zzzzzzzzzz

shivering in the office, and sleep deprived (by whom, my love? hmmm?) hush-up! No one real.... **drifts off again, yearning, dreaming.

I MISS MY WRITING

Well, well, the prodigal returns. Been tumbling, changing, and swimming in the turbulence. A year ago I wrote every day, and heard my own voice so clearly. It made a permanent improvement in the quality of my inner life, and I have zoomed ahead, distracted, on to new job, new adventures, and eventually I lost the thread back to the nourishing routine of writing.

So, let's do it again. Life is very full now, and I can't imagine getting up early enough to write real Morning Pages. Part of the challenge is the New Dog, 9 month old Lily (pics soon). if I am awake, she would like attention, now please. Tail wags. Puppy nips. Wiggling. "Do you need to go out?" usually.

So these will be shorter, and written on the fly. Maybe I can cultivate a late-night writing habit. Hmmmm. reading usually happens then.

Expect themes of prioritization, time management and juggling.

It's good to be back!

Faceless Woman

What thoughts are on this woman's mind? What is in her heart? What wisdom could she share with us if she weren't veiled?

What can any of us accomplish in the world if we are hidden, whether by decree, by fear, by discouragement.

Welcome, Lily!

Welcome Lily, my lovely young standard poodle, who had to be reluctantly surrendered by her former human, much to my good fortune.








OK, it's been a while. Yeah, Yeah, all of us irregular bloggers have reams of excuses for not posting. Well, this is a pretty good one: New job, New dog. This amounts to pretty much a new life, frankly, as both of these demand a great deal of my time and attention. No complaints, it's all good. But it's REALLY hectic at the moment.

Am I writing as much, well, no...***looks around sheepishly*** - ah, yes -- the old familiar creator's guilt. More on this in a while.

Please note new links to the wonderfully witty Hairball Gazette, and a few music blogs.

Imbolc

Crackin' cold, a bright full moon and scudding clouds tearing away to reveal her face. (photo credit: Brett Wilson)
OK, the excuse is work, work, work, and then when I do get home, there are chores, phone calls, and finally escape in the form of net conversations and video. Another four episodes of LOST is consumed voraciously. Slow down love, you’ll find out what happens, believe me!

Meanwhile, I receive two films from Netflix that both have “not for the squeamish” on the envelope. From Hell,from the twisted mind of Alan Moore gives us Johnny Depp as the inspector on the trail of Jack the Ripper. It is artful and incredibly gory, a fascinating explanation of JTR that implicates the monarchy. It is visualized in this incredible grand comic book style, reminiscent of V4V, with lots of swirling London fog in bricky alleyways.
Here are the lives of colorful whores in their dire little lives, always thrust up against the sleazy danger of lusting men. Moore’s JTR is the royal surgeon gone mad, and for some reason he must carve up the feminine in order to celebrate/investigate/destroy it. brrrr. Why do men hate women for their goddess power with such raging ferocity? JTR says “I have given birth to the 20th Century.” And why must this necessitate eviscerating women? **puzzled look**Same old shit, boys. You really aught to have someone look at that.

“Not-for-the-squeamish #2” was Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. I am drawn to it by the music, which Bohemian Weasel used in her VTV “Vequiem for a Dream

That music, relentless, building, ancient and modern, dream nightmarish, is part Chronos quintet, part Clint Mansell, an electronic composer, and it is gripping, unforgettable, and used for the V story it beautifully underscores the building fate, the dominos stacked, the inevitable doom, the terrible grace, the grandeur, the grief.

The FILM is about drug addicts on Coney Island. It begins twisted and funny, bur all come to a very bad end, as the nightmare spirals to its conclusion. I am haunted by this film, then horrified, then I can't look away as it gets worse than I could have imagined, without straining to much credulity.

After a few days of contemplation, during which I finally succumb to purchasing the soundtrack, I finally realize: Dammit! They were all doomed from the get-go, and it is a sick tragedy with no redemption, and he made me laugh, when it is not at all funny, and there but for the grace of god go I, for I had such schemes in my youth, but was protected by some angelic forces from the real vortex of drugs, in spite of my best efforts.

So meanwhile, I hear a marvelous show on Utopia/Dystopia and that gets me chewing on these ideas even more.

Why do I love these dystopian tales so much? Children of Men still haunts me, vividly, viscerally. V of course is my beloved archetype-story-hero-love. The world has gone to hell, the beauty is destroyed or buried in ignorance and greed and waste. There is no hope. But a hero, or a group of heroes, sees a better way, believes unaccountably in Something, takes on the Goliath, throws himself on the pyre and triumphs in some way.

Even American Beauty is this story: life is a dreadful caricature of what looked like happiness, all gone wrong. Kevin Spacey sees through the veil, pursues his grail, and by seeing others on this quest for truth, his daughter, her friends, by coming face to face with is muse and seeing her for what she is, he regains his own soul, he transcends, awakens, breaks the frozen pane that keeps us from living fully. The tale feels redemptive and liberating even as his mortal blood pools across the kitchen table, a senseless death by a dreadfully conflicted homophobe.

So this is how the story goes: The world has all gone wrong. It's hopeless. But Someone sees. Someone believes, and against all odds he or she keeps reaching, searching, questing. And she saves the world, and sees the truth, and rises above the filth, and makes it all worthwhile.

Live, from the Swamp Forest!

Deep, damp, drizzling rain; the dry beech leaves are orange, fluttering against the violet greys and moss greens of my young forest.

In spite of my bum knee, I made a trip to National Gallery of Art
to see Constable’s 6 foot canvases, before the show comes down today. Oh my, seeing those marvelous beauties, the sketch and the polished academy piece side-by-side, reminds me of why I love to paint. How is it that I lost the love of painting in all the confusion? Like yesterday’s dream, all is swirling around, and the nugget of value gets lost, momentarily.

Why do I love to paint? What did Constable teach me? He reinforced the classic colors of the landscaper’s palette. I learned the joy of wild skies from him, how the paint itself just falls into rhythm like the moving air. And maybe most beloved, the backlit forest of grand trees, with bright windows of skylight breaking through. And oh, (this feels like Christmas morning, and a new gift found under the tree!) the sparkle, the way his later or looser works had almost a froth of bright paint, like the high reflection off sunlit water, that danced over everything like a Jackson Pollock skein!

And, how a flat landscape can make a beautiful composition, with a tiny angled boat tucked here in the weeds, or a fishing figure wearing a touch of red there and bring the eye around and make a flat landscape interesting. Then there is the old wood, the mossy beams of locks, the noble ancient trunks, fallen or still arching, rendered lovingly, simply in umbers and siennas --I feel them.

Constable paintings all look like June or July in the northern latitudes. Here, I can actually get more seasonality into plein-aire pictures since the winter is balmy enough for outdoor work.

I am thinking about my canvas The Early Gods, with the great willow trunks standing like menihirs. There are great trees of the Moyaone that could be honored in this way. Maybe I team up with Elena on this, and include the Chapman's giants, maybe I make portrait of the grand oak on the corner, with its oh-so English church as a backdrop. There are Jose’s fine trees, like Ganesha. And Grace’s valley too.

Stand in the deep forest, surrounded by behemoth poplars and oaks. See how they rise, silently arcing, reaching for the light, making a cathedral arch. Our houses of stone for god are reaching for the light, and they learned this from the trees.

Who taught us to look up? Who taught us to climb, aspire, be strong and upright, have integrity, grain and flex with the tempest wind? Who sheltered us in his arms, off the damp and dangerous floor of the world? Who made fruit and nut to feed us? Who gives us warmth today, but the bones of oak and pine?


My early gods, the willows, were low to the ground, with hairy roots thirstily wicking up the river. Great black fast-growing trunks that lurched this way and that, to keep balance in the shifting delta sand. Frankenstein-esque, they would fall, send up suckers and regrow a whole new vertical tree, only to be blown over again. The rolling willows. The immortal weeper by the ferry, lopped off and trampled in construction, then a bush of twiggy suckers, then a few years to another incarnation of the graceful weeping willow in the 1960 postcard, more than once in my lifetime performing this resurrection.
The black willows are disappearing, as landscapers treat them like weeds, and they are not replaced as they are pruned, trimmed, deleted. Oh, you mean those weed trees, no, we don’t carry them. No one wants those.

Now I live among a young crop of white oak and beech, salted with holly and pine. Down the lane from me, great grand dams of tulip poplar remember George Washington, (as if they really cared!). the chinquapin, the live oak, the sycamore – there are grand beings all around me.

When I think of dryer climes, and my love for the French or western landscape, yes, the water is an issue, but one can find watery landscapes in the arid lands. But what is missing are the TREES, these looming giants, spewing moisture and oxygen into the air, waving their leaves to make the breeze, and giving us their bones for heat and shelter. It is they whom I could not live without. These are my guardians, my bringers of wisdom.

Yes, a guardian angel (like V!) can go with me anywhere, but as an earth-based pagan, I have the great gift and pleasure of walking on the body of my god, and in tree form, being surrounded by grace, power, patience and life-giving air, amid the flying buttresses of oak, poplar and pine.

Morning in late November, and the words flow. Cat on lap. Coffee, iBook, comfy chair.

Junipur has been coming to me in dreams of late.
Brrrr? Hello kitty-love.

Dawn came with a seductive smear of fuchsia flitting behind the curtain of grey tree fretwork. It promised a rosy day, and I wanted to touch it, kiss it. Dog rolls over and snuggles up, her spine pressing into me from knee to hip. When I next open my eyes, dawn, that tease, has left me a morning dove-soft-grey, pale in the distance and charcoal in the foreground. I search for that yummy, slutty colour, and it’s gone. Only tendrils of it in my minds eye, and a painting I wish would happen. Of course, nothing will happen if I linger in dog and cat dreaming, so up and onward with the morning tasks.

More fully lit now, the morning world is veiled in a light fog, like a breath on a cold day, and it seems caught in the trees, not resting on the ground. You could walk underneath it. I go, out into the cool air, wrapped around by pale cinnamon beech leaves and warm shiny green hollies, and feathers of the loblolly pine. I walk on a rustling carpet of ruddy oak leaves, while their elegant and austere stems arch skyward. A few lime green stars cling to a gum sapling. Dew lines up on a sprig of dark barbed wire. The looping trunks of old vines spiral up from the ground.

I feel the earth yield beneath me, and I step a bit faster. My limbs are springy, and want more. I bounce a little into a slow jog. I have the heart for a bit of endurance now. I can trot for 20-30 minutes and feel some momentum. The animal body, she who was bred on the savannah, a born traveler, awakens.

What a miracle gift, this desires to move, this reawakening. I don’t remember my body at all, from youth when she should have been lively. Well, maybe a little… my white bike Sugar, who I rode like a charger all over the known world, the string and stake fences I leapt like a steeplechaser, down the row of lawns; she who thrust her nose into the deep bells of flowers for a drink of scent; Even in these years I was learning to fear or distrust her. I remember the battles over my nail-biting. Even then I chewed back the tips of my own energy. What was it I really wanted to reach for?

Gym class was a disappointment, but ranging across the playground like a proud young horse was not, and developing a vigilant band of anti-bullies seemed the most natural thing in the world. I became an instigator, leading my little band of warriors, eventually into trouble. I wanted to give them power, and strength, as so I fed them Flintstone vitamins, baby aspirin, and sometimes the magic crystals of rock salt. I got busted, and hauled to the principals office after some poor girl barfed in auditorium and blamed it on my prescription.

A lesson I took away with me was: don’t expect your followers to have their own common sense. They are followers, and they will follow me quite literally. To this day I still find I am disappointed when people in a group don’t think about the group as a whole. But also in there somewhere was another message: to deny the body, to shut her down, not trust in her. She believed that tiny crystal of salt from the earth gave her power, along with that sweet taste of Dino or Pebbles, and a touch of St. Joseph. She got in BIG trouble for that.

She found her body in the horsey play, the feel of hooves, not feet, on the springy earth. She arched her neck and snorted, and pawed the ground, then danced crabwise; tail arching and lifting in a swirl around her magnificent ass. Muscles coiled beneath smooth red-furred skin, strong soft plush with blood from a huge beating heart, that drummed in her, run, free, run, leap run like the wind.

I found my body in those spring fields, watching the ice melt and run in rivulets down the edge of the sidewalk.. I galloped and leapt over the puddles, shaking my mane and feeling the strong limbs, four of them, carrying me through the wind.

In-laws and Out-laws

November 27, 2006 My parents wedding anniversary, whereby they consummated their relationship and before long, begot me.

My father in-law died last night. Perhaps I should say ex-law, or out-law, seeing as I have been divorced for over 20 years now. I called my ex today, and found him somewhere outside Cleveland, en route to our home place in Michigan, with his wife and son. He sounded flat and tired, but mildly pleased to hear me. I have stopped wishing he would be other than he is, finally, finally. My disappointment still curls around me like tendrils of fog, but its not so heavily laden onto him, or other family, but now dispersed, more equitable, about the human beings in general.

Tony was 90. He lived through many worlds in his life. I loved my romanticized Tony, the earthy hands-on outdoorsman, wise in the ways of water and wood. He hunted for us for all our college years and young married life, we had meat in the freezer that he had stalked and killed. I loved that part of him that shone through my lover and mate. I loved their long legs and strong sculptor’s hands; cherished their deep-set eyes, curiosity, and sandy hair falling over their eyes.

I look around my house tonight, and I see elements of his influence on my life, the wood and weather life I crave, with fire blazing, and brick hearth rising to a beamed ceiling. Even though neither of these men has ever set foot here, I could see them here, and know how they would make themselves at peace in this place.

There was a dead deer in the road this morning. On the way back from the gym I recognized him, the young buck who hung around like a dog in the little hamlet along Farmington road. Those small antlers, he couldn’t be even three years old, and there he is now with his dead eye staring, and one prong broken off, his face lying in the road. Such a little beauty he was, but dumb as dirt I guess, to hang around the road, so tame and trusting. Poor little fool. No one even gets to make good food of his body, the way Tony would have.

The Tony I romanticized was a strong gentle man, a liberator of Nazi death-camps, a wise catcher of fish and skillful carpenter. The Tony I learned to hate was dismissive of his wife, intolerant, bigoted and harsh with his son, and he would shoot a neighbor’s cat for trespassing. I remember they used to have a sweet, smart little poodle, Sherry, who died mysteriously. My ex thought she had been poisoned. Maybe by someone who’s cat disappeared. Years later, when our marriage was failing, the son gets out the 22 and shoots a barn cat in our yard. I flip. Terrified, I smuggled the gun out of the house and hid it. I loathed that he had that in him, and as our relationship deteriorated, I saw more and more of the cruel misogyny that came from his dad, and no doubt the dad before him.

Thanksgiving Weekend

November 23 THANKSGIVING DAY
So I have polished the brass, and roasted the bird, and the wet leaves fall down in the rain. The fire is laid on the hearth, and friends are on the way.

I am looking at my picture from a year ago, the thing I am the most grateful for is my own transformation, my own healing. Seventy pounds gone, and a stronger, more vital, more confident being lives here today.

November 25 - Clear, cold dawn, and a pink feather boa in the driveway.
Morning after yet another party. Not enough writing lately, I feel it, I feel the stories come and there is no where for them to go, then they fade. Like coals, like stars, like days rising and falling. Like breath. No guarantee of a next one. V says “There is no certainty, only opportunity.”

He is at peace with that, completely calm with acceptance, not at all resignation or defeat. I need this demeanor. It serves me not to search for the reasons V is sick and twisted. He sings to me another message, his calm clear, effective way of being, his powerful grace and confidence, his fearlessness borne of knowledge and preparation.

The cat is so compulsive, she is standing on Evan’s camera and ipod at the same time. She is drawn to the energy and allure of these gadgety things we love and play with all the time. I asked her to get down, and she did. I asked her to play her xylophone, and she raised a paw and struck one deliberate note. Then, being a cat, wandered off. Behold, the kitties of the house: they neither sow nor reap.