Ever have one of those days where your jaws hurt from laughing too much?  And the side of your stomach feels like maybe a rib broke?  Ever feel like a weekend was a year long at the time but now feels like it was only a day?

It’s Friday and I’m only now coming down from the rush of last weekend.  The 2012 East Jesus Birthday Blast will go down in history.  The music, the spirit, the laughs, the chocolate martinis, the absence of one guest, the presence of another.

First thing you must understand is that the weekend began on Wednesday when our birthday boy showed up and immediately had the whole compound astir.  Flip Cassidy might have rolled down Sidewinder Road with concerns but by the time he had finished his second pork chop with dinner he knew he was home again.  After a hot summer season of disuse, stored away in a cargo container, the sound system fired up on command and the first chords of the year were strummed.  We looked up and realized that we had set up the amplifier right under Charlie’s ashes, no wonder everything worked.  Since Flip had a great welcome and a good meal he felt like playing and worked through a couple songs while calibrating everything from the placement of lights to the artwork.  This proved to be a constant throughout the weekend as we fed him energy drinks and he cleaned like a whirling dervish.  He actually expanded the interior of the office container unit, somehow defying the laws of physics.  Like the cartoons of old every time you saw a cloud of dust surrounding a figure wearing a gas mask you knew Flip was at war with the desert, and winning.

Next to arrive was Joe Holiday who declared war on minimalism by unloading his most recent addition to the sculpture garden.  A concrete block encasing some Salton Sea fish and competing with the smell of cigarettes and incense in his car caused the hugs to be briefer than usual but other than that we were glad to see him.  Joe continued to battle throughout the weekend by doing the maximum amount of work per day as proscribed by some third world OSHA.  Erecting an old M*A*S*H style canvas tent in which to shelter our growing supply of art supplies, moving piles of lumber, steel, discharged shells and other things that could only be guessed at, working well into the night to secure everything against the wind.  Holiday also brought his wry sense of humor and his unique imagination to the fire each night and regaled us with stories of his and Flip’s adventures.

Thursday and Greg Hill must have showed up with his identical twin.  How else could you explain how he seemed to be everywhere helping everyone at the same time?  Or the fact that he brought so much food we were still cooking it 2 days after he left?  Several trees are blooming green after Greg finished pruning them and several campers will be glad for the areas he cleared out.  I’m sure he appreciated the pillow when he stretched out in front of the music room for an amusing set by the band.

Oh, the band?  Chris Benton brought his pirate charm and couple of rapscallions in Louis and Aaron and arrived Friday afternoon.  Once the initial looks of awe and amazement faded from their tour of the emerging East Jesus they rolled up their sleeves and built a new roof for the music room, rehung lights, soldered electronics, buried fence posts and carried piles of trash hither and yon.

This isn’t to give you the impression that the weekend was all work.  This is the home of the East Jesus Zen Center and we believe in balancing the equation of “Work Hard = Play Hard” so there was time set aside each evening for cannonballing into the hot springs.  After Marty’s hearty meals and a day covered in sawdust the water stung as it washed out the cuts and abrasions.  The ever changing colors of the solar powered lights  amidst the sculptures in the garden, our own powered colored lights on the bottle wall, Cinnabar Charm and The Tower of Barbarella, under a full moon, provided ample fodder for our photographers.  I think on one night there were half a dozen cameramen and women in the act of taking each others pictures because you couldn’t walk ten feet without encountering a tripod.  Mid day trips to town for supplies were offset against sight seeing trips to the mud pots, where they scored more railroad ties.

Of course what weekend would be complete without a bonfire to ward off any bad juju and since Reverend Flip was born this day it was only right that he light the birthday candle.  We gathered round to warm our hands and hearts and then moved the festivities to the front yard for the traditional drinking of the chocolate martinis.  Several new members were inducted into the church with most exclaiming that it tasted like an alcoholic YooHoo. Then they asked if they could have another.

Ken presented his video compilation of Royce Carlson’s early view of Charlie’s work, interviews, “I seen Evil” by Flip and the Junkyard Gospel, Phil Holland’s recording of the Car-B-Q fire with sound of Charlie reciting Cinnabar Charm and set us off imagining how to build the East Jesus movie cinema.

Saturday’s dawning found the crew gathered around the living room fire filling up on eggs and fried potatoes before starting on various art/work projects. The collective force of so many hands and minds convinced us that we could build anything and my job became more of keeping so much energy from fragmenting off on tangents.  After dinner and a movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385501/ ) a hot plunge in the springs we stopped by the Range to encourage the local musicians and increase our public image.

Sunday was a day of farewells but each person promised to return soon so the parting was happy.  They left behind more fond memories and a few blurry heads but helped to  build the foundation of a great reputation for our little space of desert.  They also left Flip so we put him to work repairing his wall of televisions.

So until next time, Happy birthday East Jesus!