IndieGoGo!

In hopes of raising funds for my trip so I can crash along through the desert playing songs and taking off my clothes, I've started an IndieGoGo project! Please donate if you are so inclined, and please do share with your friends as well :) There are lots of fabulous prizes in store for you if you do! Thanks y'all!!

a-travellin' I shall go

Well folks, I've developed a real bad case of wanderlust over here and have decided to feed that familiar monster by giving it exactly what it needs. So, come the end of July, I'll be selling all my shit, moving out of my house and hitting the road with my dog and my accordion. I'm headed northwest and am not really sure when I'll be coming back to Austin...I suppose when all my money runs out, eh? anywho, I need your help, O wonderful artists and photographers of deviantart! I'm trying to book shoots all along my route until I reach Seattle, and I'd love to work with you or someone you know in one of these cities. Let's get together! Spread the word! Here's what my schedule looks like for the week of July 25th:

WEDS. JULY 27TH
Albuquerque, NM (or camping somewhere)
Let's shoot!

THURS. JULY 28TH
Leaving Albuquerque for Durango, CO
(Can shoot along the way!)

FRI. JULY 29TH
Leaving Durango for Salt Lake City, UT
(Can shoot along the way!)

SaT. JULY 30Th
Salt Lake City, UT (or camping somewhere)
Let's shoot!

SUN. JULY 31ST
Leaving SLC for Boise, ID
(Can shoot along the way!)

as previously mentioned, I'm willing to shoot along the way between my destination cities, or IN one of my destination cities while I'm there. I'm also willing to travel a little outside of any of these cities (about an hour, I'd say) for shoots if necessary. I especially, really super duper a lot want to shoot outdoors on this trip, so let's please make it happen! Contact me for rates, details, anything else, and please do pass this along if you have the chance. Looking forward to working with y'all!

Thanks,
Mila

The Magician

I've been hiding out recently, folding inward, tucking myself away as though I were readying for the winter. But it is summer, and the hot winds blowing into town are kicking up dust storms which blind us in the dead of night. The sky is huge, full of fat puffy clouds that drift lazily on the breeze, and I squint up at them and wonder if they are bringing rain or only teasing. The cicadas have come back to stay, planted firmly on dead branches and in our windows, droning on and on about the same old things. There seem to be more of them, louder, every night. My little house roasts in the heat of the afternoon, but by night it is cool and silent and seems to be dreamy, lost in thought; much wiser than I. Most evenings I sit in a spot with a good vantage point and study the house, thinking about how strange it will be to leave it in a month, wondering if it is healthy to be so attached to a building. I am a different woman today than I was when I first walked in its door 13 months ago. I suppose I am afraid that if I leave, all the moments I had in this house will vanish also, or be buried, and I will forever be sifting through sand to try and locate the faintest traces of them. as much as I wish to be out on the road, far, far away from responsibility and obligation, I worry that all the beautiful memories I have from this house will be the only ones I will ever have; or that if I make more, they will be born in a strange place, one that is not familiar or mine, and then how shall I revisit it and them when I please? and so I must remind myself that Love does not remain silent within concrete walls; nor does it peer out of windows and sigh wistfully on beautiful days. I shall weave it into my hair, roll it into a cigarette and light it, slip it into my boots, pack it into a car with a dog and an accordion and travel west with it. For in the desert and the mountains and in all the miles in between Love stirs from its drowsy nap, rife with dreams, and warms itself in the sun. There, the inky night sky is shot through with brilliant points and streaks of light, and it gently cradles us, as the harbor cradles ships and sirens. There we will speak openly, and our pupils will dilate and we will be freed; be free to lose ourselves and to be true. So we stick together, and we press on, and I sing and wail with the bellows sounding on street corners in cities I have never been before. I leave little pieces of myself in these places, dropped like feathers in their rivers and on their dusty roads, in hopes that they will take root there, or lithify.

So far it's all a dream, a violet dream whose jumping off point is just shy of 12 miles down a winding path to the sea. For there lie ends and beginnings, centers and continuances, and I will them to meld together and with a sigh relax in their embrace.
I eagerly await my visit to the house at the end of that path - not my own, but one I feel I already know intimately. Though, certainly, once its door has opened it would not matter if a house continued to stand there at all. It would only matter that you stood there smiling, expecting me.

Waxing Crescent

A desert wind has swept across the plains
The moon is slipping by unnoticed again
A seed is stirring beneath the ground,
at the onset of the first rain
Which you wished upon this town

Our past is made of stars and rivers,
midnight kisses,
whiskey shivers
Traced in algae, silt and honey,
Always the mark the archer misses

Alight your love in a glass and drink it down
In your cells it will resound
Store it there for safekeeping
Watch over it while it lies sleeping
Don't let distance bring you down