Up late/early with the Bats

The kale of truth

There is a slow planetary weight in realizing that what I’ve been gardening is bitter but good for me. I think. Maybe. The kale of truth.

I’ve now enabled 3 friends to temporarily escape the gas chamber of America and as I witness their unfolding & detoxing & rage & embarrassment …Did I look like this? I’ve been traveling outside the borders of the US for so long. Since childhood - literally since the age of 11. What a magic number 11 is. I once read its considered mystical because its the first count past our fingers. Like zero, it required magical expansive thinking from our oldest kin. It’s my favorite.

I’ve tried not to be smug all this time. Tried to storytell and wax poetic with the other kids about adventures without it being held against me. “Oh how LUCKY. Oh how SPECIAL you are.” The othering was already firmly in place from my niche religious upbringing and my intense muppetlike countenance. I sound like fun, don’t I?

Back to the truthkale.

I am leaving.

It requires the leaving behind as much as the moving towards. I’m leaving behind partners, accomplices, hats, sewing machines, stilts, and a garden of projects I’ve tended for over 17 years. I suppose it will be more of a wild orchard now…fruiting trees getting on with their fruiting and rotting and fruiting again without me. When I stumble back through for a visit to this soil, I’ll touch the leaves and the bark and say “Hello Friends.”

The moving towards is its own unfolding. A thing I’ve been slowly planting for 6 years over 2 hemispheres. I don’t have solid offers or employments. I don’t YET have visas approved. I don’t have reserve resources to draw from. I have invitations, collaborators, chosen family, and food that tastes like food - seriously have you had a South Australian strawberry? Life changing!

I’m heartbroken. I’m hopeful. I’m going full glamour hobo.

I invite you to come with me, find me, follow me. Like twin Hekatean torches moving down the unknown road I’m beckoning you along through the fecund wonderful dark past Plato’s shadows into something multidimensional and dazzling.

Evidence of me writing this overlooking my venue, building Richmond Fringe ticketing, and witnessing giant fucking bats find their own way from safety to nourishment.

Some logistics:

• I’m leaving Patreon. Snakegoddamn its the worst. Please find me only here or in the meat world.

• I’ll be out of my nest in RVA end of May. While I will come back for projects a few times a year, I will not be spending significant time in the US. The 5th edition of Richmond Fringe (2026) will be a transition year away from my leadership and into something new and vast!

• I’m aiming for Iceland and the UK May-September. Australia October onwards with a few other hobos…

• I’ll be liquidation SO MUCH STUFF of the fancy, colorful, theatrical kind as well as the porcelain teacup/ memory foam mattress kind. Want a momento? Get in touch and watch my IG/FB for those things.

I love you.

In Curiosity,

Carmel