Dirty Hippies

 A week ago Saturday, my new friend, singer/song writer Celia invited me to a bonfire at Artica, downtown near the Arch. AC and I went down there and there was a small crowd of dirty hippies and other Bohemian artist types gathered around a fire. Celia sang and she and others played guitar and there was a drum circle. Agnieska brought a bottle of wine and we passed it around.

There were a bunch of fire spinners there. If you threw poi in the air just about anyone who caught it would know how to spin. That was really beautiful to watch.

 Then some guy came up to us and asked if we’d like to see the ceramic mural along the flood wall. A bunch of us followed him and sure enough there was this amazing ceramic sculpture of an underwater landscape along the wall. It gives way to a collection of ceramic birds, each one sculpted by a child who lost one of his or her parents. Apparently some group taught sculpture to bereaved children and assigned them each to sculpt a bird and write a note to their departed parent put it inside the bird’s heart. When the clay is fired in the kiln, the note burns and “goes to heaven.”