a king and a woman

“…but you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love…”

– Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor (1894-1972)

mixed media on paper

dreaming in Italian

“It would be impossible to love anyone else.”
– Sophia Loren (b. 1934)

last night I dreamed in Italian...it was a wonderful adventure of a dream

mixed media on paper 

without the words

"Hope is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me."

- Emily Dickinson

detail of mixed media collage on paper 

ki-ki-ri-ki

the lunar year of the rooster begins...

blessings to all...

nine months new moon

she pulls herself up to stand 

she is fearless

she is loud

she is sweet and oh so curious 

she is determined 

she is my daughter 

nine months old on this new moon

life outside the garden

"In the cage is the lion. She paces with her memories. Her body is a record of her past. As she moves back and forth, one may see it all: the lean frame, the muscular legs, the paw enclosing sharp claws, the astonishing speed of her response. She was born in this garden. She has never in her life stretched those legs. Never darted farther than twenty yards at a time. Only once did she use her claws. Only once did she feel them sink into flesh. And it was her keeper's flesh. Her keeper whom she loves, who feeds her, who would never dream of harming her, who protects her. Who in his mercy forgave her mad attack, saying it was her nature, to be cruel at a whim, to try to kill what she loves...she knows no life outside the garden. She has no notion of anger of what she could have been, or might be. No idea of rebellion. It is only her body that knows of these things, moving her, daily, hourly, back and forth, before the bars of her cage."

- Susan Griffin

divine feminine

"The more separated we become from the Earth, the more hostile we become to the feminine.

We disown our passion, our creativity, and our sexuality.

Eventually the Earth itself becomes a baneful place.

I remember being told by a medicine woman in the Amazon:

Do you know why they are really cutting down the rain forest? Because it is wet and dark and tangled and feminine."

- Alberto Villoldo 

one of my pieces from a few years ago, in a private collection 

dazzling spirit

"Creativity is a shapechanger. One moment it takes this form, the next that. It is like a dazzling spirit who appears to us all, yet is hard to describe for no one agrees on what they saw in that brilliant flash...Some say the creative life is in ideas, some say it is in doing. It seems in most instances to be a simple being. It is not virtuosity, although that is very fine in itself. It is the love of something, having so much love for something - whether a person, a word, an image, an idea, the land, or humanity --- that all that can be done with the overflow is to create. It is not a matter of wanting to, not a singular act of will; one solely must."

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

detail from mixed media on paper from a few years ago

dharma

"Turning your mind toward the dharma does not bring security or confirmation.  Turning your mind toward the dharma does not bring any ground to stand on.  In fact, when your mind turns toward the dharma, you fearlessly acknowledge impermanence and change and begin to get the knack of hopelessness.

In Tibetan there's an interesting word: ye tang che. The ye part means "totally, completely," and the rest of it means "exhausted." Altogether, ye tang che means totally tired out.  We might say "totally fed up." It describes an experience of complete hopelessness, of completely giving up hope. This is an important point. This is the beginning of the beginning. Without giving up hope -- that there's somewhere better to be, that there's someone better to be -- we will never relax with where we are now or who we are.

To think that we can finally get it all together is unrealistic. To seek for some lasting security is futile. To undo our very ancient and very stuck habitual patterns of mind requires that we begin to turn around some of our most basic assumptions. Believing in a solid, separate self, continuing to seek pleasure and avoid pain, thinking that someone "out there" is to blame for our pain -- one has to get totally fed up with these ways of thinking. One has to give up hope that this way of thinking will bring us satisfaction. Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there's anywhere to hide."

- Pema Chodron

detail from a watercolor

projections

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."

- Carl Jung (1875-1961)

working with mirrors, shadows and projections...

soy mujer y soy madre

I commit to protecting my children's sacred innocence. 

Why expose young ones to vulgarity and violence?

"The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives forever."

- John Updike

soul

"Remember this: the soul creates, the mind reacts. The soul understands what the mind cannot conceive."

- Neale Donald Walsch

snapshot: a corner of my world 

YES

"It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool

for love

for your dream

for the adventure of being alive.


It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...

I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow

if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you

to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us

to be careful

to be realistic

to remember the limitations

of being human.


It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself.

If you can bear the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.


I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day.

And if you can source your own life 
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with 

failure

yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,

“YES!"


It doesn’t interest me

to know where you live

or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand

in the centre of the fire

with me

and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you
from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone 
with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."

© Oriah Mountain Dreamer from the book "The Invitation"

a reminder to be true to myself, to my dreams, to my art...

150 años de Rubén Darío

¿Eva era rubia? No. Con negros ojos

vio la manzana del jardín: con labios

rojos probó su miel; con labios rojos

que saben hoy más ciencia que los sabios.

Venus tuvo el azur en sus pupilas,

pero su hijo no. Negros y fieros,

encienden a las tórtolas tranquilas

los dos ojos de Eros.

Los ojos de las reinas fabulosas,

de las reinas magníficas y fuertes,

tenían las pupilas tenebrosas

que daban los amores y las muertes.

Pentesilea, reina de amazonas;

Judith, espada y fuerza de Betulia;

Cleopatra, encantadora de coronas,

la luz tuvieron de tus ojos, Julia.

La negra, que es más luz que la luz blanca

del sol, y las azules de los cielos.

Luz que el más rojo resplandor arranca

al diamante terrible de los celos.

Luz negra, luz divina, luz que alegra

la luz meridional, luz de las niñas,

de las grandes ojeras, ¡oh luz negra

que hace cantar a Pan bajo las viñas!

- Rubén Darío (1867-1916)

balance pleasure against pain

"...and lately I've begun wondering 

if you're trying to tell me something 

we used to talk all night

and do things alone together 

and I've begun

(as a reaction to a feeling)

to balance

the pleasure of loneliness

against the pain

of loving you "

- Nikki Giovanni

harsh and exciting

"You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things."

- Mary Oliver

can you trust me even though you cannot tame me?

"But can you love me in the deep? In the dark? In the thick of it?

Can you love me when I drink from the wrong bottle and slip through the crack in the floorboard?

Can you love me when I’m bigger than you, when my presence blazes like the sun does, when it hurts to look directly at me?

Can you love me then too?

Can you love me under the starry sky, shaved and smooth, my skin like liquid moonlight?

Can you love me when I am howling and furry, standing on my haunches, my lower lip stained with the blood of my last kill?

When I call down the lightning, when the sidewalks are singed by the soles of my feet, can you still love me then?

What happens when I freeze the land, and cause the dirt to harden over all the pomegranate seeds we’ve planted?

Will you trust that Spring will return?

Will you still believe me when I tell you I will become a raging river, and spill myself upon your dreams and call them to the surface of your life?

Can you trust me, even though you cannot tame me?

Can you love me, even though I am all that you fear and admire?

Will you fear my shifting shape?

Does it frighten you, when my eyes flash like your camera does?

Do you fear they will capture your soul?

Are you afraid to step into me?

The meat-eating plants and flowers armed with poisonous darts are not in my jungle to stop you from coming. Not you.

So do not worry. They belong to me, and I have invited you here.

Stay to the path revealed in the moonlight and arrive safely to the hut of Baba Yaga: the wild old wise one… she will not lead you astray if you are pure of heart.

You cannot be with the wild one if you fear the rumbling of the ground, the roar of a cascading river, the startling clap of thunder in the sky.

If you want to be safe, go back to your tiny room — the night sky is not for you.

If you want to be torn apart, come in. Be broken open and devoured. Be set ablaze in my fire.

I will not leave you as you have come: well dressed, in finely-threaded sweaters that keep out the cold.

I will leave you naked and biting. Leave you clawing at the sheets. Leave you surrounded by owls and hawks and flowers that only bloom when no one is watching.

So, come to me, and be healed in the unbearable lightness and darkness of all that you are.

There is nothing in you that can scare me. Nothing in you I will not use to make you great.

A wild woman is not a girlfriend. She is a relationship with nature. She is the source of all your primal desires, and she is the wild whipping wind that uproots the poisonous corn stalks on your neatly tilled farm.

She will plant pear trees in the wake of your disaster.

She will see to it that you shall rise again.

She is the lover who restored you to your own wild nature."

- Alison Nappi

self-portrait from a new series in progress

divine prey

"Why abstain from love when like the beautiful snow goose - someday your soul will leave this summer camp?

Why abstain from happiness, when like a skilled lion your heart is nearing and will someday see the divine prey is always near!"

- my beloved HAFIZ

self-portrait from a new series I am playing with 

in sacred manner

Where are you living? 

What are you doing? 

What are your relationships? 

Are you in right relation? 

Where is your water? 

Know our garden. 

It is time to speak your Truth. 

Create your community. 

Be good to each other. 

And do not look outside yourself for the leader. 

This could be a good time! 

There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel like they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly. 

Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off toward the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water. 

See who is there with you and celebrate. 

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves! For the moment we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt. 

The time of the lonely wolf is over. Gather yourselves! 

Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary. 

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. 

We are the ones we have been waiting for. 

The Elders, 
Oraibi, Arizona 
Hopi Nation

full moon messages

On the first full moon of 2017 and on beloved Tia Melba's birthday, I found a piece I created exactly 10 years ago...

detail from mixed media on paper: crystal quartz, silk thread, vintage tulle, vintage gold lame, watercolor, photograph, pen, ink and pencil, circa 2007

reach for your dreams

she knows what she wants and reaches out for it...

she moves forward with determination...

I am learning so much from my fearless daughter...

recent snapshot of my beloved barefoot ballerina 

entre sueños y suspiros

mujer con alas de mariposa bailando entre sueños y suspiros, te recuerdo y te siento cerca...

excerpt from journals

stay

stay wild

stay sacred

stay playful

stay flexible

stay open

a moment in my day

how things are

"Conserve your energy until the time is right; be observant of your surroundings.

If Owl has silently glided into your life you may need to remove yourself from the noise of life and become the still silent observer. After slowing down and becoming stable you will be amazed by the wealth of information and meaning that surrounds you. It may be bringing you the ability to see what others may miss. Open your eyes and truly examine how things are, you will be surprised that suddenly you can see things that are normally hidden from view – like the motives of those around you. External appearances will give way to the truth and meaning hidden beneath.

Alternatively Owl is often thought to come to those who need to let go of some part of their life that is no longer needed. Listen carefully to that inner voice and be guided to recapture the knowledge of your true path in life. Owl’s senses pierce through shadows, beyond fear and darkness, through to the other side that promises light, happiness and knowledge."

- Spirit Animal Totem 

owls have been appearing to me as messengers this year