Category: Love

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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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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The Frustration And Madness That Is The Creative Process

On By Karl GessleinIn Cars, Lifestyle and Health, Love, Self-ImprovementLeave a comment
Love
Several very frustrating hours spent behind a dozen cans of spray paint.

So much of art is people wandering across something that you have created and saying to themselves or out loud if they are bold

“Wow that is pretty cool”

When they see something that is generated they don’t often even think about the work that went into creating it. There are those that call the state of creation the ‘flow’ state. So often when I move into that space-time seems to fly by and the outside world often shrinks away. Most of the time when I try to create something I start without much of a notion of where I will end up. Every time I take a step back and look at when I’ve painted or written I end up thinking to myself.

“Oh my god, this sucks so bad”

Almost all the art I created in the first 30 years of life I have destroyed because I honestly can’t stand to look at it. I keep throwing my heart at whatever I am doing again and again until I can start to tolerate my own creation.

But I never feel love. I never look at something I’ve created and say to myself

“Wow, that is pretty cool, I am so talented”

Even when complete strangers come out of nowhere and tell me that whatever I have made is the coolest thing they have ever seen I still only look at my creations and think…

‘It could be so much better’

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Here’s to the man who couldn’t control his sex drive, causing me to come into being

On By Karl GessleinIn Love, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Human nature is to remember the worst and forget the best. Why we are wired this way is beyond me, but sometimes it makes sense to think back and try to remember all the good times.

dadI remember every time my old man fixed anything he would sing a cacophonous song of the most crass obscenities I have ever heard. I never imagined that when I became an adult I would sing the same song of frustration whenever any repairs had to be done on my cars.

There was the time he spent the whole day in the basement building something cool. He never told me what it was but I think it was an automatic damper for the woodstove we had that heated the entire house. At the end of the day he proudly showed us “R2D2 and C3P0″two little groupings of electronics that we imagined to be the robots from Star Wars trapped in the wiring of the basement of our house.

Every Monday night we had Family Home Evening (what I now tell Orion is Forced Family Fun). We’d sit around and mostly play boardgames of which my father almost always won. He wouldn’t just win of course, he would grind everyone else into dust. He was a good sport by nature, I had to learn to be. I guess I still have a lot to learn on that front. I think about my son and our love of boardgames and I smile when I think of all our Monday nights together.

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How They Control Us … With Our Own Fear And Anger

On By Karl GessleinIn LoveLeave a comment
Man consoles victim
Man consoles victim

I am like you.

I noticed the Boston bombs on that lonely television in the restaurant, the airport, or the bar.

That same sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Not again.

Who will we retaliate against this time? Someone has to pay, someone always has to pay.

I tried to ignore the news, the Facebook feed, the google news articles, yet I am drawn in by tragedy. I had so many questions. Did they delay the 2nd detonation to target the EMT’s and Police? How many people were killed? Who did it?

That compulsion to slow down our car and gawk as we drive by that gnarled wreck on the freeway. Eventually I give into the urges and then I am swept away by emotion as the online pictures evoke the kind of visceral emotional reaction that only photos can.

Why do they do it, why us? We still don’t understand. We will never understand.

They do it because they can. They do it because we care, because our hearts bleed for those that we see suffer, because we are powerless.

Powerless to do anything about it, powerless to help. We sit by and watch as the towers crumble and thousands die and we know that we are powerless to stop it.

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Becoming A Father – Heads We Breed/Tails We Don’t

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, Love1 Comment

Becoming a Father. It’s been on my mind lately. So much to think about.

Orion in Troll Cave
Orion in a Troll Cave in Iceland (Click for full story)

It was an accident, the best kind of accident you could ever imagine happening. There was no broken glass, smashed metal and blood, only an overwhelming feeling of joy. When Marlo told me she was pregnant we never even had a conversation about terminating the pregnancy. Broken condoms were a pretty common occurrence in those days, and those betting odds finally caught up with us. When she told me she was pregnant it changed my life, but I could never have conceived how much his birth would change the very core of who I was.

I remember the day Orion was born vividly, it was the happiest day of my life. I had witnessed his growth in Marlo’s belly for months, but the reality never set it till the day he emerged. How could it? My old life was about to disappear and a new one would grow in its wake.

Things with Marlo had been on the rocks for a while, but when the day finally came we grew closer than we had ever been before. She needed love and support and I needed so much to give it to her. Our midwife Kate was amazing and she allowed me to catch Orion first when he came out of the womb. I remember when his head first stuck out how surprised I was, you expect the baby to come, but nothing can really prepare you for the emotions you go through when he finally arrives. This little creature that was the better half of me and the better half of Marlo changed my life more dramatically than anyone else ever could.

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