Taking a Break

I am taking a break in Santo Domingo de Calzado. If you know something about the Camino de Santiago you will know that this is the place where they keep two chickens in the cathedral to commemorate a miracle that happened here in the middle ages. It involves a hanged man and a roast chicken both coming to life again. Despite the oddity of the chicken coop, the cathedral is very nice. I am spending an extra night here because after 9 days of walking, I suddenly developed a blister on my right little toe. I struggled with it for a couple of days but yesterday I decided, and other pilgrims strongly agreed, that I needed to rest for a day. Dennis is walking on ahead. I am not sure where and when we will meet up. If all else fails, we have a date on October 4th in front of the cathedral in Santiago. Other than the toe, I am feeling fine. I had a couple of days when I felt as if I had no stamina, but in spite of the toe, yesterday I felt fine. I hooked up with a great woman from Australia whose husband died recently, and we walked and talked and cracked jokes and she cried and told stories about her husband whom she called ¨my lovely boy.¨ It was just what I needed right then. I do best when I am helping other people and she helped me more than I think she realizes. She has also gone on. One never knows on the camino, if one has seen another pilgrim for the last time or if they will show up again, but I am trailing behind the first people I met.
I left my journal behind at an ATM yesterday. I had made notes of things I had left out of my previous blogs that I wanted to write about. Somethings I remember. In the story about the woman from the Czech Republic, I forgot to mention that she speaks only Czech, Russian and German so we communicated in my minimal German and very minimal Russian. However, with the help of a great deal of mime, we managed. I am turning into a linguist. People can understand my French without much problem, which is nice. I have moments when Spanish flows out of my mouth, but most of the time people cannot understand anything I am trying to say. I can understand people speaking Spanish some of the time, but there is a wide variety of accents here and often I don´t have a clue.
Before I go any further, I want to say a word or two about Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal in Russia. It is a great place. If you are ever wandering up from Beijing through Mongolia, do stop. It is a very calm and beautiful place. Caroline and I stayed in a Russian bread and breakfast because the international place was full and I felt very lucky. Most of the time, we were the only non-Russians, but there was always someone who could speak English and translate for the owner. Most often it was the man who looked after the small church nearby. He lived there with his wife, baby and goat and was very helpful. The church had four bells and he rang them frequently during the day. The church was on a bluff overlooking the lake. Amazing. Olkhon Island is a center of shamanism and I had my own healing experience there. When I arrived the ankle I had sprained in the Altai mountains was quite painful. We stopped off at the contact we had on the island and I talked about sprain and Kolya, who is a masseur, whipped out a small battery-run machine and gave me a treatment. He gave me four more in the following days and in the morning, Caroline treated me with Polish snake venom salve and massage. It worked and although the ankle still doesn´t like going downhill very much, it is fine. Then I had a headache for four days and on the last night, Vika, our contact, gave me a treatment for that and I haven´t had trouble with headaches since. Well, once after a glass of red wine.
The experience of the camino is indescribable. That is why there are so many books about it. Everyone tries to get it right. I am thinking of a book to be called ¨Conquering Christianity: Walking Beyond Belief.¨ The camino I think is both pre- and post-Christian. Most of the Christian artefacts seem to be pasted onto the essence of the walk. There are some churches and monuments that to seem to be of the nature of the camino, the octagonal church at Eunate, for example, and odd corners of the churches. There are prehistoric settlements at most of the stops along the way so people have been walking for a long time wondering what in the world they were doing. I also don´t have a clue but I think it has something to do with going beyond belief, beyond faith, beyond disbelief. At the very end, after Santiago at the end of the earth (Finistere) at the edge of the ocean, you are supposed to burn the clothes you wore on the way. I think the earlier pilgrims who did this thought they were burning the sins of their past, but I think it is about revealing the naked present.
Well, so much for my trying to make sense of all this. I enjoy walking. The landscape keeps changing and keeps being beautiful. The people I meet are great. The food is interesting and often good. Yesterday for the midday meal I had calf cheek cooked in red wine. Quite good. Today I saw a sign outside a restaurant that offered salt-cod.
This is day twelve. I think I have walked about 240 kilometers which is about 20 a day. Not enough to reach Santiago in the time I have but I will catch up by taking a bus or taxi, or else I will chuck it altogether and find a beach in Portugal. Stay tuned.

On the Camino

I am about to begin my 5th day of walking on the Camino de Santiago. I have walked 45 miles so far. I have only about 350 miles to go. This is a very strange experience. We get up about 6 in the morning, walk until about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, find a hostel to stay in, do laundry, walk about the town, have an evening meal, go to sleep about 10 and then in the morning get up and do it all over again. We have met some very nice people so far. One keeps meeting and remeeting them. It is always a pleasure.

I have only 9 minutes left before my money runs out on this machine so I will tell one Camino story and then hopefuly catch up with the rest and with Russia later.

On the second day of walking, I happened upon a young man speaking Russian to a woman just a little younger than me. So I stopped. He was from Oregon and had spent four years working in Kazakhstan and his Russian was good. She had walked from the Czech Republic and is on her way to Santiago de Compostela. She is protesting against the low pension given to older people in the Czech Republic. She gets about $400 a month. She speaks only Russian, German and Czech. I walked with her off and on. Her hip was bothering her. Eventually we came to Zubiri and there were no more beds. So we walked on with her to Larrosoana accompanied by two young Japanese men. One of them is a photographer and the other a magazine editor and they are hoping to do a picture book of the Camino. There were no beds in Larrosoana. I went into the hostel and tried to convince them to give her a bed but to no avail. We walked out and the Japanese photographer who had heard the story and did have a bed, gave her his bed. He and his friend slept outside. We met an Australian couple and shared a taxi to Huarte where there was a very nice hostel and we had a good night and a delicious pilgrim meal. I had a delicious tomato salad with very good onions. The city is known for them.

O.K. Time to pack.

The Turning Point

I haven't finished my Russian blogs yet. They are maturing as drafts at the moment. However, while it is still fresh, I want to write about the last week in which I have been making the transition from Russia to Spain. I didn't think about this part of the trip very clearly and there have been a couple of minor bugs and it has turned out to be a little more expensive than it would have been if I had done a little planning. Nevertheless, I am having a good time and this transition time has been a time for much needed rest and recuperation despite all the travel.

I am now in Arnhem in the Netherlands. Tomorrow I get on the train for a 12-hour trip to Bayonne, France. After Russia, where I was on trains for a total of 80 hours, 12 hours is nothing at all. I do have to change three times but they are easy changes and I will welcome the chance to walk a little. For some reason, my sprained ankle doesn't like train or airplane travel very much. At the moment I am recovering from an all-night excursion to Amsterdam. My friend Tibor with whom I am staying in Arnhem insisted that I see Amsterdam so we caught the train at 10:30 P.M. and arrived in Amsterdam about midnight. We went from bar to bar and other disreptutable gay venues with little excursions to see the redlight district, the Queen's Palace and other notable sights. The first train back was at 6 in the morning so I was up all night. As my friend Angela said in Moscow when she caught me running from place to place at the Contact Festival, "Act your age." It was fun though and I don't seem to have any ill-effects despite being caught in two thunderstorms.

It is strange being in The Netherlands. I had looked forward to seeing Tibor whom I had met in Hungary about four years ago, but I hadn't thought about the fact that he was in Holland. Holland turns out to be pretty much like it was in the stories I read as a child. The houses have pyramidal fronts. People ride bicycles. There are a lot of canals. There is a lot of cheese but none in red wax coverings. So far I haven't seen a windmill but maybe I will tomorrow on the train. I go from here to Rotterdam and from Rotterdam to Paris where I change for Bayonne.

Arnhem is a smallish big city with great parks, impressive churches and a large, pedestrian only shopping district where Tibor lives. I'm very annoyed I don't know Dutch. At the moment, I want to learn every language in the world. I am happy to be going to Spain where I at least have a clue about the language although I don't speak it very well. I'm thinking of studying Russian when I get back. Something stuck after 50 years since I last studied it and I think I might have a chance of upgrading a little.

This transition period started in Moscow where I arrived very tired. I had intended to look up friends but instead checked into a strange hotel that used to serve people who worked at the Khazatstan Embassy. No one spoke Russian except a security guard. They didn't even speak German which is usually the fall-back language in Russia. It was a huge cavernous place with about five people staying in it. They did have a great breakfast buffet that came with the room but there were never more than five people eating and usually it was only me and someone else. There was kasha (Russian for breakfast porridge which comes in astounding variety), omelets (which were really an egg custard which was a great idea because it kept warm better than omelets), cold meats, cheese, hot sausages, raw cucumbers, tomatoes, dill, parsley, a range of breads, a toaster, great sweet cakes, and several different stuffed blinis. One of the hot sausages was perhaps the best sausage I have ever had, succulent, porky and earthy.

The hotel was within walking distance of central Moscow but there were also good metro connections. I walked a lot trying to absorb Moscow which I like. I took a walk laid out in the Lonely Planet to a street with a lot of old churches. Very nice. I went to a nesting doll museum. I had weird Uzbek soup and a great Uzbek pilav in a restaurant (I never realized before that "plov" is the same word as "pilaf." I kept thinking I should look up friends but I was too tired and had been in constant contact with people for a month and a half and for a solitary person, that is a lot.

Then on to London, this time in a shabby but cheap hotel near Victoria Station. The room was the smallest hotel room I have ever stayed in, but it was adequate. I tried to see my friend Janet but again we were frustrated. This is the third time we have been in the same city or state and still couldn't meet. We are hoping to get together when I get back to London in October.

In London I took a walk in the Rough Guide to Walks in Southeastern England, a book I recommend. The walk followed the Regent Canal into the docklands with a stop at the Ragged School Musem, a museum about charitable work in the East End in the 19th century. A great place. It functions as a afterschool place for local children as well as a museum. I recommend this too. It's a small treat, but a treat. In the morning I had been to see the Tower of London which I had never seen before despite having been going to London off and on since 1976. I went early, avoided the crowds, saw the two chapels and the Royal Jewels and was happy to be able to cross that off my list. In the late afternoon, I queued for an intellectual play at the National Theaters but realized there was no way I was going to last through the play so went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which almost did me in as well. I think, by and large, that the movies are better than the books but unfortunately they are so compressed that you have to have read the books to follow them.
O.K. I had an easy flight from London to Amsterdam and an easy train ride from Amsterdam to Arnhem. I will be sorry to leave Tibor and Holland which I like (but now that I'm old I seem to like everything--somehow that seems annoying). Tomorrow on to France and then on the 1st of September I start walking.

The Trans-Siberian Train

I had two trips on Trans-Siberian Trains (definitely not expresses), one going east and one west, but I am combining them together in one blog and will write about my week at Lake Baikal later.
Before that, there are a couple of items I left out of the previous email. The first is my experience in a Russian banya (or sauna to use the Finnish word). There was a banya at the camp in the Altai Mountains and I was accorded teacher's privileges so I could use it free. The sauna room itself is pretty much like a sauna in the United States (although the ones I was in were heated by a wood stove), but there is always an anteroom with steaming hot water in which one can take bucket showers (or wash ones clothes). This room also has cold water for dousing oneself, but at the Festival, the river was right out the front door so one could also dip in the river. Before the anteroom, there is a changing room and then there is usually a relaxation room with a tea pot of some sort and benches and frequently a table where one can drink, eat and hang out before going back to the sauna.
The distinctive part of the sauna experience is the "steaming" with birch branches. This is usually translated as "beating" or "thrashing" in English but that's not very descriptive of the actual process. They heat the sauna quite hot, then one lies down on theomach and they take out the branches which have been soaking in hot water. They hold them up to the top of the sauna to collect hot air and then wave them gently over the body releasing great amounts of heat. Then they press the branches into the body starting at the shoulders and working down to the feet. After that they begin rythmically slapping with the branches gently at first and then with greater force. It takes about five or ten mintues and then you turn over and they do the front. Then you make your way to the river and take a dip. In Altai, there was a full moon so the dip in the river was the most amazing part. I was steamed twice, both times by very accomplished "steamers." I am not crazy about saunas, but the "steaming" and the river were great.

After Altai, Caroline and I went on the bus to Novosibirsk and then waited for our evening train in a most luxurious apartment with Internet, really hot showers, delicious food and great company. Then on to the train.

We left the apartment on Russian time and thus didn't have a chance to shop properly so we didn't have quite enough food but in the morning. One can get off at the longer stops and buy food, but the first stops were in the middle of the night and the platforms were deserted. Also the stops varied in quality as to what was offered. I slept through the best stop. Caroline says she tried to wake me but I wouldn't budge. Fortunately, in the morning we found the restaurant car and had a most pleasant breakfast all by ourselves with a most solicitous waiter. Ham and eggs, coffee, Russian sweet bread, lots of really good butter and peace. It was great. We tried to do this on the way back but because the trains run on Moscow time the timing wasn't right so we had to have lunch instead which wasn't quite as good as breakfast.

The compartments on the train hold four. Two uppers and two lowers. Caroline preferred the uppers because there was more privacy, but I preferred the lower bunks, because I couldn't negotiate the climb in the middle of the night. On the way to Irktusk, we had two very pleasant women in the compartment with us. The way back was more difficult. For some reason, Caroline and I were in separate cars and she was with three women who warmed up to her very slowly. I was in a compartment alone with an older woman who had more memory problems than me and spoke only Russian. With the help of mime and a phrase book, we managed. She wasn't too impressed with an British woman and an American, but there was an Australian couple next door and she was impressed by them. She had seen kangaroos on television and decided that Australia was the country.
Time becomes very strange on these long train rides. It takes 30 hours to get from Novosibirsk to Irkutsk, the jumping off point for Lake Baikal. The trains run on Moscow time which doesn't help and the landscape changes hardly at all for the whole trip. Lots of large fields and lots of birch and pine forest. I slept a lot and I ate a lot, but there never seemed to be a particular reason to do either of them at any specific time. The train rattled, the wheels clicked and then suddenly one was at one's destination.
The ride back from Irkutsk to Yakaterinburg was 50 hours but it didn't seem any different from the first trip. We did manage food better. Caroline and I with the help of our friend Ivan stopeed at a supermarket before we got on the train. Supermarkets in Russia have much more space devoted to delicacies than do American stores -- lots of sausages and prepared meats, salad and fish, lots of cheese, lots of baked goods and lots of beer, vodka and other forms of alcohol. I bought some roast pork and a liver sausage and Caroline had cheese. I also bought some good whole wheat bread and by the time we headed for the train we had several bags of food. By the time we got off, it was almost all gone. I was quite amazed. Caroline spent most of her time with me and the old lady. At one stop, they had crayfish. That was fun. Neither of us had ever eaten crayfish before and Caroline found them quite revolting to look at and touch, but once I had opened them up so she could get at the meat without touching anything disgusting, she found them quite tasty. I have good pictures but I have had trouble connecting my computer via wi-fi and now it is stored in London because I decided not to carry it on the pilgrim trail.
At Yakaterinburg, named after Catherine the Great, we stayed with the woman who has the company that Caroline is laying the piece on. We stayed one night at her apartment and then one night at the amazing apartment that she found for Caroline to stay in for the month she will be there. It belongs to a ballerina in the local ballet company and is all black fringe and acres of gauzy curtains. I found it quite depressing but its location is great and it has all the things an apartment needs so it is really a good deal.
I went to the first class that Caroline did with the company. I am so impressed with the Russian dancers who are interested in experimental work. Very committed, very creative, very inspirational.
The afternoon before I flew to Moscow, we went with Natasha (the company director) to her dacha in the country. It was a collective dacha from the Communist era. Several dachas in a compound each with its own amazingly extensive garden. We munched on carrots freshly pulled from the ground while we made food which included potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, dill, and parsley all freshly picked. Natasha grilled pork and chicken and I made my mother's version of fried green tomatoes (not like the ones in the movie). I flour them and then fry them until they are brown and soft and then add a little milk or cream to make a sauce. They were a big hit. When I wasn't cooking I was running around the backyard with Natasha's two girls, five and two and a half. We didn't have a common language but we stuck out our tongues and made noises and chased each other all around, ending with games of train and "A tisket a tasket" in Russian. This was great fun and made my miss my grandchildren a lot.
O.K. One more Russian blog to go: Lake Baikal

The First Siberian Contact Improvisation Festival

I am back in Moscow on my way to London on my way to Spain. It has been a wonderful, exhausting, trying, inspirational, confusing, and mind-twisting (among other things) trip.
In the last episode we were leaving Moscow on our way to Novosibirsk the capital of Siberia. Before this I thought of Siberia as being in the far north, but actually it is most of Russia east of the Ural Mountains and goes down to the southern border. The flight to Novosibirsk was uneventful and we were met by Masha, one of the organizers. We then spent a lot of time in a post office because Caroline's and Otto's registration turned out to be incorrect. Don't ask but if you ever come to Russia and stay in one place more than three days, you will have to register. Check you registration immediately! If the dates are incorrect it turns out to be an unpleasant, time-consuming hassle. I spent a lot of time copying forms using cyrillic characters, but all to no avail. What we had to do couldn't be done there. Eventually we were brought to a pleasant spot by a river where we got on a bus for the eight hour drive into the Altai mountains. By this time it was 7:30 at night so the interesting part of the journey happened in the night. We arrived at the camp where the festival was held as the sun was coming up so we had no idea where we were. The camp was pleasant enough, up to the usual summer Bible camp standards of my youth. It was beside the Katun river, a cold, beautiful, fast-moving and noisy affair. The first day was spent getting organized. It turned out to be rainier than expected so by the next day, the first day of classes, everything had been reorganized and the schedule had changed. There were only three of us who didn't speak Russian and they kept forgetting to translate important details so the first days were confusing and sometimes frustrating. However, everything sorted itself out.

I wasn't teaching but I did two laboratories. The first was an ongoing "unannounced performance" lab which was basically a practical investigation of performance theory leading to an "announced 'unannounced performance' performance" which went very well. The participants were eager and asked very interesting questions and did very interesting work. At the end of the festival I did a second lab on sound and movement. The first part was a basic sound production warm-up leaving to movement and in the second part we went outside and did some work with movement and language using a combination of Simone Forti's and my own techniques.

I was very happy with the work the participants and I did together and I have made some connections which I hope prove to be ungoing.

There was a two-day break in the festival and Caroline and I joined a trek to seven glacial lakes higher in the mountains. This turned out to be grueling. Food was disorganized so all we had for breakfast was what we could get at an understocked little store. Then we road on a bus for an hour or so to a place where we transferred to a monster of an army-surplus four-wheel drive truck. It followed a barely existant trail for two hours while we bounced around inside on very uncomfortable seats. The windows barely existed so we couldn't see where we were going. Eventually five us wedged ourselves together on a long backwards facing seat and lay down on each other and so stayed in place and actually slept for awhile. On the way back, the others insisted that Caroline and I sit up front with the drive. We saw then that the road was two more or less parallel ruts through the woods. The truck was too big for the bridges so it forded the many streams. It seemed as if there was more water than road.

Finally we came to the starting point. Caroline got on a horse and I hiked. The way up was muddy but the rise in elevation was not too bad. I took it slow and made it. At the top there was a camp with a kitchen where they cooked over a wood fire. We had delicious soup and a macaroni and ground beef dish that tasted delicious after our ordeal. Then it was time to walk around the lakes just as a thunder-storm started. I donned my parka and headed out in pouring rain. The lakes are basically set in a stony swamp so the whole walk was on very slippery rocks. The lakes however, were beautiful and when the group climbed up to the top of a waterfall, I stayed put and had an hour and a half by myself alone in the Altai Mountains.

The Altai Mountains are not high but they are home to an indigenous people and they are many legends surrounding them and they are seen as a mysterious and powerful place. There is an eerie weirdness about them that grows on one. The wind blew, the trees groaned, the waterfall sang and I was very happy.

On the hike down, I was very tired and began to fall a lot. A husband and wife from St. Petersburg who spoke English adopted me and one walked ahead and the other followed and I made it to the bottom in one piece although I did have some spectacular falls. On one, before they took pity on me I bruised my right side so that even now it is a colorful sight.

The spell check isn't working, and I have to catch a plain to London so this is it.

Next time, Lake Baikal, Irkutsk and the Trans-Siberian Train (definitely not an express).

My 70th Birthday

Dear Friends,
I turned 70 at this Contact Festival and it was a wonderful day. It started in the sauna at midnight. Then all the next day people kept whispering "Happy Birthday" in my ear and in the evening there was a teacher's gathering and we had a small party for me and for Paula from Argentina and people sang us birthday songs in Russian, Hebrew, German, Finnish, Spanish, Czech, Catalan, Ukrainian and some other languages I can't remember now. We were in a grove of pine trees just as I was on my first birthday party.

We are in a beautiful setting not far from a river and the woods are full of raspberries and small wild strawberries. Delicious.

The festival has been very good for me. I have gained confidence as a teacher and as a performer. The people here who are interested in the kind of work I do have been very supportive and I have made new friends. I have really enjoyed teaching and organizing student performances and yesterday I had a spontaneous performance outside with two students that was very sweet.

Caroline and I fly to Siberia tomorrow for another festival. We are not sure if we will be able to get on the Internet there or not. If we can, I will right more. Here, I have been very busy and now I have start packing to catch the bus to Moscow.

Moscow

Dear friends,
I am in Moscow and having a wonderful time. As usual, I am having technological problems, so I haven't blogged yet. I have been here for a week and two days.
I feel at home in Moscow. It feels somewhat like Los Angeles. It is big. The streets are wide. Most of the buildings are low. However, many of the buildings here are painted a beautiful yellow and were built in the 18th or 19th century. The subway is amazing. It is very cheap and incredibly efficient. I have never waited for more than 3 minutes for a train.
I have seen the Kremlin, Red Square, St. Basil's Cathedral, assorted other churches, and the family home of the Romanov tsars. The Kremlin was not what I expected. From growing up in the 1950's with the Iron Curtain, I thought the Kremlin would be massive, concrete and oppressive and the soldiers would march out onto Red Square and control everyone. In fact, there is not an entrance onto Red Square. The Kremlin floats in the air surrounded and supported by a red, brick wall and has many trees, open spaces, and beautiful churches. It does not look like a serious place from which to run a totalitarian government.
The light here is amazing. It starts to get light about 4 in the morning and is light until about 10:30 at night. Also, in the evening, the twilight lingers and lingers, not as in Los Angeles, where the desert night comes on quickly and efficiently. My childhood had long lingering evenings in the summer and I feel very safe as the day very slowly disappears.
Also Russians eat the same foods as Swedes pretty much, so I have had herring, rye bread and so on, and my stomach is very happy.
I have been busy with the Contact Improvisation and Performance Festival. If you are curious about Contact Improvisation, go to www.contactimprov.com and read all about it. I am here more for the performance part, not having done much contact for the last 5 years or so, but it is amazing to dance and perform with the other teachers who are very skilled and very creative. I am teaching voice production and the use of texts in performance. Tonight the teachers perform a great theater in Moscow and then we go to the forest for the festival itself.
There are 8 of us living in a small 3 room + kitchen + 1 bathroom apartment. It is like my hippie days when I lived in collectives. I need to escape from time to time and be by myself, but I like having people around. I get up the earliest and sit in the kitchen and then others get up and wander in. I like it.
I am not sure if there is an Internet connection in the forest or not. If not I will next write from Moscow on the 26th or 27th or from the capital of Siberia a little later.

On the Road Again

I am getting ready for another long trip. This time I will be going to Russia and Spain with a short amount of time in London and the Netherlands in between.

I am going to Russia to take part in two improvisation festivals. I will be teaching at the first one which takes place outside of Moscow. Then my friend Caroline Waters and I will fly to Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, and travel south to the Altai Mountains where Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan all come together at the Russian border. We will participate in a second, more laid back, festival in the mountains and then will take the Transiberian Express to Lake Baikal (30 hours!) where we will unwind for a week. Then back on the train to Yakatineberg, principally known as the place where the Tsar's family were executed. Caroline will work on a project there and I will hang out for a few days and then I will go back to Moscow, fly to London, see friends, go to Arnhem in Holland, see another friend, and then south to St. Jean Pierre-de-Port in France where I will meet my friend Dennis Miles and we will walk on the pilgrim trail up across the Pyrenees and across the top of Spain to Santiago de Compestela. We hope to do this in about a month. I have 36 walking days at my disposal before I return to London and then Los Angeles.

Yesterday, the Fourth of July, Dennis and I walked about 7 miles west to Hollywood, up into the hills to Mulholland Drive and then back to Griffith Park Observatory (not a great picture, but you get the idea) to watch fireworks. This was a backpack test for me. I am wondering whether I will take my small netbook computer with me when I walk across Spain. The backpack with computer and everything I think I need in Spain weighs about 12 pounds. I walked with it to Dennis' house, about a mile, and decided to take out the computer for this test run. Without the computer (which weighs under 3 pounds), I was fine and with some training in Russia, I think I can do 12 pounds. We will see. We plan to walk about 16 miles a day. I can do without the computer, but what that means is that when I get home, I will transcribe the journal into the computer, a painful task. I just finished transcribing my last summer's journal.

People say to me, "A computer! On a pilgrimage?" People have been writing on pilgrimages since pilgrimages began. The number of journals written about the Santiago pilgrimage alone is staggering. If I prefer to write on a computer rather than a pen, I don't think St. James will mind. Pilgrims sometimes carry stones with them which they deposit at a cross along the way as an emblem of the sins they are expiating by their act of faith. My computer will be my stone although I will carry my sins back home with me. There is a story about the Ganges. A dip in the Ganges washes away all of your sins, but sins are like crows. They just wait until you get out of the river and dry yourself off and then they hop right back on again.

As Dennis and I were walking up Beechwood Canyon yesterday, we met a 19-year-old Brazilian who is spending a year traveling around the United States after his graduation from high school. He is a very mature young man and great fun to talk to as we wandered through Griffiith Park. He wants to make films so we talked a lot about Hollywood and movies in general. His favorite director is Bergman. My first Bergman film was Wild Strawberries which I probably saw in 1959 when I was twenty. It is strange when the currently young take up the passions of my youth. I felt the same way when my son as a young teenager became interested in the Beatles. It's my music. Find your own. And yet, it is also very nice to have a common topic that bridges the age difference. The young Brazilian was complaining that he couldn't find Fred Zinneman movies in Brazil. Does anyone else still know who Fred Zinneman was?

My son says my blogs can be no longer than 800 words or he won't read them, and I am at the limit. The next time I write, I will be writing from Moscow.

Luke

January Performances

Dear Friends,

January has been very intense. My daughter-in-law is seriously ill with ulcerative colitis so I have been up there helping my son with the children. While the circumstance is horrible, I have enjoyed being with the girls very much.
I already had three performances scheduled for this month so life is complicated. One is tonight so that is very short notice and another is Monday, which isn't much better. Anyway, here they are:


Friday, January 9, 2009, Los Angeles Dance Improvisation Festival

Electric Lodge
1416 Electric Avenue
Venice, CA, 90291
8:30 PM
Friday night is a pay what-you-can night.

I will be in two student pieces, one organized by Caroline Waters, and the other by Kirsti Simpson. They will be very different and the quality of the performers is high. There will also be duets between Caroline and Jones Walsh and also Kirsti and Simone Forti.

Monday, January 12, 2009, Anatomy Riot

Open Space
209 S. Garey Street, 90012, 2nd floor
Los Angeles, CA
8:00 PM. The cost is $10.00.

I will be performing an improvisation with Caroline Waters. We have collaborated for several years in venues ranging from Laguna Beach to Budapest and Posnan, Poland. The piece is called "Et. cetera, et. cetera." Anatomy Riot is curated this month by Arianne MacBean and will present several works in progress.

Then. Friday and Saturday, January 30 and 31, 2009

Highways Performance Space
1651 18th Street
Santa Monica, CA 90404
8:30 PM, $20, $15 for seniors, students.

This is another group, works-in-progress show, but the work is more developed than that at Anatomy Riot. I will be doing a solo set to music by Shostokovich and with text from Pilgrim's Progress.

I hope your New Year is going well.

Luke