Second Chakra: Sketchpad

2003. The year in Vancouver. After filling out forms, applying for loans, and getting my audition tape sent in, they accepted me for September 2002. Had no funding, no place to go, never been there yet, so I got it postponed to until January 2003. I had gone through many hair changes last year: Bald, bleached, red, black, shaven all crazily. Got frisked a lot at the airport. Stayed my first couple weeks in a hostel, two blocks from the school, in the worst postal code in Canada. Touched down December 27, right after Boxing Day.

This whole year will center around the Tarot. Since the Tarot has been so integral in connecting the many facets of this spiritual journey, it acts as an exceptional storytelling tool. I did countless readings this year, simply by sitting in the lunchroom at school and placing on the deck on the table as I ate my food. People would line up. Good thing to bring to bars, too. Free drinks, to say the least. To start off, I will do a Tarot card reading for the whole audience. The rest of the year can be told as a Tarot card reading on its own.

Card formation:
Celtic Cross
Cards used:
The Hermit, 9 of Swords, The Tower, 8 of Wands, The Fool, 7 of Cups, Lust, 4 of Discs, Princess of Swords, The Sun

Present = 4 of Discs: Everything I used to build myself up also eventually walled me in, or walled me out. Vancouver meant ultimate freedom, a new life half a world away. But I was stuck to make big decisions and go through everything all alone. My first apartment locked me out on my balcony, and the harsh junky environment surrounding it kept me cooped up inside my comfy Fight Club filing cabinet. So proud to be a legitimate working actor, but I couldn't watch any of my work without cringing. "Drop the American" fits in here, too.

Significator = The Tower: I was awash in spiritual visitations this year. Started off New Year's Day when I took my first ever tab of acid in a Gastown pub. Meditation got so involved that my body got in the throes of what I can only call Tantric Orgasms. Spring Break had a bad trip or two, one was so intense it was panic-attack scary. Then there was the gram of shrooms in a cup of tea which permeated throughout the week and gave me a new way of reading scripts. As I switched apartments I found out the shelf I had used as my altar had been used by a previous tenant as a Ouija board. Sundays I would walk to Chinatown and stroll in the Sun Yat-sen gardens, or pilgrimage to Richmond and take in the whole of the Buddhist Temple. Sacrifices, oracles, sitting for 15 minutes meditating on a rock in the middle of the lagoon. Malas get broken and the beads are collected and reconfigured into a whole new mala, telling its own story.

Past = The Fool: Cliche beginning. Started at Square One last year, not really knowing shit about these chakras, this whole process. It can also pertain to the fact that I haven't really had much formal acting training. A few classes here and there, the year of improv, but mostly just doing shows and messing around in everyday life. And the yearning, aching, unstoppable desire. Now my talents were to be directly challenged by actual working actors, trained staff, and a slew of drama majors. The school's a whole learning laboratory, at least that's what it's best for. And emotions spill out of the walls.

Future = 7 of Cups: Decriminalization of marijuana changes everything. I can count on one hand the number of days I was sober that year. I was a regular to the pot district and an easy mark for street people selling wares. Great story about one on roller skates and a steering wheel who sold me two bags. New Amsterdam Open Mics, Cannabis Day, remnants from the many breeder competitions, the silver door on Hastings Street. There's also the early trips to the Beer store before curfew or picking up six packs at the pub. Shenanigans and Hooters. I worked on a scene from Leaving Las Vegas by taking the script to a bar and matching Nicolas Cage per drink. So strung out, so cooped in, stuck inside. And the piece de resistance, the caper on the last flight home that would make Reservoir Dogs blush.

Conscious Thought = Princess of Swords: As court cards go, the Princess is the most vivacious. Impulse is her game, and she wields her power at moment's notice. Think Paris Hilton with a bazooka. Swords represent intellectual energy, thoughts, ideas, theories. Since I can get so stuck inside my head I tried to focus on acting on my basest thoughts instead of taking time to dissect and debate them. Led to some great adventures and many really stupid mistakes. What happens when you're 100% behind half-formed ideas?

Subconscious Thought = 8 of Wands: My brain's going everywhere. What with the constant supply of psychotropics and endless conscious awakening, my thoughts gain the capacity to hit nth-degree extremes. If I died at home alone, no one would know until the stench hit them. I'm so good I don't need this school, I could just jump on the many film sets here and run away with them. Maybe I could marry someone and become a citizen. I'm writing with my left hand at times, getting creepily sculpturelike with my prose. Everything has to move, to shift, to change. Have motion. Except me. I need to stay still.

How You See The World = The Hermit: Everyday I wake up it's a thrill just to be in Canada. It's so exciting it becomes sufficient. I don't need much else to be elated. I want it to never end but I know it's fleeting. So I don't venture out much. When I do I don't interfere much. And I make sure people don't interfere much with me. It's inevitable, of course, that people are let in. But they don't get everything. And if they do, rarely. It's a year in transit, and I'm a tourist with an expiration date. So hard to keep people at bay when you get ripe, though.

How the World Sees You = Lust: It's a cursory feeling when your dick gets groped in the hallway at school and you turn around to find a guy winking back at you. At parties people would sidle up past one another to make time for me. Every Tarot reading became like speed-dating. Raised a fat kid, I never got used to that. But I only had sex with two people that year: One a girl from the hostel, the other my bestest Canadian friend. And nothing after March. Had pussy inches from my face and still I did not succumb. Everyone knew me as an intense actor, though. Was chosen for a live scene where I played a dental patient who was driven to orgasm during a check-up. After the standing ovation my instructor pulled me aside saying, "I knew to tell them to give it to you! I knew you'd go all the way with it!"

Hopes and Fears = 9 of Swords: What's the worst that could happen? You're dropped in a foreign country, all of your belongings in bags you carry, surrounded by shit, piss, junkies, hookers, attempting to legitimatize your passion to yourself and the world, unable to get a legal job for additional income, balancing your life between your artistic education and your addictive personality, fighting inherent magnetism with strict isolation, and you fought tooth and nail for all of this. What's the worst that could happen?

Ultimate Goal = The Sun: Yellow light pierces the holes and floods the empty crevices. In an instant the haze becomes illuminated and begins to mist aside. Jagged peaks needle golden and slope down merging with smooth, frictionless plains. Every sort of texture and shape live in between. But no nook or cranny remains sheathed. Even the deepest, darkest, dankest holes fill to the brim with shimmering brilliance. This is what thou hath wrought. Take a look. Take it in. And smile, damn it. Smile at your creation.

I graduated the Acting program with honours. At the grad ceremony I interpreted the entire proceedings for my brothers. Never have I sweat so hard than at the terminal right before we boarded the plane home. We touched down days before Christmas. I always wanted to write a book with these stories titled, "I Never Saw Boxing Day".

The second chakra is orange, located in the lower abdominal area by the kidneys. It is represented by a circle inside an upside equilateral triangle, the Female triangle in Sacred Geometry, all encased in a circle surrounded by lotus petals. It controls passion, desire, sex and lust, creation and reproduction. After clawing for a foothold for anything and everything with the First Chakra, the being starts to understand its methods of acquisition and learns the good and bad consequences. But consequences are arbitrary; it's the chase that's most fascinating. Its energy can be channeled by the stones Carnelian, Alexandrite, and Tiger's-eye. In order to progress from this chakra, the being must consider the consequences of its actions and take responsibility for itself.

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Now playing: Squeeze - Another Nail in My Heart