lovers and tribes

"We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. 

I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience."

- Michael Ondaatje 

detail from mixed media on canvas

te extraño

"Te extraño -

como se extrañan las noches sin estrellas, 

como se extrañan las mañanas bellas, 

no estar contigo, por Dios que me hace daño.

Te extraño - 

cuando camino, cuando lloro, cuando río, 

cuando el sol brilla, cuando hace mucho frío, 

porque te siento como algo muy mío.

Te extraño - 

como los árboles extrañan el otoño, 

en esas noches que no concilio el sueño, 

no te imaginas Amor, cómo te extraño.

Te extraño - 

en cada paso que siento solitario, 

cada momento que estoy viviendo a diario, 

estoy muriendo Amor porque te extraño.

Te extraño - 

cuando la aurora comienza a dar colores, 

con tus virtudes, con todos tus errores, 

por lo que quieras no sé, pero te extraño..."

- Armando Manzanero 

detail from mixed media on canvas

te invento a veces con mi vanidad

"Tengo la convicción de que no existes

y sin embargo te oigo cada noche

te invento a veces con mi vanidad

o mi desolación o mi modorra

del infinito mar viene tu asombro

lo escucho como un salmo y pese a todo

tan convencido estoy de que no existes

que te aguardo en mi sueño para luego."

- Mario Benedetti

detail from mixed media on canvas, 2013

gratitude

The end of a decade is near. I sit here, after yoga, sipping my tea and contemplating all that has happened in the last ten years. 

I am blessed. My two beautiful children are healthy and joyful. I am painting, sculpting and writing more each day. I am in love with my artwork...my soul's work.

que no te amo y que te amo

"Sabras que no te amo y que te amo puesto que de dos modos es la vida, la palabra es un ala del silencio, el fuego tiene una mitad de frío. Yo te amo para comenzar a amarte, para recomenzar el infinito y para no dejar de amarte nunca: por eso no te amo todavía. Te amo y no te amo como si tuviera en mis manos las llaves de la dicha y un incierto destino desdichado. Mi amor tiene dos vidas para amarte. Por eso te amo cuando no te amo y por eso te amo cuando te amo." - Pablo Neruda ...and in English... "You must know that I do not love and that I love you, because everything alive has its two sides; a word is one wing of the silence, fire has its cold half. I love you in order to begin to love you, to start infinity again and never stop loving you: that's why I do not love you yet. I love you, and I do not love you, as if I held keys in my hand:  to a future of joy -- a wretched, muddled fate -- My love has two lives, in order to love you: that's why I love you when I do not love you, and also why I love you when I do." - Pablo Neruda translated by Stephen Tapscott

he moved her chemically more than anyone

"Her heart sank into her shoes as she realized at last how much she wanted him. No matter what his past was, no matter what he had done. Which was not to say that she would ever let him know, but only that he moved her chemically more than anyone she had ever met, that all other men seemed pale beside him." 

- F. Scott Fitzgerald 

snapshot: Roman Imperial Rosso AnticoTorso, circa 1st century A.D.

fuchsia eyes

2004 hand-dyed silk and concert ticket

a birthday sorpresa he said
i was a bit tired, but went ahead

meeting at the bookstore
in the middle of rain

our waiter was
french
spanish
colombian
quite a cocktail - that mojito
a mountain of gorgonzola cheese, please

annie lennox rocked the house
she's fifty-two not sixty-two
moving like a graceful dancer
with fuchsia eyes...

excerpt from my 2007 journal

honor dreams my dear

"She shows up just when you need her. She always gives you the support and counsel you need, and never judges you.

She is an amazing psychic advisor: she knows what the future holds for you, and she can tell you what to do and what not to do to avoid something bad or find the right job, or the right home, or the right partner.

She is a...healer who can help you to fix your body before you get sick, and who has the right medicine and nurturing to speed you into healing and recovery...She makes house calls at any time, and she never charges you a cent.

She's fabulous fun and a great traveling companion. She makes you want to get up and dance, and sing, and play. She loves to fly off to exotic places...

She has wonderful energy. An hour in her company gives you a boost for a whole week.

She'll mother you when you, and your beautiful inner child self, need mothering, hold you when you need holding, and give you a shove when you need to jump through a hole in the world.

She knows you better than you know yourself, in your everyday mind. When she holds up a mirror in front of you, you don't notice the blemishes. You see a being of radiant power and possibility, your ancient and shining self. And in that moment of recognition, you begin to remember and live from your soul's purpose, the sacred contract you signed before you came into your present body.

...and you never say thank you, or remember her birthday. You ignore her advice more often than not...You forget the songs you sang together, and those nights of love and beauty...If you find the moon through the smog and city lights, you do not recollect that she flew you there...

If she were a regular friend, she might dump you as a miserable ingrate. This friend is beyond the ordinary, and she has the patience of an angel - but even the patience of angels is not endless. So if you won't take her advice, she might make less of an effort to warn you...Then the magic begins to flicker in your world, and you are more alone than you ever need or want to be.

...dreams require action. We must take action to honor the friend who visits and advises and travels with us in our dreams, but the most important is the one we find in the mirror - when our sight is clear: the ancient and shining self. 

Taking the right action to honor dreams is practical magic of a high order. Real magic is the art of reaching into a deeper reality and bringing gifts from it into the physical world. This is what we do when we honor dreams, and the powers that speak through dreams."

- Robert Moss

gratitude

"When a woman is twenty, a child deforms her; when she is thirty, (s)he preserves her; and when forty, (s)he makes her young again."

- Leon Blum

breastfeeding in my mid-forties...we weaned about six months ago

motherhood is making me young again...

motherhood is my fountain of youth...

gratitude for another year of life...

a recent filtered feline selfie with my fiercely feminine little goddess

treasures

"Your life is short and rare and amazing and miraculous and you should do really interesting things and make interesting things while you’re still here. You have treasures hidden within you and so do I and so does everyone and bringing those treasures to light takes work and faith and focus and courage and hours of devotion and the clock is ticking and the world is spinning and we simply do not have time to think so small.”

- Elizabeth Gilbert

shifting into true being

"You are expanding wildly within and your powerful ripple is causing havoc around you.

Your change has been noticed and causing distress for some.

Chaos is inevitable now you are shifting into your true being.

It’s up to you: Will you choose the chaos or will the chaos choose you?

Both have the same outcome.

To drop you into BEing.

In alignment of you.

Will it be a fight for things to stay the same and draining you of your life force?

Or will it be uncomfortably surrendering into the liberating change the Universe is conspiring to create for you?

Slowly but surely the drums that are playing in your soul will tremble loose everything that no longer honours your highest truth.

You choose this path.

Walk it speaking your own voice

Radiantly dance into the night

Woman you are too awake.

Face your boundlessness and roam free."

- Sharona Lautoe

mixed media on canvas, 2019

eye contact

he pretends to look around, but is actually looking at me...

excerpt from a true story in my journals 

no one like me

"...Intention I feel inventive,

Gonna make you, make you, make you notice -

Got motion restrained emotion...

No reason just seems so pleasing,

Gonna make you, make you, make you notice -

Gonna use my arms,

Gonna use my legs,

Gonna use my style,

Gonna use my sidestep,

Gonna use my fingers,

Gonna use my, my, my imagination -

'Cause I gonna make you see,

There's nobody else here,

No one like me,

I'm special so special,

I gotta have some of your attention give it to me -

Got rhythm I can't miss a beat...

Got something I'm winking at you,

Gonna make you, make you, make you notice...Give it to me..."

- The Pretenders

in an 80s mood

mixed media on canvas, 2019

it might just be fantastic

"Don't get me wrong

If I'm looking kind of dazzled

I see neon lights

Whenever you walk by

Don't get me wrong

If you say hello and I take a ride

Upon a sea where the mystic moon

Is playing havoc with the tide

Don't get me wrong

Don't get me wrong

If I'm acting so distracted

I'm thinking about the fireworks

That go off when you smile

Don't get me wrong

If I split like light refracted

I'm only off to wander

Across a moonlit mile

Once in awhile

Two people meet

Seemingly for no reason

They just pass on the street

Suddenly thunder, showers everywhere

Who can explain the thunder and rain

But there's something in the air

Don't get me wrong

If I come and go like fashion

I might be great tomorrow

But hopeless yesterday

Don't get me wrong

If I fall in the 'mode of passion'

It might be unbelievable

But let's not say so long

It might just be fantastic

Don't get me wrong..." 

- The Pretenders

mixed media on canvas, 2019

tempted

- "Pomegranate Kiss" mixed media on paper circa 2007 -

Eve had the infamous apple

Persephone her pomegranate

...what is your fruit?

your temptation and pleasure?

"I said to my reflection,

let's get out of this place

...memories of it still

keep calling and calling

but forget  it all

I know I will

tempted by the fruit of another

tempted but the truth is discovered

what's been going on

now that you have gone

there's no other...

your body gets much closer

I fumble for the clock

alarmed by the seduction

I wish that it would stop

I bought a novel, some perfume

a fortune all for you

but it's not my conscience

that hates to be untrue

I asked my reflection

tell me what is there to do?

tempted by the fruit of another..." 

- Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford

deep inside

"...but even so, just as he starts to leave, when he notices a bit of dirt under his thumbnail, he stops to scrub it out. Although she has never complained at all about his grubby appearance whenever he came in tired from the digs and sat drinking with her, she might feel differently now that she is going to take him upstairs.

He is glad to see the show again because it gives him time to anticipate and dream, to build up to a private finale. Though he doesn't fool himself. She has to have known for a while how much he thinks of her, and yet, kind as she always was when he told her all his troubles, he knows she has another regular man, more sophisticated, more of her world. As one more time he watches the extraordinary grace with which she dances, all that gauzy fabric whirling around her, his longing has a different quality now that he knows his desire will soon be met...

...But it is not just the mechanics of what she does that impressed him. He has all he longed for now, even what he never quite understood before that he wanted. It is not just that she had made him happy. He is laughing to find himself lighter than air. And she has given him a deeper pleasure, too; as if reaching into the center of who he is, she has mined the gold that was deep inside."

- Susan Griffin

balance

"...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

one more sign of freedom

"...que el placer que juntos inventamos sea otro signo de la libertad."

-Julio Cortázar

"...let the pleasure we invent together be one more sign of freedom."

-Julio Cortázar translated by Stephen Kessler

...a morning with Julio and his poetry, my pearls and rose petals between pages...

transformations

- mixed media on paper -

"I take pleasure in my transformations.

I look quiet and consistent,

but few know how many women there are in me."

- Anais Nin

the little girl full of wonder

the adolescent ready to rebel

the shy young woman waiting patiently

the lover free of any inhibition

the silent and committed wife

the nurturing mother giver of life

the storyteller

the dancing warrior of light

the high priestess

the healer

the shaman

the goddess

the channel

the alchemist

the crone

the artist

from my journals

in the cage

"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

life's seasons

"My life is fruitful and abundant. Just as the earth has its cycles and seasons, so, too, our own lives have times of planting, times of growth and times of harvest."

"So much of my frustration comes from my refusal to accept life's seasons as they come to me."

"An adolescent child enters a period of rebellion. This is necessary to full maturation. A project at the midpoint is sprawling and unwieldy. This, too, is necessary. A marriage enters a time of solo growth and trajectories as each partner pursues independent interests. However unsettling, this, too, is healthy."

"Not all seasons lie serene in the sun, yet each has its place. As I ask to be attuned to life's cycles, I feel my anxiety slipping away. I rest in the faith that all is unfolding according to right timing. I am where I should be when I should be. I am alert to the good of every moment."

- Julia Cameron

images: mixed media on paper from a series of work in progress

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

I bring it all to my meditation mat: the numbness, the emptiness, the anxiety, the loss, the boredom, the grief, the gratitude, the joy, the laughter, the exhaustion...without judgement.  I sit and breathe and simply honor what is going on at the moment.  I am more than feelings and emotions.  I am more than thoughts.  I am more and yet I am nothing and everything. 

from my journals 

snapshot: detail of a tree, inspiration for a series of paintings 

as long as his heart is open

"I hope he calls you in the morning

after a night of sleeping in a big, empty bed

Just to say good morning

Just to hear your voice

as it is the only wake up call

he needs.

I hope he cooks you breakfast 

Knowing how you like your eggs

how you take your coffee

how little or how much you wish to speak.

I hope he cooks you dinner, too

For no reason at all.

I hope he holds your hand proudly

as you walk through a room

of people you don’t know.

I hope he builds you up

until you are standing on a pedestal

of your own creation.

I hope he encourages you to make art

take risks

travel the world

be alone -

always knowing that you’ll be back

home in his warm embrace

as long as his heart is open.

I hope he wears his heart on his sleeve

and is not shy

to adorn yours

as well.

I hope he is the kind of person

who, when presented with the ocean,

will not shy away

from diving in

to ride the waves.

I hope he is all of himself

unafraid to own

his stories

no matter how dark they may seem.

I hope he can see that all of you

is in the stars

poking through

the dark sky

of your past.

I hope he is not scared

by your ability to choose growth

your ability to not be held hostage

by the person you were yesterday

last week

last year.

I hope his attention span

is as long as every word

that exits your mouth

your heart.

I hope that he hears your truth

and meets it with gratitude

for your vulnerability.

I hope he loves you

in a way you didn’t know love existed.

For you have only seen love

in other places

with shaky ground that fell

beneath your hopeful feet.

This is who I hope

for you—

Because you are worthy

of being loved

by a heart so bright

the sun blushes

in admiration."

- Annabelle Blythe

I found this within the pages of one of my journals tonight

image is a mixed media on canvas, 2019