E-MAIL LETTER SENT TO NYC FAM:
This September 11th at 7:30, we'll be together with you at The Cutting Room in NYC. http://www.lizziewestlife.com/cutting.jpg

We'll gently remind ourselves who we are and what it means to be human on earth today, in the early Fall of 2006. We'll remember what happened, sing the sorrow from our bones. We'll create our reality in the midst of a seemingly unchanged world, knowing all the while, that though we may seem the same, every one of us is completely changed in the very core of our being. Though our waking may be slow and distracted, it is a waking nonetheless. Something HAS begun and it is good. My home town was born and raised under the towering stages of hustle and bustle, a shocking destruction stunned my soul and set me free. I believe, I believe, I believe. The morning after September 11th, 2001, I sat down to to let music do its work on me. As I recorded "A Time To Cry", by myself in the garden, the song kneaded my pain into healing. We'll sing that song on Monday night, along with 19 Miles To Baghdad, Prayer, Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Woman, Waiting For A Sign and Look What They Done To MY World, MA...If you have any other song requests, please let me know before Sept 7th. I'll do my best to fit it in. The morning after this coming Sept 11th, myself and our family at Holy Road Tours will leave again for the Prairie. We won't be back with you until December. Here's a live download of "Waiting For A Sign",

Please join us on Sept 11th, 2006, to listen, to sing, to be kneaded, to reach for light and to send us off with love... as we head to our Midwestern October Artist In Residency. If you don't create your reality, your reality will create you. It's easy to read about our travels on the holy road, http://travelingtheholyroad.blogspot.com/

Here's a photo of us with our long time friend and newly added band member,
Gregg Osofsky (you'll meet him at the show) taken the other day at WKZE the Inspiring local independent radio station of our "Pine Plain's Artist in Residency Home"

Howling to you from the holy road always, Lizzie West X=h/m

Coming 'round the bend of time, seven days left here in pine plains before we celebrate the residency with our closing show at the stissing house. we've been living in the old farm house next to hammertown barn. joan and gregg adopted us. wkze produced the ads. the stissing house made sure to be a perfect space to honor 21 years of independent business, hammertown happiness i call it. the farming workshop was real. it fed me from within. i was especially interested in listening to kaya talk about killing her livestock by herself. i always wanted to know that i could do that and listening to her reminded me of that. i ate a local steak the other night. it was red and good. it fed me from without. i haven't eaten meat in a long while. the new song is whole and belongs to columbia, our commuting route 70 and this small east coast town. i've been remembering my hunger for the plains lately. laura's been really keeping the ship sailing lately, with logistics of the move and the shows and so much that is worldly and necessary to reach you. tony's been making sure the web site is always new. gregg has been such a friend, an good loving host. we're planning to kidnap him and show him our love, missouri. i have a feeling he'll fly there and show me how. meanwhile, i reach for light in this moment, at the mountain cow cafe in pine plains new york. i'm wearing the yellow rag dress that baba's mama made me. it's almost time to retire the summer dress for the colder fabrics of fall. my black pants have been useful lately since my jeans ripped down the leg beyond repair. funny when i think that i bought these pants i'm wearing now so that i would look good for a record label meeting. that was back in the day when i was still trying to please the machine makers. HALLELUJAH, i lost my job. i've changed so much, i think i would be entirely unrecognizable to the vampires now. fam jim perry from new hampshire died suddenly this month. so strange to think of time's vulnerability to eternity. he was just here! we were just talking about how we'd sing the sun in to being and now he's completely gone to my world. i love it. it keeps me on my toes. i know he went where the buffalos will always roam and if i stay steady, preparing for my return, this spiraling journey through the now, maybe the Source will take me HOME too. I'll greet mama and all my goodness when i arrive. missing her is harsh lately as i close in on her birthday and spreading her ashes back to earth. "why should i see god better than this day? i see something of god each hour of the twenty four, and each moment then, in the faces of men and women, and in my own face in the glass; i find letters from god dropped in the street, and every one is signed by god's name. And i leave them where they are, for i know that others will punctually come forever and ever."-Whitman. i plan to prepare my soul daily and rise according to the rights of passage, there where i enter the trail to the planetary divide. i'll do it from the stage and sea, you and me, sept 1st in boston, sept 3rd in pine plains, sept 11th in new york city. come be with me and i promise to be true. howling to you from the holy road, X=h/m Lizzie

another week now. we've got just a while left here in this pine plains residency. mama's doing her thing, moving all things into constant bieng. i've been inside my notes on research with colored pens and glue. renewed vows for the new years declerations of celebration and discipline. plan to start now. abbey's gregg's golden retriever. she's sleeping on the floor by the early fall fire. gregg's sitting with music a while. baba's reading lust for life in the room next door, the dharma's beside him, breathing heavy and restful, like a dharma does, i love this living. the howl-o-weeen ball found its home today. Laura's been driving around the country side in Faith (the spitfire convertable) passing out fliers and hanging up posters around the hudson valley. come october 28th, we'll all dress up like pilgrims kidnapped by indians and like it. i'll go meet the boys in bed now, read my copy of the john irving paperback. gregg's coming with us to boston, he'll sit in and we'll all start the new book of today. tomorrow's the first real holy road tours workshop, "living local in america". i'm so looking forward to the learning. howling to you from the holy road, L X=h/m

the holy howl. five days without word. that's the howling taking all my body, mind and soul. closing on 214 tomorrow. that's the biggest news since birth, in ways. i'll return with the wind when the sun's gone down. too much growing growing on to tell stories now. only in retrosepect will it make sense, but i'll say this....the fast brought me Home. i am whole again. i remembered what it means to pray and that i need to be taught too. "after all the tea and cakes and ices, shall i have the strength to bring the moment to its crisis, for though i have wept and fasted and wept and prayed and though i have seen my head brought in upon a platter, i am no prophet and here is no great matter. for i have seen the eternal footman carry my coat and snicker and in short, i was afraid."(T.S. Elliot) - Howling to you from the holy road, X=h/m, Lizzie

Waking up felt impossible this morning. My body had sunk into the bed and the night had attatched itself to me. After the fruit juice Tony brought me in bed, I started to come to. Then the excavating began. All day was an inch toward memory, toward the new life. I went through waves of clinging and release. I swam and loosened the pain between my shoulder blades, stretching slowly. I think that's where my wings are growing in, where the pain is. I sat with the sun from its first sign of setting until the new night star had appeared. I wrote and remembered how to pray again. How to be in total surrender and say help and I do not know.... Breath in, thank you....breath out, for give me. Howling to you from the holy road, X=h/m, L

The third day of the fast. My whole body feels lifted. The hunger is gone. I don't feel the need to eat. The juices are so full of life. When I drink them they go straight to my heart, my blood, my brain, my memory, and I feel all emotions being transformed. It seems like faith in a glass. My fear cells are diluted and then flower into grace. Tony looks lifted, Laura and Gregg too. I practice the chanting, "god is breathing in me, i am breathing in god," and I question the time to bring me closer. It is now. i just want to be closer to The Great Author, let it be known that I am a humble and ready collaborator, on my knees I pray to thee...The Moon is so huge tonight, bigger than I've ever seen it. White as white can be. We're at The Hammertown House waiting for Gregg to finish showering. We're gonna take a night walk through the corn fields and howl our intentions. I'm in the holy old jeans and my I Pledge Allegiance To Myself sweatshirt, sitting next to the buffalo in bed. He's typing. I'm typing. The wireless connection is everywhere here. We're both reaching for light. Figaro's being his dharma self on the end of the bed and in a few moments from now it will be now again. I'll sit up and say, "ready baba?" Fig's ears will stand up all pointy and curious, his eyes will look at me with hope and devout love. Somewhere in his dharma Self he knows I'd never do a night walk without him, but still, he has to ask....Howling to you from the holy road, Lizzie X=h/m.

Started the fast yesterday. Juice and nothing but juice for seven days and seven nights. Greg, our host and long time friend of mine, says I should write about it, he says that we should all write about it. So, Tony started his story..."dear mom" he writes... god, how I'd love to write this story as a letter to my mama but she's gone now and so she wouldn't be able to leave comments like Tony's mom does...The moon's almost full tonight and music is a consistant part of the sunsets here. I want to lose my addictions to coffee and food and all things that keep me from surrender. I want to be more myself than I've ever been. Creating my reality in the fascinating moon, sinking orange into everything and focusing. Wanting to see the puzzle for what it is...But there's no guidance save the face my heart wears, the one I have to search for like a fumbling kid. I'm hungry without hunger and satisfied without food. The long lawn into the Cattail field and the Sunflower field tell me that this is a whole 'nother lifetime again, a new chapter in a book i'm writing, reading and a walking in, all at once, just right now. I have won when I remember that, that I can't win the Great wrestling match with god. I surrender at the mercy of goodness and magic everywhere. god is everywhere, go there."we must eat first of all, to believe in what makes us eat, that something makes us eat, to believe that whatever haunts us in the mysterious depths of ourselves need not haunt us as a soley digestive concern. what I mean is, if it is important for us to eat, it's even more important for us not to waste in the sole concern for eating." -Artaud / howling to you from the holy road, X=h/m....Lizzie

We've been doing the holy road scramble. Keeping H over M and all together happy. the wind shift took us to a blessed 60 acres of Roundfarm, old friends and new fam everywhere... thank you mama. the show in NYC last Wed was one of my favorites.... I'll send out some live downloads to fam who've signed up for those kinds of things. I'll say more here when i can but right now i'm catching my breath from that dance i did, the holy road scramble and the Force that caught us, helped us land on our feet again, for yet another chance at this graceful walk Home. last night we ate a great meal 'round a long table of strangers who quickly became fam, enjoyed the heat and sweat with a group of beautiful young farmers, since it meant we were alive after...earlier that evening we had come six inches from losing our lives in a car wreck...on our way to watching the collective play soccer and sing songs on the sidelines, . THANK YOU MAMA -howling to you from the holy road X=h/m, L