Stuffing straw in a basement
Has her waxing poetic about scarecrows,
There's no time or place
For little lacy shoes
But mama bear's gnarling her teeth again,
There's no waterworks now,
It's nearing December,
The sky is black as the Kalua
In papa bear's glass tumbler,
It's nearing December
The air is dry like a mathematician's
Ghost, drawing parables in the sky
For the Norse Gods.
Mama's God is turning into a fat uterine lining,
There are crystals coalescing in odd places,
Golden dreams of lighthouses
And walking on gelatinous water,
Laughter and the pit-pat of invisible feet
Don't go unnoticed in the kitchen,
Suddenly there are elaborate meals,
Opened cookbooks strewn across the counters.
There are names to write
On stockings that aren't there,
Chocolate and shopping aren't destinations
On a voyage that has a direct path under stars,
The ship is full sail
And the course is set,
Through the eons of starlit miraculous unknowns,
Delicious meals and storybooks
Punctuate the hours
Gliding forward
Rising and falling,
On the breath of the vast Ocean.
We held a traditional sweat lodge ceremony last night. Donna Wood Eaton was the facilitator. As soon as I made an offering to Donna in request of the ceremony, it felt like an engine was turning a wheel closer to the special day. The spirit guides and ancestors* of those who would attend were helping us in the dream worlds to prepare for the event. The swan-diving winged beings of white light and the indigo ancestors were dancing for whole week before the ceremony began.
The Stone People are the grandparents. Each asks to be involved in the ceremony. Each woman is asked to listen to the stones, and waits in line to deliver the grandparent to the fire. My stones each identified themselves this way, "Heart", "Mica", "Alabaster", and then the last one that talked really loudly to me in a deep man's voice. "I wanna come. You have to take me. I belong in there." The face of this grandfather rock was a large orange-red rectangle. He seemed to be smiling.
The hooting owl, the soaring hawks, and the gentle deer brought us messages to guide the ceremony. I was honored to lay the skull of the buffalo on the spirit trail with our intentions. How alive the bones of the buffalo were! Quart rocks were also placed. The crystal energy was very strong.
The 'placentas' of the womb-like cave glowed red, sparkling like stars. A crack in the cosmic egg burst. Out of the galactic center, the copal smoke rose inside the circle and carried my spirit up into the trees of the Colombian Andes.
As part of part of my rebirth, I began wearing Invisilign again. After the lodge, my teeth have magically shifted, and are looking much straighter already.
And I am looking forward to my training as a deejay/radio host! I wonder if Winter will herald opportunities to be a sub for the various programs. My spirit is so eager to learn these new skills.
Venturing to P-Town for a conversation with the delightful Ms. Dr. of Talking Back, Paula Sperry, was a delightful experience. A peek into the land of the disembodied voices, was a bit dream-like, which is compounded by the fact that being in amid the stacks of wondrous brightly-lit CDS feels like a salty-aired summerland high above the ocean waves. This lighthouse dream cave of the imagination sent me into an out-of-body experience. Yes, I met my version of heaven, with a water cooler and everything.
It was an experience to relish like polka-flavored keeshka, to savor like pierogi from the Old Country, to slurp like a bowl of red borscht. Yes, I need a beer.
Returning to one's roots is pretty invigorating. This week, when I close my eyes everything turns into a beautiful abstract painting, well with the right ambiance. Co-curating this art show with Sarah Holl which features talented artists and great works has got me thinking about a return to painting. My dad was an artist model, and I spent time around excellent oil painters as a child, and enjoyed going to art shows quite early on. I recall the smell of paint fumes, passionate artists with bushy furrowed eyebrows and pensive Aristotle eyes, and laughter. My mom and her friends would take me to museums: The J. Paul Getty Villa, the Norton Simon, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art.
At age ten I was studying sonnets and spending hours in museums staring at works of Matisse, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Waterhouse, Alma Tadema, Diego Rivera, Reuter, Rembrandt, Rodin, Jean-Baptiste Pater, Molenaer, Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet, Luca Giordano, Rubens. I would bring a pad of paper and take notes from a cushioned bench, or standing a foot away from the work, examining its texture. I tried to remember every detail with my eyes, capturing its essence with my heart. Later, I made poetic attempts to capture the essence of a Matisse odalisque in words.
My mom had a cherry wood bookshelf that belonged to her grandparents. It had glass doors that lifted like the doors of a Ferrari. It was a special bookshelf because it had fallen out of a pickup truck my parents borrowed on their first move together. They didn't have rope to tie the thing down. I guess they were pretty eager to get where they were going. It was the kind of story they would tell together, finishing each others sentences. The kind you ask them to tell over and over because you want to see if a new detail will emerge, that you can savor. And you like the way they rub each others backs or grab each others hands as they recount their old tale in fits of laughter. In actuality, their story may have only been ten years old, but it seems like another life, because it was a time before you existed, and because their eyes don't always twinkle and they don't always giggle in the middle of the day.
My dad had put the bookcase back together after it had hit the pavement on a busy boulevard, but the hinges were tricky. I always admired my mother for her fragile strength and the way she magically put everything back together in one piece, including me. And she still does every now and then. I was so proud of the way she slid those glass doors open and closed. Out. Up. In. There. And she'd smile and hold my gaze, knowing that I too could learn to do it seamlessly. But I just wanted to watch her graceful hands. I was so proud of the way she took such great care with everything she touched. I loved to hear her stories over and over again. I was in awe of her reverent touch as she relished her treasured bookcase and its contents.
Inside, were her art books, Kay Nielson, Maxfield Parish, Salvador Dali, Boticelli...She was particularly fond of her Georgia O'Keefe books, with large pages of cow skulls and Jimsonweed flowers. I loved to ask her questions, entreating her, "Why do you like these skulls?" She would wax poetic about her art books, caressing the spines and torn jackets on their covers tenderly, like they were the works of her dear friends or ancestors. She would get teary eyed, as if she was 'winding grooves in her Joni Mitchell album' to quote an old teacher pen-pal of mine Greg Kahn. She would often play music and weep. And I would say, "don't be sad". "This song makes me happy." Why does happiness look so sad, I thought. Now, I know, or don't know, but I am the one crying on the floor in tadasana, with my hands tucked between my knees.
This was one of those songs...
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My show with Linda Sandhu on Profile went great! It will stream on http://mysaccestv.com by Friday night!
