my first love story

“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 are in each other all along.” – RUMI

he kissed me (my first kiss)
22 years ago
today

he married me
14 years ago
today

his kiss still makes me blush...

no se atrevía a acercársele

“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.” 

“Le parecía tan bella, tan seductora, tan distinta de la gente común, que no entendía por qué nadie se trastornaba como él con las castañuelas de sus tacones en los adoquines de la calle, ni se le desordenaba el corazón con el aire de los suspiros de sus volantes, ni se volvía loco de amor todo el mundo con los vientos de su trenza, el vuelo de sus manos, el oro de su risa. No había perdido un gesto suyo, ni un indicio de su carácter, pero no se atrevía a acercársele por el temor de malograr el encanto."

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014)

goddess gifts

I was walking barefoot on the cobblestone streets, heading towards the colonial cathedral. 

The goddess appeared with specific messages and gifts:

a golden pen to write

a blue feather to fly

corals, crystals and minerals to sculpt

excerpt from my dreams 

seven months

my sweet baby is seven months on my beloved grandmother's birthday...

Uca would have been in love with her great-grandaughter who may have inherited some of her sweetness and beauty...

ahí como si nada

- 2013 mixed media -

"Te conseguí la luz del sol a medianoche
Y el número después del infinito,
E instalé la Osa Mayor en tu diadema
Y tú seguías ahí como si nada;

Endulcé el agua del mar para tu sed,
Te alquilé un cuarto menguante de la luna,
Y como buen perdedor busqué en la cama
Las cosas que el amor no resolvía.

Y cómo duele que estés tan lejos
Durmiendo aqui en la misma cama;
Cómo duele tanta distancia,
Aunque te escucho respirar
Y estás a cientos de kilómetros

Y duele quererte tanto,
Fingir que todo está perfecto
Mientras duele gastar la vida
Tratando de localizar
Lo que hace tiempo se perdió...

Acabé con los jardines por tus flores,
Inventé la alquimia contra la utopía,
Y he llegado a confundir con la ternura
La lástima con que a veces me miras;

Que triste es asumir el sufrimiento,
patético es creer que una mentira
convoque a los duendes del milagro,
que te hagan despertar enamorada.

Por qué nos duele tanta distancia,
Fingir que todo está perfecto
Mientras sientes que te duele
gastar la vida durmiendo aquí en la misma cama...
Cómo duele..."
- Ricardo Arjona

un rayo que te parte los huesos

"Lo que mucha gente llama amar consiste en elegir una mujer y casarse con ella. La eligen, te lo juro, los he visto. Como si se pudiera elegir en el amor, como si no fuera un rayo que te parte los huesos y te deja estaqueado en la mitad del patio. Vos dirás que la eligen porque la aman, yo creo que es al vesre. A Beatriz no se la elige, a Julieta no se la elige. Vos no elegís la lluvia que te va a calar hasta los huesos cuando salís de un concierto."

- Julio Cortazar

her first thanksgiving

at the Satchidananda Ashram, Yogaville 

a most blessed celebration

un amor que se lleve las mentiras

"Mereces un amor que te quiera despeinada, con todo y las razones que te levantan de prisa, con todo y los demonios que no te dejan dormir. Mereces un amor que te haga sentir segura, que pueda comerse al mundo si camina de tu mano, que sienta que tus abrazos van perfectos con su piel. Mereces un amor que quiera bailar contigo, que visite el paraíso cada que mira tus ojos, y que no se aburra nunca de leer tus expresiones. Mereces un amor que te escuche cuando cantas, que te apoye en tus ridículos, que respete que eres libre, que te acompañe en tu vuelo, que no le asuste caer. Mereces un amor que se lleve las mentiras, que te traiga la ilusión, el café y la poesía.” 

- Frida Kahlo

blessed

my mother holding my daughter...

I am truly blessed...

happy birthday Mamma, Mimi...

too mystical

"If you obsess over whether you are making the right decision, you are basically assuming that the universe will reward you for one thing and punish you for another. The universe has no fixed agenda. Once you make any decision, it works around that decision. There is no right or wrong, only a series of possibilities that shift with each thought, feeling, and action that you experience. If this sounds too mystical, refer again to the body. Every significant vital sign- body temperature, heart rate, oxygen consumption, hormone level, brain activity, and so on- alters the moment you decide to do anything… decisions are signals telling your body, mind, and environment to move in a certain direction."

- Deepak Chopra

snake bite

"Forgiveness if an act of self-love. No one has ever died from a snake bite. They die from the venom which continues to pour through the system long after the bite took place. You can’t be ‘unbitten’ but you can choose not to have the venom flowing through you. When you rid yourself of the venom and forgive, you are truly acting as a loving being.”

- Dr. Wayne Dyer

holding the space

"The only beloved who can always be counted on is God. The ultimate partner is a divine one, an experience of ourselves that is totally supportive and forgiving. Until we know this, we keep seeking sustenance from men that they cannot give us. Most men and women today are wounded. The search for some one who isn't in pain is unreasonable until we ourselves are healed of our own dysfunctions. Until then, we will be led to people as wounded as we are in order that we might heal and be healed together. What this means is that NO PARTNER can save us, deliver us, or give meaning to our lives. The source of our salvation, deliverance, and meaning is within us. It is the love we give as much as it is the love we get. The passion we need to feed is our relationship to God. This is ultimately our relationship with ourselves.

It's not as easy as a good date, as much fun as sex, or as dramatic as romantic tension. It is work. Personal growth, recovery, religious practice, spiritual renewal - whatever words we care to use - these are the keys to our return to sanity and peace. When we have reclaimed our wholeness, we are ready to face the worldly beloved. Until then, we will look to a romantic partner to give us peace rather than remember that our role in the relationship is to BRING peace, by receiving it from God allowing him to spread his peace through us to all mankind.

How often I have betrayed myself, forgetting - or more accurately, resisting - the twenty minutes of meditation, the hour of reading, the spiritual meeting or recovery group that would prepare me for the roller coaster ride that always lies potential in an intimate relationship. Part of our problem is that we expect love affairs to always feel good. They don't. Actually, relationships don't feel good anyway. We feel good. Unless we are centered within ourselves, we cannot blame a relationship for throwing us off. No man can convince a woman she's wonderful, but if she already believes she is, his agreement can resonate and bring her joy.

This is our function in each other's lives: to hold the space for each other's beauty, that our beloved can leave us and we still feel in his absence how beautiful we are."

- Marianne Williamson

I received this passage after my daily ritual of morning meditation, prayer and yoga...

and my dear, if the word "god" turns you off, simply substitute it with one that connects you with the Divine Life Force that resides within...

only one of you

"There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost."

- Martha Graham (1894-1991)

how do we block ourselves?

how do we block our expression?

why would we do this to our souls?

we are on this planet to DANCE our DREAMS into realities...we are ALIVE so that we can stretch and grow and learn and laugh and cry and express the beauty that is within us...

disassembled by her

"He sweeps his arm across plates and glasses on a restaurant table so she might look up somewhere else in the city hearing this cause of noise. When he is without her. He, who has never felt alone in the miles of longitude between desert towns...He lies in his room surrounded by the pale maps. He is without her. His hunger wishes to burn down all social rules, all courtesy. Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute and secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.  He has been disassembled by her..."

- Michael Ondaatje

Tío Noel

We visited you only a couple of weeks ago...

We spoke on the phone only a couple of days ago....

You told us you were thinking of living closer. How much fun would we have as neighbors!

We laughed. We always made each other laugh. 

You told us you were waiting for us to visit you again. We made plans. 

We declared our love for each other, yet we never said goodbye...

yet another dream

consecutive nights I dream of dreams...

I dream with you...

what messages are you sending me?

full moon

the moon is sharing secrets about her fullness, about her light...

en sueños

"La persona más próxima a mí

eres tú, a la que sin embargo

no veo desde hace tanto tiempo

más que en sueños."

- Ernesto Cardenal

dreaming my world into being

"The Australian Aborigines believe that two separate realities exist: that of everyday life, and that of the dreamtime, the timeless realm from which energy beings (the gods) first sung the world into existence. The dreamtime is the domain of song and poetry, of symbols and archetypes; the shamans believe that it's the more important of the two realities, for it births, shapes, and forms the physical world. They'd probably agree with Einstein, who said, 'Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.'

In our own culture, we've come to value our waking reality so much that we've forgotten our power to conceive from the invisible world of the dreamtime and co-create with the universe."

- Alberto Villoldo

from childhood I learned that I could receive messages through dreams...

ideas for my artwork and poetry often originate in vivid, detailed dreams...

make room

"Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy."

- Pema Chodron 

in my secret life

"I saw you this morning.
You were moving so fast.
Can’t seem to loosen my grip -
on the past. 

And we’re still making love
In My Secret Life.

I smile when I’m angry.
I cheat and I lie.

I do what I have to do to get by.

But I know what is wrong,
And I know what is right.

And I’d die for the truth
In My Secret Life...

...I bite my lip.

I buy what I’m told:

from the latest hit,

to the wisdom of old.

But I’m always alone.

And my heart is like ice.

And it’s crowded and cold.

In My Secret Life."

-  Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)

asumida adversidad

"If I'm to live without you, let it be hard and bloody, cold soup, broken shoes, or in the midst of opulence let the dry branch of a cough jerk through me, barking your twisted name, the foaming vowels, and let the bedsheets stick to my fingers, and nothing give me peace. I won't learn to love you any better this way, but abandoned by happiness I'll know how much you gave me just by sometimes being around. I think I understand this, but I'm kidding myself: there'll need to be frost on the lintel so the one taking shelter in the vestibule feels the light in the dining room, the milky tablecloths, and the smell of bread passing its brown hand through the crack.

As far apart from you as one eye from the other, out of this affliction I've taken on, will be born the gaze that deserves you at last." - Julio Cortázar translated by Stephen Kessler

in the original Spanish version...

"Si he de vivir sin ti, que sea duro y cruento, la sopa fría, los zapatos rotos, o que en mitad de la opulencia se alce la rama seca de la tos, ladrandome tu nombre deformado, las vocales de espuma, y en los dedos se me peguen las sábanas, y nada me de paz. No aprenderé por eso a quererte mejor, pero desalojado de la felicidad sabre cuanta me debas con solamente a veces estar cerca. Esto creo entenderlo, pero me engaño: hará falta la escarcha del dintel para que el guarecido en el portal comprenda la luz del comedor, los manteles de leche, y el aroma del pan que pasa su morena mano por la hendija.

Tan lejos ya de ti como un ojo del otro, de esta asumida adversidad nacerá la mirada que por fin te merezca." - Julio Cortázar 

election day

"If I Were President"

by: Carlos Checa-Sacasa

written earlier this year when he was 7 years old

"If I were President of the United States, I would be at least 10 years old and speak at least 9 languages. Being able to communicate with other countries brings peace and friendship.

I would stop war and create peace by helping people deal with their anger. Anger comes from fear and some people might just be afraid so they get angry and violent and want war. People need to share and cooperate and maybe meditate more.

I would have smart people with good hearts around me to help make the best decisions. I would think of ways to help people without jobs find work they enjoy.

All kids would learn to read and write and love it, like I do. Learning is so much fun, but sometimes people forget. We are always learning, no matter how old.

If I were President of the United States, I would make protecting the environment a priority. Our planet earth is Mother Earth and we must take care of her. We must love animals and respect them."

- Carlos Checa-Sacasa

Second Grade, Youth Writing Contest 2016

rage

"Under the tutelage of Wild Woman we reclaim the ancient, the intuitive, and the passionate. When our lives reflect hers, we act cohesively. We carry through, or learn to if we don't already know how. We take the steps to make our ideas manifest in the world. We regain focus when we lose it, attend to personal rhythms, draw closer to friends and mates who are in accord with wildish and integral rhythms. We choose relationships that nurture our creative and instinctive lives. We reach our to nurture others. And we are willing to teach receptive mates about wildish rhythms if need be.

But there is another aspect to mastery, and that is dealing with what can only be called women's rage. The release of that rage is required. Once women remember the origins of their rage, they feel they may never stop grinding their teeth. Ironically, we also feel very anxious to disperse our rage, for it feels distressing and noxious. We wish to hurry up and do away with it.

But repressing it will not work. It is like trying to put fire into a burlap bag. Neither is it good to scald ourselves or someone else with it. So there we are holding a powerful emotion that we feel came upon us unbidden. It is a little like toxic waste; there it is, no one wants it, but there are few disposal areas for it. One has to travel far in order to find a burial ground...

...All emotion, even rage, carries knowledge, insight, what some call enlightenment. Our rage can, for a time, become teacher...a thing not to be rid of so fast, but rather something to climb the mountain for, something to personify via various images in order to learn from, deal with internally, then shape into something useful in the world as a result, or else let it go back down to dust. In a cohesive life, rage is not a stand-alone item. It is a substance waiting for our transformative efforts. The cycle of rage is like any other cycle; it rises, falls, dies and is released as new energy. Attention to the matter of rage begins the process of transformation.

Allowing oneself to be taught by one's rage, thereby transforming it, disperses it. One's energy returns to use in other areas, especially the area of creativity. Although some people claim they can create out of their chronic rage, the problem is that rage confines access to the collective unconscious - that infinite reservoir of imaginal images and thoughts - so that a person creating out of rage tends to create the same thing over and over again, with nothing new coming through. Untransformed rage can become a constant mantra about how oppressed, hurt and tortured we were...

...Rage corrodes our trust that anything good can occur. Something has happened to hope. And behind the loss of hope is usually anger; behind anger, pain; behind pain, usually torture of one sort or another, sometimes recent, but more often from long ago.

In physical post-trauma work, we know that the sooner injury is dealt with, the less its effect spread or worsen. Also the more quickly a trauma is contained and dealt with, the faster the recovery time. This is true for psychological trauma as well. What condition would we be in if we'd broken a leg as a child, and thirty years later it still had not been properly set?

...There is a life beyond thoughtless rage...it takes a conscious practice to contain and heal such. But we can do it. It truly takes only climbing through one step at a time.

So rather than trying to "behave" and not feel our rage or rather than using it to burn down every living thing in a hundred-mile radius, it is better to first ask rage to take a seat with us, have some tea, talk a while so we can find out what summoned this visitor. At first rage...it doesn't want to talk, it doesn't want to eat, just wants to sit there and stare, or rail, or be left alone. It is this critical point that we call the healer, our wisest self, our best resources for seeing beyond ego irritation and aggravation. The healer is always the "far-seer." She is the one who can tell us what good can come from exploring this emotive surge."

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D

valor and daring

"Your love should never be offered to the mouth of a Stranger,

Only to someone who has the valor and daring to cut pieces of their soul off with a knife,

Then weave them into a blanket to protect you."

- my beloved Hafiz

awareness

"Love springs from awareness.

It is only inasmuch as you see someone as he or she REALLY is here and now and not how they are in your memory or your DESIRE or in your imagination or projection that you can truly love them, otherwise it is not the person that you love but the IDEA that you have formed of this person, or this person as the OBJECT of your DESIRE not as he or she is in themselves.

Therefore the first act of love is to see this person or this object, this reality as it truly is.  And this involves ENORMOUS DISCIPLINE of DROPPING your DESIRES, your PREJUDICES, your MEMORIES, your PROJECTIONS, your selective way of looking, a discipline so great that most people would rather plunge headlong into good actions and service than to SUBMIT to the BURNING FIRE of this ASCETICISM.

When you set out to serve someone whom you have not taken the trouble to see, are you meeting that person's need or your own? So the first ingredient of love is to really see the other.

The second ingredient is equally important to see yourself, to RUTHLESSLY flash the LIGHT of AWARENESS on your motives, your emotions, your needs, your dishonesty, your self-seeking, your TENDENCY to CONTROL and MANIPULATE.  This means calling things by their name, no matter how painful the discovery and the consequences.  If you achieve this kind of awareness of the other and yourself, you will know what love is. For you will have attained a mind and a heart that is alert, vigilant, clear, sensitive, a clarity of perception, a sensitivity that will draw out of you an accurate, appropriate response to every situation at every moment.

Sometimes you will be irresistibly impelled into action, at others you will be held back and restrained. You will sometimes be made to ignore others and sometimes give them the attention they seek. At times you will be gentle and yielding, at others hard, uncompromising, assertive, even violent. For the love that is BORN of SENSITIVITY takes many unexpected forms and it responds not to prefabricated guidelines and principles but to present, concrete reality. When you first experience this kind of sensitivity you are likely to experience TERROR. For all your defenses will be torn down, your dishonesty exposed, the protected wall around you burned.

...If it is love that you truly desire then set out at once on the task of seeing, take it seriously and look at someone you DISLIKE and really see your PREJUDICE. Look at someone you CLING TO or something you cling to and really see the SUFFERING, the FUTILITY, the UNFREEDOM of CLINGING and look long and lovingly at human faces and human behavior..."

- Anthony De Mello

from my early morning meditation

wounds from craving love

"You are a royal fish trying to wear pants in a country as foreign as land.

Now there's a problem worth discussing.

Your separation from God had ripened. Now fall like a golden fruit into my hand.

All your wounds from craving love exist because of heroic deeds.

Now trade in those medals; that courage will help this world.

One needs to love those they have yet to love to stand near the Friend.

Why be a royal fish trying to wear pants?

Hafiz, what are you talking about? Has something happened to good brilliant mind?" - HAFIZ

detail from mixed media on paper, circa 2007

para los chismosos

I asked for wisdom and my beloved HAFIZ answered:

"One of the dumbest things you can do is backbite an animal or a human being. 

Reason is: Besides the fact that an animal who is feeling grouchy that day might bite you back...

Whenever you speak ill of any living creature something of their shadow might fall on you.

Some unwanted impressions of theirs could spill on your floor, 

and I imagine you are busy enough trying to keep things tidy."

- HAFIZ

snapshot - endless pearls with vintage silks and signature bronze sculpture

esos besos

"Those kisses you sent, I found them wandering around the house. They were acting a little lost, not knowing exactly where I was.

I was busy upstairs. But now we are all having tea and talking about you, and wishing you were here.

And they imparted all you intended. They did well.

One more thing: I have seen you at your best and at your worst; still you are always welcome near me." 

- HAFIZ 

esos besos tuyos...tan míos...

los santos los muertos

"What secret are you looking for? Life will soon reveal it to you." - Frida Kahlo

Día de Todos Los Santos

Día de Los Muertos

mixed medias on paper (c. 2013) and on wood (c. 2009)