october 1, 2010
skype interview with THE LOVE ARTIST
a learning event on LOVE
with performances by Trip the Dark Fantastic, Chris Bucci of Oregon Heart Sticker & Ariana Jacobs
by THE PUBLIC SOCIAL UNIVERSITY
@ field work, Portland, Oregon
yes, I will love you too
engagements
love ephemera et al
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February 2011
02/28/2011
02/27/2011
02/26/2011
light fixture
The first thing I want to say, again, is Thank You. I can't say it enough. Today I am thanking all of you who wrote me (privately) to extend (alternately or both) worry & support & yes, more couches. It is really lovely to be loved & I appreciate & love you all back . . (&, although I know I encourage & promote intimacy, I also encourage you to leave some of your comments HERE, just to get some dialogue going, but I know, all in it's own time, my loves.)
You know I am fine, of course. As I said yesterday, I signed up for this & I also signed up to help all of you through your own trials with fear & growth, to the best of my ability & also all in it's own time. We all signed up to be here, just by being born, here, together. I dream of being pulled forward, doors opening, planes taking off . . . . The other night Nola dreamed that there were whales swimming up to her 4th floor window. I know enough about what is going on to know it is opportunity & truly a privilege to go from this side to the other. I also know that there is absolutely no way, right now, for any of us to know what is next, it is beyond any experiences with trial & error, cause & effect, action & reaction, that we all have known in the past, the answers to many of our questions now are simply out of the realm of our experience so far.
Scary? Maybe. Sometimes I feel like I am being pulled through a sieve and, as I was saying, it hurts. I have been told I am whimpering like a baby in my sleep lately, as I dream of flying then falling then flying again. Scary but so exciting, really, & what a relief to not know the answers, cause I really don't have them &, I bet, neither do you . . . we just need to take as good care of ourselves & each other & keep the vehicles light, don't carry too much.
I have been to a bunch of indoor ceremonies this winter ~ the wild, snowy & blustery winter it has been (& the wild, blustery series of ceremonies it has been, everywhere it seems). A lot of the time is spent praying, hard, for a rudder, for grounding, if only to plunge deeper, to be more essential & more honest. There have been several ceremonies where the sound of wind has been so loud in the room, times when, although I knew better, I actually thought the building might be blown apart, ala Wizard of Oz, or some kind of metaphysical tsunami, that strong. Just like in the rest of my life, as much as I kick & scream, I love a strong prayer that comes from (the feeling) of losing everything, of total vulnerability. That's when I really ask for help & that's when I really take action & that's when I really, really listen.
In these indoor ceremonies, in lofts in Brooklyn, apartments in Harlem, in lovely ranch houses in Southern California, in temples in upstate New York, I have this habit of staring at the light fixture while I pray, like God lives there. It feels so good, like a magnet, it doesn't matter if it is off or on, it anchors me. I also giggle a little when I notice it, but there I go again, every time, madly in love with the electrical connection.
"When a person says "Oh Lord," it is not anything beyond you; you are extending outside, but the reaction is happening inside . . you think you are praying to the heavens but it is you who are changing.
The state of compassion or compassionate meditation is the activity of God in a human wherever they are, whatever they are. It has no color, caste, creed, religion . . . Sometime just sit down like this and ask yourself, "Am I pure or not?" You are pretending you are not pure. If you honestly ask yourself, you will be surprised that you are pretending to be impure. You are pretending. Why? Because you don't like the responsibility. You are holy: you don't want to be known as holy, because then everyone has the right to criticize you, and you don't want to be criticized. Everyone wants to sneak into holiness and then withdraw, and we still want things to happen . . . "
~ Yogi Bhajan
02/25/2011
i love your couch
I have been a big baby lately. For some of you, this is no surprise, I know. It DOES take a village, but for me, it takes a universe & it is lucky I really get around.
For someone that appears to have so much FAITH, I make a lot of noise when I get uncomfortable & I have been really uncomfortable lately & really loud & (ouch) kinda needy. I know I signed up for the PHd level of karmic transformation & there is nothing I really do love better than playing really, REALLY hard & getting completely dirty & dissembled in the process, so you would think I would be used to my share of cuts & bruises, but to those of you whose couches I have been curling up on in the meantime (and those of you who have been cooking me dinner & rubbing my back & answering my phone calls & especially those of you who actually hold my hand, all night long ) ~ I LOVE YOU . . I hope I am at least kind of cute, because I am surely so, so, so appreciative & pay back is not a bitch.
Thank you again, my love village.
02/24/2011
the eternal snuggle (pt one)
S: chas is a lucky guy
Monday at 7:27pm ·
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Kathe Izzo i want to come overMonday at 7:40pm · -
Kathe Izzo this weekend when my 20 year old came home cause she wasn't feeling well & was psuedo sobbing/cranky about boys & daunting homework, I thought ~ this is what I want at least 50% of the time, to have the person that loves me more than anything, tell me everything is going to be okMonday at 7:42pm ·
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T: Ladies these both sound like heaven.Monday at 9:10pm · -
S: right? being mothered is good stuff. i think it's what we all want, all day.... : )Tuesday at 7:11am · · 1 person
02/23/2011
an invisible bee
an invisible bee
look how desire has changed in you,
how light & colorless it is,
with the world growing new marvels
because of your changing.
your soul has become an invisible bee.
we don't see it working,
but there's the full honeycomb.
your body's height, six feet or so,
but your soul rises through nine levels of sky.
a barrel corked with earth
and a raw wooden spile
keeps the oldest vineyard's wine inside.
when I see you,
it is not so much your physical form,
but the company of two riders,
your pure-fire devotion & your love
for the one who teaches you.
then the sun & moon on foot behind those.
~ rumi
02/22/2011
02/21/2011
"we will never leave you til the end"
A few weeks ago, in Bukavu in the Congo, a compound of buildings of sheer opportunity opened, what you can truly call PORTALS with no footnotes necessary, built with the mere investment of 1,000,000 dollars ~ nothing really, small change for what it established, in the face of complete disregard for the beauty & potential of a whole country of women & disrespect for the deep well of that cradle of life from we have ALL grown, every last living molecule of us ~ a base, built in part by the Congolese women themselves, labor they were also PAID FOR, a base for learning the tools of power for the women of this country, everything from martial arts & self defense, computer skills, literacy, therapy for trauma, nutrition, childcare . . .& in meeting these simple human needs, the garden for an army of women was planted there . .
Talk about an Inner Garden.
I want to live in this Garden.
But we are, we are, we are, we all are.
In this time where we are ALL going to the very foundations of what we know is true, we are finding the truth. As I write this, right now, at this very moment, it is rumored that in Libya, Gaddafi has fled overnight, protestors setting fire to key government buildings, the pressure of integrity just too great . . & the flow is continuing, hard work but then so is breathing, if you think too hard about it.
What is this compound of love in the Congo called? THE CITY OF JOY and yes, we know this city, WE HAVE KNOW THIS CITY FOREVER, since we first opened our tiny little eyes, even before my loves & I am meeting you there, right now, in my bed typing away, drinking my coffee, listening to the snowplows.
"When City of Joy officially opened Friday, hundreds of women, most of them rape victims, thumped on drums and sang at the top of their lungs. They wore black T-shirts that read, “Stop the rape of our most precious resource.” It seemed that the army of women Ms. Ensler envisioned was mustering in front of her eyes. Some even danced with the shovels and cement-encrusted trowels that they used to build the City of Joy."
02/20/2011
somebody's gotta do it
The work keeps growing.
Every time I think I know something I am surprised, because it is never, ever, what I think. Never.
The teachers & maps are there, always, they are my guides & the guides of those who are drawn to me. The level of expertise seems to be equal to the level of faith & surrender. I shudder when I say this, because I still believe somewhere inside that this means I don't really know anything & I am just waving my hands around & singing, but I know this is just the leftover information of my indoctrination into the civilized human race leaving the building. I also know that it is just this process: the prayer, the surrender, the catching the big fish of intuitition & reeling it in that is actually what the gift is, & these are (some of) the tools I can teach. It is always a surprise, there is something lurking in the corner of my consciousness, subtly waving a tiny wiggle of alarm & then, oh! I allow myself to actually acknowledge that I see this & then I somehow find the right combination of sounds to voice it & then usually that is where the healing begins, it is the invitation & the doorknob to what we can remember/salvage (I can barely muster the word portal, why are all the good words so overdone these days) . . . A client said to me yesterday "Thank you for going slightly mad for all of us." It did make me feel slightly naked.
02/18/2011
the luminosity
(giovanni bellini ~ madonna adoring the sleeping child)
Tom & I drove into the city the other day. It was an act of generosity & friendship on his part. I was preparing for a cleanse and, as I have mentioned here before, my current vehicle-less state has pushed me to be more forward in asking for help and he has responded, as have many, with a total wide open heart. To be honest, I had shown up on his doorstep the night before (he had already committed to the ride) to pick up the keys to do some last minute shopping and I was in an extraordinarily vulnerable, agitated state, one he related to well and in that way of recognition, healing & witnessing, he gave me every bloody cell of presence, as well as a cigarette or two to ease the pain. We had both been up, separately, for several nights (it seems like many of us had been, pre full moon & everything else that has been going on) and we were both exhausted, feeling essential in every way, good & bad.
The following afternoon, after all the business had been attended to, we rushed to the Met, for the last breath of operational hours and on the way up the historical steps we saw the huge flapping banner for Filippino Lippi's "Madonna and Child" & Tom said, that is a good candidate, so we went there and spent the rest of the hour looking at this particular embrace, over & over again, in all the adjoining rooms, took in all it told of the love and ecstasy of that moment in time.
We were both struck by the blue in the paintings, all of them from this time (approx 1400s) and how it is unlike any blue that we know of now. We wondered about the quality of this blue ~ you cannot see it in the reproduction above, you have you see it with your own eyes, because it is about the luminosity of it, something that translates particularly to your eye in the moment. It takes you somewhere, it is startling. We found ourselves holding our breath and we both figured out, or stated, at the same time, that it must have been what they saw then, at that time, this state of being held in the world/cosmos, and they attempted to capture this luminous space, the ether. The blue did not always hold the most important area of attention, sometimes it was thrown in the background, or sometimes just a touch of it in the halo. We also noticed the halos, how sometimes they were regal, ornate, but more often they were subtle, translucent, the quality of a jellyfish you couldn't quite put your fingers on, and we acknowledged that this, too, was probably something they actually saw.
I got emotional at one point, remembering moments in ceremony, occuring more & more frequently, where I had glimpses of this. I hadn't known at the time what I was seeing or feeling, but yes, now, in this conversation, I realized that, yes, this is what I might have seen, this was it, the thing I couldn't put into words, the subtle sensation to which I could only murmur "thank you."
(photo by tom luciano)
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