Connecting With Rainbows

(angel friendship hugs) Awwwwww, welcome everyone, to my enchanted, friendship sandbox! I am Noah Eaton, otherwise known as Mistletoe Angel, and have lately taken on the identity of Emmnauel Endorphin as well across the poetic landscape! :)

:) This blog truly was inspired by your friendship, the sunny side of life, and believe it or not, a peace puppet made out of a lunch bag! :)

The origin of Emmnauel Endorphin came out of a visit to the Ninth Annual Children's Peace Fair at the social hall at Augustana Lutheran Church last November 20th. I was there to help the children celebrate peace, and over at the Portland Peaceful esponse Coalition table they were making little peace puppets and dolls and I decided to make one. So I got a lunch bag, pasted yellow velvet over it to make a dress, took more velvet colors and made heart, star and peace sign shapes, pasted rainbow yarn for hair, a red pipe cleaner smile, blue cotton ball eyes, cloth wings, and finally, a blue feather worn in his hair. :) I gave it the name Emmnauel Endorphin, the Peace Puppet.

:) The doll was just sooooooo cute, and finally it got my poetic juices flowing, so I decided to create a concept poetry series from the character. Being a real fan of alliteration, "serotonin sundae" eventually got in my head, and was truly the afflatus for this poetry phenomenon. From there, I made more characters, including Mindy Melisma and the Bubblegum Spiderweb Temperament, Gotu Kola, Gelasia Monkeyflower the Laughing Coach, Commodore Celandine the Jolly Pirate, the Folletti Canaries, Ziazan Zhixxokae & the Zulu Nut Troupe, and the Yosei Philharmonic, and I just let my imagination run wild to let it all gel together somewhat into a technicolor fruitcake.

:) You can read the series that made this community possible below! :)

********Emmanuel Endorphin's Serotonin Sundae********

1: Tinkle, Tinkle
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/001446.html
2: Sunny-Side Upstaging
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/001926.html
3: Gotu Kola Sweeps The Cortisol Cabaret
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/002013.html
4: Circulating The Peppermint Picayune
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/002131.html
5: Mindy Melisma's Butterscotch Bandstand
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/002162.html
6: Have A Good Laugh
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/002456.html
7: Treat A Hug Like A Next Door Neighbor
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/002501.html
8: Equinox In My Heels
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/002628.html
9: Find That One Thing That Truly Makes You Happy
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/002646.html
10: Hana Ka Hoe, Pa'a Ka Waha
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/003031.html
11: Commodore Celandine's Caelestus Cruiseliner
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/003496.html
12: Happy Dance Grab Bag
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/002704.html
13: Geography Of Your Tanlines
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/003728.html
14: Prime Time Sublime
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/003257.html
15: Everything Is Warm And Fuzzy Here
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/002858.html
16: One More Just For Good Measure
http://piptalk.com/pip/Forum92/HTML/003755.html

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Long in my life, I have been fascinated with flower power. Where the pollen got into my bloodstream, I don’t know: my father lives by schedules and practicality and my mother is deeply into politics yet the most loving and compassionate mother, so I guess I just discovered the passion on my own. I am a flower child; my heart belongs to the heart of the matter, and that heart of the matter is love itself. I oppose every war, as I find there is no excuse to resort to any form of violence between siblings. I have a lust for adventure and discovering myself through an array of misadventures and not through conformity. I believe we should all unite but not conform. I love to wear clothing that is unique: besides my extensive tie-dye selection I love to wear my Teva sandals everywhere, T-shirts with my favorite rock bands, Hawaiian shirts, anything with some sort of unrecognized, artistic value. Sometimes my mother insists I wear mono-colored T-shirts to school, and decide to obey her though I do not admire that fashion. And though of course I want to have a family in the future, thus I need to earn money, I truly am anti-capitalistic and should I become a rock star or famous artist, I will give much of it to my love and children and give much of the rest to Toys For Tots, Greenpeace, or some other organizations I admire, non-profit based ones. And…of course…my hair, has continued to grow out as I believe you can truly learn much about a person just by looking at their hair. I find my hair to have a lot of character, showing I am a free and rebellious spirit. My Spanish teacher Ms. Doyle said she loves men with long hair too because she finds a romance in them, some mystery, and everyone should have just a bit of mystery to themselves. You can be truthful and honest and have a little mystery in you! The only thing that divides me from the ultimate hippy back in the day was the fact I don’t smoke and am zero-tolerant to drugs and alcohol. That’s probably why the Flower Age died out I imagine, I love burning incense and the scents are so spiritually relaxing, but if you encage the spirits inside of you, you will only wither away quicker. Burn incense instead. Let the spirits dance around you. I love burning patchouli, the essence growing hippies always used to burn. Lotus Champa is great too. You’ve got to stay healthy if you are going to get out there and rebel; we need our lungs and we need our kidneys.

It truly is sad how these times have passed. I accept some change, but only if traditions are respected. Sadly, I truly believe tradition is fading to black in this country, from the FCC raising the consolidation cap to 35% and tarnishing the diversity in our media, to people like Rob Unz attempting to steal bi-lingual education and the romance of language diversity in the United States, to our politicians making dishonest excuses about going to war. Let’s face it, we’re slowly turning into an oligarchy, and so many do not support what’s going on. Come to think of it, that must be where I got diagnosed with the flower power syndrome, though I have been in love with this phenomenon since I was five years old.

I dream so many times of standing there on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, riding around with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters from sea to shining sea, publishing the first rainbow newspaper with holographic images and good news as the headlines, being signed as the lead singer for The Diggers and eventually seeing my face through a platinum record with them, opening up for Grateful Dead in ’69 and sitting in coffee shops over mochas with Peter Coyote. Dang, I wish I could talk as fast as that Neil Cassady. If I wanted to meet one person to have a deep and comely conversation with more than anyone in the world, it would be him, simply because he always had something to say, in fact Jerry Garcia said he was himself too much he was unbelievable and wanted to say “OK, take the energy down a tad, Neily!”. Wouldn’t that be so much fun to sit back in that 1939 Harvester with “Further” written on your shirt and talk the day and dream the nights over? I believe my nick-name would be “Kaleidoscope Whistle”. Those people are my friends: Timothy Leary, Chet Helms, Wavy Gravy, Bob Dylan; they are true American heroes, and I will make my world feel like Camp Winnarainbow and hold the proverb in my belt that Timothy taught us, “Turn on, tune in, and drop out!”

However, the pinnacle point of my developing interest in that good ole’ love was brought upon me in 1994, when I was 10 years old. Me and my mother and sisters drove to Nederland, a relaxing mountain town just west of Golden. There, upon stepping into the confectionery to purchase some Eldorado Spring Water and beef jerky, I encountered a writer by the name of Rainbow Dancer, who has become a staple character to my life’s adventure. He had his brown hat, a rainbow shirt with a white peace-sign labeled in the middle, and a big hunkin’ Polaroid camera laced around his neck. Immediately he was delighted to see me, noticing I was wearing a white cotton shirt with the words “Peace On” labeled on the top with a huge purple peace-sign symbol labeled in the middle with some psychedelic graffiti art drawn all along the edges. He said he was publishing a new book in Seattle, Washington, filled with his own poetic thoughts and pictures of many different people wearing peace-related clothing. So I let him be my guest, take a picture, and I shook hands with the chap and spent five minutes talking to him about his project before looking out upon the gorgeous Nederland reservoir. (God, it’s gorgeous) That moment truly inspired my life and eventually, six years later, I re-invented the legacy of the Rainbow Dancer in my own poetry (Yep, if you remember Rainbow Dancer, that is his origin). Who is the Rainbow Dancer exactly? He is both a metaphysical and terrestrial uncle to everyone, both a prophet and a painter, that inn-keeper somewhere over the rainbow in your imagination in that turquoise house. He is the host of springs and the honored guest of summers. He is truly a walking Summer of Love that can’t be stopped, because when the rain falls, seeing the rainbow after the storm is inevitable. The Rainbow Dancer truly is our bigger brother of grace, and he’ll be coming out to play more than ever soon, I assure you, yippee!

This summer was no Summer of Love whatsoever, but I know in my heart flower power will never wither. As Joseph Gallivan said, “Old hippies don't die, they just lie low until the laughter stops and their time comes round again.” We’re young forever in heart, so there’s the bonus. All I know is you’ve got to prove that. Stand up for what you believe in, whenever that sty in the lower part of your eye burns when you watch the news or grimace over the black-and-white headlines. “You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” My good friend Bob Dylan said, so for God sakes just feel it against your back and let it carry you, for there’s more to us than just the turf we walk on. Pertain to the horizons.

I’ve grown up holding this spirit in me, and will intend to simply “be”. It is both a beautifully hopeful and heartbreaking thought to me, just like that last episode of The Wonder Years, when Kevin Arnold spends his last Independence Day vacation in his hometown after he loses his money and car in gambling, then knows the girl he always loved, Winnie, fell for a lifeguard, and then before Kevin goes hitch-hiking away, talks with Winnie about all the time that has passed by and how they grew up and that it is inevitable, and then talks about his family and friends and what they did after that final holiday, how him and Winnie wrote for eight years to each other and how Kevin eventually got a son, then said…

“Growing up happens in a heartbeat.
One day you're in diapers;
the next day you're gone.
But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul.

I remember a place... a town... a house like a lot of houses...
A yard like a lot of other yards...
On a street like a lot of other streets.

And the thing is... after all these years,
I still look back... with wonder.”

Though I wasn’t born when the series originally aired, I loved watching every episode on Nick At Nite, from the first kiss Kevin shared with Winnie to that finale, and I must say no series finale made me cry more than that. That episode truly tugged at my heart and changed my life forever, making me realize even though you do truly grow up (my condolences to Peter Pan, I will always believe in you) you can live with the boy or girl in your heart forever also, and I would be broken-hearted if I lost that boy in me. I will always believe in the boy in my heart, so my philosophy is simply to “be here now!” and live life to the fullest, living with a positive thinking environment and youth, charisma.

If I have a theme song attached to my life, it would undeniably be “Rainbow Connection” from The Muppet Movie. Every time I watch that movie and see Kermit The Frog strum this on the banjo, I flood in tears. It was that moment that got me fascinated with rainbows, helping me pertain to them and imagine that place Dorothy dreams of over Kansas, and dream and see the world in color.

So, class, that is today’s lesson. Be excellent to each other, give the rainbow a big hug, and…peace out! Carry on, love is coming, love is coming to us all, open up your heart to the love!

Love,
Noah Eaton
(Mistletoe Angel)
(Emmanuel Endorphin)