If you live in any big city you will understand that to get to work it is all about commute time…Well…My commute to work takes me 23 hours a day and has no car pool lanes I travel half way around the world just to get ready for work! Lets see anyone beat that! (Wait is this a good thing record to want to hold up? Maybe if your going for The Glutton Award for 2011 “and the Punishment nominees for most traveled Jacka** are.
‘Yes that is correct, you read me right… all of last year I would routinely board a plane from my hometown here in sunny Palm Springs Ca. and three flights and a total of 23 hours four meal services and countless movies and a taxi ride later my commute would end and my work day would BEGIN. “What the…” Then after 4 to 6 weeks in India I would do the same thing in reverse and come home “Honey I home…Sorry I’m late for dinner the traffic was just horrible!” Home began to seem more like a transit lounge than a real home as I was always sub consciously keeping an eye on the departure board thinking I wonder if I have enough time to do this before I fly? I was perpetually preparing for the next flight to go to work half way around the world. Ahh the Joys of international job sharing.
When you consider home to be a transit lounge, which by it’s brief and purely functional definition is-
Transit lounge-noun
a lounge at an airport for passengers waiting between flights.
(That’s all it says in the dictionary 10 words nothing more) and you do not embrace it as the clichéd “sweet place” you begin to understand that your missing out on a lot of these vital “Homemade Benefits” the kinds of things I am sure we all take for granted, those ordinarily extraordinary kinds of everyday goings on that are insignificant to even wonder why you are so lucky to do them…they are just the needed bridge to bring your bigger and more significant moments of your life together. Some of these forgotten, taken for granted privileges you have forgotten about and take with a nonplused irreverent attitude are;
A place you can unpack, relax and unwind,/A place that houses your own car that you can get into and go anywhere on a whim
A place where they speak your native language to anyone for any interaction with people in any part of your day. /A quiet safe place to read a book or magazine,
Connect to the Internet with your home wi-fi (no passwords or usernames to recall), /A place to revive and energize one that never closes
The only place you can get to sleep in your own bed!
These are to name but a few “Homemade Benefits’.
I cannot do most of the above list while working my day job in another country because of the simple fact that these Countries speak a different language so both the written word and the spoken ones were in a style and a manner that I could not understand. When buying anything from newspaper to a new car you traded in a different currency, worshiped different Gods and lets not get into the food! So, there I was working and living in a place I could not tune into and when I did get home back here to California I was not using my “Homemade Benefits” to their full upright and locked position, as I always consider myself getting ready to go to the next job journey away from home. I was forever in life a transit traveler at the mercy of an authority far greater than my own.
As a transit traveler you forfeit your “homemade benefits- because I was on hold for the next trip half way around the world where I would arrive to that place and not engage because I could not communicate, so, while I have done a heap full of wonderful events truly extra-ordinary things in my life…I realized last year that I haven’t be able to collect any homemade benefits the the everday ordinarily extraordinary things in life that make everyday ordinary…extraordinary.
Last year after 30 years I decided that while I was having a killer time doing all of these wild and wonderful extraordinary events. I was not in the total me vision benefiting from that which can provide a perspective a balance and simple perspective to ones life. “Homemade Benefits” for instance.
Not having had this skill set ever put into sub conscious practice I forget they existed for regular people. I turn going to the corner market into an event of a lifetime. Damn, I forgot how to do all the ordinarily extraordinary things you take for granted. So it’s either a grand production or I can’t make it happen, it is the only way I know how to live.
Flash forward to present day March 4th 2011
Now, I travel a mile and a half to work everyday not halfway around the globe (Yes…I have stopped dancing with my day job for a short spell to give the time needed to get my solo art career up and running and more importantly to see how you other guys do it) I wish to have my fill of “Homemade Benefits” the kind made from everyday natural ingredients that make a tasty ordinarily extraordinary. I think I am going to need your help and maybe along the way as you teach me that less can be more and you don’t always need to make a production of going to corner store,I could pay you back by showing you just how ordinarily extraordinary you are and keeping it close to home can be!
Hey neighbor!
PS is this too over the top? have a loo
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First we were in the control room and we danced while this little-big show went off like a perfect song, nothing went wrong, the 2000 volunteers did the most amazing job and we danced for them while they danced on the field! It was nothing short of amazing!
Twenty-two years ago I began this trek around the world, and since then I have been one of the luckiest men on the planet, creating shows that by count the entire world has seen many times over.
