to sing oneself alive again...

bolinas california. tsunami warning. we suited up and walked into the ocean to the horror of observers and do-gooders on the beach. it was my birthday, and i was prepared to die. there was not the option of missing my single-most important birthday ritual, the baptismal, the communion with my favorite friend, the sea. no fucking way.

thanks to mother nature, a full moon, swinging tides, all of earths great forces pulling the tektonics hither and yon... the coast of chile dished up a monster wave that kept all of san francisco at home on an otherwise lovely day. the ocean was all ours. what an awesome birthday present: i was in marin county on a sunny saturday and there were no surfers to contend with other than my die-hard friends (whom, after a breakfast of beef grits, muenster eggs and sauerkraut potatoes ala nellyda had no choice but to follow me out into the ocean, taking life and limb in hand, and why not?).

celebrate what you will. it's all there for the taking.

lonesome heroes

birthday weekend: good times served up Bay Area style. lots of good waves, good music and dancing.

Rich and Landry are awesome! their band, The Lonesome Heroes played a few different venues in the area, including their van, in the Cowells parking lot. Yeah! this is really lovely psychadelic country music, straight outta Austin Texas. xoxo.

family style, we all travelled around and slept in our cars. they play music. i hold down the dance floor. VanFam.

VanFam warming up on a chilly winter day. Home sweet home.

Going to Haiti

Hello friends. I am going to haiti to volunteer as a nurse with project medishare. I am trying to raise the money required by the University of Miami to cover the cost of my plane ticket and some medical supplies. I will be leaving March 8 and returning March 16th. It should be an amazing experience. You can help me by donating to Kickstarter, my own Haiti travel fund.

Here is the link. Thanks in advance. Any donation amount will help!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1017569045/send-nellyda-to-haiti-to-volunteer-as-a-nurse

no one said it would be easy

central california. lots of rain, green hills, chewy waves, art, danger. it isn't for everyone. maybe not even for me. sometimes you have to leave home to remember why you live there. the grass isn't always greener on the other side, they say. i think i finally got it out of my system.

today i was confirmed on a flight to haiti. i will be doing volunteer work with the university of miami medical teams for a week in a medic camp in port au prince. this opportunity seems much greater than anything california could serve up for me right now. i leave next week. karmic voyage.

worlds unknown

what is it you search for, sea dreamer?
what dreams awake you?
on what shores do you dry your wings
(or do you even fly)?

people: i am not kidding about living in my car. here i am, in crescent city parked behind a rowdy bar. no one notices vagrants like me.

i hunker down like a rat or a fox or a raccoon
keen to the movements of man,
i remain nocturnal, unseen.
i have my silence, my solitude, the voice of a rabbit.

laying low i listen to the grumblings of cooks and diners,
dinner plates clattering, announcing their greasy roundness.
noisily, clumsily the humans finish the work of the day.

food scraps tossed into the pig sty.
beers deftly smuggled out the back door.
waitresses light their cigarettes outside
by the dumpsters in the darkness
and discuss their plans for tonight--Saturday night

--time to make it come true.



then, i wake to gleaming day light, the gift of sunbeams piercing the redwood depths


finally to monterey bay, home of robinson jeffers and john steinbeck. the beauty drips off of every surface. incredible. even sleeping in my car, i feel like a queen. what privelege to be here!

hope springs eternal. sometimes it all just makes me want to cry. (yeah, you know, like a girl).

west of eden

"IT IS THE DULL EVENTLESS TIMES THAT HAVE NO DURATION WHATEVER. A TIME SPLASHED WITH INTEREST, WOUNDED WITH TRAGEDY, CREVASSED WITH JOY-- THATS THE TIME THAT SEEMS LONG IN THE MEMORY. AND THIS IS RIGHT WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT. EVENTLESSNESS HAS NO POSTS TO DRAPE DURATION ON. FROM NOTHING TO NOTHING IS NO TIME AT ALL." -Steinbeck

photos by Nellyda Anslow

home is whenever i'm with you

ART BY-PRODUCT: the peripheral experiences that happen to you as a result you your doing art in public places. often, this involves many strange people, surreal experiences and beer.

NEIGHBOR: those who live close to you; those whom you can rely on; a familiar face. this cute little orange fuzzy creature (ox? cow? bovine wonder?) smiles at me every day when i drive by. reliable. familiar. close.

search ranch

just up the road from Carmel-by-the-sea is a little old ranch called Search Ranch, which used to be a stagecoach stop in the 1830's for rich folks coming from San Francisco on their way to Tassajara Hot Springs. These days, the ranch is a cool farm inhabited by some lovely, eccentrics whom I have grown to love. The hills in Carmel Valley are dotted with live oak, california poppies and grazing cattle. Search Ranch is a sweet little place, 40 acres of land with a bubbling creek running through it, a lovely garden which we ate from each night, and a wood burning hot tub hiding in the willows beneath the starry night. 24 miles away is Carmel beach, Point Lobos, and then Big Sur a little further south. I am convinced that this is the most beautiful place on earth. I feel like i have found the home I have been searching for.

The growing season starts in February. All week was devoted to getting seeds into the ground.
After long sunny days, we partied with some local farmers... real farmers who live and die by what happens on their land. You've never partied until you've partied with people who work 14 hour days, 7 days a week, 8 months a year. When winter is here, they get to cut loose... and they really do. There are a lot of winemakers in the area too, so Search Ranch had recently inherited a keg (that's right, a KEG) of chardonay. Last night, we tapped into this keg. Memories of what happened next are a little foggy, but by the end of the night everyone was completely naked, someone was riding a motorcycle, people were creeping down to the hen house to spy on the guinea hen, and we were dancing to the Talking Heads, the Cure, The Cars, Guided by Voices, and maybe some Velvet Underground. I watched the sun come up. Yikes.

Anyway, not a bad thing to wake up to, or to not fall asleep to. Damn those crazy farmers!

We had to make the best of the day. Emily and I took the matching wooden boards to Carmel and scored some fun little peelers. Turquoise water. White sand. Warm sun. There are worse ways to recover from a hard night of partying at Search Ranch.

Oh yeah... I love this place. I will never understand how people come to dislike California...... I for one will always have a special place in my heart for such a sun drenched, happy, diverse place as this. xoxo