i sat on astroturf and enjoyed a picnic while wearing a child's foam zebra mask and catching up with a friend from high school i hadn't seen in seven years -- surreality at its very best at the happy show at the bedlam theatre. if you are looking for a dynamic and fully-engaged theater experience, i really recommend this "choose your own adventure" piece by live action set.

a late night trip intended to be urban exploring ended up as a frigid walk along the mississippi, where mist ghosts obscured the shore. a shadowy flap descended over the water: a heron landing near us on the shore to fish in the shallows. the world was beautiful and still, visible breath and the freeway hum beneath a few pale stars.

today i applied for this job, and the level to which i am excited about it defies sense and reason. do i really want to live in minneapolis? what am i thinking? yet i find myself gleefully fantasizing about designing filing systems for the seward co-op. that's the kind of dork i am: a secretarial one, and my shame is deep.

i also helped my sister paper-mache an enormous bone. may day is coming - spring is bursting forth out of decay. we are renewed and renewed and renewed. tomorrow is friday and that makes everything seems good.

the best thing i did yesterday was talk about culture while watching the mississippi river.

on the way back from a walk to the witch's hat tower (rumored to be bob dylan's inspiration for "all along the watch tower"), some friends and i picked up an uprooted spruce tree some people were throwing away and carried it back to their house, down franklin and over the mississippi river. if it can't be replanted, it will be either burned or decorated like a christmas tree.

also, i sat inside an enormous beer vat in an abandoned brewery and made wonderful resonant noices to my heart's content.

it was another good day.

after a morning bike lock debachle, i biked to common ground meditation center, my favorite spirituality hub, even though i was doomed to be half an hour late. i missed the meditation, but was just in time for the dharma talk, which, fittingly enough, was on determination and being resolute.

i was unexpectedly taken out to breakfast at the seward cafe, a collectively owned and run restaurant with an emphasis on local, organic, sustainable food. i am now officially in love with the place. anywhere that has a free box and a hand-drawn menu gives me palpitations. i had a gluten-free, vegan rice-millet-corn pancake with blueberries, tahini, and maple syrup! a highly allergic girl's dream come true! hibiscus tea is the ideal drink for a warm, sunny, delicious spring day.

today was so phenomenal that i'm tempted to write about the whole thing. but that would defeat the purpose of the word "best," so that's all i've got.

until tomorrow!

i spent my day at in the heart of the beast's open workshops for the may day parade. few things make me happier than paper mache - warm wheatpaste, meditative concentration, losing yourself to your project amid a joyful hubbub, creating beauty out of lost and discarded things, bringing forth form where there was nothing. i'm making a big ol' barn owl. it's a good time for resurrection.

on part of a fourteen mile bike ride on the luce line trail, i rode through a delightfully cool and dark tunnel, refreshing after sun-drenched, sweaty, singing spring. the bicycle is one of the best inventions of all time.

starting strong with a tie

1) you know those enormous corrugated drainage pipes that run underneath little bridges? today i explored one in minnehaha park. i sat inside of the pipe on one end while my friend sat inside of the pipe on the other side. we had an in-depth (and resonant!) conversation from about 50 feet apart. it was like living inside of a tin can telephone!

2) i shook my tail feathers at hipshaker, the monthly old school soul/obscure r&b/funkity funk dance party at the kitty cat klub in dinkytown, which resembles a maze of thrift store-furnished living rooms and intimate conversation nooks; it's worth visiting for its decor alone. the crowd was full of earnest, good-time ass-shakers who were not afraid to get down. i danced my wild and crazy heart out and was in good company. and it was free!