A Very Patriotic 4th of July

Hero and I will be on Outer Cape (pre)Teens this coming weekend from 10am to noon on Outermost Radio. A couple of weeks ago he earned his first iTunes card. Where would his taste bloom from his love of Pharell's "Happy" and Tegan and Sarah's "Everything is Awesome"? Left to his own devices he bought all patriotic songs and a couple of Frank Sinatra tunes. Hero P. Keaton, future Elk, Rotary Club member and captain of the Chess Club. Today my seven-year-old was in pursuit of Brazilian jazz tracks. Patriotism. There are a lot of directions you could take it. For example, our immigrant ancestors became Appalachian hillbilly moonshiners. Moonshine, the American beverage of choice before Coca Cola came along. Hero's German ancestors settled in Russia, before coming to America to escape antisemitic religious persecution. There's also marriage equality to celebrate, as well as, early unions that stood up for union workers in hard fought strikes for better working conditions, decent hours, and wage increases. In honor of Independence Day, I can dress like a UMWA striker and Hero can dress like J. P. Morgan. Mazel tov!

Marishka Phillips on Healing Wisdom!

Marishka Phillips will be on Healing Wisdom discussing her new film, "Love Always, Eartha". It's done well on the festival circuit. Marishka Phillips has been a Broadway actress since her early childhood. She attended the Alvin Ailey School of Dance, the Broadway Dance Center, and Fordham University. She had bit parts on The Cosby Show and it’s spin-off A Different World. Marishka has played the lead in Othello, played the lead in Absolute Fight at the NY Fringe Festival, and received an Audelco nomination for her role in Woody King’s production of Sweet Mama String Bean. She starred in Stage & Screen, a play directed by Tony Award winner Hinton Battle. As a dancer and singer she has toured with Sean P.Diddy Combs, Christian Castro, and CeCe Winans. In 2011, she founded the Marishka Phillips Theatrical Preparatory.

Here is her show: CLICK HERE

Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth

Yesterday, I gave a phenomenal reading, percussive shamanic clearing, sound/energy healing and soul retrieval (so say my clients). The better conduit I am for angel communications, spirit guide messages and healing energy medicine, the better channel I am as a performer. At least, this is the theory. We shall find out shortly if this is actually so.

My singing feels different, liberated like wild seaweed frothing around in salty riptides. Sonically, my perfectionism has given way to a much looser ecstatic celebration of imperfection. Optimism has sprouted and bloomed bunches of fragrant cacti in my proverbial desert garden set among jaded rocks scooped out ages ago by the movements of sea and ice. The bats of sundown have left the sandy soil better than they found it. Mineral deposits in former creek beds contain bits of quartz and agate that shimmer in the moonlight. Nothing purely intellectual or overly fancy can grow in the heat of the noon day sun. Materialistic hunger and lovers of shallow terrain cannot survive where inner reservoirs are required.

Where there has been loss of self, caught in weirs by fine wires and wandering amid the cemeteries, tarrying at history's flashy altars, I have stumbled and hid. I have lain at the bottom of the sea in a clown suit with my face in the sand, menstruating and playing dead in shark waters. I have shed my skin with loofas, pumice stones, and cheese graters, burned my hands on stove tops until I am bloody and raw, until alchemical processes of transmutation kicked in. I have played matador with the Minotaur. Serving papers I have divorced, condemned, condoned, officially and unofficially, signing off, signing out and signing in again. Somethings have been carved out of me, others have been torn away, some have broken away, some I have drown. But through all of these changes, I have discovered what is left.

Futures and children and investments have come and gone like an eroding cliff tousled by stormy seas at time lapse pace. Through a trip to a menagerie of porcelain fortune tellers behind glass in a Victorian penny arcade, I have seen the kaleidoscope of the past, present and future. On the steps of a fun house on the longest afternoon in eternity I have seen myself oblong and tired with shadows for tears. Inside the Musée Mécanique, I have been hypnotized by the Laughing Lady, chortled at the Wicked Wizard, and fallen madly in love with the Belly Dancer on Her Day Off. And in a moment when time stood still, I shrunk to the size I wanted to be remembered by, and entered into the dollhouse, waltzing and humming. My self a curiosity. My nosedive vision contained all the color, beauty, blood and horror of a jungle writhing with the stench of carnivorous plants, coy wildflowers and unapologetic orchids in heat. Floral pollinators buzzing, on undulating and aching flowers beneath the battle of men who disrupt and ignore the omnipresent lovemaking and insectual feeding frenzies all about them.

My inner punk rocker has grown a pair of maracas, uses her claws to aerate the soil, wears hawk and eagle feathers for mohawks. The feminism that inspired me to rebel against the misogyny I encountered early on is still coursing within me and royally pissed, but she's graduated. She's not throwing full rubber-made Luna Cups at misogynistic movie makers who enjoy killing and degrading women on screen. She's not leaving used homemade abortion kits in the expensive cars of neoconservative corporate think tank shills/devil worshipping prolife proGMO eugenists. She has found alternate modalities, methods and non-ordinary realities. My inner child grew up and grew wings. In some ways, we are living inside the wardrobe, or through the looking glass. This time I am wearing an apron and my hair is in a dignified bun. This time, my goal is to protect the orphans and angels incarnate. It's to collectively work to raise the vibrations of this planet and perhaps even help save humanity from its undoing.

The thing is, for a long time, I thought I had to put my creativity on hold to cultivate my healing practice. I'm glad I did. I wanted to steep myself in the natural and spirit world like the priestesses of Cybil and Minoan Crete. I wanted to lose sleep over it like a backpacker mountain climber, sweaty, stinky and suspended on a hammock hanging off a precipice a mile over the known world. Alone. Channeling most of the night and mornings away, devoting most of my brain space to the metaphysical explorations and paranormal investigations.

Despite the fact that being in service fulfills my soul on a deep level, I have long felt something was missing. Helping people to find their sheer bliss and explore every facet of themselves doesn't ring quite right when part of you has lurked on a furthermost back burner for years. Sublimated. Rationalized away. How will people take my psychic work seriously, if I also like playing characters? (I may be allergic to the word acting.) My whole adult life has been a journey to be as authentic, un-indoctrinated, free-thinking, honest and naked as possible. After dying inside as a child, and being overcome with profound sadness so young, I built up a lot of layers. I was a painfully shy child, but also longed so much to shine and try to endeavor to deserve life.

The truth is would you want a psychic who has no life experiences to draw from, who has no personal creative outlet, who lives through the dreams and manifestations of others, who is ready to project their own limitations onto others? Or, would you want someone who is trained in all the arts, who dabbles in everything, and can look at circumstances and situations from many points of view?

I have been preparing for my selkie role by visiting the sea with my family. We were twice blessed by visits from migrating seals. In fact, I had some almost other worldly encounters with two of them and the angels. My sister selkies liked the dancing I offered them in gratitude for their presence. They stayed just off shore for about an hour. I fancy we had a good conversation, or exchange of ethos.

Pandora's Jukebox Plus Film Festival Interviews

To hear my Provincetown Intl. Film Festival radio interviews and music show:
go to Pandora's Jukebox
click: Station Archive
click: June 20
click: Outer Cape Teens

My guests were writer/director Andrew Dresher, producers Chip and John of Beatbox and writers/directors/stars Alex Holdridge and Linnea Saasen. We also had special guest theater manager Bob Giovanelli giving us a PIFF update.

So much fun!

Mother Earth's Coming Up Roses While Schlooompy the Couch Gets Her Groove Back

Outside our home we have fragrant wild roses, blackberries, elderberry bushes, and grapevines growing in cascades of entwined boughs all around our house! These are towering over wild raspberries, chickweed, mullein, wild radishes and other medicinals! We used to have caged birds, and now we have wild ones. Cardinals, blue jays, golden finches, sparrows, woodpeckers, robins, all nesting and darting to and fro 'round the buzzing bumbles.

Nature and God are One. The Cod is abundantly glorious 'round Midsummer, most especially after such a frightful winter. Playing with my son today on the beach made every step on this journey worth it.

Schlooompy the Couch has a renewed appreciation for life in her new home...Location location location. (This is the beginning of a Cape Cod 'lanai', we will screen the porch it for guests this summer.)

Monochrome Living Room has mortal purpose and immortal memory. Derives pleasure from its collective superpowers and the global gestalt. New home is reading multiple books on plant intelligence, indigenous medicine and Reiki.

The Selkie Sings the Blues

I got the script for Selkie: Between Land and Sea

To my amazement the play is set in Orkney Islands, North of Scotland! Between work and my uncontrollable need to sing Proud Mary, Summertime, Work Song, Billie's Tune, Unlucky Woman and Preacher Man (and the like) throughout the day and into the wee morning hours, I've been unable to feign an interest in suppressing a Scottish accent and its spontaneous monologues that have been busy birthing themselves through me from out of the ether, like Spring flowers on the vine or mushrooms in the woods. I had remained in a strange artistic limbo for at least a month before this story rolled up and crashed over me. Since the day of my birth I've pined for the sea, and had a inexplicable fascination with cliffs. The sand and shore only chaffed against my skin. Restless, staring into the horizon, I found beaches almost repugnant at times.

As a teen, my family took a trip to to San Francisco and we brought my vintage-wearing cohort. As so many girlish bosom besties do, we jointly experienced psychic phenomenon together in both the portal of Muir Woods and the ruins of the Sutros Bathhouses. During our trip to the latter, I fell hard and tumbled down an impossible rocky bower on the cliffs of San Francisco with not a peedie of dirt or muck, nor a bruise or scratch, a concussion neither. During that fall, everything went black. I saw a birds eye view of a green grassy isle with bits o' rock like playful oblisks jutting up from the sea. Walking along, a quarter mile in from the cliff, freshly married on my way from church with my Honeybee to meet my mither-in-law for the first time. I had all my worldly goods in a small luggage bag. My hat blew in the breeze, and in running to catch it, I slipped and playfully rolled like a child down a slope. The cliffs were terraced. Instead of stopping at the first ledge, my momentum surprised me and I rolled clear off into the next patch of grass and off the cliff. I watched my self, caught in a crevice of water, surrounded on three sides by rocks, before I realized it was me. Turning to my screaming, crying love, I realized fate and the sea had stolen me away.

How often do you get to play a magical creature that sings and moans and calls you into the deep? Aye, this is perfection. And, if all goes well, we will be doing in next summer as a full production! The brilliant writer is an award-winning playwright and young adult fiction author, Laurie Brooks. I feel playing the mother is an initiation. I am honored that I have graduated from playing an ingenue! I stopped being carded last week, and now I get to have a fifteen-year-old selkie daughter. :) I've earned my forehead wrinkles/stripes. As a child I felt myself at least 200 years old. It put me into a state of shock that I didn't get called back for the part of Claudia, for Interview With a Vampire. Don't you know who I am? I thought somberly...half old woman, half child. Now, I'm a mom of a teen! A daughter no less. It must be symbolic.

Get Your Goddess On in Ptown

Looking forward to my shoot with local Cape Cod rocker grrl, Diana Di Gioia and her wife Melody in two weeks!!
You can see more at http://getyourgoddesson.blogspot.com

All but two of my models have never modeled before. In fact, a majority of these Cape Cod salty dolls have never worn lipstick. No exaggeration. Beauty is one thing, connecting and conveying a story is another. In this series I hope to capture alchemy with the spirit of the sacred feminine inside resonating with nature. These women are talented in their fields and jobs. They are mostly moms. They are also really really really nice gals with dreams, vision, and magic. They live *hard* in the *real world*. They don't drink Peligrino shit and get table service under cabanas courting the underworld and trying to outplay the Patriarchy for a living.

My goddesses are not objects, nor are they subjects, but Creators. They are: a horse trainer, a fire fighter, a librarian, doulas, a secretary, a hospice worker, a farmer, a landscaper, a historical society manager, restaurant and store owners, shop managers, dancers, herbalists, nurses, acupuncturists, a banker, a writer, Zumba teachers, and the like. There's a lot of character development that goes into this, but we can't rely on being cerebral about it either. It's much more energetic. The scenarios, vignettes, and oracular meanderings I toss around like hot potatoes and gold nuggets are infusions of earth poetry, like rain begotten by a trance dance from a feathered leathered greasy lizard-eating rain dancer. It's not about beauty. It's about channeling Spirit and the Depth of Archetypes. It's alchemy. It's shamanic. It's transcendental. It's release. It's a process that gets us there: starting with music, sharing our lives like women are so oft to do (even with strangers), a bit of ala carte costuming, a bit of whatever makeup will be tolerated, some improvised hair styling, listening to atmospheric music, I may read poetry to them, they may indulge in a shot of my special vodka mint julep specialty, and a big heaping helping of Vibing with Nature.

Women who are NOT models have to unlearn everything they learned about how they fall short of the ideal. But, on the other hand, they never thought they would attain an impossible ideal perpetuated on magazine covers and strutting down runways, so within that there is a freedom and an acceptance of Self. Genuine and authentic self. Self that goes far far deeper than the surface. Those qualities tend to outweigh insecurities. Supermodels hear: "Work it Girl, Make Love to the Camera." It requires a suspension of disbelief. Forget that you're courting Death, strung out on Bull urine, and partying with Premature Osteoporosis and Starbucks Adrenal Fatigue. Every ting-aling-aling that they started to sing so fine...Who needs sentence structure.

Forget that you have been bopping around in embarrassingly hideous clothing that looks like it was constructed by shrooming elfin shoemakers in Stanford-Prison-experiment-like conditions, since you were ordained 'your mother's meal ticket' after you slippery-popped from her vagina onto a beauty pageant stage during the Oops-I-Did-It-Again-Heyday.

The women I have invited to participate in my series do not undergo digital surgery, or rituals of humiliation and intimidation, and neither do the women who have booked photography sessions with me. Their bodies don't change shape at the whim of a photo editor or an agenda. I'd like to think that I foster, and that we tap into a limitlessness and timelessness of who we are as souls and who we are as egoic creatures, setting aside the mundane and sinking into a deeper sense of knowing while expanding into hat Mary Daily called the Outercourse. I don't know anything and we make it up as we go along, but it seems to be working out all right. On the other side, I have reached out to a variety of women who possess a variety of looks and expressions of femininity. Often women say they don't feel beautiful and aren't ready. As the series progresses, we are going to see a broader representation of femininity.

I always imagined I'd take up photography in the right place. Growing up in Southern California with it's endless droughts, miles of stucco boxes, burning asphalt and paved over dirty LA river oily and snaking under bridges and past chained linked fences and families of Snark hunters. The high desert and perpetual sun and surf didn't do it for me. Sure, El Matador beach in Malibu is gorgeous, but it was already teaming with women posing for designers and products. The native sycamores, California live oaks, walnut trees, white sage and sage brush are close to my heart, but I preferred to run the trails and drink their essence in to snapping photos. I always dreamed of living in a four season climate that would take me places. So, a year after we moved here in 2012, I bought a camera and started this series. The fact that other people find it beautiful is icing on the cake. I want all women to feel like Goddesses, and step into their power, grace, soul's purpose, self-love and maybe some sultry Cape Cod salty sass.

Trust

Entreating God

Lovelorn

Winter Goddess Meets Billie Holiday

Greek Winter Nymph

The Imaginal Realm of Plants

Next week on Healing Wisdom, author herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner of Gaia Studies discusses the natural treatment of Lyme Disease and its coinfections as well as the imaginal realm of plants.

We are rescheduling attorney Lindsey Straus for a following week.

Speaking of plants, plant spirit medicine is a little known tradition. The plant spirit kingdom is seldom tapped into as a resource, but drawing on the healing energy of plant spirits can be an incredibly useful and practical tool to employ. My paralyzing migraine this morning drove me past my house into a neighbors' patch of periwinkle and blackberry bushes where I dismounted my Kia steed, releasing years of suppressed pain in the form of hot blueberry vomit. First, it trickled from the side of my mouth, like I'd been shot. Next, the tidal wave from within erupted. Gaia was forgiving. Immediate relief washed over me, like tropical rain on a cool day. Except instead of litte raindrops it was violet upchuck blowing in a cool breeze across my arms and legs. There is nothing dignified about enjoying your own smurf-colored-bile-Sunday raining down on you. One cannot put on any airs, sliding into a patch of pink waffle puke on a hot leather seat, seeing Dutch angles, and falling out of yourself like a prolapsed organ. It is times like these when the earmarks of civilization, mailboxes painted in numbers, domesticated barking beasts, and car-lined driveways warming up for a commute are a welcome sight. Yell at me for puking in your bushes, sacrifise me to your dogs as a chew toy, fill my lungs with exhaust and call me crazy, I'm just so happy to be alive.

Hey, who drank the fairy berry cool-aid? In moments, the periwinkle pushed my ass back into the car and slammed the door. It drove me to our wild grape vines and pulled me into the realm of the fae. Celandine over mullein bush, the ferns and finches guided my wonky legs. Stumbling through grasses and chickweed, stooping under thorny blackberry boughs covered in new blossoms, tripping through buttercups, I skirted around a wild honeysuckle bend before falling onto our leopard couch where my husband, part Kahuna, awaited to give me the final miracle cure. When you have been with a loving partner for sixteen years, who is part angel, part super hero bandit, he can steal pain away from every muscle in your neck and face and replace it with gratitude...selflessly, expediently, miraculously. Particularly, where there has been plant spirit medicine eager to assist in rapid recovery.

Love is stronger than aspirin. Even ibuprofin.

Heaven is Just Off Stage Act II

It's a book, it's a play, it's a screenplay...It is much better to write in a room full of dead people than to be by yourself, don't you think? To be more exact, it is much better to write with a room full of dead people giving constructive suggestions, than to ignore a bunch of drunk rowdy ghosts full of consternation who have been beating their typewriters or quills against green rooms for decades or centuries. I have been trying to do this the hard way all these years, thinking if I use my superpowers for anything other than my psychic work (and sweet lovin') that I have an unfair advantage. I'm so over it.

I've devoted so much of my life to being in service, and I love being useful. Mediumship fascinates, fuels ans gives my life meaning. Channeling angels and spirit guides in shamanic sound and energy healings gives depth to earthly existence. Helping people heal and helping people reconnect with their own talents and abilities and magic gives me pride and joy.

With every day my empathic/grokking abilities grow, I also feel an increasing need to creatively express myself. It is pressing in on me like stormy seas on levy walls. There is a need to express a richness and complexity of emotions through my body, mind and spirit that can only happen through characters and music. I feel like a big salty sea goddess: sweating salt crystals, salivating to the point of drooling, nauseated by contractions, levitating above the shores and cliffs, undulating with gravitational melodies, raw unbridled hungry, foaming at the mouth rabid, aching and arching with new life kicking to get out.