"WOW, Tasha you have changed the course of my life:" From Chandra, who joined me in Edmonton

WOW Tasha you have changed the course of my life. Thank you so much. I wanted to send my intial unfettered response to the experience. I will likely follow up with more at some point, knowing that my vitality is in writing.... Thank you thank you thank you for that.

I almost don’t want to write as the experience was so visceral that I am in a state of feeling and don’t want it to end. Yet it needs to be recorded.

I have never had such a sense of humanity. You read about humanity in anthropology textbooks, have this concept of a line swiveling through history in different garments but when it comes to real humanity- knowing that we are all individuals, together.. Well, for me, that is rare.

At the end of the presentation this guy started to talk about.. well my interpretation was a little holistic, but essentially about rearranging life to start living. Moving past, working with, the time thing by showing up in the wrong place and wrong time—like traveling, map making beyond the dim but steady whir of common structure… being real, being alive.

Tasha thank you so much for embedding in me an understanding of moving past our fight or flight consciousness. You talked about it before, and now having been naked on a stage I get it.This isn’t a wishy washy new age thing for all those out there who doubt that life can move fully beyond the mundane at some point. To know humanity we need to move beyond fight or flight. To do this, we need to love ourselves. Love your toes. Love the way your toes are saturated by the sunlight from the window, and how they become soft embers sending energy back into the light. Individuality, not capitalism.

We all want to be alive. We all want a real experience. We need to move beyond the norm to discover ourselves. Then we I can know humanity.

Do you know humanity? We were all there in that room all knowing it just then.

Thanks to the body for bringing me back there.

Love.

"The show is about everything, not nothing," an Edmonton audience member's response

The empowerment of self.

The importance of finding thyself and becoming true.

You said you had nothing but really you had everything prepared and on display. The show is about everything, not nothing.

Hopefully the heart felt people will become the norm. By bringing brutal truth to everyone and find the beauty of it all. And in that finding the earth is our home and we need to act... we need to take a stand and try to be a supporter of mother earth... which includes every body.

We need to realize that we can all have a heart and we all have to connect to those around and really support everyone.

Tasha when you came out I saw the shaking hands and shaking knees and wanted to run up and give you a hug because you looked so anxious. You are such a strong person and hopefully I can take your message to my students and get them to realize what makes people naked (which like you said is not being unclothed) being a youth counsellor and teaching students daily.

Another Day of Desperation Here on Earth

I'm not very interested in why. Though I'm sure I have my reasons.

Everyone has their reasons.

But I often feel desperate. It is not a comfortable or comforting feeling. It leads to lonely. Desperate is so non-fun. There are no Desperate Pride parades.

I have paid attention to it for a very long time, longer than some of my friends have been alive. I've done the work. I'm doing the work. The work has dialled it up! Bring it on!! I said so. I asked for it. I got it.

I'm in it.

It feels so useless and I get lost in that too. The uselessness of me. Why feel so much? Why feel this way? Whistle a happy tune. Choose happiness. Do yoga. Eat fruit. Be thankful. I.e. useless, i.e. me = useless, i.e. fuck off.

There is more. There are my children and trees and dogs and Tim Horton's iced cappuccinos and sex and disco and my red velvet shirt. I get those too and good for me that I can.

How can anyone not feel desperate? It feels like such an obvious response to me. But I am always astounded by the invisibility of the obvious. (To me; I know.)

I watched that video, How To Be Alone. It's lovely.

I should make a video entitled, How To Be Desperate. AKA: Sit In Your Shit. I used to hope for a cure but now it feels like my life's work and, if there's one thing I've learned since being born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in 1961, work is considered useful. Pretty/prideful or not, useful/useless or not, I'm using my desperation and doing my fucking work.