MP3: On Paintings in the Sand

MP3: On Paintings in the Sand

Prose Poem ~ On Paintings in the Sand ~ at SoundClick, 6:42min (text here). There is some fun discussion of time in it, and other insights into the creative process that our lives are...

Jean, whose photograph inspired my piece, has written of the Tibetan Buddhist Sand Manadala created by monks visiting from Tashi Lhumpo Monastery in India in the basement of Clerkenwell art gallery in London. The monks, who had preplanned this by months, started the day after the recent bombings and the pouring of the sand to create the mandala went on for a week during the aftermath. Jean has written a beautiful entry. I urge you to read it.


(Photograph by Nancy Jane Reid, click on the image for its source URL.)

For more background information, here is an introduction to Mandala Sand Painting. Here is a site that shows the Mandala Construction process in photographs. And here's another series of photographs of the astoundingly perfect creation of a Sand Mandala and its being swept away...

On Representations of Ourselves, or "The New Profile Pic," or Myths of Self-Imitation...

A discussion on the self-referentiality of imitation of the self...Oh, ok, I'll stop being so veiled, in my travels through the blogosphere today I saw a comment by someone that said that all the bloggers they met were nothing in real life like they portrayed themselves in their blogs. Which got me thinking...


On Representations of Ourselves, or "The New Profile Pic," or Myths of Self-Imitation...

"...many people put on masks to discover who they are under the covert masks they usually wear, so that the overt mask reveals rather than conceals the truth, reveals the self beneath the self; and it tells us that, although such masquerades cannot change people into other people, they may change them into others among their many selves"....Doniger goes on to say, "the essence of a masquerade: to present something known in such a way that people mistake it for something unknown (or the reverse.)"

Wendy Doniger, The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was (Oxford, 2005), p.3-5.

Now, hmnnn... My new profile photo doesn't look like me. I'm not sure who it looks like... it was darkened considerably for the profile. Here is the original photo (click on it for a larger size), and another of the painterly things I did to the background with the impressionist brush and with the midtones darkened. Neither look like me, the light washing away the wrinkles, the years, the spots and arrows of outrageous time, but I found it an interesting photo in itself, not as representation of me as I see myself, but as representation of an image of self that is just plain different. I'm a soft woman, not the way it looks in the small version, which I think of as inclining towards heavy metal... *chuckles*~

If you met me, though, I might have to impersonate the image of myself that I have created in my blog... ! Oh, it's so interesting, persona, representation, who we are, the ways we present ourselves to each other! And how we might need to masquerade as ourselves were we to meet. Or, another approach, perhaps we masquerade as an aspect of ourselves that helps us to discover who we, in fact, are. So I masquerade as a writer in my blog, only to discover that I am a writer! The mask and the central persona become interchangeable so that life imitates art...

And he said, "You are nothing like the woman you are in your blog. In your writing you present a completely different person.' Which shocked me. Who says I have to be like the woman I portray in my blog anyway? I never said it was the 'real' me any more than any of the other 'me's' are real. *giggles & giggles*

I might not be at all as you imagine me to be were we to meet. And vice versa. Isn't this scary to contemplate? That the mask of the narrator of the blog and the central persona of the person might be far apart rather than simply interchangeable. Makes you wanna fret, doesn't it.

Especially if we are trying to discover a writerly voice, our best one, in our bloggerly lifewriting.

How does reality intersect with illusion anyway?

On Paintings in the Sand

The weaving's come undone. Stitches untied, unraveled. Strands of lace and bright-coloured yarns lie like fragmented, melted, Surrealist Dali paintings. Time itself has unwoven its tight grip. What was is spinning undone, the wheel unweaving each strand of memory, each flashback, scattering the cloth that was worn into the unrelentingly ragged. All that remains are tatters of a way of perceiving, a way of composing, a perception that gave coherence to the confusions of meaning.

The wind that sweeps across the damaged landscape of meltings and obscurities scatters what's left, taking even the mementos of a way to compose the picture that made sense, that held it all together. There is no centre. Or circumference. Only the burning, the ceaseless burning of the fire in the sky. And the light that pulls consciousness with it, into recognition, into awareness.

Into weaving stories, making patterns, creating forms, dramas about the world, personas for ourselves, staging scenarios because we don't know. What lies under the fabric of our lives? When the weaving shreds, and is lost, do we busy ourselves with raw yarn and our spinning wheels and our pots of dye and our artistic forms and create new pageants to express us and to create us over and over by reiteration? Why does what flows have to adhere to processes of fixing, stabilizing, pinning, eternalizing?

If I throw away all my weavings, crumpled and shredded and scattered, recycling into the earth, and let time undo itelf through me, will I levitate through the landscape of the unburdened heart? And will I feel the soft rain like glistening petals on my naked skin?


Click for a larger size.

At Jean's blog, This Too, today. A Tibetan Buddhist sand painting of a mandala. Isn't it exquisite?

Sacred Symbol of Female Creative Power...

The relationship between Goddess, hunter, and prey is shown in this ancient rock painting from Tassili in the Sahara.
Rufus Camphausen, The Yoni, Sacred Symbol of Female Creative Power (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1996), p.58.

While packing books today, I was deep in my maternal body section, and found a stunning cross-cultural book on The Yoni. Which I haven't read but will. And I also found this roaming through the blogosphere over my morning coffee. Is there any connection? In the way of things, yes, I'm sure there is. This delightful wisdom from Dave Bonta's blog, Via Negativa:

"A woman with the right kind of fat is a joy to others and a joy to herself. Her body is pure lubricity, able to move in several directions at once: go watch a belly dancer if you don't believe me. One night with such a woman, my friend, & no skinny woman will ever again be able to entrance you with her momentary cry & one-dimensional hunger. The exclamation point soon loses its power to astonish, but the round curves of a question mark? Ah, there's something to ponder! A thousand queries flood my tongue with the tang of olives.

Yes, hmmnnn...

Now isn't that line drawing of an ancient cave painting most interesting? The way they saw it, the woman's yoni feeds the man's erection and gives him the magical "hunt" power to enrapture/capture his prey...

I could keep you occupied for many posts with images from this book, photographs of natural formations, very beautiful, ancient art, where the yoni is revered, and modern art, where, well, it can be strange (see Gottfried Helnwein's Lulu), or natural & sensual (see Georgia O'Keefe's Gray Line), or as worthy of worship (see Judy Chicago's Cunt as Temple, Tomb, Cave or Flower); if all that isn't enough, there are close-ups of different shaped vulvas (padmini "lotus," chitrini "fancy," shankhini "fairy or conch," and hastini "elephant") classified according to the Kama Sutra, the Anganga Ranga and the Koka Shastra of India. Camphausen wrote this book before Eve Ensler's, The Vagina Monologues, or else that'd be in there too. I don't know of a counterpart book on male mythic sexuality, do you?

Alas, I have to keep packing.

But you can expound prolifically in the comments if this post has caused a springload to flourish in you...

Packing books, I come to a shelf on love...

Packing up my life. And moving I'm not sure where. When I come to my section on books on love, I hesitate, should I pack them all, or carry some with me? Here's Chopra's, Path to Love, and Ackerman & Mackin's massive anthology of love letters, poems, fiction, essays, memoirs, The Book of Love, and the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh's, Teachings on Love, and Joudry's & Pressman's, Twin Souls, and Roman's, Soul Love, and Gurian's, Love's Journey, and an unauthoured collection, One Hundred & One Classic Love Poems, among too many to mention. I decide on John Gray's, Handbook for the Heart, with beautiful essays in it, and Sarah Bartlett's, Mythical Lovers, Divine Desires, which I haven't fully read yet, and carefully slide the rest into a box.

Ah, then my books on tantra, how many are there, two dozen? Lots of art books on mandalas and yantras and academic books on tantric art and tantric thought. But there's this, Tibetan Arts of Love: Sex, Orgasm & Spiritual Healing, yes, Gedun Chopel, it is brilliant. Or the large and cross-disciplinary, Sacred Sexuality by Mann & Lyle, a lovely book with many illustrations from art history, and of course, The Complete Kama Sutra, Danielou's translation, no tantric collection would be complete without that, and California Tantrism, The Art of Sexual Magic by Margo Anand, or a Dorling Kindersley picture book of photographs of lovers, The Art of Tantric Sex, and books on full body massages...

I leave you with a photograph of a fun tarot deck: Tarot Sutra, games for lovers, which I've never used, sigh, it's in its original wrapping.

For me, romantic love combines of the erotic and the spiritual, the emotional and the intellectual, of eros and philia and agape, where there is meaning, wholeness, an intimacy with spirit, ourselves, our lovers, each other. (The other two great loves are differently configured: parental love, and I guess married love; but both, ideally, are weighted in philia, or friendship, being together on the path.)

I think I really do like the word, intimate, intimacy, intimacies... and perhaps can spend the rest of the day packing up my life, feeling my way through an aesthetic of intimacy.

On Uncertainty...

Do I like being a deck of cards in the air, a swirl of ocean foam, a migratory bird without a home, having no place to live that I know of in this moment? Maybe...

It doesn't feel free; it just feels like life. Where we can only be certain of uncertainties.

And so should I give up the need to know what's next. Anything at all could be next. Anything at all...

Packing...

Packing is a laborious process. We, my son and I, are numbering boxes. It's screech, cut, slap; screech, cut, slap - oh ho, taping boxes! Then ka-thump, ka-thump, there go the books; after being swiffered with dusters or RRGrindRRSuckRRGWhirrRRGrindSuckRRR with the hand-held vac, from which the dog has run and hidden. Followed by UUHMPH, UUHMPH, which is me lifting heavy book boxes and stacking them; my son lifts weights, he has no problem. Then of course I have to run out to the supermarket, all that work has us way hungry. Now I'm finishing a home-made cappuccino, and am ready to tackle Science, Philosophy, Art, English Literature, Psychology and Religion. Or the filling of another 30 boxes. Then we'll call it a day. Whew.

And how're you doing today?

Making Love/Art Making

Art is created in the dance of love between the artist and their muse. The best art is created by the artist for the beloved, with the beloved.

The dancer, poet, writer, painter, actor, muscian makes love to their lover, symbolically, to the fragrant air, the rich and fertile universe, the intimacy of the medium of their words or paint or music. To see a harpist or a pianist lovingly caress their instrument into singing, or a rock star playing his electric guitar like it was his woman, this dance between lover and beloved is where art is created, deeply, profoundly. It is created in a loving that is erotic and spiritual, emotional and intellectual, that is an act of pure faith, a risk and leap into the unknown.

I feel art can only come out of absolute vulnerabiltiy, when all the veneers have been stripped. When we are naked and unashamed before the beloved. When we have left the safety of our patterns and are in the present moment in its entirety. Even if this moment be one of pain, anger, ecstasy, or a kalaidescope of it all. A moment of presence where there is stillness and flow, wholeness and unfolding, eternity and the onrush of time, nothingness and everything. Where it all works without willing it to; where it just happens – the fruit ripens, it falls in its sweetness, the birth of art occurs.

What I learnt in dance is that creating your movement is best when you are dancing with your beloved. When you are making love to the light streaming in from the window, the alter of burning candles and precious leaves on the silk mat at the front of the room, the colour and movement and sensuality of the dancers around you, the energy of the life-force itself. When you are making love to the man or woman of your dreams, or your God or Goddess. When you no longer care how you look, you're not self conscious, you're holding nothing back, not restraining yourself, and you give everything, your entire passion ~pain, suffering, anger, compassion, joy, love ~ where nothing is excluded, everything is present.

And so this has become my theory of art. The intensity of love-making. Only from this place of union of self and soul can a power erupt that can be carried on the wings of the words, music, paint, dance that it is produced in. And in this way we who partake in the art as viewers, readers, listeners, are touched at our deepest core, feeling our own pain, sorrow, anger, joy, compassion. Our vision is expanded. We are not alone. For we, too, are the beloved, and the artist is making love to us.

Tonight, a love poem...

At the request of Vexations, I have made a quick MP3 of 4 recent pieces, entitled Body Texts I (6.5 min): Her Hands, Calligraphies; The Artist As Model; Scattered Drumbeats; and In the Wake. If you have any responses or suggestions, I'd consider redoing the recording if I have time before I move...


Friday, July 8th, tonight, a love poem...

London Bombings...

The bombs in London, the underground, the street ~ terrible! Such an assault on a city. A thousand injured; over 30 dead: yet a bigger weapon than the bombs, fear, which will paralyze millions.


Passengers evacuate an underground train at Kings Cross (Photo: Alexander Chadwick)

Comment I left at thenarrator's site: It will never end, will it. Prayers. Prayers that the conflagrations may end. Prayers that mediation in the world may ultimately win. Prayers for the mediators; our hope lies in those who can calm the extremes, bring about resolution, who do not see the political world in terms of black and white. I don't know how mediation can occur with terrorist groups and organizations, but it can, somehow. Mediation is the only thing that ever works. Prayers for the fear and the suffering...

That view...

Some photos of the inlet that the Pacific Ocean flows through where I was working - I have brought work home to do, where I don't have a view like that to distract me.

Scattered Drumbeats...

This will reveal what an incurable romantic I am! I have to admit it was partly motived by a Rumi quote that I wanted to use somewhere; this seemed like a good place. It's also touching on that very strange area of "internet romance" and its expectations, hopes... It's my entry in the Creative Writing Challenge:

A light rapping, knuckle on wood, breaks my solitude. In the dark warmth of the evening, I stop, listen, not expecting anyone, and ignore it. The light but insistent scattered drumbeat on the door tugs at me, continuing until I rise from my notebook, pull my cotton shirt around me. On one side of the door I breath into the soft darkness, unsure; my hand on the handle, I whisper into the crack, “Hello…?”

In the silence of an almost inaudible gasp, I hear indecision, an awaited moment from which one could yet flee, even if what one was looking for has been found, it’s fearful, and holding back for what seems like minutes before the response, “Hello…I, Miriam, I know you weren’t expecting me, I… needed to come, I’m sorry…”

“Who are you?” I whisper into the darkness and silence of the Summer night that spreads itself around the rustlings of moths whirring in the dim porch light, a light that reveals a man, in a soft summer shirt and jeans, standing at the door.

His arms almost tensed, yet awkwardly beside him, his heart full of desire, knowing his need and her recalcitrance, and feeling ashamed and exhilarated to be at her doorstep, looking at her tired and worried face as if it were a vision, “I … had to ...”

On the doorstep of my house, at the threshold of my life, in the night, I found myself wrapped deeply in the loving arms of a man I had never met, but always known. And I whispered to him lines from Rumi in the tightness of our embrace, "The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere, they're in each other all along." We became two sighs in the enveloping darkness, a twin blossom of a moonflower, a double rainbow in the night sky, another hope for the future..

last rites

burn
me to ash
fling
me to dance
my last dance
on the rich earth
sanctify flowers
bright unfolding
caress leaves
with fragments
of bone dust
fly with the wind
scatter my
white residue
light as breath
& illumined love
finally dissolving
into the lake
a dream



©2005 by Brenda Clews, all rights reserved

Writing the Middle-Aged Erotic Body...

This is a piece on the aging erotic body; it comes perhaps out of my difference feminist stance. It is in the tradition of body writing: the writing of the body of the woman. When I did the birth paintings nearly 20 years ago people found the red flowing vaginas of some of those paintings shocking and often uncomfortably averted their gaze at the wall of paintings I had up in the dining room of my house; a decade later those paintings took on new life, were used as journal covers, in art shows, copies often requested, and I am working on a poster of them. This writing is perhaps similar in that, like exploring the sensualities of the hiddenesses of the pregnant body, it explores the sexuality of the aging body. It is honest, open, vulnerable, hopefully sensual and erotic writing, but not pornographic. It is hetero. It is not my intention to offend, or shock, but to show the realism of the beauty of the body. This is the final piece in a small series, beginning with the red flower, an ethics of sexuality and relationships, the woman's gaze of her erotic desire. In Portrait of the Sexuality of a Middle-Aged Woman I want to throw light on her hiddenesses, how she sees herself. There is an element of the rebel, the woman who can be outrageous here too. This writing is a version of a response to a lover who I requested a self portrait naked in a mirror from and who then asked for a portrait in return...

Portrait of the Sexuality of a Middle-Aged Woman

Which sounds so, middle-aged...

She's never taken naked photographs. O, not true, a lover in her 20s did, but they were so faint, it was too dark; and her ex-husband took polaroids a long time ago. But not since then.

Though one night, when she was alone, she did, in the oak cupboard mirror, first seated, naked, only one breast showing, and she didn't like the photo but played with it, re-creating it through various filters that disguised her.

Then she surprised herself. The rebellion of those passing over the proverbial hill? She opened her legs and took a photograph of her vulva. When she displayed the photograph on screen, what she saw was larger than it is usually shown in medical text books. What she saw was beautiful in its own way, the folds within folds, the way her sex spread opulently from front to end. The white creamy remnants glistening. She had taken it after pleasuring herself, just to see what she looked like. Swollen, full, rich. She liked the photograph, felt it was a coming of age recognition of a sexuality she had never really seen before. She hid it on her computer, and then rushed over to delete it when a friend was looking through her photographs, mumbling about a naked photo that embarrassed her.

She'd never intended to keep it. It was not the sort of self portrait that you keep. Not what you'd want your children to find among your effects after you'd passed away. Or anyone else, not even a lover. It was an elaborate cunt, not something she'd ever seen in a Playboy or Penthouse or at any of the online porno sites she'd stumbled on, the ones with cum all over the woman's face and hard, hot cocks still beaming and glistening. When "holes" were shown, they'd be those small slits that the medical text books show.

It didn't make her feel any better, but maybe you had to be older, not tight anymore, to have this gland with its folds and glistenings and outrageous pearly opulences over which you place panties and forget about, or against which you place pads when you are bleeding with your monthly moon.

She's in her 50s. Hard to believe. She's white, Caucasian. She wears a size 8 comfortably, a bit baggy, a size 6 is more fitted. She is about 5'5", weighs somewhere around 125 lbs to 130 lbs. Her hair is long and curly and ash brown but is coming in with much more grey. Her waist isn't bad, but she doesn't know the circumference. She wears a 34C bra size; usually with an under wire for support. Though she loves bras with no under wire for hanging around the house.

She had a 'sex-goddess' body once, flat stomach, rounded breasts. After the birth of her second child, her thighs were left mapped with cellulite, which she accepts gracefully as a remembrance of the bearing of children, but which her husband found most unappealing. She's not comfortable in a bathing suit because of it. Before kids she wore string bikinis, the less fabric the better. Things change when your body is stretched with a child growing within. It's not that she doesn't love her body, she does, just in a private way. She prefers to be seen in clothes, that's all. When she was younger she preferred to be naked. Things change.

And now the little spider veins on the legs, around the feet, the larger ones that are showing on the hands, that's bothersome. But more in the way she thinks it makes others uncomfortable. The tiny veins remind her how the body is like a tree, with tiny branches or capillaries carrying life blood, and it's a beautiful creation no matter how old or what size one is.

Her breasts do sag a little, but she doesn't mind. She still has an awe of her breasts because of the breastmilk that flowed through them so freely once. And because if they're caressed and squeezed gently and sucked on she becomes very aroused and her vulva responds in ways that...

She's slim enough, not skinny, making the signs of aging both less and more pronounced. If she was heavier, her hands wouldn't be so carved with maps of veins. But she can still bend her body with as much flexibility and freedom as she ever remembers. She just can't fall onto the floor on her knees anymore, or even bend her knees for too long without pain. Her eyes are blue, or perhaps grey, with little brown specks around the pupils. Her skin is good now, but she has rosacea, it runs in her family, and has to wear a hat always. The skin on her face is very sensitive to sunlight. She babies her skin. Her teeth, oooh la. That's maybe getting too personal. Talking about vulvas is easier than talking about teeth! Save teeth for another day... Only one scar on the shin. Her skin is soft.

Orgasms are easier than ever. She believes orgasms are very healthy and would like to have at least one every day. She thinks everyone should agree that orgasms are healthy and that everyone should have at least one a day.

The Artist As Model, Or Her Desire In Her Gaze Of His Desire?

Is it erotica? Well, yes, I suppose so...

Of course it's about the body, the erotic body... and whose gaze is whose? And whose subjectivity is being expressed, and who is the object of her desire?

The Artist As Model, Or Her Desire In Her Gaze Of His Desire?

...and I lie back against you, you are caressing me, your arms, your shoulders, your hair, your face, I lean into, am held by, softly, and pulling me onto you, and I sigh gently in ways that you love, and you can feel my increasing desire, tightnesses, and deep blossomings, your breath, your tongue, your fingers on my skin, until I am an instrument in your hands and you are playing intoxicating music for your erotic pleasure, until I am a foaming sea of lavender for you, moaning and gyrating gently, craving your deep holy offering, crescendo of bliss, the air scented, a sweetness of grapes and hyacinths...

On the Ethics of the Love Life of a Single Woman...

(Using a stylus & tablet allows me to create a transparent layer underneath which I can layer other images, though I could have done a better drawing with a pencil... those are real love letters from years ago, and the writing in the border was from a one-time flame...)

Love Letters: On the Ethics of the Love Life of a Single Woman...

Please bear with me while I express this, sum it up, even if only for myself.

My ethical position came finally to this. I would not get involved with a man unless I had an openess to a relationship of forever. I wasn't putting time limits on it. If I thought that I'd maybe never want to see him again after one night, I would resist sleeping with him even if we were making motions towards; if I thought I might like perhaps a few weeks or a few months with someone at most, similarly I would walk away. That might all be fun while it was happening, but what if he fell in love with me, I'd only hurt him. I don't want to knowingly hurt anyone. It's a creed I live my life by, including my love life.

So, only if I could conceive of a forever would I get involved. That seems fair enough. And if he's not in that same space, and is looking at being into me for one night, a few weeks, or a few months, that's the risk I take. That's preferable to my doing it to someone else. The guy I did the "intimate friends" with got terribly hurt. Did that make me a better person? No. It made me a person who knew there was no commitment on my part and even though I told him that and did it anyway I knew there was a risk if he fell in love. And breaking up was hard to do because I became part of all the failures of love in his life. I don't want to go through it again. It wasn't a case of, 'well, we tried & it didn't work,' so much as, 'this was never anything more than a sexual diversion in my life for a short while.' They are two different scenarios. I simply chose not to do the latter any more; I can live without the sex, I can't live with hurting men who I more-or-less use, even if they agree to it.

It's my position, not anyone's else's, nor do I expect anyone else to adhere to my decision for myself based on what I can and can't live with ethically. And it's coincided with aging, so that's helped. And with increasing financial difficulties, that make me far less attractive. Etc.

But, then again, I wonder. A man of the cloth? And I a non-organized religion non-congregation spiritual rebel. And now man who lives nearly a continent away? Is it just that I'm afraid of intimacy? Or that I'm really choosy and the circumstances just happen to be the circumstances and not part of the design?

I hope this isn't too torturedly introspective for you.... I've never actually taken the time to write out my position in this free-wheeling world of free-love before. And it might explain why I'm at your doorstep free of entanglements and baggage. And why you don't need to worry about a thing, either, my dear lover.

***

The Red Flower...

Is this risqué? To post, I mean; no, it isn't, not at all, but, then again, I don't know... even hardworking "equality" feminists can get irate over the moon-time, it makes us different to that "one sex" white-uppermiddleclass-male everyone aspires to (except some of us don't). I'm a difference feminist. But not essentialist. Despite what it may or may not look like here. An embodiment theorist. Make of it what you will...

O, Urban Hiking...

The kids have spent copious hours on the phone with friends in TO & negotiations with their Dad, so I went off to a tiny Chinese company that I do long distance through, which was actually in a very expensive office tower downtown, to pay the $18. I owed (isn't it cute, owing that little), but gave them $30., they don't have payment by Internet banking, so it's usually a cheque in the mail, but when I realized their address, why, that's a trip downtown... so I've been trying to get down there all week, but yesterday afternoon was finally gorgeous & sunny.

Downtown looks like downtown but is emptier than the downtowns of big megalopolises... I walked around, enjoying the downtowness, the buildings of every shape, size, colour, from old and tiny squashed inbetween to glittering glass stretching up to the sky, the flower beds of tamed nature, the tiny parkettes with their miniscule splice of nature so vastly different to the wilderness, the close crop of streets, endless cars & the anger of drivers, and wandered down to the water, by the Shaw Tower, the reclamation project a much larger slice of land now, smelled the salt air, watched freighters go by and sea planes land, pondered the lush North Shore, the clouds rushing over the mountains, thought about life and Vancouver and what I'm doing here and am I going to stay, or go, what's possible and impossible, and eventually meandered through a bunch of streets until I found a skytrain station and went home.

The wind was blowing the clouds over the mountains, I was glad that it would be clear enough to see the Solstice moon...

Despite my childhood in the wilderness, and even 20 years of living in the crowded downtown core, the heart of the inner city in Toronto hasn't dulled my love of the beauty of cities... I enjoy hiking the streets of any downtown... even the obnoxious smells of buses doesn't bother me, and as a transit rider I laud their great number going in every direction constantly. I gaze at the dressed-up business types in expensive suits and the hair-matted, clothing-soiled druggies, the young and the old, the energetic beautiful people and the tired grey people, feeling neither desire nor disdain nor pity for anyone, enjoying the mix of people, the flow of the movement of bodies and the various shimmers of the fabrics of clothing on the streets, enjoying being part of this fabulous and strange humanity... in my urban hikes, which are not shopping trips and which can be up to five hours straight, I don't stop at coffee shops, though I wish I did... I always feel it would be nice, to stop & write at oases, and then move on, but I don't, I can't, I'm either walking, or standing staring at something, the ship-heavy inlet of ocean, a flying buttress of architecture reaching upwards like Babel, a group of vibrantly red tulips each drizzled with perfect drops of rain if you look close enough, the madness of wind and clouds mirrored in glass towers, the way birds fly through this urban landscape, fluttering down for crumbs and scraps, nesting in the eaves of inexplicably white painted stone Churches... I'm a great wanderer of cities... need to wander in way more cities too...

(click on photo for its source url)

Solstice blessings...

"Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage." Anais Nin

Updating my life: yesterday I was offered a mat leave job in a company I really like, but not until December, which is so far away it's impossible to think about. My son has a job at a construction site today cleaning up, sweeping and vacuuming, thanks to John, my friend ZsuZsi's partner. My daughter has just gone through the halycon she always goes through before the 3300 km journey to her father's for the Summer. Why does this trip bring such anger, sadness and terror for her? As a mother do I worry unecessarily? But today is a new day and sunny; if the promised rain doesn't come, it's going to be hot. It's been cool here and I welcome and savour the heat, the way it relaxes us all.

Yes, Anais, life does shrink and expand according to one's courage, very much so, but when you're looking for work you need contacts. When you've moved to a city where you know almost no-one it's hard to find work because you have no network to draw on. That's what people are now telling me, and it makes sense. Also the 2 year mark is a make it or break it mark. I'm at the crux.

We would like to return to Toronto, and I may be able to just afford the moving costs, but need help at the other end with finding affordable housing. My children's father, who is ideally suited to the role of 'house finder,' he'll get his children back, afterall, has said a flat no. And blamed me for moving out here in the first place. None of which makes much sense, given that he'll have weekends with his kids, be close to them again. Nor can my family help, either no car, or works nights or, in the case of my mother, in her 80s and too frail. Friends? I'm not sure anyone is in a position to find housing for us to move in August. But I'll see.

Just the normal chaos of life, with its multiple decisions...

To brighten this post, because folks in the blogosphere like images, here's one I added a lens flare to and put in my sidebar to replace the one of me reading a book with blonde hair...

Now that 'light' could be a vision, a fairy whispering delightful secrets, a higher consciousness from a space zone, a light-master from a New Age dimension, a lover whom I am dancing with, an echo of the Solstice sun in the lens, or the courage that expands our world, offering a bright future. Perhaps on this morning of new awakenings, new realizations, new hope, you could tell me what you see...

*hugs xo

On Solstice, the official entry of the abundance of Summer, a solar apex, this year with a Solstice sun and moon nearly aligned, O, the fulfillment of all our dreams and wishes...

Phoenix rising...

I went dancing tonight. Feel like a phoenix rising...

(my son took the photograph)

My daughter's poetry...

My daughter wrote some poetry yesterday, which she shared, I love it when she shares her creative writing, and then she said I could post it. The second one is in the form that she wrote it, but the lines can be broken up to "look" more like the poetry they are. There's beauty, sadness, love. She's 14, and very, very sweet...

*

I look up at night
planets are moving at the speed of light
and the world's expanding
you're forever fading
see the world in black and white
no colour or light, nothing right, nothing right
you're part of the human race, all the stars and outer space
the world's spinning

and no one seems to notice...

*

The leaves formed a perfect drop, a drop of the sun, rested upon its self, held together by mixes of light, of sky and rain, 50 million leaves, they swirl around me, they dance with my love, sing with forever beauty, in the sunset, they break the world, the universe trapped inside a city, and no one seems to notice, but me, and your world is all the sun sees, hidden by darkness, the white shadows revealed and I'll wait for them, until my days are done, history is in the past, it was somewhere and then it was lost, and no one seems to notice, but me, so I'll float through my memories, cause they're all I have, everyday I create a memory, every second of life, could be my forever memory, so I'll always have a place to be, inside of me, I'm creating my world as it fades, and I can't hold on, and no one seems to notice but me, we're swallowed in the sea, and no one seems to notice but me.

The Move

I need to put a disclaimer in here. I am the author but not the character. There are points of similarity with my life but "The Move" is also fictionalized and parts are made up. It is necessarily more brutal than my life is for the purpose of drama. Since blogging is largely lifewriting, one does need to clarify when one moves into fiction. I am in crisis, yes, and am letting that be a diving board... but I am not writing in the confessional mode; rather this is the imagination of a life...

***

THE MOVE

She stares uncomprehendingly at the Notice To End Tenancy, holds it in her hand like an entropic text. It is composed of financial hieroglyphics and it has a greater power than all of the magical texts in her library. Its final incantation is homelessness.

She sips coffee, looking at the light of the clouded sky, how silvery it is, and wonders what will become. She snaps a picture of a fading rose on the window sill, and transfers it to the computer where she draws fiery lines like fireflies leaving trails on the soft pink lips in the core. The stylus a burning ember, she sears the tips of the labyrinth of folds that the petals are while she scores them with light. Tracing the delicate trails with her lit sparkler, is there a path that she could perceive if she could only fathom it in the dying fragrance of the blossom? Perhaps this tracing is an oracle of prophetic signs on dusty, fading petals that can be read even as they are crumpling inwards, and dropping to the floor.

If you go deliberately into the uncertainty of the darkness will you find the light? Will you find answers to the direction that is hidden but already opening out? Or is there no direction but what is willfully asserted onto the crumpling inwards and emblazoned in the clouds of the morning sky like a scroll of truth?

Even as she flees she is being drawn into the molten core of what is dissolving. But then she's given to drama, especially after a sleepless night and the worry that encroaches her vision like the smudged glass of the window she looks out of.

She finishes her large mug of bitter, aromatic espresso coffee and takes it to the kitchen to rinse. There are no answers, only questions. This is the mantra.

The house is on the market. It has come to this, and she is moving, but does not know where she shall go. Her home is crumbling and she is losing her beloved abode. This brings a stream of thoughts on the protection of shells, exoskeletons, abodes. How is it to live without a shell of protection? Shall she live under the open sky emblazoned with the starlit lanterns of the Milky Way? What is a home, a house, a place to live? And how is that an expression of the architecture of our souls? These are the questions she begins with as she starts the arduous process of packing up her house.

Or has she already left, already fled into exile, already been broken by the isolation that strangers are accorded, and is trying to return?

Has the breaking apart of what is warm, enclosing, protective already happened, and was there a fleeing of the shards of that broken shell for a new place only to turn and re-seek them?

And where does the compass point now? How is she to read it when its heavy glass is fogged and the pointer spins uncontrollably? If there is no centre, how can the world revolve? Without a home, a grounding, what orbit does one spin in? Empty boxes pile up in all the rooms, some still flattened, some already made, waiting to be filled with the accumulation of hers and her children's lives.

How many lives does a cat have? How many times has she landed on her feet, and has she run out of chances?

***

O, Clarity...

Woke soon after dawn, lay in bed for an hour, wishing direction would become clear. An hour hugging my soft, clean, silky dog, who was curled in a ball, sleeping, who I shampooed yesterday after her swim in the lake in the park. I lay in the early morning light, wishing that what's possible would manifest clearly. I can feel myself walking the hot, polluted streets of Toronto; I can feel my reunion with my friends and dancing at The Move on Friday nights; I can hear the long conversations with my family; I see myself walking onto campus, returning to York University. It all feels very happy. That perhaps I was exhausted, at the end of what I could cope with when I moved out here and now after two years I am mended, renewed, ready to return and continue on. The return is becoming so real in a feeling-sense and I'm not sure why. Funds for a move back aren't here/there/anywhere at present. And no temp work this week. Stress. Though I did have 6 hours of unbroken sleep, a gift. And as I sip coffee, looking out at the clouded day of silvery light, I wonder what will become, and I began taking pictures of a fading rose, drawing fiery lines in its core, like fireflies leaving trails on the soft pink lips…

A Letter of Love...

My entry in the Creative Writing Challenge, "Tell a story in the form of a love letter..."

Many thanks to Chez Couronne, who runs the site and blogring.

Roses & Hands...

Perhaps you'd like to see the original yellow roses, & in black & white, & the one I created for the dream...

On the process of healing difficult parts of your life...

I took this photo the day before the only possible permanent job I've had in a year ended due to problems with location, there was no bus service outside of rush hour and it was a 5 hour a day position, it was right before my birthday on March 7th too... That path goes up past the high school and I walk it nearly every night with my dog... Not a great photo, and I'm into frames these days (sorry!), but it was on the edge of... O, those Cherry blossoms!

On the Vision Quest/Fasting

The process of processing takes its own time according to its own rhythms and necessities. The vision quest/fast I did in 1998 on my abandonment issues was very difficult and quite emotionally painful if I recall, but it did resolve those issues to the extent of releasing me from being tied in an unhealthy way to a fear of rejection. Because of my childhood issues, whenever I receive a 'rejection' my response is to over-give, whether it's being extra nice, or a poem, or buying something, and it's usually an inappropriate reaction. I saw that in many ways it was the central crux of my more important relationships, and that I was still trying to 'please' an 'abusive' parent - over and over, living out a primal drama of my childhood. I needed to break the hold of this pattern in my psyche, and one of the ways I did it was to undertake a vision quest where I struggled with this issue, the power of rejection over me. I know my quest was successful because I am no longer attracted to people who are explosive and mean on the one hand, and distant and cold and rejecting on the other (was that ever really true, it sounds so incredible now). Whatever unsound hooks there were in me from my survival techniques as a child were undone, cast away. The vision quest to free myself of my abandonment issues was successful, but it took a few years for me to see that, indeed, a new pattern of relationships had established itself in my life that was much healthier and happier. I developed a strength that enables me to turn my back on, and walk away from, scenarios that would send me back to my helpless childhood.

So I know that working deeply on yourself with determined intent does pay dividends.

We each heal ourselves differently.

My favoured last-resort way is quite difficult, I suppose. Although a 2 - 3 day fast is not that rigorous. But it works for me, and that is what is important.

Let me say that even with a full 3 day/3 night fast, I have never lost any weight. With the 2 days that I fasted last week I may have lost 2 lbs which, after last night's roast chicken (soaked in a brine solution for 4 hours, covered with bacon, stuffed with wild and long grain rice, roasted to succulence) with all the trimmings and my daughter's decadent chocolate cake, well I may have even gained. I would never recommend a fast to lose weight, in other words. And, anyway, then you might get into a binge/purge routine and be worse off than ever. Weight loss is another issue altogether. I don't view it as part of the process I've undergone. The only way it could be would be if I wanted to discover the deeper reasons why I needed to overeat, if that was my problem (it isn't), and heal them at a very deep level in my being.

So with seeing if I gained any insights from my vision quest last week, yes, only one seemingly innocuous nugget, that I'm looking in the wrong area for work (clerical/reception), which was great to know, like huh, and in what area then should I look? Fasts don't follow a question/answer format; it's all process, moving energy along a trajectory, discovering the path as you go.

I'm still discovering this one: how to financially support my family while I continue with my writing and image-making/painting. And answers are coming, slowly, and with effort, in the ways I need to change my attitudes about this overwhelming problem, since I haven't been able to find full time work in a year of continual looking.

Teaching came out quite strongly, though I have no specific academic credentials (besides a couple of degrees) and am thinking of what I need to do to move into the area of education. But that's long term and down the road.

Immediate answers I don't have yet.

Maybe by tomorrow I will, maybe not. I've starved myself open, though. It's like all the cards have been thrown in the air, and who knows how or where they will land.

This post has been very long and reflective, thank you for bearing with me, and I do hope you've managed to take something away from all this that enriches your own life. That most of all. xo

On Vision Quests and Fasting...

(Sorry this is such a long post, but I just added a small pic from that night at the end, surely it look like I've come through the zone, though still no clear directions...)

Tuesday, June 7, 2005

...so the big riptide rolling my way is that I've been looking steadily for a steady job for an entire year now without success, and temp work is not cutting it, and I can't hold out any longer... even a year at such an income level is nothing short of a miracle... and while I'm great with sacrifice, I must say it's been no fun at all... I finally decided that I'd like to apply to the Arts-Based Research Program in Graduate Education for 2006 but it doesn't look like I will be able to manage to stay here in Vancouver... with some money that's coming my way soon, not enough, not barely enough, I may be able to move us back to Toronto where the job situation may be no better but where my family lives and where I have many friends... I've been very isolated since moving here 2 years ago, which, in a paradoxical ways, has been healing, a watershed in my life, time to remember who I am, though without financial stability, and not ideal by any means... looking for work pretty intensively though and still no job, despite so much effort to find something, anything... is it time to leave, then?... even though I may just be able to cover moving expenses, I won't have enough for storage or 1st and last month on a place, so I'm stressing even more than I have been all year... it's been a very difficult year, only mitigated by all you wonderful people in the on-line journal world, our blogging heaven, and the creative outlet that this place is... it's very hard for me to talk about difficult things that I'm going through while I'm going through them, usually I withdraw and only speak of what went on later, so I am trying to be more open about my difficulties even as I am swirling in the midst of them...

much love...

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Monarck, that beautiful poet and model, is talking about a fast she currently on. I've been considering a fast for a couple of months. With low-ish blood pressure ~ now is that because of the yoga? I heard that people who do yoga have low blood pressure & that it's normal? I'd like to hear that it's normal... ~ when I fast I can't really keep up a normal day. But that's okay, because when I fast it's because I'm doing a "vision quest."

Often, when I had a cottage on Georgina Island in Lake Simcoe, a Chippewa Reserve, a beautiful spot only about an hour from Toronto, I would go for vision-quest fasts. Always with a specific quest in mind. One time I wanted to struggle with and overcome my abandonment issues, which come from my childhood and my Dad's frequent absence on business trips, but which were paralyzing me in my relationships, and so I fasted it out.

The first night I travelled there, by ferry and car, and spent the evening in front of a roaring fire playing a Native drum, for hours on end, calling in the spirits of guidance, sending out negative energies, whatever felt and seemed right. Looking out over a wide expanse of lake, with a silver maple forest to one side, a neighbour over a ways to the other, I could make as much noise as I liked. So I drummed long and hard and loud.

The next day the fasting continued, only drinking water, and journaling. Any visions, insights, feelings, anything at all got written down as it was happening. As I went deeper and deeper into hunger I had to let go of my attachments, wants, needs, desires, until there was no more craving, no more pain, no more suffering, until I floated free in a state of mind approaching light speed. I've done quite a bit of shamanic work in these states of mind, helping those who've passed on reach the vistas of enlightenment they seek, or whatever (my novel explores this mythology). It's a type of spirituality I am drawn to, and has its roots in the African tribal spirituality of my childhood.

Anyway, I can't think of a single quest that wasn't successful in the terms that I sought. I've learnt how to be secure in myself and not thrown into tempestuous crumbling when I'm abandoned. I've birthed creativity. I've found a deep and abiding connection to a spiritual reality that keeps me grounded and loving in the world.

Not without effort, mind you. When you fast, starve your body, you are pitting yourself against death itself, the threat of death by starvation, though, of course, you never go that far, only far enough to bring everything to the point of relinquishment so that inner change may occur.

At least, I don't fast to purify my body of toxins, but to purify my mind of restraints that don't serve me or my life or those I love.

So, I am considering fasting to find out why I don't have a job. If the issue is with me, I need to discover what is going on and why. If I am looking in the wrong areas for work, or don't understand my path and the ways I may make an income to live on that are better suited to my talents, energies, drives, ambitions, gifts and desire to give, then I need to stop, delve inwards, and change some conscious attitudes that are causing problems so a better flow can occur. Or maybe I'm in this position because I need to make a radical departure. Right now everything is bottled up. It's a terrifying moment.

If I can manage it, I'll stop eating tomorrow, and go through until Sunday. If I get a temp job, obviously I'll have to stop the fast. I may try to blog it through; can't promise on that one, but we'll see.

This is a powerful way to bring myself into alignment.

Thursday, June 9, 2005

I realize that I've actually been fasting since yesterday around noon or so if I don't count my 2oz of wine last night, I suppose -:). I'm definitely feeling the Day 2 feeling, and couldn't figure it out. Don't know how far I'm getting, but I'm quite light-headed and overly sensitive to sensual input... light is weirdly bright, sound too crisp... and hunger has transformed into a muted distant roar in my gut, I don't feel it... oh, and my tongue feels coated... my head feels, well, lightheaded, sort of enthralled in an inner drama - (of the digestive system which is signalling all over the place, and getting nothing)... all signs of fasting...

Not feeling any breakthroughs in the way I structure myself yet ~

Though I am busy undoing myself from the inside out. I've been through my entire financial history, realizing all the places where I've made mistakes, and the welcome gifts that sometimes emerge... the universe, on the whole, hasn't been too bad a place to hang out for a lifetime.

But I would like now to have a half decent income, that security. Certain areas aren't working out, I can see that, and perhaps ought to shift my focus elsewhere. I am busy clarifying what it is that I do want...

Don't know about moving back to Toronto, don't have quite enough money, but, well.... we'll see what transpires~

O, it's so silly, all of it! But so very, very serious.

I continue~

Friday, June 10, 2005

Some people can fast and carry on with their normal lives, I can't. It's a beautiful state of mind for clarity and honesty because you're somewhere in the deep centre where there is no incessant chatter. Fasting has never been a state where I could carry any anger or bitterness or any of the stories I tell myself to get through the day sometimes. It's so pure. Just the dizzying body and the spirit, and opening yourself into a better understanding of the self and the world/in the world. I was becoming quite weak, mostly resting, and more light-headed and beginning to see radiant angels about me, hovering, moving gracefully, their garments rich and soft like the brushed clouds of the setting sun, their wings gleaming and folded, soft, silky long hair, Pre-Raphaelite angels, tenderly caring for me, helping me to align my perceptions, to understand, to have deeper, clearer vision...

But my kids were finding me too strange. Sigh. What's a spiritual quest again, Mom? Today is shopping day, too, and I knew I wasn't going to make it out to the supermarket by transit and back unless I ate. My son often does the shopping, he's great that way, but we need a lot of stuff today...

I broke my fast, after 48 hours, or 2 days, with a large, granny smith apple, the juice so tart and so sweet on my throat; a large mug of English orange pekoe breakfast tea, a blend of leaves from Ceylon, Assam, Kenya and Indonesia, the very best, sweetened, with milk, soothing; flavourful white extra-old cheddar cheese in a buttered white-flour tortilla wrap; and then a curried lamb chop, which was slowly cooked with onions, garlic, celery, apple, ginger and Patak's hot madras curry sauce that I defrosted in the microwave and gobbled down!

It's like the city was silent, in moon-lit revery, a hush of magic, and the stillness has been broken and the day has begun and the traffic is moving again.

And, O Nirvana... MoreWhereThatCameFrom, she never left you...








(a tiny pic, late last night, after shopping, for you, don't know how 'post-fast' it is... but it's real, you can see the stress, I think, I share - in the self-portrait mode, a mirror image)

Moments of Decision...

...I wish I knew the point at which one can definably say... I mean there is a moment where the bulk of the direction of something has reached critical mass and cannot be held back and flows over... and in the flowing over, there is a definable something to say, a concrete fact, it is going in this direction, this is the decision made, this is what is happening now... always before the movement towards is the setting of plans, an openness or closure to, a way to slide the events in a certain direction... what is it that decides what direction something will flow in but your decisions about directions... most of life seems to work this way, at least it does for me... it's all various energy patterns, flowing and interweaving, creating and subsiding, connecting and sliding through and disconnecting and drawing back from... like a vast dynamic tableaux, a web of points of singularity all flickering and creating lines between each other according to a complex dance created by each point of singularity, each consciousness deciding its direction within the parameters and variables that are viable... choices constantly being made, from the time we rise to the time we sleep... holding patterns, keeping ourselves together, making crossings, living on thresholds... and always motivated by deep inner inclinations that move like underwater currents directing things to crash and break on the rocks or lap gently upon the sandy beaches... sometimes we float along on the same trajectory without change and other times we radically switch directions... sometimes we are forced, by the general field of connections, or lack of them, to make choices we don't want to make... and this is where I am.

Sorry to be so mysterious, but a riptide is sweeping through my life...

Blue Chrysalis...

Playing today with a too-dark image from a few days ago when I needed a new profile photo---lightening it, seeing what's in the shadows, and discovered a way to irradiate a photo with blue spotlights: I found the blue lights intriguing even as I wrapped myself in them doing and undoing many possibilities. And I wonder if this process of enfolding and illumining in blue light is teaching me something mystical or perhaps silly? Some humour might be apropos these days, as a way to release the tension of radical shifts in the underlayers of my life. It seems that when a woman does something radical to her hair, she's about to do something radical to her life too. Major transformations are in process in the woman who resides over here, at Rubies In Crystal, I suspect... I wonder what will emerge from the chrysalis of blue lights? It is an interesting process that I've been through recently, extreme sensitivity, a withdrawal inwards, the depths where one retreats to, not knowing what is going on or which way to turn, desperations folding in on one, and the way the cocoon that you didn't know had grown around you begins to crack, it's fearful, those blinding splits of needles of light, and not knowing what will emerge, something saddened by experience, weighted, or beautiful, and that can fly in freedom...

Inner Altar - African Angel

(Click on photopoem for a larger size)