled me in their laps and massaged my face. granted, this could have all been in my brain, i know...then a few years later, i fell asleep at the wheel and rolled my car down an embankment. the whole time it was happening, i felt extreme peace and woke totally uninjured, walking away from it without a scratch. as result, i'm not afraid of death in the least bit, actually i'm quite looking forward to it when it happens. six years ago, i was at my father's death bed and watched his spirit being physically yanked from his body. his eyes which had been closed for days, suddenly opened, brightened wide, and then, poof! he was gone. where did his spirit go? i want my spirit to live on. i want to have awareness of my soul's ongoing evolution and discover the beginning of all things. i want to be able to say, "oh my god, so that's how it is!" i want to hug my dad again for real, not just in dreams. i want to go to a timeless party and hang out with all the influential thinkers, writers, artists, and people who did great things in their day. i want to be a child again, yet in a parallel universe where things are tweaked fantastically different than this world and this time inhabit a body with a high-minded awareness and understanding of what it means to be a child. to experience newness and first times with a fearless and confident wonder. it's interesting though because somehow i'm trying to do all of these things here...and in some ways, even though most of it is imagined, i am. yay! for me! 080308 ... jane what are you living for? what would you die for? what would you kill for? (someone had to do it) 080510 ... redTree i'm living for sensory perception, observation, balance, empiricalness, exegesis of the imagination, interconnectedness, discovery, awareness, satisfaction, definition, magnification, legacy, fun, staying calm while others lose it, and of course my family. i would die for a member of my family if it meant they would not die. i would not hesitate to kill someone if they murdered a member of my family. 080512 ... jane you have been chosen as the world's new super hero, but you can possess only one power that you must select from the following two choices... 1. the ability to fly 2. the ability to be invisible which one do you choose? why? what will you call yourself? 080709 ... unhinged pretending to be jane do you use fertilizers in your work? what plants grow the best with minimal additions to the soil? are there any plants better suited to the house for someone who kills them easily? i can't have pets in my new place so i'm thinking of starting a little indoor garden. i also don't have much direct sunlight. for selfish reasons 080709 ... rt since i am a cuckoo bird i can already fly, so i will become invisible and i will be known as, "the great nothing." that way i can save people without them knowing it. sure, i use fertilizers...for outdoor plants the best is compost made with bat guano, next best is chicken manure...because of the high concentration of nitrogen and proper ratio of potassium and phosphorus. a good synthetic indoor plant fertilizer is miracle gro. use it once a week when you water. if you're doing an indoor garden...go with cacti or philodendron...they're low maintenance and do well without much light...if you're looking for good low light flowers indoors...orchids bloom a really long time... 080709 ... unhinged orchids....orchids i always liked the flowers that looked like they had faces; like the mad hatter scene in disney's alice in wonderland. where all the flowers came to life; that was my favorite part. i remember being enchanted with pansies when i was young cause of their little faces. trader joe's has lots of nice orchid plants. lots and lots 080711 ... redTree the world has more orchids in any form that you want. you have to allow yourself to see its beauty;to recognize for what you behold in that moment. 080711 ... redTree please remove the word, "for." 080711 ... j you have been chosen as the world's new super hero, but you can possess only one power that you must select from the following two choices... 1. the ability to fly 2. the ability to be invisible which one do you choose? why? what will you call yourself? 080714 ... p ummm.... i think she's quite happy just doing her knitting. 080714 what's it to you? who go blather from