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.

July 22: A dream becomes a story, part 1

Belle Isle, the Central Park of Detroit, sometime in the wee hours. I am the driver, there are 3 or 4 in the car, and we are fleeing a crime, blood on our hands.

Feel the nostalgia, from a time when the island and I were sunnier, more innocent. “I’ve never been to Belle Isle” one of our party muses, nose pressed to the glass. I tell her about the white deer, the Boat Club, the Yacht Club, the grand fountain, a more gracious time. Before crack dealers and used condoms. Before we wondered if the deer were radioactive, not just enchanted.

Further down Jefferson, along the old ferry docks; a crumpled paper floats on the black water. Seagulls cry, water slaps against the seawall. The lights of Windsor squiggling overtop the oily dark ripples, rebounding from the slimy pilings lurking below.

A quiet rhythm emerges from the rumbling night, the dip and stroke of a kayak paddle. Not a river that one would choose for canoeing, with the huge freighters, overpowered motorboats churning the river into a sloshing frenzy. But in the calm of the night, here a small paddled craft was approaching the pier. The tall, tar-and algae -covered pilings must have loomed over the approaching paddlers.

Earlier in the evening, our group of travelers was nervously preparing for their task. “What if I can’t do this?” whines Charlotte, fumbling with a rope that is resisting all attempts to be coiled. Song comes to her aide. “Char, let me help you.” He smiles sweetly at her, from under a frond of straight black hair. She is uncharmed, oblivious, consumed by worry. “ I am not at all sure this is the best solution, Carla. Why don’t we just leave town?”

Carla, bent over a steamer trunk of equipment, straightens up to her full height. Always taller than everyone else, she learned long ago not to disguise it by slouching, but elegantly looms over others, using its intimidation value whenever it suits her. She breathes a small sigh of exasperation and reconsiders Char’s roll in the plot. Loyal she was, no doubt, but her constant second-guessing of decisions made Carla concerned. With the wrong timing, such doubt could have very bad results.

Group of 4 standing on a ratty river beach, strewn with trash, driftwood, a tire, a plastic barrel, clamshells. Scrappy weeds crawl over the dirty sand, laden with burrs. The water laps and churls against the stumps of the old dock, nearly worn away. They are all looking down at the waters edge.
Char wished she were anywhere but here. Her mind flits to the pilings, and she is lost in a reverie about a gentler time, wedding cake steamboats arriving with fanfare, and ladies in long lacy dresses and parasols floating across the gangplank in anticipation of a holiday excursion.

She is yanked back in to the present by a conversation she has apparently missed half of. “Well, what do YOU think we should do?” asks Carla venomously. “Just pretend nothing happened? We agreed we were in this together, and would see it through, remember?” She stands taller, glaring at Song and Char. They want to step back, but do not.

The eastern horizon is beginning to show signs of dawn. Soon the morning traffic will begin to growl, and make travel across the city difficult. They need to keep moving. They need sleep, and food. They need to stay calm and united, Carla thinks. (…to be continued…)

V asks Bush to account for the crimes of his government

[Cue V4V soundtrack – Guns & Knives]
Washington DC, November 14, 2006. Lafayette Park, noon, on a clear and pleasant November day. Leaves are rustling on the trees and the ground. A phalanx of pigeons takes flight regularly with a great flap and whir of wings. The White House stands gleaming, nearby, just out of reach.

In the center lawn, behind the permanent nuke-ban protest camp, stand a group figures all dressed in black, wearing hats and a peculiar grinning mask. They stand, holding a huge banner, as if it might be read from across the street. They stand attentively, awaiting a response.

The breeze lifts the drape of my black cloak and sneaks under the mask a tiny bit. Thankfully, because it’s HOT under here. But it feels amazing, amazing to be here, representing 'The People', standing tall and fierce and questioning and embodying my hero, V, on of all days, my birthday. It feels AMAZING.

My journey across the city to the demonstration was wonderful. V4V soundtrack plays on my trusty ipod, and I stride purposefully down in to the underground. A train labeled “VIENNA” pulls up for me to board. (“There is no coincidence, Delia.”). I feel wierd and elegant in my big black Moroccan cloak. It is heavy, scratchy wool, with a big pointed hood and tassel, long and sweeping. I am carrying my mask and hat, a bit nervous, but excited. (Oh, damn it, I forgot my camera.)

When I come up from the Underground near Freedom Plaza, it feels thrilling to be sweeping through these grand architectural spaces, and drawing glances just for my cloak and my energy. I feel tall, strong, determined, and free. I am reaping all the benefit of my gym work and WW work over the past year; 67 pounds lighter, and regularly ‘running’ 2-3 miles at the gym, this city walk feels light and easy. I remember when 5 or 6 blocks would have been exhausting and when my feet and knees would have hurt terribly. Today, I walk strong and fast, leaves crackling and cape rustling. The DC government building, the Willard Hotel (where the term ‘lobbying’ was invented) the White House Visitors Center, and there, across the street, the heavily guarded Ellipse, once a spacious public park and now 9 parts armed camp, with check points and soldiers standing guard. “100% ID check” reads one sign. God Bless America.

I plan to take this lovely path between the White House and Treasury, and of course, it’s now closed for security. In the park I don my mask, and struggle with the hat. It won’t stay on; I can’t see out the eyeholes, what do I do with my glasses? Obviously this costume needs work. But I test my new performer’s courage by approaching a guard en masque. He says pleasantly “May I help you?” “I am looking for the 'We the People' gathering.” I answer, expecting to walk down the path. “You will have to go around.” He informs me, gesturing. “Go this way, turn left on 15th St.”I know, I know, thank you.” I wave my hand. (You need gloves, Ven, BLACK gloves. Right)

On my trip around the very large Treasury Building, I walk past a couple puzzling over their map. They start to ask me for help, then see my mask. They stop in mid word and stare. I am walking fast, but I stop and turn and unmask, asking, “Do you need some help?” After all, V was usually quite gracious to the innocent. They wanted to know what the big white building with the dome was. Um, The US Capitol? It amazes me that so many Americans don’t know what “the People’s House” looks like. “So, where is the White House?” she asks puzzled. I gesture over behind the trees. "It’s over here, and I am on my way there now, if you’d like to come along." We walk. They are late 20s, early 30’s black; they seem sweet, heart-landers, maybe. He says: “Hey we saw a bunch of people dressed like you over there. What’s up?” I explain. "Oh, yeah! " he grins, "you remember honey, that Vendetta movie." I get excited. I WONT be the only one there! There are Vs marching on the Bush White House!! YAY!! I speed up.

“The white House is small, easy to miss,"I explain, "especially now that it is so heavily guarded. After all it is a residence, it may be a grand house, but it is just that, a house. Not a temple. Not long ago, you could drive right by it in your car and snap a picture. Now, you can barely see it on foot.” We round the corner. “Oh, THAT?” she asks, “We were just here.” He says, mildly disappointed. I wish them well. I put on my mask.

On the plaza formerly known as Pennsylvania Avenue I am one of several Vs striding toward the center of Lafayette Square. Around the central fountain there are dozens and dozens of Vs milling. It is quite a marvelous sight. One wears a red rose on his brim. He appears to be the organizer. “You!” He points at me. “ Haven’t you got a hat? We need to all look the same as much as possible.” I pull out my battered witch hat and struggle to pull it on in a way it will stay put. The glasses have to go. He gets us in order and lines us up in formation, behind an enormous banner.

There are tall Vs and short ones. There are fat Vs and skinny ones. There are kids or Little People. There are women and men. Some have long black hair, some shorter, quite e few bad Halloween wigs, braids, graying hair. There are bowlers, witch hats, boater hats, cowboy hats, all black. There are short capes and long ones, silky capes and woolen ones.

There are over a hundred Vs.

Curious people ask what we are about. We are silent, in character, witnesses. We have nice black brochures to and out to anyone really interested, and the banner is a huge tax form with the message: “We the People: the right to petition; No Answer, No Taxes.” Several of the Vs hold signs that read, “Obey the Constitution!” More Vs arrive, and the organizer seems truly delighted. “Look, here come more.” He says, with gratefulness. He arranges us, coaches us in our bearing, adjusts our costumes, encourages us to help each other take turns, and lets us know where the nearest restrooms are.

We stand, wind ruffling our cloaks and hair. No messenger from the White House is forthcoming. I understand they have done this petitioning every two years for the 20 years they have been in existence, and have never had a reply. They have multiple lawsuits against the government for breaches of constitutional law in areas regarding waging of war and freedom of speech as well as tax. It seems a really good use of V, the fierce and intelligent challenger, who reveals abuses of power. This V is just a tad more civil; he asks nice for explanation, and waits patiently for the reply, which apparently never comes.

Someone walking through the park on their lunch hour yells out: “Hey! There was only one of you last week. What happened?” and our leader says quietly: “come back in six months.” Six months from November the 14th is April the 14th.
Isn’t that a coincidence!

:)

A painting changes, and so do I

November 11 – tender sweet autumn, violet-grey shadows and a golden peach liquid light infusing the horizon, stealthily from below.

Art happens to you, like love. You can want it, ask for it, plan to set it in motion, and then nothing – a fizzle. But when you aren’t looking, when you aren’t trying too hard, something takes root and blossoms. This morning I awoke with a suddenly clear feeling and went right to the studio and transformed a painting. Getting to the flow of art is not often that clear or easy for me. So I enjoyed theclarity of purpose that I felt, and responded to.

I had an unusually sexual dream: I live in a community, and I am conveniently male, just in time for some satisfying sex with a lovely and willing female, who I shouldn’t have been with. After the lovely romp we pretended to regret it, but really, I felt pleased and glowing, with only a small shadow of worry about how she would handle it. Somehow I just wasn’t worried about her husband or what he would think. It's as if I were completely carried by the current of my lust, which smoothly justifies all of its acts; the sexual version of ”Violence CAN be used for good.”

As I returned to our little condo community, and noticed how far down into the basement our entrances were. (ooh, freudian! how low can I go?) True, the other side of the apartments were above ground and open, lovely, being into a steep hillside. But I had pangs of shame flickering, as if I caught myself justifying the value of something that was really quite shabby. The space was like several apartments rambling on together, and there was a great common space, with lots of costuming paraphernalia, and someone was there pulling out skeins of fabric, scarves, feathers, roping, and bangles, as if we were changing costumes and roles all the time, in a relaxed and natural way.

I felt a bit of skulking worry for having had that “whoops!” sexual moment with (what was her name?!) She is in my mind as one of the senior females in the extended household, someone I would almost hold as parental, or at least a leader. So there is that pleased yet guilty seditious feeling: I f***ed the boss’s wife, and she enjoyed it, but now wishes it hadn’t happened, but it did, and now, how would the 'play' go on?

I have been studying this business of theater, performance, mask, costume and character for a while now, even more vividly now that V is in my life. My housemate LW, commenting on my V obsession, said kindly: “the heart only opens a few times in a lifetime.” It was a beautiful way to give me permission to follow my bizarre muse, wherever he will lead me. And he leads me to ponder questions about the performance of my life, my identity(s). To consider my masks and costumes, as I travel on my journey of physical and spiritual change.

I am, after years and years of being morbidly obese, on a serious long term weight loss track, and I am changing the behaviors one meal at a time, successfully enough to have lost 66 pounds (nearly 30kg). This is certainly changing how I feel, and how I present myself to the world. It is mysterious and baffling to me to be changing physically. What do I really look like? Who are you, really? "And now for all the world to see..."

My best friend T is a playwright, and I encouraged her to go see 9 Parts of Desire last night, but warned her it was a tough, painful play, with stories of rape and torture and murder and war told unflinchingly. She is working on her own plays, a one-woman show, a medium that seems to rise out of liberation as the lost voice calling clearly now: we need to hear the voices of women, the hearts of women, the joys and pains of women. She called after the play late last night, in tears, good powerful tears of creative courage, after waiting for Heather Ruffo by the stage door, and having a brief but good talk with her. I am so proud of T, following her muse into the labyrinth of the heart.

Art happens to you. Like love. It rises up when you aren’t expecting, and infuses your heart. A waking moment calls me to the studio, the rising liquid cream dawn in the mauve russet forest, with the pangs of a dreamland love affair still hanging there, full of mystery and longing.

Beautiful. Move with it.

Guess who finally came home?

The hollow ache of grief rising

November 9, 2006 Late moon, warm, wet with leaves down all around.
My cat is missing. I feel The hollow ache of grief rising, like a bad moon, too close, too big. My kitty, my kitty. I didn’t search for her with a flashlight because I didn’t want to find her body like that. Somehow it was better to wait until dawn to reveal the truth, if that is the truth.
I saw a play last night, and it left us speechless and exausted. I can only imagine the woman who wrote and performed it! 9 Parts of Desire, Heather Raffo’s depiction of 9 women from Iraq or Iraqi descent based on interviews. Nine Parts of Desire at Arena Stage

“That was traumatic.” is about all we could say about it, for a long while after the show. And now my cat is missing, ‘disappeared’ maybe by some cruel and greedy force of will, and in my soft and easy life it is the closest thing to terror and war I know.
What happens to cats around here? The story is that owls get them, but I have always found this hard to fathom, unless they are little kittens. Cypress is a fat, sturdy, strong cat with sharp claws. And she wasn’t here to greet us when we returned, walking the car into the drive like a little pilot, returning us to port.
What was I thinking? “Why this play?” Linda asks me , forgetting that she had read about it too, earlier this year, and agreed to go see it. I explain with my smug self satisfied well educated liberal notion, now fattened by yesterday’s sweeping ouster of the fearmongering party from Congress, “Oh, I though an Iraqi perspective, and a woman’s perspective, would be important.”
“That was traumatic.” The woman throwing shoes, feeding the river that bears the dead; the young doctor, sickened by the horrors she works in; the brazen artist, defiant ‘til the end, a not-so-pretty end; the bombed shelter imagery, grisly and haunting; the teeny bopper; the swirling black veil, coming and going, hiding and revealing.
And my cat is missing. All my faith to the contrary, she hasn’t come home, and I rein in my mind from the grisly images it feeds me, waiting , waiting, for dawn to reveal the truth.

July 18 - creeping anxiety vines

Sticky already. If I only got up earlier …. I am awakening with that grumpy angry sense of being already late and so “not good enough” is nipping at my heels from the get go. Judgment. Justice. “There’s no court in this country for men like Prothero…”

Flow words flow, form follows function, what’s next with the verbiage? I merely looked under the basil and there it was. Dry, wry humor. What is "wry and ready?" Jose asks about my playlist of that name. "Oh, post cynicism, now-what," I reply. Let go, with a whiff of regret, chagrin, and swingin into recommitment to going forward.

Going forward. Click-click, c'mon girl. The seditious call of depression is to give up, "why bother?" Continuously question the next step. In fact this is the nature of the plague, is it not? to bedevil the question, to undermine the resolve, to inject doubt into every act, almost every breath. This trips up my forward progress, and casts me into the pit of “there is no forward progress.” Where I wallow and nurse wounds until it becomes such a miserable prison that I clamor out feeling victimy and put-upon.

[Gently now, but clearly, see this:] I approach my work like a victim, with a leaden load of negative expectation, tangling my feet and weighing down my back. It shrouds me in not protective magic, like MK's hero, but entanglements that occlude my vision, tire me, and trip me up quite literally. All those times I re-pledge to lift my head and 'act as if' proud, then soon stumble and nearly fall, flooding my whole being with anxiety and giving the devil a chance to whisper: “See, you really aren’t (fill-in-the-blank).” A big dose of the poison pill “I cant. Its hopeless.”

How hard it is for people to change! How brilliantly we weave magic and our lives when we do! Yesterday I wrote about being a witch, and I finished "L is for Luminous", both V-Board projects. That is where I am working out my verbiage confidence. I need a schedule for the Blog. I think LSG is my laboratory where I labor over my oratory.

Schedule myself and keep my appointments – this is slipping. Yesterdays swim was good, but not a sub for my morning workout. What could get me out of bed in the am? Call MJ and book gym dates again. Attic, closet, another bag of goodwill clothes . It's so good to throw away fat clothes! never need 'em again. Vacuum. Schedule floor scrubbing. Call Sal. Love my kitty. CF gone Sunday for 11 days, share the cat care.

Keep going! The birds, and cats don’t question their being, they step forward without tripping over their mental clutter!

Soaring oak trees, scrubby holly, tangle of greenbrier, riot of vines. Invasive species, the foulest of which is man, my people. If my own people are responsible, would I really want to know? My people, the Europeans, my people, the white people, my people, the Americans, my people the well-off, the spoiled, the car people, the suburbanites, those who need air conditioning, my people are doing this. I am doing this.

How do I cope with the shame/guilt of my entire race, not just my own failures? What was that theater idea where the protagonist fails, and no one can intervene? Sound like Jesus story.

V approaches cautiously, allows tentative contact, and expects nothing. When rejected, he slumps and draws back, but only a tiny bit. The inner crumble may be monumental, but his will is steel. My inner crumble is all over the outside, and my steely will is outfoxed, convinced by the whisperings of hopelessness to yield its footing, and get out of the way of "progress", which is decay.

Get to the roots of the morbid vines, but look carefully for the Black vein… and know its essence, its value.

JULY 17 form, function, film

Sticky sweetness of melon juice runs on the table and already the yellow jackets are here, grazing it for sugar. Sugar and blood the insects come seeking. And the juices of decay, nectars to them all, they feed their broods on our effluent. The nature of being is to process and decay. We proud mammals build blood and bone, for the dining pleasure of mosquito and tiger alike.

Johnny Depp as the Libertine. Powerful. Hmm, CF is so taken with him. I am so sickened by his self-destruction. Victory would have been his triumph over this self-loathing. She keeps equating him to V… but V vulcanized his destruction into change. Wilmot wallowed in his until he rotted too soon. What would I have him do? If he could do what he did with one hand tied behind him, in his first 3 decades, imagine what he’d been capable of had he lived. It was revolutionary for him to help that actress transform. For HER to be such a fierce artist in her time. The stage mother reminds me of Leda’s theater mistress in Arcanum. Wilmot’s revolution was more personal, intimate. He could have written more. And what might that have revealed?

CB sees V as destroyed, untouchable, unable to love, a ruined empty shell. The one who says, “Oh I am finished and glad of it. For twenty years I have sought only this day.” CF is devastated by the destruction of his skin and sexual person. She is horrified by Evey’s torture, cannot bear it. These seem to me harsh comic (not funny, but of the comic book genre) devices for the radical change necessary. Wilmot begins to compare himself with Jesus in his suffering. Outrageous it seems, even to his servant Alcock. Yet CF thinks he converts on deathbed. Some research into the historical Wilmot is called for.

Must ask Leda and MK whom they read… Leda refers to herself as a Victorian writer…. What does this mean?
High high heat today, so is supposed to be. Perhaps a jaunt to fetch another AC unit is in order, and a nice, cool movie – Superman is next in my pantheon of modern gods.

And back to the form and function essay. What have I got so far: form follows function. "Who is but the form, following the function of what, and what I am is a man in a mask."

We forge ourselves by conscious intent into the form we become. We create our world projected self, and its effects, according to our belief, intention and metaphysical will, by holding the vision and belief in our minds eye. Thus we become the form of our intent. It is Bloodworth and Gawain’s metaphysics. As you believe (and act) so you are. The form, a tree, follows function, to convert sunlight into sugar. Many plants find a unique form to per-form this function. The obverse is also true. If you halve a log and hollow it into a trough, (form) it will function as a drainpipe if one end is lower than the other. Or, in order to convert sunlight into sugar, one must collect the light, allow the right chemistry to process and transport the raw materials from storage to production to infrastructure. Thus a tree, a potato, a rose.

Begins to sound strange… intelligent design rears it head in here. How farfetched, or rather, who or what is willing the conversion of sunlight into sugar? Who? Who is but the form (tree) following the function of what, and what I am is a parasol of chlorophyll solar receptors crowning a fibrous vascular system. Who? Who is but the form (cat) following the function of what, and what I am is a predatory feline carnivore, domesticated to idyll mischief. Who? Who is but the form (Ven), following the function of what. And what I am is woman robed in fat and fear.

And what of the philosophers of V’s antique time? He is but quoting to us several earlier centuries, isn’t he, the Elizabethan, the Victorian no doubt. Look at the timeline of philosophy, for Sullivan comes at late 19th, following Hegel from whom the poets and founding fathers perhaps drew their sense of divine destiny. A belief in what we were born to be.

And mayhaps intelligent design is but the latest sprout of that dearly held notion, that we were created by God for a divine purpose, that we are meant to be great and good and godlike, and this means we are entitled to spread our selves and all our divine filth al lover the earth, trampling anyone else who happens to live here.

Wilmot and CF: It’s about the power of stories. He was enchanted with the language of theater. Today we have the movies to blow us back in our seats and lift us out of the mundane.

July 16, 2006, the 61st anniversary of trinity nuclear explosion.

Foggy headed, too much outside stimulation. Want more quiet quite quiet to rite, paint, paint, write right.

It is a beautiful fragrant morning. The cicadas are beginning their song. Slow at first, a slow harmonic buzz. Ratt tatt woodpecker. A woodthrush trill. A boat on the river. I can hear it. Scolding chickadee, a passing car, and a passing fly. The pests of late summer have arrived along with the fruits. Blueberries from NJ, cherries and peaches from here. Oh what has happened to our Cherry Hill? Rolling orchard sold for ticky-tacky houses all in a row. Grieve for the blossom, the branch and the luscious fruiting forest.

The river poem: what I want to say is this: I put my body in her; she soothes me and lifts me. She is my savior. My redeemer. No ethereal being in human form could ever do for me what she is. I want to say she is sacred, and eternal, but we have abused her. We crawled out of her mud and became powerful. We dishonor her. My culture dishonors her. My people sailed here, raped this land, and prospered; made me possible. Made all this American abundance possible. Made …

A glimpse of a thread of history and I can see something – avenues that I do not explore. Alleys dark and frightening, because I know they hold Fingermen, well, at least people, the same people who rape the landscape with their landscaping and SUVs, who poison my holy river with their flushings and green lawns. I don’t want to be with those people, I don’t want to swim in those waters. I see Terry who takes like duck to water to those big business worlds and swims there strongly. She believes it a real and good world.

Those people. My people. My people who fled their German home and its poverty and hopelessness, came here and sailed until they had to collide with the shore, its inhabitants, and fight them. They came willing to struggle. They struggled, they fought, the dense timber, the indigenous people, the lack of any existing familiar structure. They came and build this country for rock and roll.

I hear the river humming again. It infuriates me that we use her, benefit from her, then trash her, then turn our back to her.
Weeds, beautiful river weeds, invasive plants and fish spreading on the wind, the flower, the food, the colonist, the successful, the growing, the transition, the takeover, the new overwriting that which came before.

July 15 - Are there paintings in here?

What about paintings? I flip throughthe latest Art News mag, and anything goes, honey. The decades are rolling along, and my art gets to change. When to transform, when to let go. First works: fantasy lake sunsets and horses horses horses. Next: island romantic decline. Next: art school-chaos. Then: road paintings, the sweeping horizontal ones. Next: trippy visions. What happened to art? In Florida – dabbling and commercial. Ithaca, reawakening, then the tangle series emerges. Find that drawing of tangled trees the big things I did at Hillcrest and the Pandora drawings! Maybe time for them to re-emerge.

Painting: what’s that? Time to hurl color, cover canvases in a rage, and get the dancing figures going again. Get CF to pose. Find a place to clean rugs dammit.

Morning fog. Evening mist, cows and weed. Walking in the stoned night again, this time in my amazing new world, the deep and lush forests of southern Mary’s Land. There are some paintings right on top, that flooded mist meadow for with hint of moon, and posts looming like figures out of the gloom, and cows startled awake by us passing, and the trees all singing with moist light pulsing.

What is it to be stoned again – an old world once the real world, now a shifted one. What the purpose – I think toke and wander, although really the toke part c’nest pas necessaire. Foggy damp moist sticky morning.

Oh that river, that lovely river, we paddled out to a sand cliff, strewn with round rocks tumbled from all up the eastern coast, and I swam like an otter in grasses waving under water, and I felt like a god or a god’s child floating in bliss. The surge of the rivers pulse, the waving green fingers, the caress of the weeds, the silk of the water – to allow my body surrender to the sea, she touched me through the brackish bay and then the river and then the little river.

Tannic honey blond brown water spills from tepid creeks that ooze beneath their blankets green running with ancient firelight seeping from cedar veins. It's clear like a sienna glaze and the cinnamon colored dragon flies flit and flirt. The water changes as we go out, and the river’s breath mingles with the forest, and a coffee cream milkiness comes in, not quite occluding the underwater forests.

Strange diving geeze and swimming things appear shimmering. Darkness gathers on the top of the bay, a menacing soft cloud. I am so distractible it’s not funny. I don’t think the weed helps.

Morning pages what do you share with me? What would make this a good day? Some housework, some gym time, a dog walk. Sane food and work on WCA.

Leaving the central states for shallow grave. Home in the valley but the rents not saved. You said the urn's half full and I said it was half empty. With what was left of our fair city? From Death Cab’s architect. Call in the army corps of architects. To flatten the skyline and begin again. I knew the years would move quickly, but never quite as fast as this. So bring on the arguments or.

The wistful piano gets me every time.

A longer-term result will be the general destruction of the dust by the energetic starlight. The dust knows its reign has passed, but it still clings to a former form, still resonating with its once concretizing state. Its intent was to aggregate itself into a planetary body and whirl around the star, but the delicate balance exists between enough mass and too little to remain coherent. But now, the unraveling: the energetic starlight teases apart the wisps of structure, dissolving the body of dust in to threads of shimmering fluff with no hope of every coalescing into anything substantial.
Substantial. Substance. Form. Intent. Formulate gather coalesce.

Get moving.

July 12 - Intent, form, feeling

Good morning. It's moody brooding summer, but still a coolness in the morning air. Mosquitos are hungry. There’s a soft grey weight to the leafy morning, a breath of rain coming, the heft of the building humidity, the legacy of July unavoidable.

WW report: OK, up a pound. Time to chart the last few weeks, slow progress, but progress down below 290. Still, I now weigh 2-something, not 3-something. A victory. KEEP GOING.

Enjoying MK’s book more and more. I detect the Vinfluence - Caramel voice indeed! Very inspiring. Love my new friends. Feeling clingy and needy? New friends oh goodie new friends!. Hmm still obsession roils here. How to keep it good, moving?

Where is my mission focus? Where is the form of my intent?

Conceal me what I am, And be my aide
For such disguise as haply shall
become the form of my intent
12th Night, Wm. Shakespeare

Conceal me what I am – a frightened woman, insecure and unconfident.
And be my aide – boy howdy, do I need help!
For such disguise – my fat shell that I hide behind, and all the pretense.
Haply shall become – perhaps will manifest,
the form of my intent. – so far, the big intent has been to survive and protect myself, a defensive stance.

Try this again, with confidence:

Conceal me what I am: an uncertain person, sheltering her vulnerabilities behind a crisp steel mask.
And be my aide – mask, persona, be my loyal ally.
For such disguise as haply shall become – this costume and persona will transform me –
the form of my intent – into the focused, accomplished being I desire to be.

I form myself from the clay of flesh. I form my intent. I form a plan. I inform, transform, reform, and deform.

Its morning in July and the mosquitoes are biting.

Dream: poodle on the porch with a big pink cake in its mouth! Traveling in France with a group, we stop to take pictures. Someone is picking tarragon along the road. We stop and get all involved in trying to put things back they way they were, and end up at a dining table with the family, who has just had a loss, and there are lots of flowers, and time is a wasting and we want to go on, but don’t want to be rude or unkind.

I feel the coffee in my gut, I feel the moisture of my skin. I feel the ache of lost love. I feel the weight of the fat around my chin. I feel the sound of birds warring – crows and jays. I feel the breeze lifting. I feel the stretch of side muscles. I feel the breath in my lungs. I feel an ache in my heart, a longing, a grief, it becomes a space, an ocean. I feel. I feel.

Feel deeply, make beauty. My mission. Still? This came to me, like the voice of god, on a road trip to Michigan some years ago. a trip to dismantle my childhood home, to dispense with my parents estate. Is this still my mission? Has it become more clear? more essential, in spite of shifting details?

Feel deeply, make beauty.

In magic, the intent infuses the ritual. Intent becomes the form, form expresses intent. It arms us with imagery and momentum to pursue the goal, the vision. In MK's Composure, a remarkable visualization of the energies interacting, the color, plant and musicality of the energy is fascinating. And realistic.

Reach for the node, down below. It doesn’t need US to feed it, does it? MK's villain, stealing fear and charging the Black, I can’t imagine it working that way, although maybe I am not wired for it. It feels plausible when read, at least. And terrifying.
Think about the psychic vampires, the people I avoid because of their energy sucking proclivities. Or maybe it is just a threatened fear. DL, DA, AP, even Cat, the stubborn refusal to change, the clinging to misery, the blaming outward, and castigating viciously inward. I cannot be around this. I fear exposure to this. I avoid this. I am halfway or more to healing this wound - and those beleivers keep re-opening it, picking the scar.

What if I had my protections, by brambles and vines and thorns, in good working order? Could there be less fear?

July 11 - At least there is flow

Writing is how I metabolize life. Julia Cameron

Good morning here it is I am getting up too late again oh well here it is and the phone is wringing conversation from me and at least the words still flow there is flow, there is flow,

I am in the river, it is surging with bits of litter and weed and mulch, brown and gritty, and warm, too warm. I swim out. The water cools, the flotsam eases, but it is no less opaque. The detritus of nation-building. Along the shore, heaps of empty bottles and cans from beer and snacks lay in abandoned state. It breaks me, this unseeing. Who can disregard the beauty? Almost everyone, it seems.

Yesterday the morning writing and then, a day of distractions and bending the mind to tedious tasks of money and bills and statements, but still phear of fone calls. Today I must make the “scary” calls. Get V to do them, in his mellifluous voice.
“Helloww, is thing the water company? Am I to understand there is a bit of an overdraft here? Well, now, I appreciate this as much as any chap, but…” V pays my bills.

So, a list then? Does it have to be here? This is supposed to be a refuge! The Boat. The Loan. The Apartment. The Stepmother. The Waterline. The temp agency. Kris. The brokerage account. The Job. The business partner. The Brother. Why all this dread!!! Release the dread! Release!! These are the petty details of my life. Get Christine moving again, gaddamit.
Then there are the neglected friends, and the ones who seem to suck too much time out me on the phone.

The city, the train, Katrina, good to reconnect, make appointments for informational interviews, search the web for how to get on Gore’s team. What am I thinking, I haven’t a snowballs chance - too old, too fat... OH get over it! Besides, here he comes, my dark angel, daggers slashing, demons falling away, no more obstacles.

No more obstacles. No more obstacles. No more obstacles. Write for the NSP. Write for the environment. Write to the perpetrators? Consider masking myself as a conservative? A heartlander? My guts roil. Take the drama to the page. Take the vistas to the page. My roiling guts are no accident – detox tea indeed! OK....

Potomac River, evening:
Heat builds, slinks along the river, hugs the surface shimmering , a glittery reflection crisp then wavering in bended air. The murky water carries the heat, too, in its top layer, slithering overtop of the deep cool, insulating, radiating.

The boats skitter and glide. The planes scratch the sky descending. The city belches out its load of trash and silt and sewage, and the river takes it into her mouth, burgeoning with filth, until people turn their back on her, the dirty whore.

This is she who bore you here! In boats and barques you sailed up her with ease, to find this land. You fattened yourself on her slippery fish, sea-scented and luscious. Your eyes caressed her velvety lush thickly furred edges and dreamed of …. Real estate. Logging. It’s great. Let’s transform it.

Her sacred flow, this river, draining valleys afar, still breathes with the tide, though salt is scarce, the sea pushes the river, shoves her higher into the marshes twice each day, a sigh and a release that sends a pulse through he quietest pools.

Did you love the scent of her? Did you quicken with pleasure at her touch? Did she rock you to sleep? Did you ever believe in her love? She who bore you here.

July 10 - What if?

July 10
What if we grew up without seeing the stars, without ever seeing the Milky Way spreading across the night sky?
What if we never hear the chorus of frogs making their john cage concert in the marsh?
What if you had never seen a hummingbird hover over a blossom, and considered its tiny vibrating heart?
What if the crimes of this government were unknown to you, and you allowed them to continue uninterrupted?
What if you really were a monster? What if you really were a god?
What if you lost a few scores of pounds and discovered what was underneath?
What if the blossoms began to sing? What if the memories in this cup could run again? What if the stripes were waving fields of grain? What if Fibi was my dog? What if Linda was my lover? What if I wasn’t afraid to talk to people? What if I got a massage? What if I got a job?
What if I really trusted and loved myself utterly?
What if I wrote like this every day?
What if I held my intent, like a votive, not in vain? What if I let laughter rule. What if I followed my song? What if I became a writer? What if I painted pictures with words instead? What if I only played in the studio? What if I were happy? What if I weren’t afraid all the time? What if I let the joy that leaks in when I am in love to take over and infect everything?
What if the world were round? What if we all grew up seeing the Milky Way spreading across the night sky? What if we all grew up feeling the power of the dark sea move beneath us? What if we all felt our father’s hand guiding us? What if we could trust the adults in our lives?
What if everyone got enough attention? What if every child was loved?
What if I just go on asking these questions for hours and days and weeks?
There’s a dream: it will take us to the roof. What if our gods were monsters? What if our monsters were gods? What if our monsters were simply us? What if Jesus didn’t die on the cross. What if people didn’t kill lie and steal in his name for 2000 years?
What if the Matrix was written by a woman? What if the aboriginal people didn’t come in from the wild? What if we didn’t give up? What if we didn’t change?
Where is the place to stand ground? Where is the a place for us? Go find your own tree. Tell, me do you like music?
Can I find Latin quotes and translations o n the net? What should I be writing about? How can I just start taking this seriously? What if I took my writing seriously? What if making words sing was enough? What if I wasn’t heartbroken that painting pictures wasn’t enough? What if I wasn’t heartbroken that love wasn’t enough? What if I wasn’t heartbroken?
What if I knew what to do? What if it were easy? What if I did it with love? What if I gave it my all? What if I wasn’t afraid ALL THE TIME?
What if this was a great exercise? What if I went to the gym enough? What if everything was alright? What if I called my brother? What if I got all my work done? What if I opened all my mail? What if I stopped making people mad at me ? what if I stopped hiding, but still had enough solitude?
What if… what if… what if?
Then what!

July 9 - remembering how to write

July 9
Morning Pages: a ritual I haven’t done in a long while, that I resisted because it’s words not images. Now, words seem like the most perfect place to be, words flow, they take up no space, I feel free. “Words carry the means to meaning and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.”
Finding new words, reading the writing of others its magic. So many things swirling in the flotsam and jetsam and tide coming and going.
The river is muddy but she has been my lover for years. So there it is, a lovely new world to swim in where I can change the scenery with the lick of the pen. That’s a piece of it then, how unwieldy the physical world has become
How blunt the canvas, how unlikely to touch anyone. Sometimes people like my paintings, but they aren’t changing anyone, they are just pretty or mildly interesting or someone admires me for the ability to do it, lately that is the most common –an envy of talent...”I wish I could do that”
So here we are, pretty words, angry words, new words, they are so light and portable, and the world can shift like a chimera in a sentence or two. Witness MK’s book....amazing shifting reality, from what you expect to what unfurls.
Distraction, the red herring it lures me off the path. I am remembering something I saw on the chat board: “the most painful tattoo,” Puff the Magic Dragon, elaborately drawn on some (poor or brave, depending on your viewpoint) soul’s entire pelvis. You can imagine what the puffing dragon was. I was particularly amused by the entrance to hell, pointed out by demons.
OK the dream: in the dream I was in school, in a class, and I kept distracting the professor, and my friend who was like an assistant, with personal questions, until we ate up all the time, and I felt lost regarding the work, and how to proceed, succeed.
Hmmmm – how I am feeling about my professional life – that I have worked hard on the interpersonal, and the personal, but the professional is sadly neglected, and there the demon fears still coil and slither, churning when disturbed with their glittery eyes menacing.

A Venturous View

I consider myself curious, and greatly value that quality, as it leads me to new places, ideas and experience. Though primarily a visual artist, I have been drawn to writing for some time, and have been journaling for most of my adult years. Some years ago I published a sort of Blog about my experiences during my father's final illness called "Gifts of the Goddess." It was a wonderful collision of words and dreams and catharsis and imagery at a tumultuous time. It's no longer up on the web... I may dust it off at some point and see how it looks, now 5 years on. At that time, there weren't the profusion of Blog sites, and I made pages in html "by hand" - making my own navigation buttons laboriously in PageMill, and ancient web page technology once sold by Adobe. As my skills are visual, not technical, it was a bit klutzy to operate, but it turns out to have been a bit of foresight. Look at all the amazing, entertaining, obnoxious, boring and funny Blogs now available, and the lovely, easy publishing sites like Blogger to facilitate them!

So, as to this new effort, I will jump into the fray with my own skewed personal opinions, rants, obsessions and observations, for what it's worth. We'll see where it goes. Some of this material has been written over the past 7-8 months using the practise of Morning Pages, as descibed in detail in Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way." I highly reccommend that book and others of hers to anyone looking to enhance their creative life.

Blessings for a Beautiful Day!

~Ven