Category: Lifestyle and Health

The Desert Wept At Our Passing, And Is Once Again Left Alone

On By Karl GessleinIn Contact Improv, Dance, Lifestyle and Health, Love, Poetry, Self-Improvement, TravelLeave a comment

70,000 people came and went where none were before. A place so barren it is without insects, and yet I saw a hawk swooping through our camp at dusk.

Black Rock City. A place like no other on earth. You have either been there and know it, or you are an outsider. There is no in between.

There is no place I feel more alive, more insane, more in touch with the emptiness inside my own soul. That personal struggle to add meaning to an intrinsically meaningless life.

Giant bug puppet. Photo by Jim Laux
Giant bug puppet. Photo by Jim Laux

I didn’t want to go, but I had already bought a ticket and a plane ride, there was no turning back. Doug and I planned for months to build a giant 22 foot walking puppet bug we were going to stride across the playa with. I knew it would be a nightmare building it there, it always is. I knew the wind would make our lives miserable as we tried to cart around this giant creation. Last year I built a 43 foot tall puppet man and moved it around with 6 others on guide wires. I swore never again, but here I was building this bug in the middle of nowhere, right back at it again.

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The Most Unreasonable Commitment Ceremony Ever Held In The Middle Of Cayuga Lake

On By Karl GessleinIn Dance, Lifestyle and Health, Love, Poetry3 Comments

It’s so rare in life that everything goes your way. So often we spend our days battling with entropy as our world seems to stay in a perpetual state of near disasters. It’s rare that everything goes right, and even rarer that this happens on the day that you commit yourself to another. Nature has always been my religion, the place I go to find peace and solace. It seemed fitting that Thilde and I would say our vows to each other in the middle of the body of water I had grown to love the most, Cayuga Lake.

The sound of over a hundred kayaks, canoes and standup paddleboards bumping together as the waves rolled by. We hadn’t rehearsed the words we were going to say, but that was fine because life wasn’t meant to be rehearsed. I was lucky enough to choose to be with a woman who cared little for words anyway. Thilde was a woman who cherished actions and affection over words. We had made it this far, and convinced 150 people to gather themselves together in the middle of Cayuga Lake for a most unconventional ceremony to celebrate our love.

The Beautiful Bride to be - Photo by Frank Muller
The Beautiful Bride to be – Photo by Frank Muller

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The Irresistible Urge To Bury Your Dead

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, Love3 Comments

fetusDay before my birthday, Thilde is bleeding. 10 weeks pregnant but something is wrong. We go to the ER.

The hospital is the same as always, fear, trepidation. Will the insurance company really pay? Sometimes it feels like they should just collect $1000 in cash from you at the front door. Wegmans is cheaper, I can usually get out of there for less than $100. This place is different. We sit in the waiting-room full of people. The all seem content with waiting, like they have been there before and they will come there again.

Lying to the nurses, trying to act like we don’t react to the sickly smell of the cleaning products. We ask her to move the Janitor cart away from the door. She is hooking up an IV. We stop her an ask how long the saline has been in the plastic bag. She looks as us like we are aliens from another planet and clearly does not know what to say. We politely decline the IV and ask for water. We get a cup but are told to drink only a few sips.

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Kite Through 3 Feet Of Powder, Launch 15 Feet In The Air, Do A Trick, Repeat

On By Karl GessleinIn Kiting, Lifestyle and Health, Love, Travel, Uncategorized1 Comment

Tug Hill Kite Festival 2014 was the best day of snow kiting in my entire life. I had made plans to spend the weekend at The Flurry Festival, a 3 day dance festival in Saratoga Springs, but I decided to cancel at the last-minute because of an impending snowstorm. Instead I packed the van with 6 kites, 2 Snowboards, 3 pairs of Micro skis, XC skis, Ski, XC and snowboard boots, some food, my portable heater and camping gear and a couple sleeping bags and started on my personal Mecca to Tug Hill, the promised land for snowkiting.

Zebulon Crabnebula doing what he does best
The Lean Green Snowkite Machine – Zebulon Crabnebula doing what he does best

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How The Prayers Change … When Another Life Is On The Line

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, LoveLeave a comment

Every morning I wake up and lay in bed staring at the ceiling. Before I get up and start my day I close my eyes and I say a prayer. I don’t pray to any deity or higher power. My prayer is to myself. I pray to be the best father, lover, friend, son and computer consultant I can be. It feels like I am asking myself to be better.  I feel like asking the same thing of myself day after day actually helps me to be the thing I am trying to be.

For the last year I have been in a wonderful relationship with a wonderful woman. She really is everything I want in a partner, patient, funny, caring and most importantly she laughs at my bad jokes. When I get low blood sugar and start yelling and acting like an ass, she carefully stops what we are doing and prepares some food.  We met at Ecstatic dance and dancing has been a very big part of our relationship. We work well together and whether we are editing her book for months on end or putting up a ceiling on her cabin it seems like we work quite well together. At least as well as anyone could possibly be expected to be working with me. It’s strange to look at yourself and be acutely away of how impossible you are to deal with.

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My Computer: “Prove To Me You’re Not A Robot”

On By Karl GessleinIn Cars, Lifestyle and Health, Self-ImprovementLeave a comment

A robot by Human Emulation Robotics.

We’ve all grown frighteningly accustomed to proving to our personal computers that we are not a robot. Every time we fill out a web form or accidentally forget our webmail password a little box shows up with a series of letters and numbers that are increasingly difficult to read. As the years have flown by, the secret codes have gotten childishly easy to read to completely and utterly indecipherable. For a brief moment I often doubt myself “Is this really what this program is expecting me to type”. If I was any more unreasonable of a man I might even have lingering doubts about whether I might be a robot myself.

So how did we get to this place where people write programs to test other people to see if they are programs? Everyone knows it’s to protect us from spammers and hackers. It’s those ‘really smart computer nerds’ that are keeping those other ‘really Bad (with a capital B) computer nerds’ at bay. So we go to bed at night feelings safe. But so much of it is like watching our grandma getting felt up by TSA security at the airport. It’s all about the illusion of safety, sadly you and I are often not even protected from the people who are supposed to protect us.

Google used their Google Maps cars to drive around neighborhoods automatically logging into people’s unsecured wi-fi and collecting personal information on their computers all over the world. They were fined paltry sums by many government agencies and they apologized profusely but this was the first time something like this was done on a wide scale.  I’ve slowly moved most of my digital life into the cloud. At this point most of the virtual information I care about is stored somewhere other than my personal computer.

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The Ocean Doesn’t Care Whether You Live Or Die – $666 Of Destroyed Gear

On By Karl GessleinIn Kayaking, Kiting, Lifestyle and Health, Travel4 Comments

As the 8′ high waves came and crashed on my head the only thing I could think was “Get back in your kayak and get out of here or you will die”. I frantically splashed around in the water while the most powerful current I had ever experienced thrashed me around uncontrollably. The boat hit me in the face giving me a black eye, I tried time and again to get myself into the swamped sea kayak and roll it up but to no avail. Eventually I gave up and grabbed my 500lb sea kayak filled with water and started swimming toward the vacant beach.

hatteras

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Worst Idea Ever – Build a 43′ Tall Puppet, Strap It To My Back, Walk Around 60,000 People in 20 mph Winds – Burning Man 2013

On By Karl GessleinIn Dance, Self-Improvement, Travel5 Comments
My 24' high puppet built for the previous burn in 2012. This year it was twice the size.
My 24′ high puppet built for the previous burn in 2012.
This year I built one twice as large. Photo by Dan Kaus.

In the last 2 weeks I …

– Had the bomb squad called on me in the airport

– Was attacked by lawn sprinklers while innocently sleeping outside somewhere I probably shouldn’t have,

– Got pressure washed with foam so hard it hurt while rocking out to a DJ in a plexiglass cage with 80 naked strangers

– Danced 6 hours a day in the desert for a week and ate the best food of my life every day at the Rhythm-Wave camp in Black Rock City

– Built a 43′ high bamboo puppet with scrounged materials found around BRC and walked around for 5 hours over 2 different nights with 5 people helping me

– Hiked for 3 days in Yosemite with Doug while the whole park was on fire, climbed half-dome and didn’t get eaten by bears despite smearing peanut butter all over my face and duct-taping myself to a tree

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Kayaking In The Moonlight At The Edge Of The World While The Waves Crash Against 100′ High Cliffs In Magdalen Islands Quebec.

On By Karl GessleinIn Kayaking, Kiting, Lifestyle and Health, Love, Self-Improvement, TravelLeave a comment
IMAG1787
The Island That Sings The Sweetest Songs To My Soul.

Words cannot accurately convey the majesty and awe that the Magdalen Islands inspire.

I launched the kayak as the sun turned red on the horizon. Strapping a headlamp on I jumped into my 14′ sea kayak and tightly gripped my favorite paddle and forced my way out through the surf. The beach was tiny, only about 20 feet wide and was the only beach for miles in either direction. The swell caused the giant kayak to tip and sway more than I ever thought possible in a sea kayak. A few feet away the waves pounded the rocks and cliff face. The lighthouse shot up from the cliff. As I paddled away I felt like I had found the edge of the earth. Here the land abruptly ended and sheer sandstone cliffs that would easily give way under your feet shot up hundreds of feet into the air. There were caves everywhere that were easily carved out by the forceful action of the waves. The surging tides would trap air in the holes and they would build up pressure and blow out air, sometimes high up into the air. The noise and the surging water struck a nerve somewhere deep inside me. I plunged the paddle into the water stroke after stroke and mile melted into mile. Before I knew it the sun had disappeared and the lighthouse was miles behind me, completely gone from view.

I had to check out one of the caves before I turned around so I cautiously turned on my headlamp and started paddling into one that looked creepy. The water was rising and falling quickly and the cave went on for a long way. After several hundred yards there was no light left except the light from my headlamp with no end to the cave in sight. As the swell surged up and down little holes in the walls would blow out water, sometimes with surprising force. It was exhilarating and frightening all at the same time, I decided to slowly back paddle my way out again.

Paddling back under a full moon was totally unreal. I could see the waves crash against the rocks and the cliff face rose up hundreds of feet with the moon peaking over the top. I paddled with a furious intensity for miles until I reached the lighthouse again. I left a flashlight on my car so I could find it on the cliff face, the two red LEDs stared out at me in the water like some kind of hideous beast waiting to devour me.

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Lets Create Laws To Shoot People Legally Then Call It ‘Stand Your Ground’

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and HealthLeave a comment

The jails are just filling up with innocent Americans who gun down intruders in their own home then get stuck with a liberally biased jury and end up spending their lives rotting away in Jail. A bunch of people put their heads together and came up with the “Stand your ground laws” to save the day. We live in such an amazing country that now 21 different states or 2/5 of our more perfect Union now have laws protecting people who shoot other people as long as it is in ‘self-defense’.

People With Glass Guns Shouldn’t Throw Stones

In Texas you can shoot a Prostitute if you pay her for sex and she doesn’t deliver ‘the goods’. Walk away scott-free thanks to Stand Your Ground Laws, but don’t try to steal ribs from a supermarket with a knife in your pocket or you could end up with a 50 year prison sentence.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/10/opinion/moore-texas-craziness

I knocked on my neighbor’s door one day with my 12-year-old son by my side. He answered the door with a shotgun and a gruff  ‘get the hell off my porch’. I stood my ground and told him how inappropriate his constant speeding down our road was threatening the lives of every living creature around. If only NY had a stand your ground law, he would have been able to shoot me and my son in self defense for not ‘getting the hell off his porch’ when he told us to. Or maybe I would have been able to take his gun from him and shoot him because I felt that my life was being threatened. Who knows?

It took them 44 days to press charges against Zimmerman, after the Jury trial he walked. Members of the jury were left feeling like they should have charged him with SOMETHING. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that George Zimmerman went out looking for trouble. If he hadn’t been packing heat and then whatever altercation he had with Travan would have ended in a scuffle with some bruises and hurt egos. Instead Travan died. Why did he die?

Because guns don’t solve problems.

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