something about conscious evolution and the bus

We had a group meeting the other day to talk about the way our purpose has evolved based on our experiences so far in our journey, and found a great sense of focus, and a renewed feeling of purpose.   We brainstormed ways to better walk our talk, and steps we can take towards evolving consciously.  See the Mission section of the blog for an updated statement of what we are trying to achieve, and read excerpts below!

Our bus seeks to become a model for an alternative way to coexist, in which individuals are empowered to sustain themselves and enrich a community through their strengths and passions.   We want to demonstrate through our project that creative and critical exchange with diverse voices and networks is imperative for this lifestyle to function well.  In this way, we seek to learn and teach life practices that are sustainable, responsible and respectful to ourselves, each other and our environment. 

Before we can really move forward we must find an alternative to powering our trip with diesel fuel, and move cleanly between communities.    If we can afford to modify a vegetable oil fuel system to power the Spes Bus we can stop wasting energy and time traveling with an expensive, unsustainable technology that contradicts our most basic values.

We will be working with an alternative automechanic in Asheville over the course of the next month to outfit our bus with a veggie oil system.  We will need to add an extra, heated tank for the oil and a filtration system so we may recycle waste oil into our fuel.  Dave, our mechanic has been converting diesel vehicles to veggie for years, and has an outstanding reputation in the Asheville area.   He has agreed to apply his experience in veggie mechanics to our house on wheels, and furthermore to teach us his design as when we install it in his shop.   This enables us to maintain and teach our system as we travel.

Our kit, including all parts Dave needs to build his system except the giant tank we'll need to squeeze somewhere in the undercarriage, comes from the Organic Mechanic, a trusted source of equipment for the diesel to veggie conversion.  It costs 2, 229 dollars.  We will also need to buy a second large tank to hold the oil to be recycled.  The remainder of our minimum budget is to compensate Dave for his time installing and teaching us about our modifications.  To afford the project, we will attempt to have it approved by the well known creative fundraising platform called Kickstarter. Alternatively, we will create an independent fundraiser here on the blog following their model.

This conversion is imperative for the short and long-term success of our endeavor.  One foundational promise we have made as a community is to live as sustainably as possible, taking good care of our planet, creating a cycle of good health.  We wish to treat the towns, collectives, farms and families we visit, however large or small, with the same respect, using our time and skills to incite creative collaboration in the arts and participate in community projects.  Relationships formed in these contexts yield mutual education and inspiration, understanding and happiness.   When we spend our time well in a place, we leave behind us, in gratitude, finished projects, musical experiences, works of art, creative ideas and thoughtful dialogue. 

Check Point

As our trusty mechanic, Jim says, it's time to

"Check your oil.  Check your tire pressure.  Check yourselves."

We on the space bus have been talking a lot about how the moment feels like the closing of the first chapter of the trip, and the opening of another.  We are comfortable with each other...trust and patience abound within the family.  We are all beginning to get a grip on our personal struggles and to define our personal goals, and encouraging and supporting one another in all this.  Problems on the bus these days seem to be external, rather than internal, which almost make them not problems, because what is a problem up against six creative and optimistic heads, hearts?

We've made our current priority the addition of a veggie oil system to Loki, so we might have a chance at affording to continue our quest across the country later this summer.   The list included a tour of our neighbor's veggie school bus (front engine, 90s), research on what system would work best for our old girl (rear engine, 80s),  finding a suitable mechanic or enough people who know what they are doing to help us, then to install a veggie filtration system, extra tank, heater and additional fuel lines to the engine.


Yesterday I spoke with Dr. Dave, veggie oil man in Asheville, yesterday, and worked out a deal where if we pay him for parts and labor, he will not only convert our bus but teach us how as he does so.  Great!  Because we were nervous about paying someone to convert Loki and then not having a clue about how to troubleshoot and maintain the system.  Dr. Dave is well reputed in Asheville as a guy who knows his stuff, recommended to us by a girl who converted her own bus and another guy who runs his own machine shop in the river arts district. Says the tank, the kit, and some additional valves are going to  run us just under 2,000, and figure 15 hours at 80/hr in labor.  So onto our list goes the task of raising 3,000 dollars in the next month. Today I will make headway into a brand new kickstarter page with which we will fundraise just for Loki's operation.


The first priority indicates it's time to leave Burnsville and head to Asheville, where lie the resources.  Which brings us to the next overdue project...thanking everyone who has made our stay in the Burnsville area so rich, rewarding and enjoyable.  So we threw a party last night on the farm!  A potluck, in honor of our Philly roots and a Southern tradition, and everyone we know from three towns was invited.  Fried chicken, and sliced watermelon, and soup with the greens Jeff and Brad and Max and I weeded for down the road, peach moonshine and pasta salad, an evening jam around the piano in the trailer bed still hitched to the truck, a fire and old sing-alongs underneath a huge Carolina night sky.  Much laughing, hugging, strong voices, love, gratitude.  One huge family all together, who we know we will come back to now and again. 

 

There's talk of reevaluating our mission statement, paying special attention to the transition between our intentions leaving Philly and our understanding of what we are after now.  The trip took us, in many ways.  We have been so much in the moment every day for the past five months that the journey has molded our values, dreams, perspectives a little each day. As a result, what we say we want today is much closer to the truth than it was five months ago.  It is still community, still to live according to values we develop through experience, rather than scripture, still a better understanding of unconditional love, and even more so today than ever to nurture our creativity and gifts to the world.  We are still looking for a space to ground the community, rooms of our own.  I think our mission has evolved to include the very important need to be ourselves, check in often with what we want as individuals, make sure we are giving ourselves permission to be it, do it, find it.  That, we have learned, is when a community functions best, when communication becomes second nature and cooperation not a hurdle.  We have not, as we thought, been able to squeeze extra travelers on the bus comfortably, but we have much more than we thought shared creative space and projects with others as our paths intersect along the way.  Local and healthy eating have become much more fundamental to our vision for the trip and especially for the Someday Space, wherever it puts down its roots.  A farm is most definitely on the blueprint, now.


I would add to our mission statement and current priority list CONNECTIVITY.  One of our surrogate road moms, joy, used the word when she was describing what is important to her in her life now, by the campfire last night.  We have been so blessed with being raised by supportive families, by our Fuhrly extended family back in Philly, by each other, and by all the adoptive siblings, parents, guardians who we have picked up throughout this trip.  Our network is such a special one, and so enormous, at this point, I think we must be very committed to nurturing it, reviving it often with correspondence and visits.  I'm not sure we would be successful at what we are trying to exemplify without such a magical family, and to lose touch would be taking our very foundation for granted.  And I certainly want to be a part of this family as it grows, which it must.  I am going to compile a master contact list for Loki in the next couple of weeks.  So, if you would like to be added to it, please send whatever contact info you would like us to have to lokithespacebus@gmail.com. If not,  I will come find you!

Thanks for reading, family.  Be well.

special moments

"they said we were just people"

Here is the beginning of a story I am writing; you will have to follow along for X amount of time to know it all! Love, rabbie.

They said we were just people, but I knew better than that. We were magical creatures flying through space and time on our space ship knowing it was not really space and time at all, but an illusion. All that really means is that we were aware of the fact that our lives were just ours, in our own hands, and so we treated them so. This is not the way that other humans were acting, for it was in a time of great selfishness and corruption that we began that glorious journey. All we really wanted to do was be free, and all I wanted to do was to make my own reality reflect the dreams that had been dwelling in my head for years.

            These were dreams of self-sufficiency, dreams of understanding the Earth well enough to live right from it, hands dirty and calloused, and a true symbiosis of respect. But alas, I was reminded time and again of the industry and social standards present in those times, and though I wanted to wash them away with one swipe of a damp rag, I couldn’t make those things disappear. All I could do was keep on, the gypsies and I in our shambled caravan, and hang on tight to all we held dear. Many times, this was each other, and other times, this was our own fleeting feelings of stability.

            I suppose it would be a lie to say we knew what we were doing. In fact, everyday was a surprise, and often a great one at that. We kept being handed gifts that just poof! dropped out of mid-air. Some call this synchronicity, or the universe looking after us. I thought we were leaving a pretty good karmic trail behind us, and I felt like we were getting what we deserved ( and not getting what we didn’t ). Maybe “deserve” isn’t the right word, because who can decide that? I suppose only yourself or someone else, but I’m tired of other’s projections of us. Dirty hippies, wandering nomads, merry minstrels, furry freaks – whatever we were – it was all love and a good amount of struggle, but always unconditional love. I never knew 6 people so in love. We taught each other about one another and everyone taught me about myself. It was uncontrollable, continual growth. Sort of felt like some sick form of self-inflicted torture at times, but only because we had to be so open, so honest that it hurt, but this made for good kinship.

            So there we were whirling and swirling down the East coast into an unknown abyss of oblivion and it was all very exciting. Sitting up on the edge of the front seats in that 48 year old hound of a vehicle, all 35 feet thrusting forward down the highway, chug chug chug, silver and red, maxing out at 55. 55, that’s as fast as we ever got, but I swear there were times we were traveling the speed of light. The captain seat was a good one, too. Going through tunnels was like going through vortexes. And all of everything rocked back and forth like in a big boat at sea. Our house on wheels was as rickety as a rocket soaring through the sound barrier and it all stayed in place with bungee chords.

            The chords to our soundtrack were Bobby Dylan and old timey jams, paving the musical pathway to heaven. Woody said it, it’s a hard travelin’, I thought you knowed. There were times of seemingly eternal blobbing out, tired of it all. Had had enough, dammit! But alas, it was always love when it came pummeling back down to it. We had to keep our heads in the game or we’d lose it for sure. Lucy, our girl she powered on down and we rolled into Asheville and right into the corner of someone’s fence. It was 3 in the morning and we were all just zombies, exhausted from a day of being stranded in a grocery store parking lot for hours with a dead battery and then a 5 hour drive. It got confusing and we parked on the side of a random residential road and slept the night. Luckily the next morning we found a fellow bus-dwelling hobbit named Forest that pointed us in the right direction. Into town it was! Our first stop was Jack of the Wood, a leafy bar full of bluegrass music and solid local beer. I drank so much of that beer, it mighta been the best damn beers I ever had, or ever wanted. The music was damn good too, different musicians every night. We busked a lot around town, then spent a couple of bucks on some tea and coffee to warm up our fingers.  It was good money; it’s a busker’s haven down there.

            There was all sorts of characters on the street, including 73 cents. He wore a sequin shirt and carried around a broken guitar, askin’ for 73 cents. One day he got real close up to Marlin and Jed, right in their faces, and said “WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” And then paused dramatically, “I mean, wee.” We hit ‘em all by storm, and stumbled drunkenly around town at night hootin and hollerin and dancin honky tonk like.

            ITHINKIT’SBETTERIFISPEEDUPHERE

            Everything was going all right in Asheville, we definitely found a groove in there real quick. I’d say it was something like getting caught in a tornado of beautiful minds and exchanging our knowledge left and right, warmed by a wood-burning stove of a house full of books and wonderful folks.  People are strange, and so are we. Works out well. God I couldn’t believe all the amazing books that filled that wood floored, rocking in a chair of a living room. Herbalism, sustainability, why capitalism sucks, foraging, DIY everything…all you really need? Almost, anyway.

            We must of been there a month, swirling in and out of random absurdities. Jed walks around with his banjo, I find myself smitten with a rat named Lily that I sometimes carry around in my shirt. In fact they all carried rats and dogs and other furry loves of theirs. There was one night we had the bus parked in a random abandoned gravel lot off the side of Patton Ave, a fairly busy and sort of industrial road, one of the main ones into town, and learned of Tommy Two Tone. He was a rather skinny homeless bum, riding around the bus on his bicycle for days, we couldn’t quite figure him out. Esmeralda opened the door with the lever and asked what his deal was and he biked away, mumbling something. Eventually he came around and swooped Marlin, Tuki and Bok into a sermon of his own. “It’s all one. There’s no problem. Nooo problem. We’re all friends. All friends.” He said as he entered the bus. We were all a little weary. I was afraid he might spontaneously combust or something and wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to be sitting so close to him, but really that’s all he said, “We’re all friends here. There’s no problem. All friends. Noo problem.” He said the lot was land he partially owned, and that we could stay there 3 more days. Sometimes creepiness compels you to move on, and so we did. Tired of being aimless and kicked out of everywhere, we decided to head for the mountains that had been teasing us in the distance, 360 degrees of glorious lust that I’d been eye balling all the time. And we immersed ourselves within them.

            Perched on our hippie paisley handmade cushions Esmeralda and I had sewn months before, I anxiously awaited trees, grass, and dirt. Fresh air. In fact I ached for it with my every being. Truth be told, I’m not much of a city person, I never was but didn’t know it until I moved from farm-lush and open south Jersey and moved to Philly for 4 years. No, the city is no place for me. It makes me feel trapped and I crave green and yearn for luscious open expanses.  It’s really the clusterfuck of chaos that just drives my head mad. Too many people, too many things, just too much stuff. It’s mayhem. And when I am in and amongst the great glorious flora and fauna of this Earth, I fell more whole, more centered, more focused, more content.

            It was especially entertaining when we were parked on an incline and we would put our drink down on the table and it graciously slid itself towards me. It was rather courteous of the table, I suppose, but sleeping was a bitch and always made my back sore when we weren’t flat.  We listened intently to the Doors and determined it sounded like robot space sound. Rather confusing, really. O! And a hint of the Beach Boys! “Every instrument has this weird, crunchy space tone.” Jed said. “Hello! Helloooo! Hi! How ya doin!? Hello!” and he waved. The ants were endless.

......to be continued.

wooooooooooooooossssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh goes the wind

The past few weeks..................I've been doing some self maintenance. Well, maybe more like complete rearrangement from the inside out. It's pretty hard to rearrange your insides, considering they're so stuck and wedged in tight little gooey places. Just when you think you know yourself, you really don't, and then when you do, all you can say is: "Holyfuck! This shit is crazy."

The farms are blissful for me. Trees, mountains, dirt; it's all aces in my book. It's my head that drives me mad, and the scenery doesn't seem to change that. I've challenged myself to a duel with....well, myself. Trying to address the parts of me that I'm not content with, the parts of me that are in such physical and emotional pain, the parts I sometimes feel like I have no control over, but want to learn how to control because really, I've got a lot of work to do in ways I didn't even know existed before. This way of life I've embarked on has opened a lot of doors, and I am a curious creature that has to open all of them. So I'm hopping around like a madman from door to door to door, creeping in, rolling around, singing songs, and bursting out and into the next one. It's been impossible to relax, and talking has never been so hard in my life. I took a day off from verbal communication a couple of weeks ago, and it was amazing. I felt no pressure, and still communicated well with everyone around me. This, I've decided, is of ultimate importance to me. Forcing each other to depend on words to communicate all the time is too much, and we forget how capable we are of understanding in other ways. There are days when I am completely consumed by pain in my whole body and fogginess in my head (thank you, chronic lyme disease, I think) that it feels like I will never heal and it's too hard. But really I just need to allow myself the time and attention to do just that; to heal. We can never neglect ourselves.

We have this conversation all the time with each other about what it's like to be the freaks. That is so say, what it's like to live outside of the "social norm," in the romping gypsy way that we do, and I've never been so disoriented in my whole life. Even though this feels more right than anything else I could be doing, I've felt confused and at a loss so much of the time. This, I can tell, will be an extremely important lesson if I can manage to finagle through it. There's something really powerful and humbling in putting yourself in the middle of chaos and just letting it ride to see what happens. I recommend this to everyone. So many people tell me they wish they were doing what we're doing, or don't think that they can. I think everyone should just do it in whatever capacity that means to them; step so far out of your comfort zone that it hurts, and then you can really know yourself. If we're always comfortable with who we are, how do we learn? What's the point?

It's not all daisies and roses all the time, but I don't think it'd mean much if it was. We plant, grow, blossom, whither, die, and become dirt for new birth. It's genuine.

                           O, and I'm learning to juggle!

love,

rab.