Gypsy Spirit Mission Manifesto

The Gypsy Spirit Mission, a global collaboration dedicated to creativity and the promotion of artistic expression, had its beginnings in cyberspace. An outgrowth of a decade-old desire to organize a "storyteller's journal end event series," it emerged spontaneously when I met an old friend in Prague, Czech Republic. We had been part of a unique expatriate community there whose alumni now maintain contact from all over the world. My reunion with this friend led to a lamentation of the lost days when creativity and productivity were unhampered by parenting, financial obligations, and geographical isolation.

I proposed - in the form of a challenge -- that we revive our flagging creativity by simply renewing our commitment and rediscovering the atmosphere of mutual support we had once known. And thus in the form of an e-mail transmission the Gypsy Spirit Mission's Cyber-Salon was born.

Soon the Cyber-Salon grew to 30 members - to whom I frequently referred as "co-conspirators." These conspirators began contributing poetry and prose regularly, via e-mail, across the United States, across Europe, across the globe. The salon's trajectory of growth led to the establishment of the gypsyspiritmission.com website.

Here interactive postings are allowed by anyone, and positive comments and dialogue are encouraged of everyone. The website has broadened the Mission's ability to make other forms of expression - art and photography, for instance - more readily accessible to our members and to the public. Having established a gypsy crossroad in limitless cyberspace, it was perhaps inevitable that the caravan would eventually find a local watering hole.

Thus the arrival in 2003 of the Nomad Café -- an Oakland, California-based venue dedicated to our ideals of creative growth, artistic expression, and community development. This coffee and teahouse environment includes an active calendar of performances, exhibitions and events. Please navigate to the Nomad Café page for a current calendar of events. And if you happen to wander over to this stretch of desert, stop and pitch tent with us for a while! Family is always warmly welcomed - and if you are a stranger, then the welcome is all the warmer. This is the gypsy way.

The Gypsy Spirit Mission: A place where artists, travelers and gypsy spirits are welcome; where they will be encouraged to foster experiences critically absent in the modern community -- through writing, art, languages, music, and celebration - imagination the only limitation. In short, our mission is to create a place where mutual commitment, pursuit of self-fulfillment, and personal and community growth can always be expected, and will always be found. - Gypsy