Here, There & Baltimore
An update on how summer is going over here.
Howdy Kumquats!
Happy Summer! I can’t believe it just got started. The tropical heat in Baltimore would make me think we’ve been deep in it for weeks, but the calendar says otherwise.
There’s also seasonal lag time. Which accounts for why it doesn’t feel like the longest day of the year is in the right place.
Anyway. It looks like I’m going to spend the summer in Baltimore. I came out here for my show with a one way ticket at the end of April, so I must’ve known deep down I wasn’t going back to Cali soon. Life this past year has made me feel like a cork bobbing in the ocean, so I can’t say I had a plan.
I’ve been un-homed officially since I was evicted from The Nest April 2023. Since then, I have lived with family, friends, a stranger who became a friend…in a rustic cabin, in an RV, in a yurt, in fancy bedrooms, in my truck at times, in the mountains, by the ocean, in the city, and house / dog / plant sitting quite often.
It took my recent Ayahuasca experience to show me how utterly depressed I’ve been since leaving The Nest. It was my baby…my creative laboratory, my sanctuary and also my hope for humanity. Losing that place hurt. I say the Ayahuasca showed me because after that experience I felt so much less depressed. By contrast, I could look back at the year and be like — WOW, how I feel now and how I felt then are very different. I’m very grateful not to feel like THAT anymore.
I’ve thought a lot about what went “wrong.”
Wondered if I was never meant to be out in Northern California, far from my roots, my family and everything I have known previously. Wondered why it felt like such a struggle, why I couldn’t get traction on my projects. It felt like being cock-blocked by the Universe all the time. Nothing worked the way I thought it should. It’s hard to tell how much of it was the plandemic, the years of fear-based self-imprisonment we had to endure, or if technology was to blame too. We have a hard time being together with one another now.
I was describing what happened to a new friend last week, about how I felt like people stood by and watched me struggle and ultimately fail to make my underground performance venue in NoCal. She mentioned this story that was making the rounds, about the difference between the east coast and the west coast. It illustrates the difference between being nice and being kind.
I was like— THAT IS SO FUCKING TRUE!!!!!
I wondered for a long time if I was the problem. When I first arrived in California (LA), I was told often that I was “too aggressive.” I felt like a cliché. Having just moved from NYC, I really valued not wasting time. Being direct felt like the kindest thing I could do for anyone and I had gotten good at articulating my own feelings quickly, in order to get to the point. I was not going to let this characteristic go. It was hard earned. So was being on time, another trait I refused to abandon just because I was living on the west coast.
Moving from a huge city like LA to a remote mountain town in the Sierra Foothills, I just didn’t seem to be welcome anywhere or fit in like I used to. Eventually, I worked on myself so much that I came to the conclusion that the world was the problem, not me. LOL. I don’t say that lightly because I take more than my share of personal responsibility for making the world the way it is.
But at a certain point, the problem grew bigger than us.
My first order of business when I arrive in any place is to find my favorite yoga studio. I have traveled the world and done yoga every where I’ve gone. Coming back to my hometown, Baltimore, I found that the building where I was trained to teach in 2004 had re-opened after being dormant for 4 years, with new owners and a new name. The building is very special for many reasons— it’s a unique old carriage house, that was also an all-girls school gymnasium, a decorative painting studio, and now a 2 story movement-community temple. I have so many memories of transformation, growth, connection and just LOVE there. Many good memories of my own guru, Kim Manfredi, too. She is also an artist, now on the west coast, painting and not involved in yoga at all at the moment.
I’m in the process of trying to start teaching at the new place, which involves a process of getting to know each other. No one wants to commit to you as a teacher unless you’re committed to being there all the time. Yoga studios offer weekly classes and the owners don’t want a bunch of scheduling problems. This always bothered me and kept me from teaching for a long time. I was forced to choose between my performing career (which involved travel) or a weekly yoga teaching schedule. It was no contest. Yoga doesn’t pay that great, first of all. Second, it’s how I tune my engine, it’s not the engine itself. Art is my engine.
I always felt that I was a better yoga teacher BECAUSE of all the traveling I did. Wouldn’t you want the better teacher sometimes rather than the mediocre teacher all of the time? When faced with the choice between quantity and quality, why do we go for quantity so often? Such a bummer.
I’m conflicted about even trying to teach again because I don’t want to get stuck. I want my freedom and I want my performing career back from the oblivion of the wokesters and trolls. So, I’m hoping I could stretch the limits of what’s possible in this new arrangement….as I often do.
If I can get on the teaching schedule and draw some of my former, very loyal, students— they might be willing to accept a substitute teacher sometimes, if it means they get to have me when I’m here. I’m a pretty good teacher, if I do say so. Mostly because I walk my talk and have been doing yoga for over 20 years. It’s just in me.
I just need the people to show up. Same as with my shows.
My bigger vision was always to have 2 lives— one with my roots on the east coast and one where I can stretch my branches— on the west coast. I toiled for years trying to get the branches-part established. Everything I own, including my truck, is still out there. But I’m going to work on the roots-part of the equation this summer and see how far I get.
I’m also filming some footage for a new episode of Artist in the Wild. I was waiting to land somewhere before resuming that project— which sprang out of the ashes of my podcast (Vive La Renaissance, about artists) and from my love of homesteaders on Youtube. I just love to see projects come together! I filmed 2 test episodes in the fall of 2022 and then Snowmageddon 2023 happened and that was the end of The Nest 1.0.
My art is always so tied to place but how I define the “wild” part of this blog and of the dormant documentary series it is named for— can be broadly defined. Baltimore is just as wild as Nevada City, just in a much different way. The vision for the show was always that it could travel with me and would include people and places that I encounter.
I used to love sharing my take on the world, mostly on Instagram. I thought of it as my travelogue and archive. Sadly, I’ve been so burned by my experiences there, I’m not entirely sure how much I even want to open myself up to the world at all anymore. But I’m still typing this blog….so I guess I do.
We’re finding out together.
Until then, don’t forget to refill the ice trays.
LOVE, Trixie
Glad to hear you're healing and figuring things out <3 things are different for you this time, I can feel it.
Also... old bay goldfish?! I have GOT to try those!
Oh Trixie, this brings back lots of feelings and memories about my 8 years in Baltimore. It often feels like a distant dream and then suddenly like it has just happened.