Soundcliff – Vashon Island
Mid July 2004

Dear Ones,

Nearly every year in late June, early July, the American Bell Association's Annual Convention takes me away on a curious & usually interesting journey. This year it was being held in southern California, so Stephen suggested we drive.

We gave ourselves three weeks around that event, making dates to visit friends along the way. Between both of our histories, we simply have too many good friends we would love to spend time with on this coast to possibly get to all of them. Sometimes memories must suffice...

Our travel down the west coast was a fine adventure; giving us the sweet time together only a road trip can do so deeply & tightly. Being thus encapsulated proves, disproves, & ultimately improves so many things for our relationship! We do travel well together, & we find much joy in our workings of it. We teach/learn so much more efficiently with such constancy & deep immersion in our interactive processes.

Ah, but... the preparation! Always, for me... whether into Seattle for a late foundry run, or to get me going early on any ol' morning... it takes me longer than "it" takes him.

Well, of course, I was preparing for months before this trip!

Besides getting the new designs into production, we continued working to build ever-deeper stock in the older designs as well. Apprentices Whit Kimball & Michael Kawata helped me in the studio, prepping waxes & doing assembly of the finished castings. I was pleased as I packed, to note the bulges in my bags, which spelled good success at that, even as we had some foundry difficulties & did some last minute editing of pieces not actually necessary for current needs. They will come along later... so, I'm actually ahead of schedule in some niches of the work!

The ABA Convention was well east of Los Angeles proper, so we got our dose of freeway driving just to get to Ontario, which is almost to Palm Springs. The venue was the Airport Doubletree, a nicely nondescript hotel. We were a small convention this year, only 212 souls. Fewer venders in the sales room as well, thus even so allowed us to write a nice business.

This is a five day & [hotel] night investment, which makes the nine hours of sales time come at premium rates... matching the oddly broken schedule which tucks sales room open hours between meetings, or quite late, after dinner & the evening programs.

But, I have made a friendly niche for myself in this group over the years & I mostly enjoy this small dose of a jingled slice from the wide varieties in the American soul.

It was fun having Stephen along... this was his third convention, but the first in three years. He has his own fans & friends there, who miss him & ask about him when I go alone. We are the first couple of men who have quietly & comfortably been out as gay in the ABA.

He does so well in the patience & service department. He knows that some coffee in my hands as I rouse in a strange bed to hit a schedule not quite to my first preference... is an investment in his day too. He is so sweet & consistent about that. I try to take the lesson once in a while... it is not unknown for him to stay longer abed than I. It is rare, but I do make the coffee once in awhile...

I know I am there by my own desire too, yet... there is still an occasional blip in my usual sweetness... sometimes just before I remind myself of that understanding. I don't like ruining my own day, either. I love his coffee attentions.

But all of the traveling stuff is easier when we've been grooving with each other actively for a few days, dancing fulsomely together. Knowing we are in more reliably similar time zones, finding closer meshing of our everyday clock & sense-of-time differences.

Life is more fun when we're making so much love… in all sorts of beds, of course, but mostly in our sharing of such immediacy & time/space currency. We do like to practice these traveling dances, & the playful moods needed to live well with each other on the road.

As always, we each see & hear so differently, Yet inside the same capsule we are sharing so much more of context, so we triangulate more easily those rich variations into a coyly shared mythology for our adventure. Each of us is an essential part in a fulsome range of capability, with an appetite to experience, to learn. We accumulate so much life energy between us. We can more actively help understand & further each other's individual interests & projects.

We visit & meet each other's contacts & friends, sometimes coming to know the living versions of characters famous in stories. Other times adding new chapters to the trove of ongoing friendships we've accumulated in such abundant richness. Plus, we are always finding fresh candidates...

This time, an 88 year old gentleman whose name appears in the credits of early James Broughton films... especially The Pleasure Garden, which he helped to produce & to edit as James' lover & professional partner. They had been introduced by Pauline Kael. They lived together for most of a decade, much of it in Europe.

Stephen has long wanted to interview Kermit Sheets as part of his project to document James' life. We stopped in Novato to keep an appointment for that, accepting his invitation to dinner & to stay the night as his houseguests.

Kermit doesn't have many visitors he can tell his story to, & he loved our rapt attention to his sweet style. We enjoyed his candor about his early life as a gay conscientious objector to WWII. Plus hearing his versions of living with the much younger version of Stephen's mentor... how he returned to the US in a huff when James exuded about his film’s having been chosen to represent Britain in the Festival at Cannes that year... in front of Kermit, who was still working hard to edit the final cut, razor blade in hand.

We had spent Equinox in Ukiah with our friend Guy Albert... walking in the vast cathedral space of an old growth redwood grove; swimming mornings in a quiet private lake caught in a hollow of those golden hills spotted with dark oaks; hearing the stories of each other's lives. The three of us share a sweet relationship as brothers in our deep Fae family. He moved back south to go to school about the same time that I was moving north, now 8 years ago. His dissertation is gelling out of the circle of notes hovering in the middle of his living room.

But we saved visiting my old home in Sonoma County for the trip back... we were due at the bell convention by the end of our first week in the car. But that Saturday was the Santa Barbara Solstice parade, which by dint of luck, had been postponed a convenient week, Michael has long told us about this colorful human powered tradition of his youth. It was good fun, if not quite living up to his memories of it.

While we mostly took a holiday from media & news during the trip, we made certain to arrive the evening before in time to be able to attend one of the premier day's showings of the Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 9/11. This was indeed an event to celebrate... especially with our most political of friends, Michael Hathaway.

He is the one who introduced us to each other, & we celebrate the wonder of that with him often. He visits every year for our Thanksgiving Feast, so it was a fine time in return to see his new home in that beautifully blooming part of California's coast.

While in Santa Barbara we shopped in a store chock full of loose cotton clothing, unisex enough, & in such a delicious variety of colors & patterns, that we had a FABULOUS time practicing such notions as planning to take empty suitcases to Mumbai [Bombay] when we go in December. Since the first part of the travel will be to spend an "imaginary solstice" [i.e. that must be improbable or nonexistent since India is subtropical] on the beaches of Goa, the long famous hippie haven,

I'm beginning to celebrate how we might begin shopping for new wardrobes from the start. We may find some version of Faerie consciousness & adopt l0cal dress 'till we arrive for the wedding in Bangalore some weeks later in full Indian drag of some kind!

Now, know that all clothing is "drag" & I would never be disrespectful. This is going to be a traditional two-plus day affaire with 500 guests… what would you wear?

But the climate in southern California, both that Mediterranean quality of Santa Barbara & the more desert-like aspects of eastern LA, was a treat to the parts of me who fear acquiring too much of a Northwestern mossback identity. I do still love good doses of sun & warm evenings, preferably walking through a garden, if not along a beach.

We did some of both. We saw a lot of lush flora. A faunal treat too, of course... now & again!

Stephen took photos as we toured & began early on making a slideshow that we re-toured, along with the next set of friends, on his laptop. The accumulation took on a form of journalism, rich in his quirky eye.

One day in the middle of each year's American Bell Association's Convention they have an auction, which holds little interest for me. It becomes a day to take a break & to explore. We wanted to visit the Greene & Greene houses in Pasadena... but the one that usually can be toured was being refurbished so we could only see from the outside.

We also spent some time in the Huntington Library & Gardens, seeing an exhibit on Christopher Isherwood, the gay writer of what became Cabaret. He & James Broughton overlap in some connections. Research can be fun: books or film inside, or bell inspirations in the gardens outside.

After convention we visited yet another Michael, & his partner Manuel, who live in Los Feliz, a bohemian trendy neighborhood near Hollywood. They have a lively restaurant, where we joined a third couple they wanted us to meet for a wonderful dinner. It was fun to have a boys’ night out, after the rather more straight set of the convention. We discovered connections, of course. One of them had lived in Occidental... he & I shared mutual acquaintances, if not during the same time.

Michael G. gave us a taste of several new additions in downtown LA... driving us around the swooping metallic forms of the Geary designed Disney Symphony Hall before turning into the parking ramp which is part of the new Cathedral Of The Angels. We went in to see broad terraces with fountains & gardens creating a glassed-in haven, etched with angels hovering in transparent protection above the freeway. Another angel leans out over the immense bronze doors of the entrance to one side of the massively angular concrete front of the building. Inside is brilliant, from equally massive sidewalls of glass, but the volumes of both light & stone are gracefully subdued with rich simple wood & finely woven, cleanly designed tapestries.

It is strong & impressive.

Next day we went to the Getty Museum, which is yet another big architectural statement, on our way back to Santa Barbara. We had enough hours to get a feel for the astounding site & the innovative notions of exhibit spaces... plus another version of the formal garden. Here dim rooms full of gorgeously glinting gilded illuminated medieval books, plus several photography shows, seduced us. One introduced another gay artist, Edmund Teske, who again overlaps into the west coast milieus of Isherwood & Broughton.

We had hoped to drive the coastal highway through Big Sur on one leg or the other, but, while all of this was too much movement, too fast for our first choice, we were due at the ranch in Sonoma before the Fourth of July. Obviously we need to do this trip yet again... & again…

Fortuitously the evening we arrived in Occidental was a celebration for one member of my old family of friends in Northern California. Laurie was hosting Steve's sixtieth birthday. So Pippa & their son Deneb were down from Booneville & Leslie was up from Sausalito. Plus, of course, Frederick & Rodney.

I knew them all before I moved from Arizona to live there myself... in days long ago. We had a great time renewing neglected friendship & bringing my Stephen into more direct contact with this long-established group.

We mentioned often the absence of Stan & Bill, who no doubt could feel our vibing them strongly in San Miguel, Mexico. But, for me the most delightful evidence of the time I've been gone was meeting Laurie's daughter Ruby who was a tike when I left. There is a photo of me riding her tricycle… but now she has grown into a saucy sprite demonstrating quite a presence & a singing voice to look forward to more of, please.

My college friend Frederick is selling Avalon, so it was also a farewell visit to the garden I'd helped to rebuild at the Bothy & all those years of memories, living on the "ranch" in the '90's. He & Rodney are designing a simpler life nearby.

It was sweet of them to give us the Rheinstaun Room in the guesthouse. It is Stan & Bill's room… Which is positively soporific in its dark, deeply aged, redwood. As the original guesthouse it retains an exterior door, but it was added onto, with a big lodge room, which for so long was the main office, a kitchen, & the other bedroom & bath, where Leslie was staying.

My old apartment up above the studio in the Bothy was empty & a bit forlorn. The studio space below had transformed into a "salon" for festive occasions... just as it had functioned while I lived there... but with less raw ambience of studio & more of décor & amenity... & another useful kitchen was added where my polishing room had been.

The two of us visited my old garden only in full moonlight. This is the garden in which we first met. It exists now in a mixture of prepared neglect... Andreas still keeps the raised beds weeded & ready for someone's impulse to plant. No one has had time for it, so it seemed best not to look too closely at the current reality by daylight. Our moon dance there was better for the brush of memory's embroidery on its veils.

We sat together in the scent of the same chamomile, which has become symbol for us, recalling the day 9 years ago when Michael Hathaway dropped us together into our still magical space. This trip celebrated such of our roots as these.

On the Fourth of July there was a fabulous faerie tea party at the Mother Garden.

Doug-Oh! & Kandis had made quite the affaire, inviting all my old friends from the days when we were volunteers together, picking salad for Food For Thought every Wednesday from the bosom of her fecund soil.

Such goodies as herbal shortbread & nasturtium butter; cucumber water with lemon verbena in a punchbowl; a collection of hand painted porcelain teacups & saucers all spread out under the big Bomburg Oak, where there is also a new stage, & where I hung the bell sample line along the wonderfully organic wooden seating.

This is my quintessential garden, the place I learned so much for my fullness of life. I am pleased it continues to nurture & teach the community of the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center. It was wild to mix folks from several lifetimes together... there is much flux of us being nomadic along our coast.

Megan, who designed the garden here at Soundcliff now lives just up the road from Avalon... she & Gabe are expecting next month, so it was very powerful to see them in my Mother garden. Happy fecundity!

Francie Kendall joined us in the last of the afternoon mellow, up from Albany, back from Ireland, joining us for dinner with FWK & Rodney at Avalon that evening. She'd never yet seen the garden we all call the Mother & about which I've talked so much for years. Here is one of my oldest friends & my first client, still dancing with me. We are always playing catch up in our lives, but she has come to visit us here on the Island, so we've done better recently.

It was too foggy on the ridge that evening to see the Independence Day fireworks in Santa Rosa. But, at Avalon's table sat three old friends from the University of Denver, circa Vietnam. Francie Kendall, Frederick Kasl & me... FEK, FWK & GRB. "Effie Kay" started us using our initials, as we all do still to this day. She not only was the first to commission a piece of jewelry from me, it seems she is responsible for my brand!

Since I had said goodbye to that passing of my garden so thoroughly when I moved up here to Seattle, it wasn't difficult to move on next morning... my past is just that, in the main. But we did go back to have one last coffee with Doug-Oh! We have missed him the last couple years at our Thanksgiving feasts, since he's been going to Africa to collect music during the garden's winter down time. He served us omelets made with a delicious new variety of squash & fruit salad crowned with stunningly pearlescent white gooseberries.

His house has been delightfully remodeled with a wonderful new kitchen... Joy! He is such a love for me, & such a teacher about growing fabulous foods new & old.

We had a more difficult time leaving there. But now we had finally come to the few days we had carved out for just ourselves, to leisurely drive the Mendocino coast & to stop early evening at a beachside motel not far up the coast in Fort Bragg, giving us time to walk on the beach before a late dinner. Next night was at a B&B in Bandon by the Sea, Oregon, where he has a story about a past visit to that stunning beauty of big rock beings strung along a sandy beach. We braved a short walk that evening in wet fog along an overlook after dinner, telling stories. But the next morning was a delightfully better amble, poking his lens into tide pool life before heading inland to Portland visiting one last friend to take his yoga class.

Yes, it was time to begin tracking with a more serious pace again... I'd committed to doing a booth with the bells that weekend at the Vashon Strawberry Festival. We'd bought a canopy on the way home as preparation for this, yet another sales adventure… I hadn't done a craft show since college! But many Island artists were there & in spite that a rainstorm tested that shelter thoroughly on Saturday afternoon, effectively closing the show early for the day, we survived nicely & by Sunday afternoon had sold a batch more bells & having a good time doing it.

It is fascinating to watch as folk zero in on what is often unknown to them... they usually have no idea they want a bell! Others are following the direction of someone who has encouraged them to come visit the booth. The bells seem always to create quite a lot of attention for themselves. I'm never certain what all the bells are up to, but we reliably seem to have a lot of fun when we play creatively together! I'm mostly glad to have the work they make for me, & I'm pleased they can make a happy income. It is ever more a sweet business.

Now I have had some days to unwind a bit & to simply sit for most of a week without particularly moving. There was much to deal with in the garden & lots of studio details to tend. This week will see more of that. But, although I need to continue production & concentrate again on getting more bells up on the web site, I'm enjoying the illusion I can stretch time out for a while.

My birthday is coming along, but I want to slide over this last year of my fifties quietly, please. It has been a deliciously rich decade, full of soaring love, business bumps & now maturation into what promises to only get better.

Another year. Bells are growing now in the gardens of so many more stories.

Enjoy!

GRB