she wanted him

"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.

secretly

"Your body is away from me but there is a window open from my heart to yours. From this window, like the moon I keep sending news secretly." - RUMI

mixed media on paper

let's just go

"Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain." - Billie Holiday

mixed media on paper

celestial messages

unfiltered snapshots from my afternoon walk...

my beloved father-in-law winks at me and laughs with me always...

the rare beauty of new life

"Easter spells out beauty, the rare beauty of new life." - S.D. Gordon

new life...

the rare beauty of new life...

on this Easter afternoon, my 6-year-old son informed me that he would like a baby (sibling) instead of a puppy...

"Are you thinking of having another child?" asked a dear one...

"Ni que Dios quiera! God forbid!" exclaimed another dear one (who happens to have three wonderful kids and recently adopted an adorable pooping puppy)...

something about the entire episode feels sad to me...

snapshots: my son's painted paper mâché eggs 

blood moon: full moon lunar eclipse

"The moon came to me last night with a sweet question. 

She said:

- The sun has been my faithful lover for millions of years.  Whenever I offer my body to him brilliant light pours from his heart. 

Thousands then notice my happiness and delight in pointing toward my beauty.

Hafiz, is it true that our destiny is to turn into Light itself? -

And I replied,

Dear Moon, now that your love is maturing, we need to sit together close like this more often so I might instruct you  how to become who you are!"

- HAFIZ

mixed media on paper

surrendering to sacred fires

- my eye -

A pulsating crescent moon gradually became a blood-orange fiery red.  The more I focused on the mystical moon, the rounder it became, gradually filling to capacity and perfect union with itself -- or could it have been with the sun?  In the midst of the orbed throbbing sphere of fire, I discovered a dancing Buddha ignited in light.  I can still feel the heat from the healing flames upon my face.

- excerpt from my dreams 

I am being purified and strengthened through the fires of my soul's journey and growth...I must celebrate and dance and simply surrender to the sacred fires...

  

questions

"Sometimes

if you move carefully 

through the forest, 

breathing

like the ones 

in the old stories, 

who could cross

a shimmering bed of leaves 

without a sound, 

you come

to a place 

whose only task 

is to trouble you 

with tiny 

but frightening requests, 

conceived out of nowhere 

but in this place 

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what 

you are doing right now,

and

to stop what you

are becoming 

while you do it,

questions 

that can make

or unmake

a life,

questions 

that have patiently

waited for you,

questions 

that have no right

to go away."

- David Whyte

questions...

day and night

"...a voice within me keeps repeating: you, you, you. Night and day you are the one. Only you beneath the moon and under the sun. 

Whether near to me, or far - it's no matter darling where you are. I think of you night and day.

Day and night, why is it so?

That this longing for you follows wherever I go...in the silence of my lonely room, I think of you.

...a hungry yearning, burning inside of me and its torment won't be through till you let me spend my life making love to you,

day and night, night and day..."

- written by Cole Porter, circa 1932

Ella Fitzgerald sings one of my favorite versions...

snapshots taken with my cellphone today and tonight...

battered egos

Verse 7 - Modesty

"The Great Integrity, having had no birth, expresses its immortality without pronouncements.

The wise are heard through their silence, always self-full through selflessness."

- LAO TZU

The ego is the issue here. It is the very act of calling attention to ourselves that alienates us from others. Moreover, it is this very alienation that prevents self and social fulfillments.

When we no longer respond to the compulsive alternating bulimic demands and anorexic sufferings of our battered egos, then we will fulfill ourselves naturally and silently just as the Great Integrity expresses its immortality without pronouncements.

- Ralph Alan Dale

the art of motherhood

bare feet

striped pajamas

river rocks found on a walk

natural healing crystals

playing

counting

building

imagining

creating priceless memories 

I love my life...

I love being his MAMA...

I am learning to mother myself - my Self - with unconditional love, patience, gentleness, curiosity, playfulness and humor...

snapshots of my son during one of our early morning rituals

transformation

"The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation." - Hermann Hesse

...a sweet call of love... 

sudden bursts of laughter

"Casimira, you have taught me to love the beauty in the spontaneous, the chaotic; the sudden bursts of laughter of the Goddess..." - Luis Javier

xo xo xo

"One regret, dear world, that I am determined not to have when I am lying on my deathbed is that I did not kiss you enough." - HAFIZ, who else?

I have not kissed this beloved world enough...

long, slow kisses...

heart-pounding, spontaneous kisses....

dreaming the 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...

imagination & kisses

"There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way of imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don't work." - Anais Nin 

snapshot: Peruvian feathers, grandmother's pearls, crystals and a rock my son painted blue when he was two...a corner of my world...

cuddle up with the stars more

"When was the last time you wallowed in contentment, maybe lay in bed for two days just making your lover sigh and giggle, and she/he and you talked silliness for hours and joked at the sweet insignificance of most all stuff?

Cuddle up with the stars more. You will be able to do that if you can start treating every human being as a sacred cow, and keep a few of my poems handy." - my beloved HAFIZ

cuddle up with stars...cuddle up with dreams...cuddle up with ideas...cuddle up with questions...cuddle up with mysteries...

become intimate with every inch of the soul...

from my journals

restless

"I'm awaiting a lover. I have to be rent and pulled apart and live according to the demons and the imagination in me. I'm restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again."

-Anais Nin 

mixed media on paper

the joy of everything else

"If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough." - Audrey Hepburn 

love, grace & gratitude

"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude." - Denis Waitley

celebrating a special birthday today...with love, grace and overwhelming gratitude 

snapshot from a corner of my home