"The only people for me are the mad ones.. The ones who are mad to love, mad to talk, mad to be saved... Desirous of everything.
Who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn burn burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the sky... And in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everyone goes ahhhh..."
This Quote from Jack Keroac's epic masterpiece biography of a gypsy called "On The Road" has meant something to me since the first time I heard it.
I don't remember exactly when that was...
But I reference it in my personal poetic manifesto i call "affirmative madness"...
The words are tattooed on my brother Ross's arm...
A few years ago at Christmas I painted a treasure chest box for my mother's art supplies and scribed it on the rounded top in multicolor acrylics...
I have recited it a million times to a million friends and strangers, most recently said those words with my eyes closed around the bonfire on the island a few days ago.
I feel it... I taste it with all the squiggly fibers in my heart.
I know what he's talking about.
I'm a mad one- and they're the only ones for me too.
Between sampoerna smoke and big half empty bin tangs splashing against the green glass bottles, the shirtless boys- half brazilian residents of this place, and half American surfers- rode a skateboard back and forth along the wooden planks of the restaurant...
Kick flipping and falling, laughing though some were bleeding...
The low moon-like light glimmering out through shell lamps that gracefully hang from the ceiling illuminating perfectly still, abandoned hammocks and the sound of crashing waves just meters away was juxtaposed in the moment by Nirvana blasting to the point of blowing out the surround sound speakers...
The boys banged their heads to the feedback noise/music and sang inaudible lyrics into the necks of their beer bottles.
Suddenly one of the twenty something boys ran out from behind a pole holding a roman candle triumphantly above his head, and in a moment that reminded me fully of my days teaching preschool - they were all off - on the mad tangent that had just been born in that moment.
They all leaped up and flew down the stairs and across the grass- weaving between palm trees and towards the hut of their main photographer who had hours before slunk off to bed amidst boos and hisses from the rest of the crew who shared not a single inkling of the same idea that it was time for bed.
He would be awoken to a roman candle hiss and seconds later a boom that would streak those spiders across the sky and light up his dark bungalow and the palm trees surrounding us all.
This is my present reality.
I sat with some of these mad ones before the skateboard has come out... We sat on rattan furniture with feet up on various tables and objects. I drew a picture in a book with colored pencils and recalled stories from the past- the conversation circled around music, drugs, and drunken incidents from our adolescence.
My adolescence felt like it happened a lot longer ago then these young kids.
I realized while talking to mu new friend Dylan who happens to be from Malibu (the next town from where i grew up) that my ten year high school reunion was coming up in a few months but i'd be here in never-never land playing mermaid masseuse and yogini.
One of the guys today told me I was "very grounded" to which I threw my head back and laughed out loud... But I was actually totally flattered by what I took as a major compliment.
To call a gypsy hippie mermaid vagabond "grounded" is a big statement but he said it with conviction and believe it or not, I actually believed it.
I guess I am tossing around this idea - or more like an actual realization- that I can be a roman candle exploding like a spider across the sky and still be grounded somehow.
It doesn't make sense with my rational, realistic mind... How to feel the ground beneath you even as you fly...
But it seems maybe I'm finding that sweet spot in the center of heaven and earth- the breath between the ocean waves...
That space between where My body ends and I begin.
I can still be me- a mad one- a Zanimal - a truly authentic bizarre creative traveling spirit dancing on the gypsum breeze - and also be grounded- a yogi.
I think this is the truly real me anyway- the me that accepts and honors all parts of me... The dark and light- the high and low- the yin and yang.
David Applebaum, piano extrordanaire, member of the mowgli's, and ex-roomie of mine at the OM hOMe in Venice Beach- sent me a voicenote recording today of the two of us playing "come fly with me" on his keyboards years ago.
It felt like yesterday and also a million years ago that we were living in that house - I was still unable to honor the many me's at that point and would push myself to stay up- to party- to be the roman candle- when the yogi inside me was aching and calling out for me to go crawl into a quiet space and be with my thoughts, my words, my art, my spirit.
I lost the grounded me then...
It's ironic that I found her again among roman candles and punk rock in a third world country on the other side of earth with no money or real possessions to call my own...
But I laughed at the end of the recording.
I laughed the exact same full, guttural laugh that bellowed in my chest - the exact same way I laughed in real life on this island as I looked out at palm trees that monkeys were swinging in- and I laughed on the recording where I would have been sitting on the edge of the bed in the green jungle room in Venice facing my friend David...
I'm still the same Zani as I was then... And that's really cool.
I'm still a roman candle.
Only tonight I sat and watched the explosion from the restaurant.
I didnt jump up and follow the guys like the tigerlily I used to be.
I didn't paint my face and play fight pirates and Indians with the boys... A few years ago I would have been the first to leap off the steps and through the jungle.
Today I can sit and participate from afar.
And now I'm in my sleeping nook upstairs. The chaos is still happening underneath me and I can love them all from here as I fall asleep and dream of wonderful things and places I am going to go to or maybe somewhere new that i will create with my mad imagination.
Is this growing up?
Or am I just discovering that I'm a grounded yogi and a roman candle at the same time?
Either way- I'm here- and thats the moral of that.
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